#lots of implied things and infered stuff in this comic

[whatlurksbean]

I'm curious as to why Trout says "they think she ate her child". I haven't seen Gull spread that misinformation, and it seemed like common knowledge Tusk wanted to give him a burial.

The whole reason Gull started pestering Tusk in the first place is because she thought Tusk might eat Rays body instead of giving him to the crabs.

When she found out tusk wanted to bury him, she was just as horrified, and brought it to trout loudly.

(You can infer that she didn’t initially expect tusk wanting to bury him because of her surprise when she admits it.)

When tusk was told she couldnt bury ray by her tree, she asked to be alone.

When they returned later, gull discovers that ray is gone, but tusk hasnt left the cave. There is heavy implication of what gull thinks happened, and she goes and spreads her belief that tusk ate her child.

[pancake-breakfast]

At the behest of @sourcoatedsugar, I purchased Under the Air, a collection of short comics by the Father of Anime, Tezuka Osamu. I've kind of put off getting into Tezuka's stuff since I don't care much for the very cartoony style, but it seems the world is conspiring to make sure I don't brush him aside.

I loved Urasawa's Pluto manga, which was a retelling of one of Tezuka's plotlines from Astro Boy with a focus on a different character, and Tezuka frequently comes up whenever I happen to get into the history of animation (since he was heavily influenced by Fleisher Studios in general and Betty Boop in particular) and anime/manga (since he heavily influenced both genres). I have yet to manage to watch Dororo, but I'm enamored with the premise and the more recent adaptation is very high on my watch list. (Alas, it is locked behind the Amazon Prime paywall....)

To start, I'm kinda iffy on the translation of the title, though I don't want to be too critical because it's admittedly a difficult one to translate. Anyone who's studied the Japanese language has probably heard that it's a language of inferences. What this means (in part) is since Japanese has a VERY limited sound palette for a language, it has fewer word options than a lot of languages, and so it has both a lot of homophones (words that sound similar) and a lot of concepts that are conveyed via implication rather than specific words.

(English, on the other hand, is a very specific language with a very broad sound palette, and has specific words for almost everything.)

Anyway, the Japanese characters for the title are 空気の底 (kuuki no soko), which I'd literally translate more as "The Bottom of the Atmosphere." The problem with "under" is it implies something is located there or happening there while "the bottom of" just implies we're talking about a stratus of the atmosphere. The Japanese lacks the particle に (or maybe で) needed to suggest this is a location where things are happening.

But of course, "The Bottom of the Atmosphere" sounds odd in English. I guess if one wanted to go more poetic, they could go with something like, "Deep Air." But neither of those capture the meaning of the Japanese, since "The Bottom of the Atmosphere" is only one way it can be read. It can also be read as something like "Base Situations" or "The Kind of People Who Aren't Worth Notice."

If I were to guess, there's some layer of Buddhism influence in here that I'm missing, as well, that might be referring more specifically to the situations of the more "lowly" types of humans as separate from those of the enlightened. But I know very little about Buddhism.

So maybe a more accurate-to-the-spirit translation would be something like, "Worldly Things," as in English/Western-Christian culture, this can simply mean "stuff that takes place in the world around us" or it can mean "things that lack the enlightenment of heaven."

From a (very) quick skim and an actual reading of the first of the stories, that duality seems to capture more of the essence of the tales. And I think it would probably also be justified by the quote at the beginning of the book:

The water at the bottom of a fishbowl does not circulate. It grows murky with leftover food, droppings, and dirt. Perhaps our world is riddled with crime and tragedy in much the same way, buried under the vast air of the sky above. Do any of us not, during the fleeting spans of our lifetime, seek peace found in those clear skies, even if just for a bit?

Anyway, looking forward to getting into this further. It wouldn't be the first time good stories have trumped my qualms about an art style that's not quite too my taste.

[decepti-thots]

Pardon me, but after reading though your blog, could you go into detail about why you hate the megamins/megamags pairing (megatron x minimus/magnus). No judgement from me. I think you may have a post about that, but I can't seem to find it. I love reading your analyses.

I do think back in… I think late 2021 I wrote a little about why it's my nOTP, but I doubt I tagged it (good manners, y'know), so sure, I'll talk a little about it for you, anon; thank you for asking. Let me just cut it so the minimegs likers can go about their day happily (hi friends <3), haha. And thank you for the kind words!

First off: I consider this a functionally canon ship, which influences my feelings on it a lot. It's something I'd describe as subtextual but largely unambiguous; it never explicitly gets quote-unquote "confirmed", but I think that to assume it's not present in the text in some form requires a degree of deliberately reading against the grain, tbh. It's unresolved, inexplicit and largely peripheral compared to e.g. CDRW, but it's hard to deny its obvious canonicity IMO. If I can point to Chromedome/Prowl as being obviously present despite the technical lack of confirmation, it'd be wildly inconsistent to claim otherwise for Magnus/Megatron, I think.

This matters for my purposes because I really dislike the way it manifests in the comic and what it narratively does. I've usually avoided talking about my ambivalent feelings about the execution of MTMTE Megatron's arc on this blog because of historical unpleasantness for both me and several close friends, but I've probably discussed it enough by now longtime readers (or backreaders) of my blog have inferred. You know, the ambivalence. Haha. In itself.

I think a lot of the Megatron/Magnus dynamic represents a kind of reliance on narrative shortcuts to try and force reader engagement with the Megatron arc Roberts is writing that, unfortunately, came to exemplify for me the formal shortcomings of that arc, and the more… not just "this didn't work" elements but actively "this is annoying now" stuff. When we first see them interact in MTMTE very early on post-Dark Cybertron, it's actually a set-up I find really interesting. I think theoretically at that point, they're very very obvious characters to put together, because Magnus is a character who is unusual in that he really does feel like someone it makes sense to have be scrupulously fair to Megatron despite the latter's actions and his own personal grudges. When you have Magnus argue "technicalities" during his trial because shut up, the law is the law and nobody is excluded from a good legal defense, he's the kind of character who you can really believe thinks like that on the Autobot side. At the same time, he's someone whose scrupulosity also means he's really unable to reconcile what Megatron has done- there's that early POV shot of his little HUD where he puts notes in about who he's looking at through the armour that shows he has one for Megatron reminding him of what terrible things he's done, and the early "Lost Light insider" insert where it's shown people on the ship have seen Magnus yelling at Megatron because of how uncomfortable he is with Megatron being co-captain. This sets up a potential interesting dynamic where Megatron in MTMTE has all these things he's done and represents that Magnus is intractably morally opposed to but all these little personal traits day-to-day he likes which could have been a very interesting contrast to explore as a conflict.

…but it's not a conflict that gets played out. We jump, quite quickly, to "Megatron and Magnus are the only two kinda uptight rule-likers who understand each other among all the chaos", with only perfunctory gestures at the core and very large moral quandry this ought to present. The entire middle section of this conflict is implied but never shown, and it's something the reader is expected to just sort of gloss over as probably existing in theory but there's no room to show it. That's not even quite it actually. It's almost like a timeskip, where it acts like it happened but there's no room for it TO have happened, and we never see it happening; suddenly, they're just in this ambiguously has-feelings-for-the-other space where the audience understands the alluded-to conflict underpins what makes the tension theoretically interesting but it's never actually shown. It's shorthand we never see, and it drives me nuts because it's not something you can get away with reducing to shorthand with how incredibly central that tension actually is to the attempt to convey Megatron's arc convincingly.

What bugs me about this more is how this exists, IMO, as a shorthand for the broader issue of defensiveness about the fact that many people were not onboard with Megatron-as-captain in a straightforward way. There are characters in MTMTE that are like… let's use Rodimus as an example. He's beloved by many and disliked by many others, because he's an engaging, complicated, abrasive, sympathetic but asshole character who fucks up royally in ways that go way beyond the flaws of many protagonists in comparable series. What makes Rodimus work is that it understands that for every person who loves him (hi) in all his abrasive glory, there will be readers who simply don't, because he is abrasive… and so it makes the story interesting even if you do not like him because of his glaring flaws. It's not interested in "convincing" the people who dislike him, because it is confident enough to deliver a story where if you don't like Rodimus, the narrative will still give you stuff to engage with. Same with Whirl, actually. Whirl is terrible and morally difficult, and if you never quite get on board with his brand of assholery, you still find something to enjoy in how the narrative presents him, so it never feels like it needs to "fix" people who are not quite onboard.

Megatron feels like a character the narrative quickly becomes defensive about occupying a similar role, IMO. It can't quite abide the idea some people will just never be cool with his redemption arc and offer that same ambivalence in a way that allows the story to accomodate such divisiveness. It becomes very reactive to on-the-go fan criticism in a way that ultimately undermines it far more than any inherent conceptual flaw in the idea, because it comes to devote more and more effort to like, course correcting rather than playing in that space. To bring this back to the issue of shipping, Magnus becomes a kind of mouthpiece for this, where his sudden shift to "we went through all the implied difficult conflict and now this Objectively Moral character is on board" becomes a way to be didactic; two really obvious examples for me are the on-the-nose bit in the second Functionist Universe arc where Minimus turns to the camera like Well I Don't Think He'd Betray Us, and the really bad post-FU bit where his exaggerated description of Megatron's assumed betrayal as a kind of reactionary thing Rodimus exploits is blatant commentary on people who were not a fan of that arc. It goes from a potentially interesting conflict to a way the comic leans on preexisting reader opinions on other characters to hammer home there is One Right Way to feel about a contentious element of the comic that I simply can't enjoy, and which especially serves to reduce Magnus' character to a mouthpiece for someone else's arc. I would hate it even if it were in service of my actual ships, frankly! If the comic had done that with him for Rodimus, I'd go from OTP-ing rodimags to resenting it in a heartbeat. I just find it poor writing, and with so little in the back half of the comic to do once his original arc is concluded in "series one", it comes to dominate Magnus' arc in a way I so dislike it makes me unable to even try to play with the Magnus/Megatron dynamic in fandom.

The thing is, the degree to which this becomes baked into the moment-to-moment canon makes it difficult for me to engage with it outside the textual elements I find frustrating. If it was less canon, I could play with it in ways that turned it into a more interesting transformative fandom thing, but the presence of it in the canon as a driving part of that arc narrows my ability to do so without feeling like I'm disregarding the text, something I do not enjoy in fandom spaces. It becomes too central to ignore, and since I dislike what it does and represents in the canon, I can't enjoy it. (By contrast, the comic's inability to actually zero in on a real definitive Megatron-Rodimus dynamic paradoxically means that in fanwork, I really enjoy playing with the space that failure leaves, and I have a lot of fun filling in the gaps that failures in the writing leaves me to work with.)

…All this is admittedly a little compounded by a bias due to the fact that the broader fandom for Magnus/Megatron was, historically, very obnoxious. From the fact people in the fandom were virulently awful to people who did not like this plotline (multiple friends of mine were- and in one case, still are years later- directly harrassed due to this at points) to the fact that it's been presented as Morally Superior to other ships by people in the fandom starting shipping wank, the fanwork culture around the ship has only exaggerated this impression to the point I just can't engage with it without feeling a little rasp of annoyance. (And also there's the issue of Megatron/Magnus stuff often having some of THE worst takes on the already fraught issue of Magnus' OCD in my opinion, but that's another post, probably, lmao. Which also involves the role Rodimus plays there, haha. It's not just my personal shipping bias, it's an issue much more broadly, including in the canon. Alas.)

What it boils down to is this: the writing for these two in canon is some of the laziest in canon, to me, and I find it impossible to engage with them outside the very present canon material, so I just can't enjoy it. I can actually do a lot with the various bits of Megatron's arc I find lacking with OTHER characters whose interactions with him are less textually clear. Rodimus? Oh, yeah. Loads of room there, just to name an obvious example. It's totally workable, especially as someone who prefers to react to canon I find unsatisfactory with "how can I make this interesting to me". But the Megatron-Magnus stuff is too… present. I cannot find the wiggle room. And so I really dislike it, and tbh, it's a shame to me that nowadays almost all of the little MTMTE Magnus character work discussed is in the context of these two, because both characters are better served IMO by exploring their arcs separately and with other characters.

tl;dr: if it was fanon I would feel able to expand on it in a way that let me make it more than the issues that exist in canon. but as it is, i find canon so restrictive i struggle, so i can't even enjoy it in fanon, especially since because of how this stuff works by default of course the fans of the basically-canon ship are building off the canon i am so dissatisfied with; there's just nothing for me there when of course the people who like the canon ship like that canon. so. anyway s/o to all my minimegs friends, of which i have a few, you all won and i love you.

[ptitelidio]

My Rivetra heart literally broke after reading this💔 is this actually Canon? I almost cried

Hi aviee28, these pieces of info that this person uses come from different SNK stuffs but they’re like spin offs or games, but they’re not written by Isayama himself. They are official SNK content but we cannot really say that it’s canon since it was written and drew by other people. For example the thing when Levi says to Petra that he went to circus with Hanji is from Spoof on Titan comics, but imo in this spin off Levi and Petra are very close to each other more than with Hanji, it was implied more than once that Petra was in love with him, for example these:

Going to the circus with Hange doesn’t mean that he’s in love with them, or that he isn’t, this comics is supposed to be funny with a lot of gags, so don’t take it as a serious information.

