#or the best approximation I could do in the new character creator on a new platform

[hornkerling]

I also made a new Rook, who will not have her playthrough for a while because work and also because I need to let things settle a but, but it couldn't be a dragon age game without an OC of mine named for a Lois McMaster Bujold character.

So here we have Nikys Mercar, Shadow Dragon and Tired. Maybe Neve will like this one.

Also pssst. @fivekoboldsinacoat I used a Pax worldstate here. It was fun trying to recreate him. The Inquisitor pajamas continue to be cursed.

[more-than-tender-curiosity]

What Gatsby musical do you think is best?

The Great Gatsby : A New Musical

Gatsby : An American Myth

And depending on which you pick, why did you choose that one?

I have been outspoken in my criticism of The Great Gatsby: A New Musical to the point where it's kind of marked me as an asshole to fans of said musical, but I'm not backing down. Read my opinions boy

No, but seriously. Let me begin by saying that I came to this point already worn down by so many heartless, obnoxious, cash-grabby adaptations of prior works (Mean Girls, Beetlejuice, Heathers, etc) that bank almost entirely on nostalgia and spectacle and, in some cases, the unknowing of their YOUNG target audience, in order to blind said audience into just calling the music a bop and moving on.

And I'm tired of it. Yes, I'm aware musical theater has always run on adaptations—Chicago and Little Shop of Horrors are among some of my favorites! But I approach every single adaptation of ANYTHING with the same baseline question: is this adaptation justified?

You could take the very moderate opinion of "having more musicals to listen to is a good thing!" but I think that's naive, and falling right into the trap set by creators who are only here for Lin Manuel-level Tony's and that's it. There's no dedication to actually making something new with something already established. Nothing transformative. It's lazy.

That's what I mean by 'is this adaptation justified'. Does the adaptation in question engage with the source material in a way that refreshes it, dives deeper into it, and takes advantage of the new method of storytelling (in this case, from book to stage musical) to showcase how the new method of storytelling benefits the source material? Like in the case of Little Shop of Horrors, it uses satire to highlight deeper issues that are barely skated across in the source material while also pulling forth factors of the source material that were more relevant at the time when it was released.

I for one am exhausted by adaptations at this point. It's always been a backbone of musical theater but now, even outside of theater, we are awash in them. it's been said before that pretty much everything you see now is a remake or an adaptation or a sequel or a prequel or a cinematic universe or something derivative, and that tends to punch down on the smaller, more creative, original ideas that might've flourished if the market wasn't oversaturated with mass-produced corporatized shiny flashy garbage.

This is where the two Gatsby musicals come in.

If you're here, you know that I...dedicate a lot of time to this novel. I could have gone to college and got a degree with the time I have spent on this novel and its study. Unraveling every single sentence, every character motivation, every real life factor that plays in to Fitz's writing of the novel—every draft, every movie adaptation. The entire history of this novel and its creation is carved into the inside of my skull.

Now, one thing you should know about gatsby is that Fitz wrote it when he was just coming off the massive failure of his play The Vegetable. That's not the full title, but I'm not going to bother typing out the rest of it. Because it was bad. It was not good. No one liked it. So, naturally, Fitz wanted to improve on his playwriting skills. Up until then, he was good at short stories and he was good at long, descriptive novels, but he couldn't quite understand how to condense and reformat his novel-writing style into something more like a stageplay.

Gatsby was sort of his attempt. You'll note that Gatsby is only 47,043 or so words, which is less than half of most of his other novels. The action and dialogue are snappy. There is, shockingly enough, less purple prose than prior releases (in spite of Nick spending 23984798347928374 words, approximately, to describe his new neighbor's smile). Scott was trying desperately to pare down his writing and see if he could slowly shift his formatting toward something that could translate to the stage.

Many of you know that The Great Gatsby was a total major uber flop.

There went his dreams of making this a play. And there have been many attempts since, all with very limited success, because for the most part, there is a total lack of understanding concerning what makes this novel a novel instead of play material. All too many times, there has been a disconnect as to what would translate effectively onto the stage as it is written in the book, like the themes of being dazzled by a spectacle but not, as displayed in the novel, the downside of such a thing.

As I said. All too often, there is too little thought given to the advantages of adapting a written work to musical theater. This leads to much of the deeper shades of the story being left to the wayside in favor of shallow spectacle just to keep the masses entertained without actually translating the stunning symbolism and figurative work Fitz put on the page.

This is what happened to The Great Gatsby: A New Musical. They took the most barebones understanding that most viewers would have of the story (that it's a love story, just like Romeo and Juliet!—side-eye), and made everything as loud and as fast and as bright as they could to make up for any lack of exploration beyond what is very plainly written on the page.

This does not work with The Great Gatsby.

I've mourned the gooberfication of Nick Carraway before. I love the 2013 film, as I'm sure many do because it was many of our first experiences with any Gatsby adaptation, but you can see it with Tobey Maguire and you can see it here in The Great Gatsby: A New Musical. So many times I see people call him an unreliable narrator but it's very clear they don't understand exactly why he's unreliable.

This 'gooberfication' I speak of is Nick's attempt to convince us that he's the innocent one here, in every single situation, and everyone around him is a liar and he's always telling the truth so you can trust him. He's the only honest person he's ever known.

Red flag central.

So from that line alone, you have to understand that everything Nick says or does, leaves in or leaves out, is suspect. He's out of his element in New York but he is absolutely not some baby-cheeked little goober who is SO TOTALLY BLINDED by his infatuation with Gatsby that he's just willing to go along with everything and doesn't pass judgment. We joke "Nick says he doesn't judge anyone then proceeds to judge everyone in the novel!" Yeah, no shit. That's the thing. He is a hypocrite made only lesser by the way he plays up the evils of everyone around him, and that's how he gets by. That's how he sleeps at night.

You can cast that into whatever light you like, whether it's the hypocrisy of saying he's so poor when he's living in at LEAST a two bedroom cottage with a maid and modern appliances and his dad is paying for a full YEAR of his life after paying his way through an Ivy League school. Or you could say he does this to throw suspicion off himself and possibly his sexuality, which is a whole can of worms involving Fitzgerald's constant projection onto his characters that I cannot bear to crack open.

Point being, Nick isn't just the passive bystander in all of these situations. He makes it sound like he is, like he's just doing favors for people who are worse than him, and how he disapproves of even everything Gatsby does despite his evident fascination with the man, but at the end of the day, he's just passing the buck. Washing his hands clean. There are so many clues in the book to this sort of thing that should tip you off to the fact that Nick Carraway is not just some silly sweet guy who gets swept up into a life of chaos and crime just to come out cynical. He was already a judgemental, cynical individual who was forced to come all too close to the realization that he, too, is more 'one of them' than he can bear to admit—even in spite of how he attempts to obscure his own hypocrisy.

Nick is not innocent. No one in this book is (besides Pammy, though she's a ticking time bomb if we're meant to understand the wealth she will inherit). That's the whole point of the fucking book. There are a thousand hands each pushing a tiny bit to keep these impossible shades of class division moving, and condemning one person (like Nick does with Daisy or Tom) doesn't solve the problem. Jay still dies. The American dream is still a nightmare. Nick still has a father to fall back on.

Which is why it's so impossibly perplexing to me to display Nick as some sort of lapdog who just seems honored to spend time with these people. Why Jay is just some quirked up white boy who is, quite literally, just too quirky and obnoxious to bear. He and Daisy are so in love and they're so close to each other and isn't it just tooooo saddd to bearrrr?? So romantic????

There's nothing deeper to it. No asking why Fitz wrote any of these characters the way he did. No understanding of the deeper implications of what he was trying so desperately to convey, on both a social and personal level. Yes, it's a love story, but it's also a commentary on just how fucked everyone is by the cages of tradition.

And there is just no trace of that in the Broadway musical. Everything is simple and easily digestible. There is no deeper interaction with the source material, no drive to have produced it at all except, perhaps, to cash in on the new public domain. They got the biggest names they could with the biggest cult followings, knowing so many would just eat it right up and call each song a bop and it would trend on tiktok and they might get a tony and then they'd move on. No integrity. No passion. No justification.

Gatsby: An American Myth is much the opposite.

After hearing a Totally Legal version of the Broadway musical, I was terrified of what ART would do to this book. Now that I had seen just how fearfully easy it was to just slap some 'art deco' and glitter on the stage, write a painfully obvious love song, and move on, I was really concerned that this trend of bloodless, toothless adaptations would continue and I'd have to sigh and move on with my life.

Fortunately, everything I mentioned that bothered me about the Broadway musical is set right in Gatsby: An American Myth. I really should have expected nothing less from Florence Welch in terms of the music (which is, of course, one of the most show-stopping elements of the musical, as it should be) considering her prior works and how they relate to the Great Gatsby. This is someone who has been obsessed with the book longer than I have been and has woven it into so much of her body of work that I'm surprised this musical didn't drop the day it became public domain. I cannot think of a better contemporary musician to handle that facet of a Gatsby musical.

This adaptation itself does exactly what I would have hoped. I am, of course, someone who holds the book and all its drafts to a very high regard—if this is a religion, that's my bible. What's in there, goes, though it's open to interpretation. Typically I would be against adding things at all.

What they added, however, was brilliant. Nothing massive—just, again, ways to take advantage of the musical theater method of production, and ways to modernize and acknowledge more contemporary understandings of the source material. Where the Broadway musical carefully tiptoed around any indication that nick was anything other than straight and in love with Jordan Baker, Gatsby: An American Myth leaned right into the idea that he was made an outsider by his sexuality, and that was part of why he related to Jay so hard. Because otherwise, why would he? He's a middle-to-upper-middle class Midwesterner whose father is paying for a year of his life while he works a little for-fun job in the big city. What does he know about being an outsider?

Gatsby: An American Myth shows you that. Shows how everyone is an outsider to each other in this story, and how individualism destroys a community that would otherwise support you. You can take that on a society-wide level or personal: Jay being totally disconnected from even himself, or the wealthy pretending they don't live on the same planet as the poor.

Another miraculous addition was a sort of bridge between Myrtle and Wilson that just makes sense. I don't want to spoil it too much, but everything they added or rearranged or re-highlighted just goes to display the depth and breadth this story really reaches. They read between every line, proudly displayed the complexity of every single situation and character—how all of them are the victim and all of them are the perpetrator—while STILL making it sound fantastic in my opinion.

It's by no means a flawless work and I saw it early on its production. It's changed since then and obviously I haven't been able to hear it since I saw it live, but I have total faith in the creative team to have not completely thrown away their good intentions in favor of trending on tiktok.

To conclude I would just ask anyone reading to please inspect the media you consume. Inspect the motives of the person feeding it to you. There's not really any sort of Nobility to art, but at this point, with so many shallow attempts to cash in on our desperate search for community and contentment, quality and passion have been thrown out the window. Shoveling this hot shit at us day and night (remakes, sequels, prequels, adaptations) has become another tool of capitalism to keep us just satisfied to not ask for more.

Ask for more. Ask for better. You deserve it.

[princesscolumbia]

Code of Ethics - Ch. 10 - The Nose Knows

Wait, whaaaat?! Why am I posting a chapter? 'cause Helen was being an antisocial bitch today and so I sent her to sleep it off.

So the story so far for those coming in only just now:

Prologue - America turns out to be the bad guys in WW3 and The Church turns out to be the man behind the curtain. The Singularity happens and humanity declares war on A.I.

Part 1 - God and Country - Agent Dylan Samuels is the best cyber agent America has, thanks to a custom built VR weapon that he uses to delete 'rogue' A.I. He's tapped for an undercover assignment using a new VR pod to deep dive into a new game. The agency intel says that the rogue A.I. tend to gravitate toward the queer community, so Dylan needs to create a character that will fit in there.

Part 2 - Master and Commander - Dylan goes into VR and creates a nonbinary alien woman character named Diane Somni'els and has an emotional breakdown in the character creator when the euphoria proves overwhelming. She pulls herself together and gets in the game, learning about the mechanics such as the Ethics tree and unlocking its first node by working out an agreement with some squatters on her station.

Oh, yeah! New cover art!

Preview below the cut:

Diane had heard of ‘nice guys’ and “Nice Guys,” but this was the first time she’d met a guy who was so nice he seemed too good for this world.

“Oh…my…gosh! You’re a Morvuck!”

Diane had to struggle to keep from laughing at the enthusiasm, “…I am…”

“I heard the dinosaurs never died out on your world, is that true?” the man’s question might have been somewhat insulting if he weren’t so clearly earnest about asking it.

“Well, they aren’t ‘dinosaurs,’ strictly speaking. They’re dinosaur-like megafauna. Distant cousins to my species, from what I understand,” she took a sip of her Jyantin Tonic…or what the station could synthesize of the stuff, which based on her trial run during the character creation process wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing. It was good enough, though, that she kept drinking even after the slight disappointment. “The megafauna that exist are more like...alligators, I guess. Fully reptilian, no bird or mammalian features whatsoever, though there’s obviously some features in common between them, us humanoids, and the avians. Morvuck birds developed a lot like they did on Earth, megafauna developing feathers and then evolving smaller and smaller until they’re…well, I guess on Mortan they’re a lot bigger than on Earth, probably feed a whole football stadium on one thanksgiving bird.” She smirked as his eyes lit with childlike wonder.

“Do you think,” groused Norma with fond exasperation, “That we could eat at this, our lunch?”

“Oh, right!” Russe snatched up his fork and speared it into the spaghetti on his plate. Like everything else made by the station’s synthesizers, it was good but not great. Diane was dutifully eating all of hers if for no other reason that her body needed the calories and proteins. The day before yesterday she’d nearly collapsed and, upon dragging herself to the med bay in the lower levels of the Ops building, it was determined that she hadn’t been consuming nearly enough calories.

Katrina had read her the riot act, informing her soundly that even if she’d been raised on Earth that didn’t excuse her from taking care of herself. Reading between the lines of the tirade, Diane had figured out that the average Morvuck needed approximately three times the caloric load as the average human and twice the protein. She’d been wondering why she was so hungry when she’d been eating as much as she normally did, but then different bodies (even if virtual) meant different needs.

Katrina then asked when the last time she’d seen a gynecologist was, and when Diane had truthfully answered, “Never,” the digital assistant railed against the state of modern medicine and idiot bureaucrats who didn’t know how to properly care for orphan girls and proceeded to have the medical drones give Diane a full workup for her female anatomy.

Diane had, honestly, felt…odd about it. While some of her discomfiture was due to the act of clinical probing that the med bot had done, the majority of it came from the humiliation she felt, not at being a man and having a woman’s procedure done, but from feeling good about a procedure only being done with actual women being done to her, it being for good reason (her virtual body did have all the proper parts and this world was designed to mimic real-world conditions, including the possibility of certain afflictions that women, specifically, had to worry about), and that someone, even if they were just a training hologram inside a VR game, was taking her feminine appearance at face value enough to treat her like any other woman.

