#op I think if this dynamic were that specific it would have this many notes

[blessphemy]

[ID: A series of screenshots of tumblr posts. 
Post 1: Tumblr user “professor-pants” posted: “Genre of character: submissive like a guard dog is submissive.” Tumblr user “haljathefangirlcat” reblogged with the tags: “#very capable of taking care of themselves very eager to take care of someone else #would kill a man for even slightly offending their partner.”

Post 2: Tumblr user “manywinged” posted: “the main problem with objectification isn’t that it’s degrading and dehumanizing but that not enough people get weird and intense with it.” Same user reblogged with addition: “being reduced to a mere object in someone’s eyes: disgusting. revolting. i hope you die. / being reduced to a mere object in someone’s eyes but the object in question is a deadly weapon, or a dangerous wild animal, or a terrifyingly powerful force of nature: [som and with lust i feel physically nauseous] i think i have covid. Same user reblogged with addition: “please please please PLEASE let me be your sword i’ll be such a good sharp blade i promise begging like a dog.

Post 3: Tumblr user “naceless” posted: “The homoerotic relationship between a sword and its scabbard. The same user reblogged with the addition: “The sword that cuts all but its scabbard. The scabbard that consumes none but its sword. The sword that is dulled by its scabbards protection but would fall to disrepair without it.

Post 3: Tumblr user “wispdove” posted: “‘why did you respond in 23 seconds’ i would rip my heart out of my chest for you if you asked. next question.

Post 4: Twitter user @carantirs posted: “it’s simply so sexy when devotion becomes ruthlessness. when ‘i would do anything for you’ is taken to its furthest extreme and a character has become utterly amoral in their unbending loyalty.”

Post 5: Tumblr user “pendulum-north” posted: “the reciprocity of the attack dog and the hand that holds the short leash though. both wielding just as much capability for hurt. mutually-assured destruction, only constrained by a thin line of honor, loyalty, and a tinge of fear. note that this feeling is not trust, but it may as well be as close t it as each of them let themselves feel in the matter. The same user reblogged with the addition, screenshots of tags: “#the leash being a construct for both party #the dog could tug out of the grasp and run away or attack the handler just as easily as the handler coule let go of the leash or choke it. #but they both chose to respect and view the leash as worth of this trust. i will not let u go i will not run away. i will not kill u. #flimsy but the strongest bond because of their conscious choice. #willing choice or born out of dire circumstances it doesn’t matter. in the end the dog heels and the hander stands still.” The same user added the commentary to the screenshots: “it’s all in the plausible deniability of it all!! I could only give you tenderness under the guise of me fearing retribution via teeth and snarls. i only heed your call because i fear the cold and starvation. i cannot admit what we both know. loving you will destroy me, will betray the very essence of what i was created for, of the role i was meant to play. and so now the stage is set for us to circle each other, wary. if eternally precarious possession was the closest thing to love i could get from you i will gorge myself on it.

Post 6: Tumblr user “lotshusband” posted: “why is it always the fancy lad boy-king type who’s the bottom. maybe his tough loyal knight who uses his body to protect and defend him and lives to serve him wants to get railed.” The same user reblogged with the addition: “maybe i just like it when mass dudes with scars and calluses and a devotion complex bigger than the moon get topped by troubled pretty boys with hands thatve never worked a day in their life. who said that

Post 7: Tumblr user “many winged” posted: “I will ALWAYS clap my hands excitedly and lean forward in my seat when someone tells a character to ‘keep your dog on a leash’ only for it to turn out they’re referring to another person.” The same user reblogged with the addition: “the way it reframes the entire relationship dynamic between the two people being addressed. the way willful loyalty becomes hopeless devotion. the way aggression and violence goes from honorable and rational to bestial and instinctual. the way faith and trust intersect with codependency and reliance. the questions about power and who wields it in the relationship opens up. the way it functions as both an insult and an expression of intimidation, of fearful submission.

Post 8: Tumblr user “casgirl” posted: “Couples t shirts that say ‘I bet on losing dogs’ and ‘losing dog.’” /end ID]

collection of posts for a very specific dynamic

[narcoticwriter]

We Need to Talk about Arnheid.

@storiesconsumemysoul

OP, I apologize for tagging you, but I saw this post and I was compelled to talk about it. I also didn't want to clog up your post with my own reblogging, and I thought this fit as it's own standalone post.

As someone who's recently watched this, I will say that I was decidedly on the fence about all of this until I took the time to think about it.

I don't necessarily see Gardar as an antagonist as much as a product of the setting he was in, as I view all of the characters in this sense. I'd like to give my own two cents on the matter if you don't mind.

If anyone would like to chime in, please by all means go ahead! Just be respectful and aware of the seriousness of some of the subject matter. Please treat it with the respect it deserves.

Everything and more, under the cut.

In the opening scene where we are introduced to Gardar for the first time, there are things to note and highlight who Gardar is even if he doesn't say all that much:

In the house, Gardar did not lay a single hand on the woman or her babe, only killing the male members of the household

It is heavily implied that he was grossly abused and mistreated by his slave master to the point where he was driven to do this in the first place

This shows that in his heart of hearts, it is implied that Gardar was not a man naturally inclined towards violence, only getting to that point due to what he already went through.

Now, I'll touch on Snake who, whether we like it or not, is upholding the status quo. He is a hired mercenary of sorts who is responsible for the safety of the farm and the goods within it. Gardar to him was considered a 'good' and was to be treated as such, but to be frank, so are all of the other slaves. So why do people think that Snake's hand was 'forced' in comparison?

I will admit that at first glance, I did wonder out loud why they were all helping out Gardar when he had cut down so many men, but then I realized something. Something that a lot of people conveniently forgot.

Most people were probably more focused on Thorfinn, Einar, and Arnheid as well as Sverkel and their entire dynamic with Snake, which lulled them into the sense that Gardar was kind of 'interrupting' that. What they (and myself at first) all failed to recognize was that it wasn't as much of an interruption as it was waking up from a nice dream: the reality of the world they are in is much more grim than that.

And most importantly, they forget one specific facet on which all of this hinged: Arnheid.

Now, I'm about to bring up some stuff that will make people uncomfortable, but I believe that it is important that I say these things with the gravity and significance they deserve. Any attempt to censor the words themselves would defeat the purpose of it, so I will be putting this under the cut.

For those of you who have watched it, you know what to expect, but for those who don't, this discussion will include slavery, physical abuse, rape, child murder, extreme violence, and death.

Treat this as a barrier. This is where I go into the meat of the matter in full.

Arnheid's story is one of a person who was genuinely trying to make the best of things that had happened to her, and even with that, it was not going to be enough for her to live. It never could be.

The author wrote out one of the most devastatingly bleak and emotional depictions of why 'Vinland' exists as a concept of 'paradise' and the symbol of freedom... by making Arnheid's experience the reason why people have it in the first place.

The Beginning

Let us go to the beginning of where she was in her village:

Arnheid married Gardar in an arranged marriage set up by their parents, but in a stroke of luck, they genuinely seemed to love each other and were happily raising their son Hjalti together.

The men of the village (including Gardar) decide to go to war over some resources and iron.

Arnheid and the other women in the village were not enthusiastic about this decision, as the village had more than enough iron already.

While the men were away, raiders came to the village and looted them as well as took the younger women as slaves.

Arnheid also has her son Hjalti taken from her and killed as unmarried women fetch a higher price.

This section serves as the cornerstone of everything that happens later in her story and already establishes more than a couple of key points for the entirety of Vinland Saga:

People will go to war for resources that they don't need.

People will raid villages for things that they don't need.

People will be enslaved because they are not seen as people.

People will be killed because they are not seen as people.

Arnheid at this point is viewed through the lenses of the lamenting wife, the grieving mother, and 'refurbished property'.

I use the last term because a mother with a baby likely would not have been 'sold' in the sense that their 'value' would have been perceived, so the raiders took care of that 'problem'.

So with that being said, this is the defining instance of Arnheid's identity of being a wife, a mother, and a person promptly stripped away. She, quite literally, was left with nothing.

The Enslavement

Now with that being said, let us explore what she experienced on Ketil's farm. I will preface this by saying that people really like to gloss over the severity of what her enslavement entailed. I will not be one of those today, so this is not for the faint of heart.

In her enslavement, Arnheid was bought for one specific purpose. Yes, she can be a maidservant to the master and his wife, she can help out with domestic duties, and she can be a caretaker for those who need it. But throughout the entirety of the anime, it is glaringly obvious for anyone with eyes:

She was bought for the purpose of the master's sexual gratification and satisfaction.

It is also worth pointing out one major difference between her and the rest of the slaves we focus on:

Pater was able to work to attain his freedom and did so. Einar and Thorfinn are granted the same opportunity to do the same.

Arnheid is not able to work her way out of bondage and was never offered the opportunity to do that.

My reasonings for this are quite simple, actually, and given the setting, it should come simple for you too: she is, for all intents and purposes, a woman. If Arnheid was a man, I guarantee you that she would have been able to work for her freedom because men are supposed to work.

She says it herself in multiple instances while she laments how she got here in the first place. Men decided to go to war, men enslaved her and killed her child, and a man bought her to use for his own wishes.

For people who want to debate this, there are multiple instances that we see, such as Ketil and her in his chambers, how Ketil talks about her, and how his wife treats her. It can be said that Ketil treats her relatively well compared to the others, but it doesn't change the fact that she's an unwilling participant.

Even if she abhors this treatment, how on earth is she going to call them out on it? Can she say no to Ketil? No. So she doesn't have a choice in the matter, and that alone constitutes rape.

Let me say this again. Arnheid was consistently raped.

With that being said, this also points out another batch of realities in her world:

People will be used for their master's own satisfaction and benefits because they are property.

People will be made to do things that they would not do themselves because they are property.

People will be abused, hurt, and violated because they are property.

Even in this bleak reality, it is to Arnheid's credit that she is taking it all quite well despite everything she has gone through up to this point. She could have broken down and she would be completely justified in doing so, but the strength of her spirit, character, and compassion have carried her through even to the uttermost.

This, however, would not be enough for what was to come.

The Reuniting

At this point, despite her endurance, Arnheid has been worn down to almost the barebones. Her husband is gone, her child is dead, and she is simply trying to make it work. Hell, she even finds some companionship with Thorfinn, Einar, and Sverkal. This moment of brief bliss of happiness and (dare I say) contentment is brought to an end by Gardar riding in with only one goal in mind: to find her and go home.

Here is why I think she reacted the way she did initially:

She was living with the mindset of making do with what she had.

She did not believe that a piece of her past, which she considers beyond her, was alive.

She was absolutely terrified of the man that she saw in the state that he was in.

Not only is her son with Gardar dead, she is pregnant with another man's child.

For the last point, the reason I single this one out is in those days, if a woman was thought to have committed such a thing (no matter the circumstance, really), Gardar would have been fully justified in cutting her down. This is just the state of the world she is living in.

She has already gone through so much, and now this instance presents itself and she has to deal with it. This moment was a turning point because it gave her something that she hadn't had for a while: a single kernel of hope. She acts on this, going to help him clean his wounds and perhaps escape.

However, I will also make the point that was touched on in the midst of the original post: Gardar's extreme violence was a product of his treatment. You cannot expect someone who had gone through what he had to be in a normal state of mind. In fact, I would be more surprised if he was intact.

This leads into the scene where Arnheid is tending to Gardar's wounds:

Gardar begs Arnheid to forgive her for leaving with the men in the village all those years ago

Arnheid begs Gardar to forgive her through tears, presumably for the pregnancy and Hjalti, but he's just confused

In the midst of this, Gardar is trying to reassure her that once they both escape, they can go back to how things were

True to this, Gardar kills a man with his teeth in his throat and Arnheid uses the knife from the dead man to cut his ropes

These are two very traumatized and very broken people. I can say this because their mutual experiences have turned them into people that have become so violent and so numb to their own selves. But the hope that they could leave... that is now what will fuel them both, Arnheid especially.

Now, Thorfinn, Einar, and Sverkal participate in her bid to run away with her husband as they too recognize the sorry state of the lot she's been dealt and are loathe to participate in it any longer despite their personal issues. There is also a worldliness about them that offers up how they know that the world they live in is truly wicked, which is why they help in the first place.

But it is in the instance where they are on the cart that there is a glimpse of the man Gardar really is: a man who loves his wife, his son, and the life he had made for himself. He even acknowledges that he won't let his son grow up into a warrior, noting precisely how terrible it —and the world— really is.

As he passes on from the wounds he sustained, she is caught, and this is where another thing should be noted about this:

Arnheid is a person.

Why do I say this? Because a person can hope. Property cannot. She, through this, had reclaimed her identity as a person and as someone who can hope. In the bleak darkness of circumstance, this is her brightest moment because it confirms her humanity.

But even then, it would be, like many others, snuffed out.

The Punishment

This part depressed me, fully and completely. It was unfair, it was unnecessary, and it was undeserved. You could use those words to describe everything that's happened to Arnheid thus far, and you would be correct to do so! Because it is! And that's the point.

So, here is the punishment in full:

She is tied up in a barn.

The guard that is watching her intends to rape her and says as much, making to do it then and there.

He also describes in excruciating detail how he and his comrades would have taken turns raping her for every life lost, highlighting the strangling and torture with sick glee while stating that he can't since she's the master's favorite.

This first section highlights and covers a few things, respective of the points in order:

An animal wouldn't have been treated like that.

Arnheid is not a person to this guard, she is an object.

The guard sees her as property, the master's property.

This brief exchange is unapologetic in how the world at large sees Arnheid outside of the meaningful interactions she has with others. She is not a person to them, but a means of feeling power and gaining their own satisfaction.

Before anything can happen, Ketil arrives with a stick and the guard scrambles away, but not before he poses a question: "Do you know who you belong to?"

He says that he won't forgive anyone who tries to steal his property, even if it's her.

This highlights how she is seen by the person who 'owns' her, stated within these specific points. He sees her as his property and he does not see her as a person. The latter point not only denies her as a person but layers it in the sense that her own personhood could put his property at risk.

She is then beaten with the stick, but in the midst of it, she begs for him to be gentle as she is pregnant with his child.

He beats her and kicks her regardless of this, calling her a liar and a thief.

Snake even stops Ketil from beating her anymore, saying that the crime befits the punishment of a beating, but to do more would kill her.

He also states that it is his right to kill her as she is his, but he ought to intend to do it.

