#meta and character babbling

[soltiana]

i know what tumblr likes and it's obviously 20 slide powerpoints about william conrad. i researched this.

[anghraine]

ROTJ ruled, as usual— it has more flaws than my beloved ESB for sure, and more than ANH, but the highs are so good and so rewarding in a way that never gets old.

One of my favorite parts this time around comes after Anakin tells Luke it's too late for him to ever go back (a belief explicitly shared by Palpatine, Yoda, and Obi-Wan, but not by Luke until that moment—and only for a little while). Luke withdrawing into "Then my father is truly dead" is always great, especially the shot of him in the lift, surrounded by taller men in Imperial uniforms with his shoulders and back rigidly straight and the warmth in his expression gone. But the thing that really makes it is not ending the scene with Luke disappearing, but letting that rejection linger by shifting to Anakin and just letting seconds tick by as he contemplates what's just happened.

He doesn't actually do much—just walks a few steps and reflects. His body language isn't overwhelmingly despondent or anything. Obviously we can't see his face. And yet we feel how hard that hit and how much he's dwelling on it. He's all but encouraged this response from Luke and yet it feels like it's really, truly sinking that this isn't at all what he wants from Luke.

He doesn't want Luke to call Palpatine (or anyone) master, I don't think; he just considers it inevitable, the only possibility other than Luke's death. And for Anakin, death above all is the thing to prevent.

Everything Anakin says is about things he or they must do, or what cannot be escaped, or destiny, but all of these things he says to Luke are ultimately about Not Getting Yourself Killed. There's no sense of choice beyond submission or destruction.

(Anakin does know he's done terrible things, clearly, but his takeaway from that understanding is that he's gone too far to turn back. That sense of powerlessness, the inability to make a choice that really means anything, pervades his characterization in ROTJ in particular.)

But I feel like, while he still feels powerless after Luke leaves, there's also this sense of a slow, half-buried epiphany. This isn't what he wants.

[cinnamonanddean]

One of the things I just love so much about the Smallville fandom is that we've all just agreed that regardless of who you're pairing him with, Lex Luthor is a fucking Sex God.

It's particularly interesting because the show barely gives us ANYTHING to support this. We have one (1) Lex sex scene, plus one deleted scene, and while they're both hot, they're not at all spectacular. Zero characters, including Lex himself, discuss his sexual prowess (or lack thereof). And yet somehow, every single fic I've read (and written!) paints him as absolute dynamite in the sack.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing or complaining about this! I fully support Sex God Lex Luthor (as evidenced by my inclusion of my own writing). I just find it SO interesting that we've collectively decided it. I feel like it's a competency kink sort of thing: Lex is shown to be someone who is generally very successful at everything he puts his mind to, so it does track that he'd be good at sex too. I don't know what, if anything, the comics have to say about his skills, so I can't draw any conclusions from that side of things.

I just adore the fact that we all looked at Lex Luthor in Smallville canon and went "yup, that guy FUCKS."

[canayams-art]

Crazy to me that there are people out there who genuinely believe Pei Xiu was/is a social climber cos I’m almost certain any ambitions he had of greatness were ripped to pieces the moment he lost Ban Yue. That man did NOT want to be great anymore and yet he ascended anyway.

Guy whose ascension was built on blood and guilt and shame. Guy who was honestly relieved to be in exile. Guy who only kept up the ruse of being a respectable god to save Pei Ming’s reputation but willingly forfeited that respectability when the vengeful spirits of Banyue Pass had finally been dealt with and the opportunity presented itself on trial.

Pei Ming even brings up the fact that Pei Xiu would rather defend/protect Ban Yue and remain in mortal exile than reach “greatness” again by turning her over to him. It’s a jab at Pei Ming’s pride considering he likely had influence in Pei Xiu’s ascension. Pei Ming is basically saying he stuck his neck out for Pei Xiu and Pei Xiu is throwing it back in his face. Pei Ming saw his own nepotism as a grace bestowed upon a grateful party, but Pei Xiu never forgot the reality of why he was recognized by the heavens.

