#people do be using it as culture war fodder

[space-blue]

SW twitter has turned so rancid and impossible.

People are like "Acolyte sucks, there's even fire in space!"

And you can't argue with them, they'll ignore the 20 million examples of fires in space, space behaving like air and spaceships like planes and Han Solo doing a space walk in nothing but a mouth mask as invalid, because their real complaint is "there's a black woman protag who has two mothers"

I'm not even hostile to criticism, the immense majority of recent Disney SW shows have been honest to goodness dogshit in my humble opinion, but the issues were poor writing, weak direction and acting, uninspired combat, cheap as hell costuming and props, overuse of the volume, and confusing scoring.

As far as I can tell the Acolyte doesn't really suffer from these issues, even if the writing feels a touch so-so to me. There's clearly more quality to it than anything since (and before) Andor (which is the one glowing exception).

There's no dialogue to be had, bigots everywhere. The shows are now just culture war fodder.

Fire in space has become a biggoted dogwhistle in the span of a week it's absolute madness.

[genderkoolaid]

i try not to fall into the trap of idolizing the prehistoric past, or applying a extremely general label to something in the past or making sweeping generalizations. because people in general and specifically leftists + feminists have a history of using the past, especially the people we know the least about, as rhetorical fodder. and yk humans being any which way in prehistory means as much for innate human nature as a preschooler thinking their teacher sleeps at school. it's a very understandable thing to believe/do and it's a very human thing but that doesn't mean it holds some Ineffable Truth About Who We Are And Will Always Be. there being misogyny or ableism or hierarchy or war etc. in the ancient past does not mean that misogynists/ableist/warmongers etc. are in the right. and we should be careful not to jump to assumptions about the past without respecting that each society was made of real individual people who existed without regard for our ideological battles in the future. and they also did not exist to represent Every Single Society in their wider cultural group. read the dawn of everything a new history of humanity etc etc

that being said i am getting emotional over çatalhöyük and neolithic societies and what little information we have on how they navigated gender. just the idea that it really didn't matter as much as we think it needs to. equal burials and equal diets. and like you don't even need the idea of a Primordial Mother Goddess cult. people with vulvae could equally participate in phallocentric cults focused on hunting wild animals because why wouldn't they? why would the presence of a penis mean they wouldn't be involved? can you imagine that? the potential for a society where sex is at once so unabashedly present in your culture yet not a dividing factor in life?

[comradeocean]

1. i found myself explaining it to people i know who weren’t there, and realized that the defining thing about the phenomenon was the way they were working class in a specifically british way - not unique but very distinct from the us boy band (was explaining this to a zoomer mark fisher fan so she got it). people remember that liam wanted to be a fireman but forget what he actually said was “i would have worked in the factory or maybe been a fireman.” liam specifically

I have not been able to shut up about this since it happened. like, I have this whole half-baked theory about 1d being the last act to be globally popular before the total hegemony of the US centric (internet) monoculture. it seems quaint now, how Liam still talked about things being American or Hollywood, and then self-consciously defining himself in opposition to that. I feel celebs don't necessarily do that anymore? like influencer culture has cut off tall poppy syndrome and assorted post-war anglo inferiority complexes off at its knees. which are, again, also such classed expressions as well!

the other wild thing about Liam's vocational aspirations is fireman was probably like fourth or fifth down the list. closer to soundbite fodder. in the same interview where he talks about his family being in massive amounts of debt, and the aeroplane factory where his dad worked as a fitter, he reveals this whole plan he had, where at the age of sixteen he'd done up the sums of the apprentice wages he was expecting at the factory, the 60 pounds given to his parents for boarding, and then made a budget for SAVING UP FOR PROPERTY. bc SINCE CHILDHOOD he'd been obsessed with renovation shows and the idea he'd buy a shit place, fix it up, then rent it out, over and over again, AND somehow key to this scheme as he was describing it, was that he himself would continue living in rentals or with his parents, at sixty pounds a month! I mean it's possible I've misremembered, but I'm fairly certain that was the gist. and don't even get me started on the whole nft thing or him being a depop girlie!!!!!!!!!! talk about being a child of post thatcher's britain

[also so funny you are the second person to bring up mark fisher unprompted in response to that post]

EDIT FORGOT TO MENTION as part of my Why 1d rabbit hole, I was trawling through the bios of other 2010s boyband wannabes and the majority of them were soooo posh like I shit you not the xfactor product the following year had a member who was an award winning ex jockey

[submalevolentgrace]

for pretty much my entire life we have been locking up refugees in UN-certified human-rights-violating "offshore detention" camps for the heinous crime of daring to try and flee from death and worse, often from wars-on-terror we've helped wage, and have very much done highly decorated war crimes in. we hold them in conditions so bad that war-fleeing refugees have sown their mouths shut, tried to starve themselves, even children trying to kill themselves to escape what we're doing to them. WE are doing. because in my boots on the ground activism days i tried to fight the government on this, and the fact is, the australian public on the whole doesn't give a shit about us torturing refugee kids, half the country is in support of it, so the government gets a free pass no matter which side is in power. from howard to rudd to gillard to rudd to abbott to turnbull to morison to albanese, we lock up and torture refugees. the UN anti-torture inspectors aren't allowed to visit. the camps are run by a private USA prison contractor now.

and it's not like we can't organise a protest! we'll barricade MP's offices because of something an ally-in-law country is doing that we condemn, but when the blood is on our hands we don't wanna know, don't wanna fight, don't wanna admit. and albanese gets up there and says those barricades have "crossed a line", "there's no place for violence like this in our democracy", he says. you know where there is an implicit place for violence, apparently? cops beating indigenous kids to death on camera, the australian people are fine with that apparently. happens all the time. better have a curfew so those kids don't get too rowdy about it!

oh and the CIA agents and US soldiers we welcomed here to supposedly defend us, they rape a bunch of women and children, mostly also indigenous? better get ASIO and the AFP to monitor the population for anti-american sentiment, local cops do it plenty too and we can't stand up to the USA, we're about to go to war with our biggest economic trading partner on their behalf, the troop buildup locations have already been announced! sweep it under the rug little aussies, scrub it from your memory, who cares about raped children anyway? not worth protesting, apparently.

we are right in the middle of the asia-pacific, with loosely speaking about a 5th of the population ethnically or culturally asian, and they are absolutely terrified of speaking out about how many hate crimes they suffer constantly, because the other 80% of the population is more culturally invested in american politics than the fact that labor considers pauline hanson an ally. i don't blame the 20% getting hatecrimed for being scared to speak up, i sure as fuck blame the rest of us for not protecting them, and for doing those hate crimes. "wE'rE a MuLtIcUlTuRaL sOcIeTy!! nO rAcIsM hErE!!", but we'll organise citywide marches in the middle of a pandemic if a black american kid gets killed over there, and then tell blak people they're spelling it wrong.

then we flood the region with our white-bleached propaganda and "culture", to control smaller governments and and lure the people of the region here for our economic benefit; the wealthy as fodder to fund the education complex, and the poor to work below-minimum-wage-slavery "jobs programs" on our great proud aussie battler family run farms.

it's all out in the open. the torture, the murder, the rape, the hate crimes, the technically-it's-legally-distinct-from-slavery, it's all known, all reported regularly on the news, endlessly, cyclically, every few months or years, for my whole life. fuck knows what else we're doing and i don't know about because pine gap prevents it from reaching english language news.

i know the internet zeitgeist really only cares about the single latest trending topic to happen, so you're wondering what that is to make me react enraged and ashamed; but it's everything. i haven't even scratched the surface, just ranting off the top of my head.

every day i carry the shame of what a disgusting violent colony nation this is; to the people who consider themselves australian, to the people here before the nation and their descendants, to the people surrounding us now. i carry the guilt of failure to stop it, and casual complicity of having given up the fight because i couldn't handle it. i think that's what most activists do here, give up in shame, because activists aren't fighting the government - we have one of the most free and open democracies in the world, and the spineless cowards in charge absolutely will do what the populace whims of them - activists here are fighting the cruel and apathetic average australian, who either don't care, or active condone it all. we have the blood of this country on our hands.

so.

what has australia done now?

it's fucken wednesday, mates. nothing new.

[irithnova]

The Russian state using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder - with a focus on Buryats

Article written in 2022, update on the Free Buryatia Foundation in September 2023 given at the end of the post.

Putin announced on October 14th 2022 that by the end of October, his partial mobilisation process would be complete

The recruitment target was 300,000. 222,000 were recruited, and it was claimed that there'd be no more plans for future recruitment

The mobilisation process soaked nation wide outrage which lead to mass protests.

It drew in criticism from some of the Russian political elite

The mobilisation process disproportionately affected ethnic minorities/impoverished regions (many impoverished regions have a high ethnic minority population)

Tuva Republic

Regions that held high populations of ethnic minorities bared the brunt of war-related deaths.

Both Ukrainian media and authorities have levelled accusations at Russian ethnic minorities - that they committed war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine

This accusations was made in May 2022 by Lydmyla Denisova, Ukrainian ombudsman for human rights

Buryats and Chechens were being accused of this

This was a form of scapegoating (not to say they 0 ethnic minorities have committed war crimes in Ukraine of course)

The Free Buryat Foundation investigated this and produced a report that challenged the notion that Buryats were ever sent to Bucha, let alone being responsible for the war crimes committed

Victoria Maladaeva is the vice president of the Free Buryatia Foundation.

She said:

Dagestan, Tuva Republic and Buryatia Republic have the highest death tolls

Moscow, with 17 million, had >50 deaths.

Buryatia with only 980,000 had 364

A Buryat is 7.8 x more likely to die in the war compared to an ethnic Russian.

A Tuvan is 10.4x more likely

The biggest losses were at the beginning of the war and numbers gradually decreased.

Mobilisation was first and foremost carried out in ethnic republics

The day Putin announced this, authorities came to Buryatia at night, went into people's homes and took them from their beds.

No one was given draft notices

They even took men with multiple children, men from the same family

Endangered ethnic groups reside in Dagestan

There are very small communities of those people with populations of around 13,000

Despite this, those minorities were still drafted

There are also very small communities in the Sakha Republic.

They are so remote, helicopters are needed to be called for medical treatment

They almost never come because of how remote these communities are

Funnily enough, helicopters came immediately to draft those people upon Putin's announcement

Putin is a Russian imperialist through and through

None Russians are treated like second class citizens

Russian cultural chauvinism is seen even in small things - such as names

Putin would frequently mispronounce Kazakhstan's president's name. If you have an ethnic Buryat name for example, Russians are reluctant to use it, instead assigning you an "easier" Russian name

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

Unfortunately, many of the people of Buryatia believe in the Russian narrative about Nazi ideology in Ukraine

It is one of the missions of the free Buryatia Foundation to help Buryats understand that this is Russian propaganda

The focus on Buryat/ethnic minority war crimes has a racial element

When an ethnic minority commits a war crime, their ethnicity is singled out

It should not matter the ethnicity of a war criminal

78 Buryat soldiers from the 11th air assault brigade were barred from terminating their contract

They were imprisoned in Luhansk.

