#the transformative experience of acting blah blah blah

[varley-of-torment]

Mercedes deserves to have a Hamlet moment

[themyscirah]

Stuck tonight on Wonder Woman as someone so good at seeing the good or the humanity in others--who never gives up or declines to reach out to someone who shows a shred of humanity and a possibility of defeat without violence or destruction (even when they are literal monsters of myth) and YET also being someone that has that brutality and willingness to kill when she is certain (truly certain) there is no other option...

[thebroccolination]

I think fic writing is a storytelling experience you can’t get through selling (or trying to sell) your work.

Like, when I listen to people in my novel-writing course talk about certain obstacles they’re grappling with, I understand in theory.

“I wish someone would read my work and tell me I’m doing all right. I feel so isolated writing thousands of words alone.”

“I just don’t know what I’m doing right. I have no confidence in my writing because no one’s ever told me it’s good. I’m just hoping it is.”

“My dream is to hear someone tell me my book made them cry or laugh out loud.”

Like! Okay, right—

So much of storytelling is inherently tied to community. We tell stories to pass information, sustain culture, teach the next generation. Storytelling is hard to do in isolation because it’s not meant to be done in isolation.

And of course writing is even harder to do in isolation, because it involves learned skills like grammar and syntax and colloquialisms and analogies and narrative structure and all that important garbage. It involves creativity and logic and editing and blah blah blah. It’s hard.

But what makes fic writing different and fun is what’s made storytelling such a lasting and beloved pastime: community. We watch a show or a movie, read a book, listen to a podcast, what have you, and then we act on a tradition humans have been practicing for millennia: carrying those stories forward. Adjusting them, reshaping them, adding onto them. Fic writing is what happens when capitalists try to restrict what humans have always done with stories.

Why do it for free? Because we’re looking for community. Telling each other stories is how we connect, how we make sense of love and devastation and fear and awe. That’s why fic writers beg for comments and feedback. By posting fics, writers are basically throwing a hand up for a high five. We’re turning to readers and saying, “Can you imagine if ___?” We’re calling out into the dark hoping someone will answer.

The reason I’m still writing today is because I’ve spent most of my life in fic-writing communities. Strangers told a nine-year-old posting structurally terrible stories on FanFiction.net that they had a great time reading, and then that nine-year-old felt validated and excited to try again. People told that nine-year-old what parts they liked best, so that nine-year-old thought, “Oh,” and leaned into those parts.

Writing fic is safe and joyous for me because community after community sat around a bonfire with me and told me they enjoyed the stories I told them. Some of my fics have been translated into other languages and carried onto to new communities, some have been made into art and transformed into a different medium, and some have been read aloud and recorded. It’s all beautifully, magnificently centered around community.

And I wish more writers creating original work could experience this, because while there are always going to be conflicts wherever there are people, humans make the experience of living warmest when we build and maintain communities. When we tell each other stories for the simple satisfaction of knowing someone is smiling with anticipation as you start to tell them yours.

[vidavalor]

Please tell me you think there's a word thing happening with the turnip and the inkwell because I can't make it make sense.

Hi there. 💕 Hope you're having a great week so far. I'm making spaghetti tonight, if you would like some. With fresh basil from my herb garden. 😊 I have some ideas on it below. I believe there are word things happening, yes.

The turnip and the inkwell has two levels of meaning, imo. It first comes up when Aziraphale is roleplaying his magic act for Crowley, who is standing in for the audience, which is all a bit meta. On this level, it's a metaphor for the creative process. How so? Well...

Turnips are boring as fuck vegetables lol. No one, in the history of the world, has ever craved a turnip and, yet, we'd be sunk without them, especially as they are also grown to feed the animals on which some of us feed. Metaphorically, a turnip is the boring, banal, everyday blahs of life. Common human experiences that link us together but appear uninteresting on the surface until, through some creative magic, a way to bring them to life is uncovered. To turn those turnips into inkwells through a spark of divine magic and then some human labor?

That is to tell a story. It's what making art is.

That is only one of the two metaphors at work in the scene, though.

There is another level of this, which is that the turnip and the inkwell are also a metaphor that Aziraphale came up with when creating his magic act. He created it within the context of the story of Good Omens so it has a whole, other meaning to him and Crowley.

For the below stuff: TWs: SA, PTSD

To look at a metaphor meant to be penned by Crowley and/or Aziraphale in the story, we have to come at it from a word history and wordplay direction. To come at the turnip and the inkwell from an etymological standpoint, then, is to start with the turnip-- and that means learning about the history of a word that we use commonly today to describe a heinous act: rape.

Rape is an Old French word that comes from the Latin words rapum and rapa. Best that people can tell, it wasn't until sometime in the 14th century that the word began to mean a sexual violation. Originally, the word rape was the name given to what we now refer to in English as the turnip.

At the time, rape was not just the name for the turnip but also an umbrella name for anything in the category of plants that we now refer to as Brassica rapa-- with the Latin roots still visible in there, as you can see. The turnip is still the most commonly grown plant in that category and the main root vegetable. Also in that category are plants that we now call napa cabbage and bok choy, among a few other, less common ones. Rapeseed oil is derived from plants in this category and was once, like the turnip, referred to just as rape. For a little while in the late 1800s, it was also referred to by a name I'll include here as it feels relevant: bird's rape.

In his magic act, Aziraphale transforms a literal turnip into a literal inkwell because it's metaphoric for what he considers his true skill as a magician-- helping to turn his Brassica rapa'd partner into a well (healthiness; full container; water source) of sexually euphemistic ink.

The turnip and the inkwell is the bits of the Fish meta that discuss Crowley and Aziraphale dealing with Satan's attacks on Crowley and what that all had to with ancient Rome, etc., in a metaphor, basically, and one that Aziraphale made up in the story.

Other posts involving this theme and Crowley, should you be interested: the one on Satan's abuse of Crowley; the one about the show using allusions to the myth of Hades & Persephone in this bit of Crowley & Aziraphale's story; and part of the deep dive into what it means to dance.

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #26

blah (having a slow morning because i drank a lot of wine with a friend last night)

Finished:

the road to heaven, as paved by bad intentions by ineffmoth on ao3 i enjoyed this svsss porn-y modern au way more than i think i had any right to, but i think it was exactly the amount of Being Weird About It that I was seeking in my tag dive

A Transmigrator and a Time Traveler Walk Into the Bamboo House by VeryCharismaticDragon on ao3 as established in my notes last week, I think the first half of this is better than the second half, but I still had enough fun to finished it

"The Mermaid" by Kathleen Jowitt, narrated by Heather Rose Jones, aired on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast

"Talking to Ghosts" by Caitlin Flavell, narrated by Heather Rose Jones, aired on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast further historical lesbian short fiction that i get to listen to through a cool podcast I like. these little bites will simply keep showing up in my weekly recaps until I run out of backlog

"Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction" by Bruno Zerweck really interesting article about how "reliability" is culturally defined, and so the like label for a unreliable narrator comes out of differentiating it in a time where the narrator of a novel was not expected to be a character/expected to be objective, but now after like postmodernism took hold, "unreliability" in narration- ie. the representation of events within a text being from a particular perspective that lacks omniscient information and which is informed by the opinions of the protagonist, where we commonly understand that we likely wont get the full picture or a perfect recounting of events- is the norm

"The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto" by Sandy Stone you saw me post an extended quotation from this, you know I liked it!

"The Rise of Fictionality" by Catherine Gallagher a good read in combination with the Zerweck article above, telling a history of the rise of novels as fiction: texts that are neither true histories, nor fully fanastical stories that aren't mean to be taken as truth, defining fiction in the novel sense as stories told to be realistic and believable, but which the reader is still not meant to be tricked into taking as fact

"The Right Language for Rape" by Nina Philadelphoff-Puren like a linguistic analysis of how victims of acquaintance/date rape defined their experiences in the moment and afterwards, coining the term "discourse maintenance" to describe the ways victims chose to act as if they were not about to be or being sexually assaulted in an attempt to resist the transformation of their situation from "bad date" into "sexual assault". i have a lot of notes on this one. i'm not sure i agree with some of the conclusions in its final paragraphs but the body of the text I think was really well argued/explained and gave me a lot of thoughts to work with, primarily the way testimony obliterates that transformation, reading the discourse of rape backwards over the original discourse of romance, rather than demonstrating the temporal shift between them. i'd recommend it?

Frequency by cryptocism on ao3 and now for something completely different! finally finished reading this longfic about comic book characters that I don't know much about, but that's okay because the end notes of every chapter literally cite every comic event that it is referencing and building the canon of this Inertia redemption arc around. it was very good

Started/Ongoing:

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian this is All Vibes. not extremely compelling to me, but I do enjoy a Cat Sebastian romance so I am reading it at the pace that feels right for it, which isn't too fast

Reading Plans: pretty much the same plans as last week: articles, queer lit book club pick, stuff i need to grab from the library hold shelf in the next two days, etc but I'm also going to make an attempt to read through the fanfic tabs I have had open on my phone for way too long this week, which I already made some progress on with Frequency?

[janedyson4thyear]

Millner, Jacqueline, and Catriona Moore. Contemporary Art and Feminism. Google Books, Routledge, 5 July 2021,

books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_h0vEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=feminism+abstract+painting&ots=4uLU1ewri9&sig=-GlB0vni50kWscSKQx2DWZe1bik&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false . Accessed 16 Mar. 2024.

A rounded history of the deep connections between female/femme abstract and contemporary art, and feminism. It has a lot of good references relevant to the topic of BLAH BLAH

Pg 85 -88

The opaqueness of modern or postmodern art, intended to confound the intellectual and aesthetic capacities of the viewer,  - how is it that contemporary art, at least in certain incarnations,

overtly positions itself as didactic

feminist theory and feminist art allows us both to trace the

development of this trend and to understand its currency.

Feminist art is by definition activist and has

consequently sought to transform audiences beyond art world initiates

Feminism’s early discovery of the relationship between ones very (private, individual) subjectivity

and the public sphere shaped its political strategy and from the outset tied transfor-

mation to teaching. Feminist consciousness-raising was based around personal story

telling; it provided space for many perspectives and acknowledged the relative nature

of knowledge and its interconnection with power.

searching for ways to understand political action beyond thepredominant Marxist framework of‘revealing’the‘hidden truths’of exploitation.

Joseph Beuys’lectures as performance andradical pedagogical experiments are an important historical antecedent here, they‘simultaneously challenged and reinforced the patriarchal power structure of the acad-emy and the authority of the artist’,5

Suzanne Lacy’s early public projects (discussed in detail below), which createdworks through personal story and supportive listening environments and have beenretrospectively described as‘expanded public pedagogy’.

feminist work reinserted the body an

d the psyche into institutional critique

Feminism contributions to changing the teaching of art - a guide sharing knowledge instead of teaching from one side

Pg 101 -

Inspired by playground design, brightly coloured and beautifullyfinished, Mel-bourne-based Emily Floyd’s installations, often in public spaces, conflate play, peda-gogy and art to loosen up the viewer’s disposition to learn. The appealing materialpresence of these objects and the physical interaction they invite are key to this con-ceptual loosening, or‘active learning’to use radical educator Rudolf Steiner’sphrase.As Australian critic Wes Hill observes,‘Similar to the way in which children play withbuilding blocks, viewers are directed toward the process of engaging with the con-structed components of her work, where‘meaning’remains open-ended’.114According to Floyd,‘contemporary art itself is the most current form of alternativeeducation’, and exhibitions can function as‘a series of forms that might temporarilyfree us from the act of explaining’,

The fluorescent mixed messages and sentiments offer no answers or solutions. But this fits. Contemporary feminism by its very definition is confusing, unfinished, hard to define and temporal.

