#meaning: I agree with you that these more sucky traits of his make him more interesting

[ahoyimlosingmymind]

i think about that scene in the healing center at least 20x's a day

One of my favorite things about unlocked is seeing how broken keefe and Fitz’s relationship has become. Because yes, in the healing center scene, fitz is just trying to help and keefe is being extremely difficult, and while most of that can be chalked up to the fact that he just went through, like, insane trauma and is less okay than he’s ever been in the series (which is saying something), his narration explicitly cares more about Sophie’s feelings than Fitz’s.

Add this onto the list of things that make keefe interesting to me I suppose

[craftypeaceturtle]

Sanders Sides- Losing My Motivation Analysis

General:

OH MY DEAR LORD- We have done it! We have made it to the first character name. God, I don't remember learning a name this early on in the series but! Now, we can introduce Logic as Logan! Each time a name is introduced, I’ll only refer to that character by their name. God that makes things easier! 

But to make a point of things. There’s nothing special about this name reveal at all but I think that actually works for Logan. It’s not some vulnerable moment or a moment of trust or anything like that. It was an accident that Logan then acts like Thomas is the weird one for not considering that they all have names. No big fuss or icky emotions involved. Very Logical. 

Again, we have a video whereby Logan and Morality both join forces to help an issue. And like before, they both blame Anxiety and then Creativity before even considering that they may be the issue. (The Mind v. The Heart episode). Admittedly, this time it’ s Logan who intended to find the issue out himself and Morality didn’t really contribute a lot to the deductions but! I don’t know, this plus the previous episode I mentioned, makes it feel like they’re supposed to work really well together despite being opposites. Plus the end card suggests that they do both like messing about with each other. 

Characters:

To stop myself being too repetitive, I’m going to start just making general points here that refer to a specific character rather than just stating again and again their personality traits. Obviously at this point, their characters are fairly ironed out. 

Logan/Logic- No real point to be made here, I just want to go over what a precious dork he is for justifying dressing up as Sherlock Holmes to solve an issue. Like what an idiot haha! His panic at being the solution to an issue he’s caused felt really extreme and escalated quickly. The idea of him being problematic clearly worries him and he’s determined to constantly be a force of good within Thomas. Partnered with the last episode where he called the others “unnecessary” before saying I love you, it makes it seem like he both values himself REALLY HIGHLY and so he cannot afford to have any fault. Also, the ending where he dismisses his name reveal in order to properly plan is like the first time we see a side truly enjoy their work. 

Morality- Still quite clueless. He claims that every Sherlock needs a Watson but then doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the conversation and even in the ending he says he doesn’t know who Watson is. Still feels like weirdly clueless rather than an endearing cluelessness. But maybe that’s my opinion! He has a moment of being weirdly patronising to Anxiety (excuse the shit quality as per usual):

He responds to Anxiety’s weak timid ol voice saying that he’s not always the bad guy and just responds with the most dismissive patronising line. I feel like I’m coming across as like a Morality hater but... it’s a weird episode for him! But I can also see how people would argue that this is just how this dad character is! He’s trying his best in acknowledge Anxiety’s concern and addressing it in a very characteristic way. But... still feels patronising. 

Creativity- The end card doesn’t lie when he says that he feels like a side character. He kinda of is. I feel like we haven’t had an episode where he’s the focus just yet. As Creativity, it makes sense that his issue is with being constantly perfect and finding the best of ideas. But this video isn’t long enough to properly address those issues and so it feels weird how quickly they move on with Creativity saying “cool won’t do it again”. Like that could be it’s own video’s worth of discussion! But whatever! 

Anxiety- The first time we see Anxiety object to his role as the bad guy! It’s not a loud objection or even a firm one, but it’s a stepping stone! Which is weird because we don’t see his persona change- he’s still a confident taunting figure. He’s still cocky when the other’s address him:

But I think it’s also important to emphasise that while, yes, he disagrees with being the bad guy, he doesn’t suddenly reject his role as Anxiety. He acknowledges that he does and manages a sucky part of the personality, but that’s just what he does! That’s not necessarily his fault!

Theories:

1) While we’re yet to see a big point of support for Anxiety, the others do still treat him fairly well? Like, Logan doesn’t get all offensive when accusing Anxiety and moves on quickly when realising the issue is above him. Same in the previous episode, every character has agreed with him at some point and none of them have been directly really harsh- or even as harsh as Anxiety himself as been. Does this mean that Anxiety is an abusive presence? Personally, I’d argue no. Again, his persona has dropped a few times which then demonstrates when he’s just lashing out. He’s not maliciously stopped any of them yet. Like, so far in the story. He’s just acted out and the others then feared him in response. I get that a major part in the theory that he’s abusive is the insults he casually throws around. In all honestly, I’m to address that but it will make more sense to address that during a different analysis as there’s a specific point I want to draw. For now, just know that I’m of the insults and will address that later! Now we’ve seen that his persona is dropping, the others don’t really react harshly to his presence. It feels a bit much to accuse any of them as abusive. 

