#killjoys meta

[ur-fav-is-a-killjoy]

HAPPY PRIDE!!!!! Every queer person ever from real life is a Killjoy!!

[sitzfleischh]

Ok ok ok but the THING the thing that GETS ME about Aziraphale and I feel like I don't see as much about it written on here is that yes we all know that Crowley pretends to be cynical and dark because he wants so badly to be joyful and optimistic but he's been hurt & let down too many times so he puts up the cynicism as a facade.

But Aziraphale is ALSO DOING THIS, just using the opposite tactic.

Crowley assumes everything will go badly because he's protected from disappointment when it does, and gets to be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't.

Aziraphale assumes everything will go well because he's unBELIEVABLY anxiety-ridden ALL THE TIME and cannot deal emotionally with even the prospect of things going wrong. So not only does he optimism his way out of seeing issues that are right in front of him until he absolutely can't avoid them any longer (see: dancing in his bookshop surrounded by demons), but he also actively gaslights himself into thinking that the bad things that happened to him or that he was involved in weren't that bad, and pretends that he doesn't have negative emotions and is just fine and happy all the time because he doesn't know what to DO with those feelings-- he's an angel! He's supposed to be placidly happy forever! What do you mean he's angry or sad or disappointed or disgusted or lonely? Angels don't feel those things!

Season 2 showed us Crowley getting in touch with his feelings of love and care, and I think season 3 is going to show us Aziraphale getting in touch with his feelings of anger and disappointment, and I for one CANNOT WAIT.

[5ummit]

The Left-Handed Winter Soldier Myth

A theory has been circulating for years that the Winter Soldier is left-handed (or at least heavily favors his left hand and uses it at every opportunity) while Bucky is exclusively right-handed. I’ve tried to ignore it in the past, but it’s come back with a vengeance in the wake of the Thunderbolts trailer and I can no longer sit idly by and let this misinformation continue to spread unchallenged. Not when it's now being used as “evidence” that the Bucky we see in Thunderbolts is not actually Bucky but the Winter Soldier.

Luckily, this myth is easy to disprove.

Turns out there’s tons of examples of the Winter Soldier favoring his right hand (these are just a few I could grab that clearly showed his hands and weren't too blurry). I actually noticed while gathering these screenshots that the soldier rarely fires a gun and basically never uses a knife with his left hand, even when it might make more sense for him to do so as the metal arm is theoretically stronger and faster. Unsurprisingly, Bucky being right-handed means the Winter Soldier is too.

But just to be thorough, here are few counterexamples of Bucky using his metal arm when he’s definitely not the Winter Soldier. One of which even includes him killing people with a gun, something I've seen some Bucky fans also claim he never did in TFATWS and try to use as further proof that he’s the Winter Soldier in Thunderbolts, because their Buckybear is a sweet innocent baby who doesn't carry weapons and wouldn’t harm a fly.

I know I'm constantly beating this drum to the point that it's probably getting annoying, but it’s really easy to manipulate "data" to “prove” whatever you want. Just because something seems like it could be credible at first glance doesn’t mean it is. Please double-check other people's claims before you use them to inform your own opinions.

[favvn]

You know, I get that Star Trek: TOS has a lot of lore surrounding it. The producers say one thing, the actors say another, and the passage of time does not help to clarify things as memory changes and opinion changes, too (look at William Shatner's infamous back-and-forth opinion on K/S, but, then again, he's an outlier adn should not be counted). The change in the women's uniforms from the two pilot episodes to the actual series has been discussed to absolute death. Is it sexist and catering to the male gaze or is it empowering and a sign of the changing attitudes to sex, fashion, and women's burgeoning freedoms in the 1960s? My own thoughts on the matter are divided, but something that has always made me lean more on the "it's sexist" half are Star Trek's production and air dates, Mary Tyler Moore, and Katharine Hepburn. (Would you still love me if I wrote a critical essay about the Star Trek miniskirt dress 🥺👉👈)

Under the cut is a discussion of the progress of the 1960s and why pants/trousers on women still matter. (Side note: UK people, sorry. Please envision trousers instead of pants otherwise lmao / semper ubi sub ubi!) With quoted articles included, this is over 4k words.

A few disclaimers before I begin: I use very gendered language in discussing the impacts of the pill owing to the era. To use gender neutral language would detract from what the pill meant to the women of the 1960s and the strides made for women since. This entire essay is centered on the United States since Star Trek is a product of the country. This essay is by no means an exhaustive look on all subjects discussed (especially the contentious history of the pill, the feminist debates it created, the conservative backlash to it, etc.) or a summary of all the social changes of the 1960s which would also impact Star Trek (the continuing progress of the Civil Rights Movement, the landmark ruling of Loving v Virginia to legalize interracial marriage in 1967, the Counterculture movement, the legalization of No-fault Divorce in California in 1969, etc.), but I hope it does do what I intend which is to explain why I feel that the women's uniforms on Star Trek: TOS are not as empowering as one wishes.

Background context: Star Trek began production in 1964 with the original pilot episode "The Cage," although it remained unaired until the 1980s. At this time in the 1960s, women made up one third of the workforce in the United States. In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved what is colloquially known as the pill. At the time of its inception, it was life-changing for both married and unmarried women alike in giving women an easier to use contraceptive and a more reliable means to prevent pregnancy (for example, a condom would require the husband's cooperation within a married couple. A diaphragm would require spermicide to be effective. The pill requires only one person's input). I shouldn't have to explain why the ability to prevent pregnancy at an individual level means greater freedom for women or how much time and energy is needed to raise children, the sacrifices that have to be made for unplanned pregnancies, and to say nothing of the issue of money lurking behind it all.

