#took off etc etc but even given All That i think this is disproportionately an issue which at least partially is due to irresponsibility on | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

impostoradult · 4 years ago

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I finally figured out why it feels like Supernatural murdered a unicorn (AKA why you need to STOP telling me to watch Black Sails)

I’ll start by saying, everything everyone else has been saying CERTAINLY bothers me:

- the queer-baiting - the bury your queers - the undermining of Dean’s character arc - the wasted opportunity for a certain kind of overall narrative closure - the flat out disrespect to Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles

All of that bothers me tremendously.

But there has been something else rather ineffable about this that has left a horrible taste in my mouth that I couldn’t quite pin down until last night. Bear with me, if you will, because this will require some set-up.

*** This is not the first show to ever disappoint me in a spectacular fashion, nor will it be the last, I suspect. And one of the ways I’ve always coped with that disappointment was to remind myself that there will be other stories, other characters, other chances to get it right. (”It” being any number of things from just pure narrative emotional coherence to not burying your queers to not stringing along your queer audience and then yelling fuck you to them on the way out)

But somehow that assurance -- that there will be other stories, other characters, other chances to get it right -- has rung particularly hollow in this instance, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until yesterday.

I kept asking myself, why do I still have this feeling, deep in the pit of my stomach, like something was lost here that can never be recovered?

Because something was lost here that I am doubtful can ever be recovered, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else talking about this aspect of it at all.

***

A few months ago, TV critic Maureen Ryan did a great interview piece with Mike Schur (of Parks & Rec/The Good Place) discussing the death of long-form TV in the streaming era. They explore how the longer seasons and longer runs of traditional broadcast/cable TV provided an opportunity to tell particular kinds of stories that you simply can’t when seasons are 8-10 episodes and series typically run 2-4 seasons (thanks Netflix).

One key thing we’ve all lost in this new era of highly condensed TV storytelling (and of prestige TV narrative styles)? The traditional (several season’s long) slow-burn/will-they-won’t-they romance. Not only is there simply no longer the time or space to write such romances, it has also come to be seen as hacky, manipulative, cheap, artistically impoverished, low-brow, a embarrassing vestige of the era before TV became art™.

Everybody is trying to be Fleabag now. No one wants to be Frasier. (”It’s really more like a 10 hour movie” they all like to brag)

Obviously TV still has romances, even ‘drawn out’ romances. But ‘drawn out’ in 2020 is like 2-3 seasons, maybe. More commonly it’s like half a season. Take Schitt’s Creek. The number of episodes between when David and Patrick first meet and when they first kiss? Seven. Seven episodes. Half a season. If you watched it live, it took less than 2 months for them to move from introducing that dynamic to consummating it. And I’m not bagging on Schitt’s Creek; I think the David/Patrick’s story is very lovely and well-written.

But Niles & Daphne (Fraiser) had to wait 7 years and over 150 episodes before they finally got there. Josh & Donna (The West Wing) had to wait 6+ years, and 145 episodes. Mulder & Scully (The X-Files) had to wait 7 seasons and 143 episodes. Booth & Bones had to wait...you see where I am going with this.

And my point is (and I can’t believe I never realized this explicitly until now): there has NEVER been a queer slow-burn/will-they-won’t-they romance of that type on TV ever. EVER.

I’m going to say that again, because I think it bares repeating:

There has never been a queer, slow-burn/will-they-won’t-they romance that fits the 100-150 episode paradigm of delayed gratification on TV.

Not ever.

I can’t think of ONE example Not a single, solitary one. And I know queer TV pretty well. Arguably the closest we’ve ever come is Legend of Korra, and that ran 50 episodes, a THIRD of the length of old school will-they-won’t-theys like Booth & Bones or Josh & Donna.

Queer people have had a fair number of canonical romances on TV by now, even fairly long running ones. But we never got a primary/front-and-center romance that you had to root for for 100+ episodes before you got any kind of canonical consummation.

That is a particular kind of TV experience that queer people and queer characters were just 100% shut out of until it was too late. And because of how the TV landscape has changed in the last 10 years, I don’t know that that opportunity will ever come back around in our lifetimes.

***

Dean and Castiel are/were a legacy of an earlier era of TV, an era that still contained the possibility for a will-they-won’t-they of that particular mold. There were other shows that could have also filled this gap at one time - Rizzoli & Isles, OUAT, House MD, etc. But one by one all of them were killed off, their queer romances unrequited, until Supernatural was the only one of its’ generation left standing.

And they should have acknowledged that they were a species about to become extinct.

There are plenty of other valid and compelling reasons Supernatural should have gone full Destiel, don’t get me wrong.

A) It would have been the most emotionally satisfying ending to the series and to those characters (and that would have been reason enough).

B) It would have stopped the manipulative queer-baiting of the (disproportionately queer) fanbase (and that would have been reason enough).

C) It would have been queer representation of middle-aged men, of bi men, of queers who came to their queerness later in life (and any/all of those would have been reason enough).

D) It could have been a glorious subversion of the bury your queers trope, considering how often they’ve died and been resurrected (and that would have been reason enough).

But point E) on this list is the reason this one hurts in a singular way that no one even appears to be acknowledging.

Almost all of the other wrongs and missed opportunities contained in this Supernatural debacle have the possibility of being rectified (at least to a degree) elsewhere. I can and I likely will get more bi male characters from TV as time goes on. I can and likely will get more middle-aged queer characters. I can and likely will get more queer characters coming to their queerness later in life, and starting queer romances later in life. I can and likely will get more queer characters who aren’t killed cheaply and prematurely. I can and likely will get more genre TV shows with sprawling myth arc plots that are resolved in a coherent, satisfying way. I can and likely will get Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles involved in other projects that value their work and their talents.

All of those other things are at the very least POSSIBLE, and many are even likely.

But a queer 100-150 episode slow-burn romance a la Mulder & Scully or Niles & Daphne or Booth & Bones? That is the one baton Supernatural dropped spectacularly that no one else even has the possibility of picking up again for the foreseeable future. (They don’t even write those types of romances for heterosexuals anymore!)

Seriously. It was a TV unicorn. And rather than letting it run wild and free, they stabbed it with a rusty nail.

***

Given the monumental shifts in the TV landscape that have occurred in the last decade, I don’t know that TV will ever go back to the slow-burn/will-they-won’t-they romance spanning 100-150 episodes. Today it is a miracle if you can get ANY show to last longer than 50 episodes in the first place.

And that is the piece of this that makes it feel (to me) like they murdered a unicorn.

Because queer people have gotten a lot of things from TV, and they will get a lot more as time goes on. But that one? That one could very well be a totally extinct species.

That is the larger missed opportunity here that has left this feeling especially hollow and destructive. That is the thing that makes me balk when people tell me to go watch Black Sails or Pose or whatever other prestige TV show is doing this representation ‘better.’ Because that’s not really the loss I am mourning here. I KNOW there is ‘better’ representation elsewhere.

But the will-they-won’t-they/slow-burn romance is a qualitatively unique thing that queer people literally just never got. Ever. There is no substitute, no alternate, no other show I can turn to with that kind of build-up and pay-off for a queer couple, and there probably won’t be in my lifetime. Not unless the TV industry undergoes another monumental evolution similar to the streaming revolution that shifts the incentives back to telling those types of stories again.

All those shows you want me to displace Supernatural with? None of them can give me the one thing I uniquely wanted (and could have gotten) from Supernatural. THAT ALTERNATE SHOW DOESN’T EXIST. It doesn’t exist. And I have no reason to hope it will ever exist in my lifetime.

So stop telling me to look somewhere else; you don’t understand what made this one a unicorn.

***

Addendum: The only other possible show that could perhaps fill this gap is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (re: Mac/Dennis). But I’m hesitant to say it exactly meets that criteria, for a number of reasons:

1 - It’s far less serialized relative to Supernatural and (except for a handful of stand-alone episodes) very little of the story is grounded specifically in Dennis/Mac’s romantic dynamic (unlike SPN, where it is absolutely central to much of the narrative)

2 - IASIP is fundamentally satirically in nature/tone which makes it much harder to have genuine romantic pathos (not impossible, but harder)

3 - All the characters on IASIP are fundamentally crummy people who you aren’t exactly supposed to root for. Which doesn’t mean a romance between two of them can’t have its value/charm/worth but it’s not the same as when it is between characters who unequivocally deserve nice things/happy endings

#Supernatural #Destiel #queer representation #sorry this is long

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earthstellar · 3 years ago

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TFP: Cybertron and the Functionist Indoctrination of Youth - Smokescreen and Ratchet

re-watching more TFP between working clinical support hours to spare my brain

and this scene really sticks out to me, from the episode “Darkest Hour”:

context for the scene:

The others have returned to the base, and have just informed Ratchet that the Omega Lock had to be destroyed in order to save Earth.

Ratchet reacts with shock, and he is physically staggered by the thought that Cybertron may no longer be able to be restored:

Ratchet: You destroyed the only device in any universe capable of restoring our home?

This is a completely understandable reaction, and it is absolutely heartwrenching to hear Ratchet’s voice weaken and waver as he nearly backs up into his console. He is devastated.

However, Smokescreen instantly and somewhat defensively immediately responds, likely misunderstanding Ratchet’s grief as a direct criticism of their actions:

Smokescreen: You weren’t there, Doc. And it’s not your place to second-guess a battlefield decision.

Ratchet: It most certainly is!

Understandably, this sets Ratchet off, and he continues on a bit, getting increasingly agitated.

Although I think Ratchet is still being fairly restrained here and his reaction is again understandable, the others jump on him a bit disproportionately.

This is most likely in an expression of their own stress and displeasure over the situation, but misplacing their own dissatisfaction on Ratchet rather than venting it off in a slightly more appropriate way. Tensions are high between all of them here, for a moment.

(I could do a more prolonged analysis of this entire scene, as I do think it’s worth analysing the full dialogue and not just the snippet above, but for the purposes of examining Smokescreen’s initial response, I’ll be keeping this to the above dialogue excerpt for now and will re-visit the scene in entirety at some point in the future.)

For now, Smokescreen’s response is fascinating, especially within the wider context of what we know about him in relation to the others:

Smokescreen Retains a Very Class/Caste System Influenced Understanding of Society -- And It’s Not His Fault

Smokescreen was part of Alpha Trion’s guard, a select group with a likely very elevated social position owing to the exclusivity of his cohort/given role and the status of Alpha Trion himself in the eyes of others in Cybertronian society/politics/etc.

Within Cybertron’s class and caste system, his position likely ranked him as a higher relative “rank” than Ratchet, even if only be default.

We also know that the upper echelons of Cybertronian society, particularly those in the “higher class” lager city states such as Iacon, where Smokescreen was stationed and likely had lived most of his life within that sphere of society, had relatively little outside worldview or perspective on matters beyond what they were trained and taught specifically as higher class bots.

This type of general ignorance was part of the problem that Orion Pax identified in himself as well, as an Iaconian reasonably well-ranked individual; In the novel Exodus, he purposefully goes to visit a gladiatorial arena in person despite the risks involved in doing so, because he has identified that he has no real understanding or exposure to other classes or castes owing to an orchestrated lack of information or lived experience by design, as a result of the rigidly enforced class system and the political motivations of keeping the comparatively well-off bots ignorant of the struggles of the lower classes and the real damages of the class/caste system that affect everyone-- With those most at risk being the most severely detrimentally impacted.

Smokescreen’s goals are to be good-- Good being defined by those in power with the ability to promote him.

He wants to do well enough that he gets a higher guard position. At least for most of his life, he was primarily motivated by a desire for skill, rank, and status. He took pride in being part of Alpha Trion’s select inner guard, and his attitude has been adopted out of a good faith interpretation of all he had ever been taught: If you get good, you’ll get a good position.

That is of course blatantly untrue within Cybertron’s Council-run society, but Smokescreen likely just had no way to know or understand this.

His life, by all indications, was likely nearly entirely spent within a very relatively closed microcosm of society, primarily within one particular city-state, educated within a narrow framework designed by the oppressors (Council) as a way to ensure their most loyal guards were quite literally unable to conceive of anything beyond status and loyalty-- Because this is what governments like Cybertron’s Council will always do.

And while Alpha Trion clearly picked out Smokescreen as being particular, for reasons we don’t know as we never hear what Alpha Trion’s reasoning may have been for selecting Smokescreen over anyone else (although I believe it is generally suggested this may have been owing to time pressures and the situation at the time the decision had to be made),

it is very evident in the way Smokescreen addresses Ratchet in the scene above that Smokescreen was unfortunately raised within a system designed to indoctrinate him with the Council’s worldview and politics, because of course, the Council wants those well-trained loyal guards.

Perhaps Alpha Trion chose Smokescreen, because it is possible that Smokescreen was least indoctrinated and less likely to rigidly default to beliefs informed by the Council’s teachings rather than learning from lived experiences, thus coming to see the truth and therefore become able to make more genuinely just decisions and defend that which truly deserves his guard-- Instead of defending the Council’s harmful interests.

Others in Smokescreen’s cohort may have fallen back and been overwhelmed by the shattering of their world view as the war progressed. We know that the guard was either disbanded or lost nearly entirely, but while it can be interpreted as meaning that the other guards were all killed, it may also be the case that some defected, choosing to defend the Council, or perhaps even became neutrals or Decepticons. We don’t have 100% verification, and with those who have suffered extreme indoctrination like most of the guard likely did, people will naturally react to having their understanding of society completely broken in front of them in all kinds of ways.

It is possible that Smokescreen was just flexible and curious enough to work for Alpha Trion’s purposes, and may have been less inclined to follow the rules to the letter, making him a better choice. He may have held more personal loyalty to Alpha Trion, rather than loyalty to the Council itself.

This fits with what we see of his character and behaviour in TFP, although this is not explicitly stated canonically and is just a theory based on the available Aligned Continuity lore + what we see on screen in TFP.

BUT.

The Council and Youth Indoctrination: Orion Pax and Smokescreen

Smokescreen, by the nature of the society he was raised in, the nature of his role within that societal framework, and his lack of exposure or understanding beyond that-- All of this clearly and inevitably resulted in some aspects of that Council-enforced class/caste rhetoric making its way into his processor.

And that type of internalised faulty understanding is unavoidable, no matter how good or intelligent a person anyone is, when raised in such a way.

This is why real world deprogramming of indoctrinated persons is so incredibly difficult; It’s not an idea that wormed its way in, but rather, it is literally the framework upon which a person’s entire concept of thought has been built.

The only reason Orion Pax was able to identify the flaws in his own thinking, which was informed by his very similar upbringing as a fairly well-off bot in a generally mid to high class city-state, is because he had access to historical records that helped him come to understand two very important things, and ask the relevant necessary basic questions:

1) Cybertron was not always like this. In fact, it used to be better, in many ways. Why was that? Why and how did things change? What can we do to improve things for the future?

2) Cybertron is not the way the Council portrays it to be. How bad is it, in true? How many are suffering, who are those people, and what are the factors involved that restrict or harm them? How severely have we derailed from our principles, and how do we restore our society to a healthy, equitable state? How do we identify, address, and resolve these inequalities?

It helps that Alpha Trion likely encouraged if not actively helped to ensure that Orion Pax (and possibly Smokescreen as well) would come to some understanding of these things, to help them restore Cybertronian society to the more equitable culture it had been conceptualised to be, long ago when the Primes first stood around the well and held high hopes for the people, whose creation they had witnessed.

But Smokescreen was in a much more visible position, and was likely subject to screening by the Council as part of a formal guard service.

So the depth of Alpha Trion’s involvement was likely not able to be very extensive, and was likely only really engaged later on when the war was kicking off and it became immediately evident that this was no longer a fall-back plan, but the main and only remaining possible plan: Get Smokescreen to Earth.

Smokescreen’s Reaction to Ratchet Is A Little Off-Base, But Inevitable

Given all of the above, Smokescreen’s rather defensive response to Ratchet makes sense, even though it wasn’t entirely appropriate.

Smokescreen is not as familiar with the team or with Ratchet personally, compared to the others.

He has only seen Ratchet in the field a few times, and may actually be unaware of Ratchet’s history and role in the war and within the Autobot Command structure.

To Smokescreen, Ratchet is “just” a field medic. Smokescreen may not fully realise how the Autobots are operated as a unit differently from how the Council likely operated similar units for at least some time, and of course the majority of his training was informed by the class/caste tier system which was applied to all aspects of life on Cybertron.

We even see Optimus reference this type of caste-based classification in the episode “Stronger, Faster”, when he calls out Ratchet for over-retaliating against a Vehicon- Not because Ratchet’s actions were inherently wrong (although in this particular instance they were), but specifically because the Vehicon is not a Warrior Class bot.

So it is clear that the influence of Cybertron’s class/caste system persists, and this manifests all over the place here and there. Bulkhead often speaks poorly of himself, in ways that are often suggestive of internalised classism-- And the other bots don’t refute him. Arcee even exacerbates or reinforces this, on at least two occasions.

While we as the audience are more familiar with Ratchet, and we are more aware of how the Autobots differ ideologically and structurally from any pre-war Council military or similar organisation, Smokescreen was not trained by Autobots. He was trained to become part of the Council’s elite guard someday, and that implies heavy Council indoctrination.

