#very formative years for him actually tbqh
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"The newest member of Coyote's "Dirt Devils", some feral outta the Bakkers. Apparently a bit of a mad dog, she's been keeping him on a short leash." "He got a name?" "They call him Diamondback."
#cyberpunk 2077#oc: dagger#cyberpunk photomode#yes before dagger was dagger he was diamondback and before that he was [redacted]#this would have been likkeeeee 2066ish somehwere in there#he was with a group of smugglers n everyone involved used animal aliases#there was also gopher fennec and hawk#and ofc. coyote who was the leader :3#very formative years for him actually tbqh#also in my lore the galena rattler was originally his car ;A; part of the joke on his name heh#he eventually leaves it when hes made raffen and v inherits it/fixes it up#and then v gives it to al and it GOES FULL CIRCLE :ratscream:#sorry for the lore dump i just think hes neat
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you are insane if you think a child reading bigoted works by a bigoted author is better than a child who has a different interest than you would like. go fuck yourself
I'm in the minority of people who actually thought something was off about the Gringotts Goblins when I was eleven, because I'm Like That, and even I think calling the series "bigoted works" is inaccurate. They're the standard level of problematic for a 90s/early 2000s children's series. Singling them out as bigoted obscures what the cultural landscape was like at the time and it's just dishonest!
I read books by the infamously bigoted Roald Dahl as a kid, and honestly I think his bigotry is a lot more evident in some of his works than Rowling's is in Harry Potter (I understand some of her later books for adults are cuckoo bananas). Reading them was still good for me! Certainly better for me than the amount of time I spent playing games on everythinggirl.com. Even better than the time I spent playing actual computer games!
This is not about what interests I would like this is about one parent trying to foster a love of reading and literacy in a child and the other parent giving him screens. If a kid only likes gaming and not books that is bad, I'm sorry! Video games are a morally neutral form of entertainment but it's very important to have a healthy balance, especially for a kid (although a lot of adults spend way too much time gaming; it's basically like the people who used to watch TV all day only slightly more interactive). And tbqh I would be very, very careful about an eleven-year-old boy having access to gamer subculture. He's way more likely to learn bigotry from gamers on YouTube and twitch than he is from Harry Potter.
Would I actively introduce my hypothetical children to Harry Potter? No. But if they wanted to borrow it from the public library I wouldn't stop them. If I knew someone who wanted to read the series with their kids I would advise the against buying new copies to avoid giving Rowling money while she's still alive and doing evil stuff with it, but that's as far as I would go because, like, who cares.
Reading is good. Encouraging children to read is good. Bonding with your kids over your favorite books is good. This should not be controversial. Kids are not better off as iPad kids than reading books you don't like.
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where are you at in worlds beyond number?
After today’s commute, I am at the very beginning of Episode 11 and things are *T E N S E*
Love the show, though. I’m currently bouncing back and forth between this and Murder She Rolled, and they’re both very different actual-plays in terms of setting and style and vibe, but in both instances the players and DMs bring the whole thing alive in a very fun and engaging way where it’s both sitting at the table while these people all have a ton of fun playing DND, and also a very immersive story that you get attached to very quickly.
Sorry I’ve been flipped into Gush About Stuff I’m Listening To Mode, I’m gonna ramble and gush about these podcasts for a bit now.
Alan Seawright in MSR is great at bouncing off of everyone at the table and flipping the switch between being the action hero in a serious way and an action hero in a comedic way, and basically everyone else at the table has picked up on that seemingly from the beginning, and it’s great. If you like…dark comedy and eldritch horror, it’s very fun.
Now.
Worlds Beyond Number is four heavyweight DND champions (both in actual-play settings and in terms of DND advice and design and generally being people present in the culture).
First off. @quiddie is a genius. Because she did something I now desperately want to try in the future, which is create inter-party tension by creating Suvi as a character that is intensely devoted to both her friends/adoptive family, but also to this place that she has now been raised and shaped by for the majority of her formative years that is set in opposition to what sort of ways Ame and Eursulon come from.
Second off, Erika Ishii as Ame is amazing, and a very fun way of playing…what I think is a Druid with some tweaks? It’s such a fun way of approaching what feels like the same class set but from a direction I absolutely would never have thought of and it’s amazing, I wanna try it now in a future game if I get the chance. Also Erika’s great, they’re amazing at interacting with everyone and keeping the lighthearted stuff lighthearted but also being able to drop into drama when needed (as has happened in the last few episodes quick specifically).
Lou Wilson as Eursulon is the sleeper hit of the show. For sure. And I am astounded by how well Lou managed to make it happen naturally. Because early on the episodes focus more on Suvi and Ame finding each other and going to find him with a quest focused on Ame and a lot of tension from Suvi’s background coming into play and being utilized to get things rolling, and then…Port Talon happens. And you realize he’s not been playing this dude that’s seemingly hit rock bottom and is ashamed of being taken advantage of as the new guy in town one too many times despite trying to live up to this *impossible* ideal, and he pulls out all these great character moments that build right to where I’m at where he’s been shamed by this great spirit for what he wanted to be and leaving his old world behind, and having finally clawed back what he could to reach what they set out to do he has to make a *choice* now, and he’s clearly struggling with what that choice is in the face of his friends’ lives being in danger and his old ideals coming back to give him pause about what he’s been doing and just…*gods* he’s possibly going to be my favorite at this rate? He’s playing a very similar character arc to what I wanted Jace to have when I played him in the campaign I played in with @charlezarrd, only…*way* more, and it’s amazing.
Also BLeeM’gan is an insanely good GM, this probably doesn’t need saying given his reputation, but it bears mentioning anyways. He’s crafted an insanely deep world that’s immersive and feels alive in a way that is…not easily describable.
And also him as the Fox is the best. The Fox is my other favorite character. He’s so good.
(Also Will Gallows might be my new favorite criminal mastermind, TBQH)
Anyways yeah Worlds Beyond Number is great! The only reason I’m not fully caught up up yet is because Murder She Rolled is also great!
(TBQH I would love to see Alan Seawright and the e rest do the MSR crew get thrown at the WBN crew, because I think it would be total chaos in the best way)
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Who really created Heaven?
First off, there is a no-fun-allowed answer from ATLUS in the Persona Club book where they directly state that Heaven was born from the repressed thoughts of Nanako, who wanted to see her mother, and how its appearance is how it is because it was molded by the heart of a 6 year old child:
It continues that the area where you fight Namatame / Kuni no Sagiri has 13 steps, which signifies that something bad is coming (13 steps to the gallows for execution).
But honestly, No Fun Allowed answers aside, the idea that Heaven was actually created by Namatame never really made much sense to me tbqh.
For one thing, Nanako goes into the TV before him. This is confirmed by his journal entry, as he wrote in his journal after Putting Her In but before the car crash. Wouldn't this mean the dungeon was formed by the time he jumped into the TV?
Another thing is that while this isn't exactly stated or explained very well, the player knows from simply playing the game that the dungeons are created by the repressed thoughts of people who appear on the Midnight Channel. Remember how the protagonist/Yosuke/Chie didn't create a dungeon when they first entered the TV? If everyone who just fulfills the basic requirement of "enter a TV" made a dungeon, then the 3 of them should have made one too. But it was Mayumi, Saki, Yukiko, etc who made dungeons, and they were all on the Midnight Channel. Namatame was on TV before due to the scandal, but that was back in April. If anything, spawning a dungeon when you enter the TV seems to be a result of the term "living rent free in someones head" taken literally, given that the TV World is Persona 4's collective unconscious. Sorry Namatame, but I think the only person who's head you've been living in rent free is Adachi's. Speaking of him - the exception here is stuff like Adachi, and his dungeon is hand waved in the book as being something he created - rather than from his repressed thoughts - to fuck with the Investigation Team. Adachi was probably getting boosted by Ame no Sagiri anyway. Cheater.
Lastly, this dialogue is new to Golden (the concert wasn't in the PS2 game), but the dungeons are shown time and time again to be some kind of representation of what the person is repressing inside. As Namatame talks to you in December, he comes to terms with him having a feeling that the TV was dangerous all along. It's likely also what drove him to jump into the TV after Nanako to begin with, instead of just letting himself be arrested.
I think this new dialogue for Golden kinda seals it (before invoking the No Fun Allowed excerpt) because if what Namatame was repressing inside was the realization that the TV was dangerous, why would his dungeon - or one he went 50/50 on with Nanako - look like Heaven?
That said, the book also notes that the protag/Yosuke/Chie created the pattern on the floor of the TV studio because they MURDER on the brain when they entered the TV, so it seems possible for someone to influence their surroundings in the TV World; perhaps the note from Atlus about the gallows steps can be interpreted to hint at Namatame creating that imagery when he went inside?
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🌙↕️🛏️👀 for middy cian and a card you place face down on the board!
thank u 🥰 | sinday headcanons
🌙 do they need an emotional connection or are one-night-stands an option?
middy — in canon she's never had a long-term relationship and most of her experience comes from one-night stands, but she also forms an emotional connection within 2 seconds of striking up a conversation, so both are true at once! (there's a bittersweetness to it. she treasures every fleeting evening of connection, and starts to think romantic love must just be a fleeting bittersweet thing in general)
cian — 99% of the time he needs an emotional connection but there was one occasion when he was desperately lonely and someone he'd been talking to in a tavern made a pass at him and one thing led to another. it was nice, but he felt a little conflicted afterwards.
ozy — one night stands are definitely an option. it takes him a long time to fall in love but sex is free and fun!
↕️ are they a sub, dom, or switch? top, bottom, or switch?
middy — switch? she's definitely not a blanket sub, and i think if the occasion calls for it she could be a very sweet and teasing dom. she bottoms more often but not always. (she really likes being taken care of and put through her paces, but she'll talk the entire time, unless her partner manages to string her out so much she's beyond words. a nice bedroom challenge)
cian — sub. he doesn't have a tonne of sexual experience but i think the one time he topped was when he slept with a woman. he wasn't sure how he felt about that, and still isn't sure which part he wasn't sure about (cian's sexuality is a little wiggly to me but i'm leaning towards gay. don't quote me on it though)
ozy — this man spent the last 50 years almost exclusively topping (it's what people wanted from him, and what he was inclined towards) but suffice it to say post-campaign kallux has him on his knees in all senses of the phrase. i think they still switch it up pretty regularly but in general ozy wants kallux to tell him what to do and kallux loves getting to ruin ozy. (ozy's two modes are service top and chatty bottom tbqh. kallux is definitely more dominant in the relationship across the board)
🛏️ what’s their favorite position?
middy — she really likes cowgirl and also just plain old missionary (and all variations of it) because she can tease and laugh and see her partner's face at the same time. spooning is also excellent for a lazy morning fuck.
cian — he's super vanilla. i think he'd like sitting in his partner's lap because he can hide his face in their shoulder and be held at the same time :')
ozy — trying to find the names for all these sex positions is interesting to say the least. apparently missionary with one leg over the shoulder is called "pirate's bounty", so there you go. he also finds anything against a wall or miscellaneous piece of furniture very hot, the arch is good, and he LOVES giving head. frankly i think ozy enjoys pretty much anything as long as it's with the right person.