How much of pedagogy, even in creativefields, remains an exercise in killing imagination and creative thinking

https://www.crossart.com.au/future-feminist-archive/

Pg 129 craftivsm 

material ethics of careIntroductionIn response to US art historian Linda Nochlin’sfamousquestion,‘Why have therebeen no great women artists?’,1feminists have long argued that women have alwayscontributed to culture; however the fact is that they‘speak’from historically margin-alised positions within that culture—spaces that for too long have been‘hidden fromhistory’.

By attending to these spaces and revaluing women's traditional arts,feminists challenged spurious delineations between what is private and public business, what is domestic and what is political

Craftivism is the practice of engaged creativity, especially regarding political orsocial causes. By using their creative energy to help make the world a betterplace, craftivists help bring about positive change via personalized activism.Craftivism allows practitioners to customize their particular skills to address particular causes

[magickfromscratch]

It's very doubtful that he dislikes you. You're mortal. You're not a world leader or politician, right? You're not trying to be his priest or anything. It's honestly really doubtful that you've done anything significant enough to earn dislike from any god.

That said, Apollon is a very intense deity, and it may be that he doesn't want you to get too close, too quickly.

I have seen people absolutely trash a deity's reputation because they had maladaptive learning surrounding the deities domains. They honestly thought the deity hurt them. That message actively hurt the god's cultus.

Trauma is maladaptive learning. It clouds our perceptions. Speaking as someone with PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, I can tell you that my initial experiences with Zeus, the lovely head of pantheon, Father of Gods and Men, was inaccurate and awful until I worked through the trauma my parents inflicted on me. When I worked through that trauma, I saw him differently.

It is entirely possible for a well-meaning, traumatized person, who is otherwise very careful and clear-thinking, to respond to their hypervigilance instead of material facts, and project aspects of their trauma onto other people, let alone gods, who can be harder to perceive.

When I was younger, when I didn't understand, I confronted the gods, and said, "you can't act that way!"

And they replied, "We cannot control individual people."

And that's true. People who aren't ready to hear a god can get them twisted. I mean, look at Jesus and the Right. That god acts in ways contrary to his mythology because he has actual clergy who are still dealing with trauma inflicted by authoritarian parenting.

Not that I am saying that this is the case with you, but as a general rule, I would advise everyone trying to seek mystic union, and mystical communication with a god (as opposed to exoteric worship) to do a trauma inventory about what they stand for, and about authority in general, including trauma with parents, bosses, clergy, and politicians.

Sometimes you need to become more aware of your triggers before you can navigate your trauma. If a deity is the literal embodiment of stuff that triggers you, and you do not have sufficient coping mechanisms, it can be a recipe for disaster.

If you work through that trauma, and try again, and the answer is still "no," it's probably to preserve your mental stability.

But also, it may not even be Apollon sending you the "no" omens.

It might be that there is another deity in the wings that you should be working with first, or an unacknowledged patron who is looking at your potential chemistry with Apollon, and saying, "nuh uh."

Because, while we think of Dionysos as a god of madness, Apollon kinda is too, in his own way.

He. Is. Beautiful.

If you get a taste of him, you're going to want more. I have watched people get too close, too fast, and because they had a fraught relationship with The Truth, it wrecked them.

And, a few years ago, I would have bucked at that idea.

Until I had a situationship come up with another deity.

Hermes kept saying no. Of course, I read it as possessiveness. As a bid for exclusivity -- like one-sided monogamy. That made no sense, and so I assumed that it was my filter, because why would the most polyamorous deity --save Aphrodite -- say such a thing? Toxic monogamy culture blah blah blah.

I disregarded the message because I assumed it was all filter. I assumed I heard all of it wrong. I had good reasons to assume that it was filter, based on mistreatment from past partners and my parents.

It was the worst three years of my life. It was the right choice, necessary transformation, but the wrong time.

And now, I want to be clear. Hermes wasn't saying "don't make offerings to this deity." He was saying, "do not engage in mystic union with this deity."

I got triggered. I made mistakes because of trauma and self-doubt. I don't regret the overall results, but it could've and should've waited ten years. I didn't mishear.

Deities are more powerful, and thus have duty of care. They have a responsibility to say no if being in mystic union with them will damage you. Your patron has a responsibility to tell you no about another deity, if it's going to hurt you, or your loved ones.

But I digress.

Here is how you can know if that's what's going on:

List out everything Apollon represents to you.

Read his mythology, and compile a list of everything he meant to his ancient cultus.

List out the traumatic experiences you have had, or just the bad ones. How was your relationship with clergy growing up? How was your relationship with your parents? How do you think about authority? What would you do with infinite power if you had it and why?

If you see a strong overlap between stuff the deity stands for and stuff you've had bad experiences of, you need to probably do some healing, ideally with a mental health professional, to learn coping mechanisms for your triggers, and your trauma.

If that is the case, you can still worship Apollon, but maybe add to your prayers a statement of reassurance: "Though I honor you, I do not wish to draw near to your power, because I'm still working on me."

If you're 100% sure you don't have trauma in connection with anything the deity stands for, then the next thing to do is an inventory of your fears about how relationships with a deity, any deity, could go wrong. Fear is an important message to you from yourself. You don't fear things, generally speaking, if you don't think of them as a credible threat to your wellbeing. Beliefs can be a powerful thing, especially when exposed to even ambient divine power.

It could be that you on some level know something and are sending yourself a message. It might be, "right idea, wrong time."

But don't let other humans tell you who to worship and not. You know better than anyone what's working for you and what not. Just commit to being self aware, and making certain you know your limits, and set your boundaries well.

I love bright Apollon but honestly I don't think he likes me very much 😭😭😭 one time I bought a necklace with a dolphin for him on it but it broke literally the same day I bought it. so naturally the next day I bought another one AND GUESS WHAT it broke while I was using it 😭

i try to give him lots of offerings and devotional acts but I still feel like he doesn't connect with me :((( any Apollon devotees have any advice??

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[soulmate-game]

Part 1 … Part 2

“So, How was your first day of school in America?” Lois asked as her small family all sat around the table eating dinner. It was almost painfully ordinary, traditional. A married couple and two kids eating a normal dinner and talking about their day.

All of them appreciated that one piece of normalcy in their worlds of superheroes and villains and PTSD.

Marinette snorted, almost choking on her forkful of food. After managing to somehow swallow without causing herself discomfort, she smiled at her mother figure.

“Honestly? I know Jon could fly and I could teleport to school in practically no time at all, but somehow Damian still manages to seem more impressive.”

“Right?!” Jon agreed emphatically, leaning over the table towards her and almost getting his whole plate of food smashed against his chest. “Probably because helicopters are huge and look awesome, but we’re still just us when we use our powers.”

Marinette nodded sagely at that reasoning as if it was something actually serious. Tikki, who was sitting next to her plate with a half-eaten cookie, giggled.

“That makes sense. But be careful Kaalki doesn’t hear you referring to them as ‘not impressive—‘“ Marinette was cut off before she could even finish her sentence.

“Too late, I already heard that blasphemy,” the other Kwami’s voice carried down from upstairs, making Lois and Clark’s lips twitch up in amusement. “I’m a god, dear, I have even better hearing than Kal-El,” for some reason the little horse god always referred to the boys by their kryptonian names, but they didn’t seem to mind much. “Not as impressive as a helicopter, hah! See if I let you use my fabulous powers anytime soon, Guardian or no Guardian.”

Marinette just rolled her eyes. Technically she could just command Kaalki, but that was against her morals and the horse god would never keep her from responding to an Akuma attack anyway. This was just harmless teasing.

And it was really nice in contrast to everything they were used to dealing with.

“Okay, but besides the helicopter,” Clark pressed gently after everyone’s chuckles quieted down. His face was open with genuine curiosity, and a little bit of worry that Marinette caught onto instantly. “I know Damian isn’t always the easiest person to get along with or understand. Did the rest of the day go by alright?”

Marinette actually set her fork down on her plate, her smile turning a little gentle. “Actually? Yeah. When we first spoke I thought he was a stuck-up jerk like some of my ex-friends and a bully of mine from Paris. But he’s just not good with people,” Marinette’s smile turned even softer as she gazed down at the table, at some memory nobody else could see. “It reminds me of my friend Kagami, from Paris. She acts pretty similar. Really impersonal and prickly on the outside, but once you get to know her she’s the most loyal friend you’ll have. Her mom is really strict though, and Kagami never got to interact with a lot of kids her own age, so she still has issues figuring out how to behave around others sometimes,” Marinette actually ended up laughing a little, rubbing the back of her neck. “We uh, we actually had a crush on the same person back when we first met and it sparked a pretty rough rivalry for a while. Once we got past that though, we ended up being best friends.”

Jon snickered, trading knowing glances with their parents. They had already agreed that, unless Damian or Bruce told her themselves, Marinette would have to figure out the Bat’s identities on her own.

“That sounds very familiar,” Jon stated with a little nod. “Me and Damian fought when we first met, too. Legend has it that Dad and Bruce, Damian’s dad, didn’t get along right away either.”

It was Clark’s turn to snort. “I think it’s just a Wayne thing,” the man agreed, amused. “They don’t like getting close to anyone right off the bat,” Lois kicked his leg under the table for that pun, but Clark cheerfully ignored it. “It is pretty funny that you have a similar experience with someone completely unrelated, though. Maybe we should invite her over sometime? Do you know when her school’s next break is?”

Marinette sat up straight in her chair, her smirk wide and almost blinding at the prospect of seeing one of her closest friends in person again. They video chatted and called often enough, but it wasn’t the same. “Actually! Kagami told me that she’s going to Gotham next month for a fencing competition. She’s an Olympic hopeful, you know. She has to make a good enough impression in different national and international competitions to be selected,” Marinette was almost bouncing in her seat, looking like a female version of Jon for a moment with her vibrant blue eyes shining with rare unhindered excitement and her body unable to stay still from the energy.

“I heard that Gotham was holding the World fencing finals this year,” Lois remarked, but kept eye contact with Clark for a moment as the two communicated silently in a way even telepaths couldn’t copy. Marinette recognized the hesitance in their faces, and her bouncing stopped immediately. She knew why they would be reluctant to let her go.

“I know Gotham is dangerous and I still have attacks pretty often,” Marinette’s voice was suddenly soft, but firm in a way that the rest of their little family hadn’t heard from her much at all. It made Clark and Lois look at her, waiting for her to finish making her point patiently. “But self defense isn’t really an issue. Even without any powers, without transforming, I…” Marinette took a breath to steel herself before continuing. “I learned martial arts from Maman. And I’ve used the Miraculous so long that all the combat experience of the previous Ladybugs is mostly muscle memory by now. And Kagami is more than just a fencer, her mom’s trained her in all sorts of sword fighting her whole life. Trust me, nobody messes with Kagami and gets away with it easily,” Marinette actually looked down at her hands, watching as she essentially had a thumb war with herself to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

“I don’t think physical attacks are what we’re worried about,” Lois admitted slowly, frowning. “I mean, yes, it’s a concern. But if I remember the dates for the competition correctly, I’ll be out of town for my first long distance job since you came to live with us. Clark will be at work during the day on the weekend, though maybe he can get a day or two off,” Lois gently worried her bottom lip with her teeth for a second. “I suppose, if Jon wants to go with you, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if something happens…”

Oh. They weren’t worried about people attacking her. They were worried about her own mind. Which, after the last few months? Was perfectly fair.

