#its a metaphor for disabilities and accepting them

[alaritheaurora]

Okay but Big and Bloop would actually be the most rad children's story book. Just, the simple adventures of a boy too big for the world and his best friend, a robot who cannot speak.

I'd imagine the book would go through Big's life as something akin to him starting off as a normal baby, if a bit large, but growing too fast and too big, and his parents try to love him but cannot accommodate him so he goes off on his own. Throughout his adventures he meets many people, but there is no house big enough for him, the people are too small, and perhaps even scared to hang around with him. Until he meets Bloop, a robot who everyone says wasn't built quite right so it's a pity he cannot speak. I think they become friends birdwatching, Big is so tall and strong that he can lift Bloop up where he can point out all the birds. Together they come up with some simplified morse-code adjacent way for Bloop to say what kind of bird it is. And they hit it off, going on adventures, Bloop can get into places Big can't, and Big can tell people what Bloop is saying. And they don't find a home, but at least they're together.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Disabilities and Monsters in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Through a discussion with @vixensdungeon (great blog to follow for TTRPG stuff by the way) it came to our attention that some of our more jokey and memey posts and reblogs may have given some people a slightly skewed idea of what Eureka, and particularly the “urban fantasy” parts of Eureka are really about, and its tone. We like to joke around about it, and the “cute monster girl” angle really sells on tumblr.com, but actually playing these types of characters in Eureka is not exactly a power fantasy. They eat people, and often eat them alive. If you find that cute, funny, and/or sexy, well, Eureka is still probably just the game you’re looking for, but that isn’t the main thing. Eureka uses the fact that many of these characters necessarily subsist off the flesh and/or blood of other people as a loose metaphor for mental and physical disability.

Imagine you need something that everyone else has but you don’t. If you don’t have it regularly, you will literally start to waste away. The only way to obtain this thing is to take it from another human being, who also needs it, and others will deny that you need it, and abhor that you need it. It’s not uncommon for people, even “progressive” people, to say something along the lines of “they need to all be killed for the good of society,” even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re saying. You didn’t choose to be this way. This is the reality of monsters in Eureka, and many people in real life.

And then even when you have that thing you need, for now, there are many facets of society that you just can’t participate in because your condition makes them impossible for you, like if a vampire wanted to take a run on a sunny beach. Monsters in Eureka will be challenged by their supernatural weaknesses at every turn, while hiding their abhorrent needs from society and even the rest of the party, and asking why they have to be this way. Finding clever ways to get around and circumvent their weaknesses is a core part of the gameplay of monster PCs in Eureka. Imagine you and your friends want or need to go somewhere, but that somewhere is on the other side of a river. The river has a well maintained bridge. For everyone else but you, a vampire who can’t cross running water, getting across the river is the simplest task in the world, so much so that no one would even consider it a task, but for you, it’s a challenge, and for gameplay, it’s a puzzle.

It isn’t totally hopeless, as many of the jokes and fan comics show (those aren’t just memes, they’re only showing one side of the coin and not the other). Monsters who accept, or even embrace and celebrate their monsterhood, can and do exist canonically, alongside monsters who can’t bear to do what they do. In some cases, these may be the same monster on different days.

I’m going to conclude this post by posting two excerpts from the rules text itself.

Disabilities are Disabling

So why don’t disabilities grant any advantage? It isn’t too uncommon for RPGs to have some sort of “flaw” system, where during character creation you can give your character “flaws” or some kind of penalty, and usually get that balanced out by being able to add extra bonuses elsewhere. Sometimes, these “flaws” may take the form of disabilities.

One particular high-profile indie TTRPG takes this beyond just character creation, and makes it so that if a PC receives a “scar” in combat that reduces their physical stats, their mental stats automatically go up by an equivalent amount, and proudly imply that to make any mechanic which results in permanent consequences or makes disabilities disabling is ableist. We think you can probably tell what we think of that from this sentence alone, and we don’t need to elaborate too much. 

We do think, in the abstract, “flaw” systems in character creation are not a bad idea. They allow for more varied options during character creation, while preserving game balance between the PCs.

But in real life, people aren’t balanced. The events that left me injured and disabled didn’t make me smarter or better in any way - if anything, they probably made me dumber, considering the severity of the concussion! Some things happened to me, and now I’m worse. There’s no upside, I just have to keep going, trying harder with a less efficient body, and relying more on others in situations where I am no longer capable of perfect self-sufficiency.

A disabled person is, by definition, less able to perform important daily tasks than the average person. To deny this is to deny that they need help, and to deny that they need help is to enable a refusal to help. This is the perspective from which Eureka’s Grievous Wounds mechanic was written.

When a character is reduced to 1 HP (which by design can result from a single hit from many weapons) they may become incapacitated or they may take a Grievous Wound, which is a permanent injury with no stat benefits. Grievous Wounds don’t have to result from combat, they can also be given to a character during character creation, but not as a trade-off for an extra bonus.

“But then doesn’t my character just have worse stats than the rest of the party?” Yes, haven’t you been reading this? There is no benefit, except for the opportunity to play a disabled character in an TTRPG. This character will probably have to be more reliant on the rest of the party to get by in various situations. Is that a bad thing?

Monsters Essay

All investigators in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are regular people. They can also be a monster, like a blood-sucking vampire or a broom-riding witch. Importantly, this works because despite their unique nature, monsters are still regular people. You can read more about this in Chapter 8, but the setting of Eureka does not have a conspiracy or “masquerade” hiding supernatural people from normal society. Though they are still largely unknown to modern science, they exist within normal society - and a lot of them eat people.

The default assumption in RPGs has been that monsters are just evil by nature, doing evil for evil’s sake. RPGs that seek to subvert this expectation often instead make monsters misunderstood and wrongfully persecuted, but harmless. Eureka takes a wholly different approach.

There are five playable types of monsters in the rulebook right now, and it’ll be seven if we hit all the stretch goals, but for simplicity’s sake this discussion of themes will just focus on the vampire. Despite them applying in different ways, the same overall themes apply to nearly every monster, so if you get the themes for the vampire, you’ll get the gist of what Eureka is doing with its playable monsters in general.

Mundane investigators have to keep themselves going by eating food and sleeping (see p.XX “Composure” for more information). Well, vampires can’t operate the same way. They don’t sleep, and normal food might be tasty for them as long as it isn’t too heavily seasoned, but it doesn’t do anything for them nutritionally. Their main way to keep themselves functioning is fresh living human blood, straight from the source. To do what mundane PCs do normally by just eating and sleeping, vampires have to take from another, whether either of them are happy with this arrangement or not. They do not, of course, literally have to, and a player is not forced to make their vampire PC drink blood, just like you reading this in real life don’t literally have to eat food. You do eat food if you want to live in any degree of comfort or happiness, and vampires do drink blood or they eventually become unable to effectively do anything.

