#more explanation: it works for adulting because this is essentially how you handle emotions and all that psychological stuff i can't explai

[eri-pl]

So I was thinking about how the solution to Legendarium (and adulting in general! And arguably other things) is always "the secret third solution, but you can't try to cheat, and it'll be harder than you think" (sorry, I can't phrase it better. But see: B&L, Fingon rescuing Maedhros, what to do with the Ring, probably a lot of other things I forgot).

And I thought about Turgon sending all those sailors to Valinor, which kinda was the third option, and asked myself: what if Turgon sailed himself? (Leaving ruling the city to Idril for example).

It feels like something that might have worked despite the ban and all (it is out-of-the-box, and he was Ulmo's fav Elf). (Yes, I know it is said that Earendil got to Valinor only because he had the Silmaril.)

What do you think?

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

I'm currently working on a fic that's set a few years after Amity breaks away from her parents' grip and is forced to ask her father for help with repairing something. Would it be accurate to portray him as more apathetic to everything around him, like a more cynical Rick Sanchez?

Anon, I feel a bit bad interfering in your creative process, but… please don’t write that. I’m sure you have good intentions, but this whole concept is extremely harmful, as you’re putting Amity into a very dangerous situation.

Amity is canonically a victim of emotional abuse from both of her parents. (Maybe I’ll cover their separate roles in the abuse their children suffer more in-depth at some point, but for now, in short: emotional abuse often works via words, sometimes actions, but it can also be the lack of action that’s abusive—the former of which is Odalia, the latter Alador falls under, for the most part.)

Having Amity break away from her parents grip is a healthy, important step for her. DON’T have her reach out to her father again, especially not because she needs something from him. That’s super, super dangerous. Their power dynamic has always been heavily imbalanced towards her father. Having her crawl back to him because she needs something from him gives him power to hold over her. That she needs something so desperately she’s forced to interact with him, as you said, means he has a lot of power to hold over her in this situation. Alador’s whole thing is that he pays little to no attention to Amity outside of how she can be useful to him, p.e. using her to network when she’s six, and recognizing her potential to become coven leader and therefore an access to more power for his family. As far as we know, he’s never been there for her when she needed him, and I don’t see how this would be different—unless he finds a way to benefit from it somehow, which would be even more dangerous.

Considering how much her parents have hurt her, and the implication that Amity has recognized that hurt rather than continued to accept her parents’ excuses of calling the abuse “tough love” since she’s emancipated herself and essentially cut contact with them, there’s nothing that could break that could be important enough for Amity to force herself to interact with her father again. She’d exhaust every other possibility to fix whatever it is, but she wouldn’t over her dead body go back to her abuser to ask for help, especially not because as a neglecting parent, Alador is specifically someone she could never rely on for help.

That’s a behavior she might be at risk of falling into right after cutting contact, but if it’s been years, she’s had a lot of time to put everything she suffered through as a child into a different perspective. She has a healthier environment in Luz and her friends and potentially other mentor figures that aren’t parental, depending on whether for example Lilith is in her life at that point—Eda and Camila probably would be through Luz. She knows which people she can rely on, and which she can’t and doesn’t want to rely on.

From how the ask is worded I’m guessing you didn’t plan for the whole incident to go over very well (even though that’s a little hard to tell without more context), but even so, I’m asking you to please rethink the general concept.

If something is somehow important enough for her to ask her abusers of all people for help, there’s no telling how much she’d let them get away with in regards to how they treat her if she really needs their help that much. She might even have to force herself to walk on eggshells around her abusers, since she can’t risk pissing them off while she needs them. You can probably see how that’s an issue.

If you really want to write a fic about emancipated Amity interacting with her parents, put her in a situation where she is in control, rather than her parents. If it’s Alador and Odalia that need/want something from Amity instead of the other way around, Amity can refuse their request, and even if she doesn’t initially, she can cut them back out of her life at any given point during the story. She doesn’t have to put up with any bad behavior from her parents. The second they overstep a line she drew, she can cut them off again, and the whole thing is over. There’s still dangers to this situation, of course (it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for abusers to pretend to be better people for a time, only to fall back into their usual behavior as soon as they have the victim back in their control), but giving Amity control over the situation and hence the means to end it whenever she wants to is an entirely different setup than her going to her parents for help, and essentially giving them back the means to control her.

I highly recommend checking out the story Make My Home Inside Your Heart by @whatisurowlpolicy regarding how to handle adult Amity around her parents, but the main takeaway from me here would be, plain and simple: Do not put an emancipated abuse victim into a situation where she’s forced to rely on her abusers for help.

Edit: I am not saying abuse victims can’t write about their experiences, I’m sorry if that came across that way. Longer explanation in my reblog but essentially just if you write something like this without personal experience, especially as a beginner writer, there’s a high chance you’ll accidentally end up causing more harm than good. This is one of the topics that I firmly believe you shouldn’t be covered at all if it can’t be covered respectfully.

[the-ghost-king]

So I'm not going to start like an Anti-Chiron tag because I don't find that enjoyable personally, but every so often people ask why I dislike him so here's essentially a "masterpost" of my thoughts on that situation for when anyone asks, just so I have it to explain some...

This isn't nearly a full list, and there's many more "incidents" that make me less than fond of Chiron, I don't hate the old man but he leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not a fan of that. He's a very twisted character.

- The Lightning Thief

This quote is literally just after Percy's mom "dies", they're all sitting on the porch of the Big House right after he's finally woken up after days of sleeping, and that's the line Chiron pulls out on him.

That's straight up emotional manipulation which was entirely unnecessary in the context of what Chiron was trying to explain. There wasn't a single reason for that, in the slightest.

Immediately following that, and Percy, who canonically has anger issues, does his best to remain calm, he is immediately threatened by Dionysus, and Chiron doesn't even tell Dionysus off for doing that; Chiron just let's it happen. It's Grover who has to speak up to tell Dionysus off...

The only reason Chiron comes out looking like a old guy in this scene is because Dionysus was so much worse in his behavior, at one point intimidating Percy with his power over madness.

- The Titan's Curse

This is the aftermath of when Nico ran away upon confirmation of Bianca's death. When Percy is telling Chiron about the situation, Chiron wishes Nico had been eaten alive rather than recruited into an army.

He'd rather a child be dead than fight against him, and he openly tells this to other children he's in charge of. If Percy went missing would he have said "I hope he was eaten <3" as well?

I don't blame Perry for not delivering the truth here, it was done in an effort to protect Nico; which wasn't something Annabeth had planned on doing... I don't blame Annabeth for that though either, she's been beneath Chiron so long that she probably doesn't realize the shady stuff he does, and to her "going to tell" probably was the "right" move because she was a child...

But the fact that Chiron believes Nico truly would be better off eaten than alive :/

- Tower of Nero

This quote from Tower of Nero shows that Chiron lied to a bunch of young children (most of them were young because the older campers are largely dead because of the war or too old for camp now). It wasn't just a little white lie that adults sometimes tell kids either; they were walking into battle and he told them it was a field trip.

Did he even begin to explain the danger he was putting these kids in? Did the children understand their situation? And how dangerous it was?

Kayla has been blindsided over the years into thinking that telling children they're going on a field trip instead of fighting a battle is something to make a joke of and not be questioned... (Again, I don't blame her she's only like 12 in the book, but still)

Apollo also agrees, which isn't on Chiron but it's a whole mother reason why I can't stand Rick's interpretation of Apollo...

<><><><><>

This isn't me being like "oh Chiron is the worst most evil character ever" I just think that he has numerous flaws which are largely ignored in favor of the "perfect wise teacher" narrative when in fact Chiron and Dumbledore share a lot of.. Offputting qualities.

I do think that some of the situation is simply a result of Chiron having his hands tied behind his back by the gods some. And he even goes so far as to confirm this in a scene of TLT

However many of the scenes in which he exhibits behaviors like that in my first three screenshots are not related to anything the gods require and are, in fact, of Chiron's own free will.

Some things I would blame Zeus and the council for, such as how he withholds information from Percy to an excessive amount for long periods of time even when Percy straight up asks about things. I could easily see that being Zeus trying to prevent Percy from claiming the prophecy as his own, and I could see reasoning that maybe Chiron had sworn over the River Styx or something similar.

But those things don't apply to Chiron making such an unnecessary comment about Percy's mother so close to her "death". It doesn't explain why he would say he hoped Nico had been eaten out loud, and it doesn't cover the fact that he led children into a battlefield without telling them that's what was happening.

I think the context of Chiron's choices and comments would be different if the campers were older. If they were in their late teens or early twenties for the most part, I wouldn't really have much to say about how Chiron handled the situation.

But this man is in charge of children and extremely young teenagers, Percy is only 12 in TLT, maybe if he would have been 16 or 17 then I could give Chiron a pass, but he wasn't. Within the context of the comment he made in the Titan's Curse, Percy is only 14 and Nico is 10 at the beginning of the book... You don't wish a 10 year old had been eaten alive by a monster no matter how bad you think the alternative is, and if you do wish that you don't say it out loud to a group of other children. In the battle from Tower of Nero we get a quick look at the battlefield, and although Ben's age, and the age of another girl fighting alongside him are never confirmed they are implied to be fairly young, and we know Kayla is only 12 at the time too; yet Chiron told them it was a field trip instead of a battle, limiting the time they would have to mentally prepare themselves for what was coming.

On top of that, the nods the reader gets to the fact that Chiron can't act out against the gods depletes over the course of the series. After TLT the amount of times the situation involves the gods interfering with what Chiron is allowed to say lessens, and by the time the Heroes of Olympus series comes around, these limitations on his speech is almost entirely gone. Yet as seen in Tower of Nero he still does morally questionable things in regards to how he treats the campers.

Like I said, I recognize that in many scenes Chiron's hands are tied behind his back because of the gods.. But there are undeniably things he does of his own free will that are, in the nicest manner, very :/

This also isn't a full list of comparisons just a few notable scenes. I don't think Chiron is equally as bad as Dumbledore, but I think it undeniable that Chiron has some significant flaws built into his character design.

A good character has flaws, and there's nothing wrong with having a character that doesn't always conduct themselves properly or have good intentions- it's actually good writing, and I can appreciate that, but for some reason I find myself personally rubbed the wrong way by Chiron. This doesn't make Chiron badly written, or poorly designed, in fact I would say Rick's Chiron is very well designed in lots of ways, but I just don't like how it's never acknowledged by anyone in the series.

Like I said, I'm not starting an anti-Chiron situation, I just think little events like those mentioned, the way he's built a child army, and how he doesn't even try to plead with the gods over raising the ages on campers being allowed to battle is a little sus. But it more so bothers me that there's no attention payed to this problem anywhere in the books, not even by a side character or Luke, nowhere.

I don't actually care that much and this isn't that important to me, but sometimes people ask why I don't like Chiron and this is basically just my explanation to hand off to them... It's not even so much that I dislike Chiron entirely, he's well written and has his "good" moments, I just don't like the way other characters interact with him and his actions.

It's more a personal beef with him rather than an aspect of poor writing or him "being bad"... PJO in general (and HoO/ToA to a much lesser extent) shows that there's not such an inherent good vs bad in the world, and that sometimes people are victims of circumstances in some situations, or they're horribly misguided in their actions, but the series does a good job of showing those people as human still, and I applaud that.

I don't really know how to tie this up in its entirety, but there's nothing wrong with having a morally grey character who does questionable things and in many aspects it is good writing. I think Chiron is a result of Rick not thinking through the implications what he's doing in lots of situations, and I can see a fairly consistent drop in Chiron's characterization from PJO-ToA which is consistent with most other aspects of Rick's work.

I also want to clarify that if you like Chiron and disagree with me, that's absolutely 110% okay, I just personally dislike Chiron and that's on me. Like my problem with many of Rick's other immortal characters, I think he missed important aspects of them in some manner and slightly (or entirely in some cases) mischaracterized them in comparison to their original myths.. Some of these characters he came around on and fixed their character in many aspects to their more "correct" characterization (like Hera), while others (like Chiron and Apollo) he never quite figured them out. Which is a running complaint I have with Rick so I'm just adding this to his tab.

But yeah, I don't hate Chiron I just dislike him and those are different things, and I don't think it's a bad thing to have a morally questionable character, Chiron just personally rubs me the wrong way and I just wanted to explain that more fully because I've been asked about it multiple times.

Also I apologize for not adding a [read more] to this, it's a complaint of mine often when scrolling through the tags but I'm on mobile currently and don't have immediate access to a computer so~

[destiny-smasher]

Life is Strange: True Colors

Leading up to the release of Episode 1 of TellTale's The Walking Dead game, I was working freelance for GameRevolution at the time, lived in the area, and had the chance to play a build of the game to write a preview on it. I remember comparing it to Mass Effect because, at the time, there just...weren't games of that subgenre. Of course, by now we've seen an explosion of this type of game - the 'narrative/choice-driven game,' spearheaded and even oversaturated by Telltale to their own demise.

Out of all of the games that have come from that initial boom, Life is Strange by DontNod was and still is the most influential on my life, but I also have always harbored really conflicted feelings about it - especially with how it resolved its narrative. Hell, if you're reading this, you're probably aware that I spent a few years of my life creating a sequel fanstory which I even adapted a chunk of into visual novel format. Hundreds of thousands of words, days and days of life spent essentially trying to process and reconcile my conflicted feelings about this game's conclusion(s). Since then, I've been experimenting with interactive fiction and am currently developing my own original visual novel using everything I've learned from both creating and playing games in this genre. It's a subgenre of game I have a lot of interest and passion for because, when handled well, it can allow a player to sort of co-direct a guided narrative experience in a way that's unique compared to strictly linear cinematic experiences but still have a curated, focused sense of story.

Up until this point, I've regarded Night in the Woods as probably the singular best game of this style, with others like Oxenfree and The Wolf Among Us as other high marks. I've never actually put any Life is Strange game quite up there - none of them have reached that benchmark for me, personally. Until now, anyway.

But now, I can finally add a new game to that top tier, cream of the crop list. Life is Strange: True Colors is just damn good. I'm an incredibly critical person as it is - and that critique usually comes from a place of love - so you can imagine this series has been really hard to for me given that I love it, and yet have never truly loved any actual full entry in it. I have so many personal issues, quibbles, qualms, and frustration with Life is Strange: with every individual game, with how it has been handled by its publisher (my biggest issue at this point, actually), with how it has seemingly been taken away from its original development studio, with how it chooses to resolve its narratives...

But with True Colors, all of those issues get brushed aside long enough for me to appreciate just how fucking well designed it is for this style of game. I can appreciate how the development team, while still clearly being 'indie' compared to other dev teams working under Square-Enix, were able to make such smart decisions in how to design and execute this game. Taken on its own merits, apart from its branding, True Colors is absolutely worth playing if you enjoy these 'telltale' style games. Compared to the rest of the series, I would argue it's the best one so far, easily. I had a lot of misgivings and doubts going in, and in retrospect, those are mostly Square-Enix's fault. Deck Nine, when given the freedom to make their own original game in the same vein as the previous three, fucking nailed it as much as I feel like they could, given the kinds of limitations I presume they were working within.

