#like we love women supporting women but also... she definitely has some 'attitude problems' as some people might call it LOL

[anthromimicry]

alright, but an important thing to note here... although misao might very much seem to be just this hedonistic, as well as utterly selfish but seemingly smart person, she is also a girl's girl. so i think that is kind of funky fresh of her when you look past all of the atrocities she has committed? and is still?? committing??? idk, i'm just trying to get in the groove of posting on here, so feel free to ignore this y'all 💀 i just imagine her being the kind of person that will say ' slay ' to another woman she sees while walking to work because she absolutely LOVED their outfit but then turn around and plot a patient's or pretty much anyone's downfall because they dared to 'look at her wrong.' like, her and barton may or may not be competing for first place for the worlds most petty character LOL but i love her anyway despite her having some very... interesting ways of navigating the world and her relationships with people, i guess you could say.

[siblingskissing]

Ronance headcanons?

Ronance Headcanons

I have had the BIGGEST brain rot about these two, you guys don't even know, so please excuse my rambling session in this post. As always- feel free to share your headcanons, opinions, thoughts ideas, just be kind <3

-Robin is the biggest simp to ever exist. Nancy mentions liking a color? Guess who's suddenly adding it all over their wardrobe! A favourite food? She's already learned how to cook it. Allergic to something? Robin will destroy it with her bare hands and make it go extinct to protect her girl.

-Likewise, Nancy would and will kill for Robin (come on Robin tell her to kill for you she wants to)

-Their favourite dates include them sitting in one of their rooms, a movie or music playing as they discuss conspiracy theories or whatever story Nancy is working on

"There's been a ton of missing items from farms in the areas. Animals, tools, bales of hay-"

"could it be aliens?"

"Alie- Robin it's not aliens!"

"What? Interdimensional monsters are real but aliens aren't?"

-Many people assume Nancy would get annoyed by Robins carefree joke centered attitude but actually she calms down whenever Robin tries making jokes.

-She doesn't like when people don't take things seriously, but she knows Robin is taking it serious, but using humour to make sure they don't spiral with the problem

-their relationship definitely started off rocky but with some time, understanding and surprisingly really deep conversations they learn to appreciate the little things about one another.

-Robin loves Nancy's drive and her leadership skills. She makes sure that everyone takes her seriously and if the kids complain about Nancy being a hard ass she brings them back to listen.

"Nancy's not our boss!"

"No, but she's the one keeping you dipshits safe- she knows what she's doing so listen up and quit complaining"

-They kids listen to Robin more and so when she follows Nancy with no complaints, the kids unconsciously follow suit.

-When Nancy gets stressed/aggravated Robin will be there to lend her a shoulder. They're very much leader/Right Hand man coded to me.

-Nancy doesn't know much about queer culture so when she does eventually come out Robin is happy to talk to her about it and share what she knows.

"So we use Blue violets because Sappho used to describe women wearing garlands of them,"

"Sappho?"

"... Do you have a spar 3 hours so I can explain Sappho and Greek poetry to you?"

-They take all kinds of cute little Polaroids that they keep at Robins place

(examples of said Polaroids)

-Robins family is more supportive so often Nancy goes over there to spend the night

-when college comes up in discussions Robin mentions that she enjoyed investigating with Nancy, the research was fun when they didn't have death looming over them.

"Yeah, learning Russian to break the code was awesome- the torture kind of ruined it though-"

"The WHAT?"

-Nancy asks Robin 1000X if Robin is sure she wants to go to the same college/same field and Robin promises her that she isn't only going because of her.

"I'd follow you anywhere, but this is also for me- if I have to do one more customer service job I might kill someone."

-They love movie nights, curled up under a blanket watching whatever film they can find. Robin always finds the oddest ones and sometimes some really deep indie films. Nancy also enjoys the foreign films she can find and let's her choose.

-on nights Nancy chooses- she likes care free fun films. Nothing too heavy because she likes the simplicity

-Theyre a gross matching couple- but in a new fun way.

-Mat hing colors in their respective styles, using each other's clothes and making it go with their personal choices, matching patterns/designs.

-They also shared shoes sometimes

-On the 90s Nancy gets a more "Rachel from friends" style like this

-Robin eats it up like no one is watching and often has to hold back from just kissing her 24/7

(also I badly wanna do a look book of the characters so Please someone ask for that because I love fashion)

I definitely probably have more but here you are!!

[la-pheacienne]

For all that they talk about GRRM being anti-war, anti-monarchy and anti-feudalism, they love neglecting to mention that he’s anti-Catholicism.

Disclaimer: if in any way I come across as agressive, it's not at all directed at you anon, I'm speaking very generally here, thank you for your ask💖

Listen. The sheer notion of "anti-war" is the stupidest of the stupidest political/moral/ethical attitudes that someone could have. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but someone needs to say it. "Anti-war" doesn't mean ANYTHING. Anti-which war exactly? You need to be specific. Not all wars are the same, not all wars are created equal, there are some wars that need to happen, that are fair, and some wars that shouldn't happen. Yes of course, it depends on where you're standing. But it always does, that's life. And of course in every war there are people suffering, but that's life again. If the enemy comes at your doorstep and wants to destroy you and everything you love or if you have been violently evicted from your homeland, what will you say exactly? Hunie I ain't doin' anything about dat cause I'm anti-war? Lol. No. The "anti-war" agenda is only relevant for privileged, white Americans and Europeans thinking they are Americans, who haven't felt threatened once in their life, who haven't lost anything, who don't know anything about human history and think that the solution to every problem on planet earth is peace and love. No.

GRRM definitely isn't anti war. There is no way a person that dedicates decades of his life reading and writing about brave warriors is anti war. Sure he's "anti- war" in the sense that he doesn't particularly fancy going out with a sword decapitating people, but he's not anti war in any fundamental way. And newsflash, none of the fans of these shows/books are. We're literally dedicating years of our lives reading about war and watching war happen and supporting aristocrats that lead their people to war. That's literally the plot of the story. So no, in real life I'm not anti war, and in the ASOIAF universe I'm definitely not anti war. All of my favourite characters are warriors and/or leaders to battle, Jon, Jaime, Dany, Stanis, Brienne. It's exactly the same thing in any fantasy story. Watching a fantasy story about warriors and being anti war is the most idiotic thing you can do. Go watch Gilmore Girls. Unfortunately, people who should have stuck to Gilmore Girls ended up watching GoT because of its popularity, and that's the very reason we have the Anti-Targaryen phenomenon.

The same for anti monarchy. Like, I don't particularly approve of monarchy, my country has no monarchy because we literally chased the monarch away, thank god, and I don't think it's a good model of political structure in any country. That doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge that Europeans lived with that for centuries. Some monarchs/emperors literally changed history for the better. They conquered, they educated, they revolutionised, they made progress, they broke centuries of tradition. I don't see monarchy, again, through the lense of the privileged American who thinks their country discovered democracy and scorns any other political system because they just know better. No honey you don't, and you didn't discover shit. Magna Carta was created under Monarchy. The Catholicism received it's fatal blow because of a Monarch. Women and bastards gained power and legitimacy because one day a female bastard decided that she could be a better Queen than her brother or her perfect religious female cousin. Cities and schools were created by monarchs. Scientific progress that changed the world was funded by Monarchs. They also did terrible things, they are also responsible for destruction, slavery, misery. But perfectly democratic leaders side eyeing literally every single President of the USA ever also did all of the above. My whole point is, you can be "anti monarchy" if you don't like the way it works, that's fine, I am as well, but if you think that every single Monarch in history was just a "bad person" and you don't acknowledge the value and impact of certain rulers and certain periods of human history then you're simply illiterate. Again, people who think that way somehow ended up watching Game of Thrones, a show about Monarchs, and again, that explains the Targaryen hate. Watching a show that tells the story of Monarchs and Aristocrats doing vile and great/heroic deeds and being "Anti-monarchy"? Sure, you can be, but what is the point of that observation in that context exactly? It makes you look like a fool.

About anti Catholicism. Sure the faith of the seven has clear parallels to the Catholicism, the Great Sparrow was a character that came straight from the Inquisition, the Hightowers are pious little hypocrites that hate women and demonize sex and bastards. The parallel is there. In that particular aspect I do think GRRM consistently shows obsessing over religion as something inherently bad in his universe but it's really not that important because religion is not the focus of the story. Power is. The Hightowers' problem is not that they are religious, even though that makes them even more unlikeable. Their problem is that they are greedy MFs that started a war for nothing and they destroyed an entire realm because they preferred that than to see a ruler with a vagina on the Iron Throne. So it's not about religion exactly, it's about a unfair war (a war motivated by greed and treason) versus a fair war (a war motivated by the need to reclaim what has been taken from you by force and treachery). GRRM is definitely anti Catholicism though, that much is certain, but religion has a secondary role in his universe any way.

[ignitedbynatsu]

Little Devils

A/N: @exhaustedpotat0 I hope I exceeded your expectations 🤗. Fun fact about me; I get story ideas at the most random times during the day, like for example when I’m making chocolate milk, poof there is an idea I’ve been trying to come up with for days (yes I am 20, yes I still prefer chocolate milk above coffee, fight me 🥊). ANyWaz thank you for the request and support!

Warnings: near death experience I guess? Bribing if that’s a warning

Genre: fluff? Crack? Idk tbh 

⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡

"It is time for the annual girls-day!" Cana announced as soon as she walked into the guild.

The Fairy Tail girls had picked a date and proclaimed it as the Fairy Queens off day. That day no girl of the guild would work a job or work at the guild itself. They'd all go out of town and enjoy a peaceful day at a resort.

It would be your first time since you had only recently joined the guild because Laxus had requested it. He proposed the idea since you were a bartender at a bar a couple of streets away. He didn't see the point when you could just work here in the guild alongside Mira-Jane. Everyone knew that the real reason was actually, so he could keep a close eye on you and making sure you were okay, but God forbid he'd ever say that out loud.

"I can't," you said as you separated your boys from fighting. Aidan and Keishi were the spitting images of their father. Both having the same blonde locks paired with two soft eyes matching yours.

"Why not?" Erza asked as she helped you.

"I can't leave the boys unattended" you explained as you picked up the crying child and placed him on your hip while Erza scolded the other.

"Let Laxus do it" Bisca shrugged her shoulder as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Alzack did so with Romeo when he was still a child"

You bit the inside of your cheek as you let the suggestion sink in. Laxus had never cared for the children alone. You were always around, and if for some reason you had to go do something, one of the girls was always there to assist him.

"I don't know" you mumbled as your eyes landed on Laxus that was unbothered chatting with Freed and Bickslow.

"Come on, (Y/N). He'll be fine. He's their dad after all" Levy tried to persuade you.

"Oi! You girls still here? Shouldn't you be leaving for your annual girls day?" Natsu asked, ditching the argument he had with Gray just moments ago.

"That's the plan, but (Y/N) doesn't want to go because she isn't sure if she should leave the kids alone" Lucy explained.

Upon hearing the explanation, Laxus decided to stand up and join the conversation as well "they wouldn't be alone, they'll have me"

"Are you sure you'll be able to handle them?" You asked as you looked up at your significant other.

"Is that a challenge?" He shot back while raising an eyebrow in amusement.

"No! No, of course not. It's just... They can be a lot sometimes" you hurriedly explained at which a soft chuckle left his lips, followed by a kiss pressed against your head "I'll be fine"

"Then it's settled! Let's go!" Lisanna yelled as she linked her arm with her sister, basically dragging the older girl with her as she left the guild.

Erza grabbed your arm, refraining you from turning back "Call me if something happens! I'll be back as soon as I can! I love you!"

And with that all the women of Fairy Tail had left the guild, leaving only the men and children behind.

The first few hours flew by as if nothing had changed, the biggest adjustment being Mira-Jane or you not filling their cups when they were empty.

"I really don't understand what (Y/N) was making a big deal out of. This day has passed by swimmingly" Bickslow chuckled as he placed his foot on the table while leaning back in the chair. Normally you or Mira would've scolded him, but with neither of you being there, he thought he'd take advantage of it.

Karma was lurking around the corner, cause as soon as the words rolled off Bickslow's tongue, everything went South.

Your children started a competition to see who could climb the highest point in the guild. They were both a couple of feet in the air when the youngest slipped, losing all flooring underneath his feet.

Had it not been for Jet's speed, the fall would have been catastrophic. "Not a word to (Y/N) about this"

Laxus was desperately comforting Keishi who was inconsolable as he just saw his short life flash before his very own eyes. Meanwhile, Gray and Natsu were trying their hardest to get the eldest down.

"Aiden! Get down here!" Natsu ordered as he started climbing up as well. The child didn't listen, only climbing higher as he took notice of the struggling adult.

His laughter filled the guild, but that soon turned into screams as the Fire Dragon Slayer got hold of his leg. "No! Let go of me!"

Natsu succeeded in getting down safely along with Aiden that was now also crying uncontrollably, leaving Laxus with two very upset children.

"Mommy!" "I want mommy!" The two cried out for their mother that was unbeknownst to the situation, relaxing in a hot spring a couple of cities away.

Laxus held Keishi close, rocking him softly as his hand softly rubbed circles on his back. He had seen you do this countless times, so why did it seem so hard when he did it? Elfman held the oldest, copying Laxus as good as he could.

"Shouldn't we call (Y/N)?" Gray sighed, annoyance evident on his face as every attempt at trying to calm the boys down seemed to fail.

"No!" Laxus exclaimed, earning him even louder sobs from the young child in his arms. He shushed him before returning to Gray in a lower voice "(Y/N) doesn't think I can handle our children"

"I can see why" Natsu snickered, resulting in a murderous look from the father.

"Freed, can't you put them in like a soundproof box or something with your magic" Gajeel groaned at the loud wails that kept coming from your children.

"You will not do such a thing" Laxus snapped at Gajeel in a hushed tone, already learning from his previous mistakes "I will prove to (Y/N) that I'm perfectly capable of taking care of my boys. Otherwise, she'll never trust me with them again"

"We still have a couple of hours left until the girls come back. We could try bribing them with sweet, perhaps?" Freed suggested.

Everyone turned to look at the green-haired mage as if he was an angel that was sent from up above. "Why didn't you say so earlier!"

"Aidan, Keishi, if you stop crying we'll go get ice cream" Laxus tried and at the sound of the cold deliciousness, their crocodile tears slowly came to a halt.

"Can we have two flavors, daddy?" Keishi asked as he looked at his father with puppy dog eyes.

"No- yes, fine, you can have two flavors" Laxus quickly changed his answer as he saw tears forming back in the corner of his eyes. He knew you'd have his head if you found out. The two boys really turned into little nightmares if they had too much sugar.

"Yay! Let's go" Aidan exclaimed happily, wriggling in Elfman's arms, signalling that he wanted to be put on the ground.

Laxus let both his sons grab a hand as they guided him out of the guild and to the ice cream shop.

"Please don't come back!" Gajeel called after them as they stepped outside the guild, sighing happily at the thought of some peace and quietness.

"Alright, now boys, I need you to listen to daddy for a second" the dragon slayer crouched down to look at them on eye-level while the two carelessly licked away at the sweet dessert in their hands. "Mommy can't find out about today. It was a normal relaxing day without any problems, alright?"

"What's in it for us?" Aidan asked as he looked at his father, still eating the ice cream that had slightly melted on his hand.

"What the- there's nothing in it for you. I am your father" Laxus started but stopped when the boys shared an unimpressed look. For being only 3 and 4, the two definitely had an attitude. "Fine I'll each give you 5 bucks that you can spend in the candy shop"

"10" Keishi chimed in.

Laxus stood perplexed. Was he really negotiating with his own children? More importantly, how was he the one losing the negotiation? "Fine"

The elder mage did as promised, handing both boys their money to which they high-fived. "Let's go back, the girls are about to return home"

Not even 5 minutes later as the three arrived back at Fairy Tail, the girls had returned.

"Mommy!" The two children ran up to you once they caught a glimpse of your face "boys!"

Laxus walked up as well, giving you a soft peck on your lips, earnings fake gagging from Aidan and Keishi "boys that's enough. How did it go, baby?"

"Normal, not much out of the ordinary, right boys?" As on cue, your children nodded their head in agreement.

"Really? So I could leave you more often with the boys?" You eyed him suspiciously, already picking up on his small habit of twirling a strand of your hair between his fingers when he was nervous or lying.

"No! I mean, I think I should help you take care of them more regularly. I'm sorry for ditching you so often to sit with the guys" he apologized at which a small chuckle escape your lips.

You wondered what happened today, but decided not to press it. It will be a secret between all the men at Fairy Tail and you respected it, knowing very well one would slip up when they had a couple of beers too much "it's alright, and I would love that"

[firelxdykatara]

You’re doing a LoK rewrite, correct? Would be really interested in hearing how you plan on fixing Suyin’s character and the Lin-Suyin conflict because……. oh boy. Man there’s a lot to unpack there. This is what happens when we don’t let Toph just raise her fucking kids for the sake of pushing a stupid as hell narrative about working women and single motherhood.