As for the cooking thing, if they thought of one of the games that was developed a long time ago, the real thing is that everyone including Hange asked Levi to cook, but Hange complained because she wanted some more, so Levi did them because they were insistent. But then, a worried Petra appears and wanted some more too haha, the game developers wanted to do something funny! Even Petra herself learned to Levi how to make some sweets (cookies) for the cadets because she thought it could give them energy, but all these pieces of information are from spin offs, games, etc.

They’re not officially told by Isayama himself in interviews or in character books, this insta user is only trying to infer something that isn’t official as for Rivetra. Isayama made the choice to not officialise Levi with anyone probably because of ship wars and probably because Levi is commercially profitable (in other words, maybe you noticed that Levi is drawn a lot with Eren in the commercials (sometimes with Erwin or Hanji, and sometimes including Mikasa or Jean) because they are the most popular people from the manga, if Isayama ever officialised any relationship involving Levi, you can imagine that many Levi fangirls won’t continue to buy the merchandises! It’s for profit). Moreover, it’s not manga-based or anime-based, so it’s not that important in their relationship. I think Isayama tried to express Rivetra and Levihan relationship (romantically or not) the better he could in the few pages of the manga and the anime, so I think everything is in the manga and the anime not in the side contents even if it’s a cool bonus!

[kinsey3furry300]

Three awesome post-GoT series I would commission if I owned any of the Big three Streaming platforms.

Yo! Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, you have a problem: there are nerds like me who want to give you even more of our time and money, but you’re not making the stuff you should be.  Following the hugely disappointing end of “Game of Thrones”  there are a huge number of sci-f and fantasy nerds who are currently not getting our fix of epic adventure, and rather than commission a whole bunch of cool series that are just begging to be made to cash in on this, you’re all just sort of doing your own things. And that’s Cool, I’m loving the Netflix Witcher series and Disney’s Loki, and looking forward to the Amazon Middle Earth series with a mix of hope and trepidation (please be good), there are, however, a whole mass of cool book series that are just begging for release in an episodic fashion, and what’s more, I can think of which series plays to which streaming platforms strengths. And unlike Game of Thrones, there are series where running out of source material to adapt shouldn’t be a problem.

So, three sci-fi or fantasy series that play to the strengths of the big three Streaming services, as suggested by me, a big ol’ nerd. One: Amazon Prime. Strengths: successfully adapting darker comic-book or Urban fantasy works Like Preacher, the Boys, Good Omens and American Gods and making a profit. Weakness: has never successfully pulled of a big Grimdark fantasy series, despite having all the talent to do so because they’re working on the Middle earth series, which doesn’t seem a good fit for their brand image as the place you come for for comically dark works, and all their adaptations are too much of a slow burn, which necessitates padding the source material (look at how little happens in any episode of Preacher or the Boy vs the insanely fast pace of the comics). Solution: Malazan, book of the fallen. A deep, insanely dark, insanely Epic story that would actually lend itself to a slow burn and the grim-dark over the top violence of other Amazon shows, and fill the “Tit’s and monsters” gap left by GoT in many of our hearts. And unlike Tolkien, I have faith that the studio that cast Sweary Karl Urban as Billy Butcher could actually pull this off with the correct tone and feel. This would have the Witcher fans from Netflix defecting in droves, and could also pull in some new viewers who might enjoy the anthropology and political intrigue of this complex, multifaceted world.

 Two: Disney+. Strengths: near infinite money and ambition, the production team behind The Mandalorian and the MCU, great Hollywood clout to draw in big name stars, but willing to cast talented unknowns, the best mix of live action and CG in the business. Weaknesses: It’s Disney, so they can never go full grim-dark: they can imply or infer dark acts, but need to keep what’s shown on screen PG13 to fit their brand, which rules out a lot of modern fantasy. And they have no true fantasy serries in their stable.

Solution: Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, and other Cosmere works.  A rare example of an excellent current fantasy and sci-fi writer who isn’t grimdark as heck, and manages to convey dark and adult themes by implication and hints rather than outright showing them, this is pretty much the only big fantasy series out there that is aimed at and enjoyed by adults but remains consistently PG13. It’s also so epic and super-hero-ish in this various magic systems, that I can’t see anyone other than the team behind the MCU pulling off a live-action version of this that doesn’t suck. In addition to this, the logical starting point for this, Mistborn, is by far the safest and most marketable, coming the closest of any of his works to a standard young-adult plot with Vin as an easily sell-able character to studio brass, being to all intents and purposes Katniss Everdeen with super-powers, which could get a big studio invested  and convinced this is a good idea before we get to all the “lets kill and replace god” stuff. If Mistborn was successful, other Cosmere works could follow, and I could see something like the Stormlight Archives working really well with the MCU effects team behind it, so long as they don’t white-wash it: No one on Roshar is white other than in Shinovar, and half of the cultures are based on either Polynesian or far eastern traditions, so cast Hawaiian, Māori, native American and east-Asian actors, and it could be both a great series, and also the most diverse Disney has ever done. You want a new, easily marketable but epic scale franchise, Disney? It’s right here.

Also for the love of god, do Wax and Wayne. I just need this, okay?

 Three: Netflix. Strengths: good at tapping into the prevailing nostalgia of Millennials and producing works that speak to them on a relatively small budget (see Stanger Things) and good at grabbing the rights to adapt good but slightly obscure works cheaply. Good working relationship with a ton of Japanese Anime rightsholders. Weaknesses: By far the smallest budget of any of the big three. Tends to produce awful live-action adaptations of beloved works (to the point that the Witcher was a pleasant surprise), but has good relationships with lots of animation studios.

Solution: Animorphs, but do what they always should have done and animate it. It boggles my mind that anyone would every try to pull this off in live action, as the transformations, which are the heart of the series, would be so hard to pull off well (look at the 90’s series). And yet, I’m aware they’re making a film, but dear god, why, when K A Applegate said form the get go that this series of books were written specifically as if they were a 90’s Saturday morning cartoon. This was always meant to be adapted as a series, not a long form film. So, don’t try to modernise it, or relate to “The kids” don’t whitewash the cast, don’t edit out the gore and body-horror, but lean into the 90’s and early 2000’s angst of it, and go balls to the walls insane with the concept. What music do you have playing for this scene? Is it Every day is exactly the same by Nine Inch Nails, and if not, why not? Do the transformation sequence genuinely scare you? No?  Then you’re doing it wrong.  Is that a happy ending? Get that the hell out of there. Go for the original time period and concept, and go hard, and if you do it now, you’ll just hit that sweet spot as the rolling 30 year nostalgia cycle moves out of the 80’s and into the 90’s. And as an apology to all the bad live-action Anime you produced, Netflix, get a Japanese studio to animate this: the Animorphs books were popular in Japan, with wonderful hand drawn illustrations throughout. Get Studio Orange on this: Beastars proved they can do flowing, fast-moving combat well, and make animal and other non-human characters look good, and what’s more they’d probably be up for it: Animorphs is basically a western Shōnen,  so the market for an Anime of it would exist in Japan.

 So there we go, the three series I would commission if I ruled the world of streaming sites. As ever, tell me why I’m wrong below, and have a great day!

[kob131]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7txJGzFpifw

30 seconds. That’s how long it took for me to get mad at this review.

“We start the episode post-argument where it’s explained Atlas’ borders are closed. Then the military guards suddenly change their minds and decide the group can speak to their commanding officer, Caroline Cordovon.”

The very first thing about the episode and we already have a problem. 

The guard’s change wasn’t sudden- They changed when they saw Weiss.

Qrow: Hey, if you don't wanna believe that I'm friends with Ironwood--

Both Nubuck Guards: General Ironwood!

Qrow: Yeah, General Ironwood, then fine. But look, we have Weiss Schnee with us and we're trying to get her home safely.

Weiss looks down with reluctance upon hearing Qrow say that. The two guards look to each other before turning their attention back to the group.

Both Nubuck Guards: Approach!

Weiss shares a look with Blake Belladonna, who just shrugs. Weiss then walks up to the gate and the two guards step up and bend down to inspect her. After a moment, both guards stand straight back up.

Both Nubuck Guards: Very well!

Guard Nubuck 2: You may speak with our commanding officer!

Guard Nubuck 1: We will fetch her at once!

Considering her tone and the video title- I expect to at least go a minute without an issue.

“We then spend about two minutes and a half doing nothing as Cordo just says random shit as opposed to saying why the kids aren’t allowed in.”

A. We already know why they aren’t allowed in- They want into Atlas, Ironwood says no. This stated BEFOREHAND. The reason why Cordovon came out was to see Weiss.

Something you’d know if you paid attention before.

B. Cordovon isn’t saying random shit- it’s demonstrating her character which is important since this is the ONLY time we see her before she busts out the mech so we need to know why the character would do it NOW.

Seriously, this is pretty god damn important. Well at least it can’t get wor-

“Then Cordovon drops some odd racism-”

...

All that bitching about the Fanaus not being discriminated against...and how Atlas wasn’t built up enough...this line does BOTH...and gets bitched at.

Are you starting to see why I’m surprised RWBY improves at all?

“Ruby wanders outside to find Maria, who tells her to sit down and tell her about her eyes a bit. Maria spends most of her speech telling us about her backstory and barely touches on the eyes.”

A. Again, character building. Even worse here since the character building is about her father (the previous eye warrior), emphasises that her training and Semblance are more important and explains why the Silver eyed warriors aren’t so well known.

B. She also scolds Ruby for beating herself up over Jaune and Oscar (I skipped over her explaining that because it was worth less than what she says the episode is) which is pretty important to a character like Ruby.

C. About half the talk is about the eyes, she doesn’t just ‘barely touch on it’ since it sets the rules for the eyes (Ruby needs to think about what she wants to protect, only works in presence of Grimm). This isn’t nearly as worthless as you treat it.

“Why start the episode at the conclusion of an argument then just pick it back up immediately? Yang’s line at the beginning must be very accurate because it looks like they saw the kids walking up and closed the gates. It’s just a very clunky way to start the episode.”

... When was it said or shown that the argument had ended? Yang’s line ( Come on! You didn't even hear us out!) can be applied in both situations. While the guards line imply they know why they’re there, thus there must have been a talk,... Team JNPR is there, they can infer why they are there.

“This entire scene with Cordovon is trying so hard to be funny and fails every time. The jokes land about as well as Jaune does-”

Okay, you really shouldn’t make a bad joke when in the middle of complaining about bad jokes unless it’s an intentional example. I know it’s not because you never use it as an example. In fact, I find your joke worse because you do the cringey ‘GET IT?!’ punchline with a weird metal rift in the back so it just...fails at the punchline even though just playing Jaune’s audio in that scene would have actually worked.

“And the pauses for laughter are just filled with utter silence.”

... Did it never occur to you the punchline is the silence? As if everyone is so flabbergasted at Cordovon’s actions no one knows how to act? You really should show a joke instead of talking over it.

“I spend half my time in this scene screaming ‘just fucking go already!’“

That explains your utter failure regarding this scene.

“How did the guards not notice Weiss? Why did they need her to come closer to know it’s her?”

They’re trying to get inside and Weiss never spoke while an angry blonde is yelling at them. People don’t act like computers.

“How does Maria know it’s Cordo who runs this place?”

Maria: Oh, yes. I come through here about once every ten years to get my eyes checked up in Atlas. You bring outside cashews on one flight, and suddenly you're placed on the additional screening list for life!

Where you screaming over this line too?

“Why did she not inform everyone she was utter rivals with the commander they’re trying to work with?”

Ruby: (mouth stuffed) Well... (takes a gulp) We're trying to make our way to Atlas. We'll probably start with the military base.

She wasn’t expecting to deal with her.

“And it takes so long-”

11 seconds. From Maria talking Ruby down (being generous since she bitches about the group guessing what they are) to Maria confirming they’re enemies.

11 seconds. Standard joke procedure too.

This just makes you look impatient.

“Dragging it’s feet as it pretends having Maria yell is the same as having a joke-”

She says as the animation with Maria shows comical facial expressions and the audio implies a random incident with cashews, common joke technique.

This reminds me of something I learned about media and the relationship between creators and audience: it’s a lot like bartering. The creators offer you something you want and the audience pays with suspension of disbelief and patience. Some creators ask too much, we’re well aware of them (like M. Night.)

However, the audience or members of it can also demand too much. Like refusing to accept anything except for a certain thing done a specific way at a specific time or demand stuff not what the creator intends to sell. Criticism videos believe it or not have something similar, offering insight and more for good faith.

Twiinks sounds like she’s being pissy about what she is given in an unfair fashion and because of a lack of insight, I am not willing to give any good faith in turn.

“The only saving grace in this mind numbing mess is the one tiny joke that actually lands.”

