#there’s very little academia or like. going into the parallel worlds thing. it’s mostly about the weird relationship between them

[aroaessidhe]

2022 reads // twitter thread  

The Whispering Dark

supernatural YA

a  girl is accepted into a prestigious university that trains students to slip between parallel worlds

but previous students’ mysterious deaths start to make her think her fear of the dark is something more tangible

Deaf MC

necromancy

[sometimesrosy]

I'm looking forward to seeing how they deal with mal and alina's, relationship in the second season. for me I really enjoyed them in the third book but not as much in the second (mostly due to us not seeing what mal was thinking and feeling so I think it will definitely be interesting to see that on screen). what are your thoughts?

YES. Bardugo really didn’t SHOW mal and alina. Frankly, imo, in the whole trilogy.

So I’ve been writing and reading romance almost exclusively for the last two years... make that five or six years, because before that, I was writing and reading fanfiction, and that is essentially romance, and what I saw in The Grisha Trilogy is the set up for an epic romance. The plot was based around this romance of two children, best friend who grew up together, Alina’s unrequited pining, then Mal’s longing for her as soon as she left, a love triangle with the Darkling, then a love triangle with Nikolai, Mal as an alpha male who never sleeps with another woman after realizing he’s in love with Alina, that whole ‘meet me in the meadow’ thing, and then the final thing which I’m not going to mention because it’s too much of a spoiler but which is SO MUCH a meant-to-be true love thing. 

But there was very little romance written in the narrative. 

Most of it was about how they CAN’T be together. And yeah, that’s kind of an essential part of any romance-- what keeps them apart-- but it lacked the moments that drew them back together. There were few interludes that explored what their connection WAS. And I mean, that doesn’t make sense because they ran away together. They were sharing a BED. Sure they weren’t. EVER. alone. But we should have gotten confidences and connection and emotion. And we just didn’t.

For a series ABOUT Malina, honestly when you come down to it, since being together or NOT being together was such an essential part of every book, and it was always bracketed by an intro about the girl and boy and ended with the resolution which required Mal and Alina, (and had an epilogue about Malina) I feel like it should have shown more of their relationship and interactions and intimacy. Maybe it was because it was all Alina’s internal monologue, which kept Mal out. IDK. 

It was like it was TELLING us it was a romance, without ever (or rarely) SHOWING us the romance.

I think we won’t have that problem in the show. They’ve already shown to be more interested in showing the connection between Malina, and seem to know how to do romantic tension. Also, a lot of it is about the *looks* they give each other, which Bardugo never really showed. It’s subtext. Which Bardugo left out. You can keep the romance subtle and just read into actions and visual shots and parallels and such. But in the books, most of the romance was displayed with JEALOUSY. Well. I think she didn’t know how to write romance, that’s why jealousy was the only aspect we really got on a regular basis.

I mean, Mal’s jealousy was understandable, but it’s the only thing that was explored as romance. She was ALSO jealous, so it was used for both of them, and they both wrote letters regularly and when they got no response they both went, *shrug* ‘I guess I didn’t mean anything to them.’ But this was the person each was closest to in the world. WHY would they come to that conclusion? Makes no sense. I mean, the boy got a giant tattoo, and the emotional and romantic resonance of THAT was ignored. He was devoting his life to her. He would sacrifice his life for HER. And while the actions were there... there was little direct discussion of it. Men kept asking Alina to marry them and Mal acted like he had no claim on Aline, which he DID. They ran away together. It was romantic. And Alina was just like *shrug* I guess I should think about marrying some other guy not my soulmate, even though he’s RIGHT there and just risked his life for me AGAIN. And never talked to him about it? And I frankly did not understand that. 

Maybe she’d never been in love and didn’t understand what it felt like? But I think she wasn’t that young when she wrote it. Maybe she just didn’t know how to write romance? MAYBE she didn’t VALUE romance and so never bothered with it. Frankly I think that’s it, because she went to Yale, and let me tell you about academia’s disdain for genre-- ESPECIALLY romance-- as a non literary form of narrative. Or perhaps there was a bit of the disdain which kept her from understanding what it means to write a romance or learning how to. That might also explain the kind of confessional writing style. Because even though this IS fantasy, and academia has disdain for SFF (not as much as romance) lit fic focuses on character over action or plot, which that internal monologue fits better. I went to college only five years before Bardugo, so essentially the same era, and it took me YEARS to get rid of that naval gazing internal monologue.

So what do I think of Malina in the books? I think it did not live up to the promise of the narrative. And I think the show will probably be able to make good on that promise, because romance is good tv, so they won’t shy away from it. The scaffolding of a great Malina story is there, but the details that make it rich and compelling are missing. 

So my opinion of book Malina is not that it’s toxic like some people believe. It’s not. It’s probably IMMATURE. But that’s not really wrong for a couple of twenty year olds, both of whom are immature. I think the writing didn’t go far enough. It wimped out on the romance, and whether that was deliberate or unintentional, it’s a flaw in the story of the great epic romance that it was honestly narratively designed to be. 

I’m looking forward to what they can do with it in coming show, though.

[sepublic]

Willow’s Unwanted Fan

While I don’t exactly think the two would be healthy unless after plenty of development... I am imagining Willow VERY hesitantly giving Boscha a chance as just an acquaintance, and... maybe Boscha makes an offhand remark or feels some frustration at Willow, who has it so easy in becoming popular once she applies herself because of how innately talented she is, how lucky she is- And meanwhile Boscha had to work so hard for fame.

Of course, Boscha doesn’t realize what this says about how toxic the coven system is, and how unfair it is because some people ARE blessed better than others; And the idea that people who are less well-off than others only have a lack of effort on their part to blame, is a faulty assumption that she defaults to, to justify cruelty and superiority. In the end, there’s a lot more to success than just hard work, there are plenty of factors that you just can’t control, so maybe a lack of success by others isn’t something you can fault them for...

Maybe Boscha accuses Willow of being ungrateful, of taking for granted the kind of power she has as a popular witch at school, citing some examples -such as herself- of how other kids really struggle to achieve this sort of fame... And Willow needs to recognize that she has a privilege, a luxury that she really needs to take advantage of and make the most of; She’s got a lot of potential, and Boscha just wants to help Willow achieve that!

Kind of like a parallel to how some kids feel pressured by parents and teachers to pursue major accomplishments in academia because of their potential, when really they’re content with the humble goal they normally desire... Perhaps Boscha will try to vicariously live out her lost power, or at least a talent and level of achievement she never had/will have, through Willow- Maybe repeating what her mother tries to do with her, even! And this’d be a particularly horrifying revelation to Boscha, who doesn’t seem to treat her mother with much respect and maybe even sees her as someone to avoid being like...

In addition, maybe Boscha is trying to replace Amity as a friend by having Willow as the powerful witch that Boscha looks up to and emulates... Though in this scenario, Boscha is almost consciously trying to mold Willow into that specific image of what she wants her role model to be, whereas with Amity she was mostly just projecting, and not recognizing Amity’s actual personality. I could see Boscha trying to get petty revenge against Amity, by making Willow so much more popular and cooler than she had ever been, especially since Willow is apparently more talented than the Blight girl,

So just as her mother uses Boscha’s achievement to show up Odalia and her kid, Boscha uses Willow to show up Amity by basically bragging about how her new friend is so much better; How Boscha is GLAD Amity left her, so the Blight girl is no longer holding her down, and Boscha can actually hang out with people who deserve it... And similarly, Amity is missing out on so much potential that Boscha could’ve supported her in reaching (just as Amity left Grudgby), and it’s all her loss!

Boscha finds an unusual resignation in not being the best, so she settles for latching onto the actual best, and making the most of them to spite those she feels ‘didn’t appreciate her enough’. Boscha is basically trying to convert Willow to be more like her, so she can actually live with Willow being better than her, and thus validate her own beliefs in a very roundabout way, by having the ‘best’ (AKA Willow) agree with them!

She can have Willow validate Boscha’s own choices and values in life, by making Willow reach the same ones... And so Boscha can have a role model who she looks up to, but also a friend who basically tells her that what she’s doing is right, and that Boscha isn’t doing anything wrong! Boscha doesn’t want to consider or self-reflect, she just wants someone to look up to, by providing a flattering world-view that isn’t challenging and only confirms what Boscha already believes in.

Regardless, Willow senses some toxicity brewing and she nopes out of there entirely, and/or completely shuts down Boscha’s train of thought. I think Boscha and Willow could have a very interesting dynamic later down the line, especially in regards to how Willow is possibly becoming more popular than Boscha, and having her greater magical strength acknowledged, particularly begrudgingly by Boscha herself... Although I hesitate to say that there’d be an outright positive relationship between the two, much less actual romance.

Goodness, what if Boscha was SO desperate to have some validation of her old role and beliefs, that she just... goads Willow into attacking her, under the satisfaction that if Willow beats her up, then it justifies her hierarchy of stronger witches being above the weaker ones! And even after being defeated, Boscha just trails behind Willow because she’s really accepting any retaliation as self-punishment for not being strong enough; That maybe she becomes SO devoted to the idea of a role model or a leader that she can follow, that she actively revels in being hurt because it’s part of some really sick and twisted concept of ‘suffering builds character’!

What I’m basically saying is, what if Boscha was like Jasper towards Lapis in Alone at Sea, fully accepting of any abuse from Lapis, because Lapis is SO strong that she’s fully justified in thrashing a weaker Jasper, and it gives Jasper some martyrdom satisfaction to serve and provide for someone who’s so much better than her, especially if it means having any taste or association of the kind of power she looks up to! Maybe Boscha just accepts, if not embraces, any retaliation from Willow as proof of her belief that strong witches should be above the weaker ones, etc., thereby validating Boscha’s loss because all IS right in the hierarchy, it just shifted!

Maybe Boscha even enjoys being hurt, because deep down it plays into some possible self-loathing at losing to Willow, while also acknowledging Willow’s victory and strength... And she keeps picking fights with Willow no matter how badly she gets hurt, because Boscha believes that with each battle, she’ll get better and better and maybe one day defeat the Park girl, so any injuries she suffers on the way are totally justifiable if it means getting back on top!

And Willow is in a dilemma where she can’t just smack Boscha away, because she doesn’t want to contribute towards that belief and justify it... She hates Boscha and won’t help her, but generally refuses to take the next step in harming the girl by entrenching her in her own ideas. Maybe we’d have a scene similar to Lapis taking her rage out on the other Lapises and thrashing them, reveling in her power over them; Only to realize that this isn’t strength, it’s just tyranny. And just as Lapis rejects Nice Lapis’ worship by admitting that her own retaliation went too far, maybe Willow does the same to Boscha...

...Of course. Even if Willow doesn’t want to outright harm Boscha, nor does she want to give her any satisfaction by playing by her game and rules; If Boscha were to threaten any of her friends, of course she’d punt Boscha into the stratosphere, no guilt nor hesitation. Because in that kind of situation, it’s just a pragmatic scenario of self-defense, where physical safety is prioritized above any ‘principles’ or ‘points’ that are trying to be made here. And Boscha is just someone Willow is going to have ignore, kick aside, and not waste time nor energy in... That yeah, if Willow hurts Boscha to defend herself, that sucks, especially if it contributes to Boscha’s toxic beliefs; But in the end, Willow’s own comfort is prioritized above all-else, and it’s Boscha engaging with Willow, that makes Willow’s happiness come at the cost of Boscha’s own recovery.

Boscha only has herself to blame for Willow choosing a painful option in that ultimatum, because she’s the one that set it down to begin with- Like when she made her friends choose between Boscha and King-Luz, and not letting them be content with both. Or of course, when Boscha makes the school choose between herself, or Willow... When both can be popular and beloved, this isn’t a pie to divvy up! Willow just might beat up Boscha regardless of whether or not she’s playing into the girl’s point or not, because Willow’s comfort comes before proving Boscha wrong- And it’s this apathetic disregard, that it’s meaningless to Willow whether or not Boscha is vindicated, that she’d rather not be bothered by the problem to begin with... That will show Boscha just how pointless her efforts have been, and how little they mean in the end.

If Boscha sometimes dismisses things or people as being ‘beneath’ her, then she’s about to be on the receiving end by none other than Willow Park herself...! It’s Willow’s out of sight, out of mind principle- Unintentionally playing by the game or not, it’s all inconsequential and interchangeable, it just. Doesn’t. Matter. Willow has more important things to worry about, because Boscha isn’t important, and she’ll do what she needs to do to get Boscha out of the way and out of her hair so she can focus on what Willow REALLY cares about. 

And knowing how little she actually means to some, that she’s not the center of other people’s world like Boscha wanted to believe, that Willow certainly has no place for her that isn’t an afterthought; It would be quite the wake-up call. People have lives beyond Boscha, they don’t need her and thus they aren’t obligated to her; So don’t act like they are, Boscha, and don’t act like you can change this and force them to reciprocate by ‘earning’ that right in a challenge they never agreed to.

[aros001]

Read through light novel vol. 14. Random thoughts.

I haven't read/watch a lot of harem stories. My exposure is mainly from Rosario+Vampire, Negima, UQ Holder, and maybe Code Geass and Overlord (I'm not sure if I should count Konosuba). So my perspectives on how harems typically work in stories is a bit limited. That said, I do like how Naofumi's "harem" differs from the norm I'm aware of.

Most harem MCs: Has many girls after his heart/wang and is either oblivious to it, can't make up his mind as to who he actually likes, or doesn't have the time for love/booty.

Naofumi: "Will you people f**king leave me alone?!"

I just love the concept of Naofumi's "harem", where a second person who likes him romantically isn't even introduced until volume 10 and Naofumi is absolutely annoyed with every member who joins his "harem", save for Raphtalia.

I tend to forget Naofumi has a brother because it isn't brought up that much, even though I did like that backstory for Naofumi we got in vol. 1 regarding him. It does make me wonder how much time is passing in his old world vs. this new one. With the other three heroes, they died, so they don't really have lives they can go back to. But for Naofumi's parents and brother he could theoretically be missing for months or years by the time if or when he goes back. But back on topic, I do like him drawing parallels to his family and Sadeena's, how his brother compares and contrasts with her and her sister when it came to the pressure from the parents. I already like Sadeena but it was nice to see her and Naofumi actually getting to bond a little over something that was very personal to one of them, without romance or attraction being the main drive of their interaction like it usually is. Honestly, there were some nice parallels drawn between characters throughout. Naofumi's brother with Sadeena and her sister. Sadeena and Raphtalia's father with Shildina and the child emperor. Even a little bit with Raphtalia's status in Q'ten Lo with Naofumi's in Siltvelt. It's a good thing she's not staying too long or she might end up in a harem bath like he did (even though, given the difference between male and female biology, there wouldn't be much point in that. She'd get her selection of guys but can only get pregnant with one at a time).

I'll admit, most of this book I was waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me, mainly because of Naofumi's comments throughout of how well the invasion was going and how stupid the enemy was being. I was waiting for it all to be some kind of trap or manipulation but...nope, their government really was just that bad and the victory was just that easy. On the one hand, it does make it feel like less of an earned victory, since they didn't have to fight too much to achieve it until the very end (and in that case it was mostly Sadeena and Raphtalia against technically the same single opponent), but on the other hand, in regards to the overall story, a comment from Naofumi does make an argument for why it works, comparing Q'ten Lo and its ruling class to Queen Melromarc. A respected ruler whom is very skilled at diplomacy and manages to work with or at least create truces with other countries, even those hostile to hers like Siltvelt, vs. the child emperor of a completely isolated country (save for some imports from Siltvelt) whom is placed on the throne far before he's ready and puppeted from behind the scenes by a very self-serving individual. There is certainly a very (unfortunately) real argument to be made as to why the latter would be already be on the verge of falling apart from such greed and sort-sighted actions. Wisdom and long-term planning vs. greed and short-term gains.