I am indeed!

In... you know, the way I'm doing most of my big potential projects, in that I have a folder with some documents that have plot notes and... some day I may actually get full, finished fics out of them (h2o AU is in there, as is my voltron!atla fusion AU, and uhhhh my book 3 atla rewrite, and a few other things), so... but I will say that the docs I have for my LoK rewrite so far amount to roughly 4.2k words of just Plot and Character Notes, which may some day turn into words of Story, hopefully.

ANYWAY, POINT IS: yes, this exists, and I have Many Many Thoughts.

Including how the Gaang kids would shake out! Cause I know I'm doing Zutara, and maybe Tokka???? Although I don't wanna just leave Suki out either... maybe a throuple??? Or Sukka having an amicable breakup before Sokka and Toph get together--maybe she already has Lin by then, and Sokka helps support her through the grief of losing Kanto???? Idk honestly, I haven't actually figured any of that out definitively yet except that Aang was perfectly happy to settle down with an Air Acolyte from one of the rebuilt temples because he grew up and out of his crush on Katara pretty easily once he hit puberty and matured a bit.

UHHH none of which is actually an answer to your question, because it's a valid one! Which is why I've been sitting on this a while (10 days I'm so sorry) bc I haven't made any solid decisions but I've been letting it percolate around my head a bit. And the more I think about it, the more I really like the Sukka -> Tokka idea (and I don't want to kill off Suki since the kids all deserve their awesome Kyoshi warrior auntie in their lives, and also I want a Sukka kid to be besties with Iara [zuko and katara's youngest] so maybe she gets with someone else after she and Sokka split? I could be talked into Ty Lee/Suki actually, the more I think about it....), but obviously having a stable father figure and a Toph who is... not what LoK made her out to be will dramatically change the Beifong family dynamic.

That said, I think I actually have a solution. (I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do.) Toph has Lin with Kanto--and he passes away when Lin is two or three, which is why she has very few memories of her father. (Although none of this 'she doesn't even know his name until she's 50+ cause Toph didn't tell her daughters about their fathers' bullshit.) Sokka is there for her through it all (all of the gaang is, of course, but you know that it sometimes just hits different when it's someone you're also starting to fall in love with, especially when there are older and much more deeply buried feelings there that are now resurfacing, because at least in my version Toph was deeply in love with Sokka when they were teenagers, but he was in love with Suki and she also loved Suki so she didn't want to mess up anything about their family or the group dynamics by making her feelings anyone else's problem), they fall in love, get married and have Suyin.

(Sokka may jokingly refer to it as a shotgun wedding, but the truth is he wanted to propose well before he found out she was pregnant, his attempts just kept getting messed up in increasingly comedic fashion.)

Throughout all of this, Republic City has been established, Sokka is Chancellor, Toph is something of a defacto police chief--mostly because, at the time, no one else was willing to volunteer, and she jokingly offered to whip the law enforcement, but unfortunately everyone else at the meeting took her seriously. However, she is also the founder of the probending league, and basically her feelings about law enforcement are complicated and she actively discouraged her kids from joining the force which is part of why Lin did. How else do you have a teen rebel phase with a parent like Toph? (Which, in this instance, means tough and firm but fair, with a 'you break it, it's up to you to fix it' attitude and very little desire to actually control her daughters and their behavior.)

Ah, but here's the rub.

Suyin is ten years old when Sokka dies, and Lin is sixteen. I'm not sure how he's killed--maybe by Yakone, to tie it into my plans for Amon and book 1. (Note that I'm not sure when the Yakone bloodbending trial happened in canon, but it doesn't matter. The timeline I'm gonna build will be completely different post-comet, and I'll eventually write it all down so that I can keep things straight.) Which would incidentally provide excellent means of having Katara have a very personal stake in the Amon conflict, and perhaps color the fight between him and Iara, but I'm getting off track. And I think Sokka being killed by Yakone, and Toph being unable to protect or save him, or deliver her own brand of justice to avenge him (because Aang is there to stop her and.... shit probably got ugly, I suspect she didn't talk to Aang for at least twenty years after Sokka's death--and this isn't to say I think Toph is particularly violent or murderous, but in that moment, she absolutely wanted to kill the man with her bare hands, and however much she may have regretted it afterwards, she took a very long time to forgive Aang for stopping her in the first place), is what results in Toph stepping down as police chief.

She didn't withdraw from her daughters or fuck off into the swamp or anything (words cannot express how much I hate that part of her canon history), but she did grieve for a very long time. Lin, meanwhile, felt like it was up to her to keep her family together, while also feeling a desperate need to... prove herself, I think. And because her mother was so adamant that she not join the police force, that's exactly what she does. I think Lin completely misread Toph's intentions, too, and believed that the discouragement was because her mother didn't think she had what it takes, when in reality I think Toph was scared of Lin losing herself in the job like she herself had begun to, and eventually coming up on something she couldn't change or fix and making the same mistakes she had.

(I think Toph and Lin have communication issues largely because they are both headstrong and willful, but where Toph thought she was giving her daughters the room they would need to make their own way, what Lin desperately craved was direction and she felt like that was something her mother simply couldn't understand.)

Suyin, on the other hand, fell in with a bad crowd like in canon. I think that what she desperately needed was attention, similar to Lin craving direction, and Toph was trying so hard not to be her own parents that she went a little too far in the other direction and Suyin began to feel like it didn't matter what she did, her mom wouldn't care, or get angry, or discipline her, or anything. Lin and Suyin butted heads a lot growing up, too, especially after Sokka's death, because Lin tried to rein in her sister's behavior and this was met with resistance and derision because Suyin felt like Lin was trying to be both mom and dad and she was neither but her big sister would never admit to being just as lost as she was and it made her furious.

So when Suyin is sixteen, and Lin is twenty-two and new to the force, The Big Rift happens. Lin catches Suyin and her gang, tries to apprehend her, gets a scar on her face in the ensuing conflict. But instead of abusing her power and sending her problem child off to her mother before fucking off to the swamp to avoid the consequences of her actions, Toph tries to actually fix things. Suyin cools her heels in prison for a while, because she was paralyzed by guilt at the time when she hurt her sister (a few inches lower and she could have slit her throat), and was still there when Lin's backup arrived.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh..... I'm so sorry I rambled for so long, BUT THE UPSHOT IS: I think Suyin learned a bit about culpability and taking responsibility for her own actions, Toph realized that her daughters had different needs than she did at their age (and I think a lot of the problem was that grief clouded her own ability to connect with her daughters, and in trying to not be her own parents she lost sight of how to be the parent her own daughters needed), and Lin, I think, had to realize that she had never fully processed the loss of not one but two fathers and had turned to her job in order to avoid actually confronting the grief that had overshadowed her childhood.

However, she did not forgive Suyin, at least not right away--and she wasn't forced or expected to. Suyin understood that she crossed a serious line, she took her lumps and did her time, and no one shamed Lin for her anger. I think, as a result, she had less reason to hold onto that bitterness, and perhaps by the time the story actually begins, she and Suyin are on much better terms, though I haven't worked it out exactly yet.

UHHH yeah I went on for days lmao. All of this is subject to change, too, depending on the needs of the story whenever I get around to actually writing it all down, BUT these are my initial thoughts, at least.

[harpersplay]

Genuine non-troll white woman here - you wrote "So I already knew that Good Girls was a white feminism phantasmagoria...But, jesus fucking christ, y'all are just showing your true colours lately. The way you talk about a MOC in relation to a white woman is disgusting." Not asking you to call out specific people or posts or start any kind of flame war but what would be a general example of what you are talking about? I follow a good chunk of people and I'm not seeing this maybe b/c I'm not following the same people, maybe out of willful blindness, maybe I'm not recognizing it - again, b/c of ignorance, etc. Just trying to understand what you mean - and not do it obviously, if I am doing it.

I apologise for taking a longish time to answer this. Honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to get into it. Anyway, I'd first like to say that this is all my opinion. What bothers me might not bother someone else. BIPOC are not a monolith. Even subsections aren't. Not all Mexican trans men are a monolith. Neither are all Japanese lesbians. You get the idea. And that's not even including people like Ben Carson or Caitlyn Jenner—people who support and work for policies that actively harm the marginalised group of which they are a part. Secondly, I know this isn't your intention, but asking POC to tell you what is ok to do and what is not is a slippery slope to "my [blank] friend said this was ok." Finally, the fandom is quite small so it is pretty hard to give general examples. I don't know if it's more trouble to quote specific posts or not, because some will think it is about them anyway. Anything I'm going to mention I've seen on Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit and/or Twitter. But there are definitely popular Tumblr blogs that all push the same narrative. Oh, and one last thing, I haven't seen any of what I'm referring to from people I follow.

Ok, let's go. For a very long time, mainly WOC have pointed out the racial problems within the show and the extremely dismissive attitude about those problems from mainly white women. And while these same women have written thousands (even tens of thousands) or words about Beth (it's always Beth) and her struggles and the amazingness of such a complex female character (ymmv), they brush aside commentary about racism as either nitpicking, not understanding the show is about the 3 women (tell that to all the white men with fleshed-out storylines), or misogyny. The last is especially hostile because they are often talking over Black women and misogynoir is a very real fucking thing that couples the fun of being hated for being a woman with the delight of good old-fashioned racism. They espouse the idea that people having a problem with Beth are all covert & overt misogynists. But talk out the other side of their mouths that they can't possibly be racist even when they support racism in the show or ignore concerns brought up by fans of colour. And that is just the absolute height of hypocrisy. Because by the former they acknowledge that people in a marginalised group (women) can still be anti- that group (a phenomenon with which I agree). But in the latter, suddenly they don't understand that concept.

Specific to the post you are responding to, fans that purport to like Brio write about the relationship in ways that reveal how much of their enjoyment comes from Rio being inferior to Beth. It's all about what he can do for her, how he acts against his best interests for her, how he literally denies himself sexual pleasure for her. Those are all meant to show how in love he is with her. But the show never bothers to tell us why. And, no, this is not because the show is so deep. Other romantic relationships they have scenes that are explicit about the characters' feelings. But Rio, after being shot, after being betrayed, after being mocked, is just so in love with Beth....because. (MYSTERIOUS!) And the Beth stans are more than fine with this because they think everyone should be as obsessed with Beth as they are. But it's bad storytelling. And, in this particular case, it gets into very dicey racist tropes. A white women treating her Latino lover like an afterthought is not the same as a white women treating her white lover like an afterthought. It just isn't. And if some of these fans are as smart as they pretend to be, they know that. They just don't care. Much like the showrunners.

There was so much talk defending the drawn-out Boland marriage because why can't we understand how hard it is for Beth—who is, at various times, claimed to be emotionally abused by Dean or staying with him because it is safe and comfortable—and we don't appreciate how difficult it is for her (I may be one of the few divorced people talking about this show on Tumblr, so this has always made me laugh). Yet there was nothing but glee when Rio flipped on his brousin (who was written as both abusive and safe) for Beth. Where was the empathy for Rio and how hard it was for him? Especially because, unlike Beth, he didn't even have one parent? Hadn't the Beth stans used her very tragical history™️ to explain away her every shitty act? idk, not having any parents and going to jail (as a minor?) and being betrayed by your family seems pretty tragic. But I didn't see them all of a sudden excusing Rio's bad behaviour. Because, feminism or something?

What about Beth's feelings? Last season she spent trying to have him killed. This season she spent looking annoyed by him. Throughout both she talked down to him in a specific white woman way that every BIPOC has experienced, even if some of them are cool with it. There were multiple opportunites for Beth to talk about her feelings with Ruby and/or Annie, but the writers made the deliberate choice to always make it about sex (and god, the immature way they had these three grown women talk was fucking obnoxious). She spent the last 2 seasons also wanting him out of her life to the point that a majority of her actions in S4 were motivated by getting to Nevada with her husband and kids. Beth doesn't care about Rio but Rio needs to put Beth above everything because he's just so in love like he's never been before (which is blatant Marcus & Rhea erasure). And anyone who doesn't think Beth would have just as happily been sitting on that bench plotting how to "run the city" (hahahahaha!) with Nick if the situation worked out differently hasn't been paying attention.

So, what do we have? A white woman who is constantly excused (by the loudest portion of the fandom) for all her ill treatment to her Black BFF & her Black husband, her Asian coworker, her Latina "friend," and Rio (among others) because her life is hard and who is not required to even be nice to her supposed "endgame". And a MOC who is expected to accept being treated poorly by the white woman because he loves her.

And, a last thing, this attitude grossly crossed over into talk about real people when the fans—who self-righteously claimed to be above anon sources or talking about the actors—latched on to the narrative and enjoyed blaming the MOC actor for the cancellation of the show, even dragging his insignificant (in terms of influence) Black wife into it. All while conveniently ignoring that the creator/showrunner is a white woman. The star & producer is a white woman. The people making the decisions at NBCU & Netflix were white women. All white women with so much more power than the Latino actor.

Shit, did I answer your question? I know this is a lot. But I could honestly make mulitple posts on each issue I touched on here. Basically, white people ain't slick, be they content creators or fans. We see how & what y'all talk about. We see that Rio not having a last name is not a big deal to you and we know why that is. So we're fucking tired. And we're over a show that had so much potential crapping all over their POC characters to prop up a white woman. And we're repulsed by the white women in the fandom who use their tears to seem oppressed and who toss around the word misogynist because POC dare call a Karen a Karen.

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

[em-neko]

KISSED BY THE BADDEST BIDDER MAIN ROUTE REVIEW

hey! so i just finished watching kaylaslovely on youtube’s review of the main five (+ rhion) bidders routes and so i thought i would make my own review, because i felt like it. so here you go!

i will be reviewing all nine main routes, or main stories. each story will be rated using these five categories: plot, pace, romance, mc (since she’s different in every story) and love interest. at the end, i’ll give the story its final rating and i’ll let you know whether i recommend it or not.

i will try not to include any spoilers, but just in case, consider this your spoiler warning!

remember, these are my personal opinions.

summary: you are a maid at a hotel called the tres spade hotel, owned by the ichinomiya group. one day, you get dragged into the ivc (an exclusive party for the elite, held inside the hotel) and you basically get lost. while you’re wandering around the area, you enter a storage room where a lot of expensive items are held. little did you know, those items belonged to a blackmarket auction, the ivc was only a cover for said auction. being the clumsy queen that you are, you manage to bump into the statue of venus and knock it over. when the men responsible for the expensive items find you, they throw you into a giant birdcage and put you up for auction instead of the statue.

from here, you can pick one of the main five love interest (eisuke, soryu, mitsunari, mamoru and ota) to buy you. the other love interest (except for rhion) only appear in the second/third season, they purchase you from eisuke (presuming eisuke bought you but you never fell in love). rhion is part of an “au”, but his story technically takes place in season one. does that make sense? okay, perfect. now, on to the review!

EISUKE ICHINOMIYA: THE ARROGANT CEO

plot: 8/10, the plot is a cliche and fairly overused trope... but i love it. it’s well executed and feels unique and original, even though the core of the plot really isn’t.

pace: 8/10, in my opinion, i think the pace was very good. it wasn’t too slow or too fast (although it leaned on the slower side) and i feel like mc fell in love with eisuke at an appropriate time in the story. the ending felt slightly rushed but i feel like that’s a common theme with love 365 stories.

romance: 7/10, not as romantic as other routes (i mean, it’s eisuke we’re talking about), especially at the beginning, but there were moments that made me smile.

mc: 6/10, she’s definitely a bit of a pushover in this route. i wish she stood up to eisuke more, i wish she was sassier, it would’ve made the story sooo much funnier!

love interest: 7/10, eisuke’s kind of a jerk in this story, but hey at least he’s entertaining? (he has his cute moments tho)

final score: 72% (b-)

recommendation: sure? to be honest, it was pretty okay, a little boring compared to the other routes but for the low low price of literally 0$ (his main route is free), it’s not bad.

SORYU OH: THE COLD MOBSTER

plot: 9/10, i really liked his plot! i’ll admit, i’m not a fan of gang related stories, in fact, i usually hate them, but soryu’s story genuinely surprised me! i especially loved the fact that mc made a female friend along the way, usually other females in stories are seen as rivals (as in eisuke’s case), but it wasn’t the case here and that made me really happy. we support women in his household <3

pace: 7/10, the ending was really rushed in my opinion, like way more rushed than the usual rushed love 365 ending. when it ended i was like, “are you serious?” it just felt abrupt. the rest was fine tho.

romance: 8/10, the romance was subtle (due to soryu’s cold and mysterious demeanor), but you could definitely feel it. there was sooo much chemistry between the characters, so it felt really romantic.

mc: 8/10, she’s a little boring, but at least she’s relatable, like her actions/choices make sense in this story.

love interest: 9/10, c’mon, who doesn’t love soryu? there’s a reason why the whole fandom simps for this man. he’s the perfect mix of cold and innocent, and his reaction to regular people things (like going to the supermarket) is hilarious! he’s really sweet too and you can tell that he really cares for mc.

final score: 82% (a-)

recommendation: yes! even if you don’t like gang related stories, i’d still give his route a chance.

