#it's the sort of thing where actually authorial intent *does* matter

[mybrainproblems]

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[onwhatcaptain]

hi i didn’t know what Star Trek was until i came across your fic it’s so. Real. poor McCoy bruh nobody’s gonna know what he went through …I guess it’s not entirely gone, but still. He didn’t get the three socks metaphor.

YOU TRICKED ME. canon divergent LIEEE LIEEEE

The way you omit time travel as a tag is craaazyy (I love time travel) AND AND THE SUNMARY BEING

“About men who love each other” LIKE NOT TWO MEN but all THREE

I do have one question though. If McCoy said “tell him you missed him” and set up the holo night, then in the first timeline had McCoy already gone back at that point and failed?

Hi! So I saw your comment on AO3 (please forgive me if it takes a moment to reply, I have an enormous backlog of comments to get around to after I took a break when the fic ended!) and I knew I absolutely had to ask you these burning questions: how did you find my fic if you didn't know what Star Trek was? What inspired you to read it?

I am beyond thrilled that you enjoyed the story and so touched that you read it all the way through without having seen Star Trek, but I absolutely have to ask what the story behind this is if you're willing to share with me!

It's definitely still canon divergent in a sort of way! At least in my figurative and literal book if you know the episode that inspired this novel, it would definitely be considered divergent:) I wanted to keep things as spoiler-free as possible to retain the surprise and emotional weight of the story, so I made the decision early on to not tag where the plot or ending was going, which definitely threw a lot of people off! Sorry for the trickery!

I ADORE that you pointed out the summary. I was actually shocked when I was reading this ask, because it was absolutely intentional and a huge part of the foreshadowing, but you're the only reader to my knowledge that has consciously noticed that choice, and you haven't even seen Star Trek!! Amazing!! I have such a big smile on my face right now!

More below because I realize this is getting long already!

As for poor McCoy, it is truly tragic nobody will know what he went through. In Star Trek, a lot of fans (rightfully) emphasize the love between Kirk and Spock, which I feel is only kept alive because of McCoy's quiet love for them both in the background as he takes care of them. In a way, it's a tribute to love that goes unnoticed, unseen.

With regards to your question, it's a great question! And I don't have a perfect answer for it, because it's entirely paradoxical. The first half of the story can only happen if the second half happens, because Kirk and Spock would not act on their feelings without the existence of the holo night and McCoy's intervention. But in the original timeline, they still die even though McCoy's actions in the latter half of the novel seem to exist. It's totally circular. It's expounded on somewhat in Forever and a Day, where McCoy tries to make sense of the same question and concludes that even if he does succeed, they will still die.

McCoy tries not to think about the horrifying implications. The knowledge that no matter what he did, he could not undo their deaths. To live, they would always need to die.

This doesn't necessarily mean that McCoy has gone back before, but it raise some serious questions about metaphysics and leaves a lot unanswered, because the two events now cause each other, and they also contradict each other. I actually took a stab at explaining the metaphysics in way greater detail in the fic originally, but my beta reader (correctly) told me this would confuse readers. So because it's confusing, I later just wave my sci-fi authorial wand to try and convince you to go along with it! :)

"And I like how the paradox makes no sense.” “I reckon it’s not meant to. They never do."

I do have to say, I recommend giving Star Trek a watch if you were interested! I think it's an amazing show. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to read a whole novel about a show you had no idea about!!

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/729708592592306176/how-about-a-different-discourse-death-of-the

What this ask is missing, a bit, is that Death of the Author *does* mean that the author’s take on things is no more or less valid than anyone else’s. It’s about decentering authorial intent in analyses of media. Barthes is pretty clear and quite pointed about it in the original essay.

What bothers me about misuses of it and what I think this anon means to say is when people start decentering the actual *text*. The idea behind Death of the Author is also that the text stands alone. You don’t need to look at any extra shit to understand it. As you said, it was a response to a mode of analysis that obsessed over plumbing through author biographies.

The issue with what people do in fandom is they ignore the text. “I don’t like this element of canon, so it doesn’t exist.” (Which is different from arguing that it’s there but it sucks because of XYZ reasons, so I’m going to consciously ignore it in my fan works. This is when people just act like it isn’t there in the text in the first place.) “You have to take my bizarro world out-of-nowhere headcanon that is based on nothing except that I want it to be true, that I love this character and I wish they were XYZ therefore they are” and take it just as seriously as headcanons that actually engage with what’s in the show/video game/book/movie/whatever and use that as their basis (like building off something that is subtextual in the original work).

Granted we all do this to some degree, we all come to a text with our own biases and you can’t *always* easily separate those out, and that can affect, for instance, your interpretation of what the subtext is, but I think the irritating fandom behavior is when this kind of ignoring-the-text-to-substitute-your-own-reality is this very deliberate sort of laziness. The annoying thing in my current fandom is people who are fans of this one ship that they insist is the most progressive and other people just don’t see the scintillating “subtext” of because we are bigots or whatever, between two characters who don’t interact that much for two MCs and when they do it’s not at all shippy (but these characters both have very shippy subtext with different characters), but where these people think the ship *should* exist because of their identities. And their “evidence” for the ship is always gifsets taken way out of context and not including the dialogue that makes the non-shippy context for that scene very clear (including that it might actually be shippy for conflicting pairings). It’s like this bizarre version of “close reading” that strips out the largely context *deliberately* in order to make a particular conclusion seem more compelling than it actually is.

Anyway, all that ignoring-the-text stuff is STILL bad analysis per DOTA. Since the point of DOTA is to go based on the text, if you’re obscuring the text you’re kind of just installing yourself as a new author.

This is why DOTA doesn’t mean “anything goes.” It just means “authorial intent is just one interpretation that doesn’t have to matter.” It doesn’t mean other stuff we use in analysis doesn’t matter, and if anything the point is to make it even more text-centric than the older author-centric analyses were. People can still disagree about what the text says, of course, but they should both be going back to it in how they construct those arguments, and not, like those shippers, deliberately ignoring chunks of the text that weaken their arguments.

--

I don't think all of them are consciously throwing out actual canon, but they are often throwing out all context that would help evaluate subtext.

Like... if you're analyzing a Marvel movie, you might ignore what the director said in an interview, but you probably shouldn't entirely ignore the fact that it is a Marvel movie and apply assumptions that make sense for some arthouse film.

And, yes, if you're arguing for shippy subtext, even unintentional on the part of creators, "I like this ship because..." needs very little, but "This ship has more support than this other ship" requires going back to the actual text and looking at it in its totality.

There's a lot of faux-intellectualism around garbage like TJLC where people try to make themselves feel smart by using the language of close reading while having the media literacy of a bucket of rotting fish.

[bitletsanddrabbles]

I’ve seen all sorts of posts about what people miss about fandom in ‘the old days’ and ‘old time fanfiction’, so I thought I’d do one myself. You know what I miss?

I miss the threat of cease and desist orders.

And before you go “Ah, yes, another post on how we were getting away with so much!” let me stop you right there by pointing out: we weren’t getting away with shit. Anne Rice made that very, very clear. Everything that we ‘got away with’ we ‘got away with’ because the creators themselves supported fan fiction or, at the very least, didn’t bother to come after us. Anyone who decided to shut us down had but to call their lawyers and we were toast.

So what was so good about that, you ask? What was good about the continual worry that it would all go south? If we weren’t part of the Glorious Rebellion Against The Creator?

One word: Manners.

The rest of the fandom could be as nasty a bunch of bullies as they liked. They could write essays on how their high school physics instructor told them it was impossible to fly on a magic broomstick and how that knowledge made them so superior. They could bully actors into giving up their careers or, better yet!, contemplate suicide. They could be as intolerant and unforgiving and demanding as they liked, but the writers?

We had to at least pretend to respect the creators and view them as actual people. We needed our disclaimers saying “I own nothing except my student debts and a pile of dirty laundry! Please, oh creator, do not break me open like a bag of groceries and dance on my sticky bones!” No, really, those were things people actually said in their disclaimers.  We needed those to keep ourselves safe.

Unlike the rest of the fandom, we could not take that safety for granted. We couldn’t afford it. Thought something should have been done differently? “I get where the author was going with this, but I’d have like to have seen it done this way instead”. Thought a scene would have been more interesting from the view of a side character rather than the main? “I thought I’d explore this through the eyes of John Doe over here.” We could still write everything we do now, and for all of the same reasons, but we could not get away from the fact that the creator was a human being who had reached into their skull and pulled out something that inspired us.

It protected us in other ways too. When people came at us complaining that fan fiction was disrespectful to the author, we had a thesis paper’s worth of disclaimers: disclaimers thanking the author for their work; disclaimers promising the reader that we were just having fun; disclaimers saying in plain words that this was not to be taken seriously, but was written as finals-week-therapy at three-bloody-am. Even the people who were lying in their disclaimers, who really did look on the creators as the lowest form of life, had to pretend to have respect and that, in turn, made sure they could never completely overlook the truth of the matter: without the creator, they wouldn’t have anything to write about.

We were Emperors and the threat of a law suit was the man following us in the parade, whispering in our ears: Remember, one day you will die.

It kept us humble.

It kept us respectful.

It kept us, to some degree, empathetic. After all, we were writers too, weren’t we? We were just having fun, mind, or practicing our writing, or whatever, but the important part was that we were all writers.

Maybe it’s a reflection of the people I spent time with, but it showed in our meta too. When talking about characters, the other fans might sprinkle their posts with snide comments about authorial intent, but we stuck to observations about the characters themselves. “But of course, the creator didn’t think about that” was again a non-writer line. If we wondered what the creator had been doing in a particular plot, it was because we were genuinely curious and wanted to know, not because we wanted to look clever. If the creator ended the series like a Shakespearean comedy rather than a John Webster piece, we didn’t sit around debating the likelihood that the whole cast would be eaten by a rabid rhino the second the credits stopped rolling, because really, let’s look at the creator’s history here. We celebrated our happy ending.

We had conversations because we wanted to enjoy things. We were in the fandom to have fun, period, end stop.

This was really important when I was in my twenties and working on getting a B.A. in Creative Writing. The idea of publishing, particularly in a pre-self-publishing craze, was daunting. Basically everything the big publishing houses put out were novels. That was a lot of work, a lot of revision, a lot of money for editors and agents and shipping things around. You were looking at a lot of rejection, so much so that writers like Steven King gave advice in interviews and autobiographies on how to deal with the sea of ‘sorry, not interested’. And it wasn’t much money, usually. The idea that, if you made it, you could wind up with millions of ‘fans’ bitching about how the book you got on eating disorders in 1893 had given you bad information and calling you a no talent, idiotic hack because you believed it was enough to make someone just give up and go into landscaping. However, the knowledge that people might be inspired to write their own things based off of your work, that they might recognize you as the source of their inspiration, and that there might wind up being a communal, living body of work based on something that you pried out of your brain….that was exciting. That was worth it. That made being part of a fandom and the thought of having one of your own encouraging and fun and supportive.