This is numerically, mechanically incentivized and not simply a rule that says something like “this character is a vampire and therefore they must drink blood once every session,” to demonstrate that the circumstances a person faces drive their behavior. In America, there is a tendency to think of criminality and harm done to others as resulting from intrinsic evil, but people do not just wake up one day and decide “I think I’ll go down the criminal life path.” Their circumstances have barred them from the opportunities that would have given them other options. 

People need food; food costs money; money requires work; work requires getting hired; but getting hired requires a nearby job opening, an education, an impressive resume, nice clothes, charisma, consistent transportation, and so on. For people without other options, crime becomes the only method left to meet their basic needs. Would you rather take what you need from other people, or go without what you need? There are people who don’t have the luxury of a third option. Failure to meet the needs of even a small number of people in a society has high potential to harm the entire society, not just those individuals whose needs are unmet.

As their basic need for blood becomes more and more difficult to ignore, a vampire is going to encounter much the same dilemma. There is really no “legal” or ��harmless” way for them to get their needs met, even if they do have resources. Society just isn’t set up for that. And no, your kink is not the solution to this, trying to suggest every vampire just find willing participants who are turned on by vampires or being bitten is suggesting sex work. It’s one step removed from telling a girl she should just get an OnlyFans the minute she turns 18, or that women should just marry a rich man and be a housewife that gets their needs taken care of in exchange for sex and housekeeping. Being forced into such a dynamic isn’t ethical or harmless for the vampire or for their “clients.”

“Oh well, then the vampire should just eat bad people!” You mean those same bad people we just described above? Who gets to decide which people are “bad people?” Who gets to decide that the punishment is assault or death?

Playable monsters in Eureka are dangerous, harmful people. They were set up to be.

Society not being set up in a way that allows monsters to make ethical choices brings us to the next theme: monstrousness as disability, and monsters as “takers.”

Vampires have to take from others a valuable resource that everyone needs to live, and the extraction of which is excruciatingly painful and debilitating. No one knows what happens to blood after a vampire drinks it, it’s just gone. Vampires are open wounds through which blood pours out of the universe.

This is a special need, something they have to take but cannot give back. Their special needs make them literally a drain on society and the people around them. In the modern world, there is a tendency to feel that people must justify their right to life, that they must pay for the privilege of existing in society. This leads people to consider “takers” (people who take much more than they give back, such as disabled people) as something that needs to be pruned away for the betterment of everyone else. Even many so-called “progressives,” while they claim not to agree with pruning “useless eaters,” still hold the unexamined belief that people must justify their existence. To reconcile these two incompatible ideas, they instead simply deny that disabled people take more resources than most people, and are capable of giving back less. This sentiment is perfectly illustrated by the aforementioned game’s insistence that disabilities are never a net reduction of a character’s stats.

Vampires and other playable monsters are inarguably “takers,” but in positioning them as protagonists right alongside mundane protagonists, Eureka puts you in their shoes, and forces you to acknowledge their inner lives and reckon with their circumstances. You have to acknowledge two things: first, that they are dangerous, that they are harmful, that they take more than they give - and second, that they are people. Because they are people, Eureka asserts that they have inherent value, a right to exist, and a right to do what they need to do to exist. (We also acknowledge that their potential victims have a right to do what they need to do to exist and defend themselves, but that is a separate discussion.)

One final point to touch on is mental illness. Mental illness is a disability, one pretty comparable to physical disability in a lot of ways, so all of the above points can apply to this metaphor as well, but there are a few unique comparisons to make here.

It’s not the most efficient, but there are a couple of loopholes deliberately left in the rules that allow vampires to sometimes sporadically restore Composure (and thus their ability to function) without drinking blood. Eureka! moments and Comfort checks from fellow investigators can restore Composure.

When writing the rules, we came to a dilemma where we weren’t sure if it was thematically appropriate for monsters to be able to regain Composure in these ways (since it could lessen their reliance on causing harm), but ultimately we decided that yes, they can.

People with mental illnesses may have the potential to be harmful and dangerous, but all the information we have access to has shown that mentally ill people with robust support structures and control over their own lives are much less likely to enact harm, whether through physical violence, relational violence, or violence against the self. This is why we kept that rule in for playable monsters. Being able to accomplish their goals, and having friends who are there for them, makes that person less likely to cause unnecessary harm.

Vampires are especially great for demonstrating this because they’re immortal and they always come back when “killed.” They can’t be exterminated, they aren’t going away, there will always be problem people in society, no matter how utopian or “progressive.” Vampires are a never-ending curse, who will always be a problem whether they like it or not. The question is how you will grapple with their inevitable presence in society and how you will treat them, not how you will get rid of them.

Eureka is as much a study of the characters themselves as it is the mystery being solved by the characters. It is a game about harsh realities, but it is ultimately compassionate. It argues through its own gameplay that yes, people do have circumstances which drive their behavior, people do have special needs that are beyond their ability to reciprocate, many of those people do cause harm or inconvenience to others, and all of them are still valuable. 

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[sepublic]

I want to discuss Harpy Eda in terms of the curse metaphor because she’s still not as abled as S1 Eda; She can fly on her own and she’s strong, but look at how Eda was blitzing about and casting actual spells in Agony of a Witch! Think of magic like her Hooty constructs, the Sleep spell, or Telekinesis. The curse even affects Eda’s ability to use a staff, which can be seen as a magical prosthetic or aid device, due to its power corrupting magic.

Between this and having to still take elixirs, and I can see Harpy mode as a metaphor for working with your disability and accommodating it; This can include coming to terms with your body changes and even finding a beauty in it, warts and all; Which is fitting for someone who is aging and graying early from said condition, but still takes pride in her appearance. Feathers are usually a visual indicator for panic; The stress of Eda and Lilith as they’re surrounded by feathers is still felt, but here we see Eda find peace in them. Raine always accepted Eda’s curse, and they find her Harpy form beautiful;

Harpy mode is accepting your disability to regain some function, or at least not struggle as much as you used to. It’ll never be the same as before, not even close, but that’s just how it is; Harpy mode is like its own prosthetic I suppose, or taking your medications (Again, the elixirs). Fittingly, Eda gains another disability, which does require a prosthetic in the epilogue!

Eda also has to actually work with the Owl Beast to achieve this form; She has to make deals with it each time, multiple times, let the beast take control and have fun with the body they’re now sharing. That’s why Eclipse Lake’s B-plot is relevant, it’s Eda realizing it’s not a one and done cure, but more akin to constant treatment; Something she’ll have to work for every time, it’s like taking an elixir each time.

And it’s also her realizing Harpy Mode is the direct result of working with another party, and having to make constant concessions via a mutual, maintained agreement. And that adds to the disability, Eda needs someone’s help, usually a specific person’s, to do a fraction of what she used to. So she has to recognize the Owl Beast is like a service animal with its own needs, or a personal aide (and it’s technically disabled itself, having lost its original body and needing to share with Eda).

[easays]

To Ragh; or, On Fatness

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for my interpretation of Ragh Barkrock's fatness as part of queer representation in Dimension20.

