#society as a whole screwed itself

[kpantydrop]

Hot Take: heterosexual relationships are some of the most toxic relationships out there these days. EVEN IF ONE OF THE INVOLVED PARTIES IS QUEER these relationships are toxic and I'm not blaming either of the parties, I'm blaming the way we are socialized.

I'm blaming the way women are expected to be clean, smell nice, shave everything, dress to the nines, and actually just try with their appearance while society will look at a man wearing a trash bag and nothing else and eb like yeah he's attractive

I'm blaming the fact that men don't get scolded enough for objectifying women. For staring at our bodies and making unwanted comments or advances, for being exposed to corn at a young age and never told that this is an inaccurate portrayal of the nasty.

I'm blaming hookup culture

Capitalism

The patriarchy

Men and women are socialized so differently in the modern era that it is well nigh impossible for them to coexist in a healthy relationship. It is not the couples fault that their relationship is toxic, but therapy would help alot

[lazy-sixteen]

I was thinking about the themes of One Piece, and what differentiated out characters we see as good versus bad, especially in a work that takes a really accepting view of different moral standpoints and values (Coby and SWORDS's justice is very different from Sabo and the RA's justice but they are both presented as good guys we'd want to root for).

So like, why do we root for Luffy following his dream to be Pirate King, but not Teach?

What about hating Crocodile who wanted to create an ideal society free of the WG but not the RA who want something similar for whole the world?

Big Mom who wants to create a place where all sentient are equal and get along versus Koala and/or Otohime who dream of that same thing for humans and fishmen?

I mean the obvious answer is that protagonists and their allies tend to be likeable - they are usually drawn prettier, have less kick the dog moments, and we get more time with them as an audience. They have to be on some level, or no one would read the manga.

But from an in-story perspective, I think its a an under looked facet of Luffy's character, for him chasing his dream is more important than obtaining it. It's why he turns down Rayleigh straight up offering to tell him where Laugh Tale is, and what is on it. What is important to Luffy isn't so much becoming Pirate King, it is being free, having fun, sailing with his friends on the journey to be Pirate King.

It's why he helps Vivi in Alabasta, Cricket in Skypiea, Shirahoshi in Fishmen Island, and the Wano crew in uhh Wano (the journey wouldn't be fun if he'd abandoned his friends to do it)

It's why he takes dangerous detours to places like Little Garden or Sky Island or Punk Hazard(the journey wouldn't be fun if he didn't get to explore)

It's why he risks his life against Arlong for Nami and declares the entire world his enemy for Robin and literally threatens to starve to death to get Sanji back ( the journey wouldn't be fun if he can't do it with his crew by his side)

All of this is why, Luffy isn't afraid of dying either. He can die at any point on his journey to being Pirate King, and feel no regret because the journey itself was the important part.

Compare this to two other D.'s Law and Blackbeard.

Law's also relentlessly pursuing his dream when we meet him (stop Doflamingo to avenge Cora), and he is miserable.

Law in trying to achieve his dream whatever the cost keeps putting himself in situations he hates.

He leaves his beloved crew behind because the mission is basically a suicide run. He cozies up to the Government he hates and hands his heart over to a morally bankrupt mad scientist he's obviously disgusted by. He plans to get Doflamingo in trouble with Kaido, which mean 1) he likely won't get to punch out Mingo himself, 2) there is a high probability of civilians getting caught in the crossfire/dying horribly.

This journey sucks. If Law had died during any point of this he would have been the world's most pissed off ghost.

It's Luffy and the Strawhats busting in and transforming that journey that puts Law on the path to success with his dream and with not being so goddamn miserable.

Like screw Caesar, let;s have Luffy kick his ass and then you fix the children he was experimenting on. Screw playing nice with the government, do what you want and call us your allies instead. Screw Doflamingo, you and Luffy go beat him up and the rest of us will pull his government/crime family down around his ears.

And it works! Law's grumpy and annoyed and cursing Luffy out, but he tells Mingo he believes Luffy can pull out a miracle and looks more at peace watching Doflamingo and Luffy brawl - knowing that he'll die or succeed with his ally/friend - than he ever did with his fool-proof plan.

The journey before destination thing is also why Blackbeard feels like a special type of evil in OP despite there being technically worse/more evil villains, because Blackbeard always prioritizes his dream over how he gets it.

He'll stay in the shadows for 20 years to increase his chances of success (wouldn't it have been more fun to be a captain like he obviously wants?)

He'll kill his crewmate, turn his commander in for a reward, then kill his captain (wouldn't it have been more fun to stay friends, he never indicates he hates/dislikes them?)

He invites strong people - and strong seems to be the only criteria - to join his crew, though tbh their personalities often suck. I don't recall any panel of his crew just hanging out or joking around which even Baroque Works, Buggy's crew, and Kaido's Beast Pirates get (wouldn't it have been more fun to recruit people he can befriend, not just people he can use)

Like obviously Blackbeard feels like the antithesis of Luffy - even though they are both all about chasing their dreams. Luffy's all about the chasing, and Blackbeard only cares about the results.

[fazedlight]

Why am I obsessed with the rift?

From my first fic to the many many many many season 5 fics I've written, to the fic where the whole thing could've been averted in season 2, to my no-villain-era-for-Lena in season 3 (twice) and season 4 fics......... I seem to have developed a bit of a rift pattern.

A reasonable person might ask: Why?

There's something that itches in my mind: I think either woman would've been fully justified in walking away from their friendship, and yet they ultimately didn't.

It starts with Kara, who is ultimately a fractured person. She deeply values the truth, and yet she's forced to live with various lies, unable to be her full self.

Her identity is in the in-betweens. She feels adrift between two cultures, she knows her alien state while reaping the privilege of passing, she hides core aspects of herself on a daily basis. I'm sucked into the rift, in part, because of who she is and how she struggles to put it all together. I think her frustration will resonate with anyone who's stuck in the in-betweens.

Kara's struggle for identity plants the seed for the rift. The bigotry of society meant she had to have a secret identity in the first place, and keeping the secret from Lena was certainly reasonable for a time.

We can debate endlessly about when Kara should've told Lena - I think it's really hard to find the line between "too soon" and "too late" - but it ultimately doesn't matter. Because it's Kara's kneejerk reaction to Lena's kryptonite that forms the first sort of betrayal, not the secret itself.

Kara screws up - she says something she regrets, she doubles down when threatened and scared. These are common mistakes... but we have super-level circumstances, so we get super-level consequences. And the engine she has inside her that fears loss (which she's suffered to a level that is unimaginable to anyone on Earth) kicks in. She can't lose another person she loves.

But who is she holding onto?

In the series, and in flashbacks, we watch Lena's progression from idealistic techie to cynical recluse. While she's experienced loss and isolation, that's not the cause of her shift.

It's in experiencing her idol and protector become the madman who kidnaps her. It's in realizing her best friend has betrayed her by taking the one thing that could've saved her brother. It's in moving to a new city to start over, and meeting a mentor who uses her to start a global invasion. It's in her partner in scientific discovery being a pawn to her brother, colluding behind her back.