I'm someone who agonizes every single time there is news for Life is Strange as a series - someone who essentially had to drop out of the fandom over infighting, then dropped out of even being exposed to the official social media channels for it later on (I specifically have the Square-Enix controlled channels muted). I adore Max and Chloe, and as a duo, as a couple, they are one of my top favorites not just in gaming, but in general. They elevated the original game to be something more than the sum of its parts for me. And while I have enjoyed seeing what DontNod has made since, it's always been their attention to detail in environmental craftsmanship, in tone and atmosphere, which has caught my interest. They're good at creating characters with layers, but imo they've never nailed a narrative arc. They've never really hit that sweet spot that makes a story truly resonate with me. Deck Nine's previous outing, Before the Storm, was all over the place, trying to mimic DontNod while trying to do its own things - trying to dig deeper into concepts DontNod deliberately left open for interpretation while also being limited in what it could do as a prequel.

But with True Colors, those awkward shackles are (mostly) off. They have told their own original story, keeping in tone and concept with previous Life is Strange games, and yet this also feels distinctly different in other ways.

Yes, protagonist Alex Chen is older than previous characters, and most of the characters in True Colors are young adults, as opposed to teenagers. Yes, she has a supernatural ability. And yes, the game is essentially a linear story with some freedom in how much to poke around at the environment and interact with objects/characters, with the primary mechanic being making choices which influence elements of how the story plays out. None of this is new to the genre, or even Life is Strange. But the execution was clearly planned out, focused, and designed with more caution and care than games like this typically get.

A smaller dev team working with a budget has to make calls on how to allocate that budget. With True Colors, you will experience much fewer locales and environments than you will in Life is Strange 2. Fewer locations than even Life is Strange 1, by my count. But this reinforces the game's theming. I suspect the biggest hit to the game's budget was investing in its voice acting (nothing new for this series) but specifically in the motion capture and facial animation.

You have a game about a protagonist trying to fit in to a small, tightly knit community. She can read the aura of people's emotions and even read their minds a little. And the game's budget and design take full advantage of this. You spend your time in a small main street/park area, a handful of indoor shops, your single room apartment. It fits within a tighter budget, but it reinforces the themes the game is going for. Your interactions with characters are heightened with subtle facial cues and microexpressions, which also reinforces the mechanic and theming regarding reading, accepting, and processing emotions. And you get to make some choices that influence elements of this - influenced by the town, influenced by the emotions of those around you, which reinforce the main plot of trying to navigate a new life in a small town community.

When I think about these types of games, the conclusion is always a big deal. In a way, it shouldn't be, because I usually feel it's about the journey, not the destination. And as an example, I actually really dislike the ending of the original Life is Strange. I think it's a lot of bullshit in many ways. The setpiece is amazing and epic, sure, but the actual storytelling going on is...really hollow for me. Yes, the game does subtly foreshadow in a number of ways that this is the big choice it's leading up to, but the game never actually makes sense of it. And the problem is, if your experience is going to end on a big ol' THIS or THAT kind of moment, it needs to make sense or the whole thing will fall apart as soon as the credits are rolling and the audience spends a moment to think about what just happened. When you look at the end of Season 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead, it's not powerful just because of what choice you're given, but because through the entire final episode, we know the stakes - we know what is going to ultimately happen, and we know the end of the story is fast approaching. All of the cards are on the table by the time we get to that final scene, and it works so well because we know why it's happening, and it is an appropriate thematic climax that embodies the theming of the entire season. It works mechanically, narratively, and thematically, and 'just makes sense.'

The ending of Life is Strange 1 doesn't do that, if you ask me. The ending of most games in this genre don't really hit that mark. When I get to the end of most game 'seasons' like this, even ones I enjoy, I'm typically left frustrated, confused, and empty in a way.

The ending of True Colors, on the other hand, nails everything it needs to. Handily, when compared to its peers.

If you're somehow reading this and have not played this game but intend to, now is probably where you should duck out, as I will be

discussing SPOILERS from the entire game, specifically the finale.

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Firstly, since I don't know where else to put this, some criticisms I found with the game. And honestly, they're all pretty damn minor compared to most games of this type.

Mainly, I just wish the whole Typhon thing was handled a bit more deliberately. It's a bit weird to do the 'big evil corporation' thing (especially when a big corporation like Square Enix occupies as much as or even more of the credits to this game than the people who actually MADE it?) without offering more explanation and subtlety. The game certainly makes some efforts but they're mostly small and mostly optional, like background chatter or a handful of one-off bits of documentation/etc. you can find in the environment. I feel like Diane in particular needed to be fleshed out just a little bit more to really sell us on how and why things like this happen, why corporations make decisions that cost people their happiness, security, and lives and they just get to keep on doing it. I think just a little bit that is unavoidable to the player that puts emphasis on maybe how much the town relies on the money/resources Typhon provides would've helped. Again, this is minor, but it stands out when I have so little else to critique.

I would've liked to get more insight on why Jed is the way he is. No, I don't think we really needed to learn more about his backstory, or even really his motivations. I think we get enough of that. I just think it would've been great to somehow highlight more deliberately how/why he's built up this identity overtop of what he's trying to suppress. Maybe even just having Alex internally realize, "Wait, what the hell, Jed has been hiding these emotions and my powers haven't picked up on it?" or something to that effect could have added an extra oomph to highlight how Jed seems to be coping with his emotions by masking/suppressing them. Also really minor complaint, but again...there's not much else here I can think to really improve on within the confines of what's in the game.

The game doesn't really call Alex's power into question morally. Like. Max has an entire meltdown by the end of her story, second-guessing if she's even helped anyone at all, if she has 'the right' to do so, how her powers might be affecting or expressing her own humanity and flaws...this story doesn't really get into that despite a very similar concept of manipulating others. There's like one bit in a document you can choose to read in Alex's 'nightmare' scene, but that's really it. I feel like this sentiment and how it's executed could have easily been expanded upon in just this one scene to capture what made that Max/Other Max scene do what it did in a way that would address the moral grayness of Alex's powers and how she uses them, and give players a way to express their interpretation of that. Also, very small deal, just another tidbit I would've liked to see.

When I first watched my wife play through Episode 5 (I watched her play through the game first, then I played it myself), I wasn't really feeling the surreal dreamscape stuff of Alex's flashbacks - which is weird, because if you're read my work from the past few years, you'll know I usually love that sort of shit. I think what was throwing me off was that it didn't really feel like it was tying together what the game was about up until that point, and felt almost like it was just copying what Life is Strange did with Max's nightmare sequence (minus the best part of that sequence, imo, where Max literally talks to herself).

But by the time I had seen the rest of the story, and re-experienced it myself, I think it clicked better. This is primarily a story about Alex Chen trying to build a new life for herself in a new community - a small town, a tightly knit place. Those flashbacks are specifically about Alex's past, something we only get teeny tiny tidbits of, and only really if we go looking for them. I realized after I gave myself a few days to process and play through the game myself that this was still a fantastic choice because it reinforces the plot reasons why Alex is even in the town she's in (because her father went there, and her brother in turn went there looking for him), and it reinforces the theme of Alex coming to accept her own emotions and confront them (as expressed through how the flashbacks are played out and the discussions she has with the image of Gabe in her mind, which is really just...another part of herself trying to get her to process things).

By the time Alex escapes the mines and returns to the Black Lantern, all of the cards are on the table. By that point, we as the audience know everything we need to. Everything makes sense - aside from arguably why Jed has done what he has done, but put a pin in that for a sec. We may not know why Alex has the powers she does, but we have at least been given context for how they manifested - as a coping mechanism of living a life inbetween the cracks of society, an unstable youth after her family fell apart around her (and oof, trust me, I can relate with this in some degree, though not in exactly the same ways). And unlike Max's Rewind power, the story and plot doesn't put this to Alex's throat, like it's all on her to make some big choice because she is the way she is, or like she's done something wrong by pursuing what she cares about (in this case, the truth, closure, and understanding).

When Alex confronts Jed in front of all of the primary supporting characters, it does everything it needs to.

Mechanically: it gives players choices for how to express their interpretation of events, and how Alex is processing them; it also, even more importantly, uses the 'council' as a way of expressing how the other characters have reacted to the choices the player has made throughout the game, and contributes to how this climax feels. We're given a 'big choice' at the end of the interaction that doesn't actually change the plot, or even the scene, really (it just affects like one line of dialogue Alex says right then) and yet BOTH choices work so well as a conclusion, it's literally up to your interpretation and it gives you an in-game way to express that.

Thematically: the use of the council reinforces the game's focus on community; and the way the presentation of the scene stays locked in on Alex and Jed's expressions reinforces its focus on emotion - not to mention that the entire scene also acts as a way to showcase how Alex has come to accept, understand, and process her own emotions while Jed, even THEN, right fucking at the moment of his demise, is trying to mask his emotions, to hide them and suppress them and forget them (something the game has already expressed subtly by way of his negative emotions which would give him away NOT being visible to Alex even despite her power).

Narratively: we are given a confrontation that makes sense and feels edifying to see play out after everything we've experienced and learned. We see Alex use her powers in a new and exciting way that further builds the empowering mood the climax is going for and adds a cinematic drama to it. No matter what decisions the player makes, Alex has agency in her own climax, we experience her making a decision, using her power, asserting herself now that she has gone through the growth this narrative has put her through. Alex gets to resolve her shit, gets to have her moment to really shine and experience the end of a character arc in this narrative.

Without taking extra time to design the game around these pillars, the finale wouldn't be so strong. If they didn't give us enough opportunities to interact with the townspeople, their presence in the end wouldn't matter, but everyone who has a say in the council is someone we get an entire scene (at least one) dedicated to interacting with them and their emotions. If they didn't implement choices in the scene itself, it would still be powerful but we wouldn't feel as involved, it'd be more passive. If they didn't showcase Alex's power, we might be left underwhelmed, but they do so in a way that actually works in the context through how they have chosen to present it, while also just tonally heightening the climax by having this drastic lighting going on. If they didn't have the council involved, we'd lose the theming of community. If they didn't have the foil of Alex/Jed and how they have each processed their emotions, we'd miss that key component. And if we didn't have such detailed facial animations, the presentation just wouldn't be as effective.

Ryan/Steph are a little bit like, in this awkward sideline spot during the climax? Steph always supports you, and Ryan supports you or doubts you conditionally, which is unsurprising but also ties into the themes of Ryan having grown up woven into this community, and Steph being once an outsider who has found a place within it. They're still there, either way, which is important. The only relevant characters who aren't present are more supporting characters like Riley, Ethan, and Mac. Ethan being the only one of those who gets an entire 'super emotions' scene, but that also marks the end of his arc and role in the story, so...it's fine. Mac and Riley are less important and younger, as well, and have their own side story stuff you have more direct influence on, too.

But damn, ya'll, this climax just works so well. It especially stands out to me given just how rarely I experience a conclusion/climax that feels this rewarding.

And then after that we get a wonderful montage of a theoretical life Alex might live on to experience. Her actions don't overthrow a conglomerate billionaire company. She doesn't even save a town, really. If the entire council thinks you're full of shit, Jed still confesses either way - because it's not up to the council whether he does this, it's because of Alex, regardless of player choice. Honestly, even after a playthrough where I made most choices differently from my wife, there weren't really many changes to that montage at the end. It'd have been great if it felt more meaningfully different, but maybe it can be. Even if not, the design intent is there and the execution still works. It's a really nice way to end the story, especially since it's not even a literal montage but one Alex imagines - again, her processing what she's gone through, what she desires, expressed externally for us to see it. And for once, the actual final 'big decision' in a game of this type manages to be organic, make sense, and feel good and appropriate either way. You choose to either have Alex stay in Haven Springs and continue building her life there, or you can choose to have her leave and try to be an indie musician, with the events of the game being yet another chunk of her life to deal with and move on from (I haven't really touched on it, but music, especially as a way to express and process emotions, is a recurring thing, much like photography was in the original game, or Sean's illustrations in LiS2). For once, a climactic 'pick your ending' decision that doesn't feel shitty. It's pretty rare for this genre, honestly.

I could - and already have, and likely will - have so much more to say about this game and its details, but I really wanted to focus on touching upon a main element that has left me impressed: the way the entire game feels designed. It feels intentionally constructed but in a way that reinforces what it is trying to express as a story. It's not just trying to make people cry for the sake of 'emotions.' It is a game literally about emotions and it comes to a conclusion in a way that is clearly saying something positive and empowering about empathy and self-acceptance.

Storytelling is a craft, like any other, and it entails deliberate choices and decisions that can objectively contribute to how effective a story is for its intended audience.

A good story isn't something you find, after all.

It's something you build.

[jaimetheexplorer]

Oh, let’s go back to the start

WARNING: negative review ahead! 

Game of Thrones is over, and it’s never coming back.

I think many viewers all over the world thought that once this day came, they would wish they could do it all over again because boy, what a great journey it was. Or they would be eager to rewatch the whole show and look out for all the little clues they missed and revisit characters and storylines they might not have previously paid attention to.

Instead, most of us are left with a bitter taste in our mouth, and many of us are left wondering why we even bothered investing our time and emotional energy (not to mention money) in the first place. This is because the final season of Game of Thrones did not make fans wish they could go back to the start and do it all again, but, rather, took many of the plots and characters people knew and loved back to their start, at best, if not to an even worse place.

Game of Thrones changed television as we know it, but this has never been a flawless show. Plot holes and questionable adaptations had been criticized for many years. Book readers in particular have been very vocal about the quality (or lack thereof) of the show’s writing. Yet I feel people kept coming back to see how it all would end, because, surely, the endgame would still be worth the investment. 

Season 8 then came. Much criticism can be raised to the first half of season 8 for having wrapped up the Night King/fantasy storyline too quickly and with almost nothing in the way of explanation. While I understood and shared some of that grievance, I also thought that it was perhaps not that overwhelmingly disappointing, and that it could make some sense from a narrative and logistic perspective. Little did I know, however, as the credits rolled on the third episode of the season, that that instalment was symptomatic of a much more dangerous problem that was just around the corner, which would butcher most of what people loved about this story that had been built up so slowly across years (i.e. its characters), at lightning speed, in the remaining episodes.

From a character perspective, at least the deaths in the battle of Winterfell were mostly well earned and actually wrapped up their characters’ arcs in a meaningful way. Jorah died protecting his Khaleesi. Theon died protecting the home he helped destroy, fulfilling his redemption. Lyanna died taking down a giant. Melisandre died after having fulfilled her purpose. Edd died to protect one of his best friends. Beric died to protect Arya so she could save humanity. While Jon and Dany were not the saviours of mankind, like everyone expected them to be, they were still instrumental in helping humans to victory; Jon having done all the work to bring together almost the entire continent to fight the threat and Dany providing valuable help with her dragons and armies. Underwhelming, perhaps, but it didn’t damage any character. 

I never expected things to go smoothly afterwards. I enjoyed the political tensions between Jon, Dany and Sansa and was looking forward to seeing Dany become greyer as she struggled in a different continent and with competition. I knew Jaime was going to be in King’s Landing again at some point, to wrap up his storyline, and wouldn’t just shack up in bliss with Brienne for the entire rest of the season. I knew beloved characters would probably die (even though I had hopes for several, not just mine). But I did not expect that, from episode 4, the story would begin spiralling into a cruel, sadistic and nihilistic mess that would continue until the very end and spare almost no character that wasn’t named Stark. Nearly all the evolution, all the progress, all the journeys that people kept coming back for, year after year, were invalidated in the span of three episodes, bringing them back to square one, if not worse.

