#the initial event was fairly minor and I probably would not have remembered it this long if not for the incredibly frustrating conversation

[nonbinary-octopus]

oops I started thinking about a frustrating event from highschool and spiraled into anger again :/

[steveramsdale]

Blog Update (or Blogdate)

Blog Update (or Blogdate).

It was 10th December 2022 when I last blogged in the Teaching on the Naughty Steppe series. Much has happened since then, but no of it to me.

However, something has happened which bears on the Uzbekistan adventure story. As I was about to start typing this, in fact I was waiting for Word to open on my computer, and last minute, breaking piece of news came to me, and I will tell you what that was in due course, at the right time.

The events in question concern Муниса that’s the VW character who made many appearances in the blog that used to disturb Saturday mornings between 2016 and 2020. I am sure you’ll remember that, after a few adventures around Tashkent and (memorably) Kazakhstan, she came to Derbyshire and lived a quiet life with me here.

For about 9 months, she was left in our storage place where the caravan was usually kept. (I’m switching to ‘it’ now.) During this time, we realised that we were not using, and probably not going to use it and that we should sell it to someone who would.

Therefore, I advertised it, a couple of people came to look. One of them bought it for just under the asking price. And that’s that. No. Of course it isn’t. It couldn’t be. I could still have spun that in to another (pointless) blog, but the real story is more interesting.

So, a few weeks ago, after we had sold the caravan, we went to the storage yard and brought it home. Of course, the battery was completely dead but I had taken a charged one we happened to have and was able to start it up. Of course, the indicators were not working so getting the five or so miles home was fun. After a really good clean inside and out, it was time to advertise. I also bought a new battery but they only had quite a small one that could not be secured properly in the bay. The van still had a valid MOT until 1st September and I planned to try to get a new one.

There was some initial interest at a fair price for a running, MOTd vanand after a week or two someone came to look. They (a father and son) had a good look around and the time for a test drive arrived. I was driving with the son who was the interested party when the gear stick snapped right at the bottom. The father drove up to where we were and he was able to get it in to second gear and I drove home. The father pointed out a small hole in a sill near the back and said it might well be an MOT fail as it was near a structural part. Interestingly, they said they’d have to go and think about it and I have never heard from them again.

A few days later, I got a message from a man in Portugal asking about it. I’d made an MOT appointment but couldn’t go, obviously. So I explained all of this to the man (Luis). He did not seem put off by this. He has many classic cars at his home and works on them himself. He also has another, similar VW and said he could bring the gear stick from that and fit it on my drive. I told him that without the MOT, he would not be able to drive it – he planned to drive it back to Portugal. I did what I could to dissuade he but he was undeterred, booked a flight and transferred a deposit.

On Thursday of this week (18th) he arrived and I picked him up from Birmingham airport. To make the story more interesting, he has some mobility issues and uses crutches, so I couldn’t leave him to navigate the railway system! 

Back here, we got to work on the gear stick – I say ‘we’ but I was just passing screwdrivers and such like. I had also told him about the indicators and that the MOT (booked for Friday) might throw up other issues. However, the indicators had started working again. All seemed to be going well. The gear stick was a fairly easy fit and worked well. I had charged the old battery that fitted properly and drove up with that.

Early Friday morning, I drove the short distance to the garage for the MOT and asked if they could fix anything minor. They said they were very busy but might be able to do anything really minor.

Around 10am, someone called to say the accelerator was not working. I said that it had been when I drove it up to them!  They had a good look and found that a small rod from the pedal to the throttle cable seemed to have rotted. They would be able to do the MOT but not fix that. I knew I could get it home on the revs of the engine in reverse and first gear and down the hill but the sale seemed to be in jeopardy.

When I went to collect it, it had passed the MOT with them having fixed the fog light switch!  They also said they had been able to get the rod back in the right place so I could drive normally. We were back on track – except they were using a boost pack and told me the battery was dead!

After all of this, Luis and I drove to the petrol station to fill up. I had given him the 25l fuel carrier I had bought in Tashkent. We filled the tank and put 15l in the container and drove home. He had some concerns about the alternator and testing the voltage (he had a device that plugged in to the cigarette lighter) seemed to show it was not charging the battery properly. We left a charger on the small, new battery overnight and Luis planned to leave early Saturday morning so he could drive in the light and not worry about the headlights draining the battery. We loaded everything in the car and he asked me to make sure he was up early.

Sure enough, by 7am we had removed the charger, closed up the engine and he was in the driver’s seat and I was ready to wave. After a few minutes, nothing seemed to be happening and I went to the window. He said that the battery was dead and the accelerator pedal had gone again. There would be no departure any time soon. I should say that I was experiencing very unfamiliar (to me) high anxiety this whole time. Not surprising perhaps, but not something I’m used to.

So…...we had to go to Halfords and buy an appropriately sized battery and find a small part for the alternator. One shop said they could get this by 1pm which was a relief. Returning home, we fitted the new battery and put the small less new one on charge as a spare. Luis did some research on how the accelerator pedal was supposed to work and went under to see what was going on. He dismantled part of it, we straighten and cleaned bits and put it back together. He then noticed that the pedal inside was almost broken. This could be the reason the rod was coming off – if the pedal was moving sideways. We decided that the only thing we could do (apart from order a new one and wait a few days until it came) was do and Uzbek-style repair. This involved putting some very strong tape around the cracking part then drilling small holes to thread cable ties through to strengthen it more. Luis was actually happy with this.

I collected the alternator part and that was fitted easily (enough). The voltage device was still showing low voltage and charging. I suggested we try connecting the 12v plug to a different point in the fuse box – I had fitted this cigarette lighter in Uzbekistan and it was sharing a connection with the headlights and only worked when they were on!  A new slot was selected and suddenly the reading was good and showed that the alternator was working properly.

So, Sunday morning was now the departure time! We took Luis out to our favourite local pub/restaurant which he loved. I went to bed a little less anxious but still fearing a new or recurring problem in the morning.

This morning arrived – as it was always going to and I had to wake Luis just before 7am. We went through a similar routine to Saturday but this time, the engine started first time and Luis drove away. Amazingly (to me anyway) he had come to the UK without bringing a phone he could use on UK networks. We were not going to hear anything unless he found wifi.

The breaking news? As I was about to start typing this story I got a message from Luis. He is on the ferry in Dover waiting to set off to Calais. He said the sliding door had popped open a couple of times (scary) but the battery, engine, accelerator etc have been fine. He has several hundred miles still to go to his home in Portugal – the story is not over, therefore. I will update you when he gets there.

This seems, though, to be a fitting end to my part in the van’s story. I could have sold it to someone 50 miles away who could have brought a trailer to get it and used it here after fixing everything. That would not have fitted with the story so far. Luis wants the van to go to Morocco and sort out some business there – so another new continent awaits.

I hope you agree that this story was worth telling. Should anything else interesting happen in this or any other context, I may venture into the blogosphere again!

Bye.

[robininthelabyrinth]

First time submitting prompts, fairly new follower. Love your writing!

NHS and LWJ friendship. Subtle and maybe people other than their big brothers don't see it and it shocks people when they find out. Mostly Canon compliant?

Associates - Part 3 - ao3, pt 1, pt 2

In the end, it was Lan Wangji who went to get Wei Wuxian, rather than wait patiently for him to return of his own free will as he had originally intended.

It had been Nie Huaisang’s idea, after nearly a year of Wei Wuxian travelling – they’d never actually pursued the jealousy idea he’d initially suggested on account of it being a terrible idea, Lan Wangji’s temporary moment of insanity in even considering it aside. It had come up seemingly apropos of nothing, one day when the two of them were working together in Lan Wangji’s study, Lan Wangji filling out the paperwork in his graceful handwriting as Nie Huaisang flittered around solving problems – he preferred pacing as he thought, which perhaps explained his reluctance to work on documents despite his beautiful calligraphy, and all the marching around made him, in some moments, look remarkably like his elder brother, something Lan Wangji deliberately refrained from ever mentioning.

“You need to go pick him up,” Nie Huaisang had suddenly said, in between planning out the next discussion conference and explaining why a seemingly minor dispute regarding shifting the boundary line near the Yuncheng Bao sect by a single li could have catastrophic consequences for the Jin sect’s long-term stability. “I know you’re afraid of giving the impression that you’re trapping him and restraining his freedom, but that’s your problem, not his. He wants to be asked.”

“Does he?” Lan Wangji had asked, finishing the sentence he was on and putting down the brush. Some things took priority above night-fishing rights near a contained Waterborne Abyss, no matter the new head of the Laoling Qin sect might think.

“Mm, yes. He’s been taking a lot of night hunts in the immediate vicinity of Gusu, close but never too close…Lan Zhan, he’s hinting that he wants you to chase him.”

“Pride?”

“A bit, maybe? Mostly I think it was his position in Yunmeng Jiang, where the former Sect Leader Jiang wanted him and Madame Yu didn’t, so his status was always that slightest bit uncertain. Here and now, he wants to know that he’s really welcome…don’t give me that look! He knows he’s welcome, you’ve made that clear, but making you be the one to ask is just another way to ensure that it’s actually true.”

And so Lan Wangji had gone to where he’d heard that Wei Wuxian was night-hunting, flying down on Bichen when he saw him walking with Lil’ Apple along a mountain path – he called his name, and Wei Wuxian had turned and smiled…

Wei Wuxian had come back with him.

More than that – he’d kissed him, he’d said he was staying with him, he’d agreed to marry him, to live their life together from then on.

They were officially engaged now, the auspicious date having been selected, Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling having demanded roles on the side of the bride – Wei Wuxian briefly protested being the bride, then realized that he was marrying into the Lan sect and promptly reversed course, announcing that he wanted all the trappings of being a bride, excluding the dress – and life was very, very good.

Unfortunately, a couple of weeks was about as long as the cultivation world could hold off on needing its Chief Cultivator to be more than part time – he’d done a lot of the work in the mornings while Wei Wuxian was still asleep or when he was busy, and of course he had the system of delegation that Nie Huaisang had constructed for him and naturally Nie Huaisang himself helping out through his letters – and regretfully, Lan Wangji had had to return his full focus to his duties.

At first, it didn’t mark that much of a change: Wei Wuxian would bring projects of his own and they would work side by side, Lan Wangji already accustomed to the presence of another through all the work he’d done with Nie Huaisang, and Lan Wangji insisted that Wei Wuxian go out regularly with the juniors for night-hunts even if he himself could not. It all seemed fine, except only that Lan Wangji had the distinct feeling that he was missing something important.

It was only when the first big issue came up – a serious dispute between two small sects – that Lan Wangji realized what that was.

He sent a message to the Unclean Realm and waited.

Nie Huaisang arrived at the Cloud Recesses at the exact time one might expect if Nie Huaisang had received the message and left at once at top speed, accounting for the relatively slow pace he had when flying as a result of his mediocre cultivation.

Letter still crushed in his hand, he swept into the jingshi in his usual manner, all high drama and flash, wailing, “Lan Zhan! You betrayed me! You, of all people! My oldest friend!”

Lan Wangji, who had been expecting this, rolled his eyes.

Wei Wuxian, sitting in the desk he’d claimed as his own, looked up, startled. “Nie Huaisang?”

“Oh, hi, Wei Wuxian, congratulations on your engagement, has Lan Zhan shown you the present I sent? Probably not, he never does – Lan Zhan! Don’t think I’m letting you distract me with Wei Wuxian! You answer for this right away!”

He waved the crumbled letter at Lan Wangji.

“There is nothing to explain,” Lan Wangji said. “I requested your assistance in my capacity as Chief Cultivator.”

“You called me a spineless, gutless coward!”

Wei Wuxian made a choking sound.

“I sought to accurately characterize your recent behavior,” Lan Wangji said, and noted that Wei Wuxian’s choking noises got worse, although he did not actually appear to be in need of air. “Do you object?”

(There was something about Nie Huaisang’s company that reminded Lan Wangji irresistibly of being a child again, he had found, and it was only recently that he had begun to remember that as a child he had once had a tendency to bite. A pleasant rediscovery, even if the sharpness of his teeth were now expressed via paper and ink rather than through physical attacks.)

“You were the one who took a month off,” Nie Huaisang complained, a blatant lie given that Lan Wangji had been on partial duty for no more than two weeks, but dropped into his usual place at Lan Wangji’s side obediently enough. “Lan Zhaaaaaaan, don’t make me do work –”

Lan Wangji was going to say something about how it wasn’t like Nie Huaisang was doing any less work by doing his part in the Unclean Realm rather than being physically present in Gusu for consultations, he was just doing it less efficiently, but that was when Wei Wuxian coughed into his hand.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he said, with too much formality, but Nie Huaisang waved his hands at him querulously, clearly disapproving, and his shoulders relaxed a little. “Ah – Nie Huaisang. Since when do you call Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan? I thought you called him Lan-er-gongzi?”

“Oh, no, it’s been Lan Zhan since I was – what, seven or so?” Nie Huaisang said. “I wasn’t joking about him being my oldest friend, you know. We were just fighting back then, when you came for the lectures.”

Wei Wuxian blinked rapidly and turned to look at Lan Wangji, who nodded in confirmation.

They’d failed each other rather thoroughly back then, neither one being there for the other when they could have been. Nie Huaisang had not been wrong to observed that simply because he had always been free and open with his affections, Lan Wangji had assumed they would always be there to be resumed at a later time, without any need for maintenance – playing hot and cold, offering and receiving comfort and support at certain times, totally distant at others…it wasn’t until much later, when Lan Wangji emerged from seclusion, that he had needed Nie Huaisang again, and realized what he’d lost in the blank and disinterested glance of the boy he’d once thought of as his friend, who now seemed to visit the Cloud Recesses only in search of his elder brother.

They’d spoken in those intervening years, but it had always been light, superficial. Lan Wangji could have reached out a hand at that time, sought to resume their relationship, but he was consumed with his own grief, his own troubles, and out of respect for the face of his sect he had refused to share them; perhaps if he had, Nie Huaisang wouldn’t have done what he had done, would have relied upon him instead.

Perhaps things would have been very different.

It wasn’t until he’d finally swallowed his pride to ask Nie Huaisang for help with the overwhelming work of being Lan sect leader and Chief Cultivator both that they had broken through that distance once more. It had been difficult at first, readjusting their long-lost patterns to their adult behaviors, but they had slowly but surely fallen into a comfortable dynamic that suited them both.

“I had no idea,” Wei Wuxian said blankly. “You spend much time together?”

“Nie-xiong assists me in my duties,” Lan Wangji interjected before Nie Huaisang could spout something stupid about eloping, as he was sometimes wont to do. “He has been critical in ensuring that I am not overwhelmed.”

Wei Wuxian mouthed ‘Nie-xiong’, but what he said was, “You, Lan Zhan? Overwhelmed?”

Lan Wangji nodded. “My brother went into seclusion,” he explained. “As sect heir, I became responsible for the duties of sect leader of the Lan sect, and I had also accepted the post of Chief Cultivator.”

“And he didn’t have anyone else to help, so he came to me,” Nie Huaisang said cheerfully, ignoring how Wei Wuxian’s eye twitched. “I hope you don’t mind. It was very convenient a trade: I know plenty of things about being a sect leader – more than you’d think, I swear! – and Lan Wangji, as Chief Cultivator, can help me whenever someone tries to make something out of that awful business last year.”

There had been a few unfortunate sequelae to those events. Nie Huaisang’s role had never been officially confirmed, but somehow word had gotten out regardless and sects throughout the cultivation world were looking at Nie Huaisang in suspicion �� less out of concern for Jin Guangyao, although there were a few that had especially benefited from his rule that were disappointed, than with an eye towards the future. The wise ones were afraid of his patience and planning, but far more were simply greedy, looking for a chance to finally uproot the notorious Headshaker now that his best protection, his brother’s two sworn brothers, were not there to defend him.

As he had promised, Lan Wangji had defied any attempts by others to do anything of that sort.

As he had promised, he would not change his mind or withdraw his support, no matter what Wei Wuxian said.

His shoulders tensed as Wei Wuxian looked over at him, his expression thoughtful. “I’m going to need to talk to Jiang Cheng,” he remarked, seemingly unrelatedly, and then said, “Well, I trust Lan Zhan’s judgment.”

Nie Huaisang had covered his face with his fan and was looking over it at Wei Wuxian. “You do? And here I thought you didn’t associate with evil…”

“Those are from Lan Zhan’s sect rules, not mine,” Wei Wuxian declared. “If he doesn’t judge you to be evil, who am I to say otherwise?”

Nie Huaisang smiled.

“We should talk more, sometime,” Wei Wuxian continued. “And hey, Nie-xiong, I don’t know if you still collect those books –”

“Oh, of course, Wei-xiong!” Nie Huaisang said enthusiastically. “Though you don’t need to ask for them from me. Lan Zhan’s built up quite a collection over the years.”

Lan Wangji sighed, even as Wei Wuxian spun to look at him with a predatory look in his eyes, not unlike a sighthound that had just fixed on its prey. “You do?”

“Nie-xiong has gifted me with many art pieces over the years,” Lan Wangji admitted. His ears felt as though they were on fire; they were undoubtedly red. “You may peruse them at your leisure.”

“At our leisure,” Wei Wuxian murmured, his eyes deeply intent. “I can’t wait to see what spring books you like best, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji averted his eyes, feeling hot.

Nie Huaisang giggled and snapped his fan shut. “You don’t want to see the art I sent, Wei-xiong, trust me,” he cackled. “You want to see the pieces. Just ask!”

Wei Wuxian grinned and shook his head. “I think that’s a private discussion! Anyway, I’m going to go talk to Jiang Cheng – you two work on your Chief Cultivator stuff.”

“Your insight would be welcome,” Lan Wangji said, but Wei Wuxian waved a casual hand.

“Later, later,” he said breezily. “I don’t know either of those sects, I couldn’t possibly say anything intelligent – maybe next time you have a question. I look forward to working with you, Nie-xiong.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

Lan Wangji watched them smile at each other – still a little wary, but both clearly willing to attempt a renewal of their own friendship, even after everything – and his heart felt light.

The only thing, he reflected, that would make this perfect would be if Lan Xichen came out of seclusion.

But with Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, and Nie Huaisang on the job, they’d be sure to figure out a way to do that soon enough.

He was sure of it.

[epinosicc]

This is going to be quite chaotic, but this is something I wrote late one stormy July night about my life this far and how I’ve realized my problems

Okay it’s around midnight where I’m at so it’s time to rant instead of sleeping because I’m a minor and I have ✨issues✨

I tend to think more than what’s probably considered healthy, mostly because I do t have people to talk to. Don’t get me wrong, I have friends, but I don’t know what they’re doing and I don’t want to burden them with my stupid problems. So like any sane person I write my problems on the internet.

I usually think about the weird things when it’s raining. It’s something about the sound and feeling of rain that makes me more content, which makes me think. Now, I don’t have any big problems by any means. I’m simply figuring myself and my life out.

First of all, my previously mentioned friends. I trust them, of course, but at the same time I don’t. And like many who think to much and have a strange amount of self-awareness, I think I know why that is. When I first started going to school, I was confident. I’d already had friends before and thought I knew how to make new ones. The problem with that is that said friends did not go to my school, so I was alone. Until I met my first two friends. They were very nice to me, we played together and got along. The thing that I started noticing though was that if me and one of them arrived at school around the same time and out third friend wasn’t there yet we’d get along great, but as soon as that third friend arrived I’d get ditched in favour of them. And that would obviously hurt me. But we resolved it (not really) and things were going fine. But that experience stuck with me. It was my first taste of loneliness and abandonment (dramatic much?) and it made me doubt myself. I thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something about me that they didn’t like.

Now jump ahead about two years and I was alone Every. Single. Recess. (Oh shit it storming outside right now and some thunder sounded like a bomb) Obviously this only made me feel worse about myself. I just remember being so desperate for some sort of connection with someone. And I got one. I started talking to this person, I’ll call them Bird, and we got along great. Pretty soon Bird was my best and we spent a lot of our time together. I was still sort of friends with the two other people, at least during lessons, and sometimes during recess, but not that much otherwise.

Jump ahead a bit more, another year or so, and my class changed. At my school my class and another (same age as us) we’re combined into one. In this class that we were combined with there were a few new people, one of whom stuck out. Mostly because they didn’t like me, and they weren’t exactly discreet in letting me know. They never said so to my face, but they made it quite clear in how they acted towards me. This also made me feel bad. Is there really something so wrong with me that others couldn’t help but dislike me for it? Can I fix it? What do it that makes me different? (At the current point in my life I’m fairly certain I know what it is so yeah. Fun)

Now, I’d always cared a fair bit about school. I was taught that education was important, and if I was going to spend hours at school I might as well use that time for something, be it academically of socially. So when those around me started caring less about their education and more about things such as appearance and social hierarchy and relationships, I was confused. Why would they just not care? HOW could they just not care? Now, I’m not saying that any of the previous things are necessarily bad things to care about. In fact, ist great! Being invested in your social life and how others view you can be nurturing and make you feel fulfilled. But too much of anything can be bad. Letting yourself care about only those things can be harmful in more ways than one. I’ve never particularly cared about those things; I don’t like dressing up or making myself look good for others. I don’t value others validation of my appearance. What I didn’t notice was that as I believed these thoughts, I started eating less.

But things are still pretty chill. I still struggle with what’s wrong and what makes me different, but that’s fine. I’m pretty sure everyone goes through that at some point in our lives. But now I’m starting to find some answers. I don’t really care much for my appearance or style, I like academic things, I’m starting to fall behind in my social development, people are becoming more bold in stating their opinions, people are more hateful and spread misinformation etc etc (there’s a fucking mosquito who won’t leave me alone fuck off please). And at this point I’m more invested in the online world. But the international online world, not my national online world if that makes sense. English isn’t my first language but I learned it from the internet/YouTube and it’s basically my second language at this point. I learned English for English content creators, and I continued following them, not the ones relevant in my home/country. So I was and still am kind of out of the loop on current influencer events here in the North. This ties in with what I thought to be the answer to my questions: the LGBTQIA+ Community.

I started finding creators from the LGBT+ and I related to them and their stories. But I didn’t think I was one of them. People at school were not afraid to boldly proclaim that being LGBTQ+ was wrong and bad and strange. That there was something inherently rotten about such people. Now, did I agree with that? No. But I let it influence to the point were I thought that others being LBGTQ+ was fine, but me being that wasn’t. I wasn’t aloud to be one of them because there wasn’t supposed to be something wrong with me. But there was something, in the back of my mind, some part of me that knew. That knew who I am and that being me was fine. Too bad that voice wasn’t loud enough.

I still had Bird with me. Granted, they also had other friends, but they still stayed by my side. And they didn’t change like others did. My two first friends are people I also grew closer to at this time. I put our “situation” behind me and ignored it. It was a new chapter of my life, one where thing were changing in the right direction. Too bad I wasn’t too good at reading maps.

At this point I’m in sixth (6th) grade, the worst grade/period/time of my life thus far. After summer break people had changed a lot. Not just socially, but physically as well. We started to mature, we were lite tiny birds, looking out of the nest and thinking about how to take flight and reach above the branches of expectations and reach the clouds of ambition. But some of us didn’t. We didn’t want to start using our wings. At most we took a little peek out of our nest and divided that was enough for now. We began to grow frightened of others and their strange ideas of leaving what we knew was safe. I’m We for those wondering.

I started struggling with anxiety, I couldn’t stand in front of people without being scared and had a few panic attacks during presentations. People would look at me weirdly and I grew paranoid of what was wrong with me. At this point I started eating even less, resigning myself to one potion per meal, and no snacks, sometimes skipping lunch. Once again some of my friends that I had at this point started drifting away from me but now the rest, and I started trusting them even less. I can’t help but think that they’re only pitying me, that they’re going to leave and that they do thing behind my back. There was also someone else who had a big influence on me.

I, along with Bird started hanging around this person, we’ll call them Pen. They were sort of new, they’d always been in our class but had been living abroad for eight (8) months and had just come back. At first things were great. Bird, Pen and I were our own little trio of friends. But soon a change occurred. Pen started getting more clingy, staying uncomfortably close at times and never staying out of our personal space. Bird ended up taking the initiative with one of our other mutual friends and had long talk with Pen which sort of ended their friendship. At first they’d all handled it alone but then Pen involved their parents and thing went downhill. But I wasn’t part of it. Which made Pen hang on to me even more. I could never get away from them, it always felt like they were breathing down my neck. I didn’t tell them this though, they just lost two friends and they must be hurt from it, seeking comfort from someone they still considered a friend. I was uncomfortable, but I felt bad for them, so I continued being around them. Something my teachers had realized at this point was that I tend to take responsibility for other and their actions, and told me that I should try to relax and talk to them as I had seemingly started to become overwhelmed. But I don’t tell others my problems so I didn’t take their help. This kind of escalated a bit next grade.