One could attribute this to what Ketil is dealing with at the moment, but that is not the point here. The point is that Snake recognized that Ketil was beating her so much that she could die. While Snake is upholding the statement of her being property, he also takes into account the way that this ought to be handled and the intent of his master. There are no saints here, but I believe that even he knew that this was too much.

When Leif asks to purchase her, Ketil states that she is his and will not sell her.

I don't think I can make it any clearer, but this only goes to show that to the master, who bought her, she is nothing more than property.

Arnheid has been beaten so badly, she is unconscious and cannot be moved.

Pater states that he does not know if she will live as she is extremely injured.

Leif states that this would have eventually happened to her if she had stayed on the farm with Ketil.

This set of points is here to simply illustrate the inevitability of her end. Leif is right. Ketil could have been set off in any way if it was to do with the perceived ownership he had over her. Imagine if he had seen Einar getting too close to her. What then? Do you think he wouldn't have beaten her over that too?

As Arnheid is passing on, we see her with Gardar, Hjalti, and another baby in her arms on the cart.

This implies that even if she was able to make a full recovery from her injuries, either the miscarriage of the dead baby or the dead baby breaking down in her body would have killed her anyway. Just think about that for a minute as Ketil was so ticked off that his 'property' would lie.

The cart stops and Gardar says that she can take a moment to thank Thorfinn and Einar for their help.

She does, and while it is lamentable, her family is waiting for her... so she joins them.

This scene is sad, but it offers me a little happiness. It seems that Gardar wouldn't have killed Arnheid over the other baby. It seems that he would have taken them in as his own. You can say he forgave her, but I would say that I don't think he would have thought there was anything to forgive. They had both been through hell, after all.

Conclusion

Vinland, as a promised land, a slice of heaven, a refuge for those who seek shelter was a dream, an idea, a hope that people had. But for Arnheid, it would have been her salvation. With her death, this Vinland was crystalized and given form.

Would the promise of Vinland have saved Arnheid? We don't know. But we do know that her experience, her life after the fact, and her death would have been more than enough of a reason to wish Vinland into reality.

However, this does one more thing for her. It confirms that despite it all, she was, is, and always will be, a person.

And that people should never be treated like this.

She lived a life that was hard and quite bleak but even through it, she did her best and she was a person who deserved a world where:

You would not have to fight for resources, for there would be enough for all.

You would not have to worry about raids, because they could not reach you.

You would not have your child killed, because your child would grow up safe, happy, and taken care of.

You would not have your personhood stripped away, because no one would take it from you.

You would not be brutally raped and seen as an object of satisfaction, because no one would have that power over you.

You would not be beaten for acting out of line for property, because you would not be property.

You would be a person, a human being, because you would be free.

In a way, you could make the argument that through her story and her life, she is one of the most consequential and important characters in the entirety of this series.

Simply because she would have loved to live in a world like that.

[sunday-arch]

*WANTED CONNECTIONS MASTERLIST/WISHLIST ( OC EDITION ) ;

clover d. iselda ---

more marine interactions; canons, ocs, you name it. i think some primary ones i'm eager to see her interact with would be: garp, koby, sengoku, tashigi, and smoker. but, really just anyone!

also, she herself is a captain so i do wanna see some captain / subordinate ineractions? i don't know if there are many marine ocs that would be a subordinate to her, but i want to explore what she would be like as a superior.

vergo. oh god, i can't say it would end well for her and it wouldn't be purely antagonistic, but yeah. this one would be so interesting.

more antagonistic relationships in general. in any verse of hers. forced to work together, enemy coworkers, i don't trust you but i trust you with my life, any type of relationship that isn't very friendly or straight up enemies.

for her shipwright verse, i'd love to write with a franky. i think that she really admires him, not in a fan type way, in a --- you're a cool, solid guy way. (also any of the other shipwrights and cp agents that were undercover).

kazumi haru ---

anyone from the akazaya nine !

the ship he stowed away on when he ran away from home. could be pirate crew, mercenaries, marines, etc.!

any plots set during the wano arc

possibly baroque works plots!

boldly going to say i ship him and robin, so if there are any interested robin writers... please call me.... (obviously, we can test for chemistry and nothing is set in stone, no pressure < 33)

nina liu ---

any underworld type muses ! or crime family type muses from the op verse. they could be business partners, alliances (temporary / betrayal also v much interested ), rivals, straight up enemies.

more cipher pol interactions for her cp specific verse! field mission, having her do a fitting for your muse, blackmailing her, a fun little gossip sesh, what have you.

interactions with the vinsmoke family!

otorobashi akai ---

any strawhat interactions! most wanted; luffy because a little captain vs. captain action would be cool. akai is super curious about this little guy.

any golden era pirates like roger, rayleigh, whitebeard, oden, kaido, and their crews. of course, ocs of this era as well!!

the marine that's out to finally capture this menace. a little cat and mouse plot would be cool. even a cipher pol agent or a bounty hunter!

rival pirate crews, temporary allied pirate crews, betrayals! just pirate dynamics.... please.

quetzal d. luna ---

any strawhat interactions! she would adore them. she's just the type of funky land humans that she'd want to be friends with.

really, any interactions in general! nothing too serious for her just because i think i want to establish some fun dynamics for this muse first before doing anything very dramatic or serious.

zephyr ---

any nami's that are interested in an older brother! obviously, i'm down for the needed plotting for this. i don't have anything set in stone as to how they meet again or under what circumstances. just that they were separated during the war on their home island.

any revolutionary army muses! he was rescued by the revo army in my canon and then later on, seeks them out to join them.

mentor/mentee relationship with him as the mentee! open to any capacity.

fight threads! whether fighting against each other or together.

zhi hua ---

because she's on akai's crew, all that was mentioned for his applies to her too!

**NOTE: any original characters, such as ocs that are strawhats, are counted, of course when i say i want strawhat connections.

[earthstellar]

hey! i just wanted to let you know that i really enjoyed your post about the mutiny on the L.L and your deeper dive into the social dynamics and inner thought processes involved there. especially when it comes to megatron being put into the lost light and how it was done with absolutely zero regard to not only the crew, but to rodimus specifically. OP put megatron on a ship in a position of power over rodimus (noting the whole "co-captain" thing and it going back and forth on whether its an actual title) and the entire crew, and it's honestly somewhat of a miracle that the mutiny even had time to develop as it did. like you said, there were a hundred other ways it could of played out. your post was a very interesting read and i really enjoyed it, kudos!

i do have to say though that the mech in the post isn't hound- it's hoist. (i get them mixed up so often as well it's not even funny, both green bots with 5 letter names starting with 'ho-', smh.) but overall your point still very much stands that there isn't just a surface level unhappiness with rodimus- there are many other factors playing into why someone would be a mutineer or how someone who is already isolated and vulnerable can be nudged onto that path by an outsider force. again, very good read, thank you for sharing!

LOL YOU'RE SUPER RIGHT ABOUT IT BEING HOIST

This is what I get for trying to check Tumblr and write a whole thing at 6 AM while working and getting ready to move at the same time!! My brain is cooked!!

That's the funniest mistake I've ever made, thank you for bringing it to my attention. Genuinely this is the most I've laughed in like two months, thank you. <3 I got so into it and never even noticed. LOL

I'll edit the post to highlight that I fucked it up but I'm not going to delete it because honestly I'm proud of how almost-coherent I was while this severely exhausted.

Anyway, thank you so much for the lovely comment, and I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it anyway! :) <3

I definitely wanted to highlight the panel as a general example of other factors and how they play into what might motivate an individual to mutiny, so the general point hopefully still holds up despite my very sleep deprived character mix-up, lmao.

But I'm glad the first half of the post is a little more coherent, as I think the disregard Optimus had for the command and crew of the Lost Light is one of the first and most significant single decisions that contributed to issues that persisted and affected other outcomes etc. and it's interesting to see how it all cascades together to contribute to the circumstances that fostered a mutiny.

I'm happy to hear you liked it, thank you so much for reading through it even though I was clearly very tired when I wrote it and rambled on for quite a bit! :')

[hopefullystillatheatrestudent]

i'm so excited about you taking asks again ahhhh okay so. if you'd absolutely had to choose. what would be your top 5 cockles moments, and why? thank you ily <3

here’s the thing: there are so many routes i could go down with this, because cockles moments come in all shapes and sizes and formats. these include moments from their panels, their bloopers, the footage we get when they don’t even know they’re being recorded, stories being passed down from photo ops & autographs(one of my personal favorite ways to get cockles, tbh, because they’re all insane), and social media(tweets to each other, instagram posts & comments, etc.). 

SO! since many a list like this has already been made, and i want to stand out from the crowd, what i’m gonna do is definitively give the number one spot to each of these five categories.(i might even throw in honourable mentions because they’re so despicably in love that they warrant that. i really put my whole pussy into this, guys, i hope you’re happy.) 

disclaimer: these are my own personal opinions. but that also means i’m right. so. enjoy. 

number one: top cockles panel moment

so we’re starting off with a bang, because how do you even BEGIN to rank what atrocities jensen and misha commit at jibcon. every single one they’ve had is damning in it’s own right, for different reasons.

however, considering just how much unabashed fuckery they’ve given us to sift through, it’s a good thing i do have a personal favorite despite it all. it’s heartwarming, the sweetest thing i’ve ever seen, AND it’s jarringly cinematic - mainly because it has a whole ass arc to it that was years in the making. it might even be surprising to some people, but my favorite cockles panel moment, and what i consider the one that encompasses their entire gut-wrenching journey from 2008-2013 in the most sweepingly romantic gesture possible, is this one.

i want this burned into my retinas. i am not even joking. when i'm through with my explanation, let me convince you why this is thee most romantic cockles moment of all time.

first, some history: people call this the resume off, but many seem to forget the botched attempt at a resume off a year prior. and yes, you guessed it: it's during their break up. it's a juicy time period for a reason, guys. it came across as exceedingly one-sided and VERY awkward. let me refresh your memory as to just how bad it was, and just how hard jensen was trying and ultimately failing at winning misha over: the funniest part of the whole resume off in 2013??? every joke/bit had literally already been made/done. they were just going through the motions again, but the difference THIS time...is that misha reciprocated jensen's energy. it. is. fascinating. i want to get into it more detail in another post, and i'll link it here when i'm done, but the main takeaway, i think, and the main difference that showcases how much they've grown in a year, is that in jib 3, misha flat out refused to do an accent, and this time around, he indulges jensen for literal minutes. when i tell you they're crazy, they're crazy. i can't wait to actually dive into it later.

ANYWAY, the resume off culminates in this moment here. and, like, a million things happen in this gifset. actually, more like a million and one. the music starts playingneediremindyouthatthesongissingingintherain(h e l p), misha starts dancing, jensen 'perpetually fake grumpy' ackles lets misha think he's not going to join, misha sits down defeated, but no!!! that was jensen's plan all along(look at his stupid fucking smirk) and he offers his arm to his dance partner who immediately grins like a fool, jensen then leads misha into their kick step, they perfectly synchronise and let loose, and are then very clearly having the time of their lives, hanging off of each other with joy and ease. from their expressions alone i can tell that this moment is so. so. so. so! much more than what initially meets the eye. i mean-misha is fighting back the biggest smile i've ever seen. to me, it reads like jensen is offering something to misha, something that misha kind of gave up on expecting, and him offering his arm like that is like, a surprise to him in the best possible way(and it's so not platonic, let me just say that.) as soon as jensen did that, it ushered in a new era of cockles. this panel is jensen and misha's favourite for a reason, and i think this moment is the biggest clue as to why.

whew!!! ok. that took a lot out of me and that was only point one. moving on,

number two: top cockles blooper moment

cockles bloopers hold an extremely special place in my heart, because it shows just how fucking disastrous jensen and misha are. they are so goddamn infatuated with each other that they HOLD UP PRODUCTION ALL THE TIME TO FLIRT WITH EACH OTHER(???). let me repeat. let it sink in. jensen ackles; arguably one of the most professional actors on that show who puts everything he has into each scene, with mountains and mountains of notes to prove it: would rather hold up production to flirt with misha collins. this sounds fake. it's not. he does it. all. the. time. and here's the thing guys!!! i'm gonna let you in on a secret!!! misha loves it. he loveesssss it. on top of that-misha collins: overlooked because he's pranked and people assume he's unprofessional as well, but his only pranks are in retaliation/off-set, and he rarely if EVER causes problems if he can help it....lets himself get carried away when it comes to jensen making kissy faces at him!!! are you actually kidding me!!! i mean. misha. it's just a face. you've seen it a million times. i don't buy that it triggers something in you that strongly....you like it, and you like jensen's reaction. you can't fool me!!! lisa berry's face in that one gifset shows just how fed up the crew is with their gross, coupley boyfriend antics.

i could pull up so many examples. sooooooo many. but my favourite was sealed since the moment i saw it.

i actually already wrote an analysis on it but i can't find it :(((( which SUCKS because i really unpacked the whole thing. i'll try to summarise.

basically, a backstory is part of this too!!! jensen and misha both had a really really hard time with this scene(because it's explicitly romantic there i said it), they sat down for hours and poured over their scripts together, they were super super nervous going into filming, both of them, jensen especially, were super hard on themselves for their performances not being true to their characters but they both complimented the other's work(boyfriend moments fr). so, yeah. they weren't confident going into shooting. and how do they get themselves to feel better???? by cuddling each other, apparently.

a lot. a LOT. happens in this specific blooper. to the point that i saw it years before i knew about cockles and it raised all sorts of flags for me.