Jon, assassinating his aunt/lover, broken by the fight and taking a black for which we don’t even understand the need for anymore. Dany, her long journey to Westeros ending with being murdered by her nephew/lover for having gone from grey to Mad Queen in the space of two episodes. Jaime, apparently accepting that all these years have only taught him that his true self is a hateful man, obsessed only with his sister to the point of destroying anything that is good, pure and innocent and does not deserve to be caught up in their mess. Brienne, essentially ends up right back where she started, serving in a celibate order after learning that love is not not meant to last for women like her and failing to prevent the death of the man she loved (and having to write her rejection down, to add insult to injury). Cersei, trying to pass off Jaime’s child as someone else’s, her prophecy discarded completely and facing no comeuppance for her actions. Missandei, freed from chains to end up executed in chains. Sandor, dying in the fire that traumatized him his entire life. And even the ones who did not face bitter endings did not move much from where they either started or had been for a long time: Tyrion (who lost much of his charm and intelligence this season just to watch the world burn around him) and Davos ended up in the same sort of advisory position they were in all along. 

The ending was advertised as a bittersweet, Lord of the Rings type ending, but there was a lot more bitterness than there was sweetness in this. Especially when it comes to romance. Rarely is life so cruel to couples, and the only sweetness was reserved for Sam and Gilly, who everyone knew had been safe for years and who, let’s face it, never elicited particularly strong emotional investment from anybody to qualify as a payoff. 

Sansa came out perhaps the strongest in the end, which is well deserved. But this was not just the Sansa story. There were a dozen other plots and characters people cared about, and they almost all were served a fate that made you feel like there had been no point in their journeys all along. And for a show that wanted to subvert expectations (!!!1!1!), it ended ticking the most predictable boxes in terms of characters fates: all the bad guys are dead (and the one “good guy” that died broke bad in order to justify her assassination), all the redemptive characters are dead too, and only the good guys are left.

So here we are, at the end of the biggest show of all time, with an ending that retroactively ruined most of what made it so big in the first place and left little room for excitement, if any. 

The sad thing is that all of this was easily avoidable. When people say that delivering an ending that satisfies everyone is impossible, that is very true, especially for a show with such high expectations. But delivering an ending that disappoints nearly everyone, is actually equally as hard, if not harder, and yet... they managed to achieve it. 

Finishing a story is never easy, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that what makes people stick with a series is the journey they are taken on (especially when they are asked to invest years of their lives into a story). If the journey starts to suck, that’s when you lose numbers. So if you have a good enough journey, with all the ups and downs and angst and drama you like, which makes people stick with it for years, you’ve accomplished 90% of the task. The ending is just the icing on the cake and it needs to provide a payoff that is consistent with that journey and does not make the audience feel like they never want to eat what’s underneath that icing ever again. 

This does not mean handing out fanservice left and right. But there’s a difference between succumbing to fanservice and destroying literally everything that made people come back for more and that the story had been building up towards. There’s a difference between fanservice and delivering an ending that is unpredictable not because it emerged from a subtle thread woven within the story that was always present if only people paid attention, but because it came out of nowhere and/or had little to no buildup within the story, and/or went in the completely opposite direction to where the buildup was pointing towards. 

I see some complaints about the criticism this season is receiving saying people are too emotional about it and therefore not being objective. And yes! Of course people get emotional about stories! What kind of writer doesn’t want people to become emotionally invested in their story, and just see it as a giant, sterile, plot-driven spectacle? This is why humans are attracted to stories in the first place! And this is particularly true of a story like ASOIAF which is entirely built upon the concept of character perspective. This is why, while slow, the first two episodes were still highly rated: they were character-driven. This is why, despite The Long Night being criticized for an underwhelming conclusion to the WWs storyline, it was not even remotely near the huge dealbreaker the last three episodes were for the audience. That is because The Long Night disappointed in wrapping up the plot, while the rest of the season crashed the characters. I feel like D&D’s never really understood how crucial character-driven perspective was (they didn’t even remember Sam was a major POV character!) and so wrote the show as a sterile, shocking, plot-driven spectacle that eventually made people sick due to the total lack of care with which the characters they know and love were handled. 

And let’s stop pretend that misery and nihilism at all costs is “adult storytelling” while hope and a sense of fulfilment is for children. Adults need hope too, perhaps more than children, because we know just how tough life can be, whereas children often don’t. Dramas can be great tools to show how people face and overcome tragedies and conflict, find the silver linings and some comfort in the chaos, even if things ultimately don’t end the way they expected they would at the start. All Game of Thrones has shown us, in the end, is how people fail and how little changes. No matter how hard the journey, no matter the effort, no matter the loss, most of these beloved characters might as well never have set off on their journeys at all, given the results. 

While this kind of storytelling can work and be compelling for a single season, or a single book, or a single movie, once you ask people to invest years of their lives, you will never land the ending with this last minute, bait-and-switch approach. 

So who wants go back to the start, now, and rewatch the story of these characters once again, knowing most of them end back to square one? Who thinks that it was worth the journey, if we end up exactly where we started? I certainly don’t. 

[lunar-years]

Okay, first of all, please don’t read this if you love Rafael or are pro-Jafael... just don’t do that to yourself. Also, warning for season five spoilers. 

This is essentially an absurdly long rant post because I realized I’ve never fully articulated why I don’t like J*fael, and given the leaks/spoilers of the finale, I really want to just get out all of my thoughts out there about this horrible endgame. So here goes....

There are essentially two reasons I don’t like J*fael, the main one being that while I don’t think Rafael is fundamentally a bad person, I do think he is fundamentally bad for Jane. Neither of them are their best selves when they are together, and this has been shown time and time again on the show. The second reason is that J*fael would never work in the long-term, now in season five for the same reason they didn’t work back in season 1. Rafael as a person is incredibly self-centered, arrogant, and angry. He relies on unhealthy coping mechanisms and shuts people out if things don’t go his way. He needs to work through his own shit before he can be successful in any relationship, let alone one with Jane. 

The biggest problem I have with Rafael individually is that he doesn’t handle conflict maturely, and never has. Obviously he has been through a lot in his life that prevented him from developing healthy ways of coping, but as a grown ass adult that is merely an explanation and not a justification. Rafael never holds himself accountable, and he never gets the help he needs. Unfortunately, the people around him (cough Jane) all enable him in this, coddling him and never calling him out on his bullshit behavior. He’s fine as long as things are going his way, but as soon as he feels his happiness is threatened, he’s a lose cannon. This magnifies and manifests whenever he fears Jane is going to leave him.

His behavior in season five, for example, has been incredibly possessive and toxic. He’s acting like a child whose had his favorite toy taken away from him, instead of being mature enough to see things from Jane’s point-of-view for once. Her husband has come back from the dead, for pete’s sake!! Michael didn't leave, he didn’t run away, he didn’t hurt Jane intentionally in any way. He was taken, tortured, and left unaware of who he even was. His relationship with Jane didn’t come to end on purpose. Yet Rafael acts like Jane is crazy for not wanting to immediately divorce Michael, and kicks her out of their house when she voices her confusion and pain and uncertainty after he gets his memory back. It’s completely irrational on Rafael’s part, who is acting like Jane is an object he has won instead of a person with real emotions going through a very real trauma. Obviously Rafael being hurt by Jane possibly leaving him for Michael again and having his life suddenly turned upside down is all valid. What's irritating is him acting like his emotions and hurt matter more than other people’s. Jane had her husband taken away from her against her will. Meanwhile Michael, frankly, is the only one who has lost literally everything. Yet Rafael doesn’t spare a passing thought about Michael’s trauma but instead immediately diminishes it and appropriates it for himself (i.e. his bullshit “I’ve got my memories back too” stance... which is just so problematic in so many ways but I digress). 

His behavior now that Michael is back also shades his behavior when Michael was “dead.” For someone who supposedly changed so much in the five years after Michael died, and who was there to help Jane through her mourning, Rafael sure reverted back fast to his old ways as soon as the “threat” against him and Jane reemerged. Rafael was fine so long as Michael was dead and no longer taking away from Raf’s personal happiness, but as soon as Michael returns he is back to being a selfish asshole. That doesn’t say much for Rafael’s “helping Jane through her grief” and almost makes it seem like all along it was just something he did just to win her back when he saw an open window for it. Being there for Jane when she was widowed means he knows just how deeply Jane loved Michael and just how long it took for her to heal from that loss. Yet he still acts like it should be easy for Jane to immediately cut Michael out of her life when he reappears. Yikes. 

The other infuriating thing about Rafael is his behavior and treatment towards his family. Rafael treats Louisa like shit. Flat out. He criticizes and judges her for her addictions despite struggling with alcohol reliance himself. He sells her out for his own gains, and he generally treats her with a “holier than thou” attitude that is incredibly irritating to watch and always has been. Then you have Petra and the twins. The scene when Petra calls Rafael out for treating her and their daughters like second class citizens is one of my absolute favorites because it’s so damn true and it’s about time Petra said it!! What’s annoying is that in the seasons since, Rafael has not learned from that confrontation or grown from  it. Whether he and Jane are together or not at any given moment, it is obvious that he will always put Jane and Mateo before Petra and the twins. That's terrible parenting, I'm sorry, but it is. He also plays “good parent” with Mateo all the time, making Jane do all the grunt work of punishing and correcting Mateo’s poor behavior while he excuses Mateo’s bad actions instead of teaching him how to do better (made especially obvious in the last episode...yikes yikes yikes.) 

Then there’s his relationship with Jane. Oh, J*fael. To be clear, I’ve shipped Villadero from the beginning, which probably made me biased about J*fael early on. Still, even when Michael was behaving horribly and the narrative was clearly urging viewers to root for Raf, I could never get behind him. To me, the Jane and Rafael attraction has always seemed so... surface-level. Like, they have a few wet dreams about one another and suddenly, because they’re accidentally having a kid together, they’re both fully invested in the idea of them being soulmates. In reality, Jane and Rafael have like, nothing in common. Seriously, what do these two talk about it? Rafael has proven multiple times that he doesn't respect Jane’s religion, he doesn't make any effort to see things from her less privileged life perspective, and he doesn’t really place any value in anything she values. They are quite possibly the blandest relationship on the show. The only thing they seem to have holding them together is Mateo. And the only thing they seem to do is to constantly have sex. 

My obviously subjective view about their chemistry (or lack thereof) aside, Rafael and Jane simply seem to bring out the worst in one another. When Rafael disagrees with Jane, he gets angry and irrational. He tries to handle disagreements by kicking and screaming, instead of facilitating civilized discussion. Jane, meanwhile, just cowers in front of him and takes it because she’s so “blinded by love.” I’m sorry, what?? After the way Rafael treated Jane last episode, putting their child between them, I do not see any scenario where the strong-willed, independent Jane from season one marries that guy a few months later, though apparently that’s what’s happening (*gag*). Rafael is constantly pressuring her to do things his way instead of actually listening to her and trying to understand her perspective. I will never understand why Jane goes back to Rafael when he continuously treats her in that sort of way. Rafael bases his entire self worth in Jane, yet at the same time he doesn't seem to actually value Jane’s thoughts and feelings. These are not the makings of a healthy relationship. Jane's behavior in season five has also been out of character, with her asking Jason to leave and saying she wished Michael had never come back. While Jane might not be in love with Michael/Jason five years later, especially when he is totally different to who he once was, you cannot make me believe she wouldn’t still love him and want to help him anyway that she could, even if she wants to be with Rafael. And she would definitely be grateful that he gets to live. The poor writing this season truly feels like the writers are simultaneously proving why J*fael doesn’t work and then forcing them together once they’ve already fallen apart.

I truly truly hate the idea that Jane is now going to go back to Rafael, who still hasn’t gotten help for his personal issues, and marry him at the end of this godforsaken season where he's been treating her terribly. For a show that I have always viewed as progressive and unique, this ending is one of the most baseless, fan-service endgames ever. Rafael using Mateo against Jane last episode was the final straw. After that i truly do not see any scenario where Jane would realistically go back to him. Rafael needs to grow up, wise up, and focus a little more on being a good father, friend and brother before I will ever believe that he would make a good husband. 

[pro-bee]

“Reunion” part 2

Part 1 is here

THE CONVERSATION IN THE BASEMENT

UGH MY FEELINGS

Now first up, I hate that they retconned Ziva’s origin story at NCIS to make it so that Eli ordered Ziva to kill Ari to fool Gibbs or whatever. It’s such a disservice to Ziva and her story.

BUT.

I do like how Ziva handled it here, and it makes Eli even more evil, which is fine by me, because he is the worst. He is the guy who had Ari’s mother killed as payback without any regard for how it would affect his son, apparently, so, like, I have no trouble believing he would be fine ordering the hit on his own son, who was, to be fair, homicidal and in need of “neutralizing.”

Anyway.

What I mean is that this displayed so much of Ziva’s humanity, and what shapes the core of her character. 

Gibbs is understandably angry, because that whole incident in “Kill Ari Part 2″ is what cemented their bond, which took them all through season 3 to “Hiatus” and beyond, and here he thinks that’s been shaken to its core, that it was all a lie, that the woman he came to think of as a surrogate daughter (and let’s be real, his relationship with Ziva is unlike any of the others’, even with Abby). Which in turn rocks Ziva, because the last thing she wants is for Gibbs to ever think she would be so callous and cruel.

And that’s what it comes down to: Ziva may act like she doesn’t care what people think of her, but she absolutely cares about Gibbs, and if he doesn’t love her, then I would bet she thinks no one can.

Her explanation is so practical and so Ziva, but also shows so much of her heart. Yes, her father ordered her to kill Ari, but she took the mission precisely to save him. Because until the very last second she didn’t believe that her brother -- HER BROTHER -- was capable of such cruelty, and she was going to do everything in her power to prove it, including saving his life so he could plead his case. 

Ziva is ride or die with her loved ones, and every brief mention of Ari indicates that he was her world -- or at least she adored him. He wasn’t some long lost illegitimate sibling spoken of in hushed tones. She was as close to him as Tali, and obviously looked up to him, to the point where she believed everything out of his mouth, despite the clear red flags, because HE WAS HER BROTHER. To everyone else he was an asset, to her he was probably her protector and her idol. (See: Gibbs.) 

So when she sensed an injustice against Ari? Of course she was going to try to straighten it all out. Surely as long as she kept him safe, they would be able to work together to prove his innocence. Not realizing the odds were stacked against her because a) Eli and b) Ari actually was a psychopath. (Just because Eli was right doesn’t make him right, you know what I mean?)

(Which it turn makes me even sadder for Ziva, because it’s like there wasn’t a single person, or at least a single male, in her life before NCIS who didn’t use her as a pawn.)

Stop for a second and think about what it must have been like growing up actually thinking you were nothing more than a chess piece for your father/country/whatever in their latest mission, and thinking that was totally normal? No wonder Ziva is so fucked up still — how can you build any kind of self-esteem when you are essentially an action figure to be disposed of at someone else’s convenience?

I digress.

So, Ziva agreed to be Ari’s handler not to eliminate him, but to save him. Which is who she is, and she will not apologize for it to Gibbs, because she absolutely believes she was right. “He was my brother, and you were nothing.” WHICH IS RIGHT. It doesn’t mean she was playing Gibbs — it’s that she loved her brother so wholeheartedly, and obviously she would protect him over a perfect stranger. Just like now, she would protect Gibbs at all costs too, and he wouldn’t expect anything different. And if it were Gibbs in the position of protecting his loved one, he would agree with her too.

