#much less half of peter's characterization

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

I just wanted to say that the way you characterize and talk about Miguel has actually really helped me with thinking about how to write for him 😭 genuinely I love the way you describe him as an actual like person and not just some sex addict or someone who's extremely distant and cold. I hope you continue writing mild Miguel because it's so refreshing compared to all the other shit I see 😭💕

THANK YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHH THIS IS A MIGUEL SAFE SPACE AND LIKE- CAN I BE REAL FOR A SECOND???

MIGUEL ISN'T AN ASSHOLE YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST MEAN - A.K.A -

My Defense & Evidence of a Milder, Non-aggressive Sympathetic Miguel O'hara.

[This is a half-break down half rant about Mild Miguel, when we see Miguel's true nature, and what fandom gets wrong about him. I have my evidence.

this is shorter than my usual posts but I'm going absolute apeshit Miguel Mode by the end so sorry you have to see that.]

I think Miguel and Hobie are the two most complex characters in the film. Like - both of them equally.

It's just really easy to explain one over the other.

I feel this way because every character we see in the entire movie - Miles, Gwen, Peter, Jess, Rio, Jeff, The Spot, everyone - is forthcoming and clear about their intentions and motive throughout the movie.

When we're watching the movie the first time, we understand Miles motive, and Peter's, and Gwen. In real time. It's there and stated. Miles wants to save his dad, Peter wants to be a better mentor, Gwen just wants peace basically.

But when we're watching for the first time - we have no idea what Hobie OR Miguel is capable of until they do it.

They are the two we're surprised by. (And they're also exact opposites who somehow don't seem to be complete adversaries)

They're the only two within the film who we are left to speculate their motive, their drive, and what they'll do next.

They're the only two in the film who are truly meant to catch us off guard with their behavior.

Leading up to Hobie's big twist, there was a LOT of misdirection. I think the same is true for Miguel...but like..the fandom isn't picking up on the misdirection AT ALL.

I have a lot of ideas and thoughts about Miguel and his character and honestly I think it's the exact opposite of what the fandom sees.

But when its's Hobie, it's very easy to understand him, just read the wiki on Punk and you're good.

But I don't think anyone has look closer at Miguel yet.

I genuinely believe that the reason Miles got away was because Miguel went soft.

He was watching the videos of Gaby to remind himself why he was doing this - why he had to stand his ground, but when Miles started panicking, and begging to know how much time he had left - Miguel slipped up. He went soft.

And he told him 'two days'.

You can see it in Miguel's face when Miles is asking.

That's not the face of a man considering assault. That's not anger. He's wavering.

He didn't have to tell Miles how long he had left. But he did - why? Cause he thought 'I'd kill for two days with Gabby. A lot of people get less warning about death - Maybe he can spend those two days with his fath-'

and then Miles is like 'word?? two days to stop you?? iight im out also fuck yall' - which understandable have a nice day

But like......Miguel wouldn't have said it if he knew it would fuck him over. He didn't KNOW Miles was radicalized cause he didn't know Hobie had spoken to him. He thought that telling him might convince him. If he knew Miles was gonna run - there's no need to tell him anything.

He could've lied and said "I DON'T KNOW. But maybe let's talk about this."

But he didn't. He slipped up.

He's SOFT. Everytime he's mean, or angry - He has to think about it. Like when he looked at Hobie - and thought about it. He has to MAKE himself do it. It isn't natural to him.

Nobody else in the room was gonna answer Miles. Miles wouldn't have known. But Miguel told him two days. And because of that, that specific slip-up, Miles is trying to save his dad.

Why? Because he's SOFT. CAPITAL S SOFT.

Miguel is not a raging monster. Or aggressive. Or manipulative.

He's a guy who thinks he's holding the universe together with duct tape and a kid is in front of him begging to know how long they have left with their father and he tells them and because of that they get away and now everything he worked for is gonna emplode in his face because he had a SOFT SPOT FOR A KID AGAIN AND DID SOMETHING HE SHOULDN'T AGAIN AND TOLD HIM AND NOW PEOPLE ARE GONNA DIE AGAIN BECAUSE HE MESSED WITH THE MULTIVERSE AGAIN FUCK-

Like...yeah- he snapped. A normal person would snap. I've snapped for way less and a lot of other people have.

Granted, we don't go mauling children.

I don't know, I just feel like he's an incredibly layered character.

Because when he's ranting and screaming at Gwen like an irritated school teacher we're already like 'oh fuck you dude but also fuck you ;)'

so when he's right there doing things like this - we don't see it. The same way we don't see Hobie's stealing - because we think we have him figured out.

We don't see Miguel's tenderness.

Because we assume we know who he is - he's cold and aggressive and rude and hates Miles,

but like...is he really?

Miles is getting upset - and the whole conversation leading up to it Miguel has talked to him from a far, hands when Miles can see them. He's not trying to stand over him, or intimidate him. Miguel knows he's scary. He knows how to be scary.

He isn't trying to scare Miles. The exact opposite. He's trying to comfort him.

And when Miles starts lashing out - Miguel is genuinely surprised. That isn't the look of someone who THINKS he's about to hurt this kid.

He's telling Miles, hands up "Hey, sorry. I'm not trying to hurt you." He immediately lets go, backs up.

I just---- FUCK, PEOPLE THE MAN IS STANDING RIGHT THERE THATS MILD MIGUEL LOOK AT HIM

If you really really think Miguel is naturally aggressive, or angry, or cold -

If you write him that way -

I ask that you rewatch the leading up to Miles' escape. Look at his body language. Watch him, and look at his face. That's all I ask.

I just kjsjrghjkSIGHIDDGU I CAN'T STAND FOR THIS INJUSTICE AND EMOTIONAL ILLITERACY

HES NOT A GOOD GUY BUT LIKE....HE'S ... THE ONE YALL ARE SERVING...COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MAN.

He's SOFT. The same way he caved for Gwen after a little pushing. He caved for Miles after a little pushing. That's why he told him two days. SOFT

MILD MIGUEL, SOFT MIGUEL, WANTS TO DO THE HARD THING BUT FUCK HE CAN'T DO IT MIGUEL, HAS TO STAND COMPLETELY STILL AND UNMOVING TO NOT CAVE TO MAYDAY MIGUEL, MIGUEL WHO LOVES PEOPLE BUT KEEPS HIS DISTANCE AND SHUTS HIS MOUTH BECAUSE PEOPLE GET HURT MIGUEL MIGUEL MIGUEL

I'm going to go Miguel Mode.

If understanding Hobie was a house, the fandom is standing out on the road.

If understanding Miguel was a house, the people aren't even in the same neighborhood. We're in the next state over. Other side of the globe. Off base by like 12 zipcodes and 4 times zones

Mild Miguel. Please tell me you're seeing this.

Am I crazy for thinking that the slip up - of telling Miles two days - wasn't out of stupidity but PITY? SYMPATHY?

Because Miguel thinks getting to spend two whole days with some you'll lose is a BLESSING to him - not a curse.

Even though to ANY non-traumatized person - it would be a curse.

...... yo

Miguel stepped into Gabriellas life because he didn't want her to lose a father. He KNOWS losing a father hurts.

So when Miles is there in front of him, talking about not wanting to lose his father - Miguel KNOWS how he feels. Gabby didn't want to lose her dad either.

Miguel UNDERSTANDS. He's a FATHER -

HE KNOWS HE'S BEING THE BAD GUY HE KNOWS ITS WRONG NOT TO STEP IN THATS WHY HE STEPPED IN FOR GABRIELLA IN THE FIRST PLACE THIS ISN'T THE PERSON HE WANTS TO BE OR THOUGHT HE'D BECOME YOU PEOPLE ARE MEAN AND HORNY -

I- I can't even i'm sorry I -

I have a longer post about this in the works like breaking down all of his body language from his moments with MJ and Hobie and like teverything

but ITS NOT EVEN LIKE I THINK HE'S RIGHT I JUST CANT STAND PEOPLE BEING THIS WRONG ABOUT IT I CANT

If you see him as aggressive or cold this post isn't meant to be an attack. I am just down bad for Mild Miguel and I'm going delirious with hunger and starvation for him

#Justice4MildMiguel Maybe I'm huffing copium but also i know im fucking not he's RIGHT THERE

[And if you hate Miguel like hate hate him Moche says dishonor on you dishonor on your cow dishonor your family and your land in the name of Aia Paec Almighty]

If you made it this far....Imsorry you had to see me that way I don't know what came over me here's a picture of Hobie to help me calm down.

(aka Hobie judging the fuck outta me in my head)

I need a glass of water. Bye.

[mochatune]

I really love your characterization, I feel like you're really true to the source material whenever possible ❤ you're good at making cute moments without sugarcoating the unpleasant parts of characters!

I'm curious.. how would Peter/YB react to the reader confronting him about not actually loving them? Reader having been very accepting of him and having a sort of revelation when his Perfect Boyfriend facade slips. (I mean he'd absolutely just cut his losses and go full murder mode but I think it'd be interesting if he actually had any level of introspection.)

If the goal was to flatter me then it worked, like shit, what a beautiful compliment 😂❤️ I got you rn. There is a lot of ways to interpret this hc so I’m hoping what is written is what you were asking for.

——

- Peter had a lot of red flags you’d had looked past. He was perfect and went above the bar when it came to past men who had entered your life. He remembered your birthday, the anniversaries, even those cheesy days like national hug day and he spared no expense into making it special for you even when there was nothing to celebrate.

- this was honestly a big part in why you were so accommodating when he was less than savory to be around, you yourself are surprised with how much of a pushover you were in the past. Guess it shows just how low the bar is for you.

- things eventually just started connecting as you got to know him. The possessiveness being a big part, it felt like ever since getting to know him your social life sort of…. changed. It suddenly felt like there was less time for the other people you cared about, even your family wasn’t spared when it came to him. Everyone was a challenge for him.

- neither of you really ever really established a relationship, you always thought you two were just really close friends I mean … sure there were some moments where it felt like something more but it wasn’t something you were barely even beginning to consider after past relationships left you feeling drained. You were okay with this sort of situationship for the the time being you just hadn’t noticed how much he had really wanted.

- He was always the guy there for you to talk shit with when you were frustrated or the shoulder to cry on, he was practically your best friend ever since Lucy had passed. You still blamed yourself for everything despite no consecutive reports on the case for months now but hey atleast you had someone to help you grieve and move past the tragedy that had happened at that diner. He was always there for you, he said it himself and had done more then enough to prove it through his actions towards you.

- one day he just changed. It’s like the guy you’ve been building trust with for almost half a year now just turned around and showed you a side he’d been forcing himself to hide from you.

- suddenly seeing those eyes that made you feel like prey, it was weird and quite frankly you didn’t like it. You didn’t like how he was treating you like a piece of meat, like any other guy would. It felt like you were beginning to see him for who he was.

- all a guy had done was catcall you, it wasn’t anything. You ignored it and kept it pushing like you always do but he just couldn’t let it go.

- he didn’t do anything, not while you were watching anyways but you saw that change in demeanor. He’s done it before though it was always a flash of an emotion you could not name, it always intimidated you but never for long as he was back to his same old lovable self.

- he sort of just dumps everything on you, everything he’d been keeping in all those nights working up the nerve at the mere thought of embracing you as more than just a friend. All those times you had cried to him but not because of him, it infuriated him that the relationship he’d been making up in his head since practically forever with you was nothing more than a mere delusion he’d created to cope with never actually being with you. That was going to change. Tonight.

- he knew, he just knew you wanted to be with him as much as he did with you so when you told him you were put off by his behavior and that you did not feel for him even a fraction of what he felt for you, hearing that “you wanted some time away from him” threw him through a loop. Not a pretty one either.

- those eyes again, the ones he has flashed at the man earlier. The ones that had you feeling helpless. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

- it was like a gust of wind when he grabbed you with all his might, a meaty vein pulsing trough his forearm and the eyes of a killer gaping into your soul. A screaming fit paired with it, words along the lines of “why can’t you just accept that you love me” the words of a delusional freak that you know in your bones you should have never even given a single benefit of the doubt. That all this time that gut feeling in back of your mind was true all along.

- you’re in so much distress that it’s all a blur. The over-exertion of your muscles trying to fight back against the agonizing grip of a grown man paired with the ringing in your head from the screams, the wet on your face from the spittle of the man screaming intensely in your face. There’s a thud and suddenly everything is just black.

- you find yourself with a pounding headache and foggy vision bound against a soft surface, most likely a mattress. You try to move but you find your wrist cold from a handcuff keeping you fastened against the bed post. Everything from last night comes back and you’re reliving everything, a panic attack hits you before you calm down again having hope that there may be a way out of this.

- your captor, the person you thought you’d see comes walking in with a slight hop in his step. Almost as if last night never even happened, he has a tray of food. You aren’t sure what it is but you know you want no part in it immediately readying your voice to try and talk your way out of this predicament.

- there’s a stool by the bed your bound to, he sits on it and puts the tray on the bedside table right by your head.

- he tells you good morning in a sickly sweet voice you wish you’d never hear, almost as sickening as the deep purple bruise left on your arm after the mere grip put on you last night.

- you don’t offer a kind response back (who would let’s be honest) but it doesn’t seem like he minds. That flips a switch when the next words fly out of your mouth, almost as if you didn’t even think about who you were talking to before you spoke.

- nasty words continuously come out of your mouth begging him to let you go all the while barking like a chihuahua as if you were trying to hit a nerve. Who could take anyone seriously while they were tied down though?

- he laughs it off, this is why he loves you so much. You have a quality that can’t be copied, your spirit is so pure to him. He can’t help but communicate how much he loves you with a breathy voice and an ethereal stare.

- you’re next words were your biggest mistake, the ones that sealed your fate. You just couldn’t say you loved him back.

- his reaction, it’s not as bad as last night but still terrifying nevertheless. He understands it’s a process in a relationship but to spout such nonsense is enough to rile him up all over again.

- he’s more than offended at being told that he doesn’t really love you and only like the idea of you, you’re more than that to him. You’re essence, the mere presence of you is enough to blow him away. He huffs it away with a smirk, you don’t mean that.