1) stop pulling my face towards your crotch(as a thinly veiled request that misha would, in fact, move jensen's face towards his crotch, considering it was jensen moving himself there in the first place. also, why so comfy down there guys???) 2) you're my baby daddy i know(in the most intimate voice i've ever heard please) 3) i know, i know, i love you too i didn't say i love you i know but you wanted to say it etc. misha's right, of course. that's what jensen meant.

it just reeks of comfort, familiarity and intimacy between the two, and it's a moment that is extremely sweet and silly at the same time. they're so <3

number three: top cockles found footage moment

WONDERFUL category. truly the culmination of the cockles experience. many people have said that shipping cockles doesn't work because 'they're just onstage you dummies!! they're playing it up for the audience!!!' here's the thing, love. i could not disagree with you more. once you climb your way up the cockles ladder, you soon learn that they are, in fact, playing their dynamic DOWN, not up. they really are just Like That™, and they could not care less about the paying audience, if we're being honest, considering how much time they take to giggle with each other and refuse to let the audience in on the joke. and i love them for it <3

anyway, my point is that this category is for all you naysayers out there, all you 'jensen and misha's relationship is just for show and is real life queerbaiting'(?????lordhelp???) oh yeah? ok, explain this.

he. he. he calls jensen sweetheart. literally enough said. there's nothing to really add here, except, misha and jared then immediately engage in damage control. jared's method is distraction and misha's is retconning('get out of the car, dude') this was what got me to buy into the cockles dumpster for GOOD good. you don't call your buddy sweetheart accidentally and sound so completely earnest while doing it! especially not when that buddy is jensen ackles!!! you think he would let any of his friends call him that? do you?

one more thing; if it was a slip of the tongue, little mouth thing or whatever, you think jared wouldn't have jumped on it immediately??? i can hear it now. 'did you just call him SWEETHEART???' yeah. that's what i thought. you know why he didn't? because it was too revealing.

number four: top cockles autograph moment

i mean, i think we all know what it's gonna be, and if you don't, well, do i have the piece de cockles resistance that is gonna send you over the edge.

if you haven't heard of this story by now, as a cockles, truther, i'm gonna go ahead and get you to read it, because there is no possible heterosexual explanation for any of it, and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

spoiler alert: it's the story where phones weren't allowed in an auto session, jensen nuzzles himself in misha's hair, leans his full body weight onto him, holds his hand, etc. etc. i'm imploding just repeating this back, actually. also, just, the sheer amount of stories from photo ops where they tackle hug each other or slap each other's asses or sing romantic songs to each other or almost kiss is, frankly, a lot. if i could wish for anything, it would be to witness them in person.

and finally,

number five: top cockles social media moment

this one is super difficult, because there's obviously a lot to choose from. but you know what? full send, i'm going with this one:

i just. what to say about this. how often do misha and jensen watch sunsets together for it to qualify as ‘always’ ??? why are sunsets synonymous with their relationship??? that’s like??? a very romantic thing????? ‘this guy’??? the fact that it’s a CANDID??? i don’t know guys.

that could have been better but i am TIRED so. there you go rose ily

[thebreakfastgenie]

I love your recent BJ and Peggy post!! Just one note: the war wouldn't have been Peggy's first time in the workforce because BJ mentioned she put him through med school. He seemed kinda upset about that too, which is super interesting to me. Always seemed to me like he was more attached to a "traditional" dynamic than she was, which would be a great thing for him to work through.

I'm not the OP of that wonderful post, but this is a a good point and I want to talk about it so I'm going to, but I'm also going to tag @mycenaae.

I am so fascinated by Peg putting BJ through med school. BJ comes from three generations of doctors, so it's kind of surprising his family didn't pay (and yeah we can chalk that up to that patented mash continuity, but) which is a whole other can of worms. But you're right, it's not her first time in the work force! I do think it's still kind of an "entry" though, because supporting a fiance/husband through med school was seen differently than being a working mother supporting a child.

We don't know much about how Peg feels about the traditional dynamic. BJ makes one comment about it was supposed to be his turn to support her so she could be home with Erin, which could suggest that Peg wants to be home with her baby (understandable and something many parents want), or it could be BJ making assumptions based on what he want. I always assumed it was a little of both: Peg wants to be home with Erin when she's little, but she's less enthusiastic about being a homemake longterm than BJ thinks she is. We get very little information about how Peg feels about the traditional dynamic.

BJ is sexist, which he's slowly unlearning. I feel like we talk a lot about Hawkeye being sexist, but BJ straight up says in the Interview he sees the nurses doing things he thought of until recently as man's work. BJ fully buys into the idea of a man's role being to protect and support women, in that well-intentioned "I love her and want to do this for her, whether that's really what she wants or not" way. It's very 50s and like I've said before, I think he's genuine about it. It's never occurred to him to question it before.

As for Peg working it's... kind of inconsistent, which again is that patented mash continuity, but I think you can make sense of it. In the Party, BJ mentions Peg is getting her real estate license, and he seems supportive of it, which is very different to how he reacts to her getting a job at a coffee shop in another episode. He specifically mentions she's going to be serving their friends, which makes me think there's also an element of classism here, but it gets back to his core insecurity which is "I can't provide for her." Also it's worth noting that he describes their marriage as an equal partnership in Inga, which feels slightly at odds to me with the way it's usually talked about, but I think that line was mostly included for the purpose of teaching Hawkeye a lesson, and also that one and the Party were both written by Alan Alda so there might be a little propaganda showing here (affectionate).

There are also a number of times BJ and Peg's marriage is paralleled with Potter and Mildred's marriage, especially in GFA, and in that same episode Potter says Mildred has learned to do a lot on her own and he's going to learn how to do it with her. I think that same dynamic applies to BJ and Peg. However either of them felt about a more traditional dynamic before, things have changed now. Peg has spent two years working while raising her daughter alone. She's had to learn and grow a lot. And that's not necessarily a bad thing! And obviously BJ is different because of the war.

So for me what it boils down to is these young, sheltered people made this commitment to each other with one vision of how their lives would go, and then this thing happened to change all that, and they have to figure out how to deal with it. And if they decide that they really do love each other and they're going to lean on each other and build something new... that's just the most compelling story to me!

I have thoughts on a potential divorce too but I think I'll make a separate post.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 06 (first part)

(Masterpost)(Episode 05)

Warning: This contains spoilers for All 50 Episodes

Bad Boys Bad Boys What You Gonna Do

Nie Huasang’s brought his nuts, and someone’s brought wine, so the boys are drinking in Wei Wuxian’s guest house. Finally he gets to drink some of the Emperor’s Smile wine that he’s been doing all those product placements for.

Boys, get a bowl or something for your shells, were you raised in a barn?

Wei Wuxian hits on waxes poetic about the wine, and Jiang Cheng tells him to shut up. 

Wang Zhuocheng’s raw-fish-eating face may have failed him, but his drunk faces do not disappoint.

Wei Wuxian teases Jiang Cheng about his list of standards for a chick: She should have natural beauty, be virtuous and caring, from a good family, not too talkative, with a gentle voice, and not too capable. Also she should not spend too much money. Drunken running ensues.

Cue Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin

(more behind the cut)

Much of the fandom has decided this list is a good fit for Nie Huaisang himself, and it sorta is. But he is both talkative and unvirtuous, what with all the current sneakiness, and all the eventual murders. 

This also definitely doesn't fit Wen Qing because she's capable as hell.  

This list is, however, a 100% a match for Jiang Yanli. Not in a weird, Jin Guangyao way--a lot of men want to marry a woman like their sister.  In a gender-divided and generation-divided society, a man’s sister might be the only woman he’s ever known well. Jiang Cheng adores Yanli and she’s his ideal model of a woman, as opposed to his mother, who...isnt.  

All these robes and talismans over the door do nothing to stop Lan Wangji from strolling in.  

Okay so - Lan Wangji is the senior disciple of the Lan Clan, yea? There is no way that patrolling the guest area is in any way his job. He is just walking around here at night specifically to see what Wei Wuxian is doing.

I already did a gifpost of the boys and their totally nonsexual horseplay, over here. I’ll just add, for sad factor, that Jiang Cheng is play-choking Wei Wuxian when they’re all on the bed, and later in the running-and-crying episode he is gonna for-real choke him. Foreshadowing! or maybe just coincidence!

One fun thread running through the young-cultivators episodes is that Nie Huaisang is legit terrified of Lan Wangji while also having a major aesthetic crush on him. Look at how flustered he is here, trying to act sober while also checking him out. 

Lan Wangji is shocked and visibly upset - what are you guys doing? This is not his busting face, this is, for a moment, his vulnerable and disillusioned face. He is super not used to what normal people are like. 

Wei Wuxian doesn't lie or otherwise try to get off the hook, which has got to have Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang grinding their teeth in frustration. He invites Lan Wangji to join them for a drink. LWJ cites a the “no drinking on campus” rule and WWX tries to convince him to chill. 

Then we have this lovely coordinated faint by the boys, to get out of going to get punished. Nie Huaisang has been practicing fainting in front of a mirror just in case he ever needs a skill like that in the future. 

Wei Wuxian keeps trying to turn this into a date. Eventually Lan Wangji is so upset he admits he can’t take all three of them by himself. 

Then the boys run away fake-barfing and Wei Wuxian hits Lan Wangji with a talisman. 

Steal His Agency That’s What You’re Gonna Do

What Wei Wuxian does to Lan Wanji here is definitely wrong. But it's not entirely a disaster.  It allows some crucial information to be shared between them, and it results in Wei Wuxian getting the utter shit beat out of him and never doing this again. I mean, he continues to mind-control his enemies and their eventual corpses, but he doesn't intentionally violate a friend or ally's autonomy in the future. Uhh not counting that whole golden core surgery-without-consent situation. And probably some other situations I’ve forgotten. He improves slightly, okay? 

It’s important to note, incidentally, that the Lan rules about drinking and other “vices” should not be viewed through a Christian lens. The Lans are neither puritans nor ascetics (look at their clothes, furniture, and jewelry, for starters). Being drunk is forbidden probably because it’s a loss of self-control. 

Speaking of self-control, mad props to Wang Yibo for being able to have zero physical reaction to fingers snapping in his face.

Drunk Lan Wangji

Under duress, Lan Wangji knocks back a cup of wine and promptly passes most of the way out. 

Wei Wuxian puts Lan Wangji into bed not unkindly, but pretty much like a sack of potatoes. Compare this to how tenderly he handles Lan Wangji the next time he’s drunk. 

WWX tells LWJ to call him Wei Gege, and giggles. Is this a term of endearment in this context? So far the various boys are calling each other -xiong, not -ge or gege.  In Western media, men calling each other “bro” is basically saying “no homo,” but brotherhood and sisterhood in C-Drama is often a way of indicating stronger love than friendship, without saying whether it's sexual or not. 

They finally start to have a conversation, and when Lan Wangji explains that no-one can touch his headband except, etc etc, Wei Wuxian stops trying to touch it. So at least he's not a handsy bastard in addition to all his other faults. 

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that his clan is boring and women won't want to marry him. Lan Wangji says that's fine. On one level this is the show acknowledging that he's gay, but I think he's responding in a gender-neutral way; he doesn't want to marry anyone. Marriage, from his perspective, is the literal worst. 

We don't know how he felt about his father, but he definitely loved his mother deeply, and she had a profoundly unhappy marriage, in which her husband did not provide companionship and her children were taken from her.

A note about all that: The dynamics of heterosexual marriages in The Untamed are not based on contemporary companionate marriage. Sex and reproduction is a wife's job in this world, and giving a gentry woman the option to choose her husband is radical. Wei Wuxian is the only one who dares say that Jiang Yanli should have a choice when Jin Guangshan casually tries to give her to his son in front of everyone.  

OP made this today but will totally reuse it when episode 23 rolls around

So Lan Wangji’s parents' marriage was extremely problematic but not necessarily for the reasons it would be in contemporary terms. Having signed on to marry Lan Dad, Mom would have expected to live together and get laid regularly (important for health, in some traditional views, regardless of love/no love) and to have the company of her children. Instead, she was isolated. Lan Dad wanted to have it both ways and so even though he loved her and apparently hooked up with her sometimes, he didn't do his duty by her. She didn't love him but she did her duty. 

Wei Wuxian continues to not get it, calling Lan Wangji dull and babbling about Lan Wangji’s parents until he realizes that LWJ is an orphan like him. 

A nice shift happens here. Once the penny drops, Wei Wuxian doesn't ask a single additional question - he just sees - by reading Lan Wangji’s face - what the deal is, and shares his own story to show he understands. 

This is the first time Wei Wuxian mentions being chased by dogs, which is kind of a big deal, because why was he left all alone when his parents died? 

Why didn't anyone take him in before Jiang Fengmian found him? How isolated are independent cultivators in this world? 

Tea Time

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen are having tea, and the Lan Clan is so uptight they don't touch each other's teacups. I don't know what this thing is called so I'm going to call it a tea speculum. 

Lan Qiren is back from the cultivation conference and says the red crack plague is happening over in Qinghe where the Nie clan lives.  Lan Xichen fills him in on the water demon, specifically saying Wei Wuxian figured out the connection to the red crack dudes, and explaining who WWX is, as if Lan QIren hadn't already thrown stuff at him and threatened to eventually kill him. 

Fun fact that I just noticed this week so didn't make it into earlier posts: In Episode 46, when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are in the Jiang ancestral hall, WWX says he was often punished to kneel there, and LWJ said that they heard about this in Gusu.  

So when WWX came to Gusu he already had a reputation as a troublemaker, and the Lan brothers were aware of it.   

Busted and Beaten

A Lan snitch comes in to say that Wei Wuxian has successfully corrupted Lan Wangji, which really shouldn’t cause as much surprise as it does.

“Wei Wuxian got drunk”

“Lan Wangji got drunk”

Lan Xichen takes a moment to consider carefully whether Wei Wuxian is a good friend for his little brother and whether perhaps he was too hasty in throwing them together. Ha ha ha no he doesn’t. 

On the punishment porch, Lan Xichen tries to lecture Lan Wangji in a calm way, but Lan Qiren wants to beat him and Lan Wangji wants to get beat. Wei Wuxian can’t understand why Lan Wangji doesn’t let him take the blame for the drinking. 

Lan Qiren goes way the fuck overboard with this punishment because he's angry--losing control and losing his sense of proportion--and Lan Xichen is shocked. The drone camera watching from above is also shocked.  

Lan Qiren has a few (very few) redeeming qualities, but his extreme rigidity and chronic resentment of anyone he perceives as bad are serious problems. His nephews are both struggling with complex moral quandaries as they get older, and he is absolutely no help to them in resolving their conflicts.

This is definitely...a style of parenting & teaching, but you can see how poorly it works, with Lan Wangji straight up saying “fuck it” after many years of conformity.  Lan Xichen is devoted to the middle path and tries to be obedient. But he is actually not walking anywhere near the middle path, as he gets pulled into colluding with a murderer at the same time as getting dragged onto his brother’s carnival ride. These men need parenting that isn’t so, uh, fucking stupid. (Yes, grown adults still need good parenting; watch Go Ahead if you doubt me) 

Wei Wuxian initially yells and falls down when he gets hit, but then he sees Lan Wangji is taking the beating without any reaction and he tries to do the same. 