This is going to sound weird but Motoyasu #2 reminds me a little of Bakugo from My Hero Academia, in regards that they both fill a similar trope, where the character (a non-villain) is very unpleasant and easy to hate but you, the audience, do have to acknowledge, even begrudgingly, how good and skilled they are at what they do. He's a horrific perv and womanizer but his blacksmithing abilities are genuinely impressive, especially with how he handled that cursed blade from the Hydra and his explanation of life force applied to smithing. I don't think we've had another character quite like that yet in this story. The other three heroes were also unpleasant and easy to hate but after the first wave battle they never really showed anything the audience is forced to give them props for, at least in comparison to what Naofumi and party could already do. They were unpleasant and were useful only in what they could potentially be once they got their heads out of their asses, not for what they were currently. I imagine we'll get something similar to the trope with Trash at some point, as even the Queen herself talked about how brilliant a strategist he once was. Though Bakugo grew as a character as time went on and the unpleasant parts of his character slowly winded down. I'm not sure we'll see that with Motoyasu #2 and Trash. Trash is maybe more likely but he'll have more of a journey he'll have to go through after how unpleasant (and kind of unhinged) he's been.

The parts about Naofumi's character that I like the most have almost nothing to do with him being a hero. I love that he's a really good businessman, both of the good and shady parts of it, and that he's a really good cook, even when he's not adding life force to the dishes. For as much as he wants to go home, of the four heroes he'd be the one who'd have the easiest time settling down in the new world once the waves are gone, since being the Shield Hero just makes what he does a little easier and it's not absolutely essential to do it. He can use his shield to improve the quality of medicines or compound it for him but he still can make good medicine on his own.

Also that he can't stop basically adopting kids despite flatly denying that he is any sort of parental figure or that he should be seen as such.

"I'm not your mother!" He says as he wears an apron and cooks and dishes up delicious hot meals every day.

"I'm not your father!" He says as he teaches them confidence and toughens them up against those who'd ever try and hurt them again.

"I'm your owner! I'm a tyrant! A dictator! I'll make you work off every penny I've spent on you!" He says as he keeps them safely protected from the dangers of the world they can't yet handle and offers them a place of peace and security like they've never had before, taking the time out of his day to play with and entertain them when they ask him enough.

Naofumi collects son and daughter figures like Lilo and Steven Universe collect father and mother figures. No wonder Raphtalia and so many women like him. He's a business owner, can cook, never gets drunk, and is good with kids and animals (and threatened to feed a kid to an animal! That's double points right there).

That reminds me. I'm not sure how much time passes between when each group/generation of Holy Heroes is summoned but I'm curious when we'll meet (or if we've already met) a child/decedent of one of the previous heroes. A previous Shield Hero apparently really like his harems so I'm sure he must have sired at least a few children (unless the shield also offers protection against pregnancy (Condom Shield!)).

So...Makina. Bitch #3 or Kyo #2? I think either would fit, though I suppose Bitch #2 is just my nickname for Kyo and not one Naofumi ever gave him. Honestly, from just the short bit she was in the story, she kind of feels like if Kyo and Bitch had a baby.

...I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I kind of love Ren and Rishia being exposition buddies, just exclaiming aloud all the techniques and magics that are happening during a fight.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/shieldbro/comments/fm85q5/read_through_light_novel_vol_14_random_thoughts/

[extraordinarilyextreme]

finally watched Guardian (2018) and i need to talk

Warning: contains MASSIVE SPOILERS, probably too much music/song analysis, my poor translations from Chinese to English, and some references to the original novel (disclaimer: my novel-reading was mostly jumping around because i have a problem where I’m not fluent enough to read the original Chinese novel and I don’t usually like English translations)

1. the freakin opening theme: We Won’t Be Falling by Chen Xueran... (also I see you Tina Guo on the cello thank you queen)

the amount of chills i get every time an episode starts,,, fantastic! marvelous! the lyrics are very VERY apt to the story of Guardian, esp this drama adaptation

(“We are the one/We will be holding on/For the promise we held for life/For the people we love are leaving” ... “And the story will keep on going”)

1.1. the promise? may i direct you to novel chapter 75? 

Shen Wei: “Sometimes I think if one day you can remember everything, then I will be able to say to you: look, I did it, I did all that I had promised you; not one bit did I miss, not one word did I go back on.”

they promise to keep the peace, to protect both Haixing and Dixing; and in the show, it’s a promise they keep with their lives

2. Zhu Yilong plays THREE characters and is able to differentiate them perfectly with particular microexpressions

-Ye Zun (literally, “Respect the Night”; “Lord/Master of the Night” would be a better title) sets off my fight-or-flight instincts even though i think his name tries a little too hard to be edgy; the way he sneers, the smiles that don’t reach his eyes, also that infamous tongue flick when Zhao Yunlan sees through the act... i think it’s both great and sad that Yunlan could differentiate the twins because, why, Shen Wei would never be so openly flirtatious (and wear a deep-cut shirt like that lol)... the delivery of “Xiao Yunlan” disturbed me so much—wonderful, stellar acting

-Black Cloaked Envoy: does his best to bend the rules where he can for the Dixingren because he’s just so fundamentally GOOD; he’s empathetic despite how stern and strict he seems to be, and how much he claims to enforce the clearly-cut laws... he’s an absolute babie ten thousand years ago (Yunlan, doesn’t it hurt your conscience to flirt with such a babie?)

-Shen Wei: in the novel, his name (both surname and first name) are given to him by Kun Lun’s incarnations—there’s a lot of power in naming something, in naming someone; he’s good-natured and gentle, always polite... he pushes up the glasses [that he doesn’t need] a lot, perhaps because he’s used to pushing up his mask as the Envoy

2.1. i find it very striking that Shen Wei dies without his glasses; he doesn’t die as the Envoy, he doesn’t die as the Professor; he dies as a person, as the person who loves Yunlan the most and has loved Yunlan for ten thousand years

2.2. the other notable moments we see Shen Wei without his glasses are where he apologizes to Yunlan [and Yunlan apologizes at the same time because they’re pining idiots] for not noticing the camera in his office, where he sets aside all his pride as Envoy and Professor and kneels in the rain for the man he loves (lwj kneeling after visiting the Burial Mounds, yea?), and of course after he slices up an orange [cuz food = love] only to find Yunlan asleep and drapes his jacket over the silly silly man... anyway, Yunlan is indeed the only person Shen Wei is comfortable enough to reveal everything to, all defenses and masks (literal and figurative) lowered

2.3. that last instance (ep 26) is when Shen Wei pulls out his necklace and reminisces as he gazes fondly at Yunlan; the song that plays during this is 《乱心曲》or “Chaotic Heart Song”... may I direct you to novel chapter 65 where Yunlan finds all the paintings and pictures his Xiao Wei has kept from the centuries?

“邓林之阴初见昆仑君，惊鸿一瞥，乱我心曲。” which translates to “In the shade of the woods I first saw Kunlun-jun; a glimpse of his grace wrought chaos in my heart’s song”

2.4. but also let’s not forget the [in]famous cut wrist scene of ep 23, where our dear Shen Wei, without glasses, as a person who loves Yunlan—not the aloof Envoy or the well-spoken Professor—is reduced to two words: “Worth it.” Yunlan is worth everything to him; this goes without question, without a second thought. Kun Lun (Yunlan) told him not to regret whatever decisions he’ll make, and Ye Zun scolds and laughs at his brother for giving up his life for a human/Haixingren, but of course Shen Wei doesn’t regret dying to protect Yunlan, dying to protect Haixing. (also, peep the behind-the-scenes where Shen Wei grabs Yunlan’s hand for a moment as he blocks the attack from Ye Zun)

2.5. on this same train of thought, Da Qing brings up a line from ten thousand years ago where Shen Wei claimed he would never kill unless it was for the world... and, well, he kills for Yunlan doesn’t he?

3. Bai Yu plays our charismatic Chief Zhao Yunlan/Kun Lun and hoo boy does he do an excellent job; the found family vibes of the SIU are spectacular and the way he flirts with tries to recruit Professor Shen is endearing and touching

3.1. there’s another piece from the OST called 《一点真心》, translated to “A Little Sincerity” though I would use “A Bit of a Sincere Heart” because it too references the novel

Kun Lun’s confession to Xiao Wei: “我富有天下名山大川，想起来也没什么稀奇的，不过就是一堆烂石头野河水，浑身上下，大概也就只有这几分真心能上秤卖上两斤，你要？��去。” [I’m rich with famed mountains and endless rivers under heaven, but none of it feels rare when I think about it. It’s all just a pile of broken stones and uncultivated streams. From head to toe, there is probably only this bit of my sincere heart that is worth anything weighed on a scale. You want it? Take it.]

Zhao Yunlan’s confession to Shen Wei: “我别的东西也有，只是你可能大多都看不上，只有这一点真心……你要是不接着，那就算了吧。” [I have other things, only you probably would not think much of them. There’s only this bit of my sincere heart... If you don’t want to catch it, then forget it.)

And Shen Wei’s reply to Yunlan’s confession is of course “我接住了。” [I’ve caught it.]

3.2. the novel is a happy ending because Xiao Guo’s important role actually plays a part (i literally don’t understand why the show couldn’t do that after they built up so many expectations about his good character/merit/inability to be corrupted but ANYWAY)... Shen Wei, Xiao Wei, the little Ghost King has a soul and wow isn’t that just beautiful after everything he did to become worthy/deserving of Kun Lun’s attention and love

4. the Zhang Ruonnan and Wang Yike (death-touch Dixingren) case in ep 3 is an obvious parallel to the “brotherly” relationship of WeiLan... Shen Wei’s line of “Many tragedies were destined from the start” references the show of course but also the paradoxical precognition that marks the drama version of WeiLan; in both of their “first meetings”, one of them was always already in love with the other—Yunlan, as Kun Lun, knew he would have to return to his own time at some point and thus doom this impressionable young Envoy to ten thousand years of waiting and Shen Wei (honestly in a Code Geass Lelouch kinda style) knew he would have to die to defeat his brother

4.1. the importance of “touch” in this case alludes to novel WeiLan, where of course Shen Wei watched over all of Kun Lun’s incarnations but wasn’t allowed to get close to him because hungry ghosts would inevitably devour the essence of the people around them; similarly Yike was terrified of touching Ruonnan all this time... but Ruonnan accepted her (just like how novel Kun Lun lets this intriguing little Ghost King trail after him)

4.2. speaking of Shen Wei’s grand plans and the idea of “knowing”, Yunlan reminds him that “You are not a weapon/blade, you are a person.” and wow once again, only Yunlan can pull the humanity from Shen Wei, who has carefully crafted his disguise and personality to fit what people expect of the Envoy and the Professor... but alas, Shen Wei fulfills his promise by in fact making himself a weapon; he poisons himself to become a bomb that will take down his brother

4.3. as many qualms and complaints as I have with Chinese censorship, much in the case of WangXian, i think i prefer the drama version of WeiLan to the novel version; the plot of the Guardian novel is a lot better in my opinion (with references to mythology and legends, as opposed to, what, aliens?? mutants from X-Men? quirks in My Hero Academia??) and yea the relationship of Kun Lun with Xiao Wei is built up a lot better and makes more sense than the time-travel of Yunlan masquerading as Kun Lun with Shen Wei... but there’s an unadulterated, unconditional kind of love that runs through the drama, whereas the novel had some darker (though probably more realistic) vibes of near-possessiveness and ulterior motives... Kun Lun/Yunlan in the novel can be, well, cruel, which is not necessarily out of character; it’s just seems a little wrong to me that you could threaten your partner in a relationship (if you keep things from me again, i really will turn against you + had i known xyz would happen, i really should have killed you)... plus i’m always a sucker for love without an “i love you”, a love that’s conveyed entirely through actions and gazes

5. Yunlan asks Zhou Weiwei (the mirror case) where her jacket was bought because he “wants to get one for [his] girlfriend” and lo and behold, what similarly-styled and colored coat does our Shen Wei show up in a few episodes later? (also the fact that Shen Wei dies wearing this jade-ish-blue-ish coat)

6. boyfriend jacket during the Moutain-River Awl case... boyfriend jacket!!!! Shen Wei claims he doesn’t need it and well he still wears it anyway because Yunlan’s love is unstoppable

6.1. the way Shen Wei grabs Yunlan’s elbow before running down the hill

6.2. Shen Wei being so freaking fine-tuned to Yunlan’s discomfort/pain as always that he drinks wine for him (and passes out immediately—heroics/bde of yllz! wwx and the alcohol tolerance of our dear lwj)

6.2.1. when Minister Gao brings up Yunlan’s dad and the Chief’s hands tighten... and of course nothing can go by Shen Wei, so he changes the topic of the conversation; also the way he leans forward as if to shield Yunlan

6.2.2. Yunlan is similarly Aware of his boyfriend’s boundaries; cue him politely excusing themselves from the dinner with Vice-Minister Guo when Shen Wei (of all people!) fumbles with his chopsticks

6.2.3. Yunlan also blocks Shen Wei from Minister Gao’s sight (subconsciously?) after that wedding showdown... even though he’s unhappy that Shen Wei has kept the identity of the Envoy from him, he trusts the other man enough to recognize there must be a reason; thus he doesn’t want other people to pry into the possibility that Shen Wei is a Dixingren

6.3. also, also that Shen Wei lets Yunlan have his way and use him as a pillow in the car once again (he also adjusts the actual pillow beneath Yunlan’s head to make it more comfortable)

6.3.1 the other Shen-Wei-is-Yunlan’s-pillow scene is when the professor picks up the poor hurting Chief off the road and in the taxi ride home... apparently this was an improvised scene from Bai Yu who just wanted to mess with Long-ge and our great Zhu Yilong just stayed in character and ran with it

6.3.2. the other notable improvised scene is the cute “Black Cloaked gege~ please be careful~ there’s someone is waiting for you at home~” [sorry that i don’t remember the exact line] but once again our great leading actors just stay perfectly in character

6.4. after Shen Wei wakes up from a night of being drunk (lol) Yunlan has left a note for him “I’ve gone back first, stay in touch. -Zhao” and what’s that on the corner of the note? why it’s a winky face

7. when Yunlan grabs the fake Zhang Danni’s wrist to confirm his suspicions, Shen Wei narrows his eyes... (lol is our Black Cloaked gege jealous)

8. when Yunlan claims he can swallow the painkillers dry, Shen Wei clenches his jaw in his anger at this idiot of a man for not taking better care of himself... you’ll find that a lot of Shen Wei’s anger is directed toward his husband being a self-sacrificial fool

8.1. after Yunlan uses the Hallows again and his nose begins to bleed, Zhu Yilong in all his acting glory has Shen Wei furious to the point that his lips tremble (cue Shen Wei angrily shoving a handkerchief into his husband’s face) [i really want to know if they ever broke character during this scene due to their proximity lol]

8.1.1. Shen Wei all but invades Yunlan’s personal space (he really does stand there between Yunlan’s legs guys) and he’s so careful even though he’s angry as he tries to stop the nosebleed; he’s aware the force might tip Yunlan backwards, so he immediately rests his hands on Yunlan’s thighs/knees to steady him

9. Yunlan has claimed that he doesn’t do things for the sake of gaining anything in return and yet every time he’s wanted things from dear Shen Wei... “take off your mask and smile for me”, “join the SID”... the sexual tension is Unreal during these scenes lol, you can see Shen Wei swallow visibly in anticipation + babie Shen Wei of ten thousand years prior all but chokes on his words when he promises to do ANYTHING Kun Lun wants him to do (honey where is your mind GOING???)