[kaylinwrites]

Life of Pi, The Martian, and Man vs. Nature

[Started January 2019]

By: Somebody who firmly agrees that chemistry is a sloppy b****, and got irrationally upset when Richard Parker didn’t say goodbye. What an animal.

I’ve been out of the loop on here for a while, and I’ve got oversharing-syndrome, so I originally started this essay with a very long explanation of how reading on my phone made me suddenly into reading again. But then I was like, what, is Audible sponsoring me or something? As if. 

So I’ll spare you the backstory. The short of it is, I ended up reading Life of Pi, and finished it within a few days. Reading a really good book is practically a drug, so I started a new book right away, another book everyone seemed to have read, The Martian. 

I got about four chapters in before I started to think things were looking familiar. 

If you haven’t read either book, you should. I’ll wait.

. . .   . . .   . . .

If you don’t have the time or patience for that right now, I’ll give you a quick summary of what goes on in each. If you’ve already read them and don’t care for my summaries, skip on down to the next row of dots.

Life of Pi is about an Indian guy named Pi, naturally. The first part of the book explains his childhood. Pi is the son of a zookeeper, so he knows a lot about animal behavior. When he’s sixteen, his family decides to move to Canada, so Pi, his brother, his parents, and a collection of zoo animals also headed for the Americas hop on a boat to cross the Pacific. On the journey, their boat sinks, and Pi is the sole human survivor. Other survivors and inhabitants of Pi’s 22 foot lifeboat include a zebra, a hyena, and briefly, an orangutan. (RIP Orange Juice.) Oh, and there’s also the tiger, but Pi doesn’t notice that at first because the tiger is seasick and was hiding under the tarp for the first, like, five days. 

(Side note, that’s a very fun reveal, because everybody knows Life of Pi is the book with the tiger boat, so when we think the tiger isn’t there, it’s all like “Hey, where’s the tiger? I feel cheated out of a tiger”, and when the tiger shows back up, it’s all like “Oh s***, there’s the tiger.” Extremely good book.)

So the second half of the book is about Pi’s very unglamorous day-to-day life at sea. He eats raw fish and drinks turtle blood, and walks the fine tightrope of keeping the tiger happy so it won’t eat him, while also making sure the tiger knows he’s in charge, so it won’t eat him. Good thing he grew up in a zoo! Pretty stressful, constant threat of death, but a happy ending. 

The Martian is a book set in, I’m assuming, the near future, wherein a group of astronauts are on a research mission to Mars. Six Sols (Mars days) in, there’s a big sandstorm, and the team has to evacuate and leave Mars altogether. Mark Watney, botanist, mechanical engineer, and all-around great guy, gets separated from the group as they make their way to their rocket (MAV, but whatever), and the team has reason to believe he’s totally dead, so they leave without him. 

Surprise! Mark’s not dead, but he’s soon-to-be, because Mars is a deserted, uninhabitable, hell-planet. So, naturally, he has a crisis, but then decides he’s going to try to survive long enough for rescue. He starts growing potatoes, and tries to keep his equipment running long enough to contact NASA and tell them they messed up big time. There’s a lot of Mars shenanigans, which is to say, Mark almost dies a bunch of times, but he’s pretty smart. Good thing he’s a mechanical engineer! And botanist, I guess, but potatoes are less exciting than blowing up rocket fuel. Very stressful, constant threat of death, but a happy ending. 

. . .   . . .   . . .

Way back in middle school, when we learned about conflicts, they taught us there were three types: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, and Man vs. Nature. I’ve heard they’ve added more now, but the only one I care about for this essay is Man vs. Nature anyways.

Man vs. Nature is all about the character(s) winning against a force of nature, be it a wild beast, a natural disaster, or even a zombie plague. Examples of Man vs. Nature stories could be anything from Lost to Jaws to Little House in the Big Woods to The Hunger Games. There’s a lot of possibilities, but the Man vs. Nature books that I’m interested in are survival stories.

More specifically, the type in which the main character is alone for most of the story. I haven’t actually seen Castaway, but I’m imagining that fits into this category. The idea is to throw a character into an unknown and hostile place, and see how they manage to survive alone. 

I believe the first story of this type I read was in elementary school: Hatchet. Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem nearly as hardcore as getting stranded on Mars or being trapped in a lifeboat with a tiger, but that’s hindsight. When I was reading this at 11, it was an absolute thriller. It even had a moment of sick horror for me. I remember reading the chapter where Brian find the pilot’s decaying corpse and freaking out a little because it was the most graphic thing I’d ever read up to that point. Nevertheless, I remember that book as being adventurous, riveting, and very real.