Grade seven (7) was not my best year but also not my worst. I spent summer break reflecting and thinking, and started to value myself a bit more. I started hanging out with friends more often (usually Bird), and started unintentionally ignoring Pen. Though sometimes, I think it was intentional, as the very thought of Pen at this point made me anxious and uneasy. I thought I could simply let Pen hang around with me, and then let them get their own new friend group. I didn’t want them to only hang around me, it was honestly a bit scary how much I dreaded being around them. The feeling that something was off or wrong around them wouldn’t go away. They didn’t leave me though. No; I became their sole friend whom they refused to leave. In seventh (7th) grade our class was split, with me and Bird being in different classes. I had some friends in my new class though andere became a group. I thought I could nudge Pen to become part of this group. Except that Pen didn’t interact or contribute to the relationship. They weren’t social enough with the group to become part of it, standing in the group only to follow me. And my teachers noticed this and spoke to me. I told them how I was uncomfortable around Pen, and how I would like to not have to sit close to them next time we switched we seats (done every few weeks or so). Teachers agreed. But didn’t follow through. They sat me Right. Next. To. Pen. I confronted them about this. They lied to me. Their reasoning was that one of Pen’s parents had told the teachers how Pen only felt comfortable around me, and that they would like for us to be together at school as much as possible.

I was horrified at this - I couldn’t be held responsible for another students comfort, grades and social life! They basically put all the responsibilities of the teachers - making sure students felt comfortable, helping with schoolwork when needed, making sure the student had friends in the class - on me! I was basically supposed to play friend, teacher and class for Pen! I honestly couldn’t believe it, and told my friends. They told me they understood completely - they could see how emotionally and mentally exhausted I was from taking care of Pen, studying, after school activities and being around people that they were concerned about my well being. They, too, had tried to get Pen to become part of the group, but when only one person is taking care of the ship you can’t expect it to sail. They also felt uncomfortable around Pen. My anxiety only got worse because of this, and I started becoming paranoid that Pen was always watching me, either through my phone or my windows. I could not get myself to relax, not even when totally alone, something I’ve always enjoyed and felt comfortable with.

And at the end of grade seven (7), it happened. I found out that Pen was switching schools. I feel guilty admitting it, but I felt so relieved and free when I found out. Finally, I thought, finally I would get some privacy. All of my other friends are aware of my boundaries: don’t touch me unless I’m ready and aware of it, give me some space, don’t force me to talk when I’m anxious etc. They know, respect and treat me well, and in turn I treat them well and respect their boundaries, but Pen didn’t seem to understand that no, I don’t want you to stand so close to me that I can literally feel you body heat.

So grade eight (8) rolls around and I so does a certain unspecified virus. We therefore had to have school online. For me this was a blessing. I don’t enjoy being around people for too long and I don’t ever want to deal with my classmates bs. The teachers even commented on several occasions that I seemed much happier, which I was considering I didn’t have someone constantly breathing down my neck. And now I start to drift away from Bird. I always considered Bird my absolute closest friend. Almost like a sibling. And now we were drifting apart. We both started walking our own paths, still close together but different in so many ways. We’re still friends to this day, but I don’t think our friendship is going to last until we’re adults anymore. It’s sort of sad, but it is natural. We are both starting to forge our own paths in life, our own docks from which we will eventually set sail from to explore the limitless blue beyond that is life. And one day we might even meet again on some distant island, reconnecting and sharing stories of calm blue oceans to storming black waters. But that will happen with time. For now, I’m content finding materials for my dock with my group of friends, sharing ideas for designs and unfinished blueprints of a distant future. I’m content staring at that great far away horizon painted in the colors of pink, magenta and blue, watching the clouds of today’s events and feeling the winds of tomorrow’s surprises whilst thinking of what one day might be.

TL;DR: I rant about my life and somehow become a poet at the end.

End note - I still struggle with trust and anxiety. I don’t have problems with how my body looks anymore and I don’t confine myself to strict diets and eating schedules. Part of me feels guilty about my situation with Pen, and one part of me feels relieved and happy that I don’t have to deal with them anymore. I’m smart enough and self aware enough to realize my problems and their causes, and I have the tools to craft my solutions. I’m doing good, and know how to keep doing good, at least for a little while more.

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (2/3)

Welcome back. Before we get started, disclaimers again! I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the history and future of the game. What I am entitled to are the thoughts and opinions written within this post. You may or may not agree with the points spoken of here. This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.

We are now on the second part, so let's go forward under the cut!

Elex

And here we have our beloved global publisher that most of seem to have Stockholm Syndrome for. Don't lie, at least half of us are still playing this damned game due to sunken cost fallacy, sunken time fallacy and the cute/hot jpegs.

In 2018, everything started out fine. Sure, maybe we had some translation mishaps here and there -coughwe'llgettothatwreckagelatercough- but overall, Elex was running the game fairly well. Rewards were on time, we had active social media and support, and a discord was set up!

Hint: Please note I use quite a bit of sarcasm in most everything I say.

And then somewhere along that road, things got derailed. And I mean it like, we're in the midst of a trainwreck in slow motion and we've only cleared the initial collision and still hurtling forward or backward into a steel wreckage ticking inferno.

Problems started cropping up as early as late 2018, just a few months after the game was launched in July.

⦁ Art contest mishaps. You know when you hold an art contest on Facebook out of all places with its shitty tagging system, you're bound to have entries lost to the void, people forced to register an FB account just to participate (seriously, who even has an FB account that isn't just there to appease family members?) and having to wrestle with figuring out how FB's tagging system works. Add to that the panel of judges happen to be Elex staff who don't have a good eye for good artwork (we actually had a kiddy figure drawing win over a well drawn one during the last contest!) and that they ALSO weren't very good at organizing such contests on FB... well, we had several grievances over that.

⦁ Region blocked FB announcements. Strangely enough, I stopped getting announcements around Father's Day of 2019 while everyone else outside of SEA kept getting updates. Turns out that someone on Elex's staff really didn't like SEA players or was just really bad at fixing the settings for the group and never bothered to revert it back. It didn't matter in the long run though, because...

⦁ Abandoned social media platforms. FooFan Twitter, FooFan Facebook... they all floated slowly into the void and was never heard from again. And this was before the 2020 pandemic.

⦁ Remember what I said about Discord? Yeah, apparently, they opened one up a little too early and the staff in charge of it knew zero about how to setup and mod a discord community, and didn't even have the manpower needed to mod the influx of members that came in! Suffice to say, they had to get help from top players and mods from the FB groups to come in and sort things out because someone kept pinging @ everyone every few seconds other than the usual chaos that comes from a server with no filters and people trying to turn the discord into Global Chat 2.0, minus Russian hours.

⦁ Also in line with the point about abandoned social media platforms, they've also mostly abandoned the discord too and only pop in once in a while to check the bug reports or lost accounts. You have a slightly better chance of response with the in-game support. Only slightly. And there's a running joke with several variations on the main discord that the Owner account of the discord server was manned by an intern-kun who never bothered to pass it on to the next unfortunate soul left to maintain this game.

⦁ Favoritism. Funtoy is also guilty of this but they don't publish the game for Global. If you're a top spender the likes of maxing out your cash rebates within the three months or so and you kept spending even beyond that, Elex could possibly invite you to a funky little club where your voice is more important than say... 99% of the playerbase. On top of that, if you keep spending, you could technically also ask for stuff like getting this frame over that frame, or well.... delay certain features from coming to Global for over a year. Now you can simp AND be heard! (Note: In 2021, it's possible that that club may be dead too, as all things shall be)

⦁ SJW Friendly. I don't know if Funtoy themselves have anything to also do with this particular decision... but it's saying something that after a certain little tiddy tantrum from the community side, Elex decided not to announce anything about a certain event's fate and when asked by it by other parties (not me) they either lie through their teeth, or beat around the bush with a non-answer.

⦁ Partial translations, mistranslations. Now, I understand that a lot of Chinese grammar and semantics are confusing to translate properly into several other languages, but you'd think Elex would have given their translators more context to the character or the mechanic to avoid such mistranslations that later set off gender debates or worded the skill/artifact description a little clearer. That is... unless Elex really is hands-off trying to get to know this IP from the start and only gave it the most bare minimum of English where they can cut costs for it, so people can understand it 'well enough' to throw money at an obviously not beta-read quality game.

⦁ No translations. Yes we do have certain parts of the game that are in Chinese since forever since xx patch. Some characters' voiceline texts are still in chinese, especially during the Pledge scenes. More recent artifacts are also in chinese with no announced translation in sight. And don't get me started on the Food Soul bios, or lack thereof.

⦁ Delayed events. Prime example? We had weeks of minor events/no events and still Elex managed to eff everything up for our second Anniversary in July 2020. We ended up getting the Croissant event in late August with barely any apologies and compensation for the delay... and this likely would have never arrived as 'early' as it did if people hadn't been railing about where our Anniversary event was. As it stands, we are several minor events behind CN, at least a year and a half's worth behind. I know Global had requested heavily for more spaced out events (to save resources, not that it actually worked with all the nerfed rewards we get) compared to CN but this is extremely ridiculous.

⦁ Delayed permanent features. Hm... Guild Wars, Sky Tower, Bar, that Wuchang Fish Showdown... several Quality of Life updates.... that new permanent pool update... Food Souls still missing their JP voice packs... Food Soul Bios... *slowly ticking off more than I have fingers and toes*

⦁ Customer Support is whack. You'd be lucky if you got someone who understood your problem/inquiry right off the bat AND did something about it efficiently. You'd be luckier if they answered you honestly if you were inquiring about event updates or other buggy features or reporting hackers.

⦁ The Great Turkey and Apple Incident of 2020. Well, if you were around for that little SNAFU during the Turkey re-run event, you'd know a percentage of people suddenly got logged out of their accounts and had a baller of a time trying to get their accounts back. You were especially unfortunate if you were playing on an iOS account because even if you did bind it (like a responsible player should be doing), you probably still wouldn't get it back in time to rank properly during Turkey. Some Android players also experienced this, but it wasn't as bad as what the iOS players experienced. And then there was the compensation mishap for that too.

⦁ Hacker-chan and not-so-uwu Hacker-teme. Hacker-chan is a meme. Hacker-chan was a harmless player who regularly topped in Top Showdown every week for a time to send a message to Elex just how easy it is to hack the game in certain rankings and invited Elex to ban them every time, just to test how competent Elex is. In the end, Elex has proven to be incompetent and also glaringly stupid about how their published game works. Hacker-teme is a collective of individuals over time who have cheated the game during important ranking events or in somewhat important permanent battles. If you tried to report a Hacker-teme with evidence to prove it -and trust me, people repeatedly have-, Elex would tell you that they're not cheating and/or lie through their teeth that they're 'investigating the case' and then not do anything about it and let them keep their event ranking and thus get the rewards while someone who actually worked hard/whaled hard to get the spot gets denied. In one case, they believe that if an account has rebate points and the player level is at least around level 80, then the hacker-teme is obviously playing the game fairly. Never mind that their units happened to have low to no artifact nodes opened, and not high in ascension.

And that is the end of the Elex saga. I'm aware there's likely more things about Elex that I've missed, but feel free to add on to this analysis post with your own thoughts.

The last part of this trilogy is probably what many of us are waiting for, for obvious reasons.

[ceescedasticity]

Jin Guangyao’s Hoarding Problem, part 4

part 1, part 2, part 3

Jin Guangyao is having a really good week, and then suddenly he is having a really bad week.

This is mostly his father's fault. But he does feel that Madam Qin really could have chosen to share this information literally any time earlier in the courtship. Even if it was after Qin Su was pregnant, more time might have enabled him to come up with something! Even if she weren't pregnant calling off the wedding this late would be a significant scandal — what was Madam Qin thinking? Probably she wasn't thinking. No one around him ever thinks.

(He's not exactly thinking his clearest, either, but he doesn't realize that.)

He wants to get out of it. (The marriage still has its good points, if the secret can be guaranteed — but I don't think he would want a marriage which could only produce children who 'had to die'.)

(He could order Wen Qing to prepare an abortifacient, but then, he could in theory procure an abortifacient in any timeline. Honestly I wouldn't even be surprised if Madam Jin quietly keeps a stock on hand in case any of the household staff has a problem. And it seems like something Meng Yao ought to know about, doesn't it? But perhaps Meng Shi insisted he shouldn't pay attention to such filthy things, and he knows no more than most young gentlemen. Still, he could get his hands on one somehow — doing so discreetly is a challenge but not an insurmountable one. The trouble is that without Qin Su's forewarned cooperation, any termination of the pregnancy will be obviously a failed pregnancy, and marrying her is still the only honorable thing, but now with an added taint of sin for premarital sex and the shame of failing to cover it up, he can hear the remarks about his mother already.)

(He could have Qin Su non-fatally poisoned — enough to make her very sick and put off the wedding. But medical examination might reveal the pregnancy, and too long a delay definitely would.) (If he were willing to entertain the idea of telling Qin Su, this would be a good way to buy time to talk. There are so many more possibilities when she's not one of the people who has to be lied to.)

(He could have Qin Su fatally poisoned, and make sure no postmortem exam found the pregnancy, or at least that no one talked about it. But he doesn't have a scapegoat set up for a murder, and Madam Qin might suspect him.) (He also doesn't want to kill her, but that's not what deters him.)

(He could have Qin Su kidnapped, into the Dizang or elsewhere. But he doesn't have a scapegoat ready for that, either, and that still doesn't fix the pregnancy.)

(Now, if he could have her kidnapped, terminate the pregnancy, somehow alter her memory so she doesn't remember there ever was a pregnancy, somehow alter her memory so she doesn't remember the kidnapping, 'rescue' her, give the impression she's temporarily lost her wits from the experience and has probably also been ruined, well, the only compassionate thing is to cancel the wedding, cancel the engagement, send her home to her parents, terrible tragedy, maybe someday she can find happiness elsewhere. If he had a way to alter memories that quickly and precisely he might go with this despite the lack of prepared scapegoat.)

He decides the best option is to go through with the wedding and… deal with it later. Somehow.

(Highlights/"highlights" of the wedding celebrations include, but are not limited to:

It is Jiang Yanli's first major social event since her mourning period concluded. She spends most of her time trying to get Jiang Cheng to stay still long enough for her to talk to him. She's not mad at him!

Lan Xichen averts a disaster when he overhears and shuts down some speculation on whether Jiang Yanli will marry again — she'd have to come with a pretty hefty dowry, what with the health problems and so-so looks and rumored madness — before Jiang Wanyin hears any of it.

Nie Huaisang gets blackout drunk and throws up in the banquet hall, but not before laying the groundwork for five different problems with minor sects he can beg San-ge and Er-ge to help him with.

Su Minshan is totally unaware that Jin Guangyao's good week has become a terrible week and cries tears of joy at his benefactor's good fortune.

Sect Leader Yao gets tipsy and attempts to tell a bawdy story. It does not work very well.

Jin Ling is prevented from inviting himself to the banquet and throws a screaming tantrum not quite out of hearing.

Jin Guangshan comments on Qin Su's hips.

Jin Guangshan offers a minor Sect Leader's daughter jewelry to meet him in an inn in Lanling.

After both of the above incidents Madam Jin glares daggers at Jin Guangyao for some reason.

In fact Madam Jin glares daggers at Jin Guangyao the entire time.

Using the rebuilt Seal, Xue Yang sneaks into Jinlintai proper and steals an entire dessert course out of the kitchen.

On the plus side, he doesn't kill anyone and isn't spotted.

Congratulations!)

(Jiang Yanli eventually corners Jiang Cheng and tells him she isn't mad at him, and he's doing a wonderful job, and as soon as she can get the idea past the Jins she wants to take Jin Ling to Lotus Pier for at least a few months. Jiang Cheng is dubious about the first two assertions but can at least appreciate the third.)

Back in the Dizang it's been convenient that courtship and wedding preparations have occupied so much of Jin Guangyao's attention, because the preliminary results of the 'crying' research have been slightly more disruptive/strange than anticipated. It turns out that it is indeed possible to manually activate the tear glands of a fierce corpse, either by acupuncture needles or by talisman. After this, they will stream for four to six hours no matter what anyone does, which also gives them runny noses. After that, though, their eyes will water when they didn't before. When Wen Ning went through the procedure, he found that he could get tears triggered by emotions. He also discovered that crying gives him a dry mouth — the initial four-hour rain of tears gave him such a dry mouth he couldn't speak for a while.

This spun into everyone getting pulled into a study of 'how do fierce corpses regulate their moisture levels'. Water ghouls don't get waterlogged and fall to pieces. Fierce corpses in deserts don't desiccate and fall to pieces. They must regulate somehow. Missing moisture has to come from somewhere, and extra moisture has to go somewhere, and no one has ever looked into how before. It's disgusting. Xue Yang's never had so much non-homicidal fun in his life. (Well, a little homicidal, since he made the corpses, but not currently actively homicidal.)

Besides Xue Yang, all of this has been productive for Wen Qing and Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian is reluctantly fascinated, and Mo Xuanyu is non-reluctantly fascinated. He Zhi and He Jian are not having such a a good time, because all the fierce corpses besides Wen Ning are, you know, their relatives. Mo Xuanyu tries to help by suggesting Xue Yang can swap out the active experimental corpses with some that used to be whichever relatives they hated? There aren't any?! This leads to a discussion of Mo Xuanyu's maternal relatives. Xue Yang offers to kill them if the opportunity arises. Mo Xuanyu doesn't say no.

As soon as Jin Guangyao can get away for a day or two without anyone noticing — some nominal discreet inspection tour — he comes back to the Dizang and brushes off Mo Xuanyu's attempt to present his report on everything that's gone on while Jin Guangyao was busy with courtship and wedding (he doesn't want to think about courtships or weddings). He just goes and orders Wen Qing to invent a poison that can be administered either slowly or in parts, which will make the victim insane with lust and ultimately cause dramatic heart failure, preferably during sexual intercourse.

Wen Qing doesn't ask what his father did to finally push him over the edge, but it's a struggle. She does point out those are extremely specific requirements and she's not an herbalist. She will try if ordered to, but…

Hmmm. Yes. Good point. Perhaps what we want here is a curse. Yiling Laozu, design me a curse.

Wei Wuxian: What? I don't do curses, that was a false accusation—

Wei Wuxian's internal monologue: 'Mad with lust' curses exist, demons hit commoners with them all the time. I don't know the mechanics — well, I have a few ideas how it might work now that I think about it — I don't know how they work, though. A curse to kill someone the next time they have sex should be fairly straightforward, would be more straightforward if I'd gotten around to having sex, not bringing that up. No, I'm not bringing any of this up, I'm going to try to get out of helping Jin Guangyao murder someone. Even if it is probably his father, who deserves it. No. Besides, getting any of this to work on someone with high cultivation would be a challenge— PROBLEM! Would be a problem.

Jin Guangyao leaves him to think about that — for now — and goes down to the cell in the subbasement to (a) look at practically-a-puppet Nie Mingjue and feel smug about his own triumph and superiority, and (b) fantasize about using Nie Mingjue to kill Jin Guangshan.

He sends a message to Qin Su saying he's been injured, but please don't tell anyone, he doesn't want to show weakness. When he gets back, he claims the injury rendered him incapable of sex — but she can't tell anyone, she can't, he'll be ruined. Qin Su is dismayed, but vows she will keep the secret and considers him no less her husband for not being able to fulfill that duty. And at least they have the one child on the way! What a blessing.

Yes. A blessing.

(Qin Su keeps her word and doesn't tell anyone about the 'injury'. She does tell Jiang Yanli, in confidence, that her marriage isn't quite turning out as she expected it to.)

(Meanwhile Madam Jin has nothing against Qin Su personally, but is very determined that everyone remember Jin Guangyao's wife is not on the same level as other Madams Jin. Jiang Yanli does her best to mitigate it, but she still isn't taken as seriously as she should be. When it becomes known Qin Su is pregnant Madam Jin's attitude sours further.)

(Jiang Yanli is privately of the opinion that Qin Su is welcome to be preeminent Madam Jin; she just wants to go back to Yunmeng for good and have A-Ling adopted as a Jiang. Sadly that definitely won't happen unless Jin Guangshan and Madam Jin are both dead.) (Not that she'd be so unfilial as to hope for that.) (Much.)

(Madam Qin dies, somewhere in here. Jin Guangyao is nothing but relieved.) (Did he have something to do with it, besides causing distress by going ahead with the marriage? We may never know.)

Jin Guangyao introduces He Lei to Qin Su, although obviously not under that name. A-Lei is the mute half-wit sister of a loyal servant of his, he says; the man is often away on business so Jin Guangyao promised to find his sister safe and honorable employment — a touching story.

Qin Su promises to be kind to poor half-wit mute A-Lei, and is very patient with her inexperience as a lady's maid and shy nervousness.

Madam Jin not so much. Despite Qin Su's poor taste in husbands, she is still a gentlewoman and deserves better servants than a mangy stray that son of a prostitute brought in, probably out of a brothel.

Jiang Yanli has to try to mitigate this, too. She also makes a few suggestions about ways A-Lei could communicate without speaking — pointing to pictures, perhaps? Hand gestures? Pantomime isn't very dignified, but they ought to let A-Lei express herself…

He Lei runs away from any such suggestions. She's not willing to 'speak' when Jin Guangyao doesn't want her to and jeopardize her siblings.

Jiang Yanli is disappointed, but respects her shyness.

(Nie Huaisang is not going to respect her shyness, especially when he's mostly sure he's seen her among Jinlintai's servants some time before her official appearance, but for the moment he's biding his time.)

He Lei goes to extreme lengths to avoid Jin Guangshan.

Meanwhile Xue Yang hears that Wen Qing is going to see if she can do anything for Wen Ning's sense of taste, next, and "helps" by providing a half-dozen fresh tongues for her to dissect.

(Wei Wuxian's internal monologue: —just mathematically there have to be at least a few resentful ghosts who have it out for Jin Guangshan with sex-related grievances. Now if you could both locate them, and then use their motivation to direct enough other ghosts to overcome Jin Guangshan's level of cultivation… Well, I could, if I had Chenqing and the Seal. Not sure how you'd package it as a curse— Not that I'm trying to package it as a curse this is idle speculation!)

[tmae3114]

I’m still here! So in the after the reset in MechQuest, the player character says to warlic that “[He], Artix, Sys-Zero, and even Mr. Z and Safiria were in it.” Oz reference aside, three of the five people mentioned are confirmed to know of (or at least understand that) the reset happened. I don’t remember where Cysero confirmed this, but Warlic saw the Shadowschythe mecha and vaguely recognized it, and in Mogloween chapter 12 or 13 (where Jack Crescent and the blood moon happened)...

...Safiria alluded to the reset, saying she locked him away after that. Idk if it’s important (or entirely intentional) but I thought it was interesting

Hi!! I’m glad you were still around! And you’re right, that is interesting!

Cysero's memory of the Reset is first mentioned in Ruins of Kordana (though there's elements of early installment weirdness there bc Kordana's dialogue also indicates he was probably planned to have been a ship/AI pre-Reset at that point) and has never been explicitly said since. There's lots of little hints to it, though, and the most blatant acknowledgement is Sys-Zero's appearance in CyseRedux! (Although, since you mentioned AQW in your next ask, I will mention that it’s more explicit in AQW! He and Warlic have a conversation alluding to it and in one quest, there’s a room in Cysero’s house with a portrait of Sys-Zero and the words “Never forget” scratched into the wall)

Warlic's memory situation is a bit foggier. As you said, he definitely recognised that Shadowscythe mecha but his dialogue indicated he didn't know why ("I— Why am I shaking like this? This thing, I know I’ve seen it before") whereas an earlier quest (Corundum Corruption) made it all but explicit that he remembered both the Reset occurring and what happened before it, with the following dialogue talking about events in Mechquest-

Warlic: There are several groups of them scattered all around Lore, hidden away from any who would try to use them for evil. Warlic: One of those groups is in danger. Warlic: A Corruption I thought removed long ago survived and has once again taken root. If left unchecked it will corrupt everything around it. The Hero: You sound like you've dealt with it in the past. Can't you just fix it this time? I know you're weak but... Warlic: You misunderstand. I didn't solve this problem. You did. The Hero: Me? I don't...I don't remember there being any Corruption when I went in and took the crystal shards the last time. Warlic: Not that time. Much, much, earlier. You probably can't even remember it anymore.

-nd this dialogue referencing the Nanovirus, after confirming that Warlic knows about the Shadowscythe-

Warlic: They first tried with a virus, something to corrupt living beings, and what that failed to corrupt everything they wanted it to they moved to... other ways.

-and that doesn't quite seem to line up with Warlic's reaction to Shadowscythe tech in the main storyline. Since the game hasn't explained this discrepancy, I've kind of just filed Warlic's lack of familiarity in the main storyline away as a retcon, which I don't mind that much bc Corundum Corruption is a fairly minor side-quest, all told, even if it was Warlic's first Book 3 appearance, iirc.

Safiria definitely remembers and, for that matter, so does Jack. Or, rather, Jack doesn't even seem to be aware that it happened in the first place, presumably because he was sealed at the time, which must've somehow protected him from the rewriting? But he's initially very confused about not being on Necryptos so he's definitely pre-Reset. And, yeah! Safiria very narrowly catches herself when she almost refers to the Reset by name!

So, of the five people that the Hero remembers seeing, two are confirmed to know it happened and one... might be aware of it and, if he isn't, is probably on the road to remembering.

What's also extremely interesting about this is that the Hero does, as you said, mention five people. Warlic, Artix, Sys-Zero, Mr. Z and Safiria. But they didn't see five people after the Reset. They saw seven.

Warlic, Cysero, Artix, Safiria, Zorbak, Twilly and Robina.

So, with everyone who remembers either being a pre-Reset person who was unchanged (Jack, Kordana) or someone who was present at that brief meeting before time resettled (Cysero, Safiria, maybe Warlic), I suppose that begs the question....

.....will the others who were there remember someday too?

[the-uninformed-zennial]

Dick’s Apartment Chapter 2: Bruce

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088298/chapters/68953245#workskin

Introduction:

The day following Jason’s death had gone by so quickly, Bruce didn’t know what had happened, not really anyway. All he could see was Robin, Jason, his son, so bloody and bruised and broken. He was almost unrecognizable. Almost. But Bruce knew, he had seen that smiling face far too many times to not know. Jason was gone. He was gone and it was Bruce’s fault. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. He didn’t know where he was. Somewhere in the city, definitely not Gotham. The next thing he knew, he was looking down at Dick, sleeping peacefully in his bed, just like he used to on long nights after patrol. Dick who had been in countless situations just like the one that got his broth… that got Jason, killed. Was he even real? Was any of this real?

Dick

“Dick.”

His name, someone was calling his name. Breath flooded Dick’s lungs and he opened his eyes, jumping back at the sight in front of him. Batman...er, Bruce in the lightest layer of the batman suit, leaning only a few inches away from his face.

“Bruce?” His brain could not process… why was Bruce in his apartment? What time was it?

“Jason...” Bruce’s lower lip started to quiver. It never quivered. Something was very, very wrong.

“Bruce, I’m Dick, not Jason.” Definitely something wrong with his brain. Maybe a new strain of fear toxin? But then why would he be here and not the cave? And where was Jason anyway? Weren’t the two of them supposed to be in Africa or something?

“No, Jason, he’s…” Tears actually started flowing down Bruce’s face. Dick had never seen Bruce cry, not even once. This wasn’t fear toxin, this was real. That could only mean one thing… no. No, Jason couldn’t be.

“Bruce, where’s Jason?” Despite how much he tried to keep it steady, his voice still shook at the name, his brother’s name.

“Gone.”

Gone. The unspoken word followed without pause. Dead. Taken from the world, never to be seen again. Jason. His brother. He couldn’t… he couldn’t do this. First his parents, now his brother? The brother he had just started to get to know. The brother who relentlessly teased him about every little thing. The brother who always wore that baggy red hoodie no matter what the temperature was like outside. The brother he would never see smile again.

Unbidden tears started to flow down his face. He stared at a blank space on the wall in front of him and tried to slow his breathing. It helped, a little. As soon as the world slowed down it’s spinning he turned to look at Bruce, who was now kneeling on the floor next to Dick’s bed, with his head in his arms. He’d gone catatonic. Dick had only ever seen him this way once before,  when affected by one of scarecrow’s fear toxins he had yet to build an immunity to. He and Alfred had been able to calm him down, but only after they had shot him with an extra dose of antitoxin and Dick accidentally caught a punch with his face. But this time was different, there wasn’t a cure for this because it wasn’t drug induced. Jason was really gone, and Bruce was going to snap, if he hadn’t already.

Dick cautiously reached out to touch Bruce’s arm. His head snapped up instantly, and it took everything in Dick’s power to not reach for the knife concealed right behind his nightstand. That is, until he looked in Bruce’s eyes. The man couldn’t stop crying. He was broken. Bruce reached up to touch Dick’s face, and after initially pulling back, Dick eventually leaned forward and let his former guardian touch him.

“It’s okay Bruce.” he cooed, trying to keep his tone steady, “I’m still here.”

That must’ve sunk in, because Bruce started to take some deep breaths, calming himself down, just like he taught Dick to do in emergency situations. Pretty soon, he was able to stand up on his own. At which point he kind of awkwardly leaned against the wall in the bedroom. Dick took the chance to glance down at his clock, 3:00 AM. Well, there went any hope he had for sleep before work in the morning. He grudgingly climbed off the end of his bed, so as to not disturb Bruce, and shuffled his way into the kitchen. Coffee. He needed coffee, and maybe a drink. Bruce probably did too.

“I-I should go.” Bruce mumbled, from his position in the bedroom.

“No way.” Dick said, a lot more coherently than he felt, “You don’t get to break into my apartment and wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me terrible news with no explanation and then ditch me after having a come-apart on my bedroom floor. Not gonna happen. So, do you want coffee or bourbon or both?”

Bruce just grunted and made his way over to the small, cluttered table that was the closest thing to a dining room Dick had in his tiny apartment. The two of them just stood there in silence for a few minutes while the water got heated. Jason, dead. That couldn’t be possible. He’d just seen him like, what, a week ago? He had just helped dismantle a drug ring that was terrorizing the city, most of the guys hadn’t even been prosecuted yet. How could he be gone? Dick didn’t notice the stray tear falling down his face until the coffee pot started making that screeching noise that indicated it was almost done. He wiped it off his face before getting down two mugs and pulling the milk and sugar from his fridge.

Bruce always said he liked his coffee black, but Dick knew that he secretly preferred a small splash of milk to dull some of the coffee’s sharper tastes. He poured the black liquid into the two cups then took down the bourbon and splashed a bit in as well. This was going to be a long night (morning?), whatever.

“Here.” The force with which Dick set the mug on the table made a little of the hot liquid splash onto some stray papers.

Bruce stayed leaning up against the wall, looking at the open window like a bird, or a bat, ready to take flight.

“Sit down and tell me what happened.”

Bruce simply glared at him.

“Bruce,” Dick chided, “how did he… what went wrong?”

Bruce still stood aloof next to the window, but decided to reach for the coffee and took a sip.

“If you aren’t here to talk, why did you come?”

He put the mug down, “I need you to stop.”

Dick raised his eyebrows in confusion, “Stop what?”

“Nightwing.”

Dick’s jaw clenched automatically. His head shook a little with the effort it took to contain his ever amounting rage. Hadn’t they already had this conversation before? Didn’t Bruce remember where this conversation got them last time?

“Will you ever stop...” he began, but couldn’t finish. Treating me like a child ...or... being batman … Dick couldn’t decide which would be the more fitting end to the question. Somehow, Bruce knew exactly what he meant. The answer to both questions forming in his mind was answered in a simple,

“No.”

The rest of the morning was spent in relative silence. Bruce had made it fairly clear that he would not tell Dick about what had happened with Jason, and Dick was honestly too tired to press. He figured he’d just hack into the batcomputer next chance he got and find out what happened for himself. Bruce would eventually need to answer his questions, but Dick figured they could remain unanswered until Bruce got his head back on straight. Besides, his mind was too full of all the memories and emotion that he didn’t think he would really hear Bruce even if he did explain himself.

Fifteen minutes until five and Dick finally broke the silence, “Look, I have a meeting with the Titans in a couple minutes and you need some sleep. There are some sheets in the nightstand by my bed and the couch is pretty comfortable, so crash there if you need to.”

Bruce lifted his head up in slight acknowledgement of what Dick had said, but quickly regained his brooding stature. Standing there in the dim morning light he looked more like a gargoyle than a real person. For once, Dick thought he could understand why Bruce chose to name himself after a bat, the two creatures shared an eerie similarity; the natural ability to strike terror into the heart of a bystander.

Dick eventually left to go get ready for his meeting. By the time he came out of the bathroom, he found that Bruce had pulled the sheets out of the drawer and laid them on the sofa. He also noticed half of his bottle of bourbon was gone. Dick couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Bruce drink. What could have gone so wrong? But there was no time to pry answers out of the stubborn bat, they would just have to wait.

So as Dick turned to leave for the day he looked at Bruce for just a moment and said, “I expect you’ll be ready to actually talk to me when I return.”

With that, he left.

---

Dick came back to an empty apartment. It looked exactly as he had left it, not a trace of Bruce anywhere, save the unlocked window and the empty bottle of bourbon in the trash. Dick could almost pretend it was a dream, just another bad nightmare. But deep down he knew Bruce had told the truth. Jason was dead.

The weight of it all slammed into him at once, and he found himself crouched on the ground gasping for air through tear soaked sobs. Jason was dead. He couldn’t move, so he didn’t. Dick stayed there, frozen on the ground, paralyzed in sadness until dawn rose to greet him once more.

Notes:

This takes place in a slightly altered version of canon where Dick wasn’t off-world at the time of Jason’s death. However, I tried my best to make it so that the events of New Titans #55 could still make sense (with a few minor adjustments), because I think the way they wrote it was actually pretty well done.

[pastelgrungewrecker]

Scarification

{Related to/Sequel to This]

The stark realization Whirl couldn’t cry shook the household to it’s foundations. He waved away the concerns, bluntly denying worry until finally he snapped- prosthetic hands curled into fists and molten-gold eye vicious in it’s near-devilish shine.

“I’M FUCKING FINE.”

He wasn’t, but like hell would he admit it.

Perceptor watched, as he always did, while the rest of their odd family unit worried and fretted.

And then, the day came he struck.

“Whirl.”, he called out quietly, “I need a favor.”

“What, shortstack?”

“I have an appointment- it might be a bit of a rough one, and I need someone who’s going to be able to drive if the painkillers don’t wear off in time so that I can be here when the kids get home from school, if it’s no trouble.”

Whirl shrugged, getting to his feet after pulling over his boots and lacing them on, “Sure thing, sweetheart. What kinda appointment is this? It ain’t that hormone doc, is it? I still say they can suck a whole fuck-”

“No, they have since been... handled.”

“...They’re dead ain’t they.”

“Wh-No! I simply transferred my care to a better physician reccomended by Ratchet.”

“...So no one would know if they died, then-”

“YOU CAN’T MURDER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS.”

“Can so. Anyway, what kinda appointment?”

They had argued and bickered the whole way out to the car, already on the way with Perceptor’s occasional direction before Whirl remembered his initial question. Perceptor blinked, before pulling away the patch over his eye and tucking it into his shirtpocket.

“Scar reduction.”

Whirl raised an eyebrow.

“Due to the nature of my previous injuries, sometimes the procedure becomes a touch invasive. They use various methods to reduce the size and discoloration; and in the event of my chest, on occasion must venture beneath the skin to free up my respiratory system.”

“Eh?”

“They get the spiderwebs out of my airsacs.”

Whirl snorted, but nodded.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Walking into the hospital made him tense soon after. He stayed close to Perceptor’s shoulder, squinting slightly at the doctor who met them- young, bright, but softspoken.

Perceptor spoke with them in low tones before sighing and unbuttoning his shirt. The doctor looked over to Whirl, and tilted their head with a small smile.

“Are you a friend of the patient?”

“Husband.”

The smile never changed, “Oh, excellent. Once today’s procedure is finished I’ll go over the aftercare with you, just in case! I’ve already informed Mister Drift and Doctor Ratchet.”

“Sounds good.”

They turned back to Perceptor, and Whirl’s eye narrowed. He, himself, was covered in scars; probably more that Perceptor given the... surgery he had received in his younger years.

“Mister Whirl? If you have any questions feel free to ask me.”

“Whatcha gonna do to him.”

“Today we are working on evening out the skin over his chest and checking on the healing from the last breathing issue we dealt with. He was having some issues with wheezing and tightness alongside pain and pulling.”

“Mhm, I remember.”

“I’m not sure how much of his history you know-”

“Served with him in the Wreckers, probably know more’n you.”

Something like alarm or relief was suddenly present on their face, “Oh! Oh that is excellent. May I ask you some questions, please?”

The squint continued, “Sure. But if I say I’m not answering, don’t be a shit about it.”

A confused head tilt, before realization and a pleasantly solemn nod, “Of course, sir. Do you know the extent of Mister Perceptor’s torso injuries? Finding any record on it has been... difficult.”

“There isn’t any ‘s why.”, said Whirl easily, “He was his own medic for all of it. If you need details you’ll need to contact Magnus.”

“Oh, wonderful- that will help a LOT in planning further treatment.”

A soft hiss from Perceptor, and they returned their full attention to him. Whirl watched the gentle motions, the careful way they handled Perceptor and his minute pains. And Whirl’s suspicious squint relaxed.

“Also, Mister Whirl- do you know the approximate age of Perceptor’s scarring, by any chance?”

“Kinda. Lessee... It was before Garrus 9, ‘n right after my veto...”

Whirl muttered to himself for a moment, quietly appreciating the patience the doctor showed before he was able to give a fairly close date, “Give or take a month.”

Honest gratitude shone in the doctor’s eyes, “Thank you so much! This explains quite a bit by way of how heavy the scarring is, and how widespread in the chest cavity it’s become. I’ll be sure to notify the head physician about this so we can modify your treatment.”

“Ugh, hopefully I won’t be the frog in the tin again.”

A soft chuckle, “Maybe only once or twice more; we were able to clear out quite a bit.”

“Izzat why you’ve been sleepin’ better Percy?”

“Precisely.”

“That’s good to hear! I’m sure uncle would be pretty upset if I made his old coworkers TOO uncomfortable.”

Whirl paused, “Uncle?”

A sad smile from the doctor before they bustled over to the small counter, plucking their necessities out of cabinets with some kind of muscle memory, “Yes, my uncle Sandstorm.”

“Sandst- oh. Aw geez, kiddo.”

“It’s alright! No need for the sympathy kiddos.”, they asnwered with a slight tightness in their voice, “But my uncle is why I went for becoming a medic, and went specifically full bore on this. Scars, even if they never really go away, deserve to be taken care of. Otherwise... well.”

A solemn silence fell over the room as Whirl and Perceptor quietly remembered old rules. The three D’s: Death, Dishonorable Discharge, and Dementia.

The third was always the worst, and Sandstorm’s case had been a pinnacle of suffering.

“So, now I’m a doctor- and, to be honest, I prefer to work with Wreckers like Mister Perceptor. Speaking of! You’re good for today, just some minor toning and double checking. Here-”

A small container put in Perceptor’s hand.

“This should help with the roughness of the skin around the scars themselves; and will help if there’s any peeling or inflammation. Keep them clean and use the cream you were prescribed last month and on your next appointment we’ll see how far they went.”

They turned to Whirl, and smiled, “And Mister Whirl? If you’d like my help, Mister Perceptor has all my contact information- unless you’d like me to give it to you for privacy’s sake.”

Whirl paused a moment, thinking. Perceptor seemed to not be paying attention, putting his shirt back on and swearing softly as sore hands rebelled against buttons.

Whirl nodded, and whispered, “If y’could, kiddo.”

A smile, a card slipped into Whirl’s hand, and a gentle squeeze of a steel forearm.

“See you soon, Sir.”

Soon turned out to be, ironically and quietly, the day after Perceptor’s appointment. 

Whirl swallowed hard as he was called back, greeted with the same soft smile and a gentle hand on a steel-plated arm.

“Hello Mister Whirl, it’s good to see you.”, they said with their voice calm and smooth, “Now, let’s see what we’re working with- as much as you are currently comfortable with showing me.”

“There’s. There’s a lot, kiddo.”

“I know. But I promise I’m no wallflower.”

Whirl choked and snorted at the almost kid-like grin, “Proud of that huh?”

“Sure am.”

Whirl shook his head, then began tugging his shirt from his body, up and over his head and set beside him in a mound of rumpled fabric. Some of the scars were raised, keyloidal and gnarled- but most were dips and dents in the skin.

With hands washed and gloves on, the doctor began carefully inspecting each one, asking quiet questions about pain and soreness and time and cause and simply listening- even when Whirl’s memory seemed to glitch, when he could remember the aftermath and not the reason.

“Well, we have a few options with a good majority of them. There’s lasering, which is quickest but can have some side effects and pain, there are topical treatments, various kinds of medicated lotions or creams that can be used.”

“Huh, go figure.”

“My major worry, however- Your arms and your eye.”

Silence.

“Mister Whirl, I know what they’re from. And even though I will never be able to understand the kind of pain you went through, I do need to be able to see what they left behind; I can’t change the past, I wish I could, but what I can do is make things less painful in the future.”

“....Nothin’ leaves this room, right?”

“Nope. Not even if Doctor Ratchet tried to badger me out of the info. My lips and records are one hundred percent sealed.”

Whirl chuckled. He knew Ratchet would never try such a thing but... For some reason, the promise helped.

“Watch how I detach the left, so you can help with the right, okay?”

“Yes sir.”

First, he removed the patch from his eye. He winced softly, the sudden chill of the air biting against skin normally covered. The doctor’s eyes widened, and they got to their feet to scurry over to.. the thermostat?

“I’m so sorry! I should’ve turned the heat up a little when you walked in- temperature can sometimes cause soreness in scars usually covered.”

“That why I swell up in the chilly months?”

“It can be a factor, yes.”, they said in concern, “But it can also be a sign of scar tissue reaching far deeper than it should, which is worrying.”

“Well, full eye gouging, so...”

“Mhm, that’d do it.”

Next, the arms- high tech prosthetics developed by Brainstorm in a fit of anger at the status quo. First the left, and then he nodded for help with the right. There was no pity in the doctor’s eyes, simply concern and calculation.

“...This isn’t a good look.”, was the flat answer.

“Y’don’t say.”

“See how the scarring has lumped up here, and here? And calloused over here? That will have to be dealt with or we could be dealing with some sticky problems.”

“Sticky how?”

“Sticky like pus pocket under the skin.”

“Gross- Perce has that issue with his eye socket once, some kinda skin infection.”

“Exactly. Scar tissue is just skin, but.. bassboosted.”

“...You sound like my kid.”

“Well, its a good way of putting it.”, they said with a shrug, “The thickness and uneven development is worrying to say the least- do you have any cushioning in your prosthetics?”

“Yeah?”

“May I look at them?”

“Sure, you’re the doc after all. My husband developed them- Not Perce. Brainstorm.”

The doctor began to meticulously inspect the prosthetics, “I see- would it be alright for me to contact him? The cushioning seems to be slightly breaking down, and I’d like to give him the contact of our prosthetics department to see if there are other materials available.”

“Er, I s’pose. His number’s in my phone- but after I got my arms back on, maybe.”

“Good idea.”

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Brainstorm was startled by Whirl’s sudden homecoming near dinner-hour; raising his eyebrows at the sneaky behavior his husband was exhibiting. Beating down his natural anxious reaction, he crept after him and peered around a doorframe into the... bathroom.

“Now, lessee... She said this one was for-”

“She who?”

Whirl shrieked. Brainstorm crossed his arms, hip cocked and expression flat.

“She who, Whirl.”

“My doc.”

“...Your what?”

“Perce introduced me to the doc who helps with his uh. His scars. She’ll be callin’ you, actually. About my arms. Somethin’ about the cushioning in the prosthetics, and gettin’ you in contact with a buncha medics who had other materials or whatever.”

Brainstorm’s eyes lit up, “Oh, oh really! Excellent, absolutely excellent- It was touch and go with the internal padding, I was terrified of what would happen if it broke down too far-”

Whirl blinked, hanging a towel over the bathroom mirror as he always did, “Huh, really?”

Brainstorm rolled his eyes, “Yes, dork. I love you and don’t want you in pain or sore all the time just to have the ability to flip the bird.”

Whirl fell quiet, humming his acknowledgement before pulling the patch off his eye and tucking it into a drawer, “Also, ‘M not s’posed to wear my patch all the time. Worried about temperature sensitivity and swellin’ and stuff. And they ave me some weird shit to put on the old scars on my stomach and stuff. Said it’ll help with evenin’ them out.”

“Good, you’re always in hell when winter hits and you know it. I’m glad you went and saw a doctor, Whirl.”

Brainstorm snuck in, standing on tiptoe to press a kiss to Whirl’s jaw before the phone in his back pocket trilled angrily, “Ah, what do you know- a mysterious caller!”

Whirl watched as Brainstorm answered, chatting animatedly about “developmental roadblocks” and “possible consultancy”. He shook his head, turning back to try and read the tiny print on the container in his hand..

“PERCE, GET IN HERE THREE EYES, I CAN’T SEE THIS SHIT!”

“WATCH WHO YOU CALL THREE EYES, YOU BLOODY SASQUATCH, I’LL BE THERE IN A MINUTE!” 

[studiobeebo]

Cold Hands, Warm Heart (Shinsou Hitoshi x Reader)

Hey guys! Here is the first place winner of my 2.5K event! Hope you enjoy!

When you had initially made plans to study with your friends, it wasn’t really a big deal.

Lately it had become a tradition of sorts for you, Shinsou, and Kaminari to meet up at one of the small cafe’s that was only about a fifteen minute walk from the dorms after school to study together or work on homework. The wi-fi was great, plus the hot drinks only got even better now that the weather was getting worse the further into winter you went, and to top it off you usually ended up making some good progress on your work even if a good portion of your trip was made up of Kaminari joking around or complaining about how Shinsou was already ahead of him in his studies even though he was fairly new to the hero course. Even though your trips usually only lasted an hour or two, it was always a nice break from your increasingly rigorous training plus at this point you could easily say the two of them were your best friends, but then again, if you were being honest you couldn’t deny that you always had a tiny hope inside you that maybe you’d get the chance to be more than just ‘friends’ with your favorite purple haired boy.

If anyone asked you about your ‘crush’ you’d brush it off, say it was nothing, but lately you’d realized that it had far outgrown the status of being ‘nothing’. It had started out that way, sure, he was just another guy you thought was cute, but when you actually began to get to know him? It was like your poor teenage heart had been shot down from the youthful naive heavens only to erupt into action whenever Shinsou would so much as laugh or smile. You had discovered that he was much more than his gruff sarcastic surface, though you did like that part about him too, and his inner passion and drive was awe inspiring to you. If you could you would choose to spend all your time with him, and when you realized that you realized just how hard you had fallen for him.

You felt like you were blessed in a way, one, because you were able to meet and befriend him in the first place and two, you thought you were pretty damn good at acting like you weren’t moments away from a heart attack whenever the two of you hung out together. Though to be fair, you weren’t exactly the best in recognizing signs of a crush so you probably wouldn’t even realize it if you were being super obvious, and thankfully for Shinsou, you couldn’t recognize those same signs in others either.

He could go on some lame tangent about ‘love at first sight’ and blah blah blah, but that wouldn’t exactly be true. At first the two of you hardly knew each other, you were in two separate classes after all, and you didn’t become friends until well after the sports festival. He just thought you were cool and nice, plus you didn’t mind him joking about the rest of your classmates. If anything he was a bit jealous, mostly because he knew you were in the hero course, but that jealousy was soon shared in the fact that he didn’t really get to spend as much time with you in comparison to your classmates. It was something that mildly bothered him at first, like a scratch he couldn’t quite get to, so when he began working with your class he thought all his questions would be answered, but he was unfortunately wrong. It was like a child finally getting the puppy they’d been wishing for and realizing they had absolutely no idea what to do with it. Hanging out with you seemed three times as awkward as usual no matter how cool he tried to play it off to a point where even Kaminari’s dumb comments couldn’t ease his tension.

It was...a struggle, to say the least, but at the same time it was nice to get to know you more. He found himself wishing that your little trio’s trips to study became more frequent, then he found himself wishing that Kaminari would get sick or something so he wouldn’t have to explain why he wanted to spend some time just with you. His prayers were fortunately answered when the two of you got a message in your group chat from Kaminari saying he couldn’t meet up with you guys because he got in some trouble with Mr. Aizawa. Of course that was bull shit, he was just getting tired of sitting in between the awkward glances and mumbled flirtation attempts and he was hoping that if he opted out of a couple of your sessions one of you would eventually get around to confessing. He was smart enough to wait until the last second, knowing both of you were either at the cafe already or well on your way so you couldn’t get out of being alone together, but to be honest neither of you would even dream of giving up this golden opportunity.

You ended up arriving first, being quick to set up all of your things and order drinks for the two of you while thinking ‘It’s no big deal, most friends know each other’s order by heart, right?’. Luckily it didn’t take long for Shinsou to follow suit, if it had, you would have had much more time to overthink the situation and make yourself nervous, but Shinsou was way ahead of you in that arena.

“Tell me I’m not the only one not surprised that Kaminari did something stupid.” Was the best thing he could think of as a greeting once he got there, and judging by the small snort you gave in return, a sarcastic remark was the right way to go.

“Yeah I’m definitely not surprised, though I didn’t even see what he got in trouble for.” You said, moving your stuff aside as he settled down in the seat across from you. “Probably his grades again, he rarely actually studies with us when we’re here.”

“Well he is pretty easily distracted.” He muttered, taking off all of his extra protections from the cold outside and sitting down only to finally notice the coffee placed on the table in front of him.

“Oh..thanks.”

“Hm? Oh! Yeah, well, I figured- Well I just remembered what you got the last couple times so..”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm..”

You awkwardly coughed under your breath, hoping the small smirk on his face wasn’t a ‘God they’re such a creep I can’t help but laugh’ smile. Even if you didn’t know it, it was actually the opposite though since he was just slightly flattered that you paid enough attention to him to remember what he usually ordered.

“Ok! So! Hero law?” You said, looking over your notes to see where you guys started with your studies earlier that day.

“Yeah, let’s get started.”

With that the two of you began going over your respective materials, filling each other in with little things the other missed and striking up casual conversation when your brains needed a short break. The strangeness of being alone together melted away rather quickly and even though you couldn’t imagine yourself not enjoying spending your time with him, it was somehow even better than you expected. Despite what others thought of his personality you felt everything but cold when being around him and his somewhat dry sense of humor sent you into more fits of laughter than you would have liked to admit. You almost felt a bit sad when he mentioned how late it had gotten, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled to cut his time with you off either. Still, you both had lives and needed time to recharge before starting all over again the next day so you packed up your things and paid for your drinks before heading out.

The warmth given to you by the hot chocolate you drank was snapped out like a flickering candle the moment you stepped outside, however, and now you wished you were back inside with Shinsou for a whole other reason. When you had set out earlier in the evening it wasn’t nearly this bad, a little chilly maybe but not freezing. The wind seemed to have picked up tremendously during the time the two of you were cozy inside so now the cold was violently nipping at every uncovered section of your skin as you walked.

For a while you tried to play it off, you didn’t want to look like a total idiot in front of your crush after all. You were trying your best to contribute to whatever conversation came up, but in your head you were just beating yourself up for not bringing a scarf, hat, or gloves when winter had already begun. When it began to snow, slowly at first and then full fledged, you really began to regret your choices as you could hardly feel your fingers anymore and your shaking was more than just a bit noticeable.

Shinsou had been mulling over his own thoughts on your freezing figure for the last few minutes, but when he realized your shivering he figured he should stop being a wuss and just say what had been on his mind.

“You can borrow my stuff if you want.”

For a moment you thought you were hearing things since he was blatantly avoiding eye contact while he spoke, and even when his words did register you still didn’t quite understand. It was then that you realized unlike yourself, he had his own winter wear on and that now he was offering it to you.

“Oh no that’s- that’s okay! I’d feel like an ass, I should have brought my own things.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal.” He continued, “I’ll be fine, we only have a bit to go anyways.”

You bit your lip in thought, going over the pros and cons of a seemingly minor thing. What if he was just trying to be nice? Maybe he didn’t actually want you to agree. But then again, he didn’t seem like that kind of guy, and since he was insisting…

“Er, alright, sure.” You muttered, slowing to a stop next to him.

He was expecting you to keep denying his offer, but when you looked up at him expectantly he let out a soft ‘Oh’ before stopping as well. He handed over his gloves to you, then his hat as well. Finally he unwrapped the scarf that hung around his neck and instead wrapped it around you, lingering for just a moment to ‘adjust’ it when in reality he just liked being that close to you. When he was done he stepped back and once he got a good look at you, he hoped that the color that was surely painting his cheeks could be written off as the cold getting to him...which it was, he was freezing his ass off now, but god did you look cute enough in his things to make at least his chest feel warm and fuzzy.

“...You good?” He finally spoke up, realizing he had just been standing there staring at you, but you were too caught up in a daze of your own to have realized.

“Oh- yeah...Thank you.” You spoke, continuing your walk as he just gave you a slight nod in response.

You felt warmer now, in more ways than just one. His gloves were a bit too big for you and so was his hat, but that didn’t make you any less happy. You had to bite your cheek to hide the giddy smile on your face, but he was too focused on trying not to stare at you to notice. You couldn’t help but bring your hands up to fiddle around with his scarf, your own cheeks starting to feel warm at the thought of it smelling like him and keeping his warmth from when he had worn it moments ago.

The two of you continued to walk in silence with cheeks warm enough to melt any snow that threatened them, and it wasn’t just your cheeks either. If feelings could manifest physically then surely both of you would be cozy as can be with the warmth that radiated off of the two of you fueled by ‘slight’ crushes and rushed glances at one another. In the end maybe your day together wasn’t exactly a date and the two of you were still a bit far from either of you confessing, but even if you were both left facing the cold, it was nothing warm cheeks and even warmer hearts couldn’t handle.

[laufie]

i have a lot of thoughts about emet-selch, its been 3 days since i finished MSQ and i’m still tearing up thinking about him. i dont expect anyone to read this shit but i just need to vent this somewhere cause crow’s ear is probably sore with all my moping

(at first) i hated him the whole time, man. not as a character, he’s an amazing character, but because he’s a villain. you know, we’re the good guys and he is the big bad guy. especially after he hurt g’raha, i was powering through MSQ hoping i get to kill him. maybe a bit too much but a rather adequate response to how they set him up.

and then amaurot. then talking to the shadow of his friend who was just a bit more self-aware than others, who told me of the heavy burden that plagues him, despite him concealing it so masterfully. then seeing it’s end. slowly coming to understand his intentions, my view on him changed so drastically and so quickly that to my own surprise when thancred dealt the final blow to him i found myself angry, not satisfied as i initially expected. i wish things went differently.

emet-selch, for all his vices and undeniable villainry, was trying to do the same thing as us. prevent a tragedy happening to the people he loved. well, more like “undo” it. he witnessed everyone he loved and cared for die and he knew of a way to bring them back. the means were abysmally catastrophic, so he had to convince himself that we are just mindless primitive savages. we don’t feel bad killing a bug that inconveniences us. that’s what emet had spent so many years convincing himself of: we are just bugs in his way to restoring everything he ever loved - makes it all that much easier to commit genocide. not only that, but the man was tempered. we don’t know how much of his will was truly his own. maybe, if there was a way to strip him of zodiark’s influence we would see a face of remorse.

he was numb to all suffering around him, save for the one he remembered his people going through. he was a hero of his own story. but he was also alone. he didn’t have others cheering him on or believing in him like wol does, he didnt have the scions at his side or even so much as a friendly shoulder to cry on. and i’m sure he cried plenty. a man who cares for someone so deeply doesn’t reach his levels of apathy without burning through every emotion there is sevenfold. and in the end he lost.

emet-selch was a villain who deserved to be saved. he deserves redemption, to feel regret and remorse and self-hatred for what he’s done, to make it up to us. final fantasy is that kind of game. maybe it’s too early to ask for a redemption ark, but the heavy implication of him really truly being dead is really hard. it’s the worst.

why couldn’t we save him? the universe with magic, aether, tempering, light and dark, is bound to be bendable enough to find a way. something that ryne saw in him. a way for wol to “drain” his darkness and balance it out with their own overload of light. loosen the grip of zodiark on him. fuck sake, even those “i have no idea why this worked” moments. anything. one of the key phrases of this expansion is that what we are doing is for those we can yet save. why couldn’t he be one of them. why re-introduce a fairly minor character back into the story, tie him to so many events and characters, set up an entire world around him, only to kill him permanently. was it only for heartbreak? i really dont want to believe that was his purpose.

i know that the re-created amaurot still stands, so maybe emet-selch isn’t dead. i know that we used the same means and the same quantity of it to kill him as we did on lahabrea, a comparatively much weaker ascian, no way the same identical thing would do the same damage to hades, so maybe emet-selch isn’t dead. i know that g’raha was also a minor character from the past reintroduced as a major key character in shadowbringers with heavy implications that he will die, just like they did with emet-selch, so maybe he isn’t dead. i’ve thought of all of this, because i’m in such fucking denial that he’s dead. i don’t want him to be dead. if blizzard found a way to bring back illidan, a villain fuckup with intentions much less noble than emet-selch and give him a redemption ark, square enix can do it too.

i keep saying to myself, final fantasy is that kind of game. despite how grim the story got, it still has the core of purity. giving someone a chance they may not deserve, seeing the good in others. emet-selch is a villain deserving to be saved, i will die on this hill alone if i have to.

i’m sad. i’m so fucking sad, i still cry when i think of the last parting phrase he says to wol. 3 days later i actually still cry over this fucking character. and no, i’m not on the thirst train or whatever, i don’t find him attractive, although i can see the appeal. i love his character so deeply. i went into shadowbringers because of what crow told me about g’raha tia - he was my main focus and one of the main reasons i played and enjoyed the story. i love g’raha. i didn’t expect that by the end of it i would find myself missing emet-selch the most. i know g’raha is still there, but as i said earlier, i was hoping to get to kill emet-selch. the game fucked with my head so hard that now i regret it so much.

i’m sad i’m sad i’m sad, i’m so fucking sad and i will never be over this character. i’m not mad at se, the story is amazing, i just. i think he deserved better.

[squeemcsquee]

Anime Iowa 2019: Friday

Hoo boy, I’ve been sitting on this review for too long. I got lazy, I suppose. But the problem of being lazy when reviewing cons is you start forgetting things, and this is one of the ways I like to remember.

Anyway, self-induced guilt trip aside, let’s dive in.

This was my first Anime Iowa but a return visit of sorts for @lechevaliermalfet - I say “of sorts” because he attended in the early years of the con and when it was in Coralville. For 2019, Anime Iowa was in Des Moines.

Just like when we attended Anime Midwest last year, @lechevaliermalfet and I drove to the con on Friday, rather than booking an additional night in the hotel. Well, he drove - I just goofed off on my phone in the car and snapped a photo for some of our friends as we passed by Bettendorf.

It’s our twisted version of this: 

We didn’t quite get started at the time we planned, due to some last-minute grocery shopping for at-con meals. Des Moines is about a 4-hour drive away, and while we didn’t figure we’d arrive right at the start of the con, I think we both initially expected to arrive before 1pm. Oh well. 

Finding our hotel and the con itself was easier than I’d feared. We were staying at the Comfort Inn and were basically right off of the interstate. 

What I did find interesting was that we actually had our names checked against a guest list by a security guard in the hotel parking lot before we could park. When we did check in, we were greeted by a fellow nerd, who commented (based on our shirts) about “being among my people.” 

We treated ourselves to a king room and it was very comfortable for the weekend, honestly. 

From the hotel, we walked to the convention center, which was only a few blocks away. I discovered that I could easily hit a few PokeStops during that walk. 

Once we got to the convention center, THAT is where things got confusing, as we weren’t certain of the appropriate entrance.

When we did find it, a helpful Anime Iowa staffer was seated outside, giving directions to the registration desk.They boiled down to “go to your right till you get to the escalators, take those upstairs, then turn left, go down the hall, turn right, down the hall, and right again...and then down the escalators. There are signs, don’t worry!” 

...Yeah. Despite one set of doors being fairly close to where we walked in, they didn’t allow two-way traffic into the registration / official con merch / snack bar area. So if you were getting your badge, buying Anime Iowa swag, or just trying to nom some fries, you had to go upstairs and across the con center to go back downstairs where you wanted to be. It...really wasn’t that practical. I’m sorry. @lechevaliermalfet probably heard me whine about it for a good chunk of the weekend, as it screwed with my sense of direction - which is shaky at best when in new territory. 

Registration itself was actually fairly quick and painless. We registered at con, since we actually weren’t certain until the week beforehand that my work schedule would work out (my job is regularly short-staffed). Our poor starving registration staffer thankfully got munchies delivered right as they handed us our badges. 

After that, we just wandered for a bit, getting a feel for the convention center and the atmosphere. And I have to say, Anime Iowa is very welcoming. We made a few new con friends over the course of the weekend, actually. I hope we get to see them next year. And there were more fans who appeared to be in their 30s, like us, though plenty of younger fans were running around too, of course. Anime Iowa also constantly paid homage to older anime with the artwork of their mascot, Buu-Chan.

Also, folks on staff clearly had an awesome playlist for the music going over the con center speakers whenever the con was open. I heard many beloved anime opening and ending themes, Disney tunes in Japanese, and more. 

I know we browsed the dealer’s room off and on during the con and we did hit the AMV room at least once in between panels, but I can’t give quite the blow-by-blow I’ve managed in the past, partly because of how late I am on this review.

@lechevaliermalfet thought it was beyond wrong that there was a Charlotte plushie there. I loved it but didn’t buy it.

Thankfully, I did screenshot the schedule, so at least I still can remember the panels we went to!

But as an aside, that was the other major organizational aspect of Anime Iowa that bothered me. The printed program listed the full panel info...but in alphabetical order instead of chronological and some panels weren’t listed. The missing listings didn’t bother me as much - that’s just sadly a hazard of having to do some last-minute shuffling after you’ve sent your order to the printer. But not having a chronological schedule that I could flip through meant I was constantly checking my phone for information - I took screenshots of the web schedule and referred to those or the posted schedules by the panel rooms to verify I was in the right place at the right time.

VS

Anyway, our first panel of the day was the Q&A with J. Michael Tatum. Now, I’m honestly not the best with remembering who voiced what, with a handful of exceptions if a character left an impression. So I couldn’t initially place characters with the name - but I didn’t mind. I learned early on, from when @shbumi and I were basically the only guests at a minor voice actor’s panel at Anime St. Louis way back when, that talent panels are always informative. And usually entertaining, though that can depend on the hour of the day and how caffeinated the guest is. 

Our second panel of the day was Greg Ayres’ Q&A panel. You would think we’d be bored of attending his events at cons now, seeing as how he’s almost always around at Anime Zap. But nope - and at Anime Iowa, in all of his panels, we were rewarded with some new stories we hadn’t heard before. And Ayres’ storytelling ability is part of why we love his panels.

Our third panel of the night was Six Degrees of Shinji Ikari. It’s sad that this panel only attracted a small crowd, honestly. It relies heavily on audience participation and bullshitting abilities. And yes, it really is just using the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” social game, only done with anime/game characters. But it was super entertaining - more so when the challengers weren’t familiar with both of the characters they were expected to link. 

The fourth and final panel was Greg Ayres’ 18+ panel. Some classic stories referencing Grindr and Jigglypuff, but also newer stories involving VAs farting in unfortunate circumstances and determining the question of “What do you do when you are in a bathroom with no TP/kleenex/towels/etc and need to wipe?”

Also, Greg Ayres’ doesn’t allow photo/video during his panel, but he was goofing off with his hair beforehand and I did snag a photo of that.

After that, the con center closed down for the night. @lechevaliermalfet and I did get slightly turned around, since we followed the crowd exiting the building. The upside to that is that we learned that the Hyatt that was hosting late-night events was connected via skywalk, and just how far it was from our hotel. But that was all the exploring we felt up to for Friday, so that also ended our con for the day.  

My Anime Iowa 2019 coverage

1) Cosplayers of Anime Iowa, Part 1

2) Cosplayers of Anime Iowa, Part 2

3) Anime Iowa 2019: Friday (current post)

4) Anime Iowa 2019: Saturday

5) Anime Iowa 2019: Sunday 

[lechevaliermalfet]

West Across the Sand: A Look Back at Kazan

When I first got into anime and manga, I was in my mid-teens, and it was the mid- to late 90s.  And at least in my part of the world, it was a little like joining a secret society.  You practically had to already know someone on The Inside, and it was like getting initiated.  Whoever had been into it longer than you would want to show you the classics of the era: Ranma ½, Tenchi Muyo! (Which one?  All of them), Akira, Vampire Hunter D, or any number of choice others.  Soundtracks (if you were into that sort of thing) were hard to come by, and most of the ones I found locally came courtesy of either Son May or EverAnime – companies I later found out were Taiwanese bootleggers.  You could tell the discs were bootlegs because the prices were reasonable.

In those days, getting fansubs meant sending blank VHS tapes to total strangers you’d found online, and waiting weeks (or longer) to get them back with anime on them, and everybody had the Anime Web Turnpike bookmarked.  There’s still a website at its URL, though Wikipedia states it’s been offline as of 2014.  

If you want to know where anime got its reputation for violence and sex, this particular era is where you want to look.  The market for anime was small in those days, and the licensors and distributors really had no idea how to expand it.  So a lot of them (in particular Streamline, Urban Visions, and U.S. Manga Corps; now all defunct) catered to the exploitation-flick market – the gore-hounds and the porn junkies, and the people we would have called edgelords if the term had been invented yet.

This was a time when you could use the word “Japanimation” utterly without irony, and there was a good chance that nobody hearing it would cringe.

Manga, meanwhile, was a total wilderness.  You couldn’t find it in bookstores back then.  That you can today is thanks to Tokyopop.  Whatever their numerous and varied sins, they can claim to have done that bit of good, at least.  And Amazon and Ebay were somewhere off over the horizon.  So you had to go to your local comic book shop, and then you had to look around for yourself, because chances were that even the people who worked there didn’t know what in the hell you were talking about.

Most of the manga that was available came through Viz and Dark Horse (and maybe other avenues I’ve forgotten).  But mostly Viz.  Dark Horse got their hands on some great stuff (Ghost in the Shell and Blade of the Immortal, just to name two), but Viz got more stuff, and a wider variety of it.

At the tail-end of the 90s, there was the beginning of an anime boom that lasted until about the mid-aughts.  I was at one of Crispin Freeman’s Q&A panels at Anime Central a couple of years ago, and he likened it to a tide rolling in about every decade. The tide comes in, hits a high-water mark, and recedes.  Then it comes in again, a little higher this time, and recedes.  In the late 90s, the tide came in and largely stayed in.

A large part of this, I think, was Toonami, which took a crowbar (part Dragon Ball Z and part Gundam Wing at the start, followed by others later) to the whole situation and forced the door wide open.  A lot of what they showed was very commercial and fairly “safe” (or at least, could be made safe), but it accomplished what Astro Boy and Speed Racer and Starblazers and Robotech before had never managed, which was to make anime into a minor phenomenon.

In the wake of that sudden explosion, there were a ton of smaller and less established entities who got into the business.  More of these, so far as I can remember, went into manga rather than anime (though there were a few new anime companies, like SynchPoint).  It was probably cheaper than trying to get in on the anime side of things.  Suddenly, we had Tokyopop (first under their Mixx Manga label, then later their own name), and DrMaster, and ComicsOne (whose publications were later taken over by DrMaster when ComicsOne vanished into the ether in 2005; DrMaster would follow suit themselves, just four years later), and Yen Press, and Studio Ironcat, and Seven Seas…  Even reputable publishers like Del Rey got in on the act after a while.

It was an exciting time to be a fan, to have so many new avenues available through which to explore the hobby, each trying to find new and exciting material in order to carve out their own niche.  Today, a lot of these publishers don’t exist.  The market was growing, but didn’t ultimately grow enough to allow room for them all.  

A certain part of me actually misses the bad old days.  Like any rational person, I’m happy that one of my major interests is now at least sort of mainstream, easy to access, and at least somewhat cheaper (nowadays, companies like Aniplex only want an arm and a leg for a boxed set of Kara no Kyoukai; back in the day, they’d have demanded your firstborn).  If nothing else, the release schedules are infinitely better.  But there was something about being a fan back then that made me feel like I was a part of something, some group, some tribe.  There was a feeling of having some hidden, secret knowledge, of knowing a whole language of fandom that other people didn’t understand, of having a line on something other people didn’t know about and didn’t get.

Really, though, I think what I miss most is the newness of my hobby.  I miss it being strange and wonderful and full mostly of unknowns, of things yet to be seen and experienced.  I miss knowing that twenty years ago, if I’d come across a copy of Beast King GoLion in a vendor’s stall, I would have lost my damn mind.  Now, I just go “Huh. Neat,” and put it on my Amazon wishlist.

A few months ago, I was going through my old manga, and came across the three volumes of Kazan I owned, out of a seven-volume run.  They were some of the first manga I’d bought in what was, at the time, the newer (smaller) size format that’s now standard for manga. Mirror-imaging, or “flopping” the artwork was still common at the time, although that practice was on its way out.  If there’s one other thing we can all thank Tokyopop for, it’s normalizing the right-to-left format for manga in the U.S.

Kazan was written and drawn by Gaku Miyao, who was probably most famous for his character design work on the Devil Hunter Yohko OVA from the mid-90s.  It was published in the U.S. by ComicsOne from 2001 to 2005.  It’s out of print now, and it was never enough of a thing that anybody else cared to pick up the license after they vanished into the ether.

It doesn’t shock me that ComicsOne went under, really.  They didn’t only release total unknowns, mind.  They got Onegai Teacher and Onegai Twins.  There was also Tsukihime: Lunar Legend (though that franchise has played second fiddle to its younger sibling Fate for a long while now).  On the other hand, they also published Jesus, and the prophet from Nazareth has never really been what you’d call a favorite character in the anime fandom.  Then as now, almost nobody in the fandom stans Christ.  Except maybe Vic Mignogna, and, well...

I remember it being new and exciting when I was reading it.  Now, looking back, it’s very much a relic of its times.  Given that ComicsOne began U.S. publication of it in 2001, I’m guessing the manga was probably published in the mid- to late 90s in Japan.  The artwork is a lot closer in style to what you’d see back then, as well as the character tropes and archetypes.  

I’d always meant to pick up the remaining volumes – certainly I’d liked what I’d read – but I’d fallen behind on collecting them as they came out, and they were hard to find later on.  Kazan was never a major item on anybody’s radar.  It’s so minor that even danbooru has no images of it.  At least, none tagged.  Fucking danbooru.

My curiosity about the later events of the series had been going strong for close to two decades, so I finally broke down and bought the remaining volumes in an Ebay auction… and then didn’t read them, I guess because now that I had them, I could take my time.

I finally got around to re-reading the series just recently, and it’s been an interesting slice of nostalgia.

Kazan is a desert-punk story named after its protagonist.  Kazan looks about eight years old, is actually closer to eighteen, and is about ten-thousand percent done with everyone’s shit.  “Surly” doesn’t quite do it justice.  He’s searching for his childhood friend, a girl named Elsie.  

Back when he actually was eight years old, he was approached by a water demon who told him that his father Sheeroc had, in desperation at the prospect of dying alone in the desert, sold Kazan for just a cup of water.  Sheeroc, leader of the nomad clan known as the Red Sand, was at that time questing about for a way to give his people a more grounded way of life.  However, instead of Kazan, the water demon decided to kidnap his childhood friend Elsie, for reasons that go unexplained for most of the story.  The demon also decided to wreck Kazan’s entire village just for good measure, and Kazan winds up the only survivor that he knows of.

Since that moment, he has not physically aged a day.  The reason for this is also left unexplained for most of the manga’s run.  

Suffice it to say that some of his surliness comes from having to constantly prove to people that, despite all appearances, he really is not a child.  A lot of the rest of it comes from the whole “being sold to a water demon” thing.

His only traveling companion in the beginning is a giant white eagle with a red crest, named Kamushin.  The eagle is so large and strong (or Kazan is so small), that he can actually carry Kazan at least for brief periods.  Kamushin seems to be sentient at times, and whether he is or not, he tends to be the most level-headed one in the room.

Aside from the eagle, Kazan’s most easily distinguishable features are his shounen-hero hair, his tall red hat, and his knife, which he wields and throws with frightening accuracy.

It’s not long at all before he gains two additional companions on his journey.  One is Fawna, a young girl capable of manifesting water at will.  This power is a double-edged sword in a desert environment.  It’s helpful while traveling, but the things people might do to have control of her power – and of course, by extension, Fawna herself – mean she has to use the power sparingly.  She and Kazan initially come to blows once her ability is revealed, or rather, Kazan comes to blows.  Fawna comes to bewilderment and confusion in the face of Kazan’s accusations that she must be the water demon who stole Elsie years ago.  Why would she have the same power, otherwise? Eventually, though, he calms down.  As he (and we) get to know Fawna, the idea of her kidnapping anybody seems laughable.

Fawna is making her way west across the desert to a country called Goldene.  She has been summoned there, as Water People (this is the manga’s translation, and we’ll come to that in a bit) frequently are, as they are necessary for the control and upkeep of Goldene’s water supply.  She’s around seventeen, and spends most of the story unaware of Kazan’s actual age.  She seems to not really take his claims of adulthood very seriously.  In fairness, “My name’s Kazan.  I’m not a kid,” – practically his catchphrase, and usually a good sign that someone has a beating on the way – is pretty much exactly what you’d expect a kid to say.

With Fawna having the same water powers as the entity that kidnapped Elsie, and Goldene seemingly a place where people of that sort are gathered, Kazan decides that his quest is pointing him in that direction.  Despite some misgivings, he decides to accompany her.  Luckily, the two of them happen across another companion, an old woman named Arbey who has a talent for making explosives.  She claims to know the way there, having been a citizen of the country herself at some point in her past.

So they go.

Along the way, they are beset by monsters and difficult situations with other travelers, as well as occasional tussles with Messengers, fierce and deadly agents of Goldene out kill Fawna (their reasons are initially unclear) and capture Kamushin, who turns out to be the White Eagle of Goldene, making him an item of high significance.

Part of what initially caught my attention about Kazan was that it reminded me in a vague way of Eden’s Bowy.  This was a show I’d first seen fansubbed at AnimeIowa in 2000.  If you want another really good example of just how different things were back then, there it is: Conventions would show fansubs, because the industry had virtually no presence at any of them except maybe the absolute biggest, so they could get away with it.  I was nursing a minor obsession with Eden’s Bowy at the time.  The three or four episodes I’d seen at the convention had grabbed my attention for reasons I’m not entirely sure I understand.  Part of it was the creeping doubt over whether the show would ever get picked up for U.S. release (it did, in fact), and I figured I was unlikely ever to see it again.  So anything that put me in mind of it got my attention.

As it happens, the similarities between Kazan and Eden’s Bowy run no deeper than the surface. There are the common elements of a boy in (mostly) white crossing the desert with a mystically empowered young girl and an older adult as companions, and in both stories, they’re seeking out a city that in some fashion lords it over the rest of the setting.  Beyond that, they couldn’t be more different.  For starters, Yorn, the hero of Eden’s Bowy, is kind of the quintessential Idiot Hero of shounen manga and anime: naïve, trusting, and ultimately kind of helpless on his own.  Kazan, meanwhile, is intelligent, self-reliant, and aggressively independent.  Cynical and deeply distrustful, he resists all attempts at friendship or other emotional connection with other characters, and the vulnerability that goes with it.

Kazan isn’t the most likeable character, but his attitude at least makes sense, given his background.  He’s a very (understandably) angry young man trapped in a child’s body, and a lot of his problems come about as a result of his hardening himself against a world that seems destined by turns to betray him and refuse to take him seriously.  When we see him in flashbacks, he’s a sweet kid.  A bit of a crybaby, even.  

Still, in the present of the story, he can sometimes be an unlikeable little shit. His early relationship with Fawna is rocky, and gets violent once or twice throughout the story, which makes me cringe a lot more in 2019 than it did in 2001 or 2002.  In the interests of fairness, I should point out that he gets violent with quite a number of people, and all for the same reason as Fawna, which is that he feels what they are doing is either very wrong or dangerously stupid, or else he sees them as enemies.  He’s an equal-opportunity asshole, I guess.  So I want to say there’s nothing inherently sexist going on there.  Still, it’s not a good look, and please understand I’m not justifying it by any means.  But I do want to lend context.  

The story does wring a lot of natural tension out of the relationship between Kazan and Fawna as natural foils to each other.  Where Kazan trusts nobody and prefers to operate alone, Fawna is naïve and occasionally trusting of the wrong sorts, which gets her into trouble more than once.  And she has a tendency, early on, to lash out with her power in anger or to harm others.  This is sometimes for self-defense, but sometimes also motivated by anger.  Kazan is – oddly, given that he’s otherwise the one more comfortable with the occasional necessity of violence – adamant that she not do this.  Memorably, one of the times he’s violent with her is to stop her from doing something of that sort.  

The manga doesn’t ever really spell out Kazan’s hangup about Fawna misusing her water powers, but I have a guess.  I imagine that it has a lot to do with his initial association of Fawna’s water power with the water demon that kidnapped Elsie ten years prior.  He has a strong (but never quite articulated) belief that in a desert world, anyone with the power to create water – in practical terms, the power to support and sustain life – should not use that power for evil ends.  Fawna using her power only for good helps to mark a clear distinction between her innate goodness and the wickedness of the water demon.

Kazan himself, perhaps surprisingly given his anger and foul attitude for much of the story, tends to pull his punches.  He’s not above beating his attackers silly and occasionally dishing out pain to those he feels are deserving.  But he goes out of his way to spare people on a number of occasions, and when someone sharpens his knife to such an edge that it can cut stones, he actually requests that it be dulled again so that he doesn’t kill someone by mistake.

Refreshingly, there’s no will-they-won’t-they pseudo-romance between Kazan and Fawna.  I don’t object to a romance angle in a story in principle, but it often gets teased in a story like this, where the two leads are each other’s foils and love interests both, and it’s just done to death.  It tends to get shoehorned in because the creators of these stories (perhaps egged on by their publishers) feel that it’s necessary.  Broadening the demographics, maybe?  But there’s a sort of obligatory feeling to it a lot of the time, as if it’s clearly being done because, well, that’s just what we do with stories like this, right?  It gets to the point where you wonder why anyone bothers teasing it.  We all know from long experience how things are going to end up.  But Kazan is clearly fixed on Elsie and Elsie alone.  He and Fawna are simply friends and partners who, by the end of the story, understand each other, and work together, very well.

Another thing that’s nice about Kazan is the refreshing absence of much cheesecake fanservice.  A few characters are dressed in provocative outfits here and there, but even when that’s the case, the “camera” doesn’t really leer like you might expect.  There are one or two moments that had me sighing and shaking my head – a couple instances of the sadly typical Faux Sexual Assault As Comedy – but at this point I like to think I’m an old vet when it comes to this. It’s disappointing, but it’s the kind of thing you learn to resign yourself to if you’re going read much manga or watch much anime at all.

The final chapters of Kazan rely on a lot of last-minute revelations to explain everything.  It’s not really a matter of deus ex machina exactly so much as it is a matter of insufficient foreshadowing.  It would go down a little easier if some of these ideas had been set up maybe a little earlier in the story.  But it’s hard to complain too much.  Even as it clanks a bit toward the end, it never quite feels like the creator is pulling it out of his ass.  The ideas are sound; it’s their tardiness that’s the problem.  But even if it stumbles a little toward the finish line, Kazan’s ending is ultimately satisfying, and earned.  The last few panels are pretty much perfect, and exactly what I spent most of the manga’s run hoping for.  And of course, there’s still the entire rest of the manga before it, which is certainly worth the read.

If there’s one place where Kazan actually falls flat, it’s the translation. And that, at least, you can’t blame on the original creator.  

You could most charitably describe ComicsOne’s English translation of Kazan as workmanlike.  It’s not really a machine translation, but it does seem at times to veer awfully close to that territory.  It’s there, and things basically make sense; that’s about the best you can say for it.  Ultimately, though, it’s just lacking something.  There are places all over Kazan’s seven-volume run where the phrasing seems bland or off, where it lacks real punch and personality, and where it seems just plain awkward and stilted. There are times when it seems like the characters lack a distinct voice.  Spelling is also inconsistent.  The name of Kazan’s father is spelled Sheeroc in the earlier volumes, but Shiroc in later ones. And there are placement issues as well, where sometimes lines that are clearly meant to be spoken by one character are lumped in with the dialogue in another character’s word balloon.  Overall, the translation is some real amateur-hour work.  This seems to be a trait of ComicsOne; the one volume of the Tsukihime manga I own has some of these same issues.

But this isn’t a problem I can really hold against the manga, since it’s a problem that (to the best of my knowledge) wouldn’t really have existed in the Japanese version.  And it’s hard to fault the original creator for how translators handled his work after the fact.

There’s not much like Kazan out there that I’ve seen.  I don’t have a lot of recommendations in the vein of “If you like X, Y, or Z, then try Kazan.”

Part of the reason I enjoyed Kazan as much as I did is nostalgia.  Not for the story itself, but for the times it puts me in mind of.  The kind of story it tells; the specific way it handles its characters, and manifests their archetypes and tropes; the way it’s drawn; all of it is intensely reminiscent of its time.  There is a certain Look or Aesthetic I’m fond of in anime, and it tends a little toward the particular stylization and combination of traits that was very stereotypical at the time I was getting into it.  But even as that’s a stereotype, there’s something about it that I actually find visually appealing.  I suppose it goes back to my nostalgia.  When this was a new hobby for me, that look was practically shorthand for everything anime stood for.

More than that, it’s a time capsule, a snapshot of how things looked when I was first getting into my hobby.  I’ll probably never again have that feeling of things yet to be seen and done, mysteries yet to be uncovered and explored, at least not with this particular hobby.  But reading something like Kazan, I’m reminded of those times with great intensity.

There’s also the setting.  I have a soft spot for huge, wasteland vistas.  As much as I can recognize that, say, The Weathering Continent is not really a good movie, I still find myself drawn to its world.  This extends into video games as well.  One of the things I loved most about Shadow of the Colossus (either version) was simply wandering its world.  Something about characters surviving in such a hostile, sometimes even decaying environment just grabs my imagination and runs with it.  But I’m picky about these kinds of stories, too.  I prefer my environments and my characters to look and sound and act a certain way.

Despite the inescapable influence of personal appeal, though, I still honestly think Kazan holds up, and is very much worth a read.  It’s not going to be the easiest thing to find, but on the flipside, Kazan was a manga published by a company that never really achieved notability and stayed in business for a grand total of maybe six years at most.  So while the supply has never been very great, neither has the demand.  The prices haven’t gotten exorbitant, and I don’t see that changing in the near future.  

In all, it’s worth the effort to track down if you can.

[ainsley-corcoran]

Starting With Submission || Ainsley & Tobias

Tagging: @ainsley-corcoran & @tobiaskswitch Date: Thursday, June 6th Location: Ainsley’s Suite Summary: Ainsley helps introduce Tobias to the more submissive side of their mark, touching on bondage, sensory, impact, and denial.

The only way to get past the barrier of never having experienced submission was to try it, right?  Jump in and sink or swim.  That was what Toby was telling himself, at lest.  The scene auction had seemed like the perfect chance to find someone who didn't mind scening with a a complete newbie, and he was hoping Ainsley would be just what he needed to try out the whole submitting thing.  She was experienced, enough to be almost in a claim, at least, and she knew that Toby was knew to this.  He was cautiously optimistic.  He showed up at her door, down the hall from his own, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and nervous that he was making some unknown mistake, but he screwed up his courage and knocked.

Ainsley had initially been hesitant about signing up for the event once she realized that she's missed much of the bidding, but one scene stood out to her in particular, and before she knew it, she'd won it. While she didn't really know Tobias, she liked the idea of helping someone ease into subbing, and when they spoke further, she found she was glad she did. He seemed interested, if hesitant, and she already had several ideas for him. When she heard the knock at her door, she was on her feet in a flash, a wide smile on her face. “Hi, come on in, Tobias.” She said, stepping aside to allow him entrance. “I know we've talked a little, but I have one or two more things I'd like to go over before we start.” Moving to the couch, she took a seat, “First, though, I'd like you to kneel while you remind me your limits and safeword, please.”

"Hey," Tobias greeted softly as he came in.  He kind of ducked his head a little automatically, a long-ingrained instinct to sort of apologize for his height and appear smaller.  He didn't even realize he did it.  "Oh.  Right."  Limits.  He hadn't thought about that.  He got down onto his knees awkwardly, still not sure how some subs managed  to make it look graceful.  He had only done it a couple times before, and he still felt like he was all long gangly limbs trying to fold himself into an appropriate position.  He sat back on his heels, finding a position on his knees that was fairly comfortable.  "So, um...  I guess limits are... uh, no blood for sure, or- what's it called, the stuff with piss....  and, um, pain is... just nothing too harsh, okay?  I'm not saying it's off the table completely, but..."  He couldn't help but think about that awful night in the dungeon, the nettles, the shouting of the guards, and how he'd panicked.  He swallowed.  "Just some minor pain, like spanking is probably okay but...  Oh.  And wax."  Another unpleasant memory from the dungeon.  "I don't want wax.  Um, also public stuff?  I know that's not really going to come up, since we're doing this here, but maybe also don't, like, I don't know, take pictures or something."  He paused, trying to think if there was anything else he definitely wouldn't do.  "I guess just... maybe don't yell or- or get mad at me, if you can?  It might not matter..."  Because she was a girl, she wouldn't sound like his father even if she started shouting.  "I just get nervous when people shout is all."  He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.  "Um, safe word... I've never had one.  I should have thought of this before I came, I'm sorry.  ....People do the whole red-yellow-green thing a lot, don't they?  I could probably remember that."

Ainsley watched with interest as Toby awkwardly maneuvered to his knees. It was clear he was uncomfortable, but doing his best to work through it. “I can definitely work within those limits. And while I think you would make a wonderful candidate for a subject for aesthetic bondage photography, we can leave that out for now.” She quipped, a smile playing at her lips. “I think that's understandable. I'm not really much of a yeller, in general, but I will keep that in mind. I also wanted to ask about your thoughts on sexual contact. Specifically, are you okay with me touching like that knowing that we won't be having sex and that ou will not be permitted to touch me?” She asked. While she enjoyed sexually teasing boys, she had absolutely no interest in any major sexual contact. “It is a thing, yes. I actually use the stop light system myself. Green is good, yellow being slow down or I need a break, and red being a hard stop.”

Toby considered for a second, then nodded.  "Yeah, I'd be okay with that.  I mean, if you don't want to orgasm or whatever, I guess that's your prerogative?"  He shrugged.  "Anyway, I don't mind you touching me, if that's what you're asking.  Have at it."  He smiled and laughed a little awkwardly.  Hopefully she didn't mind his dreadful attempts at covering for his own social awkwardness.  "Yeah, yeah that's what I mean.  Red is stop and yellow is hey wait."

"I mean, no one said anything about me not orgasming." She quipped with a smirk. "That's good to know, though. If you're a good boy for me, I have no qualms about rewarding you. And I can definitely work with that. Just know, you're both welcome and encouraged to safeword at any time." Getting to her feet, she circled him slowly, "Now, I'd like you to remove your shirts and pants and crawl into the spare room. You can leave your underwear on, for now."

When Ainsley stood, Tobias suddenly felt vulnerable, like she was stalking him.  He swallowed and told himself it was fine.  He wasn't going to back down.  And she wasn't going to hurt him.  He nodded and stood up to take off his clothes.  Wait, crawl?  He hadn't expected- but, no, he should have expected it, he reminded himself.  He knew it wasn't a weird thing for subs to do.  He'd even told them to do it, occasionally, in the few scenes he'd done as the dominant party.  So he just stripped down to his underwear and got back onto the floor to crawl into the spare room.  He felt kind of foolish, crawling, but he told himself that was just because it was something he hadn't done before.  And it wasn't like Ainsley was laughing at him or anything, she clearly wasn't trying to make him feel foolish or stupid.  So he could handle this.

Ainsley could practically see the wheels spinning in his head as she did as he was instructed. It was almost surreal, watching him struggle in the same way that she had when she had first begun to submit. But it also made her even more dedicated to making sure their scene went well for him. Once they made it into the spare room, she had him lift  onto his knees once more as she came to stand in front of him, her hand reaching out to run through his hair gently. “Good boy.” She praised with a pleased smile. “To start, I thought we would try a bit of basic bondage and sensory. I'm going to blindfold you and use two different materials to bind your arms and your legs.” She explained, moving over towards her closet. “Go ahead and stand in front of the bed, legs apart and hands behind your head.”

Tobias sat back on his heels again once he got into the room, looking up at Ainsley.  The hand in his hair felt nice, and he smiled softly.  That was the one part of subbing that he already knew he liked, going into this.  Having a pretty girl play with his hair was just so soothing.  And being told he was a good boy... part of his brain wanted to reject it, feeling a little patronized, but on the other hand... it was actually kind of nice.  No one ever told him he was a good anything. And it felt good to know that he was doing well, even if he still felt awkward.  "Okay," he said softly, nodding, and stood where Ainsley had indicated, with his hands behind his head.  He wasn't sure about the blindfold, but he'd said he'd try anything, and he meant it.  It might be fun.

Ainsley chose a navy blue silk scarf to act as a blindfold, one that would let in a little light, but was still thick enough to block his vision, along with a few lengths of rope, varying in thickness and texture. They would do double duty, providing various textures in addition to limiting his mobility. Laying the ropes out of sight on the bed behind him, she stopped in front of him with the blindfold. “Alright, im going to start working, and you're not to move, understood? Now, tell me what color you're at.” She said, wanting to make sure he was still okay with what was coming next.

Tobias watched Ainsley get things out, and wondered if he should be nervous at the sight of them, but he wasn't, really.  He didn't think she'd hurt him or anything.  He had no idea if he'd enjoy the feeling of being tied up, but he wasn't scared of it.  Unless she... well, no, she said she'd keep it simple, so it wouldn't be anything like what happened in the dungeons with the guards and the wax.  "Okay," he said when she stood in front of him again.  "Um, green.  I'm good."

“Excellent. I'm going to bind your arms in that position, and then I'm going to do a bit of decorative knotwork around your torso and legs.” She explained as she wrapped the fabric around his eyes, securing it with a firm knot. It would be easy to remove, if necessary, but she also didn't want go too easy on him. Picking up a length of rough, thick rope, she began twining around his arms, binding them in place and letting the coarse material drag over his skin juxtaposing against the gentle smoothness of her hands as she went. Each knot was careful and secure, and she knew if he began to pull, the texture of the rope pressing against him would pair nicely with the dull throb that would accompany it. "And were done with your arms. You can see if you can find any give, but probably won't find much. Not to brag, but my knots are exemplary." She said with a grin as she picked up a smoother rope, twisting it with another length of silk, before getting started on his torso.

Everything went dark, well, mostly, and  Toby found that he wasn't scared.  He was actually fine.  He wasn't especially turned on by it, but it wasn't bad, either.  It was definitely interesting not being able to see what Ainsley was about to do, but he could still track her movements by listening.  The rope that she started to wrap around his arms was rougher than he'd expected, definitely abrasive.  It didn't hurt now, but he wondered if it would by the time they were done.  Her hands were so gentle when she touched him, though, which he definitely liked.  When she said his arms were finished, he tried to move them, pressing on the ropes, but there was no give, and all he ended up doing was making the rough material scratch his skin and the bonds squeeze painfully.  He quickly stopped trying.  "Yeah, I can tell," he murmured.  He was actually fairly impressed.  He was in beginner bondage, so he'd been learning the basics, but even without being able to see what she'd done, he could tell she was way beyond anything he'd learned.

Ainsley couldn't help the smirk that come to her face as he tested the ropes, his muscles tensing only to find that they had nowhere to go. There was something incredibly satisfying about having such a strong boy at her mercy. While she tried not to be too arrogant about it, bondage in any of its forms was one of her very favorite kinks, and she knew it showed. As she got to work on the more aesthetic knots, she made sure to let the rope and silk drag against his skin, tweaking a nipple or scratching her nails lightly over his chest. All too soon, she tied the last knot, “I know I promised no photography, and I'll stand by that, but I must say, I am a little disappointed. You look incredibly hot like this.” She commented, running the flat of her hand down his center, her fingers teasing along the hem of his underwear. “Still good, handsome? I'm going to start on your legs, and then we'll move on to the next part.”

Tobias quickly realized that a lot of this, especially the blind fold, was more about the way Ainsley was touching him.  Well, making it so he couldn't move his arms was part of it too, the immobilization was definitely a factor, but as Ainsley continued, Toby realized that immobilization wasn't her only goal here.  The knots she tied down his chest didn't immobilize him at all, anyway.  But that wasn't the point, he realized.  The point was to have to feel everything Ainsley did, because he couldn't see her, couldn't anticipate her next touch, never knew if it was going to be soft or rough or even painful, like when she pinched his nipple briefly.  He might have squeaked, but only because it was unexpected.  He smiled a little when she commented about how he looked.  "Um.  Thanks."  He nodded at her question.  "Yeah, yeah I'm still good."  He was remarkably relaxed, actually.  He liked Ainsley touching him, and the unpredictability of it made it a little more exciting.

“Good boy. You're doing amazingly.” Grinning, she snapped the band of his boxer briefs at his hip, before tugging it down a few inches. “I don't think we need these anymore, so you?” The question was definitely rhetorical as she slid them down his legs, her fingers trailing along his thighs as the fabric fell to the floor. While she wasn't necessarily attracted to him, per se, there was no denying how handsome he was and she was looking forward to see how he'd react to what she had planned for him. “Alright, Toby, no moving, understood?” She ordered, sitting back on her knees as she began to twine the next length of ribbon wrapped rope up his leg. Ainsley was sure to let the back of her hand brush against his length as she reached the apex of his thigh, pressing a light kiss to the final knot, before giving his other leg the same treatment.

Tobias smiled a little when she tugged at his underwear.  He hadn't expected them to stay on long, anyway.  Once they dropped to the ground, he stepped out of them so they weren't tangled around his ankles.  He nodded at her order.  "Yes, Miss."  The next set of knots she tied were with something much softer, and thin, and flat, not a rope for sure.  He couldn't be sure what it was, maybe some kind of ribbon.  But it actually felt kind of nice, wrapping around him.  Even though it didn't restrict his movement at all, it still felt like it was holding him, keeping him contained somehow.  It was actually rather pleasant.

There was a calm, almost peaceful sort of smile on Toby's face as she got back to her feet and she took a moment just to admire her work. Reaching out, she traced along the lines of velvet ribbon on his chest, following down his midline until she reached his pubic bone. “Remember, stand still for me, Toby. Otherwise I'll have to stop touching you, and that would be such a shame when you're wrapped up all prettily like this for me, wouldn't it.” That was the only warning she gave before she began touching his cock, letting her thumb rub over his sensitive head, and stroking his shaft down to the base and back.

Toby nodded again, smiling at Ainsley's teasing.  "A real shame," he agreed.  Of course, he had no idea if the ropes and ribbons looked pretty or not, but he was willing to take her word for it.  They felt nice enough.  Not quite as nice as her gentle fingers, though.  When she touched his cock, his breath hitched, and he felt it start to harden quickly.  Apparently he was more turned on than he'd realized, with how readily he reacted to her touch.  It was because of how vulnerable he was, he realized as she stroked him.  He couldn't see her, couldn't move his hands to touch anything, and was forbidden to do anything but stand there like a decoration.  It meant that any touch was a surprise.

There was something incredibly empowering in watch his body react in the smallest ways, the tending of his muscles and the sharp rise of his chest as his breath hitched. It didn't take long for her to stroke him to his full length, feeling his cock pulse against her palm. While she wasn’t overly experienced with boys, she knew enough to keep him on the tip of his toes. Her free hand darted her and there, alternating between the gentle touches from the pads of her fingers and the sharp bite of her nails. She watched his reactions carefully, not wanting to let him get too close too soon.

The way Ainsley touched him kept him guessing, never knowing what was coming, and pretty quickly he just stopped thinking and only reacted to what he felt.  And it felt good.  He'd never been touched like this before, just... played with.  He didn't think there was another word for it.  She was playing with him, touching wherever she wanted, scratching or pinching or stroking gently.  And then of course there was the hand on his cock, slowly building the tension inside of him.  No wonder people enjoyed this.  He felt his muscles get tenser, and he wondered if she was going to make him come just like this.

There was definitely a certain kind of thrill she got from playing with him like this. Her actions were unhurried, yet unpredictable, and she made sure to read his body language, mentally making notes of what seemed to get the best reactions from him, and what didn't. As his muscles began to tense up once more, rippling under his skin as he got closer and closer, she once again mourned the fact that she wasn't able to capture the aesthetic beauty of the picture he made. And just as she felt he was getting too close, she loosened her grip, her hand coming down with a smack on his ass- not too hard, but hard enough to get his attention. “Uh, uh. Not yet, pretty boy.”

Toby jumped at the sudden slap, completely unexpected, though not actually terribly painful.  Just surprising.  It was enough to shock him back from the edge of orgasm, and he groaned.  "Ugh, so mean."  He made a face at her, or what he assumed was her direction.  "But I was getting close!"

A thrill of excitement shot through her when he jumped, his face crinkling in disappointment. She couldn't have contained her chuckle at his reaction even if she wanted to- and she definitely didn't. “I know, gorgeous, but I can't make it too easy on you, can I? And don't forget your titles, Toby. Naughty boys don't get rewarded.” She drawled, her hand stroking up his shaft once more. “Besides, your ass is such a delectable shade of pink. Surly you wouldn't deny me the pleasure of relishing in my handiwork a bit longer, would you?”

Toby grimaced when she corrected him.  "I'm sorry, yes, Miss," he said quickly, feeling stupid for having forgotten.  He just had gotten caught up in what they were doing and had forgotten that there was anything else to think about.  "I mean, I guess when you put it that way, I shouldn't deny you, Miss.  And, um, I physically can't, so..."

“That's a good boy.” She rewarded him by speeding up the movement of her hand, squeezing lightly when she met his base and running her thumb over his tip working him up again. “Exactly. That would be just plain cruel. After all, you look so good, all tied up for me.” Another laugh slipped from her lips at his last comment, the hand playing in his hair giving a light tug. “No, I suppose you can't, can you? Lucky me, having such a cute boy at my mercy.”

Toby groaned as she does up, and he tried to push his hips forward into her hand, but then remembered he wasn't supposed to move. It was so hard to stay still now. "Ugh, I... Oh god.  Oh god, Miss, please don't stop."

Her hand came down in a sharp smack as soon as his hips moved, a bright pink mark left in its wake. While she didn't put as much force in the action as she might've, the whole point of this was to give him a bit of a taste of everything. “I know that you can beg better that. Try again, and I'll consider letting you come.”

Tobias jumped again and yelped.  Oh god, why did that make him even more aroused? And so did Ainsley's voice and her demanding tone. Holy shit, this was hotter than he'd expected. "Um. Please, Miss?" Toby tried, worried he didn't know how to beg.  But it couldn't be that hard to just ask for what he wanted. "Please, Miss, I need to come, please can I come? Oh god, I'm getting so close, please, Miss?"'

Ainsley was having far more fun playing with him than she had anticipated, a grin playing at the corner of her lips when jumped again. She could see the gears turning in his head, but she wanted to drag things out just a little longer, give him a taste of denial- not to mention enhance his inevitable release. “Mm, try again, Tobias. You're a clever boy. Tell me why I shouldn't just leave you here, hard and dripping. Convince me.”(edited)

Toby groaned loudly. "Oh god.  Um, because you're not evil, Miss? You're a nice person who wouldn't be so mean to me on my very first time subbing?" He was practically vibrating with the effort to stay still, even though he knew that moving wouldn't help. "God, please, Miss, I need it! I- I can't- I need it- I think if you leave me like this I'll cry!"

His indignant groan earned him another light smak, but the rest of his plea was definitely right on the mark. “That’s much better, Tobias.” Ainsley could feel his muscles straining beneath her touch, the raw power contained in his body sending a flood of satisfaction through her. “When you put it like that, I suppose it’s cruel not to make you cry your first time. And I suppose you have been a good boy for me.” She mused conversationally, speeding up her motions her free hand moving to massage his balls as she worked him over. “Alright, Toby, you may come.”

Toby jumped again, but didn't help, since he was weirdly getting used to those little slaps. They hardly hurt, they were just surprising, and left a little bit of a sting  tingling his skin. He was trying to stay still, but he was moving in place anyway, flexing and tensing and pulling on the rough ropes binding his arms. They tightened as he pulled, digging into his skin in a way that was almost painful but mostly just created a tension that counter pointed the need pooling in his gut. He gasped at the way Ainsley's hand moved and curled down towards her, his spine curving as as his stomach pulled taut. "Oh god... Miss..." He sucked in a sudden breath and lifted up on his toes as he finally came.

It was almost impossible for Toby to stay still at this point, but Ainsley let it slide. While she enjoyed making him work for his pleasure, she also knew it would be near impossible for him not to move at this point- not that she particularly minded. And as he got closer, his body tensing and pulling at his bonds, she couldn't help but appreciate the image he made, tied up and so needy, stroking him as he finally found his release. “That's a good boy. You did so well, Toby,” Stroking him through is orgasm, she murmured words of praise, her free hand moving to run through his hair, scratching at his scalp lightly. “How are you feeling?” She asked as he started to come down from his high.

Toby moaned when he finally came, then stood there with his chest heaving as he came down from it. And just then, as his brain was being flooded with dopamine and seratonin, Ainsley's voice told him he was a good boy, and it was like a switch flipped in his brain. He knew that if she's had called him a good boy before the scene started, he would have found it nice but patronizing, but not now. Right now, it made him grin like an idiot. He didn't know how he could have done well, since he'd hardly done anything, but it felt fantastic to hear it anyway. "Amazing," he murmured in answer to her question. "It was, um... Wow. More than I thought it would be."

Ainsley was honestly incredibly proud of how well he had done, especially considering he tended to lean more towards the dominant side of their mark. Slipping off the blindfold, she “I'm very glad to hear that. You were very good for me, and I'm very proud.” She said, her hand resting lightly on his pubic bone, her fingers absently stroking the soft skin she found as she gave him a few moments to reorient. “More in a good way, I hope?” Stepping behind him, she made sure to Help support him as his body began to calm. “When you're ready for me to untie you, let me know. There's no rush, but I'm sure you're arms will be getting sore.”

Toby blinked at the light when the blindfold was removed.  He still felt sort of buzzed, and there was a definite afterglow from the orgasm.  He looked down at Ainsley and grinned at her, enjoying the way she was still touching him, almost absently, like she was doing it without thinking about it.  "Yeah, in a good way.  Definitely."  When she offered to take the ropes off, Toby suddenly found himself kinda sad that the scene was ending already.  He didn't know what else they might do, since Ainsley said she didn't want any kind of sexual interaction on her part, so the feeling caught him by surprise.  But at least it meant he knew he enjoyed subbing enough to be willing to do more of it, rather than being anxious to be done.  "Yeah, they are, a little.  And the part on my right arm by my shoulder is kinda pinching?  You can take them off, if you want, Miss."

“I'm very glad to hear that,” She said with a wide smile, lifting up to press a kiss his cheek. “As much as I like the idea of keeping you all tied up for me a little longer, I can definitely do that. Same rules apply, though. Try to stay still for me, alright?” Ainsley certainly wasn't in any rush, and she took her time as she started pulling at her ties, slowly working out the knots that kept his arms in place. While the scene hadn't been particularly long, she knew it would be uncomfortable, when his blood started flowing again, and she massaged his arms as she went, hoping to decrease any of the more unpleasant sensations. As the last of the ropes was set aside, she rubbed out the knots that had formed in his shoulders, “I'm not going to lie, I'm a little sad that I have to take the rest off. You really do look amazing, all wrapped up like this.” She commented offhandedly, her free hand running through his silky hair.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Tokens, Lampshades, and the Trouble With Deconstruction

by Dan H

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Dan finds Glee “Problematic”~

There is nothing more infuriating than middle class white boys claiming that some event that mildly irritated them gives them a profound insight into the world of the disadvantaged. “I once blamed immigrants for my own failure, therefore I know what it's like to be discriminated against” that sort of thing.

With this warning, let me tell you about my recent epiphany about stereotypes.

Kyra and I bought the first series of NCIS in order to stop ourselves from having to watch the eye bleedingly awful Lie To Me (tip from the experts: if a woman says she was raped, but isn't acting scared, she's lying).

Anyway NCIS was going well, and largely avoiding the buckets of fail that saturated Lie to Me. And it had a cute goth forensics chick and a Big Machine That Does Science so yay. Then we got to episode four: The Immortals.

In this episode, a young seaman (it's a naval crime show) was found drowned in full dress uniform, with weights tied to his waist.

Amongst his personal effects they found a character charter from an online fantasy game.

The rest was a checklist of horrendous gamer stereotypes.

Gamers unable to distinguish between game and reality. Check.

Gamers made violent by video games. Check.

Gamers driven to murder and/or suicide as a result of online interactions. Check and check.

Use of phrase “taking the game to the next level” (seriously I have seen this in every TV show about video games ever) check.

I mention this because there is a small part of me which , every time I see a horrendously stereotyped character on TV, says “well that's probably quite offensive, but I suppose you have to remember that the stereotype wouldn't exist if there wasn't some truth in it.”

Watching stereotypical portrayals of groups to which I actually belong reminds me that no, actually a lot of stereotypes are just outright fucking lies.

None of this has much to do with anything, but we'll be coming back to it later.

The Magic of Knowledge

So anyway, Glee is a not-exactly-musical not-exactly-comedy about a High-School Glee Club (the clue is in the name) which goes from humble beginnings to be all that and a bag of chips.

The pilot follows the foundation-slash-resurrection of the Glee club, with the recruitment of its six initial members who are respectively:

Rachel, an overambitious girl with dreams of stardom (to the extent that every time she signs her name she puts a gold star next to it, which is a metaphor, for her being a star). We are told that Rachel is very talented.

Finn, a boy who the Dead Poets' Society-esque teacher behind the Glee club frames for drug possession and then blackmails into joining Glee, for his own good.

Kurt, a fabulous gay boy who the writers edited into the show because they were so utterly taken with the actor. He is, to be fair, adorable – although it might be worth pointing out that the character he plays was originally supposed to be Indian. It might also be worth pointing out that Glee has won awards for diversity.

Mercedes, a fat black girl. Astute readers may note that this is the point where the character descriptions get, shall we say, shorter. Mercedes declares early on that she “ain't no backup singer”. This rapidly proves to be wishful thinking.

Tina, an Asian girl. I genuinely do not know what to make of Tina. She dresses in this quirky, slightly gothy style and her audition piece is a rather nice, slightly raunchy rendition of I Kissed a Girl. But she never actually says or does anything. Ever. It's almost like the costume department put more thought into her personality than the writers.

Artie. Artie is in a wheelchair. Artie also seems to spend a good part of the first episode pulling what I can only describe as “disabled face” - leaving his mouth hanging open and twisting his head to the side like he's trying to chew his own ear. Artie is not played by a wheelchair-using actor.

As

one of the many reviews

that have said all of this before put it: “Mmmm, token-y”.

So yeah. Tokenistic.

But wait! It's okay because the show knows that it's being tokenistic! It is using these “tropes” to be satirical!

Years ago there was a comedy sketch show in Oxford which I didn't actually see, but one of the better exchanges in it, as reported to me by my younger brother was as follows:

“It's not racist, it's satirical!” “What's it a satire of?” “Black people!”

This nicely sums up the issue with the awful stereotypes in Glee. Apparently the mere fact of acknowledging them excuses them. It's not a stereotype if you know it's a stereotype, because then it's satire. You don't even have to subvert or challenge the stereotype in any way. As long as you know about it.

That's the power of knowledge.

Glee gives us a central cast consisting entirely of stereotypes, and does nothing to challenge them.

What it does challenge, however, is the idea that presenting the characters as stereotypes is in any way bad.

Apologia, Apologia, Apologia

The tokenism in Glee is irritating, but it's one of those things I can kind of let slide. It's just a fact of life: fish swim, birds fly, Peter Molyneaux writes crappy video games, and TV shows include token black characters and get given diversity awards for it.

Except.

Except, except, except.

About halfway through the first volume of the boxed set there's an episode in which Sue Sylvester (the evil cheerleading coach) decides to take a “divide and rule” approach in her private war against the Glee Club, sowing dissent amongst the ranks by spreading the completely unsubstantiated and unjustified idea that the Glee Club doesn't give equal representation to its minority members.

The whole episode (Wikipedia informs me that it was entitled Throwdown) is excruciating. Unlike some commentators, I don't have a problem with Sue Sylvester, because I think it's fairly clear we're meant to disagree with her, and that's what makes the episode so difficult. Basically they take all of the criticisms people have of the show and put them in the mouth of a raging psychopath.

So Sue Sylvester splits the glee club in two and seduces all of the minorities over to her side with honeyed words and filthy, filthy lies.

Sylvester's “false” criticisms of the Glee Club boil down to the following:

That the minority characters are margainalised. They are.

That the minority characters are made to stand at the back and act like props. They are.

Two things about this episode are particularly frustrating. The first is that real, legitimate criticisms of the show are presented as lies invented by a balls-out villain. The second is that the minority kids are kind of made to look like idiots for being taken in by the whole thing. Mercedes' unalloyed delight at being presented with Hate on Me to sing is borderline embarrassing: “all right! An R&B song!” she says, she might as well follow it up with “I like this black people music, because I am black!”

The episode ends with the black, Asian, gay and disabled students deciding that they want to go back and work with the pretty white people and that they don't want to be given “special treatment” just because they're minorities. Because apparently getting to do the things that the white kids get to do in every single episode constitutes special treatment.

This would be almost bearable except that “minorities are given special treatment” is a recurring theme in Glee. Rachel constantly uses the spectre of her “two gay dads” to threaten people with the “full force of the ACLU”, and there's an awful scene in the

by no means uncontroversial

episode Wheels where Finn gets a job in a hotel by rolling up to them in a wheelchair and saying “you have to give me a job because I'm disabled.” (I paraphrase, it's actually Rachel who does the talking and she honest-to-shit uses the word “handicapable”).

How the show can have the brass fucking bollocks to repeat the “minorities get unfair advantages” myth while at the same time devoting ninety percent of its screentime to straight, white, able-bodied characters I do not know. Still, it gives you a profound respect for the kid who plays Artie, I mean he managed to overcome the huge disadvantage of not having a physical disability to land a role in a major TV show. And think of the guts it must have taken for the producers to take such a risk – I mean by not casting a wheelchair user they were practically asking for a lawsuit. Hats off to you, Fox.

And to make matters worse, the episode ends with Mr Schuster reminding the kids that “really, they're all minorities, because they're all in Glee Club.” Because having an unpopular hobby is exactly the same as being part of a group which is subject to systematic discrimination, oh yes.

The defence that is consistently wheeled out for Glee being so ragingly tokenistic is the fact that it's doing it all knowingly to subvert the stereotypes. Ironically it's exactly this that I find so disturbing about the series. If it was just full of slightly embarrassing stereotypes I'd be more or less willing to let it slide, it'd be annoying but no more annoying than a large number of other TV shows. The problem is that Glee is aware its being offensive, but refuses to address it. Its like the producers are standing up and saying “hey, we put a black girl and a wheelchair kid in it, what more do you want?”

The Other Sort of Prejudice

The thing is, I can see where the producers are coming from. I think they're wrong, but this is very much an “I believe that you believe it” situation.

The guys behind Glee like the guys behind the Avatar movie, and the guys behind the Earthseaminiseries, really do believe that they cast every role in the series utterly fairly, without prejudice of any kind. If a black kid had been right for Finn, they would have cast a black guy. If an Asian girl had been right for Rachel, Rachel would have been Asian. It just happened not to work out that way. Funnily enough.

Except.

There's an interesting interview on the final disc of the first DVD box set in which series creator Ryan Murphy explained that he already knew Lea Michele, who plays Rachel, before casting her. He explains that the character of Rachel was very much written with Lea Michele in mind. He further explains that despite this fact she “had to audition like everybody else.”

Except no, she didn't audition like everybody else. She auditioned for a part that was specifically written for her in front of people she already knew and who I strongly suspect were all very much inclined to give her the job before she began. She might have auditioned, but she didn't audition “like everybody else”.

Just to be clear, I really like Lea Michele, I think she did really well in Glee, and the fact that the character was written with her in mind really does make her better suited to play the character. But this still gave her a specific, undeniable advantage over the other people who auditioned.

I freely confess that I don't work in casting, but I strongly suspect that if you're casting for a particular role in a show, you're going to have a decent idea of what you want a particular character to look like. And that basically means that people who don't fit your preconceptions aren't going to be as “good” in the role as other people. What seems like an entirely unbiased decision is actually one steeped in your own prejudices – even if it's something as natural and reasonable as prejudice in favour of the girl you wrote the part for in the first place.

The DVD special features were full of cute little anecdotes about the casting process. The actor who played Finn submitted a video audition in which he was drumming on cereal packets and the casting team were so blown away by his verve and passion that they ignored the fact that he didn't actually show whether or not he could sing. The actor cast as Kurt impressed the judges so much that they rewrote his character from the ground up, in order to fit him better. Again I absolutely believe that the producers believe that the extent to which they were impressed with these two actors was a pure product of their individual talent and personality, but the truth is that we react more strongly and more favourably to people we perceive as being similar to ourselves.

Put simply, while Chris Colfer (Kurt) is no doubt adorable, I really couldn't put my hand on my heart and say that he's stand-out more talented than Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) or Amber Riley (Mercedes). What I can say is that if I was writing a TV show about a bunch of highschool kids singing showtunes, I'd have a much better idea what to do with a cute camp kid than a feisty black girl. With some of Mercedes' dialogue you can practically here the writers saying “quick, what are black people interested in? I know, R&B!”

What makes Glee difficult isn't the fact that the writers are so transparently more interested in their white, able bodied actors than the rest of the cast, it's the fact that they're so obsessed with denying it, and then patting themselves on the back about denying it. What makes it worse is that I really do believe that they believe their own apologia. Unfortunately part of what they seem to believe is that minorities are routinely given special treatment in the name of “political correctness” an that's a belief which is actually harmful (as well as being one which is flatly contradicted by their own casting decisions).

That said, I'll probably still watch the rest of the series because, y'know, showtunes.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Minority Warrior

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at 16:21 on 2010-06-30God, Glee. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Have you gotten to the episode where the teacher is an abusive fuckwit and then the show focuses on his angst (not about being an abusive fuckwit) and blames his wife for making her husband act like an abusive fuckwit? Terrifying.

And yeah, the bullshit about beautiful white people "just happening" to fit the major roles . . . I don't even know what to do with that.

I wish it wasn't so rage-inducing, because I have a deep, sparkly love for Jane Lynch, and am thrilled she's in a popular sow. I just wish the show was better.

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Dan H

at 17:09 on 2010-06-30Tragically, I've heard that later on Glee gets a lot better (or perhaps just gets a lot better on some issues). There's a really nice bit later on where Kurt's dad calls out Finn on using "faggy" as derogatory.

The show, it is problematic.

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Viorica

at 17:29 on 2010-06-30Yeah, they spend a lot more time ealing with Kurt's issues and the discrimination he faces than the discrimination faced by Mercedes or Artie. I suspect it's because Ryan Murphy is a gay man himself, and thus is okay with

his

issues being represented, but not the issues of a black girl or a kid in a wheelchair.

Also, there are two cheerleaders (Brittany and Santana) who are hinted at being together, but Ryan Murphy says they won't be exploring that because- and I quote- "

it's not that kind of show

." That was about the point when I actually exploded with rage.

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Dan H

at 17:34 on 2010-06-30Oh dear me.

"Oh come on, you've got the L Word! Why do you need another TV show about lesbians!"

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Viorica

at 18:00 on 2010-06-30"It's not like we deal with gay teenagers anyw- wait."

*sigh*

One of the more frusturating aspects for me is that I have friends who are huge Glee fans, and accuse me of criticising them when I point out the flaws in the show. Being subjected to "SHUT UP YOU DON'T NOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT YOU'RE JUST EMBARASSING YOURSELF" every time I mention the show's problems is a great form of aversion therapy.

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Dan H

at 18:06 on 2010-06-30

"It's not like we deal with gay teenagers anyw- wait."

In all seriousness I suspect that might be part of the problem.

One gay kid = teen show.

Three gay kids = GAY SHOW

One of the more frusturating aspects for me is that I have friends who are huge Glee fans, and accuse me of criticising them when I point out the flaws in the show.

It's difficult. What I find really tough with Glee is that some people genuinely seem to find it empowering (I believe Tiger Beatdown described it as "dismantling the Kyriarchy").

On the other hand, if your friends just don't like you complaining because ZOMG SHOWTUNES then they can ... well they're your friends, so they can Sit Down And Think About What They've Done.

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Viorica

at 18:12 on 2010-06-30

One gay kid = teen show. Three gay kids = GAY SHOW

And the gay kid just happens to be one the creator can identify with. Of course.

My friends actually like it because they can identify with the characters that do get screentime (one's a gay guy) so they insist that criticism of the show is criticism of them, even after I repeatedly denied it, and accused disability/women's advocates of "looking for things to be offended by." I give up.

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Andy G

at 18:20 on 2010-06-30Actually, the Tiger Beatdown quote was:

"I wish I could have titled this piece “How Glee is Dissolving the Kyriarchy Through Song” or “Let’s All Go Out for Equality Slushies, Our Work Here is Done!” But I can’t. Because lately, Glee has been making me squirm. Somewhere along the way, Glee became problematic. It stopped merely depicting systemic prejudice and discrimination, and started contributing to it. And I can remember exactly when it happened."

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/06/10/wont-stop-believin-a-gleek-turns-against-the-thing-he-loves/

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Dan H

at 18:23 on 2010-06-30Ah, shows what I know.

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:29 on 2010-06-30

What I find really tough with Glee is that some people genuinely seem to find it empowering (I believe Tiger Beatdown described it as "dismantling the Kyriarchy").

Er... are you thinking of

this article

, which says:

I wish I could have titled this piece “How Glee is Dissolving the Kyriarchy Through Song” or “Let’s All Go Out for Equality Slushies, Our Work Here is Done!” But I can’t. Because lately, Glee has been making me squirm. Somewhere along the way, Glee became problematic. It stopped merely depicting systemic prejudice and discrimination, and started contributing to it.

(Admittedly the author identifies different problems from the ones you mention and seems to say that they only set in considerably later in the series.)

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:29 on 2010-06-30D'oh! Andy types faster than I.

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Arthur B

at 18:35 on 2010-06-30

My friends actually like it because they can identify with the characters that do get screentime (one's a gay guy) so they insist that criticism of the show is criticism of them, even after I repeatedly denied it, and accused disability/women's advocates of "looking for things to be offended by." I give up.

You know, over here at Straight White Able-Bodied Guy HQ we call that "divide and rule".

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Dan H

at 18:37 on 2010-06-30

D'oh! Andy types faster than I.

I shall consider myself well and truly down-smuck.

Generally though there is still positive reception of Glee out there and it does seem to polarise people. I think the issue is that it gets so much right on the one hand and so much wrong on the other.

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Sister Magpie

at 19:25 on 2010-06-30I was really surprised to hear that Kurt wasn't there from the beginning because I always assumed he was sort of the author's stand in. He's gay, he obviously has a feeling for that kind of discrimination, so that's the main discrimination that gets played with.

Though I would say regarding the scene where Kurt's dad tells Finn off, the speech in itself is great (it could perhaps be considered a fantasy speech of things you wish your dad would say in that situation) but even that ep prefers to lean more in the direction of gay being a way you present yourself instead of a sexuality. Which is a fine place to start, but I am still waiting to see if they go into the other aspects of it instead of again claiming that "we're all freaks--because we're in Glee Club!" Um, no. When the bullies call Kurt a freak they mean he's gay. They pick on him because he's gay. They threaten Finn by suggesting he is gay etc.

I remember one ep where they made a joke where people in Glee were voting on something and someone voted for "other Asian"--a background character. That's a perfect example of the show's strange attitude, occasionally lampshading the problems without just not creating the problem.

Especially in eps like Wheels where not only does Finn happily reap the alleged advantages of being a minority, but Artie winds up not even solving the problem that started the ep (that he couldn't ride with the rest of the group on the bus) by sacrificing *his* immediate desires to any disabled people who might come along later. So basically the able-bodied kids complained a lot, but raised some money, and then happily went back to their original attitude of not caring at all if Artie rode the bus with them. The guy in the wheelchair. The only guy who did anything for or cared anything about access for the disabled was the guy in the wheelchair.

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:00 on 2010-06-30Sorry, Dan, I think I must be having a stupid day because I've been turning it over in the back of my head for a couple of hours and I'm still not completely sure how the

NCIS

anecdote relates. Which means I've probably missed something important in the article as a whole. Can I impose on you (or anyone else who is having a intellect-functioning-properly day) for a 'for dummies' version?

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Dan H

at 22:09 on 2010-06-30Partially it doesn't.

Partially it was a holdover from an earlier version of the article that was going to focus more on the "lampshading" element of Glee.

Basically Glee gets a lot of mileage out of people saying "No, don't you see, all these stereotypes are *subversive* because *everybody knows they aren't true*". The thing about the NCIS episode is that for me it highlighted in a very simple, very minor way, the fact that "everybody knows it isn't true" doesn't stop a stereotype being offensive because in fact PEOPLE DON'T KNOW IT ISN'T TRUE.

Then the whole thing morphed and the anecdote was left stuck there like a shark in a roof.

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Viorica

at 22:12 on 2010-06-30

You know, over here at Straight White Able-Bodied Guy HQ we call that "divide and rule".

So it IS a conspiracy!

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http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 02:10 on 2010-07-01

Because having an unpopular hobby is exactly the same as being part of a group which is subject to systematic discrimination, oh yes.

This is probably related to the phenomenon whereby (some) geek guys think that they Understand Women, because, after all, they are discriminated against and therefore can't possibly be part of The Problem. You even get a few guys who claim that, because some things have been difficult for them, there is no systematic sexism in society. After all, they're men! And they got made to suffer for not fitting in! Women are just paranoid for seeing it as a conspiracy against them!

Getting unpopularity caused by a choice you made confused with systematic discrimination is shown quite clearly in Glee as well, when the pregnant girl tells Mercedes that now she's obviously pregnant she Understands what it's like to be black. What?

Because apparently getting to do the things that the white kids get to do in every single episode constitutes special treatment.

That's always the case, though, isn't it? If you're not seen as having the right to be treated like the pretty able-bodied white people, then being treated the same as them is presumptuous. It's special treatment in that you want to be treated *better* than Other People Like You. (Heavy sarcasm filter, needless to say.)

...accused disability/women's advocates of "looking for things to be offended by."

Oh, I hate that one. Horrible, horrible silencing tactic. But seriously, why does anyone need to *look* for things to be offended by? There's so much that is so goddamn offensive that there's no need to look further than the bookshelf in the corner. When someone says that, they're basically saying "I know better than you do what ought to offend you. I don't think this should offend you (because it doesn't offend me) and therefore you are overreacting."

As for "stereotypes aren't true", I think that the mindless spouting of stereotypes - and then defending them by saying there's probably some truth in them - is one of the most prevalent forms of discrimination in our allegedly colourblind/genderblind society. Well, at least, among the nice, "non-discriminatory" people, anyway. I think that's what Dan was saying, so maybe I should've shorted this paragraph to "what he said". But you know us women, we never shut up, right?

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Sister Magpie

at 03:28 on 2010-07-01

If you're not seen as having the right to be treated like the pretty able-bodied white people, then being treated the same as them is presumptuous. It's special treatment in that you want to be treated *better* than Other People Like You. (Heavy sarcasm filter, needless to say.)

Also I think it comes down to the illusion that what the white people get to do in every ep has nothing to do with their being white. Iow, it's not that Mercedes is a backup singer because she's black, it's that Rachel has X,Y and Z about her that gives them a reason to have her on screen a lot and for us to see her story from her pov.

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Frank

at 05:47 on 2010-07-01

Getting unpopularity caused by a choice you made confused with systematic discrimination is shown quite clearly in Glee as well, when the pregnant girl tells Mercedes that now she's obviously pregnant she Understands what it's like to be black. What?

Exactly. W. T. F.

(it could perhaps be considered a fantasy speech of things you wish your dad would say in that situation)

I also think the writer's using this opportunity to speak to those in the audience who are identifying with Finn (who has the absolute right to be pissed at Kurt and call him out on his bullshit though not in such a hateful manner) and who thus may be suffering from gaymanphobia.

The season (network?) suffers from gaymanphobia. For all the talk of Rachel's two gay dads, we never see them. Gay sexuality isn't seen. And the lesbian sexuality that is suggested, is obviously for the het male audience as Santana and Brittany use it to their advantage to seduce/trick Finn.

To be fair, there's not much if any healthy het sexuality either but it is treated as normal. Finn successfully though suggestively loses his virginity to Santana (another fail, this time with racial representation because, you know, Latina's are sexual beings, so exotic.) Will the audience ever see Kurt suggestively lose his virginity (which many will assume to be giving up his butt to a dick instead of giving his dick to a butt)? No, because gayman sex is icky.

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Dan H

at 11:49 on 2010-07-01

This is probably related to the phenomenon whereby (some) geek guys think that they Understand Women, because, after all, they are discriminated against and therefore can't possibly be part of The Problem.

*nods*

Although for what it's worth, it's not just a geek male thing. Bad Things Happen To Men Too is depressingly common male reaction to the notion of privilege. Just look at the lovely "men's abortion rights" guys.

That's always the case, though, isn't it? If you're not seen as having the right to be treated like the pretty able-bodied white people, then being treated the same as them is presumptuous. It's special treatment in that you want to be treated *better* than Other People Like You. (Heavy sarcasm filter, needless to say.)

Sad, but I suspect largely true.

It's like when people complain that student unions have a women's officer but not a men's officer, or complain that everybody talks about violence against women, but nobody talks about violence against men (they do, they just tend to call it "crime" and there are entire branches of government devoted to dealing with it).

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Dan H

at 12:02 on 2010-07-01Oh, wanted to reply to this point too but somehow lost it:

Getting unpopularity caused by a choice you made confused with systematic discrimination is shown quite clearly in Glee as well, when the pregnant girl tells Mercedes that now she's obviously pregnant she Understands what it's like to be black. What?

I'm not sure that's a great example actually. Obviously playing the "I knwo what it's like to be black" card is stupid and offensive, but I think it's a bit iffy to describe Quinn's situation as being entirely down to "a choice she made". Even if we leave out the fact that she was apparently sufficiently drunk when she had sex with Puck that it raises some iffy consent issues, the way she's treated afterwards actually *is* evidence of systematic discrimination because it is, in essence, a form of slut-shaming.

Basically I'm very conscious that "well you shouldn't have got pregnant then" is something that people really do say to women, in one way or another in all sorts of situations (it's a common line taken by pro-lifers for example). There's a certain perspective from which Quinn's arc could be seen as "gets kicked out of her house for being date raped" - I don't think it's entirely fair to describe her as just having made unpopular decisions.

Of course none of that gives her the right to say she "knows what it's like to be black" - on a side note, isn't it interesting that we spend so much time in Glee hearing what it's like to be a minority (what it's like to be in a wheelchair, what it's like to be black, what it's like to be gay) but always from a third party. Mr Shu tells the kids what it's like for Artie to be in a wheelchair, Quinn tells Mercedes what it's like to be black. Kurt's dad gets a pass because he's not actually telling Finn what it's like to be gay, he's telling him what it's like to be a homophobe.

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Arthur B

at 12:14 on 2010-07-01It's like that party game where you have the name of a mystery person stuck to your forehead and the person to your left has to describe them to you.

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http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 15:27 on 2010-07-01Fair enough, Dan. That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black". I didn't know anything about the extenuating circumstances, just saw the racefail and reacted badly to it. Obviously, the way Quinn is treated is Not Okay either, but pretending that it's in any way equivalent is fail on the same scale as Guy With Unpopular Hobby pretending that this is the same as being a woman.

In my defence, that was the comparison I was making - there is nothing wrong with having sex or getting pregnant, anymore than there is anything wrong with having an unpopular hobby. But Quinn had (at least when I was unaware of possible consent issues) a lot more choice over getting pregnant than Mercedes ever did about being black. That doesn't make it *right* that she's treated the way she is, it just means that it's a different sort of unfair. Which kind of undermines her claim to Understand.

Of course, in the show, this exchange is presented as character development and a heartwarming moment between the two girls.

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Dan H

at 15:40 on 2010-07-01

Fair enough, Dan. That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black".

Yeah, I can see how it would be *even more failey* out of context.

In my defence, that was the comparison I was making - there is nothing wrong with having sex or getting pregnant, anymore than there is anything wrong with having an unpopular hobby.

Oh I don't think you've got anything to defend in particular (sorry if I went off on one - I'm afraid I get a bit language police sometimes) I think it's just that I've been spending my off-hours arguing with misogynist assholes on other sites and so was a bit oversensitive. There's a depressing number of people who really do believe that if a bad thing happens to a woman because she "chooses" to have sex then it's ALL HER FAULT. Again, not saying that's you, just being a bit oversensitive.

Also doesn't change the fact that "now I know what it's like to be black" is a failburger with failsauce and a side order of fail.

Of course, in the show, this exchange is presented as character development and a heartwarming moment between the two girls.

Hey, nothing says friendship like appropriation!

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Sister Magpie

at 15:42 on 2010-07-01

That's the only episode of the show I've ever watched, so all I saw was "pregnant white girl tells black girl that teenage pregnancy is Just Like Being Black". I didn't know anything about the extenuating circumstances, just saw the racefail and reacted badly to it. Obviously, the way Quinn is treated is Not Okay either, but pretending that it's in any way equivalent is fail on the same scale as Guy With Unpopular Hobby pretending that this is the same as being a woman.

Yeah, one of the biggest differences it that, of course, Quinn's condition is temporary. Sure people will probably continue to judge her for getting pregnant, but it was still another example of a line the show is very fond of, the one where the person who is in the position of social power has something happen to them or does something that suddenly makes them feel shamed. And now they "know how it feels" to be somebody who's discriminated against all the time. It's not that we can't sympathize with them as people being picked on, and there are some ways that the two situations are related, but it's not the same thing and the show really does seem to link the two a lot.

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Dan H

at 15:46 on 2010-07-01

It's not that we can't sympathize with them as people being picked on, and there are some ways that the two situations are related, but it's not the same thing and the show really does seem to link the two a lot.

*nod*

The one redeeming quality I can think of in this particular example is that at least it's Quinn's *own* experience which acts as the catalyst for her Important Learning Experience, instead of somebody else's. Unlike say in /Wheels/, where Artie gets screwed so that the other kids can learn an Important Lessson About Disability.

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Sister Magpie

at 17:33 on 2010-07-01

The one redeeming quality I can think of in this particular example is that at least it's Quinn's *own* experience which acts as the catalyst for her Important Learning Experience, instead of somebody else's. Unlike say in /Wheels/, where Artie gets screwed so that the other kids can learn an Important Lessson About Disability.

Also it's probably better that Quinn, being the cheerleader, does usually own all the privileges she has, and yet truly has had things taken away from her. Being pregnant is something other people can see and react to on sight. It's a bit deeper than suddenly being one of the kids who might get a slushy thrown at them rather than being the slushie thrower. Her dad throwing her out because she's now a slut is not only more serious but goes to the aspect of Quinn that always was a minority. In the past she just denied that.

In a way, I felt like the awkward connection of the whole thing to the experience of a black person was more something the show is always trying to do rather than something Quinn herself, based on her character, would say. She'd probably never have noticed that Mercedes was judged on her looks, much less think that she now knows how Mercedes feels.

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Dan H

at 17:50 on 2010-07-01Thinking about it, if they really wanted to have an episode in which Quinn's pregnancy experience what it's like to be Mercedes, they'd have to have an episode in which she stood in the background, didn't sing very much, and sometimes said things like "well you can count my pregnant ass in, mm-hmm" while wagging her finger sassily.

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Sister Magpie

at 18:04 on 2010-07-01

Thinking about it, if they really wanted to have an episode in which Quinn's pregnancy experience what it's like to be Mercedes, they'd have to have an episode in which she stood in the background, didn't sing very much, and sometimes said things like "well you can count my pregnant ass in, mm-hmm" while wagging her finger sassily.

Very true. She would spend a lot of time being confused at the way her interactions with people never went anywhere and all her conversations with others were about other people whose feelings she was more interested in than her own.

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Dan H

at 18:24 on 2010-07-01

She'd probably never have noticed that Mercedes was judged on her looks, much less think that she now knows how Mercedes feels.

Sorry to keep dwelling on this but:

Also, is it framed as "being judged on her looks?" because if so ... umm ... again that's a rather nasty oversimplification of a hugely complex set of issues. I mean presumably when Quinn's father kicks her out it's not because he's worried she'll get *fat*, it's because she's a filthy dirty slutty mcslutslut. And presumably the creators realize that Mercedes' identity as a black woman has rather more to it than "is female and has dark coloured skin."

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Sister Magpie

at 18:51 on 2010-07-01

Also, is it framed as "being judged on her looks?" because if so ... umm ... again that's a rather nasty oversimplification of a hugely complex set of issues. I mean presumably when Quinn's father kicks her out it's not because he's worried she'll get *fat*, it's because she's a filthy dirty slutty mcslutslut.

Sorry, no it's not. I just worded that badly because I meant she is judged on an aspect of herself that is visible to strangers. A stranger, for instane, can look at Mercedes and identify her as black and so make judgements based on just seeing her, and so can Quinn with her pregnancy showing. The way I put it it sounded like I meant "her looks" as in whether or not she was conventionally attractive--that's not what she meant.

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Lexa

at 20:19 on 2010-07-01Oh, there are so many things I hate about this show!

First off, it really, really bugs me that they have taken the idiotic step of confusing sexuality and gender in Kurt. Yes, Kurt is gay. But the writers seem to have taken 'gay' to mean 'camp and gender-confused'. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, and frankly it disappoints me. Wouldn't it be more interesting if one of the football players was discovering he was gay? You could do amazing things with that, and explore really interesting themes - such as the fact that a lot of gay men don't conform to that stereotype. It's only making more and more people think that the stereotypical 'camp gay guy' is universal to the population.

Then there's the wheelchair thing. If you ever tried to stage 'Children Of A Lesser God' professionally with a hearing lead actress instead of a deaf one, there would be uproar. Partly, I suspect, because Equity (the actors' union) would never let them get away with it. I don't know how these things are handled in the States, but it upsets me that nobody had enough clout to solve this problem. Yes, he's good for the character, but if you can re-write for one actor, what's a few tweaks for another going to hurt?

(Oh yes, and of course having a stutter is comparable to being wheelchair-bound. It cuts you off from society in exactly the same way, didn't you know?)

Casting is a thorny issue, but I wouldn't say that colourblind casting works in every case. For instance, the writers must have had character briefs when they began auditioning.

Take the character of Quinn, for example. How different would things be if she were black? She may not have the upper-class background of the current character, she may not have been head of the chastity club (which seemed to be universally white), and there may not have been the family stigma attached to her being pregnant. All of these factors were, arguably, (and within the context of the show, with its' wonderfully divisive society) directly related to the fact that the character was white and upper-class. Even if she's still upper-class, everything changes. Suddenly the focal issues of the character change, and you have to write in the additional new environment of a mixed-race relationship between her and Finn/Mohawk Dude.

No matter how good a black actress may have been for that role, I really don't think that she would ever have been considered, because it would change a lot of things that the writers wanted for the character. And actually, maybe that's fair enough, because some characters are just that specific to their surroundings.

On the other hand, Rachel could have been black and it would have changed NOTHING. Ditto Mr Schuester.

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Sister Magpie

at 20:41 on 2010-07-01

On the other hand, Rachel could have been black and it would have changed NOTHING. Ditto Mr Schuester.

With Rachel it's even more ironic because part of the joke with her dads was that they don't know which one actually fathered her biologically. She says this, then they show us a picture of her with her two dads, one of whom is black and one of whom is white. So they've already got the set up for her to be biracial, but she's not.

I personally don't have a problem with Kurt being campy just because I think it's dealing with a certain type of personality. Rather than being a person in hiding who's struggling with his sexuality he's out and proud. He himself has accepted he's gay, which can be nice. But it does give them a chance to sometimes act as if gay really is about loving show tunes and fashion and being considered girly, which fits into the whole "we're a bunch of misfits" thing they like to have for a lot of the Glee characters. The club's kind of split between the popular kids and the outcasts according to cliche high school hierarchy. Quinn, the other Cheerios, Finn and Puck are all cool people getting their first taste of doing something officially not cool. Rachel, Mercedes, Artie, non-stutter girl whose name I've just forgotten and Kurt are the nerdy-kids they wouldn't have spoken to before but now are getting to know.

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:04 on 2010-07-01Thanks for the clarification, Dan! Yes, I see how that works.

[Ducks out before being mistaken for someone who knows something about this programme.]

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Dan H

at 23:30 on 2010-07-01

Take the character of Quinn, for example. How different would things be if she were black? She may not have the upper-class background of the current character

I'm pretty sure you *do* get upper-class black people (if the Fresh Prince taught me nothing else, he taught me that). (Reading ahead, I notice that you mention later that she could still have been upper class, so I don't think you're implying otherwise - I'm just a bit twitchy today).

Quinn's an interesting example in fact for exactly this reason. Making her black would have changed nothing - you *absolutely* get rich, privileged kids from black backgrounds, and making their perfect alpha-teen black would have *genuinely* challenged stereotypes. But they didn't and I suspect that, as you say, the reason they didn't is because they felt that being white was part of who she was, even though I am damned sure that there are black girls who are *exactly* like Finn.

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Dan H

at 23:32 on 2010-07-01

Thanks for the clarification, Dan! Yes, I see how that works.

As an example, there's a running joke throughout the series that the other Asian student in Glee Club is referred to (by staff and students alike) as "other Asian".

You SEE. It's FUNNY because it's SUBVERSIVE because we KNOW IT'S RACIST and NOBODY REALLY ACTS LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE and certainly it's in no way HARMFUL or OFFENSIVE! Because it's GLEE!

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Viorica

at 01:39 on 2010-07-02

If you ever tried to stage 'Children Of A Lesser God' professionally with a hearing lead actress instead of a deaf one, there would be uproar.

I wouldn't be so sure. There's a production of

The Miracle Worker

running in Broadway right now with Abigail Breslin playing Helen Keller.

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Sister Magpie

at 04:30 on 2010-07-02

I wouldn't be so sure. There's a production of The Miracle Worker running in Broadway right now with Abigail Breslin playing Helen Keller

Has there ever been a production of The Miracle Worker, or at least one of note, that didn't have Helen played by a hearing, sighted actress? It seems like Children of a Lesser God is traditionally cast with a deaf actress.

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Lexa

at 10:02 on 2010-07-02But 'The Miracle Worker' closed early in its' run, and when the casting was announced there were huge complaints from the deaf and blind communities. (Also, I believe that it first opened in the 50s, when attitudes were very different to now) It's a huge betrayal to actors who are genuinely deaf, blind and wheelchair-bound when an actor who is none of these things gets a role like that.

And yep, Sarah in 'Children Of A Lesser God' is always played by a deaf actress - and with good reason. They even found a deaf actress for the movie, which is quite impressive when you think about it.

It genuinely upsets me that the actor playing Artie can walk. It's like they're saying "You know what, nobody in a wheelchair can act." Your agent can't find a wheelchair-bound actor? Find one. Hold open auditions, cast a complete newcomer. It's much easier to do that on television than in theatre.

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Dan H

at 10:17 on 2010-07-02Sorry to be the language police again but if we're going to take a stand against ableism can we avoid using the term "wheelchair-bound" because it

genuinely upsets people

.

I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been reading that very blog yesterday evening.

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Wardog

at 10:58 on 2010-07-02Wow, this is a minefield. I'm scared of opening my mouth....

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Sister Magpie

at 15:05 on 2010-07-02

But 'The Miracle Worker' closed early in its' run, and when the casting was announced there were huge complaints from the deaf and blind communities. (Also, I believe that it first opened in the 50s, when attitudes were very different to now)

Thanks for that info--I had no idea and I was genuinely wondering about it. Because yes, the original was in the 50s where the idea of hiring a deaf or blind young actress (much less a deaf and blind young actress) would never even have been considered. I remember when Patty Duke, the original Helen, later made a TV movie version where she played Annie Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert's Helen!

So I didn't know if there was some reason that play was not looked at the way CoaLG was, where you assume the part will be played by a deaf actress.

Now I'd really like to see MW with a deaf and blind actress. It would be a totally different performance, I'd imagine. Helen would probably relate to the world far more realistically because the actress would naturally navigate the world with the same senses. Ironically, I'll bet to a lot of people she would appear more able-bodied because of it. She'd be played less as a seeing/hearing person who's been deprived of those senses and more like an individual who uses senses other than seeing and hearing.

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Viorica

at 15:42 on 2010-07-02

Hold open auditions, cast a complete newcomer.

That's actually the argument I keep hearing- that they

did

hold open auditions, and Kevin McHale just happened to be the best actor for the role. Don't know if I believe it, though.

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Dan H

at 23:23 on 2010-07-02

That's actually the argument I keep hearing- that they did hold open auditions, and Kevin McHale just happened to be the best actor for the role. Don't know if I believe it, though.

I believe it, it's just that I believe their criteria for "best actor" were intrinsically, well, faily.

There's a lot of talk in the DVD special features about how you're looking for the "triple threat" - somebody who can act, sing and dance. Given that later on in the series there's a sequence in which Artie does, in fact, dance in a dream sequence - revealing that Kevin McHale is, in fact, a pretty damned good dancer, it seems depressingly plausible that his ability do dance was part of what landed him the role.

This role, of course, being the role of a wheelchair user whose lifetime dream of being a dancer cannot be fulfilled *because he is a wheelchair user*.

It seems nobody thought that maybe the ability to dance *in a wheelchair* might be a better quality to look for in an actor than the ability to dance *when not in a wheelchair*.

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Viorica

at 00:06 on 2010-07-03Yeah, that's what my friend tried to convince me of- that if they hadn't cast Kevin McHale, they couldn't have done the Safety Dance scene, so clearly he was a better choice than an actor who was actually in a wheelchair. The problem with this is twofold: one, it is entirely possible to dance while in a wheelchair, and two, having your disabled character constantly fantasize about not being disabled is juuuuust a bit problematic. It'd be like having Kurt fantasize about being straight. "Oh, if only I wasn't a minority!"

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Sister Magpie

at 00:54 on 2010-07-03

I believe it, it's just that I believe their criteria for "best actor" were intrinsically, well, faily.

And how many people in wheelchairs would bother showing up at an open call, really? I mean, it seems like asking a bit much to expect differently abled actors to assume they're being considered at an open call.

Yeah, that's what my friend tried to convince me of- that if they hadn't cast Kevin McHale, they couldn't have done the Safety Dance scene, so clearly he was a better choice than an actor who was actually in a wheelchair.

It does underline that we're talking about a disabled person as defined by an able-bodied person, doesn't it? If they think it's important that the actor be able to convincingly dance like a person with the use of his legs, if only for dream sequences but not important that he be able to convincingly use a wheelchair like a person who doesn't regularly use his legs. He can't dance in a wheelchair the way the character should be able to do, probably doesn't even use a wheelchair as well as a regular user would.

But they either don't see those problems or assume people will suspend disbelief for them. However when it comes to a fantasy dance sequence they need it to be the actor dancing? Even though the whole fantasy sequence frame would give you plenty of freedom to be as stylized as possible. You could probably even be more creative with it. It's not like Hollywood hasn't done this in many ways over the years when they cast a non-dancer in a dancing role.

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Dan H

at 12:00 on 2010-07-03

And how many people in wheelchairs would bother showing up at an open call, really? I mean, it seems like asking a bit much to expect differently abled actors to assume they're being considered at an open call.

But that's *their* fault for being *prejudiced* and assuming that *all able bodied people are ablists*. And we shouldn't support *prejudice*.

It does underline that we're talking about a disabled person as defined by an able-bodied person, doesn't it?

It really does. I can't believe that people *actually* cite the (arguably quite offensive) dream sequence in which Artie imagines what it would be like to be a dancer as a *good and valid* reason that he "had" to be played by an able-bodied actor.

"Hey people with disabilities: we can actually represent what it is like to BE YOU better than YOU CAN"

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Lexa

at 15:17 on 2010-07-03There are hundreds of acting calls out there where they say something like: "Actor wanted. Must be male, mid-late 30s, minority ethnic background." Or words to that effect. If you need someone black for a role, that's what you do. If they had put out one stating that they needed a wheelchair user, then it would have been no different. Sometimes you need an actor to look a certain way, and there's no problem with specifying that - asking for someone in a wheelchair is just the same.

And I say again: if they can re-write one role for one actor and change it completely (Kurt), would it have been so difficult for them to change one character slightly so that a real wheelchair-user could have done it? They can't say 'he wasn't right for the role' for one guy, and then do a shedload of re-writing for another.

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Shim

at 08:46 on 2010-07-04

"Actor wanted. Must be male, mid-late 30s, minority ethnic background."

That must be awkward if everyone who turns up is the wrong minority ethnic background.

"I'm sorry, Mr... Spock, was it? We just don't see you as Othello."

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Jamie Johnston

at 11:17 on 2010-07-04"But that is illogical:

Captain Picard

has played the part, and we are of similar appearance. Is it becos I iz from TOS?"

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Dan H

at 12:47 on 2010-07-04

And I say again: if they can re-write one role for one actor and change it completely (Kurt), would it have been so difficult for them to change one character slightly so that a real wheelchair-user could have done it?

I don't think you'll get any disagreement here. We're not saying "this is why they did it, and it's legitimate" we're (or at least I'm) saying "this is probably why they did it, and it's fucking offensive".

People get so defensive about it because what we're dealing with here (like the guy in that infuriating Times article Rami just linked to) is *internalized* prejudice. The producers cast Kevin McHale because he was "best" for the role according to their preconceptions about what a "good" actor in musical theatre should be like. Funnily enough, this wound up being somebody white, male, and able-bodied.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/weG8lOsgwf6qv3.5HfEtaiu7gZr1mw--#9e4da

at 00:48 on 2010-07-06As a person with disabilities who has

written rather extensively about Glee

(I wrote the post at Bitch discussed in Daniel's original post), I'd like to specifically rebut the claims made about the dream sequence (although this whole conversation has been very interesting).

I see the argument that Artie had to be played by a nondisabled actor to make that sequence possible all the time, by people who are apparently not aware that what wheelchair users can dance. Had they used an actual wheelchair user in that role, the dance sequence could have involved Artie going to dance camp and learning wheelchair dance, and they could have choreographed a superb dance sequence. Instead, they cast themselves into a corner by using a nondisabled actor.

Glee for some reason seems to be under the impression that people can't dance in wheelchairs. They claimed to have invented wheelchair choreography with 'Wheels' despite ample evidence to the contrary; seriously, search YouTube for 'wheelchair dancing,' and I note that they had to use a stuntman for most of Artie's moves in that episode, suggesting some awareness of the fact that there are actually wheelchair athletes that can do things that nondisabled people who are unfamiliar with a chair cannot do.

Pretty much all of the statements made about McHale's casting smell like rotten fish to me. They 'needed an actor who can sing and dance'? Well, Kevin McHale may be able to sing, but he certainly can't dance in a wheelchair, and there are plenty of wheelchair users who are accomplished singers and dancers who would have been a better fit for that role.

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Dan H

at 11:28 on 2010-07-06Hiya, welcome to Ferretbrain.

The whole dream sequence thing is just wrong on every level really isn't it?

It seems like the producers genuinely did believe the fact that Kevin McHale *isn't* a wheelchair user somehow made him uniquely qualified to play one.

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:54 on 2010-07-06Wow, I know we've had actual known writers commenting on Ferretbrain once or twice before but this is the first time it's someone I've read. Er, hello! [Star-struck.]

I'm amazed to hear they had the gumption to claim to have invented wheelchair choreography. That claim certainly wouldn't have convinced anyone in the UK, where

this wheelchair dance

was all over our televisions many times a day from 2002 to 2006 as a BBC 'ident'.*

* (I don't know whether 'ident' is a term anyone but the BBC uses. It's the little clips a TV channel shows in between programmes or during ad breaks to remind you what channel you're watching.)

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Melissa G.

at 01:10 on 2010-07-07I would just like to mention that someone I went to college with (who became paralyzed during his sophomore year due to a spinal injury) was recently on Glee. And he wrote a really interesting

blogpost/article

about his experience with the show. Just thought you all would be interested.

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Dan H

at 10:28 on 2010-07-07Obviously it's great that your friend's landed a part in the series, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with his complaining about people criticizing the show. He's entitled to his opinion of course, but so are other people.

I have absolutely no doubt that the cast, crew and writers of /Glee/ are not *consciously* ableist. I have no doubt that they will be very nice to your friend, but it *is* legitimate to criticize them for casting an able-bodied actor as Artie, just as it would be legitimate to criticize them for having a white girl black up to play Mercedes.

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Melissa G.

at 17:51 on 2010-07-07@Dan

Coming from a background where I've been on both sides of the casting table (I'm an actor and I've helped cast things as well), I can't really agree completely with how heated everyone is about Artie's casting. Yes, it would have been great if they found an actor in a wheelchair to play Artie, but for me, as long as equal consideration was given to both abled and disabled actors, I really can't get too angry about it.

Of course, I realize that my opinion comes with privilege and that, of course, as an able-bodied person, I don't have much right to say anything either way. The reason I linked Zach's article was because I thought there was more meaning to hearing his opinion than mine. But I'm certainly not going to say that anyone is wrong for being upset. It's just not something I personally agree with. And to me, the fact that Zach got a part on the show (even though he was competing against able-bodied actors during the casting session) must count for something?

As far as the dream sequence goes, I highly doubt the show had any idea they would even do that until about two weeks before the episode was shot, and from what I know of TV, it's likely that they just said, "Oh, hey, since Kevin can walk in real life, why don't we do a dream sequence where we see him dance?" Had he actually been a wheelchair-using actor, they obviously wouldn't have done the scene or would have done it a different way. But I might be misunderstanding why exactly people are angry about it.

To be honest though, I have a feeling this is an agree to disagree type of situation.

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Dan H

at 00:47 on 2010-07-08

But I might be misunderstanding why exactly people are angry about it.

I'm not really qualified to speak on behalf of People With Disabilities, but if I had to explain why I *think* people are so upset about it, it would be something like this (this may get long).

One way to view disability is that people with disabilities are just people who can't do some things that other people can do. If you follow this definition then casting able-bodied actors in disabled roles is sort of like casting bilingual people in non-bilingual roles: a complete non-issue.

The other way to view disability (as I understand it) is like race or gender: a part of somebody's identity which has physical manifestations. If you follow this definition casting an able-bodied actor in a disabled role is exactly as bad as having black roles played by white actors in blackface.

By the first definition, discrimination against people with disabilities is effectively a non-issue. Disabled people are by definition less able than nondisabled people, and if your disability prevents you from doing something well ... that's why they call it a disability. Many people (including, I suspect, many people with disabilities) are completely okay with the first definition and that is not something I feel in a position to judge. By this definition providing wheelchair access to a public building is effectively a courtesy you provide to the less fortunate.

For many people, however, it is important to recognize that people with disabilities are a social group that can be excluded by social mechanisms. While people with disabilities may do things differently to able-bodied people, they do actually do all of the same things. To these people *failing* to provide wheelchair access to a building is discrimination just as much as it would be to put a sign in the window saying "no blacks no Irish".

The reason people are so upset by the whole "wheelchair users can't dance" theme which runs through Glee is that it reinforces the notion that exclusion is a natural part of what it means to have a disability. To people who subscribe to the second model of disability "wheelchair users can't dance" is exactly as offensive a statement as "gay people can't have children" or "women can't do science".

As you say, it's an agree to disagree situation, I just thought I'd try (as best I can) to explain what I think people are disagreeing about.

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Melissa G.

at 05:34 on 2010-07-08

To people who subscribe to the second model of disability "wheelchair users can't dance" is exactly as offensive a statement as "gay people can't have children" or "women can't do science".

Okay, I see. That clears it up. And yes, wheelchair users *can* dance and it would be nice to see them let Artie do that and achieve his dream.

If you follow this definition casting an able-bodied actor in a disabled role is exactly as bad as having black roles played by white actors in blackface.

This is where it gets tricky for me. And I'm not sure I can explain this without sounding horribly insensitive, but I'll give it a go.

For me, saying that only a wheelchair using actor should play a wheelchair using character is an idea that can be taken to rather dangerous place. If you start saying that people can only play roles that they actually are, you're saying that only straight actors can play straight roles or only Jewish actors can play Jewish characters. Anyone with the right look and skills should be considered for any role. The whole point of acting is to become something or someone that you're not. And to take that to another level, I work with a disabled actor in my workshop classes, and I know for a fact that he wants to be considered for parts that are *not* written to be disabled. If we want casting directors to consider him for non-disabled parts, I feel like we need to extend that to "consider everyone who could play this character for the part". And from there, I trust that the casting people will actually pick the person who is most right for the role. And having met many casting directors, trust me, they're really very good at it.

Again, I know people will disagree with me, and they have every right to. I just wanted to add something from an acting viewpoint as well. (Please don't bite my head off....)

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Shim

at 11:37 on 2010-07-08(warning, long post)

For me, saying that only a wheelchair using actor should play a wheelchair using character is an idea that can be taken to rather dangerous place. If you start saying that people can only play roles that they actually are, you're saying that only straight actors can play straight roles or only Jewish actors can play Jewish characters. Anyone with the right look and skills should be considered for any role. The whole point of acting is to become something or someone that you're not.

I can see where you're coming from and agree to some extent, but I think there's a couple of issues involved here.

For one thing, there are several types of characteristic that might affect casting.

- There are characteristics that almost inevitably affect the character: age, gender, ethnic group, height, body type, certain physical disabilities. The actor's traits carry across to the character unless massive effort goes into disguising them.

- There are characteristics that genuinely limit what the actor can do, including some physical and mental disabilities, but also ability (singing, multilinguism, etc.). This means that actor can't do specific things, but doesn't mean the character has to be

portrayed

in that way: you can avoid showing those activities, or use stunt doubles and voice doubles.

- There are "hidden" traits that don't necessarily affect the actor's range of ability or come across to the character. These include sexuality, regional origin, social class, and some mental conditions.

The first category tend to restrict what roles people can do because many roles are designated for specific types of person. This is especially the case with historical figures, but also applies to stories in particular settings and particular types of character, or to combinations of characters. Dame Judy Dench cannot credibly play Harry Potter. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an unconvincing Gandhi. Children are often expected to be the same ethnic group as their parents. A cast of white kids just don't fit in a Chinese epic set in the Qing Dynasty. A very short cast is not a realistic basketball team, and a very fat cast is not a realistic national football team. Theatre tends to be far more generous with this sort of casting than film and TV. Taking the semi-realism of film & TV as the standard, then yes, I'd argue that Jewish actors (or at least, actors who look Jewish*) should play the characters.

The second category makes it difficult for actors to play particular roles. Stephen Hawking doesn't match up to Arnie as Conan and the work required to allow him to play the part would be astronomical (how appropriate). Similarly, if someone has an unshakeable heavy Russian accent, they just may not be suitable as Queen Elizabeth. Deafblind actors may struggle in a Jackie Chan film. However, as I said, you might be able to adapt the part or avoid or double certain activities to make them a viable choice, and of course the severity of these restrictions varies. In some circumstances, though, it seems like a reasonable decision to say a person is unsuitable.

The third category really shouldn't enter into the casting process. They might affect an actor's ability to get into character, but for a good actor, shouldn't define whether or not they can do the part. There's no reason why a straight part has to be played by a straight actor.

However: there is also the issue of equal opportunities, or more specifically fair opportunities.

While many roles could be played by anyone, they are often effectively restricted. Minority actor X might be a great fit for the grandfather role, but if the rest of the family has been cast as a different ethnic group, the directors simply can't see a way to fit X in. Or it would require a significant rewrite, whereas actor Y can slot straight in there. If the plot requires the heroine to have life-changing experiences while running marathons, an actress who can't walk or run is a big obstacle. If it's a full-blown kung fu film, a complete ignorance of kung fu is a problem.

Other roles require specific actor traits, so your Aboriginal family need to look more or less Aboriginal, Henry VIII needs to be a Caucasian bloke, and your basketball players need to be tall.

A third type of role needs someone who can portray a particular type of character, without necessarily needing that trait themselves. This ties in with the third category: traits like personality, nationality, class, education, magical powers, emotions, illness and some disabilities can be portrayed by actors without those traits.

The thing is that while the second type of roles exclude majority actors who don't fit the bill, both the first and second types tend to exclude minorities. This means a far smaller range of opportunities is open to them, which in itself reinforces the problem because it's harder to build up a reputation, experience and contacts. That being the case, I'd say it's even more important to consider them carefully for minority-specific roles, and to be

less

open to rewrites and other adaptive measures for the sake of casting non-minority actors.

Wheelchair users are actually a slightly unusual case, because you don't need to be a wheelchair user to act the part. This puts them at an even greater disadvantage than many other disabilities, because not only are they excluded from many roles not written for wheelchair users; they are also competing with able-bodied actors (who have had more opportunity to get experience and recognition) for roles as wheelchair-using characters. Thus, open casting for wheelchair users reinforces the discrimination. Hence the blackface comparison.

Obviously that doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered for non-chair-using roles, any more than all-women MP shortlists mean women shouldn't apply for other constituencies. It's not really about making casting completely open; it's about preventing passive disadvantage to minorities from the passive advantage and sheer numbers of the majority.

*I appreciate this is getting into the situation where people are concerned by ethnic minority A actors taking roles as ethnic minority B characters. I don't want to discuss that right now, I was just referring to getting a convincing cast.

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Dan H

at 12:12 on 2010-07-08

Anyone with the right look and skills should be considered for any role.

I think this is the crux of the issue (and again this might get a bit long).

For many years, to a white audience, a man in blackface had the right "look" to play a black man on stage or on film. Even after people came to realize that this was not acceptable, the film and television industry carried on doing the

exact same thing

with Asian characters because, to a white audience as long as somebody has their eyes taped back they look convincingly Asian (scanning down the wikipedia article, people still do this today). Of course to a lot of Asian people this is fantastically offensive.

To a lot of disabled people, Kevin McHale absolutely does *not* have the "right look and skills" to be considered for the role of Artie. For a start he can't dance in a wheelchair which for somebody in a show which is all about singing and dancing is a bit of a flaw. Not only that, but (I am given to understand) many people find the way McHale handles a wheelchair awkward, uncomfortable, and unconvincing. To people who actually use wheelchairs, McHale does not do a convincing job of portraying somebody who spends a large proportion of every day in one.

None of these things are immediately obvious to an able-bodied audience (or, I suspect, to able-bodied casting directors) because we define disability by inability, and think that being a wheelchair-user means "not being able to walk" instead of "being able to use a wheelchair". The reason many people find "crip drag" offensive is because they feel it should not be up to able-bodied people to decide what disabled people are supposed to look like.

I absolutely believe that Kevin McHale was chosen because he had the right look and skills to play Artie, but I also believe that what people considered to be the "right look and skills" to play Artie was based on quite a lot of harmful misconceptions about disability.

Put it this way. Look at the following picture

of the cast

. Perhaps I'm just being guided by hindsight but just looking at those pictures (which are all head-and-shoulder shots) you know *instantly* which of those characters is "wheelchair kid" - it's the pale gawky looking one because that's what able-bodied people think disabled people look like. It's even more apparent in the

DVD Cover

where he is actually pulling the "biting your own ear" face I describe in the article.

If I was a casting director, Kevin McHale is exactly the person I would cast as wheelchair kid. He looks exactly how I expect disabled people to look (pale, unhealthy, and uncomfortable) and his awkwardness in a wheelchair wouldn't even register with me, because I *expect* disabled people to move awkwardly because, well, they're disabled.

And to take that to another level, I work with a disabled actor in my workshop classes, and I know for a fact that he wants to be considered for parts that are *not* written to be disabled. If we want casting directors to consider him for non-disabled parts, I feel like we need to extend that to "consider everyone who could play this character for the part".

I think you're in danger of falling into the "reverse prejudice" trap here.

There is a big difference between disabled actors wanting to be considered for roles that are not specifically written as disabled, and non-disabled actors wanting to be considered for roles that are. Not least of those differences is the fact that while disabled actors are routinely *not* considered for roles that aren't specifically written for them, they have to be especially protective of those that are.

To come back to the race example, it's the difference between a black actor wanting to be considered for the role of Dr Who and a white actor wanting to be considered for the role of Martin Luther King Jr. One involves taking a character who habitually (and for no especially good reason) is cast as white and asking for the opportunity for equal treatment. The other involves asking people to accept that one of the most famous and significant figures in the civil rights movement can be adequately represented by a white guy.

There is a big, big difference between actors with disabilities, or actors of colour, or female actors, asking to be considered for parts in which race, disability, and gender play no significant role, and white, able-bodied male actors asking to take roles which *are* specifically written as disabled, non-white, or female. (I should add that gender isn't a great example here, because regendering roles is slightly different to merely whitewashing them).

What's offensive about blackface, and about yellowface, and about crip drag, is the notion that "white and able-bodied" is some kind of master template from which everything else can be derived. A black man is not just a white man with dirty skin. An Asian person is not just a white person with their eyes pulled back. A disabled person is not just an able-bodied person sitting down.

Should every actor who *can* play a role be considered for that role? Absolutely. But for many people an able bodied actor *can not* play the role of a wheelchair user. For many people Kevin McHale *is not* convincing as Artie, because Artie is supposed to be a wheelchair user and Kevin McHale *obviously* isn't.

And having met many casting directors, trust me, they're really very good at it.

I'm sure they are, but that does not mean they are without prejudice, or do not have privilege.

Kevin McHale was an excellent choice for Artie in the sense that he looks exactly the way the average, able-bodied audience member expects a wheelchair user to look. He was also an excellent choice for a character whose entire arc seems to be about how having a disability means having a less complete life. Insofar as Artie's function as a character is to be tragic and sympathetic, he is well cast.

The problem a lot of people seem to have with Kevin McHale is not that he did not fit the character per se, but that the character itself is a harmful jumble of stereotypes.

I hope this doesn't come across as biting your head off, just still trying to explain why I think the criticisms of McHale are legitimate.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:52 on 2010-07-08

I absolutely believe that Kevin McHale was chosen because he had the right look and skills to play Artie, but I also believe that what people considered to be the "right look and skills" to play Artie was based on quite a lot of harmful misconceptions about disability.

Just wanted to say I thought this whole post summed up the issues really well, at least the way I see them at play. If we lived in a world where the majority of people used wheelchairs, McHale's awkwardness at handling one would probably be a no-brainer. That kind of unconscious thinking happens a lot with the white able-bodied template. Like as I often said w/regard to the Avatar casting, nobody ever considered making the LOTR cast there were no discussions about Middle Earth not really being Europe and therefore the entire Fellowship should be Asian--on the contrary both there and Harry Potter it was agreed right away that convincingly white and British was the starting point for everyone.

Basically, I think we're trying to work towards a comfortable balance between blind casting where the audience is expected to accept an actor whose race isn't supposed to be taken literally and specific casting where race is an issue.

I do remember once someone on lj making a horribly misguided (imo) post where she seemed to literally be arguing that whatever specific background an actor had, that was what the character had. She was arguing that it was stupid for people to talk about the Jimmy Smits character on The West Wing being the first Latino US president when Bartlett was a Latino president--because Martin Sheen is. Even though Bartlett's ethnicity was a stated part of his character. *That* I think was definitely a case of the slippery slope where things are getting silly.

Also, we shouldn't forget that the show does have an actual disabled cast member in a recurring role--the Cheerio who has Down Syndrome. Perhaps Life Goes On changed things when it came to that particular condition, or maybe it's that it's got such a distinctive physical look (distinctive enough that it's almost like a wheelchair only it's not a prop or a costume), or again maybe it's that people with Down Syndrome have proven themselves enough as a group as actors, but I would have been surprised if they'd cast that role with a person who didn't have Down Syndrome.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:58 on 2010-07-08Also while I'm blabbing on, let me go off on a tangent. But I wonder if another unconcious prejudice that can come into play is a discomfort with the disabled. Of course I can't say this was at all a factor in the Glee casting. But I think there are situations where able-bodied people are just made a little less comfortable or a little more nervous when dealing with someone who has different limitations. So that could probably also weigh in favor of preferring the able-bodied actor. Obviously not all the time, as the actor who wrote the blog is disabled and got a part--though even there if this kind of thing was an unconscious factor people would probably feel a lot more confident hiring someone for one episode than as a series regular.

Again, I don't want to make it seem like I'm accusing the Glee cast of doing this, especially not consciously. But it seems like from things I've read disabled people say, this is something they deal with.

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Melissa G.

at 17:24 on 2010-07-08I can't really argue with anything anyone is saying. And it makes more sense to me to call the character of Artie offensive or insulting than to harp on about the casting choice, in my opinion, but that's getting into semantics.

I still can't completely agree with it, but that may be because I Just Don't Get It, which I'm willing to accept and admit that maybe my opinion is a little less significant given my privilege.

But I do want to say that I appreciate everyone responding to me in a calm, non-defensive manner so we could have an actual conversation about what I think is a complicated issue. But I'm not sure I particularly have anything more insightful to say about it at this point. (Also, watch Zach's episode; he did a good job!! ^_^)

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Jamie Johnston

at 19:09 on 2010-07-08Yeah, it's been a really interesting discussion. And I think we'd probably all agree that casting is only part of the problem, and not the biggest part. (It's certainly only one of many complaints in Dan's original article.) Even if casting were never affected by prejudice in any way (which I don't think anyone here suggests), we'd still be left with far too many series that are written to either ignore the diversity of people and experiences in the world or deal with that diversity using token characters and cheap stereotypes.

And we'd also probably all agree that the workings of prejudice are much more easily seen over the broad sweep than when looking at any single creative decision. Casting Kevin McHale as a wheelchair-using character would be much less problematic than it is (however much that may be) if the show had lots of actors with disabilities, or if it didn't but there were plenty of other TV series that did, or even if there weren't that many actors with disabilities on our screens but there were enough suitable parts being written to encourage more young people with disabilities to become actors.

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Shim

at 08:42 on 2010-07-09It's always difficult when you're talking about generalities but focusing on a specific example. Quoting Dan in a vaguely web-incestuous way:

"I don't think you can look at any single work of fiction and say "that character, right there, should have been black".

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Jamie Johnston

at 12:41 on 2010-08-17The casting issue, in

Glee

and more generally, on

This ain't livin'

from a few days ago.

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Arthur B

at 12:42 on 2010-08-17A little happy news: I just started watching

Breaking Bad

, which includes a character with cerebral palsy played by an actor who actually has cerebral palsy. At last.

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http://someobsessive.livejournal.com/

at 10:06 on 2010-08-20I just wanted to let you know that I have included several quotes from your articles on my new tumblr:

http://wholesomeobsessive.tumblr.com/

if you would like to check it out.

Sister Magpie quotes are also there.

Thank you for your articles, and for directing me over to deathtocapslock. I am being very well entertained this summer.

:-)

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Robinson L

at 15:00 on 2010-12-21Still not seen

Glee

, and still probably never will, but do have a few thoughts. One of them being that Noah Antwiler of The Spoony Experiment

also took exception to The Immortals

. In detail.

And while I haven't see the show, ptolemaeus watched the first season with our cousin last year, and she had the same problems with

Throwdown

(the Sue-Sylvester-tries-divide-and-conquer-tactics episode) you bring up. Color me unsurprised.

Also, did I dream up the part where somebody (and I could've sworn it was Dan), said something about Sue Sylvester later being depicted as more sympathetic, and that this actually makes the show's problems *worse* because—if I remember the argument correctly—now it's a likable person saying and thinking all those nasty things? That struck me as a bit odd, because while I can sort of see the logic behind it, I've always viewed treating nasty characters sympathetically and not just saying “ehn, they're just evil,” as a good thing. I didn't dream all that up, did I?

Dan: Partially it was a holdover from an earlier version of the article that was going to focus more on the "lampshading" element of Glee.

Was that version also going to go more into what exactly the “Trouble With Deconstruction” is? From all I've heard, it sounds more like the trouble is that the show lampshades it's own stereotypes without really questioning or subverting (deconstructing) them.

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https://profiles.google.com/117083096049946525193

at 02:46 on 2013-07-07Oh, this has only gotten far worse as the show has hit it's fourth season.

First, Brittany and Santana did become a couple and broke up. Brittany, being bisexual, decided to date Sam (a season 2 character), but was hesitant because the lesbian blogging community was going to hurt him. I wish I was making this up. AfterEllen had a riot on that. Sorry we're upset that our representation isn't on screen anymore. And as a lesbian myself, I do have to say, it was really frustrating how for the rest of the series, except maybe two times, they completely forgot those two dated.

The biggest fail though is the transgender (mtf) black woman named Unique. First of all, it took me a while to figure out whether she was supposed to be transgender or a drag queen (because she talks in the third person regularly, and talks about Unique like a persona, not as herself). Second, SO MANY TIMES in the show, people are calling Unique Unique/Wade (the male name). Now, I know a million idiots across America are going to think this is acceptable behavior. And finally, they made her a catfish. The transgender as deceptive/predatory is a pretty common trope, and I think a damaging one, for everyone involved.

And the final Glee minority fail. Unique is also a big girl, and is basically the replacement for Mercedes. Brittany literally calls Unique Mercedes, SEVERAL TIMES. Uuuuugh. . .

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Fishing in the Mud

at 23:41 on 2013-07-07Ryan Murphy can totally make fun of lesbians and transgender people because he's gay. Isn't it great?

Yeah, no. What a fucking worthless hack.

[douxreviews]

True Detective - ‘The Great War and Modern Memory’ Review

“What you don’t remember you don’t know you don’t remember.”

Finally! It’s back!

There was awhile there where I wasn’t sure True Detective was ever going to get a third season. It’s no secret to anyone that the show experienced quite a sophomore slump in the eyes of many viewers, and I feared that might have been enough to kill this series.

It would have been a shame too, since I always thought this detective anthology was a very novel idea. Plus, I’m in the minority of people who feel that the show's second season gets a very bad rep. While it did fail to live up to the majesty of that first season, I believe it was still a solid piece of fiction.

The thing I ended up finding most interesting about the premiere of the third is how creator Nic Pizzolatto seems to address the reception of the second. On a superficial level, it almost appears as though he were pandering to people who wanted more of what we got in season one.

There are a ton of familiar elements here: a foreboding rural setting, missing children, an investigation that cuts across multiple timelines, unreliable narration, a detective whose damaged mental state dominates the plot.

However, even if he is giving viewers what they want, Pizzolatto is also clearly not interested in telling the same story. Like season two, its story and characters stand well apart from those we’ve seen before.

Here we follow the dark journey of Wayne Hays, an Arkansas State Police detective. A journey that cuts back and forth between three distinct periods of his life, each centered around his last and most haunting case. That being the abduction of Will and Julie Purcell. We see the start of his investigation in 1980, his revelatory deposition on it ten years later, and his fractured reflection on it as a retired old man during a documentary interview in 2015.

This was a very unique framing device right off the bat, which is significantly enhanced by our main character.

One of the main problems with season two is that its attempt to divide up the narrative between four different protagonists resulted in none of them (with the possible exception of Colin Farrell’s Ray Velcoro) being as brilliantly defined as Rustin Cohle and Marty Hart from season one.

Now we’ve narrowed our attention down to one detective, and I was on board with Wayne Hays from the beginning. We’re given a lot of detail about this character in just one episode, yet he still remains as much a mystery as the case he’s attempting to solve. His background as a long range reconnaissance patrolman (or “lurp”) during the Vietnam War means that he is an increasingly jaded but professional and highly effective investigator. It’s also shown that despite his rough edges, he’s a fairly humane person, as seen early on when he stops his partner West from shooting a terribly cute fox and later when we see his determination to find the missing kids.

Even more fascinating is the effect his psyche has on the story. Hays has trouble remembering things. This shows up nowhere in the 1980 arc, is mentioned but not witnessed in 1990, and completely consumes him as a senior citizen in 2015, where he reminds himself of his memory loss through daily recordings. No doubt this will lead to some big surprises as the season goes forward.

The show has already dropped a few surprises already, the most significant of which is Hays locating the body of Will Purcell in a cave, staged in an eerie ritualistic tableau not unlike Dora Lange in season one. I was not expecting that big of a development this quickly. And it leads directly to a good hook at the end, with the revelation that Hays never found Julie during the initial case, only to discover in the 1990 deposition that she has apparently resurfaced.

This is just one of several vague yet juicy details I assume we’ll eventually get to see unfold as the story progresses. Several possible suspects are already lined up in 1980, while in 1990 it’s mentioned that the incarcerated culprit’s family is trying to overturn his sentence and the police might have caught the wrong guy. And there’s a ton of ambiguity where the missing girl and Hays himself are concerned.

I very much look forward to seeing how it all pans out.

Bits and Pieces:

* These first two episodes are directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who did a fantastic job; I wish he were doing the whole season. I highly recommend his movies: Blue Ruin, Green Room and Hold the Dark.

* I’m glad to see Mahershala Ali in the lead here, after being repeatedly impressed by his acting in various supporting roles. I recently watched Luke Cage, and he was probably my favorite part of that first season.

* Wasn’t sure about Stephen Dorff as Hays’ partner, Roland West, at first, but he quickly won me over. Dorff and Ali have good chemistry. They keep up this series’ tradition of sincere, blunt and unexpectedly funny police repertoire.

* Carmen Ejogo plays Amelia Reardon, a teacher at the Purcell children’s school who later becomes Hays’ wife and writes a true crime novel that chronicles the events of the 1980 investigation.

* In addition to being a former lurp, we are informed that Hays is also a skilled hunter.

* I can tell they're going for a Memento feel with elder Hays' recordings, but the first thing it brought to my mind was 50 First Dates.

* My favorite part of the episode were the instances of what Pizzolatto has referred to as the “slipperiness of memory.” At the beginning, middle-aged Hays states in the deposition that he and West were going over old cases when they caught the Purcell case, and we cut to them sitting in lawn chairs, drinking beers and using junkyard rats as target practice. I also loved how 1980 Hays grimly rejects the idea of getting married and having a family, when we know both lie in store for his future self.

Quotes:

West: It’s too dark, man. Hays: I don’t care. I always read dialogue as the writer speaking to the viewer, so this line felt especially meta. It’s like two people describing the show itself.

This episode was vivid and engrossing. A solid comeback for this dark, dark series. Five out of five ornamental angels.

Logan Cox