Aftermath

Jiang Yanli gently lectures the boys, blaming Jiang Cheng for Wei Wuxian's drinking.  Jesus Christ, he's the younger sibling, could you just NOT, Yanli?  

Both boys ask Yanli not to tell their parents. The boys bicker about who's at fault and then Wei Wuxian shifts to baby voice and starts whining to Yanli about the pain. 

Yanli tells him to suck it up, and says after school she'll -- ok and I know this will be a surprise for everyone -- make soup for them. The boys immediately get back on the same team, which is team Please Put Meat In the Soup.

There's a nice character building moment for Wei Wuxian here. When he sees Lan Xichen he initially turns away to avoid running into him, but then he adults-up and goes to face him and greet him, giving him a half of a bow because of the pain, the pain. Rather than complaining about his punishment he meekly asks if he's broken another rule. 

Lan Xichen tells him that he did wrong but that Lan Qiren’s punishment was too harsh, and then in what is one of my favorite Lan Xichen moments, invites Wei Wuxian to use the cold spring to heal, but doesn't invite Jiang Cheng to go with him even though Jiang Cheng also was beaten. Lan Xichen, Matchmaker Auntie Extraordinaire. 

Then he answers Wei Wuxian’s question about his mom by saying she was just like Wei Wuxian and drove Lan Qiran up the wall. Jiang Cheng's reaction to that is really sweet. He does enjoy Wei Wuxian at the same time as being constantly irritated by him. 

Lan Xichen does his patented “breaking off in the middle of saying something and leaving out a chunk of the story” maneuver, although this time he doesn't include a flute solo. 

OP is mildly obsessed with Xuan Lu’s shoulders in this outfit. Also Yanli has an interesting sword, that's got some wood carving similar to Subian, but without the organic look, which OP only noticed because of screen capping Xuan Lu’s shoulders.  

Club Ruohan

Wen Qing continues to be pretty and slightly evil at this stage, sending magic fire notes to her boss using this talisman that is definitely floating in the air and not just hanging from a string. 

Wen Ruohan is in the mosh pit with his zombie groupies while he reads Wen Qing’s extremely vague status update and says "it all makes sense." 

Reach out and touch faith

Soundtrack

Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode

Writing Prompt

How did Wei Wuxian’s parents die?

Admin Notes

I’m going to start spacing out my “first part” and “second part” posts by a few days.  I’ll update this post to link up the second part once I post it, and my masterpost is always up to date. 

Also: if you want more of my original content but don’t want to follow my whole blog (not following is fine!), I keep a pinboard of fun stuff at the top of my blog. I try to post original content at least once a week.

Continued in the second part later this week!

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Thoughts on Sotsu Episodes 1-5

Lack of motivation to write aside, I genuinely don’t have much to say about Sotsu so far! So here’s a collection of scattered fragments on the first two arcs.

First: these are by far the most straightforward Answer Arcs in the entire WTC series, aren’t they? I was initially wondering if we might be doing the set up from original Higurashi, with similar events but different Fragments - but no, we don’t even have that conceit. We’re showing the exact Fragments as in the -damashi arcs, just from different points of view. With Satoko even spelling out her trick afterwards!

The overall result is that Oniakashi and Wataakashi still feel like Higurashi being set to “easy mode” to cater to newcomers. Even after that ship long since sailed.

Meanwhile, the actually optimal way to experience Higurashi SotsuGou really does seem to be having watched the original Higurashi anime many years ago. My younger brother is in that category - so what feels like repetition for superfans like me ends up being a nice refresher on the characters and their circumstances for him.

New OP/ED!

-Gou’s OP might still be my favorite (not having a random clothing damage Hanyuu helps…), but Sotsu’s is a close second! And I suspect the song will only grow on me as the season continues.

-I think the part of the OP that surprised me most was the sheer amount of St Lucia-age Satoko and Rika in this one. So far, it seems like Sotsu’s Answer Arcs are going to be exact perspective swaps on the corresponding Question Arcs, which won’t leave much time for St. Lucia shenanigans. Perhaps a hint that we’ll be returning to that original Matsuribayashi Fragment?

-And yes, @tarhalindur​, you were not wrong that I would be all about those OP/ED visuals! As so many people have noted, the laser light battle in the Sea of Fragments is extremely Umineko-like. Even specifically Lambda and Bern-like. Regardless on how the actual SatoRika relationship shakes out, I think we’re still fully on track for witch origin stories!

(Though leaning too far into the Umineko witches makes those shots really hard to take seriously, haha! Please imagine Rika and Satoko screaming “I LOVE YOU” at the top of their lungs there, and that’s it, that’s Lambda and Bern’s dynamic in a nutshell. XD)

-As for that one shot of Satoko and Rika nearly kissing… well… that’s what my other post is going to be about.

-I actually don’t have much to say on the ED, beyond it being as incredibly beautiful as the last two. (Gosh, I really need to get high resolution screencaps of it to use as desktop backgrounds!)

Symbolically and tonally, it’s oddly hopeful and reconciliatory for this point in the story. (That handholding image in the Sea of Fragments at the end...!) In the episodes themselves, all we see is Satoko going about her plan with villainous glee (and so much for my theories that she was barely keeping her side together). But between the OP and especially this regretful ED, I still find myself believing Satoko and Rika will eventually work things out.

Oniakashi

-I thought Oniakashi was a surprisingly efficient and well told version of Rena’s backstory. I can’t remember how it was done in the OG Higurashi anime, but compared to the VN, this is a very efficient condensation of her backstory. We got exactly what we needed to know, presented in a decently affecting manner, and without over-belaboring the point.

-I always disliked that Rina was characterized as so one-note evil given her profession. It felt stereotypical in a bad way. So I was quite happy to see Rina got some tiny bit of depth to her, she honestly needed it even more than Teppei.

-There were also some neat bits and bobs of symbolism and atmosphere building scattered throughout these episodes.  That quick shot of Satoko with looper-eyes in her reflection in the classroom, for example.

(Seeing the witch version of yourself in a reflection… does that happen in the Umineko manga? I know it’s a very very common subject for fanart, but I don’t recall it occurring in actual canon before. Which is to say: goodness I love all the fanart in this mode, so I was very happy to see that visual come up in the actual series.)

Another neat detail - the symbolism of Rena’s cotton puff sinking during the Watanagashi festival. Was it on-the-nose? Sure. But it’s lingering on tiny things like that which really help to set the atmosphere, something Gou really struggled to do. So all-in-all, I think I’d actually consider Sotsu off to a stronger start than Gou in its presentation.

-After building up "how does Satoko inject people without arousing suspicion?” as an obstacle in my head so long, the explanation that Rena was just asleep felt rather underwhelming. (And come on, we don’t even get to see it in Wataakashi? Sheesh...)

-All the digital ink spilled on theories where part of Keiichi and Rena’s fight was a hallucination… well, so much for that. Pity, that was the one thing that could have really elevated the end of Onidamashi in my opinion.

-That being said, as much as I’m unhappy with the “solution” to Rena and Keiichi’s fight, juxtaposing it with Rika’s happy cheering was about the best way that material could have been presented. (The pitch black comedy continues to be on point, lol.) Plus, whiplashing from that to Rika learning about it at school makes it clear why she despaired enough to resort to suicide.

And the suicide itself… well, that scene sure made it obvious that Satoko is a lot more practiced at manually jumping Fragments! Heh.

(Though much like the infamous USO DA, Rika Stabby Fun Times is another scene where I think the original anime sold the horror better.)

Wataakashi

Satoko and Eua being able to snoop on Rika and Hanyuu’s conversations in the Sea of Fragments is very intriguing. That means Satoko probably knows about the Onigari too.

But does this detail (and Eua’s badmouthing of Hanyuu) make it more or less likely that Eua is Hanyuu in some form? Man, I don’t even know at this point…

-At least Satoko’s adventures in firearm acquisition was a taste of the completely absurd time looper thunderdome tactics I was hoping for. Rika really needs to up her game!

To some extent, Satoko’s strategy here also feels like a commentary on fans asking silly questions like “why didn’t Rika get a gun?” Ditto regarding her curiosity about what an L5 Mion would be like. She truly is becoming more witch-like - in that she’s now a dark mirror of the audience’s most morbid interests, just like the role played by Bernkastel, Featherine, and of course, Lambdadelta.

Oh, and don’t think I didn’t catch those horse names being another extremely oblique LambdaBern reference. Satoko placed her bets on Wanyan beating Cheshire Cat, you say~? 

(Wanyans/Meowoofs are also a Ciconia thing, though they’re first mentioned as a pet Lambda has in Umineko’s epilogue.)

-As for Satoko and Teppei, I’m still okay so far with how Teppei’s change of heart is being handled. I actually kind of like that even this “better” side of him is still clearly a pathetic loser who has no business taking care of a kid. And Satoko is warily tolerating his presence on her own terms, with no actual intention of forgiving or trusting him. She controls the situation!

-So much for Shion escaping St. Lucia getting brought up in Wataakashi, huh. Or Shion and Mion’s backstory at all, for that matter. A disappointing choice, after I thought Oniakashi did decently well with Rena’s backstory.

-In general Wataakashi seems to be getting hit the hardest with pacing woes, as well as taking the least unique route to Mion going L5. Lots of it seems like an attempt to parallel Shion’s obsession with Satoshi / Shion realizing she did something horrible but it was too late from Meakashi, to questionable effect.  

If anything, the thing I found most interesting was that Satoko was the one opting to push the jealousy angle! Usually she’s quite naïve when it comes to romance. But now... projecting much, girl? :P

-Finally, I can’t help but continue comparing these -damashi/akashi arcs to the twists in the original arcs, and that comparison still does not do the new arcs any favors. Because Onikakushi and Watanagashi had some really good twists to their solutions! In contrast, these new arcs are an exercise in “what if the early suspicions you had about Rena being murderous and Mion being a yandere were actually RIGHT?” It’s Onikakushi and Watanagashi played completely straight, and I think those arcs lose a lot of their brilliance as a result.

It also makes me very, very nervous for how Tatariakashi will be handled...

But we’ll get there when we get there, I suppose. No sense worrying about that now, when we’ve got Mion’s bloodbath to cover next episode!

[catras-breakup-song]

this is the last time i'm going to be discussing this "sisters" discourse (i hope), but i feel like i need to get the last word in for my own peace of mind; no hate to the OP but this was subposted about without my prior knowledge and i don't want to get confrontational by responding directly. if OP see this, by the way, i'd be okay with talking in DMs to get stuff sorted out peacefully, but i'd really rather not debate or even discuss this topic any further altogether. this response is for myself and my followers only for archival purposes, so for my own safety because i can't change the settings, please do not reblog if we aren't mutuals.

i talked about it more with one of my mutuals (who has asked to remain anonymous), who shared some thoughts that i agreed with and has allowed me to post them here, which i've re-worded and added to, in case i could ever make use of them for reference again in the future.

firstly, someone else and i have acknowledged & disputed the canon sources which say they're sisters in a different thread from this as being inconsistent with what's true to the story.

To fix this issue, all the writers had to do was to have Adora be raised by Hordak, and Catra by Shadow Weaver. That's it, problem solved. The ship is no longer incestuous because Catra and Adora, in this scenario, were raised in the same place since childhood, BUT BY TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. There would be no goldenchild/scapegoat dynamic. There would be no jealousy on Catra's part regarding the fact that she thinks Shadow Weaver will never "love" and "cherish" her the way she "loves" and "cherishes" her sister.

this comes across as a little dismissive of the abuse that adora faced as well since it mostly revolved around expectations of her and actions done to catra were in part to make her feel guilty, and suggesting they be "raised" separately tears apart the foundations of their dynamic which sets up the story in the first place ─ whether they were destined to be sisters or lovers, their turning into enemies heavily relies on their conjoined relationship with shadow weaver. for as terrible as a person as hordak is (he's literally the one who brought the horde to etheria in the first place and was a mass warlord who terrorized & conquered more territories than anyone else ever would, besides maybe prime), he's not a guardian of any type. not a parent, teacher, mentor, or what have you. he's definitely not a master manipulator either; as we can see in the third season when his arc kicks off with entrapta, he's not very sociable, so that wouldn't make much sense. i guess if the backstory was written a bit differently he maybe could have trained adora to be a ruthless soldier without anyone ever knowing of she-ra (though it's worth noting that shadow weaver sensed her existence in a flashback from season two), as i've somewhat seen in edited AUs many times before (credit apparently goes to @/sapphiscientist, whom i cannot find), but he would never single her out as "special" or have the same motivations to gain power from using her specifically.

with all that being said, the golden child & scapegoat dynamic isn't even exclusive to siblings, it's just the most common form. it still could've theoretically worked even if hordak (supposedly a better and more involved "parent") & shadow weaver had mentored adora & catra separately but worked together to divide them so intentionally, as long as they interacted enough throughout their childhoods to be close (which, again, the whole show relies on).

"If she was just their caretaker, then why do Catra and Adora have a goldenchild/scapegoat dynamic that mirrors sibling rivalry? Why does Adora admit to Glimmer that Shadow Weaver raised her as a mom would? Why is Catra filled with genuine happiness after Shadow Weaver caresses her cheek? Why does she gently touch that spot and smile? Why is Catra so heartbroken and furious when her mind basically tells her: 'Shadow Weaver betrayed you.' Why does Catra immediately give up her potentially happy life with Scorpia once she reveals to her that Shadow Weaver once again chose Adora over her"

the centering around a nuclear family structure here is very assuming and interpretative, but none of these gestures are exclusive to that. the soft caressing of faces means something special (or is supposed to) as long as it comes from someone the recipient looks up to and idolizes. also, shadow weaver also attempts to cup glimmer's face the same way in season four, so again, if it's a motherly act then what does that say?

Like… this rivalry is at the heart of C//A. Not romance, but rivalry between two adopted sisters who have a toxic and abusive adoptive mother.

essentially this hints that the heart of catradora's romance would be better off removed from the story because it's incestuous... but to quote the person i was talking to: "Except it's not, because rivalry is not exclusive to siblings. Any adult mentor/caregiving figure can pit children against each other. I get that this level of attachment to Shadow Weaver is really only shown in media as familial dynamics, but imagine having no caregivers or mentors except the people in the Horde. They depended on them to survive as kids. There is going to be a bond there. They're going to seek those people's approval. I know why it comes off as parental and in a way, it does have that energy. However, I really do not see how this parental dynamic is exclusively different than something that could develop between, say, caregivers and kids at an orphanage. I just don't see a fundamental difference enough to see this as having to be parental/like adoptive parents." regarding the last sentence, i feel like even if catradora's relationship can be technically read as sisterly in any way, it's enough to overlook for the main plotline that we were given, which was intended to be a romance.