Ragh Barkrock may be one of the most beloved NPCs in Dimension20. It would be easy for Ragh, a bloodrush player good enough to potentially play professionally, to be presented as hypermasculine. In fact, the freshmen year art for Ragh, when he was antagonist rather than beloved ally, showed him in a muscular, inverted Dorito shaped body typical of a jock.

He's, obviously, built, and his cut jaw and cheekbones only bolster that image. As Ragh comes to terms with being gay at the end of Fantasy High, his countenance changes. When we see him again, the new art reflects a chubbier, happier Ragh.

The show aligning weight gain with acceptance and happiness already works against prevailing stereotypes that use weight loss as a quick metaphor for improving yourself and being the "real you." Moreover, connecting Ragh's acceptance of his sexuality with what seems like a larger comfort in his own body is a strong indictment of hypermasculine gay culture. As Gabriel Arana writes, gay men "must reconcile their sense of masculinity with their failure to conform to its heterosexuality." Not doing so has negative mental health outcomes, as Arana points out, and contributes to a culture that devalues fat queer people (see the popular "no fats, no femmes, no Asians" that often is touted in masculine gay subculture).

All of this, I think, is why Ragh's art for Junior Year was particularly impactful for me as a fat queer person. If being a gay man (or half-Orc, in Ragh's case) means having to situate your life in relationship to failing compulsory masculinity, then it seems there is an inherent queer aspect to embracing, celebrating, and showcasing a beloved NPC in an explicitly fat and happy body.

FHJY Ragh art by @caitmayart

Ragh is still strong and he is still fat. His body radiates a commitment to the power of fat bodies to exist in spaces they are often violently unwelcome in, such as gyms. Existing in gyms and sports spaces as fat people means dealing the "impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us" and upholds a diet culture rooted in impossible, Eurocentric and colonial body standards. In TTRPGS or actual plays, there is a unique opportunity to think about how bodies might exist in worlds different from ours, to imagine bodyminds as otherwise. However, as queer critics like Paul Preciado have noted, sci-fi and fantasy representations of cyborgs and other transformative bodies often lean into "fixing" disabled people or moving gender nonconforming bodies more easily towards technologies upholding a normative standard rather than questioning the standard all together.

Spyre is a world that deals with similar issues to ours, even without direct one-to-one correlations, so it, too, is a place where the narrative and artistic choices should be examined in how it helps us interpolate the world the audience resides in. From the Applebees cultish adherence to a deity-based nationalism to the various representations of parental neglect and abuse and every side story in-between, Dimension20's flagship show does not shy away from difficult realities even when recasting them through fantasy. Ragh, as a half-orc gay son of a disabled single mother, then, I see the arc his fat body goes through as meaningful and intertwined with his self-acceptance and queerness. He moves away from the toxic masculinity engineered into his blood rush team to instead pursue coalition comraderie with his friends to the point that he and his mother end up joining a communal living situation with those friends and their parents. Ragh's body expands as his family does, as his ties to community do, and to me, the gift of his fatness is the invitation to expansion that it holds out to us as viewers.

[racefortheironthrone]

How close an analog do you think Mutants are to minority groups in our own world? Mutation seems to cover a rather broad spectrum of people: you have mutations that are basically disabilities; mutations that aren’t disabling, but set the person apart somehow; mutations that give superpowers, but also carry one or more serious drawbacks; and mutations that give great power without any serious drawbacks, making these Mutants physical gods in all but name. The farther up this spectrum you go, the more the analogy to prejudice in our own world breaks down IMO.

So this is something I've discussed in detail both here and over on Graphic Policy:

As I've said in these writings, the essence of the mutant metaphor is its protean nature - it can serve many allegorical purposes, from civil rights to gay rights to disability politics and beyond, and it's constantly changing to match the times. So I think that's actually one of its strengths, that it's not trying to do a 1:1 for a specific real-world minority experience, because it really couldn't.

That being said, I've never been that impressed by the argument that "The farther up this spectrum you go, the more the analogy to prejudice in our own world breaks down IMO." There isn't a minority group in the history of the world that hasn't somehow been described as having special abilities that make them dangerous to the majority - but the point of the mutant metaphor isn't to explore "what if that particular bigoted fear was right"? (I'm thinking here of something like BLACK by Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, and Jamal Igle, which imagines a world in which only black people can get superpowers and how our society would react to that transformation.)

Rather, and this is what gets into stuff I've linked above about the importance of the mutants being part of the Marvel Universe, the point is that the mutants are not the only people who can be physical gods (think various super-scientists, aliens, actual gods, magicians, or mutates) - but they are the only ones who are hated and feared as a minority group because of that, and that gets at the inherently irrational nature of prejudice.

[izukusagi]

TBH it always lowkey bugs me when people insist the MHA manga ending is bad on the basis of Deku permanently losing OFA, or act like he's weak now.

Like, okay. I'm not gonna argue the ending is perfectly flawless or anything, because it isn't; no part of the series is. But Deku losing OFA isn't bad writing just because it may not be what you wanted to happen; it's pretty much the only way things could've gone with how the narrative was built up. There's so much emphasis on OFA as a "borrowed power;" things which are borrowed are not owned, you give them back eventually. Deku eventually losing OFA was pretty much telegraphed from the jump.

Even aside from that, pretty much the entire narrative is built around how Hero Society's idea that a strong-flashy-heroic quirk is the be-all-end-all of someone's worth is a shitty idea; pretty much every villain in the series has a backstory revolving around being rejected from society over their quirk, and Izuku being a target of bullying for his quirklessness. It's a pretty obvious metaphor for how our real-world society treats people that don't fit into acceptable norms, with a dash of criticism of how disabled people are treated as incapable or lesser. The narrative goes out of its way to make it clear that any of the villains bar AFO could've been good if society didn't abandon them and that Izuku never needed a quirk to be a hero; he was already a hero when he faced down the sludge villain and he's still a hero in the end. Having him keep his OP quirk because ~happy ending~ would've really kneecapped that point, because then he really is just the greatest hero because he happened to get a cool power.

(Besides, he gets to be a pro in the end anyway. Iron Deku is his happy ending.)

"It's a shonen manga, it's not that deep-" honestly it really isn't that deep, which is why I'm surprised I've seen so many people all over the internet completely miss it. It's the same basic message that The X-Men has been doing for decades, and MHA wears its American comic book influences on its sleeve.