Only Ilya Kaminskiy returned. The fate of the other men is unknown

The Free Buryatia Foundation knows they cannot help everyone but they do their best. They help people in terminating their contracts for example and have been quite successful in this.

The Free Buryatia Foundation was established to counter Russian propaganda and to protest the war.

People worldwide took an interest to this, so they founded the free Buryatia Foundation.

The Free Buryatia Foundation is the first ethnic anti war organisation in Russia

They aided in founding anti war organisations in other ethnic regions such as Tuva, Kalmykia, Udmurtia, Sakha

Many Buryats fled to Mongolia and Kazakhstan

Some men were able to come back after being drafted, some were not

The economic situation for Buryatia is dire. It ranked 81st out of 85 of Russia's regions when it came to living standards

Buryats had to spend money on a list of supplies for war that Russia did not provide them

Very recently, on September 1st, Russia banned the Free Buryatia Foundation, labelling them as undesirable and anti Russian.

Here is the website for the Free Buryatia Foundation:

And here is where you can donate:

Please spread around or give what you can.

[seventeendeer]

TF2 analysis - on cultural references, context as characterization, and how to analyze comedy

-taps mic- HELLO, TEAM FORTRESS 2 COMMUNITY !

A while back, I received an ask requesting analysis of one of my favorite video games of all time and special interest of 12+ years, and you know I just had to go and turn that into a several thousand word essay for the reading pleasure of the people.

Because that shit got way too long, I’ve decided to put it into a post of its own. Hopefully a big title and no previous context being necessary will give more people an incentive to read it. I spent a long time on it and I think it’s pretty cool, and I would love some nice attention for my effort. ;w;

The ask I received went a little something like this:

Below the cut, I will be replying to these questions individually. It touches on everything from Cold War propaganda to the media landscape at the game’s launch in 2007 to first-person shooters as a genre - all to gain a better understanding of author intent, expected audience reaction, characterization and themes.

Anon previously requested help writing more accurate fanfiction, and damn it, that is what they are going to get!! and MORE

Introductory disclaimer:

First of all, for clarity's sake: this analysis is going to specifically talk about TF2 as seen through a fandom lens. I'm going to be talking about the game as a piece of media, creator intention, and the fandom's reactions to the game and extended canon - that is, the slice of the TF2 fandom that is interested in the characters, in the world and in doing at least semi-faithful fanworks.

I will not be touching on TF2's wider playerbase or meme culture. I greatly enjoy both, but they are not relevant to the post I made that sparked this anon's questions (I will link this post in the replies, in case anyone is curious).

I also have to disclaim that any references I make to real world history in this post have to be taken with a hard grain of salt. I've done my best to fact-check everything, but I am not infallible! For a better understanding of the historical elements I talk about here, please do your own research, and approach my claims with a healthy amount of scepticism, same as you would any unsourced social media post. (Readers may notice examples I give below primarily feature Soldier, Spy and Scout. This is because I feel I have the most solid grasp on the historical events and media that informs their characters, compared to the other classes. All the classes contain these contexts and meta complexities, but in an effort to not talk out of my ass too much, I have decided to focus on the characters I feel the most confident dissecting.)

>1) What tropes was the game parodying/what cultural contexts would you say are essential to understand, in order to better understand the game?

The characters of TF2 were specifically designed as satiric takes on national stereotypes depicted in American propaganda media during the Cold War. Two easy-to-explain examples to illustrate:

- Soldier embodies the ideal of a "red-blooded American" who is strong, brave, hyper-masculine, hates foreign superpowers, loves the vague ideal of "freedom" and firmly believes America is the greatest nation in the world. He prides himself on having personally murdered nazis in the past, despite actually having accomplished no such thing (comparable to the US taking a disproportionate amount of credit for defeating Nazi Germany in World War 2; at the time, WW2 was a very recent cultural memory that made for good propaganda fodder). He fears, hates and dehumanizes communists (as Soviet Russia was the US's highly-villified opponent during the Cold War). The satiric angle: he is depicted as so brainwashed by propaganda that he has become immune to facts and logic. He is horribly sadistic, brutal, paranoid and xenophobic. The ideal he is based on is portrayed as shockingly and disproportionally violent and illogical to the point of being laughable.

- Spy is based on how the US viewed France during the Cold War: as a weak, cowardly, “unmanly” nation. At the time, France was depicted this way because they were perceived to have surrendered to Nazi Germany early on in World War 2 out of cowardice. Spy is one of the least macho of the mercs, he is ineffective when fighting enemies head on, and his main method of attack is reliant on trickery and “not fighting fair.” The satiric angle: Spy isn't actually much of a coward - he is more intelligent, more tactical and more resourceful than many of the others, and simply doesn’t feel the need to risk his neck when he could be working smarter, not harder. The other characters are portrayed as a bunch of meatheads for picking on him. The negative stereotype he is based on is portrayed as largely unearned and ridiculous. (Though note that Spy is also depicted as an upperclass prick to contrast with Engineer being working class; in that dynamic, Spy is depicted as a pompous asshole, while Engie is depicted in a more favorable light. The characters are multi-faceted and no class is universally “better” or “worse” than the others, but right now I'm specifically focusing on the "Cold War stereotype" aspect.)

Notice how, while these two characters have different nationalities in-universe, they are both based on stereotypes seen through an American lens. Notice the way the American character is based on a comedically deconstructed ideal, while the character from a nation the US did not view favorably at the time is depicted as falsely judged by an unfair and ridiculous metric.

The entire TF2 cast and universe revolves on this axis! It takes old American ideals and prejudices and uses them for comedy, adding exaggeration and caveats to make those ideals look absurd.

It’s a parody of media produced in the US during the Cold War, which contained massive amounts of propaganda. It satirizes the political ideals that were glorified in said propaganda media.

Very important extra cultural context: this satiric depiction of old war propaganda was specifically designed to be instantly recognizable to TF2's central demographic at the time of release in 2007.

Older Valve games like TF2 were very specifically made to appeal to pop culture-savvy, nerdy young adult gamers. This demographic was expected to see the characters and think "oh hey, it's like a funny version of X character type I've seen in movies!"

Because those kinds of movies were still everywhere at the time. The Cold War ended in 1991. TF2 was released only 16 years later. To put this into perspective: the Legally Blonde movie came out 22 years ago, in 2001. Think about how many Legally Blonde memes are still floating around the web today, how fondly remembered this one movie is and how often it’s still referenced in contemporary media. Now consider that media produced during the Cold War was fresher in the cultural memory at the time of TF2′s release than Legally Blonde is for us today.

TF2 was never meant to be seen in a vacuum. It was always meant to be in conversation with old media that it expected everyone playing to be extremely familiar with.

I'll say that again: the cast of TF2 are based on Cold War stereotypes - comedically exaggerated - so they would clearly read as parodies to people in 2007.

Those are 3 different overlapping lenses to consider when approaching the characters.

The characters are more than just funny cartoon men with guns and an unusual amount of differing accents. They are commentary on older media trends.

Now, someone might ask - why did the developers choose this specific aesthetic and tone for their online shooter video game?

The developers have stated multiple reasons, including wanting the characters to be immediately recognizable both physically (they generally look like the stereotypical depictions they're based on) and audibly (the differing accents and regional dialects make it easy to identify which class is yelling in your ear mid-combat during gameplay).

However, I also have another theory:

It's been confirmed TF2's comedic tone was designed to combat a lot of negative aspects of shooters in the genre at the time of its creation. I have seen developers discuss that they were going for a lighthearted atmosphere to discourage player hostility.

I, personally, also think it is extremely likely the developers opted for satirizing old war propaganda partially in order to combat the tendency of other shooters often being war propaganda. Valve has always been a politically left-leaning company, with a history of depicting military-like forces and unchecked capitalism in a negative light (see the Half-Life and Portal series, respectively).

By depicting the cast of TF2 as generally unhinged, illogical and clownish, they were able to communicate to players: "War is dumb, nationalism is dumb, whatever Call of Duty has been telling you is cool is actually illogical and copying it makes you look like like an idiot. That being said, we all sometimes wish we could beat the shit out of other people in the desert with a shovel, so let's get our aggressions out in a safe, non-serious environment with no consequences. Come play pretend you're a murderous sadist blowing up equally unhinged people with us, it's silly, but it's so fun."

I believe everything from the cartoonishly over-the-top, non-permanent deaths to the deserted, remote environments, to the lack of any truly innocent or defenseless characters was all a carefully crafted foundation made to encourage players to make the informed decision to leave their inhibitions and moral hangups at the door. They wanted players to have fun and go nuts engaging in military-like violence, without encouraging pro-military attitudes in their playerbase.

For an example of a game that royally screwed up doing the same thing, just look at Overwatch - it tried to preach a "wholesome" vibe that was completely mismatched with its gameplay. Overwatch tries to justify extreme violence as Okay When Good Guys Do It To Bad Guys, which ... yeah, again, that is straight up modern military propaganda, on purpose or not (and knowing the US military’s tendency to pour money into video games that glorify war, “on purpose” isn’t as much of a stretch as one might think). Paradoxically, TF2 comes out both looking and feeling better to play, because it handles aligning player emotions VS in-game actions much more elegantly. It accounts for common pitfalls in its genre. OW jumps into those pitfalls with both legs and instead ends up looking shallow and nauseatingly twee.

Of course, all of this is personal speculation. Whether or not this was the reading that Valve intended, I do believe it's a big reason why TF2 has remained so profoundly loveable over the years - it uses its writing and art direction to put the player in the perfect mindspace to Fuck Shit Up.

It's a fantastic example of how to carefully and artfully craft something extremely stupid for maximum intended effect. It uses the strengths of comedy as a genre to its absolute fullest.

Unfortunately, because of cultural shifts since the game's release, newer fans do end up missing out on a lot of what makes this game so expertly done. Many newer fans don't come into the game with the base cultural knowledge it expected of its original audience. To gain a better grasp on the characters and enjoy this piece of media as it was intended, I think it will be extremely helpful to familiarize yourself with the material it is referencing.

For an introduction to media produced and influenced by the Cold War, I would recommend the Wikipedia article Culture during the Cold War as a starting point.

(I have skimmed, but not read, the full article; I encourage readers to be especially source-critical when engaging with pages like this that detail themes of history and propaganda - it's a starting point, not a finish line!)

>2) What themes/layers do you feel the fandom has lost sight of, over time? (or never really managed to acknowledge to begin with?)

Some of this is covered in the previous section, but I'll use this question as an opportunity to talk about another thing I feel is overlooked by fans (and, frankly, the writers of the newer comics too), especially when creating fanworks:

The fact that the characters are extremely dependent on their setup and narrative context to be likeable.

Something I think fandom culture struggles with in general is interpreting and handling fictional characters not as real, independent people who exist in a vacuum, but as the sum total of countless moving parts inside a narrative all working together to create the impression of a real person.

In a comedy, characters are especially dependent on presentation to feel like themselves. It is not enough to loyally recreate an arbitrary list of personality traits in order to create accurate fanworks - recreating the sorts of situations they get into, the kinds of people they interact with, and cherry-picking the information they have access to is neccessary for bringing out what makes the characters so charming!