“I don’t mind if—“

But, as life usually ended up, they were interrupted from their peace. Everyone jolted in their seats as the door was unceremoniously kicked down, and a man in his early twenties walked in carrying a mountain of boxes in his arms. Marinette blinked, no longer on guard since the rest of her new family immediately relaxed. But still, she was confused. Nobody said anything about having a visitor today.

“I know, I know. I haven’t been in touch for way too long, give us a little forewarning, blah blah blah. I brought presents this time though,” the man said, cheerful and casual and blasé. With the boxes on the center of the dining table, Marinette could finally get a good look at him.

He was probably about twenty four or twenty five, if Marinette’s ever-sharp eyes were correct (they hardly ever weren’t), and his hair was spiked up with a bit of gel, but not too much. Just enough to give it kind of a tousled-rebel look, and it was cropped close to his head on the sides. He had on a black leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders and slightly down the arms, with slightly baggy black jeans and a plain, worn red shirt. Dark black sunglasses rested on the top of his head, even though the sun had been down for a while.

He did not meet the usual Kent aesthetic of a charming, traditional nuclear family. He was more of an… oddly joyful punk. It actually gave her slight Luka and Jagged vibes, and made her relax a bit into her chair. Contrary to what most might think, Marinette had a bit of a soft spot for the punk rocker look. Most people, that she had met at least, who wore it on a regular basis were amazing people with great senses of humor and large personalities.

“Old man, I got you socks,” he called out with a lazy smirk, chucking the first small box over at Clark. The man caught it with a fond eye roll.

“You always get me socks.”

“Maybe if you stopped being boring, I’d get you something better,” the stranger mocked with good humor. “Lois, jewelry that you’ll never wear,” he handed the box over to the woman with significantly more care, before sliding over one of the bigger boxes to her as well. “And a new camera that you will actually use.”

“Hey, Wait a second, you know you don’t have to—“

“And for the squirt,” the man interrupted without letting Lois finish saying that there was no need to spend so much money. He tossed the last big boxes over to Jon one at a time carelessly, smirking the whole time that Jon playfully scrambled for them. “Video games, geeky shirts, and inside jokes,” he stated happily.

With the table now clear of boxes, he finally noticed the extra body. He blinked, making silent eye contact with Marinette for a tense moment.

“Okay, she’s too old to be a secret child. Did someone make another clone? Did Jon get a girlfriend that looks freakishly like a long lost Asian family member? What did I miss?” He asked, never taking his eyes off Marinette. Clark grimaced.

“If you didn’t break your phone so often, maybe we would have been able to tell you sooner,” the man said slowly, cautiously, with his eyes never straying from the stranger. “This is Marinette. Marinette, this is Connor. He’s… Jon’s brother,” the pause there was a bit odd, and Marinette frowned at the look on Clark’s face. It was like he didn’t know what to say at all, or how to say it. “Marinette is living with us for the foreseeable future. If we get the chance we might officially adopt her, so she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Woah woah woah, what?” Marinette’s voice came out a lot squeakier than intended, the girl thoroughly whiplashed by this situation. It was hard to think straight. “I— we never talked about adoption.” Clark’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, not in as many words,” he conceded slowly. “It would be incredibly hard, and we wanted to give you time to settle in before asking. But… well, you’re officially an American citizen and we all feel like you’re family already. So…”

“You wouldn’t have to change your name,” Lois was quick to interject, watching Marinette’s face worriedly. “And you can say no. You’re already a Kent. We would just like to make it official legally, if and when you’re ready.”

“Okay, stop making the poor girl freak out,” Connor interrupted, eyes also on Marinette and gentle in their concern. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Ignore them. Clark never had great timing that wasn’t related to legitimate danger. So, sorry I didn’t get you anything,” he leaned back casually, thumbs hooked on his jacket pockets lazily. “Didn’t expect I’d have a new sister when I came back to visit.”

Marinette calmed down a little, but emotions still overflowed in her head, her chest still tight and the air feeling too thin. She offered Connor a shaky smile before standing up, looking over to Clark and Lois. “Um, I— can I— I’m tired.”

Clark sighed, nodding even as his face fell at Marinette’s state. “Yeah. We’ll talk about the competition some more in the morning, get some rest.”

The girl only nodded before making a hasty retreat up to her room, even forgetting to take care of her only half-empty plate. Tikki did her best to calm her bolder down from her place hidden in the girl’s hair, but it wasn’t doing much good. She just needed space, and time to try and process everything.

—*—*—*—*—*

“Aren’t you cold?” Connor’s voice made Marinette jolt, looking over at him with wide eyes. Nobody had ever followed her on her post-nightmare trips before. She wasn’t even transformed. She just sat, in her pajamas, on the empty terrace of her old home. It hadn’t been sold yet so she wasn’t worried about scaring anybody.

“I… should have expected you to be the other Superboy, honestly,” Marinette deflected with a weak smile before turning to look over the city again. She licked her lips, trying to calm herself down. “And yeah, I’m a little cold, but it’s no big deal. I’ll just go back home before it gets too bad.”

“You’re trembling,” he pointed out casually. And she was, her whole body was practically vibrating against the terrace railing. Marinette only gave out a pitiful laugh.

“That’s not from the cold.”

Connor only sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall behind them. Gave the girl a little space.

“What did… What did Clark and Lois tell you? About me?” Marinette decided to ask tentatively. Connor raised one brow, honestly a little surprised that she didn’t also have super hearing to go with her powers. It was slowly becoming more and more obvious that Marinette was not exactly like the other Kents, and Connor only liked the jumpy little girl more for it.

“As much as they could without feeling like they were crossing a line,” Connor admitted. “That they took you in after an accident during a metropolis attack a few months ago, when you had nobody else reliable enough to take care of you. That you’re not Kryptonian, but still special and knew about all of our identities already. But strangely enough they didn’t mention teleportation or the fact that you were a Parisian superhero, not that I’m really all that surprised.”

Marinette smiled, snickering a bit at that last part before sobering again. “Is it… weird?”

Connor silently examined the girl for a moment, she probably expected him to ask what she meant. And maybe if he was anybody else, he would have.

“To suddenly come home to a new person that I’m suddenly supposed to accept as a part of the family? Not really. In fact, you’re probably the most normal surprise I’ve dealt with in years.”

“But,” Marinette looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed and blue eyes swimming with uncertainty. “But I just show up out of nowhere, and you really just accept me? Just like that? I mean, you’ve known me less than a day and you just saw me teleport to Paris in the middle of the night— you aren’t worried at all? Or suspicious, or— you really just accept me just like that?”

Connor couldn’t help but chuckle, pushing himself off the wall to lean over the terrace railing with her. “You know, technically I’m only eight years old.”

Marinette flinched with surprise at the subject change, eyes wide. “Huh?”

Connor laughed at her confusion, rustling her hair a bit. “I’m a clone. I was made with Superman’s DNA, and that of another asshole we won’t mention. Don’t tell Lois I swore. Anyway, I was ‘born’ as a teenager,” he used finger quotations to show that he wasn’t exactly born normally. “With all the mental development and knowledge of a sixteen year old. Pretty much, anyway, but I was still a newborn,” he shrugged. “Clark wasn’t exactly thrilled. Jon was eight at the time, which is why Clark can never decide if I’m the older or younger brother, and he wasn’t exactly planning on another kid back then. Not to mention the whole ‘created in order to kill Superman if he ever went bad,’ and ‘might be a spy because I was made by his arch nemesis’ thing,” Connor waved his hand as if this blasé info dump didn’t actually matter. Marinette just gaped at him, which made it hard for the guy not to smirk. “Point is, Clark was suspicious. Didn’t exactly want anything to do with me. Can’t say I completely forgive him, but it’s mostly water under the bridge nowadays. Especially when we found out that I did have trigger words, and I was unknowingly dangerous. Don’t worry, those trigger words were erased ages ago. Anyway, Clark eventually got his act together. Gave me the Kryptonian name Kon-el, had me live with him for a little bit. We worked it all out,” Connor turned back to Marinette, taking his sunglasses off so he could look her in the eye properly. “I really don’t think a Ladybug is exactly threatening in comparison.”

Marinette was silent for a moment.

“You know I could throw you off this balcony, right?”

“Eh, I can fly.”

Another moment passed before Marinette couldn’t help it, and started giggling. Those giggles turned to laughs, which quickly turned into joyful bellows. Connor joined in, smiling as he laughed alongside her.

“But… you like it with them, right?” Connor suddenly asked, looking over at her. “I know Jon can be a bit overexcitable, and Clark is an annoying boy scout.”

Marinette just shrugged. “Well, it’s not too bad,” she said softly. “I mean, at least neither of them can die by getting crushed by falling debris. So that’s an improvement at least.” Marinette instantly went pale at her own words, slapping a hand over her mouth. Connor snorted, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah, that’s the exhaustion talking. C’mon, let’s get you back in bed before Clark accuses me of corrupting you.”

Marinette just nodded, doing the world’s quietest transformation before opening a portal back to her room. She was already detransformed, Connor having one hand on her doorknob, when she spoke up again.

“Uh, Kon?” She fidgeted, not able to look up at him. “Thanks.”

The man just smirked, shrugging his leather-clad shoulders. “That’s what family’s for, right?”

Marinette smiled, huffing out a tired laugh. “By the way? I’m glad at least one of you Supers has a sense of fashion.”

“We heard that!”

Connor and Marinette broke back out into guffaws, and the girl couldn’t help but think that she was really grateful for her new family. Maybe she wouldn’t call Clark dad or Lois mom anytime soon, those wounds were still too raw, but maybe eventually. And she’d never had brothers before.

Yeah. This was nice.

—*—*—*—*—*

Part 4

I don’t think this ended up as good as the others..? But this is the best way I could write this part. Why is this story turning out longer than expected? Geez I need to learn self control. At least this one was actually kinda fluffy.

@fantasiame @thestressmademedoit @amayakans @resignedcatservant @too0bsessedformyowngood @chocolatecatstheron @mooshoon @jeminiikrystal @bigpicklebananatree @thezestywalru @bugaboosandbees @ironspiderstark @mikantsume @marinettepotterandplagg

[dangermousie]

Ok, granted I only skimmed it while I was cleaning up the MTL so maybe I missed copious scenes of Wolfie eating babies but why the hell did the censors have such insane heartburn over this drama? Sure he is not a saintly hero and there is some dark stuff but it’s in keeping with the rest of the period dramas.