[moltworm]

watched the wild robot recently, it was a very pretty movie and i liked the design of the robot. i went into it with bigger ideals than i should have for a big brand childrens movie, but i just think that they opened too many doors on big topics and didnt follow up.

complaining under the cut, i mostly just want to write my thoughts down. obvious spoiler warning for the movie

i KNOWWW its a childrens movie i KNOWWWW its a big brand name of COUUURSE it isnt going to be all that i hoped i KNOWWW i shouldnt be looking this deep into it and i KNOWWWW i shouldnt have gone into it with the (externally caused) attitude i did.

but it was disappointing mannn it was disappointing. im going to watch it again in theaters to try and introduce more joy into my heart and change my thoughts but this is all first-pass emotions.

they open too many topic doors without properly exploring them.

duck that is a runt but ends up still being accepted by the flock? Awesome, great! when that duck is an allegory for minority kids, varying as both rep for physically disabled or neurodivergent, and the way he gets accepted by the flock is by going above and beyond and ultimately learning to behave the way they do? baddd. doesn't address that no, sometimes people CANT do things that other people can. almost had "sometimes you have to find a different way that works for you" which wouldve been great but as far as i can tell that was only a transitional point and he DID end up behaving just as everyone else did.

robot that doesnt know how to connect with nature ultimately learning to become one with it?? cool, fun!! when that robot is a metaphor for a minority individual having to drop its original personality in order to survive and become accepted by the community? bad, although i cant weigh in on this too much. loses the fun bits of being a robot. i guess the "original culture" was weirdly intertwined with obtuse capitalism advertising but augh. good to unlearn advertising propaganda, bad to have to almost completely remake who you are just to fit in and give your kid a fighting chance?

expressing that animals have to survive and that means hunting each other? cool moment!!! later saying that you CAN unite them and writing hunting with a negative moral weight and later implying that they can just eat fish and live happily together? aughhhh mannn MANNN. like, okay, animals CAN form really interesting pairbonds. but also hibernation is NATURAL. animals dying is NATURAL. they almost went for it in the beginning but towards the end they backed out. rgh.

it just feels to me like if theyre going for a disabled/minority/neurodivergent metaphor, then those characters that are disabled/minority/neurodivergent are shown as having to Save Everyone to be Liked. The robot has to almost completely Sacrifice Herself for people to end up liking her. They wanted to do too many things and it ended up being a real big tangle all around.

designs are pretty cool. i sorta liked how roz resurrected and named rummage. they couldve done more with the fox and saying "violent raising begets more violent raising" but they Really Already Had a Lot on their Plate. i didnt like the evil robot who was a blatant bait character that didnt even have much "robot" in the personality. i didn't like how they handled robots, i didn't like how they handled animals, and when those are the Two Big Main Bits of the movie, WELL,

im sure that i could be swayed into liking it by someone who does like it a lot and ill probably change my thoughts when i go rewatch it. but i needed to nail down and articulate why it rubbed me the wrong way, as a known robot liker and nature liker.

[oblivionbladetd]

Lily's subtext post grates because it's so obviously just her drawing on popular Tumblr discourse specifically about authors who would throw in things like sexualities or disabilities into interviews or commentary rather than explicitly identifying them in the text (see: the initial reveal of Dumbledore's sexuality), and whether that was really worth championing as true representation.

And like, sure, that's a discussion worth having in like-to-like contexts. What it isn't, is a hard universal rule to wield as a cudgel of moral superiority against the very concept of subtext? "I don't accept subtext whenever it would be better to portray something directly" sounds silly because it's echoing a much more specific statement along the lines of "I don't accept the argument that the subtext implies the existence of a marginalized identity in this story and that's enough to make it important representation; if that was indeed the creator's intention, then this particular story would have been better served by a more explicit presentation of that identity for xyz reasons".

Buuut that would require Lily genuinely understanding the terminology she's trying to use, vs broadly regurgitating Tumblr's critical zeitgeist in order to spin her personal dislike of a story into 'actual critique'.

Anyway. I have been enjoying your recent breakdowns of her more, er, 'literary' posts! I know there are more serious issues surrounding Lily, but the fact she insists on marketing herself as a knowledgeable analyst deserves a bit of unpicking, I believe.

One hundred percent my anonymous friend. She has very skewed views on a lot of narrative tools and is wielding them as weapons against... Twitter? If even. Overall problems that either aren't or are pointed haphazardly and arbitrarily. Like her speaking of addictive tactics in storytelling while playing World of Warcraft of all games.

Not to mention, she falls for as many traps as she manages to avoid. Sure, you'll never catch Lily dead writing a hellscape of subtext, symbolism, and metaphor slamming together like a destruction derby inside a paint shaker. You'll catch her any minute of any day trivializing any struggle, big or small, and brag that it's just sensible. Like Aliana having a book on five easy steps to sever a force bond wedged in her couch cushions or Assana's mom being big chill about hearing her daughter fuckin' GETTING IT all night long when even minor annoyance at finding it hard to sleep would have made the scene a million times less weird.

As for why I focus on the literary side of the drama. It's absolutely me pointing at her work and saying, "How's this baby's first star wars fanfic enough to ignore what she's done?" I know a lot of people just don't care where their entertainment comes from as long as it's good shit. With the world as it is, I find it hard to discard the notion wholly myself. There will always be a give and take on how much you like something vs. The hatred of its creators' actions or lack thereof. If you've got even an inkling of the abuse that Lily perpetuates, I want to make it abundantly clear that the blind eyes or, God forbid, FORGIVENESS for her evils is rewarded with NOTHING. The only thing you get for being her fan is her active contempt, and sometimes she'll shit out a solid D- fanfic. I may not feel all that qualified to talk about the allegations at length, but I know what all of them are, and I sure as shit know that the reward for blind eyes is pitiful if not absolutely insulting.

[ufo-driver]

Could Ty-Lee be considered an energy bender?

I wouldn’t doubt if someone had already considered this theory before, but I tried finding if anyone had this idea. Nothing came up, so I guess I have to talk about it!

This semester, I have a TV in my dorm room, and a cool roommate to watch ATLA with. He has never seen the show, and quickly fell in love with it. Through his eyes, I’ve been seeing it all for the first time with new thoughts…

Introduction:

I know that Aang discovers energy bending at the end of the show. This is, of course, how he removes Ozai’s fire bending, rendering him powerless.

While energy bending is shown and described, very little detail is given in terms of its limitations, leaving me with many questions;

Is the Avatar the only person who can be an energy bender?

Is energy bending only accessible via Lion Turtle, or can it be inherited like other methods of bending?

Is the level of energy bending displayed by Aang only representative of a fully realized energy bending master combined with the power of the Avatar?

If methods of bending are learned from nature- fire from dragons and the sun, air from flying bison, water from the moon, and earth from badger moles- then energy bending must be granted from lion turtles. Does this mean that all other creatures can theoretically gift a human with bending abilities?

With all these questions left unanswered, it is hard to give a concrete answer to the nature of energy bending. What makes this even more complicated is the abilities of Ty-Lee.

Ty-Lee and Her Power

There are already many theories that debate Ty-Lee’s ancestry and its connection to Air Nomad Refugees. I am not opposed to the idea that she could have air bending abilities, but it would only be consistent with the canon if she was unaware of them; hence why she only “seems” to air bend. However, this can be explained as many years of practice and strength training that allows her to defy gravity.

The power that captured my attention in my latest re-watch is her unique ability of chi-blocking. Before, I accepted this as a form of general martial arts that she had learned over time, as being connected to Azula would easily grant her access to higher levels of self defense training.

However, I then compare her abilities to Aang. Ty-Lee has the ability to temporarily remove someone’s bending, something that she calls “chi-blocking.”

If I recall correctly, the entire concept of Chi is that it’s spiritual energy that flows everywhere. Ty-Lee, most likely unaware of her ability, is literally energy bending.

Of course, this would be the case assuming that not only the Avatar can energy bend, along with confirmation that full removal of bending is only possible at a level of energy bending mastery with the power of the Avatar.

Ex) while toph is powerful, I doubt she could move tectonic plates and create a separate island like Kiyoshi did

Another thing that makes Ty-Lee’s “chi blocking” interesting to me is her canonical ability to see people’s auras. Because she is able to manipulate chi, she can go as far to **physically see** the chi (or energy) that surrounds people’s bodies.

Of course, it would be easy to brush off as a metaphor, or even just Ty-Lee being a bit kooky. However, the latest rewatch made me realize that she says it so matter-of-factly, as if she has been able to do this her entire life, as if this is her normal.

I also want to point out that her ability to see auras could be similar to how Toph is able to earth bends: they can feel and “see” the medium they are bending, thus making it easier for them to bend.

It could be explained that her ability to disable someone’s bending is just another form of her ability to disable someone’s use of their arm (see when she fights Sokka). However, those are genuine pressure points, and this method of fighting has been studied scientifically.

This is not at all like the method of temporarily disabling bending. There are no physical signs of this; no muscle weakness, atrophy, or numbness. All that happens is the loss of bending, which can be seen as well when Aang defeats Ozai.

Of course, for this to be true would also mean that bending is of another energy that would inevitably cause a deficit once removed, causing physical weakness.

Because Ty-Lee is not on the same power level of Aang, assuming that his power is what allows him to remove bending, she can only block chi. Of course, it is possible that Ty-Lee unknowingly has this ability and just never has the necessary situation to use it.

This would explain why Katara, only having her energy disconnected temporarily and not removed, would not experience any physical effects as there would not be an energy deficit.

What Would this Mean for Ty-Lee’s Character?

If Ty-Lee is an energy bender, it raises many questions of her origins that could be important to the overall writing of ATLA.

Although the children born of the previous Avatars only have been seen to bend what their original bending nation was, it could be possible that Ty-Lee inherited her energy bending from relation to previous Avatars.

Whether this is because she is related to a distant air nomad Avatar or even Roku (which could explain how she had the possibility of meeting Azula in the first place, as she could be of a noble family).

In the show, Aang faces every kind of bender, many of them being more advanced in skill than Aang. The threat of Ty-Lee’s potential energy bending would seem powerful and impossible to overcome. This makes Aang’s mastery of energy bending more satisfying!

This could also explain why Azula confront’s Ty-Lee in the beginning of season 2. Knowing of her ability, Azula would absolutely monopolize it in case it needs to be used on the Avatar. Azula could have gotten any skilled fighter to accompany her, and yet she chose Azula.

You may ask, “well then why is Mai there?” In my opinion, including Mai is just a method for Azula to manipulate Zuko (knowing of their romantic history) and use Mai’s presence as psychological warfare. Her skill, although apparent, is irrelevant to fighting in general. This is its own separate theory, though.

Is Ty-Lee the Only Energy Bender Seen in ATLA?

The more that I analyze the show, I think of how Ty-Lee is very connected with spirituality. When I observe other “spiritual” characters, I also think of Iroh.

It is important to note that Iroh was jaded for his entire life by the programming from the fire nation. Assuming that Iroh has only began his spiritual journey after his failure at Ba Sing Se, he has not put much time into practicing this.

Ty-Lee has spent her entire life fine tuning her skills, unlike Iroh.

I think that energy bending, unlike other bending methods, could be learned. Considering chi is constantly flowing and is everywhere, it is inherently more available than other types of bending.

While Iroh can’t bend energy, he is tapped into chi and spirituality in general. He seems to know things that others don’t, somehow being able to say the exact thing someone needs to hear.

This is something that Ty-Lee can also do. She is often needing to read emotions, and placates Azula when she is at her most stressed. This is basically the much unhealthier version of Iroh and Zuko’s relationship.

So while the level of energy bending shown from Ty-Lee is not matched by other spiritual characters, it does seem that it can be learned over time while others have a higher predisposition. If anything, I’d compare it to midi-chlorians allowing people to have a higher sensitivity to the Force.

As far as canon from the show alone goes, Ty-Lee seems to be self taught, the show implying that only circus training could teach her this fighting method. Color me not-convinced.

Note; I do believe that there are energy benders alone in LOK, but I haven’t seen the entire show as it didn’t do the same thing for me that ATLA did. I know it’s important to consider all sources, but this is what I have! Feel free to reblog with explanations/thoughts that correct anything in this post.

[hikaaa-bi]

(rant ahead, proceed at your own risk)

honestly though, i do not like it when a show has no problem putting characters through trauma but doesn't want to address it afterwards. especially worse when they keep dogpiling trauma onto one specific character and then just forgets all about it. oh yay, the world is saved and this character is alright now, i guess.

exhibit A: Marcy from Amphibia. she was already having issues with leaving her friends and trying to combat that with escapism. she got reasonably rejected by her friends when they realized she tricked them. she got backstabbed by the king, both metaphorically and literally. the stab scene literally needed a content warning. she gets put on life support for a while and then gets turned into a weapon. the VA did a really good job with the screaming that it really made us think Marcy was going to at least have scars later. if they went all out, she'd probably be paralyzed or disabled for a while. if not, the least they could do is have her being weak and unable to move too much or fight.

but guess what? her friends rescue her from the core and after a little bit of crying and apologizing, girlie is a-okay. no visible scars, no physical injuries, not even a little bodyache. she jumps up immediately and is fighting the enemy in her super saiyan form moments after.

and do we even have to talk about the emotional and psychological trauma? nope. Marcy is saved now, that's all that matters. apart from a little bit of character growth, this girl is not affected by what she went through one bit.

don't forget that right after seeing Marcy get stabbed and presumably killed, Anne goes back to earth, has exactly 1 second of crisis and then completely forgets about her friend. a lot of the viewers argued that Anne was just repressing her feelings and trying to act happy. if this is true, the writers should show it. just having her act happy and have fun at grocery stores and museums doesn't really send the point across. you start to wonder whether the character got amnesia or if the writers have it.

The Owl House temporarily succeeded in showing a happy-go-lucky character repressing their feelings a.k.a Luz in s2b. we clearly see Luz looking anxious or sad when she's alone or when no one is looking. you see her panicking and trying to overcompensate with jokes, when she's actually not feeling okay. it's done really well in both animation and voice acting.

exhibit B: Hunter from The Owl House. now TOH wasn't overall as bad at showing emotional impact and trauma as Amphibia was. it had its fair share of tears and panic attacks. we see multiple characters very clearly experiencing the aftereffects of traumatic events they went through - King, Eda, Luz, Amity, Hunter. the only problem is that these arcs aren't really resolved well.