- you’re too weak to fight the cloth clogging your airways, the all to familiar blackness coming back into the corner of your eyes slowly drowning your vision in it as your brain goes numb.

- begging to leave it just won’t work, he knows you really love him and that you want to stay here. You just need time and he’s more than willing to take care of anyone else who seems to think they knows what’s best for you and him.

- just like he did with Lucy.

- overall the guy is fucking delusional, say goodbye to the possibility of him having even a single moment of clarity when it comes to you.

[trothplighted]

Ok so first of all I just spent hours scrolling on your blog, I’m obsessed with your meta posts, they’re so well thought through and intriguing.

I am curious about your thoughts about Peter/how he was portrayed in the early days of the fandom. I originally got into the HP fandom back in 2010ish and for a long time I didn’t question Peter being constantly left out of fanfics and fanart because the Peter that we meet in PoA is just inherently unlikeable. Re-evaluating as an adult, I want Peter there (specifically in the context of first war fics). His betrayal is so much worse when he actually exists as a friend to the other Marauders, and I hate that it gets overlooked. And I really have a hard time coming up with a reason for his exclusion that isn’t just… fatphobia.

I re-entering the fandom last year after being out of it for nearly a decade, and now characters like BCJR and Evan Rosier and Regulus Black (who have been characterized by fans as hugely attractive) play a huge role in fanon, but Peter (who is canonically fat and a bit ugly) is still often left out. And idk I’ve been thinking a lot about how JKR associates moral goodness with attractiveness (Peter is fat and I believe at one point is actually referred to as looking like a rat, Sirius is described as attractive while Regulus is essentially described as mid, Snape, back in PS when we're introduced to him and supposed to think he's awful, has greasy hair and yellow teeth, Umbridge is described as looking like a toad). I know this is not unique to JKR but I think it has played a huge role in how fans view Peter, whose character could be so interesting to explore but is just… not even included half of the time.

I also get really irritated that he’s one of the only characters consistently headcanoned as aroace. And of course, aroace headcanons are good and lovely, I myself am aspec and love to see the representation within headcanons, but it really irks me that the only canonically fat character (I’m pretty sure he’s the only one? Correct me if I’m wrong) is so regularly headcanoned as aroace. It just feels like people projecting their own fat=undesirable perspectives onto him.

Anyway this ended up being way longer than I anticipated, but I’d love to hear your Peter thoughts :)

So this took a long time because I wanted to do enough broad research to make sure my memories matched up with broader fandom trends - the HP fandom has always been big, and since it began in a decentralized era of the web tracking it has always been hard. But from what I’ve been able to see I more or less had the right of it from the start, so let’s dig in.

The question of what to do with Peter has always been kind of a messy and complicated one. You can find comments and feedback on fanworks globally across multiple languages voicing contradictory opinions on him, and criticizing or praising his inclusion or exclusion or characterization, essentially as far back as you can find Marauders-era fanworks online. People would praise a story for incorporating him well, for treating him like an equal friend among the four boys, for giving him good qualities, and for not writing him like a villain-to-be. Some stories like The Shoebox Project made an effort to make him an equal protagonist, while many others would present Sirius-James-Remus as a tight-knit trio with a bonus hanger-on in Peter. And you can see based on the commentary (check Fanlore for this, particularly their records of things like fanbooks and doujinshi) that there were a lot of people who thought like you did - why not make him a full-fledged equal member? Isn’t that how he was? Maya’s “Sirius Black, Super Genius” (not hosted by the author anywhere but you can find reuploads and archives if you Google) is useful here - it’s a bit of a crackfic and definitely a comedy but Peter is a present character who feels very authentic to how I remember him in the fics that were kind to him.

For once I don’t think we can necessarily call this fatphobia’s fault. It wasn’t until OotP that we had any idea of what Peter looked like as a teenager, and several people headcanoned that he (like many people) was thinner as a student and a young man than he was as an adult, at least if the fanart is anything to go by. This is of course a different kind of fatphobia, linking innocence and good qualities with thinness, but if Peter isn’t seen as universally or uniformly fat by the fandom it does mean they’re treating him with a kinder and more nuanced hand. I think it comes from the fact that for five years, including the Three Year Summer that was the first generation of HP fandom’s major creative period, our only awareness of Peter was as a traitor or as the boy who grew into a traitor. People wanted to create reasons for that, so they made him the least-close of the four Marauders, or they made him the least intelligent, or the least Gryffindor-like (meaning here that he was least likely to break rules for fun or take risks for fun, and the most cowardly). People didn’t consistently want to make him a hero, because he wasn’t a character with a future to be spun out. There were sympathetic villains or charismatic antagonists who had devoted followings of their own, but these were people like Lucius or Draco or Snape or even Young Sexy Diary Tom Riddle rather than Peter.

I don’t think this necessarily had to do with physical appearance (Snape’s greasy unwashed hair, confirmed teenage acne, and canonical unattractiveness weren’t obstacles even before Alan Rickman was cast), I think it had to do with personality - there wasn’t anything that most people who woobified or sexified villains could work with in Peter. He was a spineless coward, and his second appearance in GoF made him even more spineless and weak and whimpering. Even his complicated potion and resurrection ritual work is unappreciated by the narrative - Voldemort negs him through it for the whole school year, and Harry justifiably doesn’t really care that it’s cool as shit that he grew a whole new body in a cauldron.

I tend to challenge Rowling’s attitudes about all of her characters, which is a substantial effort because she’s deeply opinionated about every single one of them, but Peter is difficult as fuck to flesh out because we essentially know nothing about him beyond his betrayal. We don’t know what his dynamic with the others was really like. We don’t know how he felt about them, because he never talks about them where we can see it beyond the conversation in PoA. We also don’t know many details of how they felt about him except that both Sirius and Remus would have died to protect him rather than turn traitor, though this is probably true of many people besides Peter, especially among other Order members. And when you look strictly at his deeds and his canonical dialogue, when you remove authorial motivation and judgment, what he did still sucks real bad. We can’t immediately presume he was dealing with trauma or working through internalized prejudices, we can’t identify abusive family or community members, we can’t say with canonical backing that he was probably feeling overshadowed in his friend group due to the actions of Sirius and James. All we’ve got is that when it mattered he broke. And people don’t really know what to do with that.

To your point about BCJR and Regulus and Evan Rosier - Rosier is a blank slate, we can do what we like with him (I personally don’t care about him); BCJR and Regulus both have characterization details like people who remember them and parents who exist in the text beyond one mention. They’re more solidly fleshed out as characters (and of course it’s funny because people choose to ignore those canonical character traits in favor of building their own, such is the way of fandom) which gives them more to do and more space to take up. Peter has one character trait, and it’s “sucks real bad”. Even Umbridge comes off better, because a sympathetic or JKR-critical reading of the text can find a lot of fertile ground in examining someone whose gender presentation is naturally hyperfeminine and who clearly loves being a girl but who isn’t conventionally attractive and who never was. Peter doesn’t even have that.

Regarding sexuality headcanons - I do think allo people generally tend to assign arospec and aspec headcanons to characters they personally find “least fuckable”. I don’t think this is a conscious decision necessarily, I think it’s the safe option for many fans, but I do think that it comes out here with Peter. There aren’t any ships people are really feral for that have Peter in them, and he’s both too defined to have a place in post-2016 Marauders Build Your Own Canon and too undefined to have a place in canon-compliant works that rely on canon characterization to inform the relationship dynamics. So he gets handed the arospec and aspec rep, and people don’t necessarily mean anything negative by it but it does pretty neatly stick him into the “nobody has to feel complicated or sad about him being gone or being evil” box.

Historically, he was usually an unlucky-in-love straight boy who was just as girl-crazy as James was and Sirius was/pretended to be. (Bisexual Sirius was the fandom norm for a very brief window in time and fairly common for a decent while because of how hot and charismatic and presumably-slutty he was, because fandom is a reflection of society and that’s how the early 2000s felt about bi people. Post-HBP bi Remus became much more common and Sirius was firmly relegated to being 100% homo 100% of the time.) Part of it is that asexuality and aromanticism were very rarely discussed in broad fandom spaces, part of it was that if a character wasn’t gay/bi they were perceived as straight automatically, and part of it was again simply that nobody really could agree on what to do with him. You’d see a few fics that would expand on his affections and attractions, but they didn’t take hold in the public consciousness.

So - that’s more or less where we stand. I think Peter’s probably the only character whose position in fandom now is more or less exactly what it was 20 years ago. Isn’t that fascinating?

[a-deed-without-a-name]

Prompt: it might rob Martin of a lot of characterization depending on reading/execution, but— what if he *had* killed Elias in the Panopticon? Followed through on Peter’s original intent

Ohhhhh this is so interesting.

You've got some pretty drastic immediate consequences:

Fearpocalypse doesn't happen, at least not right away (It depends on when Elias wrote his ritual and where exactly he put it)

A good chunk of the Institute staff die - because it's funner for me personally if Elias was telling the truth about that. Vampire rules

Peter probably doesn't drag Martin into the Lonely the way he did as punishment, Martin continues on his path to avatarship

Jon and Martin don't end up together

So what spins off from that, a few months in the future? Maybe a year?

Let's find out.

(Spoiler alert: nothing good.)

It was the sort of thing that usually involved a board, a quarterly budget meeting.  Even for small, private academic institutions.  But the previous administration had seen no reason to involve that sort of oversight, and the new generation were following their lead in that area, at least.  So the director of the Magnus Institute met the representative from the Lukas Family Foundation in a cafe on the other side of Chelsea.

Jon was the only person in the cafe, sitting somewhat awkwardly in his suit.  Even the barista had ducked into the back and not returned.  That was the sort of thing that tended to happen when a place was expecting Martin.

Martin entered exactly when Jon expected him to.  He Knew that he’d checked in at the Institute, but he’d also Known that he preferred to spend as little time inside the building as possible, and where he was most likely to suggest going instead.  As Martin sat down across from him, Jon told him, “I got you a tea.”

“Thank you,” Martin said, and did not touch it.  He was smartly dressed himself, ginger curls neatly groomed and a heavy navy trench coat wrapped around him.  His glasses (a new pair, Jon noted, pricy) seemed to be semi-permanently fogged; there was a long moment where Jon could not see his eyes, before it cleared somewhat.

They were colorless.  What color had they been before?  Jon couldn’t remember.

He cleared his throat.  “How - how have you been?”

“We ought to focus on the Institute,” Martin said, and Jon said, “Fine.”

He brought out the heavy binder he’d put together, laying it on the table between them and beginning to walk Martin through everything.  Progress on the repairs, easing scrutiny from the authorities.  The new security system, badly needed, as Melanie became a growing threat.  Their rising employment costs.

“That’s going well, then?” Martin asked.  “The hiring, I mean.”

He said it so casually it put Jon’s teeth on edge.  “Yes, well.  It’s not exactly easy to more or less rebuild the staff from scratch…especially at the Magnus bloody Institute.”

A workplace shooting, and Legionnaire’s disease.  That had been their story.  The first half had covered those who had died in the Institute when Martin slew Jonah and the damage Trevor, Julia, and Daisy had done; the latter, those who hadn’t been at work at the time.  It was a flimsy story…but when had the Institute ever had anything but?

“The new folk aren’t up to your standards, then?”

“I didn’t say that.  I’m…quite pleased with the archival team, actually.  Lena runs a tight ship.”  Was making more progress with Gertrude’s very intentional mess than he’d ever managed to, that was for sure.  “And the assistants show a lot of promise, too.  Sam in particular.”

“Have you told them?” Martin asked placidly.  Jon hesitated.

“...no.”

“I thought you wanted to be honest.”

“I-I do, I’m going to, I just - I don’t.  I don’t know how to make them believe me.  Not yet.”

“If you say so,” Martin said, and sounded so much like Peter that Jon had a near-physical reaction.  He grit his teeth and changed the subject.

“Look, we both know the financials are solid,” Jon said.  “We don’t really need to go over them.”

“Should I go, then?”

“No.  Good lord, there’s - there’s so much else we need to talk about - ”

“Like what?”

“Daisy, for one.  Have you…heard anything?  Seen anything?”

“No.”

“Still in the wind, then.  I wish…”  Jon stopped himself from finishing the sentence.  I wish we still had Basira to track her down.  “How about rituals?”

“You’d Know more about that than I would,” Martin said, and Jon swallowed his frustration.

“And what about the Extinction?”

“That’s not really the point of this meeting, Jon.”  Martin flipped over a report.

“Surely we can at least discuss it.  It was this huge, looming disaster, and then all of a sudden - nobody wants to talk about it.”  Which was ironically, Jon couldn’t help thinking, what happened with a lot of the things associated with the Extinction.  Warming oceans, rising CO2 levels, garbage patches…

“Things are a bit better than they were, now some of the other powers are stronger,” Martin said with infuriating patience.  “Not quite as urgent.  We’ll let you know when we need your help; for the moment, we’re taking steps on our own.  We’d rather prefer to keep it that way right now.”

“‘We?’” Jon asked somewhat bitterly.  “Or ‘him?’  Or ‘them?’”

“‘I,’ actually,” Martin said firmly.  “It’s my project.  One of them, at least.”

“O-oh.”  Jon was somewhat taken aback, and felt guilty about being so.  He shouldn’t have been so surprised.  “Congratulations.”

“I don’t need it, but thank you.  I suppose.”

“You don’t stutter anymore, you know.”

“Don’t I?”  Martin looked faintly surprised.  It was the most emotion that Jon had seen him display all day.

“Guess you don’t need to,” Jon said.  And it was a low blow, petty and impulsive, and he regretted it as soon as he said it…especially because it was pointless.  Martin’s face didn’t even flicker, and Jon Knew what he was feeling: the same thing he always did.  Nothing at all.  Just a great, flat void inside of him, peaceful and static.

Perhaps that was what had kept him there.  In the Lonely, with the Lukases.  More than anything else.  That…peace.

Could Jon have ever given him that?  He could’ve Looked, he could’ve Known, even if subjective things like that were more difficult.  He shied away from it, and didn’t need to Know to be aware of what a coward he was.

