#like??? that’s what i’m trying to say. there’s some cognitive dissonance here

[ookaookaooka]

i LOVE first contact with aliens stories, seriously it’s one of my favorite tropes, but authors writing it really need to understand that there’s no writing it without engaging with the colonial history behind it whether you intend to or not, and if your story is about humans settling on another planet you’re gonna look stupid if you don’t

[jewelleria]

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be. 

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate. 

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified. 

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map. 

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle. 

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more. 

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop. 

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments. 

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on. 

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not. 

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways. 

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine. 

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war. 

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this: 

I am a Jew. 

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love. 

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners. 

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee! 

Then they sent me this: 

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die. 

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. 

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake. 

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired. 

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people? 

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews. 

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like. 

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for. 

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war. 

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why. 

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be. 

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I think Crowley falls into two of the classic pitfalls of people who see that the problems are systemic long before anyone else around them does: impatience and despair.

(Yes yes I know, “Crowley was an optimist.” Book Crowley is an optimist. I don’t think that line is particularly useful for analyzing TV Crowley. Stay with me here.)

Let it be said that 95% of the time, Crowley has the patience of a fucking saint (ssh don’t tell him) around Aziraphale. He knows that Aziraphale needs to build his little plausible deniability rationales in order to do something that they both know he wants to do (because it’s right or simply because he would enjoy it) but Heaven wouldn’t approve of. And most of the time, Crowley is happy to help Aziraphale get there, asking the questions Aziraphale is afraid to ask, offering excuses and justifications until Aziraphale finds one he can accept. He does a lot of work of parsing out when “no” means “you haven’t convinced me yet, keep trying” and pushing through all the “I’m an angel, you’re a demon, we’re on opposite sides and mine is the good one” talk that Aziraphale gets up to all the way through s1. Because he knows that Aziraphale doesn’t really believe that stuff, right? He just needs some time to talk himself around his own cognitive dissonance, and most of the time Crowley is not only happy to facilitate that but sees it as part of his role in their relationship.

But then when the chips are down and Aziraphale is still dithering, that’s when he gets frustrated, because HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE what’s been blindingly obvious to Crowley for millennia, that Heaven is just as cruel as Hell and no one is going to step in and fix it because the system is working as intended. And that’s when he says things like “how can someone as clever as you be so stupid?” Which is a surefire way not to convince the person you’re arguing with of anything.

And then there’s the despair. I really think the running away thing is not about cowardice or selfishness or some kind of unhealthy level of avoidance of hard or scary things, but about hopelessness. They’ve spent their lives avoiding very very real danger, and of the two of them Crowley is much more constantly aware of the danger that they are in from both sides. Yes he’s hypervigilant but he is also almost always right about the amount of danger they are in. Trying to get as far away from danger as possible is not an irrational response, even if it’s not always the correct one for a given situation.

When you feel like you’re the only person who sees how rotten the system is, how it needs to be dismantled entirely, but you are also VERY aware of how strong the people in power are and how ruthless they are about crushing dissent because you experienced it personally…well that gets fucking depressing after a while. Because even if you think the whole system needs to go, that feels like a completely unattainable goal when it seems like no one else even sees the problem, or if they see it, they are too afraid to do anything about it. And can you blame them? You know exactly what happens to people who speak up.

So it’s very easy for your goals to shrink from systemic change to just taking yourself and the people you love and finding somewhere for them to be as safe as possible, for as long as the system will let you exist. Because reforming the system is a fool’s errand, and dismantling it entirely seems impossible. I think this is where Crowley is at. Even if on some level he knows it’s an imperfect solution, because both of them have enough compassion that they would feel guilty abandoning Earth and humans to save themselves, and because Heaven and Hell really can find them anywhere in the universe. He just doesn’t see another option.

And look, I think Aziraphale is 100% wrong that Heaven can be reformed. But he is not wrong to want to stay and fight to make things better, even if it means sacrificing the Earthly comforts he loves so much, and even if it means doing it without Crowley by his side.

Ultimately they both need each other. Aziraphale needs Crowley for his willingness to ask questions and to see the scale of the problem, even if it’s terrifying. But Crowley needs Aziraphale for his hope, his stubborn determination to believe things can and should be better, and to fight for that. In the right hands, hope is an enormously powerful weapon.

[jewishvitya]

hi riki! this is a bizarre question ngl, but im wondering if you could please tell me about why you are anti-Zionist? Since i have FRESHLY (last month!! Woohoo!!) become bat mitzvah, and I’m not going to beit Sefer every week now, I’m starting to realize that what I was told about Israel and zionism miiiight be innacurate. Please feel free not to, but I would personally feel more comfortable hearing about Antizionism from somebody who is for sure not hiding any antisemitic biases. Thanks and I hope it’s not a bother!

Mazal tov!

I was debating if I should reply to this and how. You're only one year older than my son and I never considered talking about this with a kid other than my own children. But if you're online reading and looking up information about this, I'll just answer the way I would for anyone. Like I said, I don't mind explaining. But I don't have the energy to collect sources for you. I'll do that later if you'd like. For now it'll be a bit of a rant.

Basically, if you ask different people what zionism is, you'll get different answers. Some people say that zionism is just the acknowledgement of our connection to this land. That's not what I'm going against. I'm not denying that this is our ancestral homeland. I've never known a different home, I grew up near Hebron. Our history means everything to me. So maybe you could create some definition of zionism that I wouldn't be against. But then I'll be against the use of the word because in practice, politically, the movement has been colonialist. And that reality is more important to me. So when I say I'm antizionist, I'm not talking about whatever pretty idea someone might have, I'm talking about things that to me are very concrete.

Zionism uses whatever political terminology is useful to it at the time. Currently, it tries to paint itself as a sort of landback movement, placing us as the indigenous population of this land. This is a distraction. If you mean "indigenous" as "this is where we originated" - both us and Palestinians are indigenous, which makes this term pointless to this situation. If you mean "indigenous" as "a local population facing colonization" - they're indigenous and we're the colonizers. That's the more politically useful distinction.

And the thing is, zionists knew they were colonizers. Ben Gurion was welcomed by the local population and expressed hope that they're nomadic and could be persuaded to leave. Ze'ev Jabotinsky argued that no land has been colonized with the consent of its natives, so we should just take what we want like other occupying forces did. They knew what they were doing. At the time, there wasn't the broad political pushback against colonialism that you see today, so they didn't really hide it. They saw themselves as the colonizing force and the Palestinians as the natives and this distinction had them placing themselves above the Palestinians.

When I was in school, I was made to believe that Palestine was never truly a country and the population here was never a cohesive nation. You might see questions like "Who were the Palestinian prime ministers and presidents? What was the Palestinian coin? What Palestinian wars were there before the creation of Israel?"

These questions tell you nothing other than the fact that Palestine has been under foreign occupation for a very long time. They try to lead you to believe that Palestine and the Palestinian identity are fictional constructs designed to deny us our place in this land.

But Palestinians have their own dialect of Arabic. They have their own varieties of Middle Eastern foods. They have their own clothing, their own embroidery patterns, their own dances. They have a very rich culture that wasn't just made up from nothing within the last century. I still have to battle against cognitive dissonance every time I find something of the sort, because Palestinian culture goes against everything I was taught.

The truth is, the British had no right to occupy Palestine, and they had no right to offer it to us. If we pretend there was no population that was wronged when we took Israel, we can be "the good guys" with Palestinians being a sinister plot to ruin us. This turns normal families, normal people, into a conspiracy made to hurt us. We're not fighting a military force - every Palestinian person is a threat to our legitimacy. Israelis don't even really use the term "Palestinians" - they're just Arabs, their individual identity is stripped from them. We pretend that they belong to other countries around us.

Israeli propaganda will tell you that we only ever act in self defense. It's in the name of our military, it's called a defense force. Israel boasts that it has the only ethical military in the world. The only defensive one. But like I said, we define threats very broadly. And we whitewash a lot of history. I was taught in school all our fighting was defensive - and then I spoke to an elderly man and he said "of course we killed whole villages, it was war, that's what you do." Only as an adult I found out about things like the Sabra and Shatila massacre and our involvement in it.

For the existence of Israel as an ethnostate, every Palestinian is a threat. A lot of people are all in favor of Israel, but against the government actions of ethnic cleansing. The truth is, the ethnostate is not sustainable without the ethnic cleansing. You can't accept one and expect it not to lead to the other. An ethnostate is never a justified goal, and that's always been the goal of zionism as a practical movement.

And I know why this exists. We've had two millennia of persecution. Antisemitism is one of the oldest forms of bigotry. And we just experienced an attempt to industrially exterminate us, we lost millions, including from my own family. We want shelter and safety and the ability to defend ourselves. I just can't see that as justification for what we did and continue to do.

You can look up our human rights abuses, but personally, there were moments that hit me. When I saw a whole warehouse of mail intended to reach Gaza, mail that's been kept from them for years, including items like wheelchairs, in such bad conditions that some envelopes got moldy. I still think of the people who spent all that money to get a wheelchair and were prevented mobility because we decided to hold their mail.

I watched the biggest apartment building in Gaza collapse under our bombs and I cried thinking about the people inside, and about the potential survivors and everything they lost.

I watched our people beat up the pallbearers at the funeral of Shireen Abu-Akleh, a Palestinian reporter. They almost dropped the casket from all those beatings. They were no threat. They just carried her. There was no reason to hurt them.

On the news, after Shireen Abu-Akleh died, the description of the Palestinian response to her death was that they're "חוגגים על המוות." The literal translation is that they're celebrating over the death, but that's not what it means. The meaning is that they're exaggerating their pain and their grief. They're acting, pretending, milking the injustice of it for show. And that's a common Israeli narrative, that Palestinians make a big deal out of things and pretend to suffer more just to make us look bad. We've dehumanized them to the point where we don't believe their grief.

And before all of this, growing up, I saw what the "us vs them" mentality caused in children. I grew up in Kiryat Arba and the population there is very strongly zionist. It's a settlement. It's largely Dati Leumi (national religious? I'm not sure how to translate, dati means religious and leumi means national). Over there I saw children as young as six cheerfully talk about joining the military and killing Arabs. I saw a kid throwing chocolate past the electric fence separating us from them, and laughing when a small Palestinian child went looking for that chocolate, calling her a pig. I saw my high school classmates questioning if they should help the family of a six-months-old baby, first demanding to know if the sick infant is Arab.

The Israeli left has a bit of a slogan. הכיבוש משחית. The occupation corrupts. It means that being an oppressive force changes what we are. It ruins us. And I truly believe that. It taints so much about us and our culture, about our compassion and our ability to have solidarity with other humans. Many principles that kept us safe in diaspora are used now to harm gentiles living under our control, and Palestinians suffer most of all.

So these are the reasons I'm antizionist. I hate what we do to Palestinians. I hate what it does to us. And more fundamentally, I'm against colonialism.

[rey-jake-therapist]

I love how no matter how much Charlie Vickers tries to stay out of the shipping stuff, ultimately he is the one who ends up contributing to it the most (his cognitive dissonance and trying to handle PR is hilarious to watch). And I say this as not even a shipper but a casual enjoyer haha

He didn’t get to see Morfydd acting as Sauron-playing-Galadriel while on set (he was in hair&makeup getting back to being Annatar after filming his Halbrand bit). So after seeing her performance during the finale screening, he was like, of course it was interesting to see how she interpreted my performance as Sauron but I would give her a few pointers (I’m paraphrasing).