And then there's the final downfall. Her new best friend - her trusted confidant, her hero, the one who made her feel not so alone anymore - is the super who denigrated her, maligned her, spied on her. Lena had two important people in her life at that point, and she sacrificed one for the other... only to find out the other was a lie.

With betrayal after betrayal - Lex and Andrea and Rhea and Eve and Kara - she loses faith that anyone is above their worst impulses.

So she falls to her own.

How can good people do bad things?

There's a saying I heard around MIT sometimes: there are no technical solutions to social problems. It's easy to forget - when you're surrounded by people seeking to improve the world via science and engineering - that you can't solve humanity via technology or logic or rules. Lena forgot this.

Myriad marks a shift in the rift. Kara lied to Lena, antagonized her, spied on her - but her wrongs were directed towards Lena. Lena's initial response - the petty manipulation and the plan to out Kara - were directed back at Kara.

But then the rift fundamentally shifts.

At this point, Lena's wrongs are no longer just about Kara - she's trying to brainwash the world. She mindcontrolled Malefic and enslaved Eve. This went beyond the fallout between two friends.

It's clear that her intentions are still good here. She's not a megalomaniac like her brother, she's not forming an us-vs-them mentality like her stepmother. She's an anti-villain at this point in the story - desperate to find what's true, in a world full of lies.

It's a hard line to walk, acknowledging Lena's trauma and well-intentioned motivations while realizing she's still ultimately culpable for her own actions. But it's important to try to balance, because Lena is still redeemable.

But getting back to the relationship itself - Kara played a large role in pushing Lena to the edge of her trauma, which was entirely motivated by Kara's own trauma.

You hide things so you don’t lose people. I run from people who hide things. I guess we were bound to explode.

Lena says this in my first fic mentioned earlier, and it summarizes the rift as succinctly as I can put it. Their traumas were incompatible, and their relationship should've failed.

And yet.

Delving into how the CW screwed up the rift could be its own essay. They gave us a complex and layered situation, only to gut it with It's a Super Life (beloved/beloathed), the narrative retroactively justifying Kara instead of examining her foils, glossing over Lena instead of delving into her ethical blindspots. The rift was cancelled.

What does that leave us with?

Well, I guess it left me seeking the rift, over and over again. I'm certainly not the first author to do a rift fic, and I doubt I'll be the last. There seem to be a few different approaches:

Some authors delve into the nuance, having the two characters hash out what they've been through in a way that feels balanced and real. In particular, I love the @searidings fic with the birds i'll share this lonely view. I don't think I have the skill to pull off that type of story.

Some writers lean heavily on one "side" or the other, often with lots of grovelling. This never resonates with me, because at some point in a relationship there has to be the realization that it's "us vs. the problem", rather than "you vs. me". In my mind, these fics miss the layers of trauma that led to the rift.

Some authors make the rift not matter. If you put the characters through hell and back, the anger will lose its thrust, and they'll be left wanting to heal.

I fall into the last category.

There's a moment from permanence by @itllsetyoufree that I especially love, where - in the aftermath of season 6 - Eliza asks Lena why she forgave Kara. Lena can't answer.

We like to think we're logically driven. But in my experience, forgiveness - and a host of other emotions - never work that way. Sometimes "sorry" cuts it, sometimes it doesn't. A lot of times, forgiveness comes from the realization that someone genuinely wants to connect, and that the fallout was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Of course, when your fallout includes extra levels of gaslighting and a bit of global brainwashing, making it relatively unimportant requires something drastic.

That's where I end up landing. Putting my blorbos in Situations helps them see the other in a new light - see the other's genuineness, the other's fears, the other's love. Often times, this comes with the simultaneous threat to someone's life (though that's not necessary, especially if it's earlier in Lena's breaking point cutoff).

I do assume - and sometimes imply - that they're also having those discussions, working things out in the background. Because of what I put them through in my fics, I don't think those end up being explosive discussions. It's about figuring out the practical aftermath of what the heart already knows at that point.

Whether I deliver on that is ultimately up to the reader, but that's my approach. Because at the end of the day, love is about cherishing and understanding the person in front of you - flaws and and traumas in all. These stories are driven by loving both characters, and trying to see them the way they see each other.

The rift is a story about love and connection - how those things can't happen without embracing someone else's trauma and without understanding one's own imperfection. Because that's what's at the root of all of us.

And that's why I write the rift.

[itsnothingofinterest]

Oh goodness. God fucking damn it. AFO is back and about to claim that he's the one behind everything bad in Tomura's whole life.

GO AWAY YOU SELF-IMPORTANT CRINGELORD THIS STORY IS NOT ABOUT JUST YOU! Or, apparently it is! Because it looks like we're going to get the reveal that he truly was the one who gave Tenko Decay and manipulated the people around Tenko to ensure the tragedy of the Shimuras.

No doubt we will only logically then get the reveal that he gave Eri her quirk as well, since she has near all the same signs of just having a random mutation quirk as Tenko, and the moral of this plotline we are learning is that there is no random tragedy. And of course we'll also learn he killed Endeavor's dad, gave Toga her quirk, invented the modern day anti-heteromorph rhetoric, and also capitalism, that he was the guy who jumped in front of Jin's bike, and even that he's actually causing the quirk singularity apocalypse. How dastardly he is for all that; but the good news is that it'll mean that once he's gone for good for real this time, Crime & Conflict Will Be No More! YAY!

At least I sure hope so for the sake of the MHA-verse, because the world is looking pretty doomed otherwise. Tomura, The only character who cared about addressing all of that and might've gotten Deku to care about addressing all of that, is looking set to get revealed to be No-Agency-Man who it turns out was manipulated by AFO in his every thought and action this whole time. Who's gonna listen to that guy's opinions, those AFO-by-proxy opinions, on systemic inequality & corruption? Certainly not Deku; he gets to go on thinking the world All Might built is perfect outside of those dastardly AFO-like villains.

This, fyi, is the main reason I so adamantly opposed the 'AFO gave Tenko Decay' reveal; this 'Today is saved Tomorrow can go fuck itself' ending it leads to where our Tomura gets saved but the next Tenko is screwed, as is society as a whole when they become a new Tomura, form a new League, and it all gets set on a loop. (I mean unless AFO really is behind literally everything, then that's a different problem.)

God I hate this development. Please Horikoshi, veer away before it's too late.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #50 – The Gold Eaters by Ronald Wright

This was the rare book I had literally never heard of before opening it - a birthday gift from a friend, and the rare one not resulting from some sort of conversation about what books we’ve been meaning to read. It’s the first historical fiction I’ve read in year and years, so I can’t really say how it stands in terms of the rest of the genre. Reading it for myself, I had a great time – though the book did seem confused about which part of ‘historical fiction’ it actually cared about.

The book (primarily) follows Waman, an adolescent boy just coming of age in a nowhere coastal village on the edge of the ascendant and seemingly world-spanning Inca Empire, the demands and products of which are the only outside intrusions upon his life. Feeling stifled at home after his father returns from a period of conscription building roads and bridges in the highlands, he runs away to have some adventures and become a man on a trading ship. And in a stroke of truly cosmic misfortune, on his first voyage they run into a scouting expedition run by one Francisco Pizarro, investigating rumours of a strange land called Peru and its cities of gold.

Waman is abducted and conscripted into service as the Spaniards guide and interpreter. He spends the next decades of his life with an unwilling front-row seat to History unfolding, making and losing friends and endlessly searching for his family and childhood love as the whole world is overthrown again and again around him.

The great strength of the book, I think, is how it manages to portray the civilizations of the past as both familiar and awe-inspiring. The Spanish and Inca Empires are both portrayed almost like fictional kingdoms in a fantasy novel, simultaneously defamilirized and made new and strange, and presented from the point of view of someone whose ideas of normal are at least as strange to us as any of the peoples he meets. More than that, it never stops feeling like a world where people actually lived and worked, one that made sense on a human scale where all its inhabitants could find a place for themselves (or else be forced into one). It was never exactly confusing either -even if it does feel a bit like cheating to jump between points of view to ensure there’s a wide-eyed foreigner needing things explained to them wherever it’s required.

Wright is apparently a historian by trade, and has mostly previously written nonfiction. Given the sheer cornucopia of details about both daily life and the exact sequences of events that led to Spanish dominion, I entirely believe it.

As history, the two things that I most took away from the reading experience were the portrayal of the Inca at their peak as a really vital, world-shaping imperial society on the one hand, and just how drawn out and contingent the process of conquest was, on the other. The book does a great job getting across just how incredible the road- and bridge-building projects and the great imperial cities were, and how rich and organized a society it was (without ever entirely falling into portraying the Inca as some prelapsarian utopia, either, which is how a great many works in the general space seem to screw this up). It then also does an excellent job getting across just how apocalyptic the smallpox epidemic that swept through the empire was, and how ruinous the wars of succession that followed. Pizarro triumphed because he was facing an empire that was a death-choked ruin at war with itself, manipulating and extorting an emperor with many enemies and not much way in the way of skills or legitimacy except that everyone ahead of him was dead.

The other thing that did strike me is that – the historical narrative as I have always received it is that the Spanish conquered their American empire in one single, cataclysmic moment of contact, disease and violence and simple shock leaving them ruling the better part of a continent before anyone even realized what was happening. Which I’d intellectually known was false, but the book really does an amazing job dramatizing the fact that the building of the Spanish empire was a multi-decade – multi-generational, really – affair, and far more a matter of politics and logistics than initial shock an awe.

My main complaint with the book is the matter of genre – it spent the entire back half continuously changing its mind about what it wanted to be. Is this Waman’s story, a man coming of age and scrambling to form a life for himself as the tides of history destroy and remake his world around him and buffet him hither and yon? Or is he just a convenient POV to what’s essentially a rationalized history of (the initial chapters of) the fall of the Inca, improbably standing at the side of and sharing drinks with one famous personage after another to hear their thoughts and see their pivotal deeds? The book never quite settles on an answer, and so Waman’s own arc and personal concerns shift from feeling like thin connective tissue to the emotional core of the story and back several times. The issue gets worse in the latter parts of the book, where it just outright shifts into omniscient exposition of historical events at times.

Also on goodreads this is tagged as a romance and – okay so there is a romance in this book. But it’s the third or fourth most important relationship at most. For the vast majority of the page count it’s just a childhood crush Waman nurses as motivation to get home. If you come in expecting this is mostly be a love story you are going to have a bad time.

But yeah! I should read more historical fiction.

[bowandbrush]

What things do you like and dislike about Rottmnt?

the thing I HATE is the fact is what discarded and shortened to a season and a half.

ACTUAL rambling below

but really though…I don’t think there’s anything specific. I’m not a huge fan of the sheer chaos in the hidden city, but I think that’s because of the lack of episodes and time the writers had to work with. But as a society, it doesn’t seem like it could last very long, considering how crappy the police are and how easy it is to get ahold of a cloaking brooch.

Other then that, (which isn’t really even a problem to me) I love rise. It helped me improve in art VASTLY, (though I still have a lot to improve on.)

None of the female characters felt like “the girl” (if you know what I mean.)

the turtles represent siblinghood perfectly. And the positive masculinity is aced in this show.

the character designs can’t be topped. I don’t think any iteration past rise will ever top it. I know I have a bias, but I’m right. The end. Everyone can go home.

And I’m quite glad there weren’t ships in this show. I feel like it would have been a warzone in the fandom. And rise’s predecessor, 2012, definitely screwed up in the romance department.

(Don’t get me wrong though, I love a good ship when done correctly and not crammed down my throat coughcoughleosagicoughcough)

One more thing- NO, I think there should NOT be any more siblings! The four have been established so well, that shoving Jennika, Venus or Frida in is just kind of… hard to swallow. Maybe it could have been done right. (Not counting fan AUs) But I agree with Peter Laird, the OG creator of the turtles (in adding another sibling.) What I don’t mind the introduction of another turtle. (I mean, that’s what my whole maksface AU is centered around.) kinda like Venus in IDW. She’s part of the story, but she isn’t the TMNT. Kinda like April being a Mad Dog, but not within the turtle group itself.

…I think that’s all. Thanks for reading this far =)

thanks for the ask!

[thetruearchmagos]

Probably the only two things I didn't like in Blue Eye Samurai were how 'exoticised' the guns were, and the whole castle assault thing.

The last one is probably self explanatory considering how particular I can be about screwing up military 'activities' in media, but the first one might need some explanation.

Ya see, I don't actually care about whether the gun models were historically accurate, or their effectiveness, or anything like that. What I care about is how alien they seem to have been made to appear to the 'Japanese' side of the story. Like, this is Edo Japan, they have guns, and used guns back in the day to unify the country.

While I can kinda understand them not appearing in most parts of the setting, I'm kinda ticked off at the fact that the guard of the Shogun himself, being presumably some of the best in Japan, don't either?!? In fact, they act like they've never seen a gun in their life, but that gets into the battle side of things and I don't wanna go further than drawing that connection.

Nonetheless, I think there's something more to this utterly odd portrayal of firearms here at stake. The great, long lived, and stupid myth / legend that 'Samurai don't use guns', which has existed well before BES, is itself just one facet of the common trope that 'oriental' societies are hopelessly and actively backwards in their rejection of modernity, to their ruin at the hands of those who do.

And I don't want to blame this show or anyone connected to it for the fact that this trope exists, because I don't think they mean to trade in that sorta thing. There is a genuine narrative impact achieved through so thoroughly overstating the resistance to modernity that these 'old elites' embody, but at the same time it's hard to overstate how much the zeitgeist / public 'knowledge' that surrounds foreign societies and times is shaped by the media that portrays them, 'knowledge' that sometimes leaks into perceptions of actual, current societies, though I don't consider that fact a necessary addition to justify criticism.

I guess I wanted to say that I, for one, just don't think that a good story is worth misrepresenting the actual sentiments and beliefs of times long past. It's sad to see it happen.

[matt0044]

Task Force X is PERFECT for a Superman villain team to focus on.

It's basically leaning into the "immigrant" angle originally thought up for Supes to its logical extreme: going against a government that demonizes them. Especially with allusion to Isis and how prisoners are treated.

It's not just saving the world, it's saving the world from itself in a way. Saving America from it's paranoia of those outside of their borders. It feels like the whole "what if Superman went evil?" think pieces were personified by those like Amanda Waller and her organization.

It especially feels relevant with how we're not aware more than ever how people in power are actively screwing over a few to maintain the fragile house of cards that is "society" as they see it.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Been thinking about Shinji and Momo and specifically abt them in relations to the system or the ideal of the system that kind of screwed them over. With Shinji being unjustly thrown out and no one rlly fully unpacking how much of an HR concern was Aizen’s weird boundaries with Momo. You once mentioned in one of ur posts abt Shinji that the Vizards for sure do not come back with full trust in the soul society again and have their own agendas. This makes me wonder how Shinji and Momo navigate that system together now that both of them have made the decision to continue to serve under it? Momo, herself does come across as duty bound but has shown instances of acting against it when she feels the need to for the sake of the greater good (like disobeying orders to save hisagi, or admitting that not all laws are good laws even if she’s technically quoting Aizen) Sorry for the rambling! These two just fascinate me cuz I feel like aside from the whole Aizen thing, they’re like two diff flavors of being back on the job after being screwed over. The somewhat jaded mentor and the eager beaver who got the rug thrown under her.

We joke about Gotei HR all the time, but honestly in the context of their own world and worldviews would Aizen and Hinamori come across to anyone as having weird boundaries? I’m not saying it didn’t get weird but I kind of feel like part of the nature of the thing is that it’d be hard for anyone in Soul Society to point to anything Aizen did that was notably weirder than anything else everyone else does. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be an HR violation somewhere (I just completed my state-mandated sexual harassment training three days ago, so it’s all nice and fresh, LOL) but even if the Gotei had HR I doubt it would have helped in Aizen and Hinamori’s case.

I know there are people who get very deep into canonicity debates about whether Aizen and Hinamori ever slept with each other, but I’m not personally all that interested in the genre as a whole—like, the nailing down of what is or isn’t canon. In fanfic, I figure anything goes if you can make it work for you in your story. For my part, I think Aizen would take pride in not having to have sex with Hinamori in order to make his plans work. Like an *everyone* does sexual manipulation but he doesn’t even *have* to and that’s the *beauty* of the game kind of deal.

But to the question itself!

My take on Shinji is that he is, of course, very well aware of the ways the Gotei fucked him and the rest of the Vizard, and has no illusions about that. But he’s not someone who simmers in that in the same way that Hiyori does.

Honestly, maybe a good comparison might be that Shinji treats the Gotei the way he treated Aizen as a vice-captain. According to Aizen, that was a mistake, but Shinji knows the Gotei better than he ever knew Aizen. Arguably, the Gotei is more knowable than Aizen. Shinji has a certain savvy about him with respect to the Gotei as an institution, and if you now how it works, then there are degrees to which it can be managed, and perhaps even made to work for you. And if you want that to happen, the only place you can do that work is inside it, as one of its Captains. Shinji’s known that since even before TBTP, probably since before he was even himself a Captain the first time around.

But I think another key element here is that Shinji is very, very good at separating the work from the institution from the people. He can engage his octopus brain and hold the meaning of what shinigami effect in the world separate from the ethical and bureaucratic conundrums posed by the Gotei, separate from the personalities that make it up (which are the problem and the best part about the Gotei in turns). He reminds me of this guy who’s been in my toxic-ass profession for AGES but still has a ton of energy and capacity for wonder and enthusiasm and being smart in ways that make everyone smarter, and he manages this by being absolutely ruthless about not getting all sopped up by departmental drama or overly precious about ~the profession~ and making very intentional decisions about what matters and what absolutely doesn’t. I think having that as a model was incredibly useful for Hinamori, as someone with a propensity to care deeply for and about everything.

I mentioned in the tags of another post that I envisioned Hinamori as having a healing justice orientation to the world, part of which is about locating “evil” outside of individuals. It is not inherent, but made. While this does not absolve Aizen of his actions or their supporting worldviews, a path to forgiveness is at least partly about recognizing the bigger picture that produced the conditions for the fomenting of these views/plans. (And that’s before the many ways the system failed them in ways that didn’t come directly through Aizen.) Which means that moving past Aizen is also about moving past the Gotei/Soul Society, while also continuing to work for it—in a major, responsible way.

Like, Hinamori is not clocking in to sweep the floors and then leave to her wife and kids. She’s leading the thing. So what’s the journey there? We see her reclaim her role as 5th Division Vice-Captain in the Winter War (as distinct from being Aizen’s Vice-Captain—ymmv on this, like Matsumoto’s does). In that role, Hinamori has not seemed to have much of a problem with challenging authority when she felt it just to do so, even in moments of more even temper (shouting at Byakuya over Renji’s unconscious body lol). Which I feel like lends credence to the idea that Aizen’s betrayal was probably not her introduction to the world being often an unjust and deeply painful place, or even to the Gotei being these things. Like, I think she understood that. Maybe Aizen even talked to her about that, and part of why she liked him so much was the opportunity to have these long, intellectual conversations about philosophy and governance. And what do you do at the end of these conversations? You can be bitter and angry about it; you can be angry and want to burn it down; you can drink the Kool-Aid and become complicit in it; you can naively deny it and either become complicit in it or get destroyed by it; or you can—

Do what Shinji and Hinamori do about it together, which is to resolve to be the energy they wish to see in the world, which in their interpretation also requires some complicity—being officers in Gotei—and, having made that choice, periodically needing to process that. I mean, I think that’s part and parcel of being involved in any kind of institution (I know I think about it allllll the fucking time), but I imagine the experience is further magnified by the particular histories Shinji and Hinamori have with the Gotei.

I imagine sometimes—a rough week at the office, or in the aftermath of a Blood War they wonder if they aren’t being too complicit. Or, conversely, if they aren’t echoing Aizen too much, in their resolution to craft a world of their own devising. But they were different people, both from each other and very much from Aizen; their devices and visions are different, too. And so the fear falls away.

It will come back. It will probably never leave. But sometimes it’s better to be haunted than not, and ghosts can be welcome reminders.

[our-trans-punk-experience]

What does it really mean to be a "punk?" Is it a subculture? An ideology? Both? Something else?

It seems very interesting to me but I'm afraid that it'll turn into something where I have to sacrifice myself for the cause/scene/group or something. I'm not doing that. Period. I want to do stuff, you know? I want to fight. I want to make music. But I don't want to worship an idol of rigid Marxist analysis that asserts itself as the one true way of understanding our world as well as the one true moral framework. Not that I'm a big fan of morality anyways. I'm not joining The Christian Church 2.0. I'm not hanging with the bougie college kids who worship labor and workers.

I like anarchism because I want to do whatever I want. Period. It is a distinctly egoistic affair for me- think max stirner. That's not to say that I'm going to ignore critical theory stuff entirely (as I myself am a neurodivergent queer). I want to learn about the struggles of POC, queer people, neurodivergent people, et cetera so that I can resist against society and government. However, I don't want to be some kind of liberal politically-correct type that brings up their own identity in unrelated topics because they want to feel important. I'm not a twitter user.

I already know that I can do with concepts whatever I like. If I don't want to be "punk" then that's not going to stop me from being anarchist. People who feel the need to attach themselves to subcultures because they wanna feel correct and agreeable are fuckin' dweebs. What I want to know is what's in it for me. Why should I be "punk?"

OkOk tysm for being so engaged i love when ppl rlly are not afraid to grill me for information

1: Punk is a subculture, with a variety of politics in the scene, united by non-conformity and being anti-establishment / anti-authority.

2: You should in no way have to sacrifice anything about yourself, your style, or your politics to be punk. The whole idea is non-conformity so you do not have to meet any sort of criteria for style, music, or politics except the aforementioned [on a separate note i just answered an ask on punk politics, but could make another more in depth punk politics post on request].

2a: If someone on the scene gives you shit for enjoying showtunes and britpop alongside black flag and x-ray spex then that person is a wanker

2b: If someone in the scene gives you shit for wearing a battle vest with an mcr patch or a logo from a tv show you like alongside your eat the rich stitch-on then that person is a wanker

2c: if someone in the scene gives you shit for being punk in the "wrong way" then they are the one who doesn't understand what it means to be punk. they are, say it with me, a wanker

3: yeah dw, punk is not in any way synonymous w champagne socialist theory purists like you fear, its about action and small acts of resistance and mutual aid more than holding out on doing anything helpful bc it isnt a great communist revolution. we are the revolution

4: I like that you've done your reading. just as an aside.

5: yes I'd say esp nowadays (less so in the 70s) punk is a scene that has a strong focus on queer rights movement. The original punk focuses were more about class and race tensions, but as the subculture has evolved, the fight has become about standing up for anyone getting screwed over by the fuckers on top. you are in the right place for learning about the struggles facing multiple groups and how you can help them for sure

6: fear not, becoming a punk does not mean you have to join twitter

7: "I already know that I can do with concepts whatever I like." Good. You've got the hard part down already.

8: Your final point, on why you should be punk, has a bunch of different answers. Be punk bc its a great gender neutral term of address. Be punk because it'll make it easier for you to find cool ppl u get on with. Be punk bc we have good music. Be punk because DIYing your clothes is very rewarding. Be punk because it's an amazing community. Be punk bc tbfh you seem pretty punk already. You've sort of gone in reverse order to a lot of punks. You really have a good grasp on your own politics and philosophies, and you're clearly anti-conformist. If you want you can now work back into the music, the style, and immersing yourself in the subculture. We would love to have you

Do whatever you like, hope this was helpful

in solidarity :]

[joannasteez]

crying, laughing, loving, lying - being comfortable is no good

pairing: roman reigns x angel (black oc) warning: this little chapter is all angst and unfortunately barely features angel. but i'm giving backstory!! no other warning besides swearing and talks of divorce. authors note: i love imperfect characters. so yummy. first chapter found here. word count: 1700

roman loves his job. he loves the campus. and he loves his office —which to him, despite seth's modernistic sneering, is wholly traditional—outfitted tirelessly to suit a timeless sense of taste. dark wood furnishings and overly warm lamp lights. deep shelf walls and old brass ceiling fans. the neat clutter of sports paraphernalia surrounding unread midterm papers —which detailed in their own ways and intellectual fashions, the steady rise of sociopolitical tensions of pre-world war-two society through a 1936 olympic games lens — and once looked over defensive plays meant for forthcoming football games. and this here was his little heaven, his peace, but said peace was being tainted. squandered and spat on. because of all the days he'd chosen to settle in at the office on campus versus doing work from home, she, had stopped by to see him this day. to parade around that pitiful frowning in her lips and the beautiful, un-useable ring she'd never bothered to just get rid of.

and he was very specific about not getting it back. about not wanting it back. about her even selling it, if thats what she wanted. since she'd always done what she wanted anyways. what difference would it make if she sold the eighteen karat in exchange for whatever dress or lamp or table caught her eye? roman really couldn't give less than a shit what she exchanged it for, just as long as he'd never have to see it again. because all the memory is stored there, in the all those beautiful cuts of diamond. but then again, as he said to himself, 'amina does what she wants', including showing face when showing face was exactly what he didn't need. 

he seems to be the only tired one in all this. the only struggling survivor, hell the only survivor really. amina's face feening to look written in a perpetual state of guilt which was complete, utter bullshit. but then again disingenuous was her forte. and roman was sure that the divorce lawyer was the happiest they'd ever been. maybe even eating off the money they'd made at the expense of his failed marriage. but who knew. at this point, who fucking knew. 

his glasses give the ring clarity. a shine. making his jaw twitch and his foot shift till his knee jumps. all of which are involuntary. and this burns his core, the very base of his belly, because why does the discomfort take him so wholly?   unsullied and lacking compassion as it travels his skin. 

he can feel her eyes fixing into him. screwing hot over every line and detail of his freckled face as she waits. and oh does roman make her wait. letting the silence drown the room till theres nothing but the whipping spin of the ceiling fan and the warm lamps singing with a buzz.

"are you gonna say something?"

and all he can remember is his bed. the distress of the sheets and the boiling heat in his body. her moaning and then the absolute fright. the guilt as she forced her body away into the wall, the sheets surrounding her, drowning her up to her neck. his fingers cold from the breeze. 

the ring still on her finger. why even keep it on?

something in roman's skin flares. a burning irritation. an anger bought on by the existence of anger itself. because why should he be reduced to something this wild and ill-controlled? why should he be the one suffering, feeining stability. why should a simple ring bother him so much. he was, is, better than this, better than the pity written in her eyes. he hated this. why didn't she just fucking sell the damn ring. 

"hows terry doing?", that name like poison on his tongue. the whole memory of it coming up to dry his throat till he's tasting bits of bile. his fingers flexing as he takes to fingering over the stacks of papers at his desk. "still enjoying my headboard?" 

"don't do that...", amina's eyes averting. guilt, guilt and more guilt. "...don't, don't bring him up like it's on him". 

"oh?". a scoff but a laugh too. disgust and amazement. but he's irritated too. surprised. "is this accountability? are we in the end times finally?" 

she sighs exhausted. "roman". 

"amina", exhausted too but wryly so. to dig into her skin in any way he could. 

and when she takes her beat, which he finds annoyingly dramatic, staring into his eyes with all the sincerity drawn up from her gut to say "i'm sorry", he still can't find the will to care. 

and he tells her as much.

"i. don't. care", pushing the ring with his finger over toward the edge of his desk. the fast motion threatening to knock it off the surface if not for amina snatching it mid drop. "take the ring back. pawn it. sell it. shove it in an envelop and burn it", rising from his seat to take a stack of book at the side of his desk to the deep shelf wall. his body tall and wide and rife with anger. "i don't give a shit. i don't want it". 

he can hear her shifting to get up too. her heels clicking small. cautioned steps. not so far but not too close. and now he's sees that's just been the regular state of affairs for everything concerning them. an arms distance of romance. 

"it belongs to you". 

one of the books tighten in his hand. a hard cover stress ball. "the simple fact, that i keep saying i don't wan't it, and you keep shovin' it in my face, really just lets me know you’re here to twist the knife". he shelves the books impatiently, the slotting of them ending, each, with a thud into the wood. "just give me this one thing. listen to me this one time". 

amina takes her turn to bristle. to advance at him and laugh. mirthless and mocking. 

"you wanted the wedding in the summer, so we planned it for july. you wanted to move back home, so i followed you", each click of her heel harsh against his office floors. straining to creak till it's edging into his skin. "you wanted the bigger house and you didn't want me to work and you didn't want me to hang around certain men. i always listened to you". 

'no', roman thinks. whipping away from the shelf. his ears scorching. "wrong", his pointing finger toughing into his chest. "i didn't want you around terry because he was a dog in fucking heat every time you were near him. and everything was always negotiable. i never forced anything". his blood pumping sharp and wild. "you liked me making decisions. you liked being taken care of. i made shit a playground for you, and you ran it to hell till you got caught". 

"negotiable? really?", amina's voice shrill and wavering. "like its a fucking business deal? well so much for a fucking merger of equals”. the ring clutched in her fist, her balled fingers pushing into his chest as she clicks up to him. no longer an arms length away. "you just knew that you knew what was best all the time". 

and when he refuses to accept her forcibly pushing against his chest, the ring falls. 

"and the one thing i didn't know?", his face a breath away from hers. the warmth of vanilla filling his nose. making his screen cringe and his jaw tighten. "that my wife was getting fucked cervix deep in my bed by terry, every other weekend since the night of our wedding". 

"it wasn't every other weekend". 

he laughs. from his belly and with a soft trembling in his nerves. his body uncomfortable still. bothered by the shake of his own anger. "but it was in my bed, in the sheets i bought".

she sneers. her eyes rolling harsh.

"everything with you is always, i and me". 

"yes amina", his tone patronizing. "because you cheated on me. you never even tried", his head shaking. "im not the villain in this". 

her eyes glisten. welling to threaten the breaking out of tears. 

"i had no voice. no say. no room to make mistakes with you. everything was always handled. i couldn't breathe". 

"why not say something?"

"you wouldn't have listened". 

he scoffs. "you don't know that", walking briskly to his desk. collecting the stacked papers to shuffle them inside the thick leather of a messenger bag. he needs desperately to leave. to come from under the thick air of the room. "because you never considered trying. and thats the one thing you can never say i didn't do. i always tried to make you happy. making things comfortable". 

"being comfortable isn't this good thing you keep making it out to be". 

he was over it. over the heat boiling his skin. over the aching in his chest. the lumping in his throat. the sharp pricks in his eyes. the mindless way his jaw twitched to tighten. and he was over seeing amina. he needed something liquid, strong and relieving. and he had papers to grade, he didn't need this. not now. not ever again. 

"if no one has ever told you before, i need you to know that you are filled with a concerning amount of bullshit". 

amina snatches up the things she came to his office with. being sure to leave the ring. "well look at us being two peas in a pod". 

her heels click out of his office. the silence enveloping him again. his shoulders heavy and his eyes tired, from the lateness of the day and the threat of tears. 

and the ring is still there. still and unmoving. his fingers curling to fist but lacking the heart to pluck it from the floor. 

his phone buzzes. angel's name popping up against the screen. a warmth fighting greatly to overtake him as he opens up an image she's sent, but it fails to do anything worthwhile. the chill in his bones icing over so easily that his nerves feel beholden to deaden with a cooling. 

text message | angel : ready when you are

and the heart to reply is void in him. more piqued that amina had destroyed his mood so much that it'd left him hollow enough to leave you unanswered. and God was the urge there, just not great enough to overcome the anger pushing deep in his skin. 

[koinodancesite]

“Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai”

Coupled with “Jinsei Never Been Better!”

Release date: June 8, 2022

Oricon Weekly placement: 2nd

Members: Akane Haga, Ayumi Ishida, Chisaki Morito, Erina Ikuta, Homare Okamura,  Kaede Kaga, Maria Makino, Mei Yamazaki, Miki Nonaka, Mizuki   Fukumura, Reina Yokoyama, Rio Kitagawa, Sakura Oda

The shakuhatchi flutes of "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" were initially a hard sell, though maybe Kaoru Ookubo wasn't all to blame. A different kind of flute, I presume, but they rang close enough in memory for me to the one squeaking in the deranged production behind NCT 127's "Sticker," released about a year prior, for the Morning Musume song to echo some secondhand dissonance. Listening back, Ookubo's arrangement is nowhere as screwball, but on the other hand, it could use some loosening of screws: it remains steely to a fault, sucking away any potential dynamism, and a general stiffness dulls "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" as a whole.

Behind an already-steely production, the idols' unaffected cool begins to sound monotonous than it does stoic. Their performance of cool in itself fits in tune to the narrative that deals with self-confidence and emotional clarity: "It's up to me," they sing in the opening refrain before they think openly about writing their own future. But other than few accents of extra bombast to prep for the chorus, the song hardly offers peaks and valleys, with moments of epiphany framed in the same serious tone as moments of questioning.

And there are genuine moments in "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" that would add some humanity to a perfectionist idol group if only the song highlighted them as such. "We can't look into / 100 years into the future," the idols sing in the chorus. "We build the present / but who should we live for?" This humbling self-reflection arrives, too, after speaking as a role model: "You're going to grow up soon / a border made by someone else / you're already magnificent," they assure after describing a society mired by pressure. The song elevate neither parts, with one bleeding into the other.

To be fair, the ability to sing of both victories and tragedies as one juxtaposed stream of thought has been the magic behind the best Morning Musume songs. "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" also mashes together two seemingly separate conversations with the idols aspiring to rise above society in the first verse and then indulging in vanity in the second, talking about wanting to be a billionaire and pursue on their own infatuation. But the randomness sounds too streamlined for it to stand out as a quirk, their stony cool delivering them all in the same tone. Morning Musume have impressed in the past with their stoic demeanor, but "Chu Chu Chu Bokura No Mirai" shows stoicness can also be a crutch.

[5]

[israbelle]

A Conspiracy theory about the Epilogues

Alternatively titled; "Isn't it fun to take the stupid plot holes seriously sometimes, just to see what happens?"

So - The hemospectrum. I have often been taken out of the story by how little they mention it in the Epilogues and HS^2, just sort of... handwaving it away as a solved, purely cultural issue. Doylistically, they seem to be endorsing the popular "caste differences were just an enforced social norm by the Condesce and Lord English so trolls hate each other more" theory. It's been a glaring hole in the worldbuilding for a while now, and I never had a satisfying answer to it.

First off, psychics and psionics. I will talk about those more later, but... *gestures* Yeah. Second, and more relevant to the idea that the caste system is a, how do you say, natural state of troll society that has to be actively worked against to avoid falling down the pit of oppression; lifespans.

That sentence sucked because it's 4AM and it's quite difficult to think straight while listening to Mouth Moods. But anyway.

There is a popular headcanon that the Condesce, puppeteered by Lord English to create a tougher landscape, and using her Thief of Life powers, artificially shortened the lifespans of lowbloods (or maybe lengthened the lifespans of highbloods?) and had they not been under her control, they would all live to the same age and have no physical differences. This is explicitly non-canon:

Everybody say "Thank you, Kankri Vantas!" Aren't you so glad he's right about everything he says all the time and everyone always listens?!

There would be seadwellers - no, there would be ceruleans who remember the dawn of history. Can they live normal lives? Do you think that one violetblood grub Karkat holds in the credits remembers his touch? Did they hang the snapchat photo on their hive wall as one of their baby pictures? Do they brag about it?

This world would be quite different from the one shown to us today. Screw "trolls' birthrate is higher than humans" being the crux of the population issue, what about how half these trolls literally never die?! Highbloods would naturally have trouble relating to or empathizing with the lower castes they outlive dozens of times, a natural "immortal being loses touch with its humanity as it sees the cycle of life repeat evermore without ever truly experiencing it" trope, and the hemospectrum would reinvent itself and simply slot humans in at the bottom.

Which leads to the big question: why isn't this what happened? Why are humans the dominant force, while trolls seem to have been metaphorically (so far, thanks Jane) neutered? And why are they losing the war so hard when they have all those dang psychics?

You know, the psychic powers that let you shoot killer lasers and throw things around from afar and commune with beasts and fly-

...And fly?

As far as I'm aware - with the exception of Vrissy, who is a clone of an Alternian troll - there have never been any mentions of psychics on Earth C. Even when she talks about them, her information is wrong, almost as if it was only ever a historical afterthought in class instead of a reality of her life. Isn't that curious?

Apologies in advance for the hats. Tinfoil really is an awful material for garments, you know. But with all the evidence laid out as it is, there's really only one* reasonable† explanation: they did something to trolls. They flattened them all out into one homogenous mass, stripped them of nearly everything interesting and alien about them, neutered them into the Grey Humans we've all tried to fight against this whole time! And they did it with slime!!

*There are most likely many other possible explanations, and there is not a shot in Hell that this is what was intended in the text. †This is a completely unreasonable claim.

It could've been an accident, it could've been a well-intentioned impulse enacted by a bunch of teens who don't understand what eugenics are, but it happened in the ectobiology room, and I think the "how" of it is that they mixed together the troll and human slime. This flattened the curve of lifespans to be about human average, and either highly reduced the chance or outright deleted the ability for psychic powers to form. Reproduction stays the same, because that involves way too many complicated biological changes rather than just flipping a handful of proteins.

The great Alternian trolls of yore are but a distant memory, replaced by these tragic, broken copies, failed by their masters; chained to the ground with their wings torn off long before Candy Jane ever entered the scene.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Zom 100

It can be very easy to treat anime, as a presence in the media landscape, as a single unifying perspective that connects to and expresses a singular mindset that is itself directly derived from the cultural perspective of the country in which it is commonly produced, and through doing so, be seen as a voice that reduces a region of billions of people into a compressed cultural parody that we simplify in its description through the title of being orientalism. Which is to say as much as it would be fun to treat, say, the data points of Zom 100 and The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Today as if they say something about Japan as a culture and Japan’s relationship to the American concept of full time abusive labor practices that are fundamental element of capitalism, that’s at best a shorthand about trends prevailing in a few scattered examples and in no way indicative of a necessarily extrapolatable truism. It is not through any kind of greater cultural trend that these two anime completely align on how jobs are bad.

Anyway, Spoiler Warning! Talking about things in this series, though not in a lot of details. Also, this is going to be about a Zombie Apocalypse story, and that means I’m going to talk about Zombie Apocalypse stuff, which means Content Warning! This is, as the genre goes, pretty nice and doesn’t involve much sexual peril, but you might notice that ‘not much’ is not the same as ‘none.’

Good?

Good.

Zom 100: Bucket List Of The Dead is the story of Akira Tendo, who is a guy, just an ordinary guy, working a job that sucks, and then finds out that he doesn’t have to go to work tomorrow, because the world has ended, and isn’t that a relief. This is what I understand younger and cooler people call a mood, and it is a mood that permeates the opening of this story. While any given Zombie Apocalypse story tends to spend its opening grappling with the question of whether or not what’s happening is happening, Akira is a guy who doesn’t need a lot of convincing once it kicks off, and instead focuses on the very reasonable question of well, what now?

Most Zombie Apocalypse stories at this point get very dire and dangerous and immediately talk about desperation. Zom 100 instead shows him constructing a new perspective, accumulating friends, and even creating proactive plans for dealing with the Zombies in their environment, and making good on the tools that have been left around them. After all, if your entire day is free to do things like ‘travel around and enjoy yourself with whatever you can find’ you can get some industrial scale screwing around done.

Zom 100 is a single-season anime (for now) based on the simple principle that maybe the collapse of society would not be so bad if you happened to exist in a part of this society where the overall structure of society was about making your life worse. And make no mistake: The typical Zombie Apocalypse fantasy has almost always been in some way an expression of a very American Middle Class fantasy-horror mix.

Without dredging that whole conversation up, Zombies are a very popular way to express either the horror of get a load of how we’re all processed into a generic mass in a multimedia landscape, or a fantasy about how in the collapse of society, a middle class dude who cares too much about crossbows would be suddenly empowered to be the badass he’s always assumed he would wind up being. Zombie stories can be condensed into one of these two lanes and it’s often the longer form ones that inevitably become about the latter while the short form ones the former. Not a hard rule, just that it’s harder to sustain a long form narrative about how everyone is being consumed without eventually running out of stuff to consume.

Zom 100 is an interesting example of what feels like it might be in a way the latter form, where our heroes when confronted with a Zombie Apocalypse, decide the thing to do is have fun and live lives of joy that include things like helping one another, reconnecting with family, building and playing with cool toys they like. It’s… kinda embarrassing, really, to consider how simply this idea works as the spine of a story. There’s an inherent comedy to treating a zombie story as anything shy of infinitely grim, and this is one where all sorts of weird resources get considered — like scuba gear and weapons for re-enactment and of course, what value a motorbike has when you can replace the whole thing conveniently, because it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t last.

At the heart of Zom 100 is a grim murmur of a thought: That if even half the people in the world disappeared, even with the disruption to everything that ensued, the remaining population would be fine, comfortable even and in fact, bordering on pampered, just based on being able to treat the vast excess around us in all parts of our society as if they were available for people to take and to use as they needed them. We live in a society of such abundance, such depraved excess, that we could shut down production now, and a population could live the rest of their lives without discomfort, based on just these stockpiled resources.

Now, that’s all a bit Malthusian when I say it that way, but that’s not where Zom 100 seems to land on things. Zom 100 positions itself as a hopeful story, where the tension doesn’t have to get amped up too far, because the point here is not the question if who survives but rather how do we live? Individual systems of exploitation get created, in the name of ideals that they then can’t deliver, and instead, we see community triumph above all of the supposed nihilism of these spaces.

If you read all this and think ‘oh this sounds kinda low-tension,’ I mean… not really?

It’s still a zombie apocalypse story, there’s going to be gory violence and people put in danger and people get hit with pipes and eaten by zombies and characters are not armoured or protected from it just by dint of being likable. It’s just it’s also a story where zombies are treated as a threat like they are, which is slow moving inefficient hostile animals that you can be mindful of.

Good show, I liked it, and work is bad.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[bohemian-nights]

Did you read Collider article about the rumor of Nettles being cut? They said it's bad idea for the plot and the exploration of the whole ASOIAF world, but they also said that if they're doing that is to give more development to Rhaena combining her storyline with hers, but mainly cause of Daemyra since the couple became popular, they don't want risk to ruin it with Daemon being unloyal to her cause Show want them to be each others true love. So, if they're going to take this route, i assume Nyra will eventually forgive Daemon for choking her out and Daemon's redemption is actually gonna be about him being blindly loyal to Nyra, to prove Otto wrong about him, when he says he wants the throne ecc when Viserys was alive. They also said though that nothing is confirmed and that there's still possibility of Nettles showing up in S3 but they're convinced that her absence in S2 is a loss for the Show. Honestly Collider might be right, however this whole centred on Daemyra doesn't correspond to what Ryan Condal said who claimed that the story is centred on Rhaenyra and Alicent, but ofc we don't need to believe nor trust blindly Showrunner since he has always been the first on being inconsistent, besides Emma.

I looked the article up.

They aren’t lying. Despite what her missing several screws stanbase says, cutting Nettles would be a big mistake, but as much as I hate thinking that way I could legitimately see them cutting her to appease Missy Anne’s stans.

It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before.

Black girl gets cast in a role. She looks like she’s going to get with the man guy or she’s supposed to be his love interest(he could be white, but honestly her being with any race of man that the fandoms likes pisses people off).

Racist fans b*tch about it. The showrunners have no guts and are racist themselves so they give into said racist stans demands and either cut the girl out, kill her off, reduce her role, or replace her. Rinse recycle and repeat.

This has happened with The Flash, Sleepy Hollow, Twisted, Person of Interest, and it is happening currently with The Bear fandom(although I think Sydcarmy is going to be endgame despite those fans trying it). It’s misogynoir.

HOTD prides itself on diversity, but it’s very surface level. They put a few brown faces in a few roles that they know where they won’t be around for that long, where they won’t rock the boat too much, or they give them hardly any screen-time, and just have them standing there being subservient to white people(GOT did this too just on a smaller scale).

If Nettles is cut it’s not because she’s irrelevant, unnecessary, or whatever else those people want to say. It’s because of systemic racism that perpetuates all aspects of our society including in fictional settings in order to keep the status quo that white women are the most desirable and valued women.

I really don’t care what they do at this point. I’m tapped out of this fandom.

[zahri-melitor]

Casspoll!

Okay I really had to think about this one and I quickly dipped into the runs I have not touched yet rather than just using their reputations:

Kelley Puckett – It’s Puckett. He created Cass. Some of her very best stories happened here – the first two Shiva fights, delivering a man’s final wishes, Nobody Dies Tonight, Thicker than Water. The absolute heart that Cass cannot allow people to be killed hits hard here. She’s still learning about what a society is.

Dylan Horrocks takes Cass and her growth and lets her mess up and brings Bruce and Barbara more into conflict over what Cass needs, but also allows Cass to be in conflict with them over what she wants. It has the Ivy twofer “The City is a Garden/The City is a Jungle” which I think is Horrocks’ best plot. It has Tough Love, where Bruce and Cass have their conversation over what the Bat means to Cass. It has Cooking the Books, where we see the abrasive side of Barbara’s personality come out and hurt her relationship with Cass. It has Cass taking her first steps into relationships, with her attraction to Tai’Darshan and Kon. It’s a messier, more complicated time.

Andersen Gabrynch has the best conversation of Fresh Blood with Tim over their life goals and their reflections on War Games. He has Destruction’s Daughter/Blood Matters and everything that comes with the culmination of that storyline. He gives Cass her first taste of civilian life. Gabrynch is the ‘how far will Cass go’ writer.

Adam Beechen: you’re all mean! Oh Beechen. He screwed up first time around, no question, but I continue to maintain he did useful things with Cass in Batgirl 2008. He brought in the chance to parallel Slade and Rose’s relationship with David and Cass’. He worked hard to find fixes for the mistakes he made. And if Fresh Blood set up the situation where we saw Tim and Cass become closer and start establishing a sibling-like relationship, then Beechen solidified it to the point that it was expected from that point onwards.

Joe Kelly: oh, Justice League Elite. You are certainly a story. I think the most important thing Kelly actually did in JLE was when Cass stabbed Kendra. It broke her. There is some beautiful writing in JLE surrounding Cass basically sobbing to Bruce over this incident, and Bruce promising her that she doesn’t have to stay undercover, he’ll pull her out, her happiness is more important to him than this mission, and Cass refusing to be extracted. And Ollie remaining there the whole time to keep an eye on Cass on Bruce’s behalf. It’s such a good paternal moment on both Bruce and Ollie’s parts, and they so very rarely get them in concert. It’s also a moment of growth in Cass that is rarely referenced, because as I must repeat, it happens in JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE.

Bryan Hill: I have heard good things! And immediately on picking it up and going through the first three issues I saw the exact thing I’d enjoyed and wanted more of from Dixon’s 2008 BatO run – Tatsu working with and mentoring Cass – which is a solid recommendation in itself. Will 100% be coming back to this when I get up to this era in my reading.

Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad: I dipped into #1 and #14. It suffers from the modern era problem of light and bright fluffy content without a solid base behind it. Also the fact that the writers didn’t initially realise that two of the characters they were assigned were ADULTS and were writing them that immaturely is certainly not reassuring. Um. I also know I’m not fully across modern era Cass yet, but #14 seems to miss something that’s basic to my understanding of Cass – talking can be hard but READING is harder. Cass not talking but having reading comprehension showing up constantly? It feels off. (Also I’m fascinated in how an issue like Batgirls #1 manages to be that off while still managing the Cass shower robe scene, which to my eye echoes and references the BatO 2008 Cass shower scene. Suspect they just got lucky and I’m reading too much in)

Mariko Tamaki: okay I have not yet read Shadows of the Bat: The Tower, but I have read Sounds, so I’m basing on that. Tamaki really seems to get Cass, her hand with the character work in Sounds hit some very fundamental parts of Cass’ character and struggles, and I really enjoyed it.

Overlooked: ALYSSA WONG. Wong’s work with Cass in Spirit World not only has been busy recanonising a bunch of things from Batgirl 2000, but is touching on some central aspects of Cass’s view of killing and death in beautiful resonance of things originally established by Puckett. Also it’s given Cass some narrative space back on her own, and while I think Cass’s relationship with Steph is important, I also think she’s more functional and useful to DC writers when she’s not assumed to be part of an automatic pair.

Plus a plug for Scott Snyder for Gates of Gotham and giving us proper insight into the Reborn era Cass relationships with her brothers.