And the conviction in her voice — the need for him to believe her — is so important. Because she doesn’t care if Mossad or her father believed she was capable of killing Ari, because she probably thinks as little of them as they do her. But she can’t stand the thought of Gibbs believing she could do that, because he would know what it would do to her, does know what it’s done to her every day since that happened.

“Eli is all but dead to me, and now the closest thing I have to a father believes— He was my brother.”  That part ALWAYS gets me. This is what it comes down to: Gibbs has been more of a father to Ziva in 3 years than Eli had been her entire life. He’s never done anything to put her in jeopardy and has always put her well-being first, whereas Eli thought nothing of sending his daughter into a kamikaze mission for some stupid revenge on a faceless terrorist. I mean it doesn’t even come close, right? The show always jokes about Gibbs being the father figure of the group, but this is the first time anyone has said it out loud, and Ziva is admitting that Gibbs is that person in her life, and she cannot lose that. Because he is her port in the storm, in the sense that his protection and nurturing and love has fulfilled a need in Ziva that she’s never been able to fill in her life. She’s basically had no parental guidance, at least not since her mom died (whenever that was), and Gibbs offered that kind of sanctuary that anyone who is lucky enough to have loving parents knows. And she finally had that.

So now it’s hitting her that her “dad” thinks she’s just like Eli, and could easily dispose of her own brother for an inconsequential mission. And that hurts, more than any barb Abby or Leon or even Tony could throw her way. Because that would just confirm her own worst fears about herself, which would crush her. Even when everything is murky with Tony or even Eli, Gibbs has been her rock, and she’s facing the possibility that that may vanish, too, and it nearly breaks her.

Also breaking her? The fact that her brother is gone. As much as the show doesn’t really dwell on a lot of these emotional traumas, Ari has been one of the few that has actually come up consistently over the years for Ziva. Not enough for my liking, but enough that you always know how conflicted Ziva is about it. That she always has to reconcile her cherished memories of her siblings as a child to what happened to them as an adult. And more than that, that she is GRIEVING Ari, still. That pain has never gone away — not in her breakdown in Gibbs’ hospital room in “Hiatus,” not when she’s being questioned by Bashan in “Shalom,” not here. “He was my brother.” And now he is gone. And the pain is still raw.

Cote de Pablo does such a good job in this entire scene. Ziva’s heart is on her sleeve, and she’s trying to hold it together and say what she needs to say, be as practical as possible, but her emotions do get the best of her, because obviously she’s still in a delicate state herself, and this entire experience and its aftermath is stirring up all these unresolved issues and feelings she’s been burying for years. She pleads with Gibbs to believe her and forgive her and just love her the way she is, but she chokes when it comes to “he was my brother,” because deep down she’s still the girl grieving her brother, but she also can’t stand to think her “dad” would think so low of her. It’s painful and beautiful.

ALL THIS BEING SAID.

ZIVA NEEDS A HUG.

THE END OF THIS SCENE DEMANDS A HUG.

NOT A GIBBS INSCRUTABLE GLARE.

I mean I get it — Gibbs still isn’t sure what to believe and it’s a lot to take in — but goddamn Ziva is breaking and the girl has been through hell and back and SHE NEEDS A FUCKING HUG YOU GUYS.

Also back to my anger at the retcon: If Ziva was supposed to kill Ari, then why the insistence in the official report that Gibbs killed him? And why was Ziva so relieved that he kept her secret for so long when she moved to DC? IT’S BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE WRITERS!!! There was actually no need for this retcon, ugh.

Anyway.

Enjoy my feelings!!! 

[tisthewoman]

Why You Shouldn't Let An English Teacher See Movies: a reaction post of IT:Chapter 2

Okay, so I finally saw IT Chapter 2, and I have some thoughts. Some of these thoughts might rub people the wrong way, which is okay, but be warned that I'm not going to hold back here.

As a whole, let me preface by saying that I loved this movie. I will go to see it 3 more times, and I will enjoy every moment. However, objectively… this is not a film that I can recommend to people as a “great film” artistically speaking. Is it fun and Good™? Yes. Did I enjoy it immensely? Yes. Were there some very odd and disruptive writing/direction choices? Yeah. This isn’t a masterpiece, as fantastic as I personally felt it was, and honestly I do not think it topped Chapter 1 in terms of flow, total presentation, or scriptwriting.

I’m going to break down my thoughts by category:

1. Story elements

2. Visuals & Horror

3. Tone

Starting with Story Elements:

I am incredibly torn on this. I LOVED aspects of this film, and was wildly confused by others. As a whole, I think the film began strong. 

The re-introductions to the characters were fantastic, though taking the “historian” thing from Mike in Chapter 1 definitely made Chapter 2 weak in regards to his characterization. He’s a hard character to get right, but it honestly feels a little like they didn’t try, and just used him to progress the story. I could continue, but that is a whole separate Mike Essay. Bev, Ben, Richie, and Eddie were all fantastic. Eddie in particular was taken in a slightly more aggressive angle than traditional for his character, but it worked very well with the way he was established in Chapter 1, thanks to Jack’s interpretation. Bill was a little bit weaker in some ways, but still at his core Bill Denbrough. I unapologetically LOVE adult Stan, and only regret that due to the story, we don’t get to experience him as much as he deserves in the film.

The return to Derry was great, and I still think that the group dynamics are what make this story shine. 90% of what I loved so much in Chapter 1 was the group dynamics, and they are here in SPADES. The group makes sense together, and the cast did a great job, though Eddie’s constant repetition of the word “fuck” seemed a little unnecessary after the second time in the restaurant scene. However, one thing I think the miniseries did better is establish them as “the lucky seven” - they’re not just the Losers Club; they’re held together by fate, and there’s definitely some supernatural elements to that which are not present in the films, weakening their group connection. This is shown most strongly in their moments of conflict in Chapter 2, especially when they want to leave, because their draw to each other doesn’t seem to be present, at least not in the same capacity. It seems weird to feel let down by this considering my next point, but it is what it is.

Some may disagree here, but… I really dislike the decision to include the ritual of Chud in the movie. I disliked it in the book as well, as I think that it unnecessarily complicates things and turns this horror story into a surreal sci-fi story in a way that doesn’t always mesh well. King does both sci-fi and horror well, but I’ve always felt the crossover in IT was off somehow. Also, the lack of connection with this to the first film makes the ritual of Chud seem even weirder in Chapter 2. Mike’s characterization with this gets… odd… and its inclusion is very confusing. I actually said “what the hell are they doing” in theaters when Mike introduces this with Bill. That’s how weird it was for me. My biggest problem was that it makes Chapter 2 a sharp departure from Chapter 1, and failing to achieve the cohesion that the miniseries had is a huge downer for me, considering that the IT reboot is an improvement to the miniseries in so many other ways.

In comparison to the book and miniseries, I think that it was a bad choice to leave out Audra, as it was good closure for the Billverly plotline. Bill and Bev even kiss in Chapter 2 - and then it is promptly forgotten. I’m not necessarily looking for conflict, but Audra was a huge motivator for Bill, and it was much less significant to have his driving force be this random kid that reminds him of Georgie. I get it, but Audra helps show how Bill has grown more strongly and pushes him forward after the final battle. I also wanted a cinematic parallel between Audra and Bev in the sewers and was really disappointed that I didn't get it. I have similar feelings about Tom - yes, Bev obviously leaves him for Ben, but Tom had a huge impact on Bev and her growth. Leaving him out weakens her personal story.

I’m not going to say much about Henry, but the scene where he pops out of the sewers is FANTASTIC. I absolutely did not expect to get that scene (I figured we’d just pop in on him in the hospital), but was glad we did. However, this lost its impact the longer we went on; he was relevant for all of one (1) stabbing of one (1) Edward Kaspbrak, and then died without even putting Mike in the hospital like he was supposed to. A waste of his character.

There are other positives. The connection Adrian and Richie’s stories are great, and I think Richie’s moments of reveal are very well handled. I just wish the Adrian/Eddie parallels had been highlighted as well. Richie and Eddie are fantastic together, and Bev and Richie are also sweet as hell. Besties for the resties, man. In general, I think Richie’s relationship with the Losers is the strongest writing in terms of group dynamics. Putting aside his feelings for Eddie - which do a fantastic job of fleshing him out and showing how multifaceted his character is - he is the one Loser who has strong ties to every other character. Bev’s relationships with Mike and Eddie are weak, Ben’s most relevant relationship is to Beverly, Bill’s most relevant relationship is Mike - you see where I’m going with this. Only Richie’s writing showed the importance of all his group relationships, though some were stronger than others.

Almost every individual scene with the Losers and Pennywise are very enjoyable. The moments where their personal motivations and fears shine are truly the best in the film. While there were some design issues that disappointed me in terms of IT terrorizing them, their stories are great - the apartment scene with Beverly is still poignant, and Bill’s revelation about the day of Georgie’s death made me a little emotional. I’ve already mentioned this in general terms, but the arcade scene with Richie is fantastic.

As a whole, there is a lot of love here, and so much to enjoy. The script writers and the director worked hard on this film, and they tried to do a lot with it - just maybe too much, which caused problems with flow and tone as a whole.

Visuals & Horror

I love horror - I could go on all day about how it’s the best genre. As such, I have a lot of feelings about the horror elements in this film. 

I already mentioned how the ritual of Chud/Sci-Fi elements weaken the horror - in truth, the horror elements were already weak. As a result, sci-fi elements distract from what already has flaws. There are two major categories for this discussion: subtlety and design.

In terms of subtlety, a majority of Chapter 2 was basically hitting you over the head with a Pennywise-shaped hammer. There were jumpscares everywhere, and they were rarely impactful ones. How many times did we get a “Pennywise chomps down on somebody” moment? I was totally engrossed in Adrian’s scene at the beginning, but when Pennywise just takes a bite out of him and it ends, I was honestly disappointed. I do realize this is book canon, but there is something about the presentation in the book - the precise moving of Adrian’s arm, the bite, the smile, the cracking of his ribs - that is dulled in the movie for a lack of a better term. There is just something about this death that fails to hit home. Maybe it’s because Pennywise is more or less out in the open, or maybe because in the book, the bullies see It, too, making it a surreal moment that no one believed except those who were there.

As a whole, the movie has plenty of gore but little suspense. I think I had more interest the less I knew about how exactly people died. Eventually you get sick of the chomping - the unknown is more frightening than a monster with a predictable attack pattern. The missing kids. Betty Ripsom’s shoe and lack of explanation. Patrick’s fade to black. These things made Chapter 1 unsettling, but scenes like Victoria’s death had no other elements other than being bitten to death by Penywise, and that was predictable. 

For an example of what could have been in terms of subtlety, I can honestly say that I was more creeped out by “Mrs. Kersh” slinking around in the background of Beverly’s old apartment than I was by the old woman monster. For what it's worth, the way these monsters move is INCREDIBLE, especially so the more humanoid they are. I love the body language and movements. The earliest example is the headless boy in Chapter 1; the jerking limbs really emphasize their inhumanity, and it still works in this film (Mrs. Kersh at the end of the hall, Betty Ripsom’s legs, etc). This, with the use of humans and their subtle shift to the unnatural in the films, was much stronger than the larger monsters in Chapter 2. 

Another strength is the background details that you might miss. The librarian staring at Ben as he reads about the Ironworks explosion in Chapter 1 is a great example of this, as is Mrs. Kersh peeking her head out of the kitchen in Chapter 2. I would have rather had more small scares like this, rather than the reliance on jumpscares. The pomeranian monster behind the “Not Scary At All” door is essentially just that, and I was WILDLY unimpressed by it.

Returning to the focus of the film, Pennywise the clown is a great villain, but a lot of Its appeal is that It shifts into whatever scares you most. In the first film, this is done well - the painting lady, the leper, the headless boy, and even the way it shifts in the battle at the end. The strength in these forms is that you never know what to expect - and neither do the Losers. Each new nightmare looks and behaves differently. The flute dropping from the painting lady’s hands to announce her presence, the dropped eggs in the library scene… everything about the leper. Even the miniseries did this variety well (the werewolf, the shower scene with Eddie, Mrs. Kersh, etc)

Yet, in part 2, we get… two extra monsters. Which is fair - we already have plenty of material - but they both have the same style of warped features and aesthetic. I think creepy naked old Mrs. Kersh would have been a more disturbing visual than old lady monster turned out to be. Sometimes less is more. Clowns are creepy because they have almost-not-quite-human features… the same can be said of effective monsters (look at the leper, for example, or the painting lady). 

Pennywise in general and Its overreliance on Its clown persona weakens the effect. Eventually, Its presence becomes “oh, there’s the clown again,” especially considering that Its attack pattern has become so predictable. Is It going to drag me into the darkness? Is It going to manipulate me into hurting my friends? Is It going to do some other scary thing to me? No, he’s going to take a bite out of me. Not awesome, but certainly not the Pennywise of the novel or even of the miniseries, whose horror came from the fact that no one knew what happened when you disappeared - or when parts of you reappeared.

There were too many instances where the horror was all about jumpscares and theatrics. Pennywise is all about theatrics, I know, but It went from eldritch horror to dramatic murder clown in this film. In the book, Pennywise is extra as hell, so I wouldn’t be angry if that was the angle taken for the films - however, that is not what was established in Chapter 1, and isn’t actually what is achieved in Chapter 2. If we are going for a more serious, darker tone for Pennywise, I would prefer the eldritch horror we saw more strongly in Chapter 1.

Tone

This is the hardest category to explain well, because a lot of this is my personal impression of the film, but I’ll do my best. As a whole, the movie does not flow well, especially connected to Chapter 1, and this is largely because of tone. Some scenes shift too abruptly or push too hard, and I feel as though the writers were trying to capture the same charm and attitude that Chapter 1 achieved with the kids, but struggled because they aren’t kids anymore. The balance between gritty horror and charm is harder with adults, but this is something the miniseries excelled at compared to Chapter 2. In the miniseries, you never feel like you’re watching a new film when it switches to the present day with the adults. In IT Chapter 2, though the movie and story are meant to be a continuation, it feels more distant, like a sequel that doesn’t quite achieve the same mood.

I’ve said that the group dynamics of the Losers really shines in these films - however, it’s also a major problem in Chapter 2, because there are several times where the writers sacrificed the integrity and tone of a scene to fit in some banter. I love the banter, okay. I’m all about it. The banter in the IT movies is my favorite banter that I’ve seen in a fictional friend group, and yes, I’m including Stranger Things and classics like The Breakfast Club or the Goonies. However, when it’s ruining an otherwise impactful scene, it feels wasteful and disruptive. 

A good example is the scene with Richie and Eddie at the doors in the caves. This scene is fantastic - it’s funny without being a gag, and it showcases the brilliance of RichieandEddie. However - and this is a big however - every other Loser’s individual scene is dramatic and dark - tonally appropriate. Richie and Eddie, however, have their moment melding humor with some jumpscares, and though the scene is great on paper, it makes no damn sense compared to the tone of the rest of the damn sequence. There is no logical room for comedic relief here, and it was jarring, no matter how much I enjoyed the scene itself. Tonally, Richie’s one-liners in Chapter 1 made more sense, and the script of Chapter 1 did a much better job ensuring that those tiny breaks in tension do not disrupt the scene or atmosphere. I cannot say that about certain elements in Chapter 2.

The Losers work very well together, but they also have a tendency to get chaotic enough to break the atmosphere. In the book, there is a lot of quiet horror amongst the Losers Club that is disrupted in Chapter 2 by the multiple scenes where they just scream over each other during crucial moments (such as the scene in Jade of the Orient). The quiet fear and understanding amongst the Lucky Seven that made them such a dynamic group of protagonists just doesn't exist here. Every quiet moment is a moment for arguing or freaking out here, and it got tiring, especially when we went right back to individual reflection and exploration after. I use the term “quiet” here quite a bit, but I’m not sure how else to express the atmosphere I’m talking about. Hopefully the point gets across.

This may just be personal preference - I really enjoy subtle horror, as I’ve said. The moments where the Losers watch and take in the terror as it unfolds are important moments and are lacking in Chapter 2. I can’t empathize with the screaming and freaking out, but the dawning horror and realization of what’s happening puts me right in their shoes. Beverly’s slow realization when she’s staring at the picture of “Mrs. Kersh” and her “father” is a moment like this, to put it in context. 

Even more so than the Losers’ attitudes is the lack of the “dawning horror” vibe in the film at large. It is not meant to be an action film, and yet Chapter 2 is constantly go-going. The action is in places more akin to a slasher than the slower supernatural horror this story is meant to be. Chapter 1, with its slow reveals and strengthening group dynamics, hit the intended mood better, and seems further separated from Chapter 2 as a result.

Chapter 1 did a great job with balance - it knew when it was appropriate for the funnies, and how to shift that into the horror elements seamlessly. It also did a great job throwing in Richie’s one liners without ruining the balance of the scene, but Chapter 2 had several instances where it took those quick Richie moments and turns the focus entirely on him, breaking up scenes in a jarring way. An even more disruptive example is the “Richie said it best last time” bit before they entered Neibolt. The entire scene shut down for Richie’s moment, and it ruined the suspense of what could have been a really nice parallel to Chapter 1. We didn’t need the tension broken in many of these instances, and it was difficult to go back and forth. The focus on Richie is because of the positive fan response to his character, which is well deserved in my opinion. However, this could have been done better. 

Tonally, Pennywise’s script also came on too strong. The Pennywise we know and love is a lurker, manipulating humans and taking other forms rather than doing all the dirty work directly. Chapter 2 has moments of this, but more often has Pennywise as an aggressively taunting antagonist. It becomes loud and exaggerated. Part of this can be attributed to rising tension as the Losers return to finish It off, but Its dialogue is hammier than I expected. It’s become almost petty - and not to needle at the Losers, but more because It’s bitter and childish. I don’t know if it’s too much to use the term “eldritch horror” again, but I don’t know how else to describe what we were set up for with Chapter 1 and let down on in Chapter 2.

As a whole, I felt like the film was stitched together in places. After Chapter 1, I felt that I had just had an experience, but after Chapter 2, I actually looked at my best friend and said “I liked it, but I’m not sure what just happened.”

Let it be clear that I love Chapter 2, and will happily rewatch it many times in the future, but I do think that compared to Chapter 1, it is a far weaker film overall. You can watch them together for a similar experience to the miniseries, but it will be less cohesive and will feel like it fell apart a bit the longer it went on. I don’t fault the writers for this entirely, as the second half of this story is a daunting undertaking, but I think removing the sci-fi elements with the ritual of Chud and tightening down the horror aspects/tone would have made this a stronger continuation of Chapter 1. 

[cyanpeacock]

Agh. It is morning. I am awake.

Don’t feel so hot. Lots of guilt and shame. Also fury. Trying to like... feel it without hating it and getting into that whole spiral.

I’m tired and struggling with like, reasons my body is worth caring for? 

I feel kind of like... I’m ungrateful. Why would I cut all contact with a family that would accept me. They say they love me. They let me go to their houses. They’re alright... right?

But they didn’t fucking accept me. 

OK this got long and furious under the cut wow. Apparently that’s why waking up was such a cunt this morning. Well. It’s out now. 

They wanted me to be amazing in school, and got upset and/or angry and/or disappointed and/or guilty when I wasn’t achieving those kinds of grades. Punished for it. Means of social contact taken away from me, when I was already so fucking lonely. Constantly being fucking watched through a hole in the door. What the fuck kind of house just has holes in all the fucking doors? Why the fuck do you think that’s okay? Do you have any idea how much that fucked with my sense of privacy, how long I felt permanently observed for? Are you even aware how much your other kids hate it?

They wanted me to be a girl, and told me I was ‘just confused’ when I came out, got my name and pronouns wrong like they assumed it was going to pass in the next month, every fucking month. I wasn’t allowed boys’ clothes because “they wouldn’t fit me,” when being a “tomboy” was absolutely fine. Uh, I’m pretty sure ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ children do share dimensions? They’re both humans? I wasn’t even allowed to cut my fucking hair for years, because my mother wanted control over how my body wore my hair, and she wanted it long and blonde and pretty like the perfect working-housewife-to-be. She didn’t see me as a fucking man until after testosterone, and her eyes are still fucking looking for her “little girl.” Fuck off. She died ten thousand times living with you. She was one of those creepy dead-eyed dolls Sheila keeps on the landing in Killinghall. It drives me insane. 

Okay this is pretty pointedly at my mother now so yeah.

“You’ll always be my baby” NO I fucking WON’T. Jesus fucking christ woman, I am not a baby any more. You might remember a tiny child and get all misty-eyed. I’m sure it’s reassuring to some adult children. How that feels to me? Oppressive. Like it’s a trap. All-consuming. Like if I go, and actually express and deal with all my rage, I’m going to destroy your world. Because that’s how it fucking worked at the beginning. If I expressed I was hurt, or angry, or upset, or hungry, or in need, I’d get fucking yelled at, I’d get yanked around, I’d get smacked. I’d get ignored. I’d get told I don’t deserve food. I’d get shut inside a lonely dark dirty disgusting fucking room and you’d pretend I didn’t exist. 

You never saw how mental I went. You never saw me chewing the bedframes. You never saw me clawing at the walls. You never saw me picking the paint off the plaster, just the aftermath. You never saw me hurling my toys and books around in a rage, you just assumed I was ‘making a mess’. You never saw me beating my skull and body with my fists. You never saw me beating up Hank the teddy in complete rage then sobbing and apologizing to him like he was alive. You never saw me standing in the window crying wishing somebody, maybe the nice man Jeff down the road, would help me. 

You never saw how I learned to imagine characters and stories so hard I began hallucinating them in my attempts to escape that ‘home.’ You never saw me wishing the ‘scary’ pedophiles in the white vans would come and take me away, because then maybe somebody would love my body for something different, and that I wouldn’t have to think so hard any more. You never saw me wish that mummy would just kill me so it would all be over. You never saw the help notes I wrote and tore up and posted outside, in the hopes somebody would put them together, and realize I was so scared of being caught asking for help that I destroyed my attempts to get it. 

I’m fucking furious. Again and again you’d say bullshit like “imagine how I feel!” when you were the grown fucking adult in the dynamic. And I know-- Christopher comes into the equation, so does Sheila, who - man, that’s just, why would you still see that almost-murderer - I understand why, but holy fuck, I can’t watch myself start living like that - but this, right now, is about you and the child you did not protect, but transferred pain onto. 

You got so fucking far inside my head I believed I was ungrateful, disgusting, a brat, just whining, that I had no reason to be so upset. That I should just buck up, and go to school, that I wasn’t doing good enough. I still don’t fucking feel good enough, because you’d go from essentially calling me worthless, to calling me a genius or a prodigy when I did something academically remarkable. It was the only way to convince you I had value. 

So I learned to escape through school. I learned to just do the work, even though I still wanted to die right there. Easier to do an exam with an invisible gun to my head than to go home in the evenings, more fun, actually, because at least there was a chance of success in the exam. You didn’t see all the dark fucking nights I lived through considering suicide, wishing desperately that I could just kill myself, but feeling like my utter desperation to get away mattered less than your happiness. Awake all night trying to get away from the thoughts that told me to just stab myself, just go out in the cold, just rot away, because I felt responsible for holding the family together. And I also felt like I was the one destroying it.

I felt responsible for that, especially with how PISS fucking poorly you and David both handled that relationship. Neither of you are emotionally healthy people. You both used emotional manipulation on the children involved in attempts to achieve the same ends: harm the other party, gain power and control.

You know, I want to be a nice guy. I want to give happy happy endless love to the universe. Why do you think I was capable of moving in with a self-declared sadist, a man who’d shot men? Because I’d already lived with somebody who was wounding me every fucking day. In insidious, nasty little ways. That the David cunt only observed and copied. From you, Claire.

Your literal gibbering about “brainwashing!” and “mind control!!” - literally, what the fuck, woman. You’re not immune to propaganda either. You were literally making up your own. You two thought you were the entire fucking universe. He was the Right, you were the Left. It was the Tories and the Labour party, the Axis and the Allies, and the unwitting, dumb voters, with no experience in politics.

This is literally how you framed it to me.

That is literally how you two IDIOTS thought it was appropriate to navigate a breakup.

You know what? I’m done with it, again. You’re different to him in how you throw your shade, and that’s all. He’s alright, in moderation. You’re alright, in moderation. I could tolerate a serial killer, in moderation; I almost fucking was one, with how hurt I’d become, and how little trust in and respect for human beings I’d developed. All just meat to me. It’s all I’ll be in the end, anyway. It gave me a sense of power to stalk strangers at night, and observe their weak points, and consider how fucking easy it would be to get a rush that way. 

And I can’t have these conversations with you, these furious fucking conversations, because I am conditioned to box up every bit of my rage when I even THINK of your face. You show up in my mind with your eyes all watery blue and bloodshot from drinking, and your lip and chin all tight like you’re going to cry, and it convinced - and still sometimes convinces me - “pack it in, you can’t destroy her like that, the world will fucking end, it’ll come back on you and your siblings. There will be punishment, there will be blood, and it’ll be yours, and you’ll be left all alone cleaning it up with no fucking support. The only eye that sees your blood will punish you for making a mess with it.”

Neither of you can see shit about what I really feel, unless you’re reading it here, like fucking omnipresent surveillant operatives of Big Brother, which I suspect at least one of you might actually be fucking doing. 

Sure, things changed when I came back, still going through active trauma, desperate for something, some illusion of healthy family. Was that healthy? No. Was I actively going through unhealthy, traumatic times? Yes. We do unhealthy things in unhealthy times, and afterwards, while we process the feelings we went through but were numb to. It happens. I understand this, it’s why I kept making fucking excuses, why I thought ‘explanations’ of behaviour meant anything when you’d hurt somebody. It’s why I boxed up all this fucking rage. It’s why I thought my pain was meaningless compared to yours.

I’ll give this to you, you got nicer. You drink less. I appreciate it, for your other kids. They’re doing better than I was, but they’re still not well. 

When did that change?

After your first fucking child ran away, because of the sheer amount of pain you were transferring onto them. Because of the toxic fucking environment of emotional manipulation and infantilization you’d continued to foster. Because it was easier to live with a racist opioid addict murderer for a while than to stay in that shithole city any longer. I had to force you to realize how fucking unhealthy that place was.

I’m not being kind right now, because I don’t know how to express all this fucking fury in a kind way. I don’t know how to soften the blow. Maybe there’s no fucking way, maybe that’s why I’m doing it on my blog. I still don’t believe you’re grown enough to handle this shit. You shut me down in every difficult conversation about feelings, and you don’t even mean to. Why do you think I cried on you so fucking much, but you could never fucking console me? Because you fucked up at the start. Because you didn’t establish a secure attachment between yourself and your child. Because you couldn’t provide for me.

I don’t blame you for being unable to provide for me. Circumstances align this way, often, and it’s inevitable. 

I can’t go back in time and re-establish that attachment. There’s always this lingering fucking, waiting for the stab in the back. Waiting for trouble. Those moments where I go completely blank and convince myself it’s always been happy, it’s always been nice, I really am imagining things, I really do just overreact... there’s something wrong with me, why am I so ungrateful? Why can’t I feel joy here? Why is it always bittersweet? 

It’s fucking me up. It really hurts me, every day. Every god damn day when I’m living with myself, and actually working on acknowledging and expressing what I really feel, in as healthy a way as I can muster. I still wake up thinking I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to smile today. I’ve ruined the world. I’ve fucked up so badly by making the decision not to speak to you again. 

I have to stop doing that to myself. 

I went psychotic from the amount of repressed trauma I’d been burying by smoking pot. My brain had to show me all that pain and instability I’d been avoiding, in the form of hallucinated symbols. 

It was terrifying. It was also incredibly helpful. The doors of perception, as it were. Thanks for that one - I’m off making my own Brave New World, and it’s on the island, far away from the rest of them, with their neatly chemically controlled babies in fucking jars.

I needed to drug myself to function, for a while. I needed my meds to function. To do the only thing I’d ever been truly worth anything for, the only thing that was going to get me out and away. I’m coming to doubt that it was ever really my choice to be an academic. Between ability and unhealthy amounts of pressure, I was forced this way, like that fucking rhubarb you were growing. 

So I suppose that’s why I woke up this morning and thought about staying in bed all day, hiding from the rest of the universe. I wanted to go back to sleep, so I didn’t have to feel how fucking angry and hurt I am. I can’t avoid feeling angry and hurt, now nothing’s actually hurting me in my daily life, now I’ve got people who respect my every word for what it is. 

And I have to do this every day. Every fucking day, I’ve got to have these conversations with myself. Sometimes I write them. Sometimes I sing them. Sometimes I have to talk through them, slowly and haltingly, trying to understand why something apparently small hurts like something much bigger. 

Why am I ‘doing this to myself’? So I don’t do it to anybody else. Not again. So I can come to a place where I feel worthy, and deserving, and like I can connect enough to my feelings and body to function without damaging myself even more. 

All that fucking denial of my physical pain. All that denial there was anything medically wrong with me. It got inside me, man. 

But - I have to accept my borderline. I have to accept that I have an intense emotional range, that causes me problems in meeting the societal standards of daily life, because I’ve been through an emotionally intense past. 

I also have to accept that it’s not normal for this (almost) 22 year old body to click and crack and pop and grind and ache so much I have to literally limp around. My hips should not be audibly thunking when I go to sit down in an office chair to check my emails. My shoulders should not be sliding out of place steadily over the course of the day. I should never have gone so physically numb that I didn’t notice my binder warping my ribs. 

I said I thought I had Ehlers-Danlos. You said I read too much, and that I was paranoid. Where am I now? Six years later, facing the possibility that that really is what’s wrong with my cartilage, the reason my skin is so soft, the reason my ribs bent so easily, the reason my vertebrae slide over each other audibly, the reason the only joints I have that don’t hurt are my elbows. And I’ve got to do it alone, because I can’t deal with looking right at your guilt every time I bring it up, because I know that you know now that this really isn’t normal, and you ignored it at a time so much damage could have been prevented. 

I know why it went down that way. I do and don’t blame you. I just have to get angry, so I can fucking do something with my day that isn’t pure escapism, something constructive. 

So now I’m wrapping this one up. I’m not fucking “packing it in” any more. I’ll wrap it up, at a time and place of my choosing, considering every body and mind my actions are affecting in the moment. Right now? This is for me.

[slainfury]

RAVUS & NOCTIS: A COMPLICATED MATTER

so  we’re  essentially  given  breadcrumbs  at  best  in  regards  to  defining  the  relationship  between  ravus  and  noctis.  the  basic  outlook  is  that  the  two  in  the  present  gaming  timeline  don’t  get  along  and  that  ravus  despises  noctis;  but  i  think  it’s  more  than  that,  i  want  to  take  it  further  than  that.  so,  to  some  extent,  this  is  headcanon  based  and  applicable  only  to  my  blog  (  and  the  noctis  whom  i  have  developed  this  meta  with  )

i  want  to  start  with  the  reminder  that  these  two  were  childhood  friends  as  well.  do  i  have  any  scenes  /  dialogue  to  prove  this ?  well,  no.  given  that  we  barely  have  three  minutes  worth  of  screentime  for  noctis  and  luna’s  childhood  flashbacks  as  is  (  y’know,  the  girl  he’s  someday  to  marry  /  the  oracle  to  help  him  lead  )  it’s  no  surprise  that  any  exploration  between  him  and  ravus  is  left  in  the  dust.  but  it  takes  a  little  common  sense,  really:  he’s  luna’s  brother,  after  all,  and  her  only  sibling.  given  how  close  these  two  are,  i  think  it’s  safe  to  say  --  at  the  very  least  --  he  and  noct  had  friendly  interactions  with  one  another.  generally,  i  charactertize  the  childhood  relationship  as  this:  noct,  a  canonically  shy  and  introverted  child,  likely  somewhat  intimidated  by  the  older  ravus.  and  in  the  meantime  ravus  was  polite  and  friendly,  treating  him  no  differently  than  he  would  with  luna  --  even  if  any  attempts  to  have  long  lasting  conversations  with  the  boy  were  futile.

take  a  look  at  this  screenshot  from  the  opening  scene  of  kingsglaive ;

ravus,  in  the  background,  smiling  just  as  his  mother  sylva  is.  he  is  just  as  welcoming  of  regis  and  noctis  as  she  is.  there  is  no  indication  whatsoever  that  back  then  he  ‘disliked’  or  ‘barely  tolerated’  the  lucis  caelum  family.  in  fact,  anyone  who  makes  these  claims  has  no  justification  to  that  whatsoever  --  both  their  kingdoms  were  intact,  all  was  well,  and  for  ravus  and  noct  --  two  children  --  the  war  was  a  seemingly  faraway  event.  troubling,  perhaps,  but  their  knowledge  of  it  at  that  moment  then  was  nowhere  near  the  extent  as  their  parents  was.

and  then  comes  tragedy,  mere  minutes  later.  his  mother  slaughtered  before  his  very  eyes,  her  blood  literally  splattering  on  his  face.  he,  too,  is  wounded  and  left  alone  in  the  wildfires  begging  regis  for  his  help.  but  regis  (  to  no  fault  of  his  own,  imo  )  chooses  to  save  his  son  --  his  injured,  then - wheelchair  bound  son  that’s  incapable  of  running  --  and  makes  the  attempt  to  save  luna  because  she’s  closeby.  ravus  is  not.  it’s  the  most  difficult  decision  any  parent  can  make,  choosing  to  leave  behind  a  child.

and  so,  ravus  resents  regis.  but  not  noctis.

ravus  is  very  much  aware  that  this  has  little  to  do  with  noctis.  noctis  isn’t  the  reason  that  tenebrae  was  attacked.  it  wasn’t  noctis  whom  sylva  chose  to  heroically  sacrifice  her  life  for.  it  wasn’t  noctis  that  took  off  running  and  abandoned  him.

ravus  resents  regis,  the  adult.  the  king,  who  had  forsaken  innocent  people  and  selfishly  escaped  with  his  own  life.  regis,  who  has  seemingly  done  nothing  since  after  he  and  his  sister  were  taken  prisoner  by  niflheim.  regis,  who  focused  on  the  walls  of  refuge  within  his  won  kingdom  and  too  preoccupied  to  worry  for  tenebrae  after  it  and  its  queen  bled  and  died  for  him.

and  so  i  again,  i  say,  ravus  hates  regis.  not  noctis.

so  why  the  resentment?  why  the  bitterness  upon  their  reunion?

it  isn’t  directed  towards  noctis,  the  person.  it  is  to  life,  to  how  noctis  has  essentially  had  it  easier  than  him.  it  is  to  the  seemingly  carefree  attitude  noctis  presents  with  (  in  ravus’  eyes  )  and  how  he  doesn’t  seem  to  understand  that.  noctis  wasn’t  stripped  of  his  titles  and  crown,  watched his  kingdom  set  aflame.  noctis  wasn’t  beaten  and  humiliated,  a  helpless  witness  more  or  less  forced  to  watch  his  sister  be  assaulted  and  exploited  for  her  powers.  noctis  wasn’t  forced  to  bear  the  burden  of  expecting  to  somehow  miraculously  rise  up  and  rule  as  a  boy - king,  and  be  blamed  anyhow  for  failing.

(  yes,  noctis  endures  horrible  things.  his  life  is  tragic,  as  well.  and  at  the  present  timeline  in  the  game,  noctis  has  just  lost  his  father  and  home  as  well.  his  entire  set - up  is  pure  tragedy,  as  he  was  more  or  less  born  to  die.  we  as  the  audience  know  this;  ravus  does  not.  additionally,  the  comparisons  which  an  embittered  ravus  is  making  is  in  reference  to  their  childhoods.  aside  from  the  loss  of  his  mother,  which  happened  prior  to  the  events  of  the  fall  of  tenebrae,  noctis  lived  a  relatively  safe  and  happy  life  in  the  walls  of  insomnia  as  opposed  to  ravus’  life  as  a  prisoner  of  war.  )

-  it  is  also  worth  noting  that  even  when  insomnia  falls  /  the  death  of  regis,  noctis  has  the  love  and  support  of  his  friends  at  his  side.  his  friends,  all  adults  who  are  capable  of  handling  themselves  and  not  dependent  on him.  ravus  did  not  have  that.  he  had  lunafreya,  his  little  sister  who  was  dependent  on  him,  and  that’s  about  it.  for  all  we  know,  any  and  all  of  ravus’  friends  were  taken  prisoner  or  executed  shortly  after  the  fall  of  tenebrae  for  remaining  nox  fleuret  loyalists  and  not  submitting  to  niflheim.

more  evidence  regarding  my  point,  that  ravus  hates  noctis’  attitude  but  not  noctis:

-  you  received  the  storm’s  blessing.  and  yet,  you  know  nothing  of  the  consequences.

said  consequences  being  the  failing  health  of  lunafreya,  the  woman  they  both  love.  for  all  her  mighty  and  heroic  efforts  in  contacting  with  the  gods,  it  takes  a  toll  on  her  health  each  and  every  time.  it  is  quite  literally  killing  lunafreya  to  serve  noctis,  to  fulfill  a  duty  she  feels  obligated  to  fulfill.  and  noctis,  someone  who  claims  to  love  his  sister  dearly,  apparently  has  no  idea  of  that  all.  this  infuriates  ravus.  how  can  her  husband - to - be  just  seemingly  run  about  idly  with  his  friends,  with  not  a  care  in  the  world  as  luna  is  dying  over  some  ancient  prophecy?

-  first  the  lucians  stole  me  my  mother. ...  and  now  they  make  a  sacrifice  of  my  sister!

remember,  it  was  a  lucian  prophecy  that  foretold  all  of  this.  but  again,  noctis  ravus  doesn’t  outright  say  noctis  at  any  point  in  time.  he  never  says  “he  makes  a  sacrifice  of  my  sister”;  he  refers  to  the  ancestors  instead.

the  following  scene,  wherein  he  attempts  to  attack  /  kill  noctis  is  exactly  what  it  looks  like.  i’m  not  going  to  try  and  divulge  it  into  something  else.  but  there’s  a  simple  explanation:  grief.  this  man  has  lost  everything  in  this  very  moment.  everything  he  has  ever  done  since  the  murder  of  his  mother  was  for  the  sake  of  his  sister,  for  the  sake  of  preserving  their  family  through  all  this  horror  and  tragedy.  and  yet,  despite  it  all,  he  has  failed.  all  the  horrible  deeds  he  himself  has  committed  were  for  nothing  or  all  in  vain.  it  seems  plausible  to  me  that  someone  so  grief - stricken  by  such  tremendous  loss  would  make  poor  choices,  all  emotion  based,  and  temporarily  lose  his  mind.

moments  later,  ravus  saves  noctis  from  ardyn  /  from  certain  death  --  just  as  lunafreya  had.  ravus,  too,  has  now  accepted  the  importance  of  noctis’  destiny.  he  no  longer  denies  the  prophecy  and  its  belonging  to  noctis.  and  more  importantly,  recognizes  the  need  for  noctis  to  be  alive.  to  (  from  ravus’  perspective  and  knowledge,  not  ours  )  rule  insomnia  after  eradicating  the  darkness,  truly  becoming  the  light.

it’s  why  he  dies  in  the  main  timeline  recognizing  noctis  as  the  one  true  king.  it’s  why  he  dies  failing  to  deliver  regis’  sword  to  noctis.

it’s  why  he  succeeds  in  the  alternate  ep  ignis  timeline

because  together,  when  the  darkness  is  eradicated,  they  will  remain.  there  is  work  to  be  done,  and  neither  will  be  able  to  accomplish  it  without  the  other.  the  ruins  of  insomnia  and  ashes  of  tenebrae  will  be  rebult  by  two  kings.

and  two  brothers.

[scriptautistic]

I don’t know if y’all have answered this before but what’s your opinion on the show The Good Doctor?

Hi, I want to be clear - we don’t really do reviews on this blog. We help writers write autistic characters more accurately. But! That doesn’t mean there aren’t some useful lessons on writing autistic characters from the show. In the future, a more useful question to ask is, “What mistakes or benefits does this show have in the way they’ve portrayed their autistic character(s)?” The more specific you can make your question, the easier answering it becomes. Let’s get into it.

The Good Doctor and its accuracy in portraying an autistic character:

I have seen all of season 1, and this show is paced well. If you plan on writing any shows, there’s something to be learned about making sure the pacing of the show is enjoyable. It has a nice balance of drama and resolution, and while there’s a couple of medical cases per episode, the characters’ personal plot arcs last much longer than an episode which keeps it from being stressful. This is a TV show though, and as usual story elements are exaggerated to enhance the viewer’s emotional responses… so the show is not without its drama. The Good Doctor has character arcs which last for several episodes at a time, and allow you to get to know a character. Most importantly, it allows us to see Shaun in a variety of contexts.

This show also has a deluge of very subtle messages about autistic people. There are a few intentional scripted explanations about Shaun being autistic yet competent, but the show is good at showing the messages about Shaun rather than clumsily preaching them. The show’s script uses a mix of person-first and identity-first language. People who like Shaun and dislike him have said he’s autistic, and similarly with saying he has autism. It seems like the show is written in a way that using both has a purpose, but I’m not exactly sure what that purpose is - perhaps to try to satisfy anyone who prefers either description?

Many people have problems with an allistic actor portraying an autistic character, and I won’t be getting into that argument or state my personal opinion, but the portrayal of accuracy in autistic characterization is very high. This is one of those rare shows which shows an autistic adult being competent in a job as well as navigating friendships and attraction to people. He is also shown as an autistic adult; he doesn’t think or act like a child.

Shaun’s strengths and struggles: My main contention with the show’s accuracy is the Savant Syndrome super powers Shaun (the main character) has, but I think that was in part a relic from the show being loosely adapted from a Korean drama of the same name. This could have a deleterious effect on the way the audience sees autistics’ skills and smarts - as something separate from autism. A more accurate way to describe Shaun’s skills would be his special interest has been in medical sciences and physiology for years, and he is a visual learner and can extrapolate spacial information from what he has learned about the layout of the body to understand medical problems on a deeper level. This is a set of skills and intelligence very related to autism instead of a separate thing stacked on top of it; he can hyperfocus and not get bored, makes abstract links between disparate pieces of information in order to reach a conclusion, can learn a system well based on visual patterns, etc. For him, these are very autistic traits. For another character, based on their learning style/preferences/personality the autistic traits can vary. Essentially, autism touches every way an autistic person experiences the world. The show makes this a clear message, at least.

While Shaun is excellent surgeon and very intelligent, he struggles with other things. This is very accurate for autistics; there may be some things autistics are very good at and/or have fun doing, but other activities can be difficult and distressing. For example, Shaun cannot drive because there is too much sensory information associated with driving. This is a very common experience, though not necessarily true to all autistics, and it doesn’t correlate with someone’s level of verbal communication. I know a non-verbal person who drives to her work every day, and a very verbal autistic who finds driving absolutely horrendous. At the end of the day, Shaun is very skilled but makes mistakes like anyone else, though his resolutions to problems are often unique, meaning he thinks “outside of the box,” or abstractly the way many autistics tend to. He follows rules yet is creative, something often unappreciated or overlooked in autistics’ portrayals.

Portrayal of sensory experience: Shaun dislikes eye contact and seems to pay attention to people by listening or looking at what they are talking about. His mannerisms and body postures seem to be geared around rhythmic gross motor movements and precise fine motor movements, navigating and interacting with his sensory environment. He also has a myriad of sensory problems, and the degree with which he struggles with them may vary on the situation. For example, he couldn’t deal with certain noises during the day, but he couldn’t sleep when the faucet wasn’t dripping because he wanted to have the familiarity of the dripping faucet. Autistic people have sensory preferences, meaning some people love certain sensory experiences others hate and vice versa. He also is visually very sensory-seeking and bought himself a high resolution flatscreen TV so he could watch it up close. This is something consistent with his character, since he thinks very visually. Shaun has a comfort item - a toy scalpel his younger brother got him and he carries it with him everywhere. This is similar to myself and a lot of other autistics, and it’s related to a loved one and a special interest.

He also struggled with being asked direct questions when he interacted with a character - Claire - up close and couldn’t answer them, but he had prepared for his interview and could respond to questions asked directly by strangers in that context earlier in front of a room full of people. Later, he can respond to Claire’s questions more easily, likely because he got to know her better. While it might seem counter-intuitive or poorly written for Shaun to have an inconsistent ability to answer questions, but the contexts in which he was asked certain questions were different, and he had different levels of preparation to be asked questions. 

Emotions: In one episode he had an ‘atypical’ (at least by allistic standards) reaction to seeing someone get shot in a store - he compartmentalized his distress and feelings of guilt to help the person and go about his job, then later lashed out after he had packed his emotions down. He also didn’t want people to know his emotions. Yet some allistics are like this as well.The show writers leave him room to be similar or dissimilar to allistics, depending on his preferences and personality. 

His facial expressions are so subtle, other characters may not catch them and be able to read his emotions. This contributes to the stereotype he is ‘robotic,’ but Shaun certainly does NOT emote flatly. His facial expression system is merely different from those around him. He is in pain/guilt a lot of the time and has been abused and bullied, so he learned to suppress his emotions rather than trying to deal with them because they can often be too much to handle. This is consistent with his character, yet doesn’t contribute to the idea that he doesn’t feel. Instead, he is portrayed as feeling a LOT: becoming attached to certain people quickly, feeling distressed if they are removed from his life either by dying or moving or cutting off contact. He often gets watery eyes but turns away to prevent people from seeing. It’s a choice of his to keep his emotions to himself; they’re his, as he asserts at one point.

Portrayal of Shaun’s history of abuse and bullying: Unfortunately, this portrayal is very accurate. Without spoiling too much of he plot, I will describe the types of abuse Shaun experiences. He was abused by his father verbally and likely physically, though the latter can be inferred. There is at least one scene showing this. His memories shown are mostly traumatic in nature - being kicked by classmates in the schoolyard, seeing death, and being pressured into take his pants off (though he  didn’t, this is sexual harassment and humiliation) then surrounded by classmates and mocked. Autistic people are often targets for abuse of all kinds, and Shaun’s lack of obvious emotional reaction to his memories of these instances shows how acclimated to his memories of these kinds of violations he has become. Yet when he realized someone pretending to be his “friend” and manipulating him for his money, he was stung.

Portrayal of sexuality and romance: Shaun is shown as straight in this show, and becomes very attached to someone who also is interested in him. He seems intimidated by sexual experiences, but not disinterested in them - a very different portrayal of autistic sexuality than usual, as most autistics are portrayed as asexual. It is made clear he is interested in romantic experiences, and is shown as attractive.

Interactions with another autistic: There is an episode in which Shaun has an autistic patient (portrayed by an up-and-coming autistic actor). There was a little bit of weird ‘autistic whisperer’ feeling shown when Shaun translated the patient’s distress and the reasoning behind it, which may happen if autistic people know each other well or have similar sensory problems, but one autistic person may or may not be able to simply understand and explain another autistic person’s experiences.

Yet there was something interesting about this other autistic character which is not often addressed in media: he had different struggles and strengths than Shaun, different ways of communicating, and different responses to stress. Shaun internalizes his stress until he explodes, but this character seemed very communicative of stress and pain.

Something else interesting was Shaun’s initial almost-dislike of this character. Something gooshy to do on the writers’ parts would be to have them instantly become best friends, but to Shaun, he was just another patient, and Shaun had never met another autistic person. This was another way to show Shaun’s dislike of himself on some level (I would say self-hatred but I’m not too quick to point to evidence of this because the audience sees into his emotions only through memories and seeing him in private moments). Shaun has been taught by those around him there is something wrong with him, and he expected to find this patient difficult based on others’ historical communication to him that he is annoying or difficult to be around. Unfortunately, this kind of internalization of negative self-perceptions is very common for autistic people.

By the end of that episode, Shaun had seemed to get over his ambivalent feelings toward this patient and chided the patients’ parents for giving the patient a kava root supplement, as it was the cause of the patients’ presenting health problems. Allistic parents of autistic kids are often quick to jump to any supposed ‘cure’ or ‘support’ for their kids to change their autistic-ness, and this episode was wonderful at showing how dangerous this is, as the patient was in a severe amount of pain and distress. The parents were also very quick to decide both their child and Shaun were incompetent because of autism, but Shaun’s surgical team members were very quick to advocate for him despite their distrust of his skills in the beginning of the show. This gets at the show’s core message, I think: Autistic people are capable and one should assume competence.

This show is also not inspiration porn, since the narrative focuses on Shaun as the main character and doesn’t objectify him - a big plus in narratives featuring autistics.

Overall message about autism: In one episode, a physically disabled patient considering surgery to try to walk again tells Shaun, “You understand; you’d jump at a cure for autism, wouldn’t you?” And Shaun avoids the question by saying, “There is no cure for autism.” Shaun then prompts the patient to realize his best attributes - patience, willing to help others, etc. were learned because he went through physical therapy, and the patient says the difference between his ‘cure’ to walk again - surgery - and Shaun’s autism is the lessons he learned from being in a wheelchair wouldn’t go away if he can walk again. Also within this conversation, the patient told Shaun his wife married him because she accepted him for who he was, and that someone who accepted Shaun could marry him. Shaun pointed out some of his own personal qualities which are there because he is autistic. I winced at the initial question but the following conversation relieved me. This show, so far, communicates autism is a part of Shaun, not something he carries around which keeps the real him locked up.

Hope this helps with writing autistic characters in the future, especially in the medium of a show, movie, or play wherein there is a visual element for the audience in acting.

 - Mod Siena

FAQ // Like my work? Please support me on Ko-fi

[goodbonesassembling]

I worked as a nanny for the better part of ten years and it taught me a lesson about self care that I think I’ve only recently been able to start articulating: when you grow up you are forever both the adult and the child in any emotional/stressful/generally hard situation. And no one really prepared me for that experience. Like there was an idea that I would be an adult and in charge to have to be responsible and all that. But no one talked about the child-part and how to be a good guardian to that part without being mean to myself or getting frustrated with myself.

I think this dynamic becomes even more difficult to handle well when you haven’t had a great personal relationship with yourself. This is where the nanny experience has really taught me something essential. Most of the stress and responsibility (but also the joy and feelings of success that came from completing a rough day) came from the knowledge that I was caring for someone else’s child. I was being trusted to keep someone else’s child safe and happy and feeling loved.

That’s what you’re doing too, day to day, with the child-part of yourself that you carry around inside of you. You’re being entrusted with someone else’s child. It’s your responsibility, as caregiver-who-is-not-parent, to act as both guardian in moments that are too much and as comfort and support in moments where this child-part has to stand up and face the scary parts of the world.

But it’s important to acknowledge also that you didn’t get to choose how the child was raised or what the environment was, you didn’t get to guard them from the scary things before you-who-you-are-now came around, but you’re here now and you’re going to do your best job to protect this child you’ve been entrusted with. It means that, yes, you have to live with reactive energy to things that don’t always made sense, that don’t have good explanations, that seem out of place. It means you get to provide a softness that maybe you didn’t get when you were this child-part. It also means you get to sometimes leave for a while, that you don’t have to be in constant contact with this child-part. You can give yourself days off. You can spend the night not getting up every time they cry. It means you can voice the fears that arise from this part without them taking over completely and becoming overwhelming. You can say for yourself “yes this was scary and startling and reminded us of when this upsetting thing happened before but we’re safe now and I am watching out for us so we can be calm and feel safe”.

This doesn’t fix everything, obviously, but it has given me a path with these reactive feelings that come up and feel so young and vulnerable and overwhelming. I am learning how to be a good caregiver to myself without letting these parts of myself completely run the show. Because yes you have to be both adult and child for the rest of your life but you don’t have to let that stop you from growing and changing and feeling safe.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

22 Things You Do as an Adult When You Experienced Emotional Abuse as a Teenager

Juliette Virzi                     The Mighty                  June 23, 2017

The teenage years are often characterized by peer pressure, styles you never thought would come back in fashion and of course — angst. But what we may fail to recognize is that many teens are really hurting. For some, the teenage years are a time marked by emotional abuse.

The adults who experienced emotional abuse as teenagers may have been the teens who were struggling academically, the ones with the tough exteriors or the ones who seemed to have it all “figured out.” The effects of emotional abuse present differently in every individual. It’s important to remember we never know what may be going on in the life of a young person, so we should strive to treat them with compassion and respect.

We wanted to know what kinds of effects emotional abuse in the teenage years can have on adulthood, so we asked our mental health community to share one thing they do now that stemmed from the emotional abuse they experienced as a teenager.

No matter what your experience of emotional abuse was, it is important to remember hope is never lost and there is help out there.

Here’s what they had to say:

1. “If anything goes wrong, I immediately determine how it was my fault, and rehearse my explanation/apology. I then commence calling myself names and criticizing myself for allowing it to happen.”

2. “[I] constantly apologize for everything to the point who people get tired of me. [I] overthink, worry and second-guess myself in nearly every situation. [I] push people away who are genuinely trying to care [for] and look after me.”

3. “I get scared when people raise their voices. I get scared when people go silent and don’t express their emotions. I overanalyze everything I do, worrying it’s not good enough or that I’ll be in trouble.”

4. “I do a lot of things. I have trouble trusting people, and when I do trust you, I cling really bad to you. My therapist said thats part of the reason why I have borderline personality disorder and why I have abandonment issues.”

5. “I overreact to criticism. I take things super personally, even when someone probably didn’t mean [what they said] to come off as overly critical. Especially at work because we are all online, and tone or gestures are absent when communicating through emails.”

6. “I’m always taken aback when someone says something or tells me something and it isn’t the abusive and manipulative response I expected… Sometimes I don’t know how to handle it because it’s just so unexpected!”

7. “I’m always hyperaware, and it causes severe anxiety. I always know who is where, and constantly plan out the conversation in my mind, and become even more anxious when the conversation [doesn’t go] as planned. After any social interaction, I constantly review what was said, no matter how innocent, looking for the mistakes I made and berate myself for anything that goes wrong. If nothing went wrong, my mind makes me believe something did.”

8. “I feel the need to control everything. So I second-guess everything, analyze everything, overthink everything. I feel like a burden on others because I was treated as one for so long. It’s hard to undo the damage done.”

9. “[I find myself] projecting overconfidence to protect my fragile cracked sense of self-worth.”

10. “[I] jump to conclusions [and] predict the worse, almost to the extent that it feels so real I may even experience symptoms of a negative outcome that isn’t even going to happen.”

11. “[I] continue the cycle and destroy myself mentally every single day. I’m never good enough, I overreact to criticism, I’m terrified of being picked on, can’t look people in the eyes, overanalyze, have to control everything. Essentially I’m terrified of life.”

12. “I shut people out the minute I feel like there is even an inch of suspicion they’ll abandon me or hurt me… I hurt others before they can hurt me and walk away from them before they can walk away from me.”

13. “[My] startle reflex is off the charts. If you touch me without telling me you’re going to touch me, I jump out of my skin.”

14. “I have trouble with trust. Trusting others and trusting the world itself. My experiences from childhood, including my teenager years, mean that for me, some people really couldn’t be trusted and some situations did not get better. When faced with difficulties now, both in relationships and out in the world, my child brain can often get triggered and that makes it hard to look upon any difficulties with a positive light.”

15. “[I] keep my opinions to myself and only speak when I’m joking around or agreeing.”

16. “After experiencing intense bullying in my first year of college, I find myself being quick to blame myself if someone is awful to me (at work, on the street — whatever) since I was often blamed for the bullying I received then. I’m starting to challenge that sort of thinking by recognizing I don’t deserve to be treated like that, but it is still definitely an issue.”

17. “It’s impossible for me to see myself as a good person, and accepting positive feedback can be as painful as a blow to the gut, whereas if it’s negative feedback, I accept it without question. So, if I do or say or think something that I somehow deem as ‘bad,’ I continue the abuse towards myself. I repeat all of things ever said to me, over and over, until I have convinced myself I’m worthless.”

18. “[I] break down and self-harm because that was the only coping mechanism I knew at the time. Through therapy, I learned other ways to control my emotions that were overwhelming me.”

19. “I mistrust and kick out against authority. Also, [I] think everyone’s out to get me, to reveal what I’m ‘really’ like.”

20. “When someone is asking me to do something and I’ve tried and can’t get it right, I’m completely terrified to tell them. It’s like I’m a kid again, scared out of my mind.”

21. “I doubt myself — all the time — for any achievement. A whirlwind of 100 reasons to not be proud of myself beats around my brain. [I’m] working on finding the inner voice that’s my advocate at the moment!”

22. “I give teenagers and young adults the time of day. [I] talk to them with respect and take time with them [so I don’t] treat them like I was treated.”

https://themighty.com/2017/06/teenage-emotional-abuse-habits/

***  There are many good resources on “The Mighty” website.

Moonie coffin time

Boonville – “It was a very complex set of manipulations”

Indemnity is a Moon Trap

Religious Trauma Syndrome

Developing Healthy Boundaries

Why We Left – An open letter to the UC from a former 2nd gen. member

Cult Recovery website

Repairing the Soul – Janja Lalich

Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults & Abusive Relationships

[freedom-of-fanfic]

antishipping as the ‘cool new trend’

or: why are most antis under 25 years old? (posted June 2017)

I really think that antishipping is a movement that’s gaining ground with the younger & newer arrivals to fandom spaces; a kind of ‘cool trend’, so to speak. In aggregate, antishipping culture is beautifully constructed to be particularly appealing to teenage or college-age people in the late 2010′s - and especially American people - who are marginalized, oppressed, often social outcasts in real life and often under-educated about their own marginalized identity, and I kind of wanted to get into why.

EDIT (October 2018): this post is was originally put up in June 2017. I’ve tweaked it a bit to correct some stuff I now think is just patronizing/incorrect, but overall, I now think it’s overly reliant on adolescent growth stages when the best explanations are societal changes (fandom being on viral social media, fandom being conflated with social justice activism, and increasingly authoritarian trends in 21st century America.)

the other day I posted to talk a little about why I think antis tend to be young (and American). To sum up & simultaneously add a little more:

a brain still growing - until the age of 22-25, the frontal lobe of the brain does not finish development. the frontal lobe handles higher reasoning skills and complex problem-solving. Thus: the growing mind is particularly prone to incomplete reasoning, black and white thinking, and total empathy failure, making it hard for those under 25 to fully comprehend the impact of their actions, sympathize with others, or tackle social problems with nuance. Truly comprehending that others come from entirely different worldviews or have entirely different experiences and that being different doesn’t make them wrong and that most deep-seated problems need complex solutions that require nuance tends to come with this final brain growth. (Not always, of course. but often.) nah I’ve completely changed my mind on this. It’s true that physiological changes are still occurring in teens that make empathy harder, but they can respect the choices of others just as well as an adult can.

current American sex education being mostly scaremongering and abstinence-only + ready availability of sexual content, specifically pornographic material, online + hypersexual marketing = a deeply fucked cultural understanding of sex that adolescents are particularly unequipped to detangle

escaping religious/Christian fundamentalism but not  black&white thinking or authoritarian ‘us vs them’ mindset: the moral/communal purity that organized Christianity often demands can take years to deprogram (and this is not to mention the gender essentialism, homophobia/queerphobia, and anti-sex/anti-kink messages, accompanied by a strong undercurrent of anti-intellectualism to discourage self-education on these subjects!) teens just breaking away from this toxicity are especially unequipped to untangle themselves. Young ppl tend to take the same worldview/us vs them/b&w thinking they grew up with to a more liberal cause instead (such as enforcing ‘social justice’ in shipping), with a side-order of internalized, unexamined anti-lgbt/sex/kink/etc rhetoric that dovetails rather neatly with exclusionist rhetoric.

exclusionary gatekeeping as baby’s first lgbt/queer culture lesson - transformative fandom is a frequent haven for marginalized people who don’t see themselves in the media they consume (so they change the media to meet their emotional, sexual, social, etc needs, you see?). because it’s not taught in schools here in the US, it’s not too uncommon for newcomers to get their first big dose of history and cultural education that’s not centered around straight white men in fandom. but what are they learning? here on tumblr, since about 2013, exclusionists have used the relative lack of education on queer history to build an false history, one where the gender binary is strongly enforced and sexualities can only exist on the binary axis: nb/queer/ace/pan and sometimes even bi and trans -identifying people are erased or ‘not oppressed enough’. this history is the one that young entrants into fandom are more likely to encounter first and have no knowledge with which to counter it.  Antishipping derives its mode of operation and principle values from exclusionists. It dictates who can write or do what based on their sexual/gender identity (and sometimes race as well). Its definition of social justice is also heavily influenced by exclusionists because its members are mostly young people who learned all their queer history from exclusionists.

the particularly adolescent vulnerability to peer pressure (the need to belong & the fear of being ostracized): teens are particularly inclined to be influenced by friendships and maintaining social ties. [...]  it’s easy to become an anti in order to keep your friends and almost impossible to quit without losing everything, and teens are especially vulnerable to this kind of social structure.  I think this was a factor 18 months ago, but not so much now. both ‘sides’ of this argument are pretty well-known and people in fandom can have strong opinions on shipping or anti-shipping from very early on.

less focus on teaching critical thinking & self-government. Education in America has long been aimed towards adequate training to work an assembly line, but 21st century American parenting and education both have neglected teaching young people how to make decisions for themselves & how to engage in critical analysis of what they see and read. antishipping is a highly cohesive, insular culture with enforced rules of conduct, striking clear in/out lines and valuing loyalty and groupthink over originality and intellectualism. also: keeping the party line & persecution of outsiders is encouraged, further strengthening the need to conform.

having a just cause & a space to control: antishipping rests its laurels on a(n incomplete, corrupted) form of social justice/righting the wrongs of the privileged. being an anti feels like making a difference b/c your actions have visible impact on your immediate surroundings. (and having a space you feel you can control can be even more urgent with additional pressures like abusive home situations, past traumatic experiences, academic pressure, untreated/unrecognized mental illness, being forced into the closet b/c of queer/transphobia, etc.)

an American (and to a lesser degree, western European) post 9/11* cultural shift from prioritizing personal freedom to prioritizing communal safety; those under the age of 20 were 3 or younger or not yet born when the shift happened. antishipping prioritizes communal ‘safety’ (‘bad’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘inappropriate’ things must never be mentioned to protect people from hearing about them and being either corrupted or harmed) over personal freedom (allowing ‘bad’/’dangerous’ things to be  discussed, and it is up to the individual to personally decide what content to avoid).