I think one of the most interesting traits of these stories are the realism. If you’ve ever read The Martian, you know that the author definitely did his research. There’s something very cool about watching a character work out problems not with magic, or because they’re the chosen one, but with their wit and sheer determination. Life of Pi would not be nearly as fun to read if the tiger was just magically chill. Pi only survives because he knows how to work with wild animals, and while to some, that may seem convenient, I find it makes for a fascinating story. 

This brings me to the first characteristic of survival stories that makes them so compelling: good old fashioned gritty problem solving. Because any problem that crops up in a survival situation has to be solved immediately or the outcome is likely death, it forces characters to find solutions. Sometimes these solutions are quite creative. Sometimes they go horribly wrong. 

This connects to the second reason survival stories are so interesting: the main character is alone. They have to do everything themselves. And if it goes wrong, there’s no one there to pull them out of the s***. 

The Power of Friendship is a fantastic trope. No one can deny that seeing characters band together to accomplish their goals and become closer as a result makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And exploring the way characters interact with one another and develop their relationships is interesting, sure. But isolating a character is also a goldmine of a trope. Think of the episode of a show where the rest of the team is incapacitated and the remaining team member has to save the day all on their own. It allows that character to prove themselves as a competent problem solver, and show their strengths, and in the end, they save their friends, and there’s all the more Power of Friendship.

But when the character that’s isolated doesn’t have any friends, so to say, what happens? Being indefinitely cut off from the rest of the world makes for some interesting exploration of humanity as a whole. 

From a writing perspective, it’s a fascinating challenge. For one, when your main character is your only character, they have to be able to carry the story by themselves. In Life of Pi, the first half of the book is devoted to letting the reader get to know Pi, so they’ll be rooting for him, and understand his thought process a bit better. The Martian throws backstory to the wayside and tosses the reader headfirst into a catastrophe. The reader is hooked for the time being, and by the time the initial catastrophe is over, Mark has proven himself charismatic and likable, so the reader is alright with following this story through his lens. 

There’s also the psychological side of things, the reflection, which is the third thing survival stories do that’s weird and awesome. The writer can decide how much focus to put on the character’s sucky situation. The Martian plays this pretty light: Mark has a few moments of existentialism, but he hangs on to his humor and general will to live throughout the entire novel. Mark’s narration never truly loses the personality that made it so likable in the first place, even if it gets a stronger undercurrent of “F*** Mars” as the story progresses. In his situation, the threat of death is looming and ever constant. Everything seems to break, potato plants die, and one misstep means suffocating in the cold wasteland that is Mars. Life of Pi has a more passive dread. Once the tiger is reasonably under control, not a lot happens. This is the classic ‘stranded in the wilderness’ type of survival story, but with even less space to do things. All Pi can really do is collect water and fish. This makes his narration more introspective, and sometimes more numb. He spends a lot of the story grappling with his faith, which is a key component of his character. 

(Mark and Pi are interesting to compare in that regard: Mark is so obviously a man of science. He trusts in NASA’s work, and his own calculations. Pi has enough faith to practice three religions, and though he sometimes loses trust in God, in the end, his faith is stronger than ever.)

What I’m saying is, these stories can go one of two ways in regards to reflection. If a survival story is more immediately threatening, the story will focus more on the problems and solutions that come up and the writer will build a story more based around the events, though the main character’s personality is still important to keep the audience caring about the outcome. If a survival story is more slow moving and passively threatening, the story will focus more on introspection, and the writer will build the story around the character and how they react to their situation. Both serve the purpose of seeing how people deal with things alone, physically or mentally.

An honorary mention for things that make survival stories compelling is the lack of antagonist. Some may say the point of Man vs. Nature is that Nature is the antagonist (duh) but I would argue that it isn’t. Nature is really just doing its thing, and Man is the poor schmuck with bad luck. Despite what Mark Watney might say about Mars, it isn’t actively trying to kill him. It’s just existing and coincidentally killing him. And I know I said Life of Pi is more passive, but it might have a stronger claim to an antagonist in the tiger than The Martian does in Mars. But even then, Pi and the tiger reach a sort of understanding by the end, and there’s no longer a true threat besides starvation or one of the many other side effects of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific. 

(Speaking of side effects of being stranded in the middle of the Pacific, Life of Pi absolutely had my suspension of disbelief snatched right up until the part where Pi, half dead, meets another lifeboat out in the middle of the mcfreaking Pacific ocean. There’s no way he didn’t hallucinate that. It’s probably a metaphor, but it gave me so much whiplash I couldn’t figure out what for. Still a fantastic book.)

Survival stories above all give us perspective on our place in the world. As the world grows smaller and smaller, I hope we can remember to keep telling stories like them. They remind us of things we shouldn’t forget: Nature will always be stronger than us, though we can hold out against it. Mankind has a strong will to survive-- for ourselves, for our relationships to others, for our faith, or maybe just out of pure spite. I love both Life of Pi and The Martian for their exploration of these topics, and for being so unexpectedly but delightfully similar. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go live in the woods, surviving off berries and pheasants that I’ve shot with my bow, and contemplate the nature of man.