Mind you, Morfydd was playing Sauron-pretending-to-be-Galadriel as smug, all smirking and twinkly eyes, and slightly annoyed and condescending when Galadriel continued her attack. So what feedback could Charlie even give, hmm? That Sauron should have been more emotional? Vulnerable? Interesting indeed. 2x08 could have been better but it’s fascinating still.

I always say that for someone who insists that Haladriel is not romantic, at the end of the day he's the one who describes them in the most romantic way. And his discourse has very much evolved, as he went from "Nope, they're not romantic at all and I hope it will be clear for everyone that it's not!" (I recently found an old interview where he said almost exactly that *crying*), to "I mean, after all, why not ? There's nothing in the lore that goes against it, and it's really cool that people ship it even if I don't see them that way, so just 'ship away' yay !" in the span of a year or two, so... Who knows, maybe next year he'll be like what Mads Mikkelsen is for Hannigram, and will profess Sauron's eternal love for Galadriel ?

I'm kidding of course. But the evolution of Charlie's discourse is certainly the result of a change in the PR campaign orchestrated for TROP. They also went from "No, no romance here ! Galadriel and Halbrand were friends, it was all platonic !" to "Sauron really loves Galadriel" and "Galadriel was obviously in love with Halbrand". And now there are also the social media managers who keep ship baiting ever since the finals came out. That's why I generally don't take anything that actors say seriously: they are trained to lie, to stay vague, to not engage in theories and shipping but also not to discourage them, etc. Also Charlie has proved to be a very good liar in the past, like when he said he "didn't play it that way" with Miv while Miv confessed it was actually his idea to make it "more ambiguous".

I don't remember the part where he said he could give Miv a few pointers, just that he trusted her to do a great job because she's such a fabulous actress :) And also that he found interesting, that it was how she saw him play Sauron.

I think she nailed it personally. Even disguised as Halbrand, Sauron didn't show any sign of vulnerability of emotion... To the point that many of us thought he was mocking her feelings for Halbrand. Now I tend to think that he really just wanted to make the point across that they weren't as different as she claimed, but the way he repeated his speech from the log scene, but without any of the emotion his voice and look expressed then... It was a bit painful to watch, really. The only moment he showed some genuine emotion was after he stabbed her !

So, since he played Annatar/Halbrand this way, it made sense for Morfydd (and Charles) to keep that line, imho. I have no idea what points he could have given her. She seemed perfect to me ;)

[angel-in-your-basement]

hey I hope this isn't too personal but your blog kinda made me realize I'm a sadist and (possibly?) a domme? having lots of feelings about this revelation so I kinda have an odd question as like: how does one get over like cognitive dissonance with regards to self conception? sorry if that's worded weird but like, I'm a huge massive softy with like, hyperempathy type brain nonsense so its kinda hard to imagine myself actually like *as* that kinda person. I'm aware soft-domme type stuff exists but idk like how to put it together in my head? sorry if this is a lil incoherent I just woke up lol. thank you for your kink education stuff and I hope your weekend goes well ^w^

(also any general starting out safety tips are greatly appreciated cuz ngl I'm very in over my head and wanna nip any hazards in the bud before I try experimenting)

Hi there! Not too personal at all, I’m happy to talk about stuff like this. I meant to answer this sooner but I’ve just been too damn busy irl, so here I am now!

When we are presented with new information and our beliefs are not making sense anymore, it’s time to sit down and reevaluate those beliefs. If you haven’t already, I would go look at this post, which goes into more depth about shame and questioning ideas about kinks. Since that post covered shame, I won’t go into depth on here, but we are going to talk about beliefs.

Why does this happen?

What is generally happening in cases like you’re talking about, is that we have formed ideas about ourselves (ex. “I am a big softy + hyperempathetic person”) and about the world (ex. “Sadists are tough/mean/scary/whatever”), and then we create logical conclusions based on those ideas (ex. “I couldn’t be a sadist, because I am soft and not tough/mean/scary”). Which works fine until we get new information that contradicts our conclusions.

What do we do?

When that happens, and we want to resolve it, we gotta find some flexibility in those beliefs! In your case, this might look something like this:

What is “that kinda person”, and exactly what parts don’t fit for you? What parts do fit?

Where did the “that kinda person” idea come from?

Is this always the case? Are sadists 100% like that?

What might someone look like who was very empathetic and ALSO a sadist? How do you feel about the idea?

Why might it actually make sense that someone empathetic would be a sadist?

The whole point here is get a good idea of where the conflict is, why it’s a conflict and then looking for areas of flexibility.

I can’t answer those questions for you, but here is a couple things from my experience that may be useful. I have known a lot of sadists, and just like every other group of people, they vary widely, but my favourite sadists have always been the people who are big, empathetic teddy bears who want to take care of me and coddle me just as much as they want to hurt me. I, myself, am like you, where I am very empathetic but I also very much enjoy psychological sadism.

Part of it, too, is that it just takes time to warm up to these new ideas, and you don’t need to go straight into the hardcore stuff. You can integrate sadism with basically any other kink, and sadism can look a ton of different ways. If it’s more that you like the idea of seeing someone struggling or being afraid, then even stuff like giving someone pleasure or taking care of them can be sadistic. And if you’re more into the actual act of inflicting pain, then you can do it in ways where people are enthusiastically encouraging you the whole time, if that’s what you need. You can also be a sadistic sub! Honestly, I think that’s the wonderful thing about kink - there’s a million ways to mix and match, and cater your experiences to exactly what you like.

Re: starting out safety tips, I think there’s already lots of good resources on this, so look into things like negotiation, safewords, SSC/RACK, red flags, etc. This post is already getting long so I’ll just say one thing that I don’t see talked about enough.

When you’re exploring new stuff and especially new relationships/dynamics, it’s very easy to get swept up by the emotions of it, particularly if you’re a people pleasing type person. All of the bad experiences I have had have stemmed from this - from being too excited and not being able to look at the situation rationally. So imo, it’s important to have clear boundaries for yourself (i.e. I will not do any sex stuff with someone until we have talked about xyz), and to have a plan to keep yourself safe that works under the assumption that you will likely be too enamoured to want to pull yourself away from the dynamic. Having platonic kinky friends really helps with this stuff! What all that actually looks like is a whole other discussion, so I’ll save that for another day.

[that-ari-blogger]

Sweet Victory (Clouds On The Horizon)

Ok how am I supposed to discuss this episode?

Clouds on the Horizon is fascinating from a thematic and analytical perspective. I.e. I could discuss how it implies tone or how it uses that to discuss the ideological conflict between change and stagnation. I could discuss how this episode both proves and disproves my point about genre being nonsense.

Or, I could talk about a single, twenty second moment and what it means on a scale so much wider than the show itself.

The question is, what do I do?

Both. I’m going to attempt to talk about both.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (The Owl House)

“I'm gonna spend more time with my kids, get to know them. Things are gonna change after the Day of Unity.”

When I recommend this show to people, I recommend Clouds on the Horizon, and not actually for the scene you are thinking about. I recommend it for the conversation that King has with Alador.

Because Alador has been neglectful. He’s had a reason to be, sure, but that doesn’t change his actions. The man has missed all of his children growing up, not out of malice, but because he was going to do it later.

A dad sitting on a swing set he made years and years ago. He's reminiscing about times gone by, but those times never happened. He is alone with an empty part of his life.

Recently, the Nebula creator 12tone released a video about Henry Chaplan’s Cat’s In the Cradle. I believe it is also on Youtube so here’s a link to that.

The song is about a father never having time for his song and is relevant to Alador for obvious reasons.

It’s detached, and as 12tone explains, cognitively dissonant. The miracle of giving birth is not only described absent mindedly, but underscored by music that doesn’t convey much emotion. However, that “much” is doing some heavy lifting, because the song is nostalgic, and the moment the father realises he’s missed his ch

ance, all that emotion comes crashing through in the form of regret.

There’s also the chorus which reads like a nursery rhyme or a parable to make it clear that this song is something to be learned from.

“Let’s just say there’s not going to be an ‘after’ to the day of unity.”

Do you see the point I am making?

Alador messed up. He was always distant because he completely misunderstood how relationships work. Time is finite, people are like plants. They need sustenance, you need to take care of them. Give them sunlight, leave them alone when they need it, protect them from pests, maybe sing to them once in a while.

There isn’t going to be a later, Alador has just lost a large section of his life and that is time that he can’t get back. He has to start again, and the conversation with Amity at the Brawl was a start, but this man needs to realise what is holding him back.

I feel like Odalia gets a lot of attention for being the worst, and Alador gets praised for getting out of that relationship, and I think that is warranted. But it is incredibly difficult not only to realise that you messed up, but to stop and regroup and try something new.

At the start of 12tone’s video, he discusses the vibe of the song, and he does it in a very specific way.

“That feeling, not of loss exactly, but of having failed to build anything worth losing in the first place.”

Emptiness. That’s Alador’s emotion here. Emptiness. He did everything for his family, but they didn’t need everything, they needed him.

I really like the contrast in this scene. Alador and King discussing fatherhood from different perspectives, and neither of them knowing much about it at all. King just had the piece of information that could kick Alador out of his stupor.

Contrast that with the parental relationship of Eda and Luz demonstrated on the balcony.

There is a thematic parallel between the two scenes, that being the idea of change and future events. This season is about what happens next, and while that is a constant throughout this episode with the overt planning and scheming for what will be a chaotic 24 hours, it is made most obvious by Luz with her Palisman.

“I got to decide what my future looked like when I chose to be a witch, and I want them to have that option too.”

Luz is a paragon hero. I have discussed this before in relation to Monkey D Luffy, but I feel the need to restate it. Luz giving her Palisman a choice isn’t an active decision on her part. It’s not a conflict whether to pursue freedom. She just does it because why would she do anything else.

We see a lot of stories with moral quandaries and it’s a nice contrast to have a character for whom there is a correct answer and who is not going to budge on this matter.

Although, wind back the clock a bit. I said that Eda and Luz have a parental relationship, and there is something important here.

Eda views Luz as a child, Luz views Eda as a peer.

They really like this shot, don't they? They keep coming back to it, as if they are making a point. But what?

The Bildungsroman isn’t quite a genre. It’s a literary structure that blurs the line. It’s essentially a coming-of-age story with extra steps that aren’t important right now.

The point is that up until this episode, this series was nominally a Bildungsroman. It wasn’t, but it made attempts to look like one.

Luz has been growing up and maturing throughout the series. She has been learning that the world is more nuanced. But a key idea in The Owl House is that the stories don’t just stop. Characters keep going.

A key thing when you are a parent is that eventually your kids will grow up. And I can’t speak for any parents who read this, but as someone who was once a child, I find it is nice when I am treated with the dignity befitting someone who isn’t about to do something incredibly stupid.

Let me rephrase. I am about to do something incredibly stupid, but I know what I’m doing.

That specific wording is key here. I know what I am doing. I may not know what will come in the future, but I am cognisant of at least my own actions.

I don’t think either Luz or Eda understand that in the same way I do, and while I only pretend to be omniscient, I do think I am right about this. I think Eda believes Luz is still a child and therefore still needs to be taken care of as such, rather than taken care of as an adult. She’s partially right, but Luz is more mature than Eda is giving her credit for.

Meanwhile, Luz can’t tell the difference between knowing her own actions and knowing everyone else’s. She thinks she has to be the hero, and she doesn’t.

