#there's a lot of genuine issues among some authors and their works

[harpieisthecarpie]

why do so many videos discussing petty internet drama feel the need to tie it all into some moral lesson like they're auditioning to be an aesop's fable

you don't need to justify your life choices to me, I voluntarily clicked on this video, but perhaps by moralizing about the lives of strangers you are being Worse

[olderthannetfic]

I found myself rereading an old discussion about AO3 commenting culture (ye olde "Authors aren't owed comments" vs. "Readers aren't owed fic either" wank). And you know, it strikes me that a lot of the drama in such discussions is rooted in the fact that people only ever seem to engage with the worst things the opposite side says. And of course that leads to miscommunication, because the extremes are not generally applicable to most people.

Like, for instance. Someone going "I comment so regularly I practically gave myself burn-out commenting". Authors complaining about people who act entitled to stories aren't talking about you, I promise. They're talking about people who genuinely can't be bothered or go on flippant "Why don't you just write for yourself?" rants, while still enjoying other people's work. Ditto on the other side: people get offended at being called entitled authors, but odds are good the person isn't referring to you, who would simply like to not shout into the void, odds are good they're referring to the asshole authors they've met who'd throw hissy hits over comments that weren't phrased exactly to their liking, because yes, people like that do exist so it's simply flat out wrong to say "Just comment, authors are always happy to see comments, no matter how short! :)"

Also, a particular comment jumped out at me:

"It's not a consumer's job to compliment a promote an artist's work"

I generally agree that acting like people are owed comments is useless and stupid, but if I had to pick a phrasing that sums up my misgivings about common commenting culture, it's this. So many people seem to act like authors are getting a paycheck for this and don't need any additional motivator.

The other thing that bugs me is when people talk about all the reasons they don't comment (low spoons, anxiety, tired, etc.), but ignore the fact that authors have to deal with all of the above, too. And not just in fanfic. It seems any time there's any kind of social conflict being discussed (like, say, replying to a friend's messages in a vaguely timely manner) a ton of people will trot out excuses for why they can't do [insert what's generally seen as the vaguely courteous thing to do], but inadvertently act like that makes them special and like they're the only ones who have these legitimately valid excuses.

This started in one place and led to another, sorry. I guess I'm just frustrated with the Tumblr mental health culture of "I have a semi-specific reason I struggle with this so I'm not even going to try". I think people overcompensate too much for "Just don't be disabled!"-style ableism and swing too hard in the embraced helplessness direction.

Back to fanfic, every time I see the "I can't do it because of X" thing in the context of commenting, I can't help but think of how many authors also deal with depression, anxiety, self-esteem issues, low spoons, etc. and how easy it would have been for them to give up, but they got through it and posted the fanfic anyway, and how often they're then met with silence because the prevailing attitude among their audience is e.g. "I read this before bed and was too sleepy to comment, and too forgetful to comment the next day". I think about some of the fic I've written, often fic written when I maybe should have been doing something else, or fic written at the cost of sleep, or hyperfixating at my keyboard for six hours instead of going for a nice hike with my family, and it's hard not to get a little bitter, you know? Talking about legitimate reasons for why commenting is hard just so often comes across as "You're free to make sacrifices to write the stuff I read, but I won't make any"

I also feel a bit bitter that it's impossible to even discuss these things in a vacuum without someone going "Discussions like this are why I've stopped commenting", as someone inevitably will in the notes of this post. "Just shut up and make your Content(TM) and don't complain about anything", is what it feels like.

--

The entire phrasing of reward and owing is stupid.

The reality is that lots of people won't produce work unless they feel like someone cares. No amount of moralizing or excuses will change that.

It's also the reality that posting to the masses on AO3 or tumblr will result in maybe one like or other interaction per hundred hits if you're really, really lucky. The rate has never been much better than that, and it never will be. It's often very much worse.

If one personally wants to encourage people, sure, go out and do that, but any call to action that ignores the above two realities is like fighting the tide.

I do think "It's not my job to promote you" typically comes up in the context of meltdowns about letting artists "languish in your likes" instead of being reblogged onto your actual blog and/or contexts where the artist/author/etc. is selling their work.

Here's the thing: people who never comment do not count.

They think they're part of a community. They're not. If you don't participate, you're a ghost.

When some author moves to a more enclosed space, a lot of people who saw themselves as part of something are suddenly left out in the cold, wondering why. But the fact is, if you don't pay the entry fee of socializing with others, you're nobody to them.

The entitled randos don't matter. If they bug you enough, take your toys and retreat to a discord with your friends.

[artbyblastweave]

Curious if you'd say you've ever seen a superhero work that genuinely deserved the alt-history genre classifier, and otherwise at what point its even possible to use it vs going 'this has decades of in-universe history but doesn't deserve to be called alt-history for [REASONS]'

Only one I can think of off-hand that has enough granulated timeline-development would be Wild Cards, but curious if you think others qualify and/or if you think WC doesn't qualify

I can't really comment on Wild Cards extensively (haven't read that much of it) but I can comment on a few other works. To briefly be the guy who talks about the same three works all the time:

Watchmen I think totally qualifies- Nixon is on his fifth term, electric cars are ubiquitous due to Dr. Manhattan's ability to synthesize lithium, Vietnam is the 51st state, the zeitgeist is consumed by pirate comics, and everyone in New York got murdered by a giant fake squid. And superheroes are real.

Unfortunately I also have to note that The Boys flirted with this; among other things, superheroic "intervention" resulted in the Brooklyn Bridge getting destroyed during 9/11, Prescott Bush and some of the other Business plot guys got wiped out during an attempted superheroic field test in World War 2, The War on Terror is being fought primarily in Pakistan, and Dakota Bob is president because George Bush Jr. killed himself playing with a chainsaw. The fact that none of this really pans out into a tangibly different society is deliberate, as part of the comic's drumbeat that superheroes, while roundly bad, also fundamentally don't matter, and are at best able to make things bad in different ways without really changing the shape of the structures that produced them.

Worm is in kind of a weird spot here- it objectively is an alternate history, countless things are different, whole nations are gone, we see a lot of alterations to the culture- but it gives limited airtime to a lot of the specifics of how things got to where they are, beyond the broad clusterfuck generated by the parahumans. To some extent, the fact that the world is radically different is downplayed until the back half because society at the start of the story is Stepford-smiling through an immanent apocalypse- and, you know, the immanent apocalypse is ultimately kind of the relevant difference from our world. But on the whole, I doubt there's a really tight worldbuilding document documenting all the ripple effects on the dramatis personae of history. The story's pretty vague about, for example, what the American presidential lineup has been since Reagan, what electoral politics look like in a world of Capes. It's vague about basically everything else in that nitty-gritty, concrete-details vein.

I do think that all of these, Worm in particular, highlight a major issue you're gonna run into when trying to do alternate universe stuff with capes, and it's that, first of all, doing really robust, thoughtful and fleshed-out alternate history is already really fucking hard, requiring a strong command of the history and culture of maybe up to the entire world, depending on the scope of your project- and superhero stuff already suffers from really strong American provincialism, so the depictions can get stupid fast if you aren't careful. Then on top of that the nature of the cape genre is that you're going to be following a pretty pared-down central cast; authorial and audience bandwidth will be tied up with what's going on with these specific guys over the course of their story, which can get in the way of a birds-eye view of their world, unless you're specifically structuring the story in a way to dodge that issue (which, you know, I get the impression Wild Cards did.)

I also think a commonality in the above works is that a lot of the alt-history changes are instrumental, included not as the result of the author trying to hyper specifically model falling dominoes from a specific point of change, but because they help the work to make its point. I doubt Alan Moore has a one-hundred-page forum thread detailing the fallout of America winning the Vietnam War, but such a thing would be beside the point- which is that God being an American Agent would fuck shit up geopolitically, regardless of the specifics. I mean a lot of this is vibes-based already, right? In objective terms the MCU has been an alternate history for years, but it doesn't claim that label, doesn't market itself as such, so it isn't. I think it comes down to whether you decide to wear that outfit on the runway, and how well it hangs on you once you've opened yourself to judgement on those grounds.