9.1. Bai Yu does have a bruise on his knee after the scene where Yunlan asks Shen Wei for something... dunno if it’s the actor’s bruise or the character’s bruise, but if it’s the character’s bruise—how did he get it? what exactly did WeiLan do that evening lol

9.2. also peep the fact that Yunlan almost always has a lollipop in his mouth when talking to Shen Wei... oral fixation much? (also the whole sequence where he tries to explain how to eat a lollipop to babie Shen Wei, wow the amount of homoerotic tension)

9.3. babie Shen Wei’s ears and cheeks are SO RED when Yunlan snatches the mask off his face

10. Yunlan’s hairstyle changes after Shen Wei joins the SIU (joins his family), much like how a bride would change her hairstyle after marriage in China ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (random note but CQL WangXian does this too when lwj puts his hair down/styled over the front of his shoulders when wwx wakes up 16 years later)

11. the first time we see Shen Wei spit up blood, there’s an echo of “Xiao Wei” faintly and Shen Wei mutters to himself “Xiao Lan” before looking up and saying louder “Zhao Yunlan” (nicknames/pet names/names only your family or lover can call you... this trope is good)

11.1. i also think a lot about how in the novel Kun Lun muses before he dies that it’s a shame he won’t see this Little Beauty [Xiao Wei] grow up to be a Great Beauty 

12. Shen Wei’s funny little eyebrow raise when Yunlan accidentally reveals he broke into the professor’s apartment once ( “riiiiiiiiight i definitely believe you”)

12.1. though the ep 23 scene is angsty, the fact Yunlan says “It’s the middle of the night, were you hungry?” seems to imply their relationship is a lot closer than just neighbors... they’re probably used to sharing an apartment/room at this point :)

13. when Yunlan is hurt, Zhu Hong looks to him but he only has eyes for Shen Wei

13.1. after Yunlan is blinded, Zhu Hong is the one cradling him but he calls for Shen Wei first and reaches for his hand; Shen Wei of course responds immediately “it’s me”

13.1.1. both times after Yunlan gets his eyesight back, the first thing he sees is the person who loves him the most

14. Shen Wei warms up the congee in the morning with his magic after he watches over Yunlan when his stomach pain acts up (domestic use of magic? yes please)

15. the bomb defusing scene in the hospital (video game -> reality case) really is framed like a wedding proposal... also the way that Shen Wei smirks lol he’s so proud of his husband

16. after his Envoy identity is revealed, Shen Wei all but abuses his Black Cloaked Envoy voice to stop his stupid husband from doing stupid things that will hurt himself and every time Yunlan is properly sh00k by it

16.1. we really go from Chief Zhao remarking in the Mountain-River Awl case that he’s used to ordering people around, not receiving orders to married bickering with Shen Wei to then agreeing to everything Shen Wei tells him to do

17. the fact that “Shen Wei, ah, Shen Wei... You are such a good person, how could I bear to let you go?” is an actual line from the censored DRAMA astounds me, nevermind that Shen Wei just made breakfast for his man and Yunlan is basically pouting up at him from the bed

17.1. the way Yunlan’s dad warns him to stay away from Shen Wei and Yunlan responds with something like “he’s sincerely good to me, I want to be with him”... “be with him”???? [inhales deeply] yea this is definitely a “brotherly relationship”

18. Yunlan’s “WOW” after the Envoy kills the monsters in the cave of the Mountain-River Awl case is hilarious and i dont understand how such a noise is physically possible,,, it sounds like a growl?????

18.1. Zhu Yilong was asked to mimic it during an interview (which he did not do and only half-heartedly gave a “wow”) and then Bai Yu did it again

19. also i inevitably got attached to the side ship of Lao Chu and Xiao Guo... they have so much skinship for a censored “brotherly relationship” lmao

the amount of face-touching and hand-holding that they do is unreal... they’re more canon than WeiLan in the drama adaptation methinks 

20. 《时间飞行》or “Flying Across Time” sounds like Yunlan’s reply to Shen Wei’s《只是太在意》or “Just Cared Too Much”

20.1. the lyrics of both these songs really cements this idea that both of WeiLan believe the other to be too good... Kun Lun was a god in the novel, and Xiao Wei was just a soulless little Ghost King... and then we have the incorrigible Chief Zhao pining after the beautiful and kind Professor Shen... i just have a lot of feelings about them becoming better people for each other, that their love really does make each other stronger

21. my favorite two pieces from the OST are Shen Wei’s theme (arranged by Kun Luo) and Kun Lun’s theme (arranged by Chen Xueran)

head’s up: it’s been like four years since i last even glanced at music theory so a lot of this might just make no sense to an actual professional

-Shen Wei: written in 4/4 time, Ab Major, melody is primarily carried by piano + strings; the piano almost sticks exclusively to triplets whereas the strings are in steady whole, quarter, and eighth notes—which creates in interesting impressionistic effect, kind of like hazy smoke or the ripples across the surface of a lake; every single measure uses decrescendo, so the first triplet is always the loudest and the three that follow get progressively softer (mimicking an echo)... the piece ends on the seventh note of the scale, which is usually a pretty awkward place to end and yet it doesn’t feel wrong it all; the piece uses a ritardando in the last three measures, and we simply drift off with that last G... i think it’s a beautifully written piece that perfectly portrays such a complex character as Shen Wei, someone who loved with everything he had, and was just so overwhelmingly good... and then he simply disappears as if the dream has ended. it makes me think of how he guarded over Kun Lun/Zhao Yunlan for thousands of years in the novel, never ever ever daring to meet him... and yet the other man always felt like he was waiting for someone

-Kun Lun: written in 3/4 time, a minor, there’s no real complex shift in the melody although there’s brief modulation into E major (dominant/fifth note); it’s a fairly somber piece, especially when the strings join in... it’s a steady waltz, and it finishes with the scale (second to last major is g, last major is a), like a circle coming back around [like their love story perhaps?]... there’s a finality to it, a completeness, a wholeness, which makes sense in the drama-verse because the moment Yunlan takes up the name of Kun Lun is when his love story with Shen Wei all fits together. the piece feels a little lonely in its minor key and all, a little sad, indeed as if you were standing at the top of a mountain surrounded by clouds and mist... the constant meter also reminds me of like the steady drip of water, the perpetual and inevitable passage of the days and time

-i don’t really understand how because the keys of the two pieces don’t fit together easily, but somehow it doesn’t feel wrong to play the pieces back to back; the melodies of both seem to call upon each other despite the differences in key and time signature, so it actually feels right. a circle without a beginning or an ending, wouldn’t you want your love to be so infinite?

-when yunlan finds shen wei in their bubble outside of time, when shen wei is about to leave him, shen wei is wearing the outfit of their first meeting. and the lyrics go “Across time, I am in the same place”... surely, they will find each other again.

[stillness-in-green]

Changeling: The League (3/3)

Bonus Miscellanea!  A sampler round of various other villains and some AU-of-the-AU versions of the story and characters, including some alternate takes on characters using other game lines from the World of Darkness.  

This post is the last one I have in mind for the concept, but I hope everyone who was curious enough to read them enjoyed them.  There’s some fun stuff in this post in particular, I think--the Word of Darkness really is a very versatile setting.  Find the explanations and the League of Villains here, the follow-up with the Meta Liberation Army here, or just hit the jump for the bonus material.

THE MINIONS

All for One’s direct loyalists and followers.  All are dual-kithed or otherwise eyebrow-raising in kith/seeming combination, and all have a high enough Wyrd that their kith abilities are starting to evolve--serving AFO does have its benefits.  With AFO imprisoned back in Faerie and the cycle stalled out, AFO’s followers are finding themselves facing an unclear future, and so each is having to come up with what they want to do going forward.  Mostly want Tomura to come back and get things moving again, having little sense that there is a world out there that’s more “real” than the one they currently inhabit.

Kurogiri

Type: Palewraith Darkling, Chatelaine dual kith.  Once a caretaker for Tomura, he opts to find Tomura out in the real world in hopes of resuming that directive.  When Tomura does not show even a shred of recognition, Kurogiri opts to set up a bar in the local Hedge, making himself “available.”  

Mantle: Winter, season of secrecy.  Has a servant’s circumspectness with a loyalist’s desire to keep his secrets, as well as a deep, very old melancholy that even he doesn’t really remember the reason for anymore.  

Contracts: Fleeting Winter I, Sorrow-Frozen Winter I-III, Dream I-V, and Smoke I-IV.  For Smoke, he has the old 4-dot Smoke-stepping clause rather than the more modern Murkblur, which is something of a tell regarding his true age.

 Ujiko

Type: Chirurgeon Darkling, which shouldn’t actually be possible by the categorizations as the fae understand them.  He’s been in AFO’s hands for a long time, though.  Current fear: what’s going to happen to the realm if the cycle continues to stall?  Gears can only grind against one another for so long before something explodes!

Mantle: Autumn.  A mad scientist with a deep appreciation for breaking things open to find out how they tick.

Contracts: Artifice I-III, Shade & Spirit I-IV, Spellbound Autumn I-III, and Goblin Delayed Harm III.

 Gigantomachia

Type: Stonebones Elemental, Gargantuan dual kith.  AFO’s most loyal monster.  Would have tried to find Shigaraki sooner, but he’s far too removed from the human he once was to be able to find his way through the Hedge without aid.  Probably spends the first few parts of the story giving All Might trouble in Faerie.  

Mantle: Courtless.  Has no emotional affinities that don’t track back to All for One.  

Contracts: Oath & Punishment I-V, Communion (Earth) I-III, and Stone I-V.  Like Geten, a close replica of his canonical powerset.

OTHER VILLAINS 

Muscular: Bloodbrute Ogre.  Ex-gladiator; current terror.

Moonfish: Gristlegrinder Ogre.  Current cannibal; also current terror.

Mustard: Blightbent Elemental.  Looks cuter because he doesn’t have to wear the gas-mask to protect against his own fumes.

Stain: Razorhand Darkling, give or take a Pischacha dual kith.  Broken very deeply by Arcadia from the strict and upright man he once was, but Lost society was pretty much created to provide a safe haven for that kind of damage.  A Summer Court enforcer of some notoriety.  

Gentle Criminal: Windwing Beast.  Refuses to be ground-bound, and is posting videos of himself doing impossible stunts that are drawing some attention, for better or for worse.   

La Brava: Drudge Wizened.  Falls in love with Gentle for showing her that you don’t have to shrink into what other people tried to make of you.  Has absolutely dyed her hair bright pink.  Somehow amazing at stealth anyway.

Gag Inclusion That Makes No Sense With the Lore But Is Perfect Anyway So I’m Not Changing It: 

Overhaul: “Don’t be ridiculous.  There’s no such thing as magic.”  

A banality-riddled Dauntain, from the previous incarnation of the game.  This is how Magne survives--he doesn’t kill her, but rather nukes her glamour reserves/Wyrd score access so badly she has to spend the next three months in the motley’s Hollow living in as much fae decadence as they can afford her, dining on hedgefruit, pampering herself, and keeping up with her various dream pledges while she recovers.

ALTERNATE UNIVERSES, ALTERNATE TAKES  

Hero Court, Villain Court: There is a version of the story where Heroes and Villains are old labels from a time when the freehold was built around a now-collapsed Sun Court/Moon Court dichotomy, headed up by All Might and All for One.  In the days following the catastrophic last battle, changelings of the Hero Court and the Villain Court alike have begun picking up the pieces and realigned to what everyone hopes will be a more stable Seasonal Court model.  Endeavor is the Summer King, a changeling who somehow had four three children when it’s all but unheard of to have even one.

Final Boss Shigaraki: There is a version of the story that centers on Deku, and in that version, what Shigaraki learns is this: everyone and everything has an end waiting for them somewhere.  As the game story progresses through power creep and mounting stakes, dramatic revelations and shifting priorities, Shigaraki moves away from Autumn and becomes more attuned to the fatalistic but liberating philosophy of Dusk.  As such, he gains the Entropy Contract clauses, I-V.  In this fashion, Shigaraki is paralleled by Final Battle Deku, rising champion of the Dawn, who is likewise gaining mastery of the Contract of Shonen Protag Powers Potential.  Will they be enemies in the end?  Allies?  Either way, their fates are connected.

Changeling All for One: There is a version of the story in which All Might and All for One are both changelings, in which the entirety of My Hero Academia is a story being played out in some far realm of Faerie.  All for One here is not Shigaraki’s Keeper, but merely a mentor who, when expy!Kamino happens, takes the opportunity to get Shigaraki out, knowing that he himself has been gone from the world for far too long to ever make the return trip through the Thorns intact.  In this version, All Might is an unknowing Loyalist who follows Shigaraki out, determined to capture him “for the good of society”--which would, of course, entail dragging him back to Faerie.

Destro the Revolutionary: There is a version of the story in which Desto is not one of the Gentry, but rather a changeling from years past, one who was spearheading a huge movement advocating that the Lost should reveal themselves to human society writ large--that Faerie predation could never be stopped as long as humanity didn’t know about it, and changelings had the power to, well, change that.   And weren't they tired of living in hiding; didn't they wish they could tell their loved ones the truth?  And that was a message that a lot of changelings liked, but it was also a message that terrified changelings in equal measure, and so in the end, an operative/operation from the Seasonal Court freehold put Destro down.  

In that take, Re-Destro is a successor to Destro as someone who came out of a similar durance and the MLA is a group planning a retributive war against the Seasonal Courts for their perfidy.  Shigaraki and the League could either stumble across the plot or be actively approached as a potentially sympathetic party after Shigaraki's relationship to AFO comes out and endangers his position in his own freehold.  

Re-Destro the Prince: There is a version of the story in which Re-Destro is not a changeling at all, but rather a vampiric prince, heir to a forbidden blood discipline.  He and his followers catch wind of the League motley: not vampires, but not normal humans, either.  They seek the motley out to find out what their deal is and whether it will be a complication to the MLA’s plans.  Vampires are far more immediately dangerous than changelings, but changelings have so many wonderful little tricks up their sleeve, especially against people who are careless with their battle banter.  (But I’ll be real, I hardly know a thing about Vampire: The Requiem--I’m much more familiar with Masquerade.  This version of the story mostly exists because I’m a Shigaraki/Re-Destro shipper and I am not immune to adventures in sexy blooddrinking.) 

THE WIDE WORLD OF DARKNESS

There are many other spins one could put on various MHA characters that would be fun to explore.  I kept all the relevant characters fae (or Fae) because if I started thinking about all the things the characters could be, I would actually never stop--and anyway, I’m more familiar with Old World of Darkness meta than I am New World of Darkness.  A lot of the ideas were still fun, though, so for your perusal, here are some of the ones I came up with:

The Shie Hassaikai is an extremist Hunter cell dedicated to weeding out supernatural creatures of all sorts.

Ujiko is a wildly amoral retired Hunter running a mad scientist lab funded by dubiously sourced money from his fae patron, as long as he’s spending a requisite amount of time per month working on AFO’s projects.

There exists a Sin-Eater and his resident Geist who have become so tangled in each other that they no longer retain separate identities, and are now merely “Kurogiri.”  

Kurogiri is a changeling.  Yamada Hizashi is a Sin Eater.  Aizawa Shouta is a Hunter, and he and Hizashi both are trying to dig up information on what happened to Shirakumo Oboro, but neither one of them is anywhere near getting at the truth of the matter.  (This one might actually be true for the purposes of the main Changeling!AU story.)

Midoriya Izuru is a mortal taking his first, faltering steps into the great wide world.  He’s had no durance, no first change, no sire, no awakening--he’s just a young man who stumbles across a secret and has to decide what to do with it.

[lostinthewinterwood]

Crossworks 2020

Hello friend!

Right, so, ah… sorry this is late.  Got incredibly caught up in other exchange nonsense—I’m sure you know how it is, unless you have reasonable decision-making skills and executive function, in which case can I have some too?

…anyway.

Some of these have way more rambling/commentary than others but I am desirous of them all, don’t worry.

If you’re browsing for people to treat, 1) thank you, you’re awesome; 2) I will gladly accept treats in any medium :D

General DNW

Rape/non/dub-con; non-canonical major character death; heavy angst; hurt no comfort; graphic depictions of deliberate and methodical self-harm*; graphic depictions of suicide; anything E rated; smut; gore; heavy gender dysphoria; grimdark; complete downer endings; character bashing; incest; cringe comedy; a/b/o; mpreg; graphic eye trauma; graphic and/or permanent hand trauma (unless the setting can provide a more-or-less fully functional prosthetic or equivalent); issuefic; unrequested identity headcanons; a focus on unrequested romantic relationships**.

*I don’t include things like, say, punching a wall in a fit of emotion under this. however, something like cutting would not be appreciated.

**canonical levels of canonical ships are perfectly fine; background non-canon ships that I haven't dnw'd are okay too, unless otherwise specified in a request.

  General Likes/Other General Info

So, since most of my requests are for fusions, I should probably lay out what I tend to consider a fusion—it’s a little broader than the official Crossworks definition, I think, which is “A work in which characters of one canon are treated as if they always belonged in another setting, or their world has always had elements of another canon.”  All of that falls under my personal definition, as do fusions that are basically Characters A playing out the story of Canon B, even if the setting is still mostly that of Canon A.  For the one crossover I’ve requested, as noted in that prompt I really don’t care how that crossover comes about, just that it does.

