#robinson family generation trauma what about it?

[lucindarobinsonvevo]

no, I didn't mean that sorry, I can't see facts through all of my fury

[onbearfeet]

As requested, here are a few Monster Mash asks based on the "oc asks: not-so-nice edition" list. You decide which characters they're for.

What is a surprising thing your character hides?

What does your character do when they should be sleeping but can't?

What's the worst wound your character has experienced? It can be physical or emotional.

Mwahahahahahaaaaaaa. I think I'll do multiple characters. WARNING: There's mature content in this one, and it's not just canon-typical violence. See the tags if you're worried.

What is a surprising thing your character hides?

Ted has a really beautiful singing voice, even in Man-Thing form. He no longer has the physical equipment to form words in any human language, though, so he's sensitive about it and doesn't let on that he still enjoys singing. But he's sung more than a few lullabies to Jack when he's been asleep or in a coma or whatever. And Alpine gets funny little children's melodies or goofy love songs when it's just the two of them. She accepts this as no less than the worship she deserves, of course.

Elsa is shockingly generous and tells no one but her accountant about it. She inherited an absolutely stupid amount of money from her father's estate, and she IMMEDIATELY stopped using his fortune to fund his "crusade", so she's essentially sitting on a dragon's hoard. She took almost nothing with her when she ran away, so she's lived poor for most of her adult life and is deeply sympathetic to other people in that situation, not that she'll admit it. She had her finance pro shut down the murder-cult fund and set up a clean new fund to support whatever charity she damn well pleases. She's still trying to think of ideas and will probably ask the boys eventually, but just for a start, every public library in the state got a healthy donation, and every shelter she stayed in that treated its inhabitants halfway decently got a bigger one. She's also looking into funding--founding, if she has to--an organization defending the rights and interests of homeschooled children, especially those in high-control environments. Elsa was homeschooled for much of her education according to Ulysses' rather eccentric tastes, and she had to teach herself an awful lot of actual education out of the library. And that's before all the trouble she had as a non-emancipated minor who didn't have her own copies of her identity documents.

God, what DOESN'T Jack hide? He's been alive long enough that there's a huge gray zone of stuff he might have failed to mention because he doesn't want people to know OR because it just never came up. He obviously hasn't discussed his family of origin in detail, at least not with Elsa or Bucky, but I don't consider that surprising. I'm tempted to say his hidden side is something sweet and wholesome, but that's not surprising either. If I said he was hiding something terrible he or the wolf had done, that probably wouldn't surprise most people at all. If I had to guess ... the only SURPRISING thing I can think of is his spirituality, which is complex and deeply personal to him. His family might have been Orthodox, but he's got a lot of Catholic guilt written all over him, and the curse only complicates that more. I don't think he's talked to anyone about what he does or doesn't believe in a hundred years or more. He certainly hasn't talked to me.

Bucky was a sex worker in a time-displaced brothel. Okay, that's both a joke AND an oversimplification, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this question was that Bucky had the same problem as Jack: old, complicated, obviously full of both good traits and horrible trauma so nothing is SURPRISING. Then I remembered that around 2016, I handwrote a story establishing that Bucky had worked for a while as an artist at Lady Sally's. If you've never read Spider Robinson's Callahan books, they're a series of short SF stories and novels centered on a bar run by (spoiler alert) a time traveler who's trying to save the world retroactively by preventing the Cold War from going hot. They are brilliant and hilarious and they formed me as a person. There is also a spin-off series focusing on Callahan's wife, Lady Sally McGee, who does the same thing but with a brothel. The reasoning is complex, but the stories are delightful and some of the first positive, sympathetic, relatively clear-eyed depictions of sex workers (or artists, as they're called here and who am I to disagree?) I ever encountered. So it is my headcanon that young Bucky Barnes started washing dishes at Lady Sally's as a teenager, and she kept an eye on the kid because he had a lot of history ahead of him. He worked as an artist for at least a year before the war, not least because it was the only job in the late 30s that paid well enough to let him afford Steve's medicines. (Sally was keeping an eye on Buck's "roommate", too.) Bucky never told Steve, but he was actually quite a talented and popular artist, and he liked working there. He gave notice when he and Steve finally admitted their feelings for each other, wanting to be monogamous with the man he loved, but Sally insisted he come to her if he or Steve ever needed anything in the future, and she slipped him money from time to time via his former coworkers--who, as far as Steve knew, were just girls Bucky dated to keep up appearances. The connection came in handy, too, when the Winter Soldier was sent to kill a man at Lady Sally's and the staff were able to send him away again thanks to his half-remembered connection to the place. Lady Sally's is closed in our time, but you never know when Bucky might get a phone call from the Lady.

What does your character do when they should be sleeping but can't? I'll leave Ted out of this one on the grounds that his biology is different enough that "should be sleeping" may not apply.

So, on a sleepless night at Bloodstone Manor? Jack bakes. He's got access to a well-stocked kitchen now, anything he makes WILL get eaten, and baking is less likely to wake anyone else than playing his guitar or running endless zoomie laps. He also feels a little better when he can do something kind (and profoundly human) out of his emotional turmoil. Helping people helps Jack, and if there are no monsters to rescue or curses to break, he can at least make sure his people have something delicious for breakfast. (Or a midnight snack. Let's face it, somebody else will wake up from a nightmare in an hour.)

Elsa is currently the queen of maladaptive coping mechanisms. She's cut down on drinking since the boys moved in, much to everyone's relief, but she's still in rough shape emotionally. Although she sleeps better than the others thanks to her sleep-anywhere hunter training, she does occasionally have nights when her brain won't shut up, and her solution to that is to run herself into the ground. She'll hit the dojo for as many hours as it takes, usually. Bucky is trying to coax her into something less destructive in his unique sergeant-y way. The sentence "Your magic rock is not an excuse to bust your knuckles again, so wear some damn gloves!" has been uttered.

Bucky is actually the best adjusted on this front, mostly because his sleep disturbances are the worst. (Jack has more traumatic memories overall. Bucky’s are more concentrated, and he's had to heal brain damage on top of it.) Thanks to his time in Wakanda, he's learned some basic meditation techniques and some therapy exercises to help himself calm down a little. Alpine has some kind of extra sense for when Bucky is in distress, so on the rare occasion she's not already in bed with him when he wakes up screaming, she'll come running in immediately. He usually ends up either curled around her, doing breathing exercises, or settling down in bed with a book while she purrs on his chest until the tension finally melts out of him. Bucky isn't healed by any stretch of the imagination, but by God he's trying.

What's the worst wound your character has experienced? It can be physical or emotional.

Ted Sallis died of his injuries from a horrific accident, drowning in a swamp while his super-soldier serum burned him from the inside out after the so-called love of his life betrayed him. That's the worst for him. Only Jack knows about it, and even he doesn't know it all. Nothing else comes close.

Jack is pretty good at toughing out physical pain by now, so his worst wounds are definitely emotional. I think the worst one was finding out that his sister, Lissa, had died. It was a natural death, but he didn't find out until years later, and she was his last connection to who he was before the wolf. The wound has never fully healed.

Elsa's worst wound is what she told Bucky about in "Bucky Meets the Legion of Monsters": realizing that the monsters she'd been hunting, even without her father's input, had mostly been people. That's an identity-shattering experience that has fundamentally changed her.

Bucky’s worst physical wound was losing his arm. His worst emotional wound was either when he realized Steve wasn't coming to save him from Hydra a second time or when he realized Steve wasn't coming back from his time jaunt. Bucky is profoundly loyal and loving, and he is constantly disappointed by other people's failure to meet him where he is. Thus, he doesn't trust easily, but Steve has always had Bucky’s entire heart, and Steve's broken it twice now. It wasn't intentional the first time and we don't yet know what happened the second, but like Jack, Bucky is walking around with an unhealed wound in his soul. If Steve ever reappears in Bucky’s life, there will be Consequences. Even if Bucky will always forgive Steve and would take him back without hesitation, the rest of the squad will have serious concerns about a fella who'd abandon Bucky Barnes two whole times.

[alliluyevas]

dream historical American Girl year/place/demographic etc???

Oh, great question! As I said earlier, I think the most glaring gap in the American Girl historical canon (both current and retired dolls) is the lack of an Asian-American doll. I've seen people say that Julie's Chinese-American Best Friend character, Ivy, should have been the central character of the 1970s arc, and I personally also think there's no reason why Courtney from the 1980s couldn't have been written as Asian and added elements of her cultural traditions in with her general 1980s storyline. (I believe she likes video games? I haven't read her books. A little Asian-American girl can also enjoy going to the game arcade and having Care Bear pajamas). That being said, since I think it's more interesting to come up with a new addition than to retroactively change an existing character, here are some ideas.

This is definitely not my area of historical expertise, so I'm probably going to be a bit vague here. I think AG could potentially do a Chinese-American doll set during the big blank period in between Addy and Samantha. The main issue here in terms of historical accuracy is that immigration even before the Chinese Exclusion Act was heavily weighted towards single Chinese men (or potentially married, I guess, but if they had wives already they often remained home in China and the husbands came over as lone men). So there was not as much of a family life and community culture involving children. However, our character could be either the product of a relatively rare but not unique family immigration unit, or potentially biracial with a Chinese father. (There were legal restrictions on interracial marriages between Chinese men and white women, but still some marriages happened, and actually a lot of Chinese laborers in the South married African-American women, apparently.)

Another alternative would be to have a Chinese-American character whose storyline is set during the 1950s or 1960s, after anti-Chinese immigration bans were lifted and more people started to come to America. Obviously, we already have 1950s Maryellen and 1960s Melody, but we have overlapping dolls from the 1940s as well (Molly and Nanea), and I think it could potentially be very interesting to be able to compare girls with very different cultural backgrounds living in the same time period. (I'm inspired a bit here by one of my favorite children's historical novels, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, about a little Chinese-American girl who comes to New York with her parents in 1947.) Depending on what works best time-frame wise, the character could be either an American-born child of immigrant parents or have immigrated along with her parents. (Kirsten herself is an immigrant, and Rebecca iirc is supposed to have been born after her parents came to America, but either "type" of immigrant story could be very interesting looking at a different time in American history and a different country of origin.)

I think a Japanese-American character could also have interesting potential. I do think that having a storyline that directly includes experience in an internment camp would be inappropriate. There's a lot of discussion about "struggle narratives" versus narratives that are a bit more...idk, affirming? when it comes to writing historical stories about children of color. I think you can have a story that acknowledges racism and oppression without centering it in a way that can be traumatic for readers who share the characters' identities. (Or go the route that Addy's books do. They don't shy away from the trauma of slavery on Addy's family, but the first book is mostly about her and her mother escaping and the rest of them are about her life in newfound freedom.) If they were to do a Japanese-American character, they could also do something in the 1950s or 1960s, which could work with acknowledging the impact of internment camps (perhaps through the remembered experience of the character's parents or older siblings) while not feeling like trauma-dumping. Or they could go for something older, like a character set in the 1920s.

I also have some more ideas about potential storylines for a historical Mormon character, but I think that might have to be another post. (And, as previously stated, I think the lack of an Asian AG historical doll is much more glaring.)

[samasmith23]

Oh wow! I just finished 4-issue The Shade miniseries from 1997 which is collected in the Starman by James Robinson Compemdium One and holy crap was this limited series overall FREAKING phenomenal!

Narrated through the Shade’s personal journals, this miniseries covers an ongoing feud between the enigmatic and immortal Shade and a vengeful family of corrupt aristocrats known as the Ludlows which spans from 1838 when the family first found an amnesiac Shade after he first gained his powers, all the way up to the present-day in-universe (which was 1998 at the time…). What I love is how this series heavily fleshes out the Shade’s struggles with coming to terms with his immortality and gradual acceptance of his role as a villain due to the dark deeds he’s been forced to commit in order to survive ever since his first fateful encounter with the Ludlows, as well as a unique exploration about the legacy of generational trauma and inherited values with how this family actively indoctrinated each of its successors to hate the Shade due to a conflict dating back 150-years ago. Plus, seeing the Shade’s exploits across various historical time periods and regions, as well as his Golden Age rivalry with the Jay Garrick Flash (reinterpreting Shade’s generic supervillain exploits of robbing banks as actually being a deliberate game by the Shade designed to provide him a sense of purpose to his immortal and up-until-then meaningless existence by pitting himself others with powers who weren’t cursed to play the role of the villain like he has been).

Overall, The Shade was a brilliantly written miniseries which helps further cement the titular Richard Swift as one of my new favorite supervillains/anti-heroes in comics! I’ve been thoroughly enjoying James Robinson’s classic run on Starman so far this year, and the Shade’s character has been a major contributor to said-investment due to how multifaceted and enigmatic he is as both an overarching antagonist and secondary-protagonist to the series’ lead Jack Knight, aka the titular Starman!

[donnabroadway]

Neckdown dead

A few years ago on Iyanla Fix My Life, Iyanla coined a term called neck down dead, which is what she used when she felt a guest wasn't emotional enough about what happened to them. It was most often used when a guest could recall the trauma that brought them to her with a flat affect. I get it, this is a TV show, and admit it, we all watched because other people's drama makes us feel better about our lives and shortcomings, and there needs to be some emotions, even if they're fake, but sometimes a numbness comes about and I guess that's neckdown dead. You get to a point where things happen and you just shrug and keep it moving because you know the anger and tears are moot. There is a life to live, even if you're just going through the motions and sometimes, that is okay because an object in motion, stays in motion and eventually drift wood reaches shore. Sometimes you just go through the motions of living until it feels genuine. Sometimes, depression is a luxury you can't afford and everyone has opinions and advice but it's useless. One of my favorite quotes is from Meet the Robinsons and it says, keep moving forward. Sometimes neckdown dead is a defense mechanism to get you to the next day because if you truly allowed yourself to feel, it may be your 13th reason. As of right now, I am neckdown dead. Work, kids, family, the student loan crisis, and life in general are taking turns using your girl as a punching bag. I'm tired but I'm here and so are you and we're going to be here.

Traci Braxton died at 50 and all we really knew about her publicly is that she spent about half her life being upset at her sisters for moving forward with their record deal despite her being asked to leave the group for being pregnant. On the show, she was portrayed as bitter, angry, stuck in the past, hiding behind her husband, and was most famously called the "wannabe." The rift was so big that not even Iyanla could fix it and it is rumored that much of the Braxton family doesn't speak. The family couldn't even come together to honor Traci's last wishes as executed by her husband of more than 30 years and her son. If I was Traci, I wouldn't waste my time haunting them and if I saw them in the afterlife, I would side eye them. I say all that to say, that in spite of the setback, I hope Traci built a beautiful life that she truly got to enjoy. She seems to be the most stable, with a seemingly loving marriage, a son, daughter in law, and grandson that seemed to love her, and she had hobbies which included a motorcycle club. I hope she truly had joy in her life.

Years ago, Oprah stated that she changed her show format to one that was more confrontational and she realized it wasn't helpful. Yes, sometimes the confrontation is good in terms of lifting the weight off your spirit but sometimes it's just a confrontation. In a full transparent moment, I have been in therapy since I was 18 for several of the same issues, no clinical, and not much has changed in 18 years, despite my best efforts and at some point, you say "it is what it is" and leave it at a point of peace. You also realize that people, while polite in listening and sharing, often enjoy drama and your pain is a point of drama to them. People love mess, despite them declaring they don't "do drama." Yeah, drama surrounding them and their life but they will gladly watch with popcorn gifs other people's drama. It's not hypocrisy, it is human nature.

At some point, you have to ask yourself what is next? Are you going to spend the next 18 years rehashing the same drama, or are you going to make internal, personal changes, that have nothing to do with anyone else. It is okay to choose yourself because people will martyr you and not even blink twice. They will drag you into the proverbial gutter. They will drag you in the same circle and not even think twice or have any true remorse. You can choose yourself.

[myshredda]

There's three of them! and i said i wasn't going to get invested in this but now i am so here are some headcanons:

pink kills the bugs when it's just the three of them. she's brave like that

yellow and pink have ratty hair; it's always a mess. green doesn't know why it's so hard to brush ur hair everyday and is generally confused why they don't

pink wants hair like Ariel form the little mermaid tho, all poofy and floaty. sometimes she tries but she doesn't take good enough care of it bc there's just so much. despite what green says, it takes longer than five minutes to style her hair lol

several brushes have been stuck/broken while trying to detangle her hair so the adults have kind've given up on it

occasionally red or duck will try to preen her but they give up after ten minutes like "yeah, that's as good as that's ever going to get"

idk if you've seen wwdits but pink is like baby colin robinson, just hammering holes in the wall as soon as no one's watching

red and duck went on a really quick tesco run once and thought they would be fast enough to leave the kids at home and... they were wrong. she had knocked a good chunk of the living room wall out and cheerily explained that she was building her own room bc she was tired of living w "smelly boys"

red tried to stay as calm as he could given the circumstances and explain why she can't just knock walls out (but internally he was screaming). Duck just went ballistic

yellow and green got in trouble too bc they knew what she was doing and didn't try to stop her at all. their reasoning was they didn't want to share a room with her either, she snored too loud

ofc it was all ok in the end, but that was not a good day for anybody

in my mind, pink is like marie from the aristocats, "Ladies don't start fights but they can finish them!" or Mouthface from the trail to oregon musical, "I get a turn with the gun first! I have bloodlust *does cute little pose*".

she favors red just bc he was so nice to her at the beginning but she does have duck's violent streak

shes the only one that has teeth besides red so her bites hurt

she has a hard time differentiating between the types of love, romantic, platonic, and familial, and misreads social cues a lot bc of it. she's getting better but at the beginning it was really bad

she would mistake basic kindness/familial love for romantic love and then get really upset when it turned out just bc duck made her favorite food or yellow shared his toys doesn't mean they want to marry her

it took a long time for her to find value in herself outside of her relationships w others

her and yellow are the chaos crew. they're the kids that will put a big ugly toad on the kitchen table and beg to keep it as a pet. green swears up and down that he told them it was a bad idea but really he was just as excited as them

also ducks delighted to have another person to feed. he gets to cook more, make more types of food, and get the satisfaction of watching them fill out to a healthier shape

it is very hilarious to me that you started out that first ask with 'idk if i'll get very deep into this' and my response was 'oh you might not, but I certainly fucking will' and then my life spiraled out of control forever <3 Thank you for giving me the opportunity to go on a 1.2k rant about a literal one off character and give her trauma and then attempt to heal said trauma I made up for her <3 <3 <3 Love all the bits about her hair being messy because she's 100% forget to brush it now because she has STUFF TO DO and NATURE TO EXPLORE and FORTS TO BUILD and brushing her hair is boring and she doesn't want to do that 💗I think Duck would take preening her as a personal challenge and on nights where she's really sleepy and lazy and just wants to watch TV she'll let him work at it for a while and he's having the time of his life while working at her rats nest because grooming the people he loves is his biggest love language.

Yes to her knocking holes in the wall (I'm vaguely aware of baby Colin from wwdits ((I think him and Nadja's soul that's trapped in a doll are friends which is cute!))) Yes to her attempting to build a new room and knocking out half a fucking wall, yes to Red trying to gentle parent while Duck's just making a high-pitched noise of absolute horror in the background (which Pink fully ignores) Green and Yellow are like doing the innocent BUT WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING routine but Duck is NOT having it (they've lived with them enough to know better by now!) and it's kind of sucky but it's really a good opportunity for Red and Duck to enforce rules and boundaries in a healthy way that the kid's aren't used to bc 'punishment' for them in their past was violent and traumatic.

Love the idea of Pink and Red bonding bc they have teeth. Duck's like I HAVE TEETH SOMETIMES (which he did! when he was having his organs removed!) and bonds with Pink over biting people because they both like to do that 💗

Yeah at first she has a REALLY hard time with love bc in the cult there was only ONE type of love and everything fell under that umbrella (not that it was real love obviously) and Red and Duck have to explain to her over and over that No she doesn't have to marry them for them to love her and it upsets her a little because she feels like she's doing something bad bc experiencing love outside of marriage is a big no-no in Shrignold's eyes (as he told Yellow when he introduced Pink as special one in the first place!) so it's a really long process of them being gentle with her and her being uncomfortable with it but eventually they get there.

Her and Yellow have ZERO control of their impulses for different reasons but they band together and make messes wherever they go and Green watches in amusement because he thinks its good scientific research to watch them go fucking ham

Speaking of ham Duck is like fully gone Barefoot Contessa and just COOKS and cooks and cooks and makes way too much food and pushes leftovers and helps Pink realize that she doesn't have to be skinny to be feminine and she can eat whatever she feels like and doesn't have to eat less than the boys just because she's a girl and she doesn't have to help cook because she's a girl but because it's a good life-skill that everyone should know how to do and she doesn't have to help cook for the others if she doesn't want to

[hyperfixated-chaos]

This is a coupon to ramble about your favorite character or oc as much as you want use it whenever

-gasp- The first ask and best ask I've gotten!

Okay, buckle up, because Hunter <333

(Open at your own risk-- I'm serious, it's LONG)

From a meta perspective, I just so appreciate the way his trauma has been handled thus far. I think there's so much to delve into and it's so relatable to different kinds of traumatic experiences and it's just... really accurate, and handled well, and I appreciate that so, so much. There's religious trauma aspects, power abuse, and familial trauma. You can definitely interpret him as experiencing other forms of neglect/abuse as well. And the main focus in-story is the psychological abuse he experiences, mental and emotional, and how messed up that is and how much it affects him. And that's something that's overlooked a lot, I think- how non-physical forms of abuse can be so, so damaging and harmful. (And DO NOT get me started on the fact that he's the YOUNGEST GUARD EVER because ig employee abuse wasn't working, so Belos was like what about CHILD ABUSE. What about taking advantage of the basic instinct of people to TRUST AND OBEY PARENTAL FIGURES?? And then he isolated Hunter so he couldn't go through the developmental phase of having a peer group and discovering his own identity?? I HATE HIM)

Speaking of trauma, his panic attacks? The way they were both handled, both in how they were shown on-screen and the way other characters handled them (Eda making sure not to crowd Luz and Hunter & Gus teaching Hunter deep breathing my beloveds <33) is just. really good?? Zeno Robinson's voice acting in both scenes (and in general) is literally so incredible, I hope one day to have but a portion of the skill he's cultivated.

Anyways, apart from the trauma part, he's just such a sweet and fun character. He's sassy and sarcastic and his Golden Guard vibe is just, perfection, and whenever he's on-screen as GG I know I'm gonna laugh and have a good time even when I'm rooting against him. He seriously has some of the best, most quotable lines in the show, and I quote several of them daily.

He's such a lil nerd, too. We know he likes reading, and he can ramble off relevant information on just about anything he runs into. I can't help but wonder if his part of his ease at talking to Flapjack in Hunting Palismen is because he's used to talking out loud to himself when no one's interested/he needs to think something through.

Similarly, he's really intelligent. Not just book-smart, but he's incredibly observant (notices when Eda & Luz were standing in a dangerous plant, picks up on the fact Luz won't shoot him, etc.) He's clever and resourceful, too, as well as physically capable. Honestly, he's just good at his job, and you gotta admire the hard work and dedication that took. Even if his job is, you know, helping Belos.

He obviously deeply cares about his uncle (and "the greater good," as he puts it), but Belos uses that to manipulate him. He definitely hurts people as the Golden Guard, and he says in Labyrinth Runners that it's because he thought he was doing good things for a good person, but it turns out neither of those was true. So to an extent, he thought he was doing good even when doing things he was uncomfortable with (read: giving Belos Palismen). He also threatens Luz and Eda in Separate Tides, but honestly I think he was bluffing? That doesn't make it a good thing, obviously, but I really do not think he would've killed them in cold blood like that, he was being The Golden Guard(TM).

Speaking of, his personality seems to shift quite a bit from The Golden Guard(TM) to Hunter, which makes me think that a lot of that confidence he exudes is a mindset that comes along with being the GG. Like, he puts on the mask and gets the staff and is like "Yeah, I can do this, I'm the Golden Guard. I'm the emperor's right hand man, I've got power and recognition, I'm freaking AWESOME" and that's how he carries himself. But I don't think that's always how he feels, especially when we see that any real confidence in himself comes directly from Belos' validation, such as in Eclipse Lake when he has a complete breakdown at the thought of failing and losing his Golden Guard title and Belos' approval. (Belos definitely made him think like that on purpose and takes advantage of it and I hate him for it so much.) Also, I think Hollow Mind showed pretty clearly that the only thing Hunter has full confidence in is Belos, which is why the reveal that he's actually just a little bitch was so world shattering to him, because that is literally the foundation of his worldview and what he'd lived his whole life on. (-cough-religious trauma-cough-)

It's also interesting (and sad) to note that even though when he's The Golden Guard(TM) he's all confident and snarky, outside of that persona he's not even confident in being the Golden Guard. I mean, Darius, who Hunter does not seem close to at all, makes one snide comment about how he doesn't deserve to be the GG and his entire attitude crumbles and he asks how he can prove himself. From this random coven head who's being a jerk and isn't even Belos! He immediately transforms into a kid who needs to justify his existence! Darius didn't even sound serious, he was just making something up, but Hunter clings to the mission like a lifeline! He just wants to feel like he deserves to exist, dammit!!

Honestly, throughout all of Any Sport in a Storm there are a lot of things about how he thinks you can pick up about him from implications, too! While it's played for comedy, his complete and total confidence in his approaches absolutely reeks of someone who has literally never been exposed to the outside world. Which makes Darius' line about making connections outside the castle hit even harder, because not only has he not interacted with people his age before, but he hasn't interacted with anyone not under Belos' thumb without being, you know, The Golden Guard(TM) and trying to defeat them. (Except Luz in Hunting Palismen, which just makes that episode so much more interesting.) Anyways, he very confidently and casually talks about the Emperor's Coven, and how it's obviously the Best, and how 6AM is a very late hour to wake up, etc. (-cough-abused kid who doesn't realize it vibes-cough-). But when presented with one (1) person who thinks the coven system is stupid, actually, he literally freaks out. I mean, he KNOWS wild witches are a thing, but those are evil and dangerous and of course they'd say insane things like that (i.e. he demonizes them and thus wouldn't listen to anything they said). But this kid, this is a normal person, who just. DISAGREES with Belos? WHAT? He doesn't even know where to start processing that, because he has never been exposed to it. And the way he so casually brings up the training and literally has NO idea that people would consider that cruel or harsh says something about his cluelessness about the world, but ALSO how he doesn't consider that anything he's gone through could be bad. He doesn't even go after the other Emerald Entrails until remembering their Palismen will be killed, because that IS something he considers bad (because Flapjack, and I LOVE his relationship with Flapjack-). And that's probably a mindset that applies to a lot more than just coven training.

He also has his whole powerless-witch insecurity, which is why I think being The Golden Guard(TM) and having people obey/respect him is probably great for his self-esteem. Kind of like it lets him set aside that insecurity and feel important/worth something. That could also explains his attachment to Belos' staff in Hunting Palismen; I think it's a bit more than the basic utility of it and the fact it's from Belos, I think it's also because when he has it he feels like he's basically a "full witch" since he can use magic. (And like, I know he probably doesn't think of it this way because magic is just a Necessity, but he did JUST fine without it the whole episode. He's resourceful and skilled as hell, he literally does not need magic to do things.) The whole Golden-Guard-means-power may be part of his fear in Eclipse Lake, too, that not only will he lose the approval of Belos (and therefore his self-worth) but he'll also lose the only thing that makes him more than "half a witch."

Speaking of which, I am in LOVE with the moment in Hollow Mind where once he's alone with Luz he whips out Flapjack. Because he's not as attached to the Emperor's staff- it's not his go-to anymore. Flapjack has come to mean so much to him and so as soon as he can use him he does. Flapjack is such a huge figure in his life, too. Their whole strangers to friends arc is simply to DIE for, it is literally so sweet and shows so many great aspects of Hunter's character. He believes Belos, that Palismen are made from wild magic and dangerous. More than that, Belos needs them to help with his "curse," and Hunter will do anything for Belos. He seems pretty uncomfortable with killing Palisman, but -Gothel voice- Belos knows best, so he probably just pushes that feeling aside. They're dangerous anyway, right? They're not sentient or anything, and Belos needs them...

Then enters Flapjack, who by the way was introduced as wanting to escape/be free, and then proceeded to follow Hunter around after he expressed his own wish for freedom from expectations and to choose his own path in life. Hunter is immediately like "NO. Wild magic BAD" but with Luz's help he seems to calm down a little. He still thinks Flapjack is dangerous, but at least not going to attack him. Then, after being shown genuine kindness/unconditional trust by Luz for possibly the first time in his life, he turns around and fights Kikimora, NOT knowing at first that she didn't know who he was, and then watches Luz fly away with the Palismen he was sent to collect. The FIRST thing he did in this episode was use his staff to teleport back onto the ship from super far waway, but he can't even try to follow her now? With the staff in hand?? No, he abandoned the mission on purpose, probably out of appreciation for Luz and his own doubts about how moral the mission really was. Need I remind you how much he cares about Belos?? He researches wild magic while thinking it could curse/kill him because he wants to cure his uncle. He isn't just going to abandon a mission and risk not only Belos' disapproval but also his wellbeing for NO REASON. (This makes Eclipse Lake sadder btw, if you think about how he intentionally failed his last mission and now he's ended up so desperate.)

Anyways, Flapjack goes back and is immediately like "I'm gonna go find that kid again, he seemed pretty cool." So he finds the castle (which couldn't have been easy; he's so dedicated <3), and Hunter (who was probably just chewed out for failing) grabs him because Palisman! That's what I'm supposed to get! But he squeezes him too hard, and Flapjack squeaks in pain. Hunter immediately loosens his grip and apologizes, then remembers why Belos wants the Palismen. His eagerness disappears and he warns Flapjack that it's dangerous to stay. And then Flapjack turns into a staff for him. It seems like Flapjack was sure that Hunter was a good person, and that last bit of kindness he revealed his staff form. Hunter is shown to be pretty selfless here, and really uncomfortable with the whole Palismen consuming thing.

In Palismen Observations, it's implied that Hunter had been feeding/watching Flapjack since the beginning. He's such a nerd, I love him ;-; He probably isn't sure how Palismen work (I sincerely doubt that Belos is upfront with that information) so he starts studying one on his own. Hunter is a curious lil NERD and he deserves all the happiness.

Anyways, in Eclipse Lake he's not super attached to Flapjack, but he doesn't seem too minded by his presence either. He even hits him with the "Go find a better witch to be with :(" after his breakdown, so if Flapjack didn't know he was Not Okay before he does now. And through the whole thing, Flapjack sticks with him and even jumps in the way to protect him from King and helps him get the key. It's only after that, when Hunter's a bit calmer, that he seems to really appreciate how much Flapjack's done for him. He finally accepts the Palisman bond, and Achievement Unlocked: Communication!

But that's not the end of it! In Palismen Observations you can see that Hunter's still holding onto that belief that Flapjack is dangerous. Yes, he's done nothing but be nice so far, BUT he's OBVIOUSLY finding something. After all, Palismen are made of wild magic and wild magic is dangerous. He know he asks around to find out what a flapjack is, so he was obviously actively looking for information. He asks Flapjack about his previous owner/life (and doesn't get much, but y'know). And he watches Flapjack and keeps track of all the things he likes doing (for research obviously!! I'm sure he doesn't actually care about him or anything).

But he must find out how to reconcile Evil Palisman with Best Birb, so he devises an experiment >:3 (because he's an adorable lil NERD). Instead of feeding Flapjack his usual food (still not over the fact he'd been feeding him this whole time T-T) he'll give him BAD food, and then Flapjack will TOTALLY show his dark side. (Which can be seen as him failing to give Flapjack what he wants and therefore incurring a rage-induced punishment, which kindaaa sounds like Belos's relationship to Hunter idk- I might be reading too much into that but yeah...) So he conducts his experience and finds... that Flapjack is just a lil sweetheard who shares his food anyway T-T And you can HEAR the guilt in Hunter's voice as he realizes that of course Flapjack wouldn't freak out at him, he's Flapjack. So he stops his research, because he has his answer. (Heehee, nerd <33)

From then on he's shown to be super close with Flapjack. Like, they're never seen apart. And in Hollow Mind and Any Sport in a Storm, he uses Flapjack when possible instead of Belos' staff. And, in Any Sport in a Storm, we see him with Flapjack the entire time, doing his usual planning-out-loud-to-the-bird thing (which I love. baby.) Flapjack is even in the picture of the Emerald Entrails where Hunter's smiling! And again, Hunter didn't go after his teammates because he was worried about the harsh training they'd go through, he goes after them after Steve points out that their Palismen will be taken from them. Because Flapjack is someone he cares deeply about, and it's only when Hunter can relate their situation to Flapjack being in danger that he realizes that it's messed up.

Speaking of, this is where Darius really enters the picture! And I really like how he pushed Hunter's arc, even if it may not have been entirely intentional (and he definitely didn't have a good attitude about it). I particularly like when Hunter takes the cape and asks if he deserves it now, if he's worthy enough, and Darius just asks if he thinks he is. It may have been just a snide remark meant to make him feel insecure, but it still pushes Hunter to think, and in a really good way. Because his whole life, all of his opinions and feelings and even thoughts have been dictated by an adult above him. He asks Darius if he's worthy now because he needs someone to tell him he is, because that's what decides if he is. And Darius basically says "what do you think?" And he does think, and he realizes that he, Hunter, doesn't actually want to take people against their will (and definitely not Palismen-).

Not only does he realize that, and come to his own conclusions without being told what to do, but not only he puts himself in danger (going against a coven head who's probably going to tell Belos) but he goes against everything that Belos had ever drilled into his head. He also doesn't even try to hide Flapjack in that scene, which is probably just him not thinking about it in his panic to stop Darius, but I think it also demonstrates how much he needs Flapjack there. Because he feels guilty, and he's upset, so of course Flapjack would be there because Flapjack is his comfort and support. (The fear on his face when Darius mentions Belos finding out hurts me deep within my soul ;-;)

Then the other Emerald Entrails get away, and Darius gets mad. And Hunter tenses up, fully expecting to get hit (T-T), not even trying to defend himself or justify it, but instead of a punishment, he gets affirmation. A bit of positive physical touch, which he might've been too in shock to process, and Darius telling him that he was wrong and Hunter is actually good. Not good because he succeeded, or useful, or obedient, but because he made the right decision by himself. And Darius gives him a scroll and gets him to make an account so he can interact with other kids his age, and then promises to keep both the incident and Flapjack a secret. Which is a positive response to him making his own moral decision (definitely NOT what he got last time he tried that, in Hunting Palismen) and like. YESSSSSS <33 Encourage that, Darius <3

And at the end of Hollow Mind and throughout Labyrinth Runners we can see how close they've become <3 (Hunter absolutely processed the events of Hollow Mind & his subsequent Grimwalker research by talking it through with Flapjack and Flapjack was his only source of comfort and it's only thing that got Hunter through all of that and you CANNOT and WILL NOT be changing my mind-)

Then there's Hollow Mind and Labyrinth Runners, which are whole OTHER things that are SO GOOD AND INTERESTING and I love SO MUCH but that's just... wayyy too much for this post haha (Just know I would die for his & Luz's sibling energy and his & Gus's friendship)

Anyways, I'll stop now, TL;DR: Hunter <;33

[curetapwater]

My kid sister has an AU-ish of connected headcanons about Sonic characters. Here's some about Team Sonic:

Sonic

Grew up a homeless orphan and has a lot of unpacked trauma from that period of his life

Extremely picky due to sensory issues. Chili dogs are his #1 safe food

Is generally very chill but has extreme mood swings sometimes. He's learned to isolate himself during these so he doesn't hurt anyone.

Has ADHD

He's gay. He started crushing on Shadow after the events of SA2 and started dating him after the events of Generations

Hates Wearing Clothes

He's trans

He doesn't have his driver's license (TSR was an outlier due to the whole tournament being of dubious legality anyway and the All-Stars racers didn't happen)

The King of Emotional Repression

Outside of mongolian throat singing, he hyperfixates on one music artist at a time. Right now it's Big Time Rush

Thinks the Hulk is hot

Tails

Sings in his sleep

His many many patents make him the breadwinner of the household

Screams every time he yawns

Was banned from watching YouTube after watching Billion Surprise Toys too many times

Sonic once turned on Meet the Robinsons for Tails to wean him off of YouTube and when he came back into the room Tails was crying about "the orphan inventor boy that gets treated differently who learns to put the past behind him and move forward with his found family"

Was the valedictorian at Yale. His speech included a pause because he knew Sonic was gonna shout "HI TAAAAILS" and he sure did

He loves Fortnite and Minecraft. He was once playing Fortnite against Scourge online and Scourge cursed at him and he ended up repeating it so now Tails is only allowed to play online games with Charmy

The only one in the household with any organizational skills. If there's scheduling that's needed, he's the one doing it.

Often has to remind Sonic to carry out self-care tasks

Knuckles

Angel Island has floated over Sonic's house so now Knuckles can live with the rest of his team

He keeps the Master Emerald in the backyard and sleeps on top of it

He technically has a bedroom but treats it more like a storage space because he's usually outdoors with the ME anyway

Chews on doll shoes

His favorite movie is The Lion King

Locke isn't his bio dad, he just stole him as an egg and microwaved him. By the time he learns what happened, all of the echidnas including his bio dad (his dad from Sonic 2) are already dead :(

Ken Penders is a nebulous boogieman-like creature who's always trying to steal Knuckles away

Started dating Rouge around the time Sonic and Shadow got together.

He and Shadow are the world's most awkward brothers-in-law because they're both different flavors of socially awkward and don't know how to interact with each other

He sleepwalks.

[variousqueerthings]

some thoughts on queerness in narrative (using cobra kai as a main point)

1. intro

It’s interesting getting to engage with pop culture right now versus even five years ago, where there was something kinda sordid and undercover about queer reads of text and even just talking about being into stuff very passionately while being queer in spaces that included creators was considered somehow icky (supernatural is always a good example, but definitely was just the most visible of these types of interactions between fans and cast/creators). Obviously that’s where a lot of modern definitions about queerbaiting and bury your gays comes from.

A lot of this kind of drama centred on queer ships rather than queer characters in their own right (dean/castiel, merlin/arthur, derek/styles and maaaan just a lot of white brunette/blond pairings, which is another post and I acknowledge that Lawrusso is also literally that... the irony)

But also this isn’t so much about “shipping.”

2.

There’s a danger of flattening out the ways in which we create a dialogue with text when it becomes just about whether or not our ships become canon (in general the way fandom discourse revolves around ships can be incredibly unhelpful for engaging critically with text) – for context I am queer and I’m queer through my transness and aromanticness and asexuality, and I also write a fair bit of shippy fanfiction and analysis, but personally am not (always) thaaat bothered about how the connections with queer-coded people are realised in text, as long as those connections are acknowledged in a queer way. How that works varies from text to text.  There is no one-size fits all proper queer representation.

An example: SE Hinton (because I just read The Outsiders/watched the movie) being really dismissive of people reading her characters as gay on twitter (why do we ever try to do this sort of deep textual analysis on twitter, why do creators – like Hinton – think that they ought to espouse opinions on twitter, why twitter folx?)

I wrote – kinda for the void, because I write a lot and I like posting some of that on tumblr, but I don’t expect people to engage necessarily – about how The Outsiders is absolutely a queer text, whether or not the creator intended for it to be. Long story short, queerness has been – and often still is – illegal and/or frowned upon in canon text, so a semiotics was created to make something queer if you knew how to read it. The fact that cis-straight creators play with and use those semiotics without knowing doesn’t negate the fact that that language is there and was deliberately created for that purpose.

That also doesn’t make it queerbaiting. Maybe cis-straight dumbassery, idk (wouldn’t be if you just went “huh, didn’t think about that, cool read”)

Intentionally playing with and acknowledging those semiotics also isn’t necessarily queerbaiting.

Definitely queercoding though.

3.

Anyway this is all a bit murky territory, so let’s talk about Cobra Kai, my current little obsession, and about Star Trek, my always-obsession. Time-was you could get sued for your Star Trek fanfiction. Nowadays that fanfiction can get turned into a for-fun zoom play and read out loud by the two actors who played the original characters (Alexander Siddig and Andy Robinson). This is very fun, new territory for a lot of us.

Meanwhile Hayden Schlossberg and the other writers of Cobra Kai are openly aware of the fact that lots of people read their lead characters – Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence - as probably bisexual (and probably as in love) and are on good terms with several active members of fandom and fic-writing. This is… so fucking fun. And it doesn’t have that weird overtone of shit like Teen Wolf (“We’re on a ship” winky-face, followed by that about heel-turn “just think it’s weird and strange” or however tf it was described later on - that shit: definitely queerbaiting).

In Star Trek there’s a slim-to-none chance that these characters will ever become canonically queer in the main text, but the acknowledgement and the light-hearted open engagement with it makes such a massive difference (not that Siddig and Robinson weren’t talking openly about it as far back as the 90s).

In Cobra Kai there is no obligation to make Johnny or Daniel canonically bi because there’s been no promise to do so – there is, in my opinion, an obligation to create a world in which queerness exists and not just on the sidelines. In the same way as there’s an obligation to generally create a world that accurately depicts what LA looks like in multiple other ways (cough, not mainly white, cough). If a part of that were through exploring how 80s era toxic heteronormative masculinity could throw people deep into the closet for most of their lives, hey, that’d be a neat storyline (such a neat fucking storyline), but it’s not the only way to do it.

While I do like canonically queer couples in stories, I also think it’d really limit what queerness can do for a text if that were the only way it was represented - sure I ship Lawrusso, but I find the above-mentioned analysis of toxic masculinity’s effects on the characters-as-queer-coded to go much deeper than whether or not they get together. 

I also would love trans and/or other-gender characters - we all know Johnny needs his “gender-what?” ignorance challenged and the potential for characters like that to fit into a narrative around trauma, loneliness, and misfit-families is kinda perfect (and when I say characters, I mean that plural, we’re not a one-size fits all).

Lastly I think there is also an obligation to do exactly what the showrunners are doing - what didn’t happen with Hinton or SPN or Teen Wolf or Star Trek of yore or so much other popular fiction: say, oh yeah, that language is absolutely there, we recognise it, we can read it and it’s not weird or sordid or something to be judged. So that’s already a massive thumbs up/promising start.

4. some final thoughts:

Idk where all this’ll go. I’m still missing a lot of canonically queer representation - and when I say representation I mean more than just shoving in a queer character into a scene and not thinking about how that affects the world that’s been established. But I’m feeling a lot better about queerness and story than I used to.

I’m hoping that whatever comes moving forwards in culture in general it’ll have some thought put into it. I’m hoping that queerness and queer allegory and coding will be recognised more and more as important reads of text and will go into informing how something is made (Hannibal, Black Sails, Sense8, Pose). I’m just hoping this’ll mean some interesting, intelligent, wildly varied narratives.

Just very excited.

[rantingcrocodile]

what do you think of jokes about really tragic events? I'm talking 9/11, auschwitz, native American genocide, witch trials kind of events. Idk what to feel about them. People who joke about them typically get pissed off and claim whoever objects is a fragile snowflake, but also what kind of psychopath do you have to be to make a joke, something that is supposed to bring humor, about something so dark and horrible?

This is a very tricky subject because it relies heavily on both context and (more importantly) intent.

The thing about humour is that, aside from the light kinds of jokes and plays-on-words, humour also exists to take the sting out of the darkness. To laugh about something is to remove the pain of it, to pull it out of the darkness and into the light, exposing the truth for what it is.

That's one thing that I enjoy about British humour. For example, there was an incredibly popular British comedy series called Goodness Gracious Me, and they had sketches like this:

As British Asians, they created the "Cooper" (actually Kapoor) and "Robinson" (actually Rabindranath) couples (as an example above), to poke fun at the desperation to be assimilated as English. In those sketches, the writers (also two of the actors) went to extreme lengths to show how ridiculous it was for those characters to attempt to be seen as white British.

If you were to look at it coldly without the context, the idea of poking fun at that clear racism, at the trauma of forced assimilation, then that should, in theory, be a taboo. Instead, it's genuinely funny. Meera Syall and Sanjeev Bhaskar are hilarious writers, and the above really does take the pain and the experiences that they and their communities have to take the sting out of it, along with the underlying message of don't feel like you have to be like this, be yourself and screw the racists.

But that brings us back to intent. There is absolutely no malice in the above. The victims of the sketch aren't British Asians in general. It's a mockery of individual characters as a vehicle to attack the issues behind what's being portrayed. That's a world away from a racist deciding to make jokes about British Asians because the racist hates them and wants to belittle them.

The darkest jokes are something else.

(Warning for a sketch about anti-black racism and the use of a racial slur.)

This is from Not The Nine O'Clock News, another British show from back in the 1980s.

For those that can't watch, it starts with Constable Savage being reprimanded by his superior for bringing up ridiculous charges. He's made arrests for "stepping on the cracks in the pavement." Hilarious! That police officer is absurd! Until his superior then says that those 100+ bogus charges are all against the same man. Cue more laughs! The harassed man is revealed to be a black man, and it's clear that the stupid Savage is an obsessed racist. His superior berates him for being racist and for making the police look bad. The superior states that Savage is not welcome in the police, and there's no option but...

To transfer Savage to the SPG, otherwise known as the Special Patrol Group, a London-based sub-section of the police that was notoriously violent and racist.

Is that a horrifically dark sketch? Yes. Did it include racism? Yes. But it was also a jab at how racist the police was, where racism was condemned in it, underlining the seriousness of racism and how untrustworthy the police was, even when the police claimed to care. That wasn't a deliberate attack against the black community, even though we can look back at it now, forty years later, and see that the terms used were wrong and the writing clumsy. It comes back down to intent, yet again.

It also depends on the audience.

Some people will use dark humour as a coping mechanism, telling dark jokes about themselves or their own group with other members of their own group or trusted friends and family members to take the sting out of their own oppression. Others would be triggered and damaged hearing those jokes.

If someone isn't comfortable with jokes like that, then whether they're a member of the same group or not, their wishes should always be paramount to make sure that they're protected and kept safe from harm.

The issue with humour, including dark jokes, is when it comes from people from a place of privilege, where those jokes are nothing but attacks and abuse towards others, especially the oppressed, who tell those jokes gleefully because they come from a place of bigotry and hatred.

The bottom line is to be kind and sensitive to others and their feelings. It isn't "oppressive" to say, "keep those jokes to yourself if you'd otherwise upset someone." The jokes are supposed to be funny, not hurtful.

As for the people that call others "snowflakes"? You can guarantee that they'd also be the same people who would get their pitchforks ready if you joked about something that offended them.

[scarlet--wiccan]

(1/?) The MCU is going on a specific direction and might touch Wanda's history of mental illness. Maybe talk about that when you have the time? Wanda was going on a nice direction before all that happened.

Whew! Sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this— I have several super-long message chains like this one in my inbox and they’re hard to parse through and harder still to write a real answer for. I’m gonna try through a couple of these today.

Well, I think you hit all the important points here-- the optics of a mixed-raced family of first- and second- gen Holocaust survivors committing mass acts of terrorism, becoming rulers of a fascist, supremacist regime, and then, finally, committing pseudo-genocide, are, you know, not great. These are complicated characters whose representation can easily swing in either really positive or really, really negative directions, but this goes beyond the pale for me, especially given the proximity to 9/11.

The portrayal of Wanda's mental illness during this time, while not wholly unsympathetic, is wildly inaccurate and generally played as a horror motif. I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I think we can all agree that it's high time we moved past exploiting sick and disabled people's experiences for cheap scares. It's especially frustrating because Wanda, as a character, does have ground for poignant stories about mental illness-- she's had numerous traumatic experiences, starting with generational trauma and a lifetime of violent discrimination, and ending, at that point, with the deaths of her young children and the abrupt dissolution of her marriage. Her mental health should be addressed, but not in a way that demonizes illness or characterizes sick people as villains. One thing I appreciate about Robinson's Scarlet Witch is that it represents her mental illness in a very human, matter of fact manner and gives her the power to take control of her own wellness. She has realistic symptoms and pursues realistic treatments, instead of, you know, making hallucination constructs and getting mind-probed by Charles fucking Xavier.

Wanda is simultaneously infantilized and vilified in these stories-- she's denied agency at every turn, and yet, Wolverine and the other "heroes" of this saga view her with unbridled contempt, and most of them are immediately ready to murder her in the name of justice, even before the "no more mutants" spell was cast. You wondered how Bendis was able to inspire such a long lasting hatred of Wanda, and I think the simple answer is that almost every character in House of M hates Wanda. The characters you root for, the characters whose perspectives dictate the tone of the story, direct palpable fury towards her, and even those who aren't out for her blood don't extend any actual empathy towards her-- most are ambivalent to her wellbeing, while Xavier and Strange are incredibly paternalistic.

The final spell, "no more mutants", has baffled me for years. You're spot-on in saying that Wanda here represents a self-hating minority, but it's really hard for me to understand how she could have reached that point. It's not consistent with her previous characterization, nor is it thematically connected to the factors which led to her breakdown. Bendis places the onus of her condition on Erik, alleging that he abandoned and abused his children in his fanatic commitment to the mutant cause, which, besides being a willful misinterpretation of canon, has nothing to do with Wanda's current circumstance-- she's like this because Agatha Harkness altered her memories, because the Avengers continuously gaslit her, and becaue Mephisto killed her kids in the first place. It has nothing to do with Magneto, and Wanda's breakdown has nothing to do with mutant politics. She and Pietro were raised in a loving family until their adoptive parents were killed by racists. Erik didn't knowingly abandon them, and while he did mistreat them during the Brotherhood days, it wasn't parental abuse because he wasn't a father figure to them-- neither party had any idea they were related. Bendis is evoking specific forms of trauma that never actually happened, while ignoring the ones that did, and the effects of the spell itself are vague and seemingly random.

~~~~~

Young Avengers does call back to Wanda's circumstances in Disassembled and HoM, but it doesn't execute the concept of reality-warping in the same way. The driving force in YA is the spell which Billy casts, and Loki tampers with, in the first issue. It is a spell which distorts reality, but it has specific parameters, and neither party is characterized as "crazy" the way Wanda was. The spell was intended to bend space and time so that Billy could pull Teddy's mom from the past, before she was killed, into the present-- it's not dissimilar from how Wanda "retroactively reincarnated" her kids. Due to Loki's interference, however, the spell was hijacked by an interdimensional parasite called Mother. The Mother virus appears primarily as a construct of Teddy's mom, but as her influence over the Earth-616 dimension grows, she's able to create constructs of other dead parents, and even mind-control living adults. All of the ways in which reality is being warped hinge on the specific conditions under which Mother was summoned, and while it is Billy's magic that's fueling these constructs and distortions, they aren't symptoms of psychosis-- Billy doesn't lose control of his magic because he's losing his mind, he loses control because he's too young and inexperienced to protect himself from predatory forces. Those forces do take advantage of his depression and anxiety, but his condition is never the cause.

Loki's magic is wrapped up in the spell, too, but rather than conjuring dead parents, it emerges as a construct of their former best friend, Leah. Loki, in Young Avengers, is a mashup of two personae-- the reincarnated child Loki, and Ikol, a phantom of their past life who is carrying out the previous Loki's evil will even though their heart isn't in it. Ikol has mostly overshadowed Loki, who has been reduced to a ghost that torments Ikol by acting as a constant reminder of their guilt. Ikol is haunted by their past, but it's important that this haunting is a nuanced metaphor and not literal hallucination, as Wanda's condition was in HoM. Because Loki's power is part of the spell, Kid Loki's ghost is able to hijack the reality distortions to summon the construct of Leah, who, in turn, is able to summon the Young Avengers' other exes, the same way that Mother, in the form of Teddy's dead mom, can summon other dead parents.

Loki does raise the question of whether or not Billy might be subconsciously influencing Teddy with his powers, but this is clearly illustrated as a manipulation tactic and disproven several times. Loki's original goal in summoning Mother was to draw out Billy's full magical potential so that they could steal his power for themselves. Driving a wedge between Billy and Teddy, and causing Billy to question his own sanity, were devices to make Billy more susceptible to having his power stolen, and they worked-- Billy is not able to divest his magic from the spell and banish Mother from Earth-616 until he overcomes his self-doubt and start exercising mindfulness. Loki, in turn, is not able to divest their power from the spell and banish Leah and the other exes until they own up to their guilt and admit everything they've done. Both characters are experiencing symptoms of exacerbated mental illness-- Billy's depression and suicidal ideation, Loki's disassociation-- but their mental illness is not the source of their magic, but a challenge which makes it harder for them to live as their fully realized selves... just as it would be for any normal person.

I know that was a long-winded explanation, but I wanted to illustrate what sets Gillen's take on "reality warping" apart from Bendis's. It's based on clearly though-out ideas of how magic works and what defines "reality" in a world populated by parallel universes and living myth-forms. Gillen affords Loki and Billy a degree of sympathy without denying them agency, and Loki is held accountable for their decisions without being painted as a total monster. Bendis, meanwhile, characterizes Wanda's magic as delusion made real, and completely vilifies her for her illness in spite of the fact that she's given no control over her actions.

[suresimon]

{george robinson, twenty-eight, cis man, he/him} || simon orwell is a mutant with the ability of hellhound physiology. they’ve been in new york for ten years where they spend most of their time as a novelist. when i think of them, i think of hellfire of the holy, finding blessings in curses, the sun shining on a grave.

it’s’a me, a’may’rio ! new muse who dis want 2 make a disclaimer that i am not paraplegic. while i’ve been doing a lot of research so i can portray his disability as accurately and sensitively as possible, if y’all ever see me doing sumn wrong!! pls feel free 2 call me out on it!! research is not quite the same as experience

QUICK FACTS:

full name: simon george orwell (luv that for him)

date of birth: march 14th, 1969

zodiac big three: pisces sun, libra moon, sagittarius rising

gender & pronouns: cis man & he/him

sexual orientation: bisexual (pls let it be known that he can still feel pleasure)

enneagram: 4w3

mbti: infj

temperament: phlegmatic

ability: hellhound physiology

affiliation: brotherhood

alias: cerberus

various inspirations: tbd !

BACKSTORY:

triggers: brief mention of alcoholism, paralysis (paraplegia), i still forgot the word for kids getting kicked out akfjdsl

born and (mostly) raised in north carolina, for some years, simon never knew ‘want.’ it wasn’t that his parents were rich -- nothing of the sort -- rather that his mother would do anything for her sons and daughter. 

their father was not quite as doting, spending more of his time drinking his hatred away than hanging out with his wife and children. if he didn’t... who knows what would happen!

that said, simon was raised to believe that mutants were a species to be feared. ‘they’ll look at you with blood-thirsty eyes,’ so said his mother. but it was not for general hatred -- her own mother had been killed at the hands of one, a brotherhood member, and she’d been left with permanent scarring on her back. his father, on the other hand, simply wanted something he was allowed to hate.

so imagine how unfortunate -- in many ways -- simon found himself when his brother, ian, dared him to dive into a pool using their tiny trampoline... and he ungracefully followed through and dove into the water that was... much shallower than he had perceived. a terrible sensation spread, and then...

his mutation came forth, randomly and suddenly taking the form of a hellhound as a trauma response. in this form, his spine was immediately healed, but when he was quickly and involuntarily snapped back to his original form? to a human? nothing.

the doctors did all they could, but when he came to and they’d given up, he found himself completely paralyzed from the waste down with limited mobility in his arms. he could move his hands. he could move his head. he could move his neck. he could move his forearm. and, with concentration, he could move the rest of his arm. well enough to not be considered quadriplegic!

fortunate that his parents had not seen his transformation, unfortunate that he had no clue what had happened. fortunate that he could move like normal when in his new form, unfortunate that he turned any time the slightest pain was felt in one of his non-numb/paralyzed areas. finally, his ian told him his own secret: while their sister was human (as far as they knew), he was also a mutant. biokinesis, the ability to manipulate life. quite strong, quite invisible.

he told him of this organization -- the brotherhood -- that believed in mutant superiority... to which simon was like ‘didn’t one of those mutants scar mom and kill grandma?’ to which... he confirmed, but waved off. ian was considering joining, if he could find a way, and he encouraged simon to do the same.

that said, simon still had a deep-seated fear and slight hatred towards mutants. it wasn’t something he found himself able to believe in until he was sitting in the family room, watching some program that he can no longer remember, and felt a burn on his hand from his sister accidentally dropping a hot plate. 

hyperbolic trauma response: he turned into a hellhound. his parents were terrified, his sister was curious, and ian... had an odd look of pride. to make things worse, he accidentally used a subpower he didn’t even know he had and induced fear. when he was human again, his loving mother insisted that he leave. and, just to prove a point, ian used his powers -- something he had honed much better than simon -- to rot the apple on his sister’s tray (and she just looked more pissed off than afraid or angry at the two).

somehow, they found themselves in new york. with a wad of cash and unfulfilled dreams, they settled down. ian was forced into the role of his caretaker (which is why he’ll remain an npc, rip), something that felt somewhat humiliating at first but... after a while, just natural.

ian aided in simon honing his ability. and when he finally did? he’d now garnered enough hatred in his heart to truly consider his brother’s suggestion. unlike his brother, he wasn’t murder-happy, but remembering his parents... thinking about all the ways others thought of him in his hellhound form... thinking about the essex house and how that could’ve been him... thinking about the way he was actually fortunate to have the ability -- how his world would be so small without it... 

as kind of an aside, he purchased a dictation recorder to begin spilling his guts a la novels. fiction? sure! based on real life? sure! non-fiction? ...masked as fiction, sure! and, while it wasn’t the steadiest income, he would... occasionally lie and say he was related to george orwell... which would encourage publishing companies to sign, and encourage even more people to buy his novels.

five years ago, he joined the brotherhood with ian. while he isn’t too fond of murder, in his hellhound form, his predator instinct amplifies his hatred tenfold. as a hellhound, he’s so down for murder! and as a human, he’s... down for ranting about them and helping come up with plans.

CONNECTION IDEAS:

his sister ! i love family connections. with his brother being his caretaker, i pretty much have to leave him as an npc, but i think his sister would be really fun ! could be a mutant, could just be curious and... not furious. she clearly did/does not hate them to the same degree as their parents, something that simon and his brother picked up on.

brotherhood besties ! give him some people from the brotherhood who are like ‘yeah, i’m down with murder, but i’m not down down. i feel u!’

brotherhood peer pressure ! they think it’s pretty lame that he’s down for helping with the plans, but has to actually go into his hellhound form to be down with murder :\

neighbors ! he lives on the first floor of the silverhouse apartments. quite frankly, these are the people who probably know him ( in his human form ) the best.

friends from when he first arrived ! as it says on the tin !

fans of his books ! maybe they believe he’s a distant relative... maybe they don’t... but either way, they like his books.

exes ! he doesn’t have the chance to get into many serious relationships, but these two provided him with that. he felt desired... which was nice. no matter what terms they’re on, he’ll always be thankful for that. ( 1/2 )

open to so much more ! besties, ppl who ask him too much so he likes 2 lie 2 them, ‘so if you’ve got hellhound physiology, does that mean hell is real?’ ‘idk!’, etc, etc, HERE FOR IT ALL!!

@c23intros​

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2020

I know it's a little late for Xmas shipping, but I'm FINALLY getting around to publishing a roundup of all the books I reviewed in 2019!

Part 1: FICTION FOR ADULTS

I. AGENCY by William Gibson: A sequel to The Peripheral for the Trump years, about seductive bitterness of imagined alternate timelines, filled with cyberpunk cool and action.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-01-24/agency-william-gibson

II. RIOT BABY by Tochi Onyebuchi: An incandescent Afrofuturist novella that connects the Rodney King uprising with contemporary struggle, pitting supernatural powers against dire politics.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/riot-baby/#Tochi-Onyebuchi

III. OR WHAT YOU WILL by Jo Walton: A metafiction about the desperate attempt of a character to pull his writer into a fictional world to save the both from human mortality.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/07/little-bro-with-snowden/#metafiction

IV. A BEAUTIFULLY FOOLISH ENDEAVOR by Hank Green: Sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - a madcap and sometimes brutal tale of social media influencers, alien invaders, disinformation, and runaway capitalism.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/08/absolutely-remarkable-thing/#carls

V. FAILED STATE by Christopher Brown: A legal eco-thriller that imagines the end of capitalism without imagining the end of the world - cyberpunk meets ecotopianism, with anarchist jurisdictions, show-trials, and rewilding.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/failed-state/#chris-brown

VI. AFTERLAND by Lauren Beukes: Eerily well-timed road-trip novel set after a prostate-cancer plague wipes out nearly every man on Earth, except for the protagonist's teenaged son, who is now being hunted by the (all-female) US government.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/afterland/#XY

VII. BALLISTIC KISS by Richard Kadrey: Sandman Slim confronts the worst demons of all - his own trauma and self-doubt.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/25/anxietypunk/#bk

VIII. SQUEEZE ME by Carl Hiaasen: Hiaasen was writing comedic whodunnits about improbable Florida Man types decades before the memes, and his Mar-a-Lago gator plague novel is a hectic and hilarious tale for our times.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#disappearing-act

VIII. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson: KSR says it's his last novel and I say it's the book he's been training to write all his life. If you like your climate fiction wrenching but still uplifting enough to move you to tears...

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/03/ministry-for-the-future/#ksr

IX. SET MY HEART TO FIVE by Simon Stephenson: An absurdist robot-romp in the mold of Kurt Vonnegut about a robot who catches the disease of emotions and tries to treat it by moving to Hollywood to write screenplays about robots.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/01/cant-pay-wont-pay/#robot-rights

Part 2: NONFICTION FOR ADULTS

I. A PUBLIC SERVICE by Tim Schwartz: An incredibly practical, detailed guide for would-be whistleblowers (and journalists who work with them) to staying safe while spilling the beans.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/08/a-public-service-a-comprehensive-comprehensible-guide-to-leaking-documents-to-journalists-and-public-service-groups-without-getting-caught/

II. THE MONSTERS KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING by Keith Ammann: A sourcebook for RPG game-masters explaining how different kinds of monsters can use a variety of combat tactics that add depth, texture (and challenge) to your games.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/10/the-monsters-know-what-theyre-doing-an-rpg-sourcebook-for-dms-who-want-to-imbue-monsters-with-deep-smart-tactics/

III. SNOWDEN'S BOX by Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge: The incredible, true tale of how trust among friends allowed Snowden's leaks to safely transit from his home in Hawai'i to the hands of Laura Poitras and the journalists who reported the story.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/03/31/snowdens-box-the-incredible-illuminating-story-of-the-journey-of-snowdens-hard-drive/

III. ABOLISH SILICON VALLEY by Wendy Liu: A personal journey from a fully bought-in believer in Silicon Valley's meritocracy to a ferocious critic who demands tech to serve humanity, not a human race in service to the tech industry.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley-memoir-of-a-driven-startup-founder-who-became-an-anti-capitalist-activist/

IV. THE CASE FOR A JOB GUARANTEE by Pavlina Tcherneva: A fierce little book setting out an economic program to rescue the nation and the planet from a system that insists we can't even hope for a better world.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/22/jobs-guarantee/#job-guarantee

VII. SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS by Tim Hwang: What's worse than having our lies destroyed by surveillance to manipulate us with ads? Having our lives destroyed by surveillance in order to fuel a fraudulent market in ad-based manipulation.

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

VIII. MONOPOLIES SUCK by Sally Hubbard: There are plenty of *great* books about monopolies and the resurgence in antitrust, but Hubbard's is the most practical, providing the reader with excellent advice for actually *doing something* about monopolism.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/27/peads-r-us/#sally-hubbard

IX. BREAK 'EM UP by Zephyr Teachout: The most lucid, readable, infuriating, energizing book on the rise of monopolies. Teachout never loses sight of the systemic nature of the problem, even as she uses individual stories to tell the tale.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/break-em-up/#break-em-up

X. BOUNDLESS REALM by Fox Nolte: There has never been a better book about the Haunted Mansion (indeed, this is one of the best books ever written about environmental design in general). Nolte goes *way* beyond trite wisdom about "storytelling."

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/09/boundless-realm/#fuxxfur

PART 3: GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. YEAR OF THE RABBIT by Tean Viasna: A graphic memoir of Viasna's harrowing boyhood during the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's a tale we've rarely seen through the eyes of a child, and brilliantly realized.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/22/year-of-the-rabbit-a-graphic-novel-memoir-of-one-familys-life-under-the-khmer-rouge/

II. FEMALE FURIES by @misscecil​: Castellucci uses an obscure and anachronistic all-woman cast of DC Universe b-characters to tell an incredible, smart, pitiless story about #MeToo, comics, solidarity and betrayal.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/29/female-furies/#apokolips-now

III. LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE CARTOONIST by Adrian Tomine: A memoir of intensely felt impostor syndrome, a forceful reminder that comparison is the thief of joy - and that the traits that keep an artist going at first go toxic over time.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/21/the-thief-of-joy/#tomine

IV. CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED by R Sikoryak: The Trump years were an unhappy crash-course in Constitutional law, but Sikoryak's genius adaptation of the Constitution in the style of dozens of cartoonists is a pure delight.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/#r-sikoryak

PART 4: KIDS AND YA

I. SEND PICS by Lauren McLaughlin: A YA novel that's a thrilling revenge-play about "revenge porn," a cyber-heist novel that's also a sneaky and forceful book about teen girls' sexuality.

https://memex.craphound.com/2020/04/21/send-pics-ripping-brutal-amazing-novel-about-teens-sextortion-revenge-and-justice/

II. IMPOSSIBLE MUSIC by Sean Williams: A YA novel about a music-obsessed kid who loses his hearing is the frame for a book about ability, adaptation, music theory, family, Deafness and what dreams are really for.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/30/deafhood/#impossible-music

III. HARD WIRED by Len Vlahos: A 15 year old discovers the truth behind bizarre dysfunction of the world around him: he's an AI in a sim, and the guy he thinks of as his long-dead father is actually the research scientists who created him.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/31/ai-rights-now/#len-vlahos

IV. ADVENTURES OF A DWERGISH GIRL, by Daniel Pinkwater: Like every Pinkwater novel, it defies description, it is brilliant, and it is his best to date. Ghosts, Revolutionary War fleshbots, papaya juice, and supernatural beings from the Catskills!

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/25/dwergish-girl/#you-are-a-pickle

V. WITCH by Finbar Hawkins: A beautiful debut novel about a pair of 17th century sisters who avenge themselves against the witchfinders that murdered their mother. A superbly told historical.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/01/the-years-of-repair/#witch

FINALLY: I published *four* books in 2020!

I. POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER: My debut picture book, about a little girl who turns her toys into weapons and torments her parents by hunting monsters all night, with wonderful art by Matt Rockefeller:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627

II. LITTLE BROTHER/HOMELAND: My multibestselling YA novels were reissued last summer in a gorgeous package with a (fantastic) new introduction by Snowden.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

III. ATTACK SURFACE: A standalone, adult sequel to Little Brother and Homeland. The New York Times called it "vocal and unflinching" and "ultimately optimistic"; the Washington Post called it a "riveting techno-thriller."

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

IV. HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM: A long pamphlet/short book that makes the case that Big Tech manipulates us and spies on us because they have monopolies - not because they've developed devastating, data-driven mind-control.

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

[nickrobinsondaily]

Nick Robinson Was Done Playing High School, Until He Met A Teacher

The actor opened up about voicing his opinions online, his celebrity crush, and shooting sex scenes with Kate Mara. By Isabel Jones

You could be forgiven for assuming Nick Robinson is years younger than his true age of 25. The actor has been playing high school students for a full decade, beginning with a four-season run on ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey and concluding (or so he hopes) with FX on Hulu miniseries A Teacher. 

In fact, Robinson vowed to end his journey as a perpetual teen after playing the eponymous Simon Spier in coming-of-age film Love, Simon. “I’ve graduated, hopefully,” he told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2018 interview, “and won’t be going back.”

Well, it wasn’t long before A Teacher nullified Robinson’s promise, returning him to the world of pep rallies and study sessions. 

“I hoped that no one would watch that interview where I said that I would never play high school again,” he tells me over Zoom with a laugh, looking rugged and definitely over-18 in an unpretentious 66˚North beanie and flannel shirt. “I'd made that ultimatum, and then I read the scripts for the series, and I met with [creator Hannah Fidell] and Kate [Mara], and I kind of went, ‘Shit, one more.’”

Robinson joins our call from British Columbia, where he’s currently filming miniseries Maid opposite Margaret Qualley. We delay the interview for 15 minutes so he can get a COVID-19 test — a process he must undergo three times a week while in production. He tells me he had a mild case of the virus earlier this year, back when he was living in Williamsburg and “doing a play.”

That ever-so-casually-noted “play” happens to be Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, aka the “highest-grossing American play ever.” Judging by our 40 minutes together, 2,500 miles and a computer screen apart, Robinson doesn’t strike me as the type of actor who eagerly name-drops his prestigious projects or A-list co-stars. He greets me by name when he comes on screen — a simple act of courtesy that feels largely forgotten in a year marked by hate crimes and awkward interactions made from beneath face coverings. From his unfussy style to his nearly-dormant Instagram account, Robinson seems like an actor committed to just that: acting (and also maybe being a pleasant and approachable person). He takes questions and answers seriously (even when they’re about bagel toppings), pausing to find the perfect articulation for the words in his head. The celebrity of it all doesn’t appear to be on his radar.

On the rare occasions when he has updated his 1.5 million Instagram followers over the past few months, it’s been to encourage them to vote. 

“If there's a time to say something, it's now,” he tells me, his passion for the topic evident in the minutes-long monologue of sorts that follows. “To be honest, I feel like I should be doing more. There have been a million times where my finger has kind of hovered over ‘post’ or ‘share’ and not done it because there is this thing where people would be like, ‘Oh, just stick to acting, we don't need to hear your opinions,’ but fuck that.” 

With A Teacher, Robinson is able to participate in a project that not only highlights his acting skill, but furthers a conversation. He plays Eric, a high school student who has an affair with his teacher, Claire (Mara). Unlike many of the predecessors who have tread this same cinematic territory, the series is as dedicated to drawing the viewer into the illicit relationship as it is to immersing them in the brutal and enduring aftermath.

“The show does a little bit of a bait-and-switch on the audience, which is intentional,” Robinson explains. “It makes them complicit in Eric and Claire's relationship.” 

Ultimately, though, A Teacher’s stance on its subject matter is clear. “Everyone involved in this production took this story very seriously. It wasn't to make light of these kinds of relationships. It wasn't to glorify them. It really was to make a character study on what happens to these people after the headlines,” he says. “There are a lot of headlines, a lot of clickbait, and there’s not a lot of follow-up.” 

The role of Eric wasn’t an easy one to play, and the emotional toll was heavy. “That's something that I'm trying to get better at,” Robinson said of shrugging his character off at the end of the day. But this particular journey compelled him.  

“I was really interested in exploring how male survivors internalized this kind of trauma,” he says. “And oftentimes it's really suppressed for years.”

“The relationship is often used as a kind of social currency for the survivors. They're given high-fives and told ‘you're the man’ and all that. So, the push and pull of that, of wanting that to be true, but also dealing with some very complicated emotions internally, I think was what a lot of the second half of the show is about: Eric grappling with the reaction of his peers versus what he's actually feeling inside.” 

That said, Robinson’s research would be for naught if he and Mara didn’t have chemistry. Luckily, their connection was instant. 

Robinson extolled Mara’s “wicked sense of humor,” which came in handy during some of their more “intimate” scenes.

“You kind of have to laugh at some of those scenes when you're doing it,” he told me. “If you did a macro view it would just be two people with a bunch of burly grips around and camera operators and lights on you. So it's not actually an intimate experience.” 

Though Robinson’s still playing high school, the rules have changed. The laugh-tracks have fallen away and the happy endings once found at, say, the top of a ferris wheel, are just out of reach. His performance in A Teacher is a departure from a body of work that tends to skew “teen,” but it’s a defining one. 

Read on below as Robinson tells us his favorite “long and bad” joke, recounts his first kiss, and names his favorite Robert. 

What's the last thing you do before you fall asleep? 

Honestly, especially recently, the last thing before I do before I fall asleep is check the news and check social media. Probably not healthy. 

If nothing else, can we please just end this to change the news cycle? Because it's crazy-making. The whole thing is just, it's constant turnovers. I'd just like some peace and quiet.

The plotline of 2020 is really insane and implausible. It jumped the shark a long time ago.

Who’s your favorite villain?

Don Draper.

You see him as a villain?

I do. But that's the best part — most of the really good villains have some humanity and are maybe slightly ambiguous, but I think ultimately, yeah, he's a villain.

What was the first album you ever owned?

“Who Let the Dogs Out” is one of the first songs I really remember having playing, in like kindergarten, so I didn't buy it. But I had a portable CD player, which was really cool. And I had a Roy Orbison Greatest Hits CD that I liked a lot.

Do you still listen to that?

Sometimes. Yeah. I was also a big Elvis fan growing up. A lot of the oldies. And I do still listen to that, but there are  newer folks now that I prefer, I guess.

What's your favorite cheesy pickup line?

Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

A classic.

It's a classic. It's really the first one that popped into my head.

I'm going to assume you've never used it in real life?

Never.

If you ran for office, what would your slogan be?

I don't think I would ever run for office. It's not something that appeals to me, but I did see a good hat the other day that said “Make Orwell Fiction Again,” that I thought was kind of funny.

Name one place you've never been but have always wanted to go.

Vietnam, I would say, or Thailand. Southeast Asia generally. Egypt ... I'd like to go to North Africa as well sometime. A friend of mine shot a movie in Vietnam and fell in love with the country and it's been on my to-do list for a while.

Read the rest of the interview on Instyle

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Headcanon: Julian Bashir is autistic and has frequent sensory overload, and the only two people who can help him are Garek and O’ Brien. Me? Projecting? It’s more likely than you think!!!

Ha, moooood. Which on that note I have a somewhat intense fic here in which Julian has a meltdown. It’s not related to sensory issues so much as “oh boy a lot of shit’s happened to him” but if you want more O'Brien helping him out after this – so because we gave that fic to O'Brien, let’s give this one to Garak.

Also can we talk about the fact that it’s canon that Julian and the other augments can hear sounds at decibels that non-augments can’t and that it causes them pain, but Julian just taught himself to not react, like fuck, how did someone write this and not follow through on Julian-Bashir-is-autistic-and-or-otherwise-nd!

sorry for taking so long, a. this got a bit longish so it’s under a cut and b. I got distracted by the fact that I always want to see everyone’s notes on reblogs in case of interesting discussion points and i have just now learnt that that cannot be done easily if a lot of people reblog at once… oh hyper-fixation how you get me time and again

this takes place post-Doctor Bashir I Presume and alludes to the fact that during this time Garak and Bashir’s interactions were gradually stripped away in the show (because it too gay) - Andy Robinson ran with that in A Stitch In Time and had Garak write about how much he regretted the two of them not remaining close/hinted that he was in love with him… so take that background as you will.

—— More Space ——-

Thank goodness, he thought after an indeterminate amount of time. O'Brien was here. He would be able to calm him down, he would know how to come up with some soothing description of exactly which of DS9’s pistons or pipes or programs was currently making that noise and he’d either fix it or stay with him until it sorted itself out. Or maybe the noise was gone and the residual whining was just himself recreating it perfectly in his head, or maybe he was just too far gone by now for it to matter, but O'Brien would help. Since the two of them had become friends and some of Julian’s old ticks had returned after his augmentation had come to light, Miles had been a surprisingly steady presence in his life.

“Doctor?”

No, not Miles.

Garak.

He couldn’t make himself respond. His body felt like it was compressing him into a vice, with all his ability to focus somehow splintered into a million shards, each of them painful to the touch. Oh no, what if Garak touched him? If Garak touched him right now he might shatter or scream or something else entirely outside of his control, but talking was also impossible right now, so he couldn’t ask him not to touch, please don’t touch-

Garak sat down in front of him, far enough away that it didn’t feel like too… much.

“Doctor. You don’t need to say or do anything.”

He could manage that.

“I was wondering why you’d missed our lunch date. Very pleased to find you didn’t simply opt not to come without telling me, although I find the alternative to be distressing.”  He stopped talking for a moment then. “Apologies for breaking into your room. Again.”

While Garak simply sat and occasionally spoke Julian was dimly aware of the fact that he could feel his edges hardening again. The shards were being pulled back together.

He also noticed now that he was freezing. It usually happened like that, having sat sedentary for however long or coming down from some emotional extreme. He shivered.

“This station is cold,” said Garak.“The temperature, the lights, the people… all too cold.”

Julian managed a smile and it was like his mouth was freed from a curse. “It is, isn’t it.”

“Not to mention loud,” Garak added.

“All that machinery,” Julian nodded and spoke slowly. His mouth still needed to unstick. “Every time an alarm goes it’s like a sharp pain… I used to be… much better at this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I used to… I used to get these all the time as a child. Meltdowns, shutdowns, I think. But then my parents told me later that it was a side-effect of the augmentations and I tried to… to will myself to stop them, to bypass my natural instincts in order to not be found out and it worked, in a way, or at least nobody found out. I familiarised myself with and categorised any sights, sounds, smells, feelings I came across on earth during my Starfleet training and ordered them into lists and sublists: What I could handle mostly, what I could handle sometimes, what I needed to avoid at all costs. I managed to… to pretend. And then I came to Deep Space Nine and for awhile it was all too much again, I had to make new lists, but I managed, I really… I really did, I really did, I really-” he was talking himself into hyperventilating again, he knew this, but he couldn’t stop now, “- and then I got captured and it was like everything just stopped. I barely- I don’t even remember most of it, but when I got back it was so much worse -”

“Julian,” said Garak and the sound of his first name coming from Garak’s mouth surprised him back to the now. “Julian,” said Garak again. “You’re here. With me. On a floor that is quite cold, I might add.”

Julian breathed out and mumbled under the exhale. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.”

“What is that,” asked Garak.

“Counting my fingers. It… helps.”

“Noted,” and the easy way in which Garak seemed to have just accepted that he would be helping Julian again in future was another shock to his system, but then why wouldn’t he? Even if they hadn’t met up as often as they used to. Even if he was untrustworthy at heart and Julian could never figure out why Garak wanted his company at all. He found he missed Garak’s simple and complicated nature. It grounded him, somehow.

He got up off the floor, reaching out for Garak when he stumbled. He held him just tight enough to make sure that he wouldn’t fall. Not overcrowding – Julian suddenly remembered that Garak was claustrophobic. He must know how easily sensory inputs could become too much.

At Garak’s questioningly soft hold on his arm, Julian nodded and he helped him to the sofa. “Would you like some water?”

Julian nodded. As Garak went to fetch it, he began to talk again. Somehow… he just needed to get it out now, like an excision. “After the truth came out my mother told me that they’d been lying. I mean, they’ve been lying about so much, but specifically about this. I’ve always been like this. Or. Some of it. The meltdowns. I thought… those memories weren’t real. But now they are? Some of them. I’m having trouble sorting them.”

Garak handed him the water.

“I developed a theory,” said Julian, forgetting to sip.

“Tell me your theory doctor,” said Garak, his tone of voice tender as he sat down beside him, again, close enough if he needed him, but not too close.

“I was wondering why a heightened inability to process inputs was a side-effect of the vast majority of augments, when I had this inability before my augmentation. I started to suspect that it was less to do with the augmentations and was simply… who we were. The augmentations gone wrong could throw that into extremes, but that may have more to do with medical trauma responses than… anyway, I can’t confirm until I have more data. I did research into my own developmental delays, the medical history – it’s fascinating how we repeat cycles actually, first it was considered a form of possession or changelings, then it began to be classed under a broad form of what would be known as schizophrenia, then divided into narrow and still somewhat inaccurate categories of autism, aspergers, adhd, add, high and low functioning etcera, and then was gradually broadened again under general brain-differences known as neuroatypicals or neurodiverse,” he took a breath and continued: “- I’m not too interested in 21st century history honestly, but I know the government upheavals affected medical classifications and concepts of what was known broadly as “disabilities” at the time, and that it fundamentally shifted again once we formed the federation. But then -” and here he started gesticulating widely in excitement or outrage - “it all becomes the same just repackaged, doesn’t? Stigma against augments who are overwhelmingly people like me is stigma against neurodiversity is stigma against the “possessed,” it���s…” he trailed off. “It’s all the same,” he finished lamely.

He’d become very aware suddenly that he’d done that thing that annoyed most of the people he ever conversed with, running his mouth while forgetting the other person. But Garak didn’t seem annoyed. He was listening intently, in fact. At the pause he even nodded and offered: “The history of such matters is different on Cardassia. Or rather, mental and developmental differences don’t get acknowledged on Cardassia.”

“Eugenics?” said Julian with a frown.

“Not as such. We don’t mind in theory, as long as everyone can perform the tasks they’re assigned to. It’s a… class thing. If you belong to a powerful family and are expected to do great things in the army or politics or the sciences, being unable to do so for any reason is usually – what is the term humans use? - “Swept under the rug.” But then someone like you, dear doctor, if you had been Cardassian it might surprisingly have been easier for you.”

Julian shook his head. “My abilities are due to my augmentations. I’d have been… I don’t know. Not me,” he said softly.

At that, Garak gave him a look that he couldn’t pin down. Something… surprised for a moment, almost? Then smoothed out into an enigmatic smile. “Perhaps. From what you tell me you’ve always processed like you do, you’ve just been given better tools to translate and more…” he searched for the word for a second, before landing on: “space.”

At that Julian burst out into an unexpected laugh. “I certainly have enough space out here. More than enough, I’d say.”

Garak’s smile deepened. “But it doesn’t matter. Either you were always going to be able to pursue medicine and the stigmas of your parents and surrounding society were preventing you from discovering that on your own, or your augmentations made you unlock new abilities. But on Cardassia someone with the kind of passion you possess would have done well, with or without them.”

“If I were born into the right class. And if I didn’t get arrested for being fundamentally against the militaristic state.”

“Naturally,” acceded Garak. “And I must say I’m quite relieved to find the incorruptible, perfect federation comes with its own flaws. One wouldn’t have expected it with the way humans constantly go on about it.”

“Oh, we go on about the federation? According to you Cardassia is superior in culture -”

“- oh, definitely -”

“- politics -”

“- without a doubt, my dear -”

“- criminal justice system?”

“- well, we’ve never brought a wrong case before the court-”

“- I know you’re just saying that to rile me up-”

“- my dear doctor, when have I ever been anything but sincere?”

“- when have you ever said anything you meant?”

“- I am offended, truly-” said Garak with a big grin on his face.

Julian found it the easiest thing in the galaxy to return.

“Remember to drink your water,” he was reminded, gently, before they continued their lunch discussion. It was a moment in which they both forgot that they had ever begun to drift apart in the first place.

—— The End ——-

[border-spam]

Please please pleeeaseee I love my girl Tyreen I just want to see some nice things about her uwu just.. ah, idk, just tell me if you got any ideas about nice and kind (or maybe something cute? You can't tell me she's not like that sometimes even if its SUPER rare) things that Ty would do when nobody was around. (Let's give her some love too, pls)

The Tyreen that exists in private or with her brother in earlier COV eras, is a very different being to the persona she fronts for others.

Source : Joseffyne Robinson, check out their fantastic art

Within my AU and early/mid COV:

Ty’s natural speaking manner is well enunciated and smooth, without her lilting singsong habit you hear during broadcasts, or her streameresque emphasis on short, punchy words in a sentence.

She and her twin have a touch of their father’s accent that’s generally only audible during emotional moments like when highly amused or very angry, but her default speaking tone is calm and direct with a slight bite to her T’s.

Leda passed on her enunciation and vocabulary through lessons to the twins as she wholeheartedly believed the family would leave Nekrotafeyo at some point, and thought the kids would do well to be understandable anywhere they visited with neutral and clear accents.

Tyreen’s left hand is damaged from a long term injury since her childhood, and the white glove she wears is more to hide what she perceives as a weakness than to protect others from her powers. Cloth does practically nothing to prevent The Leech consuming what she touches, a lesson she learned the hard way in the childhood trauma that lead to her fingers being crushed.

She has regular mobility but the knuckles and back of her hand are noticeably scarred and can get painful in the joints during stormy weather. 

The only person aware of this issue is her twin, and she often seeks him out on nights when the pain is bad. His hand is big, strong, and practiced at massaging out the burn of the dull ache in her knuckles.

Sitting together watching bullshit on a massive echofeed in their shared cloister while he squeezes and cracks the joints for her is one of the shared unspoken bonding activities that continue all the way till late COV (though extremely rarely).

Ty is obsessed with shitty romcom movies. It doesn’t matter how low their EchoCritic score is, it doesn’t matter how scathing the reviews, she has watched it and enjoyed it. The worse, the better. 

She knows deep down that she’s living vicariously through them, but it’s not something she wants to waste her time thinking about in too much depth.

Has an encyclopedic knowledge of terrible quotes from said movies and enjoys dropping them randomly in streams (much to Troy’s absolute disgust as he gestures violently at the script she’s deviating from while he stands off camera), and then likes to follow up on what viewers are saying online. Who noticed, who watched the crap that one was from, who’s arguing over if she’s doing it ironically or not.

Lives for drama, and it doesn’t have to be the vicious kind. These kind of fun little nods to fans who are paying attention give her a buzz that’s.. nice! It actually feels like being part of something innocent? Normal? It feels like being part of something she’s welcome within as a peer rather than… Well. Rather than being the thing being worshipped.

Ty is very messy and her living quarters are rarely anything but a state. It’s not that she want’s them to be like this, it’s just that no matter how tidy she tries to be, she always seem to somehow end up with more mess. If she spends an hour focusing on cleaning up her bedchamber, she will walk into a living quarter that is somehow worse than before she started, and it eventually overwhelms her to the point of frustration.

(Troy has automated a routine with his ship’s service bots to maintain her personal quarters as well after giving up on her ever breaking out of this cycle, to which she is very thankful for.)

Bites her nails when nervous or worried, and can do so till the point they bleed. She’s never been able to break out of this habit and isn’t proud of it. It’s a remnant of her time with Typhon and a little reminder of him whenever she catches herself gnawing on a nail edge, and she hates that she can’t stop.

Her duties as God Queen take up almost all her spare time. If she’s not live streaming then she’s taking offerings, or doling out punishment to penitent worshippers desperate to be smote by her touch, or sitting in boring ass meetings with corporate sleezebags while Troy works them over. Smirking between fingers as she rests her chin in her hand, watching as her silver tongued twin lets them think they have the upper hand in the dealings, till suddenly they don’t.

In her wind down time she’s either watching movies in comfy indoor clothes, tank tops and shorts, or indulging her actual hobby. Tyreen Calypso spends a lot of time making soap.

The optional luxury of bathing was one of the first things she can remember being shocked by when they landed on Pandora. They had been hygienic on Nekro, as much as possible, but washing there was heating water over the ancient holo stove the family used for cooking, then scouring yourself with that nasty-ass soap Grouse made out of animal fat every few days.

There was nothing enjoyable about it, it was a chore that had to be done, same as cleaning clothes or cookware, so when she had her first bath in a bathroom with three (3) different liquids that smelled great that she could use to clean her hair??? Mind. Blown.

Soon as she had her own ship, she filled the bathroom with soaps, ointments, anything that smelled good and felt good and let her melt in her bath for hours on end. It was only a couple of months later when Troy offhandedly mentioned she “Could just make that stuff yourself, ya know. Loads of echo tutorials on it. Might be fun.” And Ty’s brain popped.

She could do it herself. The herbs, spices, and oils she used were dried or refined, nothing was alive, nothing would wilt at her touch, and it became an enjoyable messy hobby for her to play with when the mood hit. 

She flutters her eyelashes at any comments on her scent ever since, because she made it and damn straight it’s delicious. She gifts Troy little bars based on his own tastes often too, it’s a wordless way to make clear she values the work he puts in for their cause. 

Tyreen sways towards warm citrus. Sharp grapefruit and black pepper, rose and patchouli, pomelo and juniper. She’s inviting and hot to scent. Troy prefers cleaner, spiced smells. Bergamot and sandalwood, ceder and seasalt, lemongrass and witch-hazel. She takes genuine pride in noting when he’s been using something she made for him over what he’d usually buy.

Her hair is naturally a very deep brown as opposed to black like her twin’s is, she doesn’t enjoy the upkeep for her white bleached style but it’s part of her aesthetic at this point, and her God Queen aesthetic is worth any price.

Asks are Open!