... But it’s effectively the same joke as the one you chewed out. In fact, it had more dead air in it than the others. Also since you just showed you have the audio it REALLY doesn’t excuse your lack of examples so far.

“DO SOMETHING!”

They did, right before. You cut out the audio. And this is the same dead air you praised before. 

Do you just not understand how to dissect jokes?

“Why is Maria arguing with Cordovon?-”

They JUST said they hate each other and Cordovon just insulted her. No, I don’t care you said they need to work with each other- You’re demanding they sacrifice character for plot as everyone bitches they do too much plot.

“How does Cordo know they’re connecting to RNJR? She hadn’t seen them in the distance before-”

Dunno, they asked the same thing while acting like they tried to get in before?

“Presenting the only other good joke of the episode-”

THE SAME TYPE OF JOKE YOU CHEWED OUT BEFORE. LITERALLY THE SAME. SAME SETUP, SAME EXECUTION, SAME PUNCHLINE.

“Honestly based on this one joke, it’d be funner to see RNJR interact with Cordo instead of this slog-”

And based on the video so far, it wouldn’t do a damn thing to fix things.

“I just showed you one of the stupidest moments in RWBY history. Let’s break it down.’

Oh this should be rich.

“If this base and that relay tower are so important, why aren’t we looking at them?”

Because the actual focus is on Cordovon’s massive sense of patriotism and ego. In fact, when you look at what she said again-

You civilians are clearly incapable of comprehending the importance of our mission here in Argus. So allow me to say this slowly, with smaller words: This base, that relay tower, the very safety of Argus are all gifts from the glorious Kingdom of Atlas! (a backdrop showing the Atlesian flag waves behind her) And it is my duty to uphold them, as only I have the wit and tenacity for such a task.

The focus is all on Atlas and herself. The relay tower and base are her justifications.

Which is important as these drive her actions later on as she feels slighted by the team and insulted, leading her to act irrationally.

“We’re stuck watching Cordo because...no good reason.”

*taps the section above this*

We’re not even a third of the way into the video BTW.

“Second: this has nothing to do with anything in the conversation at hand.”

You know, other than the good guys questioning her and pressing her to relent when her ego says otherwise.

“Ruby asks Cordo to listen to their request, she says she already heard it, says she’ll explain herself then...just tells us her job.”

And it is my duty to uphold them, as only I have the wit and tenacity for such a task.

This is her explanation. Do they have to have her say “Because I know better than you!” in order for you to understand.

P.S. “Cordo says ‘I’m a General!” That’s IRONWOOD’S rank. Did you do so little research and/or cared so little that it never once occurred to you that made no sense and she was referred to as ‘Special Operative’?

“Protecting Argus isn’t brought up and has nothing to do with getting to Atlas!”

*holds up a piece of paper saying ‘EGO!’ in big bold letters.*

“And this tendency to have Cordo sputter out random bullshit to force unnecessary events persists throughout the conversation.”

And you completely missing the point to obnoxious and I dare say intentional degrees persists throughout everything I’ve seen. And unlike the show, where this all feeds into Cordovon’s character and shows human flaws, you just show immense ineptitude. 

You bitch that this scene took forever but I’ve seen time pass faster watching paint dry than this shit.

“Almost nothing she says can be interpreted as a valid response to what the characters say.”

That. Is. The. Point.

If it’s not well executed- TALK about it’s execution. You’ve gone on for five minutes and yet cutting it would in fact make your video more tolerable.

*shows an example.*

“Cutting out the filler lines about Ironwood being scared prompting her rant shows how none of what she says has anything to do with what the characters say to her.”

... 

The thing that triggered her rant... you cut out. All while trying to prove that Cordovon isn’t listening to them...when the point of the scene is to show she won’t listen to reason...

... You know what? I’m done here. This is so blatantly missing the point that you’re effectively useless.

Twiinks, actually PAY ATTENTION to the show. Your flaw here is that you don’t pay attention (a critic’s JOB) and you keep missing such details (and outright the PURPOSE OF A SCENE) that there’s no reason to listen to you.  You can’t offer insight because you fail to see anything beyond the surface and applying your criticisms would lead to the creators insulting their audience’s intelligence.

Give people like FMF and Vexed Viewer credit- They can at least understand the PURPOSE of a scene. 

You know, the same guys I preach as biased incompetent idiots.

[stormsbourne]

the dirk thing and why it’s just bad storytelling

as promised.

there’s three (possibly more, but three big ones) popular reads on what’s Up With Dirk in the epilogue and every single one of them is garbage storytelling-wise and I’m here to prove it. let’s lay these fuckers out.

theory one: dirk has just realigned his priorities upon becoming his ultimate self and thereby more obsessed with puppetmastering everything around him

this theory on its face is fine, but like, here’s the problem: does that dude sound like dirk strider to you? 

does “I told you that you can’t be nice to jake” dirk sound like the same character as canon dirk, who says he treated jake horribly and ought to stay out of his life from now on because he deserves to live a happy and safe life? does a dirk who never even talks to roxy and refuses to gender her correctly sound like the same character who said he would do anything for her, would cut off his own dick before hurting her, and wishes he could give her everything she deserves? 

does super puppetmaster mind controller via narrative dirk sound anything like that guy who gets flustered when people are bemused by his rambling? or, you know, the guy who asked infamously, “hello is this dave?” you know. the guy who cut off his own head to save his friends. that sound like this dirk? this dirk who convinces his daughter’s wife that rose doesn’t love her anymore? this dirk who point blank violates jake’s agency to force him to endorse jane? does the dirk who is asked point-blank by a shard of himself “aren’t you afraid to die just like me” sound like the one who kills himself to villainously consolidate power in another timeline?

again, on its face, this theory isn’t horrible. there’s a good meaty story to be told with stuff like how immortality and omniscience can corrupt morality. but the entire thing is that the dirk we have in the epilogue is irreconcilable with the dirk we have in canon, even if he’s been corrupted by omniscience. omniscience makes dirk stop caring about his friends? start thinking he knows more about gender shit than them? decide that jake, who he wanted to give space because he thought he’d been so unkind and controlling, is a childish infant who needs to be babysat and treated like garbage?

there’s some things that are beyond “omniscience corrupts” and ic writing is one of them.

theory two: caliborn has corrupted dirk’s soul via the shard of him that was merged with lord english

this one also isn’t bad on its face. I was initially thinking that it was the intended read but the more time has gone by the more it just doesn’t seem ... right.

is caliborn controlling dirk? if that’s the case, why does he still sound like dirk? why is he deploying the same witticisms as dirk might? picking the same fights over stupid shit that caliborn wouldn’t care about, like whether swords make noise on being unsheathed? (caliborn would fucking love that are you kidding?) why are his mannerisms the same? 

or is he just brainwashed by caliborn? in that case, why associate with his friends at all? why puppeteer jane into a position he seems to sincerely believe she’ll be good at? why even have an on-again-off-again with jake, whom caliborn seems to think isn’t worth anything that isn’t being his servant and possibly his fated rival? why deploy the lines about jake breaking his heart? why involve rose in his schemes when caliborn is infamously unfond of women and never bothers with them? I can see the “doc scratch fucks with women” thing coming here and like, look, we’ll get to the “dirk is corrupted by his own damn self” thing in a second but we’re talking about caliborn, not scratch, for the moment.

there’s some stuff intended to point to this theory, but it’s largely scraps and, in my opinion, is probably stuff just laid out in case andrew decides he wants to write a third part and undo all this garbage. it’s always been a part of his writing style to plant hooks and decide if he wants to use them later. sometimes he does, like with the kanaya vampire stuff. sometimes he doesn’t, like the wizardy herbert meta stuff. that’s all this is. but in this case, it’s awkwardly and nonsensically written. it doesn’t line up with either of the characters’ motivations and it doesn’t fucking make sense.

on to number three.

theory three: dirk was corrupted by his own worst selves such as bro and AR

again. fine on its face. but let’s talk about the other dirks we see in the comic, because we see a lot of them.

there’s exactly one that we see which is pretty inarguably a bastard, and we know almost nothing about him. we don’t know his life circumstances. we don’t know why he’s fucking like that. we don’t know if he’s influenced by lord english or if he’s just a goddamn asshole. we’re told by canon -- by dave specifically -- that this doesn’t matter. we’re not really supposed to care.

there’s also scratch, but scratch is the product of an eternity-long merger with caliborn and a few other people. could this have influenced dirk? maybe, I guess. but dirk isn’t acting like scratch, either. he’s acting like himself. a very ridiculous version of himself that I don’t think is especially in character, but he’s written as someone trying to do dirk. his witticisms and his slang are the same. his mannerisms are the same. 

now let’s talk about the others.

we see a few significant other dirks in canon, but it’s implied there are dozens or maybe hundreds of them working behind the scenes, left like fingerprints on everything he touches. but here’s the big ones: brain ghost dirk, brobot, autoresponder, game over dirk, and the ghosts of all the other canon dirks who didn’t become the main timeline version, like the one we see in remem8er. 

there’s only one of these ones that is an asshole. and even then, it’s a stretch to call the autoresponder “evil.” a bit cruel, sure. but he’s largely a victim of circumstance lashing out against those circumstances, angered by his lost identity and his lack of autonomy. he lashes out at “the real” dirk, but in his main moment of vulnerability, he admits he’s terrified, just like dirk, and that he doesn’t want to die. 

the others are largely goodguys. brain ghost dirk is a bit brusque and tends to reflect jake’s negativity back at him, but still has dirk’s soft core and instincts. brobot spars with jake, but also rips out his own heart so jake can use it. game over dirk glitch-kills himself not out of some villainous ploy to gather power elsewhere, but because he is the lone survivor of a disaster and he loses himself to despair.

so how is it that two bad dirks, out of a pool of possibly thousands of them (depending on how many split timelines the alpha kids had), corrupt the entirety and drive dirk into being a fucking monster? we know nothing about bro; how are we meant to infer that this is how bro would act? dirk is still acting like himself, not the way we’ve seen scratch act. but there are dozens of other dirks who are good people, struggling just like he is to be a good person.

and they all just happen to lose?

somehow?

it feels cheap. it feels dissatisfying. it feels like a lie and cheap drama manufactured for edgy gasps and upset readers. 

conclusion

actually, I don’t have a good conclusion to this post. but I want to establish my beefs with dirk aren’t just because I love him, they’re because the storytelling around his stuff is shoddy. I actually like the concepts of several things the epilogue does, including multiple unreliable narrators, but the way it’s been maneuvered is clumsy and nonsensical for any of the justifications people have come up with. I understand people want to come up with a reason why this happened and possibly a way it might not suck as much, but it’s.

it’s just bad fam.

sometimes things are just bad.

[batbirdies]

In your storyline ccat did Dick send Jason to Arkham like he did in the comics? How does Jason feel about that? How does Dick and the family

EDIT: I did not mean to post this yet. Ugh. The post button is too close to the little dots that let you save a draft and now it keeps not saving my edits. I was going to do some fact checking and, you know, general editing before posting but now we’re too late. I might make a more readable post about this later...

Get ready for an extremely wordy, answer.

So, this is an interesting question. Because I know that most batfans do consider this to be canon. Dick sent Jason to Arkham.

However - I read those comic issues, and even re-read them after getting this ask just to see if I missed something. And it’s very possible I still did since it could have been referenced much later in a comic when talking about the whole thing past tense. But....while Dick was there when Jason was arrested - he was arrested, as in by actual police, specifically, commissioner Gordon. He wasn’t taken in by Dick as Batman.

So while we can infer, possibly, that Dick had an influence on what facility Jason was actually brought to. It seems to make perfect sense to me that the police and court system would have ruled Jason criminally insane and sent him to Arkham themselves. ESPECIALLY after the arch in which he was arrested in. (The professor Pyg one, quickly followed by Flamingo the assassin where Jason does something so dangerous in order to kill flamingo that Dick asks him “was that some kind of suicide attempt?”)

Now, we could reason that Dick could have gotten Jason out of Arkham buuuuut, there’s so much to go into honestly... and I’m gonna go ahead and skip it here because basically everything I would say in relation to this will be the same as my reasoning if Dick was the one who was directly responsible for Jason being sent to Arkham.

So let’s go there, let’s say Dick was responsible for Jason being locked up in Arkham. Let’s first look at Dick’s options here, what places could he send Jason? He could send him to a regular prison, Blackgate, made for extremely dangerous criminals, or he could send him to Arkham Asylum, made for the criminally insane.

(One might also argue that he could have just not had him sent anywhere and let him go free, but let’s be real and honest here, unless you are the type of Jason Stan who thinks he’s perfect and never made bad decisions or been at fault for any apparently poor ones, this is faulty reasoning. Jason has not only been responsible for the deaths of a ton of people in recent times to this arrest, he also attempted to reveal Dick and Damians identities to the world and pitted himself directly against Batman and Robin in these issues. He tried to get in their way, ruin their plans, to prove that his methods of vigilanteism were more effective and in general, better than the bat’s. He was actively attempting to ruin their reputation and turn people against them.