[TL;DR What does Mars and tigers have in common? They’re both orange. And also trying to kill the main characters of two well-loved novels.]

[donghanrk-blog]

* keychains for santa

rkcharity solo; 1.6k  — donghan’s never really enjoyed helping people.

there are only a few good traits donghan has picked up from his parents, but there are plenty of negative ones: among many other things, his family shares an overwhelming need to make themselves look good. this is what, many years ago, led the original kims into volunteering for various “charity” events run by various family friends who were often just as, or even more wealthy than themselves. the lines between profit and not-for-profit were often pretty blurry, but the fundraising always went suspiciously well. as donghan  and his brother got older, his parents made less and less appearances at the events, choosing to let the children be the faces instead. this often meant donghan would (unwillingly) spend several weeknights during the holiday season taking pledges at dinners, singing in choirs, canvassing or handing out pamphlets in front of department stores. donghan and his brother never knew or cared even a little bit about the causes they were involved in, either giving up halfway through or finding little games to play with each other to distract themselves from the boring volunteer work.

the stupid thing is, donghan’s parents never caught on or never cared about how crappy donghan actually was at fundraising for these things. donghan continued to participate in whatever cause his parents pretended to care about every year until he moved to seoul – only because if he didn’t, his parents would threaten his allowance or even worse, compare him to his brother (which was incredibly unfair considering how sucky he was, too.) his first winter by himself in seoul was spent blissfully free. donghan looked forward to never having to sing in a choir or hand out cheap pamphlets ever again.

needless to say, when he receives the text from his father on november 7th, he’s unhappy.

[ sms from: Father ] Donghan-ah. We’re holding back your cheque this month.

“what?” donghan hisses through his teeth, squinting at his phone. what did he do wrong this time? his grades have been decent, he hasn’t skipped classes –  oh… does he know about all the parties? yikes. donghan’s heartrate speeds up a little as he prepares his text back, but his father replies first:

[ sms from: Father ] Unless you help us with something important. Do you remember Keychains for Santa?

donghan groans audibly, gathering some weird looks from the other students at the coffee shop where he’s studying. How could he forget? He only made, like, twelve whole clay santa-hat keychains that one year. it was the volunteer group his parents made him get involved in when he was in middle school, during their first year in seoul. the kids made and sold their own little keychains and all the profits went to a program that would buy and send christmas gifts to low-income families in poorer parts of the city (it was one of the only actually legitimate charities that the kim family was involved in.) but twelve-year-old donghan got himself banned from helping  after he rebelled and made his own  halloween-themed keychains instead of the santa hats because he thought it was stupid that they started selling christmas stuff so early.

[ sms from: Father ] They need someone to teach the kids how to make them.  Your brother can’t do it because he’s running his first shareholders’ meeting this week. Did you hear about that, by the way? He’s doing really well.

yes, i did, multiple times actually, he replies, but the sass doesn’t come through properly in text – but he supposes that’s for his own good. fighting with his father right now is a bad idea considering how badly he wants that cheque. he reminds his father that he got kicked out as a kid, to which his dad replies that he knows and explains that their family friend is desperate and donghan is the last person  on the list that they’ve asked for.

nice, donghan thinks, scowling, but he agrees to it anyway.

“why are they selling these so early? halloween just ended,” the boy in front of him (his nametag reads lee gyeonmin) is chattering. donghan laughs out loud, lightly, amused by how much the kid sounds like him.

“exactly,” donghan says, as he reaches forward to press down on the corner of the gyeonmin’s santa hat, where he’d forgotten to flatten it. “don’t forget to flatten out these edges, because they’ll break off after they bake these���”

it’s weird, how well he remembers this despite how much he disliked the volunteering at the time. he can vividly remember sitting in this corner of the downtown library, at these exact tables, arguing about the exact same things with his brother. at the time, there were more kids making keychains, but today there’s only the three preteens, two boys and one girl, and a younger seven-or-eight year old in front of donghan, himself, and an older volunteer overseeing everything.

“look at my snowflake!” the youngest, min dayeon, beams with two missing front teeth, holding it up for donghan to see. donghan gives her a thumbs up and smiles, choosing to ignore the fact that it’s lopsided.

“how much do we sell these for?” gyeonmin is asking cheerily, as he passes his hat to donghan for him to put the metal loop through. “is it a lot?”

“nah, it’s only a little bit.”