 Generally—as you could maybe, possibly, tell from the theme of many of my requests—I’m a total sucker for fairytale fusions; I haven’t really elaborated on all of those combos, just know that I adore characters I know and love playing out a fairytale plot; if you’ve matched on that, I don’t really know how you could go too far wrong.

 Other general likes I think are most relevant for this exchange include:

– I really like plotty fics

– Secret identity and disguise shenanigans, the more layers to them and more absurdity the better.

– Found family; families of choice

– Character studies

– Worldbuilding

  Specific Requests

 Superhero Fairytales

Miraculous Ladybug, Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne | East of the Sun and West of the Moon

Fic/Fusion

request-specific dnw: breaking up Rapunzel/Eugene, romantic Rapunzel/Cass, romantic Varian/anyone else from the main cast (unless you age him up/them down)

Would love to see Rapunzel et al as Miraculous holders, or the Miraculous kids with the Sundrop and Moonstone and all that goes with that, or the characters from either series facing the plot of East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

For the comparison of ML and Tangled—there’s a lot to explore, I feel, with the creation/healing vs destruction/decay powers that the series both have going, along with the idea that if united the power becomes much, much greater, and far more dangerous.

 As a side note: I’m very not up to date with ML; the last episode I’ve currently seen is Chameleon. I know some spoilers, and I’m not super concerned about them overall, but if you write a fic that relies on an intimate knowledge of events post-season-two I will be lost.

  Time-Travelling Imposters

Mother of Learning - nobody103, Rigel Black Series (Harry Potter fanfic) - murkybluematter, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad)

Fic/Fusion

request-specific dnw: romantic Harry/Archie, explicitly breaking up canon ships fandom-specific exception: as long as it doesn't violate another dnw, if you do a Tam Lin fusion, the ship it's for (platonic or romantic or somewhere in between) is up to you.

Mother of Learning/Rigel Black Chronicles: I think it would be interesting to toss the RBC characters into the world/plot of MoL--who's the time traveler? who's the tagalong? The noble/nonnoble distinction in MoL and the Splinter Wars and the Weeping would be very interesting to warp into the RBC setting/plot, I'd expect, what with the pureblood/not!pureblood things and the Fade. (i'm not really requesting this, obviously, it's not in my fandoms, but if you're at loss for the angels--or indeed the faeries for a Tam Lin fusion--i always delight in the Tortallan gods showing up in RBC fic)

RBC/Tam Lin: don’t have too much to say here, but I think that RBC has plenty of relationships that you could fit into the dynamics here.

MoL/Tam Lin: in a weird way, MoL already has its characters in the roles they need to be in for a Tam Lin fusion, though the structure is of course very different--what is Zach if not a sacrifice against Panaxeth's release? What is Zorian if not the one who fights nigh-impossible odds to save him from that fate?

  Fairytale Gamer Kids

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms  

Fic/Fusion

Fandom-specific DNW: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing, full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad request-specific note: romantic Kaoru/Nanami is okay here if you want to fuse with a romantic fairytale; I'd equally enjoy such a fairytale being made more platonic or more ambiguous.

So, if you put the kids into the fairytale—who are they?  What fairytale are they in?  Can you work in the initial identity confusion, the ongoing ruse?

  Superhero Gamer Kids

Hanging Out with a Gamer Girl (Manga), Miraculous Ladybug

Fic/Fusion

request-specific DNW: sexualization of Kaoru’s crossdressing (or equivalent character's, if you fuse it the other way), romance between Kaoru and Nanami beyond light shiptease à la canon, full justification of Kaoru’s fears re: Nanami’s dad

 I'd love to see Kaoru and Nanami as Miraculous-holders; Marinette and Adrien as slowly-getting-less-reclusive gamers would also be fun, and there are some interesting parallels you could make with their family lives.

There are so many things you could draw from HOwaGG to make parallels to ML; is it that Ladybug is apparently a boy but Nanami a girl, and Chat Noire apparently a girl but Kaoru a boy—does that help them keep up their façade?

In terms of other parallels, there’s also Nanami and Marinette both being the only children of two loving parents, and Kaoru and Adrien both being the only children of distant/absent fathers and (seemingly) dead—and certainly absent—mothers.

As a side note: I’m very not up to date with ML; the last episode I’ve currently seen is Chameleon. I know some spoilers, and I’m not super concerned about them overall, but if you write a fic that relies on an intimate knowledge of events post-season-two I will be lost.

  Star Wars Fairytale

Star Wars Rebels: Servants of the Empire - Jason Fry, Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne | East of the Sun and West of the Moon  

Fic/Fusion

I don't have anything very specific here, at least not right now, but the idea of the protagonist questing to a near-impossible place to rescue a loved one is a parallel that I think it'd be interesting to draw out—in some ways the situations are utterly dissimilar, but they’re surprisingly alike in other ways.

  Superheroes Galore

僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia, Super Powereds - Drew Hayes

Fic/Crossover

fandom-specific dnw: non-canon ships

I'm very interested in the similarities and differences between these two superhero worlds--there's the Powered vs Super distinction in Super Powereds that's absent in bnha with its quirks, the wildly different (but both still formalized and structured) paths to becoming a hero, even just how common powers are in the different worlds. I'm not sure how well trying to wrangle both of them into the same world in the same era would work, but more power to you if you manage that, or maybe it's dimension hopping or time travel shenanigans that bring them into contact with each other--I really don't care on the mechanics here.

Also, the first time I saw Izuku my brain immediately went "hey, it's tiny green Vince!" and I think seeing them meet, at any point in their respective journeys, would be pretty funny and/or interesting.

I'd be into the other characters too—there’s also a comparison to be made, I feel, between Izuku as both powerful and analytic, and Roy and Hershel who are kind of the same but More and also split apart.

  Anyway, that’s probably enough rambling from me for now.  Good luck with the writing!

[flying-elliska]

I finally finished Call Down the Hawk ! Here’s my first reaction (very spoilery!!!!) 

- On the whole I loved it. Loved most of the new characters, the themes, the more grown up vibe and the expanding worldbuilding. Is very clearly a set up, opening novel so a bit frustrating in the pacing but nothing major, just a lot more questions than answers. I just felt like it was still the start of the novel, rising tension and then boom ! the end. Had the same feeling with the Raven Boys tbh. But mostly I didn’t want it to end so soon. 

- this book is so sad ? but sad in a nuanced, gotta cope with it, adult sort of way. Like TRC was about a cool adventure quest, of course there were threats but it was full of magic and friendship and the thrill of becoming yourself and wanting *something more.*This is about stopping the end of the world and people having no good options and I can’t think of one main character in this book that isn’t like...subtly devastating. But it’s sad in a way that centers the agency of the protagonists and how much they care and how hard they’re trying, so it doesn’t feel fatalistic or gloomy. It’s just *arrrrrgh my heart*. They’re all trying so hard to cope but if they don’t find a better way to cope with their problems soon it’s going to kill them. Lol the young adult mood nowadays or what. 

- Ronan broke my heart, really. I loved that on one hand there are clear signs that he’s grown so much - he is able to show tenderness, to be open about his sexuality, he’s taken control of his dreaming to a point where he’s capable to help Hennessy - but at the same time he’s clearly depressed and he doesn’t know his place in the world and feels like everyone is moving on without him. Because the implications of his powers make it impossible for him to live a ‘normal’ life. Surviving your teenage years and self-acceptance is only the beginning ; then you have to deal with a world that isn’t made for you. He needs to find his people. This is just so, so relatable for a neuroatypical twenty-something...feels like a punch in the face. I am sooooo happy he found Hennessy and I can’t wait to see where their relationship goes. Worried about Bryde and how easily he could manipulate Ronan, though. Also, I am interested in the new sun symbolism attached to him - the kid permanently dressed in black with his ‘night horrors’ previously - now he’s making little lights/little suns everywhere in the guise of fireflies or floating flowers or little lights ; he has sundogs and a sun blade. Obviously there could be a link to the fire that is slated to destroy the world (and Kavinsky’s fire dragon !!!!) but it can also very much go in the direction of ‘stepping into the light’ and full life giving potential and sun-drenched tomatoes and happiness. MAN his arc in this trilogy is going to rock so hard i just cannot wait. 

- I just love Hennessy and her girls so, so much. The idea of living with clones of yourself is so fascinating to me...the fact that Hennessy struggles with the similarities with her mother, the artist who killed herself, and how caring for the girls seems to be a substitute for caring for herself, which she can’t manage. That scene in the bathroom...heartbreaking. Like can you imagine not being able to sleep for longer than 20 min ? That’s torture. Nod her relationship with Jordan, so complex. This idea of ‘my parallel universe self can live a better life than me if I keep all the self-hate’ ; of dreaming a better version of yourself. They care for each other so much but there is so much resentment being trapped in that state of being too. I wonder why Hennessy dreamed copies instead of something else : out of a need to be less alone with her plight ? To find others like her ? Or is it a darker ‘take her not me’ way to hide ? The fact that she gets a moon sword in the end (the moon being a reflection of the sun duh) makes this symbolism all the more present. Maybe she had this struggle of feeling like a copy of her mother, beautiful and wild and doomed and codependent on the man she loved. I can’t wait to see where this goes. I was just heartbroken that most of the girls had to die. Plus some bi rep yayyyyy (and more characters that are not white dudes ftw). It’s interesting that the Lace picked her specifically to torment ; I can’t help but feel it’s tied to that unsteady sense of self. Anyway, I really hope Hennessy gets to a place of love and self knowledge and self care and being surrounded by people who love her. I feel like her POV really underlines how tiring it can be to doubt yourself so constantly. 

- Declan Lynch ! Wow, I just love love love a POV switch that shows unsuspected depths about a previously disliked character. His arc is really *eldest sibling plight* taken to the extreme. Being boring for survival because you can’t afford to be a problem. Yup, extremely relatable too. It’s very refreshing because a lot of the MC of TRC have this ‘edgy cool we don’t like rules vibes’ which can come over as very immature (i meah duh they’re teens) and Declan had to grow up too fast and his sticking to the rules and trying to impose structure on Ronan’s life and completely draining his own life of any sense of joy or individuality, feels half like a survival technique half trauma response stemming from the terror of being given responsibilities at way too young an age and coping with the chaotic environment he grew up in and the constant threat of discovery. It’s like, textbook ‘child parentalization’ and it really sucks and Niall Lynch is an incredible asshole. And Ronan is pretty much stuck in father worship mode and turning all his anger towards Declan. The growth there...is going to be super therapeutic. And I love his thing with Jordan. Survival makes it impossible for them to be their true selves but they find something true together ? Aww. I can’t wait for them to be together at the Barns, which is really Romance Central in this universe. (I foresee angst too but ehhhh). And more art flirting and museum dates. 

- I also love how dream beings are getting more autonomy in this book. I think Declan distancing himself from Jordan in the end is this old complex about being non-magical and therefore inferior, but also because he doesn’t consider dreams to be real people capable of consent or interiority. I found the idea of Aurora Lynch always extraordinarily fucked up and in this book we learn it’s even worse - that she was basically a copy of Declan’s real mom ? Imagine growing up with that...no wonder he hates Niall. Though the idea of Mor O Corra doing the same thing is really intriguing, makes you wonder what the fuck happened there (was it a mutual decision ? was it a revenge thing ? Man their whole family is just so messed up lmao. But I just love the idea of Boudicca and the magical lady mob though.) And Matthew learning he is a dream and starting to deviating from his ‘happy but kind of dumb’ behavior in the previous books. He’s always been this previsible creature but now he isn’t and I feel like a big difference between him and Jordan was this knowledge. She has this knowledge of what she is and she immediately has more sense of self and agency and I feel that that’s a key theme of the book - knowledge, self knowledge. It’s basically what the ‘Call Down the Hawk’ title links to - Bryde talking about the man who turned into a falcon and then a hawk and learning so much about the world ; calling down the hawk would mean the man coming down and sharing this knowledge ; for Ronan it’s as well meeting and helping Hennessy ; so it’s about knowing your own nature through meeting people who are like you, as well. I love !!!!!

- Adam ! Not enough Adam in this book. I spent the book missing him, but that makes sense, because that’s the mindset Ronan is in. He represents what Ronan can’t have, and the Longing tm just permeates the whole book. Everytime he appears he’s just the epitome of cool, whether as dark academia vibes Harvard Student with his queer clique the Crying Club or Hot Motorcycle Boyfriend. He knows exactly what Ronan needs - understands his distrust when Ronan wonders if this is the Real Adam, tells him ‘go slow’ instead of just don’t, wants to take a look at Bryde to check the dude out, drives eight fucking hours on a motorcycle he can’t even drive properly to spend three hours with Ronan...he’s just like a dreamboat in this one lmao and after all the shit he went through in TRC...Therapeutic. But he is also increasingly distant and it’s so painful in a delicious way - the longing between characters who are already together but who are being kept apart by life is one of my fave angst tropes ever. Ronan wants to grow old with him and has romantic horny farmer dreams about him and the whole ‘tamquam alter idem’ thing...Boi i die that shit is just so...Romance tm. And I love how true to them it is, they’re achingly tender and yet there is still that strong chaotic shithead vibe between the two of them. Honestly the fight with the murder crabs was fucked up but made me laugh so much too. But then Ronan not being able to stay ? HEARTBREAKING. Ronan having Adam under ‘MANAGEMENT’ in his phone...really fucking funny but also feels like Ronan puts a sense of stability and direction in Adam and now that Adam is so distant...he feels extra vulnerable so he compensates with jokes. Ouch. Anyway I really want more about Adam and the Crying Club. Adam’s mix of cold, calculating pragmatism and compassion and understanding ? I love him so much, damn. I hope he’s a POV character in next book. I can see Ronan disappearing with Bryde and Adam looking for him, tbh. He’s too important to Ronan to stay on the periphery forever I hope. 

- the Carmen Farooq-Lane chapters were my least favorite, especially when she’s with Parsifal - it felt kind of repetitive. I feel like Maggie’s villain chapters are often sort of a weak point - the bad guys tend to be either ‘Vague Ominous Cosmic Horror Entity that wants to Destroy Everything’ (also often a terrifying reflection of mental health issues/existential terror) or ‘Evil Prep’ lmao, and I had the same feeling w the Whelk or Greenmantle chapters in TRC. That said, I feel like Farooq-Lane has potential. Her persistent self delusion about how she’s the good guy is fascinating. Her ‘evil sibling, obvious trauma hidden by politeness and cleanliness, probably is going to have a redemption arc’ thing feels very Gray Man. Her punching Ramsay moment was very ‘hell yeah’ and tbh I already ship her with Liliana - who feels a bit underdrawn at the moment too, but interesting potential. The Moderators, still, feel a bit too ‘generic lawful evil agency’ yet, but the concept is interesting. I really really love Bryde as an idea though. His speeches to Ronan are fascinating ; from one aspect they really illustrate a fascinating concept of the Earth coming back to real magic but from another, he sounds like a cult leader. Selling this idea to vulnerable people that their difference makes them special - and well Ronan and Hennessy definitely are, but does that make them better than other people ? Seen as how Ronan reacts to Declan, it feels like he would be vulnerable to that idea. Hennessy not so much ; I can see her accept Bryde’s help out of pure necessity maybe, but not be swayed by his lies. I really feel like they’re going to need each other. 

- So much cool worldbuilding...The Fairy Market concept is amazing (but also scary as shit right...like they’re selling people ? Probably dreams but that is still fucked up as hell ? Then again we’ve seen dreams die in pretty casual circumstances so the question is very much ‘so...what is personhood here?’). The idea of Visionaries is absolutely horrifying. Some people saying Adam could become one ? My god I’m not sure if I could stand those levels of angst. His ‘seeing the future of the world instead of people’ thing though...feels very compatible. Or at least like Adam could contrebalance the Visionaries’s visions somehow at the very least. Anyway, this is going to hurt. But it’s cool to have more answers ; the ending of TRC left a lot unexplained in my mind about the Lynch fam or why all those people wanted the Greywaren so bad etc. So this is very satisfying. 