You could reason he was also responsible, in a roundabout way, for Damian’s very serious injuries in this particular issue, where he is shot five times and ends up paralyzed from the waist down and must be rescued and operated on by Talia’s expansive medical team.

End note being: they had to lock him up. I certainly would have felt I had no choice.)

Sending him to a standard prison would never have been an option, Jason would have broken out in a matter of days if they ever would have even managed to get him locked inside. So Dick would have to choose between Blackgate and Arkham.

In later issues, after Bruce is back, he goes to visit Jason when Jason keeps appealing to be sent to Blackgate because he is sane and has passed all the tests they’ve given him with flying sane colors. Bruce says that he is in Arkham “For his own protection” implying that as Red Hood he made some massive enemies, a lot of whom are imprisoned in Blackgate at this very moment and who would take any opportunity to do harm to Jason.

Dick would have been aware of this. Dick would have been very much caught between a rock and hard place here. Because while he would more than likely be aware that Jason would NEVER wish to be stuck in Arkham, as would NONE of the bats, he would more than likely put his physical safety first. Reasoning that even if Jason was unhappy in Arkham at least he could be safe and given more time to hopefully come around to a more reasonable state. Because it’s been shown that Dick wants to help Jason. Before stepping back and allowing the police to arrest Jason Dick says this to him: “Look at yourself Jason. You’re a mess. Everything’s a mess. Stop all this...and let us help you.”

Jason then responds: “Help me? ...It’s...it’s too late for me Grayson. It was always too late for me, don’t you get it?”

Jason was more but I don’t think it’s necessary to to recount the whole thing. During this exchange the police surround both of them with guns pointed at Jason and Commissioner Gordon says the only reason they let Batman do this stuff is because he stayed on the right side of the law. So they arrest him.

Dick is then distracted by Damian, who is lying on the ground after being shot multiple times and unable to move from the waist down.

The short answer to this question, is yes and no lol. Because going by canon I think it could easily be reasoned that Dick wasn’t the one who put Jason in Arkham, but even if I’m mistaken in this and Dick was credited with this at some point in the comics I’m unaware of...

I certainly would have questioned Jason’s mental health. And I mean, I think Jaosn’s mental health is a serious concern in general. He needs help. But he wasn’t willing to get it, he thought it was too late for him.

We also have to look at the fact that while we, as readers, see Arkham Asylum as this dumping ground for the criminally insane that’s rife with abuse and everyone who works there is incompetent and allows inmates to escape on the regular etc etc. That’s not really what it’s meant to be in canon. The Batfam obviously view it as the best option they have to deal with the particular breed of crazy that Gotham produces.

Jason’s personal history with the Joker in particular is brought up the most, because how could Dick put Jason in the same place as the JOKER. LIKE WTF.

But my understanding is actually that by canon timelines Joker wasn’t actually in Arkham while Jason was there. That’s not to say he couldn’t have been locked up during his stay at any point, but I would also think that in a psych hospital it would be a reasonable action to keep certain inmates always separate and never in the same space together. Of course we can reason that even being in the same facility would bring Jason all kinds of anxiety and be terrible for his mental health but again, just looking at what I already wrote - there just wasn’t an amazing option available. Nothing would have been a great move on Dick’s part.

To actually answer your ultimate question:

I think everyone would look at this time in all of their lives as just....the WORST. Like....the WORST possible time. This is during the year that Bruce was dead, all of their lives were in turmoil, utterly chaotic and incredibly stressful. Jason was at one of his lowest points and Dick was trying to be Batman to Damian’s violent and difficult to control Robin whole also being on the outs with Tim. Jason pulled some serious shit, trying to reveal their identities on national television? Beyond his killing of people, which the batfam has been staunchly against for forever, even if they decided to give Jason a pass because reasons. No one knew what to do.

I think Jason would look at this time in his life with a large amount of shame for his actions. He might resent Dick for being involved in the event that got him locked in Arkham but he could see what’s already been mentioned. What were his options?

I think Dick feels guilty, but again, what was he supposed to do? What was a better choice? Jason DID eventually end up in Blackgate and it ended terribly, multiple got killed and like over 80 people were poisoned and Jason escaped. So obviously Blackgate would NOT have been the better option.

I think it’s maybe a rough, sensitive spot between them, but both of them also just see it as a time when all of their lives were so difficult it would have been impossible for there to be a good outcome. I think the rest of the family feels similarly. This was a terrible time in all of their lives when no one was making their best decisions. And frankly there weren’t a lot of great options.

I think all of them just want to put this behind them and move forward.

[bat-lings]

Hey, you mentioned in an earlier ask any Damian that Tim was also low-key sexist and tbh I'd love examples cause I feel like this has never been brought up and it's interesting??? Anyway, thanks Ur stuffs super interesting and insightful!

Thanks for your interest & nice words!

Let’s be clear tho Anon (I assume it’s the same Anon both times?), you are 200% entitled to disagree with me. Yes I am unapologetic about my opinions and write looong paragraphs of questionable pertinence to give arguments but like. The goal is to explain “why I think what I think,” never to tell you “why you should think what I think”. You’re very much welcome for the Damian post btw

Now I think Tim, precisely, shows internalized sexism. Doesn’t change the end result all that much though.

Random sequences

Let’s get the most straightforward stuff out of the way.

[Robin (1991) #1 || Robin (1993) #43 & #179 || Detective Comics (1937) #687]

Dunno about you but the first two are particularly cringey for me. That and the agenda section.

Okay to be fair: He does attempt to defend Lynx (first example) beforehand, throwing the on-point “she doesn’t have to go with you if she doesn’t want to” line. All is good for five seconds and then he goes “maybe she likes that treatment”.

We may have different sensibilities but the mere fact that that went through his head for even a second is the perfect illustration of what’s internalized sexism imo. Conscious thought & action level: A+ behavior (being able to identify a visibly wrong situation and taking action against it). Unconscious level: blatant sexism (”maybe she likes it” aka a less visible/more subtle manifestation of bigotry).

He has a… pretty specific way to regard women’s agenda. And is overall patronizing to straight-out disrespectful.

Tim’s treatment of Steph is a well-known fact but this is a call-out post so have a non-exhaustive bunch of examples:

[Robin (1993) #4, 41, 35, 44 || Batgirl (2009) #8]

On we go and see how there’s absolutely no ill-intent on Tim’s part in the next examples, yet I have a big problem with how he’s considering the ladies’ agency:

[Robin (1993) #182 || Red Robin #10]

Notice how it’s all about him whether the lady obeys him or not. His failure to impose the necessary authority or his failure to give the right directions. The girls’ choice/independence just doesn’t factor in. It’s a cop and a vigilante we’re talking about, not some civilians caught in the crossfire.

((btw it’s disputable but his apology in RR#10 is too little too late as far as I’m concerned. Tim gets a pass since Nicieza has him referring to his dumbass traitor!Steph arc but he doesn’t deserve any additional credit either. Okay no I’m being mean, he gets kudos for making a step in the right direction with Steph. Tiny kudos. It’s a tiny step.))

[Red Robin #5]

Tam? Okay. She’s the civilian who got embarked into this crazy story, she is in need of saving. But Prudence? Maybe don’t automatically assume that the assassin needs you to pat her on the back to even consider pursuing her own wishes, Timmy.

Tim can be arrogant to everyone yeah (more on that later), but I don’t remember him negating a man’s agenda like that.

[Robin (1993) #25]

Yeah the kid who will feel betrayed when Bruce tells his identity to Steph just elected to tell her name to Connor whom they both don’t know well yet. While talking in her place rather than letting her answer for herself (something he’s done on several occasions). Then he attempts to decide for her whether she has a right to participate, again. On that note: thank you Connor for putting Tim in his place, that sure doesn’t happen often.

[Robin (1993) #6 & #28]

Uh, yes you can. Give the adult woman who’s been handling Gotham’s streets since before you were born some credit, Tim?

As for Helena, the scene in itself is… well, not okay exactly. He’s basically dismissing her wish to handle a personal matter alone, which could imply he doesn’t think the other adult woman who’s been handling Gotham’s streets since before he was born can handle the case.

I’m just putting it with his constant attempts to keep Steph from participating, often to cases that concerned her directly, and how he tends to take it personally when she doesn’t obey… but he casually brushes off Helena when she’s saying she’ll handle a personal case alone. Double standard? Maybe I got too specific a reading but. I don’t remember that sort of thing happening between Tim and male characters– do call me out if I’m remembering wrong though.

And then there’s the “another vigilante” remark.

Anyway yes Tim can be arrogant towards both men and women. Much like Damian being antagonizing to everyone didn’t negate the possibility of him being sexist, Tim being generally arrogant doesn’t negate that possibility for him either.

Plus the only male characters I’ve seen him be that patronizing with are Chris Kent in World’s Finest #3, and Damian. The ten-year-old who’s regularly antagonizing him and does deserve to be put in his place. Oh yeah, and maybe Dodge, another brat. So yeah I do think there’s a slight difference between Tim’s treatment of men and women, if only in frequency. (and in intensity tbh.)

Yes, he’s been consistently disregardful to his girlfriends.

Anon, you say very rightfully that we shouldn’t automatically assume it’s due to them being girls. Please believe it’s not a conclusion I’ve come to automatically though:

A) While I realize that Tim only having canon girlfriends is due to heteronormativity & homophobia rather than a conscious writing intent to highlight any character trait, assuming that he wouldn’t have behaved better with boyfriends is pure speculation– aaand I am totally speculating he’d behave better if only because he’s never that patronizing or that dismissive of his peers’ agency (examples above) when they’re men. that’s part of why I ship tim/kon more easily than tim/steph.

B) Like with everything I brought up on this post I’m not considering his behavior with his romantic partners separately. It’s a character fault that could take its roots in several things, but Tim’s global characterization makes me think the root is sexism.

C) I understand why you’re thinking there’s no reason to conclude his disrespect is due to them being women; in the same vein I think there’s no reason to conclude it’s not. It’s kind of a stalemate and both conclusions are valid.

Skipping Tim’s habit to break up by letter or by phone, ‘cause that’s not cool and obviously disrespectful but even I think it’s more due to cowardice/inadequacy than sexism.

I don’t think I need to speak about Steph again. Let’s go with Ari. Who Tim casually cheated on by kissing Steph on several occasions.

Being a cheat is, in itself, a distinct character flaw that doesn’t always takes its root in sexism. Plus it’s something I have my reasons to assume Tim has grown out of.

It’s his reaction when he learns about Ariana “"cheating”“ on him (she went ice-skating with another dude once in the 87 times Tim stood her up) that ticks me off. Btw and unlike Tim who didn’t seem to feel all that guilty, Ariana did try to tell him about it but he fell asleep during her confession.

[Robin (1993) #15 & #17]

Two things bother me here, a lot more than the cheating in itself: the possessiveness and the hypocrisy. You really don’t have a right to go all “My Ariana” and to chew her out for the grand treachery that is ice-skating when you’ve been casually kissing Steph, Timbo. What those panels prove is that there’s a double standard in Tim’s head. Which one exactly is up to your interpretation and that’s probably where we’ll end up disagreeing. I read it as the “proper girls don’t get close to several boys at one time, but boys who get close to several girls are either ladies men or boys being boys” double-standard, hence Tim’s blatant lack of self-awareness here.

Btw and the thing that solidified my opinion here: Tim, as a rule, tends to be pretty self-aware, at least retrospectively. He puts himself into question and has no problem admitting when his judgment was clouded. I dunno take YJ #55 or Robin #119 for example (I even selected examples that both have Tim recognizing he wronged a girl!)

So if he’s generally self-aware, but doesn’t see anything wrong with his own behavior in the specific situation where he’s cheating on his girl then chewing her out? I explain it with the above double-standard. He internalized a mindset that keeps him from realizing how hypocrite he’s being in this situation. Also he doesn’t confront Ari immediately, he had time to think about it, it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. That should’ve been enough to allow him to step back and evaluate himself but he just. Didn’t.

Bonus: Jack has been hinted to be sexist, and contrary to Tim it’s safe to assume that was totally intentional.

[Batman (1940) #441 || Robin (1993) #122]

Only two occurrences in decades of canon arguably don’t make for solid basis but they still allow me to build a coherence since our parents do influence us without us realizing. And given how much Tim loved his dad (he said himself how much he got from Jack), it sure isn’t an element that could plead against him being sexist.

.

There’s a bunch of other sequences that I low key read as sexist, but that I’m more mitigated about or in which I gave Tim a pass for various reasons so I didn’t include them here.

All in all when I take a solid look at Tim’s global behavior, I see sexism. While it may not be a “solid canon fact” since it surely wasn’t intentional on the writers’ part, I really don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to infer from his very canon behavior. And tbh writer intent doesn’t excuse much. Factually speaking that portrayal has been there since Tim’s early days,he’s been consistently dismissive & disrespectful of his female peers and/or of their wishes and agency. It’s part of him & his history.