Within this time frame, women beyond movie stars were beginning to wear capri pants. While this trend first began in the 1950s, the pants' popularity continued to rise throughout the 1960s. Prior to this, pants were an option within woman's fashion in the US going as far back as the 1930s (and technically even further than that if one wants to look to the whole of human fashion), yet women in the US did not have the right to wear pants in public until 1923.

The 19th Amendment actually preceded women’s right to wear trousers in public, which was granted by the U.S. attorney general on May 29, 1923. Yet for several decades wearing pants remained a crime of fashion, punishable under state laws banning cross-dressing by both sexes, which aimed to keep women (and men) in their places. In 1933, Joanne Cummings was arrested for wearing pants in public in New York. In 1938, Los Angeles kindergarten teacher Helen Hulick was barred from testifying in a burglary case when she arrived at the courthouse wearing trousers. Evelyn Bross was charged for wearing trousers on a Chicago street in 1943, even though she was dressed for her wartime job as a machinist in clothes “more comfortable than women’s and handy for work,” as she explained. Bross was acquitted. As the judge explained to The Journal Times, “I think the fact that girls wear slacks should not be held against them when they are not deliberately impersonating men. Styles are changing.” (source)

Meanwhile women's bathing suits changed from a standard two-piece to what we recognize as the modern bikini due to a rise in beach films of the 60s (think: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini). Skirt hemlines grew shorter throughout the 60s, revealing first a few inches above the knee, to the upper thigh and just below the groin, and the miniskirt made its debut (although debate abounds as to who necessarily invented it along with how short it was originally intended to be). Needless to say, the pill in conjunction with changing fashions launched what is referred to as the second sexual revolution in the 60s.

“The miniskirt was an extraordinary phenomenon and had a big impact because it was part of the emerging youth culture of the 1960s and it was very much an expression of that youth culture and also of the beginnings of the sexual liberation movement due to the invention of the birth control pill. So it was kind of a historic moment,” says Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT. “You had had something of a youth culture and a short skirt in the 1920s as well but, although young women in the ‘20s were seen as being far more sexually liberated than their precursors, that primarily meant that they felt more free to go out on dates unsupervised, choose their future spouse, kiss multiple men before getting married and sometimes engage in petting. But they still were threatened with what had always limited women’s sexual freedom − that danger of becoming pregnant.” Fifty years after its invention, the garment still has many barriers to break.“With the rise of all kinds of religious fundamentalism in the world today there’s been a backlash against women and against sexual liberation [...] You’re looking forward to a much freer future and backwards to a much more restricted past, and the miniskirt is kind of symbolic of that.” (source)

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, aiming to reduce the gender disparity in pay. Also in 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. The book started out from a survey offered to her fellow classmates from Smith College, which found that many of them were unhappy with being a housewife after completing college and/or holding a career before marriage. These results, in addition to numerous women's magazines that Friedan worked for and the strict gender roles and unbridled consumerism of the 1950s, led her to examine how so many girls and women were now being taught to believe motherhood and being a housewife was all there is to life. Despite the limitations and severe oversight of Friedan's book (bell hooks famously criticized the work for failing to consider how race and class alters Friedan's claims in her own book From Margin to Center published in 1984), it has been credited with launching the Second Wave of Feminism in the US, and its timing enabled it to have the impact that it did despite its limited scope. I want to be clear: I understand the limitations of Friedan's book but it still has a lot of history attached to it and is contemporary to Star Trek's production. To put it all plainly and simply: things were changing for the better for women as conservative elements in society began to loosen, and Star Trek was in production and on air as it happened.

The Air Date versus the Production Date

"The Man Trap" was the first episode to be aired on September 8, 1966 after the second pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was produced in 1965. The first produced episode after the second pilot was "The Corbomite Maneuver," however, studio executives passed on airing it as an introduction to the series owing to its incomplete special effects and opted for "The Man Trap" over "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (too exposition heavy), "The Naked Time" (utter fools for bypassing it), and "Mudd's Women" (there were concerns about "space hookers" being mentioned in reviews which would damage the network's reputation and discourage sponsors; the times might have been changing but not everything follows suit/for all that television was able to do during the era of the Hays Code, network censors would still be wary of certain issues pertaining to sex).

In "The Man Trap", we are introduced to both Lieutenant Uhura and Yeoman Rand. Both wear miniskirt dresses as do any other female crew members that we see in the background.

What's interesting to note is that, right away, in the first aired episode, there is dialogue from two men commenting on Yeoman Rand. Not for her skills, of course, but due to her looks and her body:

BLUESHIRT: How about that? REDSHIRT: Yeah, how'd you like to have her as your personal yeoman?

Do I have to explain that the second comment might as well end with a "if you know what I mean?" How empowering, how optimistic to see the sexism of the 20th century make its ugly way into the unknown future of the 23rd century. (This is, in fact, made worse if one reads what Whitney herself had to say about filming the episode.) Yeoman Rand is not seen as a person here, regardless of her preserved femininity. She's an object to be leered at by the male crew members thanks to the miniskirt dress.

I know that one could argue that the fact that the women in Star Trek wear this uniform is not inherently sexist--clothes are a neutral thing until one places meaning on them (although, how can clothes remain truly neutral when various clothing items are designed for a purpose and when clothing is a visual element? How you dress alters how you are perceived and you cannot escape the perception of others outside of becoming a hermit.) The problem is that, even if the rest of the series does not use comments like the above dialogue, the era that it was produced in would already fill in that unspoken gap, even if a modern audience were to reach a point where that no longer happens. "The uniforms are different because men and women are different. Men don't wear dresses," are the 20th century attitudes that would still influence Star Trek: TOS, even if they aren't explicitly stated in every episode. (Any time I have to hear Uhura say, "I'm frightened" or some variation of the phrase, I want to scream because it's the old idea that women aren't as courageous or brave as men. That the men must offer the protection and reassurance even centuries beyond our present.) The series is very much a product of its time despite its optimism for the future, and one could argue that its brand of optimism is very much a result of the 1960s.