👀 how do they feel about voyeurism? exhibitionism?
middy — don't think she's particularly into either of them, though exceptions can be made! of the two she'd prefer to watch, but she'd show off for the right person. actually she might really enjoy showing off for the right person. hm. (either way she'd be the type to carry on a completely unrelated conversation throughout. it's part of the game)
cian — NO!!! NO!!!!!!! he doesn't want to be looked at like that and doesn't really want to look at anyone else like that, thank you! (he'd lean more voyeur if he was in a committed relationship, but only in the teeniest tiniest doses, and only if the other person was talking to him the whole time to make it less weird. it still might kill him though)
ozy — [cracks knuckles] okay so yes and yes. i hadn't even thought about this for him until i saw the prompt and clarity struck me like a lightning bolt. he's definitely partaken and enjoyed both in the past (emvalin orgies, enough said), but i truly think kallux brings out something insane in him. he'd very much like performing for kallux. he'd also like being told he's not allowed to do anything while kallux takes care of himself, and when i say "he'd also like" i mean it would make him so horny he can't function.
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Now that i think of it. How would it be the Willumity trio with a jealousy situation before and after they confess to each other? Like, a very handsome man comes to Luz and talk to her while Amity and Willow just want to destroy him or something like that.
So I actually addressed this in one of my first Willumity posts but I only did it with Amity so I’ll go into more detail about each of them because buh da bup bup bah, I’m Lovin This
Luz:
Before they all start dating, Luz just sort of deflates whenever she sees someone else flirting with her girls. Especially when they’re flirting with each other. Because she wants to be happy for them, they’re receiving positive attention!!! Romantic attention!!!! And Luz is Too Chicken to do it herself so she just bites the inside of her cheek whenever she sees it happening and goes quiet (always a strange occurrence, everyone knows something is wrong if Luz is quiet).
Also mentioned in one of my very first willumity posts: Luz is extremely insecure about her feelings towards Willow and Amity, especially when she realizes she’s having these feelings at the same time. Their friendship was broken for so long but once they started mending it? Luz could see their chemistry coming back to life. She liked to tease Willow about it sometimes too, but she didn’t do that often. Normally she would use that to deflect Willow’s worried looks aimed at Luz.
After they all start dating? She gets a little passive aggressive, ngl. That is, until she gets Directly Aggressive. If she sees someone flirting with one of her girls, she’ll sorta subtly go to their side and wrap her arm over their shoulders and insert herself into the conversation (usually only if she can see that her girls are uncomfortable. She knows Amity and Willow are more than capable of handling themselves). If the person trying to flirt just keeps going though, Luz will go into Sniper Mode. They’re not getting the hint? She will zero in on them and deliver a devastating line to properly deter them. And if that doesn’t work, she’ll go full-throttle Feral Mode and just start yelling. If she makes a big enough scene, she knows the other person will either flee or a big enough crowd will draw to see that someone is supposedly harassing them.
Again, Willow and Amity are totally capable of handling themselves so it rarely ever comes to that. There’s been maybe one instance where Luz has gone Feral™️ on someone who just couldn’t take a hint and someone had to physically subdue her before she ripped them to shreds. At that point it isn’t even about jealousy, it’s just about basic respect and decency.
Her jealousy doesn’t creep up as jealousy, at least not usually. It mostly manifests as a deep fear of Willow and Amity somehow coming to the conclusion that they like each other more than they like Luz and will end up leaving her behind. She’s scared of losing them, so she does get clingy sometimes, but not usually in situations where she’s scared someone else is going to take them away from her.
Willow:
Similarly to Luz, she suffers in silence whenever someone flirts with Luz or Amity before they all start dating. A lot of people flirt with Luz because, I mean, why wouldn’t they? She’s smart, she’s a human learning magic, she’s faced the Emperor and lived, and that’s not even accounting for how cute and funny she is. How genuine she is. Willow hates seeing other people make Luz blush tbqh; it takes her a hot minute to figure out why it makes her so angry but when she realizes it’s because she has a crush on Luz she just sort of dies inside. Whenever she feels that rage start to build up, she has to excuse herself to go outside and rage in a secluded section of the surrounding forest; she can’t constantly cause property damage to the school by disrupting its foundation with her vines.
She especially resents the Blight twins for making Luz blush every now and then. She knows they’re just doing it in jest but that doesn’t stop that oddly jealous curl from forming in her chest. It’s different though with Amity??? She’s not sure why (at first) but Amity making Luz blush just makes Willow’s chest fluttery because she does like watching Luz blush. And for some reason, she doesn’t mind it when Amity is the cause of said blush.
After they start dating, Willow isn’t one to actually get jealous all that often. She may get concerned if someone started flirting with Luz or Amity, mostly just if she’s never seen this other person before. But she has a weird sense of peace about her girls being flirted with once they are all dating; she knows they’re all polyamorous and any love they might feel for someone outside their little group doesn’t have any effect on the love they have for each other. So unless this anonymous person is actively making her girls uncomfortable, she likely won’t step in.
Amity:
She can get almost unreasonably jealous. She’s extremely protective of these relationships she’s somehow managed to curate with two of the most important people in her life. If she sees anyone outside of their immediate friend group even look at one of her girls in a potentially suggestive way, she is immediately by their side and glaring at the person that dared to think of flirting with her girlfriend.
Of the three of them, she’s the one with the most anxiety about them being “exclusive” despite being a polyamorous triad. She’s so worried about losing her girls to literally anyone else. It takes a while for the notion to really settle in that her girlfriends won’t be swept away from her by some stud with an animal sidekick. I think maybe Luz or Willow even gets a crush on someone outside of their little triad and it sends Amity into a panic spiral she thought she’d already dealt with. She really doesn’t want to lose them.
That original post I made about Amity’s jealousy had her be the type of jealous where if she saw one of her girls being hit on and was clearly uncomfortable, she’d stomp her way over and dip her girlfriend into a searing kiss that leaves them breathless and just stares down the person that dared to make her girlfriend uncomfortable. Which I’m defo still here for. Those girls are hers, and she’s not about to let just anyone get close to them.
I think maybe for the first....year? Two years?? They’re dating? They have to sit down frequently with one another assuade fears and clarify boundaries. Being in a polyam relationship is hard work and everyone needs to be clear with their feelings and concerns. They do figure out their rhythm though and once they are secure in their relationship and feelings towards one another, if anyone ever catches even just a fleeting sensation of feelings for someone outside their little group, the other two will start teasing them relentlessly.
Also thank you for giving me that good Willumity Prompt, it feeds my soul
If anyone else has headcanon questions they’d like to send me, please direct them to my owl house sideblog @edasnest !!!! Oh and go bug @sterling-jay in the meantime because their headcanons are the poison that kills me and the salves to my emotional wounds and it’s killing me
#prinxly inquiries#jonyturbo1#the owl house#luz noceda#willow park#amity blight#willumity#toh headcanons#last headcanon ask on this blog!!!
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RELATIONSHIP WISHLIST / ACCEPTING.
🌻 he needs older sibling friends okay? She is volunteering to be big sister ;w; / @windbornee
FRIENDS LIKE SIBLINGS.
honestly you’re right. and it isn’t like he hasn’t subconsciously started feeling a certain warmth, of all places, within mustang’s squad that grows over time and all the people he meets that are genuinely good people within a corrupt military foundation. edward may be the prodigy of the series, but he is still a fifteen year old most of it, and no matter how capable he is of outwitting adults / changing the game? no matter how much you can put on his shoulders that he’ll put himself? or hide behind sunny smiles and exaggerated arrogance? is still a very, very broken and resilient child soldier.
who chose that to ultimately prioritize and restore alphonse, who as we know, keeps commenting subtly to remind ed that he needs to restore his body too. it’s very telling how ed never really talks much about his body being restored, because well, he’s a selfless kid in a lot of ways, and like any human, selfish in his own ways too, but penultimately pretty unselfish. that’s his detriment along with his hubris, the only thing that can outmatch that terrifying intelligence of his / prodigal skill.
i think he’d really get along with aurora but also i think they’d tease the living hell out of each other; and they could just complain about central tbqh. the warmth of the mustang squad is...unnerving to ed. and that only grows over time until ed really accepts it. so it’d be this teasing sibling duo, although edward is so used to being that iconic ‘big brother you’d want to have minus the transmutation’ in animanga / fiction that you forget that.... he has no older sibling figures. and with his sense of responsibility and blame he puts entirely on his shoulders, like everything else to spare al as much pain as possible? he may not know what to do with aurora being so nurturing and kind to him. it’s almost terrifying in its own way, which is why he keeps everyone close yet at arm’s length.
but over time i can see these two forming a really wholesome, powerful familial bond and ed will have her back any time, anywhere. if she needs a confidence boost in his awkward, sincere, golden-hearted way, he’ll be there. he doesn’t want her to be ‘intimidated’ by him like i read in her bio. and frankly i’d be surprised if she still is when meeting him unless she sees him in action aka alchemy or studying where he completely tunes out everything and is able to clear out entire libraries. he’ll be an encourager and frankly as two big sibling types i can actually even see them just..... for their age gap, being it for each other because ed is a big sibling to the core. but you’re right, he completely needs people like her and she can ask / tag him in anything and you know i’ll be on it.
i can’t stress how much the military family he made without even trying or thinking of it, more like they took him and alphonse in without accepting resistance, is so important to edward. it isn’t just me thinking or wanting roy or ed to be familial. it isn’t me thinking riza can be a mom like figure without being trisha. it isn’t me erasing the moments of hohenheim or ed still giving a damn about him while not really truly knowing him.
but honestly? they do become his family, along with his family at home in resembool, though he like alphonse says, ‘will never admit it’ about winry and granny pinako. i genuinely do think mustang and his squad are like....this weird flame dad and his group of misfits / absolute talents catered to his dream and they all share that with him, so it isn’t like he’s using them.
so yeah, aurora i think can easily find a spot in the military family that really...hoo, there are so many members in it that aren’t covert with king bradley that just -- edward can find kinship in and hell, even familial love which is such a huge theme - platonic love, to me in fma. also damn this got really long hi.
that isn’t to say it will be easy. edward is cagey and his walls are towering, and his insane levels of trauma have made him very wary of any kind of love or affection, like a lion with its hackles up and teeth bared, or a bird of prey with its claws prepared --- ed shoulders everything alone, and if he lets someone in that’s a whole other analysis.
LONG STORY SHORT SIGN ME UP.
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To complete the set: nielan and or xiyao for the bingo?