“how  much are we getting paid?”

the resemblance to his younger self is uncanny, but donghan is slightly uncomfortable. he peers at the boy. “you don’t get paid. this is volunteering.” how did his parents not explain that to him beforehand? gyeonmin’s disappointed expression is strange.

the boy to the left of gyeonmin, park soobin, who is currently working on his fourth christmas tree, pipes up: “all the money we make goes to other kids. kids who need help with christmas, y’know? poorer kids.”

gyeonmin stops his crafting and looks up. there’s a frustrated look on his face as he furrows his brows a little: “why other kids?” donghan blinks, watching his face curiously, as the boy leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “how do they decide which kids need help and which ones don’t?”

is that anger in his voice? donghan isn’t sure what to say. he glances across at the older volunteer, who is talking to someone far enough away that he can’t hear what’s going on.

the little girl remains cheerfully oblivious as soobin slows his production and blinks in confusion over at gyeonmin. the other preteen, a shy girl, stares at them both. “what do you mean?” soobin asks, eyes innocent, as gyeonmin huffs and grabs another roll of clay, aggressively starting his next keychain.

“whatever.”

it’s evening now, and most of the parents have come to pick up the kids from the library. donghan has waved everyone off so far, half-heartedly thanking them for their hard work after taking their earnings and putting them in the little box held by the older volunteer. after the other three kids are gone, donghan notices gyeonmin alone, shrugging on his backpack and heading for the door by himself.

“yah—gyeonminnie,” donghan calls out, to which the boy only responds with an annoyed look over his shoulder. “where are you going? you’re supposed to wait for your parents—“

donghan had begun to suspect what’s next, so he’s not all that surprised when the boy replies with a cranky little “my parents aren’t coming.”

“ah.” donghan nods slowly. he’s a bit awkward – he normally doesn’t interact with children this much. in fact, his thoughts towards kids usually only extend to get out of my way and why are you so loud so the fact that he feels a twinge of sadness for this boy that he normally wouldn’t spare one nice thought for is strange. guilty is a new feeling.

he hasn’t interacted that much with people from poor families, either. but throughout the day, gyeonmin has given enough hints for donghan to put two-and-two together and he realizes that gyeonmin misunderstood the intent behind the volunteer event. something he had mentioned offhandedly earlier had disturbed donghan, because he’s never had to deal with something like it before: when they were talking about santa clause, gyeonmin said he and his eight-year-old sister had never been visited by santa before. it was obvious that gyeonmin was hoping that through making and selling these keychains he’d be able to help his sister. it made donghan feel bad for him which is, again, a pretty new feeling.

“what? can i go home?” the grumpy boy interrupts his thoughts. donghan nods, but he digs into his jacket pockets while holding up a ‘wait’ symbol with his free hand.

he fishes out a few bills. 40,000 won. it’s not a lot for donghan, but gyeonmin’s eyes go round. donghan hands it out. “here. you’re not technically supposed to be paid for today so don’t tell anyone, but—um, buy your sister a present if you can.”

he’s incredibly awkward, but if gyeonmin doesn’t notice this, he doesn’t care. he snatches the money and grins at donghan for the first time since that morning, bows, says thanks hyung a million times and then runs out.

donghan feels himself smiling, but he sighs. was that the right thing to do? or did he just teach a boy that volunteer work is pointless unless you get something out of it?

but if the warmth in his heart and the spring in his step is any indication, donghan thinks he must have done a pretty good thing (for once.)  

he kind of likes the feeling.

[tinnefoil]

Some thoughts on the fixxer upper concept

A while ago somebody posted an article that complained about Karamel following a fixxer-upper storyline structure and those are creepy and pretty sexist. 

Now, I actually do agree with many of these concepts. 

But what struck me about the argument was that I personally differentiate between: 

1.) Fixxer Upper

2.) Lovable oaf

3.) Badboy redeemed

(and lovable/angsty badboy)

For example, I don’t see Homer Simpson and most of the “Sitcom where the wife is attractive and the husband is not” as fixxer uppers. Because I don’t think that the Homer is ever going to change. The implication to me is more that Homer has a (in his case huuuuuuge) set of unappealing and awful traits, but he has some traits that Marge likes and that in her hand make up for it. [or: Homer “changes” mostly in such that the writers sometimes throw in a nicer episode because they worry the watchers will get sick of it, note, I haven’t watched the Simpsons regularly anymore for ages, maybe my info is outdated]

The “friendly” version lovable idiot is probably something like “accept people who they are” or “we are all flawed” etc. 

As for the difference between fixxer upper and badboy redeemed. I guess I would say the gravity of the crimes? And that badboy redeemed maybe has a bigger focus on paying for your sins versus changing? Or a bigger focus on “only she understands his real pain”. 

I actually find most of these elements are at least so far relatively absent in Karamel and if they exist, they are not a huge focus. (like Kara doesn’t spend a ton of time trying to understand Mon-El’s manpain and cuddling him over it, or at least not on screen)

Anyway, I think one aspect is the different treatment of crimes versus habits. In society if you commit a murder you are expected to go to jail. We can talk very long and detail about the philosophy of jail, but let’s agree that in the public consciousness this is often thought of as “paying” for you crime. (in fandom paying usually comes in a bunch of different forms, having bad things happen to you and suffering (karma justice/paying in pain, sometimes bleeding over bad childhood as both payment and excuse), trying to do good things to “make up for it”, direct compensation to the people who you have hurt, forgiveness from the people you have hurt) 

But you don’t “pay” for chewing with your mouth open (well at least I hope you don’t). You just either learn to stop it or you don’t.   