Contrast the new women's uniform from the series itself versus the uniform used in the two pilot episodes and what do you notice? Originally, the women wore the same pants as the men. The cowl necklines of their sweaters are the only difference in their clothes. The two pilot episodes were produced in 1964 and 1965 respectively whereas the actual series was produced from 1966 to 1969 during the height of continuing social changes (the ongoing Civil Rights movement, the Counterculture movement, etc.). Within those years, the women's uniform changes from the same uniform given to the men to something that is uniquely and obviously intended only for women to wear.

Now, I realize both Nichelle Nichols and Grace Lee Whitney have said they approved of the new uniform, and a lot of opinion has held that if the two actresses were fine with it, it must truly be alright. Again, I understand the symbolism that a miniskirt can hold and its timeliness in the era. However, the fact that the two pilot episodes envisioned a future wherein women work alongside men but are not set apart as women by the outer symbols of femininity is a big deal to see, and it takes on renewed importance when seen alongside the changed uniform within the next 2 years. Rather than appearing empowering, it looks more like a regression, a, "We can't let women become too equal with men, despite the 23rd century setting. We can't blur the lines between the genders. We have to reassert the women's femininity, so we'll put them back in dresses same as is expected of them in the 20th century." This is the same attitude used to dissuade women from wearing pants during the 1920s and 1930s. As Friedan writes in The Feminine Mystique, quoting a 1956 article from Life magazine (and no, the article is not satire, sadly; one could argue I'm pulling this bit out-of-context because Friedan was contrasting how the magazines vilified career women while praising the new housewife, but I would argue it still holds merit as many career women did, in fact, wear pants at their jobs. The praise for a skirt remains because it does not challenge the idea of femininity or the roles that women can hold/what women are capable of. It reasserts the Feminine Mystique):

Or, to quote Naomi Wolf's introduction to The Beauty Myth (yes, I am aware of the hot mess she has become. She made points with this, however):

In other words, while the above scene from "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" is seen as progressive to some due to Kirk's correction of Captain Christopher's response, it is telling that he--the man transported right out of the 1960s--calls her a woman first and foremost because that is what the dress serves to do. Of course she's a woman. The men are never seen wearing that uniform. It sets her apart and highlights her gender in that separation.

Mary Tyler Moore

The Dick Van Dyke Show aired from 1961-1966 and focused on the lives of Robert and Laura Petrie. Rob worked as a television comedy writer while Laura was a stay-at-home mother to their son, Ritchie, yet one episode plot does feature Laura returning to work as a dancer for television (to, of course, the forgone conclusion that the house crumbles without her and returning to work is too exhausting, so she'll stay a housewife and only work sporadically). What is notable about the series in this case is that Mary Tyler Moore was the reason Laura Petrie wore capri pants instead of full-skirted dresses.

She was not the first woman to wear pants on television, but she chose to wear them so much on The Dick Van Dyke Show that network sponsors tried to limit how often she could wear them. Moore defended her decision by arguing that no housewife she knew was doing housework in a dress. The network was concerned, however, that the capri pants showed her--shall I say--assets too well and wanted to hide things under a full skirt instead. Ironic, isn't it? A miniskirt and capri pants are too provocative. The fact that by trying to force Moore's character into a dress reinforced the image of a housewife as one who vacuums and cooks in a full skirted dress and heels probably didn't hurt. (source)

I mention Mary Tyler Moore as she is an example of both a woman who elected to wear pants and the same mindset that would have wanted the women of Star Trek dressed in something more feminine even if it went unsaid (although the shortness of the dresses would be a flag for their social mores). This is what I mean when I say I am divided: Moore was admonished for wearing pants for fear that they were too titillating and the women of Star Trek were placed into dresses that surprisingly got by the objection of a censor owing to their length and the fact that none of them danced on the show. (I am aware that Nichelle and Whitney were both dancers and there are photos of Nichelle in the uniform while holding her leg up as if at a ballet barre instead of the bridge set. Neither actress danced on the show, however, so if this was used to bypass any skirt length concerns, it wouldn't necessarily be a surprise).

Mary Tyler More both danced and appeared in a leotard on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I mention this because the miniskirt and hotpants have their roots in dance fashion, yet that falls apart as an excuse to bypass the censors if the actresses hired do not dance within their roles or if the episode does not hold the plot line of them being dancers. In other words, how did they get the dresses by the censors when considering the responses of the clip below, responses that were very true to the production era. Again, while television was not beholden to the Hays Code as cinema was, the conservative values held by the code would still be seen through the censor objections. The only guess would be following costume design specifications to a malicious compliance degree--the women's uniform does cover everything until someone has to sit or bend at the waist (to say nothing of if someone is thrown out of their seat)--and excusing risque designs as "it's the future and women wear less clothes." Neat that it took until The Next Generation to give us the skant for men. There's a fun destruction of gender roles in that, however scant of an appearance it had in the show. (Why it wasn't included in TOS could very well had been owing to the social attitudes of the day / I know there's more to be said about Kirk's nudity in the series and what that means in terms of reversing what gender is objectified and whose gaze is being met / the history of male nudity in public to begin with as it was once illegal for men to be shirtless in public, that men have historically worn dresses and skirts before, and so on, but this is not about the men. Sorry.)

For reference, this is a scene from season 1, episode 8 in which Laura visits Rob while still in her dance leotard. 1960s conservatism and sexism is on display with Rob's, Buddy's and the unnamed delivery boy's (played by Jamie Farr) reactions compared to Laura's response of "these are just my dance practice clothes, it's no big deal" (arguably the same response one could have to defend the miniskirt dress in Star Trek. I'm aware of this, but I cannot accept it given history):

(As an aside, do give The Dick Van Dyke Show a chance. It is hilarious despite the limitations of the era / it's a lot like Star Trek: TOS in that regard.)