Barely making it back to her quarters in time, she’d had another breakdown like she’d experienced in the character creation process. Just as confused as ever, she found herself questioning everything about herself, her life, and how she got into this position. Had she not committed to herself no fewer than three times now that no matter what she was going to complete the mission she’d been given, she’d have hit the emergency log-out option in that moment.

How are other players not experiencing this?! The thought rang through her repeatedly as she bawled into her pillow, once again having so many positive emotions that she had no way of processing them until they came out in ways that she’d normally have associated with severe distress.

She considered looking it up online. The time compression may have been a factor as it would appear almost static to her, but the Internet was still available. She would, in fact, have even greater access to the Internet than inside the wall (even though she was, technically, still inside it herself) since nothing like the American Firewall was between her and accessing all that data. She could even, she had realized, utilize the FTLN, the part of the Internet that existed due to the specialized nodes that were installed in the hardware that was developed in the non-American world.

But what, exactly, would she look up? “I’m feeling so good about being in an alien body that I’m barely able to keep the emotions contained and it’s terrifying me”? She was, unfortunately, at a loss and completely alone. That would then spiral her into an existential depression. She knew those symptoms; she’d had them enough after the death of her mother that she’d needed to see a shrink for it. He’d given her the tools necessary to manage the depression, which was what she was doing now.

One of those tools was to find people, preferably friends, to remind herself that there are others in the world who have interest in her.

While the in-game A.I. weren’t able to be actual friends, any more than an overeager puppy, they would certainly do.

And speaking of overeager puppies, Russe bolted the last bites of his spaghetti and choked it down with a glass of water. Having completed his lunch, however hastily, he took a deep breath, “So is it true that there are dinosaurs in enclosures and you can actually pet them on Mortan?”

“No idea,” she said with a grin, “Never been.” Norma apparently picked up on what Diane was up to because the woman snorted in laughter around a bite of pasta, grabbing her own water to wash the bite down before she choked on it.

“You’ve never been to one of the enclosures?” Russe’s voice almost squeaked in incredulity at the notion of someone having access to ‘dinosaurs’ but not take advantage of it.

She delivered her highest quality smirk across the table, “No, I’ve never been to Mortan. I was raised on Earth.”

Russe’s face turned simultaneously crimson and stricken, and Norma burst out laughing, throwing her head back and clutching her arms around her belly, “Oh, my gosh! Your face! This is why I wanted you to have lunch with us today, I had to see how you’d react to the commander!”

Norma’s appearance had improved quite a bit over the last week. Access (proper access) to the fabrication facility meant she could get clothes that fit properly, including a nice blouse made of a shimmery fabric that shifted colors in a rainbow of pastels and a utilitarian pair of cargo pants. It seemed she couldn’t let go of the habit of wearing something heavy and capable of delivering a kick, as she’d opted for a pair of steel-toed boots. The only part of her old outfit that she’d kept was her old flight suit jacket, and even that had been laundered and mended by the station’s robotic facilities.

Russe’s appearance prior to Diane’s arrival to the station and subsequent unlocking of the facilities for the tenants was something she didn’t know, but he’d shown up to lunch wearing a very casual t-shirt and jeans combo, a clothing style that hadn’t ever really fallen out of everyday fashion since first being introduced to the world by mid-20th century America. Given that this gentleman was a hacker that Norma had initially hired to try and break into Katrina’s systems and hadn’t left even when it was obvious that it would be an impossible task and no payment would be forthcoming told Diane one thing; he was smitten with Norma.

There were other signs, of course. Norma was constantly talking about how Russe would do random tasks around the station for her, bring her items he thought she might want for some project or another she’d mentioned working on, and often standing by her as she worked with the tenants to address the problems of the day.

It was the tiny smile on Norma’s lips while she recited Russe’s antics with exasperated fondness that told Diane that the feelings went both ways.

They were presently in the mess hall, which had been built almost as soon as the station had the capacity to do so. There were simply too many people for the food synthesizers to keep up with now that they were off emergency status. Besides, they had to be ready for the station to have a population of thousands, and the crew and support staff, which a good chunk of the tenants had chosen to become, were going to need their own place to get their grub that wasn’t going to be (hopefully) chock-a-block with visitors to the station.

Diane languidly twirled a forkful of spaghetti, “It’s not my fault you didn’t ask where I came from.”

Russe smiled bashfully and nodded, “Yeah, that’s fair. Sorry ‘bout that.”

Diane was just about to reply when a page came over the P.A. system, “Ops to Commander Somni’els, please report to Ops for an incoming transmission.”

The mentioned commander sighed, “Duty calls,” she said as she shoved an oversized forkful of pasta into her mouth and grabbed her plate and water as she stood.

Read the rest at Scribblehub

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[rainecreatesstuff]

TW: Unreality, slight body horror, manipulative behaviour (not from the main characters)

This story refers only to the characters/personas portrayed by the content creators, not the ccs themselves.

Grian’s breath flowed out as puffs of white in the off-black void around him.

“No. No no no no, I can’t be gone yet, I’m not done yet, I’m not,” He gasped, tears— or, at least, a liquid that approximated tears— rolling down his cheeks.

He couldn’t be done. He still had so much left to do. He was just starting his big base. He’d pledged to protect Scar. Hell, Scar had just gotten his elytra! If Grian wasn’t there to protect him, to catch him when he inevitably broke it midair, then, then…

Scar didn’t deserve to experience permadeath again.

And Joel, he might not see Joel again, at least not any time soon. Who knew if Joel would ever be permitted on Hermitcraft, and the only time Grian got to see him was occasionally when he would visit Jimmy’s for game nights, and in those stupid, stupid death games. He just… He just needed more time.

“One more shot,” He whispered to himself, “And then I’m done. And then I’ll go back and wait for them all to wake up again.”

He closed his eyes, and pictured the world as best he could, pictured his starter base, and the weird white structure he was building. Pictured Joel’s beautiful house, the carefully carved copper rooves, the perfectly organized chests. He pictured Scar’s base, ever expanding as it was, the dangerous rail tracks, the precarious paths, the gemstone portal that tinged the world beneath it purple when the light hit it.

When his eyes opened again, the world was in front of him. He saw Joel and Jimmy running back to his body, carrying it into a safer room, trying desperately to stop the bleeding from his back, gently slapping his face, as if they could still save him.

Maybe Grian should give them the credit when he woke up.

He readied himself to enter the world, taking a deep breath. He took a step forward, just inside the world’s bounds.

“Hello, Avicula.”

Grian froze.

“Grian,” He said, his voice cold, “It’s Grian.”

The voice laughed, sending shivers through the universe around them. Grian felt what mimicked a heart in him tremble at the noise. A fickle reminder of his humanity, and yet a cry for it all the same. He did not turn to look at the voice. He had seen it all before. He hoped if he didn’t look back, if he ignored the eyes burning through his false-flesh, he might one day forget what it felt like to meet their eyes.

“Are you still playing your little games? Have you not tired of these mortals yet? We can find you new ones, you know. All you have to do is return to us.”

Grian tried to pinpoint the voice. It couldn’t be Primmis, but maybe Tertius, or Novisimme. They both held that lilt in their voice that made Grian feel dizzy.

“I’m not playing any games. And certainly none of yours. Leave me alone. Don’t come back to this world,” Grian pulled what little courage he had left and raised his head, making eye contact with one of the eyes that reflected back to him on the world’s barrier.

“Oh, come now, Avi. It has been so long, and look! You have not even fully developed yet. Come home. It’s time,” Grian tried not to flinch as a long, claw-like appendage came up to pet his wing.

He was suddenly glad he was incorporeal at the moment. Couldn’t throw up if you didn’t have a body to consume things with in the first place.

Dilectuous. Of course. It had to be Dilectuous that found him.

He let himself take a steadying breath, then pulled his wings closer to himself, nudging off the claws. Dilectuous let out a barely audible huff of annoyance, and Grian savoured what little inconveniences he could cause them.

“I’m never going back,” Grian growled, “Not in a million years.”

“Ungrateful,” Dilectuous hissed.

The claws came back, this time gripping both wings with the force of a million stars.

“We gifted you the universe at your fingertips. We have left you in peace for far too long, playing your little games. The mortals have made you vain. You have no problem using the powers we gift you for your enjoyment. Even now, you abuse them in order to cheat in a game you have created. And yet you scorn us,” Dilectuous’ tone turned to one of pure hatred, scratching the inside of Grian’s mind in such a way that he cringed at the feeling.

“A gift is freely given. You call my powers, and my wings, and everything that makes me anything like you a gift. And therefore, you don’t get to determine how I use them. You don’t get to control me because you’ve given these, these “gifts” to the wrong person,” Grian let his voice scratch, flaring out his wings, and finally turning and meeting the creature’s eyes.

After this long, the horror had gone for him. All that was left now was a feeling of disgust, and a feeling of rage. The song, though, that still played. It lured him in, crying for his obedience, pleading for his love. Grian ignored the song.

He felt the telltale itch of eyes opening through his false-flesh, and glared at Dilectuous with every one. Dilectuous glared back, unflinching, and Grian felt a low growl hum from his throat.

“You will return with me, now, or you shall never return again. This is your final chance. I have fought tooth and nail with the Council in order to keep you in our circle. If you do not come now, you will be forever banished from the circle. You will live the rest of eternity as this disgusting hybrid, never fitting in with mortals nor magics alike. Your powers will never develop, you will be stuck like this for the remainder of forever.”

Grian huffed a laugh.

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do? I’m not returning with you, Dilectuous. Leave, or I will rip your soul from this world’s code. How embarrassing would that be? You run off after the “hybrid” you’ve been chasing for years, and return after he’s torn you from a world. I might do it anyway,” Grian grinned widely, allowing the wild feeling that always came with being in this form to properly show.

Dilectuous scowled at him, disgusted and disappointed. Grian continued to smile back. Whatever got rid of the stupid creature and let him get back to Scar and Joel. And if Dilectuous was being genuine, maybe he really wouldn’t have to deal with the Watchers again. That’d certainly be nice.

“So, what will it be, Great Beloved? Because I haven’t got all day. I’ve got people waiting for me. Unlike you,” Grian dug once more, producing a low growl from Dilectuous.

Dilectuous’ glares turned burning, and for a moment Grian was sure his very being was burning up, before the feeling subsided and Dilectuous let out a hiss of annoyance.

“Last chance. Leave,” Grian growled.

The creature let out an ear-splitting screech, and Grian hid his cringe. Dilectuous’ void-black wings beat once, then lifted them off the ground. Grian used all his energy to hold himself upright as the wind hit him, threatening to leave him knocked over and vulnerable.

“You will regret this day, Avicula. The Watchers will not forget this great offence.”

With that, the being left, melting into the void like ice in water. Grian let himself breathe. He was shaking like a leaf, now that they had left. He felt his eyes close, until he could see normally again. The tear-liquid flooded his face again, and he grinned.

Grian had turned away a fucking Watcher.

The adrenaline slowly drained out of him, and stars, he was tired.

“Just a bit more,” He muttered to himself, turning back to the world, “I’ll sleep when I get back.”

He called upon his magic once more, pushing and pulling the world around him until he stood in front of his slowly-deforming body. Jimmy and Joel sat nearby, solemnly whispering to each other. Grian let himself become just real enough to put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, then turned to his body.

It wasn’t exactly a gruesome sight. Although maybe he’d just seen his own body enough times that it didn’t register. Blood still flowed from his back, and his face was split in two parts, floating away from each other. His torso was also split into a few pieces, some floating away, beginning to disintegrate.

Time to get to work, then.

Grian decided having his face in one piece first would be best. He pulled the pieces together, binding them together with strings of energy. He moved onto his torso, then his limbs, until his body was formed enough to maybe inhabit it. He gasped for air, stumbling backwards slightly.

Not quite ready yet. His hands were still missing quite a few particles, maybe not noticeable to the mortal eye, but to Grian it was glaringly obvious. He pulled energy out of the air around him, forming it into flesh and skin, and melded it to his hands.

He pulled away and looked over it all again. He should be good to go. His false-body was utterly exhausted. Just a bit more, and then he could fall back into his body, scare the life out of Jimmy and Joel, and then fall asleep.

Grian approached his body, kneeling down next to it. He put a hand on his chest, and pulled all the energy he had left in him towards his heart. He demanded it to beat again. He felt a stutter, the beginnings of a heartbeat. He pulled more energy from the air.

There it was. Grian sighed with relief, letting his shoulders drop. Almost done.

He moved his hands upwards, to his temples, and breathed himself into his body.

He opened his eyes slowly, gasping a stuttering breath of air. Jimmy gasped, rushing to his side.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Grian?” Jimmy helped him sit up.

Grian groaned. Ugh. He did not miss pain, that was for sure. He blinked rapidly as his eyes readjusted to the colours and lights of existence. Pain bloomed from his back, and a whine drew itself from his lips as he leaned on Jimmy.

A bottle was held to his lips as he watched Joel push a totem into his hand. A warm liquid that tasted of berries coated his mouth and throat, and he felt the gash in his back weave itself back together.

“Hello,” He mumbled.

He heard Joel laugh, and smiled, letting all of his weight fall onto Jimmy. The world swirled around him in flashes of vibrant colours, the only solid things in sight being Joel and Jimmy.

“M’ tired,” He slurred, blinking sleepily.

“You’re alive,” Joel said with shock.

“No, ‘m tired.”

Jimmy giggled above him. He tried to focus on the sound. It was good to hear Jimmy happy. Jimmy hadn’t been happy in a long time. That was good.

“Stay awake just a bit longer, we’ve gotta get you home. Oh, gods, how’re we gonna get him home?” Joel asked.

Grian shrugged as best he could, remaining a solid weight on Jimmy’s shoulder. He could feel the welcoming embrace of sleep gripping his consciousness, slowly pulling him away from the world again. He let out a high-pitched whine. He didn’t want to go to sleep yet, he’d just got here. He had to make sure Jimmy and Joel were okay, and…

Something else. There was something else he’d had to do.

Jimmy shushed him soothingly, letting him fall a bit so he was more laying on Jimmy than anything else.

“I don’t think we’re getting him back like this. It’s already sundown anyways, let’s just sleep here. Then we can leave in the morning?”

Joel sighed.

“That might be our best option. Damn you, Jimmy,” Joel said lightheartedly.

“Hey! It’s not my fault Grian decided to run off and get himself killed!”

“It is,” Grian managed to mutter half-heartedly, smiling when it coaxed a laugh from Joel.

“Wah- Hey! You don’t get to talk! Go to sleep!”

“You’re just gonna ignore the words of a dead man? That’s a bit rude. I believe him. He said it’s your fault, then it’s your fault,” Joel grinned as Jimmy gawked.

Grian let the warmth of existence seep into him again, let himself smile as his friends argued. The totem still sat heavy in his hand, which he deduced must mean that he was pretty stable. He tried to open his eyes more, clear his head a bit, but felt another wave of exhaustion hit him. He’d forgotten how much dying took out of his body, especially on hardcore servers.

A yawn drew itself from his mouth, and he let his eyes fall shut. Jimmy and Joel’s voices fell back to whispers, and Grian mentally thanked them with what little consciousness he had left. He vaguely registered being lifted, followed by the softness of a pillow beneath his head, and the comfort of a blanket being laid over him.