And that indoctrination would have influenced him at a core level, even with the graces allowed to him by Alpha Trion, owing to his circumstances and the little exposure outside of that sphere of influence that he was ever likely allowed to have.

Finally, The Analysis of the Actual Scene

As a result, he reads Ratchet’s distress here as insubordination.

Instead of understanding that Ratchet is essentially a second in command to Optimus as far as the currently available team of Autobots is concerned, and without the context of knowing how deeply and for how long Ratchet has been affected by the destruction of Cybertron,

Smokescreen only sees a field medic who is speaking wildly out of turn and criticising an action that was dictated directly by their Prime.

He is unaware of Ratchet’s history as an active participant in field battles, having only seen Ratchet in the field perhaps a couple times by this point in time. He has no context for Ratchet’s perspective here, and when you don’t have any further context, you tend to rely on the context you do have.

And in Smokescreen’s case, he’s naturally going to be inclined to apply his understanding of things, from the point of view of someone who is trying to be the best Council-trained soldier they can be.

Unfortunately, that isn’t quite appropriate to how the Autobots do things, and doesn’t account for problems with the way he was trained or problems with his world view which he himself is unable to identify-- Because that is what indoctrination does to people.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and a lot of Smokescreen’s more insensitive comments are largely attributable to this type of manufactured and enforced ignorance, which he seems to consistently not identify in himself because of course, how could he? He just woke up, he just got here, and his entire life was informed by a very strict political and societal structure which gave him a reward system that worked for him.

He wanted to be good, get better, get the position of his dreams, prove himself capable and expert. Unfortunately, the Council decided what “good” was, and so Smokescreen likely didn’t challenge their authority over him or in general, because why would it occur to him to ever do so, even with some degree of counter-influence from Alpha Trion at least for some period of time later on in his life?

So he defaults here to what he knows:

Ratchet is a field medic. It is heavily implied that caste systems (within the class structures) of Cybertronian society were extremely narrow and restrictive. Nobody had any remit whatsoever outside of their given expertise or function.

As a field medic, sure, Smokescreen understands that Ratchet is sometimes in the field, probably. He’s seen that a couple times, and that’s within Ratchet’s traditional remit as a Cybertronian field medic.

But from Smokescreen’s understanding, nobody can challenge a Prime.

The Prime is essentially the God-King of their people. Ratchet wasn’t present in this particular instance, which he specifically states. He doesn’t say “you don’t know anything about battle decisions”, he says “you weren’t there”. A quick shut-down of Ratchet’s perceived complaints.

But Smokescreen interprets Ratchet’s shock and dismay as a direct questioning of Optimus’ battlefield strategy.

And from his point of view, for Ratchet to challenge the Prime, much less directly, is unacceptably beyond any possible reach a field medic could ever possibly have.

So even though we do see in peripheral lore materials that generally Cybertronians do respect age and elders, with Alpha Trion specifically being noted to be perceived as bordering on esoterically unhinged yet allowed to participate in Council meetings because of his unparalleled age and seniority,

it seems as though Smokescreen’s outrage at the idea of a lower ranked bot challenging a decision made directly by the Prime himself over-rules any respect he may have for Ratchet owing purely to Ratchet’s age or more extensive experience in general, prompting his statement.

“It’s not your place to second-guess a battlefield decision.”

The implication being, “You’re a field medic, what the hell are you doing behaving this way about a choice that was made by our Prime? Who are you to challenge him, or our actions, which we carried out under Primal orders?”

He misreads Ratchet here pretty severely, mostly owing to a lack of familiarity with Ratchet and Autobot culture and command structure, but also because he was likely chastised in very similar ways when undergoing his own initial training.

As he is essentially undergoing initial training again, just under the Autobots and not the Council, it’s very possible he’s falling back into remembering how he managed such training the first time around, in an effort to integrate himself into his new unit-- Not fully grasping how different this new unit really is, and how things have changed.

I Know I Write Forever, Thank You For Reading, Holy Shit

I’ve never done an analysis featuring Smokescreen before, so I really wanted to do one eventually, and this seemed like a good scene to use to cover a lot of what interests me about Smokescreen’s mindset.

I hope this was interesting to someone out there, and if there’s any scene or aspect of lore that you’d like me to analyse in particular, let me know!

I always have a few lore/analysis posts in the works, but I’m happy to do specific requests if anyone would like a deep dive or likes my analyses and would like to hear me go over anything specifically. :)

If you’ve read this far, thank you very much! <3 <3 <3

#long post #tfp smokescreen #tfp #maccadam #ratchet #smokescreen #tfp ratchet #transformers #transformers prime #transformers analysis #analysis #aligned continuity #cybertronian lore #cybertron #functionism #maccadams

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smol-nevi · 4 years ago

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I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.

If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.

Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.

From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.

Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.

Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.

I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.

Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'

Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.

The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.

Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.

I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.

So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.

Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.

Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.

And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:

"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."

"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."

Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.

Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.

#FFXIV #FFXIV RP #Crystal Data Center #Crystal RP #Balmung RP #Mateus RP #on one hand it's drama on the other I can and will call a spade a spade or in this case a douchebag a douchebag #this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows me even a little

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lightcomingthroughthedarkness · 3 years ago

Note

I rewatched the show for Pacey/Joey but now my OTP is Pacey/Andie. Pandie’s relationship is more mature than PJs relationship, Pandie’s dynamic is given to PJ. Andie actually changed Pacey, Joey is said to have done that. For example, In S4, Pacey told the Dean how much Joey changed him and helped him, but he was talking about things Andie had done for him in S2.

Andie was the first person to believe in Pacey. She railed against the education system that had written him off but also helped him get good grades in school. She challenged the idea of co-dependency (“don’t let out roles be edged in stone”). She brought Jack into the fold and encouraged Pacey to be friends with him. She got Mr. Witter to show Pacey affection. She refused to coddle Pacey (“I’m not coming to your pity party Pacey, if you act like a joke, people will treat you like one”). Their relationship served them both. Pacey was really patient and supportive of Andie. They had the right balance of conflict and happy moments.

S4 PJ was full of conflict. They couldn’t communicate. They rehashed the same arguments just like DJ and all of their arguments circled back to Dawson. Joey gets disproportionally blamed for the demise of PJ (for she prioritizing Dawson or lying about sex) but Pacey was equally responsible. He brought up Dawson all the time as well (“Dawson wouldn’t fail his classes/Dawson will swoop in and claim his soulmate”). He was passive aggressive and often took out his insecurities on Joey. In 4x01 he grabbed Joey’s hand, in a caveman like fashion, and tried to drag her away from her friends without asking her if she wants to go. He left her and she ended up apologizing to him at the end of the episode. In 4x05 he pulled away and made her feel insecure, like he didn’t want her anymore, so she would “start” a conversation about sex instead of starting the conversation himself. He humiliated her in front of the entire school during their prom. Their relationship was hard to watch. Their dynamic in S3 was good but it went downhill from there. Their reconciliation in S6 was contrived and clumsily written. The speeches Pacey made about Joey were unearned or over the top. Joey was wishy washy and had one foot out in her relationship with Pacey.

You make a lot of valid points and I agree with you on many of them.

What I don't agree with, is that Andie or Joey "changed" Pacey. I don't think Joey changed Pacey nor do I think she wanted to. Yes, I definitely believe she wanted him to be the best version of himself but I never really saw any signs of her wanting to change him. And I don't think Andie was meant to change Pacey per say but rather be the a person who could shake Pacey up and start his journey. She did a lot of good for him and he for her. But sometimes that's what a relationship is there for. To help us grow, to help us see outside of our comfort zone etc. While Andie did those things for Pacey, he still had so much more to overcome.

I think both women had a huge role to play in Pacey's own self awareness and journey. For the first time in his life, someone (Andie) saw him and validated him. That was huge for Pacey. That relationship absolutely needed to happen, even though I wasn't a big fan. But that was mostly because I didn't like the chemistry and if I don't vibe with a ship, I don't really ship it. But that doesn't mean I can't see its value.

Joey and Pacey were enemies to lovers. Joey could not have been that person for Pacey at that time that Andie was. Nor do I think Pacey ever imagined that to be a possibility.

I think the biggest difference is, and I know some might hate me for it, is that while Andie opened up a side to Pacey that kick started his journey... Joey was always the woman out of his league. There were hints all the way back to season 1 that Pacey held Joey in high regards and never in a million years believed "someone like her" would look to a guy like him. And maybe that's the set up of the show but Joey was really the Audrey Hepburn of the girls. The smart, beautiful, classy girl next door that just made boys swoon. Just the simple fact that Joey wanted to be with Pacey made him want to step up and be the better man, to be the man Pacey believed Joey deserved.

But that didn't actually do anything for Pacey because he was still fighting through his insecurities and his self loathing. Being with Joey was equally the best thing and the worst thing to ever happen to Pacey. She was the woman of his dreams but he was not yet the man he could be. He had so many demons to work through and he needed to reach rock bottom and pull himself out so he could finally realize it was never about Joey or a woman's love. That it was about Pacey seeing his own value outside of other people's idea of who he was or should be. Pacey loving himself and choosing happiness after years of so much self loathing and bad experiences. Pacey told Joey in the finale that he was ok with loving her from a distance because he was done being unhappy and he was finally ready to love himself. It wasn't about gaining her. It was about gaining himself.

Joey gets blamed for a lot of their issues because she deserves to get blamed for a lot of their issues. The same way Pacey deserves to be held accountable for his actions and how he allowed his insecuritites ruin his relationships and his own self identity. Pacey was awful to Joey by the end of season 4, that's absolutely true. It never would have worked between Joey and Pacey had they stayed together. Absolutely not. They would have buried each other. Especially Pacey would have killed that relationship. That's why Pacey needed to go out there work on himself. I might not have liked the execution of the storyline, but I definitely understand it.

And Joey were also wrong for how she handled a lot of the drama between all of them. At the end of the day, she did put Dawson and his feelings above Pacey. Time and time again. So many moments that should have been about Pacey and Joey always ended up being about Pacey, Joey and Dawson. With his insecurities on top of that mess? Loving a woman who every kept telling him had another soulmate? Yeah, he did screw up and who can blame him. Just the fact that you yourself say that Joey was wishy washy proves that Pacey didn't deserve that. No one deserves to feel like they are second in their own relationship. That was on Joey. How Pacey dealt with it, was on him. Thus.. their whole entire mess.

And in terms of the writing, I'm right there with you. It was obvious from the finale episode that Kevin had decided last minute to go with Pacey and Joey endgame. Luckily for them they had so much history to draw from, it wasn't unearned but it was definitely poorly built the last few episodes. Pacey's speeches were in my opinion earned. Regardless if you shipped them or not, the fact is that both Dawson and Pacey spent the entire run of the series in love with the same woman. There was not one moment where Pacey was not in love with Joey, even if we didn't get to see much of it in the story by the end of the show. It was Joey's wishy washy behavior that kept everyone guessing who she'd pick in the end. No one ever questioned Dawson's or Pacey's love for her.

And if we are to believe that Joey always loved Pacey and was so heartbroken over their break up in season 4 that she spent years trying to run from it, then yeah I can accept the story the way it was written in the end. However, I don't believe that to be true, as we know Kevin rewrote the finale. But in the end, like I said, there was enough story, love and built up that Pacey and Joey ending up together made perfect sense.

#dawson's creek #pacey x joey #ask answered

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timextoxhajima · 4 years ago

Text

HOSTIS, Chapter XVII.5: Inevitabilis, Inevitable

HOSTIS PLAYLIST: WONHO - LOSING YOU

Previous Chapter (XVII: Et Universum Parallel)

Member: Lee Hyunjae (tbz)

Genre (by chapter): drama, angst

Category: Short Novel/Long Series

Dana’s A/N: this is a special piece written by @vxstarlightxv who has been feeding me ideas to fuel this story. i did not write this chapter, i only merely proof-read it/gave her tips etc, but otherwise the beauty of this chapter will never be able to be my own original work.

P.S: if you’re emotional, please keep a box of tissues with you

“there is no escape from you, not now, not ever. you are inevitable.”

The day the kids at school start calling you Ares is the day Hyunjae loses faith in humanity. You are a spineless, low-life coward, who hardly deserves to be bestowed with the same title as himself. Yet here you are, acting as though you were worth being on the same plane as him.

He hates you. Oh god, he truly does.

He remembers the way you fucked him over so well and thoroughly, and in front of the whole school that too. Granted, he may have screwed with your equipment, but maybe if you didn’t suck so bad you wouldn’t have failed.

Blaming him for your shortcomings. How typical.

But showing Minhee that picture of the accidental kiss (that meant nothing) for the sole purpose of destroying his relationship? That was a bitch move right there. So he has no regrets when he posts a cleverly edited picture of your lab teacher with his girlfriend. None at all. In fact, the sight of your tears when that himbo Younghoon dumps you is something that brings him delight.

His heart definitely did not twist when he saw you cry, because he definitely does not care. You hurt him, and it’s only fair that you’re hurting too.

Nonetheless, he is pleasantly surprised at how fast you bounce back. His breakup with Minhee was a huge watery mess, and he cannot help his grudging admiration for your strength when you power through your own with Younghoon.

It is only admiration, for he definitely still hates you.

When the time comes to choose a medical school, he chooses the one that seems the furthest away from you. But fate hates him, so after 4 years of respite, he is dumped back on your doorstep as your fellow intern in the neurology department.

Of all the fucky coincidences.

~~~

Ares is a brutal god. He is the fire of war, wild and relentless.

Hyunjae is furious when he finds out you’ve stolen his report, but he’s not surprised. Not when he would’ve done the same thing. Then again, he was kind of hoping you would leave him alone. Naturally, you’ve done the opposite. He wonders if his emotional response is a little… disproportionate, given the situation, but he’s not going to let you fuck him over like this and escape unscathed. He isn’t a fucking pussy, your thoughts on the matter be damned.

Silly little kitten. Put your paws in the fire, and watch the heat bubble your skin.

He is simmering as he bangs on your door. He hears you screaming some nonsense about your mother, but he’s too pissed to process anything. You open the door, face falling as you see him. He cannot help but reach out a hand and grab you by your pretty throat.

He shoves you into the house, fuelled by the magnitude of his anger. You’ve hurt his pride, made a fool out of him in front of Dr Kim. He wants to shred you to pieces, get you on your knees and rip the apologies from your mouth.

Tonight you will understand why the other gods fear the wrath of Ares.

~~~

Hyunjae replays the encounter in his head as he drives home. He has never once considered you as anything but an enemy. But today, something of seismic proportion has shifted in your dynamic.

The flutter of your lips against his, like butterfly wings on a flower. The warmth of your chest against his in a tight alcove, hiding from Dr Shin. The way you felt when you took him in, the way you cried when he hit every single spot that made your toes curl. The way you purred when he called you kitten and mewled as you fell apart on his cock.

In retrospect, he hopes that he didn’t hurt you. He usually likes to stick around for aftercare, but he didn’t want to ruin your pride even more. You’d already been dealt with a devastating blow, and he didn’t want to make it worse, regardless of how big of a dick you think he is.

(Ring, ring)

The sharp blare of his ringtone shatters the silence of his ride home. He glances at the screen, smiling when he sees the caller id.

“What’s up, Juyeonie? Are you finally back?” Hyunjae is thrilled to hear his best friend’s voice. Juyeon is very busy these days, being a commercial pilot and all, so these rare moments they have with each other are more precious than gold.

“Hey, hyung! Yes I am! On that note, are you free next Friday? Let’s get drinks and catch up!” Juyeon sounds so eager and hopeful that Hyunjae can’t help but say yes, no matter how packed his schedule might be. The rest of the conversation proceeds pleasantly, and he is happy to forget the day’s drama.

It is only when he reaches home that he realises that the thought of you has never quite left his head.

~~~

“So what happened? The last I heard, she left you high and dry in JFK.”

He watches as feline eyes crinkle with delight at his question. His friend launches into a happy tirade about his mystery girl, going on and on about fate and chance encounters and love lost and found. Hyunjae listens carefully, admiring the way Juyeon has changed. He wonders for a moment if he'll ever experience something as profound as Juyeon has, will ever wake up one day knowing that his heart sits in the palms of another person, and will not fear the idea.

The image of your eyes dancing with wicked laughter arises unbidden, and it punches the breath out of him.

He is jostled out of his thoughts when a hand lands on his thigh. It is so abrupt, so sudden that he all but jumps out of his skin.

“Long time no see, stranger.”

Choi Minhee is standing in front of him, batting her mascara-painted eyelashes at him seductively. She is as pretty as ever, with her delicate collarbones and anime-girl eyes.

But she is not you.

The thought is so dreadful and unsettling that he cannot help but flirt with her the whole night in order to get it out of his head.

When have you become anything but an annoyance, anything but a pest that’s been shoved down his throat?

It is pleasant, talking to someone who he hasn’t met in a long time. He remembers her fondly, despite how miserable their parting was. Minhee is soft and kind, a gentle cherry-blossom compared to your ever-burning inferno. She complements him well (not perfectly, because only oneperson does), and for a second he feels white-hot annoyance at you for fucking him over in this regard. Hyunjae cannot help but wonder if they would have been married by now had you not intervened with that photo. Would they be living the white-picket fence dream? What would their kids have looked like?

All he can see are children with your ash-brown hair and his almond eyes. The image causes his gut to clench so tightly that he wonders if something inside him might have cracked open.

“Have you and Y/N gotten together yet? I figured that after we broke up the two of you would end up going out. You were always kinda obsessed with each other.” The question jolts him out of his reverie. Juyeon, who has been listening politely so far, decides to insert himself into the conversation.

“Yeah, hyung. The two of you have always had something special, right? What was that stupid nickname we gave you? Paris and Helen?”

The irony is not lost to him. Enemies, being compared to the two greatest lovers of all time. A face that launched a thousand ships, a blaze of love that destroyed a nation. Only fools succumb to Aphrodite, the cruelest of the divine hosts.

“Ares and Ares. And for fuck’s sake, I will never be attracted to that hag. You won’t believe what she did at work last week-”

Hyunjae misses the knowing look Minhee and Juyeon exchange. He’s only seeing you.