Katharine Hepburn

I don't post enough about her to show that I am a fan but I am a fan (of three famous Hepburns: Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, and Audrey Hepburn), and Katharine Hepburn was legendary for her preference for wearing pants long before it became fashionable for women to do so (Marlene Dietrich was another legendary actress who did the same, although I am more familiar with Hepburn):

But following her own style rules wasn’t always easy for Hepburn, a woman who would be later be revered as one of the greatest screen legends of all time and admired for her gumption. Studio staff hid her slacks backstage to stop her wearing them (she reportedly chose to go pantless until they were returned to her). Media outlets published lengthy articles questioning the Hollywood women who chose to wear men’s clothes. “Trousers for women are incredible, ridiculous and absurd!” Movie Classic magazine quoted Hepburn’s fellow actress Constance Bennett saying of the trend in 1933. “I can’t imagine wearing such atrocities.” (source)

"It was almost scandalous that she wore pants," said Marjorie Plecher Snyder, a former costume supervisor who worked on "Desk Set" in 1957. "It was an unheard-of thing." Like many leading ladies of her day, Snyder said, Hepburn simply knew what worked on her athletic body, with its long neck and limbs. While the press routinely recorded Hepburn's trouser-clad appearances as if they were transgressions, every photograph helped direct women to new ways of dressing. Hepburn, not Giorgio Armani, most helpfully advanced the cause of androgynous clothing for women. The teenager who once cut her hair short and called herself "Jimmy" Hepburn explained her style in a 1975 interview with Ladies' Home Journal, in which she said: "I've dressed this way for 40 years, just because I had brains enough to know that certain kinds of shoes were comfortable and keeping up stockings is uncomfortable." (source)

(I've tried to set the video to play at 160 seconds in but it may not do so on mobile. I would edit and upload my own clip but tumblr limits one uploaded video per post.)

So why bring Katharine Hepburn into the issue of the women's uniform in Star Trek: TOS? Because, quite simply in my opinion, it is shameful that some 30-40 years after someone like Katharine Hepburn, after how the capri pant became a fashion trend in the 50s and 60s, after Mary Tyler Moore skirted the network by wearing the pants she wanted to wear anyways, in a future boldly imagined we see women dressed in the same uniform as men for only two episodes (one which sat in the can until the 80s) only to watch the pants be exchanged for miniskirt dresses. In this view, with the history that leads up to it, it looks bad, no matter how I'm told to view the miniskirt.

I could, perhaps, argue further about professional dress codes and the way that we dress is dictated according to circumstance (example: what I wear at home is not what I wear at work or to the store. That tank top I got bleach on? Fine around the house, not so out in the eyes of society), but that would potentially get into the moralizing debate that dress codes are dictated not by practicality (pants will forever be more practical than dresses and skirts. One does not have to worry about showing their underwear in a pair of pants) but by puritanical standards and a celebration of modesty, that clothes are neutral at best, and no one is asking to be cat-called or worse raped for what they wear. The only thing that stops me from fully embracing the idea of clothes as truly neutral is that, as with anything that necessitates perception and therefore the opinion of another person, the neutrality is lost with the act of being perceived. For example, I tell myself that gender is just a dress up game and that my clothes mean nothing on their own, but no matter what, someone is going to look at me and give me pronouns and assign a gender to me in that moment, regardless of my feelings on the subject. There's no way to get around that beyond becoming a hermit.

In a way, perhaps, I wonder if modern audiences have come to forget how novel it is for a woman to be able to wear pants, how originally it was illegal to wear pants as a woman in the US, that society itself has been slow to fully adopt to the change in attitude (female senators were not allowed--according to the dress code, although it was unofficially enforced at best--to wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993, for one example), and that it is now taken for granted as something ordinary and expected rather than something that has been feared and demonized for destroying gender roles. In other words, despite the length of a miniskirt challenging conservative views and being another clothing option for women to choose from, it still upholds the notion that dresses are for women and that even within the professional sphere, women must still dress like women in order to have respect and in order to retain their femininity lest gender roles are challenged too much. Despite what it may challenge in terms of conservatism, a lot of people (regardless of gender) will still attach the judgment that to wear so short of clothing is to inherently be provocative and asking for the leering attention of the male gaze. This in turn feeds into the question of if such clothing offers respect and authority and if it is even professional for a job. (There is an argument to be said that it is infantilizing. By shortening the hemline to what is normal for a child, it does grant youthfulness to an adult woman, but it also places her in the clothing measurements intended for a child, not an adult.) This is what I wonder about when it comes to discussions of the women's uniform, in addition to the history that led up to it, and the strides we are still making now in the 21st century to enable women to be taken seriously within their job fields while wearing pants.

[restlesshush]

The use of Chuck as a tool of analysis in fandom is genuinely so frustrating, because fundamentally it encourages people not to engage with spn as a piece of media made by real life flawed human writers, which is what it is!! Like, Cas’s inadvertent structural protagonist status at various points has nothing to do with ~him vs Chuck~ or whatever, but due to specific oversights by the writers such that his actions are the ones driving the plot rather than salmondean’s. ‘Chuck’ isn’t trying to ~keep him out of the story~, that doesn’t really mean anything (and if it wasn’t for that one line in Unity, no one would necessarily even think it) – it’s that the writers, trying to keep him off screen, gave him more interesting and more impact-having things to do than they gave salmondean with their much larger amount of screen time. Like I get the Chuck explanation being enjoyable, but we already have a real life explanation, and it’s pretty fun in itself imo! Gamble very much did arguably make Cas the structural protagonist partially as a direct result of trying to kill him off, which is kind of hysterical.