To twenty something me, that made being a published author seem like an infinitely better job than packing groceries.

Then we got lawyers. We got rights. That should have been a good thing, and in ways it is, but we now have the privilege of being entitled, spoiled bullies like the rest of the fans, and God forbid we not make the most of our privileges. ‘Having fun and enjoying the thing’ has given way to ‘find as many things to be dissatisfied about as possible’. Telling the nay-sayers ‘no, we’re all just having fun’ has turned into a battle to defend our hobby against someone armed with a list of fiction summaries along the lines of ‘fixing the plot because the author is a no talent hack who couldn’t write their way out of a wet paper bag!’

Forty something me packs groceries for a living and plans on doing it until I retire. Yeah, self-publishing is a thing now, and I’m financially stable enough to do it. I could finish a rough draft (Hell, I have one that’s probably good enough to pitch at an editor), hire someone to help me clean it up, and get it out into the world.

I just don’t want to. It might do well, and then what? I get to hear all about how I’m an idiot because side plot B didn’t make sense to five people? About how someone had a great revelation about character C and it’s a pity I couldn’t be clever enough to have actually thought about it myself? About how they know that my story is really super cringe, but they found a way to think about it that I never intended and actually makes it good? About how all of the problematic parts are clearly because I’m majority? (Well, you know, mixed status, but that just means ‘worst of both worlds’.)

Working retail I have to put up with a constant stream of superior people being nasty and critical, but I don’t have to spend more money than it takes to drive to work. I don’t have to let people see my thoughts and dreams. I don’t have to hand them characters that I’ve poured hours of thought and care into, developing them to be the best, most human people I can manage, only to have them run over with steamrollers and be criticized for making them so flat.

Not to mention it pays better.

No, really. People assume that once you’ve published a book or worked on a TV script, you’re set for life, but I’ve already made more money this year boxing groceries than a bottom tier novelist. And before you say ‘oh, but the bottom tier is practically unknown and doesn’t need to worry about fans’, that is not the point. The point is that a lot of well known creators have second jobs. They still get routinely attacked by people who claim to like their work.

It’s not encouraging anymore. It’s not supportive. And I’m sure there are people out there all ready to say ‘Oh, but with you it will be different because-” no it won’t. I’m not that special. I’m not special at all, except in that way that everyone is a unique and special individual, and that statement applies to every human being in history, including the genocidal maniacs.

There are days I’m not even sure why I bother with fan fiction anymore, except that I want to write and this is what’s inspired me. Half the time it feels like people just see my comments section and go ‘Ah yes!  A fresh forum to complain about the creator!’ or my meta and go ‘Oh yeah! I can add to this, and get in a few digs on the creator to boot! Gee, I can’t believe you forgot that part!’ And I want to get better at writing and that requires feed back and being able to ask people who have different specialties than I do how things work and…

I just want to be able to enjoy talking to people about things again. I want to be able to read a great observation on a character and not have it ruined by the obligatory “But of course, we have to take into account who’s writing it!” comment. I want to be able to see a story with an awesome looking summary that isn’t labeled “fixing what the creator ruined by being a no-talent hack”. I want to be able to see I have a comment and not have to hold my breath that it’s yet another person complaining about what a horrible, awful thing the creator did by writing a scene that makes me feel represented in a way nothing else ever has and how much they hate it and of course I hate it too, right? I want to not feel bad about supporting a fan author knowing full well that they’re writing because they think the original creator sucks and will interpret everything possible in a way that reflects badly on them.

I’m glad we have the right to create fan works without fear of repercussions, but I’m really not sure we deserve it.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

The shifting narrative of God’s interventism and how it reflects on the narrative on John

This post will ignore the issue authorial intent entirely because I can, but it’s also about authorial intent in a way, but I also don’t like to talk about things as happening “accidentally” because a) a serialized story like Supernatural, especially one that got renewed for much longer than anyone could possibly expect or hope in their wildest ambitions, structurally relies on serendipity, because that’s how stories work when they’re work in progress, b) a television show is an extremely multi-authored text and the chance that something happens out of the intent of any of the multiple layers of creators is kind of... statistically negligible. So, yeah, that’s my stance on the topic. Anyway.

The shifting narrative about God is simultaneously something that hangs on fortunate storytelling clicks on an essentially programmed narrative. At first, we don’t know where the fuck God is. Cas starts looking for him with little success. Raphael says he’s dead, Cas doesn’t believe it. Dean relates to his struggle because he knows the feeling of not knowing where the fuck your father is and going looking for him with little success, not knowing if he’s even alive. Then the theory that gets assumed as the truth is that God has left. He fucked off who knows where, who knows why, leaving his creation to struggle alone. Also essentially how Dean had felt after John had died; in that case there was guilt for his demon deal and everything, but the most cruel weight on Dean’s shoulder was that John left him alone to struggle with his devastatingly horrific instructions he doesn’t understand. The angels are also left with horrific instructions they don’t understand. No wonder Cas does his own ‘demon deal’ in season 6, as he desperately tries to do what he assumes his father wants from him, but he doesn’t actually know what that is.

“God has left” is maddening, and everyone is angry about it, but it has its own dignity. God has left us without clear instructions, we are confused and in pain and evil runs amock but at least, we suppose, the evil of it is our own doing. We are alone and we do our best, our best is simply not enough. We wish he gave us guidance, but he won’t. He wants us to figure it out ourselves, possibly. We don’t actually know what he wants. But maybe that’s the point. It’s possible he doesn’t even know what’s happening, he just has left the building entirely.

But then Chuck reveals himself. We find out that he never actually left. He was there. “I like front row seats. You know, I figured I’d hide out in plain sight”. He simply chooses not to intervene. He chooses not to answer. He chooses to be hands-off. He presents himself as a laissez-faire parent, because, he says, it’s better for his children to have the responsibility they need to grow up. He’s absent, but in a different way than we thought! It’s not that he doesn’t know what’s happening or isn’t interested in knowing what’s happening. He’s here, he knows what’s happening, he just stays there and watches as you stumble and struggle and scream. It’s worse, and it pains Dean so much he isn’t even afraid to yell at God. You know we’re suffering and you just don’t give us any support, any comfort.

You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on, real hands-on, for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created... would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. It’s enabling.

But it didn’t get better.

Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.

Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.

I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

At that point of the show, the writing team almost certainly didn’t have the s14-15 twist in mind. So this was probably intended to be Chuck’s truth. Later it gets twisted (retconned?) into a lie, but about that later.

Here, Chuck is really good at manipulating the conversation. Dean has a perfectly valid point, because there IS a middle ground between being overinvolved and not being involved at all. There is a middle ground between enabling your children and abandoning them completely. But Chuck hits Dean where it hurts, plays the emotional card, basically tells him that he’s too emotional to understand, too emotional to think rationally about it, because he mixes his feelings about his father to the issue and thus cannot see it clearly. He basically tells him he’s too close to it to get it. You don’t understand parenting, Dean, because you’re too blinded by your emotions about your own little life and cannot see the big picture.

It doesn’t really matter here if he’s telling the truth or lying, it already says a lot about Chuck that he’s emotionally manipulating Dean, silencing him by hitting the painful spot.

But the thing is, 11.20 immediately presents Chuck as a liar. He makes Metatron read his autobiography and the very first line is a lie (“In the beginning, there was me. Boom – detail. And what a grabber. I mean, I’m hooked, and I was there.” “I’m hooked too, and yet... details. You weren’t alone in the beginning. Your sister was with you.”) and the stuff he talks about his experience as Chuck is not exactly truthful about anything (“That, you know, makes you seem like a really grounded, likable person.” “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” “You are neither grounded nor a person!”). Metatron calls him out (“Okay. There are two types of memoir. One is honest... the other, not so much. Truth and fairy tale. Now, do you want to write Life by Keith Richards? Or do you want to write Wouldn’t It Be Nice by Brian Wilson?”). Chuck SAYS he chooses truth and gives Metatron a different manuscript, supposedly containing the truth, to which Metatron reacts positively. Metatron believes it, and we believe it with him.

Oh! Oh, this! This is what I was talking about. Chapter Ten “Why I Never Answer Prayers, and You Should Be Glad I Don’t”, and Chapter Eleven “The Truth About Divine Intervention and Why I Avoid It At All Costs”.

Nature? Divine. Human nature – toxic.

They do like blowing stuff up.

Yeah. And the worst part – they do it in my name. And then they come crying to me, asking me to forgive, to fix things. Never taking any responsibility.

What about your responsibility?

I took responsibility... by leaving. At a certain point, training wheels got to come off. No one likes a helicopter parent.

This is sort of what he later says to Dean, except that to Dean he talks about “beautiful creatures” “my baby”, talks about helping, none of the harsh tone he’s using here. When Metatron accuses him of hiding from Amara, he retorts “I am not hiding. I am just done watching my experiments’ failures”. What a different language, uh? Then Metatron asks him why he abandoned them, and Chuck answers “Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me”. Then, he admits he lied about “learning” to play the guitar and so on, because he just gave himself the ability, and then appears to Dean and Sam, after Metatron’s passionate speech about humanity.

So, no matter the authorial intent at the time - the truthiness of Chuck’s words was already ambiguous. He kept lying and being called out, or silencing the conversation with some good ol’ gaslighting.

The season 14 finale introduces the big twist: it was, indeed, all a lie. The whole of it. Chuck didn’t abandon shit. It was all him, minutely controlling the narrative of the universe, putting the characters through all the pain and struggles for his own amusement.

The “absent father” narrative was a lie.

What does this tell us about John? Nothing, according to the authorial intent that shines through Dabb’s Lebanon. But we don’t give a crap about Dabb’s authorial intent about John! He’s just one dude and plenty of other authors have painted a different picture. So I’m going to read the narrative the way I want, because I can, and the narrative allows me to. It’s all there.

I’m suggesting that the fact that Chuck lied when he talked about being a hands-off/absentee father parallels how Dean and Sam prefer to think of their father as an “absent father” when that’s not exactly a reflection of the truth.

You left us. Alone. ‘Cause Dad was just a shell. [...] And I-I had to be more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe.