MITSUNARI BABA: THE WOMANIZING THIEF

plot: 9/10, i really loved the plot. it’s basically a romcom with action and criminal activity, it’s gold.

pace: 8/10, there were some parts that felt rushed, but overall i think the pace was fine.

romance: 10/10, the most romantic story of them all (i don’t expect any less from baba). their interactions are so cute and i loved watching them get closer and more comfortable with each other.

mc: 8/10, even though she’s kind of dumb, it works because this story is more comedic, her naivety and trusting nature helped the plot advance rather than disrupting it. she’s also really sassy in this story, i loved watching her shoot down baba!

love interest: 9/10, i love baba! i love the womanizer character trope, i know it’s an unpopular opinion but i still love it. he’s actually a total dork and he has the best lines, i smiled throughout the whole story!

final score: 88% (a)

recommendation: it’s one of my favorite main stories, so i definitely recommend it! however, if you don’t like romcoms or womanizers, you’ll probably hate this story lol

MAMORU KISHI: THE SLACKER DETECTIVE

plot: 8/10, his plot is intense. it’s action packed, there’s twists and turns and it definitely kept me on my toes. however, it is a little hard to keep up with at times, i definitely had moments where i got lost.

pace: 8/10, like mitsunari’s story, the pace was a little inconsistent, there were times when scenes felt rushed, idk if it was on purpose because it was a more “action-y” story, but even some of the “romantic” moments felt rushed.. which was a shame because there weren’t many.

romance: 7/10, it wasn’t very romantic, honestly. they had their cute moments, but they were rare. they have good chemistry, like the best friends you hardcore ship, but there just wasn’t much actual romance. i would compare their relationship to judy and nick in zootopia, like friends but a little more.

mc: 5/10, the mc actually bites back in this story, which is refreshing. however, she nags mamoru a lot, and i got sick of it really fast, to the point where i’d roll my eyes whenever she opened her mouth towards the end of the story. she acts like mamoru is a child incapable of taking care of himself, yet she gets angry when he calls her “kid” or treats her like one? wtf? ALSO, one third of the story is her being jealous of a dead person, which is literally so unreasonable and illogical. i could rant about her all day i swear.

love interest: 9/10, mamoru is so relatable, it’s not even funny. i love the way he speaks and i love the way he reacts in situations. he acts like he doesn’t care, but you know damn well the man cares more about mc than anyone else. he’s also surprisingly patient (which, few bidders are), as i said, the mc is really immature in this story, and even tho he acts annoyed, he never actually gets angry at her. there’s something really cozy about him.

final score: 74% (b)

recommendation: if you like action packed stories, i would recommend this story! with that being said, the mc really ruined it for me.

OTA KISAKI: THE DECEPTIVE ARTIST

plot: 5/10, it was too predictable. literally three chapters in i was like, “oh, i see where this is going” and sadly i was right! it was really dramatic, which i actually enjoyed, but the overly predictable plot ruined it for me.

pace: 7/10, the pace was fine, however i feel like mc realized she was in love with ota at the wrong time. i wished they would’ve picked a different moment (maybe later) in the story to make her realize she’s in love with him, or just change the scene completely. because it was like one moment she just saw him as her buyer and at the snap of a finger she’s in love with him, like what?

romance: 5/10, there was literally one romantic scene in the whole story. there were some other cute moments but they were completely overshadowed by ota’s attitude. also, the whole dog fetish really turned me off, especially because the mc was clearly uncomfortable with it.

mc: 7/10, i feel bad for her. she’s really submissive and shy in this story, but like it makes sense (i would act the same as her tbh, i’d be too weirded out to give any sass), so she gets a pass.

love interest: 4/10, ota is so unlikeable in the first season omg i’d almost forgotten how much i used to hate him. however, he becomes really sweet after season 3, you just have to suffer through the first seasons lmao

final score: 56% (d)

recommendation: i really like ota but that story was not it. i wouldn’t waste my coins, honestly. if you really wanna read ota, read one of his substories or any story after season 3, don’t bother with his main route. however, his cg’s were one of the prettiest, so hooray?

SHUICHI HISHIKURA: THE ALOOF POLITICIAN

plot: 8/10, i liked this plot. it felt more serious than the other stories, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

pace: 7/10, same problem as soryu’s story, the last chapters were hella rushed and it made the falling action pretty confusing.

romance: 7/10, it wasn’t very “romantic”, but there were definitely scenes were you could really feel the attraction between the two. i find they compliment each other well.

mc: 8/10, this story was not meant to be a comedy, but the mc made it one. she’s so stupid that it’s actually hilarious, i honestly couldn’t stop laughing at her cluelessness. usually i’d find stupidity annoying, but in this story, i loved it. it made the heavy storyline easier to digest.

love interest: 9/10, shuichi’s a vengeful bitch, which makes his soft moments that much cuter. i like how he has his quirks, and how he has a professional stoic side as well as a soft caring side.

final score: 78% (b+)

recommendation: yeah, for sure. however, if you don’t enjoy the stoic stern hard-to-read type, you might not enjoy this story.

HIKARU AIHARA: THE MYSTERIOUS HITMAN

plot: 9/10, i really enjoyed this plot. it was like a romcom mixed with a dark-ish drama, it was really unique.

pace: 8/10, the pace of the story was good, however i felt like there was a bit of repetition in the story, in scenes and in dialogue.

romance: 7/10, i absolutely love hikaru and mc’s bantering! i think they’re so cute and it’s just really funny to read. it’s subtlety romantic and you can definitely tell that they like each other. with that being said, hikaru’s treatment of mc at the beginning of the story really ticked me off.

mc: 9/10, okay, she had her annoying moments like she always does, but the mc is so funny in this story! she reminds me of the mc from our private homeroom. i really liked her.

love interest: 9/10, here’s the thing, if you don’t like tsundere’s... you’ll fucking hate hikaru, because he’s a tsundere to the max. i love tsundere’s sooo, yeah i loved him hihi. he’s fucking adorable and his dishonesty towards his feelings is really cute. he’s also a sad boy, which made me have a soft spot for him.

final score: 84% (a-)

recommendation: honestly, i did not enjoy this story the first time i read it. i think it was because i didn’t understand hikaru’s sense of humor at the beginning, so i thought he was just a dick and mc was an idiot for liking him, but when i reread it after reading a couple of hikaru’s substories, i actually liked it. so, if you like tsundere’s i’d definitely recommend this story, if not, steer clear.

LUKE FOSTER: THE GOOD DOCTOR

plot: 9/10, i liked it! it felt a lot sadder/darker than the other plots, but it wasn’t overly depressing. there were lighthearted moments throughout and i like how luke gave mc a job instead of using her for personal gain or pushing her around all day. it was also surprisingly intense, with a few steamier scenes here and there.

pace: 8/10, the pace was pretty good, but like hikaru’s route there were scenes that made me go “i feel like i’ve read this before...” there was a rhythm to the story, or at least that’s what it felt like.

romance: 8/10, this story was definitely more intense than romantic. they still had their cute moments though, especially towards the end.

mc: 6/10, the mc is so nosy, impatient and short tempered in this story omg. she’s so quick to judgement and she has no sympathy towards luke for like the first 11 episodes of the story which really bothered me. also, she didn’t seem to understand luke’s way of showing affection and it got a little frustrating. she’s just exceptionally bad at reading people.

love interest: 8/10. if you love sad sweet boys who are surprisingly hot, you’ll love him. his collarbone obsession might weird some people out, but i found it hilarious and it was the perfect way to balance such a sad story.

final score: 78% (b+)

recommendation: if you like sad yet cute stories, i think you’ll really like this one.

RHION HATTER: THE MAD AUCTIONEER

plot: 10/10, his plot is amazing! it’s so adorable, innocent and unique, all while somehow managing to make me a little emo. rhion’s also the only bidder (besides luke) who didn’t use mc for personal gain, he actually bought her for some sort of companionship which was really refreshing (wow, the bar is set low yikes).

pace: 9/10, the pace was really great, it’s a slow burn too, which i love, but the last couple of episodes felt a little rushed.

romance: 10/10, it’s probably as (or maybe even more) romantic than baba’s story. there are so many cute moments, even when mc and rhion don’t really know each other yet. the romance is really sweet and pure, but it feels so real.

mc: 9/10, i love how she interacts with rhion! she’s relatable in this story and her actions are sensible, she has a mind of her own and she isn’t afraid to speak it.

love interest: 9/10, it’s rhion. he’s so precious! his shy and sweet nature is such a nice change from the other bidders and i really love how he slowly opens up to mc. also i think his alter ego of the mad hatter is really cool!

final score: 94% (a+)

recommendation: it’s my favorite story on the app for a reason. i definitely recommend it, even if you’re more into the sexy stories, i still think you should give rhion’s main route a chance! i made my friend who isn’t even into otome games play it and she really liked it.

FINAL RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

i’ll admit, trying to look past the human trafficking bs was really difficult at first, but if you can manage to turn a blind eye to it and try to remember that it’s just a video game and everything’s fictional, it’s pretty good. the love interests are great, there’s some action, there’s a some drama and there’s a lot of humor. the sub stories are really good too!

[historic-old-guard-lover]

Do you have any headcanon on the cast’s sexuality ? ( I really like the demisexual Yusuf one )

I've been meaning to get around to this, so thanks for asking! Its important to keep in mind that Nile (and maybe Booker) is the only member who doesn't predate modern identity terms. Consider that the obligatory most-historians-frown-at-anachronistic-labeling plug, though my response is (as I point out here a little bit) that this just seems to serve to make queer history more difficult and it can be done respectfully.

TL;DR: Lykon as aro-spec bi/pan-romantic, Andy as chaotic bi/pan-sexual, Quynh as bi/pan with a slight femme-aligned preference, Yusuf as demi-sexual bi/pan-romantic, Nicolo as homosexual/gay, Booker as the token heterosexual, and Nile as queer. Scroll to the bottom for a free (trans)gender headcannon that no one asked for but that I’m handing out for free.

I personally headcannon that the oldest members are both too old for rigid social sexual norms and too old to give a damn otherwise. We know canonically in both the film and the comics that Andy is openly attracted to and having sex with multiple genders, so you can pry bi/pan Andy from my cold, dead hands. I put Lykon and Quynh in the same never-monosexual category as well. I have the totally unsupported concept of an aro-spec (bi/pan-sexual) Lykon mostly because I don't want his life traveling with two love-sick warrior women to be made worse by his #forever alone status he seems to get. It’s a choice and he’s not into romance. I also cannon Quynh to have a slight femme-aligned preference to Andy's true-chaotic-neutral bisexual energy. Yes, it's for angst purposes as most things in my life are. And it fits in with the Special Bonus Gender Headcannon at the bottom of this post. Oh, and I think that they all have poly-amorous inclinations because monogamy is overrated. Guilt and shame around sex and relationships are just not in their vocabularies.

Our Immortal Husbands are from a time where homophobic attitudes are starting to become a thing, so I don’t hand them the bi/pan-by-default card that I do for the older members’ attractions. I too like the idea of a demisexual bi/pan-romantic Yusuf, though I am totally open to him being homo-romantic as well. My issue is that I find it unlikely that a merchant in his 30s would not have already married a woman, especially if he is the first-born son or his family is particularly wealthy. There are definitely story lines where that doesn’t happen, though they require a bit more careful planning and Yusuf having nerves of steel. I’m all for the angst of a political marriage, but I worry about how the spouse might get depicted if people go for a totally homo-romantic Yusuf and she deserves more than his contempt. I assume that Yusuf values honor/righteousness (he ends up fighting in the siege of Jerusalem despite being from the Maghreb), so he would not be the kind of man to cheat on his wife even if he was not hetero-romantically inclined. They would build a relationship of mutual respect for certain.

I know I just said that homophobia is starting to become a thing, but the medieval church and knighthood was hella gay. I have absolutely zero qualms about cannoning Nicolo “that feral gay priest” di Genova as 100% certified homosexual. It’s up to any fanfic writers whether they make him internalize homophobia, but I will just point out again that monks having gay sex was a problem that the Catholic Church purposefully overlooked back then. Mix and match your angst to your own delight. Maybe he’s a tortured soul who joins the priesthood once he figures out that he could never marry/love a woman and then realizes that he’s not alone. Maybe he’s a quiet pining mess in the priesthood. Whatever route you take, please make him gay.

This brings us to Booker who grew up with good old-fashioned religion-induced homophobia. We know canonically that he married a woman and had multiple children, so I’m down for Booker as the token heterosexual of the group. I also like that it gives him the chance to reach full himbo potential and not realize he’s surrounded by three queer icons. Just imagine him thinking for decades that Andy is sad because she lost her “gal pal” Quynh and then at some point as he’s amassed details he starts realizing that they were Our Immortal Wives... It makes the Western erasure of female homosexual behavior into comedic gold.

And finally, the new kid on the immortal block. I like to think that Nile would strongly identify with the label queer and be uninterested in more specifically labeling her sexuality. Am I projecting? Maybe so, but it has value as a shared bonding experience with Andy. Also, a queer Nile brings history full circle, so to speak, from a time where sexuality labeling was unimportant to a time when people are starting to realize that it’s not always important to them. The heart-warming poetics of it all!

The Super Special Gender Headcannon That Lives in My Head Rent-Free: Transgender Andy

In a previous post, I discussed the existence of a third-gender/transgender shaman role in Scythian cultures called Enaree or Enarei ( ἐναρής ) which allowed individuals assigned male at birth (AMAB) to undergo possibly the earliest hormone replacement therapy (HRT) process. We know that the name “Andromache the Scythian” is weird for Andy because her supposed ~6,000 year old age predates the Scythian culture for a while. Consider, however, that an AMAB Andy chose to take the name of the Scythian culture because they helped her medically transition! Obviously she can find acceptance and support long before then (and I’d be mad if anyone tortured her for literally three thousand years without love and support), but I think that it would be a way for Andy to honor a people who helped her achieve something that she didn’t think was possible while simultaneously cleaning up a glaring cannon issue. It also makes the whole femme-preference bi/pan-sexual Quynh that much sweeter because Quynh would 200% see Andy as a woman regardless of whether she has access to medical transition.

[ryuichirou]

Sorry if this is personal but is it tough to be LGBT in Russia/ produce LGBT content in Russia (I mean it’s the internet but still)

Oh, this is an interesting topic… I’ll answer both of these questions and start with the content.

While being LGBT isn’t illegal per-se, there are a lot of limitations that LGBT people meet here. When it comes to creating content, for example, there is the Gay propaganda law. You might’ve heard about this one, it basically means “you can’t produce any content that portrays LGBT in any way, because it’ll make our children turn gay and we don’t want that”. But the thing is, the wording in this law is so… convenient for the State, they can basically call anything an illegal propaganda if they want to. Technically what we’re doing over here is illegal too. If they’d want to call it illegal, that is.

This is the reason people who publish works that have LGBT-related content in them may have issues in the process. There are ways to avoid them, but it is still very hard to officially publish something that has any “iffy” content. Sometimes putting a “18+” label on the book/movie/tv-series/etc helps, sometimes selling said piece of media only on the internet helps, but still: there is always a possibility that a publisher might not be able to produce the product they want. Censorship is a thing, bans are a thing, all of this exists, but you never know whether you’ll be hit by it or not. Please keep in mind that Russia is also an extremely corrupted country.

If you’re just a content creator and post your stuff on the internet only, it’s usually ok. Homophobes exist, but they tend to exist somewhere else, not near fandom places. There are tons of artists from Russia who draw explicit stuff (and a lot of these people are LGBT), a lot of them print their merch and sell it on the geek art markets, and even though there were cases where a printing house refused to print someone’s slash illustration, it’s usually ok. But.

But but but. You still can be targeted and sued for the most ridiculous stuff. For example, you can read about Yulia Tsvetkova’s case, who was arrested for her body positive series of drawings + a drawing in support of LGBT-families under the “distribution of pornography” and “gay-propaganda” laws respectively. There are tons of drawings like these on the internet, but Yulia was specifically targeted because she is an activist who wasn’t quiet about her support of women and LGBT. As you can see, the “gay propaganda” law is a very convenient way to shut people up.

Another example that comes to mind is two gay guys who got married in a country that allows you to get married when you’re not a citizen (I think they did it in Denmark), and they tried making their marriage legal in Russia too because it doesn’t really contradict any law. They fled the country  because they started getting threats and their passports (along with their marriage) were deemed  invalid. They were also charged with a fee for “damaging their passports”.

Now our wonderful government, which loves cheating during its elections to the point where you get 146% total when the max is 100%, made this wonderful terrible election for changing the constitution. Their changes are a joke (not really funny tho) and its own topic, but one of the changes was that marriage is “a union between a man and a woman”. Now it says that in the constitution.

TL;DR: If they want to get you, they’ll find a way to get you. But if you’re just a rando who posts slashy smut on your twitter, they don’t care, at least not yet. They will use it against you if you start annoying the police. There are a lot of homophobes but the fandom spaces are usually relatively peaceful.

Personally, we’re lucky enough not to face any severe problems yet. We’re careful irl (people usually think we’re related lol) and only some of our friends know about us. We don’t show any affection to each other publicly. On the internet we’re surrounded by people who are friendly, and once again, people from the fandom spaces are usually more progressive than a regular Russian Pyotr or Oleg.

I, being an idiot that I am, used to draw tons of slash (nsfw too!) at classes right in front of my teachers while I was at the uni. And even though it definitely wasn’t very wise of me, no one ever approached me with “umm are those gays, are you gay too” question. The only ones that were interested by my drawings were two straight girls who read slash fanfiction. Maybe the rest of those who noticed were too shy :(

Katsu: I was always an idiot who likes to flex things as a teenager, so when Ryu and I started dating, I mentioned it in my school to some of my classmates. I’m pretty sure it started some nasty rumors, one guy was openly disgusted, but other than that, I haven’t heard anything from them and they never told teachers or parents, which could be consequences that I never considered. The only thing he said was “Are you a lesbian?” which wasn’t really offensive even though I’m not really a lesbian, but I was like... was that supposed to be an offensive word? Because it wasn’t. Right now I realise that I was lucky not to get beaten up lol I’m from a small city (not a town) and not the best district, but I guess nobody cared that much about this info even if they heard about it, plus people were/are usually afraid of me, so not even the worst boys who were obviously stronger (like that disgusted guy) touched me. I only mention it because I know for a fact that some of the people (like 2-3) were usually openly aggressive, it’s not like the worst class you can get in Russia where the only solution is to fucking suffer.

At the uni, I heard our group discussing lesbians, since students there were mostly girls by another disgusted individual, and I actually wanted to say to her something with a “Come at me bro” attitude (I tend to do that when I’m pissed off), but I just decided not to intervene, probably because these were the first couple of days in my first year. I still told one guy like a month later, he was rather cool with it. Anyway, as Ryu mentioned, there are places and people where you can mention it and get away with it, and where you better keep your mouth shut. Most of the country is the second option, but there’re for a fact a lot of nice and accepting people even out of the fandom. We don’t talk about our relationship for the most part because we don’t really need to, so here’s that. Sorry for being so talkative lol

[army-of-mai-lovers]

~another Zuko redemption arc meta~

I’m reading this book for class called Women and Evil by Nel Noddings and the author’s already brought up some really interesting ideas. Basically, her thesis is that the tradition of white male philosophy has never looked at evil from the perspective of women, and when you look at evil from the perspective of women, lots of things that male philosophers take for granted become suspect. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Arthur, this is all well and good, but this is your ATLA blog, and you promised me a Zuko meta, why are you talking about some random feminist philosopher?” 

This line: 

“When we look at evil from the standpoint of women’s experience, we will question the whole tradition of honor that has grown up around war and violence.” 

Y’all know when I saw that quote I immediately thought of Zuko. Smarter people than me have talked about how Aang and Zuko’s arcs are reflections of one another, as well as how Aang is a feminist hero, and I think we can use Noddings’s work to connect these two ideas. 

First, we have to talk about the arguments that have already been made: 1) that Zuko and Aang’s arcs are reflections of one another, and 2) that Aang is a feminist hero. I think the first one makes itself pretty clear in some artistic decisions, namely that we get both Aang and Zuko’s backstories in “The Storm” (which, if you have ever talked to me about ATLA, you’ll know that’s one of my absolute favorite episodes). We get both of their backstories, sure, but more than that, both of their characters are complicated so much by the information divulged in this episode. We learn that Aang left his people because he was afraid of being the Avatar, and we learn about a major moment of Ozai’s abuse towards Zuko. Notice how we learn these things too: Aang tells Katara about what’s going on with him, whilst Iroh tells the ship’s crew about Zuko. Aang is open about his feelings, and after a bit of prodding from his friend, can talk about what he’s experienced and what he believes to be a major flaw of his. Conversely, Zuko does not volunteer this information about his backstory himself (and Iroh raises some serious questions about consent by telling people without Zuko giving his permission) Consider also how this episode resolves: Aang and Katara have a real conversation about their emotions regarding Aang’s backstory before going to save Sokka and the fisherman, while Zuko...lets his crew not risk their lives to try and capture the Avatar? The emotional payoff is not there for Zuko the way it is for Aang, and it is precisely because he closes himself off from feeling his emotions,. I really think this episode does a great job establishing them as each other’s character foils, and I also think that Aang’s ability to talk about his emotions is a big part of what makes him a feminist hero. Unlike Zuko (and most male heroes) Aang wears his heart on his sleeve. He resolves conflict as much as he can by being, as he puts it to Avatar Yangchen later, “quick or clever”, not angry or violent (by and large.) He is, ultimately, a peaceful, respectful kid with good communication skills, and this extends to the respect he pays to his female bending teachers and friends and all the women in the show who aren’t actively trying to kill him. (and before anyone comes for me, obviously Aang is not a perfectly feminist hero because he exists within a work that has sexist and racist flaws. However, in comparison to Zuko and much of Western canon, he can be viewed as a feminist hero.)

Now compare this to Zuko. Zuko does not chug his respect women juice. He sips at it sometimes when it’s convenient for him, but he very much does not chug. He also has emotional problems, and views emotion as a weakness for most of the story. His entire character, especially in season 1, is predicated on seeking honor within a violent context. I’ve seen a lot of people argue that Zuko “restores the Fire Nation’s honor” through his redemption arc, and while I agree with that, I don’t think we’re really dissecting the concept of honor as it’s presented in the show as fully as we could be. To apply Noddings’ work, the honor in the Fire Nation is dependent on the existence of war and violence. This is most succinctly illustrated in what Ozai says to Zuko as he’s about to burn his eye: “You will fight for your honor.” To Ozai, honor is fighting in an Agni Kai that you shouldn’t have been challenged to because you’re a literal child, and not living up to that definition of honor is deserving of violence. This is personal violence towards Zuko, but I do think that there’s evidence that, at least since the beginning of the war, this has been the way the Fire Nation views honor and violence at a structural level. We can draw a parallel between Zuko not fighting Ozai and Ozai responding by burning his eye, and the Air Nomads not fighting Sozin and Sozin committing genocide against them. And this violent definition of honor very much corresponds to the way he treats women, because expressions of imperialism and toxic masculinity are deeply, intrinsically connected. He’s disrespectful to June and the Kyoshi Warriors. He doesn’t really see Azula, his own sister, as a human being. But in my opinion, the incident that damns him the most in this regard is how he treats Mai in “The Beach.” I know part of the reason he is the way he is in this episode is because he’s really conflicted about his path and all that jazz, but he honestly treats Mai like a jewel that the boys talking to her are trying to steal, not a person. As a self-avowed Zuko stan, it makes me a little sick. I feel terrible for her. While he doesn’t treat every single woman he encounters poorly (Jin comes to mind), generally, as a rule, he’s pretty all about toxic masculinity as a response to abuse. For him, honor largely means enacting violence towards others (capturing the Avatar, the way he treated Iroh for a lot of b1 and 2, yelling at the crew in “The Storm”) as well as not really respecting women. 

But his attitude changes the closer he gets to redemption. For years, I’ve wondered why it was Katara who was down in the crystal cave with Zuko, given that he was more Aang’s foil than hers at that point. Now, I think it has a lot to do with Katara being quite a strong and empowered female character from a nation that the Fire Nation has historically oppressed. We have hope for Zuko turning good and joining Team Avatar in this moment because he has (it seems) overcome some of his toxic masculinity and imperialist thinking (remember, these are connected) and now sees Katara as a human being that he can connect with (one could argue that Jin is an early example of Zuko learning to connect with marginalized women). Later, redeeming himself means supporting Katara unabashedly as she seeks to right the wrongs that his nation has done to her (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Southern Raiders”? powerful. simply powerful.) 

Thus, when we say that Zuko “restored the Fire Nation’s honor”, what we really mean is that he changed their entire definition of honor. Through his interactions with Aang, Katara, and the rest of the gaang, as well as his own self-reflection, Zuko established a definition of honor built outside of the framework of imperialism, colonialism, and toxic masculinity. Rather than being based in violence and war, Zuko’s honor is based in love and understanding. Honestly, I wish we’d gotten a Steven Universe: Future kind of thing with ATLA, because I think seeing Firelord Zuko as he struggled with understanding what a love-based honor looks like when you’re leading a nation that has done absolutely horrible things to the world would have just been the cherry on top to his redemption arc. But we see that he understands at least part of it by the end of the show: respecting women. His relationships with Suki, Toph (y’all saw how gentle he was with her in the finale right? B1 Zuko would never. Early B3 Zuko would never.) and most importantly, Katara show that he’s learned how to communicate his fears, deal with his emotions in a healthy way, and support women.   

[ahiddenpath]

What do you think people like about your fics?

Ahhhh, geez, I’m averse to guessing what other people are thinking.  But- I do have my own thoughts about what my stories have to offer beneath the cut.

So I’ve mentioned before that I often write about trauma:

-How it can shape a life

-How it’s omnipresent and never “in the past.”  It’s not a “you survived, it’s over, you live happily ever after” scenario.

-How it is often intergenerational, or a ripple.  We Americans, for example, still deal with the trauma that soldiers faced in wars, such as WWII and Vietnam.  Soldiers go to war, see horrors, return home, have few options for mental health care, and often end up venting that horror on their families, who grow up and vent it on their families, etc.  It can also be a smaller thing, a ripple.  Someone hurts Bill, so Bill hurts someone else.  Pain goes outward unless a hurt person makes conscious, concentrated effort to avoid spreading the pain- something many people simply aren’t equipped to do without professional guidance, which is often difficult to obtain and stigmatized.

-You are never “cured” from trauma, but you can develop the tools to handle it in healthy ways, and to avoid spreading it.

It’s impossible to live on this earth without encountering hurt people who are desperately trying to do something to ease their hurt.  We are all exposed to trauma, so...  I assume a lot of my readers are interested in this aspect of my writing.

BUT, I also write about emotional abuse in a family setting, which...  Honestly seems almost...  Taboo????  In our media?  Many stories that I’ve seen show the family sort of...  Working out the abuse with a simple conversation, and then everyone is happy.  Or, even worse, the child (or adult child) just decides to deal with the abuse, “because faaaaamily,” or because, “that’s just how mom/dad/whoever is.”  Or, like, there’s almost this idea that...  Well, if you weren’t physically hurt, then it couldn’t have been that bad, and you can recover from it.  Our media seems to echo the secrecy and “look-the-other-way” attitude that a lot of families have in real life.  Like- yes, we know Uncle Bill can’t open his mouth without being cruel, but you just have to calmly take it, because frankly, we adults are also scared of Uncle Bill and don’t want to deal with the inevitable explosion if someone speaks up.  Your comfort, child, is not worth that effort.

So, I think showing a character change for the worse in an environment like that (pick up behaviors meant to protect her, like being reluctant to draw attention to herself, being guarded, and constantly alert for threats), then slowly find confidence again, then acknowledge that the situation is unhealthy and she needs to escape it, then find the tools to deal with the trauma she suffered and place boundaries for her own health...  It’s powerful, but also sobering, because I never show the trauma being over and defeated- just the characters purposefully seeking tools to deal with it, and supporting each other to do the same.

I also explore what Emily Nagosaki calls Human Giver Syndrome in her book, Burnout.  It’s...  Basically the concept that women are expected/socialized to devote their lives to supporting others, at the cost of their own wants, and even needs. 

“If you have ‘human giver syndrome’ you believe that it is a woman’s moral obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous and attentive to the needs of others.” – Emily Nagoski 

I highly recommend the book, although I should say that it is directed to women’s needs.  If you want a preview, here is an interview with Nagosaki about some of the concepts.

Now, obviously, no one is arguing that women should stop supporting other people 100%.  The point is that old adage, “don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”  If your desire to be helpful is hurting you, then there’s a problem.  If you don’t particularly want to help in a certain situation, but feel obligated out of social conditioning, then there is a problem.  

But Human Giver Syndrome can also materialize in the form of swallowing your negative emotions, because you were socialized to be emotionally available to everyone else, but never need emotional help/never “bother” other people with negative emotions.  Or, you might feel shame over not being “pretty enough”/”thin enough”/”whatever enough,” to the point where eating disorders are not uncommon in women.

ANYWAY READ THE BOOK!  It’s really important stuff!  It has lots of tips for dealing with stress, too, which, like-  Uh, yes please.  Your local library likely has a few copies, as it’s a new, hot read.  I didn’t have a title and a nice definition for Human Giver Syndrome back in 2012, but I’ve been writing about it for years- and I think it’s been resonating with readers.  (I should maybe also say about Burnout- the ideas are not necessarily new, but having language for them and having it spelled out plainly is so helpful).

Other than that, I’m a character-focused writer, I love the heck out of digimon, and I’ve just, like...  Been around for 9 years (NEXT YEAR IS MY 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY AS AHIDDENPATH, WHAT THE CRAP!).  Familiarity and frequent updates, I imagine, increase general... likeability?  

BTW, I’m not saying you have to have some grand, thematic mission for fics!  For most readers, I imagine “it was fun, generally in-character, and featured the ship/AU/trope I love,” is more than enough!  Like, don’t add pressure to something that is supposed to be fun.  For all I know, maybe people read my stuff because they think it’s funny or has nice dialogue, lol!

These are just the issues I explore for myself, and for my own mental health/sense of understanding the world.  And I figure, if it helps me, maybe it helps someone else out there?

Thanks for the ask <3  

[hellyeahheroes]

Marvel Teen Romance: Girls Edition Part 1

Solo Boys Edition

Romance is a dying art in superhero comics. 

In a medium rife with sexism, the idea of romance becomes tainted with unfortunate cliches in a wave of women’s empowerment. Terms like Damsel-in-Distress becomes less of a person benefiting of a hero’s altruism to ranging from the unfortunate burden of being the one who needs to be saved as a sign of a weakness.

Marvel best example of the romance is Peter Parker and Mary Jane. A romance rife with editorial backlash that never liked the former and did their damnest and are doing their damnest to demean the character for their own ideal partner for Spider-man or Peter. MJ was making grown ass men who resented their wives and marriages project onto Peter. If you want to see an example of the sexism of Marvel, look up Christopher Priest’s opinion of Peter Parker and MJ and then after you pick up your jaw, keep reading.

Now women in Marvel have to appeal to the girls reading them. They have to be strong and strength is often interpreted as independence from men. There is rarely moments of weakness or yearning for these characters. They do not fawn for men or anyone at all and if they do long for anyone, it is for another woman, Today’s Marvel female youth opt for solitude and hyperfocus on the mission because writers refuse to even approach the hormone addled teenaged girl which has been derided as a stereotype. There is no swooning or rarely hint of attraction towards anybody, especially the opposite sex.

The pros are that stories are more varied and page space is not wasted on smitten teen girls being smitten on useless boys.

The cons is that it creates an archetype of stereotypical strong independent female in which their only characteristic is that they are strong and/or independent which contrasts men because men can be more varied in attitude and personality while women writers opt not to even engage in romance while also not addressing the character’s sexuality. They are not allowed to be young or be emotional. 

Also, because of classism, the superhero woman opts for her equal in terms of status and usually only date men or women who are also superheroes while men, again are more varied. Men in romances with superheroic women are never powerless and usually fill an utility role. There is a need for them to want to help a perfectly capable woman. There is only one teenaged hero with a solo and a non-superhero partner and even then most of the male partners who aren’t have to be of use to the heroine in their vigilantism. They cannot just have their own lives separate from what the hero is doing like a Mary Jane Watson. They have to be hyper-competent and be apart of the heroines lives. Again, it wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the implied sexism/classism. Spider-Gwen does not get the same fantasy as Peter Parker(will get to that later).

On a side note: To Mayday fans, Anya fans, Pei from Iron Fist fans, Moon Girl fans, Squirrel Girl fans, and any girl that I excluded from this post, they will definitely be in part two. I am sorry, but I just couldn’t. You will see how long this post is and this isn’t malicious on my part, but I hope you understand and forgive me. I mean I have to go back and update the boys edition. Cut me some slack. Anya and Pei were part of the original draft but shit got too long and it didn’t feel right to include them as a footnote.

Here are Marvel’s main solo teen women, romances, and romance history:

Kate Bishop a.k.a Hawkeye

Gender: Female

Orientation: ...Questioning? We’ll just say questioning

Love Interests: Johnny Watts aka Fuse(current), Noh-Var, Tommy Shepherd,  Eli Bradley(retconned), Clown

We are starting with Kate Bishop because she is the closest to a modern woman’s love life. She has a cult following made of predominantly white women because Kate is empowered white girl embodied. And her dating life is modern in that Kate is one of the few women in Marvel that has relationships like men and is never shamed for it. Of all the women on this list, Kate was never not the focus or seen as codependent one. In fact, she is the capable and strong personality in her current relationship with Johnny Watts. He plays the supporting role for her. However varied Kate’s romantic history is, it is the prototypical love life of a teenaged Marvel woman. Every single one of her romances are by definition superheroes or vigilantes or villains. She does not have ordinary men in her life.