Also the thing is like, Chuck as the authorgodvillain was such a late addition that pretty much nothing is designed around him being the most satisfactory explanation – and it’s incredibly nebulous what viewing earlier events in that light of his intervention is even supposed to entail. If the writers had the courage of their convictions a little more, we could have been invited to recontextualise various really out of left field events in this light, eg @autisticandroids has talked about this re godstiel and the way the leviathans came out of nowhere, and me and them have also discussed it re gadreel being set up to be the “perfect deantransgression” (as @themauvesoul has pointed out) – it would make sense for a villainous author trying to create drama (and undermine Cas) to have contrivedly brought those things about specifically to that end. It is absolutely the case that there are places where it can be fun to say “it would make sense for Chuck to have made this happen for x/y/z reasons”, and it would have been very brave and sexy for the writers to be like “oh yeah lol this thing we wrote would have made more sense of it was Chuck”, but it would be very silly to say “oh the leviathans coming out of nowhere wasn’t actually bad writing because that was Chuck” y’know? Chuck as the authorgodvillain is a concept you can play with if you like, but he’s not a tool of analysis. In the show’s protagonist-powers-deconstruction episode the writers aren’t even brave enough to attack the most egregious writing conveniences facilitating the story, so extending the Chuck lens anywhere else in a way that lets them off the hook is extremely generous, as well as just pretty meaningless.

Fundamentally , the main function that Chuck as the authorgod really serves is a way to handwave away the bad writing (or any other disliked things) in spn when 1) the bad writing is interesting and 2) do we really want to give the writers that get out of jail free card?

[dirteater69]

i watched wendigoons analysis of no country for old men earlier today and it got me thinking of themes in stories reflected through characters, and i started thinking about the themes of the killjoys fic im currently writing and how they reflect through the characters, so im gonna write some of it down now before i forget. im only on the third chapter and there will be at least ten when im finished, but this is based on what i have written and planned currently so i hope it makes sense. the main themes are pretty vague in my mind, but im thinking it will be along the lines of how real people shape themselves into characters+how real events are mythologized, how ideologies and hopes affect people, heroism and villainy, how committing and experiencing violence changes someone, what normalcy means, clinging onto or rejecting social norms in times where they have kind of lost all meaning.

in this post i will mainly write about how these themes reflect in the characters of jet star and party poison (at least how i write them) and their relationship and thoughts about each other.

party wants to be the hero and shapes themselves into that character: they are the leader of the killjoys, they are very charismatic and a good fighter, later on they become an important figure in zones society in the wake of the analog wars and lead many battles. they end up being seen as a hero by many and their actions in battles and other things about them are talked about around the zones as myths or folktales.

the thing is, deep down, party does not see themself as a hero. they feel that they have something at their core — whether that’s queerness, inability to conform to other social rules, committing violence — that makes them unable to embody the ideal of a hero that they have in their head. they feel that because there is something ‘wrong’ with them, they don’t deserve to get the things they want. this manifests most obviously in the story in their romance with jet, where they think that they can never, or should never, be in a relationship with him because they would taint his (perceived by them) normalcy and moral purity with their wrongness and strangeness; however, this is only part of the fact that they dont believe themself deserving of a good life at all.

they are the first of the killjoys to ever kill someone: it happens when they are all escaping battery city, and party ends up accidentally killing one of the bl/ind guards chasing them down. though this action may have saved all their lives, party still feels immense shame and horror at having done it. the night after, their first night in the zones, they have a nightmare where they are eating the body of the man they killed, and jet appears to kill them in a way reminiscent of putting down a sick animal. at their core, party believes that they are a villain and a danger to the people around them.

of course, in the middle of a horrible war, the zones needs a hero. that is what party shapes themself into: a loud, confident, violent leader of the zonerunners to take down bl/ind once and for all. there’s a sort of split in party’s identity, where on the outside, they are the hero of the zones, but on the inside, they believe themself to be a morally corrupt fraud who is going to ruin everything good and beautiful they touch. combined, this makes for an absolute monster of a martyr complex: if they die for a good cause, then the world will both be better because the thing they’re fighting for (the freedom of the zones, the destruction of bl/ind) has succeeded, and because the evil that they bring into the world simply by existing is gone.

one other thing i want to touch on with party is how they deal with social norms. before beginning life in the zones they knew they were nonbinary but didn’t really have a safe way to express it besides going by they/them around kobra and later, when they met, the other killjoys, but when they enter the zones they begin to present more femininely. in the first chapter, party and ghoul (who is transmasc, and who i have a ton of other thoughts about) have a whole conversation about gender, which might be one of my favorite parts that ive written so far, and it ends with them swapping pieces of the school uniforms they had to wear at the school in battery city, with party wearing ghouls skirt and ghoul wearing their pants. i haven’t written any more in that vein yet, but i want to explore party’s gender more in the fic. they are definitely very open to rejecting gender norms, at least when they have the opportunity, and it’s an extremely joyful experience for them to present the way they want, but it still sort of claws at them. to them, gender nonconformity doesn’t fit with that idea of heroism that they have. when they present more femininely, they almost feel like they’re betraying the people in the zones that believe in them, like they’re ruining the hero.

this is where we get to their perception of jet star. i mentioned earlier how they feel like he’s too good for them to pursue him romantically, but there is so much more to that. to party, jet is the ideal of heroism that they feel they should be; more so, he represents the ideal of american masculinity that they betray when they present femininely. they piece together true and half-true things about him to create a version of him in their mind that they can compare themself to, furthering their idea of themself as a villain. when they decorate the masks and ray guns of all the killjoys, they make jets red, white, and blue. this idolization also ties into the shame that they feel about the violence that they commit. there is of course the nightmare they have of him killing them for having killed the bl/ind guard, but there is also the fact that while they are a very active fighter in the analog wars, jet mainly works in the medical tents. they destroy things, he fixes things. (never mind the fact that the destruction they commit is against bl/ind) this idolized idea of jet eventually ends up clashing with the real him in a scene late in the fic, where they have a whole breakdown at him about how bad of a person they are, including how they’ve ‘ruined’ him by simply being his friend. he doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

but what is actually going through jet stars head throughout all of this? well, while party is eager to show themself as a hero, jet tries to portray himself as the ‘everyman’, the regular person in a world of chaos and absurdity. this is how he’s been coping with the trauma he’s experienced at the hands of bl/ind: he is sent away from his family’s farm in zone 8 to a ‘reformation academy’ in battery city, and ends up staying there for several years before escaping with the other killjoys, but throughout those years he thinks of it as something fleeting and temporary; surely, he’ll get back to zone 8 soon, to return to his normal life. he’s not actually some kind of crazed desert rebel like the rest of the killjoys, he’s just a regular american farm boy who’s been thrust into a strange situation by forces beyond his control, and as soon as he gets the opportunity he’ll return to that life. even when beginning life in the inner zones, surrounded by the stranger aspects of zone culture, this is how he thinks and portrays himself to others — or, at least, tries to. it’s related to how he deals with trauma. while party thinks of the bad things that they’ve been through as yet another thing that makes them wrong and unfit, yet another thing that makes them the villain, they at least acknowledge that it’s happened. jet just tries to suppress those thoughts completely.

however, his entire idea of returning to a normal life in zone 8 falls apart once he sees what’s happened to it. when he travels to zone 8 for the first time in years, it’s entirely under the control of bl/ind, unrecognizable from the wholesome farm society he remembers. his plans for a normal life — and, furthermore, his thoughts of himself as a normal person — begin to fall apart when he sees the place representative of his old life destroyed. party is with him in that scene, and though he has to break through all his layers of emotional repression for it and it makes him almost feel physically sick, he manages to explain some of his issues to them. one of the things they say in response is something that will be very relevant to both their character arcs: “normal isn’t a thing anymore”.

jet is soon embroiled in the chaos of the analog wars along with the other killjoys, but he still clings to some ideas of normalcy. whereas party is an avid fighter, jet stays out of battles until it is absolutely necessary for him to join, instead helping out in the medical tents and administering first aid on the battlefield. though he isn’t explicit about it, he does kind of look down on the zonerunners most active in the fighting, especially the ones that don’t show any shame or remorse about the violence they commit and sometimes even delight in it (cough cough, a certain bomb-building thrill-chasing black-haired city-born adrenaline junkie with no regard for social niceties, mayhaps?).

of course, the main exception for this is party poison, because love makes you ever the hypocrite — and it is love that he feels for them, though he doesn’t realize it, and certainly wouldn’t admit it for the majority of the story. party falls for his front of the normal, well-adjusted american farm boy, and he falls for their charismatic hero persona in turn. while he does help people in his role as a medic, and sees it as far more preferable to shooting peoples brains out with a blaster, bl/ind goons or not, he finds his unwillingness to fight kind of cowardly. this ties into many other things he believes about himself, like shame about not having fought back against bl/ind when they were taking over zone 8 and he still lived there, as well as the idea that he can’t truly be useful to his community. the latter relates heavily to his issues with normalcy and his own identity: he’s spent so much effort on trying to make himself as palatable as possible that he’s almost cheated himself out of an identity, trying to appear normal to the point where he feels like he doesn’t have any real good traits or talents left. party is the opposite of all of this for him. they are loud and unapologetic about who they are (or, who they want people to think they are), they don’t have any qualms about doing what they have to in order to save the world, they are the ideal of a true zonerunner and hero.

circling back to jet, the thing about him is that he is not as normal as he tries to make himself seem. throughout the story, he slowly gets more comfortable showing small, strange parts of himself to the people around him. he seems to have taken party’s words to heart, at least partially: normal isn’t a thing anymore. it’s only small things, he still deals with some heavy repression of trauma and trouble facing a lot of his own feeling and desires, but its a start. he has his own quirks and absurdities, his own traits that make him a unique and fucked up person. i don’t have every part of those developments planned out, but i know that at least some of it will be in relation to gender, like growing his hair out and presenting more femininely in other ways. he would have a lot more inhibitions to let go off before really being able to face his thoughts about his own gender than party would, just due to the environment and pressures he’s been raised with. (a full exploration of jet’s gender would not really fit in this fic just with the story outline I have planned, but i might write a continuation that goes more into detail. my hc for jet’s gender in the music video era is a he/she transfem, though this fic takes place many years before that and jet still thinks of herself as a cis guy for most of it.) the point being, jet is not actually the one of the killjoys who is the most normal; he is just the one who’s the best at pretending to be.

when jet and party actually acknowledge their feelings for each other, they both have to break down a lot of emotional barriers to do so, and it’s a large part of them beginning to reject the characters they’ve resigned themselves to. party has to realize that they are not an inherently horrible person and that they do deserve to live a good life, that jet is not an untouchable object that they’ll ruin by being close to. jet has to accept that he’s allowed to love someone he’s been taught he’s not allowed to love, that just because he’s in a relationship unlike the ones he’s ‘supposed’ to want doesn’t make it any less real. it heavily involves them letting each other off the pedestals they’ve put each other on, and loving the real person underneath the persona. that is actually an interesting thing that is true for both of them: while they fixate on the fronts that the other puts up, it’s the real person underneath that they fall in love with. jet idolizes the heroic leader that party tries to be, but falls in love with their kindness and vulnerabilities. party envies jets projected normality and righteousness, they fall in love with the strange quirks that make him who he is.