Pei Xiu ascended as a result of his gruesome actions. He was a god of slaughter and war. His story is one of a man who had the ambition to beat the odds of his estranged heritage (Pei family being in exile), rise in the ranks to become something more than his family’s reputation, and ultimately pay the steepest price, which made all of his efforts no longer worth it when he finally made it to the highest peak.

I think it’s important to remember that his actions are consistently guided by the fact that he has so few choices and every option is bad. I don’t see a social climber—I see a survivalist whose exile was the thing that finally set him free.

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[yourhighness6]

A K/A defense against zutara in TSR that I keep coming across is the argument that Zuko "didn't really ask Katara for forgiveness", and although that's clearly bullshit disproved by literally everything canon in that episode, there's often an undertone arguing that the narrative tying Katara's trauma with her mother to her feelings about Zuko discounts everything he did for her in TSR. And although it can be argued that Zuko's clear remorse for his actions discounts this argument, which is a stance that I myself would probably take in any hypothetical debate on the topic, I do think its worth exploring why else this take is shitty.

Katara's trauma is explicitly tied to her mother's death, I don't think that's news to anyone, and she has abandonment issues from both her mother dying suddenly and her father leaving to go fight in the war slightly after. Although this is clearly neither parent's fault, it is worth examining how her trauma and more specifically her abandonment issues later affected her relationships with other characters, and most continuously, Zuko. For me, it seems incredibly obvious that their time in the Ba Sing Se caves together, although formed through an incredibly tenuous connection, undoubtedly excited her feelings of abandonment. This is why those feelings are very clearly examined in the episode just after, when Katara reconnects with her father for the first time in three years (coincidentally at the same time that Zuko does, which is another parallel between the two others have pointed out) and why Zuko's betrayal is shown to have affected her so personally. Not only was she the only one to connect with him, that connection was incredibly personal and therefore left her feeling incredibly betrayed. Katara's character background alone, which also happens to be heavily addressed in this episode, is enough for the narrative to be justified in connecting Zuko's betrayal back to her mother's death. Subconsciously, her mind was probably doing something along the lines of Zuko = Fire Nation + crystal caves = abandonment. Conveniently, this take also chooses, as most K/A takes do, to discount the fact that Katara canonically forgave Zuko.

I hope this makes sense, and this is not in response to anything any particular K/A shipper posted, it's just a trend in the fandom I wanted to try my hand at debunking. That being said, as with most things, I know it's not going to change any K/As minds, so I hope at least my little babble is entertaining to the zutarians out there. (K/A shippers DNI)

[omezaproletariat]

Everything I see reminds me of them… (going shopping and seeing things with my OCs’ aesthetics)

[xannerz]

been meaning to draw hector starting to re-integrate back into society, and his joy at overhearing some old coronan villagers speaking the dk's native language. quirin lets him know that a lot of people came here after edmund's order, trickling in over the years, and it's kind of staggering for hector to experience a sense of community again after so long.

[blueberryfruitbat]

Ideal anime Dedede would have been a "I mean yeah I bully the kid but I don't want him DEAD." And they'd actually keep that trait consistent.

[softantlers]

Honestly you are so right, the gender of it all IS a big reason I struggle to fully connect the adults to the teen versions. But also true that the adult actors have a certain gender presentation that's reflective of their ages and the time they grew up in. Which aligns with the time the characters themselves grew up in.

But the teen actors have the openness of their generation, and they're more comfortable playing around with different gender presentations. Which is kinda like the freedom from expectation and judgement the characters find in the wilderness. I don't know where I'm going with this anymore but yes, the gender of it all

no, i think those are really good points! i've been wanting to write a full-ass meta about this but my brain is crunching ice right now, so i'll just kind of babble at you, if that's cool?

like, there's something about soccer (and women's sport, in general) that's very similar to the wilderness for me. i mean, there's even the clothes meta. yeah, the yellowjackets have some personal pieces, but a lot of what they're wearing is their school-branded fuckshit. like, they are actually wearing their sport a lot of the time, and there's not much opportunity to take it off in the wilderness because it's the resource that they have.