It’s not incoherent with his character either– Tim has always been intended to represent a normal boy/teen (dude was legit marketed around the fact that he’s relatable). It’s not baffling or coming out of nowhere that a random teen just so happened to have internalized sexism. It’s pretty damn common, even. It’s not like Tim being sexist was a brutal turnaround that contradicted what makes the core of his character to the point of making him unrecognizable (*cough* Talia’s current characterization *cough*).

Hope this explains that.

Thanks for the asks!

[douxreviews]

American Gods - ‘A Prayer for Mad Sweeney' Review

"You have a story to tell." "Do I?" "I can see it in your fingers."

American Gods pauses in the penultimate episode of its first season to tell us a story. It's a really good story.

It seems like an odd choice, given that they only had eight episodes in the season to work with, that American Gods should devote almost the entirety of its penultimate episode to telling us an extended Coming to America sequence. It seems like even a stranger choice that they should have almost none of the regular characters appear or even be mentioned.

It should be an odd choice, but it isn't. For three important reasons:

- Neil Gaiman loves telling stories about stories themselves. That was roughly 85% of the Sandman comic's groove. It's not just about the story, it's about how stories themselves can affect a life.

- Essie MacGowan's life is a great story, and is very well told. It's actually surprisingly rare for a television show to excel in both of those things.

- When you actually break it down, this episode isn't just telling us Essie's story. It's also telling us Sweeney's story. And giving us a concrete example of how the old Gods ended up in America. It's demonstrating how the old beliefs die. It's showing us how belief can shape the course of a life, and how it can bring comfort as that life passes. It's telling us what Sweeney thinks about Laura, and why. It's showing us how his and Laura's relationship is evolving through the expediency of telling us the story of his relationship with Essie.  On a fundamental level, this episode completes Sweeney's emotional character arc. The Sweeney that puts his coin back in Laura's chest is not the Sweeney that broke into her hotel room only a few short episodes ago.

I just want to touch on Essie's story before we get into the Sweeney and Laura stuff, because there's one factor that makes it work really, really well. Essie was a servant girl who got her heart broken early, and then did what she had to for herself to survive. She stole without regret. She seduced the ship's captain in order to get back to England and then robbed him blind the second he left again, and she had what is implied to be a lot of sex with the gaoler in order to get pregnant and therefore not be hanged. They were all completely pragmatic choices that she made for herself. She enjoyed many of them and she didn't feel bad about any of them. And the show doesn't demonize her for any of it. Not even for a moment. All of the things she does which society would condemn are presented in exactly the same tone as her telling stories to her children, leaving cream out for the little folk, or being kind to a husband that she essentially conned into marrying her in order to get out of servitude, but whom she seemed to like well enough and whom she apparently made very happy.

None of these actions are presented as good or bad. They're presented, as a whole, as having been her life. Nothing more or less.

That said, the decision to have Emily Browning play both her usual role of Laura and that of Essie MacGowen was a brilliant move. Brian Fuller mentioned in the little after-show interview that they used to do that she has a gift for accents, and he is not wrong. Essie's Irish accent was every bit as believable as Laura's American accent. It was with some surprise that I discovered that she's actually from Australia, which means both are equally false. That's a real gift, as anyone who watched David Boreanez struggle with the task back in the day will attest.

Having Emily Browning play both characters explicitly tells us as viewers that we should be contrasting Sweeney's relationship with the two of them, and that choice really pays off. With Essie, Sweeney is roguish, charming, and open. He clearly treats her as, if not an equal, than at least a compatriot if not a friend. With Laura, Sweeney is bitter and cynical, clearly not thinking of her as being worth his time but being stuck with her in order to get her coin back. Just seeing the difference in him while he sits next to essentially the same woman tells us everything we really need to know about what the years have done to Mad Sweeney.

The mirror imagery serves the entire episode well, really. The usage of Fionnula Flanagan as both Essie's grandmother in the beginning and Essie herself at the end. The usage of Emily Browning as both the woman Sweeney liked and the woman he currently dislikes, and of course, the mirror car accident that finally brings Sweeney to his emotional catharsis. We all kind of assumed that Wednesday had caused the car accident that killed Laura, and that Sweeney was probably involved, right? Even so, as much of a not-surprise as that information was, it was right for them to hold it back until this point. Sweeney has witnessed Laura's kindness in letting Salim go. They've had the heart to heart in the ice cream van about having done bad things, and at that emotionally vulnerable point Sweeney is confronted with essentially the same visuals and experience as the car accident that he himself caused, which had murdered the woman whose animated corpse was currently sitting next to him. At this moment, and no other, he's presented with the thing he wants most. His coin has been knocked out of that same woman, the woman he murdered and who is herself an echo of a woman he liked very much. All he has to do is pick it up and walk away. And he can no longer do that.

That's a proper character journey, that is.

Two things that really seal this final moments into something special. First, thank you to the show for not translating for us whatever Sweeney screams at great length in Irish at this point. It can't possibly be as moving as what we're left to imagine for ourselves. And second, even more thanks for the choice to not have Sweeney tell Laura what he'd just sacrificed for her. As far as she knows she just got back up off the road and they're off again. That was the dramatically right choice.

Such a good story.

Quotes:

Mad Sweeney: "That’s what you get for putting a god in a petting zoo."

Laura: "So, do you love god, or are you in love with god?"

Mad Sweeney: "Can’t a man get a moment alone with his prick?"

Ibis: "Malice draped in pretty can get away with murder."

Essie: "I had my opportunity." Mad Sweeney: "Doesn’t seem right, just giving you the one."

Mad Sweeney: "We’re like the wind. We blows both ways."

Bits and Pieces:

-- The use of 50s music in the Essie scenes is there for a deliberate reason, despite being anachronistic. In visual storytelling, at this point in time, pop hits from the 50s indicate innocence. And more specifically, nostalgia for innocence. Not that the 50s were actually that innocent, but what can you do. The study of the use of symbols in a performed text is called 'semiotics,' if you were wondering. Tellingly, the music cues for Essie only become the 'appropriate' Irish period style when Sweeney comes to collect her at her death.

-- The three ships we first see deliberately visually invoke the whole Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria fairytale version of American history that we like to tell ourselves here in the US. Then it cuts to the interior and they're essentially slavers. A visual metaphor for American attitudes toward its own history. Discuss.

-- Were we supposed to infer that the coin that Essie gave Sweeney early on is his lucky coin that is currently in Laura's xiphoid process, or is it merely another visual echo? The sides we see of each don't match, but I don't think we see the other side of either.

-- Is Tatonka Ska supposed to be the buffalo that Shadow keeps seeing? Is he (she? They?) the 'proper' god of America?

-- I wonder if Pablo Schreiber was told when he got this part how much of it was going to involve public urination. That said, his losing an argument to a raven while he relieved himself was comedy gold. No pun intended.

-- It was sweet that Laura took the first opportunity to tell Salim where the Jinn was so that he could just go directly there and skip the rest of the road trip, but it's also hard not to read that just a little as 'We're not gonna need you for a bit, so why don't you take the rest of the season off and we'll meet you in the season two premiere, k?'

-- The implication seems to be that Essie kept forgetting to leave gifts for the leprechauns because she was too busy having sex. That's a tiny bit slut-shamey, but the episode doesn't dwell on it in any detail, so it's probably not intended as such.

-- The moment when Laura hands the ice cream truck driver everything from Sweeney's pocket and he politely takes the wallet back but leaves the money was a nicely staged bit of physical comedy.

-- This car accident was caused by a rogue bunny running in the road. We learn next week that the road bunnies are in league with Easter, who's all about renewal land rebirth. Did Easter just give Sweeney a push to facilitate some kind of spiritual renewal?

-- The title of the episode appears to be a reference to the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, but unfortunately I've never read it so I can't speak much to it.  I'm not a huge Irving fan, to be honest.

A great story. A great episode. Sweeney and Essie's last conversation makes me cry every time.

Four out of four cups of the best cream

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[theanoninyouraskblog]

Well, well, well.

@erasermic-aus​

Looks like henry and windy are at it again. Lets give them hell shall we.

Mmm look at that delicious hint. Alright you know the drill lets look at obvious stuff first. 

1: We’ve got a recording microphone. Specifically based on the shape it looks like we either have a condenser mic (specifically a large condenser mic) or a Ribbon microphone. Knowing what we do about Present Mic canonically (He has a radio show) we can assume this Mic also has a radio show (or a vlog, we’ll get to that later) which means he’s probably using a Ribbon Microphone given that they’re said to have the most natural sound and are usually used for recording human voices. 

But we can take this further. 

Hizashi’s Microphone is a mounted mic on stand... obviously (they help with audio quality). And he appears to have a pop filter on the front (basically it makes audio not sound like shit or in the words of an expert: “One of the simplest recording gadgets is the humble pop filter... positioned between the vocalist and your microphone to block plosives – those percussive P and B sounds that cause annoying low frequency bumps.”- a random fucking website, I did this research myself, I’m not sighting it if I don't have to.)

2: Red eyes. Now Hizashi canonically in the Bnha comics has read eyes, it was changed for the show... for atheistic reasons I guess? This isn’t some measly one off, because Windy and Henry aren’t sloppy. Lets take a look at what versions of Mic have green eyes. The mad hatter. Waiter Hizashi. That's it... there aren't that many full color pictures of hizashi with his eyes colored/open. 

But lets look at who has red eyes. God’s Abomination, specifically when it’s villain mic and hero eraser. (there's no fully colored version the other way round so I’m just sort of assuming his eyes are green when it’s hero hizashi and villain eraser, would make my job soooo much easier being able to draw that conclusion) BUT NOPE I can’t make that clear decisive cut of red means evil, because guess what... HERO MIC HAS RED EYES IN SCREECH’S AU.

But you know what we do know. 

Mic isn’t a hero. Henry told us as much. 

Odd emphasis on not there... implies he’s a villain. But we wont rule out civilian yet.

Now we get to talk about this:

Firstly, that one eye visible one eye not is a fucking trope in the art world. 

Want to know why?

Nah, I’m joking it’s been around a lot longer than him. But the glasses glare and the one eye is a very common theme. Don’t believe me?

That hiding one or both eyes on dangerous characters thing? Also a fucking trope. 

Want a list of popular anime character with only one eye showing??? I have one!! https://www.ranker.com/list/best-anime-characters-with-one-eye-showing/ranker-anime Want a whole fucking page about it? https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/tags.php?id=1085 Here's the data base!!!

Want videogame examples? Undyne (undertale), Sans (undertale), Garry (Ib)! The list goes on!

And doing something with a character’s eyes is always a trope! Character got possessed??? Guess what you can change the eyes to clue your audience in! You’re character just went fucking feral? SLITTED PUPILS ARE THE WAY MY DUDE. Aizawa Shouta just activated his quirk? Zoom in on them eyes, change color and do a weird color fracture. 

Super powerful character has eyes flash? Totally normal, robot character’s eyes change color when scanning? One eye changes color?

Heterochromia is also super common. 

This implies that Hizashi is dangerous, since it’s not happening before a fight as far as I can tell, it just implies he’s a dangerous man and not to be messed with. 

Also remember how I mentioned vlogging? There is the off chance Hizashi is blogging and that’s why his attention isn't on his microphone. Or he could be looking at photos,  or something... maybe a kidnapped and tied up Aizawa... who knows. 

3: Now lets look at that dialog. 

“He was amazing!” We can infer that the he in this situation is probably Aizawa... though it could technically be anyone. But we’re going to stick with Aizawa. 

He was amazing? Well sounds a bit like Hizashi talking about Hero Aizawa, having seen Aizawa on patrol or even having fought him. One this is for sure, this is probably an obsessive mic. The sort that fixates on Aizawa or the like. Seems to me like a villain obsessing over a hero. Now, subtler details. 

1: Lets take a look at this background. That’s glass right there which means this isn't Hizashi’s house, this is a recording studio. And Hizashi is either the host or is being interviewed, and we can rule that out due to the fact his feet are up and it’s fucking rude to do that if your being interviewed. 

Now this could also be a police interrogation room, but the chair lends to it not being so, as does his posture and the mic itself. No this is a recording studio which means Mic defiantly has his own show.

Not only that, he’s a public figure. And probably a villain!

2: Hand guestures are something distinctly Hizashi. As someone who speaks with their hands the same way he does, expressing with hands isn’t just a thing for other people, you move your hands by yourself, reminding yourself to put on socks with motions, etc. But that, that's an odly specific position. 

Now talking with your hands is a common phenomena, books have been written about it, it allegedly conveys strong leadership and the like... however it’s also a trait sociopaths and psychopath are known to mimic in order to endear people to them. Now let me put up a sociopath/psycopath checklist (The tests are very similar and I didnt feel like doing both) and lets look at Present Mic as a character.

GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM — The tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything.  A psychopath never gets tongue-tied. They have freed themselves from the social conventions about taking turns in talking, for example. ✓ Hey, look Charm? Never gets tongue tied... hmmm

GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH — A grossly inflated view of one’s abilities and self-worth, self-assured, opinionated, cocky, a braggart. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings. ✓ This one is a little harder to check off, because he’s not nearly as self centered, but cocky? yeah... yep, so he gets half a point here.

NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM — An excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky. Psychopaths often have low self-discipline in carrying tasks through to completion because they get bored easily. They fail to work at the same job for any length of time, for example, or to finish tasks that they consider dull or routine. ✓ I dunno if you’ve met Hizashi, but this fits in rather well.

PATHOLOGICAL LYING — Can be moderate or high; in moderate form, they will be shrewd, crafty, cunning, sly, and clever; in extreme form, they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and dishonest. ✓ If he’s a villain he checks this easily. Especially if he’s a public figure AND a villain. 

CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS — The use of deceit and deception to cheat, con, or defraud others for personal gain; distinguished from Item #4 in the degree to which exploitation and callous ruthlessness is present, as reflected in a lack of concern for the feelings and suffering of one’s victims. ✓ See above

LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT — A lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims; a tendency to be unconcerned, dispassionate, cold-hearted, and non-empathic. This item is usually demonstrated by a disdain for one’s victims. Ehhh… I really need to see more of this version of Hizashi to determine that. 

SHALLOW AFFECT — Emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings; interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open See above.

CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY — A lack of feelings toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless. Once again see above

PARASITIC LIFESTYLE — An intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others as reflected in a lack of motivation, low self-discipline, and inability to begin or complete responsibilities. Nope.

POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS — Expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper; acting hastily. ✓ Acting hastily? Yep.

PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR — A variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners; the maintenance of several relationships at the same time; a history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity or taking great pride at discussing sexual exploits or conquests. Cannonically this would make sense but we wont check it.

EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS — A variety of behaviors prior to age 13, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home. Dunno yet.

LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS — An inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals; a nomadic existence, aimless, lacking direction in life. This man wanted to be a radio host. That's not a fucking stable job Hizashi. This is poor planning. ✓

IMPULSIVITY — The occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation, frustrations, and urges; a lack of deliberation without considering the consequences; foolhardy, rash, unpredictable, erratic, and reckless. ✓ No duh

IRRESPONSIBILITY — Repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments; such as not paying bills, defaulting on loans, performing sloppy work, being absent or late to work, failing to honor contractual agreements. ✓ if He’s a fucking villain.

FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS — A failure to accept responsibility for one’s actions reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, antagonistic manipulation, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial. ✓ if He’s a fucking villain.

MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS — A lack of commitment to a long-term relationship reflected in inconsistent, undependable, and unreliable commitments in life, including marital. Nope

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY — Behavior problems between the ages of 13-18; mostly behaviors that are crimes or clearly involve aspects of antagonism, exploitation, aggression, manipulation, or a callous, ruthless tough-mindedness. Dunno yet

REVOCATION OF CONDITION RELEASE — A revocation of probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations, such as carelessness, low deliberation, or failing to appear. Dunno yet

CRIMINAL VERSATILITY — A diversity of types of criminal offenses, regardless if the person has been arrested or convicted for them; taking great pride at getting away with crimes. …..✓

Let me spell this out for you, Hizashi is displaying an oddly exaggerated handmotion, even for the most exuberant of hand talkers. (Generaly talking with your hands never gets outside of a box, here I’ve drawn the box on mic for you.)

The larger box is where most people talk and people why are shy or have been bullied/are self conscious of their hands talk in the smaller box. 

He as a character ticks of most of a psychopathic checklist and if he is indeed a psychopath he could have learned that hand motion endear people to you. Now I’m not saying he is a psychopath, most people tick off at least 4 of those boxes, I’m just saying it’s possible. 

3 yep that eye is still confusing me, he defiantly seems like he’s looking at something and the more I look at that smug expression the more I think it’s Aizawa tied up and gagged in a chair with his own capture weapon glaring at him.

4: That's a nice chair. That's a nice chair. Not interrogation I guess. But something about that chair irks me. 

Alright nitpicky now. 

Posture:

That's not fucking relaxed posture. That’s posturing to give of the air of being relaxed. Mic may have been relaxed when he crossed his legs but those arms are not relaxed. Look at the stiff angles. That’s a man who’s up to something. 

And lastly, no, no I could not figure out what kind of shoes Mic is wearing, and I don't think it’s relevant.

[houseki-no-suffering]

Words: 3053 Genre: humor, college AU, nerds being nerds and idiots being idiots  Characters: Cinnabar, Phosphophyllite Summary: AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES!

A/N: i’m super sorry this is so late. I had everything ready to post this on time but life got in the way and then nano did too. But here it is, at last! Cinnaphos comedy! Also, of course this is not betaed, who do you take me for

Among all the things they had expected from college, their new roommate barking orders and insults at them wasn’t one of them. Usually, people gave Phos a chance before they started insulting them. Even Cairngorm had conceded them a couple of hours of trial.

Phos would mumble an apology if they weren’t utterly speechless. And terrified. And they would at least try to look apologetic, even if they had no idea what about, but their face was frozen in a petrified frown. The rest of their body was struggling not to let go of the unruly pile of belongings that they had been hoping to drop on the floor of their new room.

“No snoring, no talking in your sleep, don’t overstep here, this part of the room is mine, if I catch you with so much of a hair near my stuff you’re dead. Don’t touch my things: never touch my things.”

Their tried to nod while what they had hoped would be their new friend went on some more house rules. What was the name again? Shi-Ci-Cinnabar? Gosh, Phos would never call them by name until they weren’t certain. Also, they were not quite sure that all of their stuff would fit into the corner that Cinnabar designated as their own side of the room, but there was no way they could just mention it without risking their own head be bitten off.

So they tried to start small. By some miracle, they wiggled one of their hands free, unquestionable proof that they had been a juggler in a past life, and offered it to their roommate.

“So, uhm, my name is-“

“Oh yes, one last thing,” Cinnabar said, sparing half, or better, a quarter of disgusted glance toward Phos’s hand, “Don’t. Talk. To. Me.”

--

When Phos found enough courage in them to ask around about Cinnabar, they had been expecting tales of roommates being murdered under the pale moonlight, not what looked like the description of a very, very selective cat.

A “cutie,” Padparadscha’s words. A cutie that had helped them with calculus, apparently. Which implied a lot of interesting and contradictory inferences. Like the fact that Papda had spent a considerable amount of hours in the company of Cinnabar, that Cinnabar had softened their bark enough to explain things to them, that those things were math, and that Cinnabar had been patient and good enough a teacher to succeed where even Rutile had failed. All without killing Padparadscha or even injuring them a little.

But Padparadscha didn’t count, Phos thought: everybody liked Padparadscha, it didn’t mean anything. So Phos went looking for their horror stories elsewhere.

Now Cinnabar went from “cutie” to “friend,” which sounded even stranger because it implied an even longer period of interaction and shared space. They were quite sure that Diamond even added the words “for years” next to “friend.”

Of course, Dia had a nice word for everyone, but by the time Bort seconded their opinion, adding tales about the one time they baked German sweets for Christmas rather than how they helped Cinnabar hide a body, Phos was very confused.

Cinnabar was a selective hatred-inflicting mystery, and Phos loved a good puzzle. As long as it didn’t mean ending up six feet under, but judging from their roommate’s meager if anything body-count, it was a risk they could dare take.

Like most things in Phosphophyllite’s life, they didn’t plan it. They waited for the universe to align in a position favorable for minding someone else’s business. And the universe delivered on a sunny October afternoon, in the form of a Cinnabar leaving their laptop open and unguarded on their bed when they went to the toilet.

As it was due, Phosphophyllite thanked the universe, tasting the sweet, forbidden flavor of danger in their mouth as adrenaline started rushing through their body. They were alone, and they would be alone for a few seconds at least, so they steadied their heart and did the unthinkable.

They stepped into Cinnabar’s side of the room.

They world went still. Phos imitated it standing immobile as if the walls around them could crumble at any moment. As if Cinnabar had only pretended to leave their laptop unguarded, like they would ever make such a mistake. They were testing Phos. Their sadistic, evil kitten personality was testing Phos’ loyalty to the fear they had worked so hard to elicit in them that first day. And all the days after that.

But like most times in Phosphophyllite life, Phos ignored their common sense, opting instead for the decision that would elicit the least foreseeable outcome. Which happened to also be the stupidest.

They made another step.

Was it their imagination or the air in the room was getting colder? Shinsha’s side was definitely inhabited by the ghosts of their former roommates.

The forbidden object was now so close that Phos could venture out to touch it. Would that leave any fingerprint on the black, shiny, vampiric surface though? Would those fingerprints be easily attributable to Phosphophyllite? That was the whole point of fingerprints, if Phos was not mistaken.

So they made another step, their legs now dangerously close to the bed, to the point that they could feel the soft consistency of cotton sheets against their shin. They had never felt closer to death before and thus had never felt so alive. And so determined to stay alive.

That’s when they decided that they must have a death wish. They moved their head forward, casting their eyes impossibly close to enemy territory, and stole a glance at Cinnabar’s laptop, enough to capture the image they had set as wallpaper.

And Phos brought both of their hands to their mouth and suffocated a loud, elongated scream.

Cinnabar.

Cinnabar “if you talk to me you’re dead.”

Cinnabar “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.”

Cinnabar “I have never tasted the sweet flavor of happiness.”

That Cinnabar had a picture of kittens as desktop wallpaper.

Little, cute, fluffy fur balls with a big sign with words of encouragement written on it.

And Phos wasn’t screaming, or trying to prevent themselves from doing so, because of the kittens. Because everybody had a right to live their emo life in any way they so preferred. Even if 2008 had come and gone ten years ago. Even if it meant walking around with eyes so empty they could suck you in like a singularity point while still using a freaking picture of kittens as desktop wallpaper.

No, Phos would never judge someone else’s aesthetic, however contradictory. It would have meant judging their own first of all, and they enjoyed feeling the power surge of entropy as they went about their day in mismatched colors and sandaled socks.

No. Phos was screaming, or trying to prevent themselves from doing so, because of the sign. A huge, fully saturated red monstrosity that hurt their aspiring graphic designer’s eyes, but still not quite as much as the font.

There it stood, on Cinnabar’s pitch-black laptop, surrounded by the naïve cuteness of kittens. There it stood, the forsaken font, in all its cursed glory. Desecrating, insulting, violating, blaspheming the blissful and yet beautiful contradiction of emo kittens.

If they didn’t hear Cinnabar’s footsteps approaching from the corridor, Phos would have suffered from a Comic Sans-induced heart attack right on the spot. In Cinnabar’s side of the room.

They had just enough time to contemplate if that was Cinnabar’s preferred method of killing unsolicited roommates before they plunged into their own bed with a leap worthy of an Olympic qualification, like their life depended on it. Because, quite frankly, it did.

With their heart beating fast both from the near-death experience and the horror provoked by their discovery, they grabbed a book, the first book they could find, and shoved it in their own face the moment they landed on the mattress, exactly 0.2 seconds before Cinnabar’s figure stepped through the doorframe.

They had a large, steaming cup of coffee in their hand and a murderous stare in those bottomless, blood-red pits that people around campus insisted on calling eyes.

All the cuteness and tenderness they could have felt after discovering about the kittens disappeared as Phos tried to decipher if that glance was directed at the world or at them in particular.

Their heart was marathoning a full 50km at the speed of a sprinter. And it was being loud about it. So loud. Phos knew that Cinnabar could hear it.

As if in response, Cinnabar’s head shifted imperceptibly toward Phos’ side of the room. Not enough to make out their eyes from beneath Cinnabar’s red, tangled mess of a mane, but definitely enough to have Phos question all of their life choices so far.

--

The scene kept replaying every day before Phosphophyllite’s eyes.

Their forbidden gesture, the way they had bolted to the bed, the way they had grabbed a book and pretended to be reading, the way Cinnabar had come back to their room and had looked at them, the way they had sat down on their bed without saying a word.

The way they had started using their computer as if nothing had happened, the way Phos had cast a panicked glance in their direction and the way they had discovered, upon closer inspection, that they had been holding the book upside down.

Cinnabar didn’t mention any of these things. Not that day, nor the day after that. It was like they hadn’t noticed anything amiss in Phos’ behavior. And that was what made Phos so suspicious.

Phosphophyllite knew about their own chaotic attitude towards life. They knew they would never commit the perfect crime, because they could easily find a needle in a haystack but would totally miss a sperm whale in a coffee cup. Phosphophyllite knew. Everyone knew. Cinnabar knew.

And Cinnabar was waiting for them to break down.

It was already happening. Guilt and anxiety and horror mixing up in an uncontainable cocktail in Phos’s stomach, dangerously close to overflowing.

Could Cinnabar hear the pounding sound of Phos’ heart every time they were alone in a room with them? Had Cinnabar noticed that something was wrong with their laptop where Phos’ eyes had dared taint it with their glance? Did Phos leave any traces of their irresponsible trespassing?

The silence kept stretching on between the two of them, heavier and more loaded with murderous repercussions than usual. And with it, the growing repulsion of that one, cursed sign, disfiguring the amenity of emo kittens. It must have been ironic, Phos thought, it must have been. Or it could have been another test for Phos. If so, how should they respond to it?

They realized that they were staring at Cinnabar again, ready to anticipate possible attacks.

Cinnabar was sitting on their bed, black clothed legs hugging their black laptop while long, black sleeves clad their arms and hands, fingers intently typing some mysterious something. It was probably a list of the reasons why Phos had failed the test and how Cinnabar could get rid of them and make the world a better place.

Cinnabar pressed enter one last time, a single, swift movement of the finger.

It was all Phos needed.

They knew. Cinnabar knew. It was in the satisfaction with whom they had pressed enter and made their list of ‘1001 ways to kill Phosphophyllite’ a reality.

And the emotional brew that had been fermenting inside Phos’ stomach broke free.

“I’m so sorry please don’t kill me!”

If Phos thought that Cinnabar had been considering them up to this point, they were definitely unprepared to bear the weight of their undivided attention. Because, yes, Cinnabar’s stare was now definitely murderous, and yes, all of that murderous intent was directed at Phos exclusively. Success.

They arched one single eyebrow in Phos’ general direction.

Phos felt their heart sink. Catching what could very well be their last breath, they realized they should fight for their life. Because Cinnabar spat the next word as if it was disgusting for the sole reason that it was directed at Phos.

“What,” they said.

Phosphophyllite could see their chances of survival physically dimming before their eyes.

“Y-your laptop, I’m sorry, I swear I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, it happened, I looked at it!”

“You what?”

“I was just curious,” they blurted out, a curious mix of shame, relief and desperation lining their voice, “you never talk to me and you look super scary, but everyone else said you’re actually pretty nice and I didn’t know, I didn’t know what to do, I don’t know what kind of person you are so I thought I’d look just for a tiny second, please, please, please forgive me.”

Curiously enough, Cinnabar didn’t look murderous anymore. They looked perplexed.

They arched another eyebrow and that was when the magic happened because, rather than making them even scarier, that one gesture changed the expression on their face completely. They lost intimidation points, the second eyebrow easing some of the dangerousness from their face and replacing it with a new emotion that wasn’t gloom or anger or angst, or any of the emotions that Cinnabar had displayed in Phos’ presence.

Cinnabar looked surprised.

And it looked cute on them.

And did Phos just think ‘cute’ and ‘Cinnabar’ in the same phrase? They were definitely going to die today.

“You looked at my computer?”

“I did.”

And here was when the magic kept on happening. Because Cinnabar kept looking surprised. And, as such, kept looking less dangerous than they were cute.

“You- but why-“ even more: Cinnabar looked almost calm now, as if their disbelief had been enough to kick out anger and murder from their head, because there wasn’t enough room for all three of them. For a brief second, the thought that maybe, just maybe, they would live to see another day crossed Phos’ mind.

And then the thought crossed their mind again for a longer second, because Cinnabar’s face was an adorable frown of perplexity while they tried to make sense of their first experience of Phos’ incongruous lifestyle. If Cairngorm were here, they could help them through the process. It was less traumatic when there were two people instead of one to acknowledge the hopelessness of Phos’ case.

“Why?” Cinnabar managed to ask in a tiny, childish voice that Phos would never have believed could belong to them. And they destroyed it with chaotic pragmatism.

“I don’t know! I was just curios!”

Cinnabar’s eyes were back on them, their gaze significantly less cute now and Phos contemplated the option of pleading for their life once again, but they were on a rampage and couldn’t stop the words that come out of their mouth. So they uttered them at the speed of light to make up for it.

“Also please tell me it’s ironic!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The font!” what else? Was this another test? “The cursed one! The pic was super cute but you can’t ruin it like that! It hurts the kittens!”

“What the actual fuck. What’s your problem?”

“Gosh, I can’t believe this!” and wielding as a weapon that specific brand of courage that comes from an equal mixture of foolhardiness and spite, Phos did the unthinkable again.

They stood up and walked two oblivious steps into Cinnabar’s territory. And a third one toward Cinnabar’s bed. They bent down over their computer, dangerously close to Cinnabar’s face and blissfully unaware of the defensive way in which they were drawing back.

“That thing!” they said once again, pointing a finger at Cinnabar’s desktop, “gosh, I can’t even say its name, you used comic sans. Like, you used comic sans!”

“Stop staring at my computer, you creep,” Cinnabar protested, and shut the machine as a sign of defiance.

“How can you call me a creep? Look what you did to your kittens!”

“What the hell, go away, go back to your side of the room.”

“They don’t deserve this, and that red too, they don’t deserve this pain.”

Phos was so absorbed in their graphics-induced indignation that they almost missed the fierce, deep red that was dying Cinnabar’s cheeks. And they almost missed the way Cinnabar was no longer barking threats but tilting their head to the side and looking at them with a mixture of confusion and apprehension. Because Phos was ranting about designer’s stuff to a math grad. A math grad who knew about technology only the bare necessaire to write a couple of papers in which the quantity of numbers beat words 5 to 1, and who liked it that way. So Phos missed the exact moment in which Cinnabar’s irritation for their outrageous breach of privacy and personal space muted into defensiveness.

“’twas a gift. From my Sensei.”

“Uh?”

“The thing, I didn’t make it, it was a gift. It was nice of him. He said it was t-to bring me good luck.”

And suddenly the weight of all the things they had missed while they were ranting about gestalt and the faults of sans serifs hit Phos in the head with the violence of a very, very hard frying pan. And then they felt like shit.

“Oh. Oh! Shit, I mean, gosh, and how- how old is your Sensei?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like, more than sixty?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Alright, alright, gosh,” Phos ran a hand through their hair, they gazed at Cinnabar from beneath the teal and found them staring back at them, anticipation and worry on their face.

They were several years older than Phos, and several shades more bitter. And yet, they looked so tiny. A fragile, red-headed thing with adorable little freckles and what looked like a half-pout. In that exact moment, Phos understood how Padparadscha could call them a “cutie.” Padpa was never wrong about people, after all.

“Okay, listen. He was nice, but you both need to be enlightened about stuff,” so they put their hands on their hips in the cheap imitation of a power pose and donned their most charming smile.

“Therefore, I, Phosphophyllite, will help you out. I’m going to make you the best kitten wallpaper. The one that only you can use.”

And then proceeded to be smacked in the face by a skillfully thrown cushion.

[pepperstrawberry]

Thoughts when writing...

There are certain common assumptions in a lot of stories, even for adults, that I tend to rail against.

Those that have known me a long time know that I have issues with the ‘absolute concepts’ like ‘Balance of Good and Evil’ (there is no real balance), ‘Order VS Chaos’ (chaos is just a temporary divergent move away from the human expectation of order, and order itself is not inherently a ‘good’ thing, it’s just -a thing-), and so on...

One of these concepts is ‘Perfect’.

I see often in stories at the start where something is declared ‘perfect’, and then something always goes wrong. Or a villain declares their aims for perfection...

But in all that, the issue is a over selling on the idea of Perfection in the first place.

A good example is a post I saw (that reminded me of this whole thought process) from the movie Alien, where a character (if I recall it was that android?) is quoted, saying “You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.“

But... is a Xenomorph* really a ‘perfect organism’? I’m sure a google search will pull up at least a few sites which will tell you no (though I just did a basic search with my weak ass google fu and mostly got sites with reviews of the movie and stuff that barely scratched the surface of things, so you might need to do some digging). But of the top of my head, I could say no just because they rely on other organisms to reproduce.

But what’s funny about the question is, while I could go on about that aspect, or speculate on the structure of their exoskeleton/comparisons to insects and the like, and any other number of likely vectors of thought, it misses the base question: Perfect organism for what?

See, there are really only two main definitions for ‘Perfect’: 1) without flaw and 2) complete.

Complete just means ‘done’, ‘finished’, ‘goal achieved’ and really isn’t at all special in anyway. As long as you get to the end, ‘perfect’.

But it’s that other definition that makes things more complicated: ‘Without Flaw’. What is a ‘flaw’? And what decides a thing is a ‘flaw’. In diamonds, a flaw is a fracture in the crystal matrix caused by stressed incurred during growth, and especially so the larger the piece in question gets. So that is pretty straight forward perhaps. But what about other things?

Like say, breathing. We breath oxygen. But we -can’t- breath pure oxygen. Is that a flaw? Are those other gases we breath in helping or being utilized? And by how much? Could our bodies stand to do ‘better’? And for what reason?

See, the problem with ‘perfect organism’ is the same as ‘evolution’ being viewed as a constant ‘upward/better’ change with a set direction (there is no ‘next evolutionary step of man kind. Or at least no ‘THE’ next step, but more ‘a’ next step.). Organisms grow aspects to fit a need. There is no ‘perfect’ in evolution. There is only change. Whales (I have been told by smarter folks then I at least) were evolved from creatures that had come out of the oceans, having started forming limbs, and then some ended up going back to see, and they started loosing those limbs again. Variation, shifts one way and sometimes back. Gaining this or that.

Sure, a Xenomoprh can take on elements of the host’s form... but does that always mean a better hunter? What makes a Xenomorph ‘Perfect’? Given they can keep changing, they are never done, so never complete. And if they first need a host and second keep gaining new traits from different hosts to fill needs, how are they, in themselves, flawless?

Basically if you are never done and flaws are too loosely defined to ever be completely covered in all ways, AND you can’t serve ‘every purpose’, then the vibe that ‘PERFECT ORGANISM’ gives off can never be reached.

Of course, this concept also applies to villains and their view of a ‘perfect world’. What does that really look like? Can on be certain there isn’t an issue somewhere? A flaw?

Like, take the Matrix for example: In the second movie we are told that there have been multiple iterations of the Matrix, and that Neo (an ‘anomaly’ that they account for) is just a part of the system. But given how things ended, clearly there were many aspects the Architect and other programs -didn’t- account for. Flaws they couldn’t absolve. (note: i’m speaking in universe, not to the quality of the second movie itself, k? k.)

Now, the good news is that generally, unlike the example things I gave at the start of this (good vs evil/order vs chaos), the ‘Perfection’ concept tends to be a thing used either by the villain as an obvious ‘this is wrong’ red flag, or by scientist that are usually well meaning (but not always) in things like horror and action movies... Though I have an issue with this second one due to how it paints scientist. I know few people that have gotten deep enough into real science that would actually use the word in the way you often hear it in movies, books, comics, and the like.

Though I think the worst, though relatively rarer offender is things like comic book superheroes and magic stories where folks get ‘perfect defenses’ and stuff like that. Where the very power itself uses the term. As stated above, nothing is  perfect because you can’t account for every aspect... At least if you are aiming for ‘flawless’ in the total way that is being inferred by context.

The short of all this is that ‘Perfect’, as it tends to be untilized in fiction is either a boring (villain plans), offensive (scientist being shown as short sighted), or just lazy (hero powers) writing. It’s not a bad word, but in these fashions, it’s over used and kinda rubs me the wrong way.

... Mind you, not saying ‘stop doing this’... just saying ‘maybe think about other words or angles first?’ is all.

(*side note, I agree with folks that rail against using that term as their official name, given that it’s really just a fancy way of saying ‘alien’, but it is the term folks will recognize them under the fastest, and yes, I put this note down at the bottom despite often getting into tangents, but i felt like this specific one would disrupt the flow more then usual... *shrugs*)

{edit} Just realized I didn’t complete a point in a way I was aiming and i’m not sure where I could put it without a rewrite, and this was just a stream of conciousness blab, so I don’t really want to put too much more into it at the moment (though it is on my list of things to really dig into some other time), so here it is:

A flaw implies a weakness to ‘something’, but an organsim doesn’t always evolve to cover a weakness, but sometimes just for an expressed purpose or need. Like creatures with longer necks didn’t gain those because a weakness to being short, but a need for being taller to reach leaves and the like above them. Things like that. perfection, often as it’s considered as ‘flawless’, rarely is thought of as ‘needs fulfilled’ (complete). And this is a part of my issue with the word. The word ‘perfect’ isn’t being used ‘perfectly’ (or something like that XD.. more like ‘completely’ i.e. taking into account more then a single aspect of a subject in question)

[decepti-thots]

Different anon. From the springer question I found your breakdown of intentionality interesting. It’s a grey area that’s not defined by binary approaches! But I’m curious bc your second answer implies a combo of “what was the value added by this question in my analysis as a reader?” and “does it matter?” It’s fine how choose people to engage with text and to what level but it’s odd that a question has to mean beyond what it’s asking haha… the question seemed to tap more into your knowledge of Roche and his process while writing the saga rather than how it functions thematically with the story.

I mean, a question doesn't 'have' to mean anything beyond what it's asking! But it is normal when analysing any kind of work, I think, to assume that one asks a specific question for a specific reason. And, hm. I also do think fandom sometimes has a tendency towards a) assuming that all questions about a work are of equal importance in all analyses, meaning that folks will try and 'well, actually' about stuff that is completely irrelevant to the current topic (like authorial intent!), and b) giving absolute undisputed primacy to Word Of God/authorial intent. Now the anon who asked that question was in no way doing either of those things there, to be clear! But I thought the opportunity to lay out my own approach to those things was as good as any, since I mean. If I had just answered the anon's obvious question, it would have been three words: 'I don't know.' Felt pretty abrupt.

People often want to know this stuff about how a creative made their work. But if a creator doesn't offer up the information themselves, trying to infer that sort of thing from the comic itself is not likely to get you all that far, and so I think asking "is this worth devoting a lot of my thoughts to when talking about a work" is a reasonable answer to the question when it's asked.

[seenashwrite]

Hey! So I'm finally writing a fic, and it's gonna be pretty long (from how it's been going XD). SO I was wondering when it's time to make it a 2 part series, and when I should stop part one. Because I honestly do not know what's a really good cliffhanger and what's just bad. Thanks for reading!!!!!!!

I have no idea when you wrote this, sweets, and Imma answer even though I caution I’m still stumbling into recovery from that case of the zombies I contracted. 

So. Ooof. Cliffhangers. Well.  I mean, they don’t…… the whole….. y’know, the BOOOOOM!! and/or GAAAASP!! type of thing….. I just..... yeah, I can’t be completely diplomatic about this topic. For ol’ Nash, here, I gotta say:

99% of cliffhangers suck it big time.

So, okay, PICTURE IT: we’re winding down to the end of a given chunk of the story [or the TV show’s season finale, or the movie, whatevs] and I’ve successfully imagined myself in the scenario, that protagonist O.C. character or reader insert is speaking to me, I’m tracking with the plot, I’m sold baby, I AM ALL THE WAY FREAKIN’ IN, ergo in that scene…..

….I’m on the second floor of an abandoned house, I’m a little impatient, maybe a touch nervous or annoyed, and every time I fidget, rock back on my heels, the weathered floorboards under the threadbare carpet creak, and now on top of everything I’d swear I just heard the click of the doorknob echo down the hallway, only I know Sam’s way out in the backyard and Dean should still be out front grabbing more shells from the car, so I gasp and shudder and my eyes go wide as I’m frozen to the spot, watching that knob on the door not but a hop-skip away from me turn, aaaaaaand CUT TO BLACK.

Hmmmm.

See, the problem cutting off with something like that - y'know, inferring there’s gonna be some legit cliff plummeting jazz - is I’m not gonna buy it. I’m just not. Because (a) you ain’t gonna kill me/my character, and (b) you ain’t killing Sam and/or Dean.

Unless you ARE, in which case? Don’t even go within the realm of cliffhanger, stick with pure drama genre, and keep it to a one-and-done vs. series, otherwise it comes off as…. I don’t even know the word…. Flippant? Gimmicky?  

Specifically what I mean, and I’ll use the visual medium as example: the garbage of ending a given season - or “series”, depending on your locale - of a show [that we’re all well aware is renewed] or a movie [that we’re all well aware is part of a triology/“universe”, and/or is based off of a book series/comics] with a faux death, it’s just—–

Pardon me for a sec.

[Reaches into the always-stocked water balloon basket that lives in a corner of the front porch of The NashHole©℗™, just behind the swing; picks up a real nice fatty; launches in direction of window; lands with a beautiful splat]

Apologies, I’m having a helluva time waving down the interns to refill my iced tea, and Cas, my non-dead angel buddy who’s sitting beside me, wants another unicorn frappucino, because he’s not dead, no one ever believed he was dead, of course he wasn’t dead, and we’ve been out here swaying in the breeze, adding to the ever-growing list of ways that S12 could’ve ended without cheap deaths [cough Crowley], without poorly implied deaths [cough Mary], and without completely transparently faux deaths [cough Cas], and just have been, y'know, *better*.

Cliffhangers-that-ain’t are frustrating, and it immediately cuts me down to 50/50 in terms of if I’ll continue on watching, or - for the present topic - reading. This is a MAJOR reason why - in fanfic land - I don’t care for most episode/season re-writes [I’ve perused lots of them; only 2 or 3 have made The Nail].  Why? Most rehash what I/we already know, just painting over it with the brush of the author’s watercolor personal desires, no spin or creative angle taken. It’s that whole thing of them trying to craft suspense where there is none. I know where this road leads. I walked that road with the author when I saw the ep, and not just me, about 2+ million of us. Or more, I don’t keep up with ratings.

[Psssst….. anyone curious as to how to do this “right”, RE: being inventive & not simply re-hashing — please do see the offerings at “How It Should’ve Ended”; more recent ones that tickled me have been WW and Jurassic World and Rogue One and X-Men: Apocalypse]

So, that’s Nash Cliffhanger Advisement #1: I’ve no doubt it can be done well, even though I can’t think of an occasion where I’ve seen it & not been at least partially eye-rolly about it. I’m also having no doubt that:

(A) If you do wanna give it a whirl, probs shouldn’t be done on every part because that’ll get old; and

(B) A sure thing would be to keep it to a single story if you’re looking to shock, don’t drag it out - I’d rather have a 10K one-shot that delivers on drama than a bunch of filler added to it for the sake of trying [and potentially failing] to make it suspenseful by expanding it into a series.  #Fic Wreck 

Speaking of those, mild confession time. There exists a folder, filled with tales that wrecked me, ones I caught on my dash or were sent to me or I was tagged in, that have >100 notes, some in the near-thousands count, which were so bad I hurt myself laughing. I proceeded to cut-and-paste the most heinous parts into a document, all so that when I have those times when I’m beating myself up over nit-picky sh*t in my stories & need a break, I go to Fic Wrecks©℗™, and I laugh, and I remind myself Hey, Nash, pump the brakes, people are pretty f*cking forgiving, apparently. 

This might make me a bitch. I also have a doc full of reader feedback on my stuff, both good and bad, which I read when I need a reminder of what works, what hasn’t, and that more often than not, a tidy chunk of people dig what I write. This might make me a mechabitch. I’m sleeping alright.

I bring this up to lead into Nash Cliffhanger Advisement #2 : Check out other stuff.

I know, this is in direct contrast to my writer’s block advice, part of which was to *not* read.  In this case, there’s not block; for me,this is more to the editing end of things. I’m not concerned with an accidental “lift” or “light bulb” that piggybacks off of someone else’s plot/spin/thing because at this point, I’m assuming it’s all fleshed out, you know where the story’s going, any twists/mysteries have been accounted for, etc.

Revisit fanfic that you’ve read that had more than one part, preferably ones whose plots you still remember fairly well so that you can scroll right to the bottom of part 1, read the last couple paragraphs, then hit the first bit of part 2, scroll to bottom, and so on.  

Do you tag your own stuff, like with #fic rec, perhaps?  If not, lots of peeps do - this seems to be a suuuuuper common tag, at least, that I’ve seen.  Go cruise some blogs you like, see if that pops any small multi-parters for you to check out.  

Or, think on book series. Looking back, having read the whole shebang, do you ever think “Jeez, why did the author cut it off there, then pick it up here?” And then another view to take, how’s that have been made into movies? Then ask yourself “Why did the movie-makers choose to cut it there and have the next movie pick up here?” 

I have no idea what you’ve read and then if you’ve gone on to watch their visual counterparts, but here’s a handful off the top of my head....

Narnia

Hunger Games

Lord of the Rings/Hobbit

50 Shades

Harry Potter

Twilight

Divergent

Maze Runner

Basically, in your mind, could they have done it better or did they nail it?

And speaking of nailing it, going back to the written word, thumb through the series/multi-parters on The Nail - remember, 99% of the time I’m not reading series on there in their entirety due to time restraints, so I can’t attest to them having pitch-perfect cap-offs to each of their chapters, but if they made the list?  Well, y'all know how anal-retentive I am - the author’s doing more than a few things above-average, so I’d hedge my bets that they’ve got a good grasp on ending chapters with engagement & enticement.    

And that’s where I personally aim when it comes to my chapters, whether it’s the novel-like Top of the World or my mini-series that have made the rounds here. I want the audience to (1) be engaged to the point that the end of that part kinda snuck up on ‘em, and (2) be enticed to carry on reading when the next part is posted. 

I looked back at the aforementioned works, at how I was capping off, and seems I tend to end in the midst of someone/a group pondering over something, or planning something, then I tend to [not always! but tend to] kick off the next part NOT in the midst of that exact same something. As in - different characters, or it’s the next day, or a new setting. I’d give examples but…. spoilers & such, y’know. [wink]  

Hope that helps. My iced tea has arrived. Til we meet again…. 

[dork-empress]

So, I tend to stay out of fandom drama as much as I can, especially when it comes to Voltron. I love Voltron, despite its flaws, and I really don’t want to ruin it for myself, because truth be told, thinking about my darling space lions is sometimes what gets me through the day. For the most part, its been an easy thing. Stay focused on the positive shit, stuff people can’t call me out for in regards to how I deal with things. 

With some recent fandom drama, though, I wanted to just make a statement about kinda where I stand and answer some basic questions. This is mostly a preventative measure considering I get paranoid about people judging me, so, I wanted to write out my reasonings.

So, here is my radical, radical stance I’ll be defending today: Despite Joaquim Dos Santos statement that Allura is a ‘teenager’, I still ship Sh/allura. Ish. 

TBH part of why its taken me so long to make anything about this is because I kinda only ship Sh/allura as a background pairing in most things anyway? I’ve written some things about them but nothing centered on the pairing, so I thought I’d just stay out of it. But I do like them as a pairing, and sometimes I like Sh/att better and sometimes I like Sh/allur/att. Multi and polyshipping saves lives, people. 

The first thing I want to say: No, I am NOT comfortable with the idea adults in relationships with teenagers, including Shiro being an adult and Allura being a teenager equivalent in a relationship. I haven’t been comfortable with pairings involving Shiro and the teenage paladins either, what some call sh/aladins. The reason I’ve stayed out of THAT boiling cauldron of drama is that there’s a lot we don’t know. We still don’t really know any of their canonical ages, other than Pidge is 14 and H/K/L are ‘late teens.’ 

Because we don’t have anything solid (yet) I base my opinions on what I can infer from the show itself. In the show, H/K/L seem to be in a space equivalent of high school, maybe late in the game, so lets put them at say 17.

Shiro clearly has graduated space school and has been awarded and is entrusted to pilot a deep space assignment to Kerberos. I tend to think of him as being around 25.

Coran is considered old for Altean standards, enough to get a medical condition somewhat like...idk, menopause? so lets put him in his late 50′s/early 60′s or that equivalent. 

Allura is just starting out as someone in charge of things without her father to guide her. now to ME that kinda feels like someone at the age of....well, me. So I put her at 22 (my age). 

Now, as far as the announcement goes, and why I’m blatantly ignoring it: It wasn’t an official announcement. It was a one-off line at a panel at a convention, it wasn’t like the birthday announcements or whatever. 

And even THEN, I still don’t hold stock in it from a sh/allura perspective: From her wiki, Dos Santos described her “as young as everyone else” and "acting as any teenager would." First off, ‘everyone else’ sorta includes Shiro, implying to me just that they’re all of the same generation. ‘acting as any teenager would’....I mean, I’m not gonna lie, thats trickier. I will say it doesn’t exactly say she is a teenager (or altean equivalent of a teenager). To me, honestly, it feels more like its putting her just...in the same age group as all FIVE of the other paladins. 

Also, if we take this one statement as hard fact, please remember that we’d also have to take this statement as when the dreamworks website and comics claim the paladins as “Five unsuspecting teenagers” clearly including Shiro, and putting his age at the oldest 19. 

Now I don’t think Shiro is 19, mostly cause that doesn’t make sense to me given my reasoning from above. Therefore, I also feel comfortable ignoring Allura’s ‘revelation’ and going with my headcanon age of 20-22. 

IF the creators ever come out with official ages for everybody (which, after all this hubbub, I sorta hope they do just so we can stop debating this) I may have to reconsider my stances. But until they do, I’m going to keep a) writing sh/allura in my stories when I feel it is appropriate to do so b) reblogging sh/allura art/fanfic/etc. that I find adorable c) whatever else involving sh/allura because I think its really cute.

If you’re reading this and honestly think my reasoning is unsound, feel free to unfollow me. If you think I’m forgetting some crucial piece of information, please come into my inbox and politely talk to me. I am limited by my knowledge right now, so if I don’t know something I can’t include it in my judgement/determinations. If you think this is a good excuse to send me hate, I will block you and delete your messages. 

Also, this is just for me. If the revelation about Allura’s age makes you no longer want to ship sh/allura, that is your right. If seeing the content on my blog makes you uncomfortable, you can come into my inbox (always open) and ask me to tag anything involving the ship, I don’t honestly reblog that much of it (you can also ask me to tag anything for whatever, I really don’t mind)