The other thing about fixxer upper, or rather what I picture under fixxer upper is that: 

1.) Fixxer uppers are imo relatively frequent in real life

2.) Fixxer uppers are by comparison imo relatively rare in fiction

3.) I personally believe the main reason for 2 is because men really hate fixxer upper as a concept 

Again, I do think that fixxer upper as a concept are is based on sexist ideas about roles. I think it is best personified by the saying “Women marry a guy hoping they can change him, men marry a woman hoping that she will never change” (ie never gain weight, never get a better job, never want less sex than before, never have less time for him) 

It’s this whole idea that women have to do all the impressing work upfront or that relationships are more front loaded for men (ie the good parts are the beginning and it goes downhill from there). Excluding the idea that there for example might be non-domestic women or men who really do get something out of domesticity. 

I think the male perspective on the fixxer upper is the vision of the nagging shrew who always tries to push you into things you don’t want and can’t just let you live in peace and accept you who you are. I think we see a slightly sanitized version of this in the various “men who never want to grow up” comedies, where the women are portrayed as spoilsports but maybe with some underlying “okay, maybe she is kinda sorta right in principle, I have to grow up eventually”. 

In real life the fixxer upper relationships I’ve seen usually centered around: 

1.) Losing weight

2.) Eating more healthy

3.) Dressing better

4.) Getting rid of sucky friends

5.) Getting a job

6.) Asking for a promotion 

(so this is what I’m picturing when somebody says fixxer upper, more like the slobby guy, the “well he is not as fit or well dressed or rich as I would like him to be, but those things I can fix”, and not the wifebeater/drug addict/5th stint in jail guy and his handwringing long suffering wife)

I can’t say how happy or unhappy these real life fixxer uppers are, though a decent amount of them seem to last a decent amount of time, and at least some women come off almost if they are bragging about it, almost like it is some kind of hobby. 

In real life I always kind of fascinating because in real life the joke on this is often that men have to be molded/have no will of their own (like jokes that one has to unlearn him any bad habits that his mother or last girlfriend taught him or jokes that the previous girlfriend did a good job in breaking him in). Which again I think is the reason why men don’t really care for seeing this portrayed in fiction. 

So the female negative perspective on Fixxer Upper is that it means that good women have to marry slobs and improve them because men are not taught to fix themselves up for relationships to the same extent as women are and the male perspective is something like that women are shrews who care about the wrong things, don’t accept you for who you are, and always try to push you into a direction you don’t want. 

In real life I suspect men go into this because well, most of these things are usually can be argued to have some sort of benefit or are not too end of the world awful. 

I’m guessing the romanticized version of fixxer upper from the women’s side is that she isn’t really forcing him into it, that he has this inner need anyway. 

And I guess the romanticized version from the man’s POV is supposed to be that somebody saw their true potential and supported them all the way through. (kind of like a slightly more down to earth “chosen one” narrative, based on this idea that most normal people probably at least sometimes feel that they are wasting their potential, but procrastination or maybe even self confidence is a hard thing to shake). 

Which brings me to another aspect, namely that fixxer upper as a construct is like really taboo in real life when it goes into the other direction. A woman wanting her boyfriend to lose weight is her caring about his health. A man wanting his girlfriend to lose weight makes him an horrible shallow person. Because we trust women to not just be superficial and visually oriented and to be nurturing, but we don’t trust men to be the same. Because for a woman to be beautiful has a very different meaning and value in a social context than it has for a man. And because for a long time the tools men had to try to affect their spouse’s life were very different than the other way around (like the man having the right to decide whether the woman can have a job or a bank account). 

The original article also talked about, what about the other side. What about female fixxer uppers? 

I think there are male fantasy versions that are kind of related to this concept. I think the male version of fixxer upper/badboy redeemed tends to bleed over more into a hero fantasy. It’s basically “the girl with ‘issues’”. Falling for the drug addict girl and trying to get her to come clean. Falling for the girl whose boyfriend beats her and always goes back to him (bleeding into nice guy (tm) and “if she only came to her senses and saw that I’m so much better for her”).

So back to fixxer upper versus lovable oaf versus angsty badboy. Now I do think that there’s a reason why they tend to bleed over into each other. Because I’m sure a lot of characters are a mix between them. 

Like, most redeeming badboys probably also suffers from habits that need fixing that were responsible for him doing the crimes in the first place (I guess maybe there are some exceptions where it’s more like “basically good guy in character who did bad things in the past that he feels guilty over”, but I would put that more under “goodguy with a dark and tragic past” rather than “badboy redeemed”). So he needs to do both, unlearn the old habits and pay for the crimes. Or it might be decided that it’s wrong for the woman to try to fix a guy or at least to try and fix all habits, so in regards to those habits he turns into the lovable oaf. He still retains some bad habits, but he’s still lovable due to other traits.  