but they're not just their sport. i think the scene with van face-painting allie in the pilot makes that clear? even though allie has a bit more of a fem expression, she's still wearing the soccer getup and complaining that she can't go to the dance because of her sport. she's very fixated on the beautiful dress that she would be able to wear but won't be able to because of her sport. what i'm getting at here is that women in sport kind of live in two realities. there's the field and who you are there, and there's the outside world and who you are there. (sidebar: i'm using the phrase :women" here loosely. i'm not a woman myself, per se, but for the sake of explaining the general phenomenon. my opinion- pretty much anyone who isn't a cis man experiences this bisection in sport to some degree.)

anyways, what makes me think about the wilderness being like women's sport is sort of my own experience with it. like, playing soccer growing up, it's a really liberating thing because you are encouraged to be sweaty and aggressive. there's even chants, like "be aggressive!" and so, for people who have to clock in as "women" throughout their youth, this is a very rare thing. because outside of that? yeah, you're not given positive feedback about these behaviors, which in the real world is gonna get you treated like shit for being too masc or being too angry or whatever.

but the soccer field isn't necessarily you as much as being off it isn't necessarily you. both are different versions of yourself you have to negotiate. off the field, i was this butch kid, and my best friend was this high femme. we were both masc as hell in our behaviors on the field, but that isn't to say either was our true nature. we had different selves that we floated between. bringing this all back to yellowjackets, i have this notion that the wilderness is like the girls never getting the opportunity to leave the soccer field?? for some people, this is liberating and allows them to break out of boxes in the same way as their sport (shauna's s3 clothes comes to mind). for some people, it maybe feels more oppressive as they have less opportunity to actualize who they really are with limited resource (maybe thinking about jackie here).

but yeah, all that to say, i think the wilderness is a genderfucked space full of an openness to gender expansiveness that is often oppressed and more regulated in the real world-- much the same as the soccer field. so while i think the adult actors maybe aren't matching the gender energy of the teen actors in a more outside-of-the-text way (they are restricted bc of their own socializations as older actors imo), it is still interesting to think of gender being limited also because of the distance the adult yellowjackets have from the wilderness and its encouragement (for better or worse) to get your head in the fucking game and "be aggressive!"

[anghraine]

[Note: this post is grumpy and eventually also about Star Trek, it just takes longer than usual to get there and is generally rambling.]

There's something tickling my brain about how my main fandom—to a large degree, sole fandom—for years was Pride and Prejudice, and one of my most intense and long-lasting, yet niche grievances with Austen fandom fanon was over Lady Anne Darcy. It was specifically around the fandom image of her as this absolutely idealized mother, a sort of Madonna figurine brought to life.

I've talked about this many times, but: we know little about Darcy's mother in the book, and that little doesn't really suggest this ideal modest, easy-going, selfless, soft maternal figure. Multiple people in the novel allude to her teaming up with her sister, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, in arranging the betrothal of Lady Catherine's daughter to Lady Anne's son to consolidate the status and property of the sisters' husbands, as well as their own aristocratic ancestry. Lady Catherine is really the only one who goes out of her way to mention Lady Anne. Late in the novel, Darcy very carefully talks his way around filial respect towards his dead parents while also trying to explain how they affected him, insisting they were good people while adding that they not only allowed, but encouraged ("almost taught" him) his arrogance and narrow preoccupation with his family circle. He also specifically says that his widely beloved father was the more generous and pleasant of the two.

It's a small thing in some ways: Lady Anne is an incredibly minor character who is dead before the novel starts and whom we only hear a little about that's easy to overlook. At first (long ago), I didn't care about individual fics or headcanons or whatnot working to distance her from Lady Catherine (and even Darcy himself), and instead envisioning her as a sort of generic maternal ideal. But it was impossible to avoid noticing what seemed an oddly pervasive fannish investment in this quasi-Madonna image of her, even though a) we hear so little about her and b) it doesn't fit very well with what we do hear.

And honestly, Lady Anne being the more abrasive and haughty parent, whom Darcy resembles more closely, makes perfect sense with her background and with the structural mirroring of Elizabeth-Mr Bennet and Darcy-Lady Catherine (each parental figure embodying extreme versions of each lead character's flaws and in some ways, warped versions of their virtues).

But it's not just that there's no reason to assume she was so utterly dissimilar from and superior to Lady Catherine, and that both Lady Catherine and Wickham are independently manufacturing the Pemberley family's cooperation with the planned marriage between Darcy and Anne, or to think that Darcy's implication that Lady Anne was the more difficult personality is mistaken. The thing that always puzzled me is why so many P&P fans want to idealize her this way in the first place, when she's barely referenced in the novel. Why would so many fans care so much about this dead offstage aristocrat being defined entirely in terms of Being a Good Mother (maybe even a perfect mother) despite the obvious unnecessary complications this creates around the characterizations of her sister and son?

It was never a universal fanon, to be clear, but common enough that I couldn't help noticing it and finding it strange. Like, did this whole weird fanon arise solely because Lady Anne is Darcy's mother, and marginal and ambiguous enough to allow fans to default to the most comfortably gendered image of female parenthood? Is it related to the hyper-gendered interpretations of Elizabeth and Darcy themselves, even though both are most strongly associated with cross-gender parental figures in Mr Bennet and Lady Catherine?

(A tangent, but for the record: I'd also argue, and have before, that Elizabeth is most temperamentally similar to Darcy's male friends, while Darcy himself is far more like Jane and Charlotte than like Bingley or Fitzwilliam. And just about every time that either Elizabeth or Darcy makes an assumption about the other based on generalizations about men/women rather than particulars of each other's personalities, they get proven very wrong. So understanding either of them wholly in terms of masculinity/femininity seems dubious in the first place.)

There are probably other possibilities for why there's this investment in idealizing Lady Anne, but in any case, the reason I'm rambling about this is because a lot of the sense of Amanda Grayson's character post-"Journey to Babel" that I've seen reminds me a lot of Austen fandom's representation of Lady Anne.

It's not as baseless with Amanda, for sure. She is initially somewhat set up that way only for that image to get painfully undercut later, when she tells Spock she'll hate him forever if he doesn't step down from his responsibilities to risk his life for Sarek's (she also hits Spock in this scene, though "I'll hate you forever" feels worse to me! ymmv!). And later official ST productions have moved more and more aggressively towards this "Madonna" image of Amanda (while Spock himself has also been increasingly stripped of the messy, complicated ways that TOS Spock himself interacts with gender, in-story and out of it).

But even versions of Amanda that appear almost exclusively based on TOS Amanda seem to lean heavily into an image of her that reminds me much more strongly of fanon Lady Anne Darcy than the Amanda of "Journey to Babel." And I guess it's one of those things that I not only disagree with but don't really get the appeal of. I like both Lady Anne and Amanda quite a lot, despite all of the above—or rather, because of it. They seem to be difficult, imperfect figures within messy family dynamics—great! Messy family dynamics are a lot of fun, and being good mothers is not the only metric by which to engage with female characters who have children.

I don't think either Lady Anne or Amanda are good parents, but they're no worse at it than their husbands, and I find both of them more interesting to think about than their husbands. One of my first fanfics ever was a trollish little fic about Mr Darcy cheating on his wife, who has returned to her father's house with a premature baby nobody expects to live, only to increasingly hint and then reveal that the betrayed wife is Lady Anne and the supposedly doomed premie baby is Darcy himself. There's a TOS-only concept that regularly plays in my head about the cut "City on the Edge of Forever" scene where Spock invites Kirk to Vulcan to rest and heal for some indefinite length of time, only it happens at the end of the five-year mission when Kirk is even more ground-down than he transparently is becoming in S3, but this becomes interwoven with Amanda as this personable but ambiguous figure, and with the complications around how she relates to Spock, Sarek, and even Kirk.

Anyway. I don't know if there are other fandoms where people have noticed that drive to idealize rather than villainize flawed mothers, but I was very struck by how much the cleaned-up Amanda reminded me of cleaned-up Lady Anne.

[lunarriviera]

the agent starling theory of fanworks: a meta

Hi hey hello, I am here to yell at you once more about random nonsense. This time I shall babble about something I came up with in my first year of extremely online fandom which has been useful to me as I think on these things. Perhaps it will be amusing/useful to you as well. Here we go: the Agent Starling Theory of Fanworks.

To begin with, let's consider a particularly egregious example: She Who Shall Not Be Named. You know, that super obnoxious person who (allegedly) came up with Draco Malfoy. Well, good job, Person! Thanks for that, I guess. However. Did Person ever understand Draco Malfoy? Has Person ever known what Draco Malfoys are for? Arguably no. Otherwise they would not have cut the scene where Draco throws his wand to Harry. Otherwise we might have seen, I don’t know, say, Draco dancing with Hermione at the Yule Ball, for instance. Otherwise Draco might have, at some point, even if just for a single shot, been shown as something besides a bully and sniveling coward and daddy's boy who would sell his own mother for a chocolate humbug. Of course, Draco was all of those things; but that is not all he was. (And Tom Felton did try. Lord knows he tried.)

The point here is not, how do you feel about Draco Malfoy, or even She Who Must Not Be Named. The point is, how do I know with such certainty that she got Draco so very wrong? Easy: because there are approximately eleventy gabillion fanworks addressing this failure.

Enter, then, Clarice Starling. The version important to our fannish situation is from Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991), in which Starling is played by a luminous young Jodie Foster. Starling is still a Quantico trainee, not even an FBI agent yet, but for reasons known only to her boss Jack Crawford (cough*she's hot*cough) he has decided to involve her in an extremely high-profile case.

In this scene, Starling and an ME need to do an autopsy, but the useless local cops who found the body will not stop hanging uselessly around, talking and drinking coffee and being extremely, as I may have already mentioned, useless. Remember that Starling is still basically a college student, and watch how she handles the situation.

Starling’s speech: Excuse me, gentlemen. You officers and gentlemen, listen here now. There's things we need to do for her. I know that y'all brought her this far and her folks would thank you if they could, for your kindness and your sensitivity. But now please go on now and let us take care of her. Go on now. Thank you.

Part of the whole point of Agent Starling is that she's from a rural working-class southern background, so she knows exactly how to handle these hopeless confused nosy yokels, and shoo them out of the way so the rest of them can get down to work. But in addition to her humble background, and her relative youth and inexperience, she’s also brilliant, and she will in the end be the only law enforcement officer who can crack this case wide open and clear it.

Pretty sure you see exactly where I am going with this. So here we are standing here, the fan creators, and we're basically saying: Thank you. Thank you for bringing the character this far. We appreciate that. But now, you can go. Let us handle it from here. We got this. No, really—we do. Your part is done. You did that. And now this character is safe in our capable hands. Let us take care of them. Y’all go on home, now. Go on.

I’m additionally delighted by the fact that, in the film, they’re about to do a postmortem. Because isn’t that what we need everyone out of the way to do? To anatomize a character; figure out what happened to them, what made them be the way they are, what makes them tick. We have to do a forensic examination and frankly whoever initially had their hands all over this character is not the one for the job. We don’t ask parents to do surgery on their children, and that isn’t even a good analogy (so I will give you a better one).

Because it’s also funny to me when people get mad about their characters being “taken.” I’m sorry, are you new here? Do you understand how art works? Did you actually think it was yours? Because that’s kind of adorable. First of all, there exists a mighty rushing current of culture down into which, if you are very lucky, you get to dip your little bucket. It’s like a torrential stream roaring past at very high speeds, and if you are even luckier, you draw up your bucket and there’s something good in it. Something cold and clear and crystalline and thirst-quenching and life-giving. But it’s not yours. It doesn’t belong to you. You just happened to be the one at that particular moment who was holding the goddamn bucket.

Furthermore, can you imagine the heady joy of having met and introduced to the world a character who is so beloved that other people want to make art about them? Absolutely sick. Literally insane for that. Couldn’t be me. Etc. Show me a person who’s hincty and gripped and neurotic about their character being “taken away from them” and I will show you a person with severe attachment issues. Go write about Gilgamesh or Grendel’s mom or Hikaru Genji or Hamlet, if you’re that worried about “your character” being “taken away from” you. They’re right there for you to use instead.

So! That is the Agent Starling Theory of Fanworks. Now go forth and write eleventy million fanworks about your character. They’re your character, now. You know them better than anyone else alive. And don’t let anyone, not even a copyright holder, ever try to tell you otherwise.

[anonym-potato]

Nein Again - 2x16 "A Favor in Kind" + 2x17 "Harvest Close"

Hello again everybody! Another double feature! And boy Age of Umbra is looking really good. Last we left off, the Mighty Nein descended into a sad wet cave of evil magic, and fought a GELATINOUS CUUUUBE. Spoilers ahoy!

2x16:

I rate this Sam Riegel DnD Beyond ad a 6/10. I'm too young to get most of these references but Gail is iconic.

Jester Lavorre perplexing ancient Wizards since 835 PD

"Howling Babble" is a delightfully terrible name.

Good call on that holy water Molly

Jester with the clutch Turn Undead, I always forget about that until it comes up.

Such a close call on that HDYWTDT. Wow this dungeon is mean.

I'm getting proxy sensory eeww from poor Nott's antiquing

What is a reasonable amount to like smut, Caleb?

WEIRD SHIT REPORT: The group has retrieved, from Siff Duthar's lab, The Magician's Judge, which is right at home in Yasha's hands. (She also sells her old Moon-Touched Greatsword to Pumat later)

Poor Laura losing the party's account sheet

I love that any high Intelligence roll on Fjord's part can be justified by Warlock Visions

Also they've made like 2 million dollars for charity and this episode isn't half over yet.

Matt's like NOPE I will not let you hammerspace out of this deception check

This is probably my favorite Fjord dream because of how overwhelmed and distressed Travis is. And also all the kickass sjword sjwallowing fjanart.

And also Matt. Really. How else did you expect a command to "CONSUME" to be interpreted.

Nott braiding flowers into Caleb's hair is so sweet.

I'm still insane about the whole Fjord grinding down his tusks thing. Truly a character choice of all time.

Jester and the Gentleman's banter is excellent

Thank god for that nat20 on the Deception check.

Awww and Caleb giving those papers to someone who might be able to take action. I forgot about that.

Travis' Sean Connery is surprisingly good?

OH SHIT THE MUSHROOMS

Nott's little cafe excursion still breaks my heart

The best part of Jester's "special package" conversation with Caleb might be Marisha's reaction.

It's interesting that Beau implicitly trusts Dairon in a way that's a little jarring.

"Hey mysterious geometric magical stardust you think I can time travel?" - Caleb Widogast

The way Jester says "Uno dos tres...quaaaaatro" makes me smile

Zadash has gotta start giving its criers a little more to work with.

2x17

Oh right Sam did win an Emmy

I rate this Sam Riegel DnD Beyond ad an 8/10 MORE GAIL

Jester's 16 STR my beloved

I don't know if I'd want to be launched by a trebuchet, but I certainly know some people who would.

And of course, what is there to say about the legend of the three Natural 1s?

I thought mead was made of honey, is it not usually sweet?

Jester's 16 STR my beloved

Molly buying a whole-ass tapestry of the god he pretends to worship is hilarious

What was he even going to do with it? There's nowhere to hang it!

"He just Human-splained me." Is a great quote

This whole rat conversation reminds me that Nott and Yasha's relationship is severely underrated and more people should have brainworms about it.

Yasha's arm wrestle is hyper than half the combats in the campaign so far.

Darrow!

I want to see Jester design Mighty Nein business cards. They'd be so goodbad.

Caleb leather thigh holster isn't much better than leather underwear

This announcer guy has an amazing accent that I cannot place.

The Last Line is a great name for an adventuring party

GIANT YASHA!!

And good on the D&D rules for remembering the square-cube law.

The Mountain Makers is an even better name for an adventuring party.

People smarter than me have made meta about the contrast between the minotaurs here in the Victory Pit and the ones we meet later in Xhorhas. So I'll just say they probably deserved that win.

In Conclusion: I bet nothing of any emotional weight could happen next episode.

[internetgiraffekid1673]

And we come out swinging! Fascinating first option. While I did read all of Dragonwatch, I am a sacrilegious goblin of a reader who only finished the first book of Fablehaven and got through half of the second. . .a.k.a, the parts where Warren was catatonic.

Fortunately for you, I happen to live with an expert! I have commandeered J-Dog's opinion for this (this required an interesting conversation where I only partially explained how tumblr mutuals work). Here's what he had to say:

"Warren is a very responsible person. Maybe one of the most responsible people in the series. Buuuuuuuut you have to remember that he's part of the magical world, and their perception of consequences are. . . skewed."

He went on to explain that Warren can be trusted with a lot of really dangerous and delicate stuff because, like you said, he isn't stupid. He wins brownie points for being one of the most long-term members of the Knights of the Dawn and literally working there his whole life, which is a level of job stability we both strive to achieve. He's competent enough to actually keep Seth and Kendra safe when faced with a problem. He also is good at keeping the kids out of the most dangerous situations, but still explaining things to them in a way that means they might listen. He also is able to recognize when the kids can actually help and when they're useful.

One of Warren's more grey features is how immersed he wants the kids to be in the magical world. Because while it is very responsible of him to want them to know how to use their abilities and understand what they're up against. . .well, maybe we shouldn't let the demonstrably reckless and impulsive middle schooler talk to the wraiths, Warren. He treats kids with a level of respect and maturity. Not as full adults, but certainly trusting them to make their own decisions. And while that's great in almost any other situation, Seth. . . lacks a lot of the maturity needed to have that trust. It's okay though, cuz Warren's still pretty good at explaining things to Seth in a way that gets the gravity of the situation through his thick skull.

J-Dog also explained that, like most adults in the series, living in the magical world for so long has made him forget that even less extreme consequences are still bad. Warren believes that if nobody's dead and if demons aren't taking over the world, then we're doing a pretty dang good job. Which, he says, enables Kendra and Seth to get into some pretty dangerous chaos they wouldn't otherwise be capable of. His example was that Warren and the other adults fully believe that it's fine if the house literally falls apart on top of them as long as nobody got hurt, because the brownies will just fix it anyway. No Warren. That's not actually okay. Maybe let's make it so we don't do the dangerous thing that causes the house to collapse in the first place.

Overall, J-Dog rates Warren as the second most responsible adult in the series (the first being Tanu, who tends to teach them about the magical world in a much safer and more controlled environment than Warren) and the best Seth handler in the series, which is high praise because Seth is something else and most adults are actually REALLY BAD at dealing with him.

We've put his responsibility rating at a 6.5/10. This is the second highest of all Fablehaven characters (Tanu gets a 7) and in general pretty high for middle grade fiction mentors. Warren is the first entry here, so ya'll don't have a frame of reference, but scoring over 5 is quite the honor.

Thanks for playing! You also gave me an excuse to make J-Dog talk about Fablehaven, that's always fun! Bring on the next character (ya'll can give me multiple characters, I don't mind)!

I'm Bored. Let's Play a Game:

If you've been around here for a bit, you'll know that I am an exteme enjoyer of middle grade/children's media. 11-16 year old's saving the world and going on fun adventures is my bread and butter. You'll also know that I discuss this media with my family rather copiously. And I'm going to let you in on one of our longest running discussions ever.

As discussed in this post, there is a genre convention of children's media that removes all responsible adult figures from the story so that the child protagonists get to go on fun but HIGHLY dangerous adventures. This has led to us making a game of spotting the rare responsible adults and debating about how responsible they actually are (and then loosely ranking them).

I'd like to let you all in on this game. Reply, reblog, or tag me with a character from some of your favorite children's media that you think counts as a responsible adult. If you'd like, you can prepare a defense for them, and I'll prep a rebuttal, but I can also argue both sides for them. If I don't know the piece of media, I'll do some spelunking the wiki, and you'll have to be alright with it not being entirely accurate.

After looking at the evidence from both sides, I'll rate them on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being "so irresponsible that they should be in jail multiple times over and shouldn't be allowed to interact with kids" and 10 being "get this person an actual a+ parent/mentor/whatever of the century award."

Also remember that this is all in good fun! I like debating, and I'm not dissing the characters or the story just for rating an adult low!

I'm going to tag some folks to start just so ya'll know I've opened this game, but you are in no way obligated to join! You are also welcome to play even if I didn't tag you and even if we've never interacted!

@ace-of-hats @kerpwow @givemethesleep @mzmuskratism @valid-name @mewuniverse @ellazimmermansblog

[partyof4game]

I have trouble piecing out why there's not a variation where MC doesn't always resent Thobias to the extent they do.

By purely meta-reasons, he isn't a RO, so any sort of advancement will not lead to MC getting locked into commitment. By in-universe reasons, MC is set as an inexperienced person when it comes to such matters, and Thobias, not as a close, but casual acquaintance. The overlap between these rationales gets us closer as to why every MC should resist Thobias' boldness, but not quite there yet.

His blatant attempt at bonding via boundary crossing resembles the usual tactic encountered in games where intimacy has a main role, so, shouldn't we anticipate an equivalent boldness from at least a portion of the ROs if they weren't to defy the trend?

It depends, Raena can afford boldness with minimal risk thanks to her history with MC, but how will the other ROs fare given how lacking they are in terms of what Raena had to get through MC's resistance, now probably hardened due to Thobias?

Meta-reasons aside (ROs vs Non-ROs), it'll depend on what is more likely: a slow burn respectful of MC's set nature, or an astutely handled exception, which only counts as such by the standards of an old version of a now recontextualized framework for how MC's resistance actually work. The latter would likely yield an equally bold, fast-paced approach on the surface (the exception), which would likely, only after a deeper inspection, confide how different it is from what Thobias offered (the recontextualization).

So, if the framework I gather from MC remains, Thobias' boldness shouldn't succeed. Yet, I can't see why feeling satisfaction for his pain is the only option. Surely there is potential for a wider range of emotions? Pity? Mild amusement (not the relief prompted by resentment) given not only how wasted his tactics are in you, but also the unfortunate results he reaps by misguidedly sticking to them (getting embarrassed in training)?

I'll welcome whatever point I might have missed. Thanks for the reception!

Oooooh, you've made a very good point that I've overlooked! 👀 (I am excited by this ask to set the tone of the answer!)

Thinking back, in the very, very first draft of the game, it actually started out with MC standing at the gates and talking to Father Bardley right before leaving. Then I realized it would be better to flesh out MC's life within the church at the start rather than meander and reveal things as plot progressed. So, when I was working on this section, I was thinking about what I could use as a minor conflict that could show how chill MC's life is. If the only things that MC really worries about are the food and someone who is mildly annoying (or maybe very annoying to certain audiences (I also may have named him after my parent's obnoxious chaweenie, so I was invested in this angle)), then it would be a decent juxtaposition to what happens during/after the ritual.

I started babbling, so I'll put the rest under a cut. 😂

In general I'm all for MCs that can/will flirt with anything, designated RO or not. And while I think the MC in Po4 will end up on the less experienced side, it shouldn't make them unreceptive to all flirtation outside of potential ROs.

This ask actually brings up some things I was thinking about when it comes to hitting romance tracks, which is the general idea that MC responds to flirting based on a combination of personality stats (as well the choices to avoid flirting/being oblivious etc) though this is a basic concept atm:

Bold = (Outspoken > 50) and (Emotive > 50)

Smooth = (Outspoken > 50) and (Emotive < 50)

Blush = (Outspoken < 50) and (Emotive > 50)

Stunned = (Outspoken < 50) and (Emotive < 50)

But because the prologue is still working out these stats, I also ended up avoiding flirt options in general, and in doing so inadvertently flattened any player agency in response to any incoming flirtation from other characters.

The best solution to this issue, I think, would to create a choice on MCs receptiveness to Thobias's advances (although I think it would be something like appreciative but unwilling to act on it / neutral / original upset) then have the training session reactions with him change accordingly. It's definitely something I can do!

Thank you for pointing this out! I really want to make the best game I can, so these kinds of observations/suggestions really help me both because I like problem-solving/work-shopping these things and because it helps me find and prevent similar issues in the future (well, hopefully 😂).

[omezaproletariat]

The fun thing about having OCs that are kinda half-baked is that you can be like, “It’s unclear and mysterious what her life was like before she met so-and-so…” (I haven’t thought that far back)