Nielan
CAN YOU TELL I LOVE NIELAN?? Because I do, I really do. This one is so much fun in canon because! NMJ WILL die! And LXC can delay it but he can't stop it! And before NMJ dies he will become the worst possible version of himself! That's a built-in tragedy if I ever saw one, and we've established I'm not in this fandom for happy endings.
This ship is also interesting in that we actually know so, so little of them, and what we do know is skewed - we mostly see the volatile version of NMJ, and having known each other for years before that, I'm sure that's not the NMJ that comes to LXC's mind when he thinks of him. Puzzling out what their relationship looked like Before is a hobby of mine lol
For extra angst, I also adore the idea of one of them or both being in the sort of devoted love that can't be erased by even death BUT never saying anything. That's not usually something I go for, but I feel it works for this ship (for me anyway) because they're both extremely driven by duty, and both would have reason to think keeping silent is the right thing to do, but that'd take a whole meta to explain. Anyway, I don't need this aspect but it's fun when it's there.
And now xiyao
Uh, I mean... *gestures vaguely at my entire blog* Xiyao was my #1 OTP when I finished the novel and I can scream about them forever. Putting aside the absolutely delightful tragedy of it all, something about the stability that they have in a novel where nothing seems to last for long is super appealing.
Caveat about the sexual aspect is that I think they're both attracted to each other, but I don't know that I can see how they'd do anything about it in canon. Before their social status is similar, I don't think JGY would've been comfortable with doing anything, and LXC definitely wouldn't push. After their status IS similar, I also don't think they'd do anything, because by then JGY is married and that feels like a line they wouldn't wanna cross unless QS specifically said she was okay with it and I don't think I can see any of them starting this conversation.
Tbqh I'll take xiyao in any form, but my god-tier for canon is that they're as in love as wangxian, they both have known it's mutual for almost as long as they've known each other, but they can't ever find the right time to get together, so they are as close as they can get away with but never as much as they wish. Which is part of why I always picture them as being so clingy..... But that's a meta I should probably write out in full because it'd get very long very fast.
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1/2) I was wondering what you thought of the Malec sparring scene in 3b. I wanted to like it, thought I would cause I'm really kinda into that sort of thing, but instead it just, I don't know, upset me. I couldn't help but see it as just another instance of the show undermining Alec to makes another character look good and I hate when they do that. Not just because Alec's character is basically tailor made for me to take one look at and go "MINE" at (which it absolutely, 100% is) but also
2/2) it’s just really shitty writing to constantly diminish one character to prop up another. But I see so many people seemed to love it and am I being oversensitive?
Hey, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, there’s no oversensitive. AND I HAPPEN TO AGREE WITH YOU, so. There is that. 😅
I dislike the Magnus training scene on about three (four?) different levels, tbqh, and I can headcanon all of them away, but it’s not… it does not, imo, work as is, and if you can enjoy the pretty regardless, that’s fine, but if you can’t… that’s fine too.
First: the scene at the end of the previous episode, where Magnus asks for help, is one of the most beautifully done Malec scenes in the show, imo, because Magnus is bad at asking for help, and here he does, and Alec is so gentle with him, and has one hell of a clunker of a terribly written line but he makes it work anyways because that’s what Alec does and the way Magnus pulls him in by the waist when they’re kissing there in the apothecary (in what is arguably the one place in the world that is most Magnus’, but he wants Alec there too) is just. Sublime.
But the training scene doesn’t follow on that note at all, so even if it was flawless I wouldn’t like it just because it’s ignoring how we got there. Especially since I liked how we got there. It was so lovely! And then. Completely different tone.
SECOND: The stated point of Alec training Magnus was, based on what we saw previously, to help him retrain his instincts. That is, if he’s in trouble, that he would react physically, so there’s not a stutter as he reaches for magic that’s not there, because that delay in reaction time is dangerous. THIS MEANS… that sparring isn’t actually much help for that, not initially. They need to be training the reaction, which is like katas, or a tai chi routine, or the damn heavy bag Alec likes so much. You pick the reaction you need to have and you practice it over and over and over again until your body does it without you having to think about it. (And then you practice fighting to make sure you’ve got it.) That’s what Magnus needs. There’s no argument that he knows how to move, that he probably knows how to fight, how to spar, but he needs to change his instinctive reaction.
Third disconnect! Magnus has spent 400 years learning things, sure, but he doesn’t train and practice and physically fight every single damn day like Alec does, so… there shouldn’t be any question who would win in a purely physical confrontation, even without runes. Sure, when Magnus had his magic it’d be a different story, (but tbqh Shadowhunters are trained how to fight magical creatures so it still shouldn’t be easy) but HE DOESN’T HAVE HIS MAGIC, AND HE SAID HE NEEDED HELP, THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT. LET HIM NEED HELP. LET ALEC HELP HIM.
aCTUALLy, this is 3rd & 4th, because let Magnus ask for help, that’s a very good character note and a very mature thing that he needs to be able to do, and doesn’t make him weak as a person or a character or something, come on show…
and also FOURTH: let Alec be good at the only things you’ve said he’s good at! LET HIM BE PHYSICALLY COMPETENT at fighting AND ALSO EMOTIONALLY/MENTALLY COMPETENT AT TRAINING. Like. This is a thing it is strongly implied he’d be good at? He’s good with kids, he practically raised his siblings, he’s in charge of an Institute and has been half-running things since he was a freaking teenager LET HIM BE GOOD AT KEEPING HIS PEOPLE UP TO SPEED?!?!!!
Now. ERM. Where was I?
Right. The actually training. Showing a guy stabbing a mannequin fifty times is probably not as entertaining as some sparring, I guess, but that’s lazy thinking because, honestly, Alec’s hands all over Magnus adjusting his stance and pushing him to do it over and over ‘til they’re both all sweaty is golden, wtf show, the tension build-up would be glorious, because each time they’d get a little closer to breaking form, but they wouldn’t do it.
Gah.
And then! Then you could have a legitimately fun switch to sparring because they already did the work and you wouldn’t have this jarring disconnect between Alec trying to be serious and Magnus (despite being the one who asked for help!) just playing. They could both be playing! It would actually be them obviously pushing each others buttons! Because what we got was more Magnus giving up after one exchange and then dismissing Alec’s help and then Alec eventually going, ah well, wtf, guess I can’t actually train him, let’s kiss. Which, tbf, he clearly always wants to kiss Magnus, but it’s still a really weird dynamic, because that’s not at all where he seemed to be during the sparring, he really wanted to help and Magnus wouldn’t let him and Alec shouldn’t have been okay with that dismissal.
So, honestly, wow, my italics abuse is off the charts today, sorry. Um. I don’t like the scene because it undermines Magnus, makes him look petty and disrespectful (ymmv! obviously!) in a way that I feel is out of character, and it also undermines one of the few chances the show gave Alec to be good at what he does. Like, it says he’s good at what he does, but then it only ever shows him failing and that’s… depressing and distressing on a couple different levels.
And it’s especially distressing, because a lot (not all, but a fair bit) of the training and fight scenes they’ve done for other characters/plots have been very in character, so the fact that this isn’t is, much like the other stuff I talked about in 3b earlier, even MORE annoying because they almost got there. They set it up so well, they’ve done emotional compelling choreography before, it should have been better.
NOW. If you ignore the context and are just watching them dance around the training room, yes it’s pretty, but it doesn’t (for me) fit the set-up the previous episode gave it, and it doesn’t do justice to either of the characters.
#shadowhunters#malec#alec lightwood#magnus bane#my sh rambling#sh critical#sh meta#Anonymous#jilly answers
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So I’ve realized recently that I actually really really like podcasts when my audio processing isn’t acting up (thanks tma!) and was wondering what recs you have for completed podcasts. I’m cool with basically any genre and theme, though I would appreciate a warning for tragedy. Thanks for your time!
Of course! I’ll put this one under a cut just so the length is a bit less ridiculous.
Some of my favorite completed shows are
Wolf 359 – a scifi comedy about four squabbling coworkers on a malfunctioning, isolated space station which then takes a hard right into a spectacular, heartwrenching drama. Not a tragedy, but many tears are shed when listening. Probably one of the best podcasts out there tbqh.
Ars Paradoxica – a modern physicist accidentally invents time travel, landing her back at the start of the Cold War and changing the course of history forever. The creators literally described it as “a tragedy” and they weren’t lying, although the finale is sort of hopefully bittersweet.
The Hidden Almanac – a grouchy professor in a plague doctor mask offers bite-sized pieces of history and hagiography from his fantastical world as well as gardening advice, occasionally interrupted and/or dragged off on unwilling shenanigans by his tequila-loving accidental necromancer best friend coworker. Fantasy writer/artist Ursula Vernon and her husband put this 4-minute show out three times a week for SEVEN YEARS, and it’s funny and cozy and poetic and can be found in full here, as there are too many episodes for most podcatchers to display.
Alice Isn’t Dead – lesbian Americana road-trip horror. A cross-country trucker searches for her missing wife while monsters and conspiracies pursue her across the vast empty and abandoned spaces of America. Actually also exists in novel form.
The Bright Sessions – records from the office of Dr. Bright, a therapist who specializes in people with strange and secret abilities. However, her patients aren’t the only ones with secrets. Personally this show never completely absorbed me like some others did, but the character writing is genuinely amazing. The story obviously also deals a lot with mental illness and some other difficult topics and content.
Our Fair City – the eight-season saga of the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic underground city ruled over by the remnants of an insurance company, featuring mole people, lightning-harvesting sky sailors, giant ants, and a found family of mad scientists among others. Part comedy, part drama, all anticapitalist satire. You kind of have to give it a couple of seasons to find its stride (this was one of the very first shows in the podcast-based audio drama revival) but it is absolutely worth it. Disclaimer that while I am on the final season of the show I have not quite finished it yet.
Jarnsaxa Rising – a unique scifi-fantasy hybrid, in which a vengeful Norse giantess escapes imprisonment with the goal of destroying the gods and bringing about Ragnarok, only to find herself in a post-climate-change dystopian future.
Glasgow Ghost Stories – a Scottish woman begins noticing the many ghosts inhabiting the streets of her city; but the ghosts have begun to notice her too, and not all of them are friendly. Pigeons are involved.
Big Data – an odd little heist comedy about a rogue journalist investigating a spectacular crime in which the “seven keys to the internet” are stolen, leading to a story about hacking in which no actual hacking is involved. There are two fun side notes to it: one, everything that happens in it could technically happen in real life. Two, it involves an absurd amount of cameos from other well-known podcasts (and also Taika Waititi?), which you don’t need to get to follow the story but which make it kind of hilarious on a whole other level when you listen to those shows.
I Am In Eskew – a surreal, intense, disturbingly poetic horror about a man trapped in a shifting, malevolent, impossible city, and a woman on the outside trying to find him. Extremely good but I do recommend thoroughly checking the trigger warnings on this one. (Surprisingly non-tragic finale, although not a typical “happy ending.”)