Setting aside how “I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” sort of retcons and cleans up the Winchester family picture painted by ealier seasons, the fact that John didn’t really count as a functional father figure and Dean and Sam were essentually alone is not incorrect or anything. It is true that John would leave them to their own devices a lot, thus the long stays in motels, the hunger, the food-stealing, and all. But John wasn’t always absent, at all. He trained them as soldiers, he disciplined them, he was around enough for them to be intimately familiar with what happened when he drank. He drove them around.

It’s almost like it’s preferable to Dean and Sam to spin their own “absent father” narrative, putting the accent on the time they spent alone, painting their childhood as a time they had to grow up on their own, rather than acknowledge they grew up under the thumb of a controlling, looming figure they would regularly live in fear of, even when he was not physically present.

The “absent father” narrative is what Dean and Sam need to use to avoid confronting the reality of the father figure whose moods and whims they had to dance around. “I know things got dicey... you know, with Dad... the way he was. And I just... I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should have. I mean, I had my own stuff, you know. In order to keep the peace, probably looked like I took his side quite a bit.”

John shaped their lives. He shaped their identities. Even in the episodes where he abandons Dean or both children somewhere, he’s portrayed as the figure who drives the car. He symbolically drives the car, you know? John shaped Dean and Sam’s relationship with each other, both on a surface level (the conflicts) and on a deeper level (the parental dynamic).

Heck. The entire first season of the show plays on John’s disappearance as the “elephant in the room”. John is there by not being there, you know? And after he dies, his death - his absence - is again the elephant in the room for Dean, the weight on his psyche that he shatters under.

It is not wrong that Dean and Sam had to spend long periods of time without John. But John structured their lives in quite minute detail. Where they needed to be, what they needed to do, what they must not do, everything had to follow John’s instructions. A drill sergeant, the narrative called him, ordering how his sons needed to live their lives. That’s no absence, except on a level where Chuck not showing himself and pretending he’s not there can be considered absent. That’s a presence, not necessarily always physical, but semiotical and psychological.

John is an absent father as much as Chuck is a hands-off god. He even writes himself into the story around the time Cas has the “season 1” phase (let’s go look for dad/let’s go look for god), which is when John actually was alive and appeared. Then he was no longer physically there, but he was still shaping his characters’ lives, just like he’d always done.

The “absent father” narrative on John is that - a narrative. Spun by the characters themselves because it’s easier and actually kinder on John. Or, better, it allows them not to be crushed by the psychological implications of having to accept that their father was such a looming, minutely formative figure in their lives. They know, but they can wave the “absent father” idea around to avoid thinking about it.

“I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” is something easier to tell yourself. I was the one who did it all. But he wasn’t, and that’s the problem. The fact that John was their father - Dean’s and Sam’s - is the problem. But ironically, blaming himself for every failure is a better option for Dean than fully acknowledging John’s abuse. As long as he blames himself, he has control over it. The moment he acknowledges the extent of John’s influence, he loses control over the entire narrative of his own identity and the family identity, the family dynamics. That’s scarier, just like realizing that God manipulated everything is much scarier than the alternative. “God abandoned us” was indeed a better option, and “John left us alone” was a better option. But neither was true, and the characters faced the implications of the cosmic level, but never got to face the implication of the familial level, because the narrative always danced around it and then Dabb’s apologist version “won”.

But what’s been put in the show is still there. The narrative of John’s abuse is still there. Nothing can take it out of the story.

[bthump]

I wanted to touch on the whole gutsca thing with someone (I know zero people in this fandom so you're my lucky pick!). Am I alone in feeling like their first time together came out of no where? My meta with Guts is that he was not at all comfortable with sex at that time of his life (this instance being his first time [outside of the rape he experienced as a child]). His choice of words too, "here I go", translated to me like someone only doing what they felt was expected of them rather than something he was yearning for. He clearly wasn't even ready given how rough he was and how he regressed and attacked her. This moment seemed very forced and almost rang to me like Kentaro's declaration of "no homo though". I would be curious to know how Kentaro felt about homosexuality (bisexuality, etc) and if he ever addressed the ever blatant gay tension and romantic-non-platonic-love blossoming between Guts and Griffith pre-eclipse. I do get the sense that this may be a case of severe queer baiting or perhaps a PSA against gay love altogether ("falling for a man will literally destroy you and send you and everyone you love to hell" type of message); but I'm a very jaded person so I hope to be proven wrong. Sigh, my point being Gutsca seems pretty dang forced and empty of true development. I buy them more as besties than anything romantic. Especially since both he and Casca are actually in love with Griffith (what a fucking triangle!). Does anyone in fandom have any opinions on the sad possibility of this whole beautiful and ultimately tragic love between Griffith and Guts actually being a fucked up anti-gay PSA? Are there any interviews with Kentaro shooting this theory down so I can stop being sad and bitter about it? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for sending this, I'm definitely down to talk about it! I hope you connect with more people in the fandom but don’t worry about sending random asks even if you do lol.

Anyway you’re definitely not alone. I have a lot of thoughts on Guts and Casca's hook up, and they're all pretty much "it feels really forced and not particularly romantic but I think you can argue that that's deliberate" lol. For instance I discuss in a lot of detail here how various aspects of the scene indicate that Guts and Casca having sex is shown to be a case of both of them rebounding from Griffith and sort of giving to each other what they were unable or failed to give to him.

And I talk a lot about how Judeau essentially orchestrates it all and what that suggests about Guts and Casca's relationship here.

And lol sorry for all the links but also this post is about how their relationship feels one-sided to an extent and is used to illuminate a lot of Guts' flaws, using Judeau as a comparison point.

Oh shit and also one more lol, here's a comparison between the sex scene and Griffith's with Charlotte that suggests that both start as ways for the dudes to repress their feelings.

(Don't feel obligated to read all those posts if you don't want, you should get the gist of what I'm saying w/ those descriptions.)

But yeah basically I do think that Guts and Casca getting together felt forced and awkward. At best it might be intended to be seen that way, as two friends hooking up awkwardly in an emotionally intense moment but probably doomed to failure because neither of them are ready for a relationship with the other, or particularly interested in one deep down, once they finished "licking wounds." At worst it’s just bad writing lol. But again like I think there are good arguments for the former.

I also totally agree that their relationship has a strong vibe of doing what's expected. Like for real, at least to me both Guts and Casca read so easily as gay and repressed lol. Casca talks about her feelings for Griffith in terms of “he was a boy she was a girl can I make it any more obvious”

and I can’t help but see it as Casca like, wow I have strong feelings towards Griffith, he’s a man and I’m a woman, so clearly these feelings must be romantic, there’s no other option. Then when she has sex with Guts she keeps contextualizing it essentially as repayment for Guts saving her, like she owes him. “I too want a wound I can say you gave me.” “Not just being given to... maybe I can give something as well.” Which just doesn’t make her desire for him look all that genuine lol.

And then you have Guts. The way he tells Casca that from the start only her touch was okay with him after he has sex with her, referencing the scene when he wakes up with her on top of him and starts to panic before realizing she’s a woman, is soooo suggestive of repression to me. Like, first off because it’s incorrect, he was also okay with Griffith going in for a face-grab after winning a duel Guts had been projecting his rape trauma all over, which seems like a pretty conspicuous omission. And secondly because the reason he was okay with Casca’s touch specifically is solely because she’s a woman, not because she’s special or because they have a magic romantic connection - it’s because she’s not a man. To me that just screams that Guts was open to sex with Casca because she’s the only woman he knows, and he’s afraid of the idea of physical intimacy with men, regardless of what he might actually want deep down.

So yeah that’s basically how I feel about Guts and Casca’s relationship, strong agree with you.

When it comes to Miura’s intent, I can tell you that Miura was asked about the subtext in an interview once, back in 2000, and he responded with something along the lines of ‘two men can have passionate feelings for each other without it being romantic.’ The interview is here, but this is a paraphrase the translator mentioned in the comments.

Other than that I’ve never seen him address it directly, but on the flipside he has cited several textually gay stories as inspiration (off the top of my head: Kaze to Ki no Uta, Devilman, Guin Saga, mangaka Moto Hagio in general), and he has straightforwardly said that the (magical intersex) central character of his other work, Duranki, was intended to have romances with both male and female love interests. Also people tell me there are strong griffguts vibes with the main, presumably canon or intended-to-be-canon ship there. So there’s that lol.

As for the no homo aspect and the potential homophobia in the griffguts subtext... I can’t deny I’ve also considered the idea that it’s a deliberate anti-gay PSA (though I haven’t seen anyone else address the idea as far as I remember, and I’ve only briefly mentioned it offhandedly). Like, Guts and Griffith’s relationship turns bad because they’re both too invested in each other, maybe the barely-subtextual desire is meant to look like a sinister twisting of pure platonic feelings that ruins everything, if Griffith hadn’t loved him the Eclipse never would have happened, etc.

But honestly I don’t think that reading holds up compared to a much more positive reading of their feelings, in which it’s their failure to understand them and act on them, thanks largely to formative childhood trauma and self-hatred, that leads to tragedy.

I don’t know what Miura intended, and there certainly are aspects of the story that are homophobic regardless of his intent, even if my best-faith reading is entirely correct, like the only textual gay attraction being pedophiles and over the top heretic orgies lol, or yk, Guts and Griffith both assaulting the same woman while looking at/thinking about the other in a very sexually charged way.

But the reading of their relationship where it’s positive and good for both of them, even including sexual desire, and only gets fucked up because they both incorrectly think their feelings are unrequited is legitimately so weirdly strong, much stronger than a reading where the sexual nature of their feelings is what fucks everything up, so I’m pretty happy just rolling with that take.

And as much as Casca can be seen and may very well be intended as a no homo, it’s also very easy for me to read her relationships with both as less of a hopeful opportunity for positive heterosexual romance and more of a “here’s how repressing your feelings thru attempts at heterosexuality fucks you up” PSA lol. Griffith and Charlotte too, for that matter. It’s definitely a stretch to think that’s intended, but whether it’s intended or not it’s an easy sell for me and I’m fine with not really worrying too much about possible authorial intent there.

Finally, I also want to link this post that goes pretty thoroughly into why I interpret griffguts as very positive rather than as a cautionary tale or predatory gay lust etc

And also have this shorter post about Femto on the same subject too, why not

Oh and maybe this thing where I split hairs about Guts’ lust for Griffith and desire for revenge to make a point that the homoeroticism isn’t necessarily being equated with violence by the narrative lol

[listless-brainrot]

hey @give-zuko-peace-and-tea, i noticed your tags on my post and i would like to respond to some of them, because while i believe you were well intentioned, there were some points that i wanted to clarify.