"Uhm… no. Close friends ≠ siblings, unless everyone admits that they see each other that way. Then they wouldn't consider a romantic relationship in the first place, unless there's some confusion present."

it seems like i was misunderstood again...? the whole point was that glimmadora aren't sisters, because it was arguing against the inconsistency of that logic when they can be paralleled back to catradora, especially in regards to how angella sees adora as almost familial, if not so (remember of course that "family" has a broad and open-ended meaning, and doesn't necessarily mean relatives or whomever would share the structure of adopted relatives). i don't agree with the sentiment that angella adopted adora, but it would be as valid of a statement to make as about shadow weaver taking on adora + catra. besides, i don't think there are any actual siblings in this show, that aren't outright stated to be anyway, except for micah & castaspella.

"Angella was a mother figure in Adora's life (and in Bow's life, too), but she was not her, or Bow's mother. Shadow Weaver was Adora and Catra's mother, until the end. Why? She. Raised. Them. She. Taught. Them. Everything. They. Grew. Up. With. Her.

this implies there's a cutoff to how far you can go in life before considering someone you met as parental. it's a bit insulting to many families out there to say you can't be adopted by someone once you hit your late teens (which is the legal cutoff limit in the US before you're released from the system on your own anyway) just because the person you've grown to love didn't raise you until that point.

also, do we even know how long bow has known glimmer and therefore angella? there is an old drawing by nate of them as kids, with angella included too, so if you consider his work outside of the official series itself canon then who's to say bow didn't have a third parent/mother since she was present for a good chunk of his life?

"Shadow Weaver was Glimmer's mentor (why tf would she view her as a mother figure??? It was out of despair that Glimmer had to learn from SW, not genuine affection. Also she still had her biological mother???)"

again, i think this is kind of playing into my point a bit because i wouldn't unironically argue that shadow weaver is a mother figure to glimmer. considering she mentored micah and glimmer is his daughter, it would be weird to see them that way and make it seem like she was a (grand)parent. that being said though, since she does small but similar things to glimmer that she's done with her "actual daughters" that are motherly apparently, it would be difficult not to make the comparison.

it's also strange that you would mention her biological mother still being alive, just absent, considering this whole argument is based on parental figures who are not related to their supposed kids. it's oddly specific, since aside from the fact that glimmer missed angella dearly, what she needed as queen was not just guidance/mentorship and motherly love but also simply support in general because she wasn't ready for the role. it doesn't necessarily matter how she gets it or who she gets it from in terms of relationship dynamics, she was still unstable and desperate. if there had been another character in the show besides angella & shadow weaver, they could've very well been parental, in fact if the events of season four had played out earlier and/or differently then micah would've been that person and she might've been able to step down as he regained his kingdom.

"About that "argument"… the underlying issues and insecurities Adora and Glimmer acted out are literally present between Catra and Adora, so… yeah. Case closed, goodbye."

this is still exactly what i'm talking about... i'm sorry, no offense, but this reads to me in favor of my point. the conflicts between catradora & glimmadora are similar, and if one pairing is sisterly and the other is friendly then that just proves these dynamics are not exclusive to one type of relationship or the other. they (either duo) can't be an example of schrödinger's cat as both sisters and not sisters simultaneously.

aside from quoting parts of the post, for whatever it's worth, it may also be worth mentioning that not only to catra & adora not see themselves as sisters despite everything, but adora didn't even know what an aunt was, which is a pretty basic familial term. i guess this point could really go either way since i've seen it speculated before that they were dating in the horde without really having the words to describe being girlfriends, so it could apply to sisterhood too, but i'm just throwing it out there for now.

another thing i never really see get brought up anymore (although i think it has been in the past), unrelated to sisterhood specifically but along the same vein, is that catradora are technically of different species, but both are humanoid enough for it to not be strange or otherwise socially unacceptable with the way their world's biological compatibilities work. does this discomfort to a small percentage of the viewers mean scorptra would be weird as well, since the fandom thought they were headed in that direction for a while, and scorfuma since they're implied to become a canon couple? my understanding is that this would be more analogous to interracial couples rather than comparable to interspecies ones as we consider how they'd be built on earth.

anyway, as i stated when i initially came across the subpost, it was kind of baffling to me how this person was so respectful to me when approaching my inbox the other day (which is a good thing because i would've gotten really defensive and not been so cooperative otherwise), but a couple days before that he came across as so aggressive in the tone & tags when talking about me behind my back originally. i hope this doesn't come across as too hypocritical for me to also be responding without direct notice, but as i said it's mostly for my own circle rather than for him and i'm trying to be fairly humble here.

if you (general audience) read this whole thing, then i'm not really sure what to say... i definitely don't want to cause anymore trouble, so i'm going to leave it here and not come back to it unless i feel attacked. i wanted to get this rant out because i felt obligated to for my own sake, sort of like an egotistical fear over my reputation if that makes sense. both the OP and i have acknowledged that we can't change each other's minds beyond this point, so that's not what i'm attempting to do.

seeing your defending catradora/catradora antis dni post, do you have any arguments against the whole "they're sisters" thing?

i do, yes!

growing up together does not make your friendship a sibling bond/dynamic unless you choose for it to. i saw someone claim that it inherently does unrelated to catradora specifically, but like, surely that has to be a troll because there's no way. 💀 i guess that means lonnie, kyle, and rogelio are also catra & adora's siblings, like a family of 5? what about the other unnamed human-looking characters (i think one had short green hair and another with a dark purple mullet)?

shadow weaver was never their mother (figure). she was their caretaker, basically just the supervising adult in that segment of the fright zone. but like, even if she was, it doesn't take a genius to infer that she was disowned once they both got out of there.

if catra & adora are sisters, then glimmer & adora are too, and also bow is their brother, which crosses glimbow off the list as well. you can't ship anyone without it being incestuous, unfortunately (sarcastic). considering queen angella is a direct parallel to shadow weaver, and angella's last nurturing words to adora before kissing her forehead was that the best friend squad needed to take care of each other, and shadow weaver's last act was ensuring catra could take care of adora the rest of the way to the heart... well, i guess love can only be familial.

in S4 shadow weaver took glimmer under her wing and taught her the same lessons in sorcery that micah (her father) would have if he was around in her life, literally after he learned from her first, so by this logic, glimmer & adora share two adoptive mothers; especially when you take into account their "argument" (canonically it was fake for a setup, but there were some underlying issues & insecurities there) about being the "favorite" with regards to the "golden child" method shadow weaver uses against scapegoats.

i would suggest reading this great post by @witch-apologist, which is where some of the points above come from, and you could probably also search sisters/siblings on their blog since they've challenged antis about this topic before!

[sazzafraz]

whatever its free

almost all of that doc is unsalvageable as in its just my notes to self which are. uh. not a narrative

She picks her coffee up and shifts the plate aside. The paper underneath is dirt smudged and barely legible. Sakura takes a sip of her coffee and contemplates what it would like to be truly surprised by the shape of the new world. 

The paper is old, she would have been fourteen when she saw it last, and it has not aged particularly gracefully. Underneath the official Konoha header is the tight scrawl of the jounin commander and the messy script of her shishou’s hand. Underneath that is Sakura’s own handwriting. The strokes are timid and rushed, like a little girl being scolded for stealing her mother’s lipstick. Sakura wasn’t quite a child when she signed her name to the bottom of the page but she wasn’t far enough away from ribbons and cupcakes to truly understand. 

I, Haruno Sakura ID: 012601, shinobi of Konohagakure and citizen of Hi no Kuni under our Daimyo, the 23rd of his title, do solemnly swear to never reveal the details of mission 123-575-889b. I understand that in signing this oath I agree to-

Well, a lot of things. Underneath all that, in a neat box that Sakura has never once seen filled out, is a small red stamp that says Redacted.      

And to think it was going to be such a nice day. 

so the thesis of this was going to be the thin line of sakura’s duty and morality as well as what kunoichi are in terms of ‘shadow work’ (the non pagan kind) and like. the set up was after ‘history has its eye’ which i WISH i’d finished because its conceit is necessary to most of the extended ntfs universe but, here: 

danzo is taken to trial by a jury of his peers in Oto and Konoha, considering the length and breadth of his crimes Uzumaki Karin is called in to way judgement as part of a good will diplomatic gesture. concurrently tsunade is trying to keep konoha steady while wave after wave of black ops missions are being redacted and the whole shinobi world is being forced into an awkward position by the sharp difference in values between it and the civilian populace. in the past uzumaki mito deals with becoming the wife of a very famous, very powerful man who can and does skirt the necessary politicking of ninja bullshit, accidentally setting precedents that would echo forward to danzo’s trial. along with managing her brother in law, who is absolutely NOT perfecting a jutsu that raises the dead and harvesting organs to sell on the black market in between creating humane policy, and her husbands ex, who just committed treason and is slamming bijuu into each other like its a game of paddywack and is also sometimes right? infuriating

we follow these three storylines until on the second day of his trial, after it becomes clear that the cultural differences are too wide to safely gap (the shinobi look like they want to go easy on them, the civilians are setting a precedent that will be real hard to roll back) Danzo stands up and is like ‘i have the’ wisteria papers’ of most of the people in this room hmu if u want ur secrets exposed’ and everyone just loses it

hennyways our bodies possessed, the sakura fic, was about one of these redacted missions that takes place when sakura is about 14, new to her apprenticeship and a target for assassination by danzo, tsunade plays a game of keep away sending sakura on a dangerous mission in T&I which involves her learning how to do ‘honeypot’ work. she and her instructors, a multi time failure of the jounin exams and a clan member with opaque interests, journey to what will eventually become kuebiko hospital. long story short, tsunade plays a sharp hand, danzo is nearly assassinated and sakura becomes a queenpiece in espionage, her poor disposition for it aside

and the meta story was going to be me thinking about then-11 years in this fandom and all the good work and the poor about sex in the time of shinobi. i’m not gonna name names but important here: consent. i am the most boring person on earth about this but how consent both narratively and meta-narratively has been reconstructed heavily in the last nine years or so. i started reading naruto fanfic in 2005. no one warned for anything. maybe explicit content and seme/uke nonsense but apart from that? no. and while i’m not going to get on a soapbox about this, because it doesn’t matter much, a bulk of naruto fic was written before a03, which means a bulk of its trends were too. back to consent, the concept of duty to village and a shinobi way already blurs consent. did kakashi actually consent to receiving his sharingan for example, that's a life long body alteration. can you truly consent to die and kill for your country blah blah. where this intersects with sexual consent is......wide ranging. i remember how often ‘sex training’ was part of harem fics and teacher/student dynamics and while i practice a YMMV mindset i found the inclusion as a natural outcome of being a shinobi really weird? sex work is not easy. full contact sex work is not easy. you can’t exactly train for it and while there’s certainly the idea of geisha (gross western ideas) the place that they take up culturally is not synonymous with sex. the kind of sex work exemplified in these fics again, would not be something you would want a career soldier for, too many tics and nics. and i don’t really believe the market for it is going to be so large that a dedicated team makes sense. especially when a normal sex worker would probably do fine? so this weird combination being stuck together as a realistic outcome is just baffling.

so i put sakura in it. proud sakura, who wouldn’t bend to anyone. virgin sakura, who cared about her body in a way that a kunoichi shouldn’t. and finally emotionally hurt sakura having lost her whole team to outside forces in the position of having to learn intimacy and sabotage as a form of violence. it was never going to be detailed but the point was to draw lines about the body and what it does. the female body specifically. and the problem immediately became that like, she would have to be vulnerable to do it. it became an examination of what women where willing to ask other women to endure. what sakura had to construct to be able to do it. i’ve pretty much maintained my position that of team 7 sakura is the only one whose actually good at her job. i realise now that this sounds darker than it would have been. i can’t say it was all like, current day ideas of consensual but no one would have said shit in 2008.        

tldr: sex workers as information gatherers is mildly realistic, shinobi as sex workers just generally? not so much.  

[nevermindirah]

Ok it's Jewish Booker o'clock, I can no longer stop myself, let's do this!

Why Jewish Booker? Dude was born in Marseilles in 1770, which happens to be a FASCINATING time and place in Jewish history, and it adds ridiculous layers to his character (without excusing a damn thing). Alternately just because I think he’s neat :)

Jewish Booker headcanons that make me happy:

not to be all "real Jews do X" but Jews fuck with candles hard. Book of Nile thrives on old/modern analog/digital giggles. Booker lighting Shabbat candles, lighting yarzeit (memorial) candles for his wife and sons (sob), lighting a menorah, lighting candles just because he's feeling emotional even though it's not chag (a holiday) or a yarzeit and Nile thinks he's trying to be sexy but he's really just in his feelings. just like. so many candles.

maybe Booker was the person who punched Richard Spencer at Trump's inauguration, just bringing back that time somebody punched a famous neonazi in the street and said neonazi has all but stopped appearing in public after a few rounds of public punching

were the Old Guard in Charlottesville in 2017? how many times has Booker the Blond Jew infiltrated North American white nationalist / Klan type activities and then stolen their weapons and/or killed them? likewise there's plenty of horrifying white nationalist shit happening across Europe this century, how many Pim Fortuyn types has he been involved in taking down? (I Am Of Course Not Endorsing Violence TM ;) ;) )

SINGING. Mattias Schoenaerts sings in Away From the Madding Crowd but it's church shit, sigh, anyway he has a nice voice. a lot of Jewish prayer is sung/chanted (depending on when/where you are and the gender rules of the community you're in) and there’s been a lot of innovation to Jewish singing in Booker’s lifetime, and I just want Nile to overhear him singing to himself on Friday afternoons

Nile Freeman was four years old when The Prince of Egypt came out, she grew up on that shit, she would want to introduce her new family to that shit. Please join me in picturing Booker, Nicky, Joe, and Andy all shouting "that's not how it happened!!" throughout this beautiful nightmare of a movie with lovely animation and songs but where white people voice most of the Egyptian and Jewish characters, because Booker Nicky and Joe's religious texts all frame the Exodus story a little differently and Andy was probably there when it happened (except for how it didn't actually happen it's an important story but it's just a story pls just let me giggle about Andy being super old)

Read below the cut for sad Jewish Booker headcanons, French Jewish history (mostly sad), context on antisemitism (enraging/sad), and all the way to the very end for a himbo joke.

Jewish Booker headcanons, I made myself sad edition:

he is a forger. who was alive. in 1939. visas. VISAS. V I S A S. how many of us did he save? how many more could he have saved if he didn't sleep that night? how heavily does that weigh?

how do we think he BECAME a forger? most likely he was doing what he needed to do to support his family, which gets extra poignant if he was also trying to help his people, forging documents as well as money even during his mortal life

Booker raised Catholic by crypto-Jews adds ANOTHER layer to the forgery thing, no shit he'd get good at falsifying paperwork and coming up with plausible cover stories

do we know how Booker made it back home after his first death in 1812? his route between the Russian Empire and Provence in 1812 would've been a patchwork of laws about Jews, in case starvation and frostbite weren't enough for him to have to deal with, he's blond and could maybe get away with pretending not to be Jewish if he had to, alternately maybe synagogues and yeshivot took him in on his way home

the structural and sometimes-interpersonal dynamics of antisemitism cause many individual Jews to experience feelings of teetering on the fence between a valued member of a not-exclusively-Jewish community and a scapegoat/outcast/problem. HOLY SHIT BOOKER. "what do you know of all these years alone" is the most Jewish loneliness-in-a-crowd shit I've ever heard. fear that we're not wanted, or only wanted so long as we're useful — that's something that basically all people struggle with under capitalism, but it's especially poignant for many Jews because of the particular way antisemitism operates. (NOTE this can tip from a legit Jewish Booker reading to woobification of the sad white man who couldn't possibly be held responsible for his own actions because he's so sad, which, NOPE. it's very understandable for him to feel left out and misunderstood and not as wanted, as the youngest and not part of an immortal couple and maybe Jewish, but NONE OF THIS excuses his betrayal.)

Crusaders murdered a lot of Jews on their way to the ~holy land~. how many of Booker's people did Nicky kill on his way to kill Joe's people? has Booker ever actually talked to either of them about it?

I read this really beautiful fic about Joe needing to circumcise himself after getting run over by a cart (ouch) — this is a hell of a thing for Joe and Booker to have in common

just generally Jewish Booker adds more layers to him and Joe so clearly being such close friends, ugh that look Joe gives him when they're leaving the bar at the end of the movie, and I very much do not mean this in a gross Arab-Israeli-conflict way because Joe is Amazigh not Arab and Booker is Jewish not Israeli (and also a lot of Jews are Arabs) (but most importantly there's no ~eternal conflict~ between Muslims and Jews) (more about OP Is Not A Zionist below)

like, the UK and France (and to a certain extent Italy) carved up the former Ottoman Empire after WWI; among other things, the UK took Palestine, and they could've worked on eradicating European antisemitism so Jews wouldn't have to leave but instead they used their control of Palestine to encourage Zionist emigration of Jews out of Europe, and France took what is now Iraq, which has some pretty direct implications for US military involvement in that country in Nile's lifetime; France colonized Tunisia in the late 19th century and still held it during the Vichy era which means Tunisian Jews were subject to Nazi anti-Jewish laws which is just layers upon layers of colonial racist Islamophobic and antisemitic nightmares for Joe and Booker to live through

to be crystal clear before anybody gets ooh Muslim-Jewish conflict up in here, antisemitism is an invention of European Christians that they imported to the places they colonized, the European colonial powers encouraged Zionism because it was easier for them to encourage Jews to leave Europe and set us up as middle agents between the colonial powers and the ~scary brown people~, the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim governments historically have had a second-class citizenship category for non-Muslims that rankles my American first amendment freedom of religion sensibility but was very much not targeting Jews specifically, and these two men who've lived for a long-ass time through many varieties of geopolitical awfulness (and alongside a certain unwashed Crusader who has since learned his lesson) would have Things To Say about how our current mainstream discourses frame these things

getting off my soapbox and back to this action movie I'm trying to talk about, the ANGST of Booker's exile, which is simultaneously a very valid decision for Andy Joe and Nicky to make, an extremely long time for Nile who is only 26 years old to be separated from the one person on the planet in a position to really understand the crisis she's going through, and holy shit expelling a Jew from your group when he's already been expelled from mortality and his family and being expelled from places and continually having to start over somewhere new is THE curse of surviving through antisemitism, OUCH MY FEELINGS

Some French Jewish history:

France, like basically all of Europe, periodically expelled its Jews, but Provence (where Marseilles is) wasn't legally part of France during the expulsions up through 1398 so Provence had a continuous active Jewish community; about 3,000 Iberian Jewish refugees ended up in Provence after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s

the 1498 expulsion of French Jews DID apply to Provence but many "converted" to Christianity and reestablished a Jewish community when enforcement of the expulsion chilled out (which was in the government's interest because they were really into taxing Jews at higher rates, so much so that they taxed "new Christians" at higher rates once they realized expelling Jews meant they wouldn't be around to overtax, ffs) — by the mid-18th century Provence had notable communities of Jews and crypto-Jews (forced converts and their descendants who still kept some Jewish practices in secret)

Booker would've been 21 when revolutionary France granted equal legal rights to Jews in 1791 — his mortal life and first century of immortality happens to line up almost perfectly with the timeline of legal emancipation of Jews across Europe

the American and French Revolutions happened pretty much concurrently and took different approaches to religious freedom that make Book of Nile with Jewish Booker and canon Christian Nile extra interesting — French emancipation, at least from my American sensibility, is about secularism and religion not "interfering" (hence French Islamophobic shittiness about banning hijabs), whereas American religious freedom is more of "the government can't stop me from trying to evangelize / religiously harass people at my school/workplace/etc" — to be clear I think both countries' approaches to religious "freedom" are hegemonic as shit and have devastating flaws, but they're different models that emerged at the same time in Booker's youth and Christianity is clearly a source of emotional support for Nile and there's so much to explore here

Napoleon tried to ~liberate~ the Jews of places he conquered for his dumbass French Empire, but liberation from ghettos came with strings attached (like banning us from some of the only jobs we'd been legally allowed to have for centuries, and liberating us for the stated purpose of getting us to assimilate and stop being Jews) and many places that were briefly part of the French Empire reinstated their antisemitic laws after Napoleon was gone, can you imagine being a French Jew forced to fight and die in Russian winter for that jackass and then have to trudge back through a dozen countries whose antisemitism was all riled up by French interference?

Some facts about antisemitism:

antisemitism operates differently than many other oppressions, it doesn't economically oppress the target group in the same way as antiblackness or misogyny or ableism etc — the purpose of antisemitism is to create a scapegoat to blame when European peasants are mad at the king / the church / the people actually in charge, and structural antisemitism encourages a system where some Jews become visibly successful so that those individuals and our whole community are easier to make into scapegoats

one of the historical roots of antisemitism is stuff in the Christian Bible about moneylending as sinful — Jews in medieval Europe were often barred from owning land and Christians barred from moneylending, so some Jews found work in finance and some of us became very visibly successful for working with money — a few individual Jews running a particular bank or finding success as jewelry dealers turns into "Jews control global financial systems" scapegoating — a more recent example of this is the participation of nonblack Jews in white flight and the role of Jewish landlords doing the visible dirty work of non-Jewish institutions in American antiblack housing discrimination, Nile grew up on the South Side of Chicago and would have seen some shit along these lines and might repeat hurtful ideas out of a lack of knowledge, here's Ta Nahesi Coates on some of these dynamics

Booker canonically being a forger (specifically of coins in the comics?) needs a little extra care to avoid antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, I will happily answer good-faith asks about this if you want to check on something for a fic/etc

antisemitism in the United States where I live in October 2020 isn't institutional in the sense of targeting Jews for police violence or anything like that. it IS systemic, however, for example in all the antisemitic conspiracy theories the Trump administration and several other Republicans peddle (ie QAnon), and in how the Trump administration points to support for Israel as if that means support for Jews (it doesn't, it's evangelical Christians who push the US government to support the Israeli government because they think Jews need to be in the ~holy land~ for Jesus to come back that's literally why the United States funds Israel at the level it does). antisemitism also gets weaponized to encourage white Jews (those of us of European descent, who in the United States are definitely white because the foundation of US racism is slavery and antiblackness as well as anti-indigenous genocide, maybe European Jews aren't included in whiteness everywhere but we definitely are where I live) to side with white supremacy instead of building solidarity with other marginalized people (ie a lot of mainstream Jewish groups shit on the Movement for Black Lives because of its solidarity with Palestinians)

the Nation of Islam has a major presence in Chicago and its leader Louis Farrakhan who lives in Chicago has long spread a variety of antisemitic as well as homophobic bullshit but there are genuine good reasons many Black people find meaning/support in the Nation of Islam and Nile would've grown up with that mess in the air around her, this is a good take from a Black Jew about the nuance of all that

the way the Old Guard comics draw Yusuf al Kaysani is HOLY SHIT ANTISEMITISM BATMAN I hate it please summarize the comics for me because I DO NOT WANT to look at that unnecessarily caricatured nose why the fuck did they do that human noses are beautiful there is absolutely no need to draw Joe like a Nazi would

Jews for Racial and Economic Justice is a local NYC group that recently developed a fantastic resource for understanding and fighting antisemitism (pdf) 11/10 strongly recommend

Zionism disclaimer: A lot of Jews feel strongly that we need a Jewish-majority country in order to be safe from antisemitism. I strongly disagree with this idea on its merits (Jews disagree about who is a Jew and making Jewish status a government/immigration matter means some of us are going to get left out; also non-Jews aren't fundamentally dangerous and separatism isn't going to end antisemitism) but I have a lot of empathy for the very valid fear that leads a lot of my people to Zionism. Whether I want a Jewish-majority country or not, what Israel has done and continues to do to Palestinians is a deal breaker. Emotions run very high on this subject — I spend a lot of my not-Tumblr life talking to other Jews about Zionism and I'd rather not have this Jewish Booker headcanons post become yet another place where fellow Jews yell at me in bad faith. Block me if you need to, you're not going to change my mind. Call me self-hating if you want, I know I love us.

Racism in fandom disclaimer: I feel weird about increasing the volume of meta about Booker in this fandom. Nile Freeman is the main character and deserves lots of attention and adoration from the fandom — and she deserves emotional support from as many friends and orgasms from as many partners as she wants. I think Jewish Booker makes her friendship and potential romantic relationship with him even more interesting, hence this post. Ship what you ship, but be aware of the racist impact of focusing your fandom activity on, for example, shipping two white men while ignoring awesome characters of color especially the canon man of color one of those white dudes has already been with for a millennium. Please and thanks don't use my post for shenanigans like sidelining Joe so you can ship Booker with Nicky.

Oh and a non-disclaimer fun fact, Matthias Schoenaerts was born in Antwerp which apparently has one of the largest Jewish communities still remaining in Europe?? ~Jewish Booker headcanons intensify~

In conclusion: Jewish Booker! Just because it's fun! It exponentially increases the angst of his mortal lifetime and it puts his first century of immortality smack in the middle of the most intense changes to Jewish life since the fall of the Second Temple (aforementioned emancipation, also founding of Reform Judaism, the Haskalah, Zionism, and then of course the Holocaust). It makes his relationships with Nile, Joe, and Nicky more interesting and potentially angstier and with more intense commonalities and tenderness about their differences. It's very common for Jews to not believe in God (this confuses the shit out of a lot of Christians) and this would probably have further endeared him to Andy.

One more thing: Booker as golem. (A golem is basically an earthenware robot of Jewish folklore.) He's tall and blond and the most Steve Rogers-looking of all of them and from the Himbeaux region of France. THE trope of Book of Nile is he will do WHATEVER Nile wants or needs him to do. I was today years old when I learned that Modern Hebrew speakers use golem figuratively to mean "mindless lunk" and I'm choosing to squint and read that as "hot kind and dumb as rocks" because it amuses me.

[crownedcryptid]

Death Note Review

Finished Death Note, here is a big post about it!

Death Note is one of the best shows I have ever seen in my life. It just hits all the perfect notes for me, it matches so many of my niches and creates an extremely thrilling, surprising, and creative adventure.

This is one of those iconic animes that everyone knows about, I’ve known about it forever but never watched it because I never thought it would interest me. Of course I’ve known about “I’ll take a potato chip...AND EAT IT” since I was like 8 years old!

Nobody ever actually seems to talk about what this show is, this whole time I’ve just been like “ok it’s about an book that kills people what could happen.” If I knew it was a crime mystery thriller I would’ve watched it years ago! But actually I’m glad I waited to watch it until this year because it is such a perfect thing for my current media sensibilities.

It’s just so cool how it has an extremely basic base premise, like there’s a book that kills people and a high school kid finds it. That’s it that’s the base. And what do they do with that base? Well they turn the kid into a ludicrously righteous maniac who’s manipulates the books version of “da rules” to his advantage to continue cleaning the world from evil while also being chased by worldwide police while also eventually working for the police himself to hide his identity. You’re always left wondering “How will Light Yagami get himself out of this one?!”

They do such an amazing job at creating a character who you just HATE but you LOVE TO HATE. He just KEEPS WINNING and you’re like “no!! no stop him!! he’s right there no!!” it’s mind-bending and frustrating in an extremely engaging way that I’ve hardly ever felt from any other piece of media.

The rival dynamic between Light and L is so well done. "Thriller” is a very good term to describe this show because I was just on the edge of my seat at almost all times. These two characters were always 7 steps ahead of each other you never knew how anyone would solve the tight situations they constantly ended up in.You’re constantly stuck thinking “are they gona do this? is he gona do that? but if-no wait-if they go and-no.”

I also love how the show has like about 4 different arcs over the course of it’s 37 episode run. 37 episodes is oddly specific for an anime but it is so great here. Every single arc feels so different and the status quo of the series gets completely altered in ways other shows never do. It’s like a bunch of miniseries put together, almost more-so an anthology about the Death Note itself, which may be common for VERY LONG anime series but the fact that they can do that here with just under 40 episodes is amazing. The ending of the second to last arc had me going wild like they’re seriously *spoiler action to character* so quickly and jarringly and let *other character do something* like I never felt that enthralled by a twist before.