~~~

If there is one thing that Hyunjae hates, it is surprises. So he really, really hates it when he sees you flirting with the intern as though he doesn’t exist.

The day had actually started off pretty well. He came into work feeling all pleased with himself. Not only did he break you down, but he also figured out a solid way to keep you in line. You were reacting beautifully to his taunts, and seeing you unable to walk made something vicious inside him preen.

And then, before he can breathe, you are making stupid cow-eyes at the snot-faced little intern as though he created entire galaxies in your honour.

How dare you, honestly? You’re wearing his hickeys on your neck, limping and sore because heripped you apart last night. How can you even thinkof flirting with another man? Are you doing this on purpose, to get some semblance of power back?

This is not jealousy. It definitely is NOT jealousy because that would mean he would have to be attracted to your hideous hag face. No, it was an issue of pride. And no, he definitely was not deluding himself right now.

Nonetheless, watching Eric help you into his car after work makes him want to vomit.

~~~

It is the party incident that truly knocks it into his head. He spends the entire night seething over your flirtations with Eric, with even Sangyeon. He glares at you, but you pretend to not see, and it shoves him off the edge.

Why won’t you look at him? A room full of people, but you are the only one he sees. So why aren’t you seeing him too?

He reminds you that night, who is the only one who knows how to pick you apart, snap you in half. He reminds you who is the only one who can make your body thrum and vibrate, who is the only one who can coax tears from your eyes and pleasured sobs from your throat. But he is also tender with you after, because under that diamond-hard exterior is a heart wrapped in silks and satin. Hurting you is the last thing he wants to do.

It is only when he wakes up alone in the morning that he realises that maybe, just maybe, he wishes he could see you in his bed again, hair spilled across the sheets as your breathing slowly evens out into slumber. He wants to coo over your keening wails, drink the moans from your mouth.

A thought, fleeting and profound, surfaces.

He wants you to be his.

~~~

He goes to work on Sunday with iron resolve. He has spent the entirety of Saturday thinking hard about you, and the relationship you shared with him. The line between obsession and infatuation is a thin one, one that the two of you have been dancing on for 10 whole years. When did his foot slip? When did the late nights plotting revenge mutate into candied dreams of your lips, of your body, singing for him?

But of course, who else could it be? You have always been, will always be, his forever other half.

Ares and Ares, locked in their death dance. But when did Ares become Aphrodite? War has become Love, and Love has become War.

Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong. At some point or the other, he has forgotten the hatred that sizzled through him like blazing poison. He has forgotten that you are annoying, that you are competitive, and that you get revenge in the sleaziest ways possible. He has forgotten everything, because all that remains is the way your smile looks like a flashing ray of sunlight, like a tendril of shimmering starlight. All that remains is the sound of your wind chime laughter, the softness of your small hands on his heated skin. All that remains is the memory of how good you are for him, how addictive the juxtaposition between your submissive sweetness in bed and your fiery heat outside of it is.

So he decides that he is going to make you his. Granted, the order of things was completely wrong, but he would fix it. He would cook you dinner, press kisses onto your cherry mouth, and then love you till morning comes. And then he would repeat it every day, till the day the two of you are cradled in the eternal embrace of death.

Surely, surely you reciprocate his feelings? How can you not, when your body weeps for him the way it does?

He likes to think you do, when he admires the way your eyes flutter closed when he steals kisses in the pantry. He likes to think you do, when you stay four hours past your shift and order takeaway for him. He likes to think you do, when you dangle Eric in front of him in order to get him to fuck you hard,just the way you like it.

You are his, now.

~~~

Hyunjae’s love for you grows like tender flowers. It starts off small, but grows into something lovely and heartbreaking. You have carved your way into him, nestling against the walls of his heart and beseeching him to let you in with your stupid almond eyes.

He loves your stupid almond eyes.

He is on a cloud these days, brimming with affection that lights up his every step. He never considered himself to be one of those annoying, lovey-dovey honeymooners, but he can definitely see where they get their joy from.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

You become his greatest delight. When you are around, even dust seems to sparkle like a thousand tiny diamonds. He loves waking up with you, your eyes half lidded and neck covered in his marks. He loves to see you in his clothes, smelling of his body wash, smelling of him.

(He has an extra special fondness for the days in which you are soft and pliant, allowing him to dress you like a doll. It makes his internal organs feel like they are tumbling over each other, and it makes him a little giddy. He loves taking care of you.)

But if he really had to pick a moment, he supposes he loves you most when you are with your patients, hands calm and steady and strong. It reminds him of everything beautiful there is about his profession, and he cannot get enough.

You are beautiful, in all the ways there are to be beautiful. You race through him like lightning, and he is sucked further into your orbit everyday. You carry his heart with you (inside yours), and you are never without it.

So he is overflowing with love when he picks you up and tastes your peach-covered mouth. He is overflowing with love when you smile at him with a sort of lightness that he's never quite seen directed at him before. He is overflowing with love as he goes to your favourite cafe one day to pick up the chowder you never stop talking about. Tonight, he will ask you to be his girlfriend, make this tentative little dance official.

Perhaps that is why the pain is so exquisite when he sees you with Younghoon, and hears you talking about Eric with such tenderness in your eyes.

“He’s super enthusiastic and there’s just something about him that’s so... comforting. I see him and I think about nothing but sunshine and warmth and laughter. He’s just... so cheerful, compared to whatever i’ve been used to.” Something inside him shatters into a million jagged pieces when he hears the words, and every breath becomes as a blood-drenched ordeal.

Sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine and warmth and laughter. The words ring like alarm bells.

Fool. Naive, hopeless fool. You were never really his, were you? You might be the light by which his spirit is born, you might be his sun, moon and stars, but he? He is your nothing. He is the shadow that is birthed of your radiance, forever connected and forever forgotten.

Is this is why storms are named after people? You have destroyed him in the sweetest of ways. Is this taste of heartbreak? Rust coats his tastebuds. Is this how tears are born? The agony is magnificent and all-encompassing. There is nothing left for him here. He has never been enough, never will be.

He leaves quietly, chowder forgotten.

~~~

It is truly repulsive, the fact that he can see what you adore about Eric. The intern is strong and sweet, kind in all the ways Hyunjae is not. He is soft and mellow, and will cool your scalding tantrums with gentle words. He will not stir up the embers of your fury the way Hyunjae does, hoping for a reaction. He will be tender with you, gently laying you out and coaxing your body to sing. He will not be harsh and hard and possessive like Hyunjae, claiming you with bites and bruises and writing his possession into your blood.

He has been measured, and he has been found lacking. Eric is the perfect Hephaesthus, a sweet spring dandelion, and it is no surprise that Zeus will give you to him.

Aphrodite never belonged to Ares, after all.

“Hey, Eric! Do you have a moment?” By some miracle, his voice doesn’t crack.

“Hey, hyung! What can I do for you?” Eric is as mirthful as ever, and Hyunjae wishes they weren’t fighting over the same girl because he might actually like the intern otherwise.

“Have you gotten Y/N’s number yet?” He pauses to watch the bashful amusement dance across the intern’s face, and waits for the head shake he knows is coming. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but she’s very into you. So here’s her number, and make sure you call her, alright?” The teasing lilt he’s going for comes off more as a hoarse croak, and he realises belatedly that he really needs to be less of a shit actor.

“Thank you so much, hyung! But hey, don’t you hate Y/N? Why are you helping her out?” The intern offers him a cheeky grin, and all Hyunjae wants to do is knock his teeth out. But he’s a professional,so he offers Eric a tight smile (read: grimace) and says “Well, maybe I’m hoping you’ll distract her from work so that I’ll get the promotion first.” He tosses a wink in for good measure, before reaching out to ruffle Eric’s hair with a certain sadistic pleasure.

That’s thirty minutes in the bathroom gone down the drain. But that’s what he gets for stealing Hyunjae’s girl.

Of course, because Eric is quite literally an angel who can apparently do no wrong, he gives Hyunjae a sweet smile and rolls away happily in his chair, high off his excitement at finally getting the girl he’s been after for ages.

And then Hyunjae is left alone to drown in self-loathing.

Hyunjae is clearly a masochist who likes to hurt himself, so that’s why he decides to tell you to meet him at the carpark after work. One last time, he’ll be the one to drive you home, the one who kisses you goodnight.

He promises he’ll let you go after this.

~~~

The car ride is as quiet as ever. You enjoy being left alone with your thoughts, and Hyunjae isn’t about to interrupt you when he’s being pummeled by his own.

The Japanese once made up a fictional disease to describe the horrors of unrequited love. They call it Hanahaki, in which flowers grow in the lungs of the victims, causing them to cough up petals when they suffer from one-sided love.

He supposes that it is the exact feeling that he feels now. His love for you coils in his chest, choking leaves and thorns that crush his internal organs. It is rooted so deep that it might never leave, killing him softly but surely. The petals tickle his throat in an insidious kiss as he chokes on his desire for you, their softness a poisonous taunt of your lips against his, a feeling he might never know again.

“Are you okay?” Your voice is a balm to his wounded heart.

Of course he’s not okay. He’s in love with you, but you’re not in love with him. He knows that he is nothing without you, and that knowledge is somehow everything.

All this time he wanted to make you his, but you have made him yours.

He cannot form words, so he looks at you, really, really looks at you. He memorises the contours of your face, the slender bone of your nose, the tilt of your eyes, the exact shade of red your lips are. He'll hold every little detail close, remember the last night you're his and his alone, because tomorrow Eric will ask you out and his Aphrodite will never be his again.

He wants to pretend like the sudden moisture in his eyes is surprising, but he can't lie to himself anymore.

Liar, liar. Ares is a liar.

Is this how Lucifer felt when he fell from heaven? You are life, you are life and light and everything bright. And he is cold, dark and alone. He has fallen from grace, and all that is left are the coiling tendrils of hubris keeping his spine straight and gluing the shattered pieces of his heart together. He is heartbroken, but he will clench his teeth and grit through it. Your joy is worth it. His ego won't let him fall apart. He's stronger than this. Isn't he?

Break my heart. Break it into a thousand pieces and then some. It was only ever yours to break anyways.

“Why wouldn’t I be? Anyways, we’re here now. Get out already.” Your scoff is musical. He is aching and he is broken, so he does not have the strength to resist the screaming in his head to steal one last kiss from you. He luxuriates in the feeling of your petal-soft lips against his, before pulling away reluctantly.

Everything is more beautiful because the two of you are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. You will never share this moment again.

“Goodbye, kitten.”

The words are far more permanent than he likes. You don’t hear them.

His tears run as he pulls out of your driveway. He allows himself one last look at you, confusion blossoming on the face he once swore was hideous but now haunts his every moment.

Love is fire. It burns as much as it warms, and he is the poor fool who allowed himself to get scarred.

~~~

Crossing the line from enemies to lovers was a wheeling drop of ecstasy and biting kisses. Crossing the line from lovers back to co-workers is a study in heartbreak, and Hyunjae doesn't know how much longer he can handle it.

How do I forget you? I've tasted your secrets on my lips and drank the whispers of your body. You are the weakness in my bones and the hollowness in my lungs. How do I cleave my soul from yours, when you are the drum that my heart beats to?

It is an awful sort of pain, feeling his chest cave in when he watches Eric roll over to you from his cubicle. You find him cute, it's obvious from the way your eyes crinkle like little stars when you regard him.

Look at me. Look only at me.

You look up, searching for his eyes like you’ve heard his prayer. You're expecting jealousy, disdain, fury. You're expecting him to drag you to the pantry, to call you kitten and kiss you till you bleed. But Hyunjae has no more poison to offer you. He is empty, and all he can do is give you a blank look. He hopes you will be happy, silently wishing you the best.

Hephaestus gets Aphrodite, and all Ares can do is watch. Bloody, brutal Ares is never the winner.

His lack of response throws you off. By now, you are used to his hissy fits, his seething rages. But who is he? What right does he have? You are not his to rage over, or his to claim. You might wear his marks on your neck, but you are definitely not his.

How he wishes you were. But wishes are like pixie dust, and this is no fairytale.

The rest of the day is agonising. His body is so keenly attuned to yours now, and he doesn’t know how to rewire himself. He keeps a cool distance from you, but every molecule in his being roars in fury at the forced detachment.

He misses you already.

You continue to press him, trying to push his buttons and rile him up. Hyunjae studiously ignores you, hoping his coldness will further fray the ropes holding up the fragile bridge of a relationship that the two of you have developed. You are looking at him with a strange mix of anger, disdain and annoyance. For a second, he thinks he might even see-

Is that? Could it be? Longing? Do you miss him like he misses you?

Wishful thinking. That’s what it is. But it hurts so bad that he decides that he’s just going to avoid you from now on, until he finds a more appropriate coping mechanism than simply crying like a toddler when he can’t get his way.

Maybe he should call Minhee, and try to rekindle-

He cuts the thought off before it dredges up more painful memories. All he can see when he thinks of Minhee are the one-thousand-and-one different ways you exceed her.

You’re fiercer, with more spine. You don’t give in as easily. You’re not afraid to fight with him. You have a kinder heart. You are so much smarter. Your lips are softer. Your hand fits into his so much more perfectly. You are lovely in all the ways she never was, never will be.

It is a numbing, novocaine relief when Dr Choi summons him for rounds. If Hyunjae is left for even a second longer with his thoughts, he might just spiral into a pit of depressed longing and self pity that he might never emerge from.

Mighty Ares, on his knees. Aphrodite’s laughter perfumes the air, irresistible and menacing.

~~~

He is on his final round when he meets Mrs Kang. The kind, old lady takes one look at him, eyes lighting up with knowledge that he wishes she wasn’t able to glean so easily.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Well he doesn’t, but the words explode out of his bleeding heart like ink spilling on ivory pages.

“I... I thought that it would be okay, that I could forget and let go and that it would all be fine and good but then… I saw her--” his voice cracks miserably as a lump etches itself into his throat. His heart is racing, and every inhale feels like swallowing glass shards.

“I saw her and something went terribly wrong because I couldn’t forget and my heart was remembering and I felt like I was dying but I couldn’t do anything because all I want is for her to be happy and I know that happiness isn’t with me and I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT.”

Mrs Kang is silent, regarding him with a look he can’t quite decipher. He takes it as an invitation to continue.

“I wish I was him. I wish I was the one who could make her smile, make her laugh. But I’m angry, I’m jealous and I’m immature. I’m overly competitive, and I don’t know how to lose graciously. When I’m pissed, I do stupid, radical things.”

Silence. Inside, outside. It is deafening.

“Why would she want me? I don’t deserve her, and knowing that I’ll have to live my life watching her in another man’s arms is ripping me apart.”

He’s breathing hard, like he just ran a marathon. It’s a terrifying prospect, facing his feelings head on. Until now, they were swirling around his head in an ugly tangle of emotion. Verbalising them, hearing them out loud, is painful and cathartic at once. But he’s already feeling like a pathetic little sap. He wonders if you would sneer at him if you heard. Is this what it feels like to lose? Is this how you felt, lifetimes ago, on your sofa? The two of you have always been push and pull, a forever impasse. But today, you’ve finally shoved him off balance.

Who is the stronger Ares now? Your kisses are his kryptonite.

A hand comes to rest over his.

“Love always finds a way. I know you’re feeling hopeless now, but know that if you are meant for each other, you will always find your way back,” Mrs Kang finishes with a gentle smile. The pretty words do not reassure him.

If only love was as perfect as love seems to be, if only his flaws and broken edges could be hidden away. But this is a dream that will never come to life, a flower that will never grow to bloom.

She does not know who it is that he is fighting with, who it is that is slipping away from him with every passing second. She thinks that it will be okay, but she does not know that Ares has no mercy. He expects none from you. Nonetheless, he gives her a watery grin in return before standing up to complete his rounds. He may have lost, but he has enough composure to know better than to break in public.

It is a monumental effort, holding it together.

Hyunjae makes it to the lift in peace, stepping in through the shiny doors and slamming the button for the fifth floor. When they slide open, the sight before him makes his heart drop like a wineglass.

You and Eric are standing across him, hand in hand. Eric’s foot is tapping impatiently, eager to drag you off to wherever he was taking you for dinner.

For a second, he loses control over his emotions. Agony crumples his face, and you, because you’re just that smart and just that perceptive, register it. He doesn’t have the heart to pretend anymore.

Hyunjae brushes past the two of you, ignoring your questioning look, ignoring Eric’s cheerful greeting, and most importantly ignoring the writhing in his chest. He goes straight for his briefcase and shoves his belongings in, flicking the lights off and rushing to the carpark. He does not want to see anyone. He does not want to process anything.

He is empty. So, so empty, and hollow. The void inside him threatens to consume him whole.

The moment he reaches home, he goes straight to his spirits. There’s a bottle of whiskey sitting in the top most shelf of his kitchen, a birthday gift from his father. He pulls it down, slamming the glass decanter onto the kitchen counter, and the pressure nearly cracks it open.

He remembers the sight of you pressed up against this very counter, squirming under his ministrations. He remembers your lips fall open in a sigh, and then to beg. He remembers standing between your thighs, feeding you and then licking cream off your lips. Memories swirl through his head, cutting through his ribcage and slicing his heart open.

He doesn’t bother to grab a glass, pouring the scorching liquid down his throat. It claws at him, and he welcomes the pain.

Love is cruel, love is cold. When it kills, it does it slow.

He knows the tears are coming. The pressure has been building in his head for the last twenty-four hours. They fall as he walks over to the living room, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

The mirror you clutched when you moaned wretchedly, promising him that HE was the only one who could ever ruin you this way.

He lifts the bottle, forcing himself to look his reflection in the eye as he drinks a toast to Eric. Here’s to you, buddy.

His reflection sneers back, bloodshot and desolate. A half of a whole, incomplete. This is what he is without you.

Hyunjae sinks to the ground, bottle thumping down on the carpet. It rolls once, twice, and rivulets of alcohol splash across the floor. Another memory lunges up.

There is nothing more striking than red on white. Blood on snow. Wine on cream skin, tracing paths his eager tongue follows. A hiss of anger that softens into a sigh.

The sofa smells like you. The study smells like you. You are everywhere, and it breaks him, tearing a wail of grief out of his chest.

One day, the smell of you will fade. You will slip between his fingers like the wisp of a dream, and all he will be left with is the recollection of the fleeting seconds you were his and his alone.

Too much. This is too much. He cannot think, he cannot see, he cannot breathe,without being haunted by you. You are in every orifice, in every nook and cranny and cell. You are in the water of his blood and in the porous hollows of his bones. You are in the fibre between his atoms, you are in the electricity racing across his neurons.

There is no escape from you, not now, not ever.

You are inevitable.

(Knock, knock)

It takes him a moment to realise that the pounding is not from the blood rushing in his head, but from someone impatiently banging on his door. He picks himself off the floor, not bothering to fix his appearance.

By now, you must be in Eric’s arms. He would kiss you softly, like summer rain. You would sigh into his lips, and he would look at you like you hung the moon. He would take you home, and press more kisses into your silk skin as he whispers his love. One day, he would get on one knee and present you with a diamond. You would say yes, because Eric is sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine. Warmth. Laughter.

This, this is what you deserve. Not him, not his twisted mess of anger and jealousy. He is a stinging scorpion, and you deserve more than his petty poisons. But his heart still lurches at the thought of you, nestled into Eric.

The gods have always feared Aphrodite more than Ares. He thinks he can finally understand why.

He swings the door open, and once again forgets how to breathe, forgets how to think, forgets that he kinda hates you but now kinda loves you because there you are, raindrops glistening in your eyelashes, and you eclipse every star in the sky. There is nothing but you and you alone, and his withered little heart is shooting to life because that’s just what you do to him. There’s so much he wants to say, so many thoughts tumbling through his head. But he’s a frightful, useless coward, so all that flies out of his mouth is:

“Why the fuck are you--”

And then your lips are cushioned against his, kissing the venom out of him. He cannot help the sigh he breathes into your mouth at the way your body slots so perfectly against his.

Home, home is in your arms. He has been running all his life, and you have always been his only destination.

Tears slip out, hot and fast, washing the festering wound inside him clean. The cracked pieces of his soul begin to lift up and fuse together.

The light of a thousand suns slices through the void in him, and the darkness melts like ice on a hot summer day.

He is shuddering, wrecked by the sheer force of the emotions in him. But you are holding him tight, so very tight. He hopes you will never let him go. Never ever, ever let him go.

He is yours, and you are his. Where he ends, you begin and where you end, he begins. There is nothing else, no one else, because there was never anyone for him but you. Love not at first sight, or even the second, but at last sight and at ever and ever sight.

When you finally pull away to murmur the words he would have never even dreamed of hearing from you, it’s like starlight is filling the dusty hollows of his chest, sewing the pieces that have fallen apart back into the tapestry that is you. He is surprised, he really is, but something inside him has always known, has always clung to the hope that you would choose him, despite everything.

All that matters, is that you’ve come back to him. You are the only truth he’s ever known.

~~~

Later in the evening, when the two of you are spent from your love-making and coiled so tightly that your breaths have become one, Hyunjae takes a moment to contemplate the situation. You have won this competition between the two of you. You have planted yourself as first in his life, and for once (and of course, the only time ever, because he is still going to get that damn promotion before you), he is happy to cede to you. This is what love is, to break and to be broken, to be full and to be empty, to win and to lose. He would have it no other way. All that he is, and all that he will be, center around the axis that is you.

Do you feel like this too? Like your heart is bursting from the seams?

You sigh in your sleep, seemingly agreeing. He loves you so much, it hurts. But there is one final thing to do.

He lifts his head to the stars, who have been waiting for this collision of souls for a long, long time.

Thank you, he whispers.

And for once, Zeus smiles down on his Ares.

ENDING THOUGHTS:

First of all, a very big thank you to everyone who made it to the end!! This piece has been a wild, emotional ride from start to finish and I understand that the sudden change in style can be jarring for some. As such, I am very grateful to everyone who took the time to read it :)

Hyunjae has always been a very complicated character. We’ve seen him through Y/N’s eyes for the last 17 or so chapters, and she is definitely not the most reliable of narrators. Many of her thoughts regarding his actions and motivations are shadowed by her own negative emotions, and he has come off as a rather poisonous character, except for the rare moments of tenderness he seems to show. Hopefully this will help you get a glimpse into Hyunjae’s psyche, in a way that is untainted by Y/N. I’ve seen many of your asks about Hyunjae and his behaviour, and perhaps you will see this as a sort of redemption for him, in the sense that he is so much deeper and complex than the seething neanderthal Y/N sees him as.

Writing this was a challenge nonetheless, and I think we should all be very grateful to Dana for powering through Y/N and Hyunjae’s story, given how much of a hot mess this couple is! It’s very hard to write an enemies-to-lovers fic without it coming off as corny and shallow, and she had the double struggle of writing that dynamic in a medical setting. The fact that we’re all whipped for these two is testament to her brilliant writing, so let’s all say a big thank you for that :))

Before I end, I’d like to pay homage to some of the writers that have inspired this fic. Reading through, you will see quotes inspired by the likes of Nabokov, Cummings and Homer. If I’m not wrong, there’s a little bit of Sarah J Maas and Caitlyn Siehl in there as well. And of course, who can forget the little bits of mythology peeking out here and there? If you happened to notice these references, feel free to scream in Dana’s ask box! It’ll be fun to read your thoughts :)

Once again, a very big thank you for following Hostis so devotedly, and showering Dana with your love. I hope you’ll continue to give her all your love and support the rest of her works.

(P.S Did anyone notice Pilot! Juyeon? If you didn’t, you should 1000% check out his story too, here.)

Love Always,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter XVIII: Renuntiatio

#hyunjae #lee hyunjae #the boyz #the boyz hyunjae #the boyz lee hyunjae #timetohajima #timetohajima hostis

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lightwormlol · 4 years ago

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ACOFAS REVIEW -INC SPOILERS

4.5 stars.

Okay, so! This was the first book I was able to finish in 2021. I've kinda been in a reading slump, and struggling to get past the 30-50% of books. I think its because I took essentially 3 months off my normal (daily) reading schedule and have been prioritising other things (health, fitness, job applications etc) - I think it's a testament to how addicted I was to this that I finished and consumed this at the rate I did! I recently went back and added some things to my ACOWAR review. To briefly summarise, I feel that, at the time I read it, it kind of gave me what I needed, but it definitely isn't getting a re read - my love for feysand has definitely lessened over time, but honestly i'm not that mad at sarah for this, as I find that whenever I've passed the sexual tension part of relationships in books, I tend to get bored of the domestic bliss. Like, leave that shit for an epilogue and keep it at that? As someone generally averse to relationships, but there is definitely a grace period for how long I can actively be smitten with a couple... before it becomes sickly. Taking all this into account, I honestly was nervous for this book, its release date totally took me by surprise, and I read it on a whim. As a Nessian shipper (I mean we didn't really have a choice after acomaf but to delve into the world of fanfic to keep us going) - this book gave me most of what I wanted and needed from them! I think,(some) kudos to SJM, for not disappointing in their relationship. This was definitely a character > plot driven story. In terms of the plot, I wasn't really invested until around the 38% mark? I'm not sure if I was adjusting to the writing style (lots of dramatic. sentences. that. are. so. abrupt. Nesta Archeron. Death etc) - or if it was bc I hadn't read an SJM book since the novella, which I basically skimmed. I was obviously reading for Nessian, but I didn't really feel intrigued by the wider plot (death gods, the human queens? Given I had lost my previous obsession with the world/ have outgrown 'fandom' culture, that made me actively update my knowledge, I couldn't remember a lot!) I think its clear that SJM excels character driven stories, but I think her worldbuilding and execution is significantly better in the throne of glass franchise. Now, I did say this was a character driven story. This is mostly regarding Nesta, Cassian and Azriel. I loved pretty much any interaction they had! I love a good training montage. Ngl though, I think, unless you possess an ardent love for Nessian, you're not going to be particularly wowed by this, if you've read heir of fire, or even acomaf. I obviously am never going to be able to be objective, because I've loved nessian so much from 2017-now, but I loved the dynamic those two (and three - friendship wise between nes/cass/az). One of the highlights of ACOWAR for me was the snippets of Az, showing tenderness, and opening up to the newer members of the inner circle (and i'm excluding any hint of an Elriel ship because FUCK THAT LOL) For me, the tip with SJM books is: once you outgrow them/the particular mode of narrative style, is to not anticipate anything other than a character driven story, albeit one riddled with smut. I personally am a romance heavy reader, so I'm honestly deconditioned to it at this point, (like, when I see reviewers scandalised I'm like... wow, the amount of trash I have consumed in the last five years loool.) While I disagree with the fact SJM marketed this series as y/a (or maybe it wasn't her per se, but the key booksellers definitely did this for her) - I think its clear enough now she's descended into the adult/borderline erotica genre.(very mild imo). I personally like to adopt a policy of skimming sex scenes when I find the dialogue cringy (most the time it is lets be honest any talking is v second hand embarrassment). Cassian and Nesta were definitely better than Rhys and Feyre post chapter 55 though! I was so glad there weren't a million moments of Cass/Nesta betraying their arousal with their scents, in front of everyone (like feysand, the voyeuristic pda pricks they are). I found the slowburn ish nature of their relationship great, and I actually think if you're a virgo/emotionally stunted reader, you will be happy with their relationship dynamic. It contrasts with the daemati sexual snark of acomaf, but it felt right, and authentic. This book was a journey of personal growth, for Nesta. It is clear SJM loves books about strong women, and maybe thats what makes me love this book so much. I think, out of all the archeron sisters, I love Nesta the most. This is for my Rose Calloway fans, my misunderstood, somewhat cold/left out girls, who are less receptive to being vulnerable. If you're a slowburn fan, it's not Mariana Zapata levels of slowburn, imo it's the perfect combo. Addictive enough that I don't want to put it down, but not so fast moving that I couldn't believe it. I loved the sex without emotion relationship they had!! This is honestly never done in mainstream n/a fantasy, unless its a caricature of a 'slut' that normally rivals the main character, lmao. Even if their inner conflict was p transparent, this gave me everything I needed! I know this is vapid lol but I also love the physical dynamic between the two, they just look so good together, the amount of fanart I'm going to reacquaint myself with after this review!! I adored seeing Nesta grow, (even if towards the end I kind of resented her sudden acceptance into the inner circle, i get SJM loves her and just wanted a fluffy ending, but, as a Nesta like character, it's awkward and stilted on her end to adjust to the inner circle like this - i mean, hugging rhys, really??)

I think, if I had to compare this to any other SJM book, I would say Chaols book (though I obviously preferred this). That being said, I felt less attached to new characters in this book than I was in even Chaols book (and even then ngl I remember nothing?) Obviously I loved what it represented, as a trio of traumatised women. I just, didn't love this the way I loved other inner circle members! I get that they gave Nesta exactly what they needed, a family that doesn't hold the history of her sisters, who she doesn't have to worry about holding preconceived notions of disappointment. I loved this for her! Even then.. I just wasn't attached to either of them. I found their interactions cute - but boring. Towards the end, when their stories/pasts are revealed, I couldn't help but cringe slightly, I can't put my finger on why, but I just didn't buy it. Maybe it's the brit in me but I couldn't be moved by this slightly forced bonding moment.. which was so anticlimactic. My 'aww how cute' tolerance is defo deserved for characters whose tropes I love. Maybe they just didn't fit into this list. Maybe I'm just being a cow here?

Now, let's speak about the real star of the show.... A FUCKING MAGICAL HOUSE FRIEND??? YESSSSSSS. IF YOU ARE AN ILONA ANDREWS INNKEEPERS CHRONICLES FAN, U WILL LOVE! How was the animation of this somehow more touching than all of nesta's other friendships combined? Exactly what I ordered, thank you. This trope somehow touches more than any material bonding!! The cute witch x house dynamic (also maybe howls moving castle vibes?) I loved the trying to reach the target of 10,000 steps (a little Celaena HOF). I think this, heir of fire and acomaf are my favourite SJM books for this reason. Gripes: I definitely had some personal gripes with how other members of the inner circle treated Nesta (rhys i'm looking at you. Disappointed doesn't even cover it.) I inherently take offence to any elain scene, as i'm so over bland characters whose existence is reduced to wanting to fucking plant flowers?? like?? really? To go from moriel to that is such a downgrade, even if I fell out of love with Mor due to the way she snubbed Nesta (you're a 500 year old being and you can't see someone is clearly traumatised?). I adore Az so much, but if it aint polyamorous, I cannot see any pairing with Elain making me happy. (wouldn’t mind gwyn though) I think the whole mating bond that I do not want is a good dynamic, but I really hate that everyone has to be mates in this world. I don't think we were that surprised, but it would've been nice if the somehow, idk, developed a strong bond over time, without it being preordained? Like, even if they do not all actively stay with their mate, given how disproportionate mates are among the general population, what's the likelihood 6 members of the inner circle (including lucien) have mates?

My advice? Read this book if you love nessian and the acotar world in general, but don't expect the world building to be consistent with greater fantasy series'. This style of story is obviously what to expect. She writes what she likes, and if her fantasy is this - then who are we, as readers, to expect otherwise?

Final rating: 4.5 (no, i'm not objective, but objectivity does not exist if you are a real, human being, lol)

Original Characters: 5/5 (nessian/az/house wise) 1/5 (feysand - really over how they essentially take over the very end of the book - ugh, I wanted nesta's arc to be wholly separate from them) Writing style: 3.5 Cringe Scale: Low, with the exception of some dialogue. New Characters: 2 Plot: I went into it with a 2 and came out with a 4. Not in terms of complexity, but in terms of how addictive and enjoyable this reading experience was! (less)

#acofas #sjm #sarah j maas #acotar #nesta #nesta archeron #nessian

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zdbztumble · 5 years ago

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“Kingdom Hearts II” revisited, Part VI

On the one hand, I can understand how something like this could slip under the radar, as it’s a small point; on the other hand, that small point can make a big difference, depending on who you are. It matters less to me, as I’ve played the game before, but it still bothers me: why would the Secret Ansem Report you get after the retreat from Hollow Bastion give away the name “Radiant Garden?”

In any event - the second pass at the Disney worlds is considerably shorter than the first. I had forgotten how zippy this stage of the game could get. In a way, I suppose that’s a bit of a missed opportunity to let the Organization show their stuff a little, but this game is plenty long as it is, so I can’t say that I fault them for that. As it is, I think the second pass is slighter than the first on content...but it’s also better in how it spaces that content.

Before we get into each of the worlds, though, I want to touch on the concept of “filler.” Whether it’s worlds in the Kingdom Hearts series, non-manga-inspired episodes of Dragon Ball Z, non-League related episodes of Pokemon, or even individual scenes in a movie, there’s a fairly common attitude that treats any and all filler as automatically bad - that anything not immediately germane to the central plot is a flaw. I’ve never understood this line of thought. The “filler” episodes of Gohan surviving alone during the Saiyan Saga are a highlight of the DBZ anime. All my favorite Pokemon episodes are “filler.” Filler is only a bad thing when it takes up too much time, distracting or undermining the larger story. But when it’s well-placed and well-paced, it can be as good as any plot-centric episode, and can even enhance the greater story through unexpected means.

I said in Part IV that I can understand how this game got the reputation for the Disney worlds being filler based on the back half of the first pass, but thinking more about, that isn’t technically true. I can still certainly see how those worlds would give that impression, because the story falls into a repetitive stall, but technically, things related to the main story do happen - Pete and Maleficent try to rebuild their forces, and get thwarted. That this was done in the way it was, with so little variety, cost the story a sense of progression even as nominally important events, like Disney villains being turned into Heartless, took place. By contrast, the second pass on the Disney worlds has more true filler. But because it’s shorter, and because there’s more variety in how things play out in the respective worlds, the overall effect is much more pleasing to my narrative instincts, even if it falters a little at the end.

As it did in the first pass, the Land of Dragons follows naturally from the set-up immediately preceding it (assuming that you play through the worlds by villain level.) In this case, Sora has finally learned the plan of Organization XIII - let the Heartless run amok, then harvest the hearts released when the Keyblade slays the Heartless. Since lives will be in danger if he does nothing, Sora has no choice but to keep fighting. And, when the player arrives in the Land of Dragons, this is exactly what we see illustrated. I know that some people object to how brief Xigbar’s appearance is, but I don’t see how that’s a problem. The Organization’s plot is established by this point; one can easily assume that Xigbar is in the Land of Dragons to further that plot. By the end of the level, that’s confirmed; he was turning dragons into Heartless. And just as Xaldin was teased in the first pass at the Beast’s Castle without getting into a direct scrap with Sora, Xigbar here is given some build-up ahead of his role later in the game - and, by succeeding in making a Heartless, and leaving his Nobodies behind to fight, he avoids coming off as ineffectual, the way he did during the Organization’s first appearance to Sora in Hollow Bastion.

What’s more, the Land of Dragons is arguably more concerned with bringing Riku back into the plot. At this point in the game, we have just seen him leave the ice cream and photo for Sora, but to actually show him taking a personal hand in trying to keep the worlds safe is a significant step. A case could be made that this should have happened earlier in the game, but Riku’s absence from the first pass is a concept that’s grown on me as I’ve gone on playing. There’s a real impact to his finally turning up in a Disney world at this late stage, and I like that Sora was 1. not made arbitrarily stupid for the sake of “mystery,” and actually recognized Riku right away and 2. did have a moment of doubt and confusion about Riku’s alliances. Plus, there’s a great comedy bit derived from all this too: “He was rather rude.” “Then it WAS Riku!”

From there, we have the Beast’s Castle and Port Royal - two worlds, back-to-back, that feature members of the Organization taking a very direct hand in the events playing out, more than any other Disney worlds. It’s Xaldin and Luxord doing the honors, and they are a perfect example of what I’ve meant when I’ve said in the past that Organization XIII works better as a concept and a collective than as individual members. I’ve never meant that in a pejorative sense; what I mean is that it’s the group, the monolithic unit of the Organization as a whole, that is the antagonist of KH II. Xemnas may be their leader, and Xehanort its instigator, but they are a hive mind when it comes to the goal: collect stolen hearts to get hearts for themselves. The individual members shown in KH II don’t really have their own agencies beyond serving that goal, except for Axel, and they aren’t very fleshed out as individuals. Xaldin is just as one-note and empty of personality as Zexion and Lexaeus were in CoM (though gifted with a much better English VA), and Luxord’s gaming sensibility (and Demyx’s incompetence) are only a slight step above that. But they don’t need to be any more defined than they are, because they’re 1. Nobodies devoid of hearts (at this point in the series anyway) and 2. cogs in the wheel that is Organization XIII. Unlike the Organization members we meet in CoM and R/R, they aren’t commanding huge chunks of screen time to blather repetitively among themselves - they appear when the story needs them to, and no more. They provide gradually greater challenges for Sora in combat, creating a boss battle ladder to climb until Xemnas is reached, and also help build up the scale of threat that Organization XIII really poses to Sora after being absent for so long in the first half of the story. It’s video game logic applied to story, and very effectively so IMO.

For some people, the limited screen time of characters like Xigbar, Luxord, etc., and the lack of backstory for them, is a flaw in this game. It should be obvious by now that I don’t share that complaint. For one thing - we are given backstory for Organization XIII, just not an excessive amount of it. And why should there be any more to than what the vanilla version of the game provides in gameplay and Ansem Reports? How much backstory did we get on Jafar in Aladdin, Ursula in The Little Mermaid, or Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty? The story functions well without excessive backstory for the villains for many reasons - chief among them that it isn’t a story about them. This isn’t the tale of dark protagonist Xehanort, falling into darkness and continuing on as the Nobody Xemnas to try and regain a heart. KH II is a point in the series where the staff still clearly remember who the protagonists are, and KH II is a story of resolution for their stories begun in KH I. It’s the resolution of Riku’s struggle toward redemption, begun at the end of KH I and continued through R/R before reaching its climax here; it’s resolution for Donald and Goofy’s quest to find King Mickey, and Mickey’s quest to set the worlds to right; it’s a resolution for Kairi, left alone with fading memories at the end of KH I but determined to set out and find her friends again; and it’s resolution for Sora, recovering his powers and his whole self after the events of CoM while slowly confronting what became of his Nobody in that year, and finally finding his way home after his long journey. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it’s the Odyssey to KH I’s Iliad, and Organization XIII are the cyclopses, sirens, and witches. I don’t need - or want - detailed backstories on them when the story I’m engaged in concerns the people they’re getting in the way of.

(I also think it’s notable that Xaldin hasn’t really been pushed aggressively as a major character since KH II. His brief appearances in later games don’t even attempt to expand his personality; by contrast, Zexion/Ienzo, Vexen/Even, Marluxia, and Larxene’s revivals are treated as much bigger deals, but in all the time we’ve spent with them past their supposed deaths, and for all the background and lore given to them, there’s been no appreciable expansion on their personalities. They’re all still playing the same one or two notes they had in the first place, with the only difference being that their presence is disproportionate to their role in the story and their ability to justify their screen time with personality.)

With that rant finished: the same problems with the wording of the dialogue as the first pass plague Beast’s Castle still, and Belle and the Beast remain too far down the road to romance given the nature of their ticking clock. There’s also a huge lapse in logic - the idea that Belle wouldn’t have been told, by the servants if not by the Beast, about the rose. But I do like how direct a continuation this world is from the first pass. Xaldin’s efforts to make the Beast a Heartless were fleshed out more than Maleficent’s and Pete’s were at any point, and the growth in the Beast’s character during the second pass is nice. Belle’s passivity compared to her movie counterpart is made up for (somewhat) by her quick jab and rescue of the rose. And I managed to beat Xaldin on my first try, without being reduced to Last Hope even once! (One minor nitpick about this world’s second pass, though: if Jack can keep his Santa suit in gameplay, why can’t the Beast keep his ball outfit?)

Port Royal is a massive improvement from the first pass. It’s amazing what loosening the shackles of the source material can do for this series. As brief as it is, it’s a creative way to use an element from the movie, and the first pass of the game, in the Organization’s plans, and it has a lot of great little character beats. I like Jack referring to Luxord and the others as “Organizers;” I like Sora’s prank on Jack with the Keyblade (levity with Sora done right - take note, future series entries); I like Peter Pan turning up as Summon in this of all worlds (I’d completely forgotten he was a Summon, so that was a nice surprise; it did occur to me after I found him that Summons don’t have a story justification here the way they did in KH I - a minor, and possibly inevitable, retcon); and I like seeing Sora show signs of weariness from his journeys. You could argue that his getting teary-eyed at seeing Mulan and Shang together was an earlier sign of this, but here, it’s made explicit. Though I don’t know why he had to cover his feelings with silliness; in KH I, Sora has no problem expressing doubts, exhaustion, and longing.

Another nice touch in Port Royal’s second pass is the way that it gets started - with Elizabeth declaring that she doesn’t want to sit around waiting anymore, and wants to go out and find Will. Because that couple had prompted thoughts of Kairi in Sora earlier in the game, it’s very natural to make the thematic connection between Elizabeth’s actions and Kairi’s here without anyone explicitly commenting on it. This is the way to tie related but distant story elements together. It isn’t necessary - or desirable - that every connection is called out for what it is, but doing it once or twice strengthens the overall effect when later moments pass unremarked upon. It’s a lesson KH III failed to remember, as the only time a connection between Sora and Kairi and the ill-fated Disney couples is made happens after everything Disney has already passed.

Just having the order of the worlds mixed up slightly gives the second pass some variety, but even more comes in Olympus. This is a world largely concerned with its own internal story, tying up the loose ends from the first pass. But the moment when Sora encounters Nobodies in Hades’ layer, only to be saved by Heartless, is a very nice - and subtle - way to keep the greater story in mind. We never learn what those Nobodies are up to specifically, which Organizer sent them, or what set the Heartless to attack them - but their presence means that Sora (and the player) can’t forget that Organization XIII’s plot is never far, even when it isn’t front-and-center. Olympus also demonstrates how to incorporate Final Fantasy material properly, thanks to Auron’s brief flashes of memory - they’re short, and they’re tied into what’s going on in the story instead of distracting from it.

Agrabah is almost as subtle in the way it handles the Organization - an unseen member orchestrates Jafar’s release, on the hope of making him a Heartless. It’s a slight role for them, but a different sort of slight role than they had in Olympus. This is where the variety counts for something compared to the first pass; if not a whole lot is progressing in the plot, at least things play out in a different way in each world. My problems with Agrabah’s second pass are all to do with the world on its own terms; I find the controls for the carpet riding a little wonky, and the world has the opposite problem to many later ones in that it gives the Disney hero nothing to do with defeating the villain while Sora does all the work. The resolution with Iago is nice, though, and I’m sorry this series never closed things out on Agrabah with a King of Thieves adaptation.

It’s only when we arrive at Halloween Town that I think a Disney world (on the main World Map, with combat) can truly be said to be all filler. No one from Organization XIII is present, no schemes take place behind the scenes; the only story here concerns the local Disney characters. And with the beat of him being excited to see Santa played out, Sora ends up without anything to do - he’s along for the ride with Jack. However, even with that, I would say that the second pass on Halloween Town is how to do filler right in a video game like this, because this side excursion has plenty of thematic significance. Dr. Finklestein’s puppet doing bad things out of a desire for a heart is the whole of Organization XIII writ small, and gives a preview of the pathos to come with them. And of course, Sora is once again reminded of Kairi in an adorable closer for the world.

Sadly, the last in the line-up is Pride Lands, and I was once again disappointed by this world. Taken as a whole, it’s probably the weakest of them, not counting Atlantica. That’s a huge shame, because it’s such a wonderful idea for a KH level, for many reasons. Besides being derived from one of the best and most popular Disney films, and offering great form changes, taking Summons from the first game and expanding on them in the sequel - treating them as true characters, who remember Sora and their adventures with him - was a beautiful concept. And it works so well in the Land of Dragons, even as Mushu gives way to Mulan as Sora’s chief point of contact. But Pride Lands just couldn’t pull it off. Here on the second pass, the Scar ghost makes for an intriguing idea made laughably underwhelming in execution, and the final Heartless boss is disconnected from any story content within that world or the larger plot. This is filler done wrong, and the best I can say for it is that it gave Sora more of a role than the first pass did - seeing him employ reverse psychology was fun.

(I might as well touch on the two optional worlds - true filler if there ever was any - while I’m here. I still think the 100 Acre Wood was needlessly shoved into the flow of the story during the first half, and the concept is still repetitive from the first game, but I have softened a bit from my earlier stance that it shouldn’t have been brought back at all - the minigames are a lot of fun, even if the world doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch it did in KH I. Atlantica, on the other hand, remains a colossal disappointment. I had forgotten just how much it forgets and/or ignores from KH I once Ursula shows up - logic is out the window at that point, the way Ariel and the others react to her. Her song is the worst of the bunch, and Ariel isn’t even involved in fighting her this time.)

I’ll go ahead and close on Hollow Bastion, and the second pass at Space Paranoids. Once again, we have some variety here. This time, it comes in the form of cross-cutting - cutscenes of Leon racing around preparing things juxtaposed with Sora’s gameplay inside the system. The only other time in the series I remember cross-cutting being this effective was in juxtaposing Aerith’s briefing of Donald and Goofy in Traverse Town with Leon and Yuffie doing the same for Sora in KH I. And there is an absolutely wonderful moment where Cid and Merlin finally come to a head (“OLD loon, you say!?”) It was another of those delightful bits that I’d forgotten about, and it only underscores how mistaken an idea it was to abandon this little unit in favor of “original” characters. When has Ienzo ever shown this kind of chemistry and interplay, with anybody?

But I do have to close on a negative this time. There are some nitpicks to be had with the second pass at Space Paranoids, such as Sora being more awkward about hugs than a computer program. There are legitimate story issues, such as the lack of good reason for the system going screwy. And there are missed opportunities - one of them related to that last point. Xemnas, or another of the ex-apprentices, could have been responsible for setting that off, which would have gotten Organization XIII involved in the last world right before the home stretch.

Less detrimental to this story, but more detrimental in the long run to the series overall, is the fact that the reveal about Hollow Bastion once being Radiant Garden doesn’t yield any revelations about the tritagonist of the series who came from said gardens. Kairi’s past is the one loose end from KH I that this game won’t end up resolving, and the series has never properly addressed it. Ansem SoD, possessing Riku, seemed to know her, and declared her “Princess” in no uncertain terms; one could infer from that that he knew her. The Final Mix of KH I would reveal that he deliberately selected her for an experiment to find the Keyblade. That this is all we’ve ever gotten - and that backstory concepts that might have suited her were given to other characters - is ridiculous. This game, if not the exact moment when Tron reveals the name Radiant Garden, was possibly their best chance to rectify this, and they blew it.

#z's crits #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 2 #critique #commentary

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naernon · 6 years ago

Note

for the ask meme (TES, obvs): 3,9, 13 (for naemon), 23!

thank you!! i wrote this all last night and i havent checked for coherency or errors so forgive me if it’s a bit scatterbrained at times (although yall should be used to incoherency coming from me ghhgfg.)

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3.) Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

someone said that they didn’t like serana and i was already sitting on the decision to unfollow them for other reasons and that. that was just the Final Straw.

but i think that’s it…? im so petty + impulsive (deadly combo) at times that maybe i did unfollow over a TES opinion another time but i can’t remember hgufuhfhxdfh

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9.) Most disliked character(s)? Why?

OOF this is a hard one, ill list the ones that come to mind rn;

molag bal. needs no explanation

darren guitar or whatever his name is. im sorry to anyone who likes him but i just.. can’t. he’s so obnoxious. he was toned down in summerset, probably because different people were writing him if i had to guess but in the main and daggerfall covenant questline? awful. his goddamn womanizing jokes at every second of the day was “kim, there’s people that are dying” at its finest.literally one or two “haha ladies amirite fellow man ;)/haha ladies amirite……… lady ;)” jokes can be.. bearable albeit still annoying but there was so much more than that. or they were so obnoxiously written that it seemed to be more frequent than in actuality, either way, darren guitar? 0/10also my view of him hasnt gotten better since someone sent me a rude ask about how darren had more personality than prince naemon in-game due to me joking about how i don’t like him and then subsequently blocked me for being irritated about the rudeness of the ask + the fact that im 99% sure they were the anon that appeared in my fucking inbox defending darren guitar every single time i breathed a single word about him

i completely forgot he existed until you listed him as disliked and now i hate him even more. that fucking. bard from the bannered mare. the one that harassed carlotta until you told him to fuck off. i hate that dude. always have

abnur tharn. mildly obnoxious with some amusing lines until you find out what he did to queen ayrenn like. small dick mannimarco joke is now renounced, little man. Perish.my view on Estre is Complicated because she’s a really neat character and villain and ranks as a favorite in the latter department but from like, a moral standpoint i loathe her.also while it wasn’t like. pelidil levels of shittiness i’m not fond of how she hurt naemon– but then again……. now that i think of it, i really don’t know what’d she COULD do other than keep him in the absolute dark until he inevitably gets caught up in the Shitshow otherwise. i wouldn’t suppose naemon to be 100% willing to join in her efforts or even keep completely quiet about them if she did decide to talk to him about it or let him know; and for all we know, she could’ve planned to do so eventually in some way– but the suddenness of the AD hero’s infiltration of the veiled heritance probably ruined any semblance of a plan she could’ve had. so on second thought, even from a “naemon is a perfect being and i will protect him with my life and loathe all who hurt him” standpoint, i don’t dislike her too much. let’s just reduce estre to like.. honorable mentions on my “disliked characters” list then lmao(also “moral standpoint” as if queen ayrenn is anything close to the pinnacle of absolute morality. estre is objectively worse on that front, though, so i suppose i still stand by that)

speaking of which i really… don’t like pelidil. again, moral standpoint. and “naemon is a perfect being and i will protect him with my life and loathe all who hurt him” standpoint. otherwise, he’s a neat villain and the quest in which you cut him down was one of the more impressive quests in the game IMO, or even in the entire game series. good build-up.

this is getting too long so i’ll cut it there, that’s all the characters that come to mind rn anyways hfhgdhg

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10.) Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

hmmmmmm

i guess if you view it in such a way, liking him is kind of unpopular– while there’s still a lot of those who even if not actively talking about him as a character, have praised his character/took his side/whatever, there’s also a good amount who don’t. not really in considering him a poorly written character, but rather from a (sorry to bring this phrase up so much so far) moral standpoint.

also, considering him in a semi-unironic “he did nothing wrong” way, which i do, is kind of unpopular– and i can understand that, in some ways. i dont think him snapping at the scene of the orrery was under his 100% control nor was anything subsequent, but there’s still the fact that he still is in an “i deserve the throne, fuck off” mindset in coldharbour, which, unless he’s STILL affected by the mantle and/or the orrery, is obviously a negative change in viewpoint compared to the “i’ll swallow my bitterness and remain loyal to my sister and the dominion, she is the rightful queen and i am just her shadow” you saw prior.

granted, i’d argue that even then, you have to consider the influence that pelidil had over him prior (as some have accurately put it before– whispered poison into his ear). especially with the fact that naemon’s quite young for an elf at… 26? around that age-range. i dont think altmer’s minds work in the way that, say, hobbits do, in that they age slower and this includes their mental capability, decision-making, etc.. (they obviously don’t) BUT, compared to an elf with more experience, there’s a bit of an… imbalance there. pelidil WAS the one who served naemon instead of the other way around so you’d figure the opposite if anything, but again, naemon = impressionable and emotionally vulnerable at the time.

anyways, got off-topic; my point was that naemon, when you consider the influence that pelidil and any other secretly heritance people that interacted with him, even when you use the fact that he still seems “corrupted” in coldharbour to frame him as bad… that ain’t it. there’s also the fact that he is being tortured, at that moment. big part of it. he PROBABLY isn’t in the right state of mind, to put it simply. but then again, i mean, one could still argue a whole “cool motive, still murder” take on it, so whatever. i dont know man ghfghduhbdfg

YIKES i rambled, holy shit. sorry. but otherwise, i dont think i have too many? there’s not much in the prince naemon…. sub-fandom, at least not enough to be able to render one opinion as unpopular compared to the next

(and i. Guess that headcanoning him as trans definitely has the potential to be unpopular. but i dont really talk about it or “enforce” it much other than off-hand comments that might imply such, drawing him with top surgery scars, etc.. so it hasn’t exactly been given any room to be considered remotely unpopular. haven’t gotten anon hate, snide comments, etc.. about any of it at all so it’s cool. but i’ve brought it up because… you know how fandoms are; if there was more to the prince naemon “fandom”, theoretically, it would be and therefore kind of IS an unpopular opinion. “does your arm hurt from reaching cassius” ok look, i just felt like i needed to provide one more unpopular opinion about naemon and i couldn’t figure out any other than that. but yes. yes, hurts a little)

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23.) Unpopular character you love?

unpopular as in commonly disliked, or unpopular in… amount of people that like them? with the latter, it’s def naemon. i love him with all my heart gfigufhgdugdfh but then again who didn’t know that

with the former… hm. the thing is a lot of characters disliked in this fandom are disliked with good reason IMO– nevermind. almalexia. not to open any #diskhorse wounds but almalexia’s one of them ghdfhguhg jot that down

and i’ve heard some talk that veya is kind of unpopular, what with the recent summerset developments? yeah, fuck that, veya’s one of my favorites. this fandom (or. any fandom lets be real) has an awful tendency to praise any goddamn male character’s flaws or “negative” depth as redeemable character complexity and something that can be looked past, and yet, you see even REMOTELY the same amount if not more character depth in a female character and they’re hated. pointing this out is nothing new but it’s truly just…. something to behold.

and on that note im just going to renounce my prior statement of “a lot of characters disliked in this fandom are disliked with good reason” that’s the dumbest shit i’ve ever said. or perhaps an addendum stating that it’s only applicable to male characters is more in order? or that it’s the opposite for male characters: liked with bad reason. or… liked with over-exaggerated reason disproportionate to the actual amount of depth, complexity, and/or likeability said character actually has, paired with hatred for female characters with the same amount of complexity. “bruh don’t you obsess over prince naemon–” Yeah And What the Fuck Of It

anyways moving on sorry i got distracted hgdfgyfgh. that’s all the characters that come to mind? disregarding characters that are unpopular in an unappreciated sort of way rather than a disliked way, i really dont have a lot

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salty fandom (elder scrolls) opinions

#ask memes #time to do the other ones #asks #long post #ramblings #thanks again!!!!

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poipoi1912 · 7 years ago

Text

Carisi-centric thoughts on Ep 19x11

Wait, was Sonny even in this episode?

Still, I do have some thoughts about him (I do not, however, have overall thoughts because this episode kind of put me to sleep). But first:

Dodds Thoughts

I LOVE HIM. I support him. I will not stand for him turning into some villain because the writers need to add some tension and they can’t figure out a more creative way of doing it.

I will, however, say that Liv works best when she has an adversary, and if the writers have realized that, and they’ve chosen to use Dodds for that purpose, I guess I’ll take it. I’ve said this before, but Liv is more sympathetic as an underdog. And she has more fire when she’s fighting against someone stronger. She is a woman in a position of authority, and it’s great to see the others respect and acknowledge her position and her skill (i.e. her being the ONE AND ONLY person who could EVER do this job that COUNTLESS people have done before her etc etc), but dramatically speaking that can get preachy or sycophantic or just plain boring. Giving Liv an enemy just might be a positive step. BUT WHY’D IT HAVE TO BE DODDS?

Also, Peter Gallagher is a wonderful actor and he continues to bring the best out of Mariska and it’s beautiful to watch. So, again, maybe it’s a good thing that he’s possibly shady. EXCEPT IT’S NOT. BECAUSE HE’S GREAT. BEST GUY EVER. BEST HAIR. BEST EYEBROWS. BES-ok I’ll stop.

Barba Thoughts

He is a feminist icon.

He is hungry for a nice thicc

steak.

Legal Thoughts

Nope lol. Grand larceny? OK then.

Sonny Thoughts

So, Liv comes back after 3 weeks, and Sonny literally turns his back the minute she walks in, and then he walks away and never even says a word? Never welcomes her back? The hell?

Allow me to say something as objectively as I can, considering Sonny is my fave.

I think Sonny has been relegated to last man on the totem pole, which is what he was originally brought in for. What he actually was, when he first appeared on the show, back in S16, when Amaro was still the main guy. For about a year after that (during S17) he was given a larger role, and more storylines, partially because Danny Pino had left and Kelli took time off to have a baby, and that changed things for him. Sonny started having more nuanced interactions with all the other characters (Liv, Barba, Amanda, even Dodds and Fin). In S18 he was the stereotypical Angry Male Lead, so he was getting a lot of screentime and bigger scenes, and working the cases more extensively. In S19, he’s been getting less screentime, and he only ever interacts with his partner, Rollins. No scenes with Liv, no scenes with Barba. And I actually lament the former more, because we’ve had one or two funny Barisi moments this season, bit the Benisi dynamic has been paid dust.

Liv has gone through a lot, as we’ve heard, and Sonny has always idolized her, and she always seemed to have a soft spot for him (certainly over Amanda lol). So it’s weird not to see his concern for her. I realize that the new showrunner sees Amanda as Liv’s new confidant, and the Rollivia scenes are true highlights so I most certainly am not about to complain about that, especially since I love seeing two women bond without the bullshit antagonism that used to plague their relationship, but I wish Sonny’s relationship with Liv wasn’t sacrificed in the process.

Also, is this season ultra light on Sonny, or is it me? Hasn’t his screentime been decimated since the start of the season? There were several (suspiciously so) deleted Sonny scenes in the first handful of episodes, and ever since he’s literally had nothing to do. Just the random one-off comment here and there. No real contribution. When was the last time he cracked a case? More importantly, when was the last time he connected with a victim? Or a suspect? He used to do that even in S16, when he was still the butt of all the jokes.

I mean, I can’t complain, because in previous seasons Peter was getting what was perhaps a disproportionate amount of screentime, and I certainly (and selfishly) enjoyed that, and I’m glad Kelli has been finally getting the increased role she’s always deserved (and barely had in S15), but still. Maybe they were overusing Sonny before, but they’re definitely underusing him now. As a Sonny fan, I guess I’m just saying that I want to see more of him because that’s the only way I can justify the fact I’m still watching SVU. Cause it sure ain’t about the cases.

Stray Thoughts

Kressler! I couldn’t believe my eyes! Old school!

“The guy doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket” = “he’s guilty”

Peter’s side-eye when that flight attendant said “I turned 30! I’m so old!” rivaled my own.

Also, I only caught it after I saw the gifset, but Sonny spilled his coffee as he was taking a sip? I love it when Peter is bored as an actor, he always makes his own fun in the background.

Martin Donovan is so good. I wish the writers had given him more to do.

Dodds: This is a case for the FBI.

Liv: lol no

I liked that Liv wasn’t acting like being separated from Noah would be this traumatic “WHERE IS MY BOY???” thing. I liked seeing a working mom be like “omg I’ve had enough of my kid after 3 weeks, let him go to school to play with other kids so I can go do my job!” That’s refreshing. And necessary.

Is Barba a masochist? Why did he look so happy when Liv turned him down for the eleventh time in the last 3 episodes? And why couldn’t Liv come up with an actual excuse? It’s possible she has run out of excuses, to be fair, but still. “I’d love to but [dot dot dot]”? What’s that, if not a gentle brush-off? And what does she have to do that’s better than dinner with Barba? I don’t know what these moments are supposed to convey, other than “Liv doesn’t like Barba Like That” and “Barba has no other friends”. Maybe that’s it? His loneliness? As yet another reason he might eventually leave? A slow burn of a reason? He wants to fully embrace a nice thick life and the job won’t let him? Is that the point? yes I’m overthinking this shhh

Fin, like, did some stuff. Good for him! He even has a sort-of feud with Dodds, for some reason. I’ll take it! Peter Gallagher also brings out the best in Ice-T, and they’re so fun together! There’s some macho posturing that’s very amusing because both of them have a very specific and incompatible way of, just, being, and I love every minute of it.

Dodds: How’d you get this memo?

Fin: I got a memo guy.

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jade4813 · 7 years ago

Note

Hi, Jade! I remember watching Smallville but not really being in fandom and being in tune with how people received characters. I also remember you speaking about fandom during Smallville and how they treated Lois Lane. How vitriolic was the audience, especially the fan girls, when she arrived? How was it when she came back and started having more of a role in Clark’s everyday? What excuses would they use to negate Clois? And how you you compare the treat of Clois/Lois with Westallen/Iris.

I pulled out my computer for this one because DO I HAVE THINGS TO TELL YOU.

I’m going to go ahead and put a cut here. I’ve written all of two sentences and I just KNOW this is gonna be long.

Okay, so. I wasn’t actually involved in fandom when Lois first joined the show. (And yea, but those were happy days, full of innocence and faith in humanity.) But I UNDERSTAND that things were...generally fine for those first few episodes. If she got any hate, it wasn’t much. By comparison, if nothing else. Mind you, it was known that they had only gotten the rights to use her for a few episodes, so it seemed unlikely she would be around after that. She wasn’t really a threat to any ship at that point. I mean, sure she would be. In the post-Smallvillian future. But if she only ever had those three episodes, then the rest of the show could run its course and whatever ship the show did could happen and the post-Smallvillian breakup could remain largely theoretical. Or to be left to the imagination even! It’s fine!

But then. Oh my god. Then.

Then it was announced Lois would be around for more episodes. (13 with an option for more! An option they not only never used but they didn’t even always give her the episodes she was paid to do!)

At first, I think there was tension between Clana and Clois shippers. I feel like that started from the jump. And I suppose that makes sense. Chlark fans and Clois fans got along at first. Well, Chloe and Lois were cousins, so that might have helped. And also, it was no secret that there were restrictions that prevented anything romantic happening between Clois. So Clois wasn’t a threat to Chlark. At that time (season 4), even for Clois fans, Chlark seemed more likely to happen than Clois. (Really, Clois fans genuinely were as shocked as anyone that we were actually getting our ship developed in S8. We’d been told for years it wasn’t going to happen. That Lois would be, direct quote, “out in the cold.”)

But Clana fans and Clois fans didn’t really get along. Which...if you think about it...even if you knew that Clois wasn’t going to happen on the show, TPTB did still say that was Clark’s future. That when Smallville ended, it would be at the beginning of the story we all know - Lois and all. So even if Clana lasted the whole show, TPTB were basically admitting that Clana wouldn’t get the happy ending they so longed to get. Clois would. Whether or not we’d see it on screen. That fate was reserved for Clois.

One might ask why this didn’t bother Chlark fans at that time. I think - again - they knew that in S4 there was more chance of Chlark happening than Clois. Not a GREAT chance, given TPTB obsession with Clana. But comparatively better. In that Clois had absolutely zero chance. Even in a dream sequence. So whatever threat we might pose EVENTUALLY, we weren’t the biggest problem for them at that time. Their biggest problem was that the show runners made it very clear that Clana was their jam, and that didn’t seem likely to change.

So, S4 was...comparatively...pretty smooth sailing for Chlark and Clois fans. At one point, we even did art/fic exchanges for each other. Things with the Clana fandom were...less great. They even started the whole Rock The Mythos campaign (I think that year) - they petitioned DC to break up the marriage in the comics and put Clana together. (And, frankly, there are those who believe that it got more traction than it should have done. I think Didio at the time disliked Clois, and I remember reading that he green lit the story where Lana put her panties in Superman’s bed - and Lois was written as an unreasonable bitch - to set up the end of Clois. It didn’t go over well, so DC abandoned that idea and that arc ended. Now, I would have to go back and compare dates to see if there really was a correlation between one and the other. But I BEG you not to do that to me. For obvious reasons, I’m not a fan of that arc.

... Oh, god. I had to do it. I had to know. The panties thing happened in Action Comics #822. Published February 2005. Smallville’s “Crusade” introducing Lois aired September 22, 2004. So, depending how long it takes for comics to get through the editorial process...it is possible the two are linked. Just saying.)

ANYWAY. SO THERE WAS TENSION THERE. Obviously, Clois fans didn’t take well to the Rock the Mythos campaign. Clana fans didn’t like that they were told Clois would get their happy ending. And Chlarkers and Cloisers got along...all right...because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right?

But then. Lois continued to stick around. She continued to have scenes with Clark. Scenes that kind of hinted to their future. And...those restrictions? The ones that made it a better bet Chlark would happen than Clois? Those seemed to disappear. At that point? The shit hit the fan.

Clana fans hated Clois fans. Clois fans weren’t too keen on Clana fans, not generally thinking the ship was written terribly well. Chlark fans hated Clois fans. After all, Clois fans would get the happy ending they “deserved.” What was more, it seemed at least possible that they would get something on the show. They at least got those hints that they WOULD BE together, while Chlark had no such promises. So Chlark fans started tearing down Lois, which obviously didn’t make the Clois fans happy. Chaos reigned.

By season 5, any tentative truce that had ever existed was GONE. Chlark fans came up with the Chlois theory - the theory that Lois Lane on Smallville wasn’t the “real” Lois Lane. She wasn’t Iconic Lois Lane. She was...a placeholder. Chloe was the REAL Lois Lane. And at some point (they hoped soon), Lois would die and Chloe would take her “rightful place” in the mythos.

They made arguments like...the fact that Lois didn’t start off as a reporter meant she could never be one and would never be worthy of being one. The fact that she didn’t go to college meant she was too dumb to deserve her iconic story. The fact she wasn’t a virgin meant she was a whore. (They called her Hois. And Nois. And the town bicycle.) The fact she was shown drinking alcohol once meant she was an alcoholic. She was a bimbo. A tramp. A bitch. Emotionally abusive! Toxic! Bringing down the show! Propped up to be more important than she should be, and taking attention away from the “Core Four” (the original OTF/A/etc.)! REAL Lois Lane would never put her life on the line for a story! That’s dumb and reckless! REAL Lois Lane would be more cautious! (Srsly? Have they read a comic?) She was just stealing the storyline and focus that should have been Chloe’s!

As an aside...do any of the above statements sound oddly familiar? Like things Westallen fans hear all the time about Iris? At least Lois didn’t have the incest argument.

At the time it started, I still loved Chloe. But the more I had to argue against the idiots who would tear Lois down and prop Chloe up for the same stuff, the more I nitpicked Chloe’s behavior, characterization, etc. to point out they were being dumbasses. And my enjoyment of the character took a hit. (To be fair, I think I would have come to hate her regardless. But it certainly got that ball rolling.)

They called for Lois to be written off the show. Killed off. Some told ED to her face that they hated her character and she should die so _________ could end up with Clark. Hell, shortly after getting the job, ED went online to see what people said about her. And apparently what she read was bad enough that she admitted in interviews that she avoided the internet as a whole for YEARS after.

Of course, the comments weren’t just made about Lois. They were made against Durance, too. Death threats. Saying she got her job via the casting couch. That she was a whore. All those lovely things.

And all of it got WORSE as Lois was around more. Particularly after Chlark didn’t happen post-Vessel kiss. And when Chloe started dating Jimmy. And when Clark and Lana lived together but weren’t shown in those lovey-dovey scenes their fans wanted. And when things like Red K Clark hit on Lois.

Theories abounded about how Lois was going to be killed off. Some truly awful fanfic was written. Some deplorable fanart was made. And on the biggest fansite at the time, it didn’t help that the site runner was initially against Lois (calling her “grandma” in a caption under a promo photo - that was another thing they said about her. That she looked like an old lady). Whether he was genuinely a Chlark fan or whether he knew that the biggest portion of fans on his site from the beginning to Lois’s entrance were Chlark fans and thus he was in their corner, I don’t know. But a disproportionate number of mods were Chlark/Chlois fans in that day, and I distinctly remember coming across a LiveJournal discussion amongst them in which they made a list of prominent and/or vocal Clois fans on the site, with the stated intention to target them and get them banned. (My name was on the list.)

Eventually, the site runner met Durance and she was nice to him. He told me that he met Mack and she was less nice to him. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know and I don’t care, really. The point was, he all of a sudden became much more friendly to Lois and Lois fans. A few Clois fans even became mods. It became slightly better - in that I was warned a few times by said Clois fans “please please please be careful what you say because my fellow mods want to ban you and we aren’t right now, but if you get another warning, they’re going to do it.” (To which I say “okay, cool. If the Clois threads are supposed to be for Clois supporters only, tell the shitty Chlark fan who keeps posting fanart of Lois and Chloe’s servant and other anti-Clois art to stay the fuck out of the thread.”)

It was ugly. TWOP was a fucking cesspool. You have no idea. I went there once and there were 100 pages bashing Lois to every 1 praising Chloe. It was vile. But because there really weren’t that many places to go - KSite, TWOP, and DI (our private Clois message board which has a special place in my heart always) - it was hard to avoid the worst of fandom.

So as far as the comparison of Clois/Westallen treatment? In many, many ways, it’s very similar. With the exception of the “incest” argument, I haven’t heard many arguments against Westallen that I didn’t hear against Clois. It was boring. It was predictable. She didn’t deserve him. He and Chloe belonged together because they were similar. He needed Chloe/Lana; he didn’t need Lois. Blah blah blah.

That said, Iris does also get a lot of racist attacks, which Lois obviously never got. That adds a whole new dimension to the hate - sent about the character and to the actor.

Clois did have the Chlois theorists. Who are still some of the worst people I’ve ever encountered online. As far as I know, SB fans have skirted that level of theorizing, but they’ve never gone all in like they did in Smallville. I mean, there are some WACKY FREAKING THEORIES out there. But I have yet to see the wholehearted commitment to the internal CERTAINTY of a Chlois-like theory in the works. (Once the show ended, I still saw theorists SWEARING that had been the original plan of AlMiles and would have happened if they hadn’t left the show. Like AlMiles would have had any other ending but Clana and a hint of Clois, if they had ANY say in the matter. And if they didn’t, it would have been because their bosses wanted Clois. As they ended up pushing for, actually.)

I could probably come up with more if you want. But this has gotten long and I might have scared you off already! Does this help answer your question, though?

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showmethemon3y · 4 years ago

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What Black History Month means to me - guest post by Pauline Mayers

So it’s October, and as usual I’m having a lot of thoughts about Black History Month. In advance of my conversation with the wonderful Pauline Mayers tonight for Real Talk, we got talking on the subject. When she told me about this piece she had written, I wanted to read it. And then when I read it, I wanted to pos it. So thank you Pauline for the gift of your words and experience. I will post the rest verbatim from her text here.

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What Black History Month Means To Me by Pauline Mayers

Originally written 1st March 2019

The furore over the apparent rebranding of Black History Month (BHM) to Diversity Month by some London boroughs last year (2018) is of no surprise to me.

I remember when the idea and subsequent rolling out of BHM across the UK began in 1987. The following year, I began my dance training at the internationally known dance conservatoire, the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. Being a young Hackney girl and just turning 18 at the end of the 1980’s this was a big deal for me. I decided to specifically audition for the school as I had watched the associated Rambert Dance company and noticed there were no dancers in the company that looked like me. Without really thinking about it, my audition and subsequent training at the school was a challenge to the status quo. Much like BHM in its very beginnings.

BHM was a challenge to the UK perception that black people were muggers, thieves and rioters, not to trusted and certainly not to be tolerated. Not that I noticed any of this at the time. My awareness of BHM was consigned to a footnote accentuated by seeing Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant every so often on the news. My attention was very firmly placed on becoming a dancer.

In hindsight, my training was the real beginning of being othered. At the school, I wasn’t seen as a pioneer from Hackney, the first cockney girl (to my knowledge) to attend the school. I was viewed by some of the staff as simply a ‘black body’ who was attempting the impossible. ‘Black People don’t do ballet or dance’ was a mantra that was very definitely felt by me. It’s a mantra that Cassa Pancho MBE, creative director of British ballet company, Ballet Black has spoken of recently. And one that still exists today despite the presence of the extraordinary Dance Theatre of Harlem who were a company of twenty years standing at the point I was in training. This was a fact that school staff at the time seemed to have ignored. For teachers who in theory were experts in the ballet world, this omission is rather startling. Indeed, thirty years after I had begun my training, Ballet Black working with Freed of London have launched ballet shoes for darker skin tones. Which tells me by the omission happened.

Given I had begun my training at a local youth centre and went on to train at the Weekend Arts College I had up until this point always been around people who looked and sounded like me. Being a British black girl at a world renowned ballet school was not the ‘Fame’ experience I was expecting.

I never imagined for a second, the colour of my skin would have such a impact on my every day experience at the school. Born and raised in Hackney, it never occurred to me that being British and black would become a serious bone of contention. A couple of teachers seemed to take some sort of exception to my presence at the school. It certainly wasn’t ALL of the teachers... sounds familiar...

There were however, two teachers who made a massive difference to my experience at the school. With staff that had no POC representation, and students predominantly white European, with some students as far afield as Japan, Canada and the US, seeing examples of black excellence in dance was challenging. I needed to see people who looked like me succeed in the arena I had chosen to live my life, to keep going, to be inspired, so that I didn’t falter. Thankfully the director of the school had cottoned on to how I was feeling and gave me a gift, one I have treasured to this day. The biography of African American performer, activist and French resistance agent Josephine Baker called Jazz Cleopatra. It was about how she who took Europe by storm at a point when the idea of a famous black woman seemed impossible. I read the book until it fell apart. And then bought it several times more.

In much the same way, BHM was a way of celebrating Britain’s black community and its contributions to the U.K., which is a home from home. The reach of what was once the British Empire has morphed into the Commonwealth countries, extending to the Caribbean, where the British had ruled for centuries, leaving it’s mark through the Privy Council which various parts of the Caribbean still adhere to today. West Indian citizens had been told through their educational, legal, and political systems for 400 years that they were British. A fact seemingly denied upon independence from and entry into the U.K. during the 1960’s. The British decided that being black and from the Caribbean meant you were not of Britain but something else entirely, “no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. And this way of thinking remains to this day as we have seen with last year’s breaking of the Windrush Scandal. Make no mistake, the illegal deporting of Black British citizens had been going on for decades before The Guardian newspaper shed a light on it.

BHM came after the race riots of the beginning of the 1980’s when the black community railed against the overuse by the police of the SUS laws on young black men around the country. In my recollection BHM was a way to build bridges that had been burnt by shining a positive light on the contributions of the UK black community. The recent return of such rudimentary and abusive laws now come in the form of stop and search which has shown, yet again, to disproportionally target the black community… sounds familiar?

My awareness of BHM really came into being as my dance career took off. Cool Britannia was in, as was Suede, the Gallagher Brothers, etc. Soul to Soul, the Young Disciples and Mark Morrison were showing the world that black music didn’t only come from America it was a part of British culture, the MOBO’s were in its infancy and the U.K. perceived itself to be multi-cultural. Everyone was welcome and could be whoever they wanted to be. Britain was in effect was open to all.

My first offers of working on BHM projects came in 2001 at a point of unemployment. Theatres and venues I didn’t know somehow managed to find my details, making enquiries about my availability for October with a view to making collaborations with Black History as a focus. The only downside was there was very little preparation time (enquiries began in August) and not much money. However, I believed it was worth it, considering the opportunity to work with such established organisation could foster new lucrative relationships. I felt at the time the opportunity to work during BHM was a chance for organisations to see the way I worked and witness the success of my projects. They were opportunities that couldn’t be passed up…. or so I thought.

After three years of repeated promises to work in a more sustainable way across the year instead of the one month lead up to BHM and then working across the month for very little money, I decided this particular avenue was like a parasite. BHM was feeding off my very presence. It began to signal to me Whiteness’ attempt to validate its existence by delivering BHM as a means to an end. The idea to working longer term with me would literally disappear into the shadows for the following 10 months without even so much as a thank you for some of the frankly Herculean efforts I was making for such low wages. I know I’m not the only one, this was and is being replicated across the country. At the time, BHM seemed to be nothing more than a way to service the system and give the illusion of a non-existent cohesion. Besides, I was growing tired of the slave narrative that seemed to dominate BHM.

It’s the same slave narrative that keeps being brought up as ‘black history’. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not. It’s history. British history to be exact.

The slave trade is the history of colonial white European domination inflicted on the world. It’s the story of how the British along with the French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese amongst many others fed and gorged themselves until bloated with gout upon the profits made from enforced “free’ labour entwined with the horrors of enslaving millions of africans for centuries, and how the accrued wealth turned turned Britain into a super power, gifting it an empire which ruled over 23% of the world’s population at it’s height. It’s the continuing narrative of how Britain’s educational, legal, political, financial and social systems were aided by the profits of the slave trade, indeed the rise of the industrial revolution could not have happened without the slave trade. None of this is ‘black history’.

The black history I want to understand speaks of kings and queens, education and empire on the African continent, a time before the europeans enslaved Africans on a mass scale. The black history I’ve come to understand speaks of Bussa, Nanny Maroon, the Haitian Revolution, as well as many other uprisings by the enslaved which continued throughout the entire period of the slave trade against the colonisers who refused to see human beings. It speaks of the British Civil Rights movement (not American) with events like the Bristol Bus Boycott, and hear the stories of activists like Olive Morris. This is the black history I want to see. Others agree with me, indeed Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement for Labour’s proposals to change the way Black history is taught in the U.K. shows there is indeed some sort of a will to do things differently. I want to see such history embedded in the British education system. But this I believe will never happen in my lifetime, not least because it disproves the notion of black people being knife-wielding, uneducated, service providers who should be grateful for being here in the UK. And if a black person doesn’t like how they are being treated then they, and I quote “have the means to leave the country’ as Piers Morgan told Dr. Kehinde Andrews. This insipid ‘othering’ is the thing whiteness always does to protect itself. And too many people racialised as white fall into this diatribe with wild abandonment when faced with accusations of racism. I say this with a vague hope that I’ll be proved wrong… although I doubt it.

But, I digress.

As a black woman, I am constantly called to justify my presence in the U.K. to white people who literally don’t know the history of how the black community came to be in the U.K. Every single day, I’m faced with a continual barrage of micro aggressions, pictures and articles from a media hell bent on demonising people who look like me and constantly triggering of racial trauma. In order to navigate my daily existence, as well as having artistic expertise which is frankly outstanding (you can’t say that as a black woman… yeah, I can) I’ve had to become part historian, psychologist and social scientist simply so I can defend myself against the daily assaults of whiteness. Funny how I feel I have no choice but to become a sort of collector of facts whilst all whiteness needs to question my valid criticisms of the U.K.’s continuous attacks on blackness and the on-going racial injustice in general is a ferocity of opinion. I think it’s fair to say that in the thirty years since BHM came into being, the U.K.’s relationship with the black community has at this point fallen to an all time low. BHM has been become a silo, a mouthpiece to keep black people placated. And given the contexts I’ve given, my thinking is being born out by the facts.

The current and blatant attempts to rebrand BHM to Diversity Month seeks to both service whiteness’ wish to erase black people from the British historical canon and maintain the negative perception of the U.K. black community whilst at the same time, promoting through the back door a heightened sense of whiteness’ diversity as proof that we are ‘all in this together’. From the notion of White Jesus right up to the lack of acknowledgement by the U.K. of the West Indies effort in fighting in the armed forces in both World Wars on behalf of Britain, whiteness merely seeks to maintain itself as top of the food chain. White supremacy has been going on for at least three centuries.

My criticism of BHM is not about denigrating the efforts of the many in the black community who year in, year out are called upon to deliver a programme of work, and depending on where you are in the country, for not much money. Working BHM is a thankless task which is not seen as a very necessary and integral way to celebrating a community whose efforts over the centuries have directly contributed not only to the development of the U.K., but to the world. My criticism is about the response whiteness has to BHM. A response which I feel will always typify how the dominate white culture in the U.K will always see the black community. The systems in place demands there is no alternative to the fake narrative.

BHM to me has become a series of wasted opportunities for discussions around how UK society wishes to view itself in the 21st Century. In my experience, it’s a severely under-resourced month of a string of broken promises. And it serves as yet a further reminder that the system of whiteness will do anything it can to protect itself. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement October 2018 about the importance of BHM to U.K. does nothing more than give lip service in a vain attempt to deflect criticism.

My feeling is it’s time to do away with this farce. In the face of Brexit, Britain needs to face up to and confront it’s colonial past with honesty and bravery.

I won’t be holding my breath.

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avelera · 7 years ago

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Did Cerberus dose Frank Castle with super soldier serum?

... And does that explain his physical resilience and superhuman dedication to vengeance?

A thought that wouldn’t leave me alone while I was watching the first season of “The Punisher” on Netflix. It explains a great deal, and would also help tie the otherwise superpower-free events with the larger MCU.

Cut for spoilers.

- First of all, he just heals too damn quickly from seriously traumatic injuries. It would be one thing if everyone was following anime physics and not taking any injuries, but when Curtis gets beaten up his face swells up like crazy and it is a much lesser beating than what Castle gets in the final episodes. Rawlins goes to fucking town on Frank’s face in that episode and he comes out with a bit of bruising, which is insane. It’s totally disproportionate, he should be a pulp by then. One explanation is at least a mild healing factor, but I hesitate to even call it mild given how many f-ing bullets from high powered weapons Frank also shrugs off.

- It just makes sense for Cerberus. They go looking to put together an elite, illegal force, and it would not surprise me at all if one of the flu shots or whatever that Frank got injected with included even a mild dose of serum. Another reason why? Billy is the only other person in the show to survive the kind of beatings Frank takes. Including a bullet to the face. And these aren’t pistol bullets, guys, these semi-automatic rounds make shit explode IRL.

- Given the timeline, it’s not crazy to assume that Cerberus had something to do with HYDRA, and we never got word if the US government was totally cleaned of HYDRA influence or if that’s even possible. Regardless, Project Rebirth which gave us Captain America was also a US government project. They haves access to the serum. They’re obsessed with the serum. Everyone in the MCU is obsessed with remaking that damn serum, from Hulk to HYDRA.

- Given the events of Captain America: Civil War we know other organizations are also putting together highly trained super soldier death squads. Namely, the Soviet Winter Soldier program. Again, it’s not totally crazy given the circles Frank moves around in to think he was also in a similar experimental unit, unbeknownst to him.

- Frank’s personality changes after he joins Cerberus. This is noted by his wife Sarah when she says he’s getting further away from them every time he goes over there. It’s also shown to us with his dead-eyed look in the execution video, and his complete flip-out around the ambush situation. These are easily explainable based on the traumas and situations he went through but it is also consistent with other super-soldiers like Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.

Dr. Erskine said the super soldier serum enhances traits that go beyond the physical. I have long held a theory that, contrary to the stated outcome in the MCU that Steve Rogers is the “only successful super soldier” in fact, every single super soldier attempt has been successful, including Banner/Hulk. They become enhanced versions of who they were inside in every instance. The only difference is that Erskine was absolutely right to choose someone with the personality of Steve given the outcome desired, which is a super soldier for the force of good, but even that that led to someone like Steve who will always disobey an immoral order (obedience from the super soldier has always been the most difficult trait to achieve.) The exaggeration of traits inside Steve was a desire to fight for good, which led him to become a physically perfect specimen. However, it also enhanced that desire to almost Platonic Ideal proportions, making his desire to fight for good arguably obsessive. It polished the potential inside of him to diamond sharpness.

I argue the same happened to Bucky Barnes - he was always precise, protective, loyal, and lethal. The serum made him more so, the only difference was that as a good guy they had to put his brain into a blender to make him have all those traits and still fight for bad guys (again, obedience is the hardest trait to achieve with the serum). But as stated in the linked meta above, a brainwashed good guy on the serum was still a far more useful operative than evil people on the serum. They became out-of-control maniacs, unlike Bucky.

To get back to Frank Castle as a super soldier, we can reasonably assume that pre-Cerberus, and therefore pre-serum Frank was a protective man who fought very well, fought to defeat evil, and likely had a bit of a revenge streak. It is very easy to see that being dosed with the serum took him from a normal (albeit amazingly skilled) guy who held those traits, to a super version of that person. His flip-out over the ambush was triggered by his protectiveness for his squad and “family”. Him becoming the Punisher and going to such insane lengths to avenge the death of his family could also be argued to be enhanced by a serum. His skills, which were great before as a special operative, go way, way beyond what is normal for a human. And notably, the only person who can really go toe to toe with him in a fair fight is Billy Russo, who was also in Cerberus and arguably also dosed, and other superhumans like Matt Murdock.

We saw flashes of the person Frank was before he met Sarah, which is also before he joined Cerberus. The difference is striking, but not just because of the traumas he has since undergone. He was arguably a pretty normal guy before. He played guitar, flirted with girls, served his country etc etc. But even his body language is markedly different, he is a different person. Yes, again, all could be explained by what has happened in his life since. But the insane level of dedication to protectiveness, to revenge, his insane skill level, his insane healing factor which is actually so much better even than other fighters within the show, and his other qualities which border on superhuman both physical and psychological make a compelling case.

It’s been 70 years since Steve Rogers was made into a super soldier. Whether there was connections to HYDRA, or it’s just plain ol’ US government both organizations had access to data from the original and subsequent attempts at making super soldiers. Perhaps Frank didn’t get dosed the same way as Steve, or dosed the same way as the other Winter Soldier candidates. His version may indeed be more subtle, an effect of years of refinement from those attempts. For example, with data from the other Winter Soldier program (and arguably Red Skull himself), it’s possible that HYDRA and other such organizations learned that you’re better off finding skilled but “good” people (ie soldiers but not necessarily maniacal murderers or assassins), put them in a scenario where they think they’re doing the right thing (a more subtle take on the Bucky Barnes brainwashing, and much more akin to the way Steve did HYDRA’s bidding unwittingly after he was thawed out in CA:WS).

It’s not necessarily that I believe this is absolutely 100% what was “really” happening in The Punisher season 1, but it does open up interesting possibilities. It was a show arguably without any super powers whatsoever, besides Frank’s crazy healing factor and resilience to bullets. But by adding that element, it would tie his story into that of Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, the Project Rebirth and the Winter Soldier programs in a way that brings interesting thematic unity to both stories.

#frank castle #the punisher #punisher #steve rogers #bucky barnes #the winter soldier #punisher meta #my meta #project rebirth

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joannalannister · 7 years ago

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Samyria submitted:

Hey :) I don´t know if I´m asking the right person (and also it is kind of an old case) but what are your thoughts about Jon being a Targaryen?

I personally don´t like it because it feels forced, obvious (to be honest: I´m not a fan of the Targaryen family - Daenerys included) and way too much like some kind of fanfiction where the Mary-Sue (aka Dany) finally finds her Gary-Stu (aka Jon). I mean…two families equipped with random super powers (in contrast to ALL the other families) and now there is this perfect link between them? That is a bit too much for my taste… Still I would love to hear your opinion. :D

Hi! I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking.

Are you asking me whether I think Jon Snow is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son? Because yeah, I believe that, I don’t think “R Plus L Equals J” is too obvious. The fact that so many people figure it out while reading doesn’t make it obvious or forced imo, it just makes me believe that GRRM builds a good foundation when he’s constructing his story, so that when Jon does find out about his true parentage in the books, it will feel very organic and a natural part of the story. I don’t think I have any original thoughts on this theory, but if you’d like to read about it in depth, I recommend the #R plus L equals J tag on @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly‘s blog.

Or are you asking me whether I believe that Rhaegar and Lyanna got married in the books, making Jon their trueborn son rather than a bastard?

I don’t believe the theory that Rhaegar and Lyanna got married in the books, because I don’t think Jon Snow’s bastardy is something that’s going to be “solved” so neatly. I don’t think illegitimacy is something to be “solved” at all tbh. The R+L=J reveal is going to be quite tumultuous for Jon, something that will shake him to his core imo, and I think a lot of Jon’s narrative is going to be dedicated to his emotional journey of coming to terms with the idea that he wasn’t Ned Stark’s bastard at all, but Rhaegar’s bastard, and that the woman Jon thought was his aunt is really his mother, and sure, I believe that Lyanna went willingly with Rhaegar, but I don’t think she stayed willingly at the end, because I think this medieval idea of “consent once given is given forever” is bullshit and I think (hope) that GRRM is ripping that idea to shreds, like he does with that idea in Cersei’s narrative.

That tv show doesn’t have time for emotional journeys, hence the R/L marriage and the complete lack of a nuanced depiction of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s relationship.

Like, the way that I see Jon’s narrative isn’t that his bastardy is a problem, it’s that he needs to come to terms with it emotionally. And imo Jon has come to terms with the idea that he’s Ned Stark’s bastard in ADWD, cuz Ned was good and honorable and everyone in the North affords Ned a certain respect that sort of counterbalances the stigma in Westeros that bastards are treacherous and awful. So he’s halfway toward accepting who he is. But how much is it going to shake him when he finds out he’s actually Rhaegar Targaryen’s bastard? we can debate Rhaegar’s character until we’re blue in the face, I’m not gonna do that here. Set Rhaegar aside for a moment. The Targaryens murdered Jon’s grandfather and Jon’s uncle. The Targs really fucked up House Stark.

So when I talk about one of ASOIAF’s themes of the body as a battleground, GRRM is really gonna bring it home in Jon Snow, because he has to deal with such great internal conflict, Stark vs Targaryen, and how can Jon come to terms with what Rhaegar did, and how does that affect Jon’s decisions moving forward.

Not to mention the whole “I don’t think Jon’s ever going to be fully 100% alive ever again cuz he’ll be a fire zombie” thing complicating this whole situation.

So yeah, anyways, I think Jon Snow is staying a bastard throughout the series. (Although Robb may have tried to legitimize him, idk wtf is going on with that, idk if that counts, and frankly I don’t give a damn so *shrug emoji*.)

Is it forced or obvious? I don’t think GRRM’s going to make it feel that way.

Also, I think the point of Dany’s story is that she is the Targ claimant to the Throne, not Jon, but she gives it all up anyway to save the world. It’s a lot bigger and more meaningful sacrifice on her part if Jon remains a bastard.

In terms of a Mary Sue / Gary Sue … I don’t think I believe in those concepts tbh? Mary Sue is a term loaded with a lot of sexism and misogyny, and Gary Stu is derived from it, instead of the other way around as is typical, because people mostly use the “Mary Sue” concept to criticize female characters for being “too competent” / “too beautiful” / “too admirable” etc. We’ve seen numerous examples of Dany and Jon failing, so what exactly is too competent? What is too beautiful? What makes someone too admirable?

I don’t believe in the concept of a Mary Sue. I believe in good stories.

And I think GRRM is more than capable of making Jon and Dany into a damn good story: a compelling, emotionally-satisfying, well-written story with very flawed, very human characters. I think everything from AGOT to ADWD is proof of that. I would literally have to quote the whole book here.

So, I think the opening argument falls to you here. I’m not gonna do it for you. You would need to make the argument that Jon and/or Dany is a Mary Sue in the books with specific textual examples of how you feel they fit the definition of a Mary Sue if you want me to rebut that idea.

Regarding the idea that the Starks and the Targaryens have super powers while the other families don’t … idk what to tell you. ASOIAF is an epic fantasy series; people who do magical stuff is par for the course. If the fantasy genre isn’t your thing, idk what to say.

But what do the Starks have in terms of super powers? Bran has magical powers, Arya can commune with wolves, and Jon is … possibly vacationing in Ghost until a woman from Essos resurrects him. Sansa and Rickon don’t seem to have any magic, or at least nothing that’s manifested itself. (Nor did it seem like Robb did.)

idk, this doesn’t bother me. The Starks are the heroes. I want to see them do fantastic things, as much as I want to see Wonder Woman go up and over the top. It doesn’t bother me that magical powers aren’t distributed equally among Westerosi society because these powers are supposed to be special. They’re not ordinary. The magic isn’t a mundane part of everyone’s life. The people who use it are not ordinary. Someone like Arya is … exceptional. There could be a hundred Lancels, or a thousand Randylls, but there’s only one person like Arya. Only one person like Bran. Only one Jon. Because I think we’re supposed to realize that being the hero is hard. Stepping up and being the true knight in a world as dark and twisted as Westeros is something very out of the ordinary, something very rare. And the cool thing is that they would do this true knighthood thing even without the magical powers; the magical powers are just author signposts to say, “pay attention to this person” and painting it so much larger than life.

And idk if the Targaryens really have super powers? Dany has dragons. She has magical creatures, but does she have powers? A miracle happened to her, where she survived Drogo’s pyre, but she’s not fireproof, nor are any other Targs. idk, I read fantasy because I want the miracles, so again idk what to tell you.

Why does it bother you that the Starks have direwolves and Dany has dragons?

(If it makes you feel any better, I like to imagine that the prehistoric lions in the Westerlands (basically direlions) – I like to imagine that after the Clegane kennelmaster killed the lioness, Tytos found two cubs and they took them home and he gave them to his kids as pets, but cats being cats, the lion cubs just caused a bunch of problems like knocking down expensive shit and gnawing on people and stuff, until Tytos was like, OK we gotta lock em up, and that’s why they were tame and why they didn’t bite Cersei’s hand off many years later.)

For me, it always felt like Tyrion has his own superpower: “My mind is my weapon,” and this is why GRRM wrote Tyrion as he did, making him a dwarf to give him a head disproportionately bigger than his body, like he’s someone from a comic book.

And iif you’re asking me about Jon being in a relationship with Dany, but it being incestuous … eh, it’s fantasy, it’s not real. The incest just adds to the heightened emotions, like some Greek Drama or s/t. If we were reading about the Greek gods on Olympus or s/t with all their incest, would everyone cringe so much?

Truly, I’m a lot more bothered by all the 13 year old girls being forced to get married in ASOIAF, and the way GRRM writes about how a woman’s “childlike smile” and “girlish body” is “so sexy”. <.<

For Jon/Dany … as I’ve said before, I think ASOIAF is about love, and I think it’s about loving even in the Lovecraftian landscape of the Others, about finding and reveling in our humanity even when it’s under siege in a twisted world of cold and ice. Some people think that’s corny or cheesy or cliche. I think it’s beautiful. If you don’t like it, tho, then you don’t like it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Finally, if you were asking me about Jon/Dany on the show, I’m sorry but I don’t like that show, so the question of whether Jon/Dany are forced or obvious on the show is irrelevant to me.

#replies #jdmeta #submission #lannister thoughts

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zealoptics · 5 years ago

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A Zero Waste Adventure

By Court Whelan

“This one is going to shake, rattle, and change the world,” was what was said, and felt, and end of that fateful Green Team meeting. For that day in the winter of 2018, we came together to plan the World’s First Zero Waste Adventure.

Fast forward to July 12, 2019, and the prediction was true. We shook the world, and the world shook back. It perked up, and the ripple effects proved the world was responding to us in the most fantastic of ways.

We, Natural Habitat Adventures, a humble tour operator from Boulder, Colorado, had just successfully led the World’s First Zero Waste Adventure in Yellowstone National Park. 12 travelers, 6 days, 4 cities, 9 restaurants, 4 hotels, 1 national park, and 1 small mason jar of trash.

The Adventure

There are so many directions I could take in telling the story of this adventure. The details on how it came about, the extraordinary media coverage with the likes of Forbes, MSN, and Conde Nast featuring our initiative, to the rigorous lead-up and meticulous planning involved. However, as the Expedition Leader on this adventure, I feel that the story from the trip and lessons learned are some of the most fascinating as well as influential.

To set the stage, it’s important to note that our goal for going Zero Waste on this trip was to divert 99% of all waste from landfill, which means recycling, upcycles, composting, TerraCycling, refusing, and reusing everything we came across. A TON of the work happened before we even started, removing things like single-use soap and shampoo bottles from hotel rooms, and supplying people with their own reusable cutlery, mugs, water bottles, and so much more to avoid single-use items.

Nevertheless, we definitely had our work cut out for us on the trip. You can imagine what 12 travelers for 6 days might produce in terms of garbage. (good time to note that we exempted anything that might end up in a bathroom…hygienic and safety reasons).

Yes, we carried around a green 5-gallon bucket at each meal we ate to scrape plates and compost what we didn’t eat. And yes, we had nicknamed it Kermit the Bucket by day two.

We also had ample backup compost bins in our Sprinter vans, as well as several bins ready to take recyclables, and several other bins full of dishware for those times when restaurants thought about serving on single use plates or bowls.

Oh, and I’ve forgotten to mention, we also did a “Zero Waste Office Week,” affectionately and awesomely known as ZWOW, as a match. Our entire office of 90+ staff spent the same week as the trip going Zero Waste in show of solidarity. Much was learned from that, too.

The Nitty Gritty

One of the most interesting statistics from the trip was the proportion of things we diverted from landfill. Our goal, while composting, recycling, etc., was to also measure our total impact, even if diverted. As a scientist myself, the sayings “any data is good data” and “knowledge is power” is burned into my brain…

So, we brought scales with us and weighed each segment before we took bins to the appropriate recycling/composting facilities en route.

What we found was that although we, as a group, did amazing with minimizing food waste (through guests asking for half-portions of meals, splitting plates, and consistently being a part of the “clean plate club”), it remained still the largest segment between the three main diversion “buckets” of compost, recycling, and TerraCycle.

Zero Waste Adventure Stats (12 travelers)

Compost – 27.8 pounds

Recycling – 20.4 pounds

TerraCycle – 2.7 pounds

Total Diverted – 50.9 pounds

What’s so interesting about this is that when you compare it to our Zero Waste Office Week, food waste seems to be more significant during travel.

_ _

Zero Waste Office Week Stats (93 office staff)

Recycling – 83.5 pounds

Compost – 58.84 pounds

TerraCycle – 2.1 pounds

Total Diverted 142.34 pounds

But in a way, you can see how the food waste thing makes sense. While at home (i.e., going about business as usual), you can easily make your own food, be more diligent about appropriate portions given your appetite, and eat leftovers the next day. For travel, this is very difficult to do, as folks are in restaurants basically for every single meal, and different restaurants can be very different in terms of portion size. Definitely food for thought! Ha, ya, I’m very punny.

The other fascinating thing we learned by weighing stuff on the trip is the total amount of trash we avoided creating in the first place. After all, avoiding the need to recycle or compost is even better than recycling or composting, right!?

So, unfortunately, there is a statistic out there that the average American creates 4.4 pounds of trash a day. Thus, if we had 12 travelers for 6 days, that’s basically 72 traveler days, which normally would have created about 318 pounds of trash. The fact that we only generated 50.9 pounds of stuff (compost, recycling, terracycle), this means that we might have _avoided _somewhere around 267 pounds of potential waste. This is through planning, refusing, reusing, and general waste-awareness. Now, this of course isn’t a rigorous scientific study, but the anecdotal information is interesting. This is a VERY inspiring number!

Okie doke, wrapping up here, as I don’t want to go on too, too long, but I do have some general thoughts and impressions from the trip that I’d like to share. It would make my heart happy if you were to consider these on your own and help spread the messages. You want my heart to be happy, right!?

Food waste is clearly a disproportionate big deal while traveling. More so than I ever realized. These were highly eco-conscious travelers and still generated a decent bit. Fortunately, we were able to compost it, but that’s not always the case. What can we do to lessen this impact in the future of travel?

I initially thought that asking guests to consider food waste and potentially split meals, and belong to the “clean plate club” was going to be really awkward. Like, the most challenging part of the trip. But something fascinating happened right off the bat. When our guests offered and split meals with one another, a unique camaraderie ensued. People bonded with new friends and trip-mates. It was like an ice-breaker. Fascinating!

One unanticipated result was how interested the younger, seasonal workers were in our efforts. I was concerned that the extra efforts we were asking our restaurant servers and hotel staff (to help us recycle things like cans and bottles and compost stuff we couldn’t finish) was going to really annoy them. But it was quite the opposite. They really embraced us and the goals we had for the trip and pitched in to help very willingly! There is a new, younger generation entering the workforce and it might be prime time to inspire them.

The Takeaways

The hard part of organizing and planning for a zero-waste trip is done…we have a roadmap for success, and we’re actively sharing it with the travel industry. And we’re now sharing with you, our amazing conservation-centric Zeal audience. So now it’s your time to spread the word and create that extensive ripple effect.

What we hope to do is to impart many of these lessons to the majority of our other expeditions around the world. We won’t be able to make all of our adventures zero waste, but what if we make 80% of our trips minimal waste? Cool stuff and interesting possibilities!

We have our work cut out for us, but I do think these small steps help in creating a world-wide conservation culture—which is arguably one of the most important things we can do to change the world today.

Best,

Court

#zealopticsfeatured

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