The Alexandria Archives – half comedy and half horror, in the form of a late-night radio show at Alexandria University, on the edge of North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp. Half of each episode is a standalone cosmic horror story set in and around the town of Alexandria. The other half features the antics of the university’s students, including the host MW and her friends who are definitely Canadian exchange students, and not a vampire hiding from his ex and a bunch of stranded space pirates. (A little goofy? Yes, but I love it a ton for all its faults anyway. Also, some of the short stories are genuinely terrifying.)
and also, some completed miniseries!!
The Tower – a gorgeous experimental audio drama in which a young woman decides to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one ever returns.
Time:Bombs – a comedy by the folks who made Wolf 359 about a bomb disposal squad on New Year’s Eve, trying to survive their leader’s obsession with breaking a record.
They Say a Lot of Things – upon discovering that she can interact with a dropped tape recorder, the ghost of a young girl tells her story, interwoven with the stories of those who have passed through the abandoned house that she cannot leave over the years that she’s haunted it.
Podcaster A. R. Olivieri specializes in microfiction miniseries, ranging from scifi to experimental to fantasy. (Side note, a lot of his work crosses over with the still-running scifi podcast Girl In Space, but you don’t need to have listened to GIS to understand what’s going on in his shows.)
Nym’s Nebulous Notions – a self-declared investigative journalist decides to check out a mysterious SOS signal and finds herself on a mysteriously abandoned ship – or so she thinks. Arguably a tragedy, although not necessarily in the way you might think.
Palimpsest – technically not finished, but each season of this anthology makes up a complete 10-part story, and seasons 1 and 2 are complete. Season 1 is a ghost story about a woman who is suspicious about strange happenings in her new home and her odd new neighbors. Season 2 is a turn-of-the-century dark urban fantasy about a girl who escapes her career criminal mother’s house, taking a job as the companion to what her new employer claims is an imprisoned faerie princess. (Season 3 is ongoing and is about a codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on London’s streets during the Blitz.) It’s a heartbreaking sort of show, albeit in a very beautiful and moving way.
The Details is a short piece about an office worker who goes in to negotiate for a promotion and finds himself negotiating with the devil himself instead. The number of genuinely surprising and excellent twists it packs into just 45 minutes is really fun.
The London Necropolis Railway – a really underappreciated little fantasy-mystery about a recently-dead detective who refuses to board the train scheduled to take her to the afterlife until one of its hapless employees helps her solve her supernatural murder.
Janus Descending – a scifi horror told in two intertwining perspectives, one in reverse order and one in chronological order, about two scientists who land on a remote planet to investigate the ruins of its lost civilization, only to encounter the thing that killed the former inhabitants. A fantastic story told in a really clever and unique way, but stamp a big old tragedy warning all OVER this one, although because of the structure you technically know how it’s going to end right from the start – what makes this show so good is how you get there. It will make you cry, though.
… and also my show, Midnight Radio, which is about lesbian romance, small towns, old radio shows, the good and bad sides of nostalgia, and ghost stories.
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(DOUGLAS BOOTH, CIS MALE) - Have you seen APOLLO DEMETRIUS BLACKTHORN? APOLLO is in HIS SENIOR year. The HISTORY MAJOR is 23 years old & is a SCORPIO. People say HE is CREATIVE, INDEPENDENT, CALLOUS and CYNICAL. Rumors say they’re a member of CALLOWAY. I heard from the gossip blog that HE IS NOT HIS FATHER’S BIOLOGICAL SON.
content warnings for death, drug use ?? i think thats it
he’s cupid’s brother
from a very wealthy family that rose to prominence around 1921, taking power in a variety of places. kind of like the kennedys. likely cursed. apollo claims he doesn’t believe in said curse, but the truth is more that he doesn’t want to believe in the curse.
moves from highs to lows really quickly – one week he’s extremely extroverted and ready to fight god and the next he’s alone in his dorm ignoring a paper in the name of wondering if he actually has an identity beneath the one that seems to just have been formed to get his family’s attention / approval / warmth
is honestly very defensive – i don’t mean in arguments, but rather when it comes to relationships. he’s the first one to cut and run because he tends to anticipate the fall before it happens. he tells himself he doesn’t care about his siblings because he’s honestly convinced they would sell his soul to satan for one corn chip.
nothing is eternal and he really knows this – he’s constantly waiting for death to come ‘round the corner. or something else, equally dramatic.
bit of a morbid sense of humour that not everyone appreciates.
almost has this idea that the rest of his siblings are gonna have to die if he wants to end up happy and successful which he KNOWS is absolutely wrong and not productive at all but like.... that shitty luck <3
grew up, for the most part, at his parent’s estate in romania but he really liked to travel and would do so often, after he turned sixteen
he thought he’d found a loophole around the curse / bad luck / whatever u wanna call it by simply not dating but this girl he was like FULLY in love w died in a hunting accident when he was fourteen over summer break (they’d met at boarding school) and he was like. hm. fuck. could be unrelated but.... hm.
so now if he has feelings for someone he just panics. he figured out he was bi and doesn’t really have that much internalized homophobia but he DOES have internalized cursephobia. if he thinks he’s into someone regardless of their gender he’ll ghost them or start a fight w them intentionally or start deliberately trying to notice their flaws
found out he wasn’t his father’s son bc he found a letter his mom wrote to his actual father which was never sent
he burned the letter because, at the time, he was terrified of anyone else finding out. he’s pretty sure it was the only evidence.
SUCH a hedonist. he will do whatever he thinks is the most entertaining until a deadline shows up at which point it’s time for apollo to take a ridiculous amount of adderall and finish a ten page paper in three hours. they’re often riddled with spelling mistakes but they have made some good points. he HATES making up his works cited tho its like pulling teeth w him
relatively responsible driver by day but smth about the night makes him REALLY wanna speed. prone to road... exasperation?? its not rage idk
he has like... contained anger issues like he’s never directed them at anyone he just wanders off to have a fit and then returns. hnstly pretty sure he works out to let off that steam
he’s kind of intelligent but he’s also such a fucking idiot. he had no idea how to cook / do laundry / do ANY of that at all until he was alone at university and, after a week of literally just buying new clothes instead of washing the ones he owned, finally googled how to use a washing machine
absolutely not a monogamist and you should not trust him <3 that said i feel like he’s not secretive about that one particular aspect of his personality like he’ll let people know that if they want a relationship he’s not the person to be approaching which tbqh is probably there to mask how deeply he actually would love to be in a fully monogamous and faithful relationship lol he’s a secret romantic just like... doesn’t wanna get hurt. and he CLAIMS he doesn’t believe in the family curse but that’s kind of bullshit. he does. a potential simp pretending he does not have the capacity to simp
can be awful at taking advice. he’ll listen to it and understand it but he’ll disregard it anyway
very bad at being optimistic. he does feel a bit cursed, again, even if he claims he doesn’t believe in said curse. the blackthorn bad luck always feels like its nipping at his heels.
he can be sooooo dramatic. he’s obnoxious <3
but he’s also like..... relatively independent? he doesn’t like asking for help and he feels like leaning on people too heavily is a shortcoming on his part so he just. will not.
really good at group projects like for some reason he feels too guilty about not actually giving them his all and will actually put effort in whereas when it comes to his own individual projects he’ll just say fuck it (unless he’s genuinely interested)
studying history w an economics minor because he figured he should go for something more or less related to capitalism to soften the blow of running to academia
a bit sensitive about the fact that he’s not actually related to his father by blood. it makes him think about all the conflicts he’d ever had with his father post finding out about his real parentage and like... when he thinks about all of that i think he realizes that his family’s love may very well be entirely conditional and he’s afraid of that. which might be why it almost seems, smtms, like he is actively trying to push them away because he thinks if he leaves first its Fine :)
rlly likes creative ventures he just LOVES working w his hands its so soothing to him. will often be in the pottery studio after dark. he can play piano
wanted connections:
close friends (or as close as he can get) – he seems a little detached and there are def moments where he just vanishes without a trace for a week but they seem to be okay with this and he loves them for it. never feels suffocated by them at all. is occasionally afraid his luck will negatively impact them but so far, so good.
they hooked up a few times then he ghosted them and now its AWKWARD
enemies. please !!!! its unrealistic that he wld be able to exist without ppl hating him
and maybe enemies to friends / enemies to lovers tropes can happen like... i love that.
they’ve known each other for a long time and neither of them trust the other but they have spent many nights together and would probably call each other friends if asked.
they’re similarly chaotic / detached / miserable and sometimes they lean heavily on each other because they don’t really have anyone else who gets it.
they committed a crime together once
they’re attracted to each other but he goes out of his way to avoid them bc he’s like . that seems like the WORST idea. it rlly seems like he actively hates them
classmates
and they were roommates (oh my god they were roommates)
someone he literally just argues with all the time. like thats the whole relationship
someone as obsessive as him who is willing to accompany him down history or science or whatever related rabbit holes and procrastinate with him. he wld die for them <3
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☄〔 HUNTER SCHAFER, TWENTY ONE, TRANS FEMALE, DREAM TRAVEL 〕╰ ASHLEY FLYNN just came over half - blood hill . you know , the child of HYPNOS who was claimed two months ago ? i’ve heard chiron say that she is PLAYFUL & EMPATHETIC , but if you ask the aphrodite kids , they’d say she’s LAZY & TACTLESS . i’d say they remind me of sleepy smiles and under-eye bags, messy buns and an unmade bed, running from your problems with bare feet & trying to hard to keep your friends but losing them anyway, especially since she’s FOR THE NEW CABINS . ( ✎ joey , 24 , she/her , bst . )
*insert nice graphic here aka for the love of god someone find me a photoshop link*
hi! its your resident sea witch joey here ready to bombard you with an encyclopedic knowledge of the greek pantheon and uk criminal law?? i guess??? if u dont already know, i’m the one with six (6) cats. i combined my task and intro because im LAZY and bad at intros so i’ll use paige’s stats as a crutch whoops. ash is the lazy laid-back stoner friend everyone needs. she has no trauma because she DOESN’t DESERVE IT so maybe the real trauma will be the friends we make along the way.
𝕓𝕒𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕤 .
name : ashley finn
nicknames : ash, whatever cute names u wanna give her
birth date : 4th february (aquarius squad speak up!)
gender : trans female
pronouns : she/her
ethnicity : white
nationality : irish american
hometown : ?? idk american towns SUE ME but she’s from SOMEWHERE in oregon
demigod abilities : sleep manipulation, dream manipulation, dream travel
cabin number & godly parent : cabin fifteen, hypnos
how did their godly parent meet their mortal parent? : hlhglkhg so i thought it’d be funny if they met when ash’s mum participated in a sleep research study. i think i’m hilarious.