[boyfridged]

pls expand more on the rehabilitationist v abolitionist dispute comment!

as a preface of sorts: this post is written with marxist theory of criminology in mind, and i relate to many concepts that stem from it. i consider batman as a series to be one of the most politically inclined texts when it comes to superhero comics as a whole, so imo it is imperative that it introduces many different outlooks on the topic of jurisprudence. and it is an approach that used to be pretty popular.

btw. if anything is unclear in terms of theory –– ask.

okay so, to answer the question: there's so much that contributed to this stray thought, and i think i hinted at a lot of it before on this blog, but let me just dump some of my thoughts in a disorganized manner... (maybe one day i will write about it in a more coherent way):

batman as the title needs an actual genuine counterweight to bruce's worldview, one that does not target the no-kill rule. enough with the no-kill discourse, really, i think in many ways it's almost... a detail, and i think the fixation on that detail leads to watering down the whole dilemma. (especially that bruce did not always treat is as a complete dogma and i preferred it that way.) what is more interesting i believe, is that bruce is a rehabilitationist – despite his vigilante work, he is dedicated to the idea of the legal system being a viable solution to crime. and, what is even more important, in his mind, crime is equal to a moral failure. i talked about it at length in my post about eoc, but let me just copy the relevant fragment in here:

bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime.

and of course, criminals need to be "corrected" and rehabilitated in order to be able to function in society again. the deviant behavior has to be eliminated.

i don't doubt that at the time when it was introduced, bruce's rehabilitationist philosophy was a radical one when compared with the prevailing popularity of the concept of retributive justice. but in the year of our lord 2023? the view that you can simply "fix" the system by aiding it in some ways is not radical at all. the system in question was mostly built around sustaining that corruption as a goal. and there are (or used to be) some characters, like leslie, who are “vigilante-critical” (among others) because of that reason.

enter jay. jay is very much in a position that makes it clear that the law is not usually on the side of the poor and marginalized. of course, he is only an ~11 year old, so of course he has no language to express most of these worries; he probably does not know anything about the rehabilitationist vs retributive vs reperative justice in a theoretical sense anyway. i doubt he knows that abolition exists as a concept; he might be well-read, but probably not in these categories. but he has certain intuitions; intuitions that i already talked about in the earlier mentioned eoc post. and these intuitions are that crime does not define morality. he does not consider himself wrong for stealing; he is not conflicted about willis being a criminal and grieves him easily; there’s no word of him being resentful to dealers. he has his own idea of justice that seems to be very much affected by his trouble with authority, the intention behind the crime, and perceived harm (this is imo one of the reasons he takes issue with ma gunn specifically). i think this setup is something that could lead to him taking an abolitionist point of view later on, since he seems frustrated with the label of “crime.”

obviously, at this point, jason’s disinterest in crime as something to contempt is seen as a problem (both by the editorial and in-universe); a problem that has to be fixed. and within his tenure of robin, we see him “learning” to ascribe to bruce’s moral code; which makes sense, because he is a kid, and because he trusts bruce. and so, i think his perception in this period does shift to accommodate the rehabilitationist outlook.

the garzonas’ incident, jay’s growing cynicism at the end of his robin run, and the red hood era altogether might suggest that jason, disappointed in the limits of this approach actively takes to the retributive standpoint instead. it’s def true insofar that the writers are not politically educated enough to understand the nuance that (imo) should naturally arise in his storyline. for example: the particular caveat in garzonas’ case is the position of power that felipe occupies and that grants him immunity. bruce, naturally, looks for the ways to bring justice by exploring other legal paths to solve the issue. jay goes with it despite being visibly unhappy. and i think this gets us to the core of the issue which is power and the system– the fact that the system is simply built to make it difficult to incarnate the higher-ups. diplomatic immunity exists for a reason, sure, but the fact that it allows people to get away with wrong-doing is not a side-effect; it's the goal. and so, felipe garzonas cannot be deemed a criminal, but willis and even jay at age of 11 were. the pattern repeats when it comes to the joker, who later uses diplomatic immunity to exploit the role to continue fucking with bruce. so the issue is not that the system does not work. the issue is that the system was built not to work.

another tangent: of course, you may note that the concept of the separation of powers (the judge, the jury, and the executioner) that bruce is so fond of is supposed to remedy the problem of the abuse of power. and it is, without a doubt, something necessary within the democratic system. still, i believe jason quoting arendt explains why he doesn't care for it in the slightest; in the man who stopped laughing #8 jay says: “you familiar with hannah arendt’s concept of schreibtischtäter? desk murderers? it’s people who use the state to kill for them, so they don’t have to get their hands dirty. you should read up on it. i think you’d find it very relatable.” arendt's work emerged in a very specific context, but jay makes it into something more definitive; a trait of the penal system as a whole; you can bring as many people into the workings of the justice system as you want to; but ultimately, most of them will act in the interest of authority, without a second thought (this also explains why he considers that making decisions on who lives and dies yourself is better than blindly following the rule of law.) (<- btw it links very well with the idea of autonomy as a predisposition to be moral since you need it to be an active member of the society. anarchists such as wolff have written lots of that.)

i'd say all of this leads us to the point where jason has great potential to come to the conclusion that abolition is the way to go. the ones in power will not get punished within that framework anyway, and the ones at the "bottom" of the socioeconomic ladder remain victims of it. months, months ago i had anons arguing with me, saying that comicbook characters don't have to be so socially aware and that even people irl rarely are; and i am also willing to indulge the narrative and say that jason is terribly confused regarding it all for now, because of how his childhood went and as a result of his personal trauma. nevertheless, characters are often vessels for ideas, especially in titles like batman; and bruce, for example, is allowed to have a developed a sound ideology on jurisprudence. why not jason? especially that all the motivations are there; the setup is there too. that's just another great incentive to actually make use of his origin story.

an extra disclaimer is that abolition is not the answer to all and that it requires so many reforms on all levels... and i don't think jay would be satiated with the mere idea of restorative justice that usually accompanies it, because that still leaves us with the problem of those in power maintaining it and (in the fictional context) supervillains (who very often do occupy those spaces) prevailing... but you know. abolition is very compatible with general revolutionary principles. who says he can't kill in that name if retiring is not a way to go (though my preferred timeline would include retirement for jay at least for a while... but i digress!)

to conclude, i think it's a conflict much needed not just for the sake of any progression of batman in terms of philosophy, but also because the ways jason was initially introduced (even pre-crisis) suggested that he was supposed to grow to be critical of bruce even as robin, while being on good terms with him too. and that's definitely a kind of dispute that is much more productive and nuanced than just going back to the no-kill rule over and over and over again when the source of it is much more interesting.

i hope you got anything out of my rambling. i rest my case for now:)

[ultra-creepy-fucker-things]

Rambling about Cresenta, Comet, the Archduke and the treaty. Headcanons under cut.

Comet is, genuinely, less malicious, more meticulous, and overall smarter than Cresenta was, but because her ideas about what's good for monsters are built on extremely faulty foundations, what should make her a good leader and diplomat only makes her more dangerous to the people she believes herself to be helping.

Cresenta was trying to control the monsters, but she left the job half finished, she got Penma Avarius into the made up position of "Archduke of Monsters", given the illusion of legitimacy with an election. She got this position recognized as the only legitimate monster authority by the MHC and her fellow mewmen nobility, but she never even bothered to learn who actual monster leadership was, if she was ever aware they had any, and left Penma to work out the messy business of actually getting the monsters to listen to her.

Now, Penma was smart enough to realize that A) Cresenta wasn't going to help her here, or even check her work, and B) actually trying to get monsters to submit to her would be a good way to lose her gold, her respect among mewmens, and everything above the shoulders.

She wisely chose to sit back, accept gold from the Butterfly Treasury, and bribe the occasional monster to make themselves less of a problem if they did anything to get the MHC breathing down her neck.

Now, Comet, while she did see the Archduke as the one true monster king, and blamed a lot of the issues monsters have on their unwillingness to submit to him, did also understand that monsters had leaders they actually respected and listened to, and sought an audience with them, while Cresenta basically assumed they didn't have leaders, and further assumed they'd just listen to anyone she put in charge.

Comet understood this was… Highly unrealistic. If she wanted monsters to listen to the Archduke, she would need the cooperation of leaders they actually respected, which would take not only a treaty, but some level of enforcement to keep them accountable, so they don't just sign the treaty and immediately break the terms without anyone really noticing or caring. She wildly underestimated the popularity of Seth's anti-Butterfly position, and did not understand just how little monsters as a whole trusted her, or how her own actions validated their distrust.

Ultimately, she was not a bad person, and did not deserve to die, but she also should not have been in the position she was in, the treaty was one that would've hurt monsters while dragging them deeper into Butterfly control, and killing her may have been the only option available to Toffee.

[just-thoughts-no-vibes]

Every day I think about how the Legend of Korra Season 4 could have been one of the best parts of the entire Avatar franchise if the main villain wasn't a new big evil, but already established issues that should have been dealt with long ago.

Ever since the original series, the authors have presented the Earth Kingdom as a place that even without war has a million problems because it's ruled by incompetent monarchs who do not care about the people and whose lack of interest is used by other parts of this corrupt machine.

We have seen how great the class difference is in all parts of the kingdom, especially in Ba Sing Se, how the army treats civilians, how they are willing to send children to war, how the most powerful force in the kingdom can betray its people in a second, how the queen enslaves her people believing they belong to her, how the prince won't lift a finger to help his people, how the king won't even listen to the peasants until the Avatar threatens him, and much more.

In addition to the problems in the Earth Kingdom, we have also seen the problem of apathy coming from other world leaders who have turned their backs on a country that has fallen into chaos. No one except Tenzin lifted a finger to help in any way. They sent no money, no medical or military aid. Their fix was putting an 18-year-old in charge and leaving her to do everything herself.

Two things specifically catch my eye. The only man who actually tried to do something is a member of a nation that has no material resources, no army, and has just begun to recover from the genocide. On the other hand, the leader of the ex-Fire Nation colony that was never given back to the Earth Kingdom didn't provide any help for the said kingdom. The only thing he did was ask a super-rich person to do something, she said no, and he was like oh well too bad. Also yes, I have a problem with Suyin in this situation, not because she refused to be a temporary leader, but because she had the means to help and chose to do nothing. It would be one thing if she were a regular civilian who couldn't do much, but she is not. She is literally among the top 5 richest people in the world, a ruler of the only province in the kingdom that wasn't affected by the death of the queen, and has a metal-bending army that is acknowledged worldwide. Yet, I don't remember her doing anything to help, be it just sending some funds.