- So Miss Maggie really went wanting to be normal at the expense of your true self is no way to live and also if you don’t create what you need to, you're going to die ? haha thanks for the callout i feel attacked. But honestly her saying that this was about the necessity and price of creation man I am soooo interested in where this is going to go next. All in all a stellar book, 10/10 would read again to overanalyze (yeah more than this even), most frustrating thing is waiting for the next one 

[fucktheoryquestions]

On The Economics of Higher Education

I would like to ask you a question I've been thinking of for a while, if you have the time. I have just started my PhD in Anthropology in University of Helsinki, and I have been involved in quite a few student campaigns against university reforms (of neoliberal kind). Yet still all our universities are public institutions, there are no tuition fees and all students receive student allowance, so our situation is quite different than in, say, UK and US. I've been able to study two majors without acquiring any debt, which is quite common here. My question is: Do you think university system that is publicly funded and free for all students (and adjunct staff is payed comparatively well) still has some of the irredeemable qualities that you describe in your critique of US elite universities? Best wishes, Viljami Kankaanpää-Kukkonen

Hi, I appreciate the question, thanks for letting me respond publicly so I don’t have to answer it more than once.  

Before I answer your question let me say what perspective I’m speaking from.  I’ve been in the US for 10 years.  My involvement in American academia was mostly at private institutions on the East Coast, though I took a few seminars and spent time at Rutgers and CUNY, as well. Before that, I did my undergraduate education in Berlin at the Free University.  I was in the last generation of students at the FU who graduated with a traditional German Magister degree; even before I graduated, the FU began to implement the accords of the Bologna Process, which aimed to unify educational standards across the EU and which led to a splitting of the Magister degree into American-style BA and MA programs.  I haven’t been involved in European academia in the past 10 years.  My “data” consists in 10-year-old experience with the German system; extensive 10-year-old familiarity with the British and French systems; and passing 10-year-old acquaintance with the Italian and Dutch systems.  I’m sure that higher education in Europe has changed a great deal in the past 10 years in response to the pressures and forces you describe as “neoliberal,” so take everything I say in light of these ongoing developments.  

Very simply put:  the more “Americanized” an educational system becomes, the more its structure and consequences will resemble the structure and consequences of the American education system.  The most distinctive feature of the American university system is its exorbitant cost, and its relation to debt and hence to the labor market.  So the shortest answer I can give you is No, a free or cheap university system does not share all the dangerous implications of the American system.  That said, the disciplinary and organizational nature of the European system is very similar to the American system and growing more so.  I don’t think humans are “rational actors,” but I do think we constantly perform conscious or unconscious cost/benefit analysis, and I think it’s easy to see why the cost of an American higher education is much greater than the cost of a European higher education, not only in dollars but also in anxiety, in preparation, and in non-academic lifestyle commitments required to access and survive the university. The higher the cost of attending a European university becomes, the more that system will resemble the American one 

That’s the short answer, and anyone who’s reading this can feel free to stop reading here; the rest of this post is just an elaboration.  

Your e-mail mentions “other countries” generally, but I’m not comfortable speaking about countries I don’t know enough about. I’ve met and studied with and read papers by academics from all over the world, and I know some vague stories, but that’s not the same thing as having concrete knowledge of economic relations, so I’m going to localize the rest of my response and frame it as a comparison between the American and the European systems with which I’m familiar.  

* 

A free university system cannot engage the same socio-economic relation to the labor market and to personal debt that the American university system currently engages.  The difference has to do with a different relation of the institution to the state and to private capital, as well as to the job market and to relations of labor and production more generally.  For these reasons, I consider the European university less irredeemable and pernicious than the American one.  

It shares many of the same features and problems, especially on the inside of the institution and in the production of knowledge, but I think the social role of the university is less compromised and dangerous and I think European universities could be improved more easily than American ones – for now. As we’ve already noted, the twin ideologies of privatization and austerity are pushing hard to “Americanize” higher education in Europe and elsewhere.  The more successful these efforts are, the more irredeemable the university becomes.

Before I continue, please note that while I’m less critical of the European university system, I’m not holding it up as an ideal or a model or ignoring its very real problems.  For example, I discuss the non-academic (vocational/professional) higher education system in many European countries as opening up more paths to financial stability than are available in the US.  I stand behind that claim, but I’m also very aware that the parallel higher education systems in Europe have a classist function and a classist history, serving mostly to route upper and upper-middle class students to universities and poorer students to vocational schools.  I’m also keenly aware that I went to university in a city (Berlin) that has more Turkish residents than Ankara, but I can count on one hand the number of Turkish students that sat in seminar rooms with me at that university. Etc., etc.  This is not an encomium to the European higher ed system, it’s just a description of some crucial differences.  

There are at least three major differences between the American and the European higher education systems:   

·      Debt

·      Non-academic higher education

·      Public system only vs. public/private dual system

I’ll expand on all these, but first we can observe that despite a profound difference in the economic relations in which the university is embedded, a fascinating aspect of the question is that there is fairly little difference between higher education systems in terms of content and style.  You find the same plodding, obfuscatory writing; the same laborious processes of peer review; the same behind-the-scenes politicking and reputation-based privilege; the same interests and questions, though often with different approaches or angles; and most importantly, the same canon of concepts and thinkers and disciplines.  This fact reinforces my belief that the discourse of the university performs a similar organizing social function (what Gramsci describes as “traditional” intellectual activity) everywhere, regardless of the specific hegemonic structure it’s serving or upholding.  In this context, it’s worth distinguishing a critique of the university as an institution embedded in a specific economy from a critique of the discourses produced in the institution.  These aren’t separate questions:  there’s only one economy.  But these questions operate in different registers, because the critique of the production of knowledge goes all the way back to Plato and beyond while the critique of the university’s current economic entanglements can’t go beyond the material history of those entanglements while remaining in any way immanent.  

Back to the three big differences I listed.

Debt is the biggest one, by far.  

I graduated from a European university debt-free. I paid registration fees every semester and I had to house and feed myself, but I didn’t have to pay exorbitant tuition fees.  I certainly didn’t have to take out a loan at the age of 18 that would follow me the rest of my life.  This difference is the single most important difference, because it doesn’t just change other relations, it changes the weight of other relations.  A damaging situation is bad; a damaging situation is 100 times worse if you have no way of getting out of it or putting it behind you.  

If you’re German and you get into a university and you find it utterly unbearable and traumatizing, you can just leave. You’ve spent some time, you might disappoint yourself or other people, but you’re not in debt, your parents didn’t spend $80,000.  If you’re 20 years old and you’ve already signed the loan papers and you’re $80,000 in debt already after just 4 semesters, you’re going to think really fucking hard about starting over in a different program, or leaving school to do something non-academic.  You’re much more likely to stay on a path you’re not happy with.  And even if you do make the choice to leave, that debt can still follow you around the rest of your life unless you manage to adjust very effectively to a highly profitable new career path.  If you spent $160,000 on a law degree from Yale then start practicing law and discover you absolutely hate it, you’re probably going to practice law for a few years anyway because otherwise you’re changing careers $160,000 in debt (that’s one hundred and sixty THOUSAND dollars).  Minimum wage in Connecticut is currently $10.10 dollars an hour 

Maybe this isn’t the case any more, but 15 years ago in much of Europe, you could decide academia wasn’t for you, leave the university, and get a job in a restaurant that would pay all your bills. In other words, you could shift gears to a much lower-pressure lifestyle without serious consequences.  But imagine if you have serious student debt and you have $500 deducted from your salary each month?  Suddenly you have earn more, even if you want a low-key lifestyle; you take on another job, or you find a job that’s higher-pressure even though you want to shift gears or whatever.  

The costs of debt – in labor, in health, in anxiety – are enormous.  In this way, there is a much tighter and more vicious link between higher education and the labor market in American than in Europe.  There’s no other way to put it – the structure and pressures of the American system mean that Americans have to work, constantly, grindingly, in a way that many (not all) Europeans just don’t have to and honestly can’t understand.  The American system presents a double bind:  either you are bound to the labor market by debt because you did go to school, or you’re bound to the labor market by necessity because you didn’t go to school and are locked out of higher-paying jobs.  The American university system is locked into the economy in a way that presents three options only:  serve the system at the top; serve the system at the bottom; or succeed against all odds by being truly exceptional and carving out a space for yourself alongside the system or breaking into it in an unexpected way. There are very few paths to genuine economic prosperity that don’t run through the university system somehow.  

The situation in the US hasn’t always been so dire; it got bad under Reagan and has been getting worse ever since.  For a couple of decades after World War II, the G.I. Bill and a flood of money to universities made public higher education really affordable in the U.S. for many people.  In the ‘60s or ‘70s in the U.S. (so I’m told, I wasn’t here), you could flip burgers for three months during the summer and save up enough money for a year’s tuition at a good state school if you were an in-state student; I doubt that’s still the case anywhere in the U.S., and certainly not at the more prestigious state schools.    

Now that the American “middle class” has effectively vanished, we can see what role the university had in making that class disappear.  An absolutely crucial element in that process was the defunding of public universities at the state and federal level, which led to massive tuition hikes that have made tuition at the most prestigious public universities almost as high as those at prestigious private ones.  Capitalism played a major role in that process, because university pass their costs on to students by framing the rising costs as the availability of additional features, from trendy new disciplines to massive, ridiculous sports facilities.  This is a “client-centered” approach to education that directly prioritizes students who can afford to pay.  Basically, America no longer has a state-sponsored, debt-free path to prosperity, which Europe still does…for now.  Defunding of universities and tuition hikes are the changes that will most quickly introduce debt as a decisive factor and bring the European system in line with the American one, with massive implications for the entire economy, not just for academia in some isolated, abstract way.  Keeping the European university system free or at least cheap is unspeakably important and probably impossible at this point.  

The relation between the education system and the labor market is also different in that many European countries have vocational or professional higher education that isn’t academic.  That’s the second big difference.  Craft and trade apprenticeships represent an important bloc that has no equivalent in the US, where most internships are professional position you get after you do a BA, and not instead of doing a BA (not always, but often).  There are often but not always alternatives to university-style education in Europe.  German interns (Auszubildende, or Azubis) are usually paid and can access no-interest government loans to support themselves when they aren’t.  Many people I knew in Germany in the 2000s finished an academic Magister degree and then went on to do an Ausbildung in a completely different area (sound design, lighting tech, theater management) which then became their actual career.  Here again the major difference is debt – you don’t need to take on massive debt to study nursing or hotel management in much of Europe – but there is also a difference in the need for critique of the institution.  Simply put, if there are effective non-academic paths to prosperity, academics have less of an ethical obligation to critique and correct their institutions, and the institution has less of an exclusive onus to fight against inequality.  If we consider “university students” as a socio-political bloc, that bloc is much more massive, diverse, and complex in the United States than it would be in much of Europe.  

Third – and this too is linked closely to the question of debt rather than separate from it – a major difference between the US and Europe is the long-standing existence in America of extremely wealthy private universities.  In Europe until recently there weren’t many private institutions of higher education. This was changing rapidly even while I was still there, and I’m sure it’s gotten worse.  However, it will take a long time before new institutions acquire the prestige and surplus capital which American private universities already have.  

The brilliant scheme of the American private university is that it took up the model and the rhetoric of the European, post-Enlightenment liberal university, but without sharing or adopting its economic model, which is that of a state-operated and –funded institution. The American private university is a European liberal shell over a fundamentally different economic motor, which is basically a massive private endowment of religious origin.  The biggest American universities weren’t started to train scholars, they were started to train preachers; in this, they had more to do with the medieval canon school than with the post-Enlightenment liberal university. These universities acquired private wealth and land in the manner of traditional Catholic institutions, not in the manner of liberal European universities; now, centuries later, these institutions are basically giant pools of privately-held capital which have an enormous impact on the education, labor, leadership, scholarship, and values of the United States and, indeed, the world, but without any of the regulations that state-funded and –controlled institutions have to endure.  These institutions are first and foremost corporate brands and wealth managers; they only teach students incidentally, as a kind of favor to the rich whose money they manage, but despite this they exert an enormous and unhealthy influence on higher education all over the world.  For decades, the public university system in the US has worked extremely vigorously to imitate the private model, where instead the American public should have demanded the divestment of property from private universities, or at least an end to their tax-exempt status.  

The impact of these institutions can scarcely be overestimated, but they are only the keystone of a vast system that all works together to produce and enforce inequality in the United States.  Because the university is an instrument of hegemony and because capitalist hegemony always depends on inequality, the university under capitalism will always be in some ways an instrument and an enforcer of inequality.  This statement is always true, but for that reason also fairly banal, because it doesn’t engage with any actual, specific material relations.  The difference – as of now – is in the degree to which the entire system interlocks to trap and control the individual.  Simply put, because in Europe there is less systemic inequality, less poverty, and more options for non-academic upward mobility (not many, but more than in the U.S.), the effect of the European university can’t be considered as pernicious and total as the effect of the American university. That doesn’t mean there isn’t much to correct and improve, it just means that capitalism has long tended to workshop its oppressions in the Americas first and then exported them elsewhere.   

European systems, which have traditionally been national or nationalized, tended to have a single centralized application system and held rigidly to unitary standards of admission and education across the national system, even if certain schools had a better “name” or were more popular. But even before I left Germany, there were already efforts to declare certain universities in the national system “centers of excellence” and to pump money into those places.  A major symptom of Americanization is the establishment of a corporate institutional hierarchy, often based equally on actual funding and on institutional PR, between universities in the public system.  This idealistic appeal to merit and excellence justifies budgetary inequalities which in turn serve both to defund “less excellent” disciplines and to center education on the interests of funders and not students.  Here too a “client-centered” corporate approach claims to serve students but is actually a pretense for increasing inequalities between them, and here too the same conclusion follows as above:  the more tiered and hierarchical the national European systems become, the more inequalities will emerge that resemble those of the American system.  

 Another big difference between the US and Europe traditionally has been a much higher European emphasis on the humanities and “human sciences.”  Scientists have always looked down on poets, but until fairly recently in Europe, it was equally the case the poets had the opportunity to publicly and emphatically look down on scientists.  When I first lived in Germany as a teenager, I remember regularly seeing literary critics, poets, screenwriters, and other kinds of art and humanities people on TV, in panel discussions (broadcast on daytime network television!) and in newspapers. This too had begun to change by the time I left Germany, and I’m sure it has gotten worse.  There’s a reciprocal pressure between intellectuals and institutions devaluing the humanities and the general public devaluing the humanities; as humanities programs disappear from the university humanities programming disappears from mass media.  A primary ideological function of the university in modern society is to tell people what’s important and what counts as real knowledge.  There are direct and significant consequences to the logic of quantification and its Four Horsemen, S, T, E, and M.  Global warming would be easier to fight if so many people weren’t convinced life is impossible without tech, for example.  These societal ideological formations don’t begin or end with the university, but they are upheld by it, promoted by it, and routed through it.  Consider for example the ways in which STEM professions are dependent on corporations in a way that many humanities jobs aren’t.  You can be a high school teacher pretty much anywhere if you speak the language; good luck being a freelance molecular biologist and crowdsourcing a lab. There are material and economic and personal consequences to ideological formations, that’s the whole point of enforcing an ideology, whether consciously or not.  Here too it’s a question of degree; we already see the process happening. How far will you let it go?  You often hear administrators tell you that the emphasis on STEM comes from students, who just don’t care about literature the way they used to.  In my experience, this is nonsense.  The proportion of humanities-oriented students and science-oriented students in the average classroom doesn’t change; what changes is the number of students who feel pressured or obligated to try and be science people when they’d rather be studying literature.  That is my experience only, I haven’t done any studies.  

The importance of fighting to keep European higher education free and accessible doesn’t rest on some liberal ideals of education and equality, but on the very real functions that higher education plays in the general economy, and in the relations of labor and production that express that economy.  The European university often serves the interests of industry and private capital, but it is an arm of the state and transmits the values of the state and is susceptible to the pressures of private capital roughly to the same degree that the state itself is.  But in America, the leading universities are expressions and instruments of private capital.  They are inseparable from it, and they serve as instruments with which private capital applies pressure to the state, rather than as an apparatus of the state on which private capital applies pressure. 