𝕞𝕦𝕤𝕖 𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 .
faceclaim : hunter schafer
height : 5′11″
hair colour : blonde
eye colour : blue/green.
dominant hand : leftie!
distinguishing features : her hair’s actually super curly she just straightens it a lot bc curly bedhead is a bitch to brush through in the mornings.
dress style : ugh this is gonna be hard to explain but like. you know those alt hippy stoner girls?? like that. likes baggy clothes and neutral colours. a lot of quote unquote ugly clothes with clashing prints. band t-shirts and whatnot.
𝕔𝕒𝕞𝕡-𝕣𝕖𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕 .
go - to weapon : HAH implying she willingly participates in capture the flag. she’d go for a xiphos because it’s the most basic dfkjg
ambrosia : garlic bread. yeah she’s that kind of bitch
favourite camp location : zephyros creek!
their opinion of their godly parent : really unbothered tbqh. but she’s a very laid-back person to begin with. a ton of her school friends had absent dads. if she hadn’t come to chb so early then maybe the whole ‘i have powers with no explanation’ would’ve caused some resentment but hey, he’s a god. he’s a busy man. and being raised by a single mum made up most of who ash is, so it’s not like she’d change anything.
age they were claimed : this year baby!
how they were claimed : look dad’s timing was off but as far as he was concerned he claimed ash when percy made the deal. ash kinda always knew it was gonna be him so it was no surprise.
stance on the new cabins : for the new cabins.
their opinion on lyssa pentelute : as far as ash is concerned, lyssa’s whole shtick is just an excuse to shit on the kids who don’t have to suffer the same way she did. so, uh, she’s kind of a bitch? i have this in a bit more detail down below.
quests : i’m gonna tentatively put no for now (unless anyone else on quests decides they’d like to have dragged ash along!)
𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 .
positive traits : playful, empathetic, laid-back, friendly but not a pushover, patient
negative traits : lazy, tactless, aloof, spacey, struggles to express said empathy, lack of focus
mbti : Iinfp-t, the mediator
alignment : neutral good
hogwarts house : hufflepuff
kinsey scale : JUST ASK IF SHES A LESBIAN OKAY?? THE ANSWER IS YES.
archetype : somehow she matched equally with the innocent child and the wise old man *insert so what is the truth meme*
what candle scent are they : vanilla
goals & desires : well this one was tricky bc ash is a simple girl with simple needs and really just doesn’t want anything to change. she wants a life without the pressures of work and commitment, but that’s just not gonna happen, is it? her short-term goals are to practice fighting that urge to stay in bed all day and try to be a bit more productive. it’s not going well.
fears : explained more below but basically she has a fear of destroying all her relationships due to a lack of connect with the world
hobbies : when she’s not napping? probably gaming, going on nature walks, baking treats.
habits : biting nails is the worst one. spacing out. you know that thing where you just?? stop focusing your eyes?? but you’re still tuned in to the conversation? that.
𝕙𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 .
so hear’s the short version kfjglkdfgjd ( for NOW ):
ashley’s mum, niamh, is third-gen irish immigrant. ash didn’t have a luxurious life or anything. they mostly lived off benefits or whatever niamh could pick up from her extremely lucrative dog-walking business. how she met hypnos was a literal joke. they met when she participated in a fucking sleep study and i guess they hit it off. typical story of dad fucks off/single parent yadda yadda. there’s no real ~~trauma~~ to ash. yeah, transphobia sucks and high school really sucked all but her mum’s been super supportive since she first came out and no one at chb has given her shit yet. niamh’s still around and ash goes back home every couple of months to visit her. they have a pretty good relationship. it’s all cool.
i feel cliche saying she was a ‘dreamy’ girl but dreamy or spacey really is the best word for it. mixed with your typical demigod adhd you get a kid who really struggled with school. well, it’s not like she struggled - ashley’s a smart gal - but the teacher’s struggled with her. i guess it was hard for them to understand that ash actually does her best thinking when she’s asleep.
struggles to keep friends - maintains a persona of aloofness and apathy but actually cares way too much. the narcolepsy hinders her ability to form proper connections ( although she’ll argue the sCiEnTiFiCaLlY pRoVeN fAcT that napping with someone for half an hour does more to build trust than anything else ). and no one’s really that fond of ash popping into their dreams. maybe they shouldnt have so much to hide, huh?
her biggest ‘’’ inner struggle ’’’ shall we say is the pressure to be productive. let’s face it, she IS a lazy bitch, and that’s pretty much an inherited nature. getting a job sounds like hell, she sucks at combat training, she really could NOT be bothered with camp politics and god wars and whatever else. why can’t she just sleep and dream walk all day? monster’s are out there man, she’s gonna die some point soon anyway. but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel guilty about it all. it’s kinda hard not to.
so, moving on to the ISSUE AT HAND. so when you walk through dreams and you sleep for 20 hours of the day, it’s not hard to figure out who your dad is, even if he never turns up. like, seriously, who else would it be? so yeah, sure. she was only claimed a couple of months ago. but she wasn’t completely in the dark like some of her other campers, and she respects that, truly. she got the luckier end of the stick and its not hard to understand the resentment among the minor demigods and the unclaimed.
HOWEVER, she’s very much FOR the new cabins. as explained above, lyssa’s a bitch whose taking her mummy issues out on others. ash loves bunking with the hermes kids but she’d like a space of her own and at the end of the day who the fuck is lyssa to make that decision?
𝕖𝕩𝕥𝕣𝕒 .
pinterest! (its a wip there’s not much IM SORRY)
spotify (now this is the one thing i will never let u down on)
wanted connections coming soon!
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Some thoughts on romance in TDP and ATLA: What Does Rayllum Get Right?
Okay, I know this post doesn’t do much service to this claim, but I don’t love the idea of directly comparing ships to one another. Every relationship is different in the context it takes place, and it’s just as unfair to directly compare any two relationships as it would be to compare two different couples in real life: every person, and by extension, every character, is unique in their own way. Not to mention I’m a bit hesitant to write this because TDP just found its footsteps away from ATLA with the new season, and I honestly fear plaguing the lovely positivity of the TDP fan base with old wounds from the ATLA ship wars.
BUT since there are already a lot of popular Kataang/Rayllum comparison posts floating around, I feel the need to share my two cents on the bit as someone who wholeheartedly enjoys the trajectory of Rayllum, but had my... reservations when it came to the canonized romance in ATLA.
Instead of dwelling on those reservations, though, I’m gonna focus on talking about and validating the parts of the ships we do like (meaning both Zutarians and Kataangers).
This essay, in a nutshell:
Two ships form an unlikely bond and find their peace in the midst of warring kingdoms fandoms. #amirite
What Rayllum Learns from Zutara
TBQH I surprised by how many embraced the Kataang/Rayllum parallels because the setup itself reminded me of Zutara— not Kataang. They share a similar origin story: Rayla threatens Callum in an attempt to pursue his little brother, just like how Zuko often pursued Katara to capture Aang. Their introductions are antagonistic, if not explicitly violent, but because the writers take the time to humanize both characters outside of these interactions, the audience understands that these conflicts happen because they’re driven by motivations from opposite sides of the war. Of course, when they are forced to become allies, it’s... not as smooth-sailing as you’d expect.
At its core, both Rayllum and Zutara are very cautious friendships. They don’t trust each other right away. It’s not perfect; they have their outbursts, reluctance to trust, and painful blows to their bond. But against all odds they eventually establish trust in each other. And because that trust isn’t just given, but needs earning, it takes its time dwelling on wounds necessary to transgress those lines and establishes extra depth in the meantime, making it well-earned and conducive to an understanding relationship. When they find their peace and friendship, it feels earned and respected on both sides, and both parties have a deeper understanding of each other than they could've had with a happy-go-lucky friendship.
Also, a side effect of the bitter work (sorry I had to lol) it took to to build that relationship, both Zutara and Rayllum have become especially in-tune with each other’s emotional cues. On the behalf of Zutara, there’s the moment when Katara comforts Zuko as he’s cowering in front of his uncle’s tent. She immediately recognizes that something’s wrong and approaches him about it:
Zuko opened up to Katara yet again about his insecurities and fears just like he did in Ba Sing Se. I love how easy it is for him. Zuko’s normally so guarded yet doesn’t mind being vulnerable with Katara. He’s so worried because he doesn’t see how Uncle Iroh can forgive him. It’s important that Katara’s the one encouraging him because she was also someone he betrayed that day. Someone who had faith in him to make the right choice, someone who changed for the better. She forgave him and she knows Iroh will too. That carries some weight with him.
-- Geektastic08
Because of how many more opportunities Rayllum than Zutara to show off their perceptiveness of each others’ emotions, I could name off a lot of similar moments-- but I’m going to go with when Rayla slices open the mummy on the Cursed Caldera. When she returns and anxiously gets to ushering people forward, Callum notices almost instantly that Rayla’s acting off and expresses his concern. And, of course, Rayla opens up that she did, indeed, see something “horrible”— immediately opening up to him on the fact she was afraid, almost instinctively overcoming her reluctance to show her fears and weaknesses as established from previous episodes when Callum is the one who asks about it.
Also, this:
"I know that face. It’s your dumb idea face.” =)
Another reason: balanced-out co-parenting is a thing (Ezran vs. the rest of the Gaang).
On a more grand-scheme note, their relationship actually also shares a lot of the same “thematic importance” as Zutara as a symbol of overcoming differences and bonding. As cheesy as this line low-key is (IMO), Harrow says:
“I ask you and your brother to reject history as a narrative of strength and instead have faith that it can be a narrative of love.”
Yeah, read by the human boy crossing foreign lands with a she-elf to return the Dragon Prince to his mother as a gesture of bonding elves and humans and ending the war between nations. Having faith that history can be rewritten as a narrative of love and compassion.
To top it off, Rayllum owns it when it comes to living up to the not-overtly-kissy romantic foreshadowing of Zutara.
This is an allusion to the established Moon symbolism from earlier in the episode. As painful as it was, finding out about the king winds up illuminating, and eventually fulfilling, the possibility of deeper relationship and understanding of trust they originally couldn't see (but was still there) when Callum crosses the barrier into the “light face” from the “dark, shadowed side”.
Also, this shipper’s haven scene:
Agh, yes.
What Rayllum learns from Kataang
Okay, so one of the bigger (and very understandable) issues with Zutara is that all of their development (aside from “Crossroads of Destiny”) happens very late in the last season. No matter how solid the moments we do get are, there simply isn’t enough time to fully wash away their damaged terms only a couple episodes prior, much less transgress necessary lines before a healthy relationship can occur. Whether or not their build-up does justice for their relationship arc as friends, by the end of ATLA, Zutara’s negative interactions still outnumber their positive ones by a sheer majority, so pushing that relationship into romance so soon comes with negative implications. (Which is where the Book 4 rumors seep in, but let’s not touch those today)(Anyway, even as a person who generally supports Zutara, I don’t advocate for that relationship to be “endgame”, or even as a part of canonized material because romance that soon after establishing that trust wouldn’t have conducive to a healthy relationship.)