He continued to slip away slowly, his already-muddled thoughts becoming even more discombobulated. He shifted onto his stomach, his wings forming a sort of shelter around him. He sighed contentedly.

“Sleep well, Grian,” A voice murmured.

Grian fell asleep.

[megumisbimbo]

- Four -

megumi fushiguro x reader

genre: fluff, slight angst

summary: (y/n) was nothing special. A human being who had no idea that curses walked the same earth they walked. But then they locked eyes with Megumi Fushiguro. Can Fushiguro focus on the task ahead or will he be distracted by the king of curses and his new love interest?

series masterlist

©️ @megumisbimbo — all rights reserved. Please do not repost, modify or translate my work. Reblogs and likes appreciated!

Credit for the main storyline and characters goes to Gege Akutami.

tags: @xreemie @kitkozume @noyakura @vanilnya20​ @tobi--o​

the songs are indicated throughout the story at certain points!

songs used:

put your records on - ritt momney

who dat boy - tyler the creator

goodbye - billie eilish

— put your records on - ritt momney —

(y/n) pov:

It was early in the morning when you were woken up by the sound of rustling. You turn and see Fushiguro frantically getting himself together.

“New mission?” You ask, voice deep and scratchy.

“It was a bit of an emergency, sorry I can’t stay today. But the rest of the sashimi is in the fridge.”

“I’ll be fine Megumi, I promise. You shouldn’t worry so much you’ll get wrinkles.” You say, causing him to let out a small chuckle.

“Are you ready to leave yet?” You ask

“No not yet.”

“Then can I play with Kou?”

Megumi gives you a puzzled glare.

“Kou?..”

“Your white dog. I named it Kou! Isn’t it cute!?”

“You shouldn’t get so attached to them you know.”

“Yes yes I know. Now can I play with it?!”

Megumi smiles and summons his white dog, who he noticed has taken a special liking to you. As much as he knew it would be a bad idea for you to get so attached to his shikigami, he couldn’t help but feel all warm inside when he saw you laughing. He finished getting ready and him and his white dog make their way out the door bidding you goodbye. You stare out the window again, noticing that you tend to do that often. Well you didn’t want to sit around all day bored as hell, so you decide to watch a movie on Megumi’s television and finish the sushi from the day before.

Megumi pov:

They looked so cute playing with my divine dog, how could I say no to that face.

“Snap out of it Megumi.” Nobara says waving her hand in front of my face.

“Were you even paying attention?”

“Of course I was.” I respond, slightly irritated.

“Thinking about (y/n) again?”

“WHA- WHY- WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT??” I say, startled by her question.

“I don’t know. Just a hunch I guess.”

Itadori walks outside and greets us with a smile. Reminds me of their smile...stop it Megumi you’re going insane.

Ijichi-san’s black car rolls up beside us and we step into the backseat. He drives us to the Juvenile Detention Center in West Tokyo. We step out of the car and walk towards building two.

“Our windows confirmed a curse womb approximately three hours ago. Five inmates are currently trapped inside along with the curse. Curse wombs that grow and change shape can be expected to become a curse close to that of a special grade. You are not to engage.”

I know that a curse of special grade ranking should be dealt with by a special grade sorcerer. Where is Gojo-sensei?

“Satoru is currently on a business trip.”

Of course.

A woman comes running towards us, stopped by the gate guards.

“Is Tadashi...my son. Is my son ok?!?”

I turn and see Itadori’s face turn pale. He needs to stop letting his feelings get involved.

“We cannot disclose any more information at this point.” One of the guards explains.

“Fushiguro, Kugisaki. We have to save him.” Itadori says.

“Of course.”

Ijichi-san lowers the curtain and I summon Kou.

“If it gets close, Ko-... my dog will let us know.”

“Let’s do this.”

— who dat boy - tyler the creator—

We walk into the building and are immediately caught off guard. The whole place is a maze. I turn around looking for the entrance.

“Damn. Where’s the door?”

Kugisaki and Itadori panic but I explain that Kou would be able to sniff it’s way out, since it remembered the scent of the entrance.

“You’re so reliable Fushiguro.” Itadori says with a smile, a familiar glint in his eyes.

He reacts the same way (y/n) does. They really must be close.

We walk deeper into the maze and find the work yard where the curse had first been seen. A mangled up body lay across from us. Itadori walks up to the body and pulls on the shirt he was wearing.

Tadashi Okazaki

“Is it that woman’s son?” Kugisaki asks.

“We’re bringing this body back. His face isn’t that messed up. She won’t be satisfied if we just tell her that her son is dead.” Itadori responds.

I grab onto his uniform and pull him away from the victim.

“Leave him. We have to confirm that the other two are dead.” I say, knowing exactly who this man is.

“Everytime we look back the path is different. How’re we gonna get back here?” Itadori responds.

“I said leave him. I never said we were coming back. He’s not even worth saving alive, why would I save his dead body.”

Itadori grabs onto the collar of my jacket.

“What’re you talking about?” He says, anger laced in his tone.

“This is a juvenile detention center. I read about what he did to get in here. He was driving without a license and hit a girl who was walking home from school, and that was the second infraction. I know you want to save everyone, so they can die a natural death, but who’s to say that someone you save won’t kill someone else in the future?”

Itadori looks at me with a blank stare. Anger festers within him. I can feel his energy shifting.

“THEN WHY DID YOU SAVE ME!?”

I...can’t answer that.

Kugisaki’s voice tears us away from each others stare.

“Knock it off you two! This isn’t the time or-“

Her body being sucked into a hole on the ground cuts her sentence off. We both stare blankly at the spot where she was standing.

No way.

“There’s no way...my divine dog would have-“

I turn around and see Kou’s head sticking out of the wall. Completely dead. My heart sinks. (y/n).

“Fushiguro!”

I turn towards Itadori, fear building up inside me.

“Run! We’ll find Kugisaki after we get away-“

My words are cut off by the immense amount of cursed energy I suddenly feel beside us. The special grade.

I can’t move. Neither can Itadori...I think.

Itadori suddenly swings his slaughter demon upwards in hopes of at least wounding the special grade. It proves absolutely futile when both the slaughter demon and his hand fly through the air landing a few feet away from us. I look back at Itadori and find his arm gushing with blood.

We’ve lost.

“Fushiguro. Run. Find Kugisaki. Let me know when you get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“Fushiguro...Please...”

My heart sinks as I see Itadori’s pleading smile. I know he’s strong, but he’ll die if I leave him with this curse.

Wait.

I nod and find my will to move. I run as fast as I can through the building desperately searching for Kugisaki, my black divine dog leading the way. I finally reach her and, using my frog shikigami, pull her away from the curse that was holding her. We both manage to escape from the building. I drop her off with Ijichi-san, and my divine dog lets out a howl, signaling our escape.

Please let him make it out.

Ijichi-san explains that he’ll take Kugisaki to a doctor, and insists that I come along with him. I refuse and opt to wait for Itadori outside the building. I ask him if he could do his best to bring a sorcerer higher than a grade one when he returns. Although it isn’t likely he will, he agrees and drives away with Kugisaki safely tucked in the backseat.

I wait for what feels like ages. Suddenly, I notice the expanded dormitory has disappeared, which means the special grade curse has died.

Now if Itadori would just come back.

My thoughts are interrupted by a familiar sinister voice.

“If it’s about him, he’s not coming back.”

My whole body tenses up at the sound of that demon’s voice.

“Don’t worry, I’m in a good mood right now. Let’s talk.”

Where’s Itadori? He should have switched back by now.

“He seems to be having some trouble, but it’s only a matter of time before he’ll switch back. So I thought about what I could do in the meantime.” Sukuna says, an evil grin creeping across his face.

I watch as Sukuna buries his fist inside Itadori’s chest and rips out his heart. My eyes widen as I watch him hold Itadori’s still beating heart in his hand.

“I’m taking this brat hostage!”

He can live without the heart but...Itadori can’t. He’ll die if he switches back.

“Itadori will come back, even if his death is the result...that’s just the type of person he is.” I say, my heart racing.

“You think too highly of him. Just a while ago he was so scared while on the verge of death. He was a mess you know. Talking about (y/n) and why he’s sorry and how he’ll miss them. How pathetic.”

(y/n). Dammit.

My mind is racing as I stare at Itadori’s body, covered with tattoos and gushing red hot blood.

I’ll try and make him restore Itadori’s heart before he comes back by convincing him that he can’t win with a heartless body. I have to. But is that even possible? For someone who couldn’t even move in front of a special grade curse. Doesn’t matter. I’ll do it.

“I’m finally outside, Let’s make use of this space!”

I quickly summon Nue to fight Sukuna. Although I’m using my shikigami, I’ll fight him myself as well. I think I manage to land a blow, but it’s quickly blocked.

“Put some more curse behind your blows!” Sukuna says before punching me in the face.

I summon my Serpent and with the help of Nue, I manage to restrain Sukuna.

“Don’t give him a chance!” I yell to my shikigami, hoping that I’d be able to hold him long enough to land a critical blow.

I watch in shock as Sukuna rips my Serpent apart, freeing himself. Without a second to think, I find him grabbing onto the back of my shirt, flinging me into the air. He follows me up into the sky and hits me hard against the back of my head. I fly aimlessly through the air, but Nue scoops me into its wings and softens the blow of the landing. I turn and pet it’s head.

Nue is at its limit. I have to undo the spell before it’s destroyed. I carelessly used my shikigami and now my Serpent and Kou are both destroyed.

Sukuna lands in front of me.

“Your shikigami use shadow as a medium, don’t they?” He asks.

“So what?”

“Hmmm, you don’t get it do you?

I give him a questioning look, still disoriented from the beating I just received.

“What a waste of talent...in any case, I’m not going to heal the brat. He’s not even worth fighting for.”

“Well I save people...unfairly.”

I let out all of my curse, allowing the blue tinted energy to flow through and around me.

“You’re going to get fired up now? That’s good! Well then. Entertain me Fushiguro Megumi!!”

I begin reciting a chant usually done by shinto priests that is believed to summon the dead. Also known as “The ten sacred treasures.” My thoughts are spinning, disorienting me more.

(y/n). What would they think of me? How could I face them if I lose Itadori.

— goodbye - billie eilish —

I stop, realizing the only way to win is to pull Itadori out of his own head, no matter the cost.

“Itadori, I know you can hear me. I didn’t have any logical reason to save you and (y/n) back then. Even if it was dangerous, even if they are a liability, I couldn’t watch good people die. I had some doubts but... ultimately I made a selfish choice driven by my emotions. But that’s fine. So to answer your question...I saved you because...because I’m not a hero. I’m a sorcerer. I never regretted saving you two. Not even once.”

The tattoos on his body begin to fade, and Itadori’s face resurfaces.

“I see...You’re smart Fushiguro and I think the way you live your truth is right. But I don’t think I’m wrong either.”

Itadori’s chest gushes blood and his body becomes limp.

“Ah, it’s almost time for me... Kugisaki and Gojo-sensei...I guess I don’t have to worry about them anymore. Live a long life Fushiguro, and tell (y/n)...I...love....the-“

His body hits the ground creating a puddle of blood. Tears form in my onyx eyes.

I have to go home to (y/n)...what will I tell them. I’m sorry (y/n). I couldn’t save him.

[inky-duchess]

21 History Ancedotes for my 21st Birthday

So today I celebrate my 21st birthday and I have decided to gift you all with 21 of my favourite historical Ancedotes. Some are funny, some are sad and some are plain bizarre but I hope the make your day 💜

Mary Maloney, an Irish-born suffragette in England followed Winston Churchill around while he was campaigning for a seat in Parliament, drowning out everything he said with a very large bell and calls for him to apologise for his comments on women's rights and suffrage movements.

Clodius Pulcher was a well born Roman noble during the last day's of the Republic. He gave up his Patrician status to become Tribune of the Plebs (an office in which one had to be a Pleb) by being adopted by a much younger Plebian man who became his "father". Clodius was a bit of a riot, sneaking into religious festivals dressed like a woman to sleep with Caesar's wife, building a shrine to Liberty in the ruins of the Conservative Cicero, vetoed the last speech of one of the Consuls (who basically did nothing all year and was apparently going to roast Caesar) and burned down the Senate House with his funeral pyre (the Plebs who loved him literally tearing up the furniture to build his pyre). He was honestly the best fun.

When laying on her deathbed, Queen Caroline of Ansbach turned to her husband George II of England and told him he should marry again. George refused to ever wed again... But added he would have mistresses. Caroline said , likely with a roll of her eyes, "oh my god that doesn't matter."

Florence was a pretty cool city in the Renaissance until Savanorola came to town. He disliked the loose living artists that crowded the city, with their naked pagan gods and rampant homosexuality. He expelled them all with help of the French hoping to make Florence Holy Again. When the Borgia Pope excommunicated him and sentenced him to death, one man in the crowd was reported to have said. "thank God, niw we can return to sodomy." One Floretine man in the 1490s said Gay Rights.

So this list couldn't be complete without an entry of the only American politician I love, Alexander Hamilton who was just a walking entity of sass. I could go on about his sharp sarcasm or his disaster bi vibes with John Lauren's but my all time favourite Alexander Hamilton ancedote has to be this exchange with Thomas Jefferson "There are approximately 1010300 words in the English language, but I could never string enough words together to properly explain how much I want to hit you with a chair."

Caterina Sforza was an Italian noble woman during the Renaissance. She was apart of the powerful Sforza family, which drew many enemies to her. One fateful day at Forli, Caterina's children were snatched as hostages. The besiegers threatened to kill her children if she did not cede the castle. Caterina refused, lifting her skirts and shouted to the besiegers that she had the means to make more children.

Hannibal Lecter's creator Thomas Harris was happy to end his great character's story with the original trilogy. However his publishers forced him to write an unneeded prequel explaining why Hannibal became Hannibal. Thomas Harris agreed lest he lose the rights to his character so he wrote Hannibal Rising, where Hannibal as a young man hunts down the Nazis who ate his sister with a katana.

Nell Gwyn is my favourite mistress of Charles II, mainly because of her sass. Once while trapped in the middle of a riot where Londoners swamped her carriage thinking she was Charles's Catholic mistress. She popped her head out the carriage and told the people "Pray good people be civil. I am the Protestant whore." She also dosed her rival Moll Davis with laxatives in order to free up some of Charles's time and she once flashed her underwear at the French ambassador after asking him why the Franch King did not pay her to spy on Charles because she was with him every night. A true Queen.

Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty of China once rose from his bed to go do some ruling when he realised his lover, Dong Xian was sleeping on his sleeve. Rather than disturb his lover, the Emperor cut his sleeve off at the wrist to leave Dong Xian nap. Nothing has ever been more romantic than that. Y'all could never.