* He kills her dad and household, not knowing they are hers, on orders of the King. Bad sure but the male lead of The King’s Woman did the same to the heroine and he wasn’t exactly an abused and gaslit feral child of nature (hell, he killed his OWN kid half-siblings!) And we are not going to get into Li “I made you my mark to kill your grandfather and cousins and enslave your tribe, how does a dinner and a movie sound” Chengyin of Goodbye My Princess. Yes, both these OTPs ended badly but changing the ending from the novel ending to what they made the drama ending should have covered it. No happily ever after for family killers, they all have to deal with woman they love dying in their arms, welcome to the club Wolfie!

* He got his extra fighting extra healing powers in a creepy magic evil lake. Occasionally it acts up due to Wolfbone flower or w/e. The poison in his blood can be calmed down by snake venom in Snake Lady’s blood so she gives him her blood a few times, at least once through letting him bite her when he’s way out of it. And soooo? Drinking snake venom and poisons and going to weird lakes to get powers and get cured is the staple of many a cdrama. Hell, just this year in Love in Between, shifu’s poison madness could only be soothed by the poison in Qing Ci’s blood and so Qing Ci let him chew on his arm like a steak on screen and nobody said boo.

* He is the King’s executioner and kills people who don’t deserve it when the King says so. On screen sometimes. If this was a ML disqualification there are too many dramas that could not air. I mean, Ji Ye took a hammer to a weaponless, helpless man on screen in Eagle Flag and that was a-ok (the man was supervisor at a mining camp Ji Ye was sent to, irony.) and as I said, tragic ending makes him pay for all the badness blah blah.

* They ride wolves/have battle wolves/he hulks out (transforms to some degree). Ummm so. Giant condors anyone? The hero of The Four being a LITERAL werewolf? The hero of Legend of Awakening and Legend of Yunxi both having weird powers/hulking out as a result or creepy experiments conducted on them by bad guys? That’s ok somehow.

* No sex please, we are British - but they are not British so why not allow those two to have a hint of their sex scene on screen? I mean in keeping with a lot of other cdramas, not something raunchy or anything. They aren’t committing adultery or anything.

* If he has poison in his blood that will eventually kill him, why is that such a taboo they cut all of it to as much as they could while still keeping the plot coherent (and sometimes not coherent like when MZX suddenly gets same blood out of nowhere.) I mean “I have poison in me that means I will die/go mad in x months” is a staple - three (!!!) separate characters have that in Love in Between.

* cutting stuff about evil daddy being evil. I mean he’s still evil but he’s eviler in the novel. Ummm why? They changed him from a historical emperor to a fake one and obviously did not change him to a nice guy so why?

* I am not even gonna get into them cutting out various torture/violence/beatings because in the year in which Love and Redemption aka BDSM period fantasy of your dreams came out, nothing else needs to be said about why it is absurd for them to have issues here (also Border Town Prodigal, which makes L&R look like kindergarten aired the year before The Wolf was supposed to and not just on a streaming platform, on actual TV!)

Anyway, I am gonna stop but I am officially puzzled. I expected him to maniacally laugh as he put old women and children to the torch or something by the censorship office reaction.

Honestly, other than the fact that the censors were made seriously uncomfortable by hormonal onslaught of Darren Wang as Wolfie and so freaked the fuck out, the only explanation (and probably the real one) is that they either got unlucky and drew a really picky censor or, even more likely, the makers/production of this are not one of the favored ones of the censorship office and/or weren’t able to smooth things over as much as they should and so they got the book thrown at them for things that other productions who the censors are more buddy buddy with would be allowed to get away with. At least this is how it would work in my former homeland and I see no reason why it would be different in China.

Oh well, thanks to the novel I have a fully coherent narrative and can fill in the gaps. But why the FUCK couldn’t I have the scene of Wolfie building her a set of swings, epically badly? (If they filmed that and cut it for time hoping to get on tv which they didn’t anyway ffffffff!!!!)

Gonna stop now.

[eccentricpony]

Hello dear! I kind of did a spin on this request, and the story starts around the time of their first meeting and shows the progression into a romantic relationship. Mildly inspired by Tenma’s home screen quote to practice a kissing scene.

I think it’s a good blend of angsty, spicy, funny, and fluffy, but you be the judge! I am quite fond of this piece, and I hope you are, too!  <3

Bad First Impressions

Despite your best efforts to suppress it, a dramatic sigh rumbles past your lips. And to think that you had actually looked forward to working with Tenma Sumeragi. You had watched his performances in a few teen dramas and found his ability to be quite impressive, and he was highly lauded among other actors in your professional circle for being the consummate professional and perfectionist. More like pretentious and pompous.

“…and you there-“ the haughty redhead pointed towards a mousy looking boy sitting at a diner table on set.

“Uhh, B- Bill?” the mousy boy responded meekly.

“Yeah, sure – no one just stares at the person across from them without saying anything at all. It’s creepy and weird. That goes for you, too, guy with the glasses.” He moved an accusatory finger towards Bill’s dining companion. “Haven’t you guys ever heard of “peas and carrots”? I mean, this is amateur hour stuff that you don’t even need any skill to execute…”

“Can you just close your mouth and do some work, Sumeragi?”

You could hear a pin drop in the spacious sound studio. The cantankerous teen star whipped his head towards you with a pointed glare. You were an up-and-coming actress in the teen drama scene, and although you were a year older than he was, his acting resume was at least three times the length of yours. Sure, you were pretty, and you seemed passably talented, but you had a long way to go before you could even reach the echelon of his level of expertise. And you had the audacity to criticize his judgment??

“Excuse me?!” His eyes raked up and down your form, sizing you up in an attempt to appear intimidating. The manner in which you nonchalantly rested your hand upon your hip, head-cocked and eyes rolled; it was utterly disrespectful to him, a major authority in the industry, not to mention disrespectful to your fellow actors, to the very sacred space of-

“And to think that I had heard you were a competent leader…” you continued in a jaded tone. There was a visible flare in Tenma’s cheeks, the fury sizzling behind his eyes red hot.

To his credit, he certainly had a high level of talent, but that gave him no authority to degrade his teammates, whether they be fellow actors or the key grip. You weren’t normally this abrasive, but charming teen cutie Tenma was a self-important bully who was surrounded by “yes” men. This suave schoolboy star needed a wakeup call. The scandalized celebrity opened his mouth to commence a tirade when the director stepped in.

“Now, now, please folks. Let’s be civil…” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he glanced between you both with a pleading look.

With a final sour stare in your direction, Tenma transformed back into TV’s favorite high school hottie with a heart of gold.

“Yes, of course,” he replied, and you also nodded in consent. Everyone placated Tenma, endured his toxic attitude because he brought them money. But one thing was for sure, you had no intention to relinquish control to tyrannical Tenma.

Japan’s Newest Sweetheart

Tenma rushed down the street, tipping the brim of his hat further down his forehead, his alarming speed drawing attention from passersby. But he couldn’t slow down now; it was only a matter of time before Igawa caught up to him and asked where he was going, and why he was going by himself, and what was he looking for after all, and a number of other questions whose answers he would very much prefer not to explain.

With the convenience store in sight, he quickened his pace until he reached the threshold, throwing open the door with a tenacity that startled the cashier. Returning upright from where he hunched over his newspaper, the shopkeep threw a cautious eye to the young man at the doorway, wearing a suspicious amount of accessories and panting like he was running from the law.

The ginger on a mission performed a quick visual sweep of the displays until he located the object he desired. Bounding forward, he approached the magazine rack and flipped open the arts & entertainment periodical to the index. …page 31…

Rifling through the flimsy pages of the gossip rag, he at last reached the article which he had sought. There looking up at him was a page-wide spread of you, armed with an impossibly charming smile and a sparkle of mischief in your eyes. The page opposite of your come-hither headshot bore the headline “Japan’s Newest Sweetheart.”

It was infuriating. You were a nobody – barely any experience at all, and certainly not in anything particularly noteworthy – yet you were the one pushed to the forefront of advertising. His eyes flicked back to your picture once, twice… I mean, it was a good photo.

Ignoring the manner in which his throat seized when met with your 2-dimensional gaze, he directed his attention to the article. His eyes tripped along the words, “captivating new series… “ “character growth and development…” – aha! He spotted his name among the text and focused on the containing paragraph.

“blah, blah… he’s a true veteran in the industry…” Tenma puffed up like a rooster at this remark. Damn right, I am. He continued to read your commentary, mouth silently forming the shape of the words, scouring each sentence for more well-deserved praise. You went on to describe the characters, their struggles and how the cast related to their roles… One line in particular raised his brow. Tenacious young man?? Young man, what? She’s like, one year older than I am! He rose his head, appalled that you would speak of him like a child. He turned back to the print, reviewing the sentence a second time. She’s not even a whole year older, we’re practically the same age. He bent his brow in concentration. He counted back from your birthday. Yeah, totally not even a year old. Tch. He chose to ignore the fact that he recalled your birthday so quickly and glowered down at you while you beamed right back up at him.

It was undeniable that he was pissed off due of all the attention you were receiving when he was the lead. Possibly because… well, maybe you did deserve it. He had come to respect your acting ability over the past few months, in particular your impressive ability to become truly immersed in a role.

But maybe also because…. well, you looked good in this spread. Like, really good. Your smile was intoxicating; why didn’t you smile at him like that?  On second thought, maybe it was for the best that you hadn’t. His hardened exterior would likely dissolve, and he’d be a stuttering, fumbling mess. Scanning your features, he noticed that they airbrushed away a tiny birthmark on your face. Or maybe it was a freckle?  And they did something to your eyebrows, they just looked off. Why would they even do that? They were perfectly fine eyebrows…

“Hey, buddy, are you going to buy that or not? This ain’t a library.”

Tenma’s head shot upright, dazed for a few moments before he comprehended the words spoken to him. His tense fists gripped the wrinkled magazine tightly, fragile pages strained and starting to tear. Loosening his hold, he spared a final glimpse at your face before neatly closing the pages and smoothing out the bent cover.

“Uhh, yeah. I am.”  

Sliding his shades further up his nose with his pointer, he coolly ambled to the checkout area and lay the gentleman’s digest upon its surface. The material refused to remain flat after its recent abuse, leaving your shirt and neck visible beneath the dog-eared pages. The employee recognized the article right away.

“That new actress is really something, huh? They say she’s going to be the next big thing.”

Tenma scoffed but offered no discourse, handing over the required yen.

“Pretty cute, too,” the young worker added as he slipped the purchased item into a plastic bag.

“Yeah, whatever,” Tenma huffed heatedly, snatching the illustrated booklet containing your first big media premiere and returning to the sidewalk to await Igawa.

Salty to Sweet

“Don’t they teach you how to stay on task in Middle School? Or are you in High School?  Your lack of common sense is misleading…”

“Funny,” Tenma retorted caustically, though more annoyed at himself than you. He had been finding it challenging to focus as of late since he bought that magazine and he kept screwing up on the same damn lines. His short fuse was growing ever shorter with every butchered word.

You could see that Tenma was downward spiraling; the spark he always carried behind those big, vibrant eyes was fading fast.

“Look, why don’t you try something else…” you started, preparing for opposition.

“What?” the taller boy began, with no small amount of skepticism. Ignoring his sour attitude, you stood opposite him and continued in a calm tone.

“Try talking to me about something you really like while staying in character.”

“Talk about something I like?” Tenma replied incredulously. “What am I, six?”

“Sometimes I wonder, with the way you hide your vegetables under your mashed potatoes during lunch, so no one notices you throwing them away.”  You smirk knowingly, pleased with the look of surprise on your fellow actor’s face.