On the other hand, Kataang gets a lot more credit in the time department. Because their friendship is established in such a positive light from the very first episode, Kataang has the benefit of faith from their countless endearing moments capturing a casual, comfortable friendship we can know and love, and then can grow nostalgic about over time. Even when their angrier moments play out, they usually fizzle out in the pool of happier memories they already have, so such instances are easily forgivable from the majority of the audience.
Now, despite initially being at odds with each other, Rayllum is established early enough to have the advantage of 5/6/7 seasons under its belt to build to that healthy relationship. Even in the less-immediate circumstances of their trust, the show still leaves plenty of time to fill with the necessary builds and prove their friendship through positive interactions. This is evidenced by the fact that by the end of Season 2, their negative interactions— even Rayla’s original position as Callum/Ezran’s killer— is water long down the bridge.
(Random tangent: To all who believe Zutara is an unforgivably abusive ship because of Katara’s and Zuko’s previous enemy relationship, let me pitch this to you: Rayla literally corners Callum and holds a blade in his face, about to kill him in the second episode yet Rayllum is very inarguably not abusive. The issue with Zutara isn’t that it’s inherently a sour relationship because they used to be enemies, it’s that there’s a dire lack of time to ease the ratio of interactions of Zuko hurting Katara to him helping her before the end of the show where starting that immediate relationship would have come with poor implications. In the case of Rayllum, Rayla actually gets a very extended chance to make that up in a larger span of time and exceeded those numbers two weeks ago long ago)
Thanks to all that screentime, maybe if our Season-2-Shipper-Scenes can be read as glimpses of a possible building crush early on like Kataang’s, that’ll stir up some of the heartstring garble later that it did with Kataang, too (for some, at least).
Rayllum’s interactions share the lovable silliness of Kataang. When it comes to picturing your ideal, sugarcane relationship, we will often find our soft spots in the couples who spend the most time smiling, laughing or being casually friendly with each other.
Also, here’s an interesting parallel: Katara was Aang’s primary support through his loss, just like Rayla was for Callum. Also, both Katara and Rayla struggled to hide the fact from their “romantic counterparts” at first, in fear of hurting newfound friendships with people they cared about, only to have this backfire later. However, I’d say it’s interesting to note that because Callum is almost 3 years older than Aang and thus arguably in a different phase of maturity (older childhood at 12 vs. teen at almost 15), the way they processed that realization took remarkably different forms between the two characters. Breaking the news to Callum meant surfacing more relationship-based questions about trust, meeting its resolution in a heart-to-heart conversation about honesty and hurting people you care about. On the other hand, because Aang is still, for most purposes, a child, that recognition on Aang’s part, as well as the honesty/lack of censorship on Katara’s part, doesn’t exist as much as an expectation in that relationship. Consequently, Aang’s grief process in “The Southern Air Temple” was wholly Aang-centric, coming to life in a display of rage and pain before he comes to accept his new position as the avatar and the last airbender in the arms of his new “family”. (I actually think the most obvious comparison to Aang here is Ezran, who became angry and ran away when he found out about his father’s death, then returned with a fuller understanding of the newfound individual responsibility he must face despite not being ready for as a growing kiddo. But that’s a discussion for another time; maybe I’ll write something on that later).
Of course, the aforementioned covert foreshadowing of the Zutara ship comes coupled (pun intended) with the overt romantic foreshadowing of the Kataang ship! Because what kid (or kid in the heart) doesn’t let out the giddy squeals over that.
Also, it’s the male and female lead. Everyone’s gotta love those characters! Bet you money all the 2010s children who watch TDP are gonna get hella attached to that stuff and rack up the tears on how well-elaborated those characters were and how perfect they were for each other through thick-lens nostalgia goggles when they grow up. That’s just how dat shit works.
TL;DR If Zutara was too “dark” or “intriguing”, or “bound to make six year olds cry” (as Ehasz himself supposedly said in a class at UC Berkeley; lol), Rayllum re-illustrates that arc with the cushiness of a clear, lovable path and the positive-interaction-to-death-threat ratio, audience faith, (love for small critters,) and longer friendship screentime of Kataang.
Rayllum shares all of the literary nuances of Zutara and the sweet lovability of Kataang. And then adds its own little sparks of healthiness.
It’s a ship built for everyone to fall in love with.
I honestly don’t care whether this winds up being a very strong friendship or a romantic relationship (though I’m inclined to believe from the narrative that it’s the latter), but no matter the direction the show takes, I love their relationship so much and have full faith it’ll be done right.
Let me know if I missed anything else! I know I might be missing the narrative importance and/or parallels others might see in Kataang because I’m a bit biased to Zutara as the poster of this multi-ship analysis (though I tried my best to counteract it for objectivity), so especially if you’re a Kataanger, let me know what you’ve noticed and I’ll be happy to add it in.
positive/non-warring reax only please :)
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Whoa, is that SO CHAEWON? I love her! You might know her as SOWON. She’s the LEAD VOCAL of LIPSTICK and she’s a ‘95 LINER! She’s one of my favorites under BC ENTERTAINMENT. Don’t you think she looks a little like PARK JIHYO?
hi yall, it’s me, ya boi, ruby and i messed up! i might bring alice and minzy back eventually but tbh i think starting fresh is gonna be good for me. i’ll drop some details about sowon below, but all you really need to know is she’s the messiest mom friend alive. you can peep her plots here! looking forward to writing with all of you and really excited about sowon!
sowon’s family was really poor while she was growing up. her dad walked out on them and her mom and older brother worked like 30 hours a day trying to keep food on the table for the six of them.
sowon was very much the woman of the house from a really young age - things like cooking, cleaning, and helping with homework fell to her from six onwards.
in sowon’s second year of middle school, her mom met a man down on his luck and fell in love - mom started going off with him for days at a time, which stretched into weeks over the course of a year.
One day, after three weeks away, they simply took the three younger children - aged four through ten - and left her with a check, a promise of another, and her older brother.
Her brother isn’t a bad person, but if you make someone work their entire lives and then give them no responsibility... they’re gonna go nuts. Sowon coped with it and did her school shit and kept her head down, handling the finances with their allowance and trying not to know anything much about his exploits.
she put a lot of herself into her newly forming friendships, spending as much time at friends’ houses as she did home. she found she didn’t much like being alone.
in her second year of high school, she performed in a showcase at her school and was offered a chance at bc. she took it bc she’s a honey tbqh - she never wanted to sing professionally.
anyway she got her stage name bc there were like 5 chaewons training and so chaewon. it became the new normal, so she doesn’t really think of it as a nickname anymore. she’s also sort of a hopeful thing, so it fits even if the search results for her name are mostly wish members.
she was kinda... pushed around for her body type tbh and it sort of fucked her up but at least she got to debut, right?
she’s actually pretty popular with western fans bc of her looks though, and she has a pretty impressive social media following of people completely separate from the kpop industry bc she’s sweet and hot.
she’s definitely a big mom friend, but like... a pretty messy one. her lack of self esteem gets her into trouble a lot and conflict or a mortifying ordeal, so. yikes.
actually pretty humble all around? she knows she can sing, but she’s not at all cocky about it.
she still puts a lot of herself into all of her relationships - she has a need for everyone to like her.
pls let her love you (or don’t - a lot of her plots feature messowon fucking shit up)
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New thread same TWD thoughts:
So I know I said all that stuff about Daryl and Michonne being my favorite characters on the walking dead, and also all that other stuff about good riddance to dead rapists, including among others Shane, but clearly you should ignore everything I say because I’ve spent the last couple days writing a convoluted Shane-centric backstory for a potential Rick/Daryl fic, and almost nothing about Daryl. Not too much about Rick either! Mostly just Shane, and Shane’s intense and lifelong obsession with Rick, and how that manifested over the years and really shaped him as a person.
Like .......do I want to be spending this much time thinking about Shane? Thinking about how much he loves Rick, and hates himself for loving Rick, and hates Rick both for being the object of his love and for being wonderfully unburdened by the knowledge of Shane’s love, and hates every girl Rick ever crushes on but also wants to fuck all of them before Rick can - you know. A thorny thicket of self-loathing and deeply ingrained homophobia and violent misogyny and angry possessiveness. Do I want to be circling that drain? Noooo..... but also, clearly, yes.
Also I found this article where Norman Reedus explains that Daryl is “prison gay” and it’s so problematic but it’s also all I can think about. I mean that turn of phrase is really unfortunate and I can’t get behind it at all, but when he elaborates and says that it’s like he’s attracted to men but he’d never admit it (& he’d STAB you if you called him out on it?????? Norman! He would not! He would just yell a bunch of mean things and then stalk off to go cry and smoke a cigarette by himself! And then he’d come back and threaten to stab you if you said anything but he wouldn’t actually follow through with it! Obviously!) is pretty much exactly how he comes across, and also a decent chunk of what I find compelling about the character.
What was I saying before about how I was shocked and appalled at how much time I was spending writing about Shane? I have no self-awareness. Obviously I’m obsessed with any character struggling with intense internalized homophobia. I see a character with tender gay feelings reject their tender gay feelings violently, I go “time to Process Some Shit here!!!!! :DDD” and it’s just over for me.
Jon Bernthal (& Andrew Lincoln) reeeeeeally sold me on Shane’s extreme, obsessive, physical love for Rick, mostly expressed by having sex with Lori, and later, when Rick came back and she didn’t want to anymore, by sexually assaulting Lori, and by holding Rick’s face in his big hands and staring into his eyes, their foreheads almost touching, both of their faces red with emotion, Rick’s hands gripping Shane’s shoulders, as “their son” (uh, symbolically) Carl flickers between life and death in the next room over. Shane is so terrible but he loves Rick so much! I feel bad about how obsessed I am with him.
Anyway back to characters that aren’t rapists, I kind of want to write a Daryl who isn’t ......the thing he said. A Daryl who isn’t dealing with internalized homophobia of quite such a violent variety. Let’s try a Daryl who knows the world he grew up in and knows how to keep his mouth shut and how not to get caught by his brother, or anyone who might tell his brother, or anyone who might try to, uh, stab him.... anyway, a Daryl who is smart, and keeps his own counsel, and isn’t looking to change the culture, or live openly, because living openly isn’t smart or safe, but he knows who he is and he’s not ashamed.
Tbh I’m also open to a Daryl who would threaten to stab you. Tbqh I am probably going to spend more time writing about that than a healthier Daryl who doesn’t hate himself for being queer. Listen. I have Things to process. I want Daryl to be all fully-realized but I want to grow in the process, I guess. I want hard won emotional truth. Without too much conversation, because that seems out of character. My entire way of talking and writing is out of character for this. I’ll just have to be wordy and verbose and melodramatic in talking around it and about it because i don’t know another way.
Daryl is such a “Beth asks him what made him decide there were still good people in the world and he just glances over at her. She asks him again and he gives her a more pointed look. She asks him a third time and he turns to her with this searching look on his face, this look of disbelief, like he can’t believe she doesn’t already know, and is she asking out of vanity? no, maybe not - but how can she not understand? is he gonna have to say it? he doesn’t have the words for it. And they just look at each other for some long, intense seconds, until she says Oh. And then I think there’s zombies” type of character.
Like I would not write a scene like that, it’s got too much internal monologue, but how do you convey all that without just explaining it? That literally happened exactly like that in the show and it was ...intense! I felt so uncomfortable! Esp since there was So Much Tension between Beth and Daryl in that story arc. You could read it as platonic. You could. I cling to that pretty desperately. Beth mentioned her dead older brother and I was like “thank heavens! A piece of driftwood to carry us thru the flood! She thinks of him as an older brother!” and clung to that for dear life. But it was also Pure Unadulterated Unspoken Romantic Tension. Like, if I was still an impressionable young girl, I would have watched it and had some Very Interesting Dreams About Daryl And Beth that night. I know who I was.
I remember when I was nine years old and I watched the first X-Men movie and wow, we really did open with that scene of Wolverine cage-fighting for extra cash, and he’s all muscular and sad and being exploited for his body and then Rogue is there and she’s sad and alone and touch-starved but cannot bear to be touched and people literally die if they do touch her and she insinuates herself into Wolverine’s truck and into his life and he begins, grudgingly, to care for her in this deep way where he recognizes their shared pain and her vulnerability that is also in some ways his - uh, I had a lot of Very Interesting Dreams about the two of them, you better believe, and I also started writing a “novel” (I was always writing “novels” as a kid, that were mostly just “cool ideas for stories that could exist and if they did I would love to read them” - same as now) that was basically just “what if Rogue and her superpowers but not in the X-Men universe” and I had the most intense crush on Wolverine for years and years. If I’m being honest I still do. Formative!!!
So anyway, that stuff makes me pretty uncomfortable now but I try to remember that it’s like fan service for teenagers I guess???? Idk, is it? Or is it conditioning them to accept the love of an adult as fine and normal and healthy and desirable? Idk but they never crossed the line into having Beth try to kiss Daryl so I didn’t have to rage-quit the show.
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Tbh, my policy on pirating is pretty simple. I honestly dont give a fuck one way or another w/movies, TV shows and even comic books, bc the former two have managed to account for pirating in the way they pad their expenses and tbqh they dont really hurt for it. And with comic books, okay if you pirate indie or creator owned content you kinda suck, not gonna lie, you have NO idea the kind of effort and upfront costs that go into producing comic books without Marvel or DC backing you up, not until you actually try it. Its obscene. Especially if you’re not able to do all the art AND story AND inking/lettering/coloring yourself, and have to either pay other members of your self-assembled creative team upfront or on the backend.
And this includes comic books published by Image (at least the ones without big name creators attached), because contrary to popular belief, Image has nothing to do with assembling the creative teams of most of their creator owned books, and they certainly don’t pay them any kind of wages or salaries. The way Image is set up is creators basically submit a complete first issue, all the art, inking, lettering, coloring, everything already done, to see if they’re interested in publishing.
(Technically, you only have to submit the first eight pages in order to get a response, and theoretically its possible that Image has in the past greenlit books based on the first eight pages of the book, which then allows the creators some leverage in convincing the entirety of their creative team to put in the upfront work to complete the rest of the first issue still without payment, but at least trusting now that their work will see publication, but like, this doesn’t really happen much from anything I’ve ever seen or heard or experienced).
Anyway, point being, Image takes submissions and then greenlights the books they see as potentially profitable, but again....they in no way ever pay creators themselves. Creators only make money via the actual sales of their books, once published and distributed by Image...and only AFTER Image takes their cut, which is a flat fee deducted from the sales of individual issues. Its actually a good thing in some ways, that they only take a flat fee (their cut is for publishing and distribution costs, Image NEVER owns any part of the intellectual property they publish, unless they’re part of their ‘shared Image universe’ which tbh is just like, publisher Erik Larsen’s little sandbox for him and his friends and who even cares, those books suck, Savage Dragon is lame, Erik, and everyone knows Shadowhawk was a blatant rip-off of Darkhawk, and look, I love Darkhawk with all my New Warriors fanboying heart, but of all the characters in the world to rip-off, who the fuck considers Darkhawk worth being derivative of? So weird. BUT I DIGRESS. ANYWAY.)
So in some senses the fact that they only ever take a flat rate is good, because in the rare cases of runaway books that really take off, the way Invincible and The Walking Dead were back when Robert Kirkman was still a no-name indie creator, like...the creator has the potential to make BANK. Which is exactly what Kirkman did, and why he’s now every-fucking-where, ruining all our other faves like who the fuck thought HIM producing a Chronicles of Amber show was a good idea, ewww. He’s gonna dial up the incest to 100, isn’t he? Sigh. UGH WHOOPS ANOTHER DIGRESSION, LOL YOU SEE WHY MY ADHD MEDS ARE ESSENTIAL, I ASSUME.
Ahem.
BUT in most cases, the fact that Image takes a flat fee off the top is like....shitty, because the last I heard - and tbf, this was years ago so its probably not the same anymore, but that means it could be worse - it was something like $2000 per issue. Which means the vast majority of indie creators you’ve never heard of before or after they published a six issue mini or whatever through Image never saw a cent. I’ve never heard of Image putting anyone in debt, like that’s not how they work at least - if your book doesn’t even make up to $2000, its not like you owe them for the remainder, but again, you just....never make a cent off it. So like....the reason a fuckton of Image books never make it past issue #6, if they even make it that far, is that the creators literally just can’t afford to keep producing out of pocket, financing the actual creative production costs of each issue themselves without making any profit on the backend, if they’re not ending up selling more than $2000 worth of issues once on the shelves, physical or digital).
So don’t fucking pirate Image comic books, plz. Just don’t do it. Unless they’re Erik Larsen’s. Pirate away, who gives a fuck, I hate that guy. LOLOLOL I’m such a petty asshole, ugh. Whatever. I blame my childhood.
ANYWAY. As I was saying, I don’t really give a shit about pirating from Marvel or DC, which maybe is bad of me because its not like those creators necessarily make bank either, unless they’re one of Marvel/DC’s faves and like, have their pick of titles at any given moment. But the way most of them are paid is Marvel and DC pay their creators actual salaries based on rates per page, and then Marvel/DC keep all the actual royalties themselves. The only exceptions to this are when issues sell more than 50,000 copies - that’s 50,000 individual copies of physical or digital issues, not $50,000 worth of sales like with Image. Once a creative team’s book sells more than 50,000 copies of a single issue however, THEN they start getting a cut of the royalties, as like a bonus incentive type thingie. But tbh, its pretty rare in today’s market for a book to move that many issues monthly, and only the top sellers of both companies end up in that rarefied air....and most of those books’ creative teams are the favored writers/artists anyway, the ones who have a degree of job security and never tend to lack for titles to shift to after ending a run on one book. Sooooo, they’re kinda the reverse of the creators who could actually use a cut of their books’ back end profits, but whatever.
So like I said, fuck Marvel and DC, like...corporately or whatever. Of course there’s no doubt that pirating has some definite correlation to how few books are able to move 50,000 issues monthly, but both companies have always been notoriously shitty to creators, and that’s not pirating’s fault, and less pirating honestly isn’t going to change that b/c the ones to benefit from less pirating first and foremost are still going to be the same ones who aren’t really that hurt by it currently....loooooooong before the lower rung creators start to see an uptick in profits as a result. And let’s be real, if Marvel & DC suddenly started seeing a surge in profits due to a marked reduction in piracy, they’d find some excuse to shift payment structures around again in order to still keep a lion’s share of the new profits while cutting the lower rung creators (read: new/just starting out/niche/lacking leverage creators) out of seeing much additional profits. Because the problem with creators making money off Marvel and DC IPs isn’t really pirating, its Marvel and DC not wanting to share the money made off their IPs, even with the people most responsible for those IPs generating revenue.
That’s the part of the pirating convo that most people miss, IMO....a rising tide just DOESN’T lift all boats, if one or two boats in particular are specially designed to make the most of any tiny uptick in a rising tide while all the other boats are made of the leftover shoddy materials and are undermanned or understaffed or whatever and can’t actually DO anything productive with any of the lift generated by the rising tide.
And if that made no sense, eh, idk, don’t blame me. Its not my metaphor.
ANYWAY. So that’s why I don’t really give a shit about pirated movies or TV shows or Marvel or DC books, though I do still think you suck if you pirate indie content including lesser known Image creators. You guys have srsly no idea how much harder indie comic book creators have to work compared to like, any other medium. It makes me wanna cry. Its ridiculous. It would take too long to explain just WHY its so much more of an ordeal/effort to produce indie comic book content than just about any other form of indie content save like, running an entire webshow with one or two people wearing all the hats while funding everything out of pocket and overseeing everything production wise and also being a key creator involved in creating the actual content.
BUT as I was saying in the last post, pirating novels is an ENTIRELY different thing, and I have vastly more opinions there than I do with other mediums. Because the publishing industry was designed to exploit and capitalize off the intellectual properties of INDIVIDUALS, unlike all those other mediums that are inherently collaborative and thus usually involve the combined efforts of several to dozens of people.
So at the end of the day, individual authors will ALWAYS suffer more from pirating, looooooong before publishing companies ever feel a ding in their profits. Because they designed it that way. Specifically SO that they, the big companies, would be protected. Its set up so that individual creatives, the authors, NEED publishing companies more than publishers need any singular author. Obviously the rise of indie publishing has changed this somewhat, but not as much as you might think.....because the thing is, indie authors are really only successful and profitable by the grace of Amazon. By the fact that Amazon can afford to pay authors 70 percent royalties on any sale as opposed to traditionally published authors who are lucky to get a ten to fifteen percent royalty rate on sales, with them not even seeing a cent of those royalties until AFTER their advance has already been paid back, if they ever even sell enough to make that happen at all.
And so like....its a very dangerous, precarious, and not at all trustworthy situation that allows for indie authors to CURRENTLY be profitable in ways or to degrees that a lot of traditionally published authors can’t be.
But that’s only because Amazon is taking a loss on most of the books they publish, due to this payment model. Because Amazon CAN. They can afford it. They make enough from all their other departments and revenue streams to buttress those losses. And Amazon has been using this, and using indie authors, to leverage traditional publishers into giving up more and more of THEIR profits from THEIR books, by giving Amazon even steeper discounts on the books they distribute to them, to be sold to consumers by Amazon.
And again, like I said before, its the individual creators, the bottom rung authors, who take the hits here first and in the biggest ways, because it remains true that the publishers have designed their payment structures so as to use the profits of individual authors to compensate for their own dip in profits.
And Amazon isn’t doing any of this for the little guy’s benefit. They don’t care about giving indie authors a leg up, an alternative to tradition publishers. They only care about CURRENTLY making indie authors need traditional publishers less than trad publishers need them, for a change.....but ONLY so that Amazon can rake in the increase in profits first and foremost.
Because here’s the kicker. The thing I worry too many indie authors and readers don’t account for.
INDIE AUTHORS STILL NEED AMAZON MORE THAN AMAZON NEEDS THEM.
Amazon is VOLUNTARILY taking losses on their book sales, and have been almost from the start. Because they don’t NEED that department in particular to be profitable for them NOW. They’ve been angling for a long time to get as close to an actual monopoly on the book market as is possible under current free market laws. So the thing is....unlike traditional publishers....Amazon doesn’t need ANY indie authors OR sales. Like, AT ALL. They could shut down their entire indie book model tomorrow, and not really be any worse off for it.
And the second Amazon doesn’t need indie authors even as LEVERAGE to pry more profits out of traditional publishers....you better believe that 70 percent royalty rate is going to vanish literally overnight. Because there’s absolutely nothing in Amazon’s business model or legal obligations to indie authors that requires they maintain it, or protects indie authors from having it suddenly dropped to a five percent royalty rate at Amazon’s whim.
So the second the scales tip far enough that Amazon decides they really don’t need or want to milk anything else out of traditional publishers, they’ve gotten as much of a price cut or a monopoly as they’re going to get or want to get without forcing publishers (and by extension their own ready made product that Amazon then distributes) out of business.....Amazon is going to quite happily STOP taking a loss on the sales of all these indie titles, and say well, we don’t need you as much now, so we’re gonna just give you ten percent royalties, take it or leave it. Its not like you have any better options at this point.
So whether traditionally published or indie published, pirating books hurts individual creators in very real, tangible ways that creators in other mediums aren’t affected, or are supplemented or buttressed against.
I say all this not to guilt anyone, but simply to provide information. Because there’s always so much discourse going back and forth around legality of pirating and ethics of pirating and so much stuff that’s not even consequential or relevant if people don’t even understand the MECHANICS of how pirating affects various mediums. So they can then make INFORMED choices on how they feel about pirating certain content versus other content.
As I was saying at the start of all of this....I have my own personal stance on pirating, and I don’t expect it or need it to be anyone else’s personal model. Like I said, I don’t really care about other mediums, and when it comes to novels, I’m against it as much as possible, but with caveats. Lots of people, including authors, describe novels as luxury items, and as such say that nobody’s justified in taking one for their own personal entertainment just because they WANT it. I differ from that POV because I honestly don’t consider books a luxury. I consider them to be absofuckinglutely as essential to the survival and THRIVING of the human condition as food or rest. Far more so than TV or movies, which not everyone has access to, or finds as easily accessible. Bottom line.....I fall in the category of arguing that its not enough just to survive. People have to have reason to survive, to live. Things to look forward to. Things to enjoy. Feeding the human spirit, as cheesy or whatthefuckever as that sounds, is every bit as essential as feeding the body. I would not have survived my childhood without books. I would not have survived my twenties without books. Hell, I would not have survived this YEAR without books.
So, even as an author myself, and yes, I have written stuff that’s been pirated (I made a fairly decent living for a couple years as a self-published indie author of m/m erotica and m/m erotic romance short stories, novellas and novels, and those particular genres/markets get the SHIT pirated out of them. So trust me, I am VERY much putting my money where my mouth is on this subject).
But yes, even as an author myself, I have zero problem with people pirating stuff because they honestly, truly legit can not afford it otherwise. Its not a lost sale. If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. It doesn’t mean you still don’t need, let alone deserve, to have something to take your mind off your poverty, your stresses, your issues. And even if you technically have the money to afford a book, I’m well aware that doesn’t always mean you ACTUALLY have the money to afford it in any meaningful way. If you have five bucks to spend for the day, and a choice between a book and a bagel, or like, an actual sandwich and drink, that’s not a fucking choice that ANYONE should have to make. Use that five dollars to buy yourself a fucking sandwich and just pirate the book, I say. You can pay it forward when you get the chance. You find yourself with more money at a later point, by all means, go back and buy a legit copy of that book, your money’s still good then, and having had that book to enjoy at an earlier, more stressful time in your life might very well have contributed in even the tiniest of ways to you getting to a place where you had better finances and more spending money.
Yes, obviously, I am a big fan and proponent of libraries, and I think you should always go there first, if possible, to get your free literary content. Libraries are great, and they have a LOT more content, and more of a range of content, then a lot of people realize.
I am however aware that libraries are not necessarily practical for everyone. Sometimes you just plain can’t get to one, you have transportation or mobility issues or live in a household where your reading habits or interests are frowned upon or even penalized, because sometimes, parents are awful. Sometimes libraries just don’t have the content you’re looking for. Content is subjective, depends on staff, geography, community. LGBTQ+ kids shouldn’t have to risk being seen looking through the LGBTQ+ section of the library or checking out a book, if they’re not out at home or school or in their community. By all means, I would much rather a kid in that situation pirate the fuck out of their comforting, soul-sustaining LGBTQ+ themed books than risk upsetting a currently safe and secure status quo. Again, just pay it forward when and if you can, at a later date. And so on and so forward.
BUT, again, there’s caveats there, because with books, I consider it a case by case basis, and the case in question is the individual consumer. The above scenarios IMO are based entirely on the genuine, sincere situation of not being able to afford a book in any practical way, and not having a library as a valid option for getting that or any book.
This is an entirely different situation from HAVING the spending money, and being perfectly capable of dropping five bucks on a book versus five bucks on one of those much-talked-about-in-pirating-convos Starbucks’ lattes that you don’t NEED any more than anyone supposedly NEEDS to read a particular book.
If you CAN afford to pay full price for a book without dipping into funds intended for other practical necessities or hurting or even inconveniencing you in any meaningful way, if you CHOOSE to pirate a book you can access or download through legal channels with just as much ease as you can pirate it...(again, I’m aware that due to bullshit territory laws, not all content is legally available in all areas at all times, and this isn’t what I’m talking about).
I’m talking about if you’re NOT in a bad - not just slightly uncomfortable - but BAD, financially tight, thrifty, constantly stressed situation where its honestly a Sophie’s fucking Choice trying to decide if you’re gonna shell out your money for the sequel you’ve been waiting on pins and needles for for a fucking year and its been the only thing getting you through some days....or if you’re gonna like, eat today....
THAT’S when I have no patience for your piracy, specifically. Not when it comes to novels and the bottom lines of individual, hard-working authors, most of whom have to spend their lunch hours or come home after work to soak their blood, sweat and tears into the manuscript that becomes the book you just pirated. I know what I said about indie comic book creators having it so much more fucking tough than anyone else knows or realizes, but that doesn’t mean that midlist and lower than that authors don’t work DAMN fucking hard on their product, even after working forty hour weeks at some minimum wage job that’s every bit as soul-crushing as the worst job you’ve ever held.
And you’re not a fucking rebel or revolutionary if you’re taking money out of THEIR pocket, when you don’t need it yourself, just because you can. You’re not sticking it to the man, or teaching greedy capitalist publishing pigs the error of their ways. They don’t care, and you’re just being a dick.
Entitlement isn’t always a bad thing, I believe, because we ARE all entitled to certain things. A broke, disabled person with transportation issues and disability benefits that aren’t even enough to cover their actual living expenses is IMO every bit as ENTITLED as anyone else to a nice, stress-free, enjoyable read they picked out because it was precisely what they were looking for and not because it was the only thing out of ten available options that looked halfway decent. I will never ever judge or condemn or disparage someone for pirating in a scenario even REMOTELY close to that.
But that doesn’t mean that gratuitous entitlement doesn’t always exist, and isn’t obnoxious as fuuuuuuuuuuck. You’re not entitled to whatever you want, whenever you want, for as little as you feel like paying for it, just because you WANT it. And just because you can GET it, consequence free. If THAT’S the defining motivation or influence behind pirating the debut novel of a single mom working sixty hours a week to support her kids PLUS hanging onto her dreams and pounding out her novel over the course of a year and a half on her lunch hour.....then yeah, you fucking suck, and you know it, you whiny little shit who identifies with this paragraph and goes "who me? YOU DONT KNOW MY LIFE!” Yeah, I do. We all know someone like you. You’re not special.
Just like I know that author profile I just described there was not grabbed out of my ass, but describes someone very real and not at all embellished, and she’s not even the author I know in the most stressful scenario-whilst-writing. She certainly wouldn’t even consider herself in the Top Ten. And her publisher passed on the option for her sophomore novel, because her much-pirated book never made back the $25,000 advance she was paid over the course of three installments, which meant after taxes, she got an extra $10,000 bucks spread out among three eight month intervals, or just under two years.
So yeah. That’s where I fall. Soundly in the same camp I fall in most things: Actions have consequences, and you should always make an effort to be informed on what those consequences are before deciding whether or not you take action.
Let’s be real, no one’s effectively policing whether or not every individual consumer on the web pirates casually, extensively, or religiously, if at all. Its not likely EVER going to be an issue for you. That someone can actually keep you from pirating because you’re genuinely afraid of legal consequences.
But you shouldn’t need the threat of legal consequences, the question of can I get away with this or not, to police your own actions.
And at the risk of giving anyone whiplash, I for sure don’t give a fuck about the legality of taking away from the bottom line of massive, multi-million dollar corporate interests if I can get away with it. I’m just as entitled to keeping my five bucks that I worked DAMN FUCKING HARD FOR, as the people most likely to see that money even though they didn’t log a single actual hour on producing the content they’re charging five bucks for, IMO. I’m perfectly aware there’s a shit ton of people who’d call that rationale self-serving bullshit and hypocritical, but bite my lily-white Irish ass, I don’t give a fuck. I’m comfortable with my own morality.
But part of the reason I’m comfortable with my own morality, is that it tells me that even though there are times when I think I’m entitled to certain things I can’t necessarily afford, there are also times when I know I’m NOT entitled to things I may just not WANT to afford. Any time you’re able to justify ALWAYS having things your way without it ever costing you any kind of concession, I think that’s usually a good sign it might be time to stop and take a second look at yourself. Nobody gets to have everything their own way, to their best liking, all of the time.
But the flip side of that coin IMO, is that nobody should be penalized to NEVER having anything their own way, to their liking, ANY of the time. And if that’s the situation you’re in at some point in your life, and pirating’s the only available option to giving yourself a break from your regular monotony or currently-shitty-reality? Like, who the fuck am I to tell you not to pirate that feel good book or movie that has the chance to let you go to bed later with an actual smile on your face for a change? Who the fuck is anybody to tell you that?
*Shrugs*
There’s my two cents: The Ten Volume and Unnecessarily Long Saga.
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