Princess Margaret the sister of current Queen Elizabeth II was a socialable Princess and often tasked to visit the up and coming music stars of the day on behalf of the Crown. When meeting the Beatles one evening, she noticed George Harrison was acting a little odd. When she asked what was the matter, he replied "We arent allowed eat until you go." Princess Margaret laughed and promptly left so the Beatles could get some dinner.

During the Siege of Jadotsville, Irish soldiers under the flag of the UN were attacked and besieged by local insurgents allied with the Katanga Regime. The insurgents numbered thousands while the Irish only had 158 soldiers, all who were lightly armed. They radioed to their allies assuring them that "we will hold out until our last bullet is spent. Could use some whiskey though".

Napoleon was famous for writing raunchy letters to his wife, the Empress Josephine while he was away. She used to reply with really mundane letters or not at all. She really just could not be bothered with him.

Josip Broz Tito was so fed up with Joseph Stalin sending assassins to kill him, he wrote to Stalin personally to say "If you don't stop sending assassins to kill me. I will send one to Moscow and I won't have to send another." It didn't work but Big Dick Energy.

Successful Roman soldiers returning from war often got to march along in parades known as Triumphs. During this, it was customary for them to sing bawdy songs about their commander. One surviving one about Caesar goes like this "Romans, lock up your wives. Here comes the bald adulterous whore. We pissed away your gold in Gaul and come to borrow more."

Matilda, Lady of the English was a woman so badass that history cannot handle her. She was the daughter of Henry I who left his throne to her after the death of her brother. She was away in France when her father died and her throne was snatched by her cousin Stephen. They battled back and forth for years with neither side ceding any ground. Matilda was once besieged in a castle during a snow storm, with Stephen's men all around her. Instead of fighting her way out. She simply donned a white cloak and walked out of the castle. Just walked out without any of Stephen's men seeing her.

Pedro of Portugal once fell in love with a beautiful lady in waiting called Inez de Castro. For years, they lived as man and mistress, popping out a few kinds. Pedro's dad really did not like Inez and wanted Pedro to find a legitimate wife so he had her killed. Pedro returned home to find the mother of his children dead. Pedro went a little crazy. He had all his father's assassins killed, ripping out their hearts as they had done to him. When Pedro ascended the throne, he demanded the Pope legitimize his children by Inez. The Pope not wanting to upset the King, said he couldn't because Inez was never crowned Queen. Pedro dug Inez up and crowned her as Queen, having all the nobility swear loyalty to her corpse. The Pope had no choice but to agree to his request.

A famously clever general once saved an entire city with an ingenious stragety to sit outside the city waiting for the attacking army to come. The attack had come to fast for the city to ready themselves for a Siege so, the general had to move quickly. He evacuated the city and took his place waiting for the army to come. The enemy forces stopped and took one look at him and bolted, thinking he meant to lure them in one of his famous traps.

Michaelangelo was really badly treated by the Vatican when he was painting the Sistine Chapel. He constantly fought with the Popes over the design and his work, which he was paid peanuts for. Michaelangelo got his revenge in his work, painting the gates of Hell behind the Papal Throne and an angel flipping the ol' fig (the Renaissance version of the bird) toward the Pope's chair.

Peter the Great was not a perfect guy. He kept serfdom as a practise in his kingdom, he had his son tortured to death and he could be an unpleasant guy. But Peter was a dreamer. He wanted nothing more to build a fleet for Russia and bring Russia beyond its borders. Peter took a gap year from ruling Russia to wander around Europe. When he stopped in England, he was granted Leicester House to chill in while he did his shipwright studies. It was here that Peter found a new passion. The wheelbarrow. Cue Peter and his new found English buddies drinking in Leicester House, punching the artwork and rolling each other around in barrels across the house's Great gardens.

Diogenes is hands down a walking shit post. He was a great thinker in Greece during the reign of Alexander but a rather dry, sarcastic wit. He lived in a pithos/a jar because he shunned all vanities and values of society. He trolled other philosophers, attending their debates to heckle them and eat loud foods through them. When Alexander the Great came to fan boy over him, saying that if he were not Alexander he would like to be Diogenes to which Diogenes just said "yeah me too, now get out of my sunlight."

Cosimo de Medici was the son of a Floretine banker with a great knowledge and love of art. Cosimo wished for Florence to release its potentially and join the Renaissance. He hired Filippo Brunelleschi to finsh the Great Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore which had láin unfinished for over a century, a symbol of a failure of ambition. The builders had lost the knowledge of creating a dome so large so it remained unfinished. Despite much opposition from the other nobility and denouncers of the Renaissance, Cosimo's dream of the completion of the dome was completed, making it the largest brick dome in creation at that time. There is nothing like achieving your dreams and certainly nothing like leaving a lasting reminder that screams 'I was right and you were wrong' to stand for centuries.

[yszarin]

seen people on twitter talking about what got them through 2020, but twitter scary so I’m just gonna ramble about podcasts here. I’ve loved audio fiction since I was little, when my brother used to bring me big finish doctor who to listen to when I was sick, and they’ve really been great for me this year in terms of... want story but too tired to keep eyes open? podcast. need to do a mundane task but can’t stay on it? podcast. need something on before you sleep because if you leave your brain to its own devices it’ll eat itself? podcast. looking for queer rep? podcast. below the cut I’ve stuck 10 of my favourites of the shows I started listening to this year, and I promise they’re not all from Definitely Human.

Down - fiction, horror - a state of the art submarine with a less than state of the art crew descends into a newly-discovered Antarctic trench, “The Bottomless Pit” for the purposes of exploration and science! This goes about as well as you would expect. Episodes are super short and it’s entirely possible to listen to the whole thing in less than a day, although unfortunately it’s currently unfinished due to covid, so I guess it’s more that in less than a day you, too, could join me in unintentional hiatus hell. It is worth it.    

Enthusigasm - nonfiction, talk - Rusty Quill patreon exclusive show in which Helen Gould talks to people about things they enjoy. It just has the loveliest energy, and is exactly what I’ve needed this year. They’ve done episodes on subjects including baking, the horror genre and trash tv, and every one of them has been a joy, even when it’s about stuff I’m not into personally. How RQ manages to consistently produce The Best Content I don’t know, but by god do they do it.

Everything is Alive - interview - Gemma Amor recommended this and she’s usually right about such things. It’s a series of interviews with inanimate objects, all of which are animate now and have things to say. I’m particularly fond of the gay subway seats and was emotionally distraught by the cuddly toy. Very good to listen to to fall asleep.

Marscorp - fiction, sci-fi comedy - Station Supervisor E. L. Hob is awoken from suspended animation on Mars and must do her best to restore the colony’s original purpose of terraforming the planet. If you teased Jonny Sims for naming his main character after himself and also playing him please get ready to forgive him for everything, as you meet Tom Dalling, David Knight, and Dave Price, played by Tom Dalling, David Knight, and David Price, and written by Tom Dalling, David Knight, and David Price. I’m furious.  

Pax Fortuna! - actual play, adventure - a rotating group of characters leaves a horrified and occasionally maimed trail of NPCs behind them as they adventure in and around the prosperous island city of Fortuna. The shifting cast works really well, allowing for some PCs who are just objectively terribly people, while keeping the whole thing feeling really fun. Particular favourite PCs are Selwyn Bloodstorm, half-orc in search of gold accidentally ending up with friends, Alfonso Boyo, a necromancer but only in the most bureaucratic and horrifying way possible, and Almira Q Appleby, gnome inventor presenting such items as The Potato Peeler (may contain combat setting) to an unsuspecting public. The series comprises six interconnected smaller stories, each with multiple episodes, all of which are around 25-30 minutes long, which has been a particular joy for me, as someone who has difficulty with episode lengths of over an hour and is so often “I love AP podcasts. love to actually listen to one someday”. Pax Fortuna! is the caramelised nut bowl of actual plays, in that I found it very difficult to stop consuming it, now it’s all gone, and I’m sad. There are only two fics on AO3. Please listen to Pax Fortuna!.    

Shadows at the Door - anthology, horror - A collection of quiet horror stories, mixing older tales, both classic and less well-known, and modern ones. The soundtrack is by Nico, one of the editors on TMA and Good Egg, and it turns out, also Skilled Egg at soundtracks. Each story is followed-up by a discussion of its themes, and some tangents. Also very nice to fall asleep to, lots of suggestions of new things to look for, and the stories themselves are well-dramatised.  

The Monster Hunters - fiction, comedy - It took me a bit of time to settle into this - I have a tendency to bounce off comedy, apparently - but once I had I was very settled. Roy Steel and Lorrimer Chesterfield are there with fists and brains respectively to hunt monsters and be anything from vaguely to pointedly sexist because it’s the 60s/70s (it is intentional and ludicrous). If you’re familiar with John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, you can listen out for Simon Kane as Sir Maxwell House. Some nice spooks, especially in the Christmas specials.

The Amelia Project - fiction, comedy - Need to disappear? The Amelia Project will help you fake your death and reappear in a new life. Each episode takes the form of an interview with a new client, in which they tell their story, and the circumstances of their death and next life will be decided. The creators had a stall at PodUK and gave me some Malteasers which it took me approximately 10 months to eat because I didn’t feel like I’d listened to enough of their show to deserve them. Fun fact! There are plenty of chocolate foodstuffs that will take this length of time in their stride and still be as new when you eat them, but Malteasers are not one of them. Luckily finishing off S2 of The Amelia Project has been its own reward, and I still have plenty to go!   

The Infinite Bad - actual play, horror - a slowly-forming found family leaves a traumatised and usually dead trail of NPCs behind them despite their best efforts, as they are embroiled in a globe-spanning investigation of horror and mystery. Uses a modified version of the d20 modern system, set in the inter-war period, and, it should be noted, contains depictions of period-typical racism. Other CWs (this list is not exhaustive) include child death, pet death, gore, disease, misc death (so much misc death), so please be careful if you choose to listen. Also contains stairs, the inherent malevolence of citrus products, and things which are viscous.

These Flimsy Rituals - actual play, fantasy - I’m not very far into this one, due to episode lengths, but when I have the spell slots to do so I always enjoy listening to it. I’m in the first bit, which follows a group of people fleeing a living storm. They have some really lovely lyrical bits at the starts of the episodes that I could listen to for hours, I’ve found those of the characters that I’ve met very engaging, and I’m interested to see how it unfolds.

[femalechibiblogger]

5 Underrated Cartoons That Were Cancelled Too Soon

1. Clone High

Clone High is set in a high school in the fictional town of Exclamation, USA, that is secretly being run as an elaborate military experiment orchestrated by a government office called the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures. The school is entirely populated by the clones of famous historical figures that have been created and raised with the intent of having their various strengths and abilities harnessed by the United States military. The principal of the high school, Cinnamon J. Scudworth, has his own plans for the clones, and secretly tries to undermine the wishes of the Board (Scudworth wants to use the clones to create a clone-themed amusement park, dubbed "Cloney Island", a decidedly less evil intention than that of the Board). He is assisted by his robot butler/vice principal/dehumidifier, Mr. Butlertron (a parody of Mr. Belvedere), who is programmed to call everyone "Wesley" and speak in two distinct intonations.

The main protagonists of Clone High are the clones of Abraham Lincoln (referred to as "Abe"), Joan of Arc, and Mahatma Gandhi. Much of the plot of the show revolves around the attempts of Abe to woo the vain and promiscuous clone of Cleopatra, while being oblivious to the fact that his friend Joan of Arc is attracted to him. Meanwhile, John F. Kennedy's clone (referred to as "JFK"), a macho, narcissistic womanizer, is also attempting to win over Cleopatra and has a long-standing rivalry with Abe. Gandhi acts in many of the episodes as the comic relief. Also on a few occasions, the characters that we see learn most of "Life's Lessons" the hard way.

Why it was cancelled: An article in Maxim Magazine depicting Mahatma Gandhi being beaten up by a muscular man sparked outrage in India. Clone High was caught in a crossfire when citizens in the country conducted internet searches on the Maxim article but also found out about the show's Gandhi character on MTV's website. This sparked an outrage in India over the show's depiction of Gandhi. On January 30, 2003, the 55th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, approximately 150 protesters (including members of parliament) gathered in New Delhi and vowed to fast in response to Clone High. Tom Freston, the head of Viacom (owner of MTV), was visiting the network's India branch and was "trapped in the building", according to Miller. In 2014, he recalled that protestors "basically threatened that they'd revoke MTV's broadcasting license in India if they didn't take the show off the air". MTV offered a quick apology, stating that "Clone High was created and intended for an American audience", and "we recognize and respect that various cultures may view this programming differently, and we regret any offense taken by the content in the show". Miller would later recall that executives at MTV enjoyed the show, and asked for the duo to pitch a second season without Gandhi. Lord and Miller's two potential versions of a second season included one that made no mention of Gandhi's absence, and another that revealed that the character was, in fact, a clone of actor Gary Coleman all along, and the show continued as normal. "We pitched that, and it went up to the top at Viacom again and it got a big no," he remembered.

2. The Awesomes

The show follows a group of superheroes who step in and replace the members of a legendary but disbanding superhero team. Under new leadership, The Awesomes attempt to put themselves back together in the face of intense media and government skepticism.

Why it was cancelled: On December 17, 2015, Hulu canceled The Awesomes after three seasons and did not renew it for a fourth season due to low ratings. The Awesomes was the first time Michael Tavera composed music for an adult animated series.

3. Invader Zim

Zim dreams of greatness. Unfortunately, though, he's hopelessly inept as a space invader. Desperate to be rid of the annoying Zim, his planet's leaders send him on a mission to infiltrate Earth, providing him with leftover, cobbled-together equipment. To their consternation, Zim succeeds in setting up a base on Earth and infiltrating human culture, posing as a human child as he plots the planet's downfall. Only Zim's archnemesis, Dib, recognizes that Zim is an alien, and of course, nobody believes Dib's claims.

Why it was cancelled: On the subject of why Invader Zim was cancelled, creator of the show Jhonen Vasquez said, "I could go on and on with variations of the most fantastic reasons for why the show was cancelled, but in the end, even I couldn't give you the whole and accurate truth for why the show got pulled," he wrote in a lengthy post on his website in 2010, nearly eight years after the show wrapped. "The most likely culprits are simply ratings and the sheer expense of the show, which was monstrously expensive at the time, especially when compared to more modern, flash-based savings fests."Nearly nine years later in 2019, Vasquez was interviewed by Syfy and said:

I never point to any one particular thing [as the reason for why Invader Zim was cancelled. The show could've come out at any point in history and I don't think it would ever really be appropriate... I think there's always horrible things happening in the world and genuine comedy comes from horrible things. At the time, it just happened to be things like Columbine and 9/11 and then people freak out because they don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities. It's a justified response to a certain extent; there's people who have been affected and they don't want to be reminded of this awful stuff… I just think that it did not jive well with Nickelodeon's image.

In an interview with Syfy in 2018, Richard Horvitz, the voice of Zim, was questioned about why the show got cancelled; he responded:

There's been a lot of rumors that have abounded for years about why Invader Zim was canceled. People think it's the Bloody GIR episode, because there's a quick subliminal shot of GIR all bloodied, but that’s not it at all. Nickelodeon knew about that shot and they didn't seem to mind. But what [the cancellation really was] is this plain simple fact: We had horrible ratings. There were two things that were going on in 2001. Our ratings were not doing well, our demographic at the time was not The Fairly OddParents demographic, which is what we premiered with, and we premiered to really, really good critical acclaim. But ratings-wise, the only real barometer [was the] target audience, 6 to 10 year olds, and I think that it was a little too much for that [demographic], and the parents also might have thought it was a little graphic for them. Our ratings never really got off the ground. One other thing that people often forget, is that the show premiered in March of 2001. By September of 2001, we had the horrible downing of the twin towers. Given the mood of the country at the time, I don't think people wanted to see shows that were about any kind of destruction or anything that had to do with someone trying to conquer the Earth.

4. The Oblongs

A clever comic parable of society's ills, "The Oblongs" depicts the warped world of a bizarre yet loving family of have-nots who live in a toxic valley and can't seem to beat the caste system of the beautiful people living high on the hill. The animated series is based on characters created by author Angus Oblong ("Creepy Susie and 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children").

Why it was cancelled: Could not find a specific answer. The WB network just decided to cancel it even though it had good ratings. 

5. Wander Over Yonder

The series follows Wander, a nomadic and overly-optimistic intergalactic traveller and his best friend and steed, Sylvia the Zbornak, as they travel from planet to planet helping people to have fun and live free, despite the continuing encroachment of Lord Hater, one of the most powerful villains in the galaxy, and his army of Watchdogs.

The show's first season is episodic; there are very few strong ties between episodes, and they can be viewed independently of each other. In the second season, however, a more sequential story is introduced; as Lord Dominator begins to conquer the galaxy, the show's tone becomes more serious and the focus moves from stopping the rather incompetent Lord Hater to stopping the extremely competent Lord Dominator. As a result, the episodes are more closely linked and there are several developments in the overarching plot.

Why it was cancelled: The creators of the show were not given a specific reason, even though they had plans for a third season.

[paradiselostbythedashboardlight]

Quarantine, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Wrote 430,943 Words of Prose in a Year

As we are coming up terrifyingly fast on a full year of quarantine with no end to the pandemic yet in sight for most people, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the last year of my existence in a state that most people now refer to as quarantine. Since March of 2020, I, like most other sane people in my country, have stopped traveling, going to stores, seeing all but a limited group of other humans, and begun having recurring nightmares about being in crowds without a piece of cloth over my nose and mouth.

Suffice to say, it has been a bit stressful.

The other thing that I have done since COVID-19 began rapidly spreading across the globe last year is write over 430,943 words of fiction. 

The number seems insane to me still. That is (approximately) one Gone With The Wind, one entire Lord of the Rings series, or the first four Harry Potter books. That is still sadly not yet War and Peace (but who knows… the pandemic isn’t over yet).

So now that I am looking back, I find myself with one question: how did this happen? Why did I do this? What does this mean about my life this year?

Since apparently I answer best by writing a lot, let’s begin at the beginning. Let me tell you a story. I’ll keep it short, I swear.

Part 1: Blast From the Past

In March of 2020, I was still in the midst of an academic semester. There was a long academic document to write and a class to teach. However, as quarantine abruptly robbed me of most of my usual commitments, I was suddenly thrust into the position of having more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. Consequently, I decided to break out the Nintendo Switch I’d gotten for Christmas and revive a childhood interest in video games.

And boy did I. I played the games I owned for all they were worth. I played them during the evenings when I had no social engagements to attend. I played them during the Zoom meetings I was already struggling to pay attention to. By the end of March, I had finished one game, and it had set the wheels turning in my brain.

Here’s a fact about me: I don’t usually tend to write or read a lot of fanfiction about things that I consider really really good. Basically, fanfiction for me has always been an impulse born from incompletion or imperfection. I see no need to add to a perfect story (although I happily consume and create fanart). But for something enjoyable and yet slightly unsatisfying? That’s fanfic territory, bud.

So by April, I had developed a sort of epic fanfiction for this video game I was playing. It was one of those magnum opus kind of ideas, a grand retelling of the story with a huge sprawling plot and Themes (™). 

At first, it was merely a thought experiment that lived only in my head, a sort of entertainment to ponder in the hours before falling asleep. What changed? Well, a friend of mine decided to also write a fanfiction on the same video game and she kindly consented to let me read it.

Suddenly, I was ravenously hungry to read and to write and to share and to consume. I wrote a hundred thousand words of this fanfic in April and into early May, sending each chapter to my friend and being spurred onward by her kind comments. 

The fic became a gargantuan endeavor full of strange little challenges I set for myself. It was a canon-divergence, requiring plotting, worldbuilding, a darker and grimer tone. For some reason, I decided to write each chapter from a different character’s perspective, making the final product into a series of essentially short story character studies which together formed a plot.

By the end of May, the story was published for the world to see. It was well-received, although not particularly popular by fandom standards. And that was the end. I had gotten out my pandemic crazies, the semester was over and now I could move on. I had made my peace with the source material, plumbing all of the little details that I wanted to examine and creating a narrative that I found satisfying.

It was over.

Part 2: Summer Lovin?

Except that it wasn’t.

Confession: as I had been posting my giant fanfiction, I had also begun to explore the fan community itself, mostly curious to see some nice art and gather a bit of demographic info about what was popular within the community. As a result, I found a fanfic recommendations page. Among the recommendations was one author who kept popping up and i finally decided to give the fic a read.

Woah. It was good. Like, really good. Like, professional quality writing and themes that seemed designed to appeal to me. I devoured everything that the creator had posted in a week and then subscribed to eagerly wait for more.

As June rolled around, I realized that I had a problem on my hands. My great big gen masterpiece was finished, but this author had gotten me hooked on something else, something with a nefarious reputation online: shipping.

The term du jour for this seems to be “brain worms” so let’s just say that reading other fanworks had given me some brain worms. Inspired this time not just by the source material of the game, but now the fan community itself, my mind began to develop another idea.

I wrote the fic, about 11k, in a single afternoon of frantic writing. When I finished it, I knew it was one of my strongest pieces. It had just come together, a combination of all the thought that I’d been brewing up and a stylistic execution that just worked with the story I wanted to tell.

I posted it on a new account. Shipping seemed vaguely shameful to me still and my mom reads the other account.

To my surprise, the fic blew up. It got so much more attention than my long fic ever had. Even more significantly, a fan artist actually drew a gorgeous comic of the pivotal scene, completely out of the blue! I was essentially thunderstruck. Honestly, it was probably the first time in my life that I’d ever received so much positive reinforcement from a piece of writing.

While I’d written short stories for undergrad workshops, they’d never been particularly good and I’d never gotten particularly great feedback on them. I’d applied and been rejected by more MFAs and literary magazines than I could count. I’d pretty much resigned myself to writing for an audience of me and me alone (which I don’t mean to sound tragic about, writing for you is great and fun!)

But receiving so much support and praise and feeling like I’d made other people happy or sad or moved? There’s nothing better.

This makes my decision to write another fic for the ship sound vaguely cynical, the action of a person driven by an addiction to praise. I mean, no lie, aren’t we all a little addicted to approval?

But my next fic was another long one, an 80k passion project modern AU that I dreamed up while spending a slow summer alone with my books and only able to leave the house for long rambling walks in the woods. The premise was essentially about characters attending a five year college reunion, something that I myself had missed due to COVID in May of the same year. The fic quickly became a way for me to process thoughts on a lot of topics in my life ranging from relationships to politics to mental health to classical literature.

This fic was also received with far more attention than I was used to and, as a result, I finally joined the notorious Twitter dot com where I found people talking about my fic unprompted, eager to follow me and like my every random thought.

I can’t say that this process was not without its ups and downs. Fandom has changed, in many ways for the better, since my last engagement with it during the 2013 Supernatural days on Tumblr. While fan friendships are often idealized or demonized, they are pretty much like any other human friendship (okay, maybe a little bit more horny on main). There is potential for amazing connection as well as pettiness. But in a year where many people suddenly had no social spaces that were safe anymore, I’m glad that I found a new line of communication with the world.  

So I kept writing fics for the ship, producing a lot of work that I am genuinely proud of and making connections with other people who enjoyed it enough to leave a comment.

To conclude this section, I was in fandom again. While I had not seriously engaged with a fan community since around 2014, I was back with a vengeance. And I had discovered an important truth about what unlocked my ability to write more than I ever had before: community support.

Not simply the kudos and the views. It was the comments. The discourse. The discussion. To add and contribute my thoughts and ideas to a greater network of thoughts and ideas that fed off of one another.

Often I had seen people complain about there not being enough fanworks for particular media or characters. Now I knew the secret. The comments and the community created the works. If I commented on other people’s fics, the more likely they were to write more. I made a resolution I have tried to keep, to comment on any story that I legitimately enjoyed reading, even if I had no particularly intelligent thing to say about it.

Part 3: A Novel Idea

By late October, I had produced a considering oeuvre for my ship of choice and was enjoying slowing my pace as I planned a few future projects.

Remember, though, how I mentioned not having engaged with fandom for the past 5 years? Well, that didn’t mean I hadn’t been writing.

For the past 4 years, I have won NaNoWriMo and completed 4 novels of over 100k each in length. These projects have been massively fun and improved my confidence with executing stories at the scope that I desire.

And so in November 2020, I settled down to write another novel. November is always a sort of terrible time write a novel if you work in academia, but this year, I had more time than usual. I set out to write a comedy fantasy novel, something mostly lighthearted and full of hijinks in order to pretend away some of the quarantine blues (which by this point were well established in my psyche).

This year in particular, I was reminded that writing a novel is… harder than fanfic. That seems like a very obvious point, but I’d written novels before. Suddenly, though, I was realizing how much a novel requires you to set up the world and the characters, while fanfic can be pretty much all payoff all the time.

While the fanfic flowed in wild creative bursts of energy, the novel required diligence of another sort. I wrote 2,000 words every day for two months. It was a grind. Sometimes, it was a slog. 

And sometimes it just wasn't good. The thing about writing your own novels is that the first draft is way more likely to be not good. You’re balancing a lot and it’s easy to let a few balls that you have in the air drop for a chapter or two, with no recourse but to go back and edit later.

I finished the novel by writing a final speedrun of 6k on new years eve, ending my 2020 with another project under my belt. No one has read it. Not even I have reread it.

I’m still glad that I wrote it. I’ll write another one next year. No one will read that one either.

Sometimes, we write for ourselves and no external validation is necessary.

Part 4: Where are they now?

January of 2021 is somehow now behind me, which is terrifying. I’m still writing. Mostly fanfic, although occasionally I go doodle around with some original ideas that are more conceptual sketches for the next novel.

As for the fanfic, I think I still have a few more good ideas left in me, but  I will probably leave it behind before the year is out. That feels a little bittersweet, a sort of temporary burst of fun and friendship that I wonder if I’ll ever experience again.

Coming to the end of this reflection, I suppose I should make a summative statement about what it all means.

In the end, it might not mean a lot. There are some small takeaways. 

It turns out that encouragement makes you write more! Who knew? Also, more free time makes you write more! Wow!!!!

The point that I think this reflection exercise has shown me, the point that I think matters more than any other, is that writing is a way to process my thoughts. Even if it is through the lens of ridiculous video game fanfic or novels about sad wizards, my writing is my way to make sense of my own mind. 

And sharing that is special. If you share it with online strangers, with your family on Christmas Eve, with your close friend who has become even closer and dearer to you since she let you read her work, or just with your mom (the one personal legally required to read your damn novel if you want to share it). To share writing is to give someone a little peek at your beliefs about the world.

And right now? When we’re still isolated and bored and scared and in desperate need of distraction? Binge some TV, play Nintendo, read a book. Take in other people’s thoughts.

But put down your own somewhere as well. It’s a conversation.

And for once, it’s a conversation that doesn’t have to take place on fucking Zoom.

[gunnerpalace]

hey there! so i used to be a huge fan of bleach, and loved ichiruki, and i was reminded of them today but i haven't been involved with the fandom since the series ended. however, i've heard of different variations of why the series ended/ships happened the way they did, and was wondering if you knew or could direct to me a post that explains that? i apologize if i'm bringing up bitter feelings, but i've always been curious if bleach's ending was a big FU from kubo or if he always intended rr/ih

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a post that really goes over it structurally in that kind of way (from a shipping perspective). I’ll get back to what you actually asked me after some asides, because it’s not so simple to just analyze the ships in a vacuum.

I’ve had my own post about why the ending was a fuck you moment, thematically, because it failed to resolve any of the themes and momentum of the series in a way that would be appropriate (either internally or in the context of the supposed genre of shounen.)

I would also say that the ending was a fuck you moment in terms of lore, backstory, and mystery, because all of the historical and political dimensions (i.e., things involving the Soul King and Great Houses) were unceremoniously shuffled off to Can’t Fear Your Own World. Not that any of those things were ever brought up properly in the manga to begin with; the proper and natural time for that would’ve been at the conclusion of the Soul Society arc, when Ichigo and co. spent a week there, which we saw none of. So I would say that everything in CFYOW is basically retconned bullshit hung off prior convenient plot hooks, and that the same was true of TYBW and LSS/TLA/Xcution as well. There may have been some notes and forethought, but it’s about as “valid” as Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert’s Dune works are compared to the original Frank Herbert ones; it’s second-hand, at best.

(This is setting aside that Bleach was clearly made up as it went along. For example: Noriaki literally admitted that he didn’t know who had killed Aizen in Soul Society until he realized that Aizen not being dead was the most shocking answer; the clear baiting and abandonment of Kisuke as the villain hinted at through various means such as his unclear and later retconned reasons for being exiled, and so on. Bleach was very much a J. J. Abrams-style mystery box work that was made as it went with, at best, rough notes, which is why its themes and focus change, for the worse. I also have a post about why it stopped being special, which is part of a running series I intend to write on how to rewrite it to fix and preserve that)

The best recent thing to compare it to is, really, HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones, wherein D. B. Weiss and David Benioff openly admitted to removing or deemphasizing story elements, and ignoring themes in adapting the work. The difference is that Bleach was not being adapted from anything; it degraded due to its own creator not understanding what he had created.

(To put it very simply, because this would be the point of Hyperchlorate Part II and would take a whole post to explain: the ending of the Soul Society arc did not properly establish and flesh out Soul Society as a place with a history, space, and purpose. Instead, the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs decided to be a thematic inversion and deconstruction of the Karakura and Soul Society arcs. This again had an ending that did not establish or flesh anything out after Aizen’s defeat, with an even greater diffusion of focus onto ancillary characters. The Xcution arc tripled down on this by addressing something entirely new and retconned in, only to abandon it midway through in favor of going back to invoking Soul Society. And Thousand-Year Blood War took all of these problems to 11. tl;dr: Noriaki tried themes, people hated it, and so he just shoved in more and more dumb sword fights between people nobody cared about, half of whom hadn’t previously existed.)