Btw, it gets further complicated that what fandom considers crimes doesn’t necessarily overlap 100% with actual crimes, like fandom tends to see cheating as a crime-crime and is much more likely to make excuses for “I was violent/murdered somebody to protect my loves ones”. It creates some interesting situations when for example cheating gets treated more like a crime that you pay for (like by being beaten up and crying a lot) rather than habit you have to fight/get rid of, with like psychological help. 

One last thing, I think both fixxer upper and badboy redeemed are often a type of power fantasy. Now this doesn’t mean that it’s good or healthy (like one can argue that this power fantasy is attractive because it comes from a person of powerless or otherwise one wouldn’t have to fantasize about it), it just means that that is what it feels like to the people who like it. Because to shape a person or to deeply affect their lives, are examples of having power over a person. 

The other example of course is people who like badboy redeemed from the perspective of the angsty badboy. I think this blends into the fantasy of the chosen one, of we know we suck/are less than our perfect selves, but then somebody comes and sees our potential and helps us develop it. It makes me wonder if this is related the other version, the one with the fixxer upper girl, being so taboo in society. That outside of some teacher/mentor relationships, the true equivalent of badboy redeemed, where the person is really shit, has give into her feelings, be rebuilt, see that they are shit and strive to become better is considered much more creepy with the genders reversed. Because we assume men are more controlling, because the mental image of a girl running to gain a guy’s approval is much more scary to us, because the push for women to take care of the changing without prompting is bigger/the criticism on fictional relationships like that would be harsher. Or maybe seeing it with a girl as the one to redeemed hits too close to home, so it is “safer” to project those feelings on a guy. 

To get back to the original topic: I think Kara/Mon-El so far shares the most traits with Fixxer Upper and fewer traits with traditional badboy redeemed. We might end up with some elements of lovable oaf, but it’s too soon to tell. 

[s-a-b-traction]

Stretching the Patience Rubber Band

My biggest pet peeve is immaturity. 

I don’t really like starting out writing pieces in a negative way, but I promise you it will get better by the end of this post.

I really hate immature people. REALLY HATE them. (I hope you can tell how much I am irritated by those kind of people with the intensity of the letters of the previous phrase.)

I really don’t like it when people do not act their age in situations they’re supposed to. Yes, I know that sometimes some of us act childishly for fun. I get that, and I admit that I’m like that at times too. But what I dislike is when some people act that way 24/7 -- all the freaking time in all situations. They rationalize like a child. They don’t take full responsibility of their actions, and sometimes look for a scapegoat to blame for it. Some of them even cry or complain over the smallest or easiest thing to do.

I have a friend who is like this at the moment, and you have no idea how much she irritates me right now. Since I don’t want to reveal her actual identity, I’m going to use the alias Ariane. She is several months older than me. I’ve known her for more than a year now, meaning that we’ve been friends for a while. 

There are times when I observe my friends and reevaluate the things that happened before they became part of my life. One day, I randomly decided to do this with Ariane. I was contemplating how I became friends with her, and how I wasn’t really very very close with her. The past few months before we graduated high school was when I noticed that there was something off about her, but I wasn’t sure about it because I’ve never heard anyone address that about her. I still kept that thought in my head even though I continued being nice to her towards the end of our high school career. I noticed that she had a habit of letting other people decide for something she planned. 

Yes I understand that sometimes we need to be open-minded about suggestions of other people, especially when it’s about decision-making for something very important. However, the problem with Ariane is that she’s asking for the opinion of other people for something so simple that she can decide on her own. During the last semester of senior year, Ariane asked me to do something with her and I agreed to do it because I liked her idea. When were already at the point where it had to be finalized, she seemed to be so unsure of things and kept asking me and another friend (who was also part of it) about the project. I became annoyed with that because we already told her our final decision in person and in our group message on the project. Yet, she was still thinking of changing things on the last minute because she thought of a new idea that could also work. (Having new ideas are okay, but if there is already less time to prepare the project before it is due, changing what you’ve started is not really the best idea.) To shorten this story, I kind of reminded her again through our group message that we should stick to our original plan instead, telling her that it’s already well-developed for the project. She finally went with what I said after a few attempts of convincing her that changing it to the last minute is a BAD IDEA and it would just ruin the whole thing.

Story #2 is something recent that happened.

Ariane posted something that was very odd on her Snapchat story.

We all know her as a nice, sweet, innocent girl who tries to be good to everyone. (Sounds like I’m describing myself haha, but no I’m not that kind of girl anymore.) She is very religious, considering the fact that she gave up Snapchat for lent this year. She is very obedient towards her parents. 