I started this series by discussing Luz and Belos as parallels, and this is what I mean. Bellos believes the world is simple, and will do everything to keep it that way. Luz believes the world is simple, and will do anything to fit within it. They are both wrong, but they both think that they need to do what they are doing. The difference is that a) one of them is trying to do a genocide and the other is trying to stop that, and b) one is capable of seeing the world differently and is only falling back temporarily in her darkest hour.

That’s going to come back next episode, but for the moment, Eda.

“Isn't it cool we get one last adventure together?”

Eda has consigned herself to death once again. This episode has been going out of its way to show these two are not in the best place mentally to imply a question in the next episode, which was going to be, I remind you, the final episode of the series.

This is the third time they use this shot. Did they only set up one camera or sommat? What is this?

I think the title of the episode and the imagery of this scene are important here. If you are walking in a straight line, eventually you’ll stop being able to see clearly because things are too far away, but there is also a point where things disappear.

That’s the horizon. You don’t know what will happen that far in the future, but here is something crucial.

Just because you can’t see yourself over that point, doesn’t mean you won’t get there eventually. It quite literally just means you can’t see, and not knowing about something doesn’t make it cease to exist.

I have memory issues. That doesn’t mean my phone ceases to exist every five minutes, it means I don’t know where I put it and just need to find it.

And with that, I think my discussion of this episode is complete. There’s nothing else that happens here. The episode is complete. You can stop reading now. That’s it. We’re done.

Gordon Bennet, that kiss scene.

This moment became a bit of a meme online because of how noticeable the increase of animation quality is. It’s jarring, and if the whole series was made with this quality, The Owl House would have been cancelled early in season one for financial reasons. This scene is really well animated.

In a piece of static artwork, such as a painting or a photograph, there are ways to draw attention to something. You can reduce the saturation of background details, you can put something blank behind your subject to draw it out, you can make something enormous in the frame. Or, you can make it more detailed.

The episode is going out of its way to draw the audience’s attention to a queer kiss, and I think that is important.

Activism is fun, isn’t it? You get a bunch of people together with homemade signs and you shout slogans at passers-by and the people who actually matter will change their minds overnight. Right?

No, actually. That’s not all there is to the world.

Morality is a tool of convenience for the rich and powerful. In truth, all that matters when you have everything is keeping it. Often, it’s a power built on either ignorance or complacency of the public. After all, the best way to get away with something is just to not tell people you are doing it. That’s what the shouting and sign waving is for, it’s to raise awareness, or to force a reaction. That works sometimes, but there is a problem.

In my experience, if you are confronted, your immediate response is to fight back. It doesn’t matter how right I am, if I’m an asshole, you will disagree with me on principle. Which is why, in my opinion, the best way to achieve social change is through storytelling.

It is important to me that The Owl House is a queer story, but it is just as important for that motive that it is also really good. I think The Owl House is really well written, and so did enough people that Disney brought the series back after cancellation.

The series is popular, and right in the heart of that is a queer couple and a queer kiss. The queer love story is made inseperable from the rest of the show, and that means that, as far as analytics are concerned, the show’s success and its queerness are the same thing. Disney had to bring the show back, and it had to bring back a queer story. The show proved that queer stories are just as marketable as any other, and that any argument for the contrary was based fundamentally in homophobia.

We all knew this, in the same way that we all know how Diana really died, but The Owl House looked capitalism in the face, got knocked down, and got back up. The Owl House won, if only partially, and a twenty second scene with a kiss and an intentionally ridiculous line became the centre of that.

Cycling back to the theme of moving forwards then, The Owl House cleared a way for the next generation to keep moving. It only got a three-episode final season. That was the price it paid for progress and the compression shows. Besides that, Disney is still heavily limiting queer shows.

But if a silly little show about a girl who wanted to be a witch can make such a massive stride forwards, what could the next generation do?

I have stories that I am working on that are fundamentally queer in theme, and if those can make half as much progress as The Owl House did and is doing, I will credit that to Dana Terrace for showing me it could be done.

On a different level, this was a show that looked at its audience and showed queer people just being. It showed bigotry as inherently villainous but also inherently based on stupidity, and it showed that it is possible to not just be queer but be queer and happy.

Some kids needed that, and judging by the state of Tumblr, some adults needed it as well.

Final Thoughts

One more episode of season two to go. King’s Tide. That’s an episode with a reputation.

Stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[bluedalahorse]

Here's a random YR ask for you:

As a writer, what would you say are some of Sara, August and Felice's core characteristics/essential building blocks? (Feel free to do Wilhelm and Simon's as well if you'd like!) From a canon perspective, but also from the perspective of a fic writer?

What a wonderful ask! Thank you for sending it. This made me think a lot about what I do to develop characters in a story more generally. Then I had to put those techniques into distinct categories. So what I’m going to do is explain the categories first, then move on to how I think about these categories for each character.

I just did Felice, Sara, and August, but I could do additional characters upon request if other people wanted. My askbox is still open!

On to answering the ask. Here’s some things I try to keep in mind more generally when writing any character in a fic…

Desire lines: a story is driven by what a character wants. This want often comes into conflict with what a character fears, or what they believe to be true about themself that isn’t quite true. What a character wants will determine what they do over the course of the story and the different scenes that will transpire as they try to get it. One of the trickiest things about desire lines is that you have to think about them on both the abstract and the concrete level, which determines how those desires show up internally and externally.

Bodily and sensory experiences: every character has a different body and a different experience in that body. Part of these experiences are going to be external—how other people respond to them because of their race, gender expression, perceived ability, etc. These experiences will also be internal. An important part of making a story gripping is sitting close to your viewpoint character’s perspective, and you can bring a reader closer to a character by bringing them into that character’s body. It’s also a good way to reinforce how a character is feeling their emotions.

Contradictions, rationalizations, and sources of cognitive dissonance: This is a fun one! I think sometimes we fall into the trap of trying to make characters too logical, because we hear that characters should be consistent. The reality is though that people tend to run on their own internal logic, and that sometimes internal logic is inconsistent or hypocritical or complicated, and we spend a lot of life trying to process all that. Leaning into the weirdest parts of a character’s internal logic, instead of trying resolve everything or smooth it over right away, is part of how you make a character unique. You can also deepen your understanding of a character’s internal conflict by doing this.

Mentor texts: My writing life changed dramatically when my writing teachers encouraged me to start looking at stories I liked and studying their craft techniques so I can experiment with using them in my own work. In fanfiction, this will mean studying the source text you’re making fanfiction about, but I don’t think you *only* have to study the source text. Like if a book you read reminds you of a particular character in YR and you love that book, you can study that book’s pacing or voice or POV or whatever to get an idea of how you’d tell their story.

On to each of the three characters…

Felice

Desire lines: Canon tends to be somewhat vague about Felice’s desire lines, but if I had to pick, I’d say her desires line up with living an authentic life that is true to herself, and secondarily, achieving justice through discovery of the truth. Felice concretely goes after these desires by pursuing a friendship with Sara, trying to figure out who releases the video, changing how she wears her hair, telling the school inspectors what really happens at Hillerska, etc. I don’t think she has to stick with these desires in a fanfic, but they can inform a new desire I might assign her. For instance, if I was writing a fic where Felice wants to fall in love and get into a long-term romantic relationship, I think I’d build upon her canon journey by having her grapple with who she becomes in dating situations, and what kind of relationship feels authentic to her. Her interest in justice and the truth might also lend itself to a storyline where she learns to advocate for herself in a partnership.

Bodily and sensory experiences: Felice knows she is going to stand out in most situations and be noticed for things that others aren’t. Whenever we’ve seen her in canon, she’s one of the few brown faces in a room full of white ones. (Side thought: I’d love to read a fic where Felice is in a predominantly Black environment, so we can see how her thought patterns would shift.) She’s also rich, and has been raised by her mother to pay attention to physical appearance and brands of clothing and so on. As such, Felice is probably going to be constantly monitoring her body language and how she occupies space. She’s going to be thinking about how her clothes fit and her makeup and the messages they send. Because of the comments her mother makes about her weight, she’ll probably be self-conscious about her figure. We can also consider how Felice takes in information through her senses. Because she’s interested in cooking, she’ll probably be fairly attuned to the taste, smell, and texture of food, and pick up subtleties that others might not.

Contradictions, rationalizations, and sources of cognitive dissonance: In canon we see Felice breaking away from the world of Hillerska and its values, and it’s actually a process. Her parents don’t show up much in the show, but one headcanon I have is that they aren’t just doing the things they do to make Felice’s life miserable. I think on some level they believe they’re protecting her and providing her with the best possible life. Felice’s mother thinks Felice can marry Wilhelm not only because she wants her family to be related to royalty, but because she thinks it’s what’s going to make Felice happy and powerful. Similarly, Felice’s girl squad looks up to her and thinks she’s wonderful, and they have fun together, but they also microaggress her. I think a lot of cognitive dissonance Felice will have to push through surrounds these situations. I think she might tell herself “it could be worse” a lot. Like, sure her mom’s being a nightmare, but it could be worse, right? Felice’s friends sometimes say weird stuff about race, but it’d be worse in public school or if she lived elsewhere, right? I think Felice might have to push past this supposed safety of being a rich popular girl at Hillerska, to really articulate what she needs in life.

Mentor texts: My two favorite books that pair with my understanding of Felice are When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk and The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed. Both are focused on Black teen girl protagonists coming to understand their friendships, their families, and their relationship to power structures in the world.

Bonus Felice note: Felice can be a little messy sometimes! I think there’s this pressure to portray her as thoroughly wonderful, but we also know her closet’s a mess and she lies to get out of gym class and had a shoplifting phase. Next time I write her, I’m challenging myself to lean into a moment where she might be selfish or impatient or dishonest or a bad friend, because she can be even more wonderful when we can embrace her flawed moments too.

Sara and August go below the cut, because this is already very long.

Sara

Desire lines: In canon, Sara wants to be seen as independent and capable of handling things without Simon. She also wants to feel connected to other people, having grown up quite lonely and bullied by other children. Sara pursues these desires concretely by pursuing a friendship with Felice and a romance with August, trying to live on campus at Hillerska, etc. Again, we see her achieve these desires in canon, but we can evolve them and use them as a springboard for new stories. Like, we’ve seen what independence looks like at Sara’s current age, but what does it look like in university? Or at a job? What would it mean for Sara to seek out not just friendship but a community of fellow neurodivergent people? It’d be fascinating to take her newfound confidence and put it to the test in new situations.

Bodily and sensory experiences: Sara is small, and we see the way her smallness interacts with her being an observer or witness. Some people might perceive her as younger than she is because of her height. She has to look up at almost all of her other classmates and the people around her. Any romantic interaction between Sara and August is going to start as a negotiation between his tallness and her smallness—you can say a lot in a scene based on whether she stands on tip toes to reach him, or he bends down or picks her up to kiss her. Sara’s autism and ADHD are also going to play a role in how she experiences her body. She’ll need to take meds in the morning, and as her meds wear off over the course of the day, she might feel different stimuli pulling her attention and/or need to move her body more. Her meds might work differently when she’s on her period. She may also struggle with interoception, and not register signals from her body right away. Sensory sensitivities might come up for Sara, especially when she’s distressed. Smell and sound might get to her especially, since we see her using headphones to concentrate in school, and since her dad mentions fragrance-free laundry detergent. Because she’s a high masking autistic, she may have an internal monologue going in high stakes social situations—checking to see if she made the right amount of eye contact, wondering if her tone of voice was right for a situation, wondering why she can never smile the right amount for other people. Based on season 3, shame changes the way Sara carries her body. She’ll be feeling that internally, too.