So, let’s get back to your question. Let’s talk about ships. I’ve clicked a lot of keys and spilled a lot of ink on this subject over the years, but I no longer particularly feel like searching my own archives (really ought to go back through and organize them better) beyond this post and my own follow-up to it about the chronology of IR interactions, so I’m just going to repeat myself.

First, let’s say that Bleach was not ever a manga about ships.

I’m not disavowing that what Rukia and Ichigo had was special. That was called out multiple times through the focus of the art, the dialogue, and by the characters themselves. (Directly by, for example, Orihime’s outright statement to the effect in Soul Society, and her later jealousy regarding it. Indirectly by, say, Uryuu’s acknowledgement that him saving Rukia first would piss Ichigo off. In fact, the biggest indirect indicator doesn’t even involve Ichigo and Rukia; Shunsui asks Chad why he’s there and Chad says he wants to save Rukia, Shunsui calls bullshit that two months isn’t enough time to risk your life for that, and Chad agrees and says he’s there because Ichigo wants to do it. Shunsui moves on, but his argument is left hanging: why was two months enough for Ichigo? Because, as Orihime will later say out loud, Rukia is special.)

What I’m saying is that that was never the focus. It was explicitly constructed that way.

How do I know? The Grand Fisher fight. The Grand Fisher fight is emotionally charged, bringing up both Ichigo and Rukia’s greatest traumas, and is their one real moment of not understanding each other for a time. It was a triumphant moment that made them truly glad to know one another, and you can see it in their reactions afterward (Rukia thanking Ichigo for not dying, Ichigo asking Rukia if he can keep being a Shinigami). There was a lot to unpack there, and you can see it in the way they look at each other.

What happened immediately after the Grand Fisher fight? Noriaki skipped a whole month. We go from June 18th of 2001 to July 17th of 2001. He deliberately skipped all of the emotional impact of that event, and Rukia being around for Ichigo’s 16th birthday. Just never happened. We never hear about it. Wasn’t his focus as a writer.

Now, I’m convinced that was because he was scared of what he had on his hands. He wasn’t willing to commit to either a couple’s battle shoujo or a shounen with male and female seemingly-heterosexual co-equal deuteragonists who clearly had a strong emotional bond. More specifically, he wasn’t willing to make Rukia a centerpiece of the manga despite having designed her first, having made her the moral and philosophical core of his manga, and having based Ichigo entirely around completing and complementing her. But hey, that’s just my opinion, right? Except it kept happening.

From the Grand Fisher fight onward, the name of the game in the manga, structurally, became keeping Ichigo and Rukia apart.

The moment she was taken back to Soul Society, her prominence dropped. We got emotionally charged scenes of them regardless. Right at the conclusion, after yet another emotionally heavy set of Ichigo and Rukia interactions, we again skip almost a month, from the end of the first week in August of 2001 to September 1, 2001. (Due to some completely unnecessary timey-wimey bullshit with the Precipice World.)

In the Arrancar and Hueco Mundo arcs, they have roughly a day together over the course of three months. What happens after every meeting? They’re shuffled apart and split up, and we cut away. This time, for over a year!

Ichigo and Rukia again have a very emotionally charged meeting in the Xcution arc. And what happens at the end of that arc? We skip ahead another month to TYBW. (Xcution ended sometime in May of 2003, TYBW starts June 11, 2003.)

And in TYBW, Rukia and Ichigo barely meet up at all. Indeed, the focus is scarcely upon them.

In CFYOW, neither of them even appear, let alone have any relevance to the plot.

The implication, in my opinion, is pretty obvious: Noriaki was deathly afraid of dealing with the outcomes of their interactions, and that ultimately became him being deathly afraid of allowing them to interact at all to begin with. Why? Well, as I said in one of the last linked posts:

As an author, sometimes you will find your characters will do things you didn’t anticipate or plan for, and you’ve got two choices: you can go with the flow and do what’s natural and deal, or you can fight it and try and impose your vision anyway.

He refused to let his art take the direction it needed to go in.

Now, some people might say he got bored of them, or of having them together. I say that’s bullshit. And the reason I say is down to three things:

He didn’t ignore them, he did his best to keep them apart. I outlined this above.

He did not emphasize anything or anyone else instead. His focus was all over the place. While, admittedly, Ichigo’s prominence also declined, so did everyone else’s.

It would have served him well to focus on their interactions to expand his universe and explore its lore. The things that were detailed in the databooks and CFYOW could’ve been presented naturally and easily if they were together. But that came with a cost of shifting the focus. A cost he refused to pay.

Let’s talk more about (2) and (3) now.

Regarding (2), Chad and Orihime are inextricably linked in Bleach, because they essentially have the same relationship to Ichigo. “But Orihime loves Ichigo, and Chad is his no-homo bro!” someone proclaims. So what? They’re presented as equal and parallel at every step.

They both gain their powers at approximately the same time.

We are told they gained their powers due to the Hogyouku (in Rukia at the time) interpreting their wishes (and no one else’s, such as Tatsuki, Keigo, or Mizuiro), meaning they probably had the same strength of desire.

They both go to Soul Society “for Ichigo.”

They both utterly fail against Yammy and Ulquiorra.

They both spend most of the Hueco Mundo arc doing nothing.

They are both featured prominently in the Xcution arc, and both fail to see through Tsukishima’s powers despite their love for Ichigo. (Meanwhile, Byakuya coolly tries to murder someone who he thinks is his mentor, in Ichigo’s name.)

They both get sidelined in Hueco Mundo with Kisuke in TYBW, doing little to nothing.

They both are utterly ineffectual in the final fight in TYBW.

They are often portrayed together, they are often as effective as one another, and they are equally as developed in their relationship to Ichigo going forward, which is to say: not at all. The loss of focus on IR did not come with an attendant rise of focus on IH, any more than it did with the sudden rise of IchiChad. Nothing was built in IR’s place. There was no emotional or human content which filled its gap.

This is where the IH ending coming “out of nowhere” stems from: it indeed came out of nowhere, because Ichigo was never shown to have any interest in Orihime in all this time, nor an especially close relationship with her. He never hangs out with Chad or shows a bond with him either. He never hangs out with anyone, in fact. (Indeed, “friends” in Bleach do not do any of the things that friends actually do in real life. Nor do parents. You might say that interpersonal relationships and communication largely don’t exist in Bleach. But that’s its whole own topic.)

I would honestly say that more time and emphasis was given on Ichigo’s pseudo-surrogate mother relationship with Ikumi than was spent on him interacting with Orihime. (I would say Noriaki has serious hangups about relationships of any kind, be they romantic, familial, or friendly, and also has some severe hangups regarding mothers and fathers, but that is also its whole own topic.)

Regarding (3), Noriaki apparently wanted this big, Game of Thrones-style world with a long history and political machinations and so on. This is the whole point of TYBW and CFYOW. Trouble is, early Bleach was successful because of its small-scale intimacy. So how do you go from one to the other? You have to lay the foundations at every step. And Noriaki steadfastly refused to do so at every step. Having Ichigo and Rukia interact, and focusing on Rukia while Ichigo was sidelined without powers, would’ve permitted that organically. Indeed, if RR was the endgame, it would have given time to establish that, were it his desire. (Because Rukia never showed any interest in Renji, and frankly Renji always seemed way more preoccupied with Byakuya.) It didn’t serve his goals, but he did it anyway.

It’s much simpler to say he lost focus, and that he started to hate the manga as a whole. Why else would you have Mayuri fighting a giant hand when that achieved nothing, and Kenpachi fighting Thor when that achieved nothing? It became empty. Hollow, you might say.

But that takes us back to the question you posed: where did the ships come from? Nowhere. IH, RR, and fucking TatsuKeigo weren’t established anywhere. They just appeared. Why?

Well, why did every single character wind up doing the exact opposite of their intended and stated goals in the end?

Why did Soul Society revert to its previous attitude and rebuild the Sokyouku?

Why did nothing get resolved?

Why did nothing change?

Why was it all revealed to have been completely and utterly pointless?

In my view, it’s because that ending was a giant fuck you to the readership and Shueisha. There is no other way to interpret an author pulling a 180° and completely nullifying their characters’ arcs, and their work’s themes. Aizen’s little speech at the end is the cherry on top. I read it as Noriaki saying that he’s showing “courage” in telling us all to fuck off.

As to why? That’s an open question. His relationship with Shueisha was contentious, so maybe he was mad at them. (They gave him a deadline once he was dragging his feet, and reclassified Bleach as a joke manga.) His readership was on the decline after the Soul Society arc ended, so maybe he was mad at the audience. I don’t know. I also don’t really care. What I am convinced of is he decided to blow up his franchise and to not leave a single stone unturned when he did so.

That’s where that “ending” comes from, which is why despite it featuring IH and RR, both are thoroughly unsatisfying and without setup: it was the only way to piss absolutely everyone off, including people who wanted that outcome.

In a way, it was his greatest success since the early days of the manga.

Anyway, this was messy, but it’s not a simple topic to address. The tl;dr is that Bleach was a trainwreck from the very beginning that only succeeded on the merits of its characters, and that Noriaki deliberately avoided the promise it had to be something unique and grand. The ships are just a part of that, and cannot be understood in isolation from it.

[books]

Writer Spotlight: Daniel Kibblesmith

Daniel Kibblesmith is an Emmy-nominated writer for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and has written comics for Marvel and D.C., including Marvel’s Loki (2019) and Black Panther Vs. Deadpool (2018). He co-wrote the humorous How To Win At Everything (2013), and is also the author of the picture books Santa’s Husband (2017) and Princess Dinosaur (2020). He was one of the founding editors of ClickHole.com, and his comedic writing can be seen in places like The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and APM’s Marketplace. He works and lives in New York with his favorite author, Jennifer Wright.

What are your inspirations for Loki?

Loki is ever inspired by himself (or herself, or themselves), and that was how it worked for me, too. I was a big fan of Loki as a villain in the MCU, but I hadn’t read a ton of Thor-related comics until I got the gig. The exception was the Journey Into Mystery series by Kieron Gillen and a whole roster of great artists who—alongside Tom Hiddleston's MCU appearances—really set the mold for the modern take on the character. So I re-read that, and from there I expanded outward into past and future, and read the tremendous Agent Of Asgard comics written by Al Ewing, Lee Garbett (and other artists), as well as going back to early 60's Loki appearances orchestrated by his own creator gods: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Larry Lieber. 

Aside from comic-related research, one of my editors, Wil Moss, recommended Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, which was incredibly fun, concise, and helpful in giving me a more rounded view of Loki’s history and personality. I’m a big Sandman fan as well, so it was inspiring to stand at the nexus of Kirby’s influence on Gaiman, and mythology’s impact on both of them, and to see their impact on me, first as a reader, and then as a writer, as I set out to place these mythological figures in an approximation of our actual world.

What aspects of yourself do you see or put into the characters you write?

Loki’s defining trait, especially in the original myths, is that he is both the creator and the solver of the problem. Because no one else is clever enough to get him out of the mess he started, he’s barely ever fully exiled from their society. As a former “problem” student, whatever that means, the aspect of Loki I relate to the most—and I think a lot of people do—is the idea that you can mean well, try your best, and still get punished for it.

Authority figures love to reward cleverness if it comes with obedience. I tell a story in the introduction letter to Loki #1 about getting detention for pointing out, during an assembly, that two teachers were inexplicably wearing the same clothing. I obviously didn't break any rules but the people who make the rules found me to be inconvenient and disruptive, so I got punished.

When I hear the phrase, “too smart for your own good,” I think of kids like that who don’t even know they’re about to be labelled as “bad”, which can alter their entire future and identity—for something that, in any adult circumstance, would be seen as attentiveness, or creativity, or intelligence, or just relatively harmless humor. Loki is a kid who got treated this way for a thousand years, so, of course, he became a villain. 

The story we’re telling now is about coming back from that—healing, forgiveness, and the responsibility that comes with an ever-racing, ever-curious brain, the default setting of which is casual mayhem. Loki’s superpower is one that real people actually have to live with and manage: “I just noticed a vulnerability in our world. What would happen if I acted on it?”

You’ve written for television, the internet, for magazines, and have authored books and comic books — how does the writing process vary for these different forms? Is there one you prefer?

I often compare it to playing different video games because the needs and reflexes are different. Writing satire about the news is faster-paced, and comes with its own formulas, just like character-based narrative. Writing a monologue script based on a news event is very reactive, like Mario Kart: foot on the gas, hit the important stuff, miss the stuff that will slow you down. Writing fiction can be a lot more exploratory, like Zelda: I walked around for two hours today but I found a really important acorn, that I really needed for the stuff I'll do next. Writing comics can be very nose-to-the-grindstone, but for me, breaking story is often incidental and happens at the gym, or before sleep, or in the shower. The major architecture of my narrative writing exists as fragments on my phone and in pocket notebooks, born out of little sparks of inspiration. The heavy lifting happens in fleshing them out and editing them together into something cohesive.

If you could live in the universe of any book or comic book, which one would you pick and why?

I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan—I've read five of them, I think. But I would choose to live in the Harry Potter universe because as near as I can tell, it’s just our current universe but with far superior candy.

If you could have a conversation with anyone, real or fictional, who would it be and what would you talk about?

Probably Gumby. He seems chill.

What advice would you offer to your fourteen-year-old self?

Fourteen is honestly too young for most actionable advice from successful adults, and you’re not really in charge of what you’re going to do that day, anyhow. I usually tell college-aged writers to finish entire writing samples, that ideas and potential are far less attractive to people who can hire you than finished scripts or stories are. But I can’t imagine my career taking off based on the screenplay I would've finished at fourteen. So my advice would be to start drinking coffee and working out because both of those things are going to make you feel better in a world of things that are trying to make you feel terrible—including, in some cases, young adults roughly your age and twice your size with whom you are trapped, by the hundreds, in a massive brick building, in which they are often inexplicably literally trying to maim you. In case anyone was wondering where comic and comedy writers—and trickster gods—come from.

Thanks so much, Daniel! Follow @kibblesmith! If you’re lucky enough to be attending New York Comic Con in October, Daniel will be signing in Artist Alley at Booth A-28.

Photo: Nick (IG: @goldenparachutephotography) for Midtown Comics. 

[c-is-for-circinate]

On Good Omens, queerbaiting, and heteronormative bullshit

Theory: Good Omens the miniseries and the way it treats relationships feels maybe a little weird and hits some of the same mental buttons as queerbaiting not because Aziraphale and Crowley are insufficiently gay, but because the entire rest of the show is.  In this essay I will actually write this essay, because no, really, I think it’s A Thing and I might even be able to prove it.

There’s a lot of nuance to both sides of the whole queerbaiting/not-queerbaiting argument, and I don’t want to neglect any of it, but I think my big takeaways have been as follows:

On the ‘this is uncomfortable and queerbaity’ side:

Good Omens the miniseries ramps up the emotional relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale to be the heart of the entire show.  Both demon and angel are coded as gay in a number of different ways, both individually and in terms of how their relationship is portrayed as a romance.  And yet despite being the core of the show, they never make any of it explicitly romantic.  There’s not a kiss, there’s not an ‘I love you’.  The entire relationship is built from implications rather than explicit statements.

Years and decades and centuries of storytelling have given us gay relationships that we have to look for.  That we have to find in implications rather than explicit statements.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so that content creators could keep mainstream/straight fans happy while also luring queer fans with crumbs and promises.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could slip hidden gay messages past censors.  Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could stay literally, physically safe.  But either way, it’s exhausting.  It’s been so long.  We want to see ourselves on screen.  We want somebody to admit out loud to what we’re seeing.  We’re tired.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are apologists and boot-lickers, ready to bend over backwards to defend their Precious Author Faves in hopes of receiving whatever crumbs they can get.  (Please note: this is an ad hominem argument with like ten different logical fallacies in it, and also it’s just mean.  We will be assuming that all parties in this discussion are attempting to act in good faith with a healthy dose of frustration, and largely ignoring this point.)

On the ‘no, this is Good Representation, really’ side:

Aziraphale and Crowley are in a queer relationship--it’s just not a gay one.  They are two genderfluid beings who mostly present as male out of preference or convenience, surrounded by additional similar genderfluid beings who may present as male, or female, or both, or neither.  Their relationship is both romantic and asexual.

The fact that those ‘explicit milestones’ of kissing, sex, etc are absent from the show is in fact part of the point.  Not only does it make sense for the characters themselves, but it means so much to see a relationship that is obviously romantic, that is the center of an entire story, where the key turning point is about something other than sex or marriage.  A relationship can be super important, can be important enough to build an entire life around, without sex, without kissing, without wedding rings.  It’s so good to see one that is.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are aphobes and probably transphobes, whiny babies who don’t really care about representation, they just want their kind of representation.  (Please see above note about ad hominem attacks and logical fallacies.

There are a few points that everyone can agree on.  Crowley and Aziraphale follow the plotline of a romance, and their relationship is the core of this show.  They do not kiss, or have sex, or explicitly fall into any behavior that conventionally says, ‘yes, this human couple is dating’.  Other characters in the show mistake-them-for-dating, but those characters are always uninformed about the real complex nature of this relationship.

One side says: it all comes so close to being a thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting ourselves on screen.  Why promise and not deliver?  Why come so close and then shy away?  Aziraphale and Crowley, with all they are to each other (with Aziraphale’s shop in Soho and his time in a discrete gentleman’s club, with their so-religious families that will disown them or worse for this relationship, with everything they are an have been) are a metaphor for gayness that refuses to commit past the point of metaphor and just admit it already, and it hurts.

The other side says: it has exactly hit the nail on the head of being a different thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting a different portion of ourselves onscreen.  It just so happens that the thing it’s reflecting is by nature a little confusing and undefined, is close to the kind of queerness you’re expecting without getting there.  Crowley and Aziraphale (who’ve been alive for six thousand years, who have seen so many different ways humans love each other and swear to each other, who are not bound by our conventions or definitions and maybe show us that we don’t have to be either) are a metaphor for nothing.  They parallel a lot of familiar narratives of a lot of kinds of queerness, without trying to be anything but what they are.

Two sides, everybody so starved for representation that they’ll grab for it and name-call and scrabble desperately when they almost get it.  One relationship.  One divided fandom.

.

Look, it is obvious by this point that this is a case of everybody fighting over our one specific instance of representation because there isn’t enough to go around, right?  If gay relationships were more common throughout fiction, it wouldn’t be so important that Aziraphale and Crowley were among them.  If ace relationships and alternative relationship dynamics were portrayed as frequently or given as much weight as sexual ones, it wouldn’t be so important.

And it’s not just about what’s important, it’s about what’s noticed.  If there were gay relationships--or if there were ace relationships, or other kinds of queer relationships!--all over fiction, then being explicit would matter so much less.  It is important, in this world, that queer relationships in fiction announce what they are out loud, because in this world they are so often brushed over or ignored.  They have to clear a much higher bar than conventional straight, sexual relationships.  If there were more representation in the world, everybody would be primed to notice Aziraphale and Crowley as a romance.  We wouldn’t need it spelled out--one, because we’d already know, and two, because it wouldn’t be such a big deal if somebody else didn’t.

Of course, there’s more representation these days than there used to be--little dribs and drabs of it all over.  There’s just enough out there that somebody can say, ‘look, we’ve seen basic gay romances, let us have this thing here, let us have this nuance’.  And meanwhile half the audience (who may be gay, or bi, or ace, or transgender or genderqueer themselves in all sorts of ways) is gaping, because...okay, maybe gay romance exists in some places, in corners, but there’s still so little of it.

We’re all living on crumbs.  It’s hard to appreciate nuance when you’re just a few steps past starving.  It’s hard to appreciate the grace of ambiguous and open endings when you’ve seen them twisted against you again and again, and you just want something that’s yours.

.

Here’s another thing, an important thing.  Humans are used to seeing patterns and we’re used to seeing stories.  It can be very hard to tell whether a storyteller is trying to give us something new and strange told well, or something more familiar told badly--especially if we’re used to seeing the familiar thing told badly.

And: if the audience cannot tell whether an author is portraying Thing A well or Thing B badly, at a certain point it doesn’t really matter which it is.

And: sometimes the only way to tell if a story is trying to show you Thing A and succeeding or Thing B and failing, is to look around the story to see if you can spot Thing B done right, anywhere else.

In other words: How do you make a difference between an audience that is collectively sure that Crowley and Aziraphale are some specific, slightly-hard-to-define but very definitely queer thing (and sometimes being hard to define is an intrinsic part of queerness), versus an audience divided amongst themselves over whether or not they’re just a bad, cowardly approximation of ‘gay’?

You put actual, explicit gay somewhere else in the story.

And that’s where we run into problems.

.

The problem with Good Omens the miniseries and how it does queer representation, how it does Crowley and Aziraphale and their romance, is the same problem that Good Omens the miniseries has across the board.  The problem is that half the writing team is gone, and so is half the story.

In the miniseries, Aziraphale and Crowley are, hands down, the main characters.  This is their story, and everyone else around them--Anathema and Newt, the Four Horsemen, Heaven and Hell, the Them, and even Adam himself--are just bit players.  I don’t fault Neil Gaiman for that, exactly.  I’m sure he did his best, and his best meant he poured the heart and soul of the story into these two characters and the relationship they share.  He gave them as much richness and depth as he possibly could.  (That’s part of why we all love them enough to fight over them.)  But the fact is, the rest of the story around them suffered.

Adam and the Them, Anathema and Newt, even Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell--humans, all of them, and very much the people who actually stop the apocalypse.  Considering the way Anathema kick-started Adam along his path towards Armageddon, they’re even the people who started the apocalypse.  Very, very fundamentally, Good Omens is a story about how humans don’t need heaven or hell--not to be evil, not to be good, and not to keep being human.  Except that the miniseries wrote the humans off to the side, and that cracked things a little.  In some places, it cracked things a lot.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the miniseries.  I love Crowley and Aziraphale at the heart of it, and the richness and depth of their relationship.  I love the story about how an angel and a demon are so very very human, even though they think they aren’t.

But it’s a story that only works with enough of a contrast.  We can only appreciate Aziraphale and Crowley as an angel and a demon who’ve become very-nearly human if we know what the differences are in the first place.  We can only appreciate their similarities if we see enough humans acting the same way: with want, with fear, with desire, with pettiness, with love.

The difficulty with the miniseries is that we see a great deal of Crowley and Aziraphale being full of very, very human emotions and reactions.  We see their worry and desperation and how much they care about each other.  Nothing we see from any other character in the whole show comes close.

Anathema lives a life in service to (a prophecy, not a Host, but is it so different?) a thing she doesn’t quite understand and nobody can explain to her, that she just has to trust--but we see Aziraphale deal with Gabriel and Heaven again and again, and we see so little of Anathema’s fear and doubt.  Newt is fired from (a nothing job, not God’s endless love) a world he vaguely understands but isn’t good enough for, and finds himself in a strange, confusing place where he’s probably smarter than his boss and everything smells a bit weird and it might technically be his job to hurt people except maybe he doesn’t want to--and we get none of it, compared to what we see of Crowley, six thousand years post-Fall.

Adam is human and not-human, full of powers that can bend the world around him to his whim, that can make things how he thinks they should be.  He decides not to, because of love and selfishness, because he’d rather be human.  He makes the exact same decision Aziraphale and Crowley make.  We just get so much less of the weight of it.

The thing about telling the story this way is that it turns Crowley and Aziraphale into the only real people in the whole show, with everyone around them in silhouette and abstract.  It stops being a story about how this angel and this demon are, effectively, exactly the same as everyone else--oh sure they’ve got some differences, powers and abilities and age and shape-shifting (and mutable gender, and vague non-existent sexualities), but hell, people in general are full of differences in all of those things anyway.  

All of a sudden, the differences between baseline human and celestial being start to feel weird and cheap.  If Aziraphale and Crowley are the only real people in the story, and they’re not reacting in the way most people would react--it’s not just because they’re individuals, with specific individual wants and needs and reactions.  It’s either a statement or a weird error.  If the only real people in the story aren’t people, everything starts to fall just a little bit apart.

.

And so we come back around to sexuality once again.

A deeply, deeply unfortunate side effect of the Good Omens miniseries fleshing out Heaven and Hell and neglecting the humans is that all of the queer content--all of the nonbinary characters, our one shining non-heterosexual relationship, all of it--went to characters who were not human.  It makes so much sense, on one hand.  That’s where all the new depth came from, so of course that’s where all the new queerness went.  And why should non-human characters subscribe to human definitions of gender and sexuality?  Of course they wouldn’t.

Because, right: the idea that sexuality is in and of itself a primarily human thing, which most non-humans lack but some experiment with for fun (and that is Word of God and that is explicit in the text of the show and the book)--that idea’s not actually inherently bad.  The idea that sexuality is a requirement of humanity, that it comes part and parcel with love and ‘becoming more human’ (which is, after all, the best thing you can do according to show or book)--that idea is in fact bad.  But if all of your desire for sex goes to your humans AND all your queerness goes to your non-humans...that gets real unfortunate, real real fast.

The problem is, just like the show neglected to give the full depth of human characterization and emotion to its actually human characters, it failed to give them the full depth of human sexuality and gender, too.

The humans in Good Omens are painfully heterosexual.  It’s not simply that the Newt/Anathema and Tracy/Shadwell relationships are straight--it’s that they fall into place as though straight is the only choice.  Both relationships are so very much a picture of no other options.  Anathema and Newt are facing the end of the world, about to probably die, and also have been prophecied to get together under these circumstances for centuries.  Shadwell and Madame Tracy are both very deeply alone, and getting older, and if they want to be anything but alone their only choice appears to be each other.  These four people appear to default their way into traditional m/f relationships, whether it’s falling into (under) bed or moving to the country to retire together.  They hit all of those ‘explicit markers’ we were talking about before, and they don’t do it with emotional build-up.  They don’t do it with any real exploration of the individuals involved or why they’re making these choices.  There’s barely any acknowledgement that these are choices.

The thing is, gay humans do exist in the world of Good Omens!  We spend time is Soho, and we hear about a very specific extremely gay gentleman’s club, and we know it’s there, somewhere, hidden.  We just never get to see it.  Crowley and Aziraphale (who are our only touchstone to those queer areas, which the other human characters never seem to encounter) are the Only Queers In The World.  And it sucks, and I think it happened completely by accident.

I suspect that the lack of human queerness was literally just a side-effect of the lack of human anything--Crowley and Aziraphale are in fact the only queers in the world specifically because they’re the only people in the world.  None of the already-existing human characters were given enough additional development to add much of anything, including any new gay.  The human world of Tadfield and the Witchfinder Army wasn’t given enough development to make it worth creating any new characters, let alone queer ones.

It just means that, all of the sudden, straightness gets accidentally equated with every single non-child human we spend more than two lines with, and queerness becomes exclusively the province of demons and angels.  That’s really bad.  It’s one of those unfortunate accidents that happens sometimes, because the world ain’t perfect, but it’s pretty not great.  And that’s where our problems come from.

In particular that’s where this current debate comes from, because if sexuality = human and human = straight, and nonhuman = asexuality and queerness = nonhuman, then we’ve accidentally said some pretty damning things about humanity and equated all queerness with lack of sexual desire all at the same time.  And it’s subtle, and it’s easy to miss, because it’s all about a lack of queer humans that’s all mixed in with the lack of humans at all, but it feels off.  So we go looking for reasons and we go looking for scapegoats.  It’s so easy to fixate on and blame the only queer relationship (the only developed, real relationship) we get at all, writ huge and impossible-to-miss all over our screen, rather than all the invisible ones we don’t.

.

Here’s what I take away from all of this: Crowley and Aziraphale are, in every real sense, the most important characters in the Good Omens miniseries, and their relationship is without doubt the most important relationship.  It’s a well-developed, believable relationship.  It’s neither a straight relationship, nor an explicitly sexual gay relationship.  It is a different thing all its own, a thing that does not easily fit conventional human labels, that may or may not include sex at some point but certainly does not require it to be devastatingly important.

And I like that.  I, me, personally, who would rather find a reason to feel heartened than a reason to feel angry, am really glad to see something so extremely not-straight at the emotional center of a story I care about.  That’s me.

In the absence of anything that is an explicitly sexual gay relationship, this nebulous complicated thing at the core of this story looks an awful lot as though it’s trying to be gay and not getting there all the way.  And that sucks.  And for a lot of people, that hits some very specific buttons that have been made tender over many years of stories that try to be gay and refuse to go there all the way.  The flaw, though, is in the contrast and the context around the relationship--not in the relationship itself.

Stories are hard.  Telling stories, and making sure that they get heard on the other end the way we want them to, is hard.  Figuring out why certain things resonate the way they do, why some people feel connected while others feel alienated when we’re just trying to make our point, is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

I don’t blame Neil Gaiman for not magically figuring out that this would happen with the story he was trying to tell, partially because I haven’t seen anybody else in this great big argument of ours notice it either.  He tried to tell a story that was similar to but distinct from a story a lot of people wanted, and he didn’t make it clear enough.  I still really like the story we got.  I like all the slightly-different fanfic versions, too.  I like liking things.  That’s me.

If you’re still mad, if you’re still hurt: legit.  That’s valid.  But I don’t think arguing over this one specific relationship, what it Should Be and Shouldn’t Be, is helpful.  

Basically: I don’t want to sit around getting angry at each other over why Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t get the same traditional markers of Happily Ever After as Newt and Anathema, as Tracy and Shadwell.  I want to know why those couples didn’t have to (didn’t get to) EARN their happily-ever-afters with all the feeling and wanting and fearing and deciding that Aziraphale and Crowley did.