Hunter being the most popular example. like Marcy, Hunter was someone who was just given trauma after trauma to deal with. he was a child soldier, raised by his abusive "uncle" who was also the emperor. he was brainwashed into doing whatever his uncle wants him to, with the golden child complex tacked onto him. he is already in a very fragile position at this point, accepting his death and digging his grave when he fears that he's about to disappoint his uncle. he later finds out that he was a clone of said uncle's brother and that there were thousands before him, disposed of easily when they turned against the emperor. he has to fight his uncle in the finale, where said uncle tries to manipulate him again. after getting stranded in the human realm, his uncle later possesses his body, almost killing him in the process. oh, and his best friend actually gets killed.

and the aftereffects? TOH wasn't as avoidant as Amphibia. they did show Hunter having multiple panic attacks, identity crises after leaving the emperor's coven and very obvious fear and negative impacts of abuse.

but the whole grimwalker thing seems to be not taken as seriously as it should have been. Hunter is worried about his friends knowing that he is a clone, rather than about being a clone. i mean, in a world where grimwalkers aren't implied to be a common thing, surely it must be very existentially shocking and confusing to suddenly learn that you're not you, right? i mean, if i learned that i was a clone of someone else, i know the first thing i would think of wouldn't be about how my friends would take it. because i havent had the time to process it myself.

like i get it, these are Hunter's first friends and he doesn't want to lose them, yada yada. but it's still a bit strange to address it this way.

the main problem i have with Hunter's arc is that he never gets his closure with Belos. after Belos possesses his body and kills Flapjack, Hunter tells the others that they have to find and defeat Belos in order to avenge Flapjack. he is clearly distressed and angry. but then the story suddenly seems to forget about his trauma and focuses on Willow's issues instead and just handwaves the whole revenge thing aside.

Hunter did not have to be part of the final fight against Belos. but he needed some closure after everything that had happened. i mentioned this in a previous post but remember when Zuko was able to confront his dad, call Ozai out on all the shit he did and loudly reclaim his destiny? Zuko was allowed to face Ozai and say "I'm not going to be who you want me to be. you are a horrible person who abused me all my life and I'm finally cutting myself free from your influence, and I'm going to right all the wrongs that you made." this was such a powerful moment and Hunter deserved something akin to it too.

but in the end, Hunter isn't even at the scene where Belos dies. Luz, King, Eda and Raine are. and sure, all of these characters were affected by Belos's actions one way or another, but Hunter was the one who was most deeply impacted by Belos. and he never got his closure, he just.. had to move on. it was just such a disappointing end to his arc because he was a character that had so much potential, but they pushed his entire arc and development aside, so that huntlow can happen. yes, i dislike huntlow, it's a very forced and poorly written ship that sabotages the personality of both these characters.

anyway, yeah. either take time to address your character's trauma or don't give them trauma at all. believe it or not, not everyone goes through absolute life-shattering trauma and pain. people deal with problems, sure, but if you can't write about trauma well, please don't.

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

Missed Potential in MHA - the Mutant discrimination subplot and the Quirkless Discrimination.

Both two really interesting concepts that fall flat in canon because of Hori refusing to develop them.

And seriously Hori did Shoji really dirty with the Mutant Discrimination subplot, like no just accepting the realities of the shit world you live in is not an acceptable option because it is "getting better" it gives the vibes of not wanting to rock the boat for an easy life. But it won't get better unless you stand up for your rights - there's tonnes of real life examples where people have had to do this. Where Discrimination and Discrimative attitudes have only 'gotten better' (broadly speaking in terms of making it illegal to be discriminative) when people have stood up against the system that oppressed them which is what the mutants believe they are doing by siding with Spinner.

To drive it home - these people are so desperate they are siding with AFO and Spinner - even though they know it will make them seem more villianous by doing this. Even though they know they could set their cause back if they fail. These people are so desperate they are chewing off their metaphorical arms to escape the hellish discrimination they're facing! Hori what the fuck? Just... What is he trying to say here?

Side note - can you imagine how much harder the Mutant subplot would have hit if Hori showed some of Shoji's backstory before now?

Or showed Spinner being discriminated against beyond Dabi being a dick and calling him a 'Lizard'?

Or made that part of Spinners backstory from the start instead of it feeling like a tacked on part of his Stain fanboy earlier self?

Or showed the Dog Mutant police chief even being offended when Shoto called him a "dammed mutt"?

Just give me a reason to care Hori! I want to care about this!

The Quirkless discrimination - again a really interesting idea for Izuku's backstory and a similarity with All Might! That's great! Then there's Yuuga the "dark Izuku" oh I can't wait to have this be explored from Izuku's POV -

-Oh. Wait. Can't have that Bakugou will look bad because there's no getting around the fact that Bakugou was and (still is IMO - the story just doesn't focus on it now because he has no Quirkless around him to abuse) a quirkest, abusive bitch and we can not have that. Good God.

If I may get a bit personal for a moment - Izuku's story being turned into the Bakugou show, in particular, with his quirkless past being pushed to the way side is extremely hurtful to me on a personal level. I had bullies like Bakugou, I had abusive people like him hurt me and get off with a lame fake apology just like that. Quirklessness seemed disability coded with how people treated Izuku I saw a lot of myself in Izuku and I wanted to see him eclipse his old bully, make true friends and be the number 1 hero.

And instead we get - "My Kacchan Achademia" as someone put it.

If someone told me the manga I was going to get into would have turned out like this I would have never gotten into it.

No wonder so many people are dropping this manga.

All of this. It's crazy that Izuku's character was built up around him being quirkless in a world of quirks yet outside the first episode, we get nothing else about the quirkless and how they're treated. As for the mutant discrimination part, everything revolving it was underwhelming. Minor hints and then a quick resolution. It's kinda pathetic how poorly MHA tackles its themes.

[will80sbyers]

the implications of Elmax are there tbh but I think it's because it was supposed to be also a metaphor for queerness, it's intertwining all the struggles of the characters, even if it will not be actively queer in canon, Max trying to hide from the part of her that is feeling all of those things instead of accepting that she felt like that and not giving it a meaning of her being a monster if she feels like that... it's paralleling a queer struggle

and stranger things is about self acceptance in ALL of its forms

when you feel like a mistake because you're queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual... when you are considered different because you were born with a disability or because the world is a racist dumpster fire, when you are a nerd and people bully you for being yourself and liking what you like, when you are a woman and people put you in a box and want you to shut up, when you are not academically smart and that makes you feel stupid, when you feel the pressure of conforming, when you made mistakes but you want to change for the better and have one more chance to redeem yourself, when you struggle with drug addiction and depression and anxiety and feel like you are a curse or a monster... when you're an outcast in society because your family is poor, when you lived through trauma and abuse that left you with emotional and developmental struggles you have to live with...