The final arc does admittedly get a bit convoluted, like there’s a lot of keep track of. I was finding myself getting a bit confused, and figuring things out before the show intended me to figure them out, so I got a bit lost towards the end BUT the actual like END/FINALE of the series is freaking incredible. It had me crying because I was both emotional about what happened, but also I was just so creatively struck by how hard that ending went as well. It gives you so many conflicting emotions and it’s so perfect at that. Like should I be sad, angry, or happy with this ending? I don’t know but I’ll cry about it! I was also just sad because I didn’t want the show to be over!!

The animation is great, the music is absolutely otherworldly like they knew EXACTLY when to play the exact right cues and tunes for each mood so many of the songs are instantly iconic and will forever send chills down my spin or hype me up beyond belief. I love love love love dramatic choir music.

The first op sounds really iconic and shounen-esk, it’s great! But I’m surprised by how much I like the second opening! I like edgy music but not really metal cuse it’s too loud for me. But this op, I feel like it tonally matches the aesthetic and chaos of the show so well that I’m currently in love with it. It rules!! Builds up a lot of hype. It’s also from the same album as that song from that guys animation with the bunnies, remember that? ...I know what I’m talking about.

And the english dub voice acting? BRUUHHHhh it’s so good!! And the main characters actors’ hardly have any other anime roles or leading roles?! Why?! They put on insanely good performances here. Light and L specifically I adored they’re acting. L had such a unique voice for an anime dub, it contrasted his look a lot but matched his personality amazingly, can’t say exactly what it is but he just sounded so different from the voices you usually hear in anime in the best possible way.

This series is such a great ride and it’s one of the most interesting shows I have ever watched. Again it has such a simple base premise, but goes absolutely off the rails with it in ways that feel exciting and natural.

I usually avoid fantasy based shows because that just doesn’t match my tastes. I greatly prefer it when fantasy or sci-fi elements are dropped into a relatable real world, and Death Note does exactly that. It’s just so much cooler that way because then you learn the lore as the characters do, you don’t need to be dumped with fictional information basic the base is the real world all you need to know is the small bits of added magic. So simple, a magical book that can kill people enters the human world, what would happen? This would happen!!

A+

I love this show, it is easily #3 on my list of best tv shows of all time. When I say TV shows I am including live action shows and western animated shows, so yeah my top like 7 shows of all time are all anime probably.

I feel like I have more to say but these are my thoughts at the moment, Go watch the show if mystery thrillers are your cup of tea because this is some of the best tea I have ever had.

[chocolatepot]

OP, I'm sorry to jump in because I'm sure you're going to get dozens of responses (and in line with them I'll tell you that I'm 36 and have been in fandom since I was 12), but I wanted to highlight a couple of things in your response to the ask that stood out to me.

With so many new queer shows (which is an incredible thing, btw), younger people don't really seem to understand that for most of our teenage/childhoods, we didn't have queer relationships to look up to. It's in really bad taste to mock queer adults for finding community in non-canon ships like Stucky in their adolescence because we wouldn't have had anybody to look up to otherwise. People have created a very dedicated community out of necessity, and that's why so many Stucky stans are so defensive.

Like Appleteeth is saying, we were actually there. We are by and large not only old enough to remember the 2010s and its slash juggernauts, but the 2000s and 1990s when queer shipping was often derided or harassed even within fandom. Queer people who just wanted to reflect themselves in the fiction they were reading were often relegated to the fringes of fandoms, required to use heavier warnings on their fics and accused of doing something wrong by "making them gay". AO3 was created in 2009 - several years before Winter Soldier! - in part because slash fandom's existence was so tenuous. You could be kicked off an archive if the canon het fans got sick of you or if a homophobic religious group pushed advertisers, so we needed a space by fans, for fans, that was explicitly welcoming of queer ships (and that's why even today stats from AO3 do not tend to reflect wider fandom when it comes to types of ships, just saying; I wish people would stop disregarding this when going ooooo fandom just likes men, look at all the m/m).

In other words, nobody is mocking Stucky fans for finding their own queer community in slash. They are mocking Stucky fans for positioning themselves as the first to find queer community that way, as deserving deference for it.

OFMD fandom is in fact made up of more older fans than others I've been in online. There are younger people in it as well, but nearly everyone I digitally rub elbows with on a regular basis is 30+. This is because we also spent years finding ourselves and each other in slash fandoms for shows that were never, ever going to make the queer ships canon, and then found this show that wrote pretty much exactly the sort of dynamic we were used to (oh, they're opposites? oh, they don't have solid/believable romances with women? oh, they immediately mean more to each other than anyone else? oh, they'd risk death for each other?) and then actually followed through instead of pretending there's no romance in it.

The reason we are so goddamn annoying and loud about how much we love this show isn't because we're teenagers who have lots of time on our hands to be stupid online. It's because we're middle-aged queers who see ourselves reflected in the text for the first time in our lives. And being validated by the cast and crew of a show we love this way for the first time in our lives, rather than laughed at by them as sad weirdoes who are watching it wrong.

OFMD fandom as an entity is very young. OFMD fandom as a collective is much older and reflects fannish history in a significant way.

Additionally, it was the dedication of fans in the 2010's that got studios to understand that there was a demand for queer shows/movies, which absolutely paved the way for the queer shows that younger people/newer fans take for granted (imo). OFMD and other shows like it would not exist without non-canon ships like destiel, spirk, stucky, etc.

Likewise, here I don't think you're entirely wrong - though as Appleteeth noted, our writer specifically wasn't even aware of queerbaiting, or I think slash fandom. I do think studios started to loosen up because slash fandom became more mainstream, and that's why we keep getting minor queer ships dotted here and there in the media landscape. However, again, we were part of the 2010s-era non-canon shipping. If you're saying that OFMD would not exist without these efforts, you're really telling us to celebrate ourselves. We owe its existence to a collective that we're part of, and what has been making us upset over the last week is the insistence that we're not a part of it and we owe deference to all of these fans who are younger than us and who have been in fandom for less time than us just because we are now into a canon ship, which is silly.

(Also, it's worth noting somewhere in here that HBO MAX did not act like they liked this show at all. We all found out about it via word of mouth. We did a ton of publicity for it ourselves, as did the cast and crew members who believed in it. We had to sit in limbo for over a month to find out if the show would get renewed even though it was breaking records in streaming because they simply did not want to seem to acknowledge or reward it. There was no publicity for s2 until like a month and a half ago. The success of the show is not a reflection of rainbow capitalism we're too young and stupid to understand - it's a reflection of how much we as fans loved the show and demanded more of it.)

Hey I’m sorry about your poll, I didn’t vote but when I looked and saw how many ofmd fans were getting death threats I stopped looking, so I don’t know much of what is happening, but I am sorry you’re sad. Fandom is supposed to bring people together and I feel like that girl from mean girls that just wants everyone to get along

First I want to start off by saying that people shouldn't send death threats unprovoked, that's doing a bit much for an online poll.

I think the main problem here is that a lot of OFMD fans are relatively young, and/or relatively new to fandom spaces, especially tumblr (from what I can tell). Tumblr has a lot of kind of unspoken etiquette, as do fandom spaces as a whole, and I think it kind of rubs years-or-decades-long fans the wrong way when people who don't understand the history and etiquette of fandom start acting in certain ways.

I also think that a lot of OFMD fans, again being younger and only starting to consume media and enter fan spaces in the 2020's, have no idea how long fans have been waiting and fighting for adequate queer representation. With so many new queer shows (which is an incredible thing, btw), younger people don't really seem to understand that for most of our teenage/childhoods, we didn't have queer relationships to look up to. It's in really bad taste to mock queer adults for finding community in non-canon ships like Stucky in their adolescence because we wouldn't have had anybody to look up to otherwise. People have created a very dedicated community out of necessity, and that's why so many Stucky stans are so defensive.

Additionally, it was the dedication of fans in the 2010's that got studios to understand that there was a demand for queer shows/movies, which absolutely paved the way for the queer shows that younger people/newer fans take for granted (imo). OFMD and other shows like it would not exist without non-canon ships like destiel, spirk, stucky, etc.

I feel like I'm rambling but yeah that's pretty much it. Younger people in fandom spaces should respect the literal decades of fandom that created the shit they take for granted. This was really never about the poll, it was about the disrespect OFMD fans showed towards Stucky fans.

[bigskydreaming]

Hi, I have questions about trigger warning terms, can you help? Grayson # 12 or any time a character is hit by their family, should it be tagged as domestic abuse or any other term? Also like in Grayson, those uncomfortable sexual situations are under sexual harassment right? Not assault, because that means something else? Sorry, it's not my first language and I need to put warnings before discussing comics, closest I can get the better. Honestly every comic could have abuse warnings.

I mean, there are no hard and fast rules, which is part of what complicates things here. Domestic abuse would work, certainly, but its not necessarily what I would go with as domestic violence just as often carries connotations or impressions of partner on partner violence rather than between siblings or parent and children....which, given the nature of a lot of ships in this fandom, IS something to consider, I believe.

Personally, I would go with something like “Sibling Abuse” or “Parent/Child Abuse” because the more specific the better and its like there’s no reason not to be. Also, it can only help matters to see terminology like that become more widespread and commonplace, to combat the instinctive pushback a lot of people have, like “siblings can’t abuse each other, that’s just fighting” - like, no. Sibling abuse is definitely a thing, and the more its just matter-of-factly used as a description where the description applies, the less easy it is for people to contest it, or even just overlook it entirely in their own writing.

Specifically, what makes Grayson #12 definitively an instance of abuse that should not have been written IMO, let alone validated by so many fans, is not simply Jason punching Dick. I mean, that’s not ideal, but some people are always gonna go well boys will be boys and sometimes brothers fight and blah blah blah. I mean, I have issues with all of those takes because lol toxic masculinity and also ‘sometimes brothers fight’ usually refers to like....aggressive amateur wrestling which is still not quite interchangeable with just hauling back and sucker punching your brother in the face. But whatever. Sticking to that example specifically, the thing that pushes it definitively into the abusive category is the fact that it was framed contextually by both the issue AND fandom as a kind of....penance. A just punishment. 

It was NOT brothers fighting, it was one brother taking out his hurt on the other in a way that definitively should NEVER be approved of in a family, and with the implicit EXPECTATION that he wasn’t going to have to defend himself from any follow-up attacks from Dick in response to what he did. It was clearly written as though Dick was just letting it happen and okay with it happening, that ‘he deserved it’ and its extremely upsetting that even people who push the idea of a kinder, happier, more functional Batfamily in fics and such still found justification for cheering Jason on in this moment. Punching your brother as punishment for upsetting you. That’s defensible....why?

And of course, I don’t say any of this to vilify Jason. I don’t hate his character for doing it, I hate that his character was written doing it in the first place. I hate that so many people see so little problem with him doing that they have him do it again and frequently in fanfic. Honestly, its just as damaging to Jason’s character, because hello, he’s an abuse survivor himself. 

People don’t seem to understand just how much male abuse survivors struggle with the stigma of it our whole lives, where the SECOND people find that out about us, we can often visibly SEE them regard us differently, take extra note of every single outburst of ours, treat us as though us snapping and actually harming someone else is an inevitability rather than a possibility, because we all grow up surrounded by nothing but narratives that spread the myth of all abuse victims eventually grow up to become abusers, its a vicious cycle. 

No, in reality, many of us work really fucking damn hard to never become the people who hurt us, to never do to others what was done to us. Just because we’re angry or frustrated or have a lot to vent about doesn’t mean we don’t know how to keep ourselves from actually doing harm to others, and that’s why its particularly grating how often people like to point to our anger as being somehow inherently different from their own, simply due to information we voluntarily offered up about ourselves.

And yes, this obviously has a lot to do with my fixation on Dick’s temper and how its regarded, but just as much with how matter-of-factly its treated that of course Jason is casually violent with his brothers and nobody thinks twice about it, that’s just how he IS. 

NO.

That’s how people are CHOOSING to write him, because of their own blindspots in regards to abuse and the many realities and nuances and dynamics of it. Abuse is just as damaging and carries just as much trauma and impact for abuse survivors as rape does for rape survivors, even when there is no crossover, but there is a very big tendency to just....not regard that as the case at all. 

And there’s a very big, very real disconnect between the way people write Jason with a focus on his childhood history with abuse and how that impacted him…..and then just…not connect this at all to writing him being casually violent even with loved ones and friends, as though…..its not like its treated as if its an inevitable extension, its more just like, people completely FORGET that aspect of him when writing him being casually physically violent as though this wouldn’t have any bearing on how he views his own actions and interactions with others in light of that, y’know? 

And everyone who writes him this way and doesn’t think twice about it because oh its just Jason, that’s just how he expresses himself, like, is doing a huge disservice to a lot of the very same stuff they unpack in their own stories about his history of childhood abuse when they DO focus on it. And that’s very…..bewildering, to be honest.

As to the second question about the sexual harassment scenes in Grayson, no, I think you have the right idea there. Think of it this way: sexual assault typically describes unwanted physicality, the other person forcing body-to-body contact in some way. Sexual harassment typically describes unwanted situations, the other person forcing you into scenarios or situations where you’re forced to put up with unwanted sexualization of yourself or others (usually the self though). So most of what happened in Grayson I personally would term sexual harassment rather than assault, but that doesn’t make it ‘better’ - there’s a tendency I think to view sexual harassment as being ‘sexual assault-lite’ and that’s like….no. 

I hate bringing any kind of ranking into it at all, but its not even that so much as its apples and oranges….they describe two entirely different scenarios, and sexual harassment can be plenty damaging in its own right, often due to its frequency of recurrence ‘making up’ for it not being as intensely damaging in a single situation as an instance of sexual assault, perhaps.

So for instance, in Grayson, all the times Dr. Netz like, was very implicitly depicted as groping him during his physicals and medical exams, especially during the times when on top of that, she was verbally objectifying him in narration that made it perfectly clear she knew exactly what she was doing and exactly how uncomfortable she was making him (also emphasized via the facial expressions he was drawn with)…like those were sexual harassment, no ifs, ands or buts. The harasser was taking advantage of a situation they knew Dick had no way of gracefully exiting and had to put up with and endure because its not like a spy agency likely had much in the way of an HR department that was open to listening to claims about this shit….and even if there were, his undercover op demanded he make as little waves as possible. 

Which even without Netz knowing that latter part….she still knew from the second she capitalized on his vulnerable position with him a) distinctly uncomfortable as a result and b) making no actual move to stop it (since there weren’t really any available to him)….like, the first time was ‘testing the waters’ kinda, and the second the harasser determined they could get away with it without consequence, it became a frequent, regular occurring thing, something both parties were more or less matter-of-fact about, though each instance only made the harasser bolder, and the victim, Dick, more resigned to his vulnerability in that position and even LESS likely to attempt to enforce personal boundaries or bodily autonomy, as they weren’t being respected as it was already.