This is especially important when interpreting and handling a cast made up exclusively of characters who are mean people with bad intentions, bad opinions and a complete lack of adequate self-reflection across the board.

Canon makes them all come off amazingly likeable, but this is because the writers were manipulating tone, relationship dynamics, setting, and much more to show off the characters at their most distinct, least detestable and absolute funniest.

Overlooking this aspect of writing comedy characters often leads to a very common pitfall in many, many fandoms out there - following the logic of a character's canon personality to a place they don't like, and getting rid of those personality traits to combat their own discomfort.

Making characters too kind, too understanding, too progressive, etc., is an endless source of micharacterization in fandoms in general, but especially in fandoms of media where the characters are a bunch of dicks in canon.

To be clear, I fully understand where this is coming from. Fans get attached to characters like these because they're funny (and intended to be loved!) - realizing that a character you really like would logically react in an unlikeable way if you put them into certain situations feels bad. No one wants to turn a character they love into something they find they don't love anymore.

But this is where carefully engineering your setup and narrative comes into play.

Example:

A lot of TF2 fans are queer. Queers flock to TF2 because let’s face it, the campy vibes and silly fun masculinity and weird women are like catnip to us.

But a lot of queer fans go into the fandom aspect of the game and find that ... wait, shit, these characters are not exactly pillars of progressiveness. Reconciling some of the extremist political views of the characters with queer narratives, with queer values, seems a daunting task to some. Because what’s a queer fan to do? Portray a character they love in a way that makes them unloveable? Painstakingly depict shitty, uncomfortable characterization in the name of “realism” that ultimately detracts from their own and other people’s enjoyment of the story? That’s not fun. Fandom is supposed to be fun. So, what, do they just portray the characters as miraculously having perfectly amicable social politics by the standards of the larger queer community in 2023?

Some do, of course, for their own comfort, and it’s understandable, but it’s not good storytelling. It’s an excessively shallow way of interacting with media - the fanfiction equivalent of confidently sitting down to write an in-depth, flowery review of a horror movie you watched with your hands over your eyes during all the scary parts. You cannot create fanworks that are even remotely faithful to the spirit of the canon while deliberately ignoring the core themes and author intention of the canon you’re working with. These things are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. TF2 characters are meant to be wrong about most things politically. Hopefully my reply to the first question in this post adequately illustrates why that’s so important.

But the good news is that bastardizing canon in order to avoid making characters unlikeable also isn’t necessary.

There’s a reason Soldier, in canon mocks his enemies for everything from failing at masculinity to being disabled, yet doesn’t have a single homophobic line:

The people writing his lines figured it would detract from the character. It would hurt real people’s feelings and make the character less fun to play as, so they didn’t include it. No excuses, no explanation; it is simply omitted for the sake of likeability.

(For contrast, notice that the writers did not extend the same kindness to certain other minorities, like fat people - playing as Heavy fucking sucks when you’re fat, because every other class hurls fatphobic abuse at him. This is a fuck-up on the writers’ side; they failed to identify this type of humor as meaningfully detracting from the experience for a significant amount of players, and so ignorantly decided to include it.)

This is what I mean by “setup and narrative context.” I also like to call this “maneuvering”, because it involves selectively portraying a character in contexts and situations where they shine and instill the intended audience reaction, while steering them away from situations where they would logically act in ways that counteract how the audience is intended to feel about them.

Fanworks can absolutely do the same thing! Fanworks can even take the technique further, because they’re not bound by limited time and focus, the way the original work is!

Sticking with the above example of wondering What The Hell To Do when portraying a character who, due to the ideal he’s satirizing, should by all rights be on the wrong side of history in relation to queer rights, let me make a bold statement:

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic. He's a nationalist, a right-winger, a sexist, a xenophobe - but he's not homophobic.

Why? Because he just so happens to never encounter any gay people in canon. They happen to never cross his mind. He's thinking about other shit. If there's a Pride riot in Teufort, he just so happens to be looking the other way.

Soldier TF2 is not homophobic, because he can't think for himself. He's an idea, a fraction of a bigger narrative that he does not exist outside of.

And if he needs to encounter gay people in a fanfiction, don’t just passively follow the logic of his character to that uncomfortable place none of us enjoy going to - use that maneuvering! Make him misinformed, make him misunderstand, give him incomplete information - the character is not only a face with personality traits attached, his soul is also in the context of the story!

Make him homophobic, but he's pretty sure only Europeans can be gay (just look at them!), and it's already so damn sad that they weren't born in beautiful, paradisical AMERICA, so he pities them instead of hating them. Make him think he's successfully being homophobic, but he has misunderstood what a gay person is and thinks it's a particularly venomous type of snake (men who kiss other men are fine, why would he care about that when there are HORRIBLE HOMOSEXUALS slithering around in the desert that he needs to go blow up right now before they bring this glorious nation to ruin). Make him homophobic, but literally "phobic" - he's shaking and crying hiding inside a cupboard, and his newly-outed gay friends have to lure him out with canned meat and a trail of small American flags, treating him like a feral cat that needs a little time and space to get used to people.

That's funny. It's likeable, it's charming. He isn't portrayed as a good person, or woke in a way that clashes with the themes of his character, but with a little maneuvering, he is faithful to what makes him such a legendary character in canon - being a silly caricature that brings us joy.

If Soldier himself needs to be gay? There are ways to make it happen. Same approach. Get creative. Make it silly. Go for thematically appropriate comedic explanations, not cop-outs or realism*.

That is what I think the TF2 fandom is lacking - understanding of how to manipulate context to make a character feel like their own unique, lovable selves.

Characters are not just visuals and personality traits. They are also what happens to them, what they conveniently find out, what they happen to miss.

This is the same for every story, but it is especially important to understand in a comedy. Doubly so in a whimsical, hyper-violent, morbid comedy like TF2.

It's one of the most important layers to be able to recognize, and an even more important one to be willing to try to recreate.

*Unless you feel like doing a deliberate deconstruction, in which case, go ham, sometimes actively engaging with canon means doing some real weird stuff to it to make a certain point on a meta level. This is obviously different from the issues I described above.

>3) "even the newer official comics don't even seem to really "get" the original game" … I've had a nagging sense for years now that the TF2 comics don't really match the game, tonally -- which has admittedly soured my enjoyment of them -- but I've never been able to put two and two together and fully determine why that is. What would you say they've failed to "get" about the work they're based off of?

While I very much love the newer comics on their own merits, I do think they are wildly removed from the game, and lack a lot of depth by comparison.

I believe the greatest failing of the comics, especially the long-form comic, is that the writers do not seem to be aware of either of the subjects I covered above.

They do not handle the satirical aspect well. The newer comic writers don't even really seem to be aware that there is a satirical aspect - they treat the world as just a silly version of mid-1900′s media, with a narrow focus on silver age comics (which were primarily superhero comics, not an easy genre to match with TF2′s more grounded setting - see the comic’s limp attempt at doing a Superman parody with Sniper) + a dash of the Man’s Life magazines (would have been a good match, if not for the fact that it’s primarily used as aesthetics, with no attention given to themes the way the game does with its own media references). They attempt to write parody only, and even the parody aspect is a hollow effort. Crucially, the writers don't seem to have much of an opinion of the old media properties they're parodying, and without opinions to guide a parody, it becomes shallow and lifeless. "Mid-1900′s media was a bit silly, right?" isn't enough of a hot take to justify its existence. It needs an axis on which to spin to feel complete.

Reiterating the point I made in my answer to question 1: the game's satirical aspect circled the point that was "American media made during the Cold War pushed a narrative that was illogical and ridiculously misaligned with reality."

Its absurd humor is grounded in reality and follows a thematic red thread that the comic does not. As a result, the comic (again, primarily later entries) loses a lot of the sting and edge of the game.

Even though the comic attempts to be more serious and "dark" at certain points, the much more silly and easy-going game (and Meet the Team videos, not to mention) comes out looking more mature, interesting and layered, even though many of the layers remain subtextual. The game is fully married to comedy and has no intention of "getting real", but it is loyal to the spirit of satire. It has opinions. It has bite.

In the game and early supplementary material, there is a dread and horror in the subtext that the comics tried to bring to light later on, but the comic writers didn't know what the scary thing behind the curtain was.

The scary thing was - is - the Cold War.

The scary thing is the dread injected into the genre it's satirizing by people who wanted American readers and movie-goers to be afraid. Scaring people into compliance, into finding a sense of safety and comfort in their national identity, was the entire purpose of many, many pieces of media released at the time.

The comic writers didn't notice the subtext and figured they had to make up their own reasons for why the world of TF2 is so utterly fucked.

They didn't understand the cultural context, and they missed the mark entirely.

This also hindered the comic writers' ability to reproduce the game's humor and characterization. Without understanding where exactly the game's humor was coming from or why the characters were so likeable despite being horrible people, they lacked direction. They made the characters at the same time too impassionate, too stupid, too uncaring, and too nice. All together, the characters became less interesting, less likeable.

Example:

- In the game, Spy was not intended to be Scout's father. Spy having a relationship with Scout's mother emphasized Spy's craftiness and intelligence (undermining the enemy team not only through brute force, but through infiltrating their personal lives), and showed off the strengths of his aforementioned "softness" and sentimentality (he's the only mercenary shown to have consistent luck with women). It also emphasized the flaws in Scout's worldview, and his status as the team underdog, and showed a clear contrast to Scout's non-existent love life. Spy came out of the situation funny and likeable because he 1. was portrayed as cool and capable in a way the other mercs aren't, and 2. his softer side is simultaneously humorously endearing, consistent with the rest of his characterization, and highly informed by the satirical aspect of his character in a way that clicks perfectly thematically. Scout comes out of the situation likeable because his ego is balanced out by his bad luck - you can simultaneously see that he's trying too hard and why he's trying too hard. Spy and Scout's dynamic in-game is also fun and interesting, because you have a tough, hyper-violent, wannabe-macho young man who is desperate to gain the respect of both his team and his enemies getting freaking owned by a guy who is nowhere near the impressive-tough-guy ideal Scout strives to embody. The game's satirical points inform the characters and their actions, which gives the comedy depth and nuance, which in turn makes all characters involved fun to watch and easy to get invested in. It is the establishing of and subsequent pointing-and-laughing-at an ideal that produces engaging, character-driven comedy in this situation.

- By contrast, the comics decided that Spy was Scout's father. Spy's motives for getting involved with Scout's mother is no longer about gaining intel on his enemies. In this version of events, his motives are reduced to merely wanting to reconnect with an old flame. This completely undermines the dynamic described above, for multiple reasons: the situation no longer shows Spy as having a particular skillset that sets him apart from the other mercs, he is no longer portrayed as emotionally "softer" than the others (in fact, having left a poor woman to raise and feed 8 kids on her own while he was off enjoying his upperclass life makes him look incredibly cold in a way that is distinctly unfunny; I don’t think the writers thought this part through), Scout's comedic poor luck is no longer on display, and the "macho character is humiliated by the type of guy he respects the least" satirical aspect no longer works. There is an attempt to replace it with a mutual "ugh, I'm related to this guy?" running gag, but it's a very pale substitute for the layered, strongly characterized, thematically appropriate dynamic present in the original game. Spy comes out of it looking like more of a cowardly, cold-hearted fuck-up than a hilariously brilliant tactician with a heart. Scout comes off way too pitiable, because he is not responsible for his own misery here, and the person horribly bullying him and picking apart his self-esteem on the battlefield is his absent father who abandoned him as a child. He's not an objectively badass character who nonetheless fucks himself over in humorous ways trying to chase an ideal that objectively sucks - he's just a regular shitty guy who ended up in bad circumstances because of things outside of his control.