Vecna's idea of destroying the world to change it and escape from the bigotry of Hawkins is not exactly wrong as a principle but it is the wrong way of going on about it because what that character really wants is power, he is hiding his true intention of having power under a pretense of remaking the world

what the other good characters want is love and acceptance and that's what they will give to each other and that's what will save them all (or almost all)

[sallytwo]

< music loverr ive been thinking about this for days here's which everything everything song fits each parousia character

faduhl: come alive diana

very much about the mythology of faduhl as a character... she's not allowed to be a person she's this great shining legend and has to live up to that myth. obviously this is also about aubrey... "mother looks away, father looks away for a second", "and the young diana waves inside a global grief", "I LOST AN AUTHOR THEN I LOST A DAUGHTERS AWE!!!"

ryan: president heartbeat

also about the pressure to live up to her image as a Good Officer and alsooo about her fucked up relationship with faduhl. she came to this station and gave away her entire life for faduhl only to watch her fall apart. this song has an upbeat pop sound with incredibly angry bitter lyrics that are rattled off in a desperate way which fits her well. ryan is. not a good officer. she only got this position because of neptosim, she comes from a very privaleged life, she cracks easily under pressure and has rehabilitating imposter syndrome and self doubt. "and you promised me heaven and you said it would happen soon...." ugh!!!

bennet- warm healer

his. song. it's a very melancholy song abour the dread of looking back on your youth and wondering where it went. just the resignation in this song... ITS SO BENNET!! "they call me a medicine man but my old spells dont work anymore". my sad doctor :(

aleki- END OF THE CONTENDER

SOMEONE WHO IS LAMENTING ON THEIR FALL FROM GEACE HOW THIER FUTURE HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM THEM AND BLAMING IT ON EVERY SINGLE PERSON BUT THEMSELF EVEN THOUGH THEYRE FULLY REAPONISBLE.

ekaz- the marina

ekaz has lived through so much change on the station and this one's about like. his inability to keep up and to accept this change and the way he's slowly losing his faith. someone always has to be the rock someone has to be stable and hardworking and trustworthy and that's always him.

chyell- bad friday / cut up!

bad friday is phenomenal chyell song because it's literally about a violent terrible thing happening at a club and not being able to remember what happened. which is literally how they lose their eye. "could this be the millionth warning / could this mean i'm gonna get out?"

cut up! is a frantic disjointed desperate song and is also very chyell (relating to their sense of duty) etc

talii- levithan

song that uses a levithan as a metaphor for disabling grief and sadness which is very talii. at her core she is a deeply, deeply sad person and it never goes away. she never got over her brothers disappearance. "looming in the distance never coming near / im missing you, im missing you, im missing you for real / under levithan"

jonathan- violent sun

violent sun is a PHENOMENAL late seasons johnny song. about feeling like you're being swept along in life and have no agency and don't have an excuse for being this way. and the SUN!! " there's a way you dont ever have to be a lunatic or an error or a prisoner to your terror / im too old to be crying out" and "i wanna be there when the wild waves comes and we're swept away" IT FITS SOOO WELL.

also shoutout to photoshop handsome. “airbrush what have you done with my father why does he look like a carving.” LOL!!!

max- good shot good solider

going along mindlessly with what you’re being told to do? with the corrupt violent organization that rules your life? wanting badly to be good and right and never questioning it? that’s max babyy

have to mention lord of the trapdoor too cuz “this is a whistle for only a dog / can you believe you were nearly a dog” is such a max line. god

anyway thank you for reading. everything everythingg

[rostomanologist]

For Noereen and Sonia: 2, 13 and 18!

ty for the ask !! <3

there's a lot of yapping so more under the cut :)

2. How much do they remember from the Dream? Did they have any particular experience in it before awakening?

13. How do they feel about death? Does it make them curious or scared? Do they wish to understand it or do they simply accept it?

18. [Free space for 3 pieces of trivia about your sylvari!]

Sonia:

2. it's hard to say what she remembers from the dream since she lives in it most of her life. however, her experience before awakening was rather vivid: first of all, it took much longer time for her to awake. second, the dream didn't give her the overall knowledge of tyria in the amount it gives to others, but instead let her explore its depths as a place. it also let her see more emotional memories of other sylvari. so upon awakening she didn't know where lion's arch was but could understand the concept of mixed feelings, for example.

13. at first, sonia was curious of death, but after being at the edge of it she prefers to stay on life side. she does accept the future of her dying (esp bc she feels her body is slowly fading) and is still curious to experience the mists, but she doesn't want to be alone upon her passing.

18. 3 facts!

1) sonia is disabled! she has something like FND (functional neurological disorder). when awake, she's usually fatigued and experiences movement problems, as well as dizziness, short seizure-like episodes and pain, so she relies on mobility aids and help of others. in the dream she's more active, though it doesn't mean her symptoms evaporate. she still gets fatigue and movement troubles (tho milder) from time to time.

2) her mobility aids are forearm crutches, powerchair (or should i say hoverchair) and her own magic :) her crutches also serve her as sceptres, and she uses them quite often in the dream. she also developed a fighting style using them. the hoverchair is a custom powerchair made specifically for her: it shares the concept of asuran hovering chairs aligned with the typical sylvari design. it's powered by magic and lacks wheels, instead floating comfortably over the ground, which is important for the grove's grassy and bumpy terrain. as for the magic, she uses it in the dream where she feels much more energetic; if she needs to go on long distances, she simply uses portals and blinks!

3) being heavily bound to the dream, sonia developed a very elaborate speech. when she was a sapling, it was very hard to understand her, as she used vague and complicated metaphors, and menders had to teach her to talk in simpler words. after some events in her life she involuntarily went back to her previous manner.

Noereen:

2. all noereen remembers from the dream is endless disappointment. her dream was bland, uninteresting, didn't fill her ambitions that were already blooming, no matter how she tried to explore it and answer to the challenges.

13. death is her main fear. her symbiosis with her legends is the only one thing that keeps her alive, and she Does Not want to know how death feels. all she wishes is to avoid death, even though her recklessness doesn't help in it at all...

18. 3 facts :)

1) previously her main legend was an echo of a white mantle inquisitor (probably lovisa), and their relationship was... rocky, to say the least. even though she weakened it by bonding with other echoes, it still haunts her from time to time, since it's the one her life depends on. she's also vulnerable to bloodstone frenzy because of it!

2) noereen has a huge bite scar on her side which is always partly healed. it looks fine, but if she loses her legends, it'll be a main cause of her death. nevertheless, she keeps it unprotected and it's mostly a miracle (and her bfs keeping her away from some of the fuss) how she's still alive exposing it like this.

3) she also has scars all over her body, but the side one is special not only by its nature, but also because it glows in different hue than her usual glowing. while her main glowings are pink, the scar is more reddish.

[therese-lokidottir]

I can't help it that feel worry when X-men finally arrive in mcu while mcu like do victims blaming and not understand what meaning of hero and good person/ being hero and good is by claim and not what they do

Seriously I feel scare , X-men have a lot racist, facist and genocide issues and seeing how mcu now it's make me think that they will screw X-men so badly

The mcu's don't push against the status quo in too harsh of way ideology does not bold well for the mutants. Seeing the way Loki is treated, seeing the way Kali is the villain makes me really fear for Magento.

If I can say here, I problem I often with the mutants is sometimes writers lean in hard in making the metaphor too specific. Like it's mutants are metaphor for being gay and that's it. For some character that concept of being anywhere on LGBTQ+ just isn't applicable to their character or power. Not all writers do that, but is a frequent problem. I think a lot of writers miss the chance to make stories about the intersectionality that mutants would face. Sometimes mutant would be more like being a different ethnicity, sometimes it more like being queer and sometimes it be more like having a disability and even within those differences it could still affect individual in much different ways.

Because of the floating timeline of marvel comics it has meant mutants are kind of stuck in this perpetual status quo where no progress is ever made and passive resistance is the only acceptable form of protest.

What I think is so important for X-men writers to understand is what it's like to be discriminated against. What is like to be a truly different kind of person and that difference being something that can't be changed or covered up. Story will have to deal how one adjust to the world that might not want them or actively be against them but is a story that is about finding one's place and gaining self-acceptance.

In the comics Wanda is a powerful mutant who has face discrimination, has struggled with mental illness and has had difficulties controlling her powers. But she managed to pull herself together, find peace and live happily. MCU Wanda has faced similar, and her ending is to get crushed by rocks because she's too powerful and crazy. Understand why there are so many characters I don't trust with the MCU right now.

MCU sympathies with the people maintaining the system even its failing or actively harmful over the people who push back in extreme ways to change things. What is Stryker going to be? Some man with a sob story who just means well

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Replying to this in a new post because this AU post is already super long:

Yeah I was thinking that! Maybe the word you're after is 'metaphor'? Not sure but I do get you!

Roxy being stuck in a school that expects a bare minimum that she physically can't reach is absolutely a kind of 'disability in a school setting' situation.

What I was thinking for the world was that magic and non-magic IS a fully integrated and combined thing, but some schools are primarily for magic while others are primarily for non-magic. Roxy in this case, lives in an area where magic is the norm. The only schools nearby are magic based and this one in particular was the only one that would accept her as a non-magic user.

This situation gives her a hell of a lot of resentment because she's now on a purely magic based education path, when she absolutely shouldn't be, and making the switch to a non-magic path is going to be a lot harder the longer she's at the school. If she's ever going to be able to be in a non-magic school, she's going to have to work so much harder to catch up on everything she's missed, like if you change your study course halfway through the school year. Or like in my English Lit class that was the only one in the school studying war poems and Macbeth, so anyone that got moved to that class had to learn it very quick (though our teacher was decent and put time aside to help them continue studying the Romeo and Juliet stuff instead) and all those that were moved out of the class had to drop Macbeth and learn Romeo and Juliet. They also had no choice, your clas was decided on your ability so uh yeah that was poorly thought out.

It's like that for Roxy now, except on a larger scale and she's unable to switch paths unless they move house to somewhere that has the proper school for it. And she's rightfully angry about the fact she's being held to a standard she can't meet. She gets minimal support for this problem, despite the school boasting about its support programs, and is largely left to slip through the cracks.

She has to navigate a world designed for her to fail and she doesn't know how to do that. She tries finding ways to give herself the same abilities as everyone else, like trying to cure the problem but she can't. It's just not possible. She doesn't want exceptions being made because they single her out further. Extra time and someone there to explain things to her does not make a practical exam for casting spells any easier. It feels condescending, like they've decided because she doesn't have magic, she must be stupid or that she's just not trying hard enough.

Roxy's got her anger issues too and it's no wonder. She can come up with solutions, and work arounds, but she's still considered incorrect. She's not given time or opportunity to come up with solutions either, and is just expected to solve the problems over night. She can push for non-magical sports clubs so she has a chance to excel at something but magic is more important than her. She's the only one that can't use magic after all, so they have to prioritise the needs of the many over the needs of the few, right? Look, she may not have magic, but if everyone else can manage, then so can she! Simple as! I mean, that famous person without magic did it, so why can't she?

And then I thought, this would exclude other people too. It never just effects one person, even if that's the intention. What about the ones that struggle with magic? The ones that are slow at understanding it? The ones that find it exhausting but still have to rely on it? The ones that are being locked out of the things they want to do, just because they have magic and that's a non-magic interest? The ones that could be great at one type of magic, but struggle in another and are thus, penalised for it? Fuck it, what about those with non-magic issues that can't be solved with the one size fits all magic/non-magic solutions? What about the people that just plain suck at magic stuff or don't want to pursue it? What about the attitude that whatever you're doing would be easier with magic, so why don't you just use magic? Why would you want to do it any other way? Why would you question something that is clearly, objectively, the correct way to do it? Everyone struggles from time to time you'll get there!

What about all these other people that slip through the cracks? Roxy thought she was the only one labelled as a failure and being dropped by the system, but through her efforts, she can find that she's not the only one. There's plenty of other kids that are also struggling with this system, she's not as alone as she thought she was. She may try and push it all away because struggling to do something is not the same as being completely unable to even try and do something, but ultimately, they're in the same system designed for them to be miserable.

Maybe they have workarounds that she hasn't thought of yet? Maybe her own workarounds give them ideas on how to do it too? Learning through eachother that it's okay to not be the perfect student and that the system doesn't define you, and maybe that if they cause enough of a ruckus, they can change it just a little bit in their favour? Or maybe it's a case of Roxy's efforts to change what she is, and then her efforts to make a space for her to fit in that draws the others to her? Maybe it's a case of her not realising that she's somehow managed to surround herself with people that are also being destroyed by the powers that be? The realisation could hit and she could get a whole new flavour of anger on their behalf but also feel so fucking relieved that she's not on her own here...

And maybe the others don't realise it either? Maybe a few of them keep comparing themselves to Roxy and feeling like they don't have it that bad so they're clearly just not trying hard enough? Maybe they think Roxy is just a trouble maker and doesn't care until they discover that, no, she's been tearing herself apart to try and cure the incurable because to her, that was her only option? They see parts of their struggles in Roxy and they want to talk about them too but don't know how, since clearly they have nothing in common... The similar stuff must just be overlap or something with the normal, everyday experience, right?

I don't know how they could decide to try and do something about the situation. Maybe Roxy finally cracks and starts talking to her parents or a guest speaker comes in and talks about how to make changes in the world? Maybe her latest attempt to give herself magic goes horribly wrong and she's left screaming in desperation until someone finally listens? All those people she didn't realise were friends running in to help her when it all starts crushing her like a bug under a boot?

I dunno. There's some good story to be had here though for sure