“Why did you leave?” Jon asked, because 

“Why didn’t you?” Martin returned, but it was in that same bland, dreamy tone he’d used for the entire meeting, and for every other time Jon had met with him before.  He’d begun to think of it privately as the “Lukas lilt.”  “You know how.  With Elias gone - ”

“Jonah.”

“ - you might not have even needed to gouge out your eyes.”  Martin continued patiently after the interruption.  “Why didn’t you…burn the whole Institute to the ground?  Why’d you become director?”

Jon said nothing.  Martin nodded.  “I suppose you have your answer, then.”

“I don’t feel that I have much of anything at all,” Jon snapped, and Martin sighed.

“Do you have any more pressing questions, Jon?” he asked him, with the implication heavy in his voice that if he did, he ought to just Know the answers.

“No,” Jon said.  “I suppose not.”

“All right, then.”  Martin stood.  His chair slid back noiselessly.  “Your funding request’s approved.  I’ll talk to you again in three months.

But as it turned out, he actually did have one more question.  It leaped out of him as Martin went to leave.

“Martin…when you killed him.  Eli - Jonah, he’d told us what would happen.  To the others, everyone at the Institute.  Did you…think that he was lying?  Or did you forget?”

Martin paused at the door, looking only halfway back over his shoulder.  His expression was far away, and he took a long time to answer.  Jon waited impatiently, and was about to ask again, more sharply this time, when Martin finally spoke.

“I don’t really remember what I was thinking then, Jon,” he told him softly.  “But I don’t think I cared.”

"I know that's not true," Jon said as he shoved himself to his feet, and now he was angry. "I know you cared. I know how much you cared, and who about, and - and I know that you still do." He stared Martin down. "Somewhere."

"Really?" Martin tipped his head, and chuckled slightly. "Do you Know it?"

Once again, Jon said nothing. The silence that stretched out between them was frigid and desolate, empty as the ocean, as the moors. As the now-collapsed tunnels beneath the Institute.

Finally, eventually, Martin said, "Goodbye, Jon," and left.

[horizon-verizon]

hotd feels like a downgrade compared to got, got had tank writing after they didn't have the source material to work with everything in hotd looks cheap despite had bigger budget this include the cinematography and the visual a bit yellowish like they try to hide something, the costume, even the actors? how the hell d&d with small budget at that time got Sean Bean (Lotr), Lena Headey (300), and Peter Dinklage (Narnia) and hotd got..... Matt Smith ... Sorry im not british he's probably popular there because dr who stuff But the rest? Emma D'arcy pushing 30 and this is their debut as a lead? i can understand why they never got cast for big movie or show before this they just using Emma as their diversity token.

George probably regret ever said this show would win eight Emmy.

To get one thing out of the way, GoT was always going to have a "dip" in quality sometime down the road bc its head writers and producers David Benioff & D.B Weiss expressed that:

they wanted to make the series palatable to "soccer moms" and I think football enjoyists...basically to it less magical or to focus much less or develop those instrinsic, story-making/plot-driving elements of the original work. Bran, Dany/dragons, direwolves, greenseer, Lady Stonehart, etc. all were cut or severely reduced to focus more on the politics and social chaos, which was very dumb. What was left in the scripts were was in the available books and it is still "half" of what was in those books. not just a "little" trimming, but VERY CRITICAL storylines and characters and whole characterizations of those characters!

As the entire series more or less can be quickly told as an informal indictment against people focusing too much on gaining power for themselves to observe their environment and be good leaders for others....I refer to the Long Night and the Others (the show renamed them to "white walkers"), who are an environmental cataclysm that only dragons and other sorts of magic is needed to defeat. In turn, they deliberatly meesed up Dany's character in nearly every which way, esp to mischaracterizae her mannerism and valiues. There is both sexism and xenophobia in how they handled/developed her arrival at the North, how they developed all Brienne, Arya, and Sansa's arcs that has nothing to do with in-world sexism and xenophobia but their own. They even severely mischaracterized Jon, tbh!

GoT was far more enjoyable not bc D&D had less material. Once again, they didn't "get" ASoIaF from the start and basically HALVED the entire story, so yeah, at one point even if they hadn't had the last books they would have been pressed to properly justify some things that GRRM might have written for the final battle...a lot pf people would ave been lost as toow soem tins worked or ow we ot there...bc the magic element was treated as subsidary.

Anyway, GoT was more enjoyable bc:

the writers at least had much more space to develop their characters seeing as they got much more than 10 episodes a season

they didn't wait long between seasons

you can see where they took in more consulting from the author than not, than Condal from GRRM (you see such from reading the books, comparing it to the shows to see what was left out, what was rewritten and how much, etc.)

and D&D got more access to the motivations behind the politics they craved to portray more then magic, more than Condal or Hess or whoever did for the entire F&B Targ list of generations, which you'd have to get to write for the Dance

by the last few seasons, they themselves have said that they wanted out and to write for other shows so they phoned it in; because magic the lack of last few books are really them not having anything to fallback on and pretend that they

I will give the HotD writers a tiny bit of leeway, since F&B is a history book that takes one to be able to read through secondhand, culturally inherited, etc. biases very well unlike the main books and it doesn't provide direct PoVs. Heads Up - Context

Though PoV chapters/writing also often has biased characters, those characters do not only provide summaries of their feelings and observations in those PoV chapters. They give corroborated observations as well as their own near-unfiltered thoughts and reactions to events/people...there is more obvious, direct, or firsthand information that we can trust is coming from a more obvious, traceable phenomenon/cause and effect. Whereas F&B doesn't record people in their absolute most intimate moments but events from a comaparatively more distanced persepctive.

F&B is, as PhoenixAses eloquently said, a secondary source that uses a lot of primary sources like Daemon and Otto's letters and royal/official written declarations of Aegon II and Viserys I and Rhaenyra and so forth. In any sort of non-fiction writing and rhetotical excercise (historical writing, essays for example), a secondary source is any document (video, written, audio, etc.) that draws on one or more primary sources and interprets or analyses them. A primary source is document that gives the direct experience of a thing that is being researched or studied, but not necessarily just one's perosn's thoughts so much as a contemporaneous news report of a thing not long after said thing happened, a photograph, or an audio or video recording of the actual event itself. A photograph of a group of concubines, a recording of a war prisoner being tortured, or the diary of a prince are all primary sources. A textbook that includes them is the secondary source.

F&B is all 2ndhand (different from "secondary source") information of collected testimonies form various people at various points of time witin events information and various maesters' an even some primary sources (Mushroom and Septon Eustace) speculation of what most likely happened between Targs and why they did certain things. Plus what pieces of dialouge and hearsay the maesters managed to preserve after nearly 200 years post-Dance. It was the maesters' and our job as readers to try to decipher what could have most likely happened in incidents where there's missing or suspect information and explain why with as much reliable evidence/knowledge of the society as possible--bc there is always a limit to what could have happened. You need to have a lot of knowledge of how people in particular positions of society will try to present or unconciously presents images of people they like or dislike or believe will be a good/bad influence on whatever the writer/source thinks matters. How those people and people in general construct arguments for why and how something happened, accept specific forms of Westerosi cultural biases as well as the systems that birth them and the history that justifies them.

Therefore, while some online will try to imply that this means one can do whatever they want to create something totally not possible in the orig lore and the story of the Dance ("unreliable" = "all or most of it is fake and propganda") or think bias = propoganda (they aren't bc I could have a certain bias against goldfish but I don't have fliers out there trying to convince anyone that goldfish are disgusting creatures). It actually means that it behooves you to DO YOUR RESEARCH into the lore of pre- & post-Conquest Westeros, the characters not just in F&B but also AWoIaF and the So Spake Martin Website, the main series (so many people think Rhaneyra was always and universally ahted in Westeros or that it was a severe minority that was neutral towards her....not the case. Even Shireen's famous and much-abused quote was more about the "tragedy" of how the royal infighting caused wide destruction, not how hateful rhaenyra supposedly was. In fact, there's a lot more evidence of Aegon II being credited as a subpar and even hateful ruler AND person than for Rhaenyra in noble Westerosi society! And Rhaenyra is called a "Queen" unironically by both Martin and many maesters in all the books). That doesn't mean they liked or approved of her being the heir or being queen, it means that they acknowledged she ruled and was made heir.

I personally would suggest doing even a bit of historical research into how medieval to early modern period European elites thought of religion(s), health and illness, bastardy as a concept and how it changed over several years, etc. as GRRM did to see why he writes certain characters the way he does. this isn't a historical fiction series, though, as som fans seem to want it to be. It is fantasy fiction, so despite F&B being a nonfictional piece of work within Westeros...it's still also a fictional piece of work part of a fictional series doen by a real man. It obviously has themes or narrative relations and tie ins and context for what is happening in the main books. None of these books are intellectually isolated installments! Book franchises with different styles never are!

So I also said it often before, but again Condal and Hess--who are the head writers who get to decided what are the final drafts and what direction the other writers will write and how, plus the directors in some capacity and more than others can--wanted to/did write a story with a much simpler and out-of-touch, benevolvently sexist story where they try to make their female characters less "hateful" to their audiences and it resulted in them dampening their fire, passion, ambition. So these women--who so happen to be the most prominent and driving characters of the entire story about SEXISM of the society and the Targs' assimilation tactics--overall are made boring in a critical way where D&D did not.

Here's the thing. We can and have already seen how terribly sexist they rewrote Dany to be more Cersei-like and other women being written towards a "temptress" or "harpy" (opposite end of the sexist spectrum opposed to how HotD writers have done), but they also still portrayed women who didn't take shit lying down. That is always going to be more entertaining, bc these women are doing stuff and have some type of brain activity/strategy going on, even when they are not overtly being confrontational. This would be true of men; if a man is doing nothing, it's innately less superficially entertaining than a man or child or whatever who are making moves and using theit brains to do it.

So yeah, GoT was more entertaining. But not bc of this too-simple idea of the books being unfinished.

And then there's how Hollywood has in the most recent years been more lead and taiolring their most prominent shows/working producers and writers to skew cis white men....the demographic who simply do not understand the ful breadth of life or has insight into women of any race, class, sexuality...even women of their own race, class, etc. Hess has shown herself to be still way too out of touch in the class department, even with her being lesbian. There is an article called "Hollywood's DEI Programs Have Begun to DIE. How Hard Did the Industry Really Try?" as well as multiples statisticalreports of cis white men on the older side as well as of higher classes still ruling the industry in almsot all ways in terms of the economics and who's directing what, etc. So yeah, this show is merely a reflection of what has been happening to this country, the industry, and its population's steady, historical race, gender, class divide.

[goddamnwebcomics]

Ranked from Best to Worst: Webcomics of Goddamn Webcomics (2024 Edition)

It has been a year since I started riffing the new batch of comics at hand, and 15 months since I made this previous ranking, so it's about time it got updated again. This time, if I have nothing new to add to a comic's description, it has been italicised.

0. Gene Catlow

When I added Gene Catlow to the ranking, I thought there was nothing like it on this blog and is thus unrankable. One year later, I have been mostly proven right. I still hate how terrible the pacing for this comic was in its later years, and honestly outside of Burke and Sulfur this comic's ending is hard to get through. I think the biggest strength this comic has over any other comic is the emotional versatility. Yes, it's not perfect and can often get extremely tonally inconsistent. I still recommend for people to read it, but if you skip every page after Dorzoi dies outside of Burke and Sulfur pages, I don't blame you.

1. Alien Dice

Alien Dice is still the best comic quality-wise I've read. I would actually argue it does the emotional versatility much better than Gene Catlow does, despite its VERY grimdark setting, which is impressive. Still, it has the occasional inconsistent characterization, it has the ANIMAL ROMANCE, it has the terribly written villains, it has Riley. Chel has gotten some competition with likable protagonists, but still doesn't change the fact Chel and Lexx are the only likable main protagonist couple in this blog.

2. Peter & Company

Some people may be upset by this ranking, but it speaks more about the quality of the shit I riff on this blog than the comic itself. Peter & Company does the bare minimum to not be bad. It has some really good dramatic scenes and decent art, but it's flaws are as hard to ignore as the cameos in the latter half of the comic. Combine that with some of the worst explained worldbuilding in this blog, and I don't see another decent by this blog's standards comic going below this.

3. Daisy Falls Apart

Daisy Falls Apart is a parody comic that doesn’t exactly break new ground. It’s harmless but I wouldn’t read it a second time. It’s held down by its horribly unlikable protagonist and how the whole conflict of the comic is very quickly resolved, and also too many sexual jokes in something that is based on a children’s game. Out of all the comics I’ve riffed, this one is the most mediocre, and number 3 meaning mediocre should worry you.

4. Dominic Deegan

You might be shocked to see Dominic Deegan this high up, yeah, if I did this few months earlier it would be much lower, but recently Dominic Deegan has gone through colossal improvement. However, it still has the existing problems, and especially in its past it has been rather terrible. Still, Dominic does have the credit of being an interesting case as a protagonist. He is not likeable but he is not that hateable either, because he is not a horrible person. You hate because of what a saint he is to the comic's world, not because of what he does. Still, the painful lack of nuance in its commentary can make it a cringy read, its tone is all over the place and comedy isn't as funny as some of the above comics.

5. Carnivores

This comic was originally a painful experience, but so many painful experiences came after it, it feels like one of the less worse ones despite having the worst art. Also i can tell Austin did this comic for fun, and not to convey a deep message. Also it’s probably the only fetish webcomic in history where fetish itself starts taking a backseat halfway through.

6. Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary satisfies your specific hunger for Johnny Test characters commiting several crimes in rapid succession. Reading the comic both entertains me immensely but it also makes me feel dirty. The crossover stuff is there to please the author and not really provide any point. It is unique in that the comic doesn’t feature a full cast ensemble but it’s rather just focusing on Mary ruining people’s lives and interacting some random character from a North American animated thing. The only reason it’s below Carnivores is the suspicious amount of unintentional racism???

7. Warmage

Warmage is enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. None of Dumok’s other comics have gone to the same level of bizarreness Warmage offers with each page. However it is also the host to the long-since-dethroned worst character to ever appear in this blog, Tsuki. Other than that, Warmage seemed to have semi-intriguing lore and also ended on a rather decent arc, so i think i could’ve been interested to see it continue, just because i wanna see how much worse it can get. But then again, spanking scene.