At the moment, the differing economic and social relations within which it is embedded make the European university less broken and less harmful than the American university, and with more potential for reparative change.  But even as American global hegemony collapses, economic “Americanization” is on the rise everywhere.  How far it will go, and what traditional institutions are destroyed or altered in the process, remains to be seen.  

[driftingglass]

aaaa i read why you love Katsuki and Izuku's dynamic! Can you also tell as why you love Killua and Gon's? *w*

[ WARNING: Discussion of the Hunter X Hunter anime/manga/characters below. If you haven’t read the manga or watched the anime and don’t want any spoilers of any kind, do not read. ]

*Holds breath.*

HOLY. Oh damn. This. THIS is where it gets real, my friends.

Anon. You have no idea how pumped I am to answer this. I’ve got it all ready to go, and please, if it’s a bit scrambled at times… that’s just how my brain is. All composed of bunny trails and dumb theories that may or may not be connected.

Alright. Here it goes. 

Why do I love KilluGon? 

Or… why do I love the dynamic between Killua and Gon in general?

As I’ve stated in my response to another Anon about why I love the dynamic between Katsuki and Izuku from Boku No Hero Academia, my love for a ship is constructed based on a few important details.

It depends on whether or not I respect and intensely admire both characters involved in the ship, and whether or not I find their dynamic interesting, with or without evidence to support a romantic inclination.

Now, in order for me to dive into the reasons why I just… honestly, adore Killua and Gon as individual characters as well as the ship, I have to pinpoint my connection for respecting them to the manga/anime as a whole.

Hunter X Hunter is my favorite anime of all time. 

Now, there is a reason I’m pointing this out, as seemingly unneeded it may appear. For, the main core reasons why I adore Killua and Gon as characters and their ship so much is connected to the overall appeal of the anime/manga in general.

It’s common sense to those who have watched Hunter X Hunter (and if you haven’t… what are you even doing with your life?) that numerous traditional shōnen manga tropes are either inverted, discarded entirely, purposefully subverted, or deconstructed within a story that contains arcs with no conclusion, but rather a continuous, streamlined story. 

As far as my personal experience, I started watching Hunter X Hunter with little to no expectations. I was completely blown away with what I received, and almost all of that is owed to the reasons I listed above out of pure respect, awe, and wonder at how the mangaka has been able to craft a story that’s so complex and rewarding with characters that face continuous hardships, growth, and struggles that we can relate to. 

I consider both Gon Freecss and Killua Zoldyck to be two of the greatest anime characters ever created, especially when considering the shōnen demographic.

Those who have watched the anime and read the manga know that both characters subvert traditional tropes presented in their storylines as well as their personalities. 

The author has taken numerous risks with showing his star characters in incredibly twisted circumstances that presents them in extremely nontraditional (and even, at times, antagonistic) ways. I love the risk factor taken with this series.

Now, without including any spoilers in this post, I can safely say that Gon Freecss, in particular, is one of the greatest deconstructions of any character-specific category I have ever seen. 

And Killua, while incredibly complex and going through tremendous character development alongside Gon, introduces traits that are highlighted in the other that the reader/watcher would never expect upon entering the show/manga for the first time. 

Alright. So. I want to make one thing abundantly clear with this ship. 

Many people consider Killua Zoldyck to be canonically in love with Gon Freecss. 

I respect that opinion, and I’ve entertained the idea myself, particularly with the dialogue choices, artistic liberties taken in the 2011 anime, and the reputation the author has in general of subverting shōnen tropes in his other works.

However… I do not believe that we have enough evidence to actually pinpoint Killua being romantically interested in Gon, simply because of the genre in particular. At least, for this very moment in the manga and where the anime ended. 

I do think that the potential is there, but it depends on where the story will be heading in that regard.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely. 

Could I be right? Yeah. I could. 

But, that’s a discussion for another time. 

Does this make their dynamic any less human, complex, or phenomenal? 

Absolutely not. Not in any way, shape, or form.

It’s because of the fact that we’re not sure about the possible romantic undertones between Killua and Gon that we have the freedom to deconstruct, theorize, and discuss these characters in general. 

And, this is only made possible through fantastic writing, characterization, and the undeniable one-of-a-kind friendship and connection formed between two incredibly flawed, damaged, and different characters. 

Gon and Killua go through the unimaginable and demonstrate the true essence of friendship with elements that are so human and complicated that it’s just… so impressive, that it’s able to be conveyed at all in an anime.

There are specific aspects that make their parallels all the more interesting. As I’ve noticed myself, and my two OTPs, I tend to ship characters that have very fascinating parallels and have “foil”-like connections to one another. 

Gon and Killua are not foils, as far as I can tell, but they do challenge and push each other to reach the ultimate goal, and it’s due to their mutual companionship that they are able to face the struggles they come across.

Similar to my other post regarding the dynamic between Katsuki and Izuku, I would like to present more complicated bulleted lists showcasing the inner complexities that balance Gon and Killua as well. 

So, hopefully this helps.

Let’s Focus on Gon Freecss First.

Gon, for all intensive purposes, is very simpleminded and driven mostly by a slightly skewed form of logic that is only understandable to him, both morally and culturally.

He is ambitious and ultimately one-track-minded, very driven towards a goal that could either cost him or others’ lives. 

Because of these factors, Gon is ultimately a bit of a selfish character, despite his normally good intentions. He is very much driven by his emotions.

Again, Gon’s logic is a bit skewed, though in a way that is far more complex than some give him credit for. It’s shown often in the 2011 anime, with his judgment and, at times, butting heads with Killua’s far more perceptive views on certain situations. 

Gon’s logic is based on what he sees as a genuine fact brought to attention by what he sees as the path towards success and growth. 

Both he and Killua are extremely hard workers and have been ground to the bone to achieve the strength they have.

Gon acts primarily on adrenaline and instinct, in definite contrast to Killua’s personality elements. 

Because of these factors, Gon seeks the balance to his temperament and recklessness through Killua’s (rather ironic) stability and caution. Of course, the over-reliance between the two leads to catastrophic consequences, which all ties back to the elements of them both that are, ultimately, human.

Now, Let’s Focus on Killua Zoldyck.

Killua, as stated above, has been referenced in the 2011 anime to be the offset to Gon’s temperament. In other words, he’s very much the person who calms the other down and redirects his outbursts towards something else.

At times, Killua demonstrates the need to assert control in their dynamic, which Gon does not have a problem with despite the intense way that they can, while unintentionally, take advantage of one another’s weaknesses while simultaneously boosting one another’s strengths. 

Killua is cautious, analytical, observant, and both outwardly cocky and insecure. He is also, above all things, loyal. 

Despite the intense nature of his character, the only person who rather effortlessly breaks down Killua’s walls and introduces him to a new understanding of the world is, in fact, Gon. 

Killua’s loyalty is, arguably, the main factor of his character that roots himself to Gon. No matter the situation, he will pull through for Gon. Gon is, essentially, his world. 

Killua comes from a rather twisted family background with traces of moral ambiguity and questionable relations to his parents and siblings. 

Gon is an only child and is seeking his father, while Killua seeks his family companionship in Gon and values the other’s perspective to a point that is both freeing for him as a person and damaging. 

Another thing needed to be made clear with discussing the gray, less-than-pleasing aspect of their friendship…

None of these discussed personality traits and reasons excuse any elements of their relationship that are damaging, because there’s plenty of pain in what happens between them. But, that’s part of what makes it all fascinating. 

And, I think that’s what it all comes down to. Despite the craziness in their world, in the two of them as characters individually and the indescribable, believable connection they have, one thing is made abundantly clear. 

Killua and Gon’s relationship is the most complex, fleshed out, beautifully presented, tragic and fulfilling dynamic between characters I’ve seen in an anime. Ever. 

This is, of course, my opinion. But there is something that needs to be said with Killua and Gon and their inseparable connection. 

It’s because of Gon that Killua knows he must take a step forward and grow on his own while being apart. It’s because of Killua that Gon has reached the milestones he has, that he’s even alive. 

The both of them balance each other out, survive together, challenge each other, suffer through the worst of the worst, and still remain steadfast in a companionship that is so brutally human and complex that I will forever laud the two of them (and their fantastic ship) for existing in the first place. 

I love them as best friends. I love them as characters. I love them as romantic interests because I’ve never been so convinced that it could happen not only in theoretical discussion, but also in the canon universe. 

And that is something that I don’t think will ever be repeated. 

Gon and Killua are the epitome of complex, relatable friendship that treads the lines of the ugly and the beautiful in the best possible ways. These factors make their dynamic breathtaking, awe-inspiring, tragic, wonderful and human in both platonic and romantic ways. 

*Releases breath.*

Believe it or not, I could say more, but… those are the overarching reasons. Anyone who hasn’t seen Hunter X Hunter needs to just watch it right now and experience it for themselves. No amount of words can express the justice of these two. Ever.

THANK YOU ANON. 

[hawk-in-a-jazzy-hat]

My Top 5 Anticipated Anime Summer 2017

I think we can all agree that this Spring season has been utterly phenomenal, with multiple high-profile sequels that have made their shows better than ever before, as well as new shows like Re:Creators and Alice & Zouroku among others that have stood up just as well alongside them (plus the ultimate amazing trashheap that is Eromanga Sensei, because we truly needed it).

With all that soon to end, next season at first glance looks pretty sparse by comparison; in fact I was initially going to give it a miss and work on my backlog. However more PVs and details have come out and actually there looks to be some pretty interesting stuff; less high profile sequels, sure, but what seems to be standing out are the myriad of new and interesting concepts.

Plus if any of them don’t work out, we still have My Hero Academia and Re:Creators to follow through on. :D Still, here’s what I’m excited for.

5) THE REFLECTION

“What would happen if a large group of humans throughout the planet suddenly gained mighty superpowers?”

Well, probably the first thing that would happen would be My Hero Academia suing your arse.

Although MHA is largely inspired by Western superheroes in the first place, so we seem to have an Aladdin/Prince and the Cobbler kind of thing going on here.

For all my talk about new and interesting concepts, this sounds really quite bland. “People gain superpowers. Made by Stan Lee”. And even then he’s only credited as Original Creator with Hiroshi Nagahama so his input will probably be quite limited, although his fingerprints are all over the designs and the style. Nobody really jumps out from the staff and, being a DEEN work, I’m slightly wary about the animation quality. That said, I’m not really optimistic about this so much as I am curious; given that MHA will still be running it will be fascinating to see two equal but opposite approachs to superheroes going on at the same time. And who knows; THE REFLECTION could even be a good show.

4) Vatican Miracle Examiner

Now we get onto interesting concepts; a pair of priests from the Assembly of Saints travel around the country investigating so-called miracles and the conspiracies behind them; sort of like a da-Vinci code meets Cadfael kind of scene. It’s likely to be rather episodic, although as with any mystery show if it can pull off an ongoing conspiracy then that puts points in its favour. The only reason it’s down this low is that really I don’t know anything about it; there are few staff listed yet, the PV is relatively bland. It’s also a J.C. Staff show so should look mostly decent, although it could well go beyond its capabilities on the animation front.

Really, a cool concept is the thing that’s swinging it for me so far.

3) Princess Principal

More spy work, this time with little girls in Victorian not!London, in an academy that trains them in the art of espionage. Unlike things like Joker Game and probably Vatican Miracle Examiner, this looks far more action orientated, but the reason I’m slightly more excited for it is that there looks to be some good meat behind the production; the script and series composition are by Ichiro Okouchi, who’s worked on a multitude of things from Code Geass to Azumanga Daioh to PlanetES in the past; an eclectic mix, but for a show like this that will probably in his favour. The work is a joint between Actas (Girls und Panzer) and Studio 3Hz (Flip Flappers) which again seems like an appropriate matchup for a show like this. And while the character design leaves something to be desired, the direction and colour from the 2nd PV seem appropriately gothic. It could very well be schlocky, but if the elements are there there’s a good chance it will work nicely. See Re:Creators.

2) Kakugurui

I feel like I should have watched a Mappa show before now; they seem to be an excellent mix of high-concept and just really well produced in terms of character writing in particular. I’ve heard good things about Terror in Resonance, great things about Rage of Bahamut, and Yuri!! On Ice was obviously the major Tumblr hit of last year. But sadly, I just haven’t gotten round to watching any of them yet.

I was intrigued by Kakegurui from the go as it’s a show about a gambling academy; students are encouraged to bet with one another to increase their social standing and quality of life. An interesting concept to begin with, but when you add the series compositor for Attack on Titan and Jojo behind the helm, that looks even more promising.

Still, I was on the fence about it. Until the 2nd PV came out.

Oh.

My.

Word.

This is going to be absolutely insane. In terms of complete off-the-wall intensity, this makes Death Note look like friggin’ Blues Clues.

I can’t wait.

1) Made in Abyss

Okay in all honestly, if we’re going by production quality, Kakegurui should be number one, since honestly I don’t know that much about any of the staff behind this one (aside from the fact that the Monster director is back, which is cool). It’s based on a manga about a group of kids that find a robot boy and explore a massive cave system with many dangers within. Sounds standard enough.

Well, let’s look at this then:

-          Unique, beautifully realized fantasy world with miraculous creatures and dark secrets? Check.

-          Kids going on a fantasy adventure? Check.

-          Phenomenal animation and direction, courtesy of Kinema Citrus? Check.

-          Said kids being put through some really intense stuff? Uh….check.

-          Adorable art style? Check.

I honestly have no reason for putting this as high as I do other than the fact that it looks completely and totally like my jam. Robots and monsters and great, sprawling cave systems with deep, dark secrets and conspiracies; Undertale, anyone?

I’ve also had a quick peek at the manga and…yeah, this is probably not going to be quite as innocent and fantastical as the PVs let on.

Pleeeeeease beeeee gooooooood……

Other Potentially Interesting Shows

Owarimonogatari 2nd Season – I would probably be watching this final installment in the Monogatari franchise if it weren’t for the fact that the Monogatari series is the most perfectly ‘alright’ series I’ve ever seen. And it requires paying a lot of attention. And I haven’t seen Koyomi or Kizu yet. So…yeah. I’ll come back to this.

Fate/Apocrypha – You know…we do have three other unexplored Holy Grail wars in the main Fate universe; given that Fate/Zero is practically perfect, wouldn’t it make more sense to explore them rather than go into parallel worlds?

Koi to Uso – I’ve heard excitement for this. It’s a nice concept. Also more than a little creepy. And the character designs don’t help.

Hell Girl: Fourth Season – A cool looking horror show which I unfortunately haven’t watched the original parts of yet.

In A Different World With A Smartphone – OH LOOK I WOKE UP IN A FANTASY WORLD MIGHT AS WELL COLLECT MY OBLIGATORY HAREM OF FEMALE COMPANIONS BUT THIS TIME I HAVE A FRIGGIN’ IPHONE SO THAT MAKES IT ALL SO DIFFERENT

Tsurezure Children – “A series depicting various scenarios of young love. These stories range from a boy, crippled by his absolute lack of confidence in himself, cannot even accept the fact that the girl of his dreams actually asked him out on a date, to the near-psychotic girl that pours her own blood into her homemade chocolate in order to win his heart.”

O…kay…

Knight’s & Magic – OH LOOK I WOKE UP IN A FANTASY WORLD blah blah blah ONLY I’M A MECHA OTAKU blah blah look just watch Sword Art Online again if you’re that interested.

Centaur’s Worries – More Monster GirlsTM stuff, if that’s your jam. Although it’s a Chinese co-production so…be wary of the animation quality.

18if – Something to do with jumping through dreams which I would be far more excited in if I could decipher the plot.

Restaurant to Another World – OH LOOKE I WOKE UP IN…wait, no, actually there’s a restaurant which creates dishes to serve to fantastical peoples of another world…

…actually this looks pretty clever and neat…

Yami Shibai 5th Season – A really cool little short-form horror series which I would definitely be watching if I could pluck up the courage to actually finish the first season…

…it’s so scary you guys…

 No Game No Life: Zero – Oh gee I’m definitely looking forward to the continuation of this story…

…that is definitely going to continue…

…and actually finish off the plot…

…you know, like a proper ending…

Digimon Tri: Symbiosis

…please be good…

You know what, don’t watch anime; that way only leads to disappointment, depression, and a growing realization that all your favourites are in fact trash.