Basically, there are so many issues surrounding the Earth Kingdom and Season 4 was the IDEAL time to talk about them. The setup was perfect: the country is in chaos, the avatar can't help, the richest layer of society does nothing, the only world ruler who tries to help is the air nomad, and everyone is okay with the throne being taken by a spoiled prince who doesn't care about the duties of a king.

And just think how much more interesting Kuvira would be in this scenario. I always saw her being a villain as a cheap way to say "Oh look! She is awful! Now you have to ignore everyone else being bad because she is the REAL bad guy!". And to be completely honest, taking into account her backstory, the way she was raised in Zaofu, the fact that she genuinely wanted to help, a lot of things that were said about her by other characters, and the way she surrendered and acted in Ruins of the Empire, it's completely out of place for her to be a villain. She would work just perfectly as a character who is easy to villainize but is not actually evil. She could have been used to criticize the monarchy and the world leaders while also questioning Avatar's place in the world. Literally everyone would benefit from her being a villain: monarchs who don't want to be seen in a bad light because of her reign, world leaders who don't want to be perceived as bad because they did nothing while a teenage girl risked her life every day to do the job, Suyin who turned a blind eye on suffering and ultimately abandoned Kuvira to do everything herself, and Korra who needs to prove she is still useful even if Kuvira was the one taking care of everything.

With Kuvira as a villain, they don't have to work on themselves and their policies, they don't need to change anything, and the status quo remains. But if Kuvira wasn't a villain, but a character that people want and need to be evil, then we could truly look into the core of the problem, that is, the system itself. The world would be forced into radical changes, or at least the beginning of them. The government would be questioned like never before, the richest would be seen for what they really are, and the Avatar wouldn't be able to just beat a new villain and thus regain importance but would have to adapt to the needs of this new world.

But hey, it's easier to make a villain because of whom we simply can't concentrate on the cardinal mistakes of other characters, than actually criticize the system that is the problem. It was cowardly of the authors and I have to say it's really icky that a character who wanted to retrieve colonized land was evil.

[bluedalahorse]

August and Rousseau are functionally the same character: the serious version

On Thursday evening, at my fanfic co-author’s encouragement, I posted about August and Rousseau being functionally the same character. This post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but there’s always been a serious, liberal arts college analysis version of it lurking in my head. I decided to go ahead and share it because what is the point of rejoining tumblr if I can’t torture the world with my Young Royals meta? (Do we even call it meta anymore? I am Fandom Old.)

So anyway, I have now written too many words about how Rousseau the horse is a narrative shadow for August, and how horse tropes are used to communicate August’s character arc. My ~credentials~ are as follows: I’m currently doing a terminal degree in writing literature for children and teenagers, and I have re-read the Felicity Merriman American Girl Books more times than I can count. I was not a horse girl in childhood, despite my mother trying to get me to be one by buying me Breyers and an alarmingly technicolor Lisa Frank notebook with a horse on its cover. (For Not Being A Horse Girl reasons there may be some errors in equestrian terminology here, but I’m gonna do my best. I invite genuine Horse Girls to weigh in with their knowledge and insight.) I have more thoughts about August as a character than I know what to do with, to the point where those thoughts have in part inspired the critical thesis on justice and privilege in YA lit that I am going to write for my MFA. These thoughts here on tumblr are merely for a fannish intellectual experiment, however, so I will not be as aggressive with the MLA and the footnotes as I would be in thesis work.

While I am an American of Swedish descent who has celebrated her Scandinavian heritage since childhood, I am still very much an American and my native language is English. Most of my lit theory here is therefore informed by the Anglo-American Horse Girl tradition, which I know got imported to a lot of other countries in translation. At the same time, I am aware that there are Swedish Horse Girl books out there, and I do not know as much about where they overlap with the Anglo-American tropes and where they differ. If anyone has knowledge in this particular area, please feel free to chime in.

Before we begin, I feel it necessary to issue a few notes about content. The first and most obvious content note is that this meta deals with August’s character arc, so I will naturally mention his releasing of the video and his other toxic masculine behaviors that harm the people around him. I will also make reference to his drug addiction, mental health issues, and possible disordered eating. In addition, there will be discussion of abusive relationship dynamics and adults invading the privacy of teenagers with the goal of controlling their romantic, sexual, and reproductive futures (particularly in the context of a monarchy securing its lines of dynastic succession.) You have been warned.

TOPICS COVERED

Horses in Literature and their General Vibe

Cinematography and Film Language in Young Royals

August, Felice, and Sara

Bloodlines and the Line of Succession

What’s next for August and Rousseau?

Horse/Power

Horses have long been symbols of wealth, status, and nobility. While literature and folklore offer their fair share of ordinary workhorses, the prince on a fancy white horse is an iconic fairy tale image. Historically, the ability to maintain a stable full of horses, specifically bred for battle or fine riding, was (and still is) a privilege only the rich can afford. Among the Romans, the second highest ranked social group after the senatorial class were the equites, named for the fact that they were rich enough to own horses they could bring to war. Fast forwarding to the modern day Young Royals, we see the wealth of Hillerska on full display in the stables. Even Felice’s parents, who have plenty of money to burn, remind her how much they spent on Rousseau.

August, of course, defines himself by his status. When we first meet him, he’s always going on about his father’s estate, bragging about flying off to restaurants in France, separating out who is nouveau riche and who is ancien regime—and so on and so forth. So what? you may be saying. Plenty of Young Royals characters are wealthy and own land. Why single out August and make him the character shadowed by the horse, just because of his money? Probably because of the other ideas horses get associated with in popular media. Horses in fiction are often temperamental, but their humans often work to control and tame horses in spite of that. There’s a certain tension and troubledness to fictional horses that makes them dangerous. Rousseau is no exception to this—Felice and others have difficulty managing him. We know August has a temper that gets the better of him. We also know he’s obsessed with control, and the first person he tries to be strict and controlling with is himself.

To put it more briefly, horses in stories can be used to open up a lot of questions about wealth and power and how that power is, well, reined in. Thematically, having Rousseau as a shadow to August’s character arc is an obvious choice.

Framed by the Stable Doors

The cinematography of Young Royals visually links August and Rousseau from the very beginning of the series. As early on as episode 1.2, a shot of Sara taking Rousseau out for a trot is followed immediately by a shot of August out on a run. (Or maybe it happens in the opposite order? Help.) These moments mirror one another—both of them are scenes of a moment of discipline and exercise, underscored by tense background music. Throughout season 1, even when August and Rousseau aren’t paralleled by the editing, they are at least paralleled by the writing.

As we move into season 2, the shots of Rousseau become more constrained as the threat of prison looms over August’s head. Rousseau is almost always behind a fence or restricted by some other architectural features. The bars(?) of Rousseau’s stall door echo the bars of a jail cell, while the trailer belonging to the Worst Kind of Horse People (TM) suggests a police van taking August away after a future arrest. These scenes almost always include Sara somewhere, and she’s often having reaction faces. As others have noted, Sara doesn’t speak much, but these visual cues offer hints about her internal mental landscape while also foreshadowing her eventual role as the one who turns August over to law enforcement.

I’m inclined to read these “imprisoned horse” scenes as Sara having internal conflict about her relationship with August. On some level, she is attempting to grapple with the fact that they’re already doomed because of August’s prior actions with the video. I don’t necessarily think this means that Sara is always thinking these things consciously and in words. Maybe it’s just a sense of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. Instead of having Sara try to articulate this in any sort of literal way, my guess is that the YR production team wanted to convey this part of her arc through visual language and symbolism. I think it works, once you’ve decided to buy into the horse parallels.

Does this mean we’ve segued into talking about the girls now? Probably. Might as well gallop ahead…

Enter the Equestriennes

Even outside of Horse Girl books, women on horseback are a repeating motif in Western literature. As various academics will tell you, equestrian women occupy a complex and problematic (in the academic sense) space on the page. On one hand, riding horses confers status upon these women and gives them some freedom of movement. On the other hand, equestrian women are often being trained for the patriarchy in subtextual ways. One thesis I looked at explains how in Victorian literature, riding was often used to facilitate female characters’ interaction with men in ways that eventually lead to marriage. You also examine the common Horse Girl cliché of that one special teenage girl who knows how to calm down the impossible horse, and understand it as a little sister to the “I can fix him” romance genre. As bastion of literary analysis TVTropes points out, ponies and the Troubled But Cute Boyfriend sure do have a lot in common.

Young Royals knows the tropes, and it wants you to know that it knows them.

Felice Ehrencrona doesn’t want to be a horse girl. Felice’s mother wants her to ride, because riding is what archetypal rich girls from Hillerska do. Throughout season one, we see Felice struggling with her riding classes and being afraid of Rousseau. While she gains more confidence with the help of Sara, she never truly grows to love being around Rousseau (as we can see by the way she quickly abandons her hobby later.) Still, for a while, Felice maintains the public image of the happy equestrian by posting pictures of herself and Rousseau to her Instagram and making additional posts that say she’s in the stables when she isn’t. Felice’s mother, believing this to be true, is delighted—until in 1.3 it comes out that Sara has been riding Felice’s horse instead, and Felice’s positive relationship with Rousseau is just a facade.