8. Kit n Kay Boodle

It’s amazing that year by year, Kit and Kay Boodle gets more and more tame. More than anything it helped to expose me to Albert’s usual writing bullshit, but somehow it manages to be tame compared to craziness of Gene Catlow. When you know that EVERYONE is fictional in the real life bits, it just loses the nightmare quality it once had. That being said I am bitter half of the riff is locked behind Tumblr’s stupid filter system.

10. TwoKinds

Yes, I'm afraid TwoKinds is occupying Dominic Deegan's former spot. It honestly suffers from very similar issues as early Alien Dice did, just without the likable protagonists. It has some very surprisingly progressive things for its time, but that doesn't change the extremely confusing worldbuilding, terrible antagonists, yet ANOTHER "evil side of the protagonist" and of course the sympathetic slaveowner. Why did Tomjay think that was a good idea? This comic is kind of stuck in a place where it still has a chance to either go above and beyond the early blog shit, sink below Chugworth Roommates line, or maybe just stay in the same spot as always, if the comic doesn't go through any major quality changes. It is bad, and sometimes painful, but it's not unforgivable, and we'll get to unforgivable soon enough.

-The Chugworth Academy and Roommates Line -

Yes, at this point this isn't a ranking but rather, the point of no return. Once your comic sinks below this line, there's no coming back.

11. Four Girls

Four Girls has some of the most vile, disgusting, terrible jokes and some of them just don't make sense. The characters (especially Heaven) are all extremely hateable. You just wish you were reading Daisy's Fall Apart instead. Thankfully it is short, but it is pretty much at same level of quality as Chugworth and Roommates are.

12. Spinnerette

Spinnerette is stuck at a sad, pitiable state. It's like watching the continued downfall of an internet celebrity. The story keeps doing the same mistakes over and over again, and desperately trying to pretend it is not something that is permanently stuck in early 2010's. At this point however, I am so used to Kraw's bullshit gimmicky writing and moments of drama being forced in arcs where they don't belong, I don't even care anymore. At this point, every decent character has been fucking ruined, but it is what it is. Kraw doesn't care about anything else besides the money going into his Patreon so he can keep making porn comics and figurines and Spinny dakimakuras for his disgusting audience.

13. Peter & Whitney

Peter and Whitney should have never existed. Kraw has more of a direction with Spinnerette than this comic does. It's supposed to be an autobiographical slice of life sequel to Peter and Company, but it is just a request from fans that shouldn't have been fulfilled. Peter feels like a whole different person, and there is just no conflict. I don't give a single fuck about college life of these characters, and also, it's existence ACTIVELY HARMS the existence of Peter and Company, a much better comic, because of all the retcons and foregone conclusions.

14. Las Lindas

Las Lindas is even more hopeless than Spinnerette and Peter and Whitney, because this comic will introduce the decent thing, and before you know it decent thing is ruined. At least Spinnerette has decent variety of different stories. Las Lindas will never leave that fucking farm, if we don’t count the spinoff comics half of which are non-canon and are about the same level of quality as main comic anyway. My brief revisit showed me the post-Alejandra era wasn’t as hideous as I thought but it’s pretty damn close, and with the ever-worsening artstyle and an apparent INTRODUCTION OF SUPERHEROES, Las Lindas’s level of quality could best be described with that panel where Tootsie drives into a river.

15. Carry On

Carry On may legitimately have the most hateable protagonists in this blog. It's a comedy comic from a time period when comedy was not at its worst, per se, but definitely at its most embarrassing. There are too many terribly aged jokes and just terrible jokes in general, which make our protagonists look like vicious murderers. If you are also going into this comic without reading 21st Century Fox first, you're not going to understand anything, and even if you have read it you're still going to be confused. Whether or not Rackeroon Saga will lift this comic out of the abyss remains to be seen.

16. Console Girl

Console Girl is the first comic in this ranking I just completely despise. It makes Ctrl-Alt-Delete look like Penny Arcade, it’s a comic about an ecchi console that comes to life but midway through we get a plot twist and it turns out to be a cyberpunk comic that tries to treat humanoid consoles fighting seriously…or not really, as the comic has a problem taking itself seriously, outside of some questionable moments where the author seems to project their hidden anger towards video games into the comic??? We also have in-comic non-canon filler arcs, console girls eventually becoming random fetishes instead of things actually relevant to their real counterparts and TOO MANY LITTLE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH ADULT MEN. I’m glad this comic was never finished.

17. Ask the Werewolves

Ask the Werewolves is visually the most disgusting comic I have ever riffed. It's not the art style that is bad, it is what that art style chooses to depict, hideous character designs, disgusting body horror transformations, 100% unerotic sex scenes, men and women fighting their primal urges, giant balls cumming inside dumpsters, vomiting and so much more. Combine that with the fact it tries to include out of place commentary about modern state of housing market and the end result is a comic that angers me more than it should. It still has a surprisingly likable protagonist, but I still don't want to see the said protagonist cum inside dumpsters, or hang out with a colossal woman child who ruined his life. I don't think this comic is gonna go anywhere.

18. Monster Girl Academy

Monster Girl Academy is just…the worst. It was solely created to make Kraw even more rich, but I would forgive that if the comic didn’t just…fail as a webcomic, fail as a porn comic and fail as a narrative period. This comic was designed for lowest common denominator with fetishes that are too weird to be vanilla and too vanilla to be weird. Its existence pisses me off. While other comics I’ve riffed had potential, this never had any semblance of it. The main protagonist is a piece of shit and all his girls are also pieces of shit, the only likable character is a little girl who cries and prays in Spanish, because every character reading this comic can relate to her. Fuck this comic, and I mean it with every letter of that sentence.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Peter Juul

Published: Nov 28, 2023

More than twenty years ago, the philosopher Michael Walzer famously asked whether or not there could be a “decent left.” After seeing the left’s reaction to the heinous October 7 terrorist atrocities in Israel, the answer is clearly no, there is no decent left—and we shouldn’t expect one to come into being any time soon.

It seemed that this indecent left had gone into remission with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Outside a subset of inveterate anti-American ideologues, it was left to self-proclaimed realists to make the case for letting Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine stand—or, failing that, negotiate a settlement that would reward the Kremlin with chunks of Ukrainian territory. Indeed, a number of individuals affiliated with the so-called “restraint” school of foreign policy disassociated themselves from their erstwhile comrades while Democratic political leaders brutally smacked down half-baked calls from progressives to negotiate away Ukrainian sovereignty on terms favorable to Vladimir Putin.

But the indecent left roared back to life with a vengeance almost immediately after October 7, excusing and “contextualizing”—and sometimes outright denying—deliberate mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of ordinary Israeli civilians and foreigners. Outright anti-Semitism permeated the indecent left’s reaction to the Hamas terror attacks from the start, with a number of left-wing activists, academics, and intellectuals alike either celebrating or apologizing for the pogrom as soon as it occurred. At best, the left issued impotent calls for an immediate ceasefire that amounted to demands that Israel do nothing after 1,200 of its citizens were brutally massacred and another 240 or so taken hostage by Hamas and its allies.

If anything, the pathologies Walzer described two decades ago have only gotten worse. This is not a political movement that wants to think seriously or coherently about the war between Israel and Hamas or foreign policy and armed conflict more generally; as Walzer wrote twenty years ago, “ideologically primed leftists were likely to think that they already understood whatever needed to be understood.” An epidemic of denial has characterized the indecent left’s response to October 7, one marked by three great refusals.

A refusal to deal with the problem at hand: what to do about Hamas?

Many ceasefire calls mean well: ordinary people are understandably appalled by the death and destruction and quite reasonably just want it to stop. While this humanitarian sentiment is commendable, it fails to address the question at the heart of the current conflict: what to do about Hamas in the wake of October 7? Other much-touted ceasefire calls from politicians like Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) essentially amount to terms of surrender for Hamas—immediate release of all hostages, giving up arms, and relinquishing control over Gaza. Likewise, the hostage release deal the Biden administration and Middle East partners brokered between Israel and Hamas only temporarily pauses the fighting.

Most immediate ceasefire calls coming from the indecent left essentially call for Israel to do nothing in response to October 7. Occasionally they come with provisions requiring Hamas release the hostages it took during its attack, but typically they amount to demands for a unilateral Israeli ceasefire without any explicit reciprocity from Hamas to, say, stop firing rockets into Israeli cities. Worse, they fail to take into account repeated threats by Hamas leaders to carry out October 7-style pogroms over and over again, much less the terrorist group’s long-standing, recently restated objective of destroying Israel itself. Since October 7, it’s obvious that many on the indecent left would have no problem with that outcome.

When asked what Israel—or America and the world at large—should do about Hamas after the cruelty of October 7, the indecent left’s repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire make clear that its answer is, at best, “nothing.” There may not be any good answers to this question, but “nothing” remains a grossly inadequate response.

A neo-Orientalist refusal to take either Palestinians or Israelis seriously

By and large, the indecent left has also demonstrated a remarkable lack of curiosity about either Palestinian or Israeli society and politics. It’s part and parcel of what TLP’s Brian Katulis dubbed neo-Orientalism: the use of nations and people overseas as props in America’s own domestic political debates. In particular, the indecent left spouts simplistic slogans while it professes “great concern and sympathy for the people of the region, while remaining largely indifferent to the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives within particular countries and societies.” That’s especially acute when it comes to discussions of Israel and the Palestinians, where the indecent left attempts to force the conflict into its own parochial ideological frameworks of “decolonization,” “white supremacy,” and “systemic racism.”

In other words, the indecent left thinks it already knows everything it needs to know about any given conflict—and especially any conflict that involves Israel. While “decolonization” provides the indecent left with a marginally coherent ideological framework, it amounts to little more than a “historically nonsensical” but nonetheless toxic stew of Soviet-era propaganda, half-baked academic theories, and contemporary identity politics. That includes the vogue to blame anything and everything on a mystical, all-pervasive white supremacy of which Israeli Jews somehow bizarrely partake. Why should the indecent left engage with the particularities of Palestinian politics or even give so much as a second glance to Israeli society when its ideology already gives it all the answers it needs?

As a result, the indecent left engages very little with actual Palestinian politics and society. It refuses to grant Palestinians any real agency and therefore refuses to acknowledge any real politics among Palestinians themselves, much less the fact that Hamas has repeatedly put forward an openly genocidal program or that it violently suppresses dissent among the Palestinians under its authority. Instead, many on the left fantasize about a single binational state in what was once the British Mandate of Palestine—something few Palestinians actually favor. Other leftists endorse slogans calling for a single Palestinian Arab state, but either way few of them actually delve into the complex power dynamics within Palestinian society—including those factions that don’t respect the basic rights and freedoms of a wide range of people.

If indecent leftists generally fail to engage with Palestinian politics and society in any meaningful way, they actively avoid any sort of real engagement with—or even understanding—of Israeli society and politics. At best, the indecent left ignores Israeli society and politics; at worst, it views Israeli society as somehow counterfeit. Other segments of the indecent left, especially in academia, actively discourage any engagement with Israelis and Israeli institutions. With zero understanding of Israeli society and politics, it cannot understand Israeli fears or motivations in any real way. The indecent left doesn’t know anything about Israeli society, and it doesn’t want to know anything about it.

A refusal to make elementary—if difficult—moral and ethical distinctions

In its rhetoric and analysis of the war between Israel and Hamas, the indecent left frequently equates the deliberate and premeditated murder, rape, and kidnapping of ordinary civilians with the inadvertent and unintentional deaths of civilians in what appear to be otherwise legitimate and legal military operations. Here as elsewhere, the left refuses to make what Walzer calls “one of the most basic and best understood moral distinctions: between premeditated murder and unintended killing.” At some fundamental level, many on the indecent left understand this distinction—as seen by the strenuous effort to portray just about any and every Israeli military action as unlawful and illegitimate by definition.

It may well be the case that the Israeli military has played fast and loose with the laws of war or committed war crimes in its war against Hamas. The sheer amount of ordnance dropped on Gaza between October 7 and the start of the Israeli ground offensive roughly three weeks later remains stunning—but it’s not necessarily illegal. It’s entirely legitimate and very much appropriate to question how well or how seriously the Israeli military takes its obligations to protect civilians, but as Walzer points out it’s impossible for any military to fight a war without putting civilians at risk. The Israeli military can and should probably do a better job protecting civilians, but it’s unrealistic to expect any war to end with zero civilian casualties.

By contrast, the indecent left remains either silent or in denial about blatant Hamas war crimes. It’s been an open secret for well over a decade that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, mosques, and other protected civilian buildings and facilities as command centers and bases for operations against Israel; sources ranging from the New York Times and PBS to non-governmental organizations typically unsympathetic to Israel like Amnesty International and even UNRWA attest to this fact. It’s not surprising to see the maze of tunnels uncovered beneath the Shifa hospital complex, nor is it shocking to see that Hamas brought hostages seized on October 7 to this medical facility. These Hamas abuses don’t even cover the deliberate and premeditated targeting of civilians for murder and rape on October 7 itself.

Then there’s the moral equivalence many on the indecent left have drawn between Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians jailed by Israel. There are many flaws and abuses in the way Israel treats detained Palestinians (particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank), but it’s hard to know what drives people to try and establish a moral equivalence between a four-year-old abducted by Hamas after terrorists killed her parents and a failed car bomber. However, that’s typical of an indecent left that tears down posters of hostages held by Hamas after October 7.

In its failure to make difficult but necessary moral distinctions, the indecent left contributes in its own way to the erosion of both the laws of war and the idea of crimes against humanity. It diminishes the force of both while giving the perpetrators of actual war crimes and atrocities effective political and moral cover. If there are no relevant distinctions between legal and legitimate actions in war and illegal and illegitimate ones—much less between legal and legitimate military operations and deliberate atrocities like October 7—it simply makes war even more brutal and appalling crimes against humanity more likely.

* * *

The pathologies of the indecent left burst out into the open once again after October 7, but they’ve been present in large swathes of the left for decades now. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that these pathologies are inherent to and embedded in the left, and that no amount of argumentation or persuasion will eliminate or mitigate them. There are many decent leftists, but there is no decent left.