“You saw me do that?”  Tenma stared at you with a look of both wonder and bewilderment. He was certain no one could see him do that, and you sat at another table entirely! How on earth could you have been paying close enough attention to him to spot that, unless…

“Everyone knows that,” you deflected quickly, the rosy tint on your cheeks belying your innocence in the matter. “So what are you going to talk about?” Your bitter scene partner rolled his eyes. As a veteran in the industry, he felt pretty foolish having you talk him through basic acting exercises. Yet….  There was no question that he was struggling with the script, and no better ideas came to mind. With a sigh of defeat, Tenma offered the one outlet that came to mind.

“Bonsai…” he mumbled in a barely audible tone.

“What was that?” you ask, leaning it. Your close proximity fuels a steadily growing warmth along the back of his neck. He takes a sudden step backward and repeats himself louder.

“Bonsai! Are you deaf?”

“Bonsai, huh?” You smile with amusement. “Well, that’s something you don’t read in all your magazine interviews.”

“Reading my interviews, are you?” he responds dryly, but his stomach does a flip. He thinks back on the magazine he has featuring you, kept privately stashed away in a box under his bed. The thought that maybe you had a magazine featuring him tucked away somewhere in your bedroom causes chills that ran down his broad arms and shoulders.

“Nevermind that,” you grumble, brushing a stray hair out of your face. “Well, bonsai it is, then. Whenever you’re ready.”

You spend the next few minutes listening to Tenma ramble on about bonsai pruning, the proper tools to use, and even the proper light, pH and moisture levels to ensure optimal bonsai health.  Despite the fact that you now know more about bonsai trees than you would have ever cared to know, it seems that engaging, dynamic Tenma has returned. He comes to a full stop after finishing a discourse on bonsai diseases; his head now feeling clear, he’s convinced that he can recite his lines without hesitation.

“That was really good,” you commend him honestly, mirroring the pleased look on his face.

“Naturally,” he boasts in a cocky tone, feeling confident following his flawlessly delivered bonsai monologue. “It’s amazing how pleasant you can be when you’re not yelling at me,” he jibes, looking rather pleased with himself. You raise a brow at his renewed brashness, but you’ve always been quick on the trigger.

“It’s amazing how handsome you can be when you’re not scowling,” you reply with a smug expression, reveling in the crimson darkening his cheeks.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he mumbles with an air of mild embarrassment irritation, rubbing the back of his neck which is now damp with sweat.

“Who says I want to go anywhere with you?” you shoot back with a patronizing smirk before turning your attention back to the script. “SO, where were we?” you inquire loudly before he can get a word in edgewise. Thumbing through the marked-up pages, you see in your periphery that he is doing the same.

“Scenes 12 and 14 we did, 17 we did… no need to go over scene 28…”

“Why are we not practicing scene 28?” Tenma inquired in a cheeky tone. He knew exactly which scene 28 was: the kissing scene. You hadn’t gone over it yet, in read-throughs or on set. After you had just bested him in a mini battle of wits, this would be a great opportunity to even the playing field.

He had performed at least a dozen kiss scenes; it was old hat for him by now, and he knew for sure (not that he had googled your TV and film credits or anything) that you had never performed one. He was certain you’d flounder in search of a clever comeback, then, admitting defeat, blush profusely and outright refuse to do it.

“Fine, let’s do it.” You were no fool, and Tenma Sumeragi couldn’t bluff to save his life.

If Tenma wasn’t youthful and in great health, he might fear he were having a heart attack. Words seized up in his throat, and he could only manage a curt nod. He walked in a small circle, shaking his limbs as he often did while getting into character. He could do this, this was nothing. He had kissed, like, at least 12 girls before. 12! That was more girls than most men kissed in their entire lifetime! Wasn’t it? He couldn’t really think straight. With a long breath in, and out, he reformed his strategy.

He would perform a star-worthy kiss, absolutely knock-your-socks-off amazing, and then swagger out of the room while you were still swooning and dazed. His ego swelled a bit at the thought of leaving you desperate for another kiss, but his blood ran fast and furious at the thought of… well, actually having the kiss.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” you started in the tone of your character’s persona, the sudden smoldering look in your eye plucking at his every last nerve.

“At lunch, in the hall… even waiting for the bus.” Slowly, you crossed the floor towards Tenma’s frozen form. “You’ve given me flirty smiles, you’ve given me teasing winks, but there’s one thing you have yet to give me...” His pulse pounded in his ears as you leaned in closer, far closer than you had ever been before. His eyes flicker anxiously to your mouth, his breath held tightly in his throat.

“A kiss” you purr, biting your lip with the thrill of anticipation. Your lip bite just about crushes any dignity that remains in Tenma; tracing the lines on your lips with a wanton stare, it takes him a few seconds of feeble gaping before he remembers he has a line.

“Come and get it,” he whimpered, his line in a tone more befitting the token band geek than a smooth high school hunk. And get it, you did.

His script is lost to the floor as you press your lips onto his, his body rendered both limp and tight all at once. He did not expect this kind of kiss from you. Or maybe it was because he was used to a stage kiss, with twenty people watching and instructions from several individuals on how to hold his mouth at just the right angle for the camera. This… this was a kiss kiss. Your soft mouth was moving fluidly against his with such hypnotic, sweet caresses that he was convinced that he had never truly kissed someone before now. It was humbling but delicious; he had no control, and he couldn’t care less.

He couldn’t contain the small whimper of disappointment you drew from his throat when at last you pulled away, slyly wiping your reddened lips with the back of your hand. Tenma watched you with a mixed look of shock and awe, as though you had just miraculously materialized from thin air. Practice was over.

“Don’t lose that script,” you called over your shoulder cheerfully as you exited the practice space. “I think you could use another review of that scene.”

The Premiere

The Interview

You: …and it’s been bittersweet, but we’re both ready to move onto new projects. Isn’t that right, Tenten?

Interviewer: Tenten? That’s adorable, is that your nickname for Tenma?

You: Yeah, I call him Tenten because to me, he’s a ten out of ten. [You place an overly-dramatic kiss on his cheek]

Tenma: [Feigns a gagging sound while seated beside you, but reciprocates the kiss] That is a heinous lie, by the way, on both counts. [Tenma’s ability to poke fun at himself is refreshing, his overall manner humble and gracious, demonstrating his tremendous growth from child star to the consummate professional actor.]

Tenma: Actually, one of my fellow trou- uh, one of my friends at the Mankai Company, Kazunari, gave me that nickname.

Interviewer: The Mankai Company, that’s right! You’re putting on a production soon, aren’t you?

Tenten: We are! I’d love to give you the details of our production if you could publish them alongside this article.

Interviewer:  Absolutely. [Turning to you] And do you usually attend Tenma’s performances? I know both of your schedules are rather hectic these days, with all the job offers you’ve both received following the highly successful final season of your most recent television drama.

You: Yes, absolutely; I attend every one.

Tenma: In the front row, every performance. [He links his arm in yours, speaking with a tangible sense of pride]

Interviewer: I’ve noticed you have at least a half dozen bonsai trees in your apartment. Is that a mutual hobby?

You: Well, it’s our thing. I mean, it’s his thing really, but it’s kind of both our thing now. [You smile at Tenma with affection]

Interviewer: And, I’ve been meaning to ask - that framed script on the wall there, is that a keepsake? Or a valuable script from one of your favorite films perhaps? [The interviewer gestures to the worn script hanging above the mantle, protected and held in place by a thick pane of glass, bearing a large penned “SCENE 28”]

Tenma: Yeah, it has a…  special meaning. [Your boyfriend contributes, glancing into your eyes with a knowing smile that only you two could understand]

[phantastus]

Is there any symbolism behind the bird scientific names tags representing Silent Hill characters? Like, did you pick them for any particular reasons? 👀

Oh man, well, I guess I never went into detail about them anywhere. They definitely were picked for a reason but the reason is related to a currently-unwritten fanfic and literally who knows when that’s going to happen (Gravity needs to get finished first and who knows when that’s going to happen :’]), so I might as well try and do it now.

When I was in college I started coming up with concepts and symbolism for a fic project and because I’m obsessed with birds all of it involved birds and the title of the fic was appropriately “Four and Twenty Blackbirds”, with the ‘four’ specifically referring to Harry, James, Heather, and Henry (because they were the main characters). Each of them had a different ‘blackbird’ species representing them. 

So when I decided to make separate aesthetic/inspo tags for individual characters (I already have a #silent feels tag for general SH inspiration, but I am crazy and it was NOT CONVOLUTED ENOUGH FOR ME), I decided to use the scientific bird names since it was conveniently already cemented in my brain. THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY, VERY LONG SO I’M PUTTING IT UNDER A READMORE. Click for pretentious Silent Hill fan analysis.

HARRY MASON | CORVUS BRACHYRYNCHOS (American Crow)

Harry Mason is the “”generic”” all-American protagonist who rises to a heroic status pretty much out of sheer determination and a commitment to his loved one. He’s not an unusual person, in fact he’s deceptively normal-- so the American crow felt right for him since they’re so common. You see them so often you don’t even think about them, but they’re smart, resourceful, and resilient survivors (something that especially comes into play with Harry post-SH1 when he’s eluding the Order). Harry is underestimated because of his normalcy but he’s capable of incredible things.

Also crows (and other corvids) have deep, almost humanlike family bonds between parents and offspring. They’ll maintain relationships even after the babies grow up and become fully self-sufficient, with the adult children regularly visiting their parents and socializing or helping to take care of younger siblings.

In the context of the fic Harry’s symbolic/prophetic connection to such a common “pest” species is sort of a derogatory assignment on the part of the Order/the town, as he’s seen as a heretic troublemaker (CULTS HATE HIM!! LOCAL MAN STEALS MESSIAH AND THWARTS FATE WITH ONE COOL TRICK!)

JAMES SUNDERLAND | CORVUS CORAX (Common Raven)

Ravens are like the most symbolic corvid, every gothic poet/novelist/artist and their grandma used them to represent death, grief and malaise, and James’s story is nothing if not filled with all three of those things. I mean, come on:    “By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”            Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” -Edgar Allen Poe, u know where it’s from.

Also in college, I got very interested in the myth “Raven Steals the Sun”, which has a number of different variations (it’s a story shared across multiple First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, there’s no one clear origin-- you can read about a couple of versions here!) but most involve the titular Raven delivering the Sun to the world after stealing or freeing it from a dark place where it was kept. Depending on the version, Raven's motives can either be purely selfish or more benevolent, and sometimes starts the story as a pure white bird who is stained black with soot in the act of taking the Sun. The duality of Raven’s intentions as well as the theme of light/warmth being hidden in darkness until it’s brought out felt fitting for a character whose motivations are complex and left a little ambiguous in canon (James grapples with whether his own act was purely selfish or one of love/mercy) AND someone who is naturally warm and caring but slipped behind a cold, dark wall of depression and self-isolation. The theme of being permanently marked/transformed by an act, whether for good or for bad, felt fitting too.

(Obligatory Disclaimer That My (Very White) Personal Interpretation Should Not Remotely Be Considered An Authentic Take On The Myth And Is Not Intended To Be Appropriation. For fic purposes the story would only have come up as an interesting symbolic parallel/running motif among many others, not a Literal Connection. James is a clueless white dude and Silent Hill doesn’t even take place on the west coast.)