The comic writers didn't understand what Spy and Scout respectively represented in the game, and because of this, they didn't realize they were taking the characters off the rails and making them much less interesting as a result. They didn't realize they were killing off an endless source of comedy that supported the game's satirical angle in a fun, unique, dynamic way.

It resulted in a flat, flavorless subplot. It had some superficial attempts at "heartwarming" moments ...

... but here's my take: if the writers wanted to include more warmth and sincerity in the comics, wouldn't it have been way more heartwarming if Spy started treating Scout as his son even though he wasn't?

Would it not have been way more endearing to see him look out for his girlfriend's child, not because he has any personal ties to him himself, but because he knew if anything happened to Scout, his mother would be devastated?

Why not build from there? Why not make it an active choice? Why not preserve the existing dynamic and themes, and just follow that narrative thread to its logical conclusion?

Spy has an established sentimental side. Scout is desperate for approval. The reluctant surrogate father/son development practically writes itself. It would have been such a good way to explore TF2's themes more explicitly, too!

But again, the comic writers did not seem to realize the game even had themes.

I do like the newer comics. I do think they're really fun, and I did even enjoy the "Spy is Scout's father" subplot in its own way. But this complete inability to identify the game's themes, and thus the source of all its comedy, and thus the red thread defining characterization - it resulted in supplemental material that was lackluster, directionless and unable to scratch the same itch the game does.

They're good comics, but they're hardly TF2 comics.

>4a) … Sheerly out of curiosity, how do you feel Expiration Date holds up, in comparison?

Similar to the way I dislike Spy being revealed to be Scout’s biological father for coming off as a stilted, superficial attempt at being “heartwarming,” I also immensely dislike later supplementary material trying to promote Ms. Pauling to Scout’s recurring love interest for the exact same reason. Expiration Date pushes this subplot way past its breaking point and shows off extremely well why the “jerk characters are secretly a bunch of softies” treatment is so deeply, deeply out of place in TF2.

Back in the early comics, Scout hitting on Miss Pauling was played as a joke at his expense. He was an idiotic, sexist guy incapable of talking to a pretty woman without trying to fuck - she was a highly skilled and deviously manipulative minor character who mostly existed to show off how dangerously competent the Administrator and her people were. Scout acting like an utter dumbass too entrenched in his own limited worldview to notice what was happening right in front of him was important characterization for him, Miss Pauling’s quiet, calculating efficiency was important characterization for her boss, and their clashing personalities set the tone for the dynamic between the entire team of mercenaries and the conspiracy going on right under their noses.

Expiration Date chose to eliminate these layers and invent a completely new conflict for these two specific characters to go play with in a corner, which had nothing to do with their original characterization or the larger plot. Scout is now portrayed as being genuinely in love with Pauling, even noticing small details about her mannerisms and knowing about some of her interests, even though the entire point of their original interactions were that Scout was so busy trying to live his tough-guy-with-a-pretty-girl-on-his-arm fantasy he did not bother to listen to or learn anything about the women unfortunate enough to cross his path, allowing Pauling to carry out her job without causing suspicion.

Instead, Scout’s sexist approach to interacting with women is played for sympathy (”he’s actually a romantic underdog because the lady he likes accurately clocked him as an idiot!”) and inadvertently validated (”once she gave him a chance, she found out he’s actually a pretty okay guy!”).

In the process, Miss Pauling loses far too much of her usual competence, being visibly freaked out over having to perform a job she’s been shown to handle with grace in the past, and being taken aback by what should by all rights be routine weirdness in this world, all so she can have an eye-roll-worthy forced positive reaction to the entire experience at the end of the short, in a weak attempt to justify why she comes to like Scout more despite all the trouble he’s caused for her and wants to spend more time with him in the future.

The romance subplot is only made possible because the characters are heavily edited compared to their past portrayals, is only able to develop in the direction it does by aligning itself with the values of a character who existed to be a laughable, obviously-mistaken caricature, and is only able to distill a happy ending to the whole mess by stripping the other character of personal standards and agency.

Scout and Pauling are frankly two halves of a whole shitshow in Expiration Date, because the writers either didn’t notice or didn’t care about what older works were gunning for - all they saw was that Boy Liked Girl, Girl Did Not Like Boy, and that just wouldn’t stand! After all, everyone likes romance, right?

Scout, as he is portrayed in the game and in the early supplementary material, is one of my absolute favorites of the mercs. I find him incredibly funny, and the way his hyperactive, fun-loving, jokey traits overlap with his intense bloodlust (literally - he’s the class with the most weapons available that cause bleed damage!) and barely-suppressed rage makes him fun and fascinating. The little man has so much unchecked ADHD and cultural trauma he just has to go and kill people about it, which is just so intensely relatable in the “forbidden mood” way TF2 handles so well.

Unfortunately, I get the impression he has in later years fallen victim to the curse of being a skinny young white guy character, making him a target for writers who think every series needs a relatable everyman protagonist for either themselves or the audience to project onto (and who think skinny young white guys are the most relatable people around, for reasons you can probably imagine I’m not personally very fond of).

TF2 absolutely does not need a character like that, and butchering Scout’s established personality in the name of “relatable” and “wholesome” is first of all Some Bullshit, and second of all a lost cause. The character simply has too much baggage as an over-the-top caricature to be comfortably rewired into an author- or audience-surrogate. He’s always going to come out looking like an asshole - whether this aspect of his character turns out likeable or unlikeable is entirely controlled by whether the story itself acknowledges it.

I did find Scout and Spy's dynamic to be quite well done, though, especially if you ignore the "Spy is Scout's father" reveal from the later comics.

The idea that Spy didn't have to go and do all that, but has grown a soft spot for Scout purely because his girlfriend clearly loves her incredibly annoying boy and her happiness is his happiness, is perfectly in-character. Scout has also long been established to desperately crave approval from his teammates, and on paper, the idea of putting him in a situation where he had to let go of some of his macho man dignity, imitate Spy more closely and ultimately win a tiny bit of that approval he's been looking for is interesting and plays well with the game's existing themes.

It's just a shame Scout's motivations ended up being conjured out of thin air, in direct conflict with past characterization, for the purpose of enabling a schmaltzy, tonally dissonant romantic subplot.

tl;dr, I'm conflicted on the subject of Expiration Date. It's funny, it's cute when it's not trying too hard, and seeing the mercs dick around off the clock getting into stupid shenanigans together is something I've always wanted to see in a longer animated format. It’s largely a good time and a fun watch, despite its questionable gender politics and trope-y execution.

However, like the newer comics, it suffers immensely from writers who are simply unable to identify the themes, characterization and comedy style of older material, and thus, in my opinion, falls way, way short of its potential.

>4b) I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on Emesis Blue, should you end up watching it.

I'll be sure to share my opinions if I ever get around to watching it!! I'm super curious about it. As I mentioned in another post, what little I've heard of it seems much more on-point thematically, and even with the characters being so far removed from their official characterization, I really get the impression this is a deliberate, informed choice, in stark contrast to the newer official supplementary material. I’ll be sure to drop some words on it if I ever get around to watching the full thing!

Anyway, that about wraps up my thoughts! If you’ve read this far, thank you for sticking with it, and please do consider reblogging - I’ve spent an insane amount of time writing and re-writing and fact-checking this, and I would love for it to reach just half of all the people who were curious about my initial posts on the subject. :’)

Follow-up questions are very welcome, though to be clear: I’m not really interested in “debating” the subjects I’ve talked about here. I know I posit a lot of hard opinions in this post and not everyone is going to agree with me and that’s fine - if you feel differently, I invite you to simply ignore me and write your own take on your own blog. No hard feelings, I just don’t enjoy those kinds of discussions. (Corrections on any factual mistakes I’ve made are of course encouraged).

[spyridonya]

How the Drow Became Problematic Faves - a Badly Written Meta History of D&D

Oh, hey. It feels like newcomers to D&D via BG3 fandom have discovered the Problematic Nature of Drow via Halsin vs Minthara conflict. 

Cut because of talk of racism and it being fucking long.

Let's talk about meta, first. So, the very first usage of 'drow' came from a dialetc of Scots as a term for troll, which was used to talk about all sorts of evil spirits. When Gary Gygax had to make a war game, he decided he'd make evil elves. They were based on 'black elves' in the Prose Edda and saw the word 'Drow' in a dictionary that claimed it was a term for underground elves who were skilled workers in metal. Being a white guy in the late 70s, he saw no issues in making evil elves actually black. For the next decade or so, they were canon fodder for modules and novels and always evil and repugnant. 

In the late 80s and early 90s, R. A. Salavotre and Ed Greenwood slapped on the concept of drow society being an evil dystopian society run by dominatrixes who emasculate men, in the Forgotten Realms setting. There were a few token dark elves, namely the super popular Drizzt Do'Urden, who were good but the majority were not. Like Gary, RA and Ed were white guys who did not see the problem of black elves and putting their kink into deep lore. Not all settings went by this, Dragonlance for example had drow just be ‘evil assholes elves who got kicked out of their society’ and look like just any other elves.  

(Quick note on Drizzt, he became iconic not because of his race but so much as being an outsider to two cultures while being a badass. I might not be a fan personally, but I know the appeal of the character.) 

The 90s came along and by the end of the decade, TSR was bought by Wizards of he Coast who proceeded to make the Drow even Grim Darker during 3rd edition  to go along with the times. Yet, too, didn’t stop to think about the problematic issues that were being brought up by more thoughtful fans - WotC hired another module company who wrote about  drow women being so fucking evil, they an orgasm like reaction when embryo killed each other in the womb. 

4th Edition came and went. No one talks about those times. Drow existed as evil. 

2014, 5e comes along and drow are so fucking popular, they’re included in the Player’s Handbook, rather in errata based books, as ‘humanoid’. In fact other evil races were introduced under the label of ‘humanoid’, indicating orcs and goblinkin. About a year later, Matt Mercer switched up his TTRPG to 5e because it was an easier system for his friends to understand, and they began to show their games online under Critical Role while a year after that Stranger Things came out and became a smash hit. 

Between these two, D&D explodes in popularity with an entirely new demographic group that began to outnumber the old guard. This larger and more diverse popular saw drow and other ‘evil races’ and went ‘wtf’. They didn’t exactly like the concept of ‘an always evil race’ and discovered the problematic issues that collected over the last several decades not with just drow, but with ‘monstrous’ races. 

WotC wanting money began to listen - just really slowly, and not so much in Forgotten Realms.They dropped the ‘always evil’ from the stat block but refused to change anything else to their older settings. 