[dweemeister]

Blue Hawaii (1961)

Elvis Presley’s ascent to stardom struck the United States (and the world) like a lightning bolt. Hounded from Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry due to the country music establishment taking offense to his genre-blending musicianship, Elvis grew from being a regional phenomenon to a national sensation as he helped innovate rockabilly, a form of rock and roll. Movie producers, sensing an opportunity to cash in on Elvis’ skyrocketing popularity, gave Elvis star vehicles such as Love Me Tender (1956) and Jailhouse Rock (1957). Critics shrugged at these films – low-budget affairs where most of the budget went to Elvis’ salary – but his fans made them critic-proof, turning out in droves to scream and swoon at their slick-looking dreamboat. Grappling with television’s advent and the dissolution of the Old Hollywood Studio System, Hollywood’s major studios shifted their efforts towards more bombastic, showman-like films. Such was the situation in the early 1960s that longtime Warner Bros. producer Hal B. Wallis (1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1942’s Casablanca), now at Paramount, joked that, “a Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”

To the horror of Elvis’ fans and movie studio executives but to the delight of those fans’ parental figures and teachers, the U.S. Army drafted him in March 1958. Elvis served twenty-four months before his discharge with the rank of Sergeant. During his service, Elvis nevertheless had plenty of singles in the can, many ranking high on the charts while he was at basic training and later his posting in West Germany. Looking forward to restarting his musical and acting careers, Elvis soon returned to the recording studio and shot G. I. Blues (1960) – he had discussed the film with Wallis months prior to his discharge – in short order. For the eighth film of his career and his fourth after his discharge, Elvis starred in Blue Hawaii, directed by Norman Taurog (1938’s Boys Town, nine Elvis films) and produced by Wallis. The film stars Elvis as an Army veteran recently discharged from the service, returning to his home state. I wonder where did they get that idea from? It also marks the unlikely beginning of Elvis’ association with the Aloha State – which shed its territorial status in 1959 and was ready for a Hollywood treatment that had nothing to do with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Chadwick “Chad” Gates (Presley) returns home to Hawai’i from his military service, greeted by girlfriend Maile Duval (Joan Blackman: “MY-lee”) and a flower seller named Waihila (Hilo Hattie in a cameo). Instead of immediately seeing his parents – mother Sarah Lee (Angela Lansbury, only ten years Elvis’ senior) and father Fred (Roland Winters) – he escapes to a secluded oceanside shack with Maile and his Hawaiian surf buddies. Chad is the son of pineapple plantation owners, and Sarah Lee wants him to succeed Fred when the time comes. But Chad is not interested in those plans, electing instead to work as a tour guide for Mr. Chapman’s (Howard McNear) travel agency – among other things, Maile works at the agency. The first tour he gives serves schoolteacher Abigail Prentice (Nancy Walters) and her four teenage students, all girls. One of those girls, Ellie Corbett (Jenny Maxwell), appears standoffish at first but then begins to flirt shamelessly with Chad.

If by that point in Blue Hawaii you are still concentrating on the plot, just note that your approach to watching Elvis movies is not advisable. Watching Elvis movies for a sensible plot is to invite frustration; accept the narrative drivel and enjoy.

Shot mostly on location on the Hawaiian Islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i, Hawai’i offers splendid backdrops to even the most mundane scenes of this film. Charles Lang’s (1947’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1959’s Some Like It Hot) camera allows characters to be dwarfed by the green mountains in the distance, the crystal blue waters extending to the horizon, and palm tree fronds wafting amid a gentle breeze. Scenes of breathtaking natural beauty abound in Blue Hawaii. In conjunction with the production (Hal Pereira and Walter H. Tyler) and set design (Sam Comer and Frank R. McKelvy), Blue Hawaii becomes, by default, the most colorful Elvis movie to date. The film, by design, partly becomes a tourism advertisement for the new state. Its white characters and filmmakers exotify and romanticize Native Hawaiian culture to fit their own expectations and perspectives – these sorts of depictions have endured across the last century, figuring heavily in cinema (1935’s Honolulu: The Paradise of the Pacific as part of [James A.] Fitzpatrick’s Traveltalks for MGM) and tourism advertising. This is the first live-action feature film from a major Hollywood studio to make even a minimal attempt to depict native Hawaiian culture since Waikiki Wedding (1937), another Paramount film.

Here are some more connections between Waikiki Wedding and Blue Hawaii: both share one song (“Blue Hawaii”) in both their soundtracks and both films are musicals. The Hawaiian musical sound is just as integral to popular conceptions of Hawai’i, and it is used liberally here in orchestrations, if not melodic structure. Blue Hawaii’s soundtrack contains the greatest amount of songs (fourteen) for an Elvis film. For those who enjoy their breathless musicals with a song at every turn, Blue Hawaii does just that. The musical numbers arrive in the most innocuous situations – from forming a melody from a tune heard on the radio, an impromptu jam session with a guitar conveniently within arm’s length of Elvis, or starting from nothing. The worst of the soundtrack avoids many of the novelty songs that plague Elvis films, especially the later entries. Given how nonsensical the plots to Elvis movies are, the lower-tier songs in Blue Hawaii are preferable compared to more stilted acting and fraternizing shenanigans. Thus, the bar is raised, and the inclusion of two non-original songs – “Blue Hawaii” (music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin) and “Aloha ‘Oe” (Queen Lili’uokalani) – are arranged in such a way that beautifully complements Elvis’ velvety singing voice. Among the original songs, “Moonlight Swim” (music by Ben Weisman, lyrics by Sylvia Dee) is a sensuous, laid back song that perfectly serves Chad’s characterization: an unabashed Casanova, effortless in romance, a hint of masculine arrogance.

The runaway hit of the Blue Hawaii soundtrack is among Elvis’ most popular songs. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” – music and lyrics by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss – appears approximately midway through the film as Chad says hello to Maile’s grandmother (Flora Kaai Hayes, a former Hawaiian Territorial Representative to the U.S. House of Representatives) for the first time since before his military service. It, like so many other musical entries in Blue Hawaii, arrives without much warning, backed by a constantly harmonizing music box and a steel guitar played in a Hawaiian style. One might take issue with the song’s use in context, but it is a crooners’ standard that has crossed linguistic barriers worldwide. Its simplicity is self-evident: a memorable melody, chorus, and a minor key bridge aching for resolution as it modulates to major key. Perhaps “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is not considered one of the greatest original songs in movie history because of the questionable quality of the film it appears in. More likely, Elvis’ gravitational pull as a crossover music and movie star writes its own legends that defy a critic’s or a historian’s corrections.

Somehow, I have written all the above without remarking on the acting. Other than Elvis himself, everyone else is a passing interest at best. Joan Blackman’s chemistry with Elvis is apparent, but she does not distinguish herself from every other female lead in an Elvis movie. Angela Lansbury’s exaggerated Southern accent displays her considerable range, even if there are better examples in other films. As much as some may deride Elvis’ performances for being unchallenging, one could not imagine an Elvis movie without the star attraction. His persona is effervescent; his charisma incontestable. According to Weiss, Elvis’ comedic instincts manifested themselves in subtle ways. If Elvis requested a joke to be explained in discussions about the screenplay, it was his roundabout, maybe overly polite, way to warn Weiss, Taurog, and screenwriter Hal Kanter (1952’s Road to Bali, at least twenty-two Academy Award ceremonies) that the joke was not funny. During test screenings of Blue Hawaii, every joke kept in the film that Elvis questioned elicited nothing from the audience. On- and off-screen, an Elvis movie with Elvis removed would collapse from the void of hilarity and charm such an absence would create.

Blue Hawaii, like all other Elvis movies prior, succeeded at the box office in comparison to its budget. Adding to this bounty for Elvis, the film’s soundtrack album sold millions of copies, sitting atop of the Billboard charts for twenty weeks, and garnering a Grammy nomination. The soundtrack profits from Blue Hawaii and the preceding G.I. Blues led Presley’s obstinate manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to have his client concentrate on film soundtrack albums at the expense of non-soundtrack albums – setting the groundwork for the remainder of the 1960s (Elvis released 16 soundtrack albums versus six non-soundtrack albums during this decade), with diminishing returns. Parker reasoned to Elvis that his fans demanded to see him in these musical romantic comedies, rejecting any roles that did not fit this mold. Elvis, believing his manager, continued to make films until well past the point an Elvis Presley picture was a guaranteed hit in theaters.

In its visual splendor and Pacific appeal, Blue Hawaii sealed the fate of Elvis’ post-Army career. No other subsequent Elvis film would match the commercial heights of Blue Hawaii, although one could argue several of those movies surpass this one in terms of acting, aesthetics, and musical interest (like 1964’s Viva Las Vegas and two concert documentaries in 1970 and 1972). Elvis returned to Hawai’i several more times during his career for concerts and two films – Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966). As much as Elvis is associated with Tupelo, Mississippi (his birthplace) and Graceland in Memphis, there is also a special relationship between Elvis and Hawai’i. That relationship – one that touches Elvis’ personal life and the musical traditions of Native Hawaiians – begins with Blue Hawaii, an archetypal Elvis film and one of his best.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[defenders-core]

So in Into the Spider-Verse - objectively the best Spider-Man film - Miles says of Spider-Man, "Anyone can wear the mask. You can wear the mask!" But that's...not really true, is it? Just last month, Disney told a grieving father he couldn't put Spider-Man on his 4-year-old son's grave. They informed a man who lost his preschool-age child that using the image of his son's favorite character would damage the "innocence and magic" of its character. But maybe they just don't understand "their" character as well as anyone who's actually read...for example...Amazing Spider-Man #248.

In light of the news that Disney lost Spider-Man movies because they pushed for 50% of profits despite already owning approximately half of the world, I've seen a few people sharing an interesting fact. Had Disney not pushed for extensions of copyright laws so people couldn't use Mickey Mouse's image, Spider-Man would have entered the public domain in January of this year.

Now obviously, this probably wouldn't have done too much for the MCU case specifically, as certain specific instances of the character are trademarked and therefore still off-limits indefinitely, but I think this is still a good opportunity to contemplate how much we've lost because the characters and stories we love are corporate-owned properties.

Imagine if Raimi could've just...continued his movies independent of Sony, or if creators could tell their own stories about Spider-Man and other characters they love and care about without having to use up their free time and risk a cease and desist while doing so. Imagine a world where Spider-Trans could be just as valid and "official" a take on the character as 616 Peter, or Spider-Verse's Miles, or MCU Peter. I'd love to live in a world where we could "wear the mask" without "the mask" being the property of several multi-billion-dollar corporations who can decide at a whim who can and can't "wear the mask" and when.

Our identities are tied up in the fiction we love and that fiction is beholden to the same oligarchs that control every other facet of our life. As we're seeing yet again, this means our identities are subject to the whims of Disney and Sony making and breaking deals in conference rooms somewhere. We've been broken, and I dunno if we can be fixed, but it's at least worth remembering while we argue about which corporation was in the right and which corporation should hold which rights to The Original Populist Superhero: it really shouldn't be this way at all. It really should be better.

[zelgadis55]

Chapters: 21/? Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Michelangelo (TMNT), Mikey, Dogpound, Chris Bradford, Hamato Yoshi | Splinter, Leonardo (TMNT), Leo, Donatello (TMNT), Donnie, Raphael (TMNT), Raph, April O'Neil (TMNT) Additional Tags: Mikey is captured, Bradford wants revenge, and Shredder allows it, pet trope, Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence, not graphic, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Hurt Michelangelo (TMNT), Michelangelo (TMNT)-centric, Turtles, TMNT, Mind Manipulation, Cruelty Summary:

Bradford has always blamed Michelangelo for his misfortunes and especially for his mutation so when he manages to capture the young ninja, he's going to make sure he knows exactly what it's like. 2k12 AU.

Warning: Warnings for physical and mental torture in this story abound, as well as for implied and highly disturbing situations. Trigger warnings may apply for some chapters. There will not, however, be gruesome details. Some things are best left up to the imagination.

               How Much is that Turtle in the Window                                                       ch 21

Leo opened one eye to look at him and then the other before carefully stretching. "Sorry, could you repeat that, Mikey?"

Mikey huffed in frustration. Tapping with that heavy paw was tiresome and that wasn't even taking into account the effort of putting the letters together in the first place.

"I'm sorry but by the time I realised you were talking to me, you were already half done," Leo apologised guiltily. "Maybe next time you should get my attention first and then say it."

{But u mediate,} Mikey explained slowly, tapping laboriously away with his left paw. He rolled his sore right shoulder, made worse by putting his weight on it when leaning forward to tap – still, it was less painful that way than tapping with his right. It was no wonder though, that Donnie wouldn't let him do too much at once.

"Mediate?" Leo questioned in confusion, concentrating on trying to translate the dits and dahs. "Mediate what?"

'No!' Mikey blinked in annoyance. Why did Donnie have to leave him alone with Leo? Donnie was the only one that understood him well. Leo tried but he was even slower at translating than Mikey was at tapping. He shifted from his approximation of seiza to cross-legged, lifting his paws onto his knees and closing his eyes and tried breathing as deeply and slowly as possible, wincing slightly at the tight metal clamped around his throat making the deep breathing difficult. Then he looked expectantly up at Leo.

"Oh, meditating?"

'Yes,' Mikey blinked in relief. Then, {U get mad wen dis... trbed.}

For a minute, Leo struggled with translating and then his face cleared in understanding before falling as he realised Mikey was scared to get his attention first.

"It doesn't matter if I'm meditating or not, little brother, if I'm the only one here and you need me, you don't hesitate to get my attention. I promise I won't be mad. Okay?"

{'k,} Mikey reluctantly agreed, torn between trusting Leo's word and his own messed up survival instincts born of the last almost year.

"So what did you want?"

{Go out,} Mikey tapped eagerly, faster than earlier.

"Slow down, Mikey," Leo chuckled, "I'm not Donnie, give me time to translate."

Mikey pulled a face and repeated yet again, this time far more slowly.

Leo's face fell. "You want to go outside," he said flatly.

'Yes!' Mikey blinked desperately, glad that Leo finally understood. {Need air! Pls!}

"I'm sorry, Mikey, but it's not safe out there."

{D an' R out.}

Leo sighed. "Yes, they are and I can't say I like it."

Mikey pouted, looking back and forth between Leo and the door anxiously.

"Unfortunately, they had to go out there. Donnie needs a chance to scout the ship too. He needs access to the computers and records if he can, so we know how long until we reach New York. Also, to find out if there are areas we need to avoid when out on the ship."

{Need air an' c sky,} Mikey repeated, his tapping becoming faster and sloppier in his desperation. {Won't go 'way. Stay close. Pls, L!}

"Mikey, you need to slow it down, you know I can't keep up," Leo burst out over the top of him, exasperated and frustrated by his inability to understand.

Slamming a paw down in frustration, Mikey bared his teeth, growling with his breath and Leo's eyes widened in shock.

"I understand how you feel, Mikey..." he began.

No, he didn't! He had no clue and he wasn't listening!

"... but it's just too dangerous for you to go out there when you can't defend yourself or even hide or run. You need to understand that I'm just trying to keep you safe."

It was far too late for that! Maybe he should have tried harder earlier and then he'd actually be safe now! Mikey snorted disdainfully and turned away,

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24382507/chapters/73582983   or   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13593827/21/How-Much-is-that-Turtle-in-the-Window