“BUT WAIT! Doesn’t stealing the sun from a malevolent party and freeing it sound sort of like Harry rescuing Alessa/Cheryl/Heather??” Yes, this was going to be a source of in-character confusion and a surprise twist when it turns out they got their birds mixed up. Blah blah nothing is as it seems and destiny is mutable.

One time while I was walking on a foggy beach I got followed around by an enormous raven who was just sort of waddle-hopping after me looking forlorn and scruffy and the experience stuck with me and now all these years later my enormous galaxy brain is just like “That was Big James Energy”.

Wow that was long, I’m sorry.

HENRY TOWNSHEND | CORVUS FRUGILEGUS (Rook)

The most obvious symbolism is probably the chess piece with the same name-- that felt fitting for Henry since he’s probably the protagonist who has to do the most strategizing. Between his limited inventory and his progressively-more-cursed apartment and escorting Eileen and his five billion trips across multiple fractured Otherworlds, my poor guy has a lot to mentally keep track of. In the fic, he was going to wind up being the one to keep track of all the weird complicated bullshit items and rituals they had to complete to get through the Otherworld.

The rook chess piece also resembles a castle, and unlike the other protagonists whose stories progress in a linear fashion, Henry operates from/returns to his home base shitty cursed apartment.

BUT ONTO THE BIRD the rook is a corvid like the crow and the raven, and shares their pest/death omen status in popular culture. Just appropriate for SH protags in general since they keep getting in the way of the cult’s business and also misfortune follows them.

In the SH3 Crematorium Puzzle (I’ll talk more about that in Heather’s section), there is a poem:    "The black Rook is the praying sort    Who hears the gods in the skies    His whispered petitions go on without end    And glassy and dim are his eyes" Obviously this does NOT describe Henry as a person, but it IS eerily reminiscent of the title that was thrust upon him: Receiver. Maybe if Walter’s plans had succeeded, this is how Henry would have ended up.

There is also an old belief that if rooks abandon an established “rookery” (place where they regularly roost), it’s a sign of calamity to follow. If Henry the Certified Homebody (tm) bursts out of the apartment complex and goes staggering down the street, you should get out of that apartment complex.

HEATHER MASON | AGELAIUS PHOENICEUS (Red-Winged Blackbird)

Oh boy this one’s probably the weirdest but here we go.

The first obvious thing is that unlike the other three, the red-winged blackbird is not actually a corvid (it’s from the Icteridae family, not the Corvidae family). In-universe, this was supposed to represent Heather being inherently different from the rest (like... she basically is an iteration of the Silent Hill deity), even if she seems to be a normal human. Harry’s act of stealing her from the Order and changing her appearance/name to hide her was going to be depicted as “dousing Her in black ink, but [the ink] not able to fully conceal Her radiance”. The red and gold shoulders of the blackbird visually symbolize her “””true nature””” peeking out.

I also associate her specifically with the MALE red-winged blackbird (the female looks completely different, hooray sexual dimorphism) because gender is a fuck and Heather understandably has some really intense and complicated issues with womanhood/femininity. One of my favorite aspects of her as a character is how she blurs the line between masculine and feminine, especially since she’s been through so much... extremely gendered violence, to put it lightly. Heather Mason says FUCK YOUR GENDER BINARY.

As a fun side-note, Heather is also represented (or appears to be, ymmv) by a bird in canon! The SH3 Crematorium puzzle (on hard mode) features a series of poems each about birds, and each one represents a character if you squint. Heather seems to be referenced in this one:     "The Wren, with pure heart as yet unrefined     Makes us laugh with his feeble lip-smacking     But still we all know he shall never grow old     And he knows not how much he is lacking." Heather’s role as a brash, foolhardy youth who talks tough to cope is pretty blatantly summed up in there, as is the fact that she’s... functionally immortal and keeps fucking reincarnating. The wren, a plucky little bird, is perfect for her. The part of the main riddle that references the wren is also... ominously on the nose, given Heather’s backstory:     "Burn the one who knows no death     Pure, adored by those above     No prayers within, just simple love.”

YET ANOTHER CREMATORIUM POEM could be construed as representing the town’s God (or the spiritual force of the land, w/e), damaged/corrupted/turned malevolent by All The Bullshit:     "The Kite, hot, crazy, and panting mad     Sweet shackles that tease and excite     Death itself would drive him wild     Red blood that turns milky white"  Heather is a pure-hearted protagonist in one sense, but there’s plenty of not-so-subtle hints to a bloodlust and desire for violence just waiting to break free (ESPECIALLY when Heather does certain things that could be considered taking on the role of God). So to me the Kite is what happens when Heather gets sick of being nice and decides to go apeshit.

“BUT WAIT what does this have to do with the red-winged blackbird?” The inherent trinity of Heather’s character (Alessa/Cheryl/Heather, the Mother of God/Daughter of God/God Herself) deserves a bird trinity too. I’M GREEDY, I WANT *ALL* THE BIRD METAPHORS!

Red-winged blackbirds are bold little shits who will straight up harass birds of prey. Kind of like Heather does to God.

The fact that “phoeniceus” was part of the scientific name was a VERY delightful coincidence-- but I’m not complaining about how satisfying I found it that my Bird Choice (tm) inadvertently connects her to the concept of the phoenix, poster child of pyrogenesis.

That was even longer than James’, I’m so sorry.

SO THAT’S THE META BEHIND THOSE CHOICES FOR THE FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS. If you’re still interested after all that BS, I can write up another (probably much shorter) post for the other characters. Thanks for the ask!

[zosonils]

majora's mask link for the headcanon meme

CRACKS MY GAY LITTLE KNUCKLES

realistic: before facing majora he does the ‘perfect cycle’ thing where you complete absolutely everything in a single cycle [saving all 4 regions, returning every stray fairy to its fountain, all of the sidequests, helping romani and cremia, reuniting anju and kafei, etc etc]. while i’ve never beat the game and seen the credits i’ve heard that they imply a ‘perfect’ ending for everyone in termina, and it feels in character for link to really give it his all like that

funny: he’s just..... so fucking bad at pretending to be darmani and mikau. his only experience with being an adult is getting dumped into a 16 year old body and dropped in a fucked up hyrule and it shows. he’s guessing how they might have acted based on the five minutes he spent with both of them before healing their souls and he’s such a shit actor. ‘yep that’s me i’m mikau the adult zora who is not dead or a mask’ [coughs for 7 minutes because he swallowed some seawater]

heart crushing: good LORD this child is so traumatised. oot left him in bad enough shape between his lack of healthy relationships and everything he saw in the bad future, which apparently fucked him up enough that he left hyrule, and just when he thinks ok i am starting to recover emotionally from my horrific experiences bada bing bada boom skull kid diagnoses you with deku body and scrub nightmares now go force yourself through more murder dungeons where everything wants to kill you and watch even more people die. have fun asshole. by the end of mm link is so utterly fucked up that he’s basically gone emotionally numb. king you are ten years old what the fuck why are there no therapists in hyrule

fuck canon: after saving termina link returns the main three transformation masks to their respective regions. ooh blah fucking blah he leaves without anyone knowing he was there fuck off link wouldn’t just leave the gorons and zora to believe that their heroes abandoned them and you fucking bet he’ll do everything he can to find out which deku scrub’s body he was borrowing. it’s an emotionally shattering experience every time, he probably cries afterwards, but he doesn’t leave termina until everybody has the closure they deserve

[iamabeautifulcreature]

Just finished reading all of Justice League Odyssey and I have thoughts...

(This is more for me to get thoughts out of my head, but if you do have a read of the below I’ll warn you it’s not very coherent.)

So at the premise I was really hopeful, I liked the core four of Cyborg, Jessica Cruz, Starfire, and Azrael, and I liked this story would encompass very little of the A-list heroes, because I thought that would mean these guys get some genuine character development and a new classic story for us to dissect. Overall, it wasn’t a complete flop, but I certainly did not see all of the core 4 getting the same opportunity for growth. In fact both Azrael and Starfire kinda got shat on most of the time....

General Plot:

The basic plot is that Darkseid is trying grab power blah blah blah, and is manipulating Cyborg, Azrael, and Starfire into getting the objects of power he needs from within the ghost sector....

The first 10 issues of plot I liked (on the whole), there was tension and looming fear of what Darkseid was up to... I enjoyed meeting species who worshipped the others as gods, and the hijinks they got up to getting used to one another. However by issue 12 (SPOILERS) Azrael, Starfire, and Cyborg are turned into Darkseids new (new) gods, then the plot takes a whole new turn (and yes it is a new volume but hear me out...)

Basically jess gets killed by Darkseid, only for her corpse to be transported to a ship on the edge of the universe along with Queen Blackfire, and a black cube (it’s an Eskaton, a creature that’s aim is to kill Darkseid FYI). Basically from this point forward it becomes a time travel story and we see nothing of Azrael and Starfire for multiple issues, and only see Cyborg like once an issue... only to prop up jess.

We then see Jess lead a new team of Her, Blackfire, Dex Starr, Orion, Hax, Gamma Knife, and Epoch. Now, I actually like this group together, they grate on each other, but all pull together, they have interesting interactions and honestly were fun to read. 

Long story short Epoch was basically building a time machine to try and stop Darkseid from ending the universe. He recruits the others to help finish it while holding Darkseid off. But it turns out this is too much for Epoch, as he has not thought of every possible thing that might go wrong with his changes, and Jess calls him out. He gets annoyed, sends Jess back in time, then dies at Darkseids hand anyway (Don’t worry, Jess comes back within an issue lol).

I can’t be arsed to go into every detail but the team use some time travel to bring back the core 4 from the past prior to their turning into new gods, and they fight Darkseid who retreats... (I’m positive this is to set up his use in a next major multi-issue release). Jess goes to see the Green Lanterns, Orion and Azrael takes the newbies to Darkseid, and Cyborg and Starfire go to warn the justice league on Earth.

So this summary leaves absolutely loads out, but I don’t want to make this longer than it already is. A lot of plot happens in very few issues. But overall, the last 3rd compacted loads in a very short amount of time. They obviously had loads of ends to tie but not enough issues to do it justice as they had been cancelled.

For example, we never go back to those planets to see them freed from the beginning. Never see how Tamaran fares (what’s up with Kory no longer being bothered by #25 about going to Tamaran lol. That was her whole reason for going to the ghost sector in the first place). 

But to be honest, I can live with this, they had a limited time to tell a story and they did their best. The biggest gripe for me was the characters...

Jess:

Basically this story became about her. Justice League Odyssey became Jessica Cruz Odyssey. I do like her a lot, and I liked seeing the progression of her character, but it saddens me they writers obviously favoured her at the expense of the other 3. Why can’t we lift her and the others up. A lot of the comic became “I’m right because the protagonist to progress the plot” and often was right over other characters. Also the whole omega power thing was funny and weird. “The ring was crushed into my hand and absorbed the omega blast from Darkseid so now I absorbed the residual energy which brought me back to life...”

Cyborg:

He got the 2nd best development in the story. Like he does fall for Darkseids plan, but somehow because he is able to have this internal struggle with himself when changed he can communicate with Jess and switch sides. Him and Jess apparently connect a lot, which is nice I guess, but also a bit weird. Like we only saw you working together for a 3rd of the issues so their bond sort of feels unearned to me (Yes they had that mind message for a bit but Jess couldn’t have been 100% sure that was really him and not her own thought, she can’t use that to get close to him). In my opinion that bond should have been shown with Kory more (they do this at the beginning, then it falls off teh radar.)

But yet again we barely see him after his transformation, I would have liked to have seen more of him (and maybe we would have if it weren’t for the cancellation). There is very little character arc apart from him fighting through his godly body.

Starfire:

Oh my sweet summer child. WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU. Okay, advantages are that she wasn’t sexualised (I can’t believe I had to note that down as a positive). She had some of her characteristic emotional beliefs and that she can be hot headed. That was great! However, they also kept referring to her as a mess. Like towards the end of act 1 I can see that because she was succumbing to the power. But they say she’s been a mess since the beginning and it didn’t feel seen through her actions. 

She gets supposedly healed in I think #3, but that was Darkseid, so she wasn’t healed at all, just negative symptoms subsided. They never revisit this dodgy old man who evidently doesn’t take the power away from her... Like lets have a convo on that.

I don’t know, they just make her out to be completely non-functional for most of this, even before she succumbs to her new powers, and I didn’t like it. Especially because she yet again had exactly 0 arc to get over this supposed negative and become a better person from the experience. Also... her and Blackfire trying to kill each other, then the other being horrified when they both do it was just badly written. They’ve been at this tug of war for a long time now guys... They should have spats but not keep trying to kill each other. 

Also, where was her struggle against the control of Darkseid? Why is she not strong enough? Nope instead we saw New God Starfire for one issue, ad Blackfire killed her immediately. 

Tldr: WHERE WAS THE CHARATER DEVELOPMENT? She was just a plot device...

Azrael:

Basically similar stuff to Starfire. He was an interesting character that was reduced to a plot device that got killed off for most of the latter part of the series. He did not get a decent character progression (the more he was under control by Darkseid the nicer of a guy he became lol).

He nearly had this good b-plot of him and Rapture (somebody who kinda got underused), but then after act 1 that was thrown out for Jess and the time travellers lol.

He also in my mind got no character development and really didn’t need to be there.

Basically Starfire and Azrael could have been replaced by 2 other heroes, and it would have very little impact on the plot. Which is really my biggest grievance. I can handle dodgy plots if the characters go through an experience that makes them better heroes. But we saw none of that. Overall it was a shame. There was some great potential, but the core characters were plot devices to prop Jess up (and I do like Jess), which sucked. I’m hoping wherever the characters go next they underused ones get some proper time to shine.

[beshert-bh]

My journey to/with Judaism

***This is a super long post, it’s the FULL story, not a brief overview, but it would mean the WORLD to me if you read it***

Upbringing: very much Not Jewish™️

I was born into a Catholic family. I have a goyish last name. I was baptized as an infant, and my parents took me to church each week as a kid.

In kindergarten — back when I still went to a secular private school — one of my best friends was Jewish. He told me all about the traditions his family did...told me all about the kippahs they wear, and how they had their own game called dreidel for this holiday they celebrated, called Hanukkah. (Of course this convo was at a basic-kindergarten-level of knowledge.) When I came home from school I was fascinated with Hanukkah, (this is cringey to admit but my 5-year-old self tried to integrate the traditions together and so in order to do this I drew up a “Christmas dreidel” complete with Santa Claus’ face on one side, a present on another side...you get it)

And that is when I was promptly put in “parochial” schools. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade to 12th grade. I went through Holy Communion and Confirmation like all the other kids did. My elementary soccer team’s mascot was an Angel. My high school’s mascot was a Crusader. Our high school was located on Rome Avenue. I went to a Catholic youth conference. I considered becoming a nun because I was single all throughout high school.

Growing up, around Christmastime we would always travel to visit my grandma, and she would always say we’re “German Jewish” — but I would write her off. In my mind, I was like, Yeah ok like 1%? .....It felt like my grandma was acting like one of those white people who takes a DNA test and says, “Look! We’re 1% African!” So I would dismiss her and remind her how we’re Catholics and she would drop the subject.

Falling away from Xtianity: my first 2 years of college

My freshman year I changed — politically — as I was only conservative in high school because of the ‘pro-life’ agenda being shoved down my throat. I really aligned more with liberal and leftist policies and views, though. Once I became open to new political ideology, I began to question my theological beliefs.

I always had a strong connection to God. My whole life. But I struggled with connecting to Jesus, Mary, the saints, and so on. So obviously my freshman year of college I began to fall away from Catholicism.

You see, Catholics are “bad at the Bible” as I like to say. Other Christians do a better job of teaching and analyzing the writings. They actually require school-aged children to memorize Scripture passages. Catholics mostly just teach the same stuff over and over. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, blah blah blah. Catechism, liturgical calendar, blah blah blah. Parts of the mass, fruits of the spirit, blah blah blah.

So since I was already doubting Catholicism, its corrupt leadership, and its mindless traditions.... I thought maaaaybeeee I would find purpose, truth, clarity, etc. in plain-old Christianity. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The other Christian churches I went to baptized people (which is a BIG LIFE DECISION) on the spot. For example if a newcomer felt on a whim that they wanted to be baptized, the church would do it right then & there. No learning, no planning or preparing, that was it. They promoted blind faith and circular thinking. I began to realize these were both normal attitudes and cognitive patterns within any and every Christian community that I encountered.

Even the Christians who exhibited curiosity mostly just asked questions in order to be able to understand, and then accept, the doctrine as truth. Questions never ever challenged anything.

Oh and let’s throw in the fact that I’m bisexual. Homophobia, transphobia, biphobia (and more) are rampant in the church. So needless to say, with all my observations about the lack of logical thinking in the church (and considering my sexual orientation) I fell away. I stopped going to church unless my family made me when I was home from college.

Enter stage right: Judaism

In retrospect I happened to have a lot of friends in my sorority and my favorite fraternity on campus who were Jewish (the frat happened to be a traditionally-Jewish one). Thought nothing of it at the time. Fast forward to junior year when I met this cute guy on Tinder. He’s now my boyfriend and we’ve been dating for over a year. He didn’t tell me this on Tinder, but when we went on our first date, he revealed that he’s Jewish and wanted to make sure that’s something I was ok with. Clearly I had no problem with that. I wasn’t too into Christianity anymore but I still identified as one (and I was still surrounded by Christian friends in my sorority) so I told him I was Christian/raised Catholic and asked hypothetically if he would be comfortable with a “both” family. He said yes.

We started dating during an October, so of course Hanukkah came up soon. There was a mega challah bake at our local Chabad, which he took me to, and we had a blast. From then on I decided I wanted to show him how supportive I was of his Jewishness. (The last girl he dated dumped him after 3 months BECAUSE he was Jewish... so I felt that I needed to be supportive)

We started going to shabbat services and dinner every week. We did Hanukkah together (we bought our first menorah together, he taught me how to spin a dreidel, his mom bought me Hanukkah socks...lol). At some point in our relationship I told him I may have Jewish ancestry from my grandma but it’s distant and my whole extended family is Christian so it really wouldn’t even matter. I don’t remember when I had that conversation with him.

Eventually, after another few months of Shabbat services and Shabbat dinners, Pesach came around.

We went to the first seder together. The second seder is what changed everything.

Deciding to convert

At first I wasn’t sure if I belonged at this second seder. My boyfriend had always brought me to every event. I had never attended anything alone at Chabad before. But I went anyway. Throughout the night I felt increasingly comfortable. I had never felt more like I was a *part of something* than I did at this seder.

I sat near a friend who I recognized. (He knows I’m raised Catholic.) Then he & his friends welcomed me. We all took turns reading from the Haggadah, we drank the four cups of wine together, and we laughed together as I had maror for the first time.

Then the familiar faces left to go home, and one of them even went to another table to sit with his other friends whom he hadn’t had a chance to see yet that night. Naturally I thought I was alone again. I almost left, but something tugged at my heart to stay until the very end of the second seder. Something told me to keep going and keep taking in this wonderful experience.

The rest of the night consisted of many songs (most likely prayers, in retrospect) I did not know. Everyone stood to sing and we all clapped to the rhythm. I knew none of the words but I still clapped along, alone at my own table. Then one of the boys — the one who had been sitting with my friends and I earlier — motioned at me to come over and join his other friends. I approached this new table full of people I’d never met, feeling awkward as ever, and they not only hoisted me up to stand on the table with them as they chanted, but they also included me in their dance circle. (no, I don’t think it was the Hora, we just spun around over and over. lol.)

This was the first night I felt at home with Judaism. Going through the Jewish history with the Haggadah, remembering the important occurrences and symbolizing them with various foods, ending the night by being welcomed into the community... it was transformative. After attending shabbat services for months and learning about Jewish values, it changed something in me when I observed Pesach for the first time last year. I knew this path would be right for me. I felt as if my soul had found where it belonged. The Jewish history, traditions, beliefs, and customs resonated with me. It all just... made sense.

I told my boyfriend I wanted to convert. I wrote three pages of reasons. But I sat on the idea of converting and did nothing for a while. I did do some more research on Judaism, though, as I continued to attend services each week.

The exploration stage

I began to actually research on my own time. If converting was something I was genuinely considering, it was high time I began actively learning as much as I could possibly learn. It was time to dive deeper than just attending the weekly services and googling the proper greetings for Jewish holidays.

I started digging deeper into Judaism and Christianity so I could compare and contrast the two. I needed to understand the similarities and differences. And BOY are they different. That was surprising at first, but the more I learned about Judaism, the more I loved how different it was from the Christianity I was indoctrinated into.

Not only are the values and teachings of each religion vastly different, but the Tanakh (which is “The Old Testsment” in Christian Bibles) actually contradicts:

The entire “New Testament”

The gospel books specifically

The Pauline letters specifically

How did I realize this? Some bible study of my own, but mostly through online research. And, of course, I would have gotten nowhere without the help of Rabbi Tovia Singer and his YouTube videos. He debunks everything there is to debunk about Christianity.

Here were some things I came across when researching:

It confused me how the four Gospels didn’t align (like, major parts of the story did not align at all...and supposedly they’re divinely inspired...but they don’t even corroborate one another?)

It confused me how the psalms we sang in church were worded completely different from the true wording in the Bible (essentially the Christian church is taking tehillim and altering it to benefit Christian dogma and Christian rhetoric.)

It confused me how we read in the Bible that Jews are ‘God’s chosen people’ and yet in every Catholic Church, every Sunday, there is a Pauline letter being read which depicts proselytization of Jews, as if Jews are lost and need Christians to save them. As if Jews would go to hell if they fail to accept Jesus.

It confused me why we would pray to Mary and the saints, because praying is worship, and worshipping anyone but God themself is idolatry.

It confused me why Christians make, sell, and use graven images. Idolatry. Again.

It confused me why Christians give absolute power to humans. For example, if you crawl up the same steps (Scala Santa) that Jesus supposedly crawled up before he died, you automatically get “saved” because *some old men who have no divine power* said so (they have a term for this and it’s called “plenary indulgence” lol).

It confused me why Jesus was believed to be the messiah considering he had to have biologically been from the line of Joseph. Wasn’t Jesus supposedly conceived without any help from Joseph? Wouldn’t that render Jesus, uh, not messiah by default? Even if he was from Joseph’s blood, he still did not complete all the tasks moshiach is supposed to fulfill. And even if he DID fulfill all the tasks required of moshiach... we still would not worship a messiah as he is human and not GOD.

These were all new thoughts I developed this past year between Pesach and Yom Kippur. New questions that challenged everything I thought I knew. It was like teaching a child 2+2≠22 but rather 2+2=4.

Hillel

This fall, after the High Holy Days, my boyfriend began attending shabbat dinners at a rabbi’s home. His new rav lives in the community and it’s exclusive to be invited, so I never imposed. We do Shabbos separately now (with some exceptions, we do it together sometimes).

I continued to go to Chabad with one of my friends who knew I wanted to convert. But one month, she couldn’t come at all, and I felt a little judged there anyway.

So I began going to Hillel a few months ago. And I honestly have found a home there.

From Hillel’s Springboard Fellow reaching out to me and taking me out for coffee to get to know me... to running into my sorority & fraternity friends at every Hillel event (shabbat or otherwise)... From getting included in various clubs like the women empowerment group and the mental health inclusivity group... to being the only college student to participate in Mitzvah Day (hosted by Hillel) with the elderly and the local Girl Scout troop... I feel truly welcome. I’ve started to attend every week. I even talked briefly with the rabbi about having Jewish lineage and wanting to convert.

Discovering new information

I went home to be with family during Thanksgiving break. My grandma flew in so she was there when I got home. She stayed with us from then until New Years (and she’s actually moving in with us next year.)

Of course, now I have a Jewish boyfriend, Jewish friends, and I’ve done extensive research on Judaism. So this time I had background knowledge when she inevitably said... “You know, we’re German Jewish!”

I inquired a little. I asked her what she meant. How is she Jewish? I know my uncle took a DNA test this year and came back part Ashkenazi. But I needed a deeper explanation than DNA.

She revealed to me that her mom’s mom was Jewish. We believe she married a Christian man. Together they had my great-grandmother, who I believe was Christian. She had my grandma, who had my dad, who had me.

And I immediately felt like that changed things. At first I was (internally) like, Now I definitely need to convert! But then I was like, Wait, does this make me Jewish? Am I Jewish-ish? ...Can you be considered Jewish if you’re only ethnically Jewish but not raised Jewishly? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad is your only Jewish parent? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad never had a bris or a bar mitzvah?

I joined a bunch of Jewbook groups, began learning the Hebrew calendar & holiday schedule, and found some folks who assist with Jewish genealogy. They did some digging for me and apparently I descend from the Rothschild family. THE Rothschild family.

Who is a Jew? Who “counts”?

This is something I’ve been muddling over.

At Hillel, at my school at least, most people are pretty Reform. They’re very liberal with their definitions of Judaism (they believe in patrilineal descent and not only matrilineal descent).

They accept me and see me as actually Jewish ...and the ones who don’t... they at least see me as Jewish-adjacent, an “honorary Jew” or an “ally to the Jewish people”.

My boyfriend, however, still sees me as Not Jewish.™️ (For context he’s Reform but he’s trying to become as observant as possible) I know he only thinks this was because of how we began our relationship and because of how I was raised. But I’m very confused here.

Do I count?

Do I not?

Do I count *enough* but still need to go through a formal conversion process?

So...now what?

I don’t know how to navigate this odd journey but I have felt for a while that I have a Jewish neshama and I feel a strong need to affirm it. I just don’t know how or what is appropriate. Do I learn Hebrew? Sign up for a trip to Israel/Germany/Poland? Put up a mezuzah? Or go toward the other end of the scale, and head down a path of a formal conversion/reaffirmation process?

Thank you in advance for your responses and thanks for reading. 🤎

[la-jolie-mln-posts]

What is a brand? For most of us it’s a line of apparel, a type of smart phone or your favorite cereal. But a brand goes way beyond just products and extends to people. Some of you will remember the Apple ad that showcased a Bill Gates type (guy in a jacket and tie, looking dull and corporate) against a Steve Jobs type (hip, casual, smart). You get the point. And, so did the audience — Microsoft blah, Apple, cool. It worked!

Who are some of the most visible people with personal brands? Kim Kardashian comes to mind. But if you are interviewing for an executive position at one of the top 5 consulting firms, hers is not the brand image you want to bring to your first Zoom call or in-person interview.

Oprah Winfrey owns her personal brand. She welcomed discussion about body image, embraced her own and never lost her credibility. She dressed for her position, for the occasion and for her image. She never looks sloppy. She’s crossed the Rubicon from entertainment icon to business mogul, but never lost the Oprah brand.

Princess Kate Middleton is a princess, mom and leading figure in the world of outreach to children in need. As her style has evolved, she’s been able to communicate her brand through personal acts and personal style that remains young and hip.

Today women head some of the biggest U.S. corporations.  Here’s just a few….

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube Lynsi Snyder, CEO, of In-N-Out Burger Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors Whitney Wolfe Herd of CEO of Bumble

They may not have the same instantaneous brand recognition as the Kardashians, Oprah or Princess Kate, but to achieve the positions they have on the highly competitive playing fields in which they operate, they all had to create something unique — a personal brand.

Branding with the 4 “P’s’

It’s a familiar strategy for experienced marketers. Let’s say you’re launching a new brand of lipstick or changing a trusted brand with new packaging or a new message. You start by thinking through your brand strategy using the 4 P’s:

Product: A product can be either a tangible good or a service that fulfills a particular need for consumers. Whether your product is a brand of potato chips, a household item like dishwasher soap, a hotel chain or a university, it’s essential that you have a clear grasp of what makes it unique before you can successfully market it.

Price: Once the product offering is established, you can make pricing decisions. Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategy. Products and brands may need to be positioned differently based on varying price points.

Promotion:  Once product and price are established, it’s time to promote it. Promotion looks at the many ways advertisers market to consumers and includes includes: advertising, public relations, social media, emails, search engine marketing, videos and more.

Place: Successful brands are all about putting the right product, at the right price, at the right place, at the right time. The mission is to convert interested consumers into actual customers. Today, the initial place potential clients engage is online.                            

Now, create your own brand using the 4 P’s

You are the PRODUCT, so begin by evaluating what makes you special. Ask yourself: Q. Are you dressing for your body? A. If you’re curvy and you love yoga pants, make sure you purchase high-quality yoga pants that aren’t see-through when you stretch or bend over. And consider the occasion before wearing them. If you’re going for a sophisticated look, slim fitting trouser pants may be a better fit. - If you have big chest, go for a v-neckline time. - No matter what the occasion: job interview, business trip, night out with friends or going to your kid’s soccer game, the items you pull together should communicate the same message. “There goes Susan; she always looks fabulous.”

Q. What colors work best for you? A. Navy or black works on just about everyone; here’s a few ways to make it yours: - If you’re going for a job interview, neutral is best. But a pop of color is a great way to express your personal brand. Whether a lush pink shirt under a dark blazer, a red velvet shirt with a black sweater, a dress accessorized with a fun pair of sneakers (only if you can pull off the look), or fun pair of pumps, your signature brand will emerge as you try things out and focus in on what works for you. - Hair can be a fantastic branding tool. If you’ve been blessed with a gorgeous mop, go with it. Hair is one of our best weapons. If you want to call out your inner artiste or you play in a rock band, pink or blue hair is okay. But it’s definitely not for everyone. Some work places, like design agencies, hair salons and big tech firms are amenable to this look. But if you work in a bank or a law firm, probably not. If you simply have to try it, there are always extensions. Remember, the look has to work on you. If you can pull off something like this, go for it…

Let’s talk about PRICE

What PRICE are you willing to accept for your talent, your contribution, your value, and your time? When I worked in marketing at a big corporation in my late 20′s, I met a woman who was hired to be a copywriter. She was actually a former agency owner and had a lot more to offer. The guy who hired her put her in a huge, open office setting where she wrote copy for retail projects such as in-store banners and such. She left after 2 weeks, but she also left an impression.

So, he called her back to see what it would take to hire her. She was polite, but firm. She said, “I’ll need my own office. I want to be paid twice the hourly fee you paid me, and I want to bring in my own creative talent (writers and designers) to work with.”

Done. She got what she asked for. Why? Because she knew what she was her value and had the confidence to ask for it.

Promoting yourself is a tricky business

PROMOTION today is about establishing your online presence. As we’ve seen lately, the cancel culture is a force to be reckoned with. And by that, I mean be careful with the topics you choose to address. It’s easy to be mocked, doxed and dropped from social media — all it takes is one wrong comment.

According to Forbes, “Your personal brand should be an easy daily filter that you create content and reach out to your audience with.” The article quotes Jason Wu, founder of CoinState. “Be the master of your craft, skillset or industry before starting a personal brand. Then your content will amplify who you are.”

In other words, avoid mistakes like the one made by Olivia Jade. She’s the daughter of actress Lori Loughlin who did prison time for getting her kids into college through false claims and a financial bribe. Olivia was a successful online fashion and culture blogger until her mother’s deceit landed on her. Then she made the mistake of using her social media platform to say that she really wasn’t at USC to attend classes. In the end, she lost followers, endorsements and a lot more.

The point? Have some experience under your belt before promoting your personal brand.

Have you found your PLACE?

It’s pointless to tell digital natives to avoid social media until they achieve some maturity. But, as the story above illustrates, social platforms are eternal, and establishing a trashy personal brand while young can come back to haunt you. So, parents need to keep a watchful eye on how kids are promoting themselves, knowing that colleges look carefully at this content.

When it comes to establishing a personal brand, there are tons of articles out there on how to do this. You can spend a day on Google and find lists like this:

What motivates me? What am I good at? What is unique about my personality, talents and style? What do I excel at? What bores me to tears? What do others say drew me to them?

All good and well. But here are a few constants we all encounter on the road to the true self:

Failure happens. You will lose jobs, face financial insecurity and have to reinvent your career. Some of the most successful women I’ve met in my life have transformed themselves as a result of loss. It’s only failure if you don’t get back up and re-start your engine.

La Jolie MLN launching in April 2021

Follow our journey on Instagram or Facebook La.Jolie.MLN

Website coming soon

: www.lajolie-mln.com

We would love to hear from you.  Let us know your thoughts and any topics you would want to hear about.   blog@lajolie-mln.com 

Next blog Jan 31: Doing Business By Doing Good

About Daisy Malek-Shadid

As a little girl, I would be asked what I want to be when I grow up.  I would confidently reply, I want to be a clothing designer and a respected leader.  Fast forward 30 years, after working in the corporate world, traveling, getting married and having children, the aspirations of my youth inspire me today.  I want to create clothes that make women feel both feminine and powerful, beautiful and strong, sophisticated and elevated. It takes a moment to make a first impression.  Dressing well sets the tone, so one can own that moment.  

It is important to La Jolie MLN to give back to the community, to women who don’t have the same opportunity as others. And, for that reason, 10% of every purchase will go toward our goal to donate 100 dresses to Dress for Success, a non-for-profit organization that supports underprivileged women to achieve economic independence by providing various services - one of them professional attire for interviews and new employment.  For more information about “Dress for Success” please visit their website at dressforsuccess.org.