#this person is right #but narratively i think trans zuko makes more sense than trans sokka because sokka's character arc is about masculinity #and idk i just think if you make him trans it changes the nature of why he feels so bound by his gender roles 

why does sokka (or zuko, for that matter) being trans Have to fit within the narrative? sure, him being trans would affect the Perspective from which he’s coming from, but that shouldn’t nor is the entire narrative focus. him Being trans wouldn’t detract nor change that significantly. disregarding the fact that the southern water tribe, while more traditional, isn’t even half as sexist as the northern water tribe (disregarding the fact that bryke making either of the water tribes sexist in any sort of way is. fucked up). furthermore, it’s interesting how sokka, being More Traditionally Manly, seems to translate to “trans headcanons don’t really apply to him” through the justification of “him being trans doesn’t serve his role in the narrative as well as him being a cis man does”. which is funny, because the entire point of my post was specifically that these sorts of things (being hc’ed as gay, trans, autistic, or all three) happen to No One Other Than Zuko.

#the root of why sokka needs to feel like a Man is because he thinks that is the only way to have honor #so if hes trans it becomes a story of oppression and restriction from his community

i have to disagree with you here. while sokka does have his own deal with honor going on, his emphasis on being a man is moreso tied with the concept of being a leader, which is what his dad was and left him alone to do when they went off to fight in the war. his whole thing is not fitting into those big shoes he Knows he has to fulfill eventually, as the son of the chief of the southern water tribe. there are quite a few sokka centric episodes that show his core beliefs and wants (such as jet, bato of the water tribe, the library, sokka’s master, just to name a few) which are much more war and leadership-oriented, rather than gender, even if him being a man has a role to play. and if he was canonically trans, i do have to ask- why Must his story become one of oppression and restriction? why is that the only other alternative? is it because the narrative doesn’t serve him being trans? or is it the other way around? why does either have to exist or happen? why does there have to be justification for one or the other? 

trans people just... exist. they don’t have to have a reason to. again- their gender and transition influences their perspective. if atla was an lgbtq+ story Intended to be viewed through an lgbtq+ lens, it’d be different, because then his gender serving the narrative would Actually serve the narrative, with his transness being brought to light and maybe focus. but it’s not. sokka is a guy with feminine attributes. you could say that for any character. the problem lies in Only giving somewhat feminine characters the gay or trans narrative, because then, it shows that you are moreso relying on stereotypes, rather than just letting these characters exist as they are. this also plays into another thing- where are all of the trans women headcanons? where are all the trans women headcanons for women who Aren’t somewhat androgynous or masculine? do either of the previous things i said immediately equate them as “just right” for being trans coded?

#also I agree that zuko is the more traditionally manly of the two and he is very feminized in fanon and is the lightest skinned main boy #seeing the light skinned richer character as feminine and the dark skinned as butcher is messed up 

yes. the point of my post was that racism, fetishization, infantilization and stereotyping of zuko and Zuko Only leads to the butchered fanon interpretation we see today. but the point of my post Wasn’t that zuko Can’t be feminine, even if i think he doesn’t really struggle with the concept of being perceived as feminine in the exact same breadth nor capacity as sokka. i don’t particularly enjoy how the headcanoning of characters as trans (which wasn’t even in the original post, mind you- it was in the tags) took precedence over my intended, previously stated points. however, by you mentioning it to this degree, it brings up another problem- the concept of trans people Having to serve the narrative in order to exist as trans people, as well as the gearing of lgbtq+ storylines towards oppression and suffering. these are things that a cis writer writing for a cis audience often do. and again, atla is in no way an lgbtq+ story. there was no authorial intent for such characters within the story, no matter how coded they are, so the narrative service argument and their identities “fitting better” is hard to apply to begin with.

we see multiple characters struggle with their identity over the course of the series- aang is the last airbender, katara is the last waterbender of the southern water tribe, sokka is the son of the chieftain and the only man left in charge, toph is a blind rich kid who isn’t taken seriously because she is blind, and zuko is the prince of the imperialist fire nation who has to come to terms with the atrocities his people committed all while establishing his own identity as someone separate from his father.

any of them being trans would serve the perspective of those individual journeys, but narratively, this is what their journeys would be geared towards.

but that wasn’t my point.

[itsclydebitches]

Hello again! Im the tinfoil hat anon with the long ass asks and I finally had the time to read your response. Thank you, it makes my day reading your answers. I honestly just enjoyed them over a cup of coffee like a good book.

Now, the gun pointing scene I mentioned was in fact the one from the droid fight facility like the other anon suggested. But I really liked that you covered the boat scene too, I haven’t thought of it much myself and now I definitely have!

I also would like to mention I love your “candy bar” choice analogy and I 100% agree Hunter’s “invitation” to join back wasn’t welcoming in the slightest. It is very likely just an obligation as you said. Sort of “you gave us a chance, we owe you a chance too”.

And the problem with it is now I am struggling to figure out how the batch members might change their attitude toward Crosshair going forward, especially Hunter. As of right now Crosshair’s best relationship is not with his brothers but with Omega(as surprising as this is). And I think he does realize now she cared about him the most out of all of them during the short time they interacted(both 1st and last episodes). Even between themselves(not counting Omega) I find most of the bad batch members to be cold and distant to each other. They feel less like a family than Rebels for example. And they aren’t even a “found family”(a trope everyone loves) but an actual one! And I get that they’re soldiers and supposed to be tough, I don’t expect them to share all “the feels”. I just can’t put my finger on it but something feels off. I agree with your previous post, the show doesn’t do a very good job showing or even telling they love each other.

Will Hunter and co only start caring about their brother again only after he leaves the empire?(assuming he does at some point). What about Disney’s prevailing theme and message that “family always love and care for each other no matter what”? I guess it’s “family always love and care for each other but only if you’re good guys making right choices”. There is no room for mistakes or wrong decisions. In the last episode everyone form the batch seemed to have given up on Crosshair(besides Omega). For now their attitude seems to be just “you’re not our enemy” and that’s that.

I realize Crosshair is a “bad guy” and consciously made his choice(and we know it’s the wrong one) but to me it felt like he thought he didn’t even had a choice or rather became so lost and confused he actually thought he chose the empire as “the lesser evil”(as in the less shitty choice out of all the other bad ones). We as audience have the benefit to know exactly how atrocious the empire really is but maybe Crosshair still doesn’t realize that.

So what exactly must Crosshair do to get back “in their good graces” as you say? Start saving “the good guys”? Save the bad batch multiple times? There is a popular opinion on how Crosshair can redeem himself. That he eventually heroically sacrifices himself to save them. I personally REALLY hope it’s NOT what’s going to happen but I heard so many people speculating his story is set up to be redemption=death. I know you mentioned you don’t want “Vader style redemption” either. Personally I think it would be a waste of a character who has a lot of potential. And I just think that the batch kind of don’t really deserve his sacrifice(maybe save for Omega) after how they never tried to save him themselves and how they treated him overall. Maybe he will risk his life to save Omega at some point and that will “prove” to Hunter he cares? Although he has already shown he cares by saving her(even if in Crosshair’s own words it’s just so they’re “even”). And the thing is, he doesn’t need to prove that he loves them, he already did that in episode 15 and made it clear he does care. He actually went to extreme by shooting his squad to prove his loyalty. What were the moments the batch demonstrated they care about him? Hunter saying “you never were our enemy” and taking his unconscious body to safety? To me Hunter “not leaving him behind” during bombardment felt more like guilt about the last time it happened and an obligation to Crosshair for helping them with droids, rather than them showing care. And I kinda of think if that was any random civilian(or anyone other than an enemy or a threat) they would carry them out too just because that’s what good guys do and not because it’s their brother. You also mentioned that minutes later Hunter snaps at him with “if you want to stay here and die, that’s your choice” which I agree can be interpreted in different ways. And I think it’s one more point to it being an obligation that in Hunter’s eyes is fulfilled now. He corrected his mistake of leaving a brother behind and saved him this time, now his guilt won’t burden him any longer.

Anyway, I can’t wait for season 2 and I appreciate you and all the anons sharing the tinfoil hat, interacting and speculating together. Those discussions have been a lot of fun!

TLDR: How do your think the relationship between the brothers will mend or evolve in the next season? Do you think S2 will improve in portraying the batch more as a family rather than a group of mercs doing missions together? What are your thoughts on the popular idea of Crosshair’s redemption by ultimate sacrifice? As in, how likely do you think this scenario is?

Anon, that is just wonderfully hilarious to me. Ah yes, the sunrise, a good cup o' joe, and the overly long character analysis of a snarky, fictional sniper. Exactly what everyone needs in the morning! 😆

You know, TBB is far from the first show I've watched where there's an obvious, emotional conclusion the creator wants the audience to come to—the squad all love each other Very Much—yet that conclusion isn't always well supported by the text. It creates this horribly awkward situation where you're going, "Yes, I'm fully aware of what the show wanted to do, but this reading, arguably, did not end up in the story itself. So what are we talking about here? The intention, or the execution?" It's like Schrödinger's Bad Batch where the group is simultaneously Very Loving and Very Distant depending on how much meta-aspects are influencing your reading: those authorial intentions, understanding of how found family tropes should work, fluff focused fics/fan art that color our understanding of the characters, etc. And, of course, whether someone saw TCW before they watched TBB. I personally wouldn't go quite so far as to say they're "cold" towards one another—with Crosshair as an exception now—but there wasn't the level of bonding among the squad that I expected of a show called The Bad Batch. Especially compared to their arc in TCW. The other night I re-watched the season seven premiere and was struck not just by how much more the squad interacted with each other back then, but how those interactions added depth to their characters too. For example, Crosshair is the mean one, right? He's the one picking fights with the Regs? Well yeah... but it's also Wrecker. While they're trying to decide what to do with Cody injured, Jesse calls out Crosshair on his attitude—"You can't talk to Captain Rex like that!"—and Wrecker's immediate response is, "Says who?" and he hefts Jesse into the air. And then he just holds him there, clearly using his superior strength to do as he pleases, until Hunter (sounding pretty angry) tells him to put Jesse down. If Wrecker had put him into a more classically understood bullying position, like pinning him to the ground, it would probably read as less funny—less "Haha strong clone lifts Jesse up in the air!" and more "Oh shit, strong clone can do whatever the hell he wants to the Regs and few are able to stop him." It's such a quick moment, but it tells us a ton about Wrecker. That he's going to stick up for his brothers, no matter the context (Crosshair deserves to be called out). That he will gleefully assist Crosshair in bothering the Regs (something that is reinforced when he later throws the trays in the mess hall, after Hunter has already deescalated the situation). That he's likely been hurt by awful treatment from the Regs too. That he'll only listen to Hunter when it comes to backing off. Little of this work—that interplay among the squad that shows us new sides to them other than basic things like "Wrecker is the nice, happy brother"—exists in TBB.

Or, at least, little exists after Omega becomes an official member of the squad.

Because, as said previously, she becomes the focus. I don't mean that as a total criticism. As established, I love Omega. But if we're talking about why the squad can feel so distant from each other, I think she's the root cause, simply because the story became all about her relationships with the Batch, rather than the Batch's relationships with each other. Having dived headfirst into reading and writing fic, it occurred to me just how many of the bonding moments we love, the sort of stuff we'll see repeated in fics because we understand that this is where the story's emotional center is, are given to Omega in canon:

Someone is hurt and in need of comfort. Omega's emotional state is the focus + moments like her being worried over Hunter getting shot.

Someone needs to learn a new skill. Echo teaches Omega how to use her bow.

Someone reveals a skill they never knew they had before. Omega is a strategic genius and plays her last game with Hunter.

Someone is in serious danger and in need of rescue. Omega rescues the group from the slavers + is the most vocal about rescuing Hunter. (Which, again, is a pretty sharp contrast to the whole Crosshair situation.) Omega, in turn, needs rescuing from things like the decommission conveyor belt.

Similarly, someone is kidnapped and in need of rescue. Omega is kidnapped twice by bounty hunters and the Batch goes after her.

Someone saves another's life. Omega saves Crosshair from drowning.

Someone does something super sweet for another. Wrecker gives Omega her room. Omega gives Wrecker Lula.

A cute tradition is established between characters. Wrecker has his popcorn-esque candy sharing with Omega.

Someone hurts someone else and has to ask forgiveness. Wrecker is upset about nearly shooting Omega and they have that sweet moment together.

Note that most of these examples could have occurred between other Batch members, but didn't. Someone could have created a space for Echo on the ship too. Wrecker also could have apologized to Tech for choking him, etc. It's not that those moments shouldn't happen with Omega, just that there should be more of a balance across the whole season, especially for a show supposedly focused on the original squad. Additionally, it's not that cute bonding moments between the rest of the Batch don't exist. I love Hunter selling Echo off as a droid. I love Wrecker and Tech bickering while fixing the ship. I love the tug-of-war to save Wrecker from the sea monster. Yes, we do have moments... it's just that comparatively it feels pretty skewed in Omega's direction.

So, as a VERY long-winded way of answering your question, I think we need to fix the above in order to tackle Crosshair's redemption in season two. Now that we've had a full season focused on Omega, we need to strike a better balance among the rest of the squad moving forward. We need to re-established the "obvious" conclusion that the rest of the Batch loves Crosshair and that's done (in part) by establishing their love for one another too. To my mind, both goals go hand-in-hand, especially since you can develop their relationship with Crosshair and their relationships with each other simultaneously. Imagine if instead of just having Wrecker somewhat comically admit that he misses Crosshair (like he's dead and they can't go get him??), he and Tech had a serious conversation about why they can't get him back yet, despite very much wanting to. Imagine if Echo, the one who was rescued against all odds, got to scream at Hunter to go get Crosshair like Omega screamed at them to go back for Hunter. Imagine if we'd gotten more than a tiny arc in TCW to establish the Batch's dynamic with each other, providing a foundation for how they would each react to Crosshair's absence. Instead, what little we've got in TBB about Crosshair's relationship with his brothers is filtered through Omega: Omega's embarrassment that she knocked over Crosshair's case, Omega treating Crosshair's comm link like a toy, Omega's quest to save Hunter that just happened to involve Crosshair along the way.

Obviously, at this point we can't fix how the first season did things, but I think we can start patching over these issues in season two. It would be jarring—we'd still be 100% correct to ask where this "Brothers love you, support you, and will endlessly fight for you" theme was for Crosshair's entire time under the Empire's thumb... but I'd take an about-face into something better than not getting any improvement at all. It is frustrating though, especially for a show that I otherwise really, really enjoyed. For me, the issue isn't so much that the show made a mistake (since no show is perfect), but that the mistake is attached to such a foundational part of the franchise. Not just in terms of "SW is about hope and forgiveness" but the specific relationship most clones have with each other: a willingness to go above and beyond for their brothers. The focus on Omega aside, it's hard to believe in the family dynamic when one member of the family was so quickly and easily dismissed. I couldn't get invested in Hunter's rescue as much as I should have because rather than going, "Yes!! Save your brother!!!" my brain just kept going, "Lol where was this energy for Crosshair?" It messes with your reading of the whole story, so in order to fix that mistake going forward, we need to start seeing the bonds that only sometimes exist in season one. Show the guys expressing love for one another more consistently (in whatever way that might be—as you say, soldiers don't have to be all touchy-feely. Give us more moments like Wrecker supporting his brothers' bad habits) and then extend that to Crosshair. Which brother is going to demand that they fight for him? Which brother is going to acknowledge that they never tried to save him? Which brother is going to question this iffy statement about the chip? In order to buy into the family theme, Omega can't be the only one doing that emotional work.

Ideally, I wouldn't want Crosshair to go out of his way to prove that he's a good guy now. I mean, I obviously want him to stop helping the Empire and such, duh lol, but I'm personally not looking for a bunch of Extra Good Things directed at the Batch as a requirement for forgiveness. Simply because that would reinforce the idea that they're 100% Crosshair's victims, Crosshair is 100% the bad guy, and he's the only one who needs to do any work to fix this situation. Crosshair needs to stop doing bad things (working for Empire). But the Batch needs to start doing good things too (reaching out to him). Especially since Crosshair made a good play already, only to be met with glares and distrust. He saved Omega! And AZI! And none of them cared. So am I (is Crosshair) supposed to believe that saving one of their lives again will result in a different reaction? That doesn't make much sense. And no, his own life wasn't at risk when he did that, but does every antagonist need to die/nearly die to prove they're worth fighting for? As you say, he's already shown that he loves them, far more than they've shown the reverse. Every time Crosshair hurt them (attacking) it was while he was under the chip's influence. In contrast, the group has no "I was being controlled" excuse for when they hurt him (abandonment). Season two needs to acknowledge the Batch's responsibility in all this—and acknowledge that they're all victims of the Empire—in order to figure out an appropriate arc for Crosshair's redemption.

Right now, the issue is not Crosshair loving his brothers, the issue is how Crosshair chooses to express that love: trying to keep them safe and giving them a purpose in life by joining the organization that's clearly going to dominate the galaxy. The only way to fix that, now that his offer has been rejected, is for him to realize that a life on the run from the Empire, together, is a better option for everyone. And the only way for that to happen is for the Batch to seriously offer him a place with them again. They need to make the first move here. They need to fight for him. And yeah, I totally get that a lot of people don't like that because it's not "fair." He's the bad guy. He's with the fascist allegory. He's killed people and has therefore lost any right to compassion and effort from the good guys... but if that's the case, then we just have to accept that (within the story-world, not from a writing perspective) Crosshair is unlikely to ever come back from this. When people reach that kind of low, they rarely pull themselves out on their own. They need other people to help them do that. Help them a lot. But with the exception of Omega's reminder—which Crosshair can't believe due to how everyone else has treated him—they leave him alone and seem to expect him to fix himself first, then he gets their support. It needs to be the other way around. Support is what would allow him to become a good guy again, not "Well, you'll get our love when you're good again, not before." That's unlikely to occur and, as discussed, it doesn't take into account things like this bad guy life being forced on Crosshair at the start. If the story really wanted this to be a matter of ideological differences... then make it about ideological differences. Let Crosshair leave of his own free will, right at the start. Don't enslave him for half the season, have him realize he was abandoned, imply all that brainwashing, give him no realistic way out, and then punish him for not doing the right thing. This isn't a situation where someone went bad for the hell of it—the story isn't asking us to feel compassion for, say, the Admiral—it's a situation where Crosshair was controlled and now can't see a way out. That context allows for the Batch, the good guys, to fight for him without the audience thinking the show is just excusing that behavior. They should have been fighting from the start, but since they didn't, I hope we at least start seeing that in season two.

Ultimately though... I don't really expect all of the above. The more balanced dynamics and having the Batch fight for Crosshair rather than Crosshair going it alone... I wouldn't want to bet any money on us getting it, just because these are things that should have been established in season one and would have been more easy to pull off in season one. (If the Batch wouldn't fight for Crosshair while he was literally under the Empire's control, why would they fight now when he's supposedly acting of his own free will? It's backwards in terms of the emotional effort involved.) But again, it could happen! I'd be very pleased if it did happen, despite the jarring change. I don't want to make it sound like I think they're going to write off Crosshair entirely. Far from it, I think there are too many details like his sad looks for that, to say nothing of Omega's compassion. But the execution of getting him on Team Good Guys again might be preeeetty bumpy. I expect it to revolve around Crosshair's sins and Crosshair's redemption, even if what I would like is balancing that with Crosshair's loss of agency, the Batch's mistakes, and their own redemption towards him.

Honestly though, I just hope that whatever happens happens soon. It's a personal preference, absolutely, but after a season of Crosshair as the antagonist, I'm ready for him to be back with the group, making the Empire (and bounty hunters) the primary enemy. Whether his return happens through a mutual acknowledgement of mistakes, or through Crosshair being depicted as the only one in the wrong who has to do something big to be forgiven... just get him back with the squad lol. Because if the writing isn't going to delve into that nuance, then the longer he remains unforgiven, the longer some of us have to watch a series while going, "Wait, wait, wait, I really don't agree with how you're painting this picture."

[oumakokichi]

Hello I am the Tsumugi love hotel anon Thank you for answering my ask it's great to know that other people have the same problem Sorry if this sounds strange but it's hard for me to enjoy V3 without thinking about this I love Danganronpa and I like Tsumugi but this really really bothered me And I kinda don't want to assume that someone who created a series I like so much is like this I guess as a fan Do you have any advice? So sorry but I have this habit of overthinking things and just want help

Hi again anon! It’s not a strange question at all; this is sadly kind of a common dilemma to run into in most fandom spaces, and it’s perfectly normal to have conflicting feelings about these things.

The best advice I can give is to view everything through a critical lens. By this, I don’t mean “you can’t ever enjoy things casually” or “you have to hate the media you consume in order to be a Good Fan™.” I simply mean that it’s important to be aware that pretty much all media is going to be flawed on some level, and that it’s important to not brush aside those flaws when having a real discussion about the content we enjoy and consume.

Part of the reason why I love meta and analysis so much is precisely because it’s a really good way to sort through some of these more complicated feelings I have on certain topics. For as much as I love DR and as much as it’s been a huge source of enjoyment and comfort to me for quite a few years now, I’m never going to sit here and act like it doesn’t have its fair share of flaws. It’s certainly not for everyone, and I can completely understand why some people may not like it.

There’s a very fine line when discussing media too, between raising awareness that all media and content we consume is inherently flawed in some way, and simply dismissing it as okay because “well, everything is problematic in some way so it doesn’t matter.” These things do matter, and I feel like discussion of them is a very important part of critical analysis, especially when it raises awareness of potentially upsetting subject matter to people who may have been unaware of it before.

The entire love hotel scene with Tsumugi is undeniably in extremely poor taste, particularly when incest is a very real and terrible form of abuse that real survivors have suffered through. Seeing it used for nothing more than skeevy fanservice to pander to an otaku audience is deeply upsetting, particularly coming from a game that explicitly touches on the ways in which fiction can and does impact reality in very real, tangible ways.

It doesn’t help that the love hotel scenes themselves hang in a weird sort of limbo as far as their role in the game goes, either. There’s been a lot of debate in the fandom as to whether these scenes can even be considered “canon” on any level—and even if they’re not technically canon, which I think is a fair assessment given that none of the other characters even remember them after waking up and they have no real lasting impact on the plot, the decision to include them at all is still gross on some level.

In my personal opinion, the best way to determine how comfortable you are continuing to support a series or not, is to try and gauge authorial intent: why are these topics or themes included in this piece of media? What purpose do they serve? Are they contributing to a larger narrative by being included here?

To take a topical example… let’s compare this with Harry Potter. DR certainly has its flaws, and ndrv3 is no exception. Not only are certain unsavory “tropes” like incest played as either a punchline or a tool for fanservice, but even earlier parts of the series don’t hold up particularly well (like Chihiro’s “gender reveal”). These things are definitely not enjoyable parts of the narrative—but their presence in the narrative seems to stem from a larger issue of fanservice tropes in visual novels and anime overall, rather than some overarching attempt to either demonize any marginalized group or normalize harmful behavior in real life.

By contrast, through watching JK Rowling’s downward spiral on twitter in the last few years, we’ve seen her become more and more brazen about her hatred of trans people, and trans women in particular. Though she often attempted to brush these tweets aside at first as “middle-aged moments” or “accidents” where she wasn’t aware of the content being spouted by the people she was following, she’s become perhaps one of the most unapologetic T*RFs in the public consciousness.

No matter how much a series like Harry Potter may have shaped my and many other people’s childhoods in the past, it’s really impossible for me to go back to it nowadays as a trans individual. Re-reading the series with a much more critical eye shows that many of Rowling’s most harmful, offensive beliefs are not only something she spews on twitter every other month, but also downright woven into the narrative. Lines about “boys pretending to be girls to try and sneak into the dormitories” and Rita Skeeter’s “rather large, mannish hands” while she “disguises herself” to infiltrate the school premises just hit differently, knowing Rowling’s stance on trans issues and the disgusting harm that she advocates for with her huge platform.

I suppose that’s the biggest line I try to be aware of in deciding where I draw the line between enjoying a series while remaining critical of it, and just flat out refusing to support said series anymore. This line is understandably going to be different for different people, no doubt—but I think being mindful of what creators are actually doing with their platforms is the biggest indicator about the potential intentions behind their works.

The only other piece of advice I can think of to offer, and perhaps the most important one, is to simply support small creators with all the enthusiasm and love that you would for a large series. As long as we maintain a critical eye and awareness about the flaws within popular works like Danganronpa, I think it’s okay to keep enjoying said works. But there are so many content creators out there trying to contribute all kinds of meaningful works with better representation than anything we’ve seen in mainstream media, and it’s incredibly important to support these people so that their works can become better-known.

My best recommendation is to make sure you’re striving to support these smaller content creators: especially black artists and trans artists, who often get overlooked even when hashtags on twitter to support smaller artists are trending.

This sort of became a lengthier response than I was intending, but I felt your question deserved more of an in-depth look at the topic. I hope I was able to get my points across! Thank you for the question anon, and I really hope I could help.

[nerianasims]

Billboard #1s 1969

Under the cut.

Tommy James And The Shondells – “Crimson And Clover” -- February 1, 1969

There are barely any lyrics to this thing, and they don't make any sense. Why crimson and clover over and over? And over and over and over and someone make it stop. Also it's musically attempting to be interesting and failing miserably for me. This song is apparently a critical darling these days. I don't get it. It bores and irritates me.

Sly & The Family Stone – “Everyday People” -- February 15, 1969

A funk song about how people are bad at accepting outward differences, and that we should stop with that nonsense. With a line about "For bein' such a rich one that will not help the poor one" as well. It's got a lot of oomph and musical interest, and it's a sentiment that people will probably always need to hear. Great song.

Tommy Roe – “Dizzy” -- March 15, 1969

The music of this song, with the constant key changes, does make me feel dizzy. They lyrics are the normal stuff about wanting a girl ever since the narrator saw her, except for this line: "I want you for my sweet pet." Um, what? That's off even for the day. Not something I like.

The 5th Dimension – “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” -- April 12, 1969

Was this song taken seriously at the time? The tune is a good Broadway show-stopper, but the lyrics are just... seriously? "Mystic crystal liberation." And the "let the sunshine in" part is unbearably repetitive.

The Beatles – “Get Back” (Feat. Billy Preston) -- May 24, 1969

Billy Preston injected some needed inspiration back into The Beatles. The lyrics are pretty much nonsense. It's an okay Beatles song but with a great bassline.

Henry Mancini – “Love Theme From Romeo And Juliet“ -- June 28, 1969

We watched Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo And Juliet in high school, with one caveat: The geometry teacher/boys' swim team coach had recorded a sunset over the football field over the part of the balcony love scene where they get all hot and heavy, apparently thinking it was just too much for 13 and 14 year olds. They left the sound though. Which made it way dirtier than it would have been with the images still there. So anything associated with that movie is hilarious to me. This is a Henry Mancini instrumental, which means it's good and I really shouldn't be cackling.

Zager & Evans – “In The Year 2525″ -- July 12, 1969

On a musical level, I hate this. It's a tidge too slow, it's a lot too bland, and something about the far future should sound futuristic, and this doesn't at all. Also the lyrics are dumb. It's not all of us who have fucked up the environment; it's the powerful. And I refuse to be morally scolded by someone who says in total seriousness, "In the year 4545/ You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes/ You won't find a thing to chew." Dull and annoying.

The Rolling Stones – “Honky Tonk Women” -- August 23, 1969

The Rolling Stones are English. They don't know honky tonks. But then they sort of do. Music, alcohol, and sex, not exactly complicated and pretty universal. In the song, Mick's supposedly trying to fuck and drug his way out of heartbreak, and not just with women. There's a verse about "charming" sailors in Paris. It's actually still hard to find the whole thing online even today, but that's the version on the "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!" album. The single version that became the hit doesn't have that verse, of course. Anyway, it's a good party song.

The Archies – “Sugar, Sugar” -- September 20, 1969

It's a song for a cartoon. It's the most bubblegum of bubblegum pop. I hate it.

The Temptations – “I Can’t Get Next To You” -- October 18, 1969

The Temptations can do absolutely anything, such as make ships sail on dry land, but they can't get next to you. It's like a god singing to a goddess. Motown could do that. Great song.

Elvis Presley – “Suspicious Minds” -- November 1, 1969

Elvis has entered his Vegas era. The rhinestone suits, sunglasses, all of that. But of course he pulled it off. In the song, Elvis complains to you about how you're so suspicious, and it's hurting him, but he can't walk out because he loves you too much. The way he sings it, though: Bullshit. He knows it's bullshit, you know it's bullshit. Dude's cheating. I mean, he's Elvis, of course he's cheating. He's putting everything into a performance to keep you, though, even though he knows that you know he's lying. And by the end, I'm thinking it would be better to have a guy with that much charisma and talent who cheats on you than some nothing schlub who's faithful only because no other woman would have him.

The 5th Dimension – “Wedding Bell Blues” -- November 8, 1969

This kind of song is why I really need to keep an airplane barf bag by my desk. The narrator's whining about how she loves this dumbass "Bill" so much, and has done everything for him, but he still hasn't proposed, so "Marry me Bill." If the lyrics were acceptable, I'd say the song was a nice bit of pop fluff. The lyrics are not acceptable. Also I have an uncle named "Bill" AND my mother's husband is named "Bill" and I just cannot.

The Beatles – “Come Together” -- November 29, 1969

The bassline is this song, and damn it's a good one. Apparently this song's lyrics confused people so much at the time, people thought it meant Paul was dead. I have no idea how they got to that. I thought it was about Jesus, or a Jesus type. Or something. I dunno, it doesn't matter, the riffs are the point. The Beatles were breaking up, but this was one hell of a way to go out.

Steam – “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” -- December 6, 1969

So this is apparently supposed to be about a man trying to get you to leave another man because he'll never love you the way the narrator will. But I can't hear it as anything other than a sports chant. I do not advise trying to listen to the full four minutes.

Peter, Paul & Mary – “Leaving On A Jet Plane” -- December 20, 1969

"I'm leavin' on a jet plane/ Don't know when I'll be back again/ Oh, babe, I hate to go." This song was originally intended to be about a traveling singer who'd been unfaithful a lot. But authorial intent doesn't matter. It became about the Vietnam War. And as such, it's heartrending.

Diana Ross & The Supremes – “Someday We’ll Be Together” -- December 27, 1969

According to the lyrics, this is about the narrator regretting having broken up with her boyfriend, and promising that someday they'll be together again. But authorial intent doesn't matter. And hearing this during a pandemic which is keeping everyone apart, well. Rather changes things.

BEST OF 1969: "Come Together"  WORST OF 1969: "Sugar, Sugar"

[dollydeez]

Fanfic is Canon, and Here’s Why

I was thinking today about the distinction between canon and fanon, sort of in the same vein as Death of The Author. Ok, that might not immediately make sense but hear me out:

I am of a fairly strict belief that the core reading of a text should be centered around what is actually in the damn thing. Authorial intent, in my mind, should be thrown out the door as it doesn’t matter what is meant but what is said. Examples of this would include Ray Bradbury screaming at college kids that Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about censorship or she who must not be named throwing in bullshit elements of her books on Twitter. This is highly influenced by the way I perceive the creation of art: the artist sends a work out into the world and it is completed, for lack of a better term, in the audience by their interpretation. This isn’t to say unpublished work isn’t art, as the artist is always the first audience member to impress upon said work their own interpretation. You could split hairs dissecting that assertion with different situations or whatever else, but I’m not here to define what is or is not art; I’m not giving the unpublished work implication more than passing attention because it really isn’t relevant to what I want to discuss. What I’m really driving at is the conception of works, specifically written works as far as we are concerned, being separate from the author once they have been completed and submitted to audiences. Granted, with the introduction of sites such as Wattpad, the relationship between the author, the audience, and the work has changed greatly; however I would argue these don’t quite factor in to our discussion as, for our purposes, they are practically a different medium.

So how does this tie in to fanfic? I’d argue that, if the work is being considered under this framework, the authority of the author’s interpretation of the piece isn’t just called into question, but their authority on the world they have created. This is complicated by the capitalistic system under which we live, so for simplicity’s sake let’s put aside the compounding factors of copyright, market share, etc., however I would like to point out that there is precedent for, if not fanfic then fandom at large having an effect on the original work. But, more to the point, let us consider the relationship between the author and the work post-publication, more specifically the authority retained by the author over the world they have created, as this is conceptually based in the idea that their own interpretation is no more valid than any other reader. The main factors I see in this consideration is, in most cases, whether there is a textual contradiction, and in the case of AUs how perspective may shift if it was written by the original author. In the former case, the amount of leeway given should be equal to that which would be given to the original author by suspension of disbelief. The misalignment of certain details is usually tolerated within a series as long as they aren’t too glaring or have too much impact on the plot, and this courtesy should be extended to fan fiction. For the latter case, the re-imagining of stories has been an accepted practice for centuries; it is only in recent times that, because of copyright, only those done by the original author (or many decades after their death) are considered at a similar standard as the original. So how does this play out when someone continues a story through fan fiction and is contradicted through a sequel by the original author? On one hand, I would say this is up to individual interpretation, as if an audience member prefers one to the other that is their prerogative, however future fan fictions will be based on the plot progression delivered by the original author. For practical purposes, what the author says happens next in a story is what canonically happens next.

The distinction between what constitutes canon and what does not is much too strict. The author has control over what is true within their story, but has no authority over what is untrue. This latter distinction is solely up to textual evidence. With exemption to fictions taking place in alternate universes, the only real distinction between an author’s work and a fan’s fiction is the stories taking place and whether or not they contradict each other; in other words, if the fanfic is not contradicting the story being told by the author, it has as much claim to being canon as the original work itself. For this concept I would like to put forward the idea of the communal imagination: although one person may create the piece establishing the world in which the others take place, they have as little control over the valid interpretation and creative use of that world as they have regarding the canonical plot line.This world created in the imagination, and then disseminated into the the imaginations of others, will most likely have some sort of guiding principles around it, therefore even the sequel by the original author could be considered to be a sort of fan fiction. While it could be argued that fan fiction is in a different category, due to its inherently derivative nature, it could just as equally be posited that all stories are derivative and that it is simply matter of scale; in my opinion basing artistic merit on where a work falls on this scale is counter-intuitive to the creative landscape. Art is art, stories are stories, and your fan fiction has just as much claim to being canon as the work produced by the original author. Theoretically, at least, given capitalism and all.

[bladekindeyewear]

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh.  Time to pay the piper.  Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to.  FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!??  Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash?  --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it.  I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive.  Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33:  Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized.  They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining.  But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such.  They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT.  Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state!  Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it.  And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted.  :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this.  The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice.  At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall.  Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though.  Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us.  Real Dirk-like, actually.  Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know.  No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises. 

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all.  He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance. 

Huh.  So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him?  That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such.  That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that.  I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid. 

This is ALSO what I came here for:  Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us.  I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it.  So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand. 

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious.  Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue. 

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole. 

You know... who IS doing the commentary here?  One of the authors, all of them?  One of the artists??  This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions. 

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure. 

HERE we go!  This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place.  John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake.  (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.)  So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag. 

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening.  Good!  No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet).  That’s an honest relief.  The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens. 

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so.  Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that? 

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting!  Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting.  Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter!  But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65:  Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood.  I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!!  I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson.  Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole. 

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood!  I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving.  I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”?  Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it?  Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing?  I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that.  I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here.  I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”.  I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context.  (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any.  I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please.  Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product???  They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man.  That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it. 

Wait.  What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...?  Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving.  How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far!  Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected.  $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on.  Sound fair?  I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake.  Have a good MLK weekend, y’all.  :)

[marta-bee]

I’ve been thinking a bit about Mary Watson and AGRA; or Agra, if you prefer.

If you know your Doyle canon you know Mary started out as a client who’d been receiving these mysterious gifts of jewels (or pearls? I’m going from memory) from a stranger, and wanted to know where they came from. It turned out a male relation (estranged father? uncle?) had been involved in some scheme that netted him and his compatriots a treasure of questionable legality and/or morality, that the male relation was now dead and one of his fellows was sending Mary a pittance from the treasure out of a sense of obligation.

I twisted my foot this morning and am still slightly loopy from painkillers. It’s also been a while since I’ve read The Sign of the Four. So bear with me.

Here’s the key point, though: at some point Watson decides that he quite likes Mary and starts to court her (... sort of ...) but he’s not sure it’s really the right thing to do. If the case turns out one way and Mary inherits the full treasure, she’s going to be really rich! Much moreso than Watson; and he’s quite unestablished, doesn’t even have a medical practice or a job outside helping Holmes that I can remember. That in itself is actually quite interested; he’s clearly capable of running about when Holmes needs it. But nevermind. In the end the treasure is lost in a daring boat-chase, and Mary is just a respectable governess with no great fortune to her name. Watson can marry her honorably, and does. The case is solved, John and Mary ride off together, the Yard gets the credit for a case duly solved, and Holmes is left to his seven-percent solution.

That bit always brings a tear to my eye. I’ve only made my peace with it because I look at it story-externally, as Doyle trying to lay Holmes to rest so he can go off and write about fairies or some such. But talk about queer-coding the man!

Anwyay, back to Mary and Agra. There’s some obvious parallels to BBC here and if they’ve been discussed I’ve missed out on the discussion. The fascinating thing is, it’s really not that clear how we’re supposed to read it. The obvious parallel is Agra/AGRA, as in the flashdrive. If AGRA is empty then John and Mary are well-matched. Only they’re not. As devastated as John is by Mary’s betrayal (and her shooting Sherlock? One would think.) .... pre-revelation, John is growing bored. Maried bliss doesn’t suit him; he’s biking to work, half-packed, dreaming about the war and his adventures with Sherlock in a way that seems structured like the sorta-kinda affair we see him playing with in TLD. If AGRA is empty, Mary may be *worthy* of John but she’s hardly a good match. And isn’t that a turnaround from the original? AGRA being empty might make her a fitting match for the man John wants to be post-TRF, but at a fundamental level it’s not just working.

There’s another way of reading this though. In BBC, Agra/AGRA isn’t just some external thing Mary was given, it’s a record of who she actually is. Not just her, but including her. And if Agra/AGRA is Mary’s self, then in a sense whether the jewel-box is empty or full depends on if you think she’s really pregnant or not; and whether you think the baby’s actually John’s. At least through the end of HLV, the fact that there’s a baby in the picture is one of the easiest explanations for why fans can understand John shooting Mary. There’s an awful lot to forgive there, and she’s hardly the most penitent of characters. So in a sense, if AGRA is full John can (indeed, must) honorably be her husband; if it’s empty his continued staying with her seems a lot less intuitive.

That feels like a damning condemnation of my own psychology as a fan, and I’m hardly the only fan who makes sense of HLV along these lines. Because it reduces Mary to a chalice only valued for the jewels within; and it takes away a lot of her responsibility to be held accountable for her own actions. I don’t like myself for finding that more convincing than the idea that a newly married man might try to move past a great betrayal because he loves his wife. Whatever other factors need accounting for (and yes, shooting Sherlock and being an assassin for hire and --at least subtextually-- taking on the role of Moran in EMP and making a lot of sense as being connected to Moriarty (what were they doing with that parallel if they never meant to follow through..... ) -- whatever else needs to be made sense of, I think if you’re going to imagine John and Mary making sense as a continuing couple, those explanations need to start from a place of re-commitment to each other and a need to move past who she was.

(Yes, who you are does matter. Obviously.)

As always, here’s where I bump against the reality of S4′s fuckery. I would love to say that Mofftiss were being clever and trying to do something intentional with all of this, but after the way Mary’s past was just so completely sidestepped, attributing cleverness does seem like a leap of faith. Not sure how seriously I should think about authorial intentions here. At the level of thinking through the parallels as a fan on my own, though, it does seem ... interesting, I guess, at a minimum.

[netbug009]

So yesterday I was sorting through my comics and found a few issues of Lost Light and wound up rereading them, and I have been thinking about this line ever since. Knowing what we know about LL now that the entire arc is complete, this panel REALLY BOTHERS ME and I want to get some of my thoughts about this and MTMTE/LL in general off my chest as someone who is religious, like Drift, and has navigated bonds with others who are not, like Ratchet. A few disclaimers:  1. Spoilers, obviously.  Second disclaimer is spoilery and thus under the cut:

2. This rant is NOT INTENDED to be anti Drift/Ratchet in any way, shape, or form. I’m not out here trying to argue that the ship itself is BAD, rather maybe the order of events the writers chose for developing this relationship could have been better, if that makes sense? I hope that makes sense by the end, so please bear with me before thinking I’m out here calling a ship Problematic(tm) or whatever.

So anyways, Lost Light #2. Drift, Ratchet, and a bunch of other characters are in the functionist universe and it sucks. They see this big ol’ statue of Primus and Ratchet says this line. Completely unprompted, passive-aggressive, and self-serving to show that yes, Ratchet reads a lot of books and is very smart and felt the need to once again remind Drift that he thinks his beliefs are “bunk.” This is the latest in a long string of irritated banter between the duo about how they don’t see eye to eye theologically that is all part of the duo’s character development. Now, as tempting as it is to insert a longer rant here about exactly why this is disrespectful and decidedly NOT beneficial to maintaining bonds across faiths, I don’t think I need to, because the series acknowledges that Ratchet has room to grow from here. Like I said, these exchanges are all part of an arc and he DOES grow to point of making an active effort to try and understand where Drift is coming from by the end of the series. 

So all’s well that ends well, right? Why am I bothering to point out this panel/issue in particular at all? Because, this WOULD all be fine and good, except for one major problem this issue introduces, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why the writers thought the panel we started with was copasetic with where they confirmed the relationship was officially at during these events:

And so here’s the major beef I have with Dratchet in Lost Light 2: 

Ratchet is still being belittling, passive-aggressive, and disrespectful towards Drift.... at the point in the series where they are apparently MARRIED.