What holds true for horses holds true for boys, too. Felice’s mother is constantly putting pressure on her about boys, specifically in the way she encourages Felice to pursue Wilhelm. The fact that Felice knows stuff about the line of succession and whose babies get what rank (something she explains to the beleaguered American Maddie) suggests that Mamma Ehrencrona isn’t just interested in Felice having a nice boyfriend, she’s actually bringing marriage and babies into it. Which… is a lot. It’s so “a lot” that Felice rebels against her mother at the end of 1.3 by hooking up with August.

Although Felice’s initial act is one of rebellion, she ends up trapped back in the same place she started from, where socioeconomic status and performative gendered nonsense is prized above all else. August, after all, is still from the nobility and still comes with all that baggage Felice is getting from her parents. Felice’s relationship with August is very bad, especially behind closed doors where he’s constantly questioning her about who she’s with and where she’s going. To Hillerska at large, however, they give off the impression of being the school power couple. During moments of characters scrolling there phones we can see that in addition to being seen together, they also included photos of themselves together on one another’s instagrams. This contrast between the image and the reality of Felice’s relationship with August echoes Felice’s selfies with Rousseau.

As for Sara… well, if you nodded along to what I said before about the special teenage girl who is the only one who can tame the troubled horse, you probably already know where I’m going with this. Sara and August’s relationship doesn’t really come out of nowhere. Rather, they’ve spent an entire season taking a step closer to one another, literally and figuratively, every few scenes. You know the cliché where the horse girl visits the troubled horse every day and gets a little bit closer each time until the horse finally trusts the girl enough to eat sugar cubes out of her hand? Yeah. Same rhythm/pacing as the Sara/August scenes, and it only gets more obvious in season 2. That scene where he’s having a panic attack and she calms him down? He is a scared horse. We’re all on the same page, right? I hope we’re all on the same page.

In some ways, it’s not a perfect analogy and doesn’t always match up in a one to one way. Most horse girl books stay wish fulfillment and there isn’t always a moment of “the horse is Bad Actually, and we will remind you that the horse released a sex video of the horse girl’s brother.” But I think the horse girl novel coding speaks to what makes a relationship with August appealing to Sara in the first place. Deep down Sara wants to be special and exceptional to someone else, and she feels she understands things about August (and how to keep his emotions regulated) that other people don’t. As Sara sees it, she’s taken time to build trust with August. It’s the two of them together against really difficult odds, and she’ll take the difficulty that comes with that.

Also, while we’re here, the first place August kisses Sara is the stables. And there’s that entire conversation Felice and Sara have when Sara comes back after having sex in 2.3. I’m just saying. It’s right there. We’re all doing the math, right? We all see it?

People Of Good Breeding

Here’s where it gets even more icky.

In season 2, Felice decides to quit riding. This makes keeping Rousseau a bad investment, so Felice plans to sell him, and Sara decides to tag along. When a particular family expresses interest in Rousseau and comes to Hillerska to assess him, Sara swiftly dubs them the Worst Kind of Horse People.

What makes the Worst Kind of Horse People so upsetting to Sara? They don’t know how to respond to Rousseau, and they don’t treat him with the compassion Sara does. They’re willing to endure Rousseau’s volatile moods, however, because of he’s a thoroughbred and has a prestigious pedigree.

Things I did not know before watching a documentary about it: apparently all the thoroughbreds that exist in the world now are descended from three historical stallions. They are inbred af. IRL people who own thoroughbred stallions now will charge ~$50,000 per insemination in like a horse breeding hookup situation. Which… what? What the literal fuck. I get that this is a hobby people feel very passionate about and find fulfillment in, so I am trying not to be judgmental… and also that is a lot of money (more than half my yearly salary) for just one instance of breeding horses. So I’m still wrapping my head around it.

It stands to reason that the Worst Kind of Horse People could want Rousseau for his, um, genetic material. Anyway, let’s talk about the monarchy and the line of succession.

At the same time that the Worst Kind of Horse People are expressing interest in Rousseau, the royal court has started to pay attention to August. According to the YR fictional family tree, August is next in line for the throne after Wilhelm. Kristina’s advisors have plans to groom (see what I did there) August as a backup heir if Wilhelm keeps insisting on having free will. (Really! The audacity! Good for Wilhelm, though, we’re all rooting for him.)

For August, the idea of being elevated to spare prince, or potentially even king one day, feels liberating. Based on how he’s acting at the shooting range after his visit to the palace, he sees a chance for himself to leave his crimes behind and not be caught in his guilt. But I want to pause for a moment and consider the scene in 2.4 where he gets the phone call from the palace. Jan-Olof asks August a series of privacy-invading questions, including ones that touch on his sexual history. The final question (and therefore the one the writers want you to notice) is simply “are you heterosexual?” to which August replies that he is.

There’s a tempting rabbit hole I could go down about what it means for August to go beyond just engaging in toxic heterosexual behavior, and actually embrace heterosexuality as a label, and because it’s a tempting rabbit hole I will save it for another meta. What I want to focus on here is how sinister this scene feels. Part of that is because we (and Sara) know how blatantly and easily August is lying, and that he’s slipping back into his old, status-loving, drug-abusing self. In light of the established Rousseau parallels, however, I can’t ignore the subtext that the royal court is interested in whether or not they can “domesticate” August just enough that they can get him to eventually marry the right girl and produce a legitimate heir to the throne. That’s it. Nothing more. They aren’t interested in helping him with his addiction or getting him into therapy for his disordered eating or helping him process his dad’s death—all of which would put him in a better emotional place, and maybe even prevent him from returning to the emotionally dangerous mindset he was in when he outed Wilhelm and Simon to the entire world. On a metaphorical level, the royal court is basically treating August as livestock. Which. Is gross, actually.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We all know that August himself perpetuates a lot of gross sexual behavior toward others. Aside from releasing the video, he’s selfish and borderline emotionally abusive toward Felice, especially about sex. He constantly eggs on his classmates to stand up on the breakfast table and brag about their “conquests.” He eventually becomes extremely sweet and tender with Sara, but that’s only after he’s tried to get her to sell him drugs, bullied her family about not being able to eat lunch on Parents’ Weekend, and kissing her without her consent in the stables. August is very much Not Someone Who Respects The Sexual And Reproductive Autonomy Of Others and yet! There is this whole entire system of hereditary monarchy behind him, aiming to control every aspect of his life and violate his privacy, and he is a teenager. It’s not okay that they do it to Wilhelm either. We know they’re trying to do it to Wilhelm even now, and we get the sense they did it to Erik too, given the lines about the OnlyFans girlfriend needing to be hushed up.

I think it’s easy to say, well, August is power hungry and amoral enough that he consents to having his privacy invaded, and he does, but I legitimately wonder if he knows what he’s getting into. (Case in point: I think August really believes that the palace crowd would let him publicly date Sara. And, no. Even if Sara weren’t Simon’s sister, I can’t imagine they’d be excited about him dating the neurodivergent daughter of an immigrant mother and a father with a shady drug past. At the very least they’d force Sara to sign some pretty hefty NDAs.) My point is, you can consent to something and still end up in a weird power dynamic that’s bad for you and doesn’t honor where your feelings are. You can be a person of privilege who harms others, while still being harmed by systems of privilege yourself. And that’s precisely part of what makes August a compelling and complicated character.

Look, I just wish more people nowadays had seen the legendary 1990s anime Revolutionary Girl Utena because they would then get what I mean when I say that August isn’t Akio, he’s Saionji.

…I’m off track. My point is that the reproductive subtext in that scene is deeply unsettling and August’s nakedness in front of the window only makes it moreso. Right. Moving on.

What’s Next? The Horse and His Boy

(Apologies for naming this last section after a problematic Narnia book.)

Man. I wish I could just write August off and clamor for his untimely and violent death without a care in the world. The reality is that I’m under a curse, and that curse makes me want to see him eventually sort his life out, one way or another.

Let me be clear about what that does and doesn’t mean: I don’t mean that I don’t want to see him face consequences for the very real crime he did. I don’t mean I think he should suddenly be perfect and woke. I don’t mean that he and Sara should get back together. I don’t mean I want to see everyone forgive him. I just mean I want August to honestly confront the truth of his life so far and go “you know what? I suck. I can do better. I’m not even sure how, and I’m gonna make mistakes along the way, but maybe I can suck less.” And maybe he takes one tiny step where you’re like, if he keeps taking steps like this, this kid could turn out okay by age 40. Maybe. I feel incredibly exposed even saying this, since I know August is so widely despised by so many people in fandom, and I know other people who are okay with letting him stay in the villain zone, but I also feel like if anyone can pull off this story, it’s Lisa Ambjörn. She gets nuance, and she gets young people their flaws and their family conflicts. If YR were a different show, with a different writer and a different morality underlying the stories it tells, I would feel differently. But I don’t, and I think Lisa can pull off a complex story like that. So here we are.

(For examples of YA novels that pull off this kind of narrative catharsis, check out the character arc of the protagonist Deposing Nathan by Zack Smedley. Or pay attention to the uncle’s character arc in Randy Ribay’s Patron Saints of Nothing.)

There’s a very soft acting choice of Malte’s in 2.3, where August goes to meet Sara in the stables, to ask if she wants to come by and talk later. Sara’s getting Rousseau settled for the evening, and August reaches out and pats Rousseau on the nose. If I’m remembering the scene correctly, the usually temperamental Rousseau is calm in response.

We’ve seen August act self-aggrandizing before so he can build himself up and threaten other people. We’ve also seen him engage in escalating acts of self-harm (via excessive exercising and calorie counting) when he isn’t living up to his own strict standards. What we don’t see a lot is him having compassion for himself. If we accept that Rousseau is August’s shadow-self, then this nose pat is a rare moment of self-compassion. It’s at this point in the season that August realizes he needs to exist in community with other people, and that he needs to actually process his overwhelming emotions instead of lashing out at others. He makes an effort to try and quit using drugs, genuinely connects with Sara, and even briefly defends Simon when Vincent gets on Simon’s case after the indoor rowing match. It’s a positive trajectory and a glimmer of what could have been. That lasts until his visit to the palace, when August is offered the position as Wilhlem’s backup and starts to go back to his old ways. Moreover, the pressure of becoming the spare creates new complications for August’s mental health, and he slides back into lashing out at others again.

At the end of the season, August views Rousseau as a commodity and buys him for Sara in a Grand Gesture (TM) that’s actually pretty alarming and could be categorized as love-bombing. Sara is not impressed (I suspect she’s witnessed Micke love-bombing Linda, and all her alarm bells are going off) and continues her trip to the bus stop so she can report him to the police.

I could talk about the police call and the part where Sara is playing with a small horse keychain at the bus stop, but that might be the topic for another meta. Instead I want to take a moment to think about the practical fact that August owns a horse now. This opens up a few questions: if Rousseau continues to be August’s shadow-self, what does it mean for August to buy and own Rousseau? Is August going to have to learn to take care of Rousseau now? How much farther can we extend this metaphor?

Patience, comrades. We’re almost to the finish line.

By buying Rousseau, August has allowed himself to be bought by the aristocratic power structure that’s been trying to maneuver him into royal life. He’s started to actually use the inheritance left for him by his father—not because he’s finally started to process his grief, but because he’s doubling down on the idea that he deserves his inherited wealth and that he can use it as lavishly as he wishes. What’s interesting is the way he thinks this makes him into someone Sara will stay in love with. There’s the quid pro quo of it all, which is the obvious surface reading, but there’s also another level wherein August has been raised to believe that this is the ideal of aristocratic masculinity, and therefore what Sara would be attracted to. He assumes Sara wants the prince (even if he has to be a little bit Machiavelli’s the Prince behind the scenes to play that role.) But Sara wants the trust and care and connection, and a bond that’s a little bit weird and unique and ultimately private. She also values honesty and accountability. Sara doesn’t want the prince—she wants the horse. But not the literal one. And not necessarily in a material ownership kind of way, either.

As we move into season 3, I find myself wondering what’s next for August and Rousseau. Like. August owns a horse now. Is he going to have to take care of it? Like is he going to have to learn how to groom Rousseau and muck stalls and such? I get that he’s rich and can probably pay someone to do that for him, but given the way that Rousseau is meant to be a commentary on August’s character arc, there’s a lot of narrative potential (and dare I say… humor?) in August just having to learn to take care of the horse his own damn self in season 3. I feel like it could allow for some great moments of introspection on August’s part, if done well, and could lead him to a place of radical acceptance. We don’t even have to rule out August going to jail for his crimes, but knowing that jail is not the kind of thing that will happen in the first five minutes of the first five episodes, why not facilitate some internal character growth via horse chores first?

Alternately, August will just keep doubling down on making someone else do the horse chores. This would be consistent, if nothing else. He may just continue to be horrible, in which case I am worried for Rousseau.

(Please, Lisa Ambjörn and/or god and/or Epona. I am so desperate for this as-of-present unrepentant fuckboy to have to do symbolic horse chores that end up being about him finally coming to terms with the impact his counterrevolutionary behavior has on others. Is that so wrong?)

Anyway, I guess we won’t know until season 3. Thank you for sticking around if you’ve read this far—it ended up being way longer than intended! I’m back on tumblr after being away since 2015 or so, so this post feels like a wild way to reappear. But I’m glad I shared my thoughts all the same. Have a blessed Saturday, fandom.

[livingmeatloaf]

For the ask game: Sangcheng or Mingcheng!

Link to the ask game

Both are good! Both i ship! So I'll do both lol

Sangcheng

What made you ship it? The Cloud Recesses arc. They are a great candidate for friends to lovers, especially since (in CQL at least) they're constantly hanging out and getting into shenanigans. Pre-NMJ's death, they are also a somewhat viable marriage possibility (ignoring homophobia, etc) since Huaisang is a second son and could feasibly marry out if Mingjue got another heir, and getting a stronger alliance to the Nie would be good for the Jiang.

What are your favorite things about the ship? Huaisang is a playful balance to Wanyin's seriousness. Huaisang is also incredibly intelligent and politically savvy, but could whine and bully Wanyin into doing things for him. People would see Wanyin saddled with a useless spouse and not see the crocodile among the lotus leaves until they were dragged under. Just as the two of them would prefer 😊 I like that Jiang Cheng could relax around Nie Huaisang, and that they share some interests and memories.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I don't know what's popular or unpopular lol. I think there's a chance they could work post-canon, but it would take a lot of work. Mostly on Huaisang's part as he was the oriole hunting and thus did the most breaking of trust.

Mingcheng

What made you ship it? A gif from CQL of Nie Mingjue saying he was proud of Jiang Wanyin and Wei Wuxian, and how Wanyin was so happy about that lol. I definitely had the thought of "oh this man's daddy issues and praise kink could get blown way the hell up by an authority figure he respected."

What are your favorite things about the ship? Mingjue is very straightforward in his opinions and the expressing of them. I think that would make Wanyin able to relax in the relationship more easily, since he wouldn't have to try to pry meaning from obfuscated phrases. Also, again, praise kink and genuine praise and appreciation. I think Wanyin would also be able to flex some of Mingjue's black-and-white thinking. They're also very hot together, a big point in their favor lol

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? Again, no idea what is popular lol. Though I think Jiang Cheng could easily top or dom if they wanted that, it's not always the bigger man that tops. I would love to see more explorations of them being kinky with Zidian, since Mingjue is one of the few characters without overt whip trauma lol

Truly, the answer to #1 is always the fics. I can be convinced of any ship in the right context, as long as the worldbuilding and relationship are well supported. Even if I only ship them in that context, I can see it. I have always been a multishipper and I always will be.

[lynnettys-world]

MENTALITY OF THE HEART [ AN ORIGINAL FICTION]

Original Characters [WMBW ORIGINAL ROMANCE FICTION]

Rating: 16+

Author: Lynnetty L. Mubanga (AKA Lee (me🤭) )

#MATERIALIST

SYNOPSIS: Alice Monroe, At the age of 25, found herself working at the largest psychiatric hospital in the city, where her skills and dedication were highly valued.

Despite her young age, she had earned the respect of her colleagues for her professionalism and unwavering commitment to her patients. However, not everyone was quick to acknowledge her talents. Some older male colleagues dismissed her as inexperienced, while women of all ages admired her for breaking barriers in a male-dominated field.

Though she exuded confidence and competence in her professional life, Alice's personal life was a stark contrast. With a bubbly personality and a caring nature, she often found herself struggling to maintain boundaries with her patients, especially those who appealed to her maternal instincts. This had earned her the nickname "Mother Nature" among her friends, a label she wore with a mixture of pride and exasperation.

On the other side of the spectrum was Alexander Dante Bianchi, a 29-year-old Italian billionaire known for his ruthless business tactics and his irresistible charm. Women swooned over him, while men envied his power and charisma.

Despite his outward image of success and confidence, Alexander harbored a dark secret that threatened to unravel his carefully constructed facade. He battled with a severe mental disorder that he kept hidden from the world, fearing the repercussions of revealing his vulnerability.

When fate brought Alice and Alexander together, it was a collision of two worlds that could not have been more different. As his newly appointed personal psychiatrist.

Despite their differences, they found themselves drawn to each other in ways they could not explain. The line between professional duty and personal temptation began to blur, leading them down a path they never expected.

Would they succumb to the fire burning between them, or would they resist the inevitable pull of their hearts?

~

PLEASE READ!!

Hey lovely readers,

I'm excited to share with you one of my original stories and I really hope you enjoy it.

Before we dive in, there are a few things I want to make clear. This story is the result of my hard work and creativity, so I kindly ask you not to translate, plagiarize, or copy my work in any form.

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

This book contains some disturbing scenes, especially those related to mental health. Please read with caution and take care of yourself while navigating through these parts of the story.

Just a heads up, this story falls under the genre of dark romance, and the male main character is depicted with various mental health conditions. I want to emphasize that I do not romanticize or glamourize individuals dealing with mental health issues. The portrayal of these conditions in the character is meant to raise awareness about mental health struggles. It's a topic that often goes undiscussed, and those facing mental health challenges are sometimes overlooked or misunderstood because they may not always express their feelings openly.

Additionally, more content warnings for this story include mentions of violence, blood, revenge, manipulation, child trauma, and abuse, among others.

I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. It means a lot to me, and I genuinely hope that you find some enjoyment and maybe even some thought-provoking moments within these pages. 😊

Thank you for being here and for being open to exploring this story with me. Your support and understanding are valued more than words can express. Enjoy the journey ahead!

[adachikiyoshi]

omg id love to hear ur thoughts on kazehaya being the superior shoujo ml bc i feel that way but i struggle to articulate why.. ur so right abt shiina not relying on trauma to create sympathy for him

thank you for asking!

i think what makes kazehaya so charming and different than the rest of the male leads of his time (early 2000s and before) is that, from beginning to end, he is a genuinely good person.

he is introduced as a kind guy who is sociable and easy to get along with. he's not extraordinarily handsome or super talented or rich. he is refreshing and popular but at the same time he is Just Some Guy.

it's kind of hard to talk about how good he is without comparing him to other male leads of the 90s/00s. in a time where mostly distant and aloof and emotionally constipated male leads with a traumatic past were on the rise, kazehaya stood out for his emotional availability and overall normalcy.

for measure, a character similar to kazehaya from the 90s would be arima from kare kano. just like kazehaya, he is introduced as a kind guy who is popular among his peers and who is from the beginning nice to his love interest. however, all of that is thrown out of the window as soon as his backstory is starting to unveil.

i personally find how 'boring' kazehaya (supposedly) is, a positive. a lot of people say they feel his development lacks in comparison to other characters in the series and while a lot of times this is said by people who have not read the manga, they're not far off.

but his development lacks not in a "bad writing" kind of way, but in the sense that there's not much he needs to develop, as far as his personality goes. while other male leads needed to learn to be civilized people by getting together with the protagonist, kazehaya's main struggle was communication with his loved ones —mainly with sawako, and later on, with his dad— and he works on it until the very end of the series.

by no means does this mean his development is insignificant or nonexistent; it's just not as big of change to him as a person as it is to how he navigates his relationships.

i would also like to mention that his little need for change and the lack of unecessary tragic backstory gave so much space for other characters to get the spotlight. it's not inherently bad for the male lead to get as much screentime as the protagonist; sometimes it's necessary, and it's great, if done correctly.

however, kimi ni todoke, in my opinion, succeeded in giving almost everyone, besides the protagonist, their own time to shine and i think kazehaya not having a thousand issues to solve helped with that.

at the end of the day, you like kazehaya because he's nice to sawako, he's nice to everyone. you understand he sometimes struggles with communicating his feelings. sometimes he makes mistakes. even then, you know he is a good person. you don't need a backstory to excuse his every misbehavior and you don't need a backstory to know that he's a good person.

i hope this doesn't sound like i think characters with trauma are inferior or automatically bad writing; there are good ways to do that (karuho did it in kimi ni todoke already with another character). but i do think some authors rely too much on it when writing their male leads.

[dropoff99]

—On WoT fandom disagreements and such—

Been reading WoT since 1998. For most of my life it was THE fantasy series as far as I was concerned and still is in many ways. The world and the characters were simply deeper and more realized than anything I was reading. The roster of fantastic characters, scale, the magic system, masterful use of multiple POVs, metaphysics, and general lore Jordan created pulled me in and wouldn’t let me go.

I stilI have visceral memories of the time around RJ’s death, distinctly feeling like nothing resembling a proper ending was going to come to what I felt like was the best fantasy series around . Very few other fantasy authors prior to his passing were eager to cite Jordan in tones of reverence. If anything many “serious” fantasy fans were embarrassed to admit they loved the infamously long series which was the peak of the genre once but had more or less stalled out. Knife of Dreams was amazing to me personally but with RJ’s death and the slog prior you couldn’t argue that a satisfying ending was on the horizon. Fantasy authors like George RR Martin (despite being a friend of RJ’s and WoT definitely influencing both his work and success) constantly railed against many of the tropes of the genre (Chosen ones, Tolkien imitation, lack of moral ambiguity, plot armor, etc.) that Jordan reimagined/leaned into early on. It also didn’t help that Martin didn’t exactly argue when people made critiques of WoT in front of him either (like the famous Stephen King interview he did much later). This wouldn’t really matter if these sentiments were not so common among fantasy readers when Sanderson hopped on board. What was clear to me very early on after reading TGS was that not only was Sanderson a fan but he clearly understood the gravity of finishing the series and the care/respect he had for both the community and Jordan’s legacy was evident. I never had the feeling that it was an outsider coming in who just didn’t “get” the wheel of time. Secondly what Brandon did very well is communicate what was special about the series as a whole to new readers.

I have my issues just like anyone else but I genuinely have enormous respect for the work that both Team Jordan and Sanderson did under circumstances that were obviously not ideal. I can see the arguments regarding Sanderson’s religious/political overtones entering his other works but certainly not Wheel of Time. Yeah he didn’t completely overhaul every institution Jordan created and had to resort to quicker solutions. I’m also not going feign any sort of religiosity or be his apologetic in that regard and consider it to be the thing I like least about Stormlight. His worldview/biases of course will remain (just like Jordan’s). However I really don’t think you can deny he was an enormous fan who had genuine love and respect for both the series and Jordan himself. The fact that Harriet (Jim’s widow and long time editor) picked him based on his work and eulogy mean a lot to me. The reverence with which Harriet still seems to hold for BS and the job he and Team Jordan did seems to indicate that at the very least the people closest to the work and previous author felt that the promise of Jordan’s vision was delivered as best as could be expected.

I’m not someone who is without criticisms for BS. I envisioned the direction of Mat, Padan Fain, Perrin, Logain, Nyanaeve and several others very differently after reading the story well over a decade by that point. I missed Jordan’s unique style on character perspective and gift for painting a visual I could walk into mentally. But I also think in retrospect Sanderson was the perfect choice outside RJ to do the job. Some of his weaknesses at the time (barreling through plot, lack of rich setting, hasty exposition etc.) actually worked in his favor as he converged gigantic swathes of character arcs which still required three massive books. I respect those who think Sanderson’s choices were bad. And if you really hate the guy based on political/religious views go off I guess. I just don’t see how claiming he doesn’t respect Robert Jordan or his legacy holds any water at all. Or at the very least, as someone who’s been paying attention to the community my entire adolescent+adult life, I have not seen compelling evidence for that to be the case.

[olderthannetfic]

People going on about how they're representing this whole Greek thing are missing that that one anon had a pretty good point about how "cultural appropriation" rhetoric gets misused. People do really need to be more specific about what the issue is, or it very easily turns into basically just arguing for cultural segregation. I've seen that happen numerous times on this website over the years. I've seen people argue that it's appropriative to do something like *learn about* another culture or learn its language. I think it's really important for people to keep an eye on what are the actual issues with cultural appropriation (mostly about exploitation and colonialism) and not just the idea that cultural mixing is bad, or that being interested in a culture that isn't your own is bad. Because the truth is, whether you intend this or not, if you're just arguing that everyone should only keep to the culture of their ethnicity or their place of origin or both, then you're basically in agreement with white supremacists. It's not that cultures mixing is bad; most culture is a result of some mixture. It's when it's done in a way that's exploitative and/or disrespectful: like reducing sacred symbols like indigenous war bonnets to a fashion accessory, or incorporating the art of another culture into your own art without giving credit and without paying anyone from that culture who taught you or added to your work.

FTR, I don't think you can "appropriate" ancient mythologies. I think people are getting twisted around though because there is a genuine history of colonial exploitation of Greek artifacts by colonial powers to fill their museums, as with the Elgin marbles. I do think it's still a good idea to be properly informed about them, regardless, at the very least because those make for the more interesting retellings. For all that people (who IME, largely haven't read it, I'd love to hear if people who have read it disagree though) rag on Song of Achilles, I actually thought it was a pretty good example of a retelling because the author, who has an educational background in mythology, takes great pains to try to recreate the society and cultural norms of Greece at that time rather than sugarcoat it. Achilles may be even more of a jerk than he was in the original Iliad, tbh. It's telling to me that the author's other books that are less "shippy" don't have as negative of a reputation on here in that regard as Song of Achilles, despite being fairly similar, and it makes me wonder how much of that is because it's popular among "fujoshi fandom" so people just assume it MUST be shallow and fandomified, and I was super shocked at how much it really wasn't that at all. As well as I saw that a lot of people expecting something more like that were disappointed by all the period-accurate misogyny and so on.

Which brings me to another point: another reason I'm skeptical of a lot of this discourse is that it seems like often it's more of a high-culture, low-culture thing. A thing that is popular with M/M fanfic writers can't POSSIBLY be doing it right. A thing that is a popular video game or Tony-winning Broadway musical that is popular with the fandoms for those things, can't possibly be accurate. And I get that a lot of that is because a lot of populist things that took from Greek mythology have been inaccurate (Disney's Hercules, for instance) but if you're going to criticize the accuracy of something, I think it is worth engaging with the original work and what it actually does rather than just assuming It's Popular It Must Suck. It feels like a lot of this turns into lording that you were into it before X over others. And being aware that Tumblr Recommendations often do a poor job of actually giving you a good idea of what the work is really like.

As well as, of course, asking yourself - as we should with any sort of historical inaccuracy etc. - if the inaccuracy was deliberate or not. Sometimes people are not really telling that story in order to tell the most accurate version of something but to make a different kind of point, and so the changes might be deliberate. I would argue this is true with something like Hadestown.

That doesn't mean you can't still dislike it for that reason, of course. I know a lot of classical musicians who dislike the movie Amadeus for being so inaccurate about Mozart's and Salieri's lives. I like it despite that because I think the point it is trying to make is stronger for not sticking to the historical fact. I just wish more people did know the historical fact, though.

--

One would think the "Is it bad if I learn to cook Thai food?" thing was a strawman... but I've seen it in the wild far too many times.

[twilightguardian]

More Discussing Fixing RWBY Criticisms

I've been thinking of doing this for a while, since I know while my initial essay was ungodly long, it wasn't comprehensive. Plus, there's new criticisms and stuff I glossed over in my initial post that started my involvement in all this. Partially because it wasn't as big, but also some of the criticisms require a lot more time, effort and nuance to look through and discuss and my initial post had taken a couple of days to bang out.

I'll start off with a review that was posted due to my involvement in this. I think it was a good review, and it was brought to my attention because Raymond happened to see it and discussed it. This person has unfortunately blocked me, and I don't blame them for it, because I said some things that with my phrasing could be viewed in a less than good light. But I'll explain myself a little bit below, when I talk about my general attitude toward confronting people since I might as well.

I'm mainly posting this as a primer because it's going to encompass most of the criticism. And I think it's fair if the reviewer didn't find the faunus plotline to their tastes. Not everyone is going to be satisfied with it, no matter what and at the end of the day, no matter how hard someone tries, there's going to be issues someone will take with a work, or how a concept is presented, and there's ultimately nothing that can be done with it. The most that an author can do is their sincere best.

I think calling the White Fang 'the bad guys' in Fixing is a little simplistic. Sure, they are an antagonistic force to some extent, but they aren't bad or evil. The first volume has thieves posing to frame the White Fang and cover Roman's tracks. The second volume does have actual White Fang members, recruited by Cinder, and Roman forced in middle management between the two.

But it is established that there is corruption seeping into the organization and disparate groups in some internal political maneuvering in the background as people with different ideas move about among the different branches. This is where we get Onryu, who is only ever mentioned, Adam, who was under Onryu, and then Sienna and Ghira.

Volume 3 has Adam directly involved and pushing White Fang involvement in the Fall of Beacon. Adam abusing his power and influence, and later in Volume 4 blames the actions he pushed for on the Lieutenant who died. I think that pretty clearly establishes that these are individuals and mindsets within and not the White Fang as a whole who are considered bad guys, but people swayed by charisma and ideology to do a man's bidding with the White Fang itself in opposition to it in Volumes 4&5.

As for Blake, she said directly that their parents got a new extension to their home, and later it's stated that Ghira is newly crowned Chieftain.

Getting extra clarification on this, there was mention that Blake was meant to be 12 when she ran away, but her family's class status doesn't actually matter to this other than as background detail. But there was something that we determined was a genuine flub on his part because of this criticism, with him waffling on whether the house belonged to the Belladonna's or the house belonged to the Chieftain who'd move in once elected.

Either way, Blake isn't a rich princess-or-equivalent in Fixing, nor is it meant to imply that she is in the dialogue. I believe he could have been clearer on this, but the scene where he says 'newly elected Chief' is there.

I'm unsure if this is an issue or just stating a fact. But if it is criticism, then I'm not sure how racism being mostly an issue within the minds of individuals is a problem. We saw it be an issue all throughout volume 1 and it's mentioned with Cardin. Weiss' arc is also very much heavily focused on racism, even if her main issue is her perfectionist attitude about her team.

It's a little confusing when it's stated here that they're hoping it'll be treated like a big deal but then implies that they're brushing off everything with Cardin and Weiss as not being enough. I suppose in this person's mind, at least according to what I'm gaining from this review, the only racism worth talking about is systemic? I do not want to assume, but that's what I glean off this.

Well, I'd already said how Blake is not the pseudo Weiss-like character this person seems to think she is. But even so, that doesn't mean Blake hasn't experienced racism in her life. Especially after she joined the White Fang. I'd honestly think that if a faunus family like Blake's could gain that much affluence, then things have improved. And that's the point, isn't it? Adam's a true believer of the cause, and Blake attacked his core motive: One that has driven him to spite and hatred and malice, no matter where it may have started.

He's had a rough situation, but can he see past it? Can he see the concept of a good human? Or that the situation with the faunus has improved, even if there's still work to be done? If what he wants is no longer equality, but revenge, no amount of what happened in his past should justify Blake sitting back and watching Adam hurt innocent people. It's a cycle of hatred and violence, one that is easy to fall into.

That's ultimately the dilemma between Blake and Adam now, though I'm told we'll get a lot more into this as we go through Volume 6.

The comments feel very ideological, and such things can paint one's view of a work. But I just want to say that I don't think Blake's tragedies have to match Adam's in order for her to have an opinion on his extremism. Do I think that Blake being an orphan could make her case stronger? Sure. I don't think it's necessary.

In my rewrite/OW template, my interpretation of the White Fang is much more leaning into religious cult, with its members being raised and indoctrinated into an idea that humans are the enemy and will harm you if you let them. But the White Fang are also not the only racial justice group, with Velvet being a part of one in Vale and takes over as a student representative and leader of the movement at Beacon when the last one graduates.

In Fixing, we just had Ghira and Kali set up an all-faunus disaster-relief force that's separate from the White Fang as well.

There are many different routes that one can go with depending on how close or far one wants to take the ideas and worldbuilding and Blake can be adjusted for to fit the needs of that world.

There have been a couple of Sketchy Huntsman who have addressed this months ago. Your mileage may vary with how successful that was. There are some people who go to extremes with how careful one must tread when addressing other cultures to the point where it's almost not worth it to acknowledge another culture's existence. In writing circles there's also a growing concern over the concept of sensitivity readers hindering a project more than helping.

The term itself is also vague and muddies the conversation, and I much prefer the term 'diversity editor' as it better reflects their role in professional writing and what they're meant to do. But I digress.

This isn't professional writing. It's a fan project meant to expand upon and correct issues with the worldbuilding of this franchise. So what do we have?

This text claims that the Branwen tribe is inspired off the Ainu people. This gives a false impression it's meant to be a 1-1 comparison between real life Ainu peoples and the Branwens. That's not true. The SH who have addressed building up the tribe talked about how the Branwen tribe is a fictional ethnicity and culture that are based on multiple different cultures, not just one. There's elements of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and yes, Ainu. They aren't representative of one ethnic group, nor were they ever intended to be. The main inspiration were those of Mongolian tribes, of which there are many. It was specified Mongolian Steppe Peoples, though there was contention with this use of words.

Pan-Asia is a term and ideology that seeks to unify all elements of Asian peoples. Japan itself has tried to use this term for its own imperialist gain. But for our uses here, Pan-Asian does not work. This isn't a unification of Asian cultures into a single amalgamus blob of Asia. This is creating a fictional ethnicity by taking inspiration from many different real life ethnicities. This contention seems to be under the impression still that no matter what, the ethnicity is still meant to represent a real group of people when that's not true.

I take issue with the idea that creating something by taking elements of other things is inherently bad. That is how art is made. An artist will look up pieces of different clothing to create something that looks similar to, but isn't quite like the sum of its parts. Collages are made out of what inspires you with the design. This is no different, and the exact method used in designing the clothes of the Branwen tribe, and broadly their ethnicity as a whole, made of many things but not directly any of them, but something new. It's fiction. We who write fiction are inspired off the real world, and may at times reflect it, but never copy it lest we get called out for being hacks.

The Branwens are bandits. They are nothing more than bandits in canon, a collection of people who gathered around Raven, though a handful may have been with her since they were young. Fixing turned them into a people.

I repeat that humans cannot create something out of nothing. We don't have that amount of creative freedom, and something is bound to be copied intentionally or not off of something that person has experienced in their lives, or looks up. It is not disrespectful to be inspired, to have no desire to create a perfect representation of a specific peoples in a world that is not reflective of ours.

It is correct that there is a misconception about what the bear is being sacrificed to. The bear, taken from its mother and raised like a person, is then killed off after two seasons with arrows until its throat is slit and the spirit of the god is released back into the mountains. The peoples are gathered for the celebration and the flesh is then eaten.

But the process of killing the god is itself still called a sacrifice, no matter if it is to something or for its own benefit. It is still a sacrificial ceremony where the life of the mortal bear is sacrificed to release the spirit of the god.

To take this concept and apply it to Vernal is called symbolism. Symbolically she is the bear, worshipped and venerated and kept close and raised well, but it is her mother's faults and failings that ultimately get her daughter killed, propping her up as a god and slaughtering her. Symbolism doesn't have to be directly comparable and to think that it must is to stifle creativity and art.

Yes, I have done research on Ainu culture, both because of my own interest with characters in fiction who were directly Ainu, but also because of this. Knowing the meanings behind things, the ceremonies, the practices, the beliefs does not mean I'll necessarily want to replicate it. In a way, like how Ainu art is respectful to the gods by creating something original, not replicating and creating a realistic image, so too does the Branwen's Ainu leanings not reflect the truth out of respect.

Honestly this is the end of the Fixing RWBY section. Stop reading if you don't care about what I have to say below because it's otherwise unrelated because this issue wasn't about Fixing, but the one time I talked about canon (legitimate hot take) and people got upset.

So, here we are. The 'stain' on my time here and the main reason I was blocked by this person in particular. I will clarify I was talking about Shay, not Shiloh, and I differentiate them by calling them by their names depending on whether I'm talking about canon or Fixing. And I was talking about Shay.

In my opinion, Shay did not sexually harass Yang and I'll stand by that. Why? Because I'm not someone who is going to look at every single negative and unwanted interaction and label it as such and my opinions are very strong on this. Sexual harassment can be any unwanted interaction because there is no solid definition. Because I have friends who have told me they witnessed these situations at parties, where the girl is upset the guy leaves and complains to my friend about it because she was playing hard to get so why'd he leave? I've been directly in Yang's situation myself, and arguably worse because the guy did end up touching me.

So why do I not view any of these three examples as sexual harassment? Firstly, context. The guy is drunk, and if anyone who has been around drunk people know, their mental faculties aren't exactly there. That means their booze-addled brains are too stupid to comprehend small little social faux pas like touching someone's hair or (in my case) reaching into someone's mouth because they're wearing fake vampire fangs and drunk brain goes what the fuck is that. He was clearly trying to flirt, not believing the girl he saw was as young as she claimed, because dumbo drunko brain. Yang was calm, slightly annoyed, but engaged in conversation with the guy. To me, thinking about how drunk people can be fucking stupid, can easily see the guy interpreting her engagement in conversation as egging him on and playing hard to get.

Secondly, I simply don't automatically assume malice in anyone, fictional or otherwise until it's made clear to me they're meant to be someone I shouldn't trust. There has to be strong evidence to the contrary, and even after the reveal of him being a bandit, he's played far too much for laughs for me to consider him any amount of legitimate threat.

Thirdly, and this was the thing I was trying to originally say: I don't like calling Yang a victim of sexual harassment. That implies some level of frailty on her part, and she was in control and comfortable in the space and with her abilities the entire time despite the small triggering of small episodes with her shaking hand.

Whether or not someone still agrees with me after this, that's fine. But I do not like the idea of infantilizing Yang as a victim of Shay and that idea triggered something primal in me. But I'm not a sexual assault apologist or whatever for looking into the context and not immediately assuming malintent due to my own personal experiences and the experiences I've heard about from close friends. This isn't out of nowhere. Some people are going to have their own experiences that aren't mine, and they'll interpret the scene a lot more maliciously than I have. I'm not meaning to downplay their experiences, merely state that my own has painted my perception of the scene, as their experiences also painted theirs. But at the end of the day, I stand by Yang was not a victim of sexual harassment.

As for mentioning someone's sexuality, the meaning people took from it was the direct opposite of what I'd intended, and I can in some ways acknowledge if I wrote it in an unclear way. I was trying to say that I did not believe she could use her lesbianism to play dumb on the topic of male dating and flirting because I thought she was too smart for that and didn't believe gay flirting could be that different.

[summersfirstsnow]

June Reads 2023

A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larson aka Local Spinster Has to Do Everything Around Here. This is the reading experience:

MC: is this a romance me: MAAM YOU BURIED YOUR BROTHER'S CORPSE IN THE BACK GARDEN THREE DAYS AGO MC: okay well I have to prepare this random girl's dead body for viewing, a job that is for some reason mine MC: * physically relocates the dead girl's jaw * MC: okay back to what I was saying about this being a romance! me: the fact that you are capable of contemplating romance in this murder mystery is amazing

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee: if you watched How to Train Your Dragon and thought "okay but what if the dragons WERE incapable of loving you and would leave you for dead in a heartbeat and might try to eat you, wouldn't that be great" then good news! This is the book for you. I did enjoy this one, it's a very quick read (or listen, in my case). This is about giant birds (love it) and hunting monsters!

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall: This was. Almost painfully tedious. If you're writing a story where both the romantic leads are women, then you NEED to conceptualize women as active characters who are allowed to be both funny and stupid or your sapphic romance will be so so extremely boring. If your female characters are all reactive rather than active, they will never be able to play off each other, because nobody in that relationship will actually provide the initial motion. And an object at rest will remain. At rest. Until we all die of boredom. Also the narrator choice was genuinely baffling, in all honesty. Like. I don't know why the author went "you know what this novel needed? Someone to constantly comment on how stupid all the events are, in case the reader hasn't noticed." Don't worry, Alexis Hall. I noticed. I noticed.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 edited by John Joseph Abrams & Veronica Roth: These were varying levels of enjoyable for me, but overall, it was a good collection! And This is How to Stay Alive by Shingai Njeri Kagunda made me cry from older sibling feels, among other things. Beyond the Dragon's Gate by Yoon Ha Lee was also a stand-out for me.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose: only YA novel on the list for this month, I think! I enjoyed this one a lot. Anequs is definitely a main character who pulls her own story along, and I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel when it comes out. I liked the organic integration of different ways of knowing very much! It does have some of the usual debut novel issues, but hopefully Blackgoose's writing will grow and those will get worked out at the series goes on.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty: this book rollicked along well! The notorious pirate captain Amina Al-Sirafi is retired, and for a good reason, but finds herself pulled back into the world of supernatural creatures, mythical treasures, and high seas misadventure when she is asked ("asked" in heavy quotations) to track down a noble family's missing daughter. This book takes place in the same extended universe as the Daevabad trilogy, but doesn't require having read it.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns: when Mackenzie, a young Cree woman living in Vancouver, begins bringing things back from her nightmares, she finds herself drawn back home to the rest of her family, to try to figure things out, especially as the dreams get more dangerous. This is a horror story about monsters, but also a horror story about grief and colonialism. It's about a family of magical dreamers, but also about the ties of family and the strength of those ties, no matter how tattered, in the face of generations of horror. This one is an atmospheric story that I found somewhat disorienting as a read, and has a couple debut quirks, but overall was a good reading experience. It got spooky and I just went "the only way out is through" and finished it at 1 AM.

Spectred Isle by KJ Charles: I feel like Saul just goes "well this might as well happen" about basically everything in his life at this point, which definitely brought a certain energy to the story. This one isn't my favourite KJ Charles book (not that I've read all of them but still), despite the fact that usually fantasy is me preferred genre.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant: This is a reread for me, and still the Seanan Mcguire/Mira Grant book that appeals most to me. Still really enjoy the merfolk in this! Deep-sea dwelling and very toothy. Jurassic Park vibes overall. The dolphin sideplot still feels misplaced with the rest of the story, doesn't really accomplish much of anything, which made it a frustrating digression in an otherwise tightly plotted novel.

[rishikaroy95]

Get healthy and thick hair

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Does PRP truly assist with further developing balding?

There has been a lot of exploration on PRP treatment and it is an FDA-supported methodology. There are various continuous investigations on the adequacy of PRP for balding, thus far, the exploration has been promising. A recent report in India took a gander at a gathering of patients with male-design sparseness who utilized endorsed meds, yet saw little change in their hair development. After four PRP medicines, they developed around 30% more in diminishing regions. A recent report out of Italy likewise found male patients had expanded hair and thickness in regions where specialists utilized PRP treatment.

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[sdoughltec5703]

Week 12 Reflection

AI supported sentiment analysis can be incredibly helpful in determining users and authors opinions towards a topic/ program. Working for the TAMS program, I am around high schoolers quite often and will hear a lot of complaints towards multiple TAMS policies. For example, the requirement to take up to Calc 2, being limited to applying to 15 colleges, and the wifi for our building cutting out at 1AM. These are all valid complaints, but I think that typically we only hear the people who feel negative and those who don’t mind the policies often don’t speak out about them, hence why I only know the negatives. If TAMS admin were to roll out a survey to gather student opinions towards different policies such as those listed above, and assuming a 100% response rate, then the admin could see if students tend to genuinely feel negative towards these different policies or if it’s a loud minority that feels negatively towards the policies. That being said, the results of a sentiment analysis tool could effectively guide the decision making process as to whether or not these policies are beneficial or harmful to the student body. Since I work for TAMS but also regularly have conversations with the students (a side effect of living where I work), I am able to hear both the admin and the student perspective on these things. In regards to calculus, the student complain the their average high school peers don’t have to go up to calc 2, as well as many college make them take calculus again after TAMS. Admin argues that it shows how much stringer the TAMS education is when it’s a standard for their students to be high achieving in their level of math. The 15 schools college application limit is always a major point of contention around October/ November as the seniors/ second year students start wanting to last minute apply to extra schools in fear of being rejected from their top picks. The admin push back is that this limit pushes students to be more mindful of what schools they are choosing to apply to and making sure that they have a healthy balance of safety schools, targets, and reach schools, as well as applying to that many schools can be expensive for families and time consuming for the academic counselors to submit that many transcripts/ letters of recommendation. Lastly, the wifi cutting out in our building at 1AM is a very nuanced issue among students and staff. The students complain that it prevents them from being able to finish assignments, but the staff argue that it promotes a healthier sleep schedule and if students really need extra time to complete an assignment that they can wake up at 6AM when the wifi turns back on. This issue gets more nuanced when you take into consideration that many students have cellular data and hotspots that they can use to continue working, and that this policy can disproportionally affect student from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, so this policy is even getting the criticism of some staff now. Overall, the many TAMS policies that are points of contention could benefit from a survey to gather student opinions and then responses could be analyzed using a sentiment analysis tool. There are even many group chats that students use to talk and those could be analyzed to see what the actual opinions are instead of the refined thoughts that are put onto a survey response. I genuinely believe that this form of analysis would greatly benefit the TAMS students, as well as the admin who are constantly having to field complaints from TAMS students. I feel that this is a rather simple sentiment analysis applications o I definitely think that currently available tools would be able to properly handle the task.