#why are you worked up if you clearly didn’t even try to understand the narrative lmao

[deimcs]

I have to admit, the media literacy abilities I see some people displaying all around social media when it comes to Baldur’s Gate 3 is so irrevocably in the negatives it’s almost jarring.

[reyesranch]

the whole “you have no media literacy” as an argument is so funny to me because the same people who yap about it are completely missing the point of buck and tommy’s failed first date. instead of understanding and asking why it ended the way it did, you’re putting blame onto tommy as if he left you standing on sidewalk irl and then never spoke to you again. narratively there had to be conflict, because when people say “he’s throwing himself back into the hamster wheel” well, maybe that’s true at first.

he once again is finding himself in some sort of romantic endeavor without much thought, which on one hand kudos to buck for not having a gay meltdown after realizing he’s into guys too, it’s really nice to see that he’s mostly really cool about this new fact about himself—until reality hits.

suddenly buck is not cool about the fact that he’s into guys and on a date with a guy because no one else knows yet. he’s so caught off guard because he wasn’t ready to share it, it’s new and nerve wracking despite being an 🏳️‍🌈 ally 🏳️‍🌈.

there had to be conflict to get buck to the place he needed to be to continue his queer arc. while its hard watching tommy cut their date short, it needed to happen for the story to continue. it gave buck time to think, gave him time to really process his feelings and work out the issues he was having with his queerness aka being open about it. tommy even said he didn’t want to pressure buck and it’s the reason he cut the date short, because buck didn’t seem ready and tommy very obviously didn’t want to drag it out and end up with them both hurt more so than ending it then and there.

even after bombing his date with tommy he still seeks his sister for advice and ends up coming out to her (accidentally but it’s the first step) and then proceeds to gush about tommy even though at that point, their little romance was over.

we witness buck try to come out to eddie once before finally pulling up his big boy pants and telling eddie “it was a date, when you and marisol ran into me and tommy. we were on a date.” and then proceeded to confide in eddie that he cannot stop thinking about tommy and eddie tells buck to call tommy, buck is scared tommy will say no, eddie says if he knows buck’s an idiot he’ll love him and if he doesn’t then screw him.

tommy says yes. he agrees to meet with buck after the chaos of their first date because “of course” he wants to hear what buck has to say. he tell’s buck he doesn’t need to apologize but lets him anyway because buck needs to apologize. for himself if no one else. he realizes his behavior was bad, that it wasn’t fair to tommy. he owns up to it but tommy still assures buck he overall ended the date because he didn’t want buck to feel pressured. buck admits he wasn’t ready but that after some time and thinking, he knows he can not stop thinking about tommy and what they could be. he invites him to be his date at a wedding, his sisters wedding and tommy albeit dare i say, flabbergasted, ultimately agrees because clearly, he also cannot stop thinking about buck or else why would he have given this a second chance?

the conflict of the failed first date is there to show buck’s growth from that hamster wheel mentality to grounding himself into something he knows that he wants.

that my friends, is media literacy.

you can agree to disagree.

[heliza24]

Please allow me to brain dump all of my episode 5/devils minion thoughts/questions/predictions one more time before the episode comes out this weekend here. Only partially organized into something of a list:

- After the initial aborted interview, Armand is jealous that Daniel is able to connect to Louis in a way that he cannot, and he’s furious that Louis tells him about Lestat. He’s also just angry and frustrated. He’s been trying to make things up to Louis for thirty years, and their relationship has been strained for as long. And he takes it out on Daniel. I imagine the “is that was makes you fascinating?” Could easily be in response to Louis saying something like “I know I should have killed him, like we always kill the boys we sleep with, but he was just so fascinating that I didn’t want to.” And then all the jealousy that Armand has carefully stored away when Louis was imagining Lestat or choosing to sleep with another human rather than him just bubbles up to the surface.

- The more I think about it the more questions I have about Louis and Armand’s relationship (and their relationship to the absent Lestat) at this time. What caused Louis to want to do a first interview in the 70s? What happened between the 1973 and 2022 to change how he describes Lestat to Daniel so much? How and why do Louis and Daniel connect, and what does that mean for why they are repeating the interview in 2022? I am sometimes very guilty of having Armandaniel ship goggles on, I love them so so much together, and most of the further points on this list are from that lens. But I would be remiss to forget that Louis is the protagonist of this show, and that he has always been paralleled with Daniel narratively. So their connection is going to be really important, and i am also dying to understand it.

- Armand’s “I am the quiet you have been longing for” speech to Daniel is the equivalent of Santiago rooting around in his victim’s head before luring them into a willing death on stage. It’s seduction, but a seduction towards death. Armand is trying to peel Daniel apart in his anger. But somewhere along the line he gets too used to looking, too fascinated himself, to kill Daniel.

- I’m sure some of the initial anger at Daniel, and some of the initial anger at Louis, for humoring and connecting with him, has to do with Armand’s engrained respect for the great laws. Louis violates the law about not recording the history of the vampires, by talking to Daniel. He has revealed his true nature and let Daniel live, etc. part of me wonders if that’s why there’s that photo of Armand and Louis carrying Daniel when Louis is clearly being burned by doing it during the day. He made a mess, and his punishment is to do the dirty work of cleaning it up, even if Armand could take care of Daniel quickly on his own if he wanted to. I presume that eventually Armand ends up breaking rules himself around Daniel (not killing him, chiefly) which makes the forbidden aspect of their relationship all the more interesting to me.

- The two examples we have so far of Armand peering into Daniel’s memories (selling porn magazines and sleeping with a girl only if she would cover her face) speak to a combination of sexual shame, cruelty, repression, and desperation. There is something prompting Danny to sell those magazines, whether it be poverty or some hidden trauma. And Armand is familiar with that kind of relationship to sexuality. There might also be something about Daniel’s sexual brashness, as complicated as that might actually be, that feels refreshing after decades of Louis’s simmering resentment. There’s also a similarity between these early Daniel facts and Louis pulling the knife on Paul. It demonstrates a vampire-compatible personality (a certain viciousness combined with certain type of shame) while they’re both still human. And I’m sure that is fascinating to Armand.

- I’m also hoping that we’ll learn a little bit about Daniel’s childhood or backstory. I do feel like he has to be already running from something by the time he meets the vampires. He’s self medicating for sure, and I want to know why. Whenever I write about Daniel in fic I always end up coming back to his relationship to women and mothers/daughters, maybe because his daughters that he doesn’t speak to anymore in 2022 seem to loom large in absentia to me in the Dubai version of his character (especially in the ways they echo with Claudia). His disavowal of his queerness and kind of casual acceptance of the fact that he was a shitty husband does the same thing. The casual cruelty and misogyny of the bag over the head story reinforces this to me. I would love to learn more about this side of Danny, not because I think it’s a particularly good part of him, but because it’s a thing I think we’re missing in our understanding of him. It makes him grey in the same way the vampires are grey, in the same way Louis was grey before he was turned, and I want to understand it better.

- I think Louis begs Armand to stop torturing Daniel; whether or not he and Daniel actually hook up (and I kind hope they do!) I think Louis genuinely likes him. But Armand either refuses or continues to chase/torture/fall in love with Daniel behind Louis’s back. I’m not positive this is what the show is going to do, but I think it would work so well to have Daniel basically be an affair during Louis and Armand’s marriage. that information imbalance would make the drama in the penthouse more dynamic, and I think it would make sense that Armand would be looking for some kind of release, something that was just his, while he was trying to manage Louis’s moods and continued attachment to Lestat.

- I have a kind of more structural question as well, which is- how much they are gonna show us in this episode? Just from a character arc perspective, I don’t think they can end season 2 without Daniel knowing exactly why his memories were erased. That’s his dramatic question; not just what happened to me, but why do I not remember (and what does that mean for me now)? So I suspect that if we only see the first part of Devil’s minion in this episode, the torture and the stalking maybe, but we don’t get to the point where Daniel’s memories are erased, then there will be future revelations in the later episodes about happened in the 1970s. I am also wondering if the episode will be akin to a bottle episode, at least in the San Francisco section, set all over the same night in the same location. This is very play-like, so it would not surprise me if the writers room full of playwrights wrote it this way. And we’ve also only seen images and clips from the one location and the one set of costumes. If that’s the case, and we learn why Daniel’s memories were erased in this episode, that means his interaction with the vampires was actually pretty short lived, and any deeper devil’s minion stuff is gonna happen in the Dubai era if it happens at all. Because of that I either hope that the episode is less of a bottle episode than we’ve been led to believe, or that the bottle episode is only the start of a longer interaction between Daniel and Armand.

- To me Armand is like a dragon, who has been taught through repeated trauma that the only way to get what he wants is to roll over and show his vulnerable belly. Thats his dynamic with Louis; he grants him control even though he is the more powerful one because he wants to keep Louis. But Armand comes in like the monster he is to Daniel, and the fact that Daniel ends up liking him anyway, and doesn’t ask him to dim his power or appear more human or more gentle, is what makes their connection special. That’s what makes generally terrifying Danny early on necessary, the idea that he sees the absolute worst of Armand and is still somehow interested. I hope we can get to the point in this season where Daniel can articulate how attracted he is to Armand’s monstrosity. Based on the critic’s reactions I guess we’re not getting that this episode? But I live in hope that we’ll get that sentiment somehow before the season ends.

- Part of me is scared that the critics who believe that nothing romantic is going on between Daniel and Armand are somehow correct. Like, maybe we just aren’t gonna see any of that at all this season. Maybe if they have a romance at all it will just be in the Dubai timeline somewhere down the road. But then I remember the way Assad plays Armand around Daniel, and the way that he has jumped to Daniel’s aid twice (once in season 1 and once in season 2), and the “Alice wanted to say yes when you proposed but you hadn’t given her a reason to trust you” comment, which to me so clearly reads as Armand talking about himself. Surely those things don’t mean nothing.

- I love the idea that if Daniel and Armand were having an affair, Daniel asking to be turned and made into Armand’s companion would involve Armand leaving Louis, or at least breaking his trust further. That would be a huge leap for Armand because of the ways that he’s committed to and indebted to Louis because of what happened in Paris, and it makes sense to me that he wouldn’t be able to make that leap. Especially if Daniel’s addiction issues ends up transferring to vampire blood. The question of “do you really love me or do you just want to drink from me?” Is such a great doubt for a vampire to have, and I can see it really plaguing Armand, enough for him to not want to turn Daniel. I also hope we get him just in general not wanting to make fledglings because it feels like passing on a curse, and wanting to protect Daniel from the hellish parts of vampire existence by keeping him human. (I wonder if we’ll also see some kind of evolution in Louis and Armand’s relationship that will make it easier for Armand to recommit to Louis. Some kind of demonstration by Louis that he would pick Armand over Lestat if he had a choice? Something else? I’m not sure).

- I do think Daniel asking for the memory wipe himself is the most dramatically satisfying way for it to happen. Daniel being desperate for immortality, and despondent at the fact that Armand won’t turn him, and choosing to forget him instead is just so good. Especially if Armand acquiesces because he can see that his and Daniel’s connection is hurting Daniel and affecting Daniel’s mental health. It would fit with the way that Armand puts all of his partners before himself, because Armand would erase Daniel’s memory to save him, at the expense of his own broken heart. And that broken heart would explain the vacillating coldness and bitterness and affection he treats Daniel with in Dubai. And it would be an incredibly difficult realization for Dubai Daniel to have, that the person he initially thought was a monster because he committed this violation of his mind actually did so at Daniel’s own behest. This would fit with something that Eric mentioned in an interview, that Daniel realizes that he has fucked up two marriages because of the things that went down with the vampires that he cannot remember. What if the reason he could never be happily married was that he was never fully over Armand, even if he didn’t realize it? Heartbreaking. Juicy. The stuff of good drama! This is the other reason I keep reassuring myself that something romantic did happen between Daniel and Armand in the past. It changes the Dubai dynamics in ways that are simply too rich to ignore.

- I also do suspect that season 2 is gonna end with modern day Louis and Lestat being reunited. Lestat has to be around to narrate season 3 after all, and we have that tiny clip of the Loustat hug that feels modern. I’m really excited about that! But my heart breaks for Armand in that case, and I just… really hope that Daniel could be Armand’s safe place to land if Louis ends up leaving him at the end of the season.

[fruitbasketball]

i see your stand point of cc. and i’m not trying to defend her in any way, but as a woc myself, i don’t see how this is fair to her at all. im a personal believer that your actions and words reflect you, and other people’s actions and words reflect them. i believe it’s in the way you treat people as a human being that deems you a ‘good’ person. as far as i’ve seen, cc has given praise to legends and poc before her. i do think color has a major factor in the way her fans act, but i don’t believe her fans are a reflection of her at all. she’s spoken out about how there’s no room for racism or bigotry in her fanbase/the wnba. i genuinely believe she wants to play the game of basketball and get her money. i don’t think there should be anything wrong with that. i don’t think any other wnba player has been asked to ‘talk to’ their fan base about the way they act on social media, because i don’t think any other wnba player has had the amount of fans that cc has had. i just don’t really understand why it’s expected of her to say something to a group of people that support her, while also supporting things (out of their own delusion) that she clearly does not support. we saw it in the way tom brady fans reacted to people calling mahomes the greatest of all time. brady wasn’t asked to or expected to quiet his supporters (even with the amount of racist remarks that were unnecessarily brought into the conversation). i don’t mean to come across as trying to start an argument, but i just want to understand why you believe it’s her responsibility to try to control a mass of people that don’t reflect her beliefs (that she has made public) in the slightest?

i appreciate this discourse!!

i think firstly, the nfl is a bad comparison. the nfl has a really shitty history dealing with political statement, or even statements of dissent. you can look to colin kaepernick for this; the expectation of the nfl is to remain a largely apolitical league.

the same is not true of the wnba. a league full of queer, black women cannot afford to be apolitical. conversely, a league full of straight men can largely afford that. the wnba can’t, nor has it ever attempted to.

you’re talking about a league that rallied for black lives matter, who came together to bring bg home from russia, who has and will continue to speak about injustices as frequently as possible. cc either needs to get with the program or get the fuck out.

that’s the other issue with comparing her to tom brady. we’re not going to sit around and say that they had the same impact on both their sports. are new england sports fans just generally and largely racist? absolutely. is it tom brady who brought them into the sport? certainly not. they were there before.

so when caitlin clark is bringing her fans into this black, queer space, she has to be aware of her privilege as a straight, white woman. “she just wants to play basketball and get her money” doesn’t work here. she chose to declare for THIS league. if she wanted to play in an apolitical space, she could’ve gone and played overseas. but she chose the wnba. so she’s just gonna have to suck it up.

and i know we want to say “she spoke out about this this and this”. no the fuck she didn’t?? she answered a question asked of her in a presser that most people didn’t and will not see. a statement made AFTER her teammates girlfriend tweeted out saying: “damn, this mfker needa say smth”. what was she going to say “yes, i condone racism”?? there’s no statement made of her own will, no instagram post, no tweet, no nothing. her “speaking out” was lazy, it was forced, and it was ineffective. it’s just not enough.

i don’t expect her to control her mass of racist fans. i expect her to make any attempt to do so. i expect her to make an effort to distance herself from that narrative.

and it is immensely disappointing that she hasn’t even really tried.

[ravenalla]

I think overall the main problem season 3 is having is the same as TBOBF, which is not giving the audience a well-established storyline and so not giving them a reason to care. This is probably gonna be long so bear with me.

Throughout the first two seasons, we had a clear goal for our main character. Sure Din did other things all the time, the “side quest” as the fandom liked to joke, but it always made sure to remind us what the motivation behind all of this was, keeping Grogu safe, finding him a Jedi. The story still introduced other characters concepts, but it made sure to always keep Din tied to them in some way that made us understand why this would affect him and why we should care. The side adventures never felt random, they all had a clear step by step progression as Din tried to get closer towards his destination. Moff Gideon was also not just a threat against Grogu, his rule under the Empire was responsible for the destruction of Din’s people. The conflict between them was personal, both because of Din’s newfound love for the baby and because of who he is. It all tied together to give us this intriguing but fun and adventurous story.

On the other hand, stuff in Season 3 just feels like it’s happening at random. It began looking like the main drive this season would be Din trying to regain his identity and the restoration of Mandalore as a whole. Instead, the former was solved in a matter of two episodes with little fanfare compared to how serious they made the situation out to be. No we get pirates both we and the characters have never seen before and have no reason to give two shits about. They’re gone for a while. Then suddenly back as a big threat we are suppose to take seriously for some reason. Din and the rest of the covert do not show any indication they are ready to rally the Mandalorians and take back their planet up to this point. Oh nevermind now they want to. Like there’s no motivation for our main character happening between episodes behind the random monster of the week stuff, nothing the covert is working towards.

Things are just happening out of nowhere, nothing feels like a cohesive narrative and Din isn’t getting any new development or character moments to make up for it. Aside from two things that have nothing to do with the actual Mandalorian, Bo and the New Republic.

Bo-Karan’s story is interesting, and I like her developing a relationship with the covert, but this is not her show. You should not be ending every episode with a shot of her like this has always only been about her journey, at least not here. It’s fine to have more than one main character, but you can do that without throwing away everything you spent two seasons developing with another one. I don’t even know why Din and Grogu are here to be honest. Are they really any different from the background Mandos at this point? Din’s speech was cool, but there’s not really been tight moments of friendship this season for us to get super emotional about him coming to Greef’s rescue from these random Disney channel villains on planet gentrification. It’s obvious now that Bo’s going to be the one to lead, so him showcasing traits of leadership probably also won’t even matter. Din is obsolete, and the heart-wrenching relationship between father and son is now being used for cheap Grogu brownie point moments when they actually remember they have to include them.

As for the New Republic, yes, as people have said this does expand the world and relate to stuff that is going to happen later that we don’t yet know about. The problem is, this is a completely detached event from the main character. Nothing (aside from the random reveal of Moff Gideon’s escape) relates to our main characters situations at all, and it is so clearly ideas from rangers of the new republic shoved in so they can squeeze already established plots they didn’t want to abandon. Because we don’t know why this matters at all towards Din, there’s really no reason to care at this point. Again, you can say there’s plot happening, but it’s all disconnected in a way that doesn’t keep us anticipating any type of ending. And look I’m not saying the show needs to spoon feed its audience or explain everything right away. My problem is everything is that Din is given nothing to do anymore. All of his problems that were built up for two seasons have been solved instantaneously, and we don’t even get many conversations between Din and Grogu as we use to, the driving force of the show. Neither do we get simple explanations for things like where the hell did all the new Mando’s come from or why they decided to settle there. It is both so busy and so empty.

The Mandalorian was never just about finding Grogu a home as quickly as possible, it took the time to show us Din’s personality, his relationship with himself, and the new relationship he formed with his son. So why is the show treating it like none of that stuff was important enough to take up screen time? That Din and Grogu had to take a backseat because showing two former Imperial officers having a meaningless conversation about a planet’s history was more important, that dedicating every emotional beat to Bo-Katan’s changing feelings left no room for exploration of the main character’s own when he is suppose to have been his most changed and isolated self yet, that setting up major plot lines and characters which will bleed into other shows was worth sabotaging what made the show so popular in the first place? The Mandalorian can have a bigger plot, it can have more characters, but when those elements feel like they can exist without that main character being there? That is just bad writing.

[andrewwtca]

the Aubrey problem (or how Omori's writing failed her)

Also available to read on Archive of our Own.

I really like video games. If the fanfiction, theory posts, and occasional essays weren’t enough, here’s me saying it—I really like video games! They’re a conversation between writing, art, music, and human interaction, between the player, the game, and the characters in them. Of course, not all games have all of that, some being only text-based, some being lifeless wastelands, but whatever they end up choosing to work with, they often do something amazing.

Sunny is one of my favorite protagonists in any realm of media—video game, movie, book—and he genuinely changed the way I view the world. Not just him, but the entire world built around him, Headspace and its charming inhabitants and the wondrous sights and music, the creative bosses that leave so much insight, the beautiful overworld that is Faraway and a nostalgic look into what we leave behind, and what we return to.

So that’s why I’m so disappointed I don’t like Aubrey.

This game blew my mind away when I first saw it—my first experience with the game wasn’t even my own playthrough, but sitting through a 20-hour longplay!—and I lost so many hours of sleep twisting and turning and trying to make peace with the grief it left me feeling. And after finishing, I realized that its flaws were plenty, but not enough to drag me out of my enjoyment. But Aubrey? Aubrey didn’t make me feel the way I knew she was supposed to.

That frustrated me, especially as I became a bigger and bigger fan of the game. I had no qualms about liking her archetype, the feminine bully with a tragic backstory, and yet I do with her.

As someone who craves literary analysis and in-depth looks into every media I consume, I just needed to know: what made me dislike Aubrey?

And after over two years of being a fan of the game, I’ve finally figured it out: it’s a good mixture of 1) lack of explanation, 2) rushed self-awareness, and 3) lackluster narrative choices. And I’ve found the words I needed to explain these concepts, so please join me on my messy journey to understanding what went wrong with Aubrey.

preface

If you’re an Aubrey apologist, this essay is not for you. I’ve heard plenty of arguments about why Aubrey was actually in the right, not limited to “Basil deserved it,” and, “Aubrey was hurting too,” so I’d like to begin by stating that Aubrey was a bully very clearly.

Rejecting the notion that she actively harmed others is rejecting a core component of understanding her character. Before we dive into her character and how the writing failed her character arc, I would like us all to be on the same page: she physically, verbally, and socially bullied Basil. It was not Basil’s fault, and it will never be a victim’s fault to get bullied. She is not the victim of her own crime, just like how Sunny is not the victim of Mari’s death, and Basil is not the victim of Mari’s hanging. We, as the player, are to recognize their responsibilities in their actions. The same must be extended to Aubrey.

Some people feel the need to deny this aspect of her character to justify her actions and/or justify liking her. Firstly, the purpose of this essay isn’t to villainize anyone for liking Aubrey. I’m simply analyzing what was attempted with her character and why it didn’t strike a chord with me and so many others. Secondly, as Kel wisely said, “Just because you did something bad, doesn't make you a bad person.” I’m not here to say that Aubrey is a bad person—no, nobody in Omori is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and labeling characters as such is taking away the nuance they possess. And I’m certainly not saying liking a character who did something bad makes you bad, either!

Liking Aubrey is in no way a problem (which makes me a tad bit sad that I need to clarify), and I’ll even go as far as to say kudos to you, but if you bend and twist to stop her from holding any responsibility for her actions, that’s when problems arise. Basil is a fictional character and won’t care if you think it was his fault he was bullied, but for the people around you who may have been in similar positions to him?

And lastly, I want to say that if you cite sexism as the reason people don’t like Aubrey… actually, this is the perfect transition into the analysis.

gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss

Femme bullies are not a new phenomenon. Perhaps it’s the break from the stereotypical sweet feminine girl that makes them so fascinating, using their femininity to not sing to animals or wish for a man, but pull down others and advance their status.

I, for one, adore the femme bully trope. Especially if they’re one who used to be extremely kind and underwent some sort of ‘fall from grace’ that led to a bastardization. But, as for all bullies, if they are left without a proper backstory and motivation, I’m turned off from them. Most humans are not mean just because they can be but rather are products of how they were raised. When these causes are ignored, the trope falls flat, and instead of being a good reconstruction, it’s a flat stereotype.

The best way to analyze this is by comparing Aubrey’s character to good examples of femme bullies in the past. Specifically, I’m picking my favorites: Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nanami from Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Sophie from The School for Good and Evil. I’m going to do a quick (and a bit sarcastic) overview of their characters in their respective media, but a quick warning for suicide in Asuka’s overview, and animal cruelty in Nanami’s.

Asuka is a pilot for one of the mechas, the Evangelion, and she always thought of herself as better than everyone. Well, of course, she would: she studied hard, worked harder than everyone around her, and she’s just naturally talented. And yet, she’s still always threatened by others and how they can ruin her status. Specifically, for the course of the show, she targets Shinji—he’s this nobody from nowhere who could suddenly pilot an Eva, while she had to fight her whole life to get here! How is that fair? And what has that asshole been through anyway? Did he have to see his mother’s corpse after she committed suicide as a small child? Did he fight for his mother’s love his entire life just for her to kill herself? Does he have to fight for male attention just so he isn’t thrown aside? No, of course not! So how is any of it fair?

Nanami is the sister to the wonderful student body president Touga, and she wants nothing more than his attention. And with her being the youngest of the cast, one cannot be mad at her for not understanding the severity of violence and finality of death, so her anger as a small child with a kitten whom Touga adored is also understandable. One simply cannot be mad at her for drowning it. So, of course, you cannot blame her for wanting to punish the ever-elusive Anthy and Utena, who Touga has become fixated on. What does Anthy or Utena have that Nanami doesn’t? They’re stupid girls, not Touga’s sister. No matter what, Nanami is going to win her brother’s affection (and in her pursuit, ignore how horribly he’s been manipulating her the entire time).

And Sophie is the Witch of Woods Beyond, capable of powerful spells beyond the imagination, from a place that few know of. And she wants nothing more than for her own fairy-tale ending—why do all the princesses around her get princes and castles and beautiful dresses, and she’s doomed to being hideous and alone for the rest of her life? Who decided that for her? She’s beautiful, after all, so she should be a princess! It doesn’t matter who stands in the way of her happily ever after; especially not if it’s Agatha, her lifelong best friend. No matter what, Sophie will not end up like her mother who died all alone, with her husband forgetting her and moving on. Sophie will be loved, no matter who she has to hurt.

What do they all have in common? Firstly, they’re all girls. As stated, femme bullies are different from masc bullies, especially as they reveal aspects of femininity and womanhood in general that many people—see, a male audience—will neglect to face, and overall uncover sexism that's still present in both media and society. Secondly, they’re all bullies, and they targeted someone in particular who they saw as detrimental to their happiness. And thirdly, they all had specific upbringings that conditioned them to have their ‘falls from grace’. What is this third, unidentified thing?

Mommy issues!

(Sorry, I know Nanami technically has a brother complex, but I just wanted to say mommy issues.)

A pattern has been developed with all of these girls. They all start fairly, what one can call, ‘feminine’ or at least, per standard stereotypes. They’re gentle and sweet and shine when needed. And they all have a ‘fall from grace’—a moment, or sequence of moments, that leads them to reject traditional femininity and embrace a more vengeful version of it. And a final moment, where they are faced with their opposite, who represents all that they do not have.

Asuka was sweet and kind and bubbly until her mother killed herself. After that, she dedicated herself to her studies and getting adult male attention through means of the over-sexualization of herself. And then, she began to bully Shinji.

Sophie was sweet and kind and bright until her mother died. After that, she idolized her mother’s false display of femininity and became obsessed with becoming a princess. And then, at the School for Evil, she began to bully Agatha.

Nanami was assumedly sweet—she deviates from this pattern slightly, being built off assumptions of a good past rather than showcases—until she was brought into this family and became obsessed with her brother and was manipulated by him. After that, she became desperate for his attention, fighting any other who could take it. And then, she began to bully Utena (and Anthy.)

While Nanami does deviate from this pattern, they all have clear origins. They were not bullies from the start. As aforementioned, in the face of an adversary, the majority of people do not turn to hurting one another. Something in their pasts, their ‘falls from grace’, was the foundation of their actions, what led them to believe what they were doing was okay. It’s not justification—it's a much-needed explanation. After all, if you do not understand, how can you empathize?

Still, you may fail to see my point. The game has lots of hints of Aubrey’s troubled upbringing. And that’s exactly what the problem is. These girls have clear origins while Aubrey’s is muddled.

Of course, I don’t expect Omori to have spoon-fed me details of her past. You can put the pieces together by walking through her home and seeing bottles laid on the ground. But, even in a game dependent on nuance and having the player put certain things together, it’s better to leave things out directly rather than to work a way around.

To build up a good femme bully, we need a good origin story. What happened to her that made her turn to violence? Why should we care? We know Aubrey probably had a troubled childhood. But the game doesn’t supply enough. It leaves too much to fill in the blanks. I know that Asuka saw her mother’s corpse, I know that Sophie was forced into a misogynistic viewpoint upon her mother’s death, and I know that Nanami was manipulated to hell and back. I know what these girls have been through so I know why they ended up walking their paths.

But the game simply doesn’t reveal enough about Aubrey. Fan speculation is not enough. Canon interpretation should not be confused with fan interpretation—according to the fans, Aubrey’s father is a deadbeat, and her mother is an abusive, neglectful alcoholic. According to the game? Aubrey’s dad is “strict”, and her house is an absolute disaster. The house is one of the biggest clues as to Aubrey’s childhood, and while some may praise this as ‘showing and not telling’, the game never tries to make workarounds for the other characters (which I will dig deeper into later). I can assume what happened in her house but it’s not my job to find ways to empathize with the character; that is the story’s job.

This is the first of Omori’s three sins and we haven’t even scratched the surface.

actions speak more than words, or something like that

I recently saw a post that I thought would make a good intro for this section. It’s an apologist post for Aubrey, discussing how the game did treat her with just enough harshness—that because she’s been beating herself up, because she’s suffered a public breakdown, because it took kindness to help her heal, it’s proof of her regret. There’s some good Basil blaming in there too, with a strange turn saying that she refused to leave Basil’s house because of her willingness to turn over a new leaf. And it ends with a weird claim that she was a “good person all along,” (implying an argument otherwise), but I’m not here to rat on that post.

Despite how frustrated the post made me, I am inclined to agree. It’s black-and-white to state that Aubrey didn’t change at all. If you compare her first Faraway appearance to her final scenes, she’s a completely different person. Which would've been nice if the change didn’t take two scenes.

Much like how I compared Aubrey’s backstory to that of other femme bullies, I’m going to compare Aubrey’s redemption to that of my favorite redemption story in all of media: Riku from Kingdom Hearts (the fact that I’m so in touch with his story may also explain some of my disappointment with Aubrey’s).

Riku starts off his journey on Destiny Islands. He’s always wondered what lies beyond his small home and dreamed of taking a sailboat with his best friends, Sora and Kairi. However, jealousy is an awful thing—Sora and Kairi are close. And it seems that Riku has been hearing about how they’re thinking of leaving him behind. So, he does what any teenager dealing with larger-than-life feelings does: he gives in to the magical Darkness and effectively kills everyone on the islands, separating him, Sora, and Kairi (don’t worry—everyone comes back.)

By the end of the game, he’s come to his senses, but it takes a lot of time. He fights with Sora a lot because he just knows, deep down, that he’s right and Sora is wrong, and if Sora would just listen…but no. Sora keeps abandoning him. So he has to work through that and all the feelings that accompany those abandonment issues, he has to work through the question of “What is even making me want to kill my best friend, anyway?”, and he has to work through “Wait…can I kill my best friend?” So, it takes a lot of time for him to get to his senses.

And then, he goes through hell. Literally and metaphorically. He dedicates himself wholly to making up for what he did. How? Well, he first identifies what he did wrong—he separated from his friends, he gave in to his jealousy, and he submerged his home in Darkness. He apologizes for it directly—although he doesn’t have a chance to speak with Sora right away, he's constantly apologizing for the fact that he gave in to the Darkness, so much that it became a running gag to some fans. He put up distance—he didn’t feel like he was owed forgiveness right away (or at all, but that’s a different matter) and didn’t stick at Sora’s side to wait for his best friend to forgive him. He worked hard to show that he’s changed—it would be a much longer essay if I attempted to explain the lengths he went through, but it’s not limited to allowing himself to be possessed, going to literal Hell, forcing himself into isolation, and enduring multiple handicapping injuries.

Long story short? He really, really tries to make it up to Sora. And when he and Sora finally talk (it took three years in real life, took perhaps a year in the game), Sora doesn’t even hesitate to forgive his friend…though it may be in part to Sora just being Sora. Nevertheless, Riku had earned that forgiveness.

And then, after that, Riku continues to give himself hell! He never stops to sweep what he did under the rug. It’s a part of him, after all, an ugly past but his past nonetheless. It does not define him but it cannot be forgotten, otherwise, he hasn't learned anything at all.

Deep breath. We talked a lot about Kingdom Hearts in an Omori essay. But it’s important to understand the sheer depth put into his redemption: identification, distance, and work.

What’s most frustrating about Aubrey’s arc is that fragments of this good writing exist, but that’s what they are: fragments. I would like it to be stated for the record that everything I explained for Riku’s arc wasn’t me creating speculation based on what the games said. It’s what the games literally came out and said. Aubrey however…

Identification—she apologizes to Sunny, Kel, and Hero by saying “I’m sorry, guys… I’ve been acting like such a jerk.” While I may give her grief for the usage of the word ‘jerk’ when perhaps a stronger, more evocative term would’ve done a better job, it’s certainly better than what she said in front of Basil’s door: "I just wanted to say that… I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you.” Completely separating herself from the issue at hand. 

Distance—none. She's immediately reintroduced to her old friend group, at a rate that ended up giving me whiplash the first time around. The question, “What about the Hooligans?” is never brought up, and things are back to how they always were, with no problems at all.

Work—Aubrey stayed the night at Basil’s house, wanting to make sure he was safe. To which, if you end up getting the neutral ending, you get the most insightful message of Aubrey’s arc (which is technically non-canon): “I'm so sorry, Basil. Please forgive me…” If getting the good or bad ending, her staying the night meant literally nothing, as Sunny’s fight took the reins.

These are fragments of a character arc. These are fragments of good characterization. While I praise Omori for how often it appears realistic, this kind of exponential growth simply isn’t. In what world, does someone who’s been bullying someone for four years, take less than two days to realize she’s been a bully and decide to change the entire course of her life?

While I could rat on Aubrey, this isn’t her problem. This is the game misreading what makes a good redemption. Redemption means work. It means effort. It is not a character simply changing their ways. Those characters feel cheap and empty—there’s a reason, after all, why the majority of fans always characterize Aubrey as the mean girl she’s shown to be when she first appeared in fan works. It’s because the ‘new’ Aubrey, the Aubrey buried under layers of hurt, hasn’t earned the right to exist.

The Riku I love in Kingdom Hearts III has earned the right to be angsty and gay and happy and his new self because he’s put in 17 years' worth of effort to become that person. It’s beautiful, it’s inspiring, it’s hopeful—you can make a mistake and go past it. It doesn’t define you. You can be forgiven. You can have hurt and have been hurt and still be worthy of love and loving.

The Aubrey at the end of Omori has not earned the right to be there, simply put. She’s the product of lazy, or ignorant writing, and it feels harsh to type out, but there’s no other way to describe it. Her self-awareness happened too quickly. She passes by Sunny’s house every day, sees Kel playing basketball every day, and could freely visit Mari’s grave whenever she wants—there were four years for her to change who she was. If Kel wasn’t able to give up his toxic positivity until the bitter end of the neutral ending, it’s quite hard to believe that a few hours of just talking made her change her ways. Especially considering that the Hooligans were characterized as her new, accepting friends, who love her and hear her out.

And again, the best fragment of an arc that could’ve been appears in the neutral ending! While it was not directly Aubrey’s actions that led Basil to take his life, it’s very impactful to see her begin to blame herself. It’s not right for her to blame herself—but that’s perhaps the only scene in the entire game where I really sympathized with her. It’s the only scene in the entire game where I truly saw that she wanted to change.

A quick note I wanted to pull out before finishing: the inclusion of the Hooligans. They were, again, fragments of an amazing arc. While they could’ve been a good way to show how kind Aubrey still is, they are thrown aside and mainly included in scenes where Aubrey is still being a bully. It’s in content outside of the game (see: Aubrey birthday comic) that they contrast Aubrey’s harsh exterior and show her sweet insides. But no, they’re underdeveloped and unutilized to make Aubrey’s arc feel doable.

There seems to be a very clear culprit to both this and the femme bully problem, and a solution that should’ve been considered more deeply.

rome wasn’t built in a day

There’s a loud rumor in the Omori fandom that Omori was originally supposed to take place over ten days rather than three days. While I’m not sure how much merit this rumor has, the fact that it exists leads me to my ultimate point:

Omori should’ve been longer.

Specifically, Omori should’ve taken place over a longer period.

EDIT: Before we continue, I just had an excellent conversation with a friend ( /ᐠ ._. ᐟ\ﾉ ). This solution only applies to if one is unwilling to change Aubrey's core character; essentially, the extent of her bullying. By making her someone who goes out of her way to torment Basil, significant screen time is going to be needed to properly unpack all that's been given. Making the base game ten days is only my opinion of the best choice, but there are other ways to solve this. However, the best course of action would be to change the extent of Aubrey's bullying on Basil—in other words, changing how Aubrey's anger presents itself.

For example, she would simply hold a grudge over what she believed was Basil destroying the photos, being extremely passive aggressive towards him. It would make a reconciliation between her and Basil, much, much more doable as well, perhaps him seeking her out in the first place in a peaceful manner to look for the photos. The lake scene could be an emotional explosion for her, perhaps finding out Basil just gave the photo album to Sunny, who is literally about to leave, and then pushes him into the lake. Then, the reflection she has next would fit what has tonally been established, seeming doable. She had, after all, been on good terms with Basil, even if for a little while.

By ‘lackluster narrative choices’, I am referring literally to the belief that Omori should not have been a game that took place in three days. I’m not here to argue about the game's mechanics—should Headspace have been that long? What is the point of a world created to serve as escapism, which should be fleeting moments of happiness, when it ends up being longer than the real world?—as much as I’m here to argue that this is a flaw of the game’s writing as opposed to a game design standpoint.

I’m not going to pretend I know how to make a video game. I’m enthusiastic about them, I follow their development and creation, and I strive to learn as much as I can about the ones that are dear to me, but I’m not going to pretend I know the first thing about making a video game. Omori’s development is one of the most infamous parts of its legacy, and the notion of extending the game would’ve only been another strain on the extended period between its announcement and its final release.

But, I know how to tell a story. Or, at the very least, I know what makes a good story. Now, the three days format of the game serves its other protagonists amazingly.

Sunny, whose arc mainly develops through the interfering ideas established in the real world and the ones previously established in Headspace, doesn’t need an extended time in the real world. His story takes place in his dreams, and the foundations of Headspace are already extremely insecure, based on the idea of covering up the truth. But when faced with a separate truth in reality, despite only a brief exposure, the lies created to protect Headspace fall apart. So Sunny’s arc does not depend on how long he spent in the real world.

Kel and Hero, on the other hand, have a very small arc. They are not flat and are very much dynamic when you compare how they started and how they ended up. However, the majority of their arc had taken place off-screen. The majority of their characterization does not occur through direct interaction with Sunny—we don’t learn about Hero’s depression because of him having a breakdown, but rather Kel discussing it. And in that same scene, we learn about Kel’s toxic positivity and the strain it’s taking on him, rather than through the game. This recontextualization is perfect for Kel and Hero. The change that occurred after Mari’s death is not easily seen by Sunny, and through it being slowly revealed instead, we learn the nature of their changes. Nonetheless, their changes occurred after Mari’s death and another change will occur most likely after the revelation of the truth—either way, their character arcs do not depend on the length of the three days. No amount of time would’ve changed them without Sunny revealing the truth (and as aforementioned, Sunny’s time was well spent in Headspace).

And finally, Basil. He's in the same boat as Kel and Hero, having an arc that occurs entirely off-screen. The difference is, however, the amount of emphasis the game puts on what happened to him as opposed to a few cutscenes with the brothers (though it is understandable, given his role as the game’s deuteragonist). His arc is a downward spiral, from an already unstable boy to an insecure mess who becomes obsessed with the sole idea of keeping his best friend safe. While it’s a progression of who he used to be, it’s development nonetheless, and it also happens off-screen. Given Basil’s fragile mindset, furthermore, the appearance of Sunny suddenly was enough to throw him off, given he was already planning on taking his own life. His rapid spiral into an even worse mess which leads to the fight between him and Sunny, therefore, is understandable. And, similarly to Kel and Hero, his real change will only occur after Sunny reveals the truth. Basil’s character development does not at all depend on how long the game would be.

The simple fact is that the other characters do not go through a drastic change on the days that Sunny comes out, and Sunny’s change was fueled by the existence of Headspace, not by the real world. The game taking place in three days does not affect the others. That is good storytelling. Using the game’s time frame to properly convey their arcs having occurred off-screen.

Aubrey, however, is not subject to that same praise. Her arc occurs on screen—while she descended to becoming a bully after Mari’s death, the arc we the viewer are supposed to acknowledge is her redemption. And three days just isn’t enough time.

The last two problems I covered, a lack of detailed backstory and a general lack of redeeming actions, lie in the same problem: the game went past those scenes far too quickly, as though Aubrey’s redemption is not essential to understanding her. It’s as though the game is trying to place importance on relationships and the joys of rekindling, rather than having to actually rekindle a relationship, having to put in the work. If the game had been slightly longer, Aubrey’s story could’ve been dealt with in a far more effective manner.

I am not Omocat, nor am I a part of the development team. I do not have the ideal solution for what could’ve been. I do, however, have a few ideas that I’d like you, my audience, to consider. How much do you think the game would’ve changed if it was ten days instead of three?

As already explained, Sunny, Kel, Hero, and Basil would not have had any significant difference if the game took place longer. Perhaps, there would’ve been a more natural awkwardness present that accompanies talking to someone for the first time in four years, but aside from that, the events of the game would’ve just taken longer.

Aubrey, however, would’ve had some actual thinking time. Her fight in the church would be her turning point, and her then isolation would feel like she had time to think things over. For a few days, Aubrey would have to be absent, and given the impression she left on the players, this absence would be heavily felt. It would be her return so much more effective, especially if she returns as someone who is unsteady due to their actions.

For the next few days, leading up to Aubrey deciding to stay the night at Basil’s house, we have the chance to know and forgive her better—perhaps, similar to Kel talking to Sunny about Hero’s depression, Aubrey can explain what it was like growing up in her household. Not as a defense, but as an explanation. She would do things with the rest of the group, and she would at a more natural rate, be integrated once again. And not just anything! She would actively help them with whatever the ten days would have to offer, and it would show that she is hurting over her actions.

And, finally, when she would decide to stay at Basil’s house, it wouldn’t feel like the game was just trying to have the cast together for one last moment, but it would feel like she’s trying to bridge the gap of all the hurt she created. When she would go to Basil’s door, it wouldn’t feel like the game was just trying to convince us to forget about her actions, but it would feel like she’s reflected and attempted a new leaf. And hopefully, the game would offer a more heartfelt apology, given more context and material to work with.

Four years of bullying can’t go away in ten days. But that’s not what the game was trying to argue in the first place—it wasn’t fully erasing Aubrey’s action, but trying to create the stepping stone for a way back. But the three days poorly argued her case, with a rushed and lacking version of redemption, and it made her ‘final character’ feel poor.

At the very least, ten days would have allowed the audience to empathize and begin to understand her. And, more importantly, it would’ve made sense that she understood the weight of her actions. And the Aubrey she became, whoever that girl would be?

She would’ve been so, so loved.

a little love in our lives

This has been on my mind for an awful lot of time. Sunny, as aforementioned, is one of my favorite characters of all time (if not my favorite), but the entire cast has a spot in my heart and is very dear to me. That includes Aubrey, but she benefits from association, which hurts me—I hate when girls in media are defined by their relationships with other guys. I wanted to get to the heart of why I couldn’t get her to stand on her own.

To summarize: Aubrey’s character was criminally mismanaged. Instead of it being a hopeful story of redemption, someone finally breaking the cycle of abuse and breaking free of her toxic household, seeking forgiveness by taking an active part in Basil’s healing, she is let off too quickly and makes all her further scenes feel twice as empty. The ideal solution would have been to have the game take place over a larger period, rather than a rushed three days, to allow the audience to empathize and relate to her.

Aubrey apologists truly astound me. I find so many flaws in her writing, and yet other people manage to see those flaws as perfections. I see people making very absurd, ableist arguments, and it makes me question the humanity of many fans, but I’ve always been intrigued by how many different perspectives there are surrounding her. I’ve seen some who relate to her because they were bullies or because they’ve been abandoned by others; so some valid reasons, and others very concerning. But it’s telling how our own experiences make us relate to different characters and help us understand why someone stands in the places they do.

…do you see what I did there? I started talking about relating backgrounds and how that benefits our understanding and— yeah, I suppose you understand, if you got this far (almost 6k words, you should be proud of yourself). If you’re still unfazed and believe that Aubrey’s writing was splendid, all the power to your fannish behaviors. But if I’ve opened your eyes a bit as to the flaws in her writing or if I’ve been able to explain your dislike of her, then I’m glad. It’s important to discuss things that didn’t stick the way they were meant to so that we can do better and we can learn.

Omori’s writing failed Aubrey. Some fans took that as a challenge. I’ve said before that canon interpretation should be separate from fanon interpretation, but I’d have to be heartless (Kingdom Hearts pun intended) to say that many fan’s interpretations didn’t get me to feel with her. I think Aubrey could’ve been brilliant, and while Omori didn’t fully capture that, a lot of fans did. So to everyone who makes art, whether it’s a drawing, a written work, a video, a song, an edit, or whatever, thank you for sharing it. Thank you for telling your stories.

I feel like writing these analysis pieces without connecting them to our own life experiences is pointless. So, to everyone else, please tell your stories. Tell your stories of redemption and love and forgiveness, because that’s what Aubrey’s story was meant to be about, and that’s what we all need in this world. Tell your stories, no matter what they are, because that is what ties us all together. We are made of stories and we return to them. We learn from them and we become better people. We become kinder—and we could all use a little more kindness in the world.

Thanks for reading!

[lurkingshan]

La Pluie: We Must Speak Our Love

La Pluie, my precious child, my perfect show, I could not love you more. You stayed true to your themes the entire way through, and you trusted the audience to use our brains to understand what you were trying to say. You stuck to your guns about focusing on the relationships and the choices the characters made as the driving forces of this narrative, not the mythology and not destiny. You knew exactly what story you wanted to tell and you told it with a clarity and completeness that is extremely rare in these drama streets. I salute you.

This show never intended to solve the questions around the workings of fate in this universe, and while the characters individually may or may not believe in soulmates, what matters is who they choose to love. Tai even said it a few times in this episode to make sure the point was extra clear:

As for the destiny and soulmate stuff, they are like a trap in our relationship.

Love is about two people. It doesn’t need destiny to pave [the way]. I don’t care whether you are my soulmate or not. The most important thing is our feelings…I love you, Patts. I don’t care if it rains or not. I do love you no matter what happens.

No one chooses to find an answer anymore [about hearing loss or soulmates]. Because whether or not we know, it doesn’t have anything to do with the path that each person chooses. At least, we get to choose our own path, instead of destiny determining for us.

With that theme (which has been present through the entire show) coming through loud and clear, in the finale La Pluie was able to turn to another very important theme and hammer it home: the importance of speaking our love out loud, and communicating clearly with the people we care about. The fantasy of romance novels–that your lover will just intrinsically understand you without need for you to speak–was fully dismantled. This show said it is selfish to hold back your true thoughts and feelings from those you love, and we can only really connect with each other when we are willing to use our words. Below, I break down the many places this theme showed up in the finale’s excellent resolutions for our characters. 

Dream and Nara

First of all, let me just scream again because AHHHHHHHHHHH. I did not dare to dream that we would actually get this pairing, not as subtext, but as actual text in this show. We got to see Dream ask Nara out! And importantly, we got to see Nara nudge her into doing so by asking her to be clear. When Dream started hinting about whether Nara was open to a new relationship, Nara said straight out:

Can I ask why you want to know that?

Dream then got shy, but Nara kept talking to make it very clear exactly what they were discussing. She didn’t want any uncertainty between them, so she told Dream directly that she was welcome to hit on her. We love a confident and direct communicator! And we see in the epilogue montage that this clear communication paid off for them, and they are now happily dating.

Lomfon and Tien

I have to start this section by giving mad props to Lomfon, because that boy: understood exactly what he did wrong, reached out to Tien to try to make amends many times despite being rebuffed, put his effort into a film project that would get Tien’s attention, and then when the crucial moment came, used his words and used them well.

Lomfon was determined to show Tien how he felt, which was an important part of their resolution. His persistence mattered because it proved to Tien that he was serious. But his actions alone were not enough. When Tien asked why he made that film, Lomfon said:

I have already told you. I would show you with my actions.

And Tien walks away. It is only when Lomfon opens his mouth and begins to speak, in no uncertain terms, about what he did wrong, why he is sorry, and what he wants with Tien going forward, that Tien accepts his sincerity (and lays one on him). 

The words mattered. Tien needed to hear them to know that he could trust Lomfon with his heart. And now that he has heard him, he will.

Tai’s Journey

When we first see Tai in this episode, he is still stubbornly clinging to the idea that Patts is going to reach out to him first, passively waiting for that to happen, and resigning himself to giving up if it doesn’t. Tien shares our frustration with this knucklehead, and tries one more time to get through to his brother:

For the past two years, you haven’t talked to him. He had tried to reach you so many times.

Tien said brother, I love you, but it is your turn to try. And he’s right! Patts has been doing all the heavy lifting in this relationship, and Tai is the one who was in the wrong. He needs to be the one to reach out to Patts this time. 

This inspires some further reflection for Tai, and he finally makes an important connection: he has been doing to Patts what his mother did to him.

You’re really not going to say a thing?! I can’t understand [if you] say nothing.

Yadfah’s silence hurt Tai deeply, and as he remembers his painful conversations with her in the aftermath of the divorce, he realizes he stonewalled Patts the same way his mother stonewalled him. He finally seems to grasp how unfair that was, and he immediately springs into action. 

Tai’s first stop is Dream, who he is hoping can tell him where Patts is. In his conversation with her, we hear him reflect again on how his silence harmed their relationship.

If I’d understood him and talked to him earlier, it wouldn’t have turned out like this.

He also learns about Patts seeing him with Lomfon, which clarifies for him why Patts hasn’t reached out and why he has cut off contact from everyone. His determination grows, and with only the knowledge that Patts is helping to open a veterinarian clinic somewhere in Chiang Mai, he hits the road. 

But we’re not quite done with Tai’s lessons yet! As Tai wanders aimlessly around Chiang Mai, checking every clinic he can find, he makes some new friends when he runs out of gas and a shockingly kind couple invites him to eat dinner with them and stay overnight in their home. Art and Phueng are lovely people who have been together for years, sticking it out through Phueng becoming permanently disabled. Tai asks them for their secret to being happy together, and Phueng tells him:

We listen to and understand each other. We listen more, and speak less…if we speak more but listen less, we don’t hear [each other’s voices]. Then we don’t understand each other.

Do we got it yet, friends? Communication is the key to a happy relationship. 

Tai and Patts 

After days of searching, Tai finally finds Patts by chance, looking like a dead man walking in the street outside his clinic. And Tai wastes no time, calling out for him, running to him immediately, and launching into his verbalization of everything he’s realized. Crucially, he starts here:

You don’t have to say anything. This time, please let me say it.

And y’all. Y’all! Those words meant so much to me, let alone how it must have felt for Patts. We see Patts draw in a surprised breath after Tai promises he will say it this time, and as Tai goes on his eyes get increasingly misty and he struggles to keep his face neutral–you can see how much it all means to him. To finally have Tai acknowledge that Patts has been the one doing all the communicating, that he understands where he messed up now, that he was wrong, that he is sorry, that he absolutely does love Patts and he should have been able to say it. 

I didn’t talk to you well. I let it slide until [it got] bad like now.

Tai finally understands that his refusal to speak was the core problem, and he is saying it all now.

And that is all Patts needs to forgive him. Just the words that Tai has been holding back. Tai’s silence was always the thing that caused him the most pain, and now that he is speaking his love out loud, they can move forward. They can choose each other with no further doubts and a commitment to keep talking.

(Thank you thank you to @wen-kexing-apologist for grabbing screenshots for this post for me, and an extra special shout-out to @bengiyo for grabbing me after episode 1 of this show and telling me in no uncertain terms that I needed to start paying attention immediately. It has been an honor to clown with you and work to bring so many along with us for this wonderful show.)

[cboffshore]

Sorry I know you are not a fan of thinking about it but I’m curious. Is your disgust of Skybound angst baced on a moral problem with Sa being represented and talked about at all? From what I’ve seen of your work you also uses Nadakhan’s canon creepiness that uses the fear that he is going to do worse things. It’s like you’ve drawn a certain line and shame those who write worse. Didn’t Nadakhan kiss Nya against her will? Is it because of jay focus specifically? No shame in staying away from all that of course but it’s strange like Skybound “as it is” so much but also dismiss and explain away things that happened you didn’t like or act like everyone should just not think about implications you’ve acknowledged as there. I don’t see how you could be more upset at fanfic writers than people actually paid to write and produce what clearly caused that kinda fic to be written. Again sorry to bug I don’t usually interact here but yeah.

I've read this over a few times and I think the best way for me to respond is with line by line replies because... this is a lot at once, ngl. Under the cut we go!

Is your disgust of Skybound angst baced on a moral problem with Sa being represented and talked about at all?

No. I should clarify that I'm neutral to positive on angst in general - done well, it's a great way to examine a character or situation. My specific problem with the most representative chunk of Skybound angst is how it misinterprets/misrepresents the themes of the season, usually in a way that comes off to me (key words: to me) as pointless and unfair to the characters and underlying story. It's not a moral issue. I'm just sick of the scene being flooded this way.

From what I’ve seen of your work you also uses Nadakhan’s canon creepiness that uses the fear that he is going to do worse things. It’s like you’ve drawn a certain line and shame those who write worse. Didn’t Nadakhan kiss Nya against her will?

Good point. I do use the canon creepiness factor, it's true, because that's a crucial part of Nadakhan's character. However, I draw that line and try to play within the bounds of what the show would do, because that helps me process it both to understand 1. why it's uncomfortable as-is and 2. how it serves the narrative. 2 there is kind of how I handle any analysis - no point in ragging on the writers or their intent (more on that later) because I'm analyzing the story for what the story holds. I'm not into cranking things up for the sake of angstifying my work, because I believe that with enough analysis of the existing material, I don't need to. I'm certainly not trying to shame anyone, and I understand that it might come off like that sometimes. Genuinely: I'm not trying to shame anyone, and I'm sorry if I've made it sound like I am.

Is it because of jay focus specifically?

Only kind of. (I'm writing this as if "it" in this phrase refers to my discomfort with the field of overblown Jay angst, just so we're clear.) I'm all for Jay character analysis! I like him as a character, and I love his arc in Skybound. What bothers me is when the SA themes that, by all canon means, should be applied to Nya get shuffled over to Jay even though there is zero indication in canon that he experienced it. I'm all for creative license, yes, but it also baffles me when people analyze and write Jay through that "SA was a huge cornerstone of his trauma" lens, because it wasn't. I think there are so many better questions to ask about Jay's arc and experience than "what if he was assaulted on top of all his other suffering?" On a similar note: I also think there are way better questions to ask about Nya's arc, and Nadakhan's, but unfortunately all three of them get shoehorned into reductive roles in this specific type of work, which is a disappointment. I think all three of them deserve focus in different ways, and deep dives into the things they actually did and experienced. Again: nothing wrong with a Jay focus, but I think it's more compelling to dive deep into what did happen to him than to transfer Nya's implied experience to him and crank it up.

No shame in staying away from all that of course but it’s strange like Skybound “as it is” so much but also dismiss and explain away things that happened you didn’t like or act like everyone should just not think about implications you’ve acknowledged as there.

This is where I think you're misunderstanding my position. If I've come off as saying that we should just handwave the problematic elements of the season (both of and onscreen), then please know that has never been my intention. To be perfectly clear, I'm not trying to explain these weird things away - I am simply trying to explain them. Fact of the matter is that those elements are there, stuck in a story I've found unusually compelling for eight years running; I can't get rid of them, so I may as well dig in and see why they're there and how they contribute. Does that stop the uncomfortableness from being uncomfortable? Absolutely not. However, I like to examine what role that discomfort plays in the narrative instead of giggling like a middle schooler asking you to spell ICUP and then saying you're gross for saying that. Yes, I do like Skybound as it is - because it utilizes that discomfort well to say a lot of interesting stuff about the characters involved in it.

I don’t see how you could be more upset at fanfic writers than people actually paid to write and produce what clearly caused that kinda fic to be written.

Once again: I'm not terribly interested in analyzing the deeper motives behind why the story came out the way it did. Of course it's important to consider the origin of the season, and I do that when necessary; however, keep in mind that I'm doing this for fun. I find the story layered and compelling enough on its own, and while its origins may have been questionable, I don't think that invalidates what the story has to say at all. I also find the story interesting enough on its own that I think it's weird when authors ignore all those interesting things in favor of writing hundreds of thousands of words of Jay getting assaulted in every sense of the word. I'm definitely more focused on the fic writing side of it than I am on the canon writing side because, well, the fic side is the one I'm on! These are peers I share a digital space with in a way I can't with the showrunners.

Or, put another way: This is Tumblr. You've heard of the two cakes principle, right? The idea that the audience will appreciate having more art and writing available even if it's not as fancy as the famous stuff? This situation, to me, is like that in a way. This is like me showing up to a bake sale staffed by bakers who I know are talented and have access to the best equipment and ingredients. Except I roll up and the tables are eighty percent supermarket cupcakes. Sure, sometimes a supermarket cupcake hits the spot, and generally they're crowd pleasers - they'll sell well! But this is a bake sale staffed by wildly talented bakers. I know they're capable of cooler things and I know they have access to the time and resources to make those cooler things. Maybe they just care about the bake sale in a different way than I do, and that's fine, truly... but it's still disappointing.

I hope this cleared some stuff up for you, anon. If you've got any other questions, please let me know. (And you don't have to go anon for it if you don't want to - we can even discuss it via DM if you'd like to.)

[shiroikabocha]

favorite part of talos principle??????

I procrastinated forever on this ask, sorry. The answer’s kinda sad. But it’s also, like, deeply true and important to me as a person, so.

My mom died at the end of 2013, concluding a truly impressive any% cancer speedrun. Less than 90 days from first symptoms to last. I loved her a lot. It was a bad time.

2014 was the worst year of my life. I became convinced that human consciousness (or at least, my own human consciousness) was not an inherent good. Not an inherent bad, either, just… the nature of the human brain is to want to continue existing, and to be incapable of continuing to exist. It’s not a system that’s designed to function without pain. It’s not a system that’s designed. Consciousness hurts. Being a conscious, physical creature in an unpredictable physical world that has no obligation to make coherent narrative sense hurts.

(I miss my mom. It’s a problem with no solution.)

And then there was this video game. And it had this guy (gender neutral) in it. And this guy was like: you’re so right, bestie. Making sense of existence? That’s a loser’s game. Can’t even get to I think, therefore I am without coming up against some truly gnarly logical conundrums—almost enough to make you wanna invent a big invisible sky-friend who gives you all the answers and reassures you that you’re important and good, right? But that’s stupid. You don’t want to be stupid, do you? You want to be smart. Like me. Smart means you’re better than the people who need happy little answers to all their silly little questions. You don’t need them. You don’t need anybody. That’s the great thing about nothing—it’s so beautifully consistent! When nothing means anything, there are no contradictions. Trying to understand your place in the cosmos—asking the question “I exist; what should I do with that fact?” and expecting to arrive at an actual, functional answer—is a sucker’s game. The only winning move is not to play.

I can’t really explain what it felt like to see my own feelings repeated back to me so clearly, so accurately, and at such length—and for my reaction to my own worldview to be seething fucking hatred. When I started playing The Talos Principle, I was a pessimistic nihilist. I did not perceive myself changing into something different until I was screaming at my keyboard FUCK YOU, my existence has meaning because I CHOOSE to imbue it with meaning and I do not FUCKING CARE if it doesn’t make sense, some things are more important than being flawlessly logically correct and ME HAVING A REASON TO LIVE is ONE OF THEM

(when your internal logic answer to Why should I stay alive? starts out as My life is a precious gift given to me by God and it is not mine to throw away, and then your understanding of the world changes in a way that no longer incorporates an ontologically-existent God, sometimes you wind up with: Why should I stay alive? Answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And that answer really only works as long as nothing terrible happens. It does not hold up well under stress. When you take god away you do have to put something else in its place, and it’s not easy to find something else that can hold up under the weight.)

Like… it would be an oversimplification to say that The Talos Principle made me want to live again. But it wouldn’t be too much of an oversimplification to say TTP forced me to acknowledge that I didn’t currently have a good reason to want to live, and that felt bad, and I owed it to myself to fix it. And that if I could hate this fucking asshole librarian so so much (because he was me), and still feel so much compassion for him by the end of the game, then maybe I could figure out how to feel compassion for myself, too.

Also I really like the puzzles where the solution is to zwoop around all over the place with fans, those are my favorite

[panoralis]

⋆⠀⠀RAISE OUR GLASSES.⠀⠀ ┉ ⠀⠀ DECEMBER 2021

“⠀⠀ AND IN THE END, even saints can admit her fault was staring through the wrong shade of lenses. ⠀⠀”

STARRING.   hwang haein .. bang chan .. mention of kalaya cherinsuk and hwang gyuri

CW(S).   arguments, possible toxic mindset (particularly when it comes to work and personal relationships), initial refusal to accept accountability, swearing, emotional injuries

MONA SAYS.   welcome to the mini trilogy i unofficially title ‘the happiest girls’ !! i’ve had this planned for a while now then ended up writing this at like.. google docs said 1:08 a.m. slides that out of the way let’s just go with early. also yes, the formats are inspired inspired by fiixion’s ocs and moirtre ♡

UNKNOWN, 10:03 P.M: can you meet me here? UNKNOWN, 10:03 P.M: haein, i don’t want us to dissolve so easily UNKNOWN, 10:03 P.M: please give me this chance

haein swears she blocked his number. but in this universe, she doesn’t have the power to enforce the same command on his manager. it’s not a surprise anymore—he’s clearly mastered the art of finding loopholes.

without the bustling students weaving between the machineries of the arcade, or kids accidentally knocking people’s legs during their endeavor to get on the little rides, it doesn’t take long for haein to find him. he’s so predictable; silently leaning against the wall beside the photo booth. 

..seven, eight, nine.

it takes the anxious man seven flashes of his lockscreen, eight deep breaths, and nine flicks across the space before his gaze finally catches her. knowing him too well, haein can see the specks of relief that shimmer upon his cocoa-tinted irises. was he truly so worried that she wouldn’t show up like he desperately expected?

funny.

“you came..” the words barely squeeze past bang chan’s lips. his impulsive thoughts kick in; strongly tempting him to hug her. “you’re here-”

“-to officially put an end to this.”

haein can’t remember the last time she let her professional persona bleed into her personal life. clearly, neither does the male idol, for the hope in his face is ruthlessly erased. he can strain his muscles as much as he wants—the corners of his lips won’t reach his dimples. 

just this once, she’ll let him grasp her arm and lead her to the vacant space between the photo booth and row of motorcycle racer stimulators. while she wants to nip the bud and return home already, the last thing anyone needs is a scandal.

“no, haein- please..” he begins to plead again. “i know you understand me when i say that i was trying to protect everyone.”

hitting back with a scoff, the noirette retorts, “you call concealing the truth from inka—someone who looked up to you, trusted you—protecting her? spare me the bullshit, chan. you had so many chances to be honest with her. and yet, even when you got caught, you still spun the narrative on her; ‘made her feel like she was too young to face it.”

and there his hand goes—fixing the edges of his beanie despite it not being a distraction in the first place. haein has experienced enough fights with him to spot the tell-tale signs: a shadow covers the warm gleam in his eyes, his attention is abruptly averted to things surrounding him, and he bites his tongue to refrain from saying something he will regret-

“why are you even on her side? i’m your boyfriend, aren’t i? you should be assuring me that i did what was best for the group.”

(oh? oh, sounds like the eve of new year is already trickling into.. certain people’s personas.)

“no chan, you’re a hypocrite.” haein states without hesitation. “look at us, we began dating even though you still have that dating ban in place. what makes us different from inka’s situation, huh?”

stunned, the once candid male doesn’t have any words to spill. but his girlfriend still has plenty.

“i may not know inka as well as gyuri does, but what i do know is that you didn’t have the right to meddle with her personal affairs. you kept acting like she’s this fragile doll that in the end, you were the one who shattered her into fine fragments.” 

her sharp words cut so deep, the strings of frustration that tried to move bang chan are cut seamlessly. no longer is his common sense eclipsed by undeserved self-assurances, yet everyone knows the importance of timing. 

so haein forces him to reap the consequences by watching her walk away—from him, his recklessness, and their previously sturdy relationship. 

sure, she’ll listen to him call her name, sprinkle some ‘don't go’ too. she’ll feel the hurt he blends with desperation while trying to get her back. and she’ll look back once to notice the tremors in his hands as he tries to reach out for her.

but the young woman had just finished dressing the cuts littered across her skin. they’re not very pretty.. then again, witnessing the man you love shatter the foundation of your story so easily isn’t either. still, if he ever gathers the audacity to ask her again, she’d let him know her preference.

she wants to draw stars around her scars, not layer them some more.

FANBASE  :  @stealanity @lost-leopard-beanie @fairiepoems & send an ask or dm if you'd like to be added !

[mr-president]

I have a question (To be perfectly clear this is not an ask trying to strum up controversy, but just my own curiosity of your views, and I love your analysis and how you say things. But if you have nothing to say on this matter feel free to delete this ask)

There’s some controversy in the funger fandom about the writing of the Bremen army, also in Pav. Some people think it’s too sympathetic or the choices that Miro made are in poor taste. Do you have any opinions on this?

CW: fascism, Nazism, antisemitism, and what have you. also, sorry if i get things wrong, again, it’s been a while.

Yes, I do think that portraying a historical, fascist, genocidal regime in Nazi Germany as the Bremen army was in poor taste. It’s one thing to just have a fantastical, fictional totalitarian government and another to use an actual historical allegory as stand in for history. The Bremen army is an allegory for Nazi Germany, there is absolutely no denying that, and Mr. Haverinen made that conscious, authorial choice to make that connection.

However, and this is my personal opinion, I don’t think he properly understood, articulated, or represented the impact that Nazi Germany had on Europe, the world, and especially for Jewish people. And this is a problem, because Nazi Germany still has lingering influences on society and culture today, and Mr. Haverinen’s choice to not only write Nazi Germany in the story but portray it in such a way is…in poor taste.

I understand why Mr. Haverinen likely used Nazi Germany as an allegorical tool—the same reason why he uses religious allegory throughout the story. Because we are all familiar with WW2 and Nazism, we have a general idea and basic understanding of this fictional totalitarian, colonialist regime. And that is perfectly fine and is a valid shorthand storytelling device.

Additionally, the Bremen Empire is still depicted as Not A Good Thing. Like, that’s very clear within the narrative—Mr. Haverinen is not a Nazi and clearly does not support that ideology. However, I do believe that he could have done better in understanding/depicting a sensitive historical subject beyond showing how they are bad. If that makes sense.

My problems with the Bremen Empire are that it:

fails to articulate a coherent ideology as to why their influence is so vast,

gives them a somewhat “good” motive that kind of validates their existence

does not empathize with or represent the minority group (Jewish people) who were most affected by this historical tragedy.

For 1), though there are references to the Bremen army’s horrific atrocities, it’s kind of hand-wavey as to why they’re really doing it, seemingly only because Le’garde’s general bloodlust and assholeness. I’ll discuss that more in the second point, but I just want to state that Nazi Germany had a legitimate, compelling, and actual ideology behind it that perpetuated the attitude of nonchalance and “justice” that came with the atrocities they committed.

It is not merely power, it was fascism. Fascism cleans up your neighborhood, gives you jobs and school and work, gives you what made you great, and gets rid of what put you down. Fascism creates a problem and posits that the solution is to exclude the…undesirables and raise yourself up to your truest potential.

And here, Bremen fails. Somewhat.

Point 2). Their motive. The ultimate goal of Le’garde’s bullshit is for him to usher in new era of humanity, where he becomes Logic, ascends to new-Old Godhood, and helps humanity overcome the rule of the Old Gods and truly live for themselves rather than their whims.

Ultimately, it’s uncertain if this will be a positive thing, but in Ending A it’s kind of a good thing, especially with Reina becoming Logic instead of Le’garde. Of course, much like Funger 1, it begs the question of “was this suffering all worth it,” but like many people have criticized with Reina’s usage at all, that question doesn’t hit as hard as Funger 1.

And Funger 1 didn’t even need a wholeass Nazi allegory to ask that question. Was the suffering of every innocent civilian worth it to get Logic? To usher in this new era of humanity?

The question seems more on the side of “Yeah” because unlike Funger 1, Logic’s existence is depicted as a good thing for humanity. Thus, Bremen is sort of a “good thing,” that at least it was towards something positive and for the betterment of people everywhere.

Which is…a really awful thing to say when, again, this was an actual fascist regime who discriminated against, subjugated, and had a system that enforced the oppression of numerous minority groups.

Point 3). Not really interacting with the minority groups subjugated. Termina’s cast is pretty much entirely made up of minorities, and many of them do have or would have tangible interactions that conflict with the Bremen army.

Levi and Pav are perhaps the best examples of characters who were genuinely traumatized by the Bremen army, and their actions and characterization are substantial for recognizing the psychological impact colonization has on people.

However…no character or even allegorical minority group is a stand in for Jewish people, who are one of the most affected groups of Nazism.

Ok, there didn’t need to be a Jewish character who actually went through the atrocities of Nazism in graphic, Funger-grade detail. That could be very triggering, and it could also spell problems of getting the story censored. And also, misrepresentation is a genuine thing to fear when depicting something like that.

But to scrub most if not all references of Antisemitism? Isn’t that kinda fucked? I think it’s fucked. Let me know if I’m wrong.

Anyways, I need you (audience) to understand something.

It is imperative to understand that this is Fear & Hunger. These are games which depict suffering, mass, unavoidable, tragic, yet wholly unnecessary suffering. You the player suffer and understand suffering. And then Mr. Haverinen has an allegory for a fascist regime which caused so much mass, tragic, colonialist, yet entirely unnecessary suffering and chose not to depict who were those sufferers.

It’s my own opinion, but if you make Nazi germany you can empathize with the people who suffered from it if your central theses revolve around suffering.

Additionally, I understand that this story is supposed to be a fantastical retelling of history, but girl, like. You could keep the historical allegory and the historical context and just have it be vaguely referenced. But you interact with the Bremen army in the game. Le’garde acts as a stand in for fucking Adolf Hitler.

Like, you could keep the historical allegory and the historical context and just have it be vaguely referenced. But to interact with that history in such a direct manner, on the side of the oppressor? Without much depiction of the oppressed?

In my opinion, Mr. Haverinen doesn’t really have an excuse for depicting what is essentially Nazi Germany in such a strange way. He didn’t need to make an allegory to Nazi Germany. He didn’t need the game to interact directly with Nazis and their leader. He didn’t need to even depict Nazism to begin with, or have it be such a dominant force in the narrative.

For that reason, it is fucking worthy to critique his authorial choices about a major historical tragedy in a game about tragedy.

Of course, you can say “it’s fictional, people shouldn’t be stupid and believe Nazi Germany was actually like this; there are penis gods, don’t be stupid,” but guess what?? People will be stupid. Fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and though I doubt actual Nazis will come about from Funger, I think Mr. Haverinen isn’t absolved of criticism for portraying Nazi Germany in such a way. It still perpetuates harmful narratives about authoritarianism, minimizes the impact of fascism, and what have you.

We unfortunately exist in a society where people could take away that authoritarianism is maybe cool because you get the internet out of it and maybe sovereigns are trying to help society.

We exist in a society where the portrayal of suffering as perhaps a necessary evil for societal gain is the standard. And for a series that seems to want to say something meaningful in portraying suffering, shouldn’t it aim to critique oppression by sympathizing with the oppressed?

Plus, fuck you if you just tell people not to be stupid and to shut up. That has always been a tactic used by privileged individuals to…talk around the issue. But I’m getting off topic—a rant about alt-right or moralist tactics to end or control a conversation is for another day.

Basically, hey. I care enough about this series to write this critique. I care enough about it that I drew it every day in June, and here I am still thinking about it.

Your art can and will be criticized. This is the right of your audience, and you should listen to their critiques. You should be afraid of potential backlash but people will love your work still despite its grievances. And you should try and do better.

And you should talk about problems in representation. That’s like, how things get better. Be a bitch. Don’t let those with the privilege to ignore continued systemic oppression control the narrative and silence you.

On the subject of Pav, I think he’s…fine? He’s basically Russian, and I think the problems with his characters have more to do with the Bremen Empire being poorly written than his character conceptually. Because I think conceptually, he’s fine—illustrates the cycle of abuse, the trauma of war, whatever, whatever.

tldr; oh yeah, it was not a good representation and we should criticize it.

[hopefull-mindset]

Hello. I had another question. Would you say the way the relationships/interactions are written between the characters in BSD would be considered queerbaiting?

Technically by definition I would personally say yes, however there's usually a negative connotation that comes with queerbaiting that's related to harming the queer community so I was wondering if you had a more nuanced approach to the topic.

Queerbait… ah my worst enemy of a term has struck again. Mind if I add the Queer Coding discussion into this as well? Because when I see one person denounce the idea of Queer Coding in BSD, another person goes “oh yeah, it’s actually Queerbait”. No offense, but nobody knows what they’re talking about with either term and I understand why. I have my hangups about how they've been used and the blur between them causing this confusion.

I didn’t even realize this was something people argued about because I didn’t think there was enough to argue queer intent anywhere. I’m generally used to vague queer representation getting these types of arguments, so I blanked out with confusion.

For those who don’t know, Queerbait is a term coined to refer to marketing strategies that use the “implied” queerness to market their content to an audience who are interested in that to view their content. Of course, they don’t actually follow through on that “promise” for the sake of their viewership not being disturbed. Maybe they'll put some hints in their little show, and then kill them off when the time is ripe.

That’s where most of its negative connotations come from: Taking advantage of a marginalized group’s need for representation to improve their ratings. People use this… very incorrectly, usually when someone is clearly using Queer Coding in their work and get accused of Queerbait when they don’t follow through with an explicit romantic relationship.

Queer Coding is when a creator writes subtextual hints into their writing that a character or relationship is meant to be read as gay to bypass censorship or stigma within the media they’re writing in. Usually with signals that a gay audience can catch onto or romantic references in plain sight. While technically not the greatest example since MDZS is a danmei, the Donghua wasn't exactly allowed to fully present their relationship for what it was. Surprisingly, they added a scene where a move of Wei Wuxian’s colored both his and Lan Wangji’s robes red to resemble Chinese wedding garments.

I only chose that example because I think it's a great representation of details in plain sight. But then there's the other way I've seen Queer Coding get used and that's in queer analysis where we read a narrative or character as gay because of their distinct traits or plotline that resonates with LGBTQ+ audiences. It gets confusing when people use it both ways, but fandom usually uses it the first way.

I'm a bit bitter when I talk about these two terms because of how often the overlap confuses audiences, and god knows how loosely Queer Coding gets used to describe some vague, homoerotic friendship while the other side starts accusing the author of Queerbait. Then you start questioning if the author was really trying to take advantage of the community, wanted to explore sexuality without commitment, or literally didn't realize what they wrote could be interpreted like that because of how it chooses to write intimacy. It gets messy FAST.

Ah, how do I say this… I get the outrage of not having explicit representation more often, but when Queerbait starts getting used to describing the writing itself rather than just the promotional marketing, it starts losing all meaning to me and becomes a scab on my back. It generalizes the intent of the writer and assumes them in this box of malicious motivations. Then there's the whole argument of whether or not real people can “queerbait”, which is also stupid to me.

The examples people bring up don't even hold up (starts using t.A.T.u in your examples for once because… wow) and a majority only apply this to fictional content because of the super-secret rule to Queerbait. Usually, it can't work because then that assumes the sexuality of the person in question and they fully well could just be non-disclosed queer who's exploring their sexuality, but then what makes the writer a problem? What's stopping you from confusing Queer Coding with Queerbait?? It's different when it's obvious that they're using the queer identity for a quick browny point, but Jesus.

The way fandom uses it is not in these really obvious moments, but in ambiguous writing. I don't understand any of this when we start straying into this territory and I'm trying not to get mad when I'm currently talking about this right now. I am already mad, I failed. Maybe it's just a personal feeling, but I really don't like this term for these reasons. It's useful, but kind sucks. I can go on forever about Queerbait and the misusage of it, and even the way I think its used currently is bullshit anyway, but I digress.

Right right, this is about Bungou Stray Dogs. As you could guess from my rant, I don't think Asagiri is queerbaiting us if you mean it in the “queerbait writing” crowd. So what about Studio Bones?

Bones, well… I mean it's really common for animation studios to draw official art like this and since Queerbait is more of a Western concept, this is understood as just fanservice I think. You can technically count this as Queerbait if you'd like, but you should always consider the fact of a different community always having a different relationship with queer concepts.

Studio Bones's official art of Soukoku is hilarious to me. There’s another one promoting some brand and they're at a fountain dating spot. At least these are not as bad as the official art for Mecha animes in the 2000s lololol.

Moving on, the argument for Queer Coding when it comes to Soukoku tends to rely on these arts. I don't recommend doing that because relying on side content that holds no purpose other than to rile up fans doesn't make a strong enough case. Subtext is the most important part to making a point, so if you can't even point in the direction of the main text, then…

Dazai and Chuuya is a bit bottom barrel of what can be considered Queer Coding. I like Soukoku as much as the next guy (maybe not in the same way) and think their relationship is incredibly fun, but one vaguely homoerotic scene in Dead Apple does not convince me anything of the idea they should be seen in a romantic context. Trust me, I've spent a long time back proofing my arguments as to why my long-term OTP should be understood as gay. Soukoku doesn't impress me in these lines of understanding.

I personally think the way some SKK fans approach their relationship from a purely romantic view and are entirely insistent on this one-note understanding of Dazai’s feelings for him ruins most conversation on the topic of Dazai, Chuuya, Age 15, and his inclusion in Stormbringer. They're very important to each other, but some need to step back to appreciate what they have in canon and then apply romance?

I have no idea why people talk as if Dazai joking around and saying “That's what makes me like you” really meant anything. Makes me doubt half the time if it's just people seeing the panel out of content and have never read the actual novel.

Fyodor and Nikolai shippers are like this too. They take the importance they have to one another (at least for Nikolai, idk what Fyodor thinks of him) and then inflate that into just romance. What they have isn't really Queer Coding, it's just fixation that is seen as romantic. They have their official art, but that doesn't mean much since it's anthology art.

Rimbaud and Verlaine hm… sometimes when an author depicts real people who were in a relationship, they avoid that detail by calling them “brotherly”. The relationship of the real authors shouldn't be pointed at as proof at all because the characters are not the people. I would not recommend romanticizing their relationship either since it was um, I don't think chaotic cuts it. The age gap was disastrous, Rimbaud moved in with him and his wife at some point (obviously making the marriage worse), one of them got slapped with a fish, Verlaine tried shooting Rimbaud, etc.

So me saying that there was no Queer Coding shouldn't mean you can't see them as queer, I just mean there's no proof of Asagiri having that intention. That is all. I think Verlaine and Rimbaud had something going on, but that's purely from my own amusement and appeal.

That's my take on that I guess? I don't see it either way. It takes a lot for me to believe there was an intention to write them a certain way. Even if you asked me, “Do you think Akechi and the protagonist from Persona 5 are meant to be gay?” I'd giggle and consider it from what the p5 royal content was like, but I'd tell you no, unfortunately.

[hatosaur]

ep. 8 thoughts here we go. tw for sexual assault obv.

so i liked the episode, but not really as much as the others. compared to the others, i’m closer to lukewarm. the episode felt a bit rushed in the second half, because the first half spent an adequate amount of time setting up david.

i’m gonna talk about david first to get him outta the way.

i liked most of the details they added for him:

the christian thing -- as i was watching, i thought it was a good way to subtly imply the pedo thing without being overt about it. we also never got to see how much power david had in the game, so those beginning moments of the ep where his unequivocable leadership over the group is shown were really good at silently highlighting that. i’ve also seen it pointed out this being the “traditional” and “correct” way to maintain society and yet immediately turning to eating their own kind because of their one leader, versus jackson being communist and thriving because everyone holds the exact same amount of power, is really, really funny.

the subtle emphasis on traditional gender roles -- i don’t really recall him having this in the game but that moment where he insists he’s that one girl’s father because of his role in the town is a really scary prelude to what role he thinks ellie should take up alongside him.

the teacher thing -- much like the christian thing, but something that doesn’t quite hit till later. creeps me out just thinkin about it.

the detail that i didn’t like, which i feel crumples up all this good subtextual writing and throws in it the bin is david’s attempt to rape ellie. in my post about ep. 7, i was HOPING that they wouldn’t be more explicit about david’s...intentions than they already had been; and they did exactly that, but in the smallest way. in the penultimate moment, in the burning diner, david admits he likes “the part where they fight” the most and reaches for his belt. like...i get it. you want it to be clear-clear that he’s a pedophile, that had ellie gotten to the machete a bit later in the game, maybe he would’ve made that intention clear as well, but why go that far narratively? you already have the building blocks for the audience assuming he’s a creep, you even strengthened it in the subtext, so why make him attempt to sexually assault her, in a burning building i might add????

the only saving grace was bella’s acting chops and, of course, when she kills the mf.

i’m not a fan of craig mazin’s reasoning for his changes nor his understanding of the characters, especially in the bts for this ep. his point about david being right about ellie having a “violent heart” is gross, because no, she doesn’t?? she doesn’t have a violent heart anymore than joel does, or maria, or tommy, because they all live in the post-apocalypse. she’s a literal kid trying to survive and maintain the good that she has, why describe her in such a weird way? when she’s quite literally the embodiment of good and hope in the series??? i know more than you, craig. >:///

a change that i did like was the separation between what happened in the burning building and joel finding ellie. because yes, i agree, the whole point of ellie’s section was for her to come out victorious through her own making. that moment where they find each other again, with all the fucked up additions, did feel all the more relieving, i’ll give it that.

that other change where it’s not joel pulling her close, but ellie going in for a much-needed hug, was really good. to me, it works with the build-up of ellie’s reliance on his protection. “if you die, i’m fuckin’ dead out here” & “i can’t fucking do this without you” were building up to this point where she can (non-verbally) say that she needs him.

in the game, it’s more so “she’s finally safe, thank god she’s safe,” which is still good, clearly because it’s one of the best scenes in the game and because we’re in joel’s shoes, but i like that the show’s depiction of them plays into the dynamic of ellie loving joel’s protection and him just being there for her. shit, i like seeing how much ellie loves joel in the show!!! her cuddling up with joel REALLY felt to me like for a moment, she could pretend for a second that he’s more than some guy transporting her across the country, but like maybe a dad? something like a dad? something precious that she wants in her life for a long time??

the game being from joel’s perspective, we don’t get as much on ellie’s feelings, how she comes to love joel, and i really dig that the show is giving us that. like hey, i know she’s a kid and of course, that means she’ll latch on to him faster but maybe it’s a bit more complex than that, who knows.

HEY, SPEAKING OF JOEL: poor guy’s parts of the ep were way too short :( not just in an “i wanna see joel do more sick shit because this is a gameplay section” kinda way, but also in a “hey, you’re rushing the episode” kinda way. i wanted more of him tearing the place apart in search of ellie. the game had it that way to match the chaotic energies that both parties were going through just to get back with each other! but joel’s portions of the ep were lacking and it seemed like the episode needed that boost. in trying to remember what joel was doing in the episode, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t really his torture scene but him ambling about in the snow. not a great thing. give the man more to do, please. i now see what people mean when they say the action has been neutered a bit.

anyway, back to ellie again lol. 

bella was AMAZING in this. they’re so good at acting and acting like ellie that it’s like??? where they born to play ellie???? she killed all the feral moments, the vulnerable moments, the moments where ellie fucks up. the “ellie is the little girl that broke your fucking finger” moment was PHENOMENAL. 

last episode next week. it’s 44 min apparently?? i’m not liking how that looks. if it were up to me, it’d be a two-parter. a bigass slow burn. one episode dedicated to ellie and joel only, expands their growing relationship after winter, lets them be soft, has the giraffe moment, makes things seem okay, then at the end they get found by the fireflies. second starts with the anna flashback and really digs into what’s about to happen, rounding off the theme of getting into the scientific side of the cordyceps in a neat way, then kicks off the end segment of the game.

here’s hoping they nail it.

[freakshowtwopointoh]

Road to Hell - All I've Ever Known Part 5

It was the road to hell

It was hard times

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By the time I made it back to my bedroom, my head was still spinning. It all made sense, and yet didn’t at the same time. But I had gotten my answers, right? Vought wants to control the narrative - of course they wouldn’t want it public knowledge that their superhero serum causes spontaneous heart attacks. If they control Maggie, they can use her device without her research going public. And this way, she becomes good PR for GodU as an added bonus. They didn’t even need to lift her up, just pretend like they discovered her instead of her existing on her own merits. It should have made me feel better - knowing that she wasn’t being artificially boosted in the rankings or whatever. It should have made it easy for me to stop obsessing over Maggie and focus back on my own life.

If I was honest with myself (and I’m usually not), the way she reacted when I brought up Sam changed my mind more than anything she told me in that warehouse. The crack in her facade, a glimmer of truth behind the lies. She’s clearly powerful, and intelligent... Maybe I should be more worried about her being a legitimate rival than a nepotism plant.

But shoulds didn’t matter when she met my eyes across a room - my heart would begin thumping erratically in my chest, and my mouth would go dry. 

We fell into a strange routine, now that we had something of an understanding. She was always awake before me, sitting in the kitchen and sipping coffee when I would come downstairs to go running. We rarely said anything to each other in the mornings, but it was easy. I could feel Maggie let her guard down around me slowly - like the air in the room was getting marginally lighter. We ended up spending most evenings on the porch - she would lay on the couch and read or just scroll on her phone while I smoked. Sometimes we’d talk, but we usually didn’t. 

I started looking forward to it, in spite of myself. Even knowing I had studying or work to do, I didn’t want to give up these few moments of peace that I had managed to carve out in my life. She started bringing songs to share with me. I remember the first time: she seemed kind of nervous that evening, picking at her nails.

Flashback

“What’s up, mouse?” I asked her, flicking my eyes to her briefly before looking back out into the night. It was getting harder and harder not to stare at her - she was absolutely beautiful in the twilight. She still hesitated, chewing her lip for a moment. I almost gave up on getting an answer from her - it was useless trying to pry information out of Maggie, especially like this. But she surprised me.

“I want to play you this song. I think you’ll like it?” She said it like a question, which made me chuckle. 

“Go for it. I’m always down for new music,” I said lightly, trying to ignore the way my heart swooped and twisted at the thought of her thinking of me.

And she was right, I did like the song. And each song she showed me in the following weeks. It was hard to keep her at arms length when she kept seeing right through every wall I put up.

One Saturday morning, I came downstairs to see Maggie looking more tired than normal, staring off into the distance as she stirred her coffee. Without really knowing why, I came up next to her. “Come with me,” I said gruffly, walking towards the door without waiting.

“Where?” She asked, her voice rough with sleep as she stood up.

“Just come.” I said. We walked in silence towards the gym, as I tried to deny the real reason I was doing this. I led Maggie towards the back, into the training room I usually frequent. It isn’t outfitted for powers, but there’s some sandbags and stuff. “Punch something. It might help you sleep.” I said. “S’What I do, anyways.” Then I began my workout, shifting into my smaller form and falling into a rhythm. I put in my headphones but I didn’t listen to any music, listening to Maggie’s rhythm as she began striking the sandbag. Whatever training Park had put her through had worked - she had force behind each strike and an even rhythm. I wondered what it would be like to spar with her - face her in the ring, mind running a mile a minute to out-maneuver her, sweat leaving a soft sheen on her skin, finally pinning her down...

Focus, Li! I thought to myself, starting my workout playlist and putting all my frustration into the sandbag in front of me. I let myself fall into the familiar beat of the music, accented by fists meeting leather. It was easy for me to clear my mind when I trained - sometimes, it was the only thing that could keep me from losing my mind entirely. 

It was raining lightly when we left the gym, an oppressive layer of clouds above our heads foreshadowing a worse storm coming soon. I was hurrying through the rain, trying to keep my hair from being entirely ruined. Having two heads of hair means two sets of curls to keep from frizzing out.

“Wait!” Maggie said, sticking her arm out to stop me, almost clotheslining me. “Careful.” She pointed at the ground, a massive earthworm slithering across my path.

“Did you just stop me... from stepping on a worm?” I asked her, not sure what to make of this. As with most things Maggie does, if I’m honest. But I stepped around the worm anyways, rolling my eyes. 

“When it rains, the worms flee to the pavement. Scientists think it's because the vibrations feel like moles.” She explained, continuing to hop across the sidewalk as if that explained literally anything at all. I hurried to keep up with her, shaking my head in amusement. 

Once inside, I turned to her. “By the way, if you ever need to, uh, train with someone,.” I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly. “No pressure, of course.” I was cringing at myself as I spoke. 

“I’ll probably take you up on that.” She said, surprising me once more. She smiled at me with that crooked grin that made my heart go erratic. I headed up to my bedroom, trying to suppress a smile. I thought back to the time I saw her training earlier this semester. Watching her figure out how her powers work and utilizing them to gain the upper hand reminded me of my own experimentation with shifting mid fight. Yes, it was Brink who first suggested it, but once I was able to analyze the situation on my own and ascertain the right time to shift, it felt like a whole new world opened up. When we’re able to actually understand our powers and the role they play within the entire encounter, the better we’re able to actually use them.

One of the downsides to growing up in a... volatile home is that you become aware of all sounds and what they mean in your spaces. So I had instinctively removed my headphones when I heard the telltale signs of people gathering in the kitchen. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the usual happy sounds of dinner being made. I heard raised voices - Luke, and Maggie? I knew I shouldn’t listen but I found myself straining to hear in spite of myself. 

“God damn it, Maggie, let it go! This isn’t healthy for either of us.” Luke sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him.

“Isn’t healthy? Luke, what if... I just mean,” She didn’t sound angry - she sounded desperate. “He wouldn’t h-”

“Just stop! We just didn’t know him as well as we thought we did. You have to let this go before it eats you alive.”

“This? He’s our brother - our baby brother. If there’s even a tiny chance...” Maggie took a long deep breath, and I could almost hear her jaw tighten as she tried to keep her emotions in check.

“Stop it! You silly little girl! Maggie, grow up, and face reality: he’s gone. Forever.” I heard him storm off, and I sat back in my desk chair, in shock. Luke was always so cheerful, kind, and careful with others' feelings. But the way he was yelling at his own sister, the way he was dismissing her concerns about their brother - someone I know he loved dearly... it was a side of Luke I had never seen before, and I didn’t like it. My heart was pounding in my chest and the memories of my childhood were tainting everything around me. Laying in bed at night, hearing my parents yell about my problems (read: my powers), fighting with each other about how to deal with me. I was frozen, just like back then, unable to do anything but listen and try to understand. Because maybe if I understood what was going on, it wouldn’t scare me so much. It never worked. 

I still went out that evening to meet Maggie on the porch. Like most nights, we didn’t say much. I didn’t comment on the joint she had brought out with her, and she didn’t comment on the tremble in my hands, and neither of us wanted to go back inside. I knew I shouldn’t mention what I overheard, but I had to say something. 

“Listen to this.” I said finally, pulling up Into the Ocean by Blue October and playing it from my phone. It felt strangely vulnerable, playing this song that had been a comfort to me when I felt so alone. It makes me sound like an emo teen, but to be fair, I was one when I found this song. And it made me feel understood for the first time since getting my powers. I hadn’t ever been the one to bring in a song, but since I couldn’t find my own words, I thought someone else’s might help. 

And from the look in Maggie’s eyes, they did.

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edits by @barbieprincesshilton

[fate-motif]

How do I get into Star Trek? I hear so many things about it that sound interesting, but there is just an intimidating amount of content. Do I have to start at the beginning?

i feel kind of bad about leaving this ask hanging, anon, but believe me that i’ve been considering it. i’ve been thinking deeply about a good answer to give you because i love star trek. if you follow me, you know i love star trek and if you don’t i have no idea why you asked me of all people but i need you to know that when someone asks me, hey, how can i get into star trek? i take that question very seriously. and i’m sorry if you wanted a simple order for which to watch properties but star trek’s kind of a hard franchise to get into compared to most. and you’ll find roadblocks that you probably won’t run into for other franchise. so i’m going to describe to you first, a brief overlay of the star trek franchise’s installments, in order of release, and then two (and a half) possible methods to watch them in. i hope this helps and that the length of this post doesn’t intimidate you.

a preface

i will add three initial clauses come with this guide to help you to orient yourself when unsure about what to do in the face of uncertainty.

1. it’s okay if you don’t want to watch something, whether that be an episode or even an entire show. i know there are people who have very strong completionist instincts but i’m going to have to stress here that star trek is a franchise spanning over fifty years. all kinds of production teams have come and gone and released episodes that really run the gamut of quality like you wouldn’t believe. you won’t just find bad episodes, sometimes you will find unbelievably racist or sexist episodes. you will find aesthetic or narrative decisions you heavily disagree with for other reasons, and sometimes if you don’t mesh with something you’re watching, it’s okay to leave it behind. normally you won’t need to be heavily well-versed in the franchise to keep going to the next installment (provided you’ve already somewhat immersed yourself in how the technology and protocol of starfleet) but for a long period of the franchise, the shows were heavily episodic. you’ll recognize the more serialized episodes and shows when you see them but if a specific episode feels outdated and too weird and clearly this one very specific spat about whether riker wants to take up ballet won’t matter later on, you can move on, and in fact you might feel better if you do it instead of punishing yourself by slogging through filler that really isn’t working for you. however, and i have said this before, for a long period of the franchise, the shows were heavily episodic. one of the joys of star trek comes a lot in how a character gets deepened through every silly episode. so while you should feel free to skip an episode if you’re not vibing with it, one way you can try and parse out whether a flimsy and bizarre episode might be worth sticking with is by identifying the characters you like the most and trying to see if this episode develops them in particular. you might be in for a treat!

2. don’t be ashamed to compliment your watch with wikis. that’s how i stopped being a little less intimidated of the breadth of the star trek franchise. i knew what episodes were coming and i could liberally skip those that focused on characters i didn’t really care about or even cut out shows i knew wouldn’t offer a lot to me. granted, my experience has been a little unorthodox but if you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to google it! wikipedia has a very strong set of plot summaries for the shows of star trek up to 2004, the end of the berman era, but for a more fan-focused perspective you might want to rely on memory alpha, a fandom dot com fan wiki focused on the worldbuilding of the star trek universe where you can figure yourself out if you have any questions about what this specific species they just mentioned might mean or if it’s just a passing namedrop to make stuff sound more alien. (memory beta also exists but it’s dedicated to archiving stuff related to secondary canons ie not the shows or movies like videogames, tie-in novels, the now defunct sequel novelverse that was supposed to continue after voyager, etc.)

3. no star trek has been good from the start. it is a common truism among star trek fans (although i have to dispute it in some cases) that the first season of every star trek show is garbage. while it may seen ridiculous to us, who are familiar with streaming services canning shows at the drop of a hat, a lot of these star trek shows got away with entire early seasons of being meh or even terrible without getting cancelled. you might even want to have the plot summaries of the episode from the first two? seasons of a show handy just in case there’s a particularly bad stinker incoming that you might want to avoid at all cost. if you want to, i’ll answer an ask for particularly offensive episodes across the franchise that you might want to avoid, but this ask is going to be long enough with just basic info as to how to get into the franchise, so i’m not going to jump the gun just yet.

PART I: THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE

so let’s start with the order of the films and shows of the star trek universe as they were released. the release order is important because every show is heavily touched by the historical context in which the properties were made in, in both good and bad ways, and the context informs decisions that were taken in them very obviously. (i will also add a small three-letter abbreviation of the title of each show because it’s a common way for fans to get across what specific incarnation they’re talking about without typing the whole thing out.)

star trek (1966-1969) [tos]. this was the original star trek show, now more commonly referred to as “the original series”, hence tos. created by gene rodenberry, it pictures a future in which earth has joined an alliance of planets named the united federation of planets that seems to expand their scientific horizons through their discovery service. it made great strides in its time for advocating for a more sexually liberated society and a more inclusive society for black people and women, even portraying one of the first interracial kisses broadcast in america. however, do note that it’s still a show of its time and it will be apparent in both casual asides from the dialogue and the plot of some of its episodes. but you still might enjoy it due to its extremely 60s campy tone and hey, it didn’t start one of the longest-lived slash pairings in history for nothing (and in fact, invented the term “slash”). just be aware of the underpinnings that a show released in the 1960s might have.

star trek: the animated show (1973-1974) [tas]. after the original star trek show was cancelled, there was an effort to continue the adventures of the main cast introduced in tos in the animated form. tas doesn’t do much that tos doesn’t already do, except that it’s animated during the dark age of animation, and so…you get a really, really goofy sequel series to a show that was already super goofy with mediocre animation and just as mediocre writing. however, a lot of people will swear by it and it has its own silly charms that you can hold on to. most people won’t judge you for skipping it because it’s more than anything, an addendum to tos.

then after around a decade after the cancellation of tas, a series of films were released after much effort to get something off the ground to revive star trek. these are also centered on the characters we met in the original series: star trek: the motion picture (1979), star trek ii: the wrath of khan (1982), star trek iii: the search for spock (1984), star trek iv: the voyager home (1986), star trek v: the final frontier (1989), and star trek vi: the undiscovered country (1991). these take place about a decade or so after the original series and we meet the original crew in higher, more cinematic stakes than in tos. just as well, these movies are not produced in the 60s on a TV budget so you could argue that the original cast really get a chance to shine in these and if you liked the cast but not the production of tos, you might really treasure them. ii to iv are continuing the same plot so you probably can’t skip anything in between if you’re touching that string of movies, but otherwise they are mostly self-contained movies. (god knows no one would fault you for skipping the final frontier).

thankfully, the success of these movies was enough to get a new era of star trek on TV off the ground. the following shows (and accompanying movies) are what we now call the “berman era” of trek, named after the main shared showrunner of the shows that more or less had the baton passed to him after gene rodenberry developed alzheimer’s and then eventually died. (do note even through progress was made between the 60s and the 80s in terms of writing women and people of color, there were still some gaping flaws that a mostly white and male writing and production team couldn’t fully cover from, and as a result if you were hoping for shows far ahead of their time in terms of representation, you might be a little disappointed with the result.)

star trek: the next generation (1987-1994) [tng]. this series takes place almost a century after the adventures of tos, and introduces an entirely new cast on a new flagship continuing the discovery work of the federation. thanks to the time skip between this show and its previous installments you don’t need to have seen much from the tos era to understand what’s going on, but if you’re here from those shows then you’ll have full knowledge of how the federation operates already, with some new technology thrown in that didn’t exist in the tos era. it also establishes a lot of long-running elements of the universe that will be crucial to the understanding of the shows after it, so if you’re not enjoying this one you might want to at least pass over some important episodes or at least read their wikipedia pages or memory alpha plot summaries.

star trek: deep space nine (1993-1999) [ds9]. this series takes place around a year before the end of tng, so you can see that if you want to start this one you might want to at least know what happened on tng. this one takes place on a space station as opposed to a ship, and is much more concerned with morally gray topics about politics and interspecies relations than its predecessors. that’s not to say it doesn’t indulge in occasional lighthearted and out-there scifi episodes but it takes it on itself to ask questions about the seemingly utopian federation and its interactions with other alien societies that don’t share its views. it’s probably both the most interesting and the most watchable for a modern audience because of its observations, but it certainly doesn’t work as well for the audiences that are looking towards star trek for more zany scifi comfort food.

star trek: voyager (1995-2002) [voy]. this one starts midway through ds9, and is probably as condensed as you get in the lore as you get in berman era trek. you kind of need to know a lot about what happens in both tng and ds9 to understand the setup for voy, which is hilarious considering its setup is that the eponymous ship gets yeeted by an extremely powerful alien entity halfway across the galaxy into depths of the mostly uncharted by the federation delta quadrant, so you won’t get that many returning plot elements across its run. it can be heavily divisive based on the quality of its episodes and its intent but it definitely sets itself up in counterpoint to the most cerebral and grave ds9 by returning to the days of purely exploration for the main cast (even if there’s a greater element of danger than in the tos days due to being so far from home). this is the last show in the tng-ds9-voy series, and the century these three shows take place in is commonly referred to as the “tng era”.

throughout the release of ds9 and voy, star trek also released a series of movies that continued the adventures of the cast of tng. these are star trek: generations (1994), star trek: first contact (1996), star trek: insurrection (1998) and star trek: nemesis (2002). these are all standalone movies and if you’ve become a fan of the crew of tng, have at it! i will warn you ahead of time that by the point of first contact there had started to be franchise fatigue. the quality of all these movies except first contact is constantly argued and for good reason, and some jokingly say that star trek: nemesis singlehandedly killed the star trek franchise. but there’s still one more show left from the berman era of trek.

star trek: enterprise (2001-2004) [ent]. this is a prequel series set before the tos days before the birth of the united federation of planets. it’s a complicated show to appreciate due to the serious franchise fatigue that was setting in by the beginning of the 21st century, its aspirations to return to its more utopian days in the franchise and then its efforts to backtrack on that completely when shows like 24 began to make a killing in the market which led to its production team to tackle, incorrectly i might add, the sensitive topics going around by the days of the war on terror. but if you’re already immersed in the universe and if you fall in love with the cast, you might appreciate the worldbuilding it offers in spite of it having all the worst excesses of the berman era section of the franchise. suffice to say that the finale of this series was the most reviled of the franchise and probably to this day.

the franchise then didn’t see any more installments until the reboot movies that brought back star trek to the mainstream. star trek (2009), star trek into darkness (2013) and star trek beyond (2016) center around an alternate universe and an alternate version of the cast of tos. these are way more in line with the modern traditional hollywood blockbuster than any of the previous installments and were famously produced by j.j. abrams, who vocally admitted that he took on the responsibility because this might be the closest he might ever get to making a star wars movie. … anyway, while these movies might rub the wrong way to fans of the old movies (if you came to these movies having seen the franchise that came before you probably won’t enjoy them as much), they’re not technically bad movies though, and star trek beyond is by far the best of them. we’ll come back to them when i talk later about possible ways to get into the franchise.

once again, the success of these new movies revived attention in the star trek universe, and we have now entered the latest chapter of the star trek franchise that is still ongoing to this day. commonly referred to as new trek, the franchise has taken on a somewhat grittier, more action-based tone than what came before and the steps it took to solidify itself have been very hotly contested. that being said, as someone who’s been through the wringer of [gestures upwards vaguely] all of that, i’m going to use my trekkie street cred and still endorse new trek. there have been both reasonable and completely unreasonable criticism to the entries of new trek, but star trek has always been flawed in some way or other but even in new trek i can see the shine that all of us star trek fans see when squinting our eyes through a questionable 60s or 90s episode of a better world. i will say, though, with one exception, i think new trek is probably the worst way to get into star trek just because of how heavy it is with the previously set up worldbuilding. i’ll go into further detail when i describe the possible roads you could get into the franchise but all of these shows are piggybacking off of at least one other show or era and aren’t really made for people who are completely unfamiliar with the universe. but if you’ve made it this far, here’s the rundown for new trek.

star trek discovery (2017-ongoing) [dsc or dis, but more often than not ends up just being abbreviated to disco]. this was the starter of this new era of star trek. it starts a few years before tos and its main characters are heavily ingrained in the stories of the cast of tos, even if they are not original tos cast members themselves. the first two seasons are extremely rocky but ultimately the show makes great efforts to get the shine out of its potential in its latest two seasons. if you feel that it starts off way too tryhard and edgy in an attempt to capture a more mature audience in a franchise that’s never needed to do that, you are not alone, but they eventually recognize this tendency and begin to course correct for mature stories that aren’t trying to shock to get all its worth out of its mature rating.

star trek picard (2019-ongoing) [pic]. this show is set a few decades after the end of voy and is also target of a lot of discourse because it’s also trying to be dark and mature whether or not it’s appropriate for the franchise or for the development of these characters. decisions are made with the characters of this era that a lot of people don’t approve of (myself included). however, if you’re really invested in getting closure out of the cast of tng and you’ve been warned ahead as to the more controversial developments that they take, you might find this show worth a shot. not to show my own colors but i personally steered clear of this one

star trek lower decks (2020-ongoing) [lds or lwd]. this is the first purely comedic star trek show and the first animated entry since tas. it centers on a cast of lowly ranked characters on a ship from a low rung class of ships dedicated to the unstylish duty of second contact. this is the first entry of new trek that warmed up pretty quickly to the fans, and i have to say that this one is probably the most inhospitable to newcomers because it’s all built on the understanding that you know the star trek universe top to bottom. the animation style is contentious, due to it resembling a lot of low-quality adult animated shows, but if you get past it you will be very well entertained, because this show is comfort food for the trekkie, and it has a lot of heart as well, even if the battles aren’t exactly monumental.

star trek prodigy (2021-ongoing) [pro]. this is the first star trek show made to include children new to star trek in the audience, though it’s still highly enjoyable as an adult trekkie as well. the protagonists are refugees from the delta quadrant seeking to find solace in the federation, so you get an outsider’s perspective to the federation while they’re doing so. i’ll talk about this show later on in my potential entries to the franchise but off the bat i’m going to show my colors and say that this is the show with the best original content of the franchise since the start of new trek and a lot of people aren’t giving it its due because of its intended age range, so that’s a massive shame and i hope you don’t pass it over, anon.

star trek: strange new worlds (2022-ongoing) [snw]. thanks to the success of disco, an entire show was greenlit for the continuation of the story of one specific character, captain christopher pike. he’s actually a character introduced in tos, and so this show follows the events under his command previous to tos. it has multiple members from the tos cast like spock, uhura, nurse chapel and m’benga, but it also has new characters and new ideas to complement its tos roots. it has some questionable decisions in its writing that make me averse to it but from what i can tell it’s pretty popular due to the fact that it’s not afraid to get a little weird with it, like a lot of previous star trek shows, and i hope that they continue that tradition for as long as they’re on the air.

PART II: HOW TO GET INTO THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE

now, with all that information on the table, surely that’s the most logical way to get into the franchise? following the order of the release of the shows and movies that make part of the franchise? well, yes, and i’ll elaborate a little later on about that path, but that’s not the only way you can get through it. i have loved ones who couldn’t get into star trek through tos because the 60s production style bounced right off them. i have friends who couldn’t get into properties that don’t have the tos cast because in tng is when the lore starts to compress and become heavier and more important and they just wanted something more casual. so taking into account different sensibilities for eras of TV, the quality of the works involved, and the importance of the lore from its components, i devised two and a half ways to get into star trek that i recommend, and one experiment if you’re brave enough to undertake it. let’s get to it.

the basic tos era block: starting with the original series, then the tos movies, and then following the franchise by order of production. this would be a pretty logical way to go around it, as previously said. the world gets elaborated in the way it was written. i can’t imagine what a shock it would be to try and handle the franchise chronologically in-universe because a show produced in 2017 is a prequel to a show produced in the 1960s and the clashing aesthetics and writing would be very intense. this way, instead, you see the production value increase and the sensibilities change more towards what we have in the present day without being pulled between eras of TV. it also helps that even if you kind of don’t love the original series itself, if you like the cast of characters but not the fact that their stories have to be told in the 1960s, the sequel movies do the characters a lot of justice (up to a point, i mean final frontier exists) so you won’t be frustrated the same way other fans have to be that the limitations of the time the show was produced in completely defined the stories told with the characters. you can even just stay in your tos bubble if you like, you’re still a star trek fan if you just feel attached to the one crew, and it’s fine. but if you started here you are in an optimal position to continue with the rest of the franchise, preferably in the order of production of the shows.

reboot movies as a gateway to the tos era: starting with the reboot movies (star trek, star trek into darkness, and star trek beyond), then watching the original series, the tos movies, then following the franchise by order of production. at the risk of alienating my star trek mutuals, i’m going to say that i think not everyone will just acclimate to the production values of the 1960s so easily. i certainly couldn’t, and if i had been introduced to star trek through tos i don’t think i would have continued through the franchise. i came to the franchise through the reboot movies because it was 2013 and i thought anton yelchin was super cute. be warned if you take this path as a way to familiarize yourself with the tos cast before jumping ship to tos: these movies really are more in line with the sensibilities of a marvel movie than your regular star trek show. i only suggest this shortcut so that you fall in love with the characters and wonder what kinds of other stories they can be in aside from j.j. abrams’ questionable mystery box approach. if you do fall in love with the characters, you could make it to tos and brave through tos or even just part of tos (there’s nothing wrong with skipping episodes if you’re not feeling them!) as it is, the tos cast really get their time to shine in the sequel movies. you will benefit from having seen at least some of the tos episodes before jumping to the movies though. and as i said before, if this is where you want to end your star trek journey, no judgment! i have friends who stopped here and i’m happy for them. but again, if you’ve made it this far maybe you’re wondering where the universe can go from here, even without the tos cast. if you really can’t attach yourself to any of the new characters, however, you might be ready to tackle something like disco or snw which heavily feature or even are led by members of the tos crew, especially since you came here having started through the abrams movies and a little action and questionable modern day blockbuster quality clearly didn’t throw you off.

the basic tng era block: starting with the new generation, then continuing with deep space nine, voyager, and the tng movies, before watching new trek. another perfectly logical starting point is tng because it was meant as a starting point for newcomers of the franchise and doesn’t continue the stories of anyone featured in the franchise before. furthermore, if you want to do the same thing previously mentioned where you just want to focus on the adventures of the tng cast, that might be for you! just note that the tng cast movies have a more mixed reception, to say nothing of picard. if you want a continuation to the stories of the cast of ds9, voy, or even ent you’re fresh outta luck; none of the other shows really focus on the developments in the lives of the cast of these shows. but i will say that the world is far better fleshed out in this part of the franchise than in the rest of it, and new trek is a continuation of what was established here mostly, even if the show is set in the days of tos or thereabout.

however, i need to interrupt this suggestion with one very dire warning: tng s1 is some of the worst star trek ever to be made, and probably some of the worst TV overall. holy shit i cannot stress this enough. it is so bad that even i haven’t seen it, and you will have to ask someone who’s actually seen it ahead of time to tell you what episodes might be worth watching because the hell that is tng s1, hell even some of s2, is no joke and i can’t imagine seeing this as your first star trek ever. abuse the plot summaries heavily in early tng. you will need it to not give up hope on the franchise.

finally i’m going to suggest an experiment to you, but i don’t know whether it will work or not. start with star trek prodigy, then watch tng, ds9 and voy. this is kind of an insane route to take because none of these shows are prequel shows to prodigy (except arguably voyager) but i swear to god that prodigy is modern star trek at its very best and maybe, if prodigy gets to you, you’ll give a shot to the other shows set around its time that established the lore the same way that the reboot movies are a good gateway to the tos era of the franchise (except prodigy is actually good as opposed to the reboot movies).

once you complete either one of these blocks—either basic tos era trek or basic tng era trek—i feel like you’re ready to watch whatever show in whatever order as long as you understand the rough timeline of ent era ➝ tos era ➝ tng era. i honestly made it sound way more complicated than what it’s actually like but i hope this was in any way helpful to you. happy holidays and live long and prosper 🖖

[aemiron-main]

I am not trying to be rude when I say this, but have you considered that a blog asking why people act like Henry did nothing wrong and then saying “oh I hadn’t heard that theory before” when told that people genuinely theorize that Henry is innocent is not a direct personal attack on you or your theories? Maybe taking an offhand statement as a targeted diss at your theories and insisting that you clearly understand their line of work better than they do might be a bit of an overreaction?

Have you considered that the og post literally wasnt asking that and instead was straight up saying that people like me are batshit insane and that a bunch of the TAGS (which is also what my response was replying to) are VERY SPECIFICALLY bashing my analysis/are from people that i’ve had in depth arguments with about this before and that i’ve also seen a bitchy reply from op abt this topic before on another post? If the post was just “i dont understand why people think henry did nothing wrong,” i would have HAPPILY explained without any snark. But that wasn’t the post and that wasnt what was going on in the tags & its disingenuous for you to act like that’s what was happening.

Like, the tags were ABSOLUTELY targeted and specific on that post AND many of them were from people who have SPECIFICALLY gone after me for this before AND op was calling people like me batshit insane AND this is not the first time that i’ve seen comments from op on this subject so my response wasn’t just about That Post.

And I don’t think it’s an overreaction at all. Hell, my film student posting isnt solely directed at that person, its directed at like at least three people all of whom i’ve proven objectively wrong about film production things on different occasions. I DO understand their line of work better than they do. Sorry not sorry. Not my fault they didn’t pay attention in class. Like. I DO understand their line of work better- because I’ve invested a ton of time and effort into researching their line of work & researching the actual production of ST & demonstrating exactly how they don’t understand what’s going on (see: people insisting that the bodies turning into adults during nina is “just adult standin doubles for the kids and you should listen to me because im a film student” but not understanding/knowing that all of the kids have hyperrealistic digital doubles and therefore zero need for adult standins.) and hell, even more technical production stuff aside, film students who cant grasp the most basic narrative themes/ideas of st (such as Children Arent Born Evil) should maybe consider a different line of work.

And like also nobody has to care about the henry stuff but to be a film student and COMPLETELY write off looking at an entire section of a show just because you’ve already decided he’s inherently evil? Why are you studying film!!! Why are you studying film if you don’t care about analyzing film & figuring out what goes into it and how it works!!! Why are you going to film school and then coming into my notifs claiming that the camera work/shot choices “arent that deep,” but having zero evidence to back that up???? Why are you studying film if you don’t care about these things?????? Why are you studying film if you cant be assed to look beneath the surface of a piece of media??? And having a film degree/being a film student/“being in this line of work” does not automatically make you correct. Which is my whole point.

Film students are constantly wrong on this website. And it’s because they rely on “well im a film student”/their own Limited Personal Experience as evidence instead of actually looking at the show/analyzing the piece of media/pulling evidence from the show.

And also, considering that I’ve had to explain what the word subtext means and how it’s applied in media to film students on here and how its different from allegory & how we can tell the difference, i feel like i’m not overreacting to say that I understand their line of work better than them when they don’t even seem to understand the most basic storytelling concepts/literary devices & how they’re applied in film. Sorry not sorry. Hell, I’d probably GO to film school if I had access to the funding AND if we werent still in a pandemic right now (i currently live and work very isolated and rurally & still take covid extremely seriously). Which is also part of why it’s frustrating to see people wasting that opportunity because they’re so dead set on Always Being Right Even Though They’re Not Right/Always Needing To Disagree With Me.

I hope that clears things up. It was never just about That One Single Post.