Again, this isn’t an attempt to say “oh the whole ship is problematic forever now and shipping it is bad” rather all I’m saying here is some writer made the VERY UNFORTUNATE CHOICE of deciding THIS POINT in the ship’s development was when they should be married by, and that absolutely sucks because that’s.... That’s not how you treat a spouse. You don’t marry someone who hasn’t learned to stop making disrespectful little quips about things that deeply matter to you yet. You don’t dedicate yourself to someone who belittles things you value to seem smart, and the fact that the writers decided that Drift should bothers me to no end, even if everything worked its way into a mutually respectful and loving relationship later down the line.

And it makes me think about authorial intent here - was this something the writers really considered? Did they view it as a major problem the way I do? From my perspective, I’m imagining one of 3 things was happening in the writer’s room when this decision was made: 

1. The writers wanted to get the “Drift has a conjunx GUESS WHO” tease into the run as early as possible to troll the fans as much as possible and didn’t make the connection about the consequences of putting it while Ratchet and Drift were still not really sharing the respect conjunxes should. In this case, it’s hard to blame them for getting a little trigger-happy - getting a fanbase to start picking apart every little interaction Drift has with both Rodimus and Ratchet for TWO YEARS as they desperately tried to figure out which one was his conjunx sounds absolutely hilarious and I wish I’d been in the fandom to see that mess go down live each month. 

2. Lug was making an assumption based on how much Drift and Ratchet cared about each other at this point, disrespectful passive-aggression aside, and we weren’t supposed to read that as them ACTUALLY being conjunxes. This doesn’t seem likely, as Lost Light pulls out Endura terminology pretty rarely and is usually very serious about it. 

3. My last theory, and I hope this isn’t the correct one: Roberts didn’t see Ratchet belittling Drift’s beliefs as the matter of disrespect I see it to be as a believer myself, despite acknowledging the matter properly in the end. MTMTE/LL has a pretty strong theme running through it of “Every story with a god involved has some more down-to-earth explanation” and Ratchet is one of Roberts’ personal favorite characters. It could simply be that, for most of the run, Roberts felt Ratchet had every right to try and “talk sense” into Drift. I don’t suggest this to say “Grrr Roberts is mean and I’m mad at him” rather if this IS the correct theory, I’d be curious as to what exactly CHANGED about the way Roberts viewed things between LL2 and LL25. Again, it’s probably one of the first two things, but the way an author’s viewpoint affects a story is fun to think about, right? :D Anyways, that’s my little essay about why I hate that Ratchet says that line in the same issue where Lug says that line. Again, this isn’t intended to bash any ships, authors, or beliefs. It’s just an assorted pile of thoughts about one moment in a series I enjoy I felt was a bit of a writing blunder and why I feel that way. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this!

[fireflysummers]

Just Fiction (and When It’s Not)

I’ve been tying myself in mental knots for the last while about the “It’s Just Fiction” argument. At this point I’ve heard a lot from both sides that’s actually pretty valid, leading to a lot of general confusion. 

The conclusion that I’ve come to, though, is that “It’s Just Fiction” is not a universal defense, and its meaning shifts drastically when it’s shifted out of the originally intended lens.

I propose that there are three lenses through which the “It’s Just Fiction” argument can be viewed: in-universe, authorial intent, and public interpretation.

Before jumping into the analysis, I should note that there are a few assumptions here:

The fiction in question is actually fiction, and does not resemble any real life persons, living or dead in an identifiable capacity. Therefore, things like the Ted Bundy Case Files are immediately disqualified.

We are assuming innocence until proven guilty.

The In-Universe Lens

The “It’s Just Fiction” defense is most often applied to in-universe logic, and is related to the suspension of disbelief--the mechanism by which we can ignore our comparisons to the real world and immerse ourselves in a fantasy.

When you say "It's Just Fiction" about in-universe logic, it understands very clearly that fiction is fake, and that the characters and events do not exist in the real world. It may echo real life, and real people might to replicate it, but no matter how dark or gross or fluffy or fantastical the content, no matter how gritty and “realistic” it is, it is not real. 

Arguing that "It’s Just Fiction" is basically stating that you understand how to separate reality from fantasy, and treat characters and in-canon logic as the mechanisms by which an interesting story is told. While they may feel real, especially if you have a special connection with them, they fundamentally are not. 

As a result, content creators are generally allowed to use it as space to explore taboo topics and search for relationships and meaning in places that no sane person would enact in real life. 

However, this is not free reign to create whatever you want, and expect no consequences, as we will get to in our next point.

Authorial Intent

As stated earlier, the general assumption here is that the content creator did not intentionally have ill will towards anybody. Unfortunately, there have been too many case where this has proven to be bad faith. As a result, how to approach this aspect of the “It’s Just Fiction” argument is very difficult and controversial, because sometimes it is very difficult to “prove,” especially since the creative process is often multi-faceted as content creators draw from multiple inspirational and motivational sources. 

Oftentimes, content creators are young, ignorant, and lacking self-awareness. This leads to them not knowing how to take critique, especially if they are approached in a harsh, critical manner, and generally only alienates them in a way that stifles their desire to learn and grow naturally. It is generally not your job to educate strangers on the internet, either, since there are often trolls who disguise actual ill intent as ignorance.

The most surefire way to address this is to curate your own internet experience by blocking liberally those whose content you do not wish to see.

There is another case, though, that needs to be discussed: that of predatory content creators. These people usually straddle the line between “a distasteful lack of mindfulness” and “preying on vulnerable populations.” 

Accusations of ped/o/phil/ia against any individual are serious, and in process you have to consider a personal history of predatory behavior, rather than applying a blanket "if it's dark and taboo topics, then it automatically implicates the author as a pervert.”

You can usually identify these individuals based on the content’s tone and approach--that they aren't approaching a taboo topic for the sake of literary exploration, but because they are self-inserting themselves. There are heavy implications about people who  self-insert into that sort of fiction, such as people who write or draw cartoon character CP, and you can usually tell on a case-by-case basis whether or not somebody is hiding a gross perversion behind "It’s Just Fiction.”

Public Interpretation

Public interpretation is usually where the “It’s Just Fiction” argument breaks down entirely, because we are no longer working directly with the work (in-universe) or the people immediately responsible for its creation (authorial intent). Public reactions are very, very real and need to be treated as such--but first, you have to consider the likelihood that a work of fiction will actually contribute to swaying that public.

The argument here is “even if the person didn’t mean any harm, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be held responsible.” And this is another tough one, because on one hand, yes, content creators ideally should exercise mindfulness about how their work will be received and interpreted. On the other hand, the public is beyond the control of any single individual, and things can easily be taken out of context or snowball out of their control, regardless of their intent. 

So, for the sake of this particular case, we have determined that the author did not mean to cause harm, the next question is how much harm is being done. 

In other words, who exactly is the public, and how many of them are there?

For instance, a bunch of kids filming a shitty monster movie featuring sharks may have the exact same messages as Jaws (sharks are evil and need to be killed). Neither one of them intend to do real sharks any harm; however, the one that needs to be held responsible is Jaws, not the shitty indie film. 

Why? Because Jaws was a box-office success that became a cultural phenomenon. It impacted the opinions of the millions of people, leading to a sharp increase of shark hunting. 

Yeah, the indie film was equally bad in the messages it was conveying, but it just fades into obscurity without actually doing any harm. 

It’s the same spiel with fandom works. Because fandoms are insular spaces, they feel a lot bigger than they actually are. That’s why fan-content creators are not held to the same standards as mainstream content creators, because the public they actually affect is actually quite small. 

When people say “It’s Just Fiction” in relation to content that is not intended to do harm, but is controversial in content, what they’re really saying is “fandom is a small, in-bred pocket of the internet, and and because it is not written by somebody intending to cause harm and will never likely see the public eye, the damage that it does is negligible, and any energy that you put into causing an outcry over it is merely a petty waste of time.”

At which point, again, the best course of action is to just block what you don’t want to see.

Applications

This is a long read, and the basic point is to exercise your own critical thinking skills. My general rubric for what I keep versus what I block is:

Is the content actually fictional.

Is the content creator acting out of a desire to hurt others?

If the harm is unintentional, how many people are affected, and how wide-spread is the damage? 

Let’s Practice

Case 1

Person A is obsessed with a villainous character from an anime.

They know that the character is completely made up.

They have no desire to hurt other people, since this affection for a fictional character is literally just them. Their actions do not pose a threat to vulnerable groups. 

The number of people even directly aware of Person A’s special interest is pretty small, and if you’re squicked out by it they’re an easy block.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” works just fine as an explanation for their actions.

Case 2

Person B’s fanfic reduces your favorite character to LGBT+ stereotypes. The tone of the fic, though, is fluffy and light-hearted.

Again, this is entirely fictional and all parties know it.

It’s difficult to gauge whether this was done intentionally or not; sometimes a quick chat with the author will clear things up; otherwise, the tone of the fic and the lack of mean spirit in any of their other works, so it’s probably unintentional. It’s probably safe to give the benefit of the doubt.

The general readership on the fic and the number of kudos is pretty low, which means that it’s not getting much attention anyways. It was distasteful, it made you feel gross when you read it, but overall the damage is pretty contained.

Therefore, by this rubric, “It’s Just Fiction” still generally works, because of the limited number of people even aware of the fic’s existence.

Case 3

Person C made an AU with characters aged-up from the canon, and there are some N/S/F/W scenes or jokes!

AU = fictional

This is a tricky one sometimes, because there are absolutely people who age up characters just to “legally” draw them in N/S/F/W situations. 

However, there is a difference between people who do that, and others who say, project out an entire timeline full of unique character interactions and are looking to explore the various aspects of adult life, which sometimes involves consensual sex. The authorial intent here is usually pretty easy to pick up on, because a well thought-out aged-up AU often takes a lot of mindfulness on the part of the creator.

Again, things limited to fandom spaces are by default pretty small in the public that they reach. 

“It’s Just Fiction” absolutely applies here because of the amount of work that has been put into it to create an adult version of the world and characters, and it’s clear that the intent was not to expose minors for the entertainment of perverts.

tl;dr: If you’re going to treat fandom with academic scrutiny, please apply critical thinking to situations as they come. “It’s Just Fiction” does not work as a general statement because it wasn’t originally meant to be a general statement.

[marginalgloss]

the republic of heaven

Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.

At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  

Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 

To call the novel ‘optimistic��� might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 

It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   

Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 

So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  

The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.

It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  

This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  

The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 

What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 

But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   

The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 

At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago.