#the most manic pixie dream girl anyone has ever been actually

[one-1-eye]

watching emily play fig play wanda childa feels like i’m watching michaelangelo paint the sistine chapel

at a bus stop with an old ipod? listening to the complicated women podcast: lucy frostblade?? she just got back from breaking up with her boyfriend??? a genius at work

[being-so-normal-about-reploids]

Rambling about an OC under here lol plus maybe vague and not terribly important first-chapter-ish spoilers for the still unnamed sequel to >E.04642-SYS: Failure to compile. (but I mean if you liked Valentina I guess it could be interesting because that's who I'm gonna ramble about)

So there's a TON more Valentina in the sequel and she's an absolute delight to write, which like. Maybe that's blowing my own horn a little bit but whatever. I'm allowed.

The thing about her as a character and also in-world as a reploid is that she's very easy to not take seriously. She was created as a sex worker. She likes being a sex worker, at least when she has autonomy about it, and that makes her kind of bizarrely human-adjacent and even gross to most reploids. And it's not subtle, it's not something she can just hide, because she's physically constructed in a very different way to the rest of them. She doesn't even have the goofy feet (which actually means that she's got a very good balance system, since she can't make up for it by just having a large footprint like a lot of reploid designs do. She also uses it for dance). Humans look at her and see a thing made for their entertainment or abuse, reploids look at her and see something even worse. If she's not gross, she's pitiful, but either way, ew, she's not really One Of Them. She's kind of alien to both groups.

And yet she's emotionally intelligent in a way that most reploids are not, because she's got a lot of life experiences that are specifically with both humans and reploids and not in a work capacity. She's the kind of person who hangs out with the freaks and weirdos. She's dated both humans and reploids, sometimes at the same time, in a lot of different capacities. She's been homeless longer than a lot of the others and she's known a lot more people of all stripes so she's got a lot of street smarts that reploids in general never develop. Valentina is actually ridiculously capable and resilient!

But that tends to go unnoticed because she was designed to be a manic pixie dream girl that you could rent for a few hours. And she doesn't even deny or dislike that. That's part of her and she's into radical self-acceptance, so she doesn't even see it as "yeah I'm a sex worker but you should still value me because I'm a person underneath that." She sees it as "yeah I'm a sex worker AND you should still value me because you should value everyone no matter what they do with their body" and that's a much harder sell.

X sometimes even trips on this despite his best efforts because he's just not had to ever consider how to treat somebody like Valentina before recently. She's not a combat unit, she's ridiculously good at what she does, but what she does is all soft skills that he's never learned to value. He does figure it out, and they actually become good friends, but it takes a lot of conscious work on his part and in the wrong mood if he's feeling antisocial (aka something's triggered his PTSD that he definitely has but doesn't know what to call) he'll still slip into 'ugh why are you bothering me with your frivolous shit' mode unless he calls himself out on it.

But the thing that Valentina talks about in >E.04642-SYS: Failure to compile. (while she spooks X pretty hard lol), where she says that they aren't that different, is pretty accurate actually, and X comes to realize that months later because he's slow and has the emotional IQ of a doorknob, while Valentine's kind of a prodigy for a reploid. They were both pushed into doing what they hated with skills that they had originally enjoyed having and it really fucked with both of their senses of self and ability to relate to anyone else (and resulted in a trail of corpses, whoops). She's got a huge head start on processing it though.

The thing about Valentina that X appreciates absolutely the most though is that she does see where they're similar and treats him like a regular person about it. He's not a poor little broken baby or inspiration porn or anything. He's just a guy who's Been Through It, like just about everyone else she's known. She's actually pretty comfortable to talk to as a result because she's a good listener and gives him a fair amount of insight, and she turns into probably X's third closest friend, which is a tight race with Glitch and Mack (X would never even try to put them in any kind of order either). I've really enjoyed watching that develop more in the sequel. She's got a pretty big role!

Anyway I love Valentina. Absolutely simping for my own OCs today and nobody can stop me.

[melonnade]

OC-TOBER DAYS 2-4 (commentary about each character under the cut)

2: NEW OC - Luo Yuqing

3: OLD OC - Tess (joint effort between @millidew and I)

4: REDESIGN - Sanya Harris

Day 2 - new OC: technically Xiang Wanyi is my newest OC but he was Day 1, so I’ll just do my second-newest. for a long time, Luo Yuqing didn’t really get much character development from me. from the onset, I knew I wanted a character like Song Riyuan as the protagonist of this OC universe. SRY needed a friend of some sort but I didn’t really have a clear-cut idea, so I just quickly scribbled in LYQ’s design without thinking much about it and made their concept “cloud recesses wangxian but lesbians.” so for a while, LYQ has just been “what if Lan Wangji was a girl?”

after fleshing out SRY a bit more though, I figured LYQ deserves some more actual thought from me too, so she has this sort of inverse character development thing with Riyuan. Waymond Wang in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once has a quote that lives rent-free in my head: “When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary… This is how I fight,” and “We have to be kind. Please, be kind.” This is SRY’s mentality at the beginning of the story. LYQ has a more cynical worldview: sometimes kindness hurts more than it helps. It’s more similar to Megumi from jjk’s “who’s to say that someone you save won’t kill anyone in the future?”

not going to get too much into plot, but over time, stuff happens and the two begin to slowly swap ideologies. after a time skip, LYQ has basically SRY’s original mentality, while SRY has taken on LYQ’s. I get so excited just thinking about how they’d interact when they meet again—they’re still so, so important to one another but there’s this distance now that they’re not sure how to navigate. to SRY, her old mentality was the reason why she wasn’t able to keep the two of them from being separated—she hates that part of herself. to LYQ, her memories of SRY were what got her through everything—she takes on that ideology as a sort of homage initially, but grows to believe it completely. there’s so much fun potential here for different situations.

I’m just going to try to describe her in a sort of stream of consciousness way. overall, LYQ makes me think of the North Star—always there, always constant, never wavering. basically, she doesn’t give up ever. not in a Naruto Uzumaki bold, confident kind of way, but in the same way Sisyphus keeps pushing that boulder, slowly but surely, over and over again. Luo Yuqing’s character is like the way waves against cliffs over the course of centuries can turn rock to sand. not sure how much this makes sense, but these are the types of associations I have in my mind with her. the vibes, if you will. she’s very fun to think about, now that I have more of an idea of what she should be.

Day 3 - old OC: Tess is the very first OC I ever made, before I even knew what an OC was. she’s a group project of a character, so I guess Millie and I have shared custody. she’s very edgy, very cringe, and was very fun at the time to make. I don’t think I ever drew any ref art of her, so this is just a drawing that I made today of what I remember her looking like. Tess is so funny to me because I remember thinking, “if she’s an assassin, she can’t be 12, because I’m 12, and 12 is too young to do anything like that. she can be 13 though.”

I drew her with her manic pixie dream girl traveling companion Sel, since I didn’t want to separate them!

I think Tess & Sel’s creation was a formative time in my life because this is basically how I make every OC now. they always come in pairs—their personalities are developed around one another, so I almost never make individual OCs. you can pretty much group all my OCs into two: Luo Yuqing & Song Riyuan, Qin Tianxiao & Xiang Wanyi, Haneul & Anna, Zach & .Soren, Atlas & Louisa, etc. If a character on my Art Fight doesn’t have an obvious foil, it’s most likely just because I haven’t drawn their ref sheet yet. anyway, I just think it’s funny how that moment in my life influenced my entire creative process, even now. if you spend enough time looking at my OCs, there are definitely clear patterns that I tend to follow though!

Day 4 - redesign: another part of my OC creation process is when I scrap certain universes, I try to reuse the characters if possible. either I’ll essentially blend them up with another character to create someone new or I’ll just stick them in a brand new universe. Sanya Harris initially was a best friend/sidekick-type character in an urban fantasy monster-hunting OC universe that I’ve abandoned. (like all of my other OCs, she had a partner OC too, but he’s been recycled into Zach lol). she was a college student working a part-time job as a motel receptionist in rural Kansas. now, in her current backstory, she lives in California and is a teenager going to summer camp. this whole situation is very funny to me.

actually, a lot of my OCs would fit for the “redesign” prompt because all of the recycled ones are basically redesigns. for example:

let’s compare the art I drew of Tess to Haneul’s original design from 2021. “they’re the same photo” meme etc, etc.

their personalities are very similar too—they’re basically the same person. again, I find this hilarious, but yeah, there are definitely character archetypes that repeat in my OCs that are easily identifiable if you’ve been watching me make a lot of them over the years.

[treestomeetyou]

I have a very similar experience. I obviously get wanting to look at the positives, but I also think it's important to understand the full picture. A lot of the talk I've seen online surrounding autism has made me realize that people don't really know just how shitty it can be sometimes.

Autistic people aren't just "a little quirky". In fact, some of the most talked about symptoms were the least of my concerns growing up. My emotional maturity has always been...not great. I struggled with anger and I had outbursts so bad that I would sometimes end up getting in fights or breaking things. And I had these all the way up until I was in high school. I thankfully had therapy and it's not as bad as it used to be, but my issues will never be completely gone. I've also had sleep problems my whole life and I don't really have the ability to be in certain high stress situations. That takes a lot of things off the table that I otherwise would have loved to do. I also can sometimes shut down when I get overwhelmed which is similar to a depressive episode (something I also have and experience) and depression is often a symptom autistic people experience but for me it was a seperate diagnosis. There are also people who have it worse and may never be able to live on their own, and who have problems that are even more serious and it feels like we're just...not allowed to talk about that. I have been called ableist more times than I can count by people who didn't realize I was autistic, just for trying to talk about these things, or for saying that I wouldn't wish this on anyone else.

A lot of people seem to think it's a fun thing to have and that's just not the case. It sucks. I wish people would understand that there's a difference between hating myself for being autistic (which I don't, I'm actually very upfront about it) and wishing that I didn't have certain symptoms. I'm not "masking" because I don't want to get angry and yell at my friends and family every two seconds! I did everything I could to get past that because it was the right thing to do for the sake of the other people in my life. I was bullied in school as a kid (mostly for the anger stuff) but as an adult I have experienced more shaming from within the autistic community than I have from outside of it. I should be able to talk about both the positive and the negative side of autism. There's normalization, and then there's presenting an idealized fantasy version of autism that rarely ever actually exists. (I also wish people would do actual research instead of just...basing their views of autism on a tik tok they saw somewhere, but that's a whooooole other conversation lmao)

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to get so long. I'm just very passionate about this. I hope you have a good day. ✨️

never apologize for making it so long it’s nice to hear from other people. i feel like autism on tiktok is just some kind of new age manic pixie dream girl. like she’s quirky and she has funny little habits but it’s “breaks the fantasy” when she has issues that can make her unpleasant to be around.

i always joke that i don’t drink a lot because i’m kind of a bitch when i drink, but it’s just sensory overload that makes me a deeply unpleasant person. i don’t want to be like that, i put in a lot of work to not be like that. but that work takes a lot out of me and i resent that. i agree with you that i wouldn’t change myself, i’m autistic and that’s an unchangeable part of me. but it’s so hard to make people understand that it’s a still a disability. that there are things i can’t do. i will require certain supports my whole life. the toxic positivity around autism (and neurodivergent people in general) online gets on my nerves. i can love myself and find positives in myself while still being upset about how i struggle

[godza]

hello hello lisey :) most exciting thing i've done all day is watch the close up vers of the orv musical. as you've seen. i still owe you everything for introducing me btw. also made a little bit of progress in sui hunter not much since the last update. i feel bad for gorke. i think that's his name. imagine being just some teenager and god shows up after two hundred years to declare you the new priest and then beat you up to make you learn magic what the. heretic questioner was so insane for staying in the tower for two hundred years just to use his snails to enslave everyone else T_T there's something wrong with him. i knew that already. umm i've been meaning to ask do you have any vtubers/streamers you'd recommend. i've wanted to start getting more into that stuff for a while but i am not sure where to start. no pressure to compile a huge in depth list on the spot if you don't feel like it just making one of your swag lists sometime whenever you're up to it would be cool ^_^

woooo i need to rewatch the orv musical bc it slaps. just rewatched 188 in 4k jesus christ. i posted it specifically back then so you would see it. and yayyy sui!! god beats you up on the daily in your dreams you are gorke. and heretic questioners snails are insane. heretic questioner is a manic pixie nightmare girl. and yayyyy streamers!!! my fave actual person is rtgame, the best twitch streamer ever imo he has had me waking up early on the weekends you need to have a strong grip on me to do that. his content is what makes me laugh the most, theres a bunch of great stuff on his yt channel.

here is my a list of vtubers you may like! noir vesper, hes really good at talking for hours and making every second entertaining, he can talk about computer parts for an hour and i wont understand but ill enjoy it. min suha, the most popular niji kr member, hes fluent in korean and japanese but is trying his best in english and is super funny and wholesome, slightly fruity. selen tatsuki, if i could marry a streamer it would be her, her laugh is contagious and is a beast at fps games and has my whole heart can she give it back i need it. hyakumantenbara salome, a jp high class lady whos incredibly funny, you may know her from the desu wa craze a while ago if that was an event to anyone else but me. other misc ones you may like: uki violeta, calm gay guy. pomu rainpuff, anything but calm fairy. enna alouette, she got into some controversy lately so maybe hold off but her contents great, and shu yamino, the only guy ive ever seen who doesnt swear but is also hilarious. i just infodumped all over the place ill need a mop to clean this up

[suburbiatales]

unhealthy attachments, embarrassing separations

we hear a lot about the perils of romantic relationships. after all, we are at our most vulnerable when we allow a person into every aspect of our lives. they see us at our best, and at our worse. from crying at a stupid video of a raccoon accidentally dissolving a piece of cotton candy (if you have not seen that video, you know nothing of pain), to a jealous screaming match over flirting with the cashier at the supermarket. they've seen us from every angle (literally). they know about the weird mole on your labia, your inverted nipple, and your fascination with pimple popping videos.

all of that to say 1) I have a weird mole on my labia and 2) it's old news. most romantic relationships end in tragedy or, at best, an awkward wave when you run into them at the local coffee shop.

but do we talk about platonic relationships enough? i can tell you right now that nothing has hurt me more then the "friend" breakups i have accumulated over the years. this year, for example, i had a friend dump me for keeping a secret that wasn't mine to tell. the worst part? they told me they forgave me. and then proceeded to ignore every text and every phone call. actually, that's a lie. they texted me to ask for a 4am ride to the airport. and my dumbass, of course, said yes.

i was dumped so many times by friends that i developed a (diagnosed by my lovely therapist) fear of abandonment. so, unlike other people with legitimate reasons to feel abandoned, like daddy leaving for a cigarette and never coming back, i fell prey to mean 13 year old girls who didn't like my dry sense of humor. lame.

anyways, back to my point. another thing you hear a lot about is the romantic soulmate. that look across a crowded bar, the butterflies, a hint of nausea. but did you know that there are friend soulmates too? that one person that just met you and immediately got it. "it" being why you are the way you are, how to navigate your flaws, how to cheer you up when you're down. and i met mine.

for the purpose of anonymity (as if anyone reads this blog-), we'll call her margaret. maggie darling was my first friend in college. usually people completely divorce their first freshman buddy; we are so desperate to find a friend we'll cling on to anybody at first. then you find your footing, your people, and that first desperation friendship becomes a lost memory. not me and maggie. it was friendship at first sight. we immediately died at each others jokes, shared our childhood trauma, had our first sip of watered down vodka together.

the funny thing is that we couldn't be more different. i was a goody two shoes, depressed little nerd. she was a drug addict, manic pixie dream girl. emphasis on the "manic". and the "drug".

she struggled to make friends at first. even though i didn't i stayed by her side whenever she needed. we were conjoined at the hip. when she wanted to leave a party because she had no one to talk to, i was outta there holding her hand.

when the situation flipped however, she forgot i existed. she made a new best friend that i didn't like. so instead of being that cute friend trio, buffy/xander/willow style, they became a duo. and i became a solo.

over the years, she eventually dumped the inconvenient new best friend. apparently, i wasn't crazy for disliking her, which maggie made me believe. "you are jealous," i heard numerous times. no, the girl was insane. no boundaries, shots for breakfast crazy. post a picture of maggie naked on her instagram story crazy.

i found that, over the course of 3 and a half years of knowing maggie, i have been the comfortable friend. the one she reached out to when everyone started hating her for hitting on someone's ex-boyfriend. or when her recent fuck buddy dumped her. but when i needed her, she disappeared.

it's so sad that she was the only person i have ever met that completely understood me as a human being. undoubtedly, in a different universe where she has any type of self-reflective inclination, we are inseparable.

but here i am. i neglected making other friends because she felt lonely, and i wanted to support her. now i am maggie-less and friend-less. it's my own fault really. i think our bond was so strong at first that i developed this incredibly unhealthy, concerning even, attachment to her. almost an obsession. and that's what i am here to warn you about.

take care of yourself first. i don't care if its with a partner, or a friend, or a partner/friend. no one is going to put you first, stop neglecting yourself for the service of others. friendship and acceptance aren't everything. sometimes a girl just has to be her own best friend. don't let yourself be the miranda to someone's carrie. be the samantha to your own samantha.

anyways, that's the rant of the day. i hope you learn from my misfortunes. don't forget to hydrate and take your birth control. deuces.

-A

[sherl-grey]

Show: Doctor Who Series 6 or Series 7?

Character: Amy or Clara?

Pairing: Eleven and R*ver or Ten and Reinette?

Anything: "A Good Man Goes to War" or "Let's Kill Hitler"?

oh you're really giving me full salt opportunities aren't you?? and you're setting me up for a full anti-moffat post haha. these are the worst choices i've ever seen in my life and i'd rather punch a wall than choose most of these but here we go i guess!

Show: Doctor Who Series 6 or Series 7?

okay... *readies scale*: on the left, we have "the doctor's wife," "the god complex" and "closing time," alone with the worst "attempt" at a series plot i have ever seen in my entire life. on the right, we have "a town called mercy," those 3 minutes from "dinosaurs on a spaceship" with rory and his dad and nothing problematic, "hide," "the rings of akhaten," a really terrible companion finale and whatever the heck they tried to do with Clara. i'm gonna have to go with series 7 because i have less express hate for it but uh. it's still not a winner

Character: Amy or Clara?

so full disclosure, i'm only at the beginning of series 9 and i've heard that she's......... not good in this one, but i'm gonna go with Clara. she's manic pixie dream girl River but at least she has a personality? i cannot name things about Amy that aren't directly tied to her relationship with Rory or the doctor so i can't really pick her

Pairing: Eleven and R*ver or Ten and Reinette?

hey OP i don't know what the hell you want me to say but uh. i hate both of these with a passion. i think it comes down to the fact that my dislike of canon River far exceeds my dislike of canon Reinette, although I do think they suffer from similar writing mishaps. neither of them are very good characters, and even not including my Doctor/Rose preference i can name several other Doctor pairings that make me less uncomfortable than these two. the thought of Ten being with anyone else, especially in Series 2, is rather nauseating, but surprisingly I'd rather see him make dumb mistakes and hope for fix-its and resolutions than watch what i view as the most uncomfortable almost-double-grooming scenario as Eleven and River ruin each other's lives? like creepiness factor aside I guess you can try to play off GiTF as some passion or excitement or stupidity or cowardice or whatever. Eleven and River is long-term, intentional choices to take away a person's autonomy and actively making them uncomfortable because you're familiar with them even if the reverse isn't true. calling that a "relationship" makes me nauseous.

Anything: "A Good Man Goes to War" or "Let's Kill Hitler"?

listen these are both like bottom 10 episodes for me but "a good man goes to war" might only be outdone by "kill the moon" in terms of "worst thing i've ever watched." like. let's round up a gang, except--let's make it a gang of people we've never met before but act like it's really cool and badass. let's then give us a nearly plotless episode where almost nothing happens and give a fancy reveal that's actually even more uncomfortable because that awful relationship they've been promoting is actually with the daughter of someone who the doctor also met as a child and who also grew up to relentlessly flirt with him. at least LKH includes Rory punching two nazis and shoving hitler into a closet.

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!

I’m so glad @littlestartopaz​ recommended this to me, because it was SO GOOD.

Yuta wants to start high school afresh: new school far from home, new classmates who don’t know he spent middle school acting out the fantasy of being the mysterious and magic “Dark Flame Master,” new him. But one of his classmates has delusions of her own, and after she accidentally discovers his embarrassing past, Yuta is unwillingly drawn into her life and a growing circle of friends with their own quirks.

The “chunibyo” of the title basically means “8th grade syndrome;” a phase in middle school where some kids inhabit and act out their own fantasy stories, positing themselves as dark magicians, magical girls, and other wielders of magical powers.

I had avoided this for a while, until it was specifically recommended to me, because honestly, it sounds embarrassing, right? It sounds like it’s gonna be an embarrassing manic pixie dream girl scenario. But what it actually contains is the story of how a mixed bag of students--some actively chunibyo, others not--become friends and develop very endearing close relationships, while arguing and frustrating each other because that’s what friends do.

Now, the idea of being the star of what’s essentially your own fantasy-action anime is embarrassing, but what’s notable is that the show doesn’t really hold the chunibyo characters up for mockery. Sure we might laugh at them, but hey--it’s funny to watch friends be silly together. And most viewers, just like some of the characters who have moved on from their chunibyo phases, probably easily understand the mix of soul-wrenching embarrassment and (mild?) fond sentiment that comes with remembering our middle school selves.

But let’s be real: the reactions the two former chunibyo students, Yuta and Shinka have to being reminded of middle school, are #RELATABLE

Rikka, our title chunibyo, in particular uses her fantasy in part to cope with grief, coming from an extended family that (without getting spoilery) didn’t help a young girl to deal with a very hard and life-changing time. Now that she’s in high school, her older sister blackmails Yuta (using an a voice recording of one of his chunibyo speeches) into helping deal with Rikka and things (like the cat she wants to adopt) that pop up.

One thing the show is very good at, though, is not making a single thing the reason behind a character’s chunibyo. One may have started their fantasy inspired by another person, or prompted by an event, but it’s also (while active) part of their personal narrative that influences how they spent their free time, how they see the world and keep blogs or diaries, etc.

But at the same time, they’re still teenagers, and their inner view of themselves...doesn’t always translate skills.

I said the show is primarily about friendship. A lot of that friendship is between Yuta and Rikka, but they accumulate a little group, mainly through Rikka’s attempt to start a magic club. Recruit 1: Kumin, a polite, quiet senpai with no chunibyo history or aspirations.

Kumin starts off seeming like a background character, but by the second season it’s clear she’s not just there for jokes about how she’ll take a nap anywhere. She’s perceptive, and genuinely enjoys watching the others act out their scenarios.

Compared to the other characters who are boisterous in their chunibyo activities (Rikka, Deko, Satone), or vociferously trying not to get drawn in to chunibyo activities (Yuta, Shinka), Kumin is happy to watch and offer encouragement, but she’s also willing to participate if a chunibyo scenario calls for a group.

Incidentally, the show does a really interesting thing where occasionally, we’ll be drawn “inside” the chunibyo world, seeing what Rikka/Deko/whoever see: a fantasy land, big magical weapons, anime-grade magical attacks. Occasionally we’ll also see what this “really” looks like--a couple people running around waving umbrellas at each other--but often we only get the fantasy version. It’s clear that Rikka and co. are legitimately on some level engaging in a shared imagination, and the times when a reluctant character (particularly Yuta or Shinka) willing steps in to the shared illusion are genuinely sweet.

Speaking of, Shinka (aka Morisummer) became one of my favorite characters. Like Yuta, she was chunibyo (”Morisummer the magician”); like Yuta, she chose a high school where she didn’t know anyone expressly so she could reinvent herself as a normal teen. And like Yuta, she’s getting dragged kicking and screaming into chunibyo again.

It would’ve been so easy to make her a bad character. She’s pretty, puts a lot of effort into being popular and likable at school, trying to keep up a good teen girl image, despite being fairly sarcastic at her core. And as loathe as she is to admit it, she likes her friends (even if she won’t admit they’re friends, even if half of them are actively chunibyo, even if she says she’s only hanging around so she can make sure all traces of chunibyo-Morisummer are erased from the internet).

Shinka gets drawn in to the group through Rikka’s apparently only pre-existing friend: Deko, a fellow chunibyo who follows Rikka (or “Eye of the Wicked Lord Shingan”) as her master, and is extremely devoted to the great magician Morisummer. So devoted, in fact, that she has several physical copies of Morisummer’s book containing all her wisdom...aka Shinka-Morisummer’s blog, which Shinka has tried to erase all trace of.

Needless to say, the two don’t seem to get along great.

Deko’s dedication to chunibyo and Morisummer irks Shinka; Shinka’s claim to be Morisummer irks Deko, who refuses to believe the great magician could ever be this sarcastic, mundane girl. Deko’s refusal irks Shinka, bringing out the sarcasm and bluntness Shinka tries to hide from the school at large.

Obviously, they actually become close friends, but heaven help you if you actually say so.

The entire series is an exploration of relationships, and Yuta’s developing closeness with Rikka (hey, we knew it was going to happen) is also sweet. He’s a genuinely likable boy, embarrassed by the vestiges of his former self he sees in Rikka, but often willing to meet her on her level, and both of them also learn/reaffirm the importance of doing things their way, and keeping both of them comfortable, rather than acting a certain way or performing specific acts just because their classmates think their relationship status mandates it.

Speaking of classmates--and I know this is getting long but I CAN’T HELP IT, I LIKED SO MANY ASPECTS OF THIS SERIES--the characters aren’t ridiculed at school. Sure, some people think they’re weird, but there’s no shunning, no arc involving teasing or bullies. Rikka’s often content as a loner, but when she attempts to join in a social circle, she’s welcomed. Shinka’s obsessed with reinventing herself and appearing normal and seems to think that otherwise she’ll be cast out, but multiple characters mention that others at the school notice how she behaves (oddly, on occasion) and there are no social repercussions. Truly nice for a show that has characters spending quite a lot of time in school.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and it’s got strong performances. Rikka’s voice actor in particular does a fantastic job capturing the difference between chunibyo!Rikka’s confidence and command, and regular!Rikka’s, well, normal awkward teenageness. (Plus, I also found her lower-than animegirl-average voice enjoyable.) (Double plus, I honestly think her English voice is better than her original Japanese voice at showing the difference between her emotions and chunibyo/reality.) Deko’s VA is fantastic showing the enthusiasm of the 9th grader (and what enthusiasm, Deko is like the Energizer Bunny), and Shinka’s VA manages to show her alternating annoyance, cheerfully sweet ideal self, and organizized leader voices.

Visuals: Fine, and I really liked the chunibyo designs for each character’s chunibyo phase. The contrast between chunibyo-vision (giant magic weapons; mysterious lights, fantasy landscapes) and reality (an umbrella or soup ladle; a strip of lights taped to the floor; a local park) was really well done.

Worth watching? Yessss. It’s very manageable--two 12-episode seasons--and while each season contains its own arc (you could stop after the first one, but why), together they make an excellent story. Heck, I think the second season is equal to, if not better than, the first, because the friend group is well-established and even more fun to watch.

Where to watch (USA, as of October 2020): Netflix (dub, sub); Crunchyroll (sub), HIDIVE (sub & dub, plus OVAs and film)

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

[dynamite-el]

so I speedran the last few eps of hwarang for my second watch yesterday, and I love it.

but.

the relationship between Seonu and A-Ro is genuinely so uncomfortable to watch. I understand what the writers thought they were doing, but the actors have such wonderful platonic chemistry that whenever they kissed I had to look away. and ultimately, there was no need for them to end up together! it wouldn't have changed anything plotwise as long as they did it right, and it would have been so wonderful and wholesome.

so here is my rewrite.

Just because they are a man and a woman, it does not mean they have to end up together.

if this was two men or two women? those writers would have made it platonic.

A-Ro is suspicious of her 'brother', as she was originally. but instead of developing feelings for him (which was weird), she starts to accept him as a brother and feels very betrayed when she finds out that they aren't actually siblings and he has lied to her. but she gradually forgives him, and accepts him as her brother regardless of whether they were blood relations or not. can you imagine how goddamn wholesome that scene would have been?

A-Ro did not need Seonu as an excuse to reject Jidwi. And Jidwi did not need Seonu as an excuse to let her go.

Sure, Jidwi can mistake them for a couple, whatever. But when A-Ro rejects him and he assumes it's because of Seonu? She says, nope. She just doesn't like him and he has to accept that instead of trying to force her into a relationship with him because she doesn't like anyone else. This would have made a stronger moment for A-Ro as well as ultimately a stronger character arc for Jidwi, who has to realise that he is not entitled to her just because he's the king, and that she is allowed to find happiness for herself that does not include him. I thought the last scene where he just wrote her a letter was cowardly, and to really show his change they could have had that exchange in person.

A-Ro acts as a kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl for Jidwi, in the respect that she helps him to find his strength but he becomes very attached to her as a result. if they spoke in person instead of through a letter, Jidwi ultimately lets her go because he has changed and although it's the hardest thing he's ever done he knows it's the right thing to do and not because of Seonu. it would have been so much more powerful in person, and made him so much stronger as a character.

also I personally would not have minded if Seonu and Sookmyung ended up together. like, not as a main plot in the show, but maybe as a what-if teaser for their possible future. in the show, Sookmyung could have tried to force Seonu to pick her over A-Ro, with Seonu telling her that he wouldn't, because his sister was the most important person in the world to him and he wouldn't choose a romantic relationship over A-Ro. eventually, Sookmyung could have realised that there was no reason that A-Ro would come between her relationship with Seonu, ultimately overcoming her selfishness and desire to have him for herself as she understands that he can have family too. obviously they could easily have not ended up together and that would be fine too, but I feel there is more basis for a romantic relationship between the two of them than between Seonu and A-Ro and if they really needed a romance then I would have preferred this one.

tl;dr - stop making all heterosexual couples default romances! it devalues platonic love! Seonu and A-Ro could have had a bond just as strong without it being romantic - found family is just as beautiful.

[fayewonglibrary]

The Stars in Wong Kar Wai’s Universe  (2021)

- excerpt -

Oliver Wang on Faye Wong              

Watching Chungking Express for the first time, you’d be forgiven for missing Faye Wong’s initial appearance. We’re formally introduced to her character—also named Faye—during the transition between the film’s two halves. In that scene, we learn that Faye is working at her cousin’s food stand, seems a bit restless, and really likes playing “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas & the Papas at ear-piercing volume.

However, Wong actually enters the frame in the first half, during a brief, seven-second scene seventeen minutes in. Distracting us from noticing her are (1) Brigitte Lin, enigmatically cloaked in a raincoat, blonde wig, and sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, and (2) the ginormous Garfield plushy Faye carries out of a toy store.

That giant doll provides some levity to relieve the tension of Lin’s cat-and-mouse game with double-crossing heroin smugglers. But this interstitial moment gets a callback/payoff in the second half of the film, when Faye brings the same plushy to secretly replace the equally oversized teddy bear in the apartment of Cop 663 (Tony Leung). Between the scenes, Faye found time to slide a T-shirt onto Garfield that appears to ask, “ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?”

If Wong Kar Wai has any cinematic muses, the two most obvious candidates would be Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, with whom he’s respectively made seven and four films. Yet I’m not sure he’s ever created a more indelible character, or made a more inspired casting decision, than when he chose Faye Wong to play Faye in Chungking Express. As I wrote about in 2019 regarding the film’s use of Wong’s own single, “Dream Lover,” the character Faye was so heavily aligned with the singer’s star persona—free-spirited and whimsical—it’s impossible to imagine the role being played by anyone else.

Faye also feels like a singular departure from the brooding melancholia that defines most of WKW’s characters. This includes Wang Jing-wen, Wong’s lovelorn ingenue in 2046, left morose after her father forces her to break up with her Japanese boyfriend. Jing-wen is cloistered in a way that’s antithetical to Faye’s unbridled autonomy. Yet there’s an irrepressible vivacity in Wong’s eyes that seems to link the two performances, however intentionally or not.

When I was younger, I found Faye charming, though I was probably projecting manic-pixie-dream-girl vibes onto her. Now that I’m older, her emotional repression and questionable ethics—she basically roofies Cop 663 to continue her covert cleanings—make Faye less alluring yet no less compelling. This has been especially true over the past year as I’ve watched my sixteen-year-old, Ella, become interested with Faye/Wong in ways I’ve never been.

Partly to help pass the time in pandemic lockdown, Ella decided to become an Asian cinephile, bingeing on most of WKW’s catalog when she wasn’t exploring Kore-eda or Iwai flicks. Her favorite WKW film is Fallen Angels, but she’s also fascinated with Faye, telling me: “To be able to find beauty in the ordinary, to do what you want without fear of judgement, to silently yearn and genuinely live, this is what is so largely appealing and romantic to me about Faye . . . She exemplifies original cool.”

I had always viewed Faye as I imagined Cop 663 did—as a romantic object—but Ella’s interest in her is driven less by desire and more by identification. To her, Faye’s free spirit is a sensibility to aspire to, a way of moving between the harsh realities of work and romance and a vivid dream world of one’s own making. Faye’s journey by the end of Chungking Express is left open-ended, which seems exactly right. For both Wong, the actor/singer, and Faye, the character, the goal to strive for is a life open to the possibility of serendipity. We don’t actually know why Faye purchased that giant Garfield to begin with, but as is evident in the fact that it eventually ends up in Cop 663’s apartment, it’s the unexpected path that produces the potential for surprise and delight.

Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at CSU-Long Beach and regularly contributes to the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times,

NPR’s All Things Considered, KCET’s Artbound, and other outlets. He cohosts the music podcast Heat Rocks.

------------------------------------------------------------------  

SOURCE: THE CRITERION COLLECTION

[reversecreek]

snickers feverishly at myself for bringing in a 5th... who do i think i am? unstoppable? invincible? suddenly ripples my titanium plated pecs. maybe so. u can find her pinterest here n her playlist here. 

* margaret qualley, cis female + she/her  | you know bradley milligan, right? they’re twenty-four, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, all of their life? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to looking for knives by dyan like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole snow angels trampled through by your father’s footprints, casually reading a newspaper that’s catching flame & stubbing a cigarette against the wing mirror of a parked cop car thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is november 11th, so they’re a scorpio, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nai, 24, gmt she/her  )

HISTORY:

bradley has this memory of meeting her grandmother for the first time n everything in the room was frozen still. even the air. she didn’t feel like she cld move n she got the impression this is how it’d always been in the milligan lineage. the only thing that was allowed to act of it’s own accord was her grandmother’s eyes as she tracked every slightest flinch of muscle. when her father left the room her grandmother reached out and took bradley’s hand n bradley looked at this like it was smthn she’d never seen before until her grandmother leaned close and all she could stare at was a nicotine stain on one of her front teeth. “he’s cold, isn’t he? he’s always been cold. i don’t think he’s mine.” bradley could tell from how tight she held her hand that he was. she could tell by the way she smiled as she said it, too. the way she felt obliged to smile back.

growing up in a huge white house in aquila drive w pruned hedges sounds idyllic n looks it too. swanky cars w tinted windows in the long driveway. always men filing in and out under the cloak of night wearing expensive suits n smiles worthy of a politician’s billboard. bradley’s mum alyssa thought so too n that’s hw she got into this whole mess tbh. tony milligan is very good at advertising. he cld package a jarred human heart as strawberry jam and convince u to spread it on ur toast if he wanted to. he could make u smile politely as u ate ur own. 

alyssa ws this very pretty blonde kind of mysterious presence in a room. everyone wanted to kno her story or fk her but noone rly treated her like a person more just like a puzzle to solve. john green syndrome alert..... literally manic pixie dream girled bt on turbo charge. there were vague whispers she’d run away from home when she appeared in town out of nowhere bt nothing concrete. tony decided he wanted to crack the case n once he set his mind to something there was no changing it. they wound up embroiled in a whirlwind romance. head over heels. he came at romance hard and fast as a freight train. alyssa knew he was into shady things but not quite the full extent of it n honestly she didn’t care bc she wanted security n a family to call her own n tony promised that. they were married within a year. 

tony came frm money bt he wanted to carve his own path n make his own legacy. destined fr greatness he’d tell her. we’re destined for greatness. it sounds nice doesn’t it! alyssa thought so too.

(drugs mention tw) slowly over the yrs he essentially forged his own crime organisation tht only grew. he opened a strip club down the seedier side of irving called ‘no angels’ n this became the front thru which his gang ran drugs in the back (predominantly coke n they pride themselves fr having a Superior Blend apparently) as well as laundering cash n this also was kind of their home base to hang

(abuse tw) their marriage increasingly lost it’s shine n alyssa came to realise she’d been sold a lie n she didn’t rly know this person or what he was capable of right around the time bradley was born. by then it was kind of like Wow i am rly in this n there is not an exit door huh. i won’t go into details bt things were not good at all. bradley witnessed n experienced a lot of things she shouldn’t have growing up. she didn’t understand why other kids drew home in all these different coloured crayons like they were bright places to be. she didn’t understand why everyone got so excited when the bell rang at the end of the day bc she just felt sick. she rationalised tht this was normal when she was younger bc sometimes kids talked abt the monsters under their beds giving them nightmares n she thought mayb they were talking abt their dads too. as she got older she realised tht actually her world wasn’t the same as anyone else’s n she also realised no-one wld ever be able to tell her why. she started becoming friends with the angry feeling in her chest tht she used to try and swallow around this time. often she’d wander the mall for a while to put off going home. smoke on random park benches. watch trains rattle thru town from the vantage point of a random rooftop. 

(abuse, missing person implied, murder implied & grief tw) when bradley was 12 she woke up and all of her mum’s clothes were gone frm their drawers. no shoes anywhere. a framed photo of them at the beach holding bradley as a baby vanished from over the mantelpiece. when bradley asked her dad what was going on, tony essentially said “it was exhausting her. being here. being your mother. she didn’t want to do it any more, so now she’s gone” n then he hugged her. little details leaked into the mix over the yrs. at one point tony dismissed her as having flown overseas to a foreign country to drink in the sun like she’d always wanted even tho alyssa always told bradley she liked the snow best (once she even walked outside as it fell in a thin lace nightgown when tony was out n when bradley said “mom you’re gonna get cold” she only tugged her down and made her do snow angels until her lips looked blue). the most significant memory bradley can never shake from her head is her mother cupping a yellow tulip at the park n saying she hated them. when bradley asked why she only turned and smiled at her as she stroked the hair from her face n then said “because they look so happy”. after bradley’s mum vanished a long flower bed at the bottom of the garden was suddenly overrun with dozens of freshly planted yellow tulips. whenever bradley looked at them out of her window she got this sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach like she was visiting a cemetery. she suspected what had happened to her mum (especially as rumours circulated within tony’s organisation abt alyssa being unfaithful with someone tht used to work fr him) bt she cld never bring herself to truly accept it. thus she ws stuck in this strange purgatory state of not-quite-anger at her mum for “leaving” and not-quite-grief.

bradley rly started to transgress in school after her mum was gone. alyssa was always kind of a character when she’d pick bradley up (wasn’t doing well n acted kind of ‘eccentric’ i suppose u cld say) so tony managed to spin it all as a child acting out in the wake of an unfit mother uprooting n abandoning. bradley became........ interesting. JKHGFSSKJGHFSGHSKFGHFG. she’d snap n resort to violence very easily. very desensitised to it. students were kind of scared of her tbh. as this progressed into proper high school she got in w the more rowdy popular crowd solely bc she was so fking.... wild for lack of a better word. rly would just do anything fr the thrill. had no sense of ‘i shouldn’t do this bc it’s dangerous’. partied harder than anyone. bit back harder than anyone. no filter. hung w a lot of guys honestly bc they had less morals n either found her scariness cool or wanted to fk <3

(hospitalisation, depression & drugs tw) she’s had. a few stints in psychiatric institutions fr various reasons tbh. missed a small chunk of her senior yr fr this but it wasn’t widely known just kind of rumoured. she showcases a lot of similar symptoms to her mum who struggled w severe depression (which was difficult to cope w when ur husband was often pouring ur prescription down the drain fr kicks) n in order to compensate fr the lows she takes a lot of things to kick them into highs. drinks n snorts too much. bradley i love u bt i’m begging u to seek healthier coping mechanisms......

as the yrs went on (especially once alyssa had gone) tony rly started trying to integrate bradley into the business side of things...... she literally. is named bradley bc he was expecting a boy n he was like well let’s still call her bradley. n had in mind she’d still fulfil the role he wanted her to of being his little protege so to speak.... both sexist n ugly all in one fell swoop...... an example of this is he literally. bought her a mint green switchblade for her 14th birthday n named it tinkerbell bc it would “die without attention” aka using it. tht sounds like a healthy gift to give a child tony congratulations sis <3

in an ideal world bradley wld have gone to uni to study psychology bc she jst wants to know how the fk her dad is literally like that bt she probably stuck around n is now managing no angels along with billy n marco (billy’s in her dad’s gang n is, u guessed it, a cunt, n marco is his sort of right hand man so to speak) bc tony’s in the closest neighbouring city overseeing a second ‘no angels’ opening up there to expand into a franchise n widen their income margins. bradley wld also be sort of used as a honey trap type deal once she got older if they needed to lure ppl places n sometimes still is bt it depends. the guys in the club all know not to mess w bradley bc she’s tony’s daughter n literally kind of scary herself sometimes bt there’s also this certain allure tht comes with being the boss’ daughter n it kind of comes across in how they act or talk abt her. yes i will kill them all n no i won’t feel bad abt it <3

think that’s kind of all u need to kno history wise... blinks one eye out of sync w the other..... runs to personality

PERSONALITY:

a phrase i wld always use to describe bradley in old intros is “like a cup of black coffee with one grain of sugar that u don’t taste until the last sip”. also dark chocolate. lime. liquorice. she’s an acquired taste n i feel like u either love her or u hate her. 

cannot express how unpredictably chaotic she is..... frequently throws a drink in a stranger’s face jst to start something bc she’s bored. loves to hurl cheese slices across the room so they slap onto someone’s face out of nowhere. likes smashing things. stubbing cigarettes out on faces in framed family photographs. will literally pick a lock n then smash the window besides it to defeat the whole purpose just bc she found how neat it was boring. does anything fr the adrenaline n thrill. gets into far too many fights n fights dirty. probably been thrown out of every bar in town at least three times. banned from a bunch too.

she’s witty bt she has a dark sense of humour..... can be quite mean.......... loves to roast ppl for no reason........ honestly has some nathan young frm misfits aspects in that sense like jst seems untouchable emotionally n like she doesn’t take anything seriously n is fking outrageous about it.....

has this quality abt her tht kind of scares herself sometimes. it’s like she recognises parts of her dad in her. she’s very perceptive (bc she’s had to be over the yrs trying to read every micro-expression of her dad’s to predict what’s next) n like emotionally intelligent in a way which is ironic bc her own emotions r just an absolute minefield.... bt. she can read people quite well. gets this eerily calm look abt her sometimes n it’s jst like god what’s. she thinking. what’s she’s gna do. i’m shaking. a cool n controlled kind of rage can often be scarier than the explosive type n bradley does that well. grits my teeth n tugs on my collar....

very strong on the surface. hates being vulnerable. has this ingrained idea that crying is childish or rly any kind of emotional display within herself. 50% not taking things seriously 50% angry. tht’s how she comes across....... internally? whole different story. bt ppl don’t see that.

very cavalier abt some things. will flash her tits n not even think abt it. jst very out there...... one of her closest friends is a homeless man named joe who wears neon purple fishnets on his head n loves to spit on ppl from over an underpass. finds eccentric ppl like this funny n surrounds herself w them. loves to be kept on her toes.

LOVES driving stolen cars down the wrong side of the highway. it’s a lot.

fiercely loyal to a fault to a select few bt if u wrong her personally this can switch pretty quick. quite a force to b reckoned w n will hold a grudge. bt like. if ur a Chosen One she’d bury a body for u no questions asked. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS

deals to u: bradley isn’t like full time into dealing bt she does do it sometimes.... treats it kind of like a hobby bc the lesser ranked can do tht shit as far as she’s concerned bt.. sometimes also jst gets bored n is like. why not. might be chaotic. mayb they’ll try to rob me <3 we love the thrill <3 or like..... if ur friends w her she’ll deal to u n no she will not do a friends discount <3 or if she does there will definitely be some sort of stipulation attached <3

high skl crew: if ur muse is local n ws an absolutely demonic hell spawn in high skl tht went to 1974547254 parties n was outrageously chaotic n rude then. bradley probably was friends w them <3 her friendships tend to be surface level bt they’d definitely go out a bunch bt whether they actually knew a lot abt her life is debatable bt we could explore options fr this

people who work at no angels: no angels is her dad’s strip club in irving that she kind of helps to run now. it’s kind of a shifty environment. the place where ud have an outrageous bachelor party. u go for the first time w a fake id n u get served bt u also get ur wallet stolen n ur convinced someone spat in ur drink n u also kind of think there might b a hit on u now after u made eye contact too long w a broad shouldered man smoking in a back booth. scary environment. testament to her dad as a person. maybe ur muse is a dancer there or works the bar or security or whatever u name it....

ma’am are u ok?: ur muse found bradley passed out across two bus seats one time in smudged dark eyeliner a silver slip dress n the world’s chunkiest combat boots this town hs ever seen. sometimes she winds up in spots like this when she goes too hard n it’s absolutely dangerous n reckless bt that’s jst bradley <3 mayb they forged an unlikely friendship frm this strange meeting or maybe even? dare i say it? a romance? opposite worlds colliding? good influence? let’s go crazy. release ur inhibitions. feel the rain on ur skin.

hook-ups: bradley’s cavalier abt this stuff..... very unemotional typically..... mayb we cld do an unrequited thing that wld be angsty n fun altho i won’t lie i don’t kno if she’d be the one to catch the feelings.... she rarely sleeps over bt once when she woke up in someone’s bed she hiked over to straddle them carefully as possible so they wldn’t wake up n then pressed her knife to their neck as a fun little surprise where she said boo when they opened their eyes.... she’s a lot clearly.

watermelon slugger, hiiii: bradley has this habit where she gets a bunch of watermelons n then goes to a rooftop n throws them over the edge to watch them explode when they hit the pavement.... maybe ur muse almost got hit by one once n were like WTF???????? another quirky meet cute moment like the bus one <3 can’t stop w them <3 maybe she randomly invited ur muse to do it w her when they were like. a stranger of f the street. she was bored. decided to adopt them as a science experiment. we cn elaborate on this probably....

ouch charlie: similar territory bt she also sometimes shoots pedestrians w a bb gun from rooftops. mayb ur muse wld always get hit by one on a certain route they walked n finally one day they saw her head ducking down behind a ledge n then they see her in the street one day n are like HEY IT’S YOU............. WTF? n bradley’s like ya i’m christ risen again it’s a lot to take in i know...

rly jst anything... mutually destructive friends... exes.... in one rp a character tried to get close to bradley so he cld write an expose all book about her n her family which i found so fking funny so i’ll request that again.... people she’s fought.... ppl whose gf/bf she’s fk’d n it’s caused enemy status.... someone whose place she broke into and shaved their eyebrows off in the night only to draw them on again in crudely thin permanent sharpie lines.... roommates cld be fun n sexy i’d love that actually.... jst anything rly. go wild. kisses everyone tenderly on cheeks.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

"Heart and head are contrary historians."

Year Read: before 2006, 2016, 2020

Rating: 5/5

About: The students at Mica Area High School, Leo Borlock among them, are content conformists, few of them standing out among the others. Everything changes the day Stargirl Caraway joins them. She plays the ukulele, sings happy birthday to strangers at lunchtime, carries around a pet rat in her pocket, and cheers for both teams at basketball games. At first, everyone can hardly believe she's real, but Leo is among the first to discover that Stargirl is as real as they come, maybe realer than anyone he's ever met. He's drawn to her light, but when the social tide of Mica High turns against her and the school shuns her for everything that makes her different, Leo will have to choose whether to stand out with her or fade back into the crowd without her. Spoilers will be clearly marked. Trigger warnings: bullying, mild violence.

Thoughts: It's hard for me to write reviews about books I really love. I'm never sure I'm doing them justice or fully explaining how much they mean to me. If I had to choose books that most impacted my life when I was younger, Stargirl would easily make the top ten. In present day, she'd probably be accused of being a manic pixie dream girl, but like a lot of stories about supposed MPDGs, that's actually the opposite of the point of the story. The point is that she's not some charming figment brought to life by a teenage boy's daydreams and sent to teach him life lessons; she's a living, breathing person of her own, and she suffers as much as anyone in high school--maybe more.

But of course, there are lot more lessons in this book than that, and not all of them sit easily in agreement with each other. Stargirl is all about being herself, the most authentic version of herself, but the lesson could just as easily be that high school is a terrible place to be yourself. There are themes in it about teenage love (and what a rotten age that is to be in love), how hard it is to go against popular opinion, how bullying takes a lot of forms, and how thin the line is between generosity and selfishness--how hard it is to see outside ourselves, even when we're trying to do good. For its slim size, Spinelli packs a lot of nuance and philosophy in there, and it keeps me finding new things each time I read it. While the sentences are often short and simple, he never condescends to his audience.

Stargirl has always been one of my fictional heroes. As Leo notes, she has absolutely no ego. She dresses how she likes, sings and dances when the fancy strikes her, and she's always going out of her way to do random acts of kindness for strangers. It would be easy to say the lesson I learned from her was to be myself, but I'm not sure that's quite it. (I, like Leo, hate having public attention on me, so I could never do a fraction of the things she does.) I think what I most took from Stargirl is that she's happy, that's okay to be happy and to do little things that make you happy, and that so much of her happiness comes from doing kind things for other people. I'm not as selfless as she is, never have been, but I like to think I absorbed some of that growing up and tried to be a better person for it. It's delightful, funny, heart-breaking, and insightful at any age.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

I loved Leo a lot more as a teenager, likely because Stargirl loves him, but now that I'm an adult, I see him better from Archie's--their wise old man archetype who gives them riddles instead of direct answers--perspective. He's a bit of an everyman, content not to stand out from the crowd, an observer to the natural phenomenon that is Stargirl. The problems arise when he tries to become a participant, and I think his reluctance to publicly accept Stargirl's strangeness is so sixteen. Leo does what most people would do in that situation, and it's not the nicest path he could have taken; he even knows that, but at that age, he isn't brave enough to change it. As a teenager, I never liked that Leo and Stargirl do not end up together. As an adult, I think that Spinelli wrote a much better novel for it. Happily ever after was never the point of this story. Like the reader, Leo comes away a little bit better just for having known her.

[crimeronan]

soulmate verse meta no one asked for: adam’s lack of soulmates, narrative themes, and the story i care about telling 

(spoiler: i get bored writing “everything sucks for adam forever” fics)

this was a response to an ao3 comment on we never were good at doing what we’re told (that i’ve edited to be a clearer essay for people who haven’t read said fic)

i’m bursting so heavily to talk about themes and feelings and writing and characterization and shit that it’s become an essay that’s not just about the soulmate verse itself but also about like..... my entire thought process when crafting any narrative, ever

one of the biggest things that turned this story into a heart project of mine was wondering about what non-traditional relationships look like in a world where soulmates exist 

and then on the flip side, wondering what kind of challenges or unhealthy relationship dynamics soulmates might face despite being fated

in this universe, people are born with silhouettes of tattoos that color in when they touch their soulmate for the first time.  many people have more than one mark, but having a Lot of marks is unusual.  so you know from the getgo how many soulmates you have, but don’t know who they are until the skin-on-skin touch

adam parrish does not have any soul marks.  he has no fated soulmate relationships.  complicating this is the fact that most of his loved ones have marks for each other - but not for him

there's a low reach where you can take the concept of "adam doesn't have any soulmates" and run with routes like

adam can never connect to people on a deep intimate personal level

adam will never be as close to anyone as their soulmates are

adam can only forge relationships with other people who don't have soul bonds

every relationship adam forges falls apart because if it's not fated, that means there's no compatibility

adam has to work harder to be loved than a person with a soulmate

adam's a callous bastard who doesn't need anyone and hurts everyone because he doesn't understand them

adam is worse for ronan, gansey, noah, and blue than they are for each other

but that's not a story that feels genuine to me. it would give me no pleasure to write a fic where the conclusion is "and adam will never be able to have the love that other people do because he sucks and/or life sucks. amen. peace"

what DOES interest me, though, is the thought of how adam himself may have internalized these ideas 

the society that adam, ronan, hennessy, and the other characters are living in has very Very heavy social constructs about soulmates

mainly, that being someone's soulmate means:

that there's an inherent compatibility/understanding/reflection 

that there are missing emotional pieces immediately found 

that your soulmate is a person who is SUPPOSED to be in your life forever because they WILL make your life better  

if they don't make your life better, you're doing something wrong

but the thing is that we can also see that these constructs are not inherent truth, they're just being presented like inherent truth.

these are some details throughout the fic thus far (as of writing this, the first six chapters):

different cultures all have different complex and varied histories and traditions and feelings about soulmate bonds.

scientists have tried to quantify what different marks mean, analysts have tried to use marks to predict the shape of relationships, and there are no on-paper answers. 

ronan talks about a now-considered-antiquated idea that soulmates aren't relationship fated at all, but are instead formed when one person saves another's life. 

he's thinking about it because of his internal struggles, but there's a massive implication there: that the social definition and expectation of what a soulmate is has shifted DRASTICALLY over time rather than being an unchanging rock.

so as the person writing this world, i know that the social constructs are bullshit. adam does too, intellectually. he's spent a lot of time picking apart discrepancies and fallacies and falsehoods 

if adam didn't believe intellectually that he could have a relationship with ronan or gansey or blue or noah that's just as important as their relationships to each other, he wouldn't be here. 

if adam had bought into the idea that only soulmates understand each other, he'd be isolating himself as we speak 

he spent a lot of his adolescence challenging his preconceptions and rethinking what love and relationships mean, very parallel to his relationship with love in canon

but adam still has those nagging fears and doubts that these things might be true. 

what if he's more invested in his partners than they are in him? 

what if he loses them and can't rebuild? 

what if he's never going to be able to provide the emotional support or happiness that people deserve? 

what if no one will ever understand him? 

what if this is all a mistake? 

what if there's a reason he has no soulmates? 

what if he's an inherently destructive person fated to hurt anyone close to him?

adam doesn't believe these things are true, but the "what if"s are constantly itching at the back of his mind

so a big part of adam's journey in this story is him having experiences and shifting his worldview in ways that put the worst fears to bed. adam's done a lot of introspection about himself and his lack of soul marks, but he hasn't spared as much thought for soulmate relationships themselves. adam's looking at soulmate bonds and thinking, "those are an inherently good thing i've been deprived of," and hasn't yet devoted enough analysis to the fact that they might NOT be inherently good.

ronan and hennessy have equally complicated relationships with this society and its constructs. all three members of this group have experiences that challenge the others' preconceptions about what they believe is true

-

as the author, thinking about the themes i want to establish and the story i want to tell, every single interaction in this AU and every relationship is built around concepts like

-soulmates don't always understand each other's thought processes and emotions.

ronan has a very different relationship with every one of his individual soulmates plus adam 

each relationship has its strengths and weaknesses. not every soulmate can help ronan equally with every issue.

ronan and adam have learned each other, but ronan has ALSO spent a great deal of time learning his soulmates as well.  and they him

ronan’s relationships with EVERYONE have changed and grown and shifted over the years, and they’ve meant different things at different times.  there’s never been a single unchanging dimension of compatibility

-commitment, respect, growth, and communication are INFINITELY more vital for relationship health than a soul bond. 

this is something that’s gonna be delved HEAVILY into in upcoming content.  that being fated isn’t enough to make a relationship good if the foundation of mutual respect and commitment isn’t there

-soul bonds aren't well understood and don't necessarily mean what people think they do. 

(see: the whole above ramble)

-some soulmate relationships end up being DEEPLY unhealthy and dysfunctional. 

digging heavily into this soon as well. 

 in the first six chapters, the most striking example is hennessy’s parents.  they were soul bonded and hennessy’s mother believed her father would be a savior.  her father believed his soulmate was his sexy manic pixie dream girl but didn’t want to do the heavy lifting of helping with her actual mania.  

you’ve heard this tragedy before.  tale as old as time.

-soulmates CAN have lifelong happy healthy harmonious partnerships with strong compatibility, but it always takes work and respect and active choice. 

ronan is soul bonded to gansey, noah, and blue.  he has very good relationships with all of them.  he has also had very bad soulmate experiences in the past.  the difference in his committed life partnerships is the commitment and love and respect and ongoing understanding

-

the conclusion is:

my own life experience has been VERY centered around nontraditional relationships, figuring out how to construct healthy life partnerships, and making up my own rules because varying social constructs/expectations don't work for my heart. 

so that's all reflected in this verse, particularly in how adam has been told he's too broken to form connections & has instead said "fuck you i'm gonna do it anyway"

[netflixandgrill-blog]

40 Days and 40 Nights and 9 Reasons It Sucked

Josh Hartnett works for a burgeoning “dot-com” (we know, 2002, hilarious) in San Francisco and he has a big problem: every beautiful woman he so much as bumps into on the street wants to immediately go to bed with him. How will he ever find true love if he keeps giving in to their sexual advances? Well, like anyone with this completely relatable problem would do, he consults the Catholic Church for some healthy advice on sex. After talking to a priest (who happens to be his brother) in a confessional, he decides to go the entirety of Lent—40 days and 40 nights—without sex, intimate contact, or...ahem...self-gratification. The rub? (Pun intended.) He then meets the girl of his dreams (she has a name but we just call her Manic Pixie Dream Girl). Also, for added pressure, his office has a betting pool on when he will cave, and so they try to tempt him to give up his celibacy at every turn. We would like to say hilarity ensues, but as the church has taught us, even the smallest lie is a sin.

1. The Only People Who Could Possibly Relate to This Premise Are Single People During a Pandemic

The problem: we are not single. Also, a second problem: our brains work. 

2. Josh Hartnett’s Horniness Defies the Laws of Human Biology

Poor Josh Hartnett is so horny that, for the last two of his 40 days he has a perma-boner and is shaking like a heroin addict at a methadone clinic. So horny that, on the last day of the challenge, he hallucinates that he is floating through a sea of (really unattractive) boobs in a fevered psychotic break from reality, like Ewan McGregor seeing the dead baby on the ceiling in Trainspotting. So horny that, in the aforementioned psychotic break, he doesn’t even realize that his ex-girlfriend is mounting him in an effort to sabotage the 40-day challenge at the 11th hour. He imagines that he’s at the laundromat or some shit while his ex-girlfriend gets on top of him and has sex with him to completion before he comes to (pun intended) and realizes what has happened. And all of us watching are supposed to go, “Yeah, that tracks. I remember not getting laid for the entirety of high school and it was exactly like that.”

3. His Ex-Girlfriend Sexually Assaults Him and Yet He Still Has to Apologize For It

Speaking of the aforementioned scene with the ex-gf, we are still beside ourselves that during Josh’s fever dream (where he’s basically unconscious and tied to the bed), his ex-girlfriend legit rapes him, and no one in the movie—including Josh Hartnett—even suggests, “Hey, that kind of wasn’t cool.” His new love interest, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, walks in on it and swears Josh off forever and he spends the last 15 minutes of the movie apologizing and trying to win her back, when the misunderstanding could have been solved with the following 4 lines:

MPDG: You slept with your ex-girlfriend!

Josh Hartnett: No, actually, I was sexually assaulted.

MPDG: Oh my God, I’m so sorry that happened to you.

Josh Hartnett: Thank you for understanding. Let’s get a panini.

<Roll credits>

4. They Could Have Cast the Female Characters as Blow-Up Dolls, Because the Women are Just Props in This Movie

All the women, except for Manic Pixie Dream Girl, are completely interchangeable. So much so that it takes next to nothing to set her apart in Josh Hartnett’s eyes. “This girl is so quirky! She dances by herself wearing headphones at the laundromat! How quirky!” Other women are beautiful and ready to sleep with him at any moment, but this girl is different. 

In fact, this must be Donald Trump’s favorite movie because it’s a world where women are just there to seduce men, and the fact that men can’t control themselves sexually is completely justified. And also because there are no black people. For real, like, none. It’s just a world full of white guys who all look exactly the same, and one Asian guy (the Rolling Stone dude from Almost Famous) thrown in for “diversity”. That’s it.

5. Josh Harrnett is REALLY Bad at First Dates

Their first date was worse than our first date, and we drunkenly sat drinking water out of Tupperware. JK, that was a great 1st date. Ours, not theirs. For their first date, Josh Hartnett took Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the most romantic place on earth, the bus. They literally just rode the city bus for what must have been like 4 hours. Not to mention the fact that they live in San Francisco and the bus managed to drive by every tourist spot on this fictional city bus route, as if it were a trolley tour. HEY there’s an idea, why didn’t he take her on a romantic trolley tour? You know what this movie needed? One rewrite. Just one. 

6. Josh’s Workplace Makes Frat Houses Look Like a 1930’s Ladies Sewing Circle

Where is the HR office at Josh’s dot-com office? Did they outsource it to India or decide to convert it into a marshmallow pit wrestling ring? We’re guessing one of those scenarios took place seeing as how Josh’s boss talks to the women in the office like it’s last call at a meat market bar, looks up the women’s skirts when they aren’t looking, fingers dried apricots like they are ladies’ sexual organ, and performs cunnilingus on said dried apricots. But it’s all given a pass because he is such a sexual being and just can’t help himself. Josh’s coworkers also attempt to drug him with Viagra in order to thwart the 40 day/40 night challenge but end up accidentally drugging the World’s Horniest Boss instead, who subsequently masturbates in the office bathroom for the rest of the day, which everyone thinks is HILARIOUS. No wonder the dot-com bubble burst.

7. The Entire Conflict of the Movie Could Have Been Circumvented with One Simple Conversation. 

Josh Hartnett was like halfway through the 40 days already when he meets Manic Pixie Dream Girl, so the central conflict of the film could have been solved with the following 5 lines:

Her: Wanna come back to my place?

He: Actually I gave up sex for Lent. I have 20 more days. 

Her: So, as two people who just started dating, if we have the completely normal amount of one date per week, it’ll be like 2 or 3 more dates before we can have sex?

He: Yeah.

Her: Cool.

<roll credits>

8. This Isn’t the Longest Movie Ever, But It Feels Like It 

At one point we turned to each other and exclaimed, “How can there still be 30 MINUTES LEFT?????” This is like the “Layla” of movies, in that you think it’s done, but it just keeps going.  But unlike “Layla”, which goes from something awesome to another something awesome with a little break in the middle, this movie just goes from suck to suck with no break. 

9. They Had a Sex Scene Where They Use Only Flowers and Neither of Them Even Makes One “De-Flowered” Joke

Josh Hartnett brings Manic Pixie Dream Girl flowers to make up for the fact that he’s not sticking her good. So, naturally, instead of thanking him for the gesture, she makes a big deal out of the fact that she and Josh haven’t kissed yet (kissing is part of the “no sex for lent” shebang) after like TWO DATES. She says that the kiss is the only way you can tell if there’s a real connection between two people--she heard it in a Motown song once, so it has to be true. So instead of kissing they get creative and begin to “touch” each other using the flowers Josh had brought. Josh then proceeds to make her orgasm by just using a flower petal and gently blowing on her nether regions. “Wait, would this actually work?” Heidi asked Mike during that scene. But Mike had already hurried off to the bedroom with an asthma inhaler and a dream.

In conclusion, we’ll never watch 40 Days and 40 Nights again. Except during Lent, as our penance. 

[luckyjak]

Why I Don’t Ship Widojest: A Master Post

An anon sent me an ask about this topic, and I debated for quite a bit about how to answer it. Then I decided the best way was to do a long post like this. I put a lot of thought into why I don’t like it, and I thought to share it.

A few things: 1) I am not telling you not to ship it. The goal of this is not to say “Don’t ship Widojest! It is a bad ship and you are a bad person for shipping it!” That is not my goal, okay? The internet and fandom in particular is meant for fun, and if you enjoy Widojest then more power to you! Don’t let me or anyone else stop your fun! Lord knows I have shipped significantly more problematic things. All I ask is that you tag shit more but that’s beside the point.

2) I am not particularly interested in argument. You are not likely to change my mind. I am not trying to be hostile, but if you know reading this is going to piss you off, then don’t read it. A question was asked of me, and so I thought to share my opinion. Unfortunately for everyone involved I am a high school English teacher, and so I cannot think about anything without completely overthinking it.

About my shipping preferences: generally, I like all the ships! I was particularly fond of Widomauk before Molly died, and I now I really enjoy Shadowgast, but I also like Fjorclay, Fjester, Beaujester, Beauyasha, Widofjord, Clayleb, Lavorclay, and, as the only person on earth, Yasha/Caleb. Hell, if Astrid gets a good redemption arc? Caleb/Astrid or even Caleb/Astrid/Edowulf. Any of those ships could become canon and I’d be tickled pink! You can even throw Nott into the mix, even though I mostly ship her with her husband. Nott/Fjord? Delightful. Nott/Caleb? Weird flex but why not? Nott/Jester? Absolutely! They are the best detectives!

I just don’t like Widojest and I don’t want it to be canon, and here’s why:

Doyalist Reasons First:

1) Laura and Liam played twins for years, still act like siblings even though they aren’t related by blood, and it squicks me to think of them together romantically.

Laura and Liam are fantastic actors. If they were hired to play a romantic couple, I have no doubt in my mind they could knock it out of the park.

But why on earth would they want to pretend to be a romantic couple, in a game they both play for fun? 

It would be weird. I play D&D with several guys I consider my brothers, and I can’t imagine pretending to romance either of them in d&d for that same reason. It would be weird. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be weird for Liam and Laura. Maybe they are more dedicated to their RP, and they’d be able to push that aside for the sake of fictional romance. But for me, that would be the last thing I’d want to play, and I suppose I project that onto Laura/Liam.

2) A lot of “evidence” for the ship is the way Liam looks at Laura.

To which I say...did you watch Vox Machina?

That’s how Liam looks at Laura all the time. He’s the president of her fanclub. He’s her twinsie. He always looks at her with hearteyes. I have a hard time seeing that as “evidence” for him having feelings for her when...that’s just what his face looks like.

Now, for Watsion reasons:

3) It has all the benefits for Caleb, and none for Jester

Seriously. What does Jester get out of a relationship with Caleb?

Don’t say someone who understands her, because Caleb certainly doesn’t. In fact, the only person who routinely “gets” Jester is Beau. (see: their conversation on the ship.)

Lots of people accuse Widojest as being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl ship because...let’s be realistic, it has all the makings of one. Tortured, broody man meets young, innocent girl who teaches him to enjoy life once again? Wikipedia’s definition is “[girl with] eccentric personality quirks and are unabashedly girlish. They invariably serve as the romantic interest for a (most often brooding or depressed) male protagonist.” Guys, that is textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl! It gets even worse because Jester’s character is a healer! You want her to heal him? That is squicky!

And yeah, I trust Liam and Laura to be more nuanced than that, but do you know who I absolutely do not trust to be more nuanced?

The fandom. The fandom that is already producing mass amounts of Manic Pixie Dream Girl fanfic. And as that’s where I spend a lot of my free time...egads. I do not want that.

The few Widojest fics I have read (which, admittedly, are not a lot, because again, I don’t like the ship. The few I have read have been tagged as gen and then come to find out, weren’t.) have the distinct problem of woobie-fying Caleb so that Jester can take care of him, and gosh, I do not want that to become a trend. 

4) Age Gap

Yes, thirteen years is not that major of an age gap. Yes, Fjord/Jester also have a large age gap.

However, there is a world of difference between “20 year old girl displays romantic interest in a 30 year old man, who decides he likes her back after getting to know her for months” vs “33 year old man decides to pursue a 20 year old woman after they danced one time when he was drunk and held hands and she showed general concern for his well-being.” One is decidedly more creepy.

(And would Jester be the one to pursue a relationship with Caleb? I almost think she’d have to, but again, why would Jester ever pursue Caleb when Fjord/Beau are right there.)

(Also, side note that I thought about making it’s own point but then decided it was petty: if Jester’s type is Fjord--tall, broad-shouldered, dark haired, muscled, then Caleb--skinny, red-head, shorter than Fjord--decidedly isn’t her type.

You know who is tall, dark, and handsome though? Beau.) 

And do not say Jester is mature for her age, because she absolutely isn’t! In fact, the whole point of her character is that she’s not mature, she’s very immature and childish on account of her being locked away and being incredibly sheltered most of her life! 

Also not a good excuse: Caleb spent 11 years in the asylum and therefore he’s only mentally in his 20s. Uh, no he’s not. He was in an asylum: he was not brain dead. He lived those years. He might’ve been crazy, but he was alive then. Nothing Liam’s done suggests that Caleb is mentally in his 20′s.

5) What would they even talk about?

This is probably actually the one that bothers me the most out of all these reasons, but uh....what would Caleb and Jester talk about, if they were in a relationship together?

Seriously.

They could talk about books? But Jester only ever reads terrible romance and smut. We saw when she tried to pay attention to the dunamancy lessons that she struggles to be interested in that academic stuff that is Caleb’s bread and butter. They could talk about their childhoods? That will go over well. Jester was locked away from society and Caleb straight up murdered his beloved parents. If they manage to avoid that, I’m sure they could fight again over income, what with Jester being a rich kid and Caleb being a poor farm boy. Pranking? Caleb enjoys a good prank now and again, but I can only imagine he’d tolerate getting banned from so many libraries.

They are a cat and a dog, literally. Caleb is an introvert and his idea of a good time is a quiet night at home with a good book. Jester’s idea of a good time is a party with lots of people! Yet I’m supposed to believe they’d have a happy and fulfilling relationship? Don’t get me wrong, many introverts and extroverts do get married in real life, but like...I have a hard time seeing this one working out. How many dicks do you think Jester draws in his spellbooks--which are expensive and time-consuming and require precise work--before that becomes a point of contention? 

6) He doesn’t trust her enough to tell her his secrets

Hey quick poll! Who in the Mighty Nein doesn’t know that Caleb murdered his parents?

Fjord. Caduceus. And look, Jester.

I have a hard time buying that he sees her romantically when he can’t even tell her one of the biggest things about him. And he’s known her for months at this point.

If I liked a guy, and I found out he had this big secret, and he had told Beau but not me this secret? I would think he didn’t trust me.

I suppose you could argue that he’s trying to protect her. But then that just goes back into the whole “he doesn’t trust her” argument. He even had the opportunity to and he didn’t during their whole hand-holding thing a few episodes ago!

7) What does their ending look like? 

Listen, my ideal ending for Caleb at the moment is “maybe after ten years of friendship he lets Essek tenderly hold his hand for just a moment but no longer” but that’s just me. I see a lot of people who seem to think Caleb’s going to settle down and marry Jester and they are going to have kids, and I just--

Caleb? Having children? Caleb, who murdered his parents and has severe PTSD surrounding that? Caleb, who was abused by his mentor daily for many years? You want to give that Caleb children??? Children who he would constantly worry may grow up to kill him, like he did his own parents, or worse, that he’d do something to accidentally hurt them in a fit of madness?

I could see Caleb maybe adopting a kid if one was forced onto him, but I cannot see him going “ah yes we should procreate!” 

Jester, meanwhile, needs like approximately fifteen kids ten years from now, I think. She’d love them. She’d just adopt an orphanage and let the kids run wild and be the best at playing games with them.

Also, character arcs are important. Because Caleb’s ideal ending is stability and Jester’s is exploration.

Caleb, traumatized child soldier who has spent the past 15 years in an asylum and also fighting for his life, and before that spent time traveling between the Zemni Fields, Ikithon’s home in the country, and the Empire’s Capitol, who then escaped the asylum and spent all of his time running, trying to avoid being caught by Ikithon. The best ending for Caleb is to find peace; peace that involves not having to move around anymore, and having a home again, something he hasn’t had in almost twenty years. Maybe that home is a tower in Nicodranas. Maybe it’s a house in Xhoras with six other people. Maybe it’s a quiet bookstore in Zadash, or a little cabin in the Zemni Fields. A garden/graveyard in the woods. Either way, it doesn’t involve a lot of travel from place to place.

Meanwhile, Jester, who was trapped in exactly one place for her entire life, deserves a chance to explore the world. Even when the Mighty Nein disband, I can’t see Jester being happy to just go back to Nicodranas and stay there for the rest of her life. She may settle down eventually, but uhhh, not for several decades, I don’t think. Part of why my two big ships for her are Fjord and Beau: Fjord wants to be a sailor again, I think, which involves travelling the world, so I could see Jester going out with him. Beau, likewise, is an Expositor whose job is to seek out corruption, which again, means travelling, which Jester would be happy to do with her. Hell, the three of them could go together, sailing and punching evil for all of time! It would be great!

(Also: her god is called the TRAVELER why would you want her to settle down and be a mom??? What part of her story makes you think she needs to stay in one place?)

Lastly

I apologize if this post offends anyone. I’ve just been thinking about it for a while, and while Widojest as a ship has surged in popularity, I suppose I wanted to make a counterpoint about my feelings towards the ship. This isn’t meant as an attack on anyone, again, and please, if you like the ship then don’t look at this as a reason to stop liking it! Fandom is for fun! Keep liking what you like!

And I can’t promise I’m always going to feel this way about the ship--hell, the VOD of Thursday’s episode may come out on Monday, and I may watch it and be converted myself. Who knows! I didn’t like Vax/Keyleth at first either, but it grew on me and now it’s one of my favorites from Vox Machina.

(ALTHOUGH Mr. O’brien I swear to God if you romance Jester while flirting with Essek in a direct parallel to Keyleth/Vax/Gilmore I’m going to fly to LA just to punch you.)

Part of me wonders too if it just comes down to character interpretation, if there is something about their characters that is clicking for some people but isn’t for me. Admittedly, I love Caleb and Jester’s friendship, and I see them more as growing like siblings that romantically, but I’ve been wrong before and who knows, I may be wrong again. But if it is a character interpretation, I just wonder what they are seeing about the characters that squicks me but appeals to them.

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, so, Wonderwall.

None of the Faetowns have hard and final niches, they just develop organically from the needs and wants and magic of all the changelings who gather in a set area, once there’s enough of them concentrated in one place to hit critical mass- at which point the Faetown just starts to develop and grow bit by bit around them.

But they do have various reputations all the same. For instance, The City Above is known for its scholars, being a place primarily focused on learning and intellectual growth and stimulation....with most changelings that prioritize accordingly, like, usually moving to that Faetown at some point even if they started out in a different one that was easier for them to get to. With the Painted Portals, that’s easily accomplished.

The three Wandertowns are no different. They tend to draw the most whimsical of the changelings, ones naturally attuned to the Wandertowns’ natural tendencies to relocate and so on.

But of all the Faetowns, and even taking the other Wandertowns like Frostmyre into consideration, its pretty unanimously held that the changelings of Wonderwall are the most capricious, chaotic and downright dangerous of them all.

If there’s one Faetown that holds true to the spirit of the Fae of old, otherworldly beings interested only in their games and pleasure and enticing mortal folk to take part in them through temptations as foreboding as they are compelling....its Wonderwall. 

The traveling Wandertown that began as an abandoned carnival, integrated bits of abandoned amusement parks it picked up along the course of its wanderings, and arrives randomly in a new location just as night falls in that particular place. With bright lights and familiar but oddly dissonant music drawing people from miles around, even if it put down stakes for the evening in a relatively secluded place.

And everyone’s heard of Wonderwall of course. The one Faetown people made extra sure to caution everyone to be wary of. Where you could enter and lose all track of time, not realizing entire days had passed before you emerged.....or leaving Wonderwall to find the Wandertown had relocated in the middle of the night, and you’re now stranded on the other side of the globe. Where the changeling population are each like individual forces of nature....wild and pitiless, nourishing and destructive all at the same time or cycling between one extreme to the other at a whim.

But everyone’s also heard about the other side of Wonderwall...the allure, the glitz, the glamour. Its the place where anything can be found, where there are changelings who can make your wildest dreams come true, where people get what they deserve if they’re confident that what they deserve is good...and even when its not. Some say if you’re in need, Wonderwall will take you where you want to go, that its a safe haven for any runaways or homeless, mainstream human as well as changeling, and you’ll be safe and warm and fed there until you decide to leave it and find you’ve been dropped off in just the right place for your fortune to turn around.

Sometimes people never leave Wonderwall at all...thanks to changelings like Mirror Mirror, whose magic can open doorways to other universes where the grass might be greener for someone and they step through with no desire to ever step back. 

But then some never leave Wonderwall because they came to prey upon those seeking sanctuary or with other ill intentions....but fail to properly heed the warnings, that the changelings who live here include among their number the apex of apex predators, the kind of monsters who only feed on lesser monsters. The changelings who disappeared as helpless human victims only to later Return all sharp-toothed and unafraid, now simply laughing at the worst humanity had to offer....how adorable, how cute. How...mortal.

If your sins were great enough, the Count might devour your soul. If you came to hunt, you might find yourself the one hunted - chased and toyed with by Bloody Mary and her brood through the endless nights and infinite back-alleys of Wonderwall. If you just happened to rub the wrong changeling just the wrong way, they might point you out to the Ticket-Taker, who’d then ensure you depart at a time and place most decidedly not to your liking.

Wonderwall is home to risk and reward in equal measure - the greatest dangers balanced by the most desired treasures.....and come one, come all, step right up and try your luck, ply your skill, or test your fate....and see which one the Wheel of Fortune deals out for you, or maybe something else entirely.

Be careful what you wish for isn’t the caution it should be though, when the town is just as likely to make your dreams come true. But its equally true that while you can find anything past its gates, what you find might not want to be found. Its all in the turn of the cards, the roll of the dice. Once you enter, your fate is out of your hands.

But its not out of theirs.

There’s Gossip Girl, who has no real appearance of her own - rather, she appears to everyone in the form of a trusted friend or confidante, the one person you’re most likely to spill your heart out to and that you’re so used to having by your side.....you forget to realize they didn’t come with you and shouldn’t be there right now. 

Sometimes she has sympathy for whatever story you unknowingly entertain her with today, and she’ll tell you exactly what you most need to hear, even if you had no idea you needed to hear it. 

Sometimes your secrets are sharp-edged and cutting, and the kind that deserve the same in return....in the form of a well-placed reply or judgment or slight that leaves a wound that won’t soon scab over. Sometimes it just depends on what mood she’s in and whether she likes you or not.

Sometimes she’s just bored.

Then over on that stage there’s St. Nicky the Matchstick Man, an old term for con-artists, so old, most people never think its a reference to anything other than the fact that he’s a white boy in his late teens and constantly aglow like he’s stage-lit by St. Elmo’s Fire. Always surrounded by a constant halo, flickering lights like his own personal Aurora Borealis that appear just behind him, around him, wash over his audience every time he laughs.

But his magic is old school too, the kind that would have had him dubbed a faith healer in centuries past....at least as long as enough faith was there in the audience that night. Because the trick of Wonderwall’s Matchstick Man, the magic behind his magic, is that his repertoire is all just a matter of how much he can get you to suspend your disbelief. If he can convince enough people he can do something, that’s all the fuel he needs to empower his magic to do just that...its a con that isn’t quite a con, once you add a dash of magic and only count what you’re left with in the end.

So he starts out small, with each new audience, each new crowd. Simple tricks, stage magic, sleight of hand. Nothing fancy, nothing real.....until somewhere in the sea of faces past the stage, someone starts to believe. Just a little at first, just a tad...he’s a changeling, magic is real, why can’t those tricks of his be real magic? Its as likely as anything else, right?

And from there he starts to build. Testing the waters, carefully feeling out what he has to work with as he adds a little more impossibility to each trick he performs, draws a little more faith and builds a platform to erect the rest of his act on. And by the end of it all he’s transformed, at least for the night...no longer a matchstick man but a genuine miracle worker, for as long as his audience lingers and wants real magic to believe in, to wonder, to marvel at.

Then cut away to the opposite end of the town and find another stage, one set for Panic! The exclamation point is implied, its part of his name....you don’t say his name, see, you yell it, if its not spoken like a shock to the system you’ve got nothing to say to him that he cares to hear. He’s Japanese-American, he’s goat horns and grunge rock, he’s a guitar riff that brings the night to life, alight with black radiance that’s somehow both pitch-dark and illuminating all at the same time. He conjures symphonies straight out of your fantasies, things you didn’t even know your subconscious could compose but that feel familiar all the same.

Sometimes your party might be joined by the Wisp, a delicate, laughing, spritely black girl with cotton candy hair and an ever shifting wardrobe that flickers like the constant changing of channels until she settles on something she likes. She seeks out those having a genuine good time, the best time, is drawn to it like a flame....but she’ll never be burnt by it because she’s only ever here as long as she wants to be. Lose her interest, cause her alarm, just plain piss her off...she’ll wisp away into nothingness, vanishing in a pink misty haze and randomly reappearing somewhere else....then flicker-stutter-stepping all throughout the town in however many blinks of the eye it takes for her to find new surroundings more to her liking. Even the memory of her is ephemeral...you only get to hold onto it if she wants you to. Otherwise she’s nothing but a half-remembered daydream forever just out of sight, just out of mind. She’s not here to be your manic pixie dream girl....the good time she’s after is entirely her own.

Over there operating the roller coaster and the funhouse side by side are the twins, Maher and Kyd - their nicknames are just the rushed pronunciation of acronyms they use as their actual names...and refuse to let anyone in on what they mean. They’re Cuban, identical, and the rarest kind of changelings of all.....appearing to have the same identical Change, though technically its just in the eye of the beholder. They’re constantly shifting in size, can be giants one moment and barely come up to your knee the next, but though the end image might be the same, everything else is a matter of perspective. Maher actually grows and shrinks as he appears to, but Kyd’s size is all relative to distance. Kyd’s magic makes for hallways that never end and folds space til everything is just a hop and a skip away; Maher’s magic means you might spend the whole night in Wonderwall thinking nothing’s amiss, and then exit to find you’re as small as a mouse and have been the whole time.  

And there’s Mirror Mirror, with his hall of mirrors that are all glimpses of other lives you could lead, and if you’re in luck, on the other side of one of them there’s another you staring back thinking yours looks pretty good too....he can turn that window into a door, let you swap places so long as there’s another him on the other side with the same magic - infinite universes, there’s a lot where there isn’t, but a good few million where there is....its not usually a problem. The more pressing issue is just the matter of the return policy....if you decide you’d rather your stay not be a permanent one, he’ll let you back through....as long as you can find Wonderwall and him again in the first place.

And the Caricaturist can make your outside match your inside, whatever that means for you, and Wyrd’s a levitating hooded cloak empty except for two glowing eyes, with whom what you see is what you get, as in, for a time even illusions, hallucinations and nightmares can be real to the touch....and looking to bite.

When Scream Queen belts out an aria, you’d better hope she’s not singing it for you, and Stranger Danger is the ominous and unforgiving guardian angel at the shoulder of every child who enters Wonderwall unaccompanied. Shadowjack’s shadow puppets are an everpresent entourage that serve as a dozen extra hands to do or get or be whatever he needs, and Seven is the seventh son of a seventh daughter and seven people in one, one for each day of the week.

But if pressed to pick one changeling in Wonderwall as sought out as he is avoided, most would have to go with the Count. He presides over his own version of a Guess Your Weight game, though his version is about guessing your sins, and you’re the one who has to do the guessing. Reclining lazily in a makeshift throne with a crown rakishly angled atop his head, the brown of his skin is offset by the white mask covering one side of his face and extending down to encompass his neck, his shoulder, his entire right side all the way down to his waist....like the Phantom of the Opera decided why stop there and kept going. 

Only upon closer inspection, its not quite white, more streaked with gray that occasionally flickers with filaments of all the rainbow colors, and the gray isn’t static, it moves, like clouds crossing the sky, and peeking out from under the edges of it all is a warm, amber light, constantly flaring up and dying back down again as if in a never-ending effort to break free and....do what, you’re not entirely sure, but something, definitely something. There’s something almost hungry about that glow, though you’ll be damned if you know what makes you say that.....but of course, you’re before the Count. Odds are fifty/fifty you might end up damned regardless.

Guess right, judge yourself honestly, and there’s a boon in it for you, a magical goodwill that leaves Wonderwall and sticks around for the perfect opportunity to change your entire life for the better. But guess wrong, judge yourself over-optimistically, and you might leave with a curse instead, one tailor made to deliver the perfect comeuppance and no doubt whose work it was.

And of course, if you try and game the gamesmaster, or perhaps are naive or just plain stupid enough to believe he’s all just for show and can’t see right through you.....

Well. That’s not a good idea, and that’s best left at that.

The only guarantee upon venturing into Wonderwall is that your life upon leaving it will never be the same.

....though guarantee is not quite the right word, when first there’s the matter of whether you ever leave Wonderwall at all.