Now you are probably thinking that Kate is a team character. You would be right, but I think I speak for all Kate fans is that she is exceptional in that she can and has held books before alone where her other Young Avengers can’t be assed to have an appearance. And I like Kate. She is my favorite white girl in Marvel. So here we go.

And no, I am not going to consider her rapists in Central Park as love interests, but I will say that her relationship with men and her overall independence from them even while she is in relationship with them is because of this assault. There...I said it.

Eli Bradley aka the Patriot. Kate and Eli started off from a rocky place. Kate wanting to be super strong and independent rich girl and Eli being super prideful and somewhat sexist. Eli wants to fulfill his grandfather’s legacy and feels that he has to immediately live up to him no matter what probably did not like Kate upstaging him, and Kate mistook what Eli was saying as sexist. It wasn’t that Kate was a girl that was the problem. It was that Kate was a rich white girl who chose to make rescuing herself and then making he and the Young Avengers look like idiots that was the problem. So they argue and fuss at each other all of the time.

Kate misinterprets Eli’s reluctance to have her and Cassie on the team as sexist when in fact, the team was constructed for a specific purpose and have a specific roster pool to draw from. Cassie and Kate just aren’t in it.

So Eli and Kate take each other apart and both take shots at each other.

So Kate and Eli have this tic for tac relationship which is something Kate seems to relish in while Eli seems to be abrupt with her about it.

And also, the two both have Strong Type A personalities. They both want to be the leader of the Young Avengers.

But during a fight with Kang the Conqueror, both Kate and Eli reach an impasse. 

Kate’s and Eli’s relationship starts to develop a bit and after some revelations about Eli come to the surface and the Avengers disband the Young Avengers only for the team to regroup out of spite of the Avengers. They start recruiting again, then come across Tommy Shepherd, Billy Kaplan’s brother and son of Wanda Maximoff.

And Eli doesn’t like him because Tommy seems to be a little too okay with murder and wanton acts of violence.

Kate and Eli start getting along to an extent. Eli is more of a stern individual and cuts Kate no slack. But Kate often challenges him.

And eventually they go on a date.

Uh. Excuse me. Not a date.

After getting jumped by Ronin on their Central Park, Not-A-Date carriage ride, Kate tried to calm him down after a disastrous evening.

So enough about Eli, let’s move on to Tommy.

Tommy Shepherd is the prototypical fun bad boy. He doesn’t challenge Kate to be better. He dares her to keep up. So after Kate loses her bow and arrow to the original Hawkeye aka Clint Barton in a shooting contest, she goes home feeling ashamed. Eli, still raw from their not-a-date, starts relentlessly criticizing her. Kate did not need that on-top of her embarrassment so she told Eli to fuck off and walked away. Tommy, being less stringent than Eli, talks to Kate. Tommy flirts with Kate, in front of Eli, and they both decide to go out. Tommy was not there for Eli’s and Kate’s fight so he has no idea what is going on. Kate catches him up to speed and well...

Tommy is such an awesome dude when he isn’t murderous. So Kate and Tommy break into Avengers manor and steal back her bow and arrows.

Fun and exciting, bad boy.

The two steal back her bow and arrows and it was a fun date.

Now this triangle business and Kate’s indecisiveness plays a role because eventually she starts teaming up with Clint Barton and she witnesses first hand how disastrous his love life is. But I’ll get to that later. But just to be clear, she doesn’t choose to be with either, Tommy or Eli.

Eli quit the Young Avengers after accidentally having a role in the death of Cassie Lang? It’s confusing. So with Eli’s departure, Young Avengers disbanded and thus Kate decided to team up with the other Hawkeye, Clint Barton, when the other members decided to quit.

Kate Bishop takes up an apprenticeship role under the tutelage of Clint and she helps him out on missions from time to time. There is some hint that Kate is somewhat attracted to him, but she realizes that is nasty and Clint is like twice her age. Clint, however, likes teaching her because Kate is a fast learner.

So this pairing of the Hawkeye’s became somewhat of sensation that propelled Kate to mainstream attraction. The crime busting duo became the bane of low level street thugs all over Brooklyn. But under his mentorship, Kate also saw how much of a wreck Clint’s life was. More specifically, his love life.

Clint was dating Jessica Drew at the time. But he slept with Penny, some woman he rescued, while he was dating her. Natasha is more of his work wife in a sense, you’ll have to ask Hawkeye fans if they ever dated, but she is more concerned with the fact that Clint robbed some gangsters and got arrested. Bobbi was Clint’s ex-wife...well at the time of the comic, she was his separated wife. She wants to find Clint to finalize their divorce. So Kate is dragged into this mess.

Kate witnesses what a mess Clint’s life is, and she gains one fear: to not be like Clint Barton.

Fast forward to the Young Avengers relaunch.

Kate wakes up from a booty call. And it is not some ordinary booty call. No-nonono.

Enter Noh-Varr. Like the narration says, she met Noh-Varr and he collectively kicked all of the Young Avengers asses. And I guess she is over that now and Kate and he hooked up. Noh-Varr is the silly himbo. Stupid but pretty as heck to look at.

It is hard to classify what she and Noh-Varr were because to me, they weren’t really an item as he was more like a one night stand that became a multiple night stand... Good dick is hard to find so if you find one, might as well hold on to it for awhile, am I right ladies?

Anyways, I couldn’t tell you the plot of Young Avengers 2015 because...even I was confused by it. Regardless, we are here for Kate’s love life.While facing the final...whatever the fuck they are fighting, Noh decides to confess to Kate.

And telling Kate that he was semi-seeing someone else on the side kind of drove the relationship to hell.

Anyways, we moving on. Also, America suggests something to Kate.

Another oddity in Kate’s love life is that most, if not all, of her lovers are bi. Juries out on Eli(and will probably stay that way), but both Johnny(we’ll get to him) and Noh-Varr, her only serious relationships, are bi and are attracted to each other. The irreverence that Kate has for dating should be dating because she rarely pontificates on her partners. There is no, “I wonder what X is doing.” It is all business, and rarely play. Also, we are not suggesting that women dating exclusively bi-women are bi by association. We are saying that Kate Bishop isn’t as straight as she thinks she is.

What she fears is having a love life like her mentor, Clint Barton: A fucking mess. Kate is the only young woman who has had multiple booty calls and has pulled the, “Well last night is fun, but you got to get the fuck up out of here” on a dude.

And by doing this, she is acting as self-destructive as Clint who is notorious for doing the same thing. Kate declares that she doesn’t need attachments and that the above boy was too clingy for wanting to hang out after knocking boots. He was a distraction for Kate. Miss America points out the irony of her saying something like that.

On top of everything, Kate decides to get away from Clint and heads out to Los Angeles to start a detective agency. She gets up to some high class hijinx there and in the midst of the chaos, she meets a boy.

Johnny Watts.

What I like about Johnny is that he isn’t overstepping of Kate. He is lax and is perfectly willing to step aside and let Kate be a hero and not let his male ego get wounded by the fact that his girlfriend is a kick ass superhero. Johnny also unlike Eli can keep up with Kate’s wit so their banter/flirtation is quick and rapid.

He is also supportive and understanding.

They hook up after Kate defeats Madame Masque again.

Johnny seems like a normal dude, right. There is nothing strange about him at all. So what is with the above preamble if the first Marvel heroine you mention has a normal boyfriend? Well...

Johnny absorbs the matter of anything he touches and can briefly become the item. It ranges from concrete to even vibranium. Why vibranium? Well he has a nose ring that is made of vibranium. Why does he have a nose ring made from a precious Wakandan resource? Johnny and his sister are Wakandan exiles and they kept a piece of vibranium as keepsakes.

So Johnny has powers like all of Kate’s other boyfriends and exes. When Kate forms the new West Coast Avengers, she enlists her boyfriend as her first recruit. He has issues adjusting into being a superhero, but he is learning. He takes up the alias as Fuse and he and Kate continue with their relationship without much trepidation. Until Noh-Varr comes back.

And Noh-Varr being a himbo doesn’t necessarily jive well with the relationship because Noh-Varr has no tact or grace. He is also really attractive and a pretty boy.

And then it dons on Kate that her boyfriend and her ex are attracted to one another.

All and all, Kate is the standard for super-heroine women in Marvel in.

Miss America Chavez

Gender: Female

Orientation: Lesbian

Love Interests: Ramone Watts(current),Lisa, Ultimate Nullifier

Yes, she is lesbian. Ultimate Nullifier was simply an experiment that she didn’t like after the first kiss. Like one kiss with a guy and she said, “umm nope.”

She is lesbian. She likes girls and from the general reception of the character, girls like her too.I am not going to bother covering her relationship with Ultimate Nullifier because who the fuck really cares about that guy?

I can’t tell you much about Lisa other than America isn’t necessarily a good girlfriend. 

Well she isn’t? Like there was this whole convoluted thing that made America break up with Lisa for a reason I can’t really explain and the narrative tried to paint America as in the right when she was a shitty girlfriend. I just wanted to put Lisa in there because I like to confirm that she existed and still doesn’t have a last name.

Anyways, on to the good shit.

America and Ramone met through mutual colleague and also shared friend, Kate Bishop. Kate was dating Ramone’s brother and America kept Kate around so Kate could ogle her. Anyways, Ramone was trapped in a collapsing building and America saved her and caused Ramone to have what could only be described as gay panic. So naturally, the two decided to date because...well have you seen Miss. America Chavez. If one could describe her, she would be the one woman “reason why I’m gay” justification for women.

That image alone just created like 10 lesbians.

Anyways, the two are just cute. Like I can’t even describe how the two are just cute around each other.

But no one wants to be like deadweight as Nero from Devil May Cry can attest to. So Ramone, like her brother, turn out to be exiles from Wakanda.

And then this happened.

And Allow was born. So after Alloy rescues America and the West Coast Avengers, let’s just say that America was very excited about the new development that her girlfriend has powers just like her.

And they lived happily ever after and are still the item until this day. 

Laura Kinney aka X-23 aka Wolverine

Orientation: Indecisive

Love Interests: Julian Keller,  Warren Worthington(ewwwwww)

tw: sex trafficking, rape, and incest mentions

I don’t know what I expect out of franchise spawned the likes of Wolverine being with anybody or the idea that Wanda and Pietro practicing incest or Professor Xavier being in love with Jean Grey. I honestly don’t know why I hoped they would handle this character with tact as she is the most popular X-character made in the past 20 years. God forbid I expected that the  franchise that insisted on Emma Frost mind raping Cyclops and then being an item  would actually think about Laura Kinney as a character and not do some inappropriate shit...but here we are.

Let me explain the life of one Laura Kinney in the Marvel comics and why everything about her being in a relationship with a man who is the same age physically as her father is a bad idea. We all know about the X-periment and how she was the gender flipped clone of Wolverine...or is she her biological daughter? Who the fuck knows or even cares, let me get to the point.

Laura Kinney is a victim of sex trafficking. She was pimped out and did some weird dark shitty shit and yes, it involved her claws. So her history with sex in general should be handled tactfully. Her life has been nothing but violence and death and dismemberment. And I am not saying that Laura should not find love. I am saying that a girl like Laura should not be with older men, but what do I know. It seems the X-men franchise seems to be looking for writers whose only criteria is that  you have to have a creepy fascination with Kitty Pryde.

Granted, Julian Keller aka Hellion had a relationship with Laura that allowed her to express emotions like a teenaged girl should be allowed to express without the influence of an older men. Julian’s relationship was born of resentment because Laura was not a real mutant, whatever that mean to fear that Laura was nothing but an assassin to admiration after witnessing how much Laura endured. Notice how Julian could never push or influence Laura to do things that she did not want to do. 

Warren is the same fucking age as Cyclops. If you are going to make a stink about Rachne being with Josh Foley, then why in the fuck is this 30+ year old man with a fresh faced teenaged abused girl?

I’m just saying that any character with rape and/or sex trafficking as their backstory should be handled as gracefully as possible in regards to romantic interests and sexuality. Her being with Adam is not handling gracefully.

Gwen Stacy aka Ghost Spider

Gender: Female

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Peter Parker, Harry Osborn, Miles Morales, ...fuck it, I am going to go ahead in put Mary Jane Watson in here

Okay.

“But, Gwemj isn’t canon so why would you put that in here?”

First off, Spider-Gwen is the quintessential pinnacle of everything that is wrong with how Marvel deals with superhero romances with solo women. There is no reason why in the 4 years as of this writing, that you have yet to introduce a love interest that is Spider-man viable in the 50 issues she has starred in. There is no excuse that her first kiss was not with anybody within her supporting cast, but with another established hero. Spider-Gwen, you have an underdeveloped supporting cast and setting, and it fucking shows.

Second, it was clear that the original plan was Gwemj, but Gwen Stacy became popular and marketable so they derailed the sapphic train and landed on the most forced and out of theme romance in recent comic book history. Like for fuck’s sake, she is Spider-man for girls and women. You know how many superheroes Peter Parker dated, 3-4 if you count Kitty Pryde and every time it never worked out because they could never relate to Peter Parker.

That is the fucking point, Marvel/Latour/McGuire although the last person isn’t the biggest offender.

Giving Gwen a superhero love interest negates the fucking point of Spider-man. It is against theme and it is really sexist as shit because every male hero has a love interest that is not superpowered. Not a one woman can hook up with a non-powered boy if they are in hetero romances.

Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy is the most cynical pairing shill that I’ve ever seen.

The fact of the matter is that Gwen has the most chemistry with Mary Jane and most of her romances have been bouts of forced heterosexuality. And it is not that she is possibly heterosexual that is the problem. It is that you refuse to develop said romances and try to make sure the man involved is just as empowered as the girl for no fucking reason. 

It’s pure laziness.

Anyways, it’s hard to pindown where I should start this because the comic creates Gwen’s origin out of flashbacks so it’s hard to figure what came first.. And I guess it begins with Peter.

I’m working with assumption in trying to nail down the chronological order. Okay, Peter noted Gwen’s music in her headphones and identified it. Gwen was on that Neku Sakuraba tip except without the angry at the world attitude so she was this disheveled girl who listened to music openly and isolated herself from cast. But she wasn’t bullied or anything like Pete.

She was a cool loser.

So after their shared taste in music, Peter and Gwen become fast friends, but it is hinted that Peter had a crush on her and it more than platonic feeling for her. Anyways, Gwen’t and Peter’s duet became a 3 man band as they added residnet outcast, Harry Osborm to the crew.

Now do the math, two boys and one girl. 

It is obvious that both boys have a crush on the one girl. Now it is hard to discern Gwen’s feelings for either of the two boys because there isn’t a lot shown. But the main takeaway is that Peter was broken down by bullying. He channelled his inner Vergil because he wanted power. This universe’s Peter is the Peter we see in Ditko’s early Spider-man run without the powers and none of the growth he received later. Harry, on the otherhand, is well aware of how broken Peter is and resolves to not be like him while hoping to move in on the cute blonde.

“...They won’t break me like they broken [Peter]”

So Peter is not exactly the kid you’d say after a school shooting, no one would expect that he was the culprit. I’m pretty sure no one at Midtown would be surprised. So guess what sends Peter over the edge?

No surprise here that Peter Parker without the character growth of becoming Spider-man becomes an incel asshole.

Anyways, some time passes and Prom happens. Guess who is going stag?

No that is an actual question because I am not sure who went with whom. Did Gwen decide to go out with Harry? Are they dating? Who the fuck knows because there isn’t a lot to infer from these panels.

Judging by the clothes, Gwen isn’t dressed up or gussied up. She is wearing a white T-shirt at Prom. She doesn’t appear to be with anybody. Harry isn’t with anybody either and Peter definitely isn’t. And this is why when you make a character, you start at the beginning. This shouldn’t be background or filer. This is essential information because I assumed that we had a love triangle going on with two wayward boys pining after the same girl. It’s clear that Harry has a crush on Gwen. It’s implied that Peter had a crush on Gwen as well with his reaction and calling Harry a traitor.

It’s really unclear and it is a situation that defines Gwen’s story and stories going forward. We really don’t know what happened at prom and the first Midtown attack. We really don’t know exactly what led to Peter turning himself into the Lizard. There are inferences and implications, but nothing is concrete. This series is built on the idea that Peter Parker’s death matters without giving a reason why to care about Peter Parker. And just to remind you that while the Night Gwen Stacy Died didn’t focus on Gwen Stacy, you had nearly a hundred issues to care about her prior to her death. Gwen is not just some iconography and symbolism. She was an actual character. A bad one, but nonetheless, she had more than a few pages to get represent a character.

So after Prom was a murderous incel Lizard shitshow and Gwen stopped and accidentally killed the Lizard(Key word: accidentally because it’s not clear if Gwen killed him because it was weirdly effective punch and she toyed with him like she usually does), Spider-Gwen goes on a severe depression and isolation streak and doesn’t talk to anyone ever...possibly. Again, it is the case of Gwen’s origin not exactly being clear. We don’t know much and what we are shown was presented through flashbacks.

Until she gets wrapped up in Spider-verse and she meets several Spider-folks with most of them looking like her Peter Parker and falls into a depressive episode realizing that maybe her Peter should have been the one who was bittem and she was destined to be miserable all of her life. Following a confrontation with a grief-stricken 616 Peter Parker stating that she isn’t ‘his’ Gwen, Gwen just doesn’t want to deal with any Spider-men that look like Peter Parker or are Peter Parker. And also, she is still being tormented in her own universe by a smear campaign that unfairly places the blame of Peter’s death on her shoulders. Because of said campaign, Gwen is a fugitive and her enemy, Matthew Murderdock, is extorting her for her own powers that only he has access to and  her father’s life in exchange for working with him.

In summary, Gwen is stressed and is at a breaking point. She is miserable and facing an existential crisis that every adaptation of herself has died or suffered horrible consequences and questions if she is incapable of experiencing happiness. She has lost her Spider-power and has to rely on her sworn enemy to have them. And her whole city sees her as a murderer.

Enter Miles Morales.

I already explained why Miles was in E-65 in the previous post. I don’t need to repeat myself. But I can elaborate on why Miles was attractive to Gwen Stacy. For one, he is a Spider-man that doesn’t remind her of Peter Parker. So she isn’t feeling guilty and at least he isn’t a literal anthropomorphic pig. Two, Miles is around her age. This is debatable because in spite of what Bendis says, Miles was 15 at the time of this arc and he clearly aged Miles up so Gwen didn’t look like a cradle robber for daring to be interested in a kid4-5 years younger than she. And finally, this.

Miles presents the one alternate dimension where she is happy and with children. So combined with Miles being a nice if not horny kid and being overwhelmed with guilt and stress in her daily life. Miles starts becoming more attractive to Gwen. Which leads to....

Okey-doke.

I have made myself clear about how I feel about this ship. If you want a summary, I wish it never existed but here we are.

Anyways, Miles goes back and immediately starts pursuing more interesting love interests and Gwen continues to deal with being stressed. I am going to stop it here. But I want to posit a theory.

Spider-Gwen was supposed to be with Mary Jane or EmJay. For the longest, the tension between Mary Jane and Gwen was honestly the only non-superheroic related with the most tension and description outside of her own father and EmJay seemed focused on Gwen to an absurd degree. It wasn’t until it was reported that Marvel pinned Gwen for her popularity that they didn’t want to damage her marketability so being a lesbian superhero in Marvel is kind of a no-no in terms of profit. But GweMJ was and still is a popular ship so to appease fans, Latour basically threw MJ at Glory in a random and spontaneous manner if only to appease those fans.The issue is that Glory and MJ aren’t super prevalent in the book. I mean Glory Grant isn’t even that important to Spider-man mythos as a whole. So it became a case of pandering to the base while simultaneously throwing the lesbians away.

That is all I am going to say on this.

Kamala Khan aka Ms Marvel

Gender: Female

Orientation: Heterosexual

Love Interests: Bruno(current), Kamren, Dante Pertuz, Red Dagger, Miles Morales(one-sided), Sam Alexander(one-sided)

Ms. Marvel is a teenaged love story with superheroes. It is a romantic literature geared towards Muslim women or girls. It’s true. And I have earned the right to fucking say it. This is going to feel like I am harping on her religion, but Ms. Marvel’s religion is the core of her character and her story. Believe it or not, it is what makes her a hero. It is her “Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility.” So it’s important that we discuss how Kamala’s religion has to do with her love interests.

Anyways, let’s start from the beginning.

Bruno has had a childhood crush on Kamala Khan. This subplot is intertwined throughout the book. The struggle however isn’t because Kamala is irreproachable. Her religion is the obstacle.

Kamala’s parents would never accept Bruno Carrelli as a viable partner. In fact, homegirl is not even allowed to date without male supervision.

Kamala initially only sees Bruno as a friend. Her best friend. Don’t say ‘friend zone’ because...grow up honestly.  Kamala didn’t care for boys, but she does care about her independence. Freedom that her cultural mandated patriarchy did not afford her or at least was regimented. I am not Muslim nor a woman, but I would surmise that a lot of teenaged Muslim girls would rebel or want to rebel against such a strict culture especially when they live in America. Kamala strikes the core of conformity to the West being seen being against the Uniformity of Islam and she struggles with being too anti-Muslim to the point that she risks allowing Islamophobia or allowing the cultural misogyny of Islam to guide her and restrict her. That is the internal conflict or religious conflict that Kamala somewhat addresses and part of it has to do with marriage or partnership.

But what makes Kamala heroic is her religion and what makes her strong is her drive to be free.

“Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind and whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.

-the Quran

This part sticks with me because while she is quoting a heroic purpose from her religion’s text, she is using patriarchic language so that that quote isn’t referring to who she is not does it apply to her exactly.

Kamala takes the good of her culture and applies it to a purpose to be a hero while somewhat resenting the implied patriarchal stances. This is why Ms. Marvel took off and became the quintessential Muslim Western Hero and Sooraya sadly didn’t. Kamala addresses the internal conflict that a teenaged Pakistani American would have.

I am going to assume that almost every Muslim American girl knows that exact line Kamala’s mom is saying or at least a variation of it.

“But this has nothing to do with her love interests”

It does. Because if her parents control and has the final approval who she is allowed to see, that man is more than likely going to perpetuate the same cultural traditions onto her.

Feminism is a big thing for Kamala so she respects a man that doesn’t overrule her like her father does his mother and her. Which is why Bruno not being a superhero and also being her sidekick is something that she respects and desires. She wants him to assist her and not much else at first when she gained her powers. Bruno becomes her confidant and also her conduit to being Ms. Marvel.

For the bulk of the first volume of Ms. Marvel, Kamala is oblivious to Bruno’s feelings towards her. In fact, Kamala sees him as part of her aesthetic of being a superhero: he is her sidekick. I suspect Wilson didn’t want to have a girl portray a stereotype that girls constantly think of boys.So she flips it on the genders. It is Bruno whose every interaction has to do with Kamala. He is the smitten boy while Kamala is doing her Shounen hero routine. And it is not that she is oblivious to romance. She is just having too much fun being a superhero.

“Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!”

I know it sounds bad and Bruno is absolutely correct, fellas. There is no such as a friend zone and seeing anyone like that shows that you really don’t care for them.

Apologetic moralizing aside, Kamala just did not see Bruno as anything, but a friend.

So Kamala simply is unaware of Bruno’s feelings. And Nakia kind of reinforces how her family feels about Kamala’s future prospects.It is less about the person and more about about the status.

Enter Kamren

Kamren came with a bit of controversy. The idea is that Kamren was supposed to be a classic villain love interest. The implication was that Muslim men are controlling and white men are liberating.

Normally, Kamala’s father and her brother, Aamir, would be seen as protective if they were in any other culture, but being Muslim and arranged marriages are a well-known and often scrutinized practice in Islam, Willow who is a white Muslim woman, unintentionally opened another can of worms: Commentary on Muslim men being evil.

Look, I am not Muslim and I know the bullet points of Islam. Never read the Quaran, but I understand that the Quaran is supposed to be read in Arabic which given the ideas of the Haj and other Muslim traditions, the religion focuses on tradition and a fidelity to that tradition. Coupled with Western Cultural Imperialism, Ms. Marvel faces the problem of delving into some muddy political waters that in every other book,would just be a typical romance trope.

So I suspect Willow meant no harm because she has been a substantial Muslim feminist champion in a political climate in which that would be an oxymoron to a lot people(Not me, but again, I understand 3rd World Feminism ideals of not seeing feminism in the same lens as the west). You can’t escape the notion that depictions matter and having Bruno, white Italian, being seen as the chief romantic interest while depicting the Muslim one as evil and controlling is going to raise an eyebrow or two.

Kamren was set up as an inevitability cultural and the narrative during this arc was made for the reader to sympathize with Bruno.

Bruno is Emineming this shit and Aamir gives him the cold hard reality.

Up to this point, Kamren has been portrayed as an otherwise decent guy. His only flaw was that he wasn’t Bruno. So of course, the facade of him being the perfect Bollywood male lead begins to come down.

“There’s no reason for you to keep wasting your energy to protect people who don’t believe what you believe.”

That is not an obvious parallel that implies some sort of cultural insensitivity. He is talking about Inhumans, but the cultural parallel to other Islamist radical groups is intentional. So swap Inhumanity with Jihadist Islam, then Kamren’s character becomes even more unsettling.

He uses victim-blaming tactics on Kamala in that she chose to be part of this InHumanist movement the moment she enetered the car with him as if he didn’t zap her body unconscious after he revealed his true intentions. Kamren is a disgusting individual and of course Kamala whoops that ass, but I wanted to point out the unfortunate implications of this romance before I moved on.

Meanwhile Bruno gets an SOS from Kamala and tries to save her. He fails miserably, but at least he has this moment.

This cover encapsulates everything about Kamala’s and Bruno’s relationship in Ms. Marvel Volume One.

And just before the end of the world, Bruno finally spits it out.

So that’s it, right? They are just friends, right? 

It’s a love story, you dumbasses. Read this like a teenaged romantic sitcom. This is just phase one.

So Volume 2 of Ms. Marvel kicks off and the world didn’t end. So you think after that awkward but somewhat romantic confession on the rooftop, Kamala and Bruno would hit it off, right?

Brno/s gay? He is with Mike now? Bruno just skyrocketed in popularity with Yaoi fangirls.

Oh, Mike’s a girl and her full name is Michaela Gutierrez ....AND SHE THICK

It’s over Kamala. You lose before you even knew that there was a game. Bruno took that no and went on and found Barbie Ferreira. Bruno figured out what a skinny girl can do that big girl can’t. Answer: Not a goddamn thing! Ahead of his time, really.

Nothing against Mike, she is delightful and honestly, I’m cool with it. Sure, she is destined for failure because she is in the way of the OTP, but goddammit, put both hands up for the big girls.

Kamala takes it personally and decides to give her not-boyfriend the cold shoulder.

Now, if you are a guy and you think Kamala is being a bit of a hypocrite, you are not thinking about this optically. Bruno confessed that he loved her on that rooftop. That is not some shit you just say capriciously especially to your best friend. It looks like on the surface that Bruno just happened to have a backup just in case Kamala said no thus making his confession not as genuine. If you are pursuing someone as much as Bruno was to the point that he confesses love to that person, you don’t have back-ups like that. It makes his confession seem less genuine.

And yes, Kamala is being jealous and she hates that Bruno unintentionally made a scenario to make her jealous. Because if she had known about Mike instead of being blindsided like she was, then maybe she could have managed that moment on the rooftop better, but it feels like to her that Bruno just gave up and it drives her crazy to see it rubbed in her face.

In defense of Bruno, there is no set time when you are expected to get over someone that rejected you after confessing something. And maybe 6 months is too soon for Kamala, but if she had a problem with him being with anyone and needing to be told, then maybe she isn’t being honest with herself.

Also, sidenote to all writers of superheroines: this dialogue about a sub-plot is what you miss out on if you refuse to approach romance.

Anyways, It sucks to realize that you love someone and possibly took them for granted when you see them with someone else.

Oh and now your best friend who confessed his love for you is now having safe sex with another woman(implied).

Yeah, I’d be a little miffed too.

Since Kamala and Bruno are on break, I’m going to touch and go on their situation because at this point, Kamala’s popularity afforded her several appearances and a lot boys from outside her comic book did a double take.In summary, Kamala’s milkshake brought all the boys to the yard.

First is Miles Morales.

Let me just say that Sara Pichelli draws a gorgeous Kamala Khan. I mean she just makes beautiful teenaged girls in general for some reason. The boys are always ordinary looking, but the girls are always trendy or fashionable or bombshells if not all three.

Anyways, Miles has a definite crush on Kamala, but unlike Sam who I will get to later, he is mostly lowkey about it when they interact. He is also a very supportive friend of hers and honestly her and Kamala are like Peter Parker and Johnny Storm.What is weird about it is that there is no on-page formal first meeting between the two. So we never see when or why Miles revealed his identity to Ms. Marvel. I guess there was a miscommunication between Bendis and Waid and Wilson.

There isn’t much on page thoughts from Kamala about Miles as she mostly kept the air living up to be a hero she admires the most, Carol Danvers. Again, Karol is the model of typical Marvel heroine. As far as I’ve read, Carol doesn’t really have much in the way of romance compared to Spider-man who as @traincat​ would say, is a Himbo(yes, I am going to keep plugging her so you guys can follow her because she is the only Peter Parker expert that I respect). So her and Miles relationship is professional friendship. There was a time when Bruno mentioned something that implied Kamala gushes about a Spider-man’s abs, but that could be just jealousy and it never states which Spider-man he was talking about. All in all, she is not interested in Miles and Miles is interested in her, but respects her too much to act on it. Until Miles confuses an Infinity Stone for a mood stone and spills the beans to her.

Kamala doesn’t return the gesture and it is seen as a way to lightly put Miles down which is okay because he handles it like a champ.

Next is Sam Alexander aka Nova.

He is a little less tactful than Miles about his attraction to Kamala since he immediately hits on her upon first meeting.

Kamala of course thinks he is a brash idiot who shows-off too much.

Sam is persistent in their first meeting, but keeps on hitting the wrong marks and saying the wrong things at inappropriate times.

Sam pretty much can’t take a hint and eventually catches Ms. Marvel in the middle of changing costumes.

*insert the sound of an airplane falling and crashing*

So Kamala and Sam don’t initially like each other as initially, Kamala thought she was being mean to Sam unintentionally and Sam thought he was being idiot. They are both right in their own way, but in the end, Sam sees Kamala as an uptight do-gooder personality and Kamala sees Sam as a reckless jerk. Which has a lot to do with their powersets because Sam is not really meant to be doing street level crime or protection.

And finally we have Dante Pertuz aka Inferno. Now this is one time where Kamala’s interested in a guy and not the other way around or at least it is implied by a third party.

Over the course of Secret Warriors, Kamala and Dante interact and while nothing is initially made out of it, Dante and Quake hook up and Kamala appears to be jealous and annoyed that Dante likes Quake mainly because Kamala does not like Daisy Johnson.

Now we could take Daisy’s word for it, but again, she is kind of a jaded jerk so take it with a pinch of salt. Kamala also denies it.

Ms. Kamala not only shoots down her own ships, but she also bombs other people’s, sheesh.

Now that is done, let’s get back to the main attraction.

Kamala and Bruno and now Mike pretty much go back and forth. Bruno makes kissey faces at Mike, and Mike returns them while Kamala dies a little inside. Bruno is pretty much that guy from the meme who is with his girlfriend, but he keeps looking at the girl they pass and Mike is not a moron and knows that she is pretty much the Cyrano and is conscious of this fact. It hurts because Mike is actually a cool character and her and Kamala become good friends in spite of having the same romantic attraction to Bruno. While Bruno did care for Mike, he could not help but be jealous of the men Kamala encounters as Ms. Marvel such as Spider-man(not sure which). 

Point is that this entire comic is a delicious mess and should be read with the same intention as the audience of Dawson’s Creek.

Eventually, Kamala starts to realize that her idol has a huge authoritarian streak and implements her version of Hitler Youth to patrol Ms. Marvel’s turf. And I think this is a something we need to address in regards to Carol. Yes, she is good, but she is socially aware as a....white woman. No really, she does not stop to think as to why people of color would not be too for a system that arrests people because they are foreseen to commit a crime. It’s profiling or in this case assisting in racial profiling. I always found it weird that of all people, a Pakistani first generation born American would idolize her. But that had to do with Kamala’s own self-hatred than anything Carol was.It is like being a Mexican Trump Supporter.

Anyways, Kamala is reluctant, but she joins Carol’s little SS and starts putting people in detention camps. And people are pissed. People like Bruno are pissed.

So Bruno decided to break Josh, who was wrongfully detained on the suspicion of wanting to bomb a school. Kamala goes and tries to stop him from breaking in the detention center.

Well....

Shit.

This haunts Kamala. You see, Bruno and Kamala are close obviously, but for once, it was her ambivalence that nearly got him killed. She wants so desperately to be her own ideal hero that she completely neglected her own support system in pursuit of being accepted by Carol.People like to point to Kamala’s fandom in superheroes as a main characteristic, but neglect to mention that it was Bruno introducing her to the world superheroes that started it in the first place. It was Bruno who introduced her to Ms. Marvel. 

Bruno becomes paralyzed on his left side.I haven’t mentioned this, but Bruno is an inventor. He creates things and he is also left handed. So his dream was in jeopardy because he was willing to help Kamala out with her dream. So Kamala feels guilty as fuck.

Bruno decides to take a trip to Wakanda and get some schooling. Thus making Bruno the first white boy to be legally allowed to learn in Wakanda.

I’m as surprised as you are. I mean Wakanda gives a scholarship to some white boy in New Jersey, but rejects Lunella Lafayette. Ain’t that some shit?