[inkingaboutwords-blog]

Lesson 1: History And Scope

1) Foreword

Inking About Words is a free online poetry course covering all kinds of poetry. No previous knowledge of poetry is required. Its purpose is to mentor budding poets in the local scene of Wellington, Aotearoa. People from outside of the greater Wellington region are welcome to use these resources for their personal education, but are asked not to submit to the workshops. Inking About Words is the creation of Vex Chat-Blanc, and is run in association with Poetry in Motion, Wellington, and with the support of the Wellington community. For further information see the FAQ.

The course comes in the form of a large informative post each month, with small posts of additional content throughout the month. Hopefully every mid-month there will also be a guest post from a local poet expanding further on the topics covered that month. I want people to know what they're in for, so here's a run-down of what to expect from the monthly posts:

A brief foreword

An index that doubles as a checklist so people who feel competent in covered topics can choose to skip/skim those parts

A few sections of writing describing some practical skills, poetic devices, poetry formats, and general theory

Small breakout paragraphs with tips, examples, or sources for further reading

Some encouragement and suggestions for practicing skills covered that month

I intend to be open to workshopping some poems submitted by people relating to that month's topics. I'll post rules for how that will work each month.

Mostly sincerely, Vex

---

2) Index

1. Foreword

2. Index

3. Lore

 3.1 Poetry by Definition

 3.2 History of Poetry

 3.3 Geography of Poetry

4. Forms

 4.1 Free Verse

 4.2 List Poems

 4.3 Found Poetry

 4.4 Blackout Poems

 4.5 Spam Poetry

 4.6 Google Poetry

5. Devices

 5.1 Simile

 5.2 Metaphor

 5.3 Analogy

 5.4 Allegory

 5.5 Parallelism

 5.6 Correlative Verse

6. Skills

 6.1 Inspiration

 6.2 Drafting

 6.3 Assessing

7. Suggestions

 7.1 Find Some Poetry

 7.2 Find Some Poets

 7.3 Make Bad Poems

 7.4 List Everything

---

3) Lore

3.1) Poetry by definition

If you're not new to any kind of educational works, you know to expect that we begin with a boring waffle about the 'true definition' of the topic - starting off with a dictionary definition before painstakingly pointing out all the ways the definition isn’t precise enough.

For poetry, I'm fond of this definition from dictionary.com, which gets progressively more vague with each step and frankly sounds like a poem in its own right:

 noun  1. The art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.  2. Literary work in metrical form; verse.  3. Prose with poetic qualities.  4. Poetic qualities however manifested:        "The poetry of simple acts and things."  5. Poetic spirit or feeling:        "The pianist played the prelude with poetry."  6. Something suggestive of or likened to poetry:        "The pure poetry of a beautiful view on a clear day."

Of course, a dictionary definition really fails to encompass the breadth of poetry. But we don't need a good definition to do the ground work. I just thought it would be good to begin these lessons making sure everyone is thinking about how loose the definition can be, because having that perspective gives you a lot of room to experiment with the boundaries of what can reasonably be called ‘poetry’.

Further watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F7quI-MbzY Further reading: https://www.britannica.com/art/poetry

3.2) History of poetry

If you’ve studied English Lit before, you’ll likely be familiar with the works of some white dudes. But perhaps one might imagine a world of Hemmingways and Byrons to be a bit dull, so I’m going to expand the horizons a little.

An important thing to keep in mind about poetry is that it predates literacy, so while existing written work has been dated back all the way to about 2000BC, using written word as the academic yardstick to measure poetry might be a bit naive, given the oral traditions of hymn, prayer, chant, song, mnemonic, elegy etc. are known to date back further.

On a more modern scale, it’s useful to look at poetry’s applications. While many of these are not new, studying our forebears (that is, the proverbial giants on which we stand rather than the ferocious beasts that stand before us, but you can imagine either as you choose) gives us perspective on what we may wish to repeat or improve upon to have words with impact, rather than simply having words. Such applications I’d like you to consider:

Using poetry to define new concepts

Expressions of affection

Bringing whimsy to the mundane

Speaking out against injustice

3.3) Geography of poetry

Literature is one of the most universally important cultural artifacts. For us to truly understand poetry, we must understand its existence in every culture provides us with a wealth we could never have amassed alone. Studying to create this course really drove home this point for me as I read lists of devices transliterated from other languages, many of which described rules unique to forms from relatively small regions. The point is, poetry doesn’t belong to one culture. It especially doesn’t belong to the academia who study its theory but aren’t a part of its applications. Many cultures, whether that be regional, religious, class, generation, social rights causes, artistic movements, or anything else; include poetry as part of their identities. As a result, poetry can be a powerful way for people to connect to their peers.

Further reading: https://static.poetryfoundation.org/o/media/landays.html Further watching: The Bigger Picture Campaign

---

4) Forms

4.1) Free Verse

Excuse me for starting with the obvious, but free/open verse is poetry that doesn't have any rules or restrictions.  It's a good starting place to establish that your poetry can just say "idgaf" to all the rules. I can't really teach form without acknowledging that form itself is an opt-in sort of deal.

4.2) List Poems

One of the easiest forms of poetry is the list poem, which unsurprisingly is a list as a poem. You'd think that not just any list would do, but for real any list will do. Just write a list of things and decide how you want to make it poetic (You don't necessarily need to make a list of boring things poetic. It's more common that people make poetic things into a boring list, and that approach is fine too.)

Example: The Labor It Takes To Forgive by Uyên Thi

4.3) Found poetry

Poetry can be found among all sorts of text. Remembering that poetry is to give more meaning to a text through devices, it follows that the act of finding meaning in existing text can therefore create poetry.

There's lots of ways to create found poetry, many of which hinge on highlighting the absurdity of the world. One of my favourites is just to take things out of context. The removal or addition of context can create or change meaning in text.

Example: This couplet written using a truth or dare game on chewing gum wrappers.

Here's some other forms of found poetry:

4.4) Blackout poems

An erasure poem involves removing words or letters from a block of text, such as a page of a book, or a psalm, or an existing poem, such that what is leftover forms a poem. The most popular method, and a more common name, is the blackout poem, which involves using a permanent marker to blackout the other words. Many use the opportunity to also create an image that complements the poem.

Example: They Were Married

4.5) Spam poetry

Spam poetry is a form of found poetry that takes words or phrases from spam emails and forms them into poems. Sometimes they have messages, but more often they are an exercise in skirting the uncanny valley of coherency to highlight the absurdity of spam messages.

Example(s): http://www.spampoetry.org/our-favorites/

4.6) Google poetry

Another common form of found poetry is Google poetry - a form created by gathering the suggested search completions that google presents you with when you start typing in a partial search term. Many of these poems consist only of suggested search terms and are very short and in the format of a list poem. However, it is possible to create a poem that uses these search terms as part of a larger narrative.

Examples of short google poems: http://www.googlepoetics.com/ Example of larger narrative: Google Search For Black Lives Matter by Len Lawson

---

5) Devices

5.1) Simile

A simile is an explicit comparison made, typically using a ‘like’ or ‘as’ statement.

Example: “A simile is like a metaphor”

5.2) Metaphor

A metaphor is an implicit comparison made by saying something entirely different to what you’re saying. Now, is that cheating? Heck yes. Poetry is 90% cheating.

Example: “You are an asshole”.

(Swearing is, after all, probably the most common use of poetic device.)

5.3) Analogy

An analogy is a phrase that uses one idea to express another. This can be a metaphor or a simile, and can be straightforward or subtle and indirect. On the internet, analogies are often (ironically) regarded as a false equivalence. The catch being that an analogy is used to explain a concept by relating it to an existing concept rather than say those concepts are the same.

Example: An atom is like a solar system in that it has planets (electrons) that orbit a large sun (the nucleus).

5.4) Allegory

An allegory is the story-sized version of a metaphor. A tale in which the actors are stand-ins for political figures, or social ills, or a child you want to send an irresponsibly indirect warning to. They tend to be used to send a moral or political message. Balancing the clarity of the message with consistency of the metaphor can be tricky. Most fairy tales are allegories designed to teach children about the dangers of the world around them.

5.5) Parallelism

Parallelism is the use of words that are similar in their construction, sound, or meaning. It often employs repetition, and is often used to compare two concepts. For example: “Like father, like son”. Parallelism is an umbrella term that encompasses many more specific poetic devices, such as Janus parallelism, which uses the multiple meanings of a word to join two different statements together in such a way that each statement uses a different meaning of the word.

Example: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

5.6) Correlative Verse

Correlative verse uses two lists, and parallels the items between those lists. The way the lists are paralleled isn't constrained in any way, so that's up to you. That said, I think if you want people to appreciate it as a device, you have to use a parallel that will be clear to your audience.

Example: “The intern, the mistress, and the public, were not aware of the affairs of the state, or the heart”

---

6) Skills

6.1) Inspiration

Finding inspiration is a thing most poets I know have trouble with, but to be honest, if you have something to say, about anything at all, you have a poem. Anything you can tweet can be reworked into a poem with the right application of poetic devices. Of course it's not as simple as that. Some topics are bland no matter how you state them. But if you find yourself with such a problem, consider some alternative perspectives on the topic: is there someone with higher stakes in the matter? Maybe you could write a persona piece (be wary of telling other people's stories though - it seems like an easy grab for evocative content, but I can guarantee you it's a trap. Your best work will come from your experience 99% of the time). Is the topic an easy allegory? What’s the smallest amount of words you can use to get your point across? Can the topic be expressed by remixing something that already exists? Would wild exaggeration make the topic more interesting?

6.2) Drafting

The drafting process is not a universal thing, and it’s okay to have a process that differs from what I’m about to outline. But there are two mistakes that are incredibly common among poets:

Believing a bad draft is a worthless poem

Believing a good draft is a finished work

Ideally, a first draft should be a train wreck of ideas that don’t consistently flow on from each other. It may not be cohesive enough to perform, and in fact that’s probably a good sign. Most forms of writing have an initial planning stage, and use the first draft to get the ideas from the plans into words, acting as placeholders for the more refined structure and vocabulary in later drafts. Poetry is typically easier to plan -after- the first draft. I recommend using the first draft as a way to collect whatever stanzas, ideas, and poetic devices flow freely out of your headspace when you first decide something might make a good poem. Don’t worry about what the end result will be, and don’t pre-emptively throw things out if they don’t seem good enough. Just ensure you write down everything that comes out before you start running out of ideas. It’s worth noting that many people get discouraged because their first draft turns out bad. The biggest favour you can do your self-confidence as a poet is to not expect a first draft to produce a poem.

6.3) Assessing

Once you have an initial draft, you can work on figuring out where to go from there. This is the point where you can plan a structure, choose a form, decide what message you want to convey, decide what lines to keep, decide what lines to throw out. Think hard about what aspects of the draft are good, and what aspects are bad. Consider where you can give it a better rhythm and where more complex poetic devices can be fitted in without disturbing the flow.

Tip: Think carefully about -how- you want to convey your message. Your draft may have some novel devices or particularly on-the-nose metaphors that will go a long way to making the piece unique among similar voices. This is normally what I recommend focusing on, as the most striking poems usually are the ones that hold an entirely new perspective for people.

---

7) Suggestions

7.1) Find some poetry

I don't usually look for found poetry. You get the most out of it by developing a mindset that questions whether any given thing is poetry (which I do recommend working on, it will help you a lot to produce more content). But you absolutely can actively search for found poetry. Try the techniques described earlier just for practice.

7.2) Find some poets

You gotta know what you like. Better yet if you know why you like it. Find some poets you like across all genres, and jot their names down. If you need to discover new poets to do this there are good sites online that will help you out (and expose you to too many old white dudes, so don't rely on them too heavily if you can). I recommend choosing a variety of categories such as genres/topics that interest you, minority groups you want to see represented, poetic forms you like, etc and trying to find a poet you love for each category. If you want to take it one step further, use those categories to make a Punnet square and see if you can find a poet that fits each intersection of those categories. Be sure to include both page and performance poets.

7.2) Make bad poems

Try editing a draft into a intentionally bad poem. Aim to end up with something you'd be embarrassed to have discovered in a diary from at least 5 years ago. This will help you in a number of ways: you'll become more comfortable accepting the difference between a draft and a poem, better be able to identify mistakes/bad use of poetic devices, and become more comfortable producing bad work (it seems like an unnecessary thing, but I assure you it will help you out)

7.3) List anything

Just pick something to list and list it. Try to cover a range of topics from trite mundane things like shopping lists, to heavy existential things like reasons university is killing you. Lists make great drafts and typically bad poems. The unfortunate thing is they tend to make great drafts specifically for list poems, so you won't always get something you can work into another form. But once in a while a list poem comes out really well on its own merits. --- I juuust realized I said I’d explain how submissions will work at the end of the post. I really have no idea what an appropriate way to do this would be, so for now if you a) are from Aotearoa, b) want some advice (at the moment I’ll only be helping with the assessing step), c) are comfortable with your work being posted here, then fire through a submission.

[performingwomen-blog]

Asian/American - Response

It’s interesting to me that so much of the discourse about being Asian-American still has to focus on issues of reductive stereotyping, namely because discourse about being black in America seems to have gotten more complicated than that, though the issue is still relevant. I can’t find the exact quote, but somewhere early on in Kandice Chuh’s Imaginary Borders, she says that there is a long tradition of activism with respect to the rights of black Americans for which there hasn’t existed a parallel for Asian-Americans until relatively recently. I think this is the reason why the Asian-American movement still has to contend so breathlessly with poor or nonexistent representation and various kinds of essentalizing stereotypes, things that pro-black activists have been developing countermeasures for since the early nineteenth century. The performances of Canwen Xu and Denise Uyehara both seem to bear that out in their content, but also in their form; these are obviously two very smart, very talented women who, even in very liberal circles like (pseudo-)academia and the theater, still have to contend at a very basic level that they exist in complex ways that are distinct from one another and totally different from the various stereotypes that are propagated about them in popular culture. 

This is the same context that informs Celine Shimizu’s project in The Hypersexuality of Asian/American Women. Her call for the reclamation of the hyper-sexualized Asian woman is at once a legitimization of the experiences of Asian-American sex workers/other folks on the sexual and economic margins, a subversion of the trope itself, and a contestation of the model minority myth, which sterilizes/renders vanilla the range of acceptable Asian-American sexualities and personalities. It was also interesting to think about representation with respect to Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty.” Somewhat similar to how Shimizu makes a case for the perverse, I wanted to unpack my initial reading of the video as problematic and bad. 

As Lavigne said in her tweets/Facebook post, the video was shot in Japan, with a Japanese director and Japanese choreographers, on her Japanese label, for her sizable population of Japanese fans. I did a little research to try and corroborate that last point: according to Business Insider, Lavigne’s self-titled album (released in 2013, featuring “Hello Kitty”) peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts in Japan and reached #1 in Taiwan and China. Furthermore, reports from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (via the Recording Industry Association of Japan--here’s the translated/collated/wiki-fied version, sources at the bottom) indicate that Japan has been the world’s second (and sometimes first) largest music market since at least 2004 (earliest available record), which means that Avril Lavigne has probably had fans in Japan since the first half of the second Bush administration (“Sk8r Boi” was released in 2002). So it actually isn’t any surprise at all that she ended up making this weird-bad dubstep remix of a poorly written English language J-pop song, and it isn’t a surprise that the music video she made for it rehearses many of the same tropes that show up in that genre. 

For comparison, here’s a recent showing from what Wikipedia tells me is one of the most popular J-pop groups on the planet, Momoiro Clover Z. Again, there are lots of pastel colors and cursory/superficial representations of Japanese culture, all of them within the aesthetic range of “Hello Kitty”--though the performances and production value are way, way better (bonus points for the rapping black guy). This is all to say that the J-pop genre literally exists to essentialize, objectify, and commodify Japanese culture. 