What should liberals and decent leftists do, then?

First, recognize that the indecent left is not your friend in any way, shape, or form. Indeed, the indecent left sees liberals and decent leftists—not conservatives or right-wing populists—as its primary adversaries. Even when there are ostensible areas of agreement, the underlying analysis and motivations and goals of the indecent left stand at odds with those of the broader center-left. It may not seem like much, but it’s important for mainstream liberals and decent leftists to understand this basic fact.

As a corollary, it’s important to note that the indecent left remains a small faction in American politics—it’s a paper tiger that garners excessive attention through activity on social media platforms and destructive political tactics. Different polls use different definitions and give different results, but the “progressive left” amounted to just six percent of the population in a 2021 Pew poll and eight percent in the 2018 Hidden Tribes poll.

Next, quarantine the indecent left. Much as mainstream liberals and decent leftists did in the late 1940s, today’s liberals and decent leftists must establish intellectual and political firewalls against the indecent left. That’s easier said than done, especially given the structure of contemporary center-left politics; unions and political parties that once filtered out bad-faith actors and indecent politics have weakened enormously in the intervening decades. Many of the same problems that plague domestic politics—an overreliance on college-educated professionals from foundation-funded non-profit institutions to staff government offices and agencies, for instance—likewise make it more difficult to combat indecent leftists on foreign policy.

Finally, liberals and the decent left need to articulate their own vision of foreign policy. The Biden administration and others on the mainstream center-left have been slowly groping their way toward this vision, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But liberals and the decent left need to accelerate their own efforts to establish a foreign policy that stands in opposition not only to the indecent left but the isolationist America First right and the technocratic approach of the post-Cold War era. It’s an urgent task that can no longer be postponed.

Liberals and decent leftists did it once before, albeit under vastly different circumstances. But that should give us hope that we can do it again today.

[mightyflamethrower]

Who actually are the “garbage” people?

Are they one and the same with Joe Biden’s “semi-fascists,” “chumps,” and “dregs of society?”

Do they include Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables?”

Are they FBI grandee Peter Strzok’s Walmart shoppers who “smell?”

Over the last decade-and-a-half, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Harris-Walz, and a host of other self-described elites have variously invented a wide range of smears and slurs—but about whom exactly?

Who are these people that leftwing politicians have so vehemently derided—and why?

They include Trump supporters, of course, or what Biden also dubbed “ultra-MAGAs” and Tim Walz called “fascists,” now without the prior qualifying prefix “semi.”

In general, these adjectives of disdain denote about half the country according to the results of what will soon be the last three presidential elections.

This half is more rural than urban, characterized by larger than smaller families, more high-schooled diplomaed than college degreed, and more conventional and traditional than vanguard and trend-setting.

Statisticians tell us that the new non-clinging Democratic Party finds its greatest support from those who earn less than $50,000 and those who make considerably more than $100,000. These are the rich/poor bookends that surround the reformed Republican party in between.

So, in terms of generalized income and earnings, the left is now the party of the well-to-do professional and credential class and the rich, along with the subsidized poor. The Republicans, by contrast, are increasingly represented by the middle classes.

The Democratic top dogs are most likely to embrace agendas that never garner 51 percent of public support—vast reductions in gas and oil to lessen “climate change,” open borders to welcome in the world’s needy, the government promotion of a third, transgendered sex, abortion on demand without restrictions, the reifications of various critical (race/legal/penal/modern monetary) “theories,” and radical changes in the current system (ending the Senate filibuster, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, the 50-state union, etc.).

Two truisms stand out about the elite boutique agenda: one, when these theories are implemented—often by the courts, and the permanent and unelected administrative and bureaucratic state—the architects of such experimentation do not really feel the inevitable deleterious consequences.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Silicon Valley masters of the universe, the professors of law, the corporate CEOs, and the Bill Gates of the world really don’t care much whether gas is at $3 a gallon or $6, or Romex wire is $39 a spool or $150.

Illegal aliens do not go to their children’s schools or crowd the offices of their concierge cardiologists and oncologists, much less dump trash on their streets and curbs.

They are strong supporters of teachers’ unions, despising the very idea of charter schools and homeschooling. And yet they send their children more often to private schools where students are not the lab rats of the public school system.

Their ideology is the fruit of their privilege and so is often more utopian and abstract. Given that if it results in economic, social, and cultural damage to millions, they will certainly avoid the ensuing flotsam and jetsam.

The fallout from defunding the police falls upon the inner city, not the privately patrolled Presidio Heights or the secluded sorts in Martha’s Vineyard.

Given their income and status, the new Democratic credentialed and moneyed classes do not care about the struggle of others to live one more day, clinging to the middle-class vestiges of their parents’ era. Instead, for the anointed who have transcended the fear of not filling up their tank or coming up short on monthly rent and power bills, it is not hard to mandate job-killing EVs or to chuckle over biological boys in girls’ locker rooms and pride flags flying from the abandoned American embassy in Kabul.

By the same token, the poor count on the left’s largesse to cushion themselves from the damage of their own party’s dreams turned into nightmares. Various food, housing, medical, legal, and educational subsidies to the poor are testaments that the left’s own agendas stagnant upward mobility and confine the poor to permanent poverty.

In a cynical sense, left-wing elites square the circle of the guilt over their privilege through government subsidies for those whom they’d rather not necessarily live next to or have their children attend school with. In other words, they find them useful rather than empathetic. They welcome in millions of illegal aliens—as long as they don’t camp out at Yale, the Hamptons, or Malibu Beach.

Not so the struggling middle classes. Modern theories can result in hyperinflation that can ruin them or easily send them into the ranks of the government-subsidized poor. They are conservative in wanting a secure border, legal-only immigration, affordable food and energy, safe streets, and equality of opportunity rather than of result, because they have no margin of error, lacking the wherewithal of secure home zip codes, or the perks of gargantuan grocery bills at Whole Foods, or a new foreign car every two years.

Such conservatism is reflected in the worldview of the clingers and irredeemables. They accept not cosmopolitism but 2,500 years of nationhood that remind them there can be no nation without borders.

There can be no modern comforts and security without access to affordable food and energy. There can be no public society without safe streets—and indeed, not even public places without sanitation and common decency.

So, the great middle class is wary about falling at the hands of others into government dependency and even more fearful of destroying what has worked over the ages. They resist experimenting with the unknown, especially when thought up and designed by those who will easily ride out the ensuing disasters when such harebrained schemes inevitably fail.

These chumps, fascists, and garbage people know that their advantages in numbers are outweighed by the Eloi’s absorption of institutional and government power. So, in depression, they often shrug and drop out. They assume wisely that the network news, the New York Times and Washington Post, Hollywood, and the corporate boardroom are mere extensions of the utopian and cultural left, who despise them for ignoring their supposed betters.

They pass on watching the Emmys, Oscars, Tonys, and Grammys. They are deaf to the top-down sermons from an Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons, the Obamas, or Joe Biden, which assume the grubby majority is either too ignorant or amoral or both to know what is good for them and so must be shamed, smeared, and slurred rather than won over by argumentations and persuasion. Is not the 2024 election about just that—the haughty who sermonize and those weary of being lectured?

The dregs could care less who is president of Harvard or how many letters and titles follow a professional’s name—except to confirm to themselves when watching or hearing such people that our elites increasingly have neither common sense nor integrity. A high school history teacher could have answered congressional questioning on race, anti-Semitism, and bias far more effectively and adroitly than a deer-in-the-headlights, clueless Harvard president Claudine Gay.

Yes, the semi-fascists are lectured that they are racist, sexist, and xenophobic. They are damned by the credentialed as “white privileged” who “rage,” as they dutifully go off to Iraq and Afghanistan to die in combat at double their numbers in our demographics.

They are advised of their toxic illiberality and bigotry, even as their children lack the race, gender, and ethnicity advantage accorded to the so-called Other and the inside edge that money, influence, and status provide for the elite.

What has recently brought this great divide to a head and exposed the fury of the elite is resurgent anger at the newfound impudence of the deplorable class, or the notion that they would dare call the dishonest media the “fake news” or suggest that “fit-as-fiddle,” “smart-as-a-tack,” cognitively challenged Joe Biden is the proverbial emperor with no clothes.

Who are these arrogant who pack the 20,000 seats of Madison Square Garden even after the good people have warned that they were mindlessly reenacting Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will?

The left believes that either racial victimization or money should guarantee privilege and so despises those qualifying for neither. In the elite’s view, the working class so often lacks the romance of the poor and non-white, but worse still, the culture and pretensions of the progressive Übermenschen.

Finally, the unspoken irony of this divide is that the self-professed elite know that they are not the elite by any definable standard or meritocracy. Yale gives a higher percentage of A’s on spec to its students than do trade schools and junior colleges.

Today’s supposedly brilliant Columbia student would likely struggle to earn an objectively graded C on a state college’s standardized, multi-choice history exam.

Those who run the Washington Post or NPR are less competent, worldly, and knowledgeable than the chumpy and dregsy sexagenarian who publishes a small town’s weekly newspaper.

The average salesman and electrician can far better spot fraud and deceit than an Anthony Fauci or Peter Daszak. And the tractor driver is more likely not to lie under oath than a John Brennan, James Clapper, or Andrew McCabe. The lineman working with high voltage is far more likely to err on the side of safety with the lives of others than the executives of Pfizer or Moderna.

In a wider sense, the deplorable class believes it can still build reliable pipelines, frack, truck our nation’s goods, and clean up after a hurricane. But it has utterly lost confidence that the best and the brightest at the Pentagon can win a war, at Boeing can craft a safe jet, or at NASA can send astronauts safely into space and back in the fashion of their grandfathers more than half a century ago.

This election is about many things—left/right issues, of course, and the peculiar personalities of Trump and Harris perhaps.

But it will likely be defined by those who are not just tired of being smeared as the underbelly of America but, far more unforgivably, are beginning to enjoy and mock the disparagement from those who have never earned the right to smear anyone but themselves.

[make-mine-movie]

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

The Sword in the Stone is a rather odd movie in the Silver Age of Disney Animation. This movie was released in 1963 and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 67%, the lowest for this era. It feels really out of place in this era, but nevertheless exists.

The Sword in the Stone is a complicated movie that, outside of animation style, does not feel particularly fitting for this era of Walt Disney animation. The beginning and end of the film have a sense of coordination and direction but the actual plot at the center of the movie lacks direction and consistency. Merlin and Archimedes are loveable characters, but no one else really has this level of appeal. That being said, the movie is rather funny and has a lot of enjoyable pop culture references despite it being almost sixty years old. However, one of the three lessons Merlin tries to teach Arthur feels very inappropriate. According to the Wiki page, the scene with the squirrels is supposed to be representative of male-female relationships in society, but overall it just feels very predatory, even more so when you realize that Arthur is a young boy being flirted with by an older squirrel. None of this is funny or interesting nor does it do anything for the plot. It just feels like a forced narrative about heteronormativity that also pushes a predator-prey dynamic in relationships which is pretty harmful considering this movie is intended for younger audiences with little to no media literacy. Beyond this concerning scene there are some other issues with the film that are less troubling. As previously mentioned, the plot progresses with little stability. Another bothersome aspect of this is that Madam Mim, the main antagonist of this film, is not introduced until the last twenty minutes of the movie and has little to no impact despite being the villain. I will note that this movie utilizes the same sketch-heavy animation and artstyle seen in One Hundred and One Dalmatians that I absolutely love. In conclusion, The Sword in the Stone is not an absolutely horrific movie like Peter Pan or Lady and the Tramp, but it is also exceptionally drab and meaningless in comparison to Cinderella and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Overall, The Sword in the Stone receives 3.5 out of 10 stars, an unsurprisingly disappointing score reminiscent of a disappointing movie. Points were deducted for poor plot, poor characterization, insignificance and overall bad timing of Madam Mim’s appearance, as well as the whole scene with the squirrels. The Sword in the Stone maintained a half point as the music was okay and fit what was going on. To no surprise, the movie does not pass the Bechdel Test and loses an additional point for this.

Summary of the film under the cut.

The Sword in the Stone begins by opening a fairytale book and telling the story of a time when England had no king. A miracle came from the sky in the form of a sword in an anvil which can only be pulled by England’s rightful ruler. However, no one can successfully pull the sword from the stone. Much later, a wizard, Merlin, and his talking owl, Archimedes, are speculating who Merlin’s future pupil will be. Archimedes does not believe Merlin and brushes him off, but Merlin is sure a young boy is on his way to their cabin right that instant. Meanwhile, a boy named Arthur, typically referred to as “Wart,” and a young man named Kay are seen hunting in a meadow. Arthur messes up Kay’s shot on a deer, which then infuriates him. Arthur promises to retrieve the arrow from the dangerous woods. While on this mission, a wolf follows him around and attempts to eat him, but is continuously unsuccessful. This bit plays for most of the remainder of the film. Arthur falls through the roof of Merlin’s cottage, and Merlin begins to bombard him with the importance of education. When Arthur informs him that he is learning to be a squire and needs to work on his chores, Merlin magically packs up his whole cabin into one suitcase and they head off. Initially they start in the wrong direction but then turn around and wind up at Sir Ector’s castle. Ector is Kay’s father and Arthur’s foster father, although he treats the latter as a servant more so than a son. Merlin is appalled by Ector’s behavior, especially since he keeps calling him “Marvin,” but decides to stay so he can train Arthur. He is put up in a crumbling tower on the side of the castle. One of Ector’s friends, Sir Pellinore, visits and informs him that an annual competition will be used to determine the next king of England. Ector decides that he wants Kay to win and become king, so they start training the following day. Arthur helps Kay with his jousting training, but Merlin has other ideas. He turns Arthur into a fish and the two of them swim along together. They are then chased by a hungry pike, and Merlin teaches Arthur to use his brains over his brawn to outsmart it. Arthur struggles nevertheless and leaps from the water, getting help from Archimedes and flopping onto the shore. Merlin turns him back into a human just as Ector is looking for him. He instructs Arthur to clean the dishes, but there are hundreds of them. Merlin decides to create a magical cleaning system in order to get Arthur out of his chores.