(Incidentally, the company that made Grim Dark Drow really disliked 4e. They decided to make their own take of 3.5e with Hookers and Blackjack and made Pathfinder, which was supposed to be Edgier Game than D&D. However, a lot of people they hired were quick to notice the nature of the game and say, ‘nah, this shit is stupid’. As of now, Pazio is retconning drow from their lore. - That my friends, is called a character arc.)

During this 46 year span, drow have been fucking evil because their goddess made them do it as justification of their evilness - and not because they were black or born into it. In fact, Lloth, Gruumsh and Maglubiyet are the reasons why the Drow, Orc, and Goblinkin society is so evil and they’re also why they can function as a society when in truth, they all should have fallen apart. And no one has bothered to change this lore. In fact they avoid mentioning this lore rather than changing it to avoid conflict with older fans and newer fans. 

Then BG3 hits and hits harder than anyone expected. A lot of new fans come on aboard and really begin to like Drow, who are super sexy evil elves, not knowing the lore and kicking the problematic issues down the road. Larian was a bit quicker than TSR/WotC to realize ‘wow, this is fucking yikes’ and decided to make Seldarine drow. I’ve been playing since I was young teen, in the last years of 3.xe. I saw a lot of wanna-be Drizzt and Good Aligned Drow that were played variably, but there were a lot of people who loved the concept. While Seldarine aren’t a concept in TTRPG canon proper, the idea of Seldarine drow has existed for decades at tables, and Larian acknowledging that is something I love.

But they made Llothsworn Drow as the ‘lore compliant drow’ because WotC hasn’t changed drow in decades. 

The thing is, Drow being Problematic Faves isn’t because WotC is wildly racist on purpose, it’s just that during the majority of Drow being A Thing in D&D, they have been Sexy and Evil Villains and play the role of Misunderstood Outsider (though this recently has been taken over by tieflings).

In fact, I’m seeing a lot of new fans getting kicked in the teeth when characters react to a Llothsworn drow as flat out evil and not being judged by their actions, because they don’t know it’s been a thing in D&D for years with narrative excuses to justify in-universe racism. And then there are some players who make an evil Llothsworn drow and still get upset despite playing into in-universe reasons for the excuses of racism.

We’re seeing it as a reaction to datamined information with little context other than an abused white guy feels uncomfortable with an abused black woman - and it’s super hard to justify in-universe reasons for this because in the real world, a white guy is going to be listened to and believed regardless of it being true or not.

Essentially, the drow are a fucking mess due to D&D ignoring the racial implications of drow in the real world for nearly 50 years. The only way to fix it is making major lore changes, which is something they’re reluctant to do because they’re making their errata books so damn light on lore as to avoid conflict and the model sells.

Will this change with BG3? I don’t know. But I kinda hope so. 

[sixty-silver-wishes]

with regards to the iran/israel situation and literally any other humanitarian situation that's going on right now, I just want to re-iterate some of my stances on current events:

I do not believe in wishing death on anyone. no matter anyone's identity or beliefs, I think that everyone should be entitled to basic human rights. I will NEVER advocate for statements calling for the mass death of civilians of any country, and detest seeing such statements made as jokes. I don't want to see "death to (country)," "burn (country) to the ground," "(country) needs to be nuked," etc. if you make those statements, think about what you're saying. we should not believe ourselves to be entitled to who gets to live or die. that is genocidal rhetoric.

WAR IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT. by that I mean I'm tired of people who have never experienced war treating it like fictional media. it's not strictly good vs. evil, it's not a sports game where you pick your favorite team. people die in war. and of course that seems obvious, but ever since the russian invasion of ukraine, I've seen people online, usually westerners with no connection to either country, treating a global conflict with devastating civilian consequences like fandom. express your support for ukraine by raising awareness for humanitarian causes, supporting ukrainian businesses, or learning about ukrainian culture and history, not making volodymyr zelensky thirst traps, goddammit. (and yes, I remember the volodymyr zelensky thirst traps. those were indeed a thing.) war is not meme fodder and entertainment, especially for those who are fortunate enough to be removed from it.

I do not believe in generalizing entire populations based on the actions of their governments. yes, of course there are civilians that support a government's actions, and there are civilians who oppose them. there are israelis who oppose the actions of the israeli government, russians who oppose the actions of the russian government, americans who oppose the actions of the us government, etc. the minute you generalize all civilians under a certain government as holding the same beliefs, you risk promoting rhetoric that is also used to justify ignorance and bigotry in best-case scenarios, and genocide in worst-case scenarios. people are not monoliths, and treating them as such can lead down a dangerous pipeline of attempting to justify the extermination of entire populations.

just because a government is committing atrocities doesn't mean the governments opposed to it are absolved of atrocities. powerful governments are not generally interested in human rights; they're interested in gaining as much influence and power as possible. ukrainians and palestinians are both suffering, but the international governments that claim to support either group of people are only doing so to support their own self-interests, such as global prominence or economic gain. we should not be cheering for the iranian government just because they oppose the israeli government; the mahsa/jina amini protests happened for a reason.

whenever there's a war, civilians always suffer the most. for those of us removed from war, we're removed from the full extent of this suffering. nowadays, with the rise of social media, we are able to witness atrocities in real time, but seeing videos of mutilated bodies and hearing the testimonies of survivors still doesn't equate to witnessing such atrocities firsthand. I don't believe that we should actively seek out graphic or distressing footage in order to alleviate any feelings of guilt, but we should treat these situations with extreme sensitivity, because we're not the ones experiencing them.

this goes with point #1, which is sort of where all of these points ultimately stem from, but I don't believe the killing of civilians is ever justified. even if one believes the ends justify the means, the lives of those people don't stop mattering.

please, going forward, let's be sensitive, compassionate, and kind. we need to be open to learning about different perspectives, as well as history, culture, and current events. there's already been so much suffering in the world in these last few years alone, and for those of us who are privileged enough to be removed from this sort of suffering, it's our responsibility to do our best not to make it worse than it already is.

[jessicas-pi]

the sheevery ends and the shenanakins begin????

This is one of my oldest fics--I believe I wrote the part I'm gonna share here about two years before I even got an AO3 account! It's sort of an introduction story to the Problem Children AU, a fix-it where the Clone Wars ended, the Jedi saved the galaxy, and the fight for clone rights was won in a frankly ridiculous way...

---

To literally everyone’s surprise, though, the thing that truly reached the people was not an Amidalan speech. It was not a dramatic act of heroism and humanity. It was not the work of a thousand voices crying out for justice. It was a single pen on flimsi. It was a young woman with flights of fancy and a fluttering heart.

It was a book.

And not just any book. A really, genuinely, honestly trashy flimsiback penny-store romance novel, full of purple prose and gratuitous descriptions of fancy outfits.

And it was about the Jedi.

More specifically, it was a romance between a “Twi’lek Knight of ethereal beauty” and a “bold yet caring clone commander”, also starring a blatant Dooku expy as the villain and a ridiculous portrayal of the Jedi life and culture. It was called Remember the Midsummer Night, and it was a smash hit.

The Author’s Note was what really hit home with the people: it told the story of the author’s experience in the war. She claimed she owed her life to a Jedi and a clone “working together in perfect synchronization, like a droid-destroying dance”, and that it inspired her to write a story based on the experience. She followed it with a plea to fellow victims and survivors, to remember what sacrifices the clones made, and to honor them as they should be honored—as people, not cannon fodder.

(Regardless, ever since that book came out, Aayla Secura has been using a “You Will Die By My Hand If You Even Think About Mentioning That Accursed Novel” glare on giggling initiates and Skywalkers, a compilation video of Bly being flustered called Proof Clones Aren't Emotionless Meat Droids appeared on the Holonet, and of course Anakin memorized long passages of the book to quote them at inappropriate moments. What was he supposed to do, not recite the main character’s five-page inner monologue about how handsome her clone commander was in the middle of a council meeting?! Puh-lease.)

And it didn’t stop there. There had always been holofilms and novels featuring fanciful depictions of Jedi, but from the moment Remember the Midsummer Night hit the shelves, “Jedi Romance” became its own genre. The copycat books that followed the original publication were progressively worse. Publicly, the Jedi refused to comment on the stories, but privately…

Well, the Jedi Council meetings (which had begun to feel rather long and empty after the chaos of the war ended) became the Jedi trashy book club.

(Most members of the council weren’t aware Master Windu could laugh until Yoda read aloud a particularly painful passage from Heart of a Hero in the way only Yoda could and Master Windu fell out of his chair, tears streaming down his face, clutching his sides. To be fair, the rest of the council were in similar positions.)

(Anakin loved being on the council.)

[ann7av]

You ever notice how Violet barely interacts with the regular citizens of Navarre? She goes to Rhiannon’s house twice and never talks to Raegan despite having more conversations with Rhiannon’s on-and-off girlfriend.

Idk if there’s a scene I skipped in Iron Flame where she goes around talking to people, but it kinda reads like Violet doesn’t actually care as much as she should about their plight (which makes sense considering she’s a military nepobaby). I think this is one of the reasons why the world feels so empty to me.

Yess!!! I've commented about this with a friend and thank goodness someone else noticed it too. I have issues with how the Tara/Rhi situation was done but that's for another day.

Sorry in advance for the essay, I have a lot to say about this and am very happy someone asked.

I can't remember any interaction with a non-military on the page, which is weird considering there's a little village in Aretia, but RY never bothers to show it to us, just like she never showed us Shantara (the little village near Basgiath) and instead opted to include Xaden and Violet having the same fight for the fifth time. (the romance in IF took too much off the plot for my taste)

It's weird that Violet never interacts with civilians, (who are probably the ones keeping things clean/cooking/sewing/etc) but again, including civilians would require RY to develop the world beyond surface-level and I don't think she's too worried about Navarre's culture/currency/lifestyle beyond war, death, and dragons so why include a character who's not involved in either.

Now, on a character level, Violet is often used as a self-insert (unfortunately, because my girl deserves better) so we can say that, just like RY, she understands the value of civilian life abstractly since she was raised in the military. Civilians are numbers, casualties, workforce and must be protected on principle but she doesn't interact with or consider them on a personal level. That has nothing to do with her own morality, it's simply the way she was raised and could be an interesting arc for her character (there's already a moment during Resson that it really hits her that those numbers are people) and I hope it happens but I doubt it.

Another thing that drives me insane is that we never see a child in any of the outposts (even tho Violet says very clearly that she grew up going from outpost to outpost) in fact the only time besides Rhi's nephew that children were included in the story was in Resson, and they were only used as cannon fodder to show how horrible the war was.

That itself wouldn't have bothered me so much if we had seen a couple children playing in Montserrat to at least show us that the officers have lives and aren't just soldier-shaped cardboard cutouts, BUT when we take the way children were written in addition to RY's Instagram post about the "conflict" in Palestine it gets weird with the whole idea of "a perfect victim" she sprinkles here and there in her books (I can elaborate if someone wants to)

Anyway, that's it, I hope it made some sense and that I answered what you were asking

[suratan-zir]

This is a post of gratitude. Maybe tumblr isn't the most appropriate place for this, maybe it sounds silly and needlessly pretentious coming from a little nobody that I am. Regardless, I have long felt the need to write about it. News about the Leopard tanks from Poland might be a good enough occasion to finally say it.

Dzięki, ačiū, thank you, people of Poland, Lithuania, UK, US and every country that has consistently supported Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion.

Maybe we, Ukrainians, don't say it enough, but we know that we owe our lives not only to our defenders, but to all of you, citizens of countries that didn't abandoned us in these dark times.

Every day on the battlefield my country loses its best men. People who were teachers, doctors, architects and actors, parents, sons and daughters are sacrificing their lives in the name of our survival, our future. Hopefully, with the support of your countries, their sacrifices won't be in vain. Thank you for giving us a chance for the future. Thank you for not leaving us alone in this.

War puts everything into perspective like probably nothing else and it teaches you how to be truly grateful. Only earlier today I wanted to complain that due to the destruction of our infrastructure and emergency power outages, in my apartment it is so cold that I can't even hold the phone in my hands for long - my fingers are freezing. But then I quickly remembered that our fighters in Bakhmut and Soledar are losing their fingers due to the frostbite. I am alive and have a roof over my head thanks to these heroes.

What does this have to do with the topic of this post? Well, the same way I often want to complain about the injustice in this world, I want to write something angry about how russia is not punished enough for the crimes it commits. But then I stop myself, because had the world did not help us throughout these 10 months, had the world just let it slide like it did in 2014, I would likely be homeless, imprisoned or dead, along with millions other Ukrainians. Ukraine could no longer exist by now. Because this is a war of extinction, cultural as much as physical.

Which is why I want to say thank you. Not only for the weapons provided by your countries, but for giving us hope, especially in hard times like these, when the enemy on the eastern front is literally bombarding our troops with cannon fodder in unlimited quantities, turning cities into ruins and meat grinders.

Thank you for helping us to overcome this senseless evil. This post may be cringy and poorly written, but my gratitude is sincere.

[pumpumdemsugah]

It's very crazy

I'm not as well real about chattel slavery as I'd like to but I know a fair amount, especially about the Caribbean vs the rest of the world but it's just mental to me how this has been twisted. It went from talking about how race science was used to gender Black people as different and beastly and recognition that this is racism and fiction, to that gendering being treated as inherent attributes of our bodies so we're GNC and we need to pretend its transphobia and discard why and how Black people are seen as unfeeling animals. Slave masters spent their time coming up with reasons for how Black people weren't humans, not modern ideas around gender. Please read if that pisses you off.

Something (cis Black women experience transphobia) that's an opinion ( a shaky one imo) is being pushed as a moral imperative and necessity for Black women to see our experiences as and if you don't, regardless of your politics it means Black people that agree can dog pill you and talk about your Black womanhood in a way I don't even see white supremacist immediately jump to but this is solidarity.

It's a political stance. One I don't hold or I think is helpful, especially when you look at the crackheaded behaviour of white trans women against Black women, and how many of them happily saying " say her name " purely for their white peers but this is sisterhood & solidarity and not white entitlement? Do white trans people know more about us? Because I've not seen that. They've decided to not learn anything about us. Is that solidarity for you ? They're very comfortable bringing us up though, relevancy be damned bring out the Black trump card

The number one reason I see Black women come up, is as a jumping off point for someone white to talk about their gender feelings. Quite frankly, a lot of western white trans people hide behind the culture war attacks to avoid taking responsibility for how deeply racist they are about Black women because if everyone doesn't agree the fascist win! but isn't it funny it doesn't work the other way for us if we take issue? Unless of course that Black person is ripping into another Black person that doesn't think that view makes sense. Its then you ' listen to Black women '

I still remember this post by a white British trans woman very happily talking about how Black people have bigger bones and linking it to gender and saying Black women have male bone density so blah blah I'm valid and that's when I knew, we're political shields being used by racist to feel better about themselves cause they view us as inferior, not sisters in arms. I even read the study being referenced and it was about osteoporosis in different races of women and didn't come to a big Black bone conclusion but that if you weigh more and work outside you typically have a heavier frame, both characteristics found in the Black people that were a part of the study but Black women didn't have different outcomes than other women and lots of Black women had smaller frames but Black people have diverse bodies types like all humans, is not what this racist took from that because they needed to feel normal.

The fun thing about being a Black woman, is our issues are so fucking crazy that when we do take a stand it's extremely easy to accuse us of whatever ism. Race traitors by patriarchal Black men for talking about misogyny is a firm classic. Can't talk about Black Femicide without white supremacists using it as fodder for anti-Black racism. The suggestion Black women should be nice about either of these issues because it can be used by people that don't care about Black women is a feature of Black female oppression. There's no way to do this without pissing someone off, including Black people that think you should tread lightly

I'm related to Black men and I don't care what they think so the guilt for this simply doesn't exist and the idea i should take a stance for the benefit of white internet people is crazy lol especially one that's not backed by reading

It's historical revisionism and misogynoir

This isn't sisterhood but using the credibility and activism of Black people for white people that don't know how to defend themselves but are too fucking lazy to learn anything that's not a short post on social media.I'm not enabling laziness or white entitlement.

It's like that post where someone said vitamin C fucks with your medicine when it's grapefruit juice can fuck with your ADHD meds because of how info gets distorted online. The truth gets transformed into misinformation and what was once helpful looks nothing like it's original form

[lemonhemlock]

Turning off replies & reblogs because you can't mount a proper counter-argument. Very well, I can be petty, too.

he also wasn’t raised believing in the faith, i thought that was clear enough.

Do you have any textual evidence to support this? Because, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all Targaryens are officially raised within the Faith of the Seven.

Even the start date is a matter of some misconception. Many assume, wrongly, that the reign of King Aegon I Targaryen began on the day he landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, beneath the three hills where the city of King’s Landing would eventually stand. Not so. The day of Aegon’s Landing was celebrated by the king and his descendants, but the Conqueror actually dated the start of his reign from the day he was crowned and anointed in the Starry Sept of Oldtown by the High Septon of the Faith. This coronation took place two years after Aegon’s Landing, well after all three of the major battles of the Wars of Conquest had been fought and won. Thus it can be seen that most of Aegon’s actual conquering took place from 2–1 BC, Before the Conquest. (Fire and Blood, Aegon's Conquest)

I hate to break it to you, but the Pope doesn't "anoint" and "crown" heathens. Conversion to the Faith is a 100% non-negotiable must for this to have taken place. I'm not sure in which fantasy world you live where the high priest of a major religion performs religious & investiture ceremonies including people that don't share said religion.

And, you're right, I do support proselytism and cultural erasure. Ideally, I'd wish people renounced evil beliefs and cultural customs that drive them to human sacrifice and slavery (so as to provide fodder for their blood rituals) in order to gain access to fire-breathing creatures they can use to terrorize the known world. Yeah, I think we can do without those kinds of religions and cultures. 🥺

Still waiting for confirmation that Rhaenyra and Viserys would never have paid money to replace one item of furniture or decoration in 10 years.

[randomnameless]

It's crazy how both Adrestia and Almyra have just as much (if not less) worldbuilding and development as the neutral countries in Fates; even moreso when the latter are canonically complete fodder to Nohr and Hoshido, are mostly irrelevant to the actual war, and are just there to give Corrin and their comrades something to do while they travel to Nohr/Hoshido/Valla to put an end to the main war, while the former are meant to be two of the biggest and most important players in the main war and are shown putting up a good fight against the other major countries

Why do you think so many people developed intricate headcanons about Adrestia and Almyra anon -

it's precisely because they are supposed to be "big player" important nations (let's say compared to Albinea) but their games dgaf about them bar some "in Adrestia people love tea" low tier of development lol

All jokes aside,

Some people already said it better than I could, but in general you come up with headcanons to talk about something you really like but has many holes in the canon, that's why you can have a lot of room to come up with whatever you want (or it's easier to avoid the "not canon compliant" hammer since canon is a puff of smoke).

Hell, I took the coliseum + Rhea's Seiros the Warrior's clothes + Word of God saying Adrestia is supposed to be based on Italy with german names to come up with a general "ancient rome" aesthetic for early Adrestia in my own hcs.

Some people really developped an entire lore with languages and patterns and a lot of cultural stuff regarding Almyra - kuddos to them! - because, for a place that is often compared to "Fodlan" by Claude and serves as the basis of his character, well, the Fodlan games are... really scarce about giving us any details regarding Almyra as a country -

(and then Nopes happened - sometimes it's better for canon to remain in a perpetual foggy state than to become what Nopes did to Almyra !)

I like every breadcrumb I can find about Adrestia through the various supports, books and NPCs, but well, you can't make a decent meal out of breadcrumbs.

And Fodlan scattered so many breadcrumbs around that at first glance you expect a banquet... and then only find out that the "promised dinner" is just, well, a handful of breadcrumbs thrown here'n'there on the table.

That's why I'm so upset at the "worldbuilding" lol, it could have been so much (some breadcrumbs are tasty, where's the dish???) but we end up with... a plate of nothing.

Sure FE as a series isn't the best medium to develop and explore different countries/cultures (even if Engage tried to have the cast visit different places and talk to different people, just like Echoes where you can visit villages and talk to people living in said villages!) but FE Fodlan really dropped the bar, and unlike Jugdral, we have no Treasure Book to reveal more about the crumbs we're playing with.

So yeah, I can't really see where the "better writing and worldbuilding than Fates!!!" spiel comes from, and I say this as someone who wasn't particularly fond of FE14 lol

[aurora-313]

You know that I love WH40K, I also grew-up with 80' action movies, love them and their testosterone macho-over -the top feel. I do not mind even zero female characters in my reading, movies etc, it depends.

But every time I criticize shonen someone jumps me and tells me it's for boys. AND? To stuff for boys should not have good their girl characters well written?

I know, it's not about that it's about the narrative contract, when you put in fighting women, and no one is making you, and you give them promising starts, then they are lucky if they can beat some fodder latter on, feels like a broken promise. Then the author says he's not good at writing females, even if people just ask why aren't they winning any battles, not why they don't talk about their feelings.

So if the mangaka don't use the ''it's for boys'' but ''I can't write women'' excuse now, why is the fandom using it? Boys literally asked for decades for Sakura to stop being trash in battle, and they were ignored. The target audience wanted her a useful fighter and not a primarely a healer, and still teenagers today are treated as if they want exactly want their grandparents wanted? It's insulting to boys. As a teacher I can confirm that even in non-occidental countries there are changes.

Make all the women healers, non-combatants, support fighters from the beginnig write them well, make it explicit that in universe they are important, just don't sell horse manure. It is ok if you have zero women on the front lines. Just don't make them go there and suck. Or maybe they are cautionary tells for girls to not even try, let the men do the protecting.

Not even in a war series everybody has to be a fighter to be important, but it has to be well-written. I actually appreciate that Orihime doesn't have a warrior's heart, like you said she and her feelings for Ichigo not being explored it's one of the biggest mistakes of Bleach.

Even newer manga that are lauded are victims of this trope.

Sure there are exception, but the big names, the ones that remain for decades like Dragon Ball, drop the ball on women.

tl;dr If you can't handle it, don't write women fighters.

If you can't write woman at all, something is seriously wrong with you as a writer. Improve. Fan-fic writers improve over time by practice and accepting constructive criticism. Is to much to ask from a professional?Are there no writing classes in Japan?

Sorry season 2 of JJK made me bitter. It's not that the girl of the main trio was killed is how she was killed, while a bitch that uses her little brother as a meat shield and maybe more escapes to fight another day.

I wish a shonen author had the balls to say in the prologue, that women in the setting are just not as good as men at using the magic or the tech of the setting, and explore the concept as he wants.

I am so tired when any complaint I bring is treated like I have a feminist agenda, that wants to ruin fun for other people. When all I want is consistent writing.

So authors of all kind, please don't false advertise your girls as being capable to climb the power cliff, if you don't plan to do it. I feel like when Rukia was on all promotional Bleach stuff as the deuteragonist, when she barely appears in the second part of the story.

I honestly don't have a lot to say in response to this semi-rant. Beyond that I agree with the whole 'I can't write women' or 'its for boys'.

I'm sorry, there are plenty of series I grew up with where I was specifically not the target demographic but they wrote magnificent woman characters anyway.

While I dislike a lot of his stories, I think George RR Martin put it best when it comes to writing women: "You know, I've always considered women to be people."

But to play devil's advocate: there's an element of culture clash here. Eastern countries are steeped in traditional roles. This isn't a bad thing. Those roles have inherent value when one takes a balanced approach to them (and frankly I think the West needs to dial its obsessive progressive attitudes back a LOT and return to those more traditional roots).

However that attitude does influence how many writers direct their characters. More often than not, female characters are plot devices.

In most manga, women tend to be plot devices. Even in Bleach, Rukia was a plot device. Thrice over:

To give Ichigo his powers at the start.

To be imprisoned and facing execution so Ichigo would rescue her.

To give Ichigo power AGAIN in the FB arc.

Orihime, another plot device. Kidnapped by Aizen for the sole purpose of playing on Ichigo's various neuroses to get him out of the way while Aizen invaded Karakura.

At the same time, this isn't exactly a universal problem. There's plenty of manga out there where its a predominantly female cast or have strong representation. Like with everything, it comes down to the writer and their style. Two mangas off the top of my head that treat their female cast extremely well are Claymore and Full Metal Alchemist. I'd give them a read if you have the time, I rather enjoyed them.

In regards to JJK season 2. I have to contest you on that one. Nobara's death makes sense, both contextually and thematically. Contextually, Nobara dies because she is both Mahito's natural enemy (like Yuji) and thus a priority target to eliminate, and because it reinforces the theme that acting selflessly in this world is violently, vehemently FIERCELY punished. Nobara selflessly went to aid Yuuji without knowing the full extent of her opponent's capabilities, got outfoxed and paid the price.

That debate of selfishness vs selflessness is a fundamental aspect of that world. Which is why Yuuji keeps getting crushed and ground to dust until he adopted the mentality of being a cog in the machine. The world itself has taken this boy who acted selflessly to save someone else (Megumi, by eating Sukuna's finger) and relentlessly tore him down over and again. His selflessness is punished. Like with Nanami and even Gojo to an extent, no matter the intent behind it, they suffered for their selflessness.

Mei Mei, a borderline narcissist, outright states 'the only value a person has to me is my paycheck'. Her using Ui Ui to escape and for other vile ends makes all of the sense in the world. In this selfish disgusting world, the most selfish and disgusting thrive. Sukuna, the most selfish of all, stands as king of that mountain.

So I have to say I'm not bothered by it. I'm merely annoyed that Gege doesn't outright state if she's dead or not. Is she dead? Is she braindead? Will she come back? Just COMMIT to one, please.

But back to Bleach - yeah, Rukia was the deuteragonist. And it pains me to see how she was shoved away in TYBW.

Bleach was built on Death and the Strawberry... then Kubo removed Death and "tried" to replace it with Beeeewbs, the Oedipus edition.

Although I wish someone would explain to me that out of all the beautiful men in her life, past and present, how the hell did Rukia end up marrying the dog? I've never once see Rukia look at Renji with a single ounce of the admiration, affection or love she's given to Ichigo, or Byakuya, or Kaien. No philia, storge or eros - nothing of that.

But that's a rant for another time.

[badpancakelol]

After completing his second term as King of Naboo, Steve would say that there wasn’t much from it that he missed. Yes, he misses being able to communicate with the people of Naboo so easily — being able to use his title for something inherently good instead of for the sake of intimidation — but the countless hours spent doing paperwork and being held up in his ivory tower, seeing the people from afar, and not being able to take a hands on approach? 

No, Senator Steve Harrington doesn’t miss it. He’s grateful to his people for their support and their love, trying to amend the laws to let him serve another term, but the traditions existed for a reason, and one continuous ruler was not the way to let their world grow.

The one thing that he very much did miss, however, was the royal transport (and some of the ornate clothing, okay? You caught him. However heavy the headpieces were, and however cake-y the makeup was, he missed being carted around and dolled up. The silks the sheer sleeves, the heels). Being able to skip lines and take direct hyperspace routes to planets — he misses it. 

He enjoys piloting, sure, but not being the one in charge lets him work on all the different things he has to do on before he arrives… wherever he needs to go. Perfecting speeches, replying to comm messages, keeping in contact with his people, staying up to date with what’s happening in the senate, messaging Eddie.

It’s what brings Steve to the commute shuttle, the cold air, and the mostly empty seats, on his way to some Force-forsaken freezing planet that he was visiting to gain data on the war effort. Was it technically his job? No. But it was data that would help with his bill, and he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to do it himself.

Sure, Hop had offered to continue serving for him, being his body guard and keeping him safe and flying him places, but Steve had just waved him off. Had told him that it wasn’t that big a deal, and that most people took the public commute anyway — why should he be any different when he’s representing these people?

“Caf, Senator?” 

The woman strolling her hovercart down the aisle is polite in the way that she smiles — a twi’lek. Her purple lekku adorned with the intricate markings of her people. It was something that Steve had always found himself interested in. How there are so many different living species who had their own cultures around the galaxy; so different and so similar all at once.

“Do you have sugar?”

She nods and hands him the portable packets. Steve reaches for the smooth rectangular credits in his pocket, places it in the outstretched palm of her hand, and watches as she moves on to the next couple of seat in front of him. He has a lot of work to do, and yet he can’t stop himself from just— people watching. Seeing how all these little families were as complex as his own being. Dealing with drama and love and death all the same. 

Maybe that’s why he’s so worried about the current political climate; with the Separatists and the Republic at war, the Kaminoans have started the production of clones. It’s not the actual process that he’s against — he’s heard that it’s actually quite nice growing up on Kamino, that you get to be with your own ‘batch’ of brothers, who stick with you well into your life and the war — it’s the way that everyone else has been treating them. He knows that the other senators don’t see them as anything but cannon fodder. They wear a bounty hunter’s face. They’re not really humans. They’re like those strand-casts. They are not citizens of the Republic.

They weren’t exactly subtle with their views. 

It didn’t matter how many times the men rallied and shouted for the Republic! as they sent themselves off into a losing battle. The senators were not changing their mind. And, well. Steve has a real fucking problem with that. He’s looked at the fine print that the Kaminoans have given the senate, and he’s seen the way citizens of the Republic, of core worlds, sneer at the men when they are off duty. Nothing good will come from this. Steve feels in his bones that they are only set to fail. 

He just wishes there was more he could do for them. Go out to every single on of them and tell them you matter, you are different, you are individual, you are alive. Because he had met some of them, earlier on. He had met a group of clones, seen the way that they were all different, the way that they had come up with names for each other and themselves, acting as their own fathers for that of the bounty hunter who had left them behind.

(“And what’s your name?”

“CT-7742, sir.”

Steve turns to look at the rest of the men — their armour adorned with a deep blue, different markings on each piece of armour. Some of them look more professional than others, but the Kaminoans had told him that these clones were new. That they were only so young.

“And you?”

“CT-3301, sir.”

Steve smooths down his robe from where he stands. Do these men not get named? He knows that the Kaminoans don’t let them have, well, anything. But surely they’re allowed this? They’re allowed to be named?

“Do you only go by your designated number? I’m not going to tell the Kaminoans if you like to be called something else.”

“No, sir.” CT-3301 says. “We are only allowed to be addressed by out CT number, or our rank—”

“But what do you want?” Steve stressed. “I’m not here to sing the Kaminoans praises. I’m here to figure out what you want, and how you want to be represented. You deserve to have someone advocating for you in the senate, so I need to know exactly what you want. Not what you were told to say.”

He settles his hands back into their long sleeves, the navy colour reflecting off of the white armour of the men in front of them. Steve had been informed about the accelerated aging in the clones, and how it was meant to be a ‘good thing’. How these men that had been on missions, had been moulded to be soldiers, were only ten years old. The senate had shied away from that fact, away from the idea of child soldiers fighting to keep them safe, while having less rights than the vehicles that carted them around their fancy Coruscant apartments.

“Buddy.” CT-7742, Buddy, says. “The Jedi that we served under — he didn’t like the idea of calling us numbers, either. So would call me Buddy. And then it stuck.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Buddy.” Steve nods, and smiles. “What about the rest of your batch?”

“Ace.”

“Sev.”

“Fetch.”

“Per.” He says. “Pronounced like the fruit, spelt without the ‘a’.”

“Because he wanted to be ‘special’.” Snorts Fetch.

“There’s already two other clones I know called Pear! I can’t just go around taking their name.”

“You know, my partner and I have very mundane names. There are over a thousand humans called Steve or Eddie.” Senator Harrington said. “So I think one out of three is pretty damn special. With or without the ‘a’.”).

They are as alive as any other being, in Steve’s mind. In his heart. And they needed to be recognised as such in the eyes of the public and the senate. For the men that he met, for the ones that he will never get the chance to.

Senator Cunningham was on his side for this. She was a stern believer in clone rights, despite never having met any of those who served, but not as vocal as Steve was. And he doesn’t blame her, really. Her reasons are as valid as they come, with the way that her partner influences her votes, the way that he commandeers her speeches, the way that her whole family aches of rot. There’s more to the Cunningham’s than what meets the eye, and from the small moments that he’s shared with Chrissy, he’s worried for her. 

He sighs. This is all too much to be thinking of on a public commute. He needs to keep working on the draft for clone citizenship and realisation of them as living beings in the eyes of the council. He doesn’t need to go on a tangent that nobody will hear, that nobody will take the time to consider. Steve needed to be articulate and smart with his word choice — things had to be put plainly enough for him to gain the public vote, and nuanced enough that the senate saw his reasoning. 

“Next stop, T-minus, two standard Coruscant rotations.” The droid’s voice whispers over the intercom.

It was gonna be a long ride.

— — —

“Steve?” 

He grumbles, tucks his head further into the corner near his window seat. 

“Stevie?”

He feels fingers through his hair, a warm laugh as a pushes himself closer to the touch.

“You know, for a senator, you’re pretty careless about your own safety. Not even a guard around here?”

“Eddie?”

“The one and only.”

Steve opens his eyes to find his partner, his lover, adorning the seat that used to be empty, beside him. He sees the way that his eyes are soft despite the tiredness surrounding his being, the way that his shoulders slump forward into Steve’s space — trying to give him parts of his own warmth. His time on Tattooine had tanned his skin, slightly, not as much as Steve’s natural tone was, but enough for him to not be as piercing as the Hoth weather. He’s missed this. Being able to touch. Being able to see each other in the colour that holos don’t provide.

Steve pushes himself up from his slumped position against the window and into Eddie’s space, revels in the way that he tucks his head into Steve’s shoulder.

“Missed you.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t know you were going off-world? I would’ve asked Hop to pick you up and we could’ve gone together. Or I could have flown.”

“You’re a terrible pilot.” Eddie laughs, and the movement sends a comforting rumble down Steve’s spine.

“And you know that’s a lie. Self-projection isn’t the prettiest look on you, Eds.”

They seperate, and the stars from the window reflect against Eddie’s dark eyes. Sometimes they seem as if they are an endless inky pool — as wide and diverse as the universe itself. It’s cliche, Steve knows it is, because he’s read it in about every romance series on his datapad, or heard it be said in every holodrama. He should be able to come up with a better way to articulate it, what with his whole job being about convincing people with his words, but he can think of no other way to say it. Maybe it is cliche, but even with all the starmaps of the universe, he would still get lost in Eddie’s eyes.

“Force, you know how many clients gave me bantha crap for being a mechanic who couldn’t fly properly? It’s honestly ridiculous.” He does the same thing he always does when this is brought up. Eddie leans forward and then dramatically slams himself into the back of his seat, arms crossed, eyes rolling throughout the action.

“Well, maybe it’s time that you re-learnt how to fly?”

“I’ve got my republic-mandated license, thank you very much.”

“You’re actually lying out of your ass right now. We both know that the republic has tried — and failed — to mandate flying tests. There’s literally no such thing as a republic-mandated license.”

“S’not the only thing the Republic has failed to do, recently.” Eddie sighs.

Steve shifts in his seat watches as the they move passed the stars beside him. The warmth that Eddie offered through his layers, his flight suit, shirt and jacket, were still there, but there was a sense of finality to the way that he was speaking that said I know what is going to happen, I’m scared. 

There was always a part of Steve that felt slightly responsible every time the senate made a decision that effected the Republic in a way that was horrible. On their weekly holo calls, they would try and avoid the topic of politics, because whenever it was brought up, Steve could see how it was wearing down on Eddie, who lived in the Outer Rim, and Steve has no doubt that Eddie could see how it was wearing down at himself, as he failed to deny the passing of a key bill. 

He can’t escape it, now. Now that they’re face to face, with nobody else in this section of the starship commuter. 

“You know about what’s happening with the war?” Steve asks, although he already knows the answer.

“How could I not?” Eddie huffs, and when Steve turns to look at him, he has a faraway look on his face that he saw reflected in some of the older clones. “It’s fucked, out at Tattooine. I didn’t want to worry you with everything going on, but—”

“I thought the attack wasn’t near the main town?”

“It’s everywhere.” Eddie says. “I know you can’t do anything about it — the Republic can’t do anything about it — but I couldn’t stay there. I mean, Force, Steve, I don’t really want to be fixing ships in the middle of nowhere for the rest of my life, you know? It’s good and easy and honest work, sure, but I’m not really doing anything. It’s all just— meaningless.”

“My door is always open. You could have just holo’d me and I would have come straight there—”

Eddie shakes his head. There’s a furrow between his brow that reads apologetic, and Steve just can’t understand why he would’t come to him for help. This was their plan for the long run for years. Eddie said that he wanted to work on Tattooine, gaining experience, knowing the Outer Rim as well as he possibly could, while Steve ran as King and then senator. And once they had saved up enough, and Eddie was tired of the two suns, or Steve was tired of arguing for his job, they would move in together. 

Not on Tattooine, not on Coruscant, but somewhere nice that they would choose together to foster a new home. Somewhere that Eddie would find a job that he was content in, maybe somewhere like Sorgan, or somewhere that was close enough to Coruscant that Steve could take one hyperspace jump to the council. Maybe— he doesn’t know. Moving back to Naboo, if they have to.

But with everything going on — the war, the clones, the Kaminoans and the Separatists — Steve understands. He hates the way that Eddie didn’t try and tell him, but he knows how he is. Knows that he would have tried to convince him to stay in a place that he was getting sick of, to move to a place that was overcrowded and filled with stuffy suits and nepo-babies.

“You’re going.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, turns to look at Steve head-on. “You’re doing your part to help with the war from the council. I’ve seen the way you’ve advocated for those clones, Steve.”

“And you feel like you need to be doing more?” Steve asks, almost wishing it to be not true.

“Something like that,” Eddie sighs. “There was an opening — they need a mechanic to help teach some of the new clones the basics to their venators and other warships. I know my way around them since Wayne was so obsessed with what made them tick when I was younger.”

“I remember meeting him that first time, and all he wanted to talk about was looking at the ship I arrived on.” Steve reaches his hand across their shared armrest and tangles his fingers with Eddie’s. “Do you know where you’ll be stationed?”

“Someplace warm, they said.”

“Maybe they read your file and thought you couldn’t get enough sun.” Steve replies, hand brushing against the warm tones of Eddie’s cheek. He doesn’t want him to leave. He only just got him back — just got to see him in person for the first time in almost a year, and now he’s going to go to the front lines, with no promise of coming back. 

“Those men you mentioned me to, that first time you met a batch of clones? Sev and Ace and Fetch and Buddy and—”

“—Per without an ‘a’?”

“Yes! The brief mentioned that they were going to be stationed with me. At least I’ll have some familiar faces, right?”

Steve smiles, pinches Eddie’s cheek. “The Republic would say that they’re all familiar.”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

“Yes,” He says, as he looks down to the datapad balanced precariously on his lap. The auto lock had turned on, password protected for miles on end, but if he looks hard enough at the black screen he can imagine the words of the drafted bill searing themselves into his brain. “You couldn’t be more right.”

Steve knows why Eddie has to do this. Because it is the same reason that he has to make sure this bill passes. It is the same reason why Steve hasn’t changed his last name, yet, despite not having a good or healthy relationship with his parents. Names held power, families held power, and he knew this all too well. Steve, Senator Harrington, knows that he wouldn’t have received his position if it wasn’t for his service as King of Naboo, where he was elected through the grapevine of knowing names and titles that held a stupid amount of weight for so little syllables. His last name holds more worth than his words about the clones, right now, and he will milk that curséd name for all its damn value if it means the clones get even a slight chance at being recognised as alive. 

Their names — names that are not recognised by those who created them, are only given by those who care enough to ask — are not even names. They are designations. They are numbers. They are ways that the Kaminoans and the Republic and the Jedi can keep track of how many soldiers they have, elect to move certain batch numbers to certain bases for the sake of ease and replenishing the ‘stock’ that they lost after each battle. It is how they have been alienated from their humanity to the public, the reason why they are seen as a worthy sacrifice or a sacrificial lamb. 

“They mentioned you, you know?” Eddie says, fingers fidgeting their way between Steve’s. “That little mission to Kamino you went on a couple months back — it really left an impression on all of them.”

Steve nudges his shoulder, “You’re exaggerating. I was there for all of two days.”

“No! I’m serious.” Eddie rummages through his rucksack on the floor, pulling out his pristine datapad that he had only recently bought. It’s covered in flecks of Tattooine sand, and dust and smudges, but also stickers and drawings and a personalised case. There’s always something about Eddie’s belongings that makes Steve want to stare at them forever — like an intricate maze or puzzle that keeps giving and giving the more he looks at it. If his wasn’t council-sanctioned, he probably would have asked Eddie to help him decorate his, too.

Eddie flips through a couple images, and Steve watches over his shoulder as his face moves by — stills from their last holo talk, an image of the two suns setting, an interesting and (maybe) cute small creature, and then—

“Here!”

It’s an image, yes, but not like the others. It’s marked as saved, showing that Eddie wasn’t the one who took it, meaning that one of the clones Steve had met up with had been given Eddie’s contact. But the image it’s, well. It’s of their humble barracks on warm planet’s base. The bunkbeds look rickety, and the mattresses look lumpy, and somehow, despite the dirt and the small space, it looks infinitely more welcoming than their ‘home’ on Kamino did. 

Sev and Ace are stood back to back, arms crossed, posing next to the neatly tucked in sheets, smiles on their faces despite the war. Steve can see the reflection of Fetch in the mirror hung by the bedposts, taking the image. Buddy and Per are each on one knee, hands raised and bracketing a poster of— of—

Him.

“What?”

Steve pulls Eddie’s datapad closer, zooms in on the image that the two men are proudly showcasing. It’s one of the in-council-session photos that must have been taken only a short while after he had visited them. His robes are the dark blue that mirrors their armour, and he looks angry. Steve’s hands are on the floating platform before him, sleeve running down to his wrists, hair tucked behind his ears with the Royal Nabooian gold jewellery of the King that he was gifted on full display: earrings and headpiece shimmering in the council’s light. There’s a set to his jaw as he glares up towards another platform— out of view. If he’s remembering correctly, it was towards the new Chancellor — the blonde one who had all these horrible ideas on the war, that everyone seemed to be accepting without reason. 

In the first time that Steve can really see what people mean when they say he looks powerful, and not just because of a name he didn’t want.

“It’s not just Per and his batch, either. It’s actually quite a lot of the clones, if they’re not exaggerating.”

“Who sent the message?”

“Fetch.”

“Well,” Steve sighs — but not of contempt or exhaustion, no. It’s something else. Exhilaration? Determination? “Then I better believe it.”

Eddie uncurls Steve’s fingers from the datapad, turns it off and places it pack into the rucksack. “They all watch your speeches. I think they’re finally starting to realise what it’s like to have someone who wants to fight for them, without wanting anything back.”

Steve rests his head on Eddie’s shoulder, pretends not to find comfort in the way his hair still smells like the sun, pretends not to hurt at the realisation that his hair has grown longer since the last time they met in person. Was their life always going to be like this? Rotating suns and moons only meeting every millennia in some freak accident that was never, truly meant to be? Were they only to meet when the galaxies were ending, when they were at the beginnings and the middle of a war?

“The clones — all of them. They deserve so much more than this.”

It’s Steve’s way of saying I don’t want you to leave, but I know that there is nothing I can do to stop you. It is his way of saying you have such a large heart, and I wish it all belonged to me, but I know that you want to make as many people feel loved as you can. It is his way of saying I know. 

And Eddie gets it. The same way Steve got it when he had to leave, first, when he was the catalyst of the long distance and the infrequent holos and the even more sparse in-person meetups, because of his kingship, because of his place on the senate. 

There is too much to be said, but the droid’s voice over the intercom squirrels out a destination, a cold planet that Steve is underprepared for, that Eddie does not stop on, and their time is already up.

“Come back to me?” He asks, but he does not make him promise it, because Steve knows there is no way to truly make sure. Promises are worthless he had always been told. And yet, it still hurt when they were not fulfilled.

So he doesn’t make Eddie promise it. There is no way of knowing if he couple truly keep it.

“Always.” Eddie replies.