Contradictions, rationalizations, and sources of cognitive dissonance: Sara’s living so many of them! Everyone else calls her authentic and praises her for being uniquely herself, but like any other teenager, she’s still figuring out who she is. She loves people who let her down and wonders why the love persists anyway. One of the reasons I enjoy Sara’s overall arc so much is she has to come to terms with the way life and one’s emotions are messy, and then she takes action without sweeping the emotions under the rug completely or disavowing them. To me, I think leaning into that beautiful mess instead of trying to make Sara’s emotions neat and tidy and fandom-approved is an important part of doing her justice. I’d say more, but I worry about triggering another round of Sara Discourse, and the sad thing is that there are still people out there who will read anything she does in bad faith. Sigh.

Mentor texts: When I write Sara, I find myself turning to 19th and early 20th century classics. Jane Eyre, the March sisters, and LM Montgomery’s protagonists go well with Sara’s balance of pragmatism and romanticism, as well as her outsider status. I also find Sara in Joy McCullough’s Enter the Body, a verse novel where Shakespeare’s tragic heroines retell their stories, and in the Into the Woods musical soundtrack. All of these mentor texts help me get at what’s going on with Sara internally.

Bonus Sara note: After receiving my AuDHD diagnosis, I created a guide of resources that fanfiction writers can use for approaching Sara. I’m linking it again in case anyone needs it!

August

Desire lines: Okay this is wild but… what if I told you August’s more abstract desire is a fulfilled sense of belonging and the opportunity to create a sense of belonging for others? August is notoriously bad at understanding his own desires, and even worse at figuring out how to go after them concretely and in ways that don’t bother or harm people, and at the end of the series he is perhaps just realizing he may have miscalculated when he’s in line to be crown prince. But I think one of the things I see as being core to his character is that he’s lonely and traumatized, and he’ll do anything to feel like he belongs with people and is safe somewhere, and part of that shows up in also trying to be a leader within the Hillerska community. Because if you’re running all the traditions, no one’s going to question if you belong, right? Hence his working so hard to be prefect and captain of the rowing team and de facto leader of the Society and planner of all the parties. He knows those things matter to him and to others. At the beginning of the series, August’s idea of how to create a sense of belonging for himself is deeply flawed. It rests more on the exclusion of many so that an elite few can feel included. Over the course of the series, we see him reevaluate that idea, and I would argue that his understanding of belonging is now changing. I think I’ve gone on a tangent here, so let me try to bring this to some sort of satisfying conclusion. I think any portrayal of August that tries to simplify him down to wanting power or status or the ability to make Wilhelm and Simon’s lives miserable… just isn’t going to hit as hard as an August with a deeply buried earnest need for belonging and love and safety at his core. Even when I wrote him as more of a villain with a deeply tragic ending, this was true.

Bodily and sensory experiences: August’s relationship to his body is so fraught! He’s tall and imposing and looks quite grown up, but this is a fairly recent development, and it wasn’t long ago that he likely looked like a sweet little kid and then an awkward gangly boy in his early to mid-teens. This is all happening very fast, and I think there’s a stark contrast between August’s internal little boyishness (and all the fear and earnestness that goes with that) and his apparent adult maturity. August is probably always physically coming up against stuff that reminds him how fast his life changed—it’s not just that his father died, it’s that he can now wear his father’s old clothes, and his mother is now smaller than he is and hugs from her probably feel different. Moreover, August seems to need to move his body to self-regulate. If you’re a writing a fic from his perspective, think about where he’ll feel his restlessness, and whether he’ll be tapping a pen or pulling his hair or trying to for a run to process it all. I think it’s worth considering all this history of August’s body alongside more obvious things like August’s disordered eating and exercising, and whatever he feels after standing naked in front of the third years. As someone carrying a lot of complex trauma, he’s probably hypervigilant, with sensory sensitivities to go with that.

Contradictions, rationalizations, and sources of cognitive dissonance: We could be here all day, couldn’t we? Like Felice, August is supposed to be benefitting from the system he’s in, but he’s not. He tends to assume he’s failing the system instead of the system failing him, and doubles down on trying to meet this elite idea that will only make him miserable. At the same time, August has an impulsive streak, so he sometimes acts first and rationalizes his more impulsive decisions after the fact. He does an initial round of harm when he acts impulsively, but then doles out additional harm through what he does when he’s rationalizing. In addition, August is trapped in a well of traumatic grief for both his father and Erik, both of whom gave him some sense of identity and belonging, but who also harmed him in their own particular ways. He’s sitting in the emotional dissonance of that every minute of the series. While August and Wilhelm have begun to grieve Erik together, August still doesn’t have anyone he can discuss his father with yet.

Mentor texts: Tana French is my go-to for all things August. She’s great with unpleasant but compelling characters, writing about social class, and unearthing buried traumas. Her settings often act as extensions of the characters and themes, and I feel like August-centered fics can develop and lean on emotionally resonant settings (Årnäs, Hillerska, the palace) as an extension of his internal landscape. I also want to mention the soundtrack to Fun Home as another inspiration, because of the way it handles grief and dysfunctional families.

Bonus August note: As fun as it is to write August doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, he can’t be that way all the time. I also write him doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, the right thing for the wrong reasons, and even the right thing for the right reasons. I also do not write him as a cold master manipulator or as someone with a high opinion of himself—internally August loathes himself to the point of self-destructive behaviors. Any story that acknowledges these things really captures the flavor of August, in my opinion.

[ominous-feychild]

Incorrect Quotes Tag

Rule: use this generator to create “incorrect quotes” for characters in your wip!

This tag was going around for a bit months back, but I'm reviving it!

WAVES OF MISFORTUNE

Zarina: I’m telling you, my team is competent. Cricket, rushing in: Zarina! Yesval tried to make pasta in the coffee pot and now it's broken!

Flavie: What are your adjectives? Yesval: …You mean my pronouns? Flavie: No, I know what your pronouns are! What are your adjectives? Yesval: …I dunno. What are yours? Flavie: Noisy and chaotic! Yesval: I’ve never had something go from making no sense to making complete sense so quickly.

Yesval: Do you ever get pre-annoyed? Like you already know someone is going to piss you off? Flavie: What? No, I— Benji: *enters room* Yesval: *jaw clenches*

Flavie: *gasp* Yesval: wHAT?? Flavie: What if soy milk is just milk introducing itself in Spanish? Yesval: *inhales* Tián, in another room with Benji: Why can I hear screeching?

Benji: ARE YOU- Tián: Fucking. Benji: KIDDING ME?! YOU- Tián: Fucking. Benji: IDIOT! Cricket: …What was that? Tián: Zarina banned Benji from swearing, so I’m helping him out.

Cricket, shakily: Please, just tell me what the book is about. The plot, please. Benji, reading an annotation on the cover of a book, unfazed: A subversive masterpiece. A deep and touching story. New York Times Bestseller. Cricket, now looking directly at Benji: Go fuck yourself.

Benji: Do dragons fart fire? Cricket: I don't know. Benji: I thought you went to college.

Cricket: Please pray for Benji. Tián: What happened to him? Cricket: Nothing, he's just very stupid.

Tián, at an awards show: Well, first of all, I’d like to thank Benji, the love of my life, for telling me Flavie was going to win so don’t bother to prepare a speech.

Tián: Wanna get out of here and grab a bite to eat? Benji: I don’t usually eat with losers. Tián: Neither do I but I asked you, didn’t I?

Tián: I love being right. It’s one of my favorite personality traits.

Zarina: What are you two arguing about this time? Benji: She's always using common phrases incorrectly! Flavie: Cry me a table, Benji.

Flavie: What do you guys do when you're stressed? Zarina: Try and calm myself down! Benji: Sleep. Cricket: Get myself into even more stress, so that the first reason for my stress gets cancelled out. Yesval: I don't.

Tián: Good night. Benji: Sleep tight. Yesval: Don't let the bedbugs crawl up to your ear and whisper threatening things that make you question yourself. Zhihao: Great, now Benji's crying.

Flavie, holding a gun: If the conspiracies about life being a simulation are true WHOEVERS CONTROLLING MY SIM I JUST WANNA TALK.

Flavie: Is this a good idea? Flavie: Probably not. Flavie: Do I care? Flavie: No.

Tián: I think Flavie is in trouble. Yesval: Alright. Struggling to give a fuck, if I’m honest.

Flavie: Benji, what are you doing tomorrow? Benji: Having my day ruined by whatever you’re about to ask me to do.

Benji: My goal is not to be the best, but to inspire someone enough to one day surpass me. Flavie: YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT EVERY TIME YOU BEAT ME AT CONNECT FOUR!

Flavie: Benji told me I was found in a KFC bucket next to a dumpster and I was rescued. Yesval: You probably were. Flavie: Oh crap, maybe that's the reason why. Maybe my lackluster feelings towards their fried chicken is because subconsciously I'm reliving the trauma whenever I see their trademark bucket. My brain and cognitive dissonance won't let me completely lie to myself and say I hate their food, because fried chicken is great and I want some now, instead it just steers me away. Thank you for helping to guide me towards this epiphany, perhaps now the healing can begin.

Zarina: What makes you all smile? Tián: Friends and Family. Flavie: Snacks. Benji: Victory and success. Yesval: Face muscles.

Benji: All the sudden I got a random burst of energy, and I think it's my body's last hurrah before it completely shuts down.

Benji, spraying a melted cutting board with a tiny water gun: We gotta cool this bitch down. Cool it down. Flavie: I actually just put the cutting board in the oven... Cricket, visibly confused: Okay, so they decided to put the cutting board in the oven? Benji, spraying Flavie: You FUCKING DUMBASS! Flavie: Dude, I forgot- Benji: OH MY FUCKING GOD! We're trying to make Chicken Alfredo right now, and you fucking MELT the cutting board in the oven at 400 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT!? Zarina: *Watching in complete confusion while trying to process this whole situation.*

Flavie: Why would anyone want to harm Benji? Yesval: Maybe because they met him?

*the TV is freaking out* Tián: Don’t worry, you have to treat an electronic like you treat a patient on life support. *unplugs the TV, then plugs it back in again. nothing changes* Tián: Yeah, that didn’t work with my grandma either.

Zarina: Ayo, what the FUCK is this?!? Yesval, sitting down, surrounded by corpses: I won Mafia, that’s what.

Flavie: *sharpens knife* We've got ways of making people talk. Flavie: *cuts piece of cake* Benji: ... Can I have some? Flavie: Cake is for talkers.

RISING FROM THE ASHES

Kieva, slamming pots and pans together to the rhythm of "Give it to me, I'm worth it": I didn't get no sleep cause a' y'all! Y'all never gonna sleep cause a' me!

Carmin: When life gives you lemons, what do you do? Sammy: Make lemonade! Carmin: No, throw them back up in the sky and make life deal with it’s own shit.

Kieva: Your smile looks forced. Carmin: That’s because it is.

Tián: I started school with straight A’s. Now I’m not even straight.

Kieva: I need life advice. Tián, sipping Gatorade and eating cookie dough: You came to the right person.

Tián: Do you ever think? Because I do not.

Caron: That's it, you're grounded! Tián, no adventures for you! Roman, no fighting for you! Taj, no stealing for you! And Al... oh gods, is there anything you love? Al: Revenge. Caron: No vengeance for you. Al: I was going to say "I'll get you for this," but I guess that's off the table.

Tián: And if you have any suggestions, please put them in the suggestion box. Kieva: That’s a trash can.

Mei: Are you this rude to everyone?! Carmin: Yup. Carmin: Don't think you're special.

Carmin: You’re kind of a pushover, aren’t you, Mei? Mei: … I’m sorry. Carmin: See!? That’s exactly what I’m talking about!

Mei: Do you mind if I slyly mention that you’re single? Carmin: Do not do that. Mei: You won’t even notice! Kieva, entering: Mei, you wanted to see me again? Mei: Carmin's single Carmin:

Mei: Did you win? Or just not die? Mei: Either way, hooray. Carmin: ...Is "no" a valid answer? Mei: The hooray is redacted and you frighten me.

Sammy: Of course I have a lot of pent-up rage, you fool! I've been the same height since I was twelve!

Police Officer: You have the right to remain silent. Sammy: I choose to waive that right! Sammy: *screams*

Flavie: So... who's the big spoon and who's the little spoon? Aditi: We're chopsticks! Flavie: Well... that's cute! Flavie: Does that mean you two snuggle together perfectly? Tián: No, it means that if you take the other away, the only thing the other is good for is stabbing.

Aditi: I’m so happy two of my favorite people are getting along now. Carmin: Uh, Tián and Taj are not getting along. Aditi: They’re not trying to kill each other. Carmin: You may have a point.

Zain: You’re alive. Roman: No need to sound so disappointed.

Elazi: Alright, so the vampire's gravestone is— Roman: Cenotaph. Elazi: What? Roman: It's only a gravestone if it marks the location of a body. A monument honouring someone whose body isn't present is a cenotaph. Elazi: I'm... not sure that's how it works if the body gets up and walks away on its own. Roman: There's a precedent for gravestones being reclassified as cenotaphs if the body is later removed and reinterred elsewhere. There's no rule that says the body itself can't do the removing. Elazi: Okay, but the body is very much coming back. That's kind of what we're here to accomplish. Roman: So it's a temporary cenotaph. Elazi: And naturally our greatest concern here is avoiding semantic ambiguity. Roman: Semantic ambiguity is how vampires get you.

Elazi: Do you want to know your gay name? Roman: My... my gay name? Elazi: Yeah, it's your first name- Roman: Haha. Very funny Elazi- Elazi: *gets down on one knee* And my last name. Roman: Oh- oh my god.

Tagging (no pressure!): @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet @illarian-rambling @ashirisu @urnumber1star

@the-letterbox-archives @48lexr @aalinaaaaaa @thecomfywriter @an-indecisive-nerd

@seastarblue @leahnardo-da-veggie @world-of-iridensia

Banners from @saradika

[anamericangirl]

(1/2) So to that one anon. First of all, yes the removal of completely healthy tissue and Frankenstein-esk construction of some gross approximation of human genitals is, was, and always will be, mutilation. Second. Yes, despite the fact that you losers continually try derail conversation so that no one notices, There are children receiving procedures such as double mastectomies (literally just google Chloe cole. Or that creepy plastic surgeon who was bragging on tik tok about doing surgeries on minors and even telling these kids and their families to contact her if they can’t get the surgeries they want. There are more verifiable examples I could provide here, but I’m not going to write you a book of examples since you probably won’t listen anyway. Even if you say “those are isolated cases” it doesn’t make it any less disturbing) and lastly there have been many videos of doctors ( a lot of whom advocate for “gender affirming healthcare” and or hold high positions on boards and in organizations for these types of things) admitting that puberty blockers are not as safe and effortlessly reversible as y’all would have people believe, but rather causes a lot of long term damage such as infertility, losing the ability to ever achieve an orgasm, and the underdevelopment of sexual organs such as a micro penis in boys. Not to mention the other long term risks such as osteoporosis, vision issues, and brain swelling. And this isn’t me spitting this information after some convoluted game of telephone. You can watch videos of respected board certified doctors saying these things directly. A lot of this is info that comes directly from the fda, nhs, and literally organizations for trans “healthcare” a lot of which are specifically targeting children. And yet the argument is always “you shouldn’t prevent anyone no matter how young from accessing blockers, hormones or surgery! Stop talking about the damages these things cause you bigot! They need these things or they’ll kill themselves!” No one ever wants to actually treat these things. When you just go: surgery! hormones! etc, you are effectively putting a band aid over a gunshot wound. You don’t get to the root of the problem which is ultimately, weather you like it or not, a form of mental illness and or disorders. These people should in no way be demonized for being mentally Ill. It’s not their fault and they would never have asked for this but they need true psychiatric help. You wouldn’t give a girl with an eating disorder a gastric bypass if she said she was going to kill herself, but that’s effectively what we do to these people. The problem is that it’s never going to be enough. No amount of surgery or any other of these treatments will ever make it okay, not because “society is bigoted and won’t affirm me!” It’s because the individuals themselves feels a crazy amount of cognitive dissonance in their every waking moment, because they are living a lie and denying reality. There are perfectly happy trans adults like Blaire white and Marcus dib who are secure and confident in their transitions. Why? Because they have accepted the objective reality of their biology while just enjoying living their lives as the opposite sex. Giving irreversible “solutions” to children who simply enjoy activities society has decided doesn’t align with their sex, or who feel uncomfortable in their bodies at the single most uncomfortable time in a human life (childhood and adolescence, where you start from scratch attempting to figure out both the world and yourself, and just when you start to have it figured out, your body goes through all these changes you cant control and didn’t ask for) it’s bound to cause a lot of problems. The thing is though, statistically, (and feel free to fact check me on this one) over 80% of children who at some point experience gender dysphoria are rid of it completely upon finishing puberty. And the amount of trans adults who have some other underlying mental issues or are mentally ill in some way and don’t actually experience true dysphoria is astounding.

(2/2) cont. Depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, anorexia, asd, add, adhd, the list goes on. The statistics don’t lie, the amount of people who identify as trans and also have some other mental health issues is staggering. I have to say though, (putting aside the fact that they won’t believe me) I truly bear no Ill will towards these people. Living with mental health problems is hellish. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. In fact I find it disgusting that the medical system and such a large portion of society today (at least in the west) has just been blindly affirming them to the detriment of these individuals and the people around them. Medicalizing people for life is not the near perfect solution it’s touted as. Medically transitioning is not a “Try it and see how you feel,and if you don’t like it we can just pump you with more hormones and everything will be as it was” situation. That doesn’t solve anything. No one is born in the wrong body. That’s not the problem. The problem is that their minds are constantly at war with reality and they are suffering as a result. People not affirming their delusions isn’t what’s truly causing that. (Also big apology to whoever runs this blog, didn’t expect this to be this long)

No apology necessary because you are absolutely correct and said it better than I could! Anyone spouting out lines like "puberty blockers are completely reversible! No one regrets transition! Minors aren't getting surgery!" is advertising the fact that they've never researched this issue in their life (certainly not both sides) and are just repeating talking points they've heard.

Because the fact is there are several testimonies of people who received these surgeries as minors and being "isolated incidences" doesn't mean they don't count. It doesn't mean others haven't experienced this. It doesn't mean medically transitioning children is ok.

And while they want to talk about puberty blockers being reversible they don't have anything to say about the effects of those puberty blockers, big ones like infertility, not being reversible.

The very medical professionals they tell us to listen to are the ones confirming these things things so they're telling us to listen to people they obviously haven't taken the time to listen to thoroughly.

People shouldn't be demonized for having a mental illness and feeling like they are in the wrong body, but those feelings shouldn't be affirmed by doctors either, especially when those people are children. Even if the child really does have gender dysphoria you do more harm than good by affirming these ideas and mutilating their bodies, which, as you pointed out, does happen, whether people want to admit it or not.

[obsolescent]

(i’m not the previous anon) so do you think one day leon would snap? after years of seeing some of the worst things imaginable i don’t think he would be the most sound of mind

it would be possible for him to have a psychotic break, probably after one mission that went horribly wrong. how do you think he would act? or what he would do in regards to reader?

I’ve actually been playing around with that idea, though the more accurate description I would probably use is along the lines of a mental health crisis that he would suffer from.

I actually have a WIP for this scenario, but knowing me and how realistic I like to make Leon, I am trying my best to make it so. I’ve been working on it for a few months now, tweaking things here and there, but I’m?? Uncertain still.

Here’s some of my thoughts on it:

I do agree with you that it would be after a mission gone terribly wrong. One that just tears away at the foundation of his mental health, but I also think he would fight it? Scrambling to find answers. At the library, on the internet, he’d avoid telling others and try to do his own research on why he’s suddenly feeling the way he does. He may not make the connection due to, well, how long he’s done this. Like why now all of the sudden?

Now when you say snap, I definitely don’t see Leon ‘snapping’ in an aggressive/murderous way. If anything, more so (if it involves you) in a possessive manner (ie. wanting to keep you from danger, from the horrendous things in the world), which could lead to cognitive dissonance. I think he would try to compartmentalize all of this to try to keep a hold on it all.

As I said, he would probably keep it to himself but his demeanor would definitely be off, I could possibly see some irritability rising when he’s pressed on the matter. Though you may not be able to clue in on it for how well he hides it other than that. But I think that control would slip the longer the feeling’s there.

Honestly been thinking about getting mutuals’ opinions on how he would react mentally or physically to something like this. If you have any ideas please feel free to reach out!

This story would be delve into topics of depression, suicidal thoughts, and more. I would have links attached to the writing for ways you could seek help due to how heavy things could get in it.

[soullessjack]

so one of my other problems with babyjack is that the fandom just seems to have this sort of collective cognitive dissonance about it, in almost any context or discussion. like this post as probably my only standing example (bc it’s the only one to have gotten traction), there are all these tags about how babyjack leads to bad dean criticism, or how it’s nice in aus but they want canon complex jack, and like I’m not entirely disagreeing with that, but it is so fucking frustrating that people are still ignoring the actual problem with it and either only focusing on the most surface level issues that personally affect them or their corner of the fandom, or making up some point of acceptability for it that frankly isn’t theirs to make.

it’s the autistic experience of our struggles never being seen or cared about until they become other people’s inconveniences, and our voices being used to say something else entirely. when the main takeaway of that post is how the fandom’s treatment of jack being in a way he’s explicitly shown to hate being treated directly mirrors autistic people’s struggle for autonomy in the real world, I really do not need you to make it about how it makes your golden website boy dean look like a big meanie pants, okay? that’s definitely a part of it, but it’s not at all what we are talking about, and it 100% should not be the only reason you care.

and especially when the other takeaway is how this is just a smaller scale issue that comes from autistic infantilization, the absolute last take I want to hear is that you find that infantilization acceptable as long it’s an AU or something else separated from canon. believe me, I’m beyond glad more people actually prefer canon complex jack—like, I don’t think you guys understand that that is legitimately a rarity to find here— but the thing about babyjack is that the concept itself is inherently ableist, and directly relies on his complexities (and the representation he means for us) being removed and erased so that he can even exist in the context of those AU’s. It feels very… ‘have your cake and eat it too’ to me.

I’m trying not to sound angry or accusatory, but I am also tired of having to force civility on a problem that’s pretty much just an open secret thar everyone collectively ignores and beats bushes around solely because they prioritize #domesticdestiel over all. I mean, do you guys even hear yourselves sometimes? Like half of it just boils down to “Autistic infantilization is always bad, except for this one context where it makes my ship look domestic and redeems my blorbo,” and it’s getting really fucking annoying to have to constantly explain something that is not only painfully easy to understand, but is understood and actively ignored, and still play nice so that somebody out there might listen.

So many people will say they like canon Jack and want more of him from the fandom, and I more than agree, but motherfucker you have a blog! You have the tools! Be the change you want to see! He doesn’t have to be your fav or your blog thesis blorbo, but if you want it, you are literally fully equipped to make it! Write some meta, draw some fanart, whatever. Better yet, you could even stop engaging with and perpetuating content that actively pushes down on what you want and, I must reiterate, is actively harmful and ableist. If you want domestic silliness go right ahead, but you don’t need to resort to ableism to do it.

I don’t think I’m asking too much or asking rudely, and frankly I don’t even think I owe niceties to anyone when it’s a problem that has been openly ignored for 6 years and holds plenty of bearing in the real world concerning my identity and community and shit we face constantly. Outside of our screens, we are constantly fighting for autonomy and recognition and representation, and even to be seen as people. Online spaces, especially fandom spaces, are a huge source of escapism and support that we wouldn’t get otherwise. So for the love of god, please stop bringing that fight here.

[horizon-verizon]

Im not sure if you watched ep. 3, but I feel like they’re utterly destroying Rhaenys’ character. Season 1 Rhaenys I liked, but this season she is already feeling so oddly out of character. The fact they made her defend Alicent to Rhaenyra is crazy to me.

Also Rhaenyra begging Alicent for peace?? What’s that about?

And Ulf being Baelon’s son pissed me off so bad. They could’ve chosen any other of Jaeherys’ children.

This episode is why I’m boycotting the rest of this show.

Haven't watched. And I don't have the desire to, either. Wrote about Rhaenys in these posts when others talked abt her recently: #1, #2, #3. Pointed out some in-HotD character inconsistencies, I believe, in the first linked post.

Answer to your rhetorical question: It's sexism:

Male Gaze and HotD -- xenonwitch

Essentialism in Pacifist Women v Violent Men - rhaenyragendereuphoria

Alicent, rhaenicent, Fascism, and Sansa Stans -- rhaenyragendereuphoria

Why Rhaenicent is so Popular -- me/rhaenyragendereuphoria

Excuse me anon, I'm taking this opp to rant again.

I mean, yeah, this is really just the show's MO and has been from the beginning, I just think people didn't really think about the implications of some of the changes they made and what they meant about how these writers saw the project they were creating so now they're caught by surprise at the stuff here. It's kinda understandable bc you just want to enjoy stupid drama sometimes. But I felt that it would inevitably travel towards interpreting the actual book/orig story itself bc people kept using the "two canons" and "F&B is a historical document w/biased/sexist writers" even when they did read the book....which shows how they didn't actually read the book or understand what the purpose of the unreliable narrators & how they are there to get readers to try to read between the lines as best they can and not take some things (not ALL things!) at face value. The book is presenting the reader with the opp to see how susceptible they are to propaganda and we are supposed to work through a process of battling the cognitive dissonance it creates and/or see our own biases while arguing how Rhaenyra DID NOT deserve her fate (Doylistically/exegetically). How greedy and violent men have over generations assured the demise of themselves in their exclusion of women. Sounds trite to those who don't understand the implications.

Which is parse out the truth as best you can, recognize patterns or deviations/inconsistencies (& think abt why those are there) from such to do so, understand the cultural and character context to understand the likelihood of that what Septon Eustace/Mushroom/Munkun/others all tell the version of an event the way they do. And, with any literary text, look to syntax, vocabulary, the use of some figurative language, tone, the mood the language sets and for what reason? That Rhaenyra likely sat the Iron Throne when she took back KL, that can't be denied. That she was bleeding bc she was "cursed" & "rejected", bc she was so "obviously" not worthy of the throne? That's what Septon Eustace wanted you to believe, just as he wanted people to not criticize Aegon for being with a 12 year old girl by saying "she was of good status to be a paramour".

Back to how people use this fallacious argument abt 2 canons and unreliability--I felt that people would use this to then argue that HotD was actually "revealing" mysteries and hidden truths of F&B/AWoIaF, and that was proven by how people think of the 3 eggs Dreamfyre laid that became Dany's dragons. Now you got people believing that they are Syrax's depsite how F&B makes it so damn clear they aren't. And so now you got people arguing for Baelon cheating on Alyssa the same way some were arguing for Rhaenyra to not be the person GRRM wrote her to be...karma keeps receipts.

This show is a money-making, marketing project that seeks to deny the sort of sexism-commentary F&B was actually doing or willfully misunderstands it and most lore in order to make bucks off a rich world. Because people in real life do not take sexism seriously, thus they do not know or care to understand the basic "woman=human" "idea". People even take pains to deny it at the same level or close to racism. It is the oldest form of discrimination...except maybe ableism?

The sooner people realize and internalize all that, the sooner they will not be disappointed by this show and be more interrogative of it.

Me, I chitter over the slowly accruing hatred for it on Twitter.

[hero-israel]

I’m Afro-Indigenous as well as a mix of other things including NA Jewish and Palestinian. So I have a somewhat personal anecdote that could explain a little more into why Palestinian-Americans (imo MOST, not just some) are so unwilling to recognize indigenous American sovereignty and the (still ongoing) colonialism of our land.

The not-so-short answer is: they just don’t want to take accountability for their own actions and engagement in settler-colonialism, and they realize how hypocritical they sound when they screech at Jews being settled-colonizers while simultaneously doing the same thing. Sometimes they’ll try to defend this by saying they get a pass because the only reason they are on this land is because the evil Jews kicked them out. But that quickly falls apart when you remember that 1) majority of them are BORN Americans and not refugees (despite them claiming so), and 2) even if their parents or grandparents were actual refugees, being a refugee or fleeing persecution doesn’t stop you from being a settler-colonizer (this coming from their own logic that they use against Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries and after the Holocaust btw). So they are able to ignore their hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance by saying ‘we’ll colonization is done, so that means we aren’t hypocrites for willingly engaging in the same type of oppression we claim to be against!” and then they turn around a buy a house on indigenous native land while doing nothing to show solidarity to Native Americans other than to appropriate our Land Back movement while doing nothing to help us… get our land back. Im thanking I’ve met some Palestinians who are actually active in supporting Native sovereignty and have done tons of work to support Land Back, but the majority of Palestinians do not, whether they are leftist, liberals, islamists or communists.

And yes, many Jews are also not supporting Natives either. And that’s a problem. But Jews also don’t make a habit of saying people should be killed for being settler-colonists while simultaneously being one themselves. And their is much more similarities between Native American history, oppression and goals of sovereignty than Palestinian ones (despite what many claim). NTM the rhetoric Oalestinians use literally being the same rhetoric used to harm Natives. One off the top of my head is “the Jews / Natives were all died off/were expelled so long ago so it’s okay for us to keep their lands” which is super common and is literally the same rhetoric behind why the US considers multiple tribes extinct despite living people being apart of them, and why most Palestinians still refuse to even accept the fact that Jews still continued living in Israel and Judah even after they were expelled and colonized, just as a minority.

This is also where you get another one, the “they were colonized/expelled too long ago for it to matter today and others moved into the land so it’ll be unfair if we give it back to them (despite unjustly settling on and taking it in the first place)” which is one of the biggest reasonings anti-Indigenous people use to defend their opinion that Natives shouldn’t have sovereignty.

Anyway, the whole point is that they are essentially hypocrites and anti-Indigenous. They may use indigeneity politics to defend themselves, but that’s all they care about. I gave up trying to have any kind of support from the Palestinian movement here in the US when I went to a activist organization/meeting and had many of them say I was a zionist (before I even was one) for simply saying it’s not right of them to ignore Indigenous Americans while appropriating a movement (Land Back) created by us.

It actually hurts me a lot that they’re like this. I grew up closest to my moms side, which is the Afro-Indigenous and Palestinian side. It was even until last year when I began reconnecting to my Jewish family and ancestry (my dad was North African Jewish and Bengali-British) since it came from my dad and he died when I was young, so I had no one to teach me about it. So I grew up around Palestinians, so it’s really weird to be disconnected from that side and community now. But I can’t stand the anti-indigeneity and hypocrisy. I do the same with Jews and non-Natives and non-Blacks too, so I’m not a hypocrite, but thankfully it hasn’t happened that much in the Jewish community for me to fully disconnect myself. I literally went to a high school created by Jewish people (literally majority of the faculty were Jewish and the people behind the creation of it were all Jewish iirc) to teach social justice, and for the full four years they included Native American focused curriculum and took us to protests, powwows, indigenous activist groups and so on. So yea they’re much better at this whole solidarity thing 🤷🏾‍♀️

Thank you for that very detailed and personal insight. I am sorry that you saw firsthand what poor "allies" so many Palestiners tend to be, as they relentlessly redirect all attention from other causes (i.e. immigration, police brutality, climate change, Anne Frank...) to themselves.

[fischerfrey]

a psa regarding the upcoming release of hogwarts legacy:

disclaimer: the following is not targeted towards anyone in particular

this has been said a billion times and i’m getting kind of tired of saying this: no, buying and playing the game does not immediately make you a bad person or a transphobe.

however, if you do buy the game, you’re not being an ally to trans people. being an ally requires giving up things you don’t want to give up. it’s recognizing that your entertainment is not more important than the dignity and rights of trans people and the dignity and rights of jewish people, since the story seems to lean heavily on antisemitic tropes.

i really don’t want to hear your justification for why you buy or play the game, that’s your business. but if people don’t feel comfortable engaging with your content anymore, or have an opinion to share that makes you uncomfortable, then i want you all to know, from the bottom of my heart, it’s not trans or jewish people tearing this community apart.

i say this all as a non-binary person who is obviously still creating content for hphl era (and the hp universe at large, but that’s a whole other conversation). i got into hphl not really knowing any of the game’s context. i should’ve looked into the background more, but i saw people creating ocs for late 1800s and i ate that shit up.

i chose to be a part of this fandom. i chose not to drop harry potter once i realised what kind of person jkr is. that was my choice and everyone is entitled to make their own. but choosing to support this particular game, even after everything that has come out about it, is going to affect this small corner of the hp fandom that we have all created together. there’s nothing to be done about that.

however you feel about this issue, i don’t condone hate or harassment. there are discussions to be had here but i really, really hope we can have them in a respectful manner.

i love my hphl era ocs, and i’m not going anywhere. i might start using a different tag for my legacy-adjacent content though, since my story lines really have nothing to do with the game anyway.

i wanted to play this game so badly. i wanted it to be good. but i’m not buying it, even if the story line ends up not being as antisemitic as the trailers made it out to be (doubtful, but hey, it could happen). i strongly encourage engaging in some good, old-fashioned piracy if you want to try it out.

please watch this video, or at least the part about legacy itself (starts at around 2 hours and 13 minutes), if you have the time:

“i know many people say and feel like ‘well capitalism makes us all complicit in one way or another. why bother fighting this fight? why not buy this game if it makes me happy? rowling’s gonna rowling anyway, regardless of what i do.’ and it creates a cognitive dissonance in people. they realise jk rowling is causing harm but they don’t wish to feel like a bad person if they want to play the game. they want to be made to feel okay.”

“but what discourse like this does is try to comfort those who want to buy the game, to make them feel like they’re still good people if they support a system that causes harm, because they can’t fight it anyways. yet it ignores that you do actually have power. it tries to make you forget that you don’t have an obligation to buy the game. you don’t have to give it your attention.”

to reiterate: i don’t think everyone who buys and/or plays this game is a terrible person, but i do disagree with those saying that buying the game is a non-issue.

finally, there are so many good games out there that don’t support a terf or subscribe to antisemitic tropes!!! i know you all fellow gamers have loads of unplayed games on your devices or libraries just waiting for you to play them. maybe try those out instead. 

[letters-to-rosie]

talk revolution to me: arcane fanfiction playlist

there are few moments more exciting as a fanfic author than when someone makes something inspired by your work. in this case, we have a playlist made by @arrowdite, and in this post, because there were rationales for every song picked, I wanted to respond! the playlist is a work in progress, and this post is, too! thanks again, friend! 💖💖💖

check out the fic here!

1. Black Sheep - this is pulled from my regular Timebomb playlist. I think it fits the state we find Ekko and Powder in, regardless of the universe. Now that the truth is just a rule that you can bend / You crack the whip, shape-shift, and trick the past again

I really like the lines you pulled out on the past for this one. The vibe of the song, like sonically, is very Powder I feel, and the lines about the past really fit with how I just kind of drop the reader into the story, into Powder and Ekko's relationship in the main timeline, before I bothered to explain how they got like that in the first place lol. Their own lack of understanding about what really happened between them and the other's motivations when they were kids is such a big part of their arc, so these lyrics really fit, not just the ship in general but this... articulation, I guess lol, of them.

2. Run Wild - I imagine Powder listening to this song to hype herself up as she heads to The Last Drop in chapter 2. I think some of the lyrics in the chorus fit her when we first meet her, too: determined, but aimless. I’m on a mission and I won’t stop / No destination but it’s worth a shot

For two, she wasn’t going to go. She wasn’t. But then she got back to her apartment, dumped her bag out on the floor, and saw that stupid green eye staring back up at her. She has nightmares about green eyes, sometimes waking, sometimes sleeping. Her worst ones are the what-ifs—if she had just done something different that day, or any of the days preceding it, what kind of life would she be living? Some of the what-ifs hurt for their immateriality, while others make her happy for what she’s got. And with Viktor, the human manifestation of her meager impulse control, gone for the weekend, Powder put on some music, dolled herself up, and got on the move.

She'd be playing this while getting ready haha, dancing in her apartment and feeling angry in a way she can't express right. She really is wild in that chapter. And that aimless state is so important, because Ekko is kinda right when he says she's not offering any alternative, but that's not even what she's trying to do at that point. Plus, this song is just fun, and I feel like Powder would like it lol. I also really enjoy the Thutmose reference, bringing it back to Ekko!

3. Pathetic - Powder’s opinion of Ekko at this point in the story, revealed when he makes his first appearance in chapter 2. …It's been / 1460 days since we were alright / You're having trouble sleeping and I think I know why / 1460 days since we were alright / But now you're just pathetic, I said it

Okay, I just really like this one hahahahaha like?? I can't even describe what exactly it is about it, but after a couple listens, it just stuck in my head. But considering "pathetic" is a word Powder uses in their fight at the end of chapter 2, it gets that other layer of meaning. The irony here is that Powder doesn't know why Ekko has trouble sleeping—and in Ekko's POV, we see how different that night plays out to him. In her head, he's just this posturing villain, and he is like that a little bit, but she has no idea the cognitive dissonance she's about to inflict on this man. Until later, hehehe. It's also fun to imagine Powder dancing to this one with a hairbrush as a mic. I'm sure y'all get the vision.

4. Pieces Of The People We Love - A character song for Powder. She has lost a lot of people and carries their memories with her, across distance (Vi), change (Ekko), and even death (Vander, Tovan, Mylo, Claggor, her parents…). As much as it can pain her, she keeps those people close to her heart. I think this is one of her strengths. She may not know how to express it, but she has a lot of love to give. Like when her empathy is on display at the hospital; though she doesn’t know the people there, they get to her. She takes them with her. Decides to stop looking away. Start her club. In short, the pieces of the people she loves are what drive her to build a better future. And all our time together is tearing me apart / I can't hold you tomorrow but I hold you in my heart

I remember I was actually really nervous about writing Jinx as a main character, just because I tend to relate more to Vi in canon, but working on this fic led me to appreciating things that hadn't stood out to me before. Jinx literally keeps versions of the people she lost near her because of how heavily the trauma weighs on her. I wanted revolution!Powder to have some of that same energy. The song has this kind of anxious energy, and I feel like that connects well with how Powder feels throughout the chapter. She's really knocked off-kilter in chapter 3, and she has to decide how she's going to deal with not only what Ekko said but what she's going to do with these "pieces of people she loves," and that really is what motivates her. She takes off the blinders and decides to empathize with others. I'm like a proud mom lol I love her!

5. Memories - Chapter 5, Ekko and Powder’s reunion at the community center. How Powder remembers Ekko and how he appears to her now juxtapose each other in her mind’s eye. And it’s reciprocated: Ekko is baffled to see her. I imagine they’re both confused about how to rectify the discrepancy in their minds. My memories came back in the form of someone else / …Why won’t you love me now? Why won't you love me now? / …You shouldn’t be on your high horse, we’re not so stable anymore

Yeah, they were both very confused lmao. They both have very preconceived notions of who the other is, and they don't really take well to the disruption to that. I alluded to it in the notes, and he says it outright in chapter 20, but Ekko really thought Powder was following him lol. And Powder accuses him of stalking her, even though she's able to put together that he went to school in that neighborhood way back in the day and would probably have some connections in that part of the city. She's also very much on a project to knock Ekko off his high horse after he retaliates with that threat. But as the creator of this playlist pointed out in a comment on this chapter, Ekko's not the only one being self-righteous! Plus more Thutmose! Yayyyyyy (for those who might not know, he's one of the people who provides Ekko's voice for True Damage!)

6. Hard Times - Chapter 6, but applies to Powder’s whole situation. “Vi huffs. ‘You gotta stop being so hard on yourself, Pow.’ ‘Tell life to be softer on me.’”

Is this the time to admit that I fully fit into that stereotype that black people love Paramore? I have a friend who's black and Brazilian and apparently the stereotype travels lmao. But I actually hadn't heard this particular song before, and I really enjoy it! Another one for Powder to dance and have a crisis to. But the funny thing about the particular quote from chapter 6 that was pulled here is it was actually inspired by another song with kind of similar enegry? "Softer to Me" by Relient K, because I grew up during a time when "Sadie Hawkins Dance" and "Be My Escape" were big hits, and that band was pretty formative for my teen years. I used to listen to them and Paramore on playlists I made in the late 2000s, so the connection was really fun for me!

7. Same Soul - Another song pulled from my Timebomb playlist. This one is kinda meta. They’re in a different universe, literally, since this is an AU, so it’s like they’re meeting again in different bodies. But it also works in-universe, since they’re meeting again after so much has happened and they don’t recognize who they were to each other. Figuratively—but also, Ekko’s eyes are green now. Would your heart know if I met you in a brand-new set of bones? / …I’m just somebody that you used to know

Also just really love this one, particularly the chorus, and especially the one after the bridge. I also thought of it in connection to Powder's feelings about Vi and meeting her after her years in prison. There are places where I make it explicit that Powder's feelings about Ekko and Vi are interlinked in some ways (particularly the poem at the end of chapter 17). This also fits well with Powder's gradual realization of how different Ekko's life is and how he has different people in it, which comes out strongly in chapter 12.

8. Starboy - This song makes me think of Revolution-verse Ekko. He’s under so much pressure and has to present a particular image to be effective in a lonely, high-stakes role he doesn’t like to play. And from Powder’s perspective, he does certain things just to hurt [her]. Look what you’ve done / I’m a motherfuckin’ starboy

Ekko definitely plays mind games. It's one of the traits I pulled out of his Arcane portrayal and turned up to eleven to make an "antihero" version of him. The first verse of this song I feel like connects to that part of him, and the second connects to the part that is tired of the games that are part and parcel of the shimmer business and take up so much of his time to push back against, even if he dismisses them as uncreative (and even if that comes back to haunt him). Everything he does is pretty much calculated to keep that inner universe steady and keep his head on amongst all Silco's allies as he comes into that more... administrative role. And Powder does see him as having particular tools to hurt her because of their history, as well.

The mac and cheese is baked as it should be. It is Powder’s sole consolation in this stupid, awful world. She ought to be able to enjoy the scene in front of her, but she can’t. Every time she interacts with Ekko, she comes away feeling like trash. Their history gives him a unique ability to make her miserable, and she knows, somewhere deep in her bones, that Ekko isn’t going to let this lie. Their little peace is over, and as long as she keeps coming to the community center, she’ll likely have to prepare for battle on a regular basis.

9. Undo - Chapter 8, the argument on the bridge from Powder’s perspective. You've been pouring gasoline in your living room / Light a cigarette while you complain about the fumes / Who are you to talk? / …Oh, come on, just say something / No, go ahead, tell me, what do I need?

Some of these lyrics kind of parallel a song I am trying to advance as a timebomb song, "Percogesic" by Gallant. But I think the lyrics here— You're so shook when I look right past you So surprised you don't get an answer Guess no one told you, now I told you We're not living in the forties Ain't it weird to feel small 'n stuff? —connect very nicely to Powder not answering Ekko's question at the end of chapter 8, even though it doesn't surprise him. He will get an answer, just not directly, and that's the surprise! But the lyrics in general remind me of them, how Powder is unwilling to give him that power over her; even though Ekko's presence does make her upset, he's far from the only problem she has. As she says at the end of chapter 9, "...she will handle Ekko. But first, she has to handle herself."

10. < Coping Mechanism > - Powder lost a lot the night of the explosion, including Ekko—from her perspective, willingly—to Silco. She sees Ekko as an adversary, but it’s because she feels betrayed. Now that he’s back in her life, she’s forced to look at some ill-timed big feelings in chapter 9. I've wasted so much time / Hating myself for trying / ...Had your eyes locked on someone else / No, you couldn't help it / Or could you?

Somehow this playlist beat me to announcing my headcanon that revolution!Powder would be a Willow fan, haha. Their energies match in my head. Plus, bi solidarity! But anyway lol, the song mentions voices in her head, which is very relevant for chapter 9, and there's this sense that the lyrics are questioning whether the situation in the song is predestined or not. I also like these lyrics for them: Fun fact, I really wanna fuckin' make you cry It just isn't right, so enticing just like you Mastermindin' every fight Rivers flowin' from my eyes No emotion from your side Fun fact, I'm the worst, it's true Fun fact, I learned it all from you I need a coping mechanism now, every night

11. An Honest Mistake - Chapter 9. Powder’s Anniversary feelings catch up to her. My old friend / I swear I never meant for this / I never meant— / Don’t look at me that way / It was an honest mistake

Powder really does see the accident as an honest mistake (because it was!!!), and I haven't written it yet, but there's a reason Powder doesn't see Ekko's expression in the scene where he finds her mid-breakdown. She's assuming he's looking at her a certain way, and she doesn't even know. I love drama lmao

12. Our Own House - Chapter 12, the porch scene. Powder’s group becomes official. It’s the culmination of and launching pad for so many things in Powder’s life, and for Powder as a character. We built our own house, own house / With our hands over our hearts / And we swore on that day / That it’ll never fall apart

The porch scene!! It really solidifies Powder's friendships with her club, and it so much of the politics I've been trying to explore is about that "own house" building. There are a lot of things we can't change, but building solidarity with people around us and working to build something that will take better care of us than the current system does is certainly a place to start. This gets a nice theoretical resonance in a book I recently read for class, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò's Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). The theory is doing a lot lol, but he advances it in the hopes of putting forward this idea he calls "constructive politics," which is about building new rooms and houses, as he puts it, where we can create more equal ways of relating to each other and the world. A tall order, but I like to dream big. He also talks about how Pedagogy of the Oppressed was used in the liberation struggles of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and that is just super fucking cool haha.

13. Zanies and Fools - Chapter 12. The porch scene is such a pivotal moment for Powder, it deserves two songs. It may sound corny, but together, anything really is possible. (This song is a real-life reminder of that truth for me and I get emotional nearly every time I listen to it.) This song also recounts how Chance the Rapper met his future wife and I’m not saying that’s Ekko and Powder but I’m not not saying it 👀 I'm so powerful every time I look at you / No  memory of anything I couldn't do / …Everything will go right as it can / It's possible

It's true! If it weren't, there wouldn't be so much effort put into preventing solidarity on the part of the powers that be. If y'all will allow me a theoretical moment, there's this part in the Bible that says the wisdom of God runs contrary to people's wisdom, and I think that's interesting if we think of that in terms of how often we're told that humans are rationally selfish and human nature is greedy and violent and everything else. Acknowledging this is considered common sense, but we also know from practical experience that people are also often kind and generous, and we can choose to lean into that and cultivate it. Believing anything is possible is considered foolish, but how else do we change things, you know? Outside of the connection this could have to the porch scene itself, there's also a link to the way that Ekko sees Powder as constantly pushing what he thinks is possible, which is why she inspires him so much. They're so cute. Help lol

14. Montage - Chapter 13. Powder reminisces about the childhood she shared with Ekko. Tears soaked, we still make each other laugh / Fabricating a montage of our love / All the things we were gonna do fade away / We grew up and apart and we’re not the same

This one is a little funny to me just because it's so different from the song I chose to quote at the start. But it's a nice little flip side, because where I had a more... I almost wanna say cynical approach to that chapter, not necessarily in the content, but because I was the only person who knew where that moment would lead, it was almost like I was poking fun at it, but that's not how it is for Powder and Ekko. And she does make him laugh! That's how she gets through to him. The idea of the montage pairs really nicely with the play and the curtains that frame Powder's reminiscing in the chapter.

15. Let Me Down Easy - A song from Ekko’s perspective of chapter 13. Ekko expects Powder to tell him to fuck off forever when he offers, but it’s not what he wants. Despite how awful they’ve been to each other, despite expecting rejection, his care for her comes through. He holds her in higher esteem than she believes. I also like that the song mentions lemonade, a callback to the porch scene. It’s not a, a bad time, time spent with you / There’s cool lights and songs with good lyrics / We never have to talk again, whatever, up to you

Lol the lemonade needs to come back to tie things together in the plot. But this is a pretty good summary of where they are at this point. Ekko certainly doesn't think they'll be friends again, and he's willing to give Powder peace even if it means closing the door on the possibility that they could become close later. His care comes through, and he really doesn't expect the slightest bit of reciprocation, but Powder surprises him again (and gets ice cream for her troubles, lol).

16. Get Free - Another character song for Powder. I feel like this one could be Powder’s/this fic’s thesis statement: Not trying to get by / I’m trying to get free

I need Mereba to drop a new album because she keeps clowning us on instagram, and I have complained about this with a friend before lol. That said, I really think the title of the project this song (and "Black Truck," which gets quoted in chapter 25) comes from is really apt as well: The Jungle Is the Only Way Out. That phrase really sums up Powder's journey very well, and she really is trying to free herself from the structures that come more and more sharply into view as she applies herself to helping others and working towards change. And while this can be discouraging, she keeps pushing because she wants to be free. Very relatable feeling. Side note, I feel like "Sandstorm," another one of her songs featuring JID is a good timebomb song.

17. RICKY - An Ekko song. Particularly obvious in Chapter 16, at the hospital. “‘Catch more flies with honey than vinegar.’ Ekko scratches at his scalp. ‘But jealousy makes people do crazy things.’” His success doesn’t secure his safety. He has to deal with people he’d rather avoid or, at worst, would see him killed. But he’s successful because he takes wisdom from multiple—even contradicting—places, uses it the best he can, learns quickly, and doesn’t forget who he is. First they mockin', now they hoppin' / All on the wave 'cause they see me poppin' / Big-big-big large pockets, they start flockin' / Here's what I say when they ass keep knockin'

This is so funny to me lol. For reference, I quoted the title song from the ZUU album in chapter 6, and this is the track that follows it. There are a lot of themes (and I have a lot of feelings about Denzel's music, but this is not the time because otherwise we'll be here all day) about family and parenthood in Ekko's side of the story, so I think this is a good fit, even though it never occurred to me! He keeps things that belonged to his parents close and thinks about them often. Advice they've given him features in his inner monologue as well. But it's also true that people are trying to get things from him, and it's all catching up. (Chapter 16 also has a Denzel Curry song quoted in it, "Chrome Hearts" ft. Zacari and the Cold Blooded Soul Band; extra fun fact, I can rap this whole song lmao).

18. Dancing in a Daydream - Chapter 18. Ekko and Powder see each other at the club, on the balcony and dance floor respectively. This is, admittedly, the more angsty of the song options I had for this moment. I chose it because the lyrics describe a moment as temporary as the one they share. We've reached the palace but I'm betting that it won't last / Bright lights and mirror ball / We might be hurting but I'm ready for the free fall

It's fine if this is an angsty choice, because Powder's pretty angsty by the end of the chapter as she develops her plan to set things straight with Ekko, lol. The dream imagery of the chapter pairs nicely here. The song I picked for it is a pretty different vibe, and so is the song I could have picked but didn't think of in time, Kehlani's "Hate the Club," which is also a nice match. Between the three songs, you can choose your fighter lol. I like the name of this band, though. Fits the vibe, and me lol

19. Ego - Chapter 20. Ekko and Powder have a difficult conversation in Ekko’s hotel room. They’ve both been working on their egos, going by their ability to have one at all. (Thank you for recommending me this song forever ago, btw, it’s lovely.) Easy for me to care and you want me there / …I’m working on my ego

Y'ALL. This is my current favorite song. It has been since I first heard it. You gotta get like almost 4 minutes in before that switch comes in, but the strings and the bass... like it's truly magical. If you have headphones, I recommend using them. Done advertising lol. But that part at the end has nice lyrics for them too, as well as the beginning: Is that you, baby? Check when you're makin' no sense In this hotel bed Feels like, "What are we doin'?" Which is pretty on the nose lol, but I like it, and then toward the end: Don't wanna run Every time I get that feelin', I just rather be stuck Putting my favorite song at the most pivotal chapter, I'm emotional haha. The instrumental catharsis it provides matches the way the chapter is designed to build, too.

20. My Friend - By the end of chapter 20, Ekko and Powder clear the air. They reach a new understanding of each other. You’ve seen me from every side / Still down for the ride

These lyrics also capture part of why they work well as a couple; they work on most of their major issues before they even date, haha. On a more serious note, Powder really does get a real picture of what Ekko's dealing with, and to his surprise, she decides to stick by him and extend kindness. Just like in other situations throughout the story, Powder changes things by choosing to be understanding and kind. Perhaps it is cliche, but Powder/Jinx is a character who feels very deeply. I think it works.

21. Same Heart - You know I had to pick a song by Reed Shannon. This one has themes of reconnection while there’s action out in the streets. The moment Ekko and Powder part in chapter 21 feels like the start of something new, so I thought it fit. Baby, maybe we can do it again / Let’s restart, I’m your friend

In case you didn't know, Reed Shannon is Ekko's voice actor in the game AND in Arcane. As far as I know, he's the only voice actor from the game who reprised his role in Arcane. I love the 2000s r&b vibes on this one, very me. The fun thing is that Ekko realizes his feelings for Powder when he wakes up after the whole... hotel thing, and so there are a couple layers of meaning here. And it was just the night before that Scar was doing the stuff, so there was very much action in the streets! Really fun easter egg-type song to include.

22. Dirty - Caitlyn’s reveal in chapter 22 absolutely gets a song on this playlist. Full disclosure, I’m not convinced this is the one. But I like that it asks the question, “Do you love your neighbor?” because it has multiple meanings here: Piltover and Zaun are neighbor cities, and the rent strike is about helping your literal neighbors. And I like that some lyrics sound like they’re written by a schemer, like Caitlyn. I got a skeleton under the floorboard / I got a secret I need you to keep / …Aren't you fed up yet? / Do you have enough love in your heart / To go and get your hands dirty?

Caitlyn still has stuff up her sleeve in the plot! But she is very much a schemer, both in canon and the fic. Caitlyn's arc is very much about learning how the systems of exploitation that keep Piltover and Zaun in their places operate and using her influence to mess with that. Even if she doesn't get everything from the outset, she's determined to learn from Powder, and she's motivated by love, primarily for Vi, but also for the fellow people who are suffering under the name of the City of Progress.

23. Choose Me - Chapter 27, Powder and Vi’s fight. Powder is working hard to build a life she and Vi can be proud of, but they need different things. Vi doesn’t see what Powder does for Zaun and why, so Powder wonders how Vi can see her for who she is. How can Vi want her? I know there are places that I can't go with you / ���I'd rather you choose me every day

OH BOY, there's a reason chapter 27's title has "tragedy" in it. Powder does want to be chosen by Vi, all of her, and not just the parts Vi understands. Vi's own trauma really does prevent her from seeing things from Powder's perspective. There are places she can't go because of how much pain they cause her, and while Powder's working on reaching out more, she wants the same from Vi. At the same time, Vi feels like Powder is choosing Zaun over her in a sense, so it works on both levels.

24. Call You Mine - Chapter 30. “Yeah, she decides later, lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling. She’s going to tell him.” Baby, can I call you mine, mine? / ‘Cause you're always in my mind, mind

This one is so hopeful! It's a big shift after the content of chapter 30, but Powder really is at that point where Ekko represents a bright spot in her life. They've been working to know each other better, and Powder's friends are cheering her on to go after something that would make her happy. It speaks to how sweet these two turned out to be in the fic, which was probably a surprise to everyone (including me lol, since it grew out of things I came up with as I was writing).

25. Hummingbird - Ekko and Powder steal moments when they can, resulting in long text convos and late-night phone calls. Pen pal on the night shift / She’s who I get away with / …And hummingbird, I know that’s our time / But stay on / Stay on, stay on with me / And hummingbird, I can never unsee / What you've shown me

The OG interlude! Even if it makes them both tired, they prioritize each other in those long convos and calls. You could almost imagine this playing in the background while the two of them are shown split-screen talking on the phone, lying in their beds.

26. Like 90s R&B - Ekko spends the night at Powder’s place and already she can’t wait to see him again. Feel like I was only seeking you, already got me feening for more / I spend all my time daydreaming, got me living for the weekend, oh no

I am an r&b girlie, what can I say. This one was a lot of fun! Powder really is in too deep, like the lyrics say. But so is Ekko, haha. I think the song will only fit more as they keep getting closer, getting frustrated with the things that make it so they can't be as open with their relationship as they'd want.

27. Offense - End of chapter 33. Powder announces herself to the wealthy of Piltover with her excellent award acceptance speech. Figured I should say some', but you don't wanna hear me vent / You can talk bad all day long, I will never be impressed / Dunno what I did to make you feel that you be earnin' my respect / …I said it with my chest and I don’t care who I offend, uh huh

Simz always has so much confidence in her music, haha. This song goes really nicely with the title of chapter 33, "polemics in free verse," which implies that Powder is attacking someone else's ideas through poetry. It really fits perfectly; Powder refuses to be taken in by the glitz and glamor, choosing instead to point out the people who make it all possible. All Power to the People indeed.

gif was sourced from here