But to its credit, J-pop made by Japanese people is effectively Japanese people objectifying themselves willfully. Insofar as the performers are consenting parties, they are making their own choice to reduce and commodify their own racialized and gendered bodies.* And the objectification is very clearly meant for other Japanese people, which is to say that there is little to no risk of misrepresenting the culture, since the culture presumably knows what it’s own truth is and could effectively call bullshit if it saw that something about its representation was off. 

What makes the “Hello Kitty” video dangerous is that Avril Lavigne is a white Canadian, not Japanese. As a result, we, viewing it from an American context, can be forgiven for assuming that (1) she made it for us, (2) she made it without the consent of “the Japanese” (whoever they can be said to be, since there are Japanese people in the video, but presumably not the ones who are empowered to decide what is and is not an appropriate representation of Japanese-ness to an American audience), and that (3) she did so in order to make herself look cool and trendy and marketable to us, her audience in North America. So the “Hello Kitty” video appears to us as appropriation, and a rehearsal of reductive stereotypes about Asian-ness/Asian-American-ness in front of an audience that still, impossibly, doesn’t know how to make sense of Asian-American bodies beyond these stereotypes. And it does this all in the interest of capital, which makes it even worse. 

You could argue that because it’s a J-pop-style song and a J-pop-style music video, and because she has a significant fanbase in Japan, we Americans should recognize that Avril Lavigne did not intend the video solely or even mostly for North American consumption. You could also argue that because the whole creative team and label were Japanese, she didn’t take Japanese culture without asking the proper authorities. You could conclude (and I would hesitantly agree) that the “Hello Kitty” music video isn’t open appropriation, but a consequence of an evermore global music industry--albeit a really shitty showing of what that industry is capable of, even when it comes to making extremely vapid music (for comparison, I present exhibit B, the best-selling idol group in Japan, AKB48). You could even go as far as to say that, if anything, it was Avril Lavigne’s whiteness that her team were trying to commodify, packaging her and selling her to the Japanese public as the infantile, exotic Occidental, fumbling her way through the language and locales with childlike cuteness. But in the end, intent doesn’t excuse consequence. Avril Lavigne and her team should have recognized that because she’s white and Canadian, her primary place of relevance was (is? do people still listen to Avril Lavigne?) North America. Had they done this, they may have realized that their music video would also have a life as a piece of North American popular culture, and would therefore contribute to the North American popular mis-imagining of Asian-Americans.

Does this mean that people who produce popular culture for America at one time shouldn’t produce for another culture at another time if it means that the product might impact negatively the situation at home? Doesn’t that severely curtail the ability for popular cultures to interact across borders, eliminating or at least limiting the ways in which American artists can engage with the cultures of nations that have representative populations in the US? Well, maybe. I don’t know. It could be a really good thing to develop a global popular culture market that’s systemically adverse to exoticism, even/especially the kind that objectifies white people. Not least because it might prevent us from having to witness more of these atrocities.

-sali.

*This becomes a really fraught statement when you consider the fact that J-pop idol culture seems predicated on adult male sexualization of teenage girls (here’s a documentary for you if you want to learn more). I don’t feel confident in my ability to critique the statement further because I don’t belong to contemporary Japanese culture, nor have I engaged meaningfully in its study. But incapability or no, I felt that it would be irresponsible to not include this caveat.

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: Little Witch Academia

Finally, a Netflix Original I care about![1]

I’d been waiting for this dub since the first OVA earned itself on Article on io9. An adorable, all-ages anime about witches going to school? Count me in.

Though I let the Netflix release of the OVAs sit on my list for an embarrassingly long time, I made sure to watch them right before starting on the series proper.

So let’s step into yet another world of magic and wonder![2]

The first of the two OVAs was… cute. A lot of world building by showing, good general aesthetic for the monsters and magical artifacts, hint of mystery and potential story, and Akko and friends are endearing. It’s very clearly a proof of concept, but the first Little Witch Academia has it’s charm, and certainly deserves the franchise it started.

The second OVA, The Enchanted Parade, is my favorite of the Little Witch Academia stories. It opens with Akko and friends messing up in class, then landing in trouble, with dialogue establishing quickly that, 1. Akko and her friends are troublemakers, and 2. Akko carries the sort of innocence that leads to her listing her past infractions. Their punishment? Organize a parade for the local festival!

At first thought, that seems oddly light, however, the parade is traditionally a time for the townsfolk to mock and humilate witches, so being ordered to participate is not great.

Fortunately, our three heroines shall not be alone, as we’re introduced to the B-Team to our trio: Amanda, a burglarizing witch with flashy broom skills; Constanze, a technomancer (and Luna Nova dislikes technology); and Jasminka, who was eating in class.

I like Amanda and Constanze a lot, and they carried over the best to the series.

The Enchanted Parade implied a format that I would’ve liked to see a lot more: Akko and friends letting curiosity get the better of them, landing them in trouble with their strict Headmistress while Ursula tries her best to smooth things over, before hard work and inspiration solves an even bigger problem to the amazement of all. It’s a format that I wouldn’t have mind seeing run longer in the series proper, but, unfortunately, the Main Arc had to get involved.

Also, Ursula gets to use her skills as a performer to great effect during the titular parade, something I would’ve like to have seen more of. She is blatantly Shining Chariot, after all (even if the name makes her sound like a dang pony).

So, these two OVAs were so beloved, that a series was commissioned! Yay! But… I do have a few nitpicks.

Besides the slight change in tone from the more ‘world of wonder’ of the OVAs to the more casual magic of the series, there’s also been few character changes. My largest complaint being changes to two characters that are oddly opposed when compared: Sucy and Diana.

In the OVAs, Diana was prideful. She was talented and of high birth, and would actually rub it in Akko’s face. She had a mean streak, was kind of a bully, and it made sense she kept her two flunkies at heel to build her ego. It was a nice contrast to Akko’s own arrogance, since Akko was just hot-headed and ambitious, eyes cast higher than her current skill, while Diana was innately talented and knew it. Not to an irredeemable extent, but it was nice to see some immaturity and mutual rivalry between the two. In the show, Diana’s just… nice. She’s toned down and more mature, and that ends up making her boring. The rivalry seems entirely in Akko’s head, since Diana mostly views the girl as slightly annoying, but little else. I just would’ve seen more of her and Akko butting heads, instead of just… generic talented girl trying to solve the main conflict while Akko stumbles about.

On the other hand, Sucy’s now more actively malicious. In the OVAs, Sucy enjoyed potioncraft and poisons and used Akko as a guinea pig, but the OVAs portrayed it more as a gentle prank done to her friends, and that Sucy never meant any harm. In the series, Sucy has no care for safety, no regard for her friends, and attends Luna Nova by accident. She doesn’t feel like she’s Akko’s friend, and has few redeeming qualities in a show about cute witches doing their best. Sucy isn’t doing her best, she’s just a jerk who happens to share a room with Akko and Lotte. I actively dislike this version of Sucy.

Aside from those two, Diana’s two boring worshippers, and the villain of the second act, I liked the cast.

Akko’s an adorable protagonist that you root for throughout her whole journey; Lotte’s a cute nerd girl (even if she likes the Twilight stand-in series… that’s 365 volumes long…); and the B-Team’s unchanged from their debut OVA, and I love Amanda[3] and Constanze dearly, while Jasminka just suffers from never getting her own focus episode.

The teaching staff is also a good mix of overly uptight to overly lax, and I wish we got to see more of them outside of Ursula and Croix.

As for the plot, when it was a slice of life episode about Akko getting into trouble or exploring the world, I liked it. When the episode focused on the decline of magic and Luna Nova’s difficulties, I was less thrilled. Akko’s dreams and ambitious were more infectious than the adults fretting over the future of their job field.

So the first 13 episodes[4] were stronger in my opinion, when the ‘Magic versus Tech’ elements were more subtle. It’s a trope I’ve grown less fond of over the years. Placing the two in opposition seems overly restrictive, and I’d enjoy having Magic tied into modern technology, which we see in the second half with Croix, but she’s the main antagonist, so it’s still being touted as a bad thing.

Even then, Constanze is sitting right there, using magic and technology without being evil, so even that message is fractured.

I’ve heard a theory that the series is a metaphor for traditional animation versus computer animation, and how the old ways are being crowded out by technology. It’s an interesting take, but the show seems more focused on emotion and following your dreams than about the landscape of the animation industry. But I also tend to be resistant to over analysis and such English Class nonsense. Just let it be a story.

There’s also a running thread about Ursula hiding her true identity from Akko, who would so love to meet Shiny Chariot.[5] And… well, you know me and unnecessary secrets. To the show’s credit, they do give a plausible explanation for why Ursula’s hiding her past, and maintaining the secret doesn’t cause anyone much pain outside of inconveniencing Ursula herself, as she could’ve used her true identity to swing Akko against Croix earlier, but the secret’s harmless.

Still a stupid secret, but Ursula’s ashamed of the damage she caused by accident while on tour, so I’ll give it a side-eyed pass.

So the first 13 episodes spend time world building, character building, and culminates in Akko and her friends getting the shortest straw for an annual festival, and Akko’s resolve and practice turning being human sacrifices (they get better) into a grand event that ends with no one ever having to do the job ever again. It’s a big moment, even if the win Akko rightfully deserved got passed to Diana.

Then Croix does an ominous, last fifteen seconds thing, and…

Croix was a boring villain, made worse by the fact she came in when the show tightened its belt and decided to commit to the magic’s fading plotline. Also, Croix spends most of her time sitting in her lab, smirking nefariously, and just… hanging around? Yes, we see her dark cubes and evil roombas flying around causing problems, but Croix herself is so passive it’s hard to care.

Though evil roombas is a hilarious parallel to brooms.

Admittedly, my opinions of the last 12 episodes may be unfairly colored by what I had wanted out of the show, as opposed to what the show was providing. And it wasn’t a terrible plot, I just… preferred the episodes about Akko than the mystery about Croix and Chariot’s relationship.

And the ‘find the Words’ half of that main narrative fit with what I enjoyed. Akko always found the words when she was just having adventures with her friends. Akko joining the side of the striking monster servants was both in character and very amusing, especially since the teaching staff’s reaction amounted to ‘Akko joined them? Okay, sure, that tracks.’ Then Akko visits Lotte’s family, where she has to first help gather ingredients to cure a curse on the town, then ends up having to complete the project herself, and it’s all very well written lesson on patience and compassion.

Which is then followed by two episodes co-starring Amanda and Constanze! Croix’s influence do cause boss battles for them, and Amanda’s episode did split its focus with Andrew’s character development, but still, Akko becoming better friends with the B-Team is great.

And Constanze’s focus episode was just perfect. Akko nosing in where she’s not invited, gets rebuffed several times, but her tenacity and ability to relate to the school service staff wins over Constanze, and they build the ship from Enchanted Parade.

Which Constnze then retrofits into a transforming mech (at Akko’s suggestion), because it’s Studio Trigger, and they want to remind you they made Gurren Lagaan!

I kid. The entire sequence was fun, silly fun; Constanze, despite her apparent mutism, is given plenty of stoic personality; the Stanbots’ antagonism towards Akko is funny; and the show gives as a positive example of Technology and Magic working together.

Which undermines the whole ‘Mixing the two is bad’ thing Croix’s supposed to have going, but even the devices she introduces helps expand the magical capabilities of Luna Nova, so the show’s all over the place with the message.

So, Amanda and Constanze were given focal episodes, so obviously the third one must be about Diana!

Poor Jasminka. All she gets is a bag of chips. She’s content with the bag of chips, of course, but still, complete the trilogy, show!

Anyways, Diana tries to leave Luna Nova to take over as the head of her family, which Akko doesn’t want to allow, and tracks the girl down to her family estate, where Diana’s evil Aunt and her daughters are selling off family heirlooms and just generally being jerks. Lot of high class drama.

Also, we see Diana’s got the last Shining Chariot Trading Card Akko needs, finally establishing Diana’s own fandom of Chariot first hinted at by her Cameo during the opening sequence of the show.

These are elements I feel would be stronger if Diana was a little more of a jerk. Akko’s attempts to get her to return to school would’ve shown a lot more of Akko’s general compassion had Diana not been generically aloof and a little more antagonistic. The two would’ve had their differences, but gosh darnit, Akko needs Diana to measure herself against!

Also, the Cavendishs are descended from one of the Nine Olde Witches, and taking over as head of the family involves a ceremony initiated by a Venusian eclipse. Which begs the question:

Are the Nine Olde Witches the Sailor Scouts?

And does that make Rita Repulsa Sailor Moon?[6]

Such intriguing lore.

The final five episodes are just all Croix plot. She’s going to use technology and cause an international incident to get the Grand Triskelion, and that’s bad.

Well, causing soccer riots is pretty wicked, but my understanding is such things are normal in Europe, so shrug.

It’s all… fine, I guess. We get a fuller explanation for why Chariot disappeared, as she was ashamed of accidentally stealing magic potential from her audience (hence Akko’s inability to fly), but Croix didn’t tell her that’s what the power-up technique she created did, so Chariot is kind of absolved, even though she maybe should’ve double checked Croix’s research.

So, turns out Ursula was keeping her secrets because she was ashamed of her actions, and it caused little damage, so… I give it a begrudging pass.

Although, had Ursula been a little more open earlier, Diana could’ve stepped forward after Akko has a meltdown over it and been all ‘Uh, I saw that very same show, and my magic’s fine’, and everyone would’ve felt better about the whole thing, and Akko could go back to trying hard.

The finale was exactly what it should’ve been: Croix’s designs backfire on her, Ursula’s identity as Chariot is out in the open, and Akko’s general optimism inspires everyone to go beat up an evil magic missile. The important characters do their part, with Croix and Constanze collaborating on making a super broom designed as a multistage rocket, a team up I wanted since Croix was introduced. Then Chariot helps by… giving the seven girls fancier duds? That’s not really participating, Ursula.

So the broom fires off, everyone gives their inspirational efforts, using their talents to help as they fall away, leaving Akko and Diana to do the final battle.

Fueled by the power of the world’s dreams, hope, and belief in the Little Witches trying to save the day. Saccharine and very MLP-esque, but we do have a character named Shining Chariot, so what can you do?

Okay, I joked about Ursula not really helping, but Croix does nudge her into what she should’ve done during the Mecha vs. Giant bird fight: act as announcer and narrator ala Enchanted Parade.

Chariot’s showmanship finally, after 25 episodes, returns from the best OVA! She tells the world the general situation, and tells them to believe.

And it’s great, and Akko and Diana fire a magic arrow into a missile and blow it up.

Then the Shiny Rod vanishes. Because reasons.

For the final scene, Akko finally gets a broom to float. Yay!

It was a satisfying finale. And a satisfying series. I might not have enjoyed aspects of the main plot, but that’s more an issue of personal taste than actual poor writing. I’m glad to have seen it and, if I’m being honest, I hope Netflix doesn’t pressure the staff into making more episodes. Anime has usually been good about telling a complete story in a timely manner[7] and letting it speak for itself, but Netflix is an American company, where we tend to stretch series out as long as it gets good ratings. I wouldn’t object, however, to more OVAs. And if they do a sequel series with a new plot, that might be acceptable. I’m also totally getting that game when it comes out, and likely will throw it on the Stream pile.

Though, there is still one final mystery:

How did Salem Saberhagen get admitted to a girl’s magic school? What trickery did that cat play?

Thanks for reading my review. Look at my blog for other works and projects, send me questions and messages, consider my Patreon.

And, most importantly, believe in the Magic that believes in the Magic in you.[8]

Kataal kataal.

[1] Well, okay, A Series of Unfortunate Events was also good, but I didn’t do a review of that, did I? [2] Because there’s such a shortage of them… [3] Even though people keep saying she’s Ryuko from Kill la Kill. I still can’t get my hands on that series, so the comparison’s lost on me. [4] Because Netflix split the series into two batches, so there was a break between them. [5] It wouldn’t be such a horrible name if everyone had ridiculous names. But, no, everyone’s got freaking normal names. Except Chariot. [6] Pay attention to the hats behind the headmistress’s desk. Rita’s is present. [7] Shonen fighty-man series aside. [8] Really need to get through Gurren Lagaan one of these days…