their emotional journeys won’t have full resolutions in this fic, but if i finish it i will probably write a continuation in which the analog wars have ended and there is more focus on the characters emotional development. it would show more of that theme of them letting go of the roles they’ve placed themselves in: party realizing that they don’t need to act a specific way or have a certain personality to be a hero, they just need to help people; jet letting go of his attachment to normalcy. they don’t need to be perfect heroes, they don’t need to follow specific norms or rules. they just need to be who they are, and that’s some fucked up kids stuck in a fucked up situation just trying to make the best of it.

of course, even with those emotional issues resolved, they still struggle. I mentioned at the beginning the theme of real events being turned into myths, and that would certainly be relevant to the killjoys, especially to party. during the analog wars, the image of party poison as a hero and leader of the zones spread quick and they were mythologized into an almost godlike figure. (this is true for the other killjoys as well, but not to such an extent.) this image comes to haunt them even when the wars have ended: wherever they go, they are expected to live up to this idea of themself that they have long since let go of and never even really fit in the first place. the mythologizing is to the point where certain people who preach about the figures of party poison and the killjoys don’t even know what they actually look like.

there is also the fact that while the analog wars have technically ended, there are still attacks occasionally made by bl/ind, and the killjoys have to defend themselves with violence whether they like it or not. the ‘end’ of the analog wars also brings along some other questions about the themes: how do the killjoys deal with the absurdity of their lives when they can no longer blame it on existing in an active war zone? how do they rebuild their lives after all that non-stop violence? again, this is if i finish the fic im currently writing.

im not sure how to end this post but it’s been fun to write and i hope other people might enjoy reading it. i might write a similar one about how the same themes reflect in fun ghoul and kobra kid, but i dont know.

[kirkwall-age]

this is a stupid me personal thing. but Fereldan names have always driven me a little bit insane because they are a hodgepodge of different Britonnic languages with no rhyme or reason. the devs will take one name, and use all versions of it: Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and then some Germanic variants to boot.

which etymologically is very frustrating and sloppy world building to me. incredibly niche pet peeve, i know. but languages are my specialty and such careless use does invite questions

e.g. Mhairi, Moira, Maura, Miriam are all different language representations of the same name. how did that come about? or Wynne and Fiona being a Welsh and Irish representation of the same root, and they are in a room having a conversation, and I'm here wondering when did the language split?

one could ostensibly make a case that before Calenhad united Ferelden, all the Alamarri tribes had one single root language family but it devolved in these related but different languages

but. regardless. as I was looking up all the names and trying to map out where they fall in the actual Earth languages

i made a discovery i should have really made a long time ago

which is: i know from general history examples -- and also other fiction (*cough* Dishonored *cough*) that Teague is an Irish masculine name

based on that knowledge, I never questioned Teagan

but Teagan (also spelled as Tegan) = while most certainly related to the name above = actually follows the same logic as such names as Megan / Meagan. or Regan / Reagan. current unfortunate association with a president who ruined everything notwithstanding, Regan is King Lear's daughter. and Regan is the child protagonist of The Exorcist, a girl tormented by the demon. these are feminine names. TEAGAN is a traditionally feminine name

another OBVIOUS example being of course the ever famous sister-duo Tegan and Sara. but. based on the queerness. I kind of assumed the opposite? that it was a butch thing and she wanted to use a masc name? or that the name is just unisex and the popularity with one gender or the other changed with time, like it did for Addison, or Cameron, or Ashley. or that the spelling made a difference

but no. straight-up. historically it's a woman's name

and listen. i'm all for unexpected unisex names. Artemis Fowl? Star Trek: Discovery's Michael and Pushing Daisies' Chuck? hellyeah. my own name is traditionally masc and I'm fem-presenting

but also i'm just saying: trans!Teagan

(they did blithely retcon and canonize that Eamon and Teagan had polyamorous parents. that their father had a wife and a male lover (Connor) whom Rowan, Eamon and Teagan also considered a father. and Eamon named his son after the man. so honestly this isn't the most wild headcanon I could put forth about them)

[moonchild-in-blue]

@staff I have a concept for you: Custom Badges. Like, if we could pay for a badge but it's actually our own submission? Like the Reddit Custom flairs? Because I'd LOVE to get a badge for my blorbo fandoms (like the Goncharov badge).

You don't even need to credit me for the idea, just make it happen yeah? Thanks babes 😘

[milligramspoison]

I’ve been manifesting this since June and now DD night is officially here!

Please for Danger Days night wear one of the killjoy outfits

Idc if it’s Poison, Mike, or Val, I’m just manifesting a killjoy outfit 🕯️

[crimsonscloud]

related to the uniform analysis post, simultaneously lol-ing and angry that fucking carl (minor character from seasons one and two) shows up again in season five as a factory worker, yet we couldn't get just one reference to jelco. with the whole fake memories plotline that would have been so interesting esp if amnesia!jelco turned out to be a decent guy / willing to work with dutch to figure out what's going on, and then he regains his real memories and chooses to keep helping her despite remembering what he did to old town in the past.

it would have been a nice reversal of their earlier hostility back in season two where they tried to get the other killed (or at the very least were completely fine with it happening), where now you have them trusting each other to have the other's back. sure they still snark at each other and occasionally annoy the shit out of each other, but what person has dutch met that doesn't do both of those things repeatedly lmao. they've moved past the trying to kill each other part (mostly).

[brunnismemorybank]

Rat City might be my favorite of the show’s urban locations. I wonder if  the towers with the turning helixes are part of a geothermal energy system-- a power source frequently ignored by science fiction, but likely to play a major role in the future. The skyline certainly looks very different from that of Old Town, with its gigantic chimneys pouring out smoke. Which makes sense, considering the Nine’s deal with the Hullen: Sustainable energy no doubt sounds less pressing if you expect most life on the planet to be wiped out in a couple of centuries anyway.

[ur-fav-is-a-killjoy]

SHE'S 20 TODAY!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉

[cripplemagics]

jay: i’m not a huge disney fan.

jay in the shower: -belting this out-

[vintake-ss]

𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐗 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍

// basically the valorant agents as genshin characters... these are mainly based off vibes

I've had this in my head all day and it's been consuming me.

→m.list

Okay, so Jett's obviously an anemo sword user, duh(but they're dual daggers). She's the standard 5* that was meta early game but then fell off years later

Sage is litterly a geomancer. But she's that character whose design doesn't fit their element. Standard 5*, catalyst.

The ripple effects when you shoot at Astra's wall and just the overall visual of her kit screams hydro. Catalyst, 5* that's an S tier support

The 4* vibes radiating from Yoru are flabbergasting despite his ego. Cryo dps that requires the blood sacrifice of your entire lineage to be decent. Sword user

Dendro bow Skye cause it just feels right. 4* dps that's better than some 5*s

Using her dendro vision, Viper releases poisonous fumes using plants. Polearm. Is supposed to be a 5* bc of her status and lore but alas. Ningguang treatment fr

Unfortunately, Reyna is that 5* with a kit so bad they're basically a premium 3*. Electro polearm.

Gekko is the SS+ tier 4* support that has like a 91.6% spiral abyss usage. "𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘬𝘬𝘰 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮, 𝘵𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨??" Dendro claymore

SS tier pyro catalyst 5* dps since release. You can pry the meta out of Raze's cold dead hands. Popular enough that even people who know nothing about the game recognize her.

Deadlock is the most forgotten character, but she's still a decent 4* for beginners. Cryo claymore.

Omen would be a 5* anemo catalyst with the sickest animations not him dying instead of his friends

Sword user cypher who had to be sent to the ER for singlehandedly carrying the geo meta. 5*

Fade would probably have the creepiest idle voice lines. 4* cryo catalyst.

Dearest father brimstone. Everyone looses their 50/50 to him at least once. Standard 5* geo claymore.

Our Pyro king Phoenix who happens to be the worst Pyro character. But at least he's got great humor and a loveable personality! Also pretty popular. Standard 5*, sword user

Breach is that character that will get you kicked from someone's world if you dare try to bring him into a domain. 4* Pyro claymore

4* Iso who should've been a 5* with how strong his shield is. Slap some def% and he's tanking 5 ruin guards and 3 abyss mages at the same time. Electro bow

Neon is definitely one of those niche characters. Not versatile in most team comps but will do big dmg if you get her the specific setup. 5* Electro catalyst

Clove was called trash even before they were released. Turned out to be the best 5* sub-dps. Will nuke your enemies if teamed up with astra. Hydro bow

Killjoy doesn't wield her claymore herself, she has tech to that for her. Electro 4*

Sova has a pretty easy kit to understand, he's also pretty easy to build. The kind of character you wouldn't mind loosing your 50/50 to. Standard 5*, cryo bow

You'd need a PhD from an ivy League university to understand chamber's kit though, so most people just end up skipping his banner. 5* hydro catalyst with the lowest player ownership lmao

4* that's being held captive in the basement, harbour gets to be on a banner once a year if lucky. Hydro claymore genshin could never.

KAY/O is that one character that, by all means, refuses to crit. Idk why. Anemo claymore.

[junethehellenicpagan]

Riverdale is a GREAT show, its CAMP, its, FUN, its so gay, its colorful, its meta, its heartwarming, its stupid, so stupid but that’s what makes it so good. It makes no sense and yet its genius, I will die on that hill, riverdale is great when you stop being a film bro hispter killjoy.

Things can be fun. Not everything has to be serious and profound. It’s okay to have some glitter, a few songs and a weird ass plot.

[aoral]

[og poll here]

c!tubbo and q!tubbo…er Idk

hmm considering c!tubbo was a soldier...but q!tubbo fought in purgatory twice. I'm not sure.

-- a good ol' sword vs killjoy trigger happy chainsaw!

Okay new point maybe c!tubbo? considering q!tubbo fought more with. enchanted weapons, having a much different 'environment' due to the server being modded (meta aspect) it would be less common for him to fight without any weapons. c!tubbo otherwise being in a earlier era of Minecraft it would make sense with a bit less...advanced weapons.

-- it really depends on when did the string of sensibility snap

do you think c!tubbo fought back by instincts when every weapon he owned and every amour he had was confiscated? do you think q!tubbo knawed on flesh and wood and snapped at everyone and everything in his line of sight? Do you think they go feral once in a while, a break from the calm skies and rainbows, to the plummeting rainstorms and bolting lightnings? Do you think they sometimes stare at the escape exit and say "shit, this is escalating" in their mind?

-- I just realized that the poll is asking hand-to-hand I forgot and I only realized after I wrote the following chunk of words lol

c!tubbo counts his steps on taking the queen, he makes the most use of the pawns, the knights, the bishops and the rooks, he counts on how to check, how to queen, to restrain the opponent from winning. He counts on checkmate, on how many blocks he needs to promote the pawn, on taking steps back and forth. What makes him a good fighter is not his strength but his mind of winning.

q!tubbo fights like there is no tomorrow, he sinks into the bloodlust and fights like desperation itself, like being hanged forward by the primal urges to kill. He snaps because if he doesn't, if he doesn't give his all with no reservations he knows he will not win, he needs everything to win the fight so he does not forfeit to enemies, his bravery shines among other traits.

-- but just hand-to-hand fights? I'd say they will be evenly matched.