I hope that makes those distinctions easier to conceptualize, and sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this!

[villainever]

"I See You Got What You Wanted": Niko & Villanelle's Relationship + What Gemma's Death Means for Villaneve

i think it’s fairly safe to say that gemma’s death in 2x07 has been one of the most controversial of villanelle’s murders. in this mini-essay, i want to look at the eve-niko-villanelle-gemma dynamic, why villanelle might’ve killed gemma, what that means for the show’s plot, and for villanelle/eve. although in my last post i talked about how villanelle and eve DON’T have an “i / it” relationship, villanelle certainly does position most other people in the “it” category. eve is an exception, not the rule – unless someone really captures villanelle’s attention, she doesn’t really bother to contextualise them as more than an object, or in gemma’s case, a tool.

villanelle is aware of gemma before eve is, and meets her minutes after, as one of her many characters – one specifically designed for interacting with gemma. remember, this is 2x03, and even though raymond has told villanelle that eve isn’t interested in her anymore, she doesn’t believe him yet, because a) she doesn’t view raymond as a reliable source, and b) eve came to julian’s house when villanelle called her, even though they ultimately missed each other. at this point, villanelle is happy with her and eve’s progress, and understands that they’re more connected than they’ve ever been (“she [stabbed me] to show me how much she cares about me” / “sometimes when you love someone, you will do crazy things”). but one obstacle remains between her and eve: niko.

i believe her actions at this juncture reflect how seriously villanelle takes her relationship with eve, and its potential future. because the obvious, easy answer to someone like villanelle would be, “kill niko”. it’s fast and efficient and neatly removes him from the equation. BUT. villanelle has learned from killing anna’s husband that people don’t just bounce back from having a partner murdered, even if they were already having an affair with you. so villanelle takes killing niko completely off the table; she doesn’t want eve to hate her, to resent her even years later, like anna did. notably, though, her first strategy is NOT to tell him about the stabbing, and to try and make him hate/distrust eve. she tries the carrot, not the stick. 

“squirt your perfume in his room so it always smells like you. flatter him. make him doubt his wife.” not only is this transparently from villanelle’s playbook (lmao), it’s an attempt to give gemma a viable plan to solve everyone’s problem: gemma seduces niko > niko leaves eve > eve is single > villanelle and eve rail each other into the next century (i can only assume this is how villanelle’s brain works lol). gemma gets niko, and presumably both are happy and far away. and most importantly, villanelle gets eve for keeps. i think this is probably the max of empathy we can expect from villanelle when it comes to two people she literally couldn’t care less about except for their roles in eve’s life. however, villanelle’s massively impatient. her idea doesn’t work instantly, probably because she’s overestimated niko’s willingness to abandon a long-term relationship for new possibilities and chemistry – and who can blame her, seeing as she’s making her calculations based on eve’s readiness to do the same when villanelle comes into the picture. anyway, villanelle isn’t getting instant results, and then the game changes: eve doesn’t come to amsterdam. villanelle’s suddenly freaking out, because god, what if eve’s not into her anymore, when villanelle still so crazy about her?

so after meeting up with eve in 2x05 – which confirms yet again that this thing between them isn’t something villanelle can bear to lose – she shifts it up a gear, and tells niko that eve stabbed her. it’s the pincer approach: on one side, there’s gemma, looking sweet and simple, and on the other, eve, appearing increasingly grey and complex. obviously, that’s a very easy choice for villanelle, and she’s hoping it is for niko too, only in the opposite direction. everything that makes villanelle like eve more, makes niko like her less. 

then niko and eve hook up in 2x06. villanelle probably kicks over every trash can along the street and taps on all windows creepily to scare people until she feels better. after this, she’s a bit petty with eve until eve reveals that niko left. then it’s all genuine effort at AA, and “maybe eve’s lonely, i should text her”, because hey, the window is open, and impatience cuts both ways. she’s not going to lose the opportunity.

by 2x07, things are going well between villanelle and eve, but villanelle wants reassurance, and insurance. she’s tying up loose ends – getting the recipe, making sure gemma and niko are riding off into the sunset and leaving her and eve alone. side note: while villanelle tells niko that she wants the shepherd’s pie recipe because “eve likes it”, i think it’s also because to villanelle (who loves food) it’s a significant piece of the memory of her first proper meeting with eve in 1x05. she might be hoping it reminds eve of this night too, but even if it doesn’t, villanelle likes it, and it has all-round positive associations for her.

anyway. villanelle asks niko if he loves gemma – no, he doesn’t. he loves eve. “of course i do, she’s my wife”. in this scene, after he says that line, villanelle’s eyes get shiny, like they did in amsterdam, almost like she’s about to cry. ive tried to grab it in the screenshot, but it’s hard when it’s not a gif. 

here’s the thing. i don’t think villanelle would’ve killed gemma if she’d waited until after rome to have this confrontation. why? because in rome, it’s pretty clear that even if niko’s not over eve, eve is pretty much over him. when niko leaves, eve says, “don’t leave me alone!” crucially, this line, this FEAR, isn’t really about him at all. eve’s relationship with villanelle is so volatile that she hasn’t made the leap yet, unsure of the landing. niko is her safety net. we’ve been shown all season that eve’s basically bored with him, and has been since pre-villanelle (“you’ve missed [teacher’s night] for three years”), but she keeps him around so that she has someone. at this point, eve isn’t certain whether she has other people in her life, so she doesn’t want to lose him.

EXCEPT. seeing him with gemma at her house kind of puts him in a new light, and eve’s abruptly faced with exactly how normal he is, and how different they are. earlier that day, she and villanelle were running an undercover op, and villanelle killed someone in broad daylight (at least a lil to impress eve), but here niko is, hanging out with someone who collects music boxes, and is painfully ordinary by contrast. it’s enough to get eve to walk away, but her decision is affirmed in rome. hugo’s more than happy to sleep with her, and far more significantly, villanelle is too. eve’s suddenly available, but villanelle hasn’t lost interest now that the chase is effectively over (they’re hardly enigmas in different countries anymore; they work together and text and have conversations about jealousy). with niko gone, eve ISN’T alone. and i think eve will find that life without a safety net is even more of an adrenaline rush, plus now there’s nobody to slow her down or question her (questionable) decision-making. she’s not thinking about niko AT ALL, and he’s barely crossed her mind this season anyway. but rewind to pre-rome, and villanelle sees an eve/niko reunion as a possibility. now, i really doubt niko would’ve told villanelle he still loved eve if he’d realised it was the wrong answer. in fact, i believe he thinks it is the right answer for villanelle, because he fundamentally misunderstands villaneve’s relationship.

he still thinks it’s a cat-and-mouse, power-trip thing. in season 1, he accuses eve of getting off on being the only one who can predict villanelle (not landing on the fact that it’s villanelle herself eve likes, not just the rush of a high-stakes mission), but even with villanelle saying, “we’re more than friends”, his “what are you talking about?” is actually in response to her telling him she’s forgiven eve – he’s asking, “forgiven her for what?”. niko doesn’t get that villanelle and eve are inherently romantic, albeit in an unconventional (and twisted) way. he does infer that villanelle cares for eve in some way, so i think he incorrectly adds it up, and comes to the conclusion that in 2x07, villanelle’s come to see him and gemma because she’s mad at him for leaving eve, and has come for revenge on eve’s behalf. but she’s not there for revenge, she’s there for closure. and he turns around and does the exact opposite of what she wants. so she kills gemma.

even though many of us were expecting a recurring character death this season (i saw some speculation around hugo, particularly), gemma’s death wasn’t exactly predictable. while villanelle killing people is very par for the course with this show, and killing eve does an excellent job of using close narration to warp viewer’s morality while they watch (another essay in that point), gemma evoked a lot more of an emotional response than villanelle’s typical marks. i think this is for a few reasons. firstly, even though she was far from the show’s coolest or most interesting character, gemma was nice and considerate; she tried to shoot her shot, but she never pushed niko to cheat on eve, and when she met eve, she was kind (and friendly to villanelle too when she was “kim”). secondly, she was really normal – most of killing eve’s cast of characters feel exceptional, almost fantastical in the best way, but gemma was someone you could meet in real life. lastly, gemma didn’t opt-in to any of this; unlike bill, nobody warned her of the risks, and her life was completely extrinsic to the main plot – from her perspective, she basically got killed completely out of nowhere. villanelle won’t kill people eve cares about anymore. she killed bill, when their relationship was nascient, but in 1x05, villanelle telling eve “he was slowing you down” is what prompts eve to reach for the knife that first time before villanelle pins her to the fridge. but eve dislikes gemma, so villanelle decides this is unlikely to have negative repercussions for her.

is she intending to frame niko for murder to eliminate him permanently without killing him? maybe. she did use materials she found on-site (i.e. crime of passion). but villanelle has a certain flair for narrative, and i think if she was trying to do that, she probably would’ve staged some kind of scene to make niko seem more guilty (e.g. a domestic dispute). that said, the murder did have less of her usual drama, so she might be trying to keep it realistic for niko to have done. if yes, this was a bit risky, because it might pull niko into the MI5 investigation, and put him in proximity to eve. what i think is most likely is that, just as villanelle has positive associations with niko’s shepherd’s pie, she’s trying to give niko a negative association with eve. trying to ensure that every time he looks at her, he sees gemma dying for no real reason, sees the harsh reality of the path she’s chosen, and can never be truly close to her again. if it’s niko’s choice to stay away from eve, then eve will be less mad at villanelle – she might be more cross if he got falsely imprisoned. this way, she’ll see him as someone who can’t hack it, just as she already does. and he’ll see how she keeps going on, relatively untroubled, and his image of her as “the best person [he] knows” will be irreparably shattered. so will eve be mad about gemma? im not even sure she’ll find out about it this season. it seems like there’s a lot going on in rome next episode; it might not even come up. honestly, given eve’s current development, i’d guess the consequences will be eve acting huffy at villanelle for a few days in a way that villanelle will weather in relatively good spirits, knowing that once it’s passed, they’re in the clear. eve doesn’t care about gemma, maybe even dislikes her, and if she was able to move past bill’s death, then this is unlikely to bother her that much. with eve, we are able to more and more often see these “i / it” relationships shine through, and to eve as well as villanelle, i think gemma is an “it”. carolyn will probably make this mess go away, to keep her own plans sailing smoothly.

gemma’s murder also has the symbolic value of the death of normality, specifically eve’s normality, which she’s been drifting further and further from over the whole show, but particularly this season. gemma’s body literally has “fragile” written on the murder weapon: eve’s ordinary existence was always fragile, because eve didn’t fit. she’s a sociopath, and her life was a performance that was suffocating her, just as gemma suffocates. personally, i liked gemma, and was quite sad that she died. while i was shocked when it happened, the longer i’ve had to reflect, the less i feel that surprise. part of what makes killing eve fresh is that it doesn’t pull punches, and it’s not interested in trying to make villanelle more human, it’s interested in seeing how far it can take her and still have us love her. given the fates of bill, frank and nadia (she even shot konstantin), this was hardly out of the left field for her – the most notable deviation is that gemma’s death was her last resort, not her first idea. just as eve is changing, villanelle is adapting too. ive mentioned a few times that they’re meeting in the middle, and this is another step towards that. now, for anyone who actually made it through that slog, i have one more point. villanelle is really hung up on niko’s moustache, and i think that’s a great choice from the writers’ room, to have the thing she uses to identify him as being something explicitly masculine. to villanelle, niko is just The Man. The Husband. The “i / it” relationship here is between villanelle and a moustache.

this mini-essay is for @enter-the-mind-of-a-degenerate , who asked in the comments of the last one. if anyone else has any requests, inbox me or reply to this post :D also any and all of your comments give me life, and i have so much fun reading them/the messages you guys send me. 

[automatismoateo]

Religious Private schools should be illegal via /r/atheism

Religious Private schools should be illegal

As many of you know this is already happening and yet probably worse than you think. I live in a "very blue state", however I live in the reddest part of this blue state. Back in 2012 in the before times, even then old old racist history books would refer to MLK Jr. as a rebel rouser and a society disruptor. Even my country ass was aware of how outdated these books were. I saw these issues as relics of the past that were still affecting us today, but I couldn't comprehend how deep these roots went...what was growing in the dark. But now it's starting to move out of the darkness, and into the light. I speak of religious private schools. Before, while they were indoctrination stations, they still taught the basics. You could get a good education sans the religion. But now, now they are spawning grounds for a generation I am terrified to see. With recent law changes these "schools" are allowed to hire teachers with no training what-so-ever, administrators who know noting of running a school, and power dynamics that allow for rampant physical and sexual abuse of staff and students. These schools are uncredited and many times do not meet state basic standards. And Republicans are willing to kill our public schools for them. They are glorified cult daycares that are purposely making our next generations dumber in the name of Jesus all so that they can win elections. Their goal is a Evangelical theocracy state, and they will do anything to you or your children to get there. The Constitution is a fake defense, and they will shred it when they get full power.

Now for those of you who read this far and are saying "Well duh OP did you just learn about the Christians, they've been at this forever"

I say- This is a new technological age. Everything the Christians accomplished they did with print and television media. Imagine what they can do in a digital world with data collection and authoritarian laws. Where religious organizations are richer than Apple. Where they making "Young Earth Evangelicals" look sane, agreeable, and be the good ones.

If they can't control us, they will destroy us, because the Bible tells them so.

Edit: I guess I should have been more specific this post is in regards to mostly Protestant especially Evangelical schools. Former catholics need to chill most of you are getting offended by this and you clearly didn't fully read the post. Maybe you went to a liberal Protestant/Catholic school. I timestamped my time in my relgious school, and as stated I said these schools have become more radicalized. To get an idea of what is breeding, that you are unaware of, please watch the documentary Jesus Camp. Or research Jefferson Co., Florida and their reading rates to get a taste of what's to come. If you think my post is wrong or political you haven't gone to the schools I described, but they exist in plenty. Only political aspect to consider is how many states lost local to federal elections to MAGA/Qanon this year. You can argue what they're gonna do. But when they say defund public schools and fund private religious schools, it's your fault if you're surprised at what happens next.

Submitted May 30, 2022 at 08:10PM by Prestigious_Gear_297 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/sU19YaB)