(*actually, this shift started in the US before 9/11. 9/11 just sped it up.)

of course, all of this is conjecture based on my own experiences and observations, and it’s not a set of rules - just circumstances that I believe absolutely encourage young fandom members to end up falling headfirst into antishipping and either never notice how hurtful it is or never get the courage to leave it behind. And I think there’s a lot more the popularity/prevalence of antishipping today, but this post is already longer than I meant it to be.

(I always go light on racism when i talk about antishipping because while antis frequently accuse shippers of racism, it’s disingenuous to class racism as the same kind of oppression as lgbt+-phobia & misogyny, particularly in America - they’re related, but not the same. Centering non-white (and especially black) voices does not get the same focus as centering lgbt and women’s voices in fandom, and I think it’s easy to dismiss legitimate charges of racism as ‘anti bullshit’ when we class all these types of marginalization together.)

[calleo-bricriu]

The questions asked about an ex:

How does he feel about me?

Where will our bond end up?

What's the real reason we broke up?

1. So the Two of Swords typically meant the relationship was at a crossroads for one reason or another and there were difficulties finding common ground or agreements where it came to important decisions; there is a possibility that, instead of being an adult and working through them with you, he decided he couldn't handle it and need space as he didn't want to appear vulnerable or risk getting hurt.

It can also signify that he'd been thinking of walking for some time and was waiting for an excuse; the Two of Swords' excuse is often another relationship. If he didn't get busted cheating, that doesn't necessarily mean he didn't, he could have just as easily used the fact that you've told me you were close with him to tell you he 'needed a break' or 'needed some time'.

Either way, he doesn't feel the same way about you as you do about him or he'd have been up front and honest with you about any doubts or concerns he had about where the relationship was and/or where it was going instead of taking the easy way out, which was to break off the relationship.

If he does feel the same way about you, he's just sort of emotionally stunted/immature at this point in his life and before you'd want to even entertain the idea of trying again with him, he needs to get his grown ass to therapy to learn how to communicate his emotions in a way that isn't arguing or simply walking away when there is a disagreement.

2. The first thing I'd want to ask you is what is it you're holding onto in wanting to keep that bond? If you really stop and think about it out of context of the failed romantic relationship, is it really a platonic friendship you want or are you hoping that if you remain 'close friends' he'll realise how much he misses you and take you back in a romantic sense? I ask because that's not a healthy mindset and will only get you repeatedly hurt until you realise what's happening and finally cut him off.

But, again, you were asking my deck of cards.

The Star in this context sees...very little. In fact, everything it suggests is that it's time to let go of any lingering baggage from the failed relationship so you can finish up healing and look forward to bigger and better things (and people). While it can indicate someone coming back into your life and trying to rekindle a romance, considering your third question, you would not want to allow that until you get an answer that seems sincere and, at that point, decide if you accept that reason and can forgive it.

If he tries to rekindle what he snuffed out and you leap at it because you miss him and not because you've both had time to sit down and talk it through to a point where you're satisfied with his explanation and apology (and how he plans to better himself and his behaviour so it doesn't happen again), it can be positive in that regard but you'd both need to be open and honest about what happened prior.

3. It was one sided.

Eight of Pentacles indicated strongly that only one of you was putting the effort in, I drew another card to see if it added more, and it essentially was a repeat: He just wasn't as into you as you were into him.

Given the repeated answer to the third question, I would guess the future doesn't hold much beyond you realising you were way more invested in a relationship with him than he was with you and moving on to someone who will reciprocate at the same level.

[starsgivemehp]

Red’s lesson on skeleton anatomy (and a bit of science talk, and scar talk from Boss)

A discord semi-rp with @pyrocicle

"technically you explained it right but at the same time you explained it all wrong."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"academia has a tendency to use jargon as a method of gatekeeping, if it can be explained in simpler terms there's no reason - beyond legitimate technical explanations - that it shouldn't be."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"it can be simple and not... like that."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Evil giggling. "I'm sorry are you offended I called it 'brainmeats'?"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"yes.""not only that tho."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

hysterical giggling.

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"shut up it's gross"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

WHEEZE-CACKLING.

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"besides the brain is made up of grey matter not meat"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"... oh right you've never heard of head cheese."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"....i'm going to pointedly not ask you"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"fair."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"ok listen"

"there's a better and just as effective way of explaining what you just explained"

"watch."

"or listen, rather"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Chinhands!

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

“well fer starters, y’are slower. before ya could move at the speed of magic, now yer slowed down t’the speed of thought an’ there’s a pretty significant delay between the two. there’s a minimum two-part delay. yer actually processing shit after it happens - basically, ya know how I’ll see an attack comin’ but still can’t get out of the way in time? that’s because I gotta see it an’ there’s a processing delay because the brainmeats want to process sound and vision at the same time but sound travels slower than sight, then I have to figure out what to do, and only then can I actually move out of the way.”

vs.

"all of the magic in one body is the same. it's spread out but it's one piece. all of the nerves in a human body branch out. the sensations nerves receive need to travel to the brain to be processed, while the sensations magic receives is automatically processed. for example. magic can see and hear an incoming attack at the same time, and the correct part of the magic moves in response. nerves see and hear an incoming attack separately, relay the information to the brain, and then the brain can tell the correct body part to move. the delay is small but noticeable, and it gets humans killed.  hence, an attack that you or i can dodge easily is deadly to dove if she's not completely focused on fighting."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"see that relies on knowledge I don't have."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"it's basically the same thing it just uses more formal wording"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"it also relies on knowing how magic in the body actually works, which I just knew I have a delay and y'all don't."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"...eh, i guess that's fair"

"time for a lesson in skeleton anatomy, dove"

-sits down-

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Dove: !!!!! -gets out the notebook!-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

-holds up his right arm-

"watch this"

-pulls off his right arm at the elbow joint-

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

-spittake-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"hehehehe"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"what the actual FUCK"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"doesn't hurt me one bit"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"augh that's gross!" -now SHE'S covering her eyes-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"oh my god it's not even bleeding marrow, stop covering your eyes. this is important."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"hell no that's disgusting!"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"the bones are completely intact"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"and things that should be attached are not!"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"but what's the only thing attaching them?"

"i don't have nerves or flesh"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"magic?" -still not looking. guess he knows how to revenge squick her now-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"yes, exactly. the only thing holding the parts of my body together is magic. now, since i've taken off this arm, the magic in it is stagnant. it can't move on its own."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"okay."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"but since it is still magic, it can still hurt. if i were to- ow."

-bends one of the broken fingers as he speaks-

"see? well no you can't 'cause you ain't looking."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"and now I'm not gonna oh dear gods"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"pfft. anyway. it can still hurt. but it can't move on its own. so, uh, clearly, taking off parts of my body ain't somethin' i want to be doing anytime anywhere. but this demonstrates perfectly the difference between a human nervous system and a monster magic system."

"i stopped hurting it, seriously open your eyes now. for like, five seconds."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"if you make me regret this you're gonna have to clean up the results." -peeks-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"watch." -he simply moves the arm back to its place, then lets go. it's connected again and he waves with the hand- "reattachment is simple, painless, and instantaneous. magic starts flowing again without any extra prompting."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

-she still looks kind of green but at least she isn't making a beeline for the trashcan-

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"not that bad, honestly. the point of that was to demonstrate how flexible and smart the magic is that makes up our bodies. it can't rip or tear unless the actual bone is damaged. even that can be healed, with green magic. my entire body is a vessel for my magic. i don't have a central processing center like humans do in their heads. this would work with literally any part of my body if i'm careful enough in doing so - though i don't do so 'cause what's the point? and without that central processing center, all of my magic moves exactly how it needs to with minimal processing time. all, if any, processing is done through the soul. due to the placement of one's soul, it's often compared to the human heart, but it functions similar to a brain, as well. our emotions and reactions stem from our soul. does that make sense?"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"yeah, that makes sense. explains why everything feels numb when my soul gets yanked out, too. great now I'm wondering if there's an even bigger processing delay because of that..."

[I mean given the soul is 'the culmination of your entire being'...]

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"probably. ok. 'but red,' you might say, 'why doesn't ecto slow a skeleton down?' and to that i say,... well it does, but only as much as it weighs. and ecto is far lighter than flesh."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"... huh."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"why is that? because ecto is also made of magic. it's just a slightly more solid magic, hence it weighs something, unlike the magic in the rest of my body. i only weigh as much as my bones. manifesting ecto ups my weight."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Well now she's taking notes again, and if he looks carefully he can spot a... doodle of him popping his arm off. Apparently it bothers her less in art? "that makes sense I suppose."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

[8'D looking at disection diagrams didn't bother her but the minute she had to actually touch the fetal pig she noped the fuck out]

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"makes perfect sense. of course, babies can't control it like i can. if seeing my arm pop off squicked you out, never hold a skeleton newborn."

"their magic isn't smart enough to keep itself connected properly. skeleton babies need their parents's magic to assist theirs in holding their bodies together."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"... joy."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"here's another interesting piece of information for you! and far less squicky."

"the nature of how our magic works compared to human magic is why monster children get sick and adults don't."

"for monsters, childhood illness is usually just a fever and weakness. so why a fever, of all things? skeletons regulate their temperature so easily. well, to answer, consider this. magic is energy, right? what's energy made out of? heat. therefore magic is also made out of heat. this is why skeletons don't get cold. our bones are warm due to the magic flowing in them."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"oooh. makes sense."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"so when a monster child develops a fever, the reason why is an excess of magic in their body."

"children can't control and guide their magic. too much of it builds up, and they essentially get overstuffed with it."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"....ooooh, kind of like what happens when I eat too much at once?"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"yes, sort of. except this is inevitable for all children, whereas that is caused by the action of overeating."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"makes sense."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"now then. take boss. he got sick very often as a child."

Boss: "..."

"whereas i did not get sick very often as a child. this is because due to... reasons... i had a far better handle on my magic from a younger age. while my body is weaker and smaller, my magical control was better honed. boss's body may have been far stronger and far bigger, but he wasn't as skilled at channeling and directing his magic, so it overflowed often.

("'reasons' being 'experimentation')

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

“if it makes ya feel better, I'm frankly amazed my sinuses haven't tried to knock me out yet. I usually get miserably sick at least once a season."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"...THANKS, I GUESS..."

"heh. well, he grew out of it, like all children do. and now when it comes to green magic, he has a far better handle than me, not to mention more magical and physical stamina. but anyway, the reason why i brought it up is because of that inherent nature of magic. monsters are made of magic. we learn how to suppress it enough to function properly. humans, on the other hand, have reserves of magic within them and are made of other things. flesh, nerves, chemicals, water. it's so difficult for you, dove, to use simple magic we could use as children, because your body wasn't necessarily made for it."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"that makes sense. I'm coming at it from the opposite direction than you guys did."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"exactly. you can be taught, just as monster children are taught how to regulate their magic. it's just... well, you weren't. but now you can be! i've no doubt by the time we reach the castle, you'll be able to use far more of your magic in a far more cost-efficient way."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"it's actually kind of interesting because, well, ya know my little fire trick? I used to do that as a kid with no control over it. and did have to learn how to control that."

"but I'm sure you're right!" Big smile.

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"well, i'm not surprised by that. but magic certainly never induced physical body issues."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"yeaaaah." nod nod. "I'm pretty sure that's just my shit genetics."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"probably. and bad luck."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"that too, yeah."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"boy do i know the feeling."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

nodnod. "one'a my nicknames growing up was 'accident waiting to happen'. like, this scar?" She points at the longer one on her right arm, "is from when I fell off of a dresser and we still don't know what I cut it on but it went down to the bone."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"holy shit. accident child."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

She squirms around and pulls up her pant leg, showing off the deep, j-shaped dent-scar on her right shin. "this one, I was jumping on some rocks, slipped, and cut right down to the bone again."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"damn."

"OH, WE'RE COMPARING SCARS??"

"boss no don't start."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Left sock is pulled down. "surgical scar from where I broke this ankle. dislocated everything below the knee and snapped it right on the growth plate. I've still got a screw in it!" they're comparing scars.

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"so that's why you sometimes just-"

"WOW. LOOK AT THIS ONE!"

"boss no-"

"SHUT UP I LISTENED TO YOUR ANATOMY LESSON. LOOK!" -points to the giant crack on the top of his head- "I GOT THIS FIGHTING A COUPLE OF AARONS!"

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

Giggling. She shifts to kneeling so she can get a better look. "niiiice. I cracked my head on a marble windowsill as a kid but you can't see the scar because of my hair."

"also yeah that's why sometimes it just gives out."

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"THAT'S TOO BAD! NOW THIS ONE." -points to the crack on his left femur- "BEAR MONSTER AND EAGLE! THE EAGLE CLAWED ME GOOD WITH ITS TALONS BUT I STILL WON WITH ONLY ONE HAND!"

"that sucks dove."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"oooooh. only one hand? damn!" High five?

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

-boss high fives her with a smirk-

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"wanna hear something cool? when my ankle isn't randomly rolling, I've actually got good enough balance to walk along a guard rail in flip flops"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"THAT SOUNDS PRETTY COOL! NO WONDER YOU CAN DANCE."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"that and knowing how to fall, yep!"

GetMcDunkedOn-07/06/2017

"SO THE HUMAN BODY CAN STILL DO REMARKABLE THINGS! JUST... NOT AS REMARKABLE."

grimoireCrow-07/06/2017

"... I dunno, being able to recover from a heart transplant is pretty damn remarkable?"