Then they explore the forest, magically transformed into squirrels. While jumping from branch to branch Arthur runs into a female squirrel who refuses to let him go despite his protests. At first this amuses Merlin but then the same thing happens to him. The two of them turn back into humans, which frightens the female squirrels and upsets them. Ector claims that Merlin has been using black magic, and punishes Arthur for associating with him, but they continue their lessons anyways. In his free time Arthur convinces Merlin to let him learn how to fly, and Merlin turns him into a little bird. While Archimedes is helping him get acquainted with the new concept, a hawk tries to eat him, and he dives towards the ground to save himself. He ends up falling through the chimney of a woman’s cottage. The woman who lives in the cottage is named Madam Mim, and she is playing a card game when she notices the young boy, who is still a bird, in her house. Mim is excited to have a guest and proclaims she is the greatest wizard of all time, to which Arthur disagrees and says Merlin is superior. She wants to play games with Arthur, and chases him around her house in the form of a cat. Merlin shows up and challenges Mim to a duel, freeing Arthur from this torment. Mim, who is known to be a trickster, creates a set of rules for them to follow: no minerals or vegetables (inanimate objects), no disappearing, and no imaginary creatures like pink dragons. The two of them fight, turning into a variety of animals before Mim breaks her third rule by turning into a dragon and trying to set Merlin on fire. Merlin protests against this but she claims it is okay because she is a purple dragon and not a pink one. Then Merlin turns himself into a disease and infects Mim with it. She is bedridden, and Merlin, Arthur, and Archimedes go along their way. When they return, Arthur becomes Kay’s squire after he is knighted because his other squire got sick. Merlin disapproves of this and leaves for Bermuda. At Christmas, just before the competition to determine the rightful king, Ector asks Arthur to get a sword for Kay, and Arthur brings him the Sword in the Stone. When Ector realizes that it was the Sword in the Stone, he announces it to everyone. The Sword is returned to the Stone, and then everyone nearby bickers over who should be the first to try and retrieve it. Pellinore claims loudly that Arthur should try, and Arthur successfully pulls the Sword from the Stone. He then becomes king, and everyone is very proud of him. He can be seen in a large throne room with no one except Archimedes, and every time he tries to leave a mob of people continuously cheer him. Merlin shows up, back from Bermuda (presumably 1960s Bermuda), and very proud of Arthur’s accomplishment. He tells him he will do great things in life.

[the-power-of-a-pen]

A Way Home

Fandom: Spiderverse

Summary: Following the loss of his alternate universe daughter, Miguel is reluctant to risk letting anyone close to him and breaking canon again. However, as most anomalies are returned to their universes, there's the issue of you. You don't have a universe to return to. So, after having you on his team for half a year, he adopts you as his child.

Word Count: 4654

Pairing?: Father-child relationship btwn Miguel and gn! reader.

Trigger Warnings: Some cursing, reader is hinted to having a traumatic past (very briefly and vaguely described), 1 reference to reader as "Spiderman" (meant as a gender-neutral phrase)

A/n: This turned out to be longer than I had planned b/c I realized how much I had to add to make the change of heart even slightly natural, so let me know if y'all want a part two of the reader and Miguel interacting further along the adoption. Not sure how I feel about the structure + characterization in this one. Feedback much appreciated! Please!! I'm on my hands and knees, begging for feedback!!!

------

"Lyla, status on current anomalies," Miguel ordered. He leaned over the yellow panels in front of him, watching the same scene of him and his child playing over and over again. His grip on the console tightened.

She blipped into view. "Currently, there are 918,503,201 anomalies to be returned to their home universes. That's 40% less than yesterday! Spider-Byte does have an update for you regarding-"

"I'll convene with her later. I'm busy."

"Busy brooding over your twelfth cup of coffee. Not enough sugar this time around?" Lyla teased, only to be met with a glare. "Alright, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But seriously, it can't wait. A canon event was disrupted and now there's a spider-person without a universe to return to."

Miguel turned around dangerously fast. "What did you just say?"

"Talk to Margo -- she'll fill you in." Lyla blipped away.

------

"There you are," Margo mumbled to herself as Miguel approached. "This one's in rough shape, got dropped in Earth 616 and put up a fierce fight before Jessica took them to HQ. I tried to send them through the Go Home Machine, but it just dropped them back here."

"And you're sure it's not a hardware issue?"

"It's 2099," Margo drolled and rolled her eyes. "There's no hardware issues anymore, grandpa."

"Then try sending them home again. I don't see why this requires my supervision."

"This machine tears people's atoms apart and throws them back together in other dimensions," she explained. "If I run the same person through the machine too many times, they could die."

Miguel sighed heavily and began pacing around. "Well, what am I supposed to do? Keep them here forever?"

Margo looked at him like he was crazy and slowly nodded. "You can't leave them here to die."

"They're an anomaly anywhere they go, Spider-Byte. Maybe death would be a mercy."

"To you," Peter B. called from behind him.

"Maldito sea, carajo" Miguel cursed under his breath, turning around. "I thought you were taking the week off."

"Well, I was going to, but Mayday was begging me for another one of these cafeteria burgers," he said with his mouth full of food. "They're really good, you should seriously try them sometime."

Miguel's eyes darted to Mayday and quickly darted away. "I have work to return to in my office, so if you'll excuse me-"

Peter stepped in his way. "I'm sorry, Miguel, but I can't let you walk away from this problem. It's gone too far."

"I'm sorry, what?" Miguel questioned, laughing bitterly.

"Ok, I'm not great with words, especially not in front of big, strong, angry men, so MJ had me prewrite this, let me just get it- oh, Mayday has it. Mayday, hold the paper up for daddy, thanks, sweetheart."

Peter cleared his throat and began to over-annunciate his speech. "Everyone in this building joined your society because they believed in your ability to lead, shape, and change the world. We trusted you to use humane practices behind your actions and to keep the safety and rights of humanity at mind before all else. However, given the fact- Ok, this is bullshit - sorry, Mayday, don't tell mommy. Point is, Miguel, that you claim that you're all about saving the multiverse and saving humanity, but then you throw half of your sanity away to hunt down a 15 year old kid who just wants to save his dad. You're so obsessed with the concept of saving humanity that you forgot what it's like to care about individual humans. You forgot how to be a human."

"I never forgot what it felt like to care. To love."

"It's okay to admit that the new kid reminds you of your daughter, you know."

For a moment, Miguel and Peter B. just stood across from each other in silence, unable to break eye contact. Miguel's expression was intense, but otherwise unreadable. Then: "Go home, Parker. More and more of you prove that you're untrustworthy when it comes to prioritizing the greater good. I'm not afraid to get rid of you, too."

Peter's arms gripped on tighter to Mayday. He seemed to want to say something, but found it in him to walk away. Once he went through his portal back home, Miguel called for Lyla.

"Hold the chatter, Lyla," he said before she could open her mouth, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Silence any notifications except for the urgent ones. And I mean urgent."

"Well, since you asked so nicely," she remarked sarcastically, but complied.

------

Everything in Miguel's office repeated like a broken record. The video of his daughter. Peter's comment that he "forgot what it's like to care about humans, forgot how to be human." Gwen's "we're supposed to be the good guys." The feeling of his own child glitching out of existence in his palms, the very reason he got into this work. The ticking of the clock. The ticking of that motherfucking clock.

He zipped a web to the clock and smashed it into the ground, falling to a knee amidst the broken glass.

"I understand that you're having a very emo moment right now, Mr. O'Hara," Pavitr began, "But Jessica told me to drop this off." He placed the file on the floor and nudged it over with his foot as far as he could without getting too close. "I'm heading home now, have a great day!"

"Wait."

"Oh, I was afraid you would say that."

"Tell Jessica to report to my office."

"She said to tell you that she's not available until noon tomorrow."

"Of course," he chuckled angrily. "One person's off for the week, another needs 3 weeks of recovery. Now one of my only trustworthy members can't report for duty until tomorrow. But who's checking in on me, huh? That's right - no one. I took on this leadership role because I know firsthand what it feels like to have the only joy in your life, your only reason for living, taken away from you because of your own reckless mistakes. And despite all of that, I made it my life's mission to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. But now I'm the villain?! "'We're supposed to be the good guys!'" "'You can't leave them to die!'" "'They remind you of your daughter.'" But does anyone else here know the pain of losing a child you weren't even destined to have?"

Pavitr blinked heavily. "With all due respect, sir, I'm 17."

Miguel barely seemed to hear him. He sank to the floor, running his hands through his hair and not bothering to clear the glass shards around him. "Maybe they're all right. Maybe I'm the one hurting everyone else. Maybe I'll make the same mistake I did before, and take another innocent life because I want to feel fulfilled, just for a moment."

"Should I get someone?"

Miguel sighed. "Just go."

------

“Morning, sunshine,” Jessica called, taking a seat in Miguel’s office. “You had a chance to go through the file?”

Miguel hummed in agreement. “Need a second opinion.”

Jessica flipped through her copy of your file. “Teenager, been Spiderman for 2 years, originally from Earth 45, but got dropped in Ben’s world. A slippery one for sure; took nearly two hours to get them on the ground. Tried talking to them, but they wouldn't speak. I know my stance on this, but what’s yours?”

Miguel paced around the room. “We can’t keep them here. They’re an anomaly regardless of where they go. Margo said that it would be too inhumane to send them through the Go Home Machine again, so… I think we should let them go quietly.”

“Are you serious?”

“When am I not serious?” He took a seat across from Jessica. “I’ve been hearing it from everyone else. I need to hear it from someone who was there from the beginning. Someone who I trust. Am I falling off the edge? Have I gone too far?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re just now questioning that? Look, as your friend, I’ll say this: you’re taking too much weight onto your shoulders. You need to stop being Spiderman for a moment and start being Miguel.” She shifted in her seat. “But, as your teammate, I want you to know that I’ll be by your side no matter what you choose.”

Miguel nodded, but he was totally spaced out. All he could think about was his daughter. How he wanted to take this one in so bad, just to feel like a father again, feel like a man again. How he feared the consequences of love. 

Jessica snapped in front of his face. “Earth to Miguel.”

He shook his head. “What?”

“Look, I can’t say that I don’t agree with your initial idea. But I look at them, and at Gwen, and at my future kid, and-” She put her hand on her stomach “-I just can’t imagine leaving them in the dust like that. I was wrong about Gwen, yes, but these kids are suffering. And I don’t know if we can keep making these hard decisions that put these people right back where they were trying to escape from and still call ourselves heroes.”

Miguel held his face in his hands. “I don’t know what’s up and down anymore, right or wrong. I was all of these kids once: Miles, Gwen, Hobie. I know what it’s like to love your family so much that you throw everything else to the wayside. But that cost me my child, and thousands of other lives. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do anything to stop it. I just want to stop the suffering. I just want it to stop.”

Jessica gave him a moment. “Let’s meet the kid. Give them a trial before we make any decisions we can’t take back.”

“Alright,” he agreed, “But if you’re wrong about this-”

“Then lunch is on me. Come on, mafioso.”

------

“Here they are,” Margo announced. “Just so you know, they’re fully aware of their situation, but not very talkative.”

“Let me talk to them,” Miguel insisted. “I want to hear what they have to say.”

As Miguel and Jessica approached, you refused to meet their eyes. Instead, you drew your hood closer to your face.

Miguel took a knee by you, talking through the red barrier. “Hey, kid. My name is Miguel. Miguel O’Hara. I’m Spiderman.”

You gasped dramatically. “No way! Really? I never would have guessed!”

He took in a breath. “So you do speak. Look, we’re trying to relocate you, but we need to have your account of what happened. Why doesn’t your home exist anymore?”

You shrugged and counted off the events on your fingers. “Dalmatian-looking dude crashed through a window at my internship. He went straight for the collider room, and most of my mentors were at lunch, so I went after him. I tried to shut off the collider at the same time he stepped through it, he pushed me into a hole, that lady behind you caught me after an uncomfortably long chase, and here we are.”

“You worked at Alchemax,” Miguel mumbled, though mostly to himself.

“Yeah,” you replied, leaning back. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Did you get bitten by the radioactive spider before or after working there?”

“Did I fucking what?”

“That’s how you got your powers, right?” He asked.

“My powers? Oh, I see what’s happening here,” you laughed. “You’re all off your rockers! Let me guess, this is some alternate dimension Alchemax where everyone’s trying to biologically get the abilities that I developed through technology. Ooh ooh, or, this is an elite spider society trying to save the multiverse from itself!”

“That was really just a guess?” questioned Jessica.

“I read a lot of sci-fi,” you explained.

“Nevermind all of that,” Miguel groaned. “What’s your story, kid? What’s your motive? Because if we don’t have that information, we can’t help get you out of there.”

Your expression became grave for a moment as you considered your options and chuckled bitterly. “My story? My story is that I’m a poor kid from the slums who worked their ass off to get into a good school so that I could do better for my family. My story is that my family never loved me, my friends never cared, and I was forced to choose between what I love to do and what the world needed from me. I didn’t have the power to stop my parents from hurting me or stop people from hurting each other. So, I manufactured that power and took it into my own hands. My story is that the moment I was released from that hellhole of a world, I was locked up in a three foot wide cage and forced to talk about my feelings. I heard what you guys were talking about in that back room. All I ask is that you do it quickly. I don’t like waiting.”

“Miguel, we can take a quick debrief if you need one,” Jessica offered, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Miguel didn’t budge. He looked into your eyes and felt your pain like it was his own. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Finally: “Let them go, Margo.”

“What?” 

“You heard me,” he asserted. “Let them go.”

Margo released you and offered her hand to help you step down from the pedestal, which you reluctantly accepted. “Didn’t know you were one for sob stories, Mr. O’Hara,” you mocked, though your comment fell through as soon as your legs trembled from lack of use.

“I’m not,” he responded, walking up to you. “But I know an innovator when I see one. You’re hurt, yes, but you have the capacity to do so much good. I’m offering you a place on my team.”

You approached cautiously, your arms crossed. “And if I say no?”

“I’d ask you to reconsider.” He held out his hand for a shake. You accepted, and he smiled. “Welcome to HQ.”

Margo whooped in the background and gave your shoulder a squeeze.

------

“Ok, first mission briefing,” Miguel started, walking backwards.

“On the move?” you asked.

“That’s the only way to do it.” He shot a web to a nearby building and dropped from an HQ terrace. 

You followed suit. “Where exactly are we going?” you shouted over the wind.

“Earth 616. There’s a rogue Vulture stealing tech from Osborn. We’d let it happen, but the man's the only thing between a country of people and an all-out war.”

“Got it.”

“We go in, capture Vulture, and bring him back to HQ. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

 You stepped through your portal and immediately got whiplash from the pure speed of a nearby aircraft. 

Vulture swooped down from above and tore the tail off of the police helicopter. It crashed into a skyscraper and gained speed as it headed for the street below. 

Miguel spoke to you through the comms. “Trial number one, newbie. I’ll pursue Vulture; you stop that helicopter from hurting civilians.”

“On it.” You dived off of your skyscraper to gain speed and pulled yourself forward with your webs. In one smooth movement, you grabbed the two co-pilots and placed them on the closest rooftop. 

The helicopter was quickly approaching the ground, where children were playing in an enclosed playground. 

“Shit,” you murmured, propelling yourself under the machine to create a landing pad for it at a safe distance from the kids. At the rate you could fire, you wouldn’t be able to stop it on time. 

In the distance, you saw Miguel struggling to keep Vulture away from a construction site, and reached out to him over the comms. “Have him ram into that crane.”

“What?”

“Just trust me.”

Miguel redirected the Vulture, dodging last second when he attacked so that the crane would fall down. 

The crane caught the chopper where it was, and you used it as a crutch to help you redirect the chaos to the empty street. You swung around the crane five times, wrapping an immense amount of webbage around it and attaching along the side of a business building. When the helicopter threatened to fall due to the weight of it, you shot three web bombs at it to keep it in place.

When you reached the ground, you were out of breath and half-heartedly waving to the clapping children and their parents. Miguel placed his hand on your shoulder as you observed the incapacitated Vulture.

“Not bad, kid,” Miguel chuckled. “Not bad.”

------

A good six months had passed, and you had risen in the ranks of the Spider Society. You were still without a place to stay, and had been bouncing from place to place in between missions. The first month, it was Pavitr and his aunt’s place. Then, Hobie’s, then HQ, and finally, Gwen’s. Most of your free time was spent discussing tech with Margo or trailing behind Miguel. 

A building-wide alert had gone off, sending every spider-being into high alert as they searched for the threat.

“What’s the sitch?” you asked Miguel as the two of you bounded down the hall. “A futuristic Rhino that’s suspected to work for The Spot just invaded HQ. He’s trying to destroy our tech and pick us off.”

Just as Miguel had finished his explanation, Rhino crashed through a door four floors below. You both zipped towards him, barely avoiding running into Peter B. as he took a picture of himself, Mayday, and Rhino. Miguel attacked Rhino head-on, performing a spin-kick to the face before webbing his arms together and latching onto his back. Rhino broke his constraints effortlessly, and threw Miguel out of a nearby window. You helped Noir get to his feet and went after Rhino.

By the time you got there, Rhino had Miguel pinned to the cracked concrete. His web shooters were broken, and he was using all of his remaining strength to stop Rhino from snapping his neck. When he saw you approaching, he tried to silently signal for you to go, but you didn’t listen.

“Hey, Alexei!” you shouted. “I never really took you for the dominant type! It doesn’t suit you.”

You swung a piece of concrete at his back and zipped to deliver a punch to the face. Rhino was quick to return the favor, and charged you through a nearby wall. 

Miguel attempted to stand up as backup arrived. He climbed onto Rhino’s back and sunk his teeth into his neck, effectively, though temporarily, paralyzing him. A team of 15 spiderbeings worked to get Rhino back to HQ while you and Jessica helped Miguel to his feet.

“What the hell were you thinking, kid? You could have died,” Miguel snapped.

“You were the one near death,” you argued. “If I didn’t come when I did, you could’ve died. Was I just supposed to let that happen?!”

“Yes!”

“No!” You dropped his arm from around your shoulder and Peter B. went to pick up the slack. “Why is it so hard for you to understand that people care about you? You gave me a chance when no one else would. I lost my world, my home, and my friends. I couldn’t lose you, too.”

“That’s not for you to decide. I can’t trust you like an adult if you refuse to act like one,” he grunted, before wavering in his stance. Jessica helped right him. 

You took a step back and pressed your lips together. “You know, I joined this team because I wanted to save people. I have the ability to save them. And… if you can’t acknowledge that ability, then… maybe you need to reevaluate your interests.” With that, you took off.

Jessica and Peter sat Miguel down to rest. 

“How bad did I fuck up?” Miguel inquired.

“Give them a few minutes to sit on it,” Peter suggested. “Kids are like that. They need time to cool off. Just make sure you talk to them later.”

------

You sat on the slanted glass roof of HQ to listen to music and blow off some steam. Heavy footprints sounded from behind you. You sighed. “If you’re here to argue, can you at least wait until the end of this song?”

“I’m not going to argue with you. I wanted to talk. And… apologize.”

That piqued your interest, but you tried to sound nonchalant as you gestured to the space next to you. “Go ahead, then. Sit.” You turned the music off.

He obliged. “I’m sorry for saying that I couldn’t trust you and that you needed to act like an adult. It wasn’t fair. I do trust you, and there’s no reason for you to act like an adult when you’re still a kid. I’ll be more conscious of my words in the future.”

You nodded. “Thanks.”

You sat in silence for a while, and you began to get up.

“Wait,” he asked. “Please.”

“What did you really come here to say?”

“Just sit, and I’ll tell you.” He waited for you to return to your spot and took a deep breath. “When I was first messing with the multiverse after working at Alchemax, I wasn’t as careful as I am now. I found a world where I was dead, but had a daughter, so I replaced myself and began raising her. I loved her more than anything. But, I was an anomaly, and had disrupted canon events. I felt her glitch right out of my hands. Thousands of innocent people died that day because of me. So, I made a vow to myself: never again. I wouldn’t let this happen to anyone else, and I wouldn’t let anyone get close to me.”

He paused, gulped, and forced himself to make eye contact with you. “Then I met you. And I tried to hate you, I really did. But you’re funny, and you’re smart and passionate, and you have a damn good heart. And everything in me just wants to protect you. I’m so mad at myself for hurting you and-”

You cut him off with a bear hug, to which he slowly responded once he understood what was happening. You shed a few tears into the crook of his neck and mumbled, “I’m sorry, too.”

He laughed, partially in disbelief. “For what?”

“I called you a dick behind your back for the first three months because I thought you had a stick up your ass.” You backed away snickering and wiped your eyes. “But you’re more my family than my parents ever were.”

Now or never, Miguel.

“About that,” he began. “I know you’ve been staying at Gwen’s place - and you’re completely free to stay there if you want - I just thought it might be nice for you to have a permanent place to stay, a school to go to, a familiar face, you know?”

“Not really,” you expressed. “What do you mean?”

“I- it’s better if I just show you.” Miguel took a folder out of his bag and handed it to you. He looked the other way as you processed what he gave you.

“Are these adoption papers?”

“Um… yeah,” he relented, still refusing to look your way. 

“And this isn’t a joke?”

“Of course not. But, it’s also up to you. I don’t want to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do-”

“Yes,” you cut him off and wrapped him in an even tighter hug. “Absolutely yes.”

------

Miguel helped you carry your few boxes of belongings that you had left at Gwen’s into his modern duplex. 

“Jesus, dude,” you commented. “You didn’t tell me you were rich.”

He laughed. “This is what being a scientist earns you.”

“Damn.” You took the space in. The windows in the living room were from floor to ceiling, the couch a cool grey with ornate yellow and green pillows. Everything was open concept, and both the Mexican and Irish flag hung on either side of the TV. Aside from the occasional painting, the apartment was largely monochromatic. 

“The kitchen is under that loft area, which I usually use as office space, but you’re free to use it, too. Bathrooms on first and second floors,” he explained while walking up the stairs. He stopped in front of the third door to the right. “This is your room.”

You gently pushed open the door. Miguel had prepared for your arrival intensely. A twin bed sat in the back left corner of the room, a desk in the back right. There was a wide panel of windows with shades and a nightstand with knick knacks. A mirror, bookshelf, decorative rug, and bean bag filled the empty space. A poster with a Spiderman symbol hung over your desk, and a smile fought its way onto your face. 

“There’s a closet, too,” Miguel said proudly.

You opened the closet to find it fully stocked with casual, formal, and tactical clothing. “You did all of this for me?”

He smiled warmly. “Welcome home.”

------

It was the following year on Father’s Day, and you were waiting for Miguel to come home when you heard keys turning at the door. 

“Hey,” you called from the kitchen island. “I made dinner for us. And we can watch that crappy comedy show that you like.”

He hung up his jacket and gave you a hug. “Thanks, sweetheart. How was it with your friends?”

“Pretty good. But it took an hour to get Miles out of that Famous Footwear. I swear that boy has enough sneakers to cover the Mediterranean. How was work?”

Miguel grabbed a plate and took a seat next to you. “Well, we finally figured out the malfunction in the control room. Hobie had been messing around with it for his own projects. Shocker, right? But other than that it was just a bunch of boring meetings.”

“Oh, I just remembered something.” You rushed upstairs to get a gift bag from your room and returned, out of breath. “I made this for you. It’s not much, but my job doesn’t start until July and I wanted to give you something, so…”

He removed the tissue paper to find a carefully knitted shawl with his suit designs on it. He remained speechless for a moment. 

“What do you think?”

“I love it.”

“Really? Cuz I could get you something else if you’d prefer-”

“I love it,” he repeated, giving you a bear hug. “I’ll wear it all the time when the weather takes a turn.”

“I thought it might be useful for winter patrols,” you admitted. 

“It will be. I know you don’t like getting too sappy, so let’s watch some TV, yeah?”

Halfway through an episode of the comedy show, you got up to use the bathroom. Miguel paused the show and admired your work on his shawl. When you came back, he was still staring at it as if he were examining each individual stitch. 

“I’m back,” you said when he didn’t acknowledge you. 

He hummed in response. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

You furrowed your brows, worried now. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not all, it’s just…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wanted to let you know that I would understand if you want to look into seeing if there’s any way to find your real parents. I love you and I want you here, don’t get me wrong, but if this is something you feel strongly about, I wanted to make sure you knew that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt.”

You stared at him for a while before bursting into laughter. 

“What’s so funny?”

You grabbed his hands and looked him in his eyes. “I found my real dad the moment you brought me here. I’m home.”

He squeezed your hands and repeated your words as if convincing himself of the truth. “You’re home.”

------

[sylvaineglen]

After giving it some thought and a second watch here are my assorted thoughts about Peter Pan & Wendy:

-It feels wrong calling this a remake of the animated Peter Pan because, honestly it feels less like a remake and more like a new film that was adapted from the same source material. There are scenes that are similar, but those are scenes that also come from the original book.

-I like that Wendy spends time playing with her brothers and getting into trouble, it makes her feel more like an actual young girl where many adaptations keep her separate from the boys' pirate games. Also, her anxieties about growing up being centered around her being sent away to boarding school is a nice touch. It feels more like a real tangible change to her life than just being taken out of the nursery.

-When I first heard about the casting I remember being skeptical about Jude Law as Captain Hook. I honestly don't really remember why I felt that way, I just sort of did. Having seen his performance I can now say that my skepticism was not warranted at all, he was a great Captain Hook. I would honestly sit him next to Jason Issacs and Tim Curry among my favorite Captain Hooks. He manages to play Hook as both a ruthless, bloodthirsty pirate and as a vulnerable, broken man and these two characterizations never feel incongruous with each other and he is able to switch from the one to the other within not just the same scene, but within the same conversation.

-Also, Jim Gaffigan as Smee is wonderful. He manages to retain the comic nature of the character without coming across as goofy or over the top. He's befuddled and well meaning and clearly doing his best. I also like that they recast Smee as sort of a surrogate father figure to Hook, it's stated outright that Smee is the one who found James when he was lost at sea as a child and it's sort of implied that Smee basically raised him after he was taken in by the pirates.

-The Lost Boys are gender neutral and the film doesn't really say anything about that other than it's just a thing. The Lost Boys introduce themselves, Wendy points out that they aren't all boys, they say 'yeah, so what', Wendy says, 'well, I guess it doesn't matter', and they move on. And I think this was a good way to handle it. There are Lost Boys of various different races and genders and the film doesn't feel like that should be noteworthy.

-I am half tempted to buy the soundtrack for this film just for the sea shanties, because the pirates get some pretty great shanties in this film.

-It low key kind of feels like Tiger Lilly might have a bit of a thing for Wendy. I kind of ship it. Also, I like the reworking of Tiger Lilly's character into more of a legit ally of Peter and the Lost Boys rather than a one scene damsel in distress like she is in most versions of this story. She actually plays a role in the story and serves a pivotal function in Wendy's character arc.

-I'm not a huge fan of the 'Hook used to be a Lost Boy' idea, it always felt like something that belonged in the world of dark AU headcanons rather than an actual adaptation of Peter Pan to me. That being said, I really like how this film handled that idea, it honestly kind of sold me on the concept. It doesn't try to play it as some sort of big third act surprise twist. The reveal happens about midway though the film and hints of it are seeded through out the early parts of the film. You can feel the tension and history between Hook and Peter every time the two of them are on screen together.

-I like that Wendy's disillusion with Neverland happens relatively early in the film. She realizes almost as soon as she gets there that it isn't just the place of fun, happy adventures that she heard in bedtime stories. Neverland is real and dangerous, much more so than Peter's childlike attitude lead her to believe. It isn't the escape from her anxieties about adulthood that she hoped that it would be.

-The scene where Hook is talking to Wendy after he captured the Lost Boys is honestly, just heartbreaking. This man is weighted down by so much grief and bitterness which he typically hides beneath the surface of his cruel, bloodthirsty persona and just seeing all of that break through over the course of their conversation is just devastating.

-I love that Wendy's idea of 'happy thoughts' evolves over the course of the film from just remembering happy times when she was small, but to also envisioning what her life might be like when she gets older.