Now, that last line. She is very obedient towards her parents. That means if her parents tell her she can’t have a boyfriend yet, she can’t have one... or else they’re gonna kill her with thousands of lecturing. I have met her parents a few times, and I must say that they’re very strict. Strict dad = heck to the NO with boyfriends.

Going back to the odd Snapchat story, she posted a monochromatic pic of her hand intertwined with someone... who seems like a guy. She also put a caption with a lock emoji and an emoji of 2 people. 

Some of her friends, including me, were so shocked when we saw that picture. She never told us anything about crushing or meeting up with a guy, whether it was back in high school, now in college, or last summer vacation. When I interrogated her about the picture and who the guy is, her answers didn’t seem genuine to me. She said so many things, including her dm-ing him on Instagram last summer and rejecting him for now because he was apparently courting her. I knew that she was lying, but I still kept asking her questions to get an answer that I can use as proof that she’s really lying and just making things up about the “guy” she was intertwining hands with in the picture.

When I asked what the guy’s name was, I laughed so hard. She couldn’t think of a better name. The name was obviously derived from the name of her favorite Youtuber that she’s obsessing with at the moment. 

And there. In that moment, I already knew I was right.... that she was lying and just making up information to say that her social life isn’t dead and that she had someone hitting on her.

A week or two after she posted that snap, I was still infuriated. I was still annoyed with what she was doing. I couldn’t believe that I associated myself with her... with a person like her who had a trait that I hated. Because of that, I did a sarcastic awards show on my Snapchat story to mock the awards show that her favorite Youtubers are in (I called it #SabsSnapchatAwards) and to let her be aware that I’m very very annoyed with how she’s acting. Some friends thought that shady mock awards show of mine was brilliant and a creative way of shading someone. Some friends thought it was mean and petty of me to do that; I must say that I half-heartedly agree with them. 

Fast forward to last Saturday, when I went to her post-birthday celebration.

I had mixed feelings. 

I was happy because I got to go to another event like that this year. Dressing up and putting on makeup for events like that is fun for me. 

I was anxious because I remembered the rumor about Ariane’s brother, who apparently had (and still has) a crush on me, serenading me with a song at her party. First, I had no idea who the brother was prior to the party. I probably have seen him once or twice when I went out with Ariane or attended to school events with her. Never talked to the brother. Not even one word. I didn’t even know his name before the party, for goodness sake! It was creepy. Also he’s not that cute. #SorryNotSorry

I was excited because I got to eat more free food. YES FREE FOOD IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT. I was also excited because I got to see my “babies”, my friends from the class of 2020, and some friends that graduated a year ago. Of course, I’m also happy about the music. Lit music. More lit than our prom music, which was a bit sucky because..... AHHH I’ll save the prom stories for another blogpost. It’s going to be pretty long.... I think? (If I won’t get lazy or become too busy, then maybe it’s gonna be long.)

Here’s a summary of what went down at the party to close this post.

The party was fun. I had fun. The arrangement was great. I liked the venue; it reminded me so much of a school gym... It’s like those gyms they use on TV shows to throw a homecoming/prom dance. The food was great even though I didn’t get to finish it. (For once, it wasn’t Asian food. I don’t hate Asian food; I just get tired of it sometimes if I eat it in and outside of the house.) The DJ was so much better than the DJ at our prom. There were so many throwback songs that were played. They even played the freaking songs I wanted our prom DJ to play for slow dance! 

The positive note to end this post:

There were so many people besides myself that talked about the great qualities that she had as a person. What struck me the most was one of her younger cousins talking about her. The younger cousin told her that she looked up to Ariane because Ariane was a role model to her. 

Role model. 

I felt like an asshole after everything that I’ve been thinking about her after I heard that speech from her younger cousin. Well, maybe the stuff I’ve said are really true. I’ve heard some other people besides me complain about the problems she has that she’s oblivious about. But that word in the speech just hit me hard. 

I remembered my younger cousins. My younger cousins that I grew up with several years ago back when I still lived in my province in the Philippines. My younger cousins that I helped with their homework in grade school. I kinda felt like shit because I saw myself in her for a second, and here I am talking shit about how immature she is.

I still want to be her friend. I still want to. I think she’s a good person. I just contemplated how shitty I am as a friend for me to think of her like that. But I still have preferences, of course. I want to be friends with people that I want to learn from, not to babysit. I may say that I have friends that I call ‘babies’ because they’re younger than me, but I’m friends with them because I can see them as mature people. I can see their potential to reach maturity quickly.

And so I’ve decided that I will still remain friends with her. But I will distance myself from her to avoid myself from being toxic of her immaturity problems. 

If she does come up to me and decide to rant, then I guess I’ll try to be more patient with her.

I just hope that one day she will change and face things in life in a different way.

I just hope that one day she will stop crying over the fact that not everyone likes what she likes and not everyone she becomes friends with will stay forever in her life. (And no, I’m not foreshadowing about my absence in her future life. I’m still going to be here for her as a friend.)