So just to recap on this drama, Kamala turned down Bruno in favor of superheroism. Bruno got with Mike. Kamala becomes jealous, but Mike is cool so can’t bring herself to hate her. Bruno is jealous that Kamala is hanging out with superhero studs like Spider-man. Mike is just tired of being overlooked for an apparently nice girl. Bruno is annoyed that Kamala is siding with Carol’s harebrained George Orwell fanfiction idea over her friends and decides to break everyone out. He gets injured in the process and leaves New Jersey, but not before lashing out at Kamala for not appreciating him.

A fucking teenaged love story, I tell you.

And the only person happy is the gay one. tsk...

So the two are basically apart at this point. Bruno is on a no-speaking terms with Kamala and Kamala is respecting that. This cover pretty much sums it up.

Kamala took Bruno for granted and Bruno resents Kamala for taking for granted. And of course, it did bomb his relationship with Mike because he is resenting a relationship with a girl that is not currently his girlfriend. But with Bruno in Wakanda getting reverse affirmative action, that means Ms. Marvel is taking a break from romance, right?

Kamala’s milkshake be bringing boys from across the ocean.

Okay, this is Red Dagger aka Kareem. Kamala first met Kareem when she visited her cousins in Pakistan with and without costume. Get your head out of the gutter, they met eachother while they were in civillian identity and superhero alias without connecting the two. Lareem eventually moved to New Jersey because he studied abroad from which Kamala quickly deduced that his identity.

So the two have a team-up from which Kamala feels uneeded so she runsaway and  attends a private school without anyone, even her parents knowing(and people wonder why I felt that Wilson’s Ms. Marvel read like a Saturday Morning Cartoon). Eventually she comes out of it with absolutely no consequences for abandoning her superhero duty because she felt unneeeded and forcing her friends to fight crime in New Jersey in her stead. Whatever, Red Dagger feels bad for making Kamala feel unappreciated and...

This is nice.

That is right, Kamala, You get over your ex, by getting underneath another person. I mean, girl you bold. You went to your boy interest’s former place of employment and hangout spot, and made out on top of the roof. Extra thot points for making him watch another man’s tongue down your throat.

I’m kidding, but yeah, ackwarrrrrrd.

Of course, Bruno and Kamala talk about that situation and Kamala swears that it didn’t happen to spite him in spite of it happening on top of Circle Q. They eventually reconcile and get back on speaking terms and then...

Mike catches the pair holding hands. Actually not what it looks like. Kamala was helping Bruno up the stairs. So much drama. 

Kamala freaks out because she thinks she is a two timing thot because she out here kissing men and thotting and shit. So she runs to her Masjid in hopes to get some spiritual help for her crisis.

So Kamala has a confessional with a third party and surprisingly, he subverts the entire stereotype of Muslim religious patriarch.

He tells her that he laments not teaching young Muslim people in his Masjid to not know how to properly be themselves and not know how to deal with their feeling. He also laments not teaching their parents to not give stern warnings in place of recalling what is like to feel like you are in love for the first time thus giving kids an echo chamber because they don’t feel safe to talk to their parents about this for fear of admonishment.

He tells Kamala to be true to herself unleash the inner thot....I’m kidding.

He tells her to be true to herself and be real with Bruno.

I think this is the most important scene in Ms. Marvel because too many times, media has used the Muslim patriarch as this oppressive tool to admonish Islam as a faith.Is it sexist? Yeah. I can’t lie about that shit, but ultimately it is up to those women who practice it to reform it and modern male muslims tend to be more open to feminism especially if it doesn’t come from white feminism brand that loves to target those cultures.

Anyways, back to the drama, Mike and Bruno break up. Kamala and Red Dagger end things amicably. And now it is a rat race to see how long it takes for Kamala and Bruno to finally hook up because why not? If you have been reading up to this point, you know what is about to happen so I’m going to get straight to the point.

Nadia Van Dyne aka Wasp

Gender: Female

Orientation: Not interested in boys in the very least, but girls who like science....that is a jam so...sapiosexual lesbian

Potential Love interests: Amber

So Nadia Van Dyne is the daughter of Hank Pym who took after the last of Hank Pym’s abused ex-wife, Janet Van Dyne.You should all read the first two volumes of Unstoppable Wasp because Nadia in general was a welcome, wholesome surprise for me. Regardless, I am not just here to gush about Nadia, but explore her love interests, but to be honest, she doesn’t have any so this will be pure speculation and subtext until otherwise stated.

So what is different about Nadia is her disinterest in all things of the opposite sex and her interest in all things about science. She was raised in an Assassin/Scientist school where Nadia was trained to be a super scientist assassin along with other young people. She is a genius, but Nadia developed a love for science. When she was freed from the Red Room, Nadia kept her love for science and sought to make sure all girls like herself could be allowed to express their love for science without a glass ceiling. So she wanted to recruit a science girl gang of sorts.

You could make an argument that Nadia is ace and I wouldn’t argue against you. However, as you can see, it is easy to write off character interactions as that when in actuality they are underdeveloped. I think Nadia is a sapiosexual lesbian because her attraction directly correlates with how intelligent a person the person is. And she hates overly intelligent scientific men like Peter Parker and somewhat resents her abusive father as they kept a glass ceiling in the intelligencia of academic science that chased women out. However, any woman with a compelling interest in science immediately piques her interest. And sure, we could say that this attitude is fostered due to her mission statement of uplifting women of science and girl geniuses in the place of attraction towards said girls, but sometimes we forget that no matter how wholesome Nadia is, she is still a teenager.

This Amber and I’d say that this was the first and only time Nadia exhibited an actual crush on somebody.And sure, Nadia’s innocence could be taken to mean that she was just being her normal bubbly self, I want to take note that she really didn’t ask about Amber’s scientific prowess. She complimented her looks first and then her tattoos and then she saw the Teleforce Tattoo. 

But just like the others on this list, Amber could not just be a normal girl. Nope, she had to be a supervillain.

I am just pointing out a pattern. Boys need their love interests to be non-superpowered and not necessarily the physical equal. Girls have to have their romantic counterparts be just as physically capable as them.

Amber aka Seeker becomes a rival to Nadia until they realized that they aren’t necessarily enemies of each other as the real threat was an Ultron merged Hank Pym who wants to take over the world or whatever does Ultron want to do anymore. Who knows?

So Seeker and her AIM Anti-Ultron think tank joined Nadia’s GIRL. And we never knew what happened between her and Nadia.

Riri Williams aka Ironheart

Gender: Female

Orientation: ?

Love Interests: Xavier King, Viv Vision

Okay, Riri is a bit complicated because her story goes as this: 

Girl goes to school.

Girl becomes bored with school.

Girl starts acting out because she is bored with school.

Girl gets tested and it is revealed that she is a super genius.

Parents of girl freak out because they realized that by boring her, they could have made the next super-villainess.

Girl is then handled with care to ensure that she is not alone all of the time thinking about her inventions and struggles to make human connections because she is smarter than everybody in her neighborhood.

Girl meets another girl who becomes her best friend.

Girl’s best friend and her super nice step dad die in a drive-bye shooting.

Girl decides to close herself off again and be stuck working on her inventions.

So it makes sense that Riri has problems making connections with people. Or Bendis didn’t really bother to give the girl a romantic interest so he hastily came up with one. Xavier King.

Xavier King didn’t get much characterization until Eve Ewing took over and he went from boy that Riri Williams might have fancied to being Riri Williams’ Ron Stoppable to her Kim Possible.

She is the hypercompetent woman and she is pretty much the silly sidekick. I can’t say that the two are dating or romantically inclined, but I can say that I love their friendship

Xavier doesn’t necessarily become a boyfriend. He has a better role: he is her best friend.

He makes her laugh and most importantly, she feel comfortable around him. Which leads us to someone who isn’t as warm....physically....or is she? What is the temperature of synthezoids?

When Riri joined the Champions, her communication skills continued to be sorely lacking. She kind of kept to herself and really only got along with Nadia, Amadeus, and Viv Vision. Just to be clear, she only got along with the geniuses as Miles was too friendly and somewhat got on her nerves. Kamala simply avoided Riri and gave her space and everyone else except for Miles apparently followed suit.  Viv on the other hand doesn’t quite have a grasp on social cues yet.

And the two socially awkward girls connect. Riri and Viv get along quite well. The girls didn’t really advance their friendship until Riri did something monumentally stupid: she tried to take on Thanos.

So after that humiliating shitkicking, Riri pretty much developed PTSD and our favorite synthezoid decided to check on her teammate.

And Viv consoled Riri and the two decide to make Riri a new Iron Man armor.

The end result.

Girls don’t want flowers. They want cool power armor.

Viv and Riri sort of connect more with Viv letting her pet synthezoid hang our with Riri and Riri being the most open to her. And Viv read too much into this cordial relationship between her and Riri...and well...

now I’d like to point out that this isn’t because Riri doesn’t swing that way. On the contrary, it isn’t the gender that Riri had a problem with in regards to Viv. It is the invasion of space that turned Riri off. You have to ask Eve Ewing and Jim Zub, but Riri never explicitly stated that it was orientation incapability that turned her away from Viv. It was because Viv made her feel uncomfortable.

And Viv’s unawareness as to why exactly kissing Riri was distressing to Riri didn’t help.

And this is why Riri actively stayed away from Champions’ related activities for the majority of the run. Viv made her uncomfortable and Riri decided to keep her distancing while still reaching out to Kamala and Nadia.Later Riri was mind controlled by Blackheart who brewed those fears and emotions towards Viv and made those insecurities toxic and violent. So under his manipulation, Riri knocked out Viv and the rest of the Champions.

Riri went for the killing blow, but Viv 2.0(long story) rebooted and took over for the then comatose Viv. 

THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!

Viv rounds up the remaining Champions and Blackheart mind controls the Champions that Riri took out. There was a final battle and Viv eventually took control of her own body and finally confessed to Riri and apologized.

So after the battle between the Champions and Blackheart, Riri and Viv have a heart-to-heart.

So this is all for part 1 for now. It took forever. I may do some updates on characters because it is a growing and developing story for characters. But this is mainly for Marvel. I don’t know if I want to tread the minefield that is DC love interests because that shit is crazy. I also have been trying to figure out wht to do with inner team romances like X-Men, Inhumans, Avengers Academy, Runaways, and etc. So those Nico and Karolina fans, I am aware of y’all and I didn’t forget. It is just that this takes time. Be patient.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day.

@ubernegro​

[jonthethinker]

Expositor Beauregard And The Mighty Nein

Others have said it before, but because I think it should be screamed from the mountaintops everyday, Beau’s growth is so fucking good!

I think back to the runaway monk we met at the beginning of this campaign, all sharp edges and curt words and no roots, committed to convincing the world she doesn’t care about anything and she’s fine on her own (but the loneliness already showing as she asks Jester and Fjord whether they’re going to leave town without her.)

Then we have Beau now, who has deep friendships with every member of the Mighty Nein sans possibly Caduceus and Yasha (who still fall under the domain of her protective instinct, and who she still very much considers her people.) It could be argued that Beau is the sturdy foundation of the Nein, offering each other member of the Nein some sturdy ground to stand on to grow themselves:

Travis has mentioned Beau’s commitment as first mate as a comfort for Fjord, and when he was deliberating whether to reveal his accent to the group, He never doubted that Beau would continue to support him if he told the group the truth. Their easy relationship is among my favorites on the show, and when the action starts they’re never out of sync.It is safe to assume that to the half-orc orphan who very much attended the school of hard knocks and has every reason to distrust others, having a friendship in which the only thing that is asked is a willingness to call Beau on her bullshit and an openness to Beau calling him on his, is an immeasurably important feature in Fjord’s current life and one he wouldn’t trade away for anything.

Beau is undoubtedly fiercely protective and supportive of Jester, and made it clear to her that she will support Jester being more honest about negative feelings she has, while also standing up to Jester when she thought she was making a reckless decision in how to confront her father if it meant keeping Jester safe and the door open for a healthy relationship with said parent. Jester has in Beau someone who will continually encourage and support her through thick and thin, and have a good time along the way. I want to say a hell of a lot more about their friendship and the parallels of their lives, because their friendship is the most precious thing to me in all of critical role, but that’s not what this meta is about, so I’ll save it for another time.

Her sisterly relationship with Nott is something that is easy to forget about, but I imagine it means more to Nott than is let on; Nott was a bit of an outsider even as a halfling. Since the Iron Shepards (And arguably before, in Hupperdook,) Nott has had an easy relationship in Beau, with Beau being about as judgement free as Nott has ever experienced. The two are playful with each other in a way I imagine Nott wishes she could have been with her brothers, and Beau’s willingness to forgive Nott for any harmful decision she has made (a certain bullet in the ass comes to mind) can’t be underscored in its importance towards the goal of keeping Nott’s beaten-up heart healthy.

While I disagree with some in the fandom who think that Beau’s friendship with Caleb is the single most important relationship in his life right now (which to me has been unquestionably, from the beginning, Nott, and is nowhere near changing to anyone else in my humble opinion,) to say their friendship has not been a critical step in his growth as a character is absurd. Caleb perhaps had not planned on one of the keys to his success in his wizardly pursuits as well as the reclamation of his humanity being a rough-and-tumble friendship with a blunt, somewhat aggressive monk with a knack for getting him to admit to things he never wanted to admit to, but life doesn’t often go according to plan. Despite a rocky beginning, their friendship has evolved into something beautiful, with Beau always there to keep Caleb grounded, whether he risks letting his thirst for knowledge drag him into trouble, or his past begins to eat him alive. And it’s certainly nice to have someone around who can help him find that book he’s looking for.

Beau’s relationship with Yasha has been interesting from the get-go, what with Beau immediately seizing on the opportunity to flirt with the giant, introverted barbarian. While shipping discourse tends to dominate the discussion of their interactions, we shouldn’t ignore the chance to take a crack at what these moments mean to the characters as individuals.

With hindsight and insights Marisha has given on Talks, I’ve gathered that to Beau these moments were driven by this weird relationship in Beau’s mind between sex and power. She uses these casual, almost doomed to fail, encounters with women as a band-aid to avoid confronting her actual problems with developing intimate, meaningful romantic or platonic relationships with women she’s physically attracted to. She sort of game-ifies the encounters into a power struggle between her and her potential conquest; the end goal not being the sex or denial thereof, but of the buzz of the conflict itself. On the outside it looks like a pure expression of ego, and some of it may be, but I interpret it mostly as a deflection from Beau’s clear struggles with self-loathing and her fear of abandonment; I speculate that to Beau, after how things ended with Tori, has not allowed herself to feel the same about anyone else (With the recently revealed exception of Jester, who is all too conveniently deemed inaccessible; “She has a thing for Fjord, and so it’s not a possibility,”) for fear of utterly letting down yet another women she loved.

With Yasha I take these moments as a sort of siren’s song. Here she is, having lost the most precious person in all her life, a love she knew was forbidden but pursued anyway, and clearly blames herself and her desire for Zuala as the very reason she died. To Yasha, the lesson she learned from all of this is not that her tribe was wrong, but that her desires are wrong, that she can’t trust herself to want anything, and can’t trust herself to love without getting someone hurt (A feeling only exacerbated by the death of Molly trying to save her from the Iron Shepards.)

So she feels all this and then there’s this monk who relentlessly flirts with her. Their first interaction indicates to me that Yasha has had some experience handling this sort of thing since joining the circus, and with arms like those, how could she not? But Beau just keeps going and going the more time they spend around one another, and Yasha has eyes, and Beau does indeed have those abs, and is incredibly persistent and almost admirably self-assured about herself, and okay maybe eventually even the tough Barbarian might be flustered and stutter a little bit.

And that would be that, if that’s all their relationship was. But Yasha being the quiet one who looms to the back in social interactions and group planning watches the others, Beau included, and maybe begins to see another side to the monk. The side that clearly cares a great deal about this group. Who looks out for the others and will gladly put her body on the line to protect them. Beau isn’t as sturdy as Yasha, can’t take as many hits and depends on avoiding being hit in the first place, but still there she is, tanking a Hydra, rushing to the front lines and protecting her friends. There she is, reassuring party members in a well-meaning if a little rough around the edges sort of way. There she is, comforting Yasha after she reveals her past to the group, seeking a way to relate to her even when it’s clear Beau doesn’t share personal details often.

So to Yasha, Beau is a few things. She’s someone who she can rely on to keep this lovely found family alive no matter the personal cost. She’s someone who can be leaned on and relied on not to judge. And she’s someone who makes her feel like a person, not just a tool or a wall of muscle, or a burden to be dealt with, but a person. I think Beau will be second only to Jester in the importance she will play in Yasha’s recovery and victory over her grief and guilt, which, let’s face it, is a long road yet to be traveled, but a road made all the easier due to Yasha’s friends of the blue persuasion.

Caduceus sees in Beau potential. Where he may get frustrated or confused by many in the Nein, I think in Beau he finds a reliable and easy to understand set of motivations. Beau wants to keep the Mighty Nein happy, healthy, and most importantly alive, and maybe make a positive difference in the world along the way. While her gruff demeanor can sometimes grate him the wrong way, I feel her actions have spoken for her in Caduceus’ mind. I take that he feels that while he may be the only adult in the room, Beau is definitely the rather mature teenager that can often be trusted to make decisions in his absence. Condescending? Of course. But a delightfully Caduceus-like thing to think.

This long diatribe is not me saying that Beau is the be all end all of the Nein, but just my way of illustrating the impact of her and her growth on her friends, and the role she plays within the Nein. The other members have had just as much of an impact on her. From Fjord’s trust and charm training, to Jester’s love and support and faith in strangers, to Nott’s open ear and sisterly banter, to Caleb’s ability to establish goals and remind her of both the forest and the trees, to Yasha’s fierce protectiveness and soft treatment of their friends, to Caduceus’ encouragement to tell the truth and be open and the successes that attitude has led to.

And to Molly, who arguably, made this growth possible, or at least as quickly progressive as it has been. Without him pushing her towards making the world better than she found it, it’s hard to imagine the road she would have had to travel to get to where she is now, fighting to save the world, standing up to and earning the respect of her Cobalt Soul mentors, sharing her feelings with the group, and allowing herself to love.

Beau is my favorite character on Critical Role. She has been for a very long time, but my love for her has only aged like a fine wine. From barely being able to meditate at all, to mentally transporting herself to a beach in Nicodranas in order to escape Obann’s thrall. From telling Jester she didn’t worry too much about her well-being, to telling her on several occasions that she loves and cares about her. From being incredibly antagonizing towards Molly, to getting a tattoo in his honor very visibly on the back of her neck. Her Journey to become the Expositor she is today has been an absolute delight, and her journey towards forging the ties she has with this beautiful found family have been heartwarming and some of the best storytelling I’ve ever seen. And she has so much potential for growth and I just can’t wait to see more.

[hazelandglasz]

Netflix And Chill

Inspired by this post, as requested by @lilyvandersteen

As a side note, I know literally nothing to how the netflix help service works, so let’s call of this artistic license ;)

On AO3

“Come on, come on, work this time …”

This is, officially, Kurt’s worst night ever.

And to think, he kept his expectations so low too: all Kurt wanted for this Monday night was to come home, reheat a soup he had in the freezer, and binge-watch The Good Place with a bowl of ice cream afterward.

Was that so much to ask?

Apparently, yes. Because his Netflix is not working.

It’s not a matter of unpaid bill, that’s certain. He already unplugged and replugged his provider’s box, so why doesn’t it work, for fuck’s sake?

Kurt doesn’t cry often, but this time, when the white screen with a big “ERROR” appears again, he feels like bawling like a baby.

Before going to that extremity, though, he has one more chance.

The Hotline.

Also known as the 8th level of Hell, by all users and customers worldwide, but he has no other option at this point.

So Kurt dials up and puts his phone on speaker.

Twenty-one minutes later, the waiting music stops and a perky male voice echoes in his living room.

“Thank you for your patience and welcome to the Netflix hotline. I’m Blaine, here to help you.”

“Oh!” Kurt didn’t expect someone with such a … positive attitude. “Hi. Hello. I’m--I’m Kurt.”

“Good evening, Kurt. Can you confirm your address and your subscription?”

Kurt gives him all the correct information.

“And before you ask me, I already tried turning it off and back on,” he adds just as Blaine seems to launch into his next question.

“Oh. Alright then. That already makes you my favorite customer of the evening.”

“You don’t say.”

“There is major network problem in your area right now, but we have found out a way to regulate that. But having to explain to some of our, err, older users how to use their remote …”

Kurt lets out a surprised laugh. 

Blaine laughs too, a small but warm chuckle, before clearing his throat. “Right. Back to your issue. So, what you need to do is …”

What follows is almost half an hour of Blaine gently guiding Kurt through plugs and buttons, all while doing tests and manipulations on his own side of things.

And then, finally, miracle of miracles, the big, red N appears and lets him in the menu.

“Yeah!” Kurt exclaims, and Blaine sighs in relief. “You fixed it!”

“I’m glad it worked,” Blaine replies. “Maybe we can … try it out? To make sure the problem is gone for good?”

“Try it out?” Kurt repeats, a smile forming on his lips without him realizing it. Through the whole ordeal, Blaine has never lost his cool, being gentle and supportive and, yes, charming. “Like, watch a movie or something?”

“Or something.”

“That is very … thorough of you. Do you hang out with all your customers in need, Blaine?”

“Err. No. Only the ones who don’t insult me and my ancestors and laugh at my jokes.”

“I feel privileged.”

“You should.”

“Oh.”

“And, um, if we’re being honest, I need to tell you that you’re probably the most interesting person I’ve talked with all day.”

“Oh!”

“Now, um, what could we watch to test my repairing superpower?”

“What about ‘When Harry Meets Sally’?”

“Excellent taste, Mr. Hummel.”

Kurt grins at his phone. “You flatterer.”

“Gets you everywhere.”

Kurt lets the movie load before starting it, snatching his snack box from under the couch.

“Are you munching on something?” Blaine asks as the credits roll at the beginning of the movie.

Kurt looks down at his lap. He has a bag of pretzels and a bag of M&M’s opened, and he mixes them. 

“I am. Is my speaker that finely tuned?”

“It is. I’m jealous.”

“Don’t have snacks?”

Blaine snorts. “I have been forbidden from having snacks in my cubicle.”

Kurt openly laughs. “Is it that bad?”

“Oh, it is. I have a tendency of mixing snacks together and it bothers my colleagues.”

“Mixing?”

“Sweet and salty. The last straw was when I dipped potato chips in Nutella.”

“Oh but that sounds delicious!”

The movie goes by while they chat--except for some key scenes, where Kurt and Blaine can recite the lines in perfect synchronisation.

“Well, Kurt,” Blaine says when the movie is over, “it seems like everything works perfectly now.”

“So it seems.”

“Did you have another question for--”

“What will I do if it stops working unexpectedly?”

“--me, oh. Well. You can always call back. Either one of my colleagues or me will be delighted to help you.”

Kurt can feel his face turning red. “But what if I want to be sure you help me?”

“I--”

“Because you did it so well, and with such gentleness.”

Kurt would swear he can hear Blaine smiling, even though he doesn’t know what Blaine looks like. It doesn’t matter.

“That is very kind of you to say, Kurt. And if you could just say that when they send you the automatic email to check on your contentment level …”

“Of course.”

“But if, um, if you want to be sure to contact me to check on your Netflix, maybe I could …”

“Yes?”

“Give you my personal number?”

“Is that the usual protocol?”

Blaine doesn’t speak up, and Kurt has his answer. 

Blaine sighs. “I’m sorry if I overstepped or misunderstood …”

“No!” Kurt exclaims. “No, no, you didn’t. I just--you surprised me.”

“Ah. So …?”

“So I would be honored to have your phone number, for my … peace of mind.”

“For your peace of mind.”

Blaine gives Kurt his number, and it is definitely a New York area code.

“Well, Kurt, if that is all,” Blaine says, his voice changing to his earlier “corporate voice”, “on behalf of Netflix, I thank you for choosing our services and I hope you’ll have a pleasant evening.”

“You too, Blaine,” Kurt says softly before hanging up.

Kurt looks around his empty apartment, looking for a witness, but the only other presence is the glow of his TV, where Harry and Sally look at each other.

“Was that a date?” he asks aloud, but alas, the characters stay quiet.

Where are Santana and Mercedes when he needs them?!

#

The interaction stays on Kurt’s mind for days. It wasn’t just Blaine’s niceness, but his humor, his comments, his laugh …

They’re occupying every single one of his thoughts, to Santana and Mercedes’ long suffering.

“Okay, Kurt, you know I love you,” Mercedes starts one evening where all he did was sighing when they turned Netflix on, “but enough is enough. Either call him and get a date, or go out and get yourself a man--”

“Or go out to a club and get litteraly fucked,” Santana calls from the kitchen where she is in charge tonight.

Mercedes glares in her direction. “No need to be crass, ‘Tana, but yeah, it is the gist of it. Either do something about your Netflix Boy or shut up about him.”

Kurt pouts at her, crossing his arms over his body pillow. “I haven’t talked about him that much.”

Both women give him a look of such condescension that all he can do is flee the room.

And dial the number.

(Turns out, Blaine was slowly driving his own roommate crazy with his description of the Customer Who Went Away.

Kurt apologizes by asking him for a coffee.

And then another.

And another.

Until he knows what Blaine is going to order simply by looking at him, and until Blaine knows Kurt’s coffee order down to the extra drop of caramel syrup.

And then they go to the movies.

And to the restaurant.

Until Blaine asks Kurt to come to his place for a Netflix date.

Where they don’t spend that much time actually looking at the Netflix menu and dedicate a lot of the date on the “chilling” part of the popular saying.)

[bigtittyhimmler-blog]

Who Goes Nazi? Brooklyn Edition

If you’re anything like me, a twenty-something Twitter leftist with an advanced degree in the humanities, you hate absolutely everyone around you and badly want to kill them. You live in a brownstone playground of Timorese food and adult coloring books, and you want to suicide bomb the L train but leave a note blaming it on manspreading or whatever, so people don’t think you’re one of “those” random mass murderers (the bad kind). You hate having to tell people at parties that you “work in content,” and you hate the fact that they all also work in content. You hate that they all make content for outlets that are slightly cooler and more prestigious than the outlets you make content for. You hate that none of them have even fucked you for like thirteen months. You hate that you can’t even hate them for the ways in which they’re different to you, because there aren’t any. But fear not! There’s one thing you’ve got that nobody else does: you know that you’re definitely, 100% Not A Nazi.

But what about them? Imagine if the Nazis took over America and it was suddenly cool and prestigious to be a Nazi, and there were trendy Nazis on the TV the whole time, and they once again sold soap with slogans like “Dove: The White Pride Soap for Hating QTBIPOC and Not Amplifying Their Voices.” But also don’t imagine, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

 This game was invented by Dorothy Thompson in her classic 1941 Harpers essay Who Goes Nazi?, in which she presciently pointed out that intellectuals are definitely more Nazi than aristocrats, but not nearly as Nazi as union leaders. But she set her essay at some dinner party in the Hamptons or wherever, and last time I went out there I went swimming in the sea and a wave hit me and I lost my bikini top and a bunch of bros in boat shoes started laughing and pointing at me in a way that despite my white privilege I still feel was somehow like imbued with racism, and then afterwards I just stayed inside for three weeks writing content and ordering groceries online, so the setting needs to be updated. Let’s look at your group DM. Which of these Twitter creatives who live in Brooklyn would go along with it and become a Nazi? (All of them.) And who never, ever would? (Me.)

 Mr A isn’t actually in your group DM, and you’ve never encountered anyone like him irl, but you literally can’t stop talking about him, so he gets included anyway. Mr A is a short ugly loser, and he’s already a Nazi. He doesn’t even live in Brooklyn, he lives in his mother’s basement, and eats chicken tenders, and he doesn’t get laid, but in a different way to the way you don’t get laid, which has to do with patriarchy. Mr A is a Pizzagate. Mr A is a Gamergate. Mr A is a segregationist. Mr A opposes the reforms of the Emperor Diocletian (284-305). Mr A won’t shut up about the superiority of a “free silver” bimetallic monetary system over gold specie, and keeps on talking about the “gold shills” in a way that doesn’t really make sense until you realize that your own name is Goldschmidt, and yeah, he doesn’t really care about expansionary monetary policy at all, he’s talking about the Jews, and specifically you. Mr A is basically a pathetic worm whose life sucks and nobody likes him, but also he represents the whole of the repressive forces of society and he’s at the top of the social hierarchy. Everyone you’ve ever met is actually Mr A, wearing various masks. He is the source of all your problems. He must be killed, and once we kill him, we need to find more people like him to be the source of any problems we have left over.

 Mr B is in your group DM, but you also have a separate group DM with everyone else except Mr B in it. He keeps trying so hard to be nice, and says stuff like “so how is everyone’s day today” with a smiley emoji, and when you’re talking to him you get this airless feeling like you’re about to suffocate in his treacly good-natured presence. Every time you see Mr B at a party you’re afraid that he’s going to blurt out that he loves you, but you can’t keep your distance too much because he’s so clearly autistic, and you don’t want to be ableist. Anyway once in the group DM he said that while he obviously thought divining for water with Y-shaped copper rods was good and important and valid, he didn’t understand what it had to do with socialism. That made everything better, because clearly he’s a Nazi. The whole group DM expended hours of emotional labor educating him about how dowsing is part of LGBTQ+ culture and how his dismissive bro-y attitude was reactionary and gross, and eventually he posted a video of himself crying and begging for forgiveness and promising to do better, because you guys were the only friends he had. This was classic white fragility, but in the end you let him stay. You just have the other DM now, where you make fun of him and it’s ok, because if the Nazis came and he had license to start being cruel and sadistic to other people, he’d definitely do it.

 Ms C is one of those women who doesn’t like other women, and you know this about her because you can’t fucking stand the bitch. Plus she says stuff that’s really not ok, even though it costs nothing to have empathy and be kind. You’ve personally heard her use the D-word, the H-slur, and the L-pejorative, all while laughing and holding a glass of white wine by the stem, like she doesn’t need to consider the harm this does to others, just because she’s “funny” and “an artist.” She’s the Cool Chick. She makes nude self-portraits (the bad, skinny kind), and she’d throw you under the bus in a second for male attention and approval. She’d definitely go Nazi. But the worst thing about her is that she has the impudence to be bisexual and Asian, which makes it really hard to call her out. But then you realized that all Asian people are collectively responsible for the long history of anti-Blackness and misogynoir in their communities, and you’re thinking of holding her collectively responsible for the Rape of Nanking too, once you’re certain she’s a sushi Asian and not the dim sum kind.

 Ms D’s boyfriend works in finance, or like accountancy or something, or I think I heard he was a musician? Maybe a drummer or possibly he used to bartend at a place where they had live music. Anyway they definitely have vanilla cishet sex in the missionary position and you can’t stop thinking about it, his body, her body, naked, moving, breathing, together, almost silent, tender, disgusting. She says she’s a socialist but doesn’t devote every minute of her waking life to getting mad about people online. This means she’s just vaguely following a trend, and if the trend were being a Nazi (which it is), she’d be a Nazi (which she therefore is). You can’t imagine yourself actually hitting her but it’d definitely be punching up to maybe poison her food?

 Mr E used to be a comrade, but then he did a tweet that got 38.6k RT’s and now he’s moved to Los Angeles to spend his whole time in writers’ rooms. Last you heard he was pitching an animated show for adults about a snail with borderline personality disorder. It hasn’t even been greenlit yet, but you’re already thinking about all the ways in which it will be a missed opportunity and do harm and perpetuate tropes. Mr E will definitely turn out to have been a Nazi, and then you can start an anonymous petition to get the show cancelled so he has to move back to New York. Once he’s back you can send him a long email about how much it sucks his career burned out and how (even though you won’t say it in public) sometimes people do actually take the social-justice thing too far. That way he’ll be a comrade again, which is good, because we believe in rehabilitating people who have a genuine change of heart.

 Mr F probably thinks he’s better than you. He’s a union organizer. So are you (you added “#Unionize” to your Twitter name), but his union stuff involves workers who aren’t in tech, content, or grad school, and he probably thinks that makes him more in touch with “the real workers,” who he probably thinks are just a bunch of cis white males in a factory, who are probably all racist and probably have thick, heavy dicks that intrude on your mind in a kinda #MeToo way a lot of the time. He talks about class, and you agree that class is important because you’re not a lib (you support Bernie, you just want him to Do Better). But from the way he says it you’re certain he doesn’t acknowledge all he/him lesbians as part of the working class. He’s trying to save a tiny sector of the workers from a necessary and important socio-economic shift that will impoverish them and make their lives worse, and that’s what being a Nazi is. This is why his union needs to stop dragging their heels, change all of their rules and priorities, and let you get him fired.

 Ms G (me) will never go Nazi, because she is beautiful and kind and pure, and has all the good opinions instead of the bad ones. Because of this she’s allowed to do things that other people can’t do. She can totally fail to understand what having an authoritarian personality actually means, and construct a version of the Who Goes Nazi? essay in which the people who go Nazi are just people who are already right wing, having confused politics with personality, probably because she herself has no personality other than her politics. She can minimize, ignore, or even encourage the infliction of actual suffering when it happens to the wrong kind of people. She can write that “nothing that terrible has really happened” since the publication of Mark Fisher’s Exiting the Vampire Castle, even though Mark Fisher himself is mysteriously not around to appreciate that fact. She can do some shit with threatening to leak an unedited draft that I don’t even want to go into. She knows that the Nazis don’t come promising hatred but promising to be your friend, but it’s ok because she doesn’t really have any friends, just mufos. She’s doing great. She’s building a better, kinder world. She will never, ever be the Nazis.