-If the scene where Wendy and Hook were talking in the brig was heartbreaking, then the final confrontation between Peter and Hook is devastating. They both have a lot of very strong feelings about everything that's happened between them and it all spills out over the course of one long sword fight between them. Peter actually apologizes to Hook for not being a better friend to him and Hook is too shocked to even believe it. I'm honestly at a loss for what's more emotionally devastating; Peter actually calling him James when he apologizes, Hook's shocked disbelief that Peter would ever apologize to him, or Peter still clutching on to his hook after Hook fell out of the crow's nest while Peter was trying to help him.

-If the scene between Wendy and Hook was heartbreaking, and the scene between Peter and Hook was emotionally devastating, then the final scene between Peter and Wendy was a level of hurt that I'm not sure I have a word for. It perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of Peter Pan as a character. He is an eternal child, and because of that he can only ever pass briefly through the lives of others. He locked himself into this state long ago and because he fears growing up he will never allow himself to be anything else.

-I like that they didn't kill off Captain Hook, or imply his off screen death like many adaptations do, it ended in such a way that implies that his and Peter's story will continue.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Loved that last kintsugi chapter! I was actually suspecting Matt because of the title (familiar face II) and oh boy he is very persistent and so in character. I love it. I admit that I'm weak for Peter Matt interactions so all this near meetings make me really happy! Not Frank though. He's definitely not happy about it and idk how he's going to convince Matt not to chase Peter down and talk to him after being so close to him when he's like this.

Frank's going to have to worry about stalker lawyers for sure.

Really cute how Frank was trying to help Peter with Michelle with the whole "hold her bag" he's officially adopted him omg Peter is in for the long haul here and he probably won't like how Frank's going to keep being overprotective (well, normal protective because being a vigilante is really not a good thing for a kid)

Also I love how you write MJ she's great. Every character in the fic is great tbh I love all your characterizations

This has been half-answered in my drafts for MULTIPLE CHAPTERS and i am so very sorry that i didn’t answer sooner. 

MJ’s like one of my favorite characters of all time and I LOVE zendayas take on her and could write an entire essay on why. She’s so fun to write I love her soooo much it’s just peak weird girl energy. A lot of people seem to not like her because she’s not like the original Mary Jane model but i could write another entire essay on why she’s an entirely plausible multiversal product of the same core traits. I love her so much. She’s my absolute favorite MJ and MJ’s one of my favorite characters so it’s just fantastic

Franks so funny to me he’s like already accepted the fact that peters too stupid to live and too smart to not find the trouble he’s looking for and he’s going to have to be on babysitting until it’s peters wedding day. meanwhile peters still trying to puzzle out the moral implications of having the punisher be within ten feet of him for an extended period of time.

The Matt in the first step of kintsugi is one of my favorite versions of matt and it makes me sad that we don’t see too much of him. I’ve spoken a little bit in other posts about why that is, but I still wish i could have him be more present here. He’s such an intensely lonely person, and I think the interesting thing about him right now is that he is so much less lonely than he used to be. Like, this version of Matt has always been desperate for community. With Foggy and Karen, he has extremely close family for the first time in really ever. Not even his dad knew about his abilities, but Karen and Foggy know that and more than anyone else in the world. but they still don’t really have that connection of knowing what it’s like to have powers, and matt’s still isolated in that respect. 

***mild spoilers for the defenders below this***

This matt has a very complicated relationship with the defenders, mostly because i’m utterly convinced that it’d be awkward as hell following that finale. They’re absolutely friends and they would all go to bat for each other, but there’s still some lingering uneasy undercurrents left over from the building collapse. It’s not the right part in the story to bring them up (I have an aside from Luke Cage’s POV following the Accords drama that’s along the same vein as glaze defects and porcelain chips that I’m still writing that I think is a better place to deal with the defenders’ complicated relationships with each other). I will say that Matt is a bit more isolated from the rest of the group because of it, and things are still extremely tense between Karen and Foggy and the Defenders, so matt’s sort of the child of divorce in the center. As a result, he still has a few walls up with them, and not a single one of them know the truth about Stick (that’s not exactly because of the building collapse--he more feels weird bringing Stick up. It’s sort of a huge trauma for him that he doesn’t disclose lightly, and also Stick had been treated a bit more like “wise old colleague” while working with the Defenders and not “serial child abuser.” his abuse was also low key for danny’s benefit because the chaste are technically the iron fist’s soldiers, so... it’s awkward. he has never brought it up). The other thing is that none of them really had the same experience growing up. Danny grew up in magic kungfu city and didn’t have to worry about someone using him for the superpowers he didn’t have. Luke has his own huge trauma around how he got his powers, but he got them as an adult, so the trauma is just a different kind of animal. Jess did get them as a child, but she was in a very different kind of household. She was in a highly exploitive household, but she was never exploited for her powers. her household exploited her for image’s sake, and it was a household of resources. while it was never a safe household, it did in a way protect her from being exploited in the way that matt, being bounced around the foster system with no advocates, risked every day. So jess has a lot of trauma that matt never suffered, but she also doesn’t have the trauma that still affects Matt and that matt sees the risk of in Peter. 

so the idea of peter has become this is extremely complicated thing for matt, because he represents this sort of past loneliness and isolation that matt’s for the most part moved on from, but that he sees peter is experiencing. He wants peter to have a karen and foggy. he wants peter to have someone who he can trust with all of him, including his powers. At the same time, this kid is sort of this potentiality for community that Matt has been chasing his entire life. He’s still on the off-step with the defenders. But the exploitation he thinks Peter is going through mirrors a lot of what he went through, and he sort of sees Peter as the chance to make the community he spent his entire life yearning for, and at the same time save Peter from suffering under the same loneliness. Matt’s soooo interesting to me in this and I can’t wait until I can put him and Peter together. 

[olderthannetfic]

re: racist fic, what I've mostly seen isn't single examples of horribly racist fics, but patterns in characterization over lots and lots of fics.

example: I liked winter soldier and read a fair bit of stevesam fic because they had a great dynamic in that movie. but after AOE and especially civil war, the stevesam stuff pretty well vanished in favor of stucky. and if Sam showed up at all, it was in a very mammy-ish role, where he baked cookies and played counselor for Steve and seemed to have no inner life of his own.

if it had been just a few fics, whatever. but the huge flood of them--while at the same time seeing the fandom pick apart every tiny microexpression on Steve and bucky faces while treating Sam like a prop..... it all came together into something undeniably racist.*

you can't point the finger at any one fic or fan when this happens. taken alone, no single fic might merit a "racism" tag. it's the snowball effect of all of them. and I just cannot see an easy solution to it.

*disclaimer: I'm not hating on stucky or anyone in the fandom, it's just one example of a pattern of sidelining black characters that I've seen in a lot of fandoms.

--

Yeah. I see those situations all the time.

One extra problem, on top of nobody being at fault specifically, is that the general pattern happens in all fandoms. Sam gets sidelined into the Free Therapy Friend role, and the choice of whom to sideline is undoubtedly influenced by racism. However, if he were white, it would still happen.

Look at Harry Potter fandom. In most fic shipping Harry with anybody other than Ron, Ron is either the prop best friend or the equally stock Impediment To The Ship friend, usually via cartoonish homophobia or jealousy.

I walked into TWS excited to see Bucky come back (I love characters coming back from the dead). I walked out a Sam/Steve shipper. But the things that make me like Sam are the same things I suspected would make him a less popular shipping choice. Yeah, he's also an adrenaline junkie nut when you really dig deep, but the vibe the movie gives him is the super sane, supportive friend who is just so stable he can handle the most ridiculous shit. I always go for this character. Which means that if there's a black guy in the cast, I always go for him because our casting is hella racist. Fandom's favorite broken-but-beautiful disaster who takes over everyone else's life with his drama trope is cast as a white guy time after time after time. Unless you watch Asian media or something.

What I noticed after TWS is that a lot of people were pleasantly surprised by Sam, but that at the same time, the FLOODGATES of Stucky opened. I did not stay in the fandom, but I have a feeling that it's less that these later movies made Stucky overtake Sam/Steve and more that most ships peter out after a bit, and it was only at that point that Sam/Steve fans were forced to notice just what abnormal staying power Stucky had.

If canon were about an epic, star-crossed bromance with a black guy and treated him as the woobie who gets all the humanizing closeups, that might be enough to somewhat disrupt fandom's usual pattern of not caring about black characters. But casting the black guy as the supportive friend who comes in half way through the incredibly epic loss and recovery story is not going to do it. Not even if he's massively charismatic and gets good one-liners. Big shipping trends also tend to kick off at the very beginning of a franchise. "How Steve and Bucky reunite" had already been going strong as a fic genre before TWS came out. It's hard to unseat that even when you don't add racism to the mix.

It's not nearly such a big fandom, but the closest analogy I can think of is Star Trek: Discovery. And unsurprisingly, a lot of that AO3 section is Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets. I know a lot of people still felt like the couple was sidelined too much in canon, but they're still arguably a central-to-canon epic romance with return from the dead.

So yes, the lack of Sam/Steve is racism in the sense of fans just not being into the black guy "for some reason", but it's also everything else about how canons tend to play out.

[dangerous-disposition]

You said how ever many I wanted sooo

❤️💥🏷️💕💌

🫶🏻

HECK YEAH (i'm working through some writer's block so these asks are helping so much)

❤️What is your favourite line that you've written in a fic?

Oh shit this is so hard actually, because there have been a few!!! There's one line that I keep going back to in my longfic for the last fandom I wrote for, and it's a part where a character has been lying about who he is and has this big Come To Jesus moment and just...

‘Rex Glass’ was a fake name, a fake person, while Juno was so real and beautiful. Nureyev wanted— no, needed Juno to know his name, his purpose for being on Mars. He needed Juno to know him, even if he chose in the end to cast Nureyev aside. He knew, roughly, what it meant for Juno to be in his lap, pulling at his clothes and begging so prettily for more. He didn’t want to fuck Juno while only offering less than half of himself when the detective was giving everything in return. He didn’t want to fuck Juno as Rex glass, he thought with a soft cry when Juno bit his neck again. With a gasp of utter terror, he realized he wanted to make love to Juno Steel as Peter Nureyev, more than anything else in the galaxy. The detective was still working bruises into the skin of his long throat when Nureyev turned his head to whisper, directly into Juno’s ear, “Nureyev.” Juno froze, and Nureyev screwed his eyes tightly shut. “My name is Peter Nureyev.”

There's just!!! His neck is literally bared while he's confessing his deepest, darkest, most tightly held secret. ANYWAY I think about this scene literally all the time when I'm writing literally anything else because I'm so proud of that shit.

💥What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

I mean... other than the obvious in Stranger Things? Idk, I guess I want to see Steve being taken more seriously by the other characters. Like Robin takes him seriously, and Nancy is starting to, but yeah.

🏷️Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

Other than the ship? Generally nah... like unless I'm looking for specific smut? But I'm rarely in a Specific Mood for fics if I'm in a reading mood!

💕What is your favourite fic you've written?

Hmm... this one's tough because like... a lot of my fics I love for different reasons. So I'm gonna discuss all the ones that I think of when you ask me which fics of mine are my favourite!

i could be honest, i could be human - I just think I did a really solid job with characterization and like rereading it right after posting it and I don't hate it? That's a first for me, tbh

and i'm swirling, softly - One of my Juno Steel fics. I really loved delving into the different perspectives of the characters' shared canon trauma!

kiss away young thrills and kills - Another Juno Steel fic. Peter Nureyev character study, my beloved~*~

the bittersweet between my teeth - my Juno Steel longfic. And listen... it would be wild if I wrote a 100k word fanfic and it wasn't one of my favourites of the fics I've written.

💌Is there a favourite trope you like to write?

Oof, I don't know! I don't tend to think about stuff I'm writing in tropes, so I struggle when tagging my fics! I think most of the ships I write end up falling under "idiots in love", does that count?

Thank you so much for your ask!!!!

Send me more Fun Fanfic Author asks!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[bedknees]

top 5 eene episodes?

aaaaand your current top 5 favorite songs!

Thanks for the ask!! This was hard but I did it lol. ❤️

EENE Episodes:

5. Smile for the Ed ; I know it's a contentious episode, but I like some of the insight we gain IRT Eddy and his mom. And even though Eddy gets mistreated hard in this episode, the way it's presented ostensibly takes Eddy's side and really makes you feel for him. He didn't do anything that would warrant how he's treated, illustrating that the kids kind of just suck and almost certainly contribute to how he reacts to them in some of his less glamorous episodes.

4. Dueling Eds ; It's another good Eddy episode and just fun all around. Still gets a laugh out of me when Edd just Dies at the end. Also I adore when Tony's Canadian accent slipped in when Eddy was apologizing lmao.

3. A Fistful of Ed ; Great Edd episode and just well written and fun all around. I think everyone is characterized really good here, and it's one of those nice rare occasions that it's not a downer ending.

2. Dawn of the Eds ; Ed3 friendship at it's best! It's an early episode, but their dynamic here is so fun and IMO at its strongest. It's probably the episode I rewatch the most besides...

1. Big Picture Show ; I KNOW this isn't an episode, but I love the movie so much. I adore the set up, the genre deconstruction, and how it basically constitutes as an Eddy redemption arc of sorts. I love how dark it is, especially in retrospect. I love how it recontextualizes the show as a whole. Just... chef's kiss.

(If you only wanna count episodes and not the movie, number 5 would be May I Have This Ed and the others would shift down uwu).

Songs I like atm:

5. Happier in Hell by Royal & the Serpent. Relatable and makes me feel bad, but in a good way if you know what I mean. Cathartic I guess? "Maybe you're not sad enough" has me in a chokehold.

4. Spit by Poppy. It's better than the original full stop. She is such a good screamer I can't!!!

3. LosT by Bring Me the Horizon. Oli Sykes said he can just do whatever the fuck he wants and make a mid-2000s esque emo song and y'know what? He's so right.

2. Half by PVRIS. I really vibe with this song. Excellent representation of what having depression is like. Another one of those feel bad, cathartic songs I dig.

1. HEAVEN, IOWA BY FALL OUT BOY. PETER WENTZ WTF. Plz read my unhinged review here for an idea of what this song did to me: