#writing this made me realize that having inconsistent love in my life is exactly what my test is

[heavierthanlaila]

today is just one of those days where waiting sets very heavily on top of your shoulders that it almsot breaks your bones. patience is a 1000 degress firey monster that can melt your flesh away in a second. you feel like you've overstayed your welcome in your family's house and your free trial is over and is now the time to pay your overdue rent. their love will no longer be for free. whatever friends you have left are distracted living their own lives cherishing their own separate friends and can't find the time to include you. yet you can't blame anyone because it's your time to be tested. it's your time to be stripped away of whatever little support system you have to see if you're a true believer on your own or is it only a group project sort of thing. but you know it's not easy and loneliness is a big fat bitch that sits on your neck almost crushing your wind pipe.

[ph4os]

So... this is a serious post which however may touch the sensitivity of many people, which is why, before reading, I warn you that I will talk about feminicide, harassment and stalking. I also put a divider right under these warnings to prevent someone who hasn't read this first part from reading something and feeling triggered while scrolling.

Today in Italy, after exactly a week, the body of a girl who disappeared together with her ex was finally found. The killer's lawyer (that's still at large, supposedly in AUSTRIA) said that this murder was not premeditated, that he loved her because "he always made biscuits for her". [Do you know where the fuck you can put those shitty biscuits? I'll tell you, up your ass.] The truth was that he didn't love her, he was obsessed with her. He was jealous of her. He was jealous of the fact that yesterday she would graduate while he didn't, he was out of class and would probably never get the degree. He was jealous that she was able to make a life without him. The killer's acquaintances, his family, are filling the newspapers saying that he was a very good boy. Now I have to ask myself something: men always justify themselves by saying "not all men" that "men who do these things stand out, you can see when a man is dangerous". So why, every time something like this happens, the people around the killer always say that he was a "good guy, polite and with sound principles"? Do you realize the bullshit you're talking about? Do you see the inconsistencies or am I the crazy one? You know what else is absurd? The fact that the media continues to use photos of the two of them together, from when they were engaged. It's crazy that they refer to him as her ex. He's not her ex. He is her killer. He is a MURDERER, a fugitive, an outlaw. NOT. HER. EX. It's a horrible thing to say, but part of me wants him to kill himself too, because people like that don't deserve to be in the world and I know for a fact that if they ever catch him, he'll be out of prison after a couple of years for good conduct and, consequently, Giulia will never have the justice she deserves.

Three hours after this news another very similar one arrived: another woman, a nurse, was shot by her husband who was jealous because she was very good at her job and very well liked by patients.

It's not normal. It's not normal that I was molested by an eighteen year old boy wen I was in eighth grade. It's not normal that he stalked me for 2 years. It's not normal that if Covid hadn't divided us I probably wouldn't be here writing now. It is not normal that I should be afraid to go out in my city for fear of die like one of these poor women. It's not normal that my best friend, even though she's never been harassed, is still afraid to go on date a with a guy without first sending me her real-time location. It's not normal that I have to stay awake until she texts me that she's back home safe. It's not normal for both me and her to have a ready message to send to each other's parents in case one of us stops responding during a date with a man or goes out alone at night. It is not normal that none of the men I follow have never posted even a story for the International Day for Elimination of violence against women or even a message of condolence for the families of today's victims. It's not normal for me to have to fear for my safety every time I set foot outside the house.

It's not normal. I'm tired and scared of this world. I just want this to end.

"Not all men", but all women.

[caelumsnuff]

What keeps you here (listening to Redacted, slightly engaging with fandom, writing for it)? I don’t mean that in the annoying ‘omg why are you here if you’re gonna complain’ way. As I think it’s heathy for a fandom to discuss what could be better about their fandom space and what works and doesn’t work for them in the media they’re consuming (and even as someone who enjoys 99% of this place, this fandom’s ‘don’t even say that you don’t like a thing’ is unlike any fandom I’ve ever been in, big or small).

I’m asking ‘cause I’ve been listening to Redacted since 2021 and it became a fixation, but recently I feel it fading a lot (I don’t find the narratives as compelling anymore with Quinn and Avior being the recent ones, HBS was just okay even tho nothing quality wise changed to me, even my enjoyment of the podcast has waned (and I listen to a ton of podcasts of all types so that should have been the one thing that stayed lol, but they are inconsistent then come back and talk about Pokémon Go only for 70% of the episode every episode lol so I think that’s what’s not helping).

So what brought you here and what keeps you here now? What do you think will keep you engaging with his work? What do you think will (or could be) what makes you step away (whether abruptly or gradually)? (Sorry for all the questions. I’m curious. Hope you have a lovely day!)

Thank you for the ask! I know this is long and a little word soupy perhaps, but i hope you can glean some coherent meaning from it.

Under the cut bc long.

I've been here since very very very early in the channel. Like...... 2020 early. I was getting back into listening to rp asmr after having a small interest in it a few years earlier, and i came across redacted, a lil baby VA. Redacted had some unique qualities in the rp asmr scene, and if we're being honest he still does.

My brain kinda decided to hyperfixate on Redacted, i think because he had plot heavy audios and that wasnt super common in this genre of rp. And in the beginning, the plots were actually decently good in terms of writing and whatnot.

At some point along the way, that fixation became something of a special interest eventually. Probably sometime around early 2022 when i decided to join the discord to finally see some fanart and maybe make friends with people in this fandom. That kinda sent me down the rabbit hole of realizing "oh shit yeah these people have wildly different interpretations of these audios", which started to irritate me in regards to a certain magical therapist and i ended up writing a fanfic about it after being afraid to write for literally most of my life. I got very mixed responses, but some people were really kind and expressed gratitude for my writing and that made me actually want to be a part of this fandom, even if i stay in my own little corner. After that point i started to engage with the content far more critically, and decided that i care about his videos too much to not talk about them and critique them.

I can't really tell you why i stay here, not exactly at least. I think plot-wise the videos have declined in quality greatly, which i started paying attention to. I have been known to enjoy bad media. Like a lot. I watched all of Voltron, all of Vampire Diaries, 13/15 seasons of Supernatural, the Twilight movies, and i fucking enjoyed them. Im just a fan of shit media. Its really fun to critique as well! But like..... I don't think Erik is an all around shit writer, i think he's really good at some things. Character building (the base of a character at least), universe building (for the most part), and the line writing is really good actually, i enjoy them. And i think that he's decent when writing darker content and plotlines, look at the Adam plotline, the Ivan plotline, Imperium AU etc. So i guess the answer is i enjoy critically engaging with it and actively critiquing the art, as well as being attached to the characters and the universe. I have kinda yoinked the characters and they are now my little barbie dolls to play with.

Tbh i ignore most of the fandom bc i just..... simply do not care what people i dont know think about me. I think that majority of this fandom has demonstrated not just a lack of critical thinking skills, comprehension of fandom etiquette, and media comprehension skills, but also a lack of basic human decency and kindness. I do not care what people like that think of me. I know who i am, my loved ones know who i am, and im not gonna let children on the internet stop me from making the art i enjoy.

I take breaks from listening to videos every once in a while (like 2 months at the beginning of this year), but i always end up coming back. I guess im curious as to where this all is going, and i really really do want to see this man get better at writing which..... hasnt happened yet but i guess im patient enough to wait lol. I think he hit a new low recently though. I think the Quinn storyline is the first time that the bad writing actually made me like... angry. Like i was MAD, like shaking laughing in my bed mad. It took me an hour to cool down like what the fuck was that man 😭 If i think about it too hard ill get all riled up again.

I.... don't know what would make me step away tbh. Idk what that would take, but i guess it'd have to be worse than the Quinn arc, which is setting a pretty high bar.

So yeah i think i stay here because i love the characters (or the ideas of them), as well as the universe, and i think writing fics for them is really good practice for me. There's also some very sweet people in this fandom who have been nothing but kind and encouraging to me, and i do not want to let these interactions i have with you guys fizzle out just yet. I may not know yall or directly interact with yall a lot, but i really do love you guys in this little corner of the fandom ive carved out.

[theindiscreetbookworm]

I've had anxiety since before I knew what that was (and it was the 90s so a quiet and careful child was a good child, never mind the reason). I fell in love with stories as a way to escape, at first. I think I probably dissociated for a bunch of my childhood and adolescence.

Stories were my favourite way to experience emotions. When I figured out what being a fan of something was (far later than you'd think), I dove in head first and didn't look back. There's probably more than a decade of evidence of that right here.

Stories climbed into my chest and ached in the most beautiful, wonderful way. Somewhere along the way, though, the edges of the stories got sharper, or maybe the cavity inside my chest got smaller. It started hurting in a bad way, made my head swim and made me dizzy and sick. I started collecting scars, from breakups and failures and letdowns, and they made me afraid to care too much.

2017 may have been the real juncture, although I can't be sure. I used to spend all my time on tumblr and I stopped, really slowly, but surely. I stopped engaging with media I was really interested in; I never watched a bunch of shows that I know I would've liked. I retreated to podcasts and YouTube, and things that were interesting but not fascinating. (Nothing wrong with podcasts and YouTube, I still like them!)

I've been in therapy a long time, the better part of the last decade. It's been great. I've been with my current therapist for 5 years and learned more in long form therapy than I ever thought possible. We got me out of my head, where my anxiety has always lived. (I say that, but I'm still in my head, just less than I was.) I was on the verge of "graduating" therapy. And then new physical symptoms cropped up.

I couldn't breathe. At first, whenever I was a bit anxious. It started happening more and more, culminating in a 10 day period where I couldn't draw a full breath at all. I went to my doctor. Chest x-ray came back clean, as did blood work. We concluded that it must be my anxiety.

I've been afraid of meds for a long time. I can't articulate why exactly very well, but I'm afraid of losing my control of my own body and mind. Of feeling a way I don't want to and not being able to do anything about it. (I am aware of the inconsistencies of that and having a mental illness, yes.) But I didn't know what else to do.

Long story short, I got a psychiatrist for the first time in my life, brand new meds, and a trial period. It's not even a month in, and changes have been gradual. Until I watched Our Flag Means Death.

I'm sure it could've been anything. There's a miles long backlog of shows I will love that I couldn't bear to care about. But I picked OFMD. Watched it in two sessions, the first 4 episodes and then, a week and a half later, the other 6. And my blood is alight.

I thought I'd lost this feeling for good. I want to write, and read (stopped reading books and fanfic too when everything else stopped). I want to engage and ponder and yell all of it from the rooftops. I want to love OFMD, and everything, openly and unabashedly. I care so goddamn much. And it aches. And it feels incredible.

I'm not afraid anymore, of almost anything. I hadn't realized that had happened. This seems small and silly but it feels like my life has been changed. I feel like I've fallen in love. I'm not gonna say I didn't know how bad it had gotten, because I did on some level. I just thought those feelings were over for me. Therapy took away the terror I lived in every day. But I think medication has given me the light back.

[atimetoteardownandatimetobuildup]

history and me

tw: mention of suicide

I know this is kind of a writing dump, but you probably are wondering, "how can you reconcile being queer and Catholic when the doctrine doesn't like you?"

Well, here's how. It involves the Bible, my own self-discovery, a history lesson, and a few quiet conclusions I made.

Most of the Church doctrine surrounding LGBTQIA+ people stems from the Pope St. JPII (John Paul II, for those not exactly in the know) era, and some of it from the Theology of the Body. This was during the 1960s through either 1980s of 1990s (I don't remember and don't have the energy to look this up). This was also an era where the Church politics were very "in this world but not of it" and things were also changing quickly. I don't know if this was what was going on, but the actual doctrines seem kind of reactionary, if that makes sense? The "traditional family" is very Eurocentric, especially when, around the world, so many other types of families are traditional? "But they're not Christian!" I know. I'm just acknowledging that Christianity is not the only religion in the world. And even in predominantly Christian areas, there are... um, how do I put this without offending the trads?... questionably gay traditions? For example, in Poland, where a lot of my family is from, it's completely socially acceptable for two women to dance together (with quite a few traditional dances). "their husbands aren't there" HAVE YOU CONSIDERED LESBIANS, SHARON? Also those outfits are really pretty and I want to make one, but it would sacrifice my hands and potentially a sewing machine forever. But that's another story.

Another thing that came out of this era was the consistent ethic of life. Which, personally, I have a couple of issues with. For one, life is really inconsistent, and while I agree with the sentiment behind the doctrine, it has issues. Which is another post. And yes, this matters. Because queer people have a higher suicide rate than straight people. And having to fit into a standard that doesn't fit you and in some cases, suffer under an identity that isn't yours, is REALLY depressing.

This is the first question I pose: how could you live with yourself if your words were what drove someone to commit suicide? Would that be considered killing them?

And this is my first answer: I couldn't live with myself knowing that anyone killed themselves because of my words, especially not my friends. And I would drive myself to Confession as fast as possible.

I realized that around seventh grade, and I had a slight crisis of faith. My faith recovered, and a seed was planted: was I straight? Keep in mind, my autistic self did not know what social norms were and had no concept of a crush and was terrible at recognizing flirting. Around this time, I realized what sex was and had the greatest "NOPE" reaction in the history of my family. I really should have put two and two together that point, but I didn't know anything about the queer community at the time.

Around the end of my freshman year of high school, I learned about asexuality. I had a lot of stuff to work through, but I remember thinking that it fit. I think I had this progression: straight -> alloace -> aroallo -> the weird denial/amnesia phase where I thought I was straight -> allodemisexual -> aroflux demisexual? -> aroflux? ace -> fork it, I give up trying to figure out what the romantic attraction is, aroace. -> wait, girls are cool? aroace -> sapphic aroace -> aroace lesbian/possibly bi but it's mostly girls tbh -> once again questioning the aromantic part of it -> HOLD UP SOMETHING IS HAPPENING WITH GENDER CIS PEOPLE HAVE STRONGER ATTRACTIONS TO THE WORDS THEY USE TO DESCRIBE THEMSELVES THAT I DON'T HAVE OH [BLEEP] HERE WE GO AGAIN -> something on the multigender spectrum, maybe agender but I Know There's Gender There

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Well, if my neighbor isn't straight, I'm going to accept them. Because I accepted myself. I may have trauma. I may have issues with my self-image. But I will not give up.

TL;DR: Last I checked, God wouldn't want me hating myself forever.

[humble-althemist]

Yes! Exactly! To me the fact that Iorveth gives Yaevinn that nuanced of a description always felt like about as close to praise as he would’ve been likely to give another Scoia’tael who had such vastly different views and approaches to the cause of freedom. It’s easy to see in real life activist/politically active circles how often times the people who want the most similar outcomes can often wind up the most vehemently annoyed by each other if they think they’re going about the thing wrong. So that level of respect always fascinated me and really made me want to see the reverse, hear Yaevinn’s thoughts on Iorveth.

God, I so want to dig into their history together now in a way that’s only been vaguely in the back of my mind for ages. Cause you’re right there’s so much wide open territory for speculation around the few facts we do have. I agree that Yaevinn feels older to me, whether he was being coy about being there for Aelirenn’s rebellion because he was there, or because he’s just a little shit who likes egging Geralt on and making him think he’s more mysterious than he actually is (both being readings I just about equally love). But yeah, that then makes his small role in the Vrihedd Brigade very curious. Agh I need to get on my book reread now, although I know it will illuminate little haha

And yess, absolutely. Iorveth is suchh a hypocrite (affectionate). I think that’s part of why the “sharing dreams” line strikes me so much as a double entendre. Because Iorveth is clearly very capable of having lofty dreams, so the fact that he wasn’t able to join in Yaevinn’s feels more like a “I wasn’t into him quite like he was into me/like he wanted” or a “we weren’t good for each other” kind of thing to me. Which can also be interpreted in a more non-romantic way, too.

But yeah Iorveth being such a clear hypocrite is part of the reason I think he gels so well with Geralt as a character haha

As the center of a story that is constantly and repeatedly about wanting to be neutral and saying he’s neutral and doesn’t give a shit, and then whoopsie giving soo much of a shit and winding up taking sides whether he means to or not, Iorveth is not so much a foil as just like… Elf Geralt. They are both very passionate yet very stoic, both not at all comfortable with the political scheming side of things, but pretty capable of it when pressed.

Which, as an aside, I’m realizing now is also a characterization I like to sprinkle into Yaevinn too, when writing geralt/yaevinn stuff. Not quite to their level, but just in the sense that he’s a very old elf who’s taken very seriously by a lot of his peers, and has worked hard to make it so, so kindling such a bantery/antagonistic friendship with Geralt gives him a chance to get kind of called on things that he normally doesn’t? Lets him realize little inconsistencies in his worldview or whatever that no proud Scoia’tael would’ve ever called him on or even probably noticed, cause they’re right there with him. Part of the intellectual tet-à-tet that makes their dynamic work so well — Geralt getting a lil bit of a speedrun on some character building shit that happened over the course of the books that he no longer has since losing his memory of those events, having to rethink some shit, but keeping up well enough that he’s able to make Yaevinn see some things from new perspectives too.

But back to Iorveth and Yaevinn, I definitely get the impression that Iorveth is half reassuring himself that he’s being fully logical and practical about this whole thing, when he calls Yaevinn’s failed dreams idealistic. And with their histories, it almost makes me think that perhaps part of why they are the way they are by the time we meet them in the games is because of what happened with the Vrihedd Brigade and Dol Blathanna. Yaevinn believed it could work, and when it didn’t it shook his faith in the dream entirely. Made him, at least for now, for the next couple decades maybe (because I imagine with lives on timescales that long, character growth is much more of an ebbing and flowing or circular sort of thing than we usually think of it as, but that’s a whole other talk lol), into a much more practical and present-focused leader. Meanwhile Iorveth, who at least now looking back thinks Dol Blathanna was never going to work out the way it was promised (and I’m fairly comfortable believing that he had his doubts even while fighting for it. sometimes the vibe is just off but you stick with it cause fighting alongside your fellow elves is better than doing nothing), made him that much more susceptible to falling for exactly the kind of messaging that didn’t take him in before because it didn’t take him in before. Because Francesca’s brand of charisma didn’t really speak to him maybe, but Saskia’s does. Or maybe just because the timing is right, and he’s had enough successes lately, made enough human enemies, that he’s starting to think maybe he can do this damn thing.

But agh, you’re right it’s so fun to tug at all the strings of insinuation and possibility and character and theme that all the little crumbs we get for both these characters, across and between various canons, whether carefully picking and choosing between contradictory bits, or explaining contradictions with further lore of our own. An absolute joy, and one that it’s so weirdly rare to find people to gush with about. Like on the one hand I get it, no one should play witcher 1, I have it permanently installed on my computer but that’s because I’m an absolute madman with no self respect, but agh the fandom is much poorer for the lack of Yaevinn in it imho. The contrast between him and Iorveth deepens them both in such endlessly delicious and fascinating ways.

@humble-althemist Thank you for the delightful tags on the post about Yaevinn and Iorveth, I hope you don't mind me addressing them, but it's really just so interesting and engaging to me!! I was equally taken with Yaevinn and Geralt, but Yaevinn and Iorveth are also an interesting pair, I find, despite the fact that they never actually interact on screen. The subtext, though brief, is there, and it’s so very compelling to me. There was a relationship of some kind there, that much can be said for sure. No matter whether or not one takes it as romantic and/or sexual, I think it has to be accepted that there is at least respect and likely some degree of fondness there. Iorveth isn’t the type to mince words when he’s not fond of someone, as can be evidenced in some of his dialogues, but he’s actually quite careful with his word choice about Yaevinn, it would seem. He uses the descriptor “unrealistic”, yes, but it’s not for Yaevinn himself, and he never attacks Yaevinn directly with his criticism. He says that Yaevinn had beautiful dreams and just reasons, and that those reasons were as unrealistic as they were just. It is the world who has no place for this beautiful dreamer, not Iorveth who cannot accept him. Iorveth is in agreement with him, even, he just thinks that Yaevinn could not have rightly expected to fulfil these dreams of his.

There isn’t ever really any more contextualisation of the nature of the relationship that occurred between Yaevinn and Iorveth in the text of the games, just more subtext with which to play. Yaevinn is well-known enough a commander among the Scoia’tael to be deemed “legendary” in his citation in TW3, but he wasn’t a Vrihedd commander, Iorveth was. Additionally, while there are no canon ages given for either of them, it seems likely to me that Yaevinn is the elder of the two; I don’t remember if he confirms that he took part in Aelirenn’s rebellion, but I seem to have a memory of at least the implication of it when he tells Geralt of Aelirenn in the bank robbery sequence, which would put him at least over two hundred years old, with the specifics beyond that getting a little hazy, while Iorveth has been fighting humans for, I believe depending on the dialogue in TW2, either a century or over a century, so he is over a hundred for certain, and beyond that, the specific detail is unsure. Older and potentially more experienced in command, and yet he would have been Iorveth’s subordinate in the Vrihedd Brigade. Did they work closely at all? Did they know each other prior to this? How did they see each other? Yaevinn before his desperate attack at Vizima, Iorveth before he lost his eye, they’d be in quite different positions in the era of the Vrihedd Brigade, which is the last point that can be said for sure that they were both present.

 It’s hard to say with so little evidence to work with, how things were for them. I’m very partial to queer readings of both Yaevinn and Iorveth, and the potential for a relationship there is interesting, but it’s also very interesting to consider it as impartial or platonic, a political relationship, perhaps commander and advisor. There’s so little to be known for sure that one can just run wild with extrapolation.

And, well, with this bit of dialogue that is being examined, there’s some interesting material to work with for both of their characters. I really really like this point, it’s very compelling to me, because it’s absolutely right, it may be dialogue about Yaevinn but it is also very strong characterisation for Iorveth

And one of my favourite things about Iorveth is that he's a bit of a hypocrite? I say this with the utmost fondness, but there are a few different instances I could look at.

Yaevinn is unrealistic for considering combat and killing to be poetry, and Iorveth considers himself wholly logical and correct to take the very poetic stance that war is prose with no place for beauty.

Or like how he says to Geralt that the reason he's pursuing Roche so fervently is because he's going after the first commanders of the anti-elven special forces units across the north – in his own words, "Of the commanders first appointed to such units, he's the only one still alive”, but also in his own words, “"The Temerian Special Forces, created by Foltest to combat the Scoia'tael after the first war with Nilfgaard”, and "Vernon Roche! Special Forces Commander for the last four years". No matter whether one takes the book timeline or the modified timeline established in TW1 (the Battle of Brenna therefore being placed in 1265), Roche having been Special Forces Commander for the "last four years" would place him as making command rank in 1268 if Iorveth includes the current year in his count, and at the earliest 1267 if Iorveth does not include the current year, which is in both cases places him after or at least during the second war with Nilfgaard, which makes his point of referral very odd unless Roche is not the first commander after all.

Or how “our women are prepared to die” when he doesn’t want to risk turning back during the escape on the prison barge and risk the lives of the collective for a few, but what leads him to challenge his alliance with Letho and ultimately to capture the prison barge is Geralt referring to his right-hand man; in that moment of challenge, he risks it all for Ciaran’s sake, on Ciaran’s say-so.

Or how he insists Saskia is “different”, that she’s special, but she is not only the same as the others, her broad strokes are pretty well exactly the same as the one who came before her – a personally powerful but politically disadvantaged queen who had the Scoia’tael fight and die for her victory, and when she claimed the valley, she cast them aside. While there is certainly more nuance to each situation, it pretty neatly parallels with what Iorveth describes as having happened with Francesca Findabair and the Vrihedd Brigade when Saskia disparages Iorveth and his Scoia’tael as murderers and terrorists after they’re the ones who won the valley for her, fought and died in her name.

That’s his idealism speaking, the whole entanglement with Saskia is idealism – the fact that he is responsible for the tales of Saskia the Dragonslayer? He told the whole world of the woman that he loved, whether it was a romantic love or a platonic sort of adoration, and that love raised an army, it’s idealism in action, and it’s a powerful idealism. While it can certainly be said that allying oneself to a dragon is a good idea, that's not the source of Iorveth's attachment, it's evident in the way he speaks of her that it's more than that. It sort of begs the question that if Iorveth can do so much on his own, what could he have done if he had shared in Yaevinn’s dreams? If they’d been united, rather than apart?

(As an aside, it’s kind of funny to hold them in juxtaposition like this because, like, Iorveth is the one who gets called a terrorist for ultimately having a regimented and orderly combat with another military force, and Yaevinn is commemorated as a “legendary Scoia’tael commander” rather than a terrorist when he’s the one who basically burnt a city to the ground.)

But nevertheless, Iorveth’s perceived hypocrisy over the notion of idealism is also very interesting as far as his characterisation goes, because the point of the matter is determining what, exactly, is truthful and intentional. He expresses a pretty clear stance on most matters in which he opines, but he must be therefore scrutinised for these stances. As I can see it, the likely possibilities are that he is actually being hypocritical and contradicting himself, that he is lying to others to make a certain impression, or that he is lying to himself.

To apply this to the quandary of Yaevinn and these beautiful dreams, Iorveth might perhaps contradict himself because he wants to decry the perceived lack of realism behind Yaevinn’s reasoning despite being equally fanciful in his endeavours for Saskia. He might also perhaps lie about his stance to make himself seem more eminently practical and capable in front of an ally like Geralt; he isn’t chasing a dream, he has plans and strategies and resources, he has the tools for success. He might also state this aloud as though to affirm it to himself – Yaevinn was a dreamer, and had grandiose visions of a better future and all the right reasons behind him, but Yaevinn failed, and Iorveth is too practical and grounded to fall prey to the same fate.He wants to believe this, he needs to believe this, he cannot fail, and so he affirms it to someone else, as though that might make it real. 

It’s interesting to take this interpretation and juxtapose it with Yaevinn’s apparent disillusionment in TW1, the ways in which they react when the pressure is on. Yaevinn, who is just so tired of the fighting but pushing on anyway and ensuring that every necessary step is taken, to the point of being curt with his friends and companions, like his rather terse letter to Golan Vivaldi, cuts out the idealism of a free nation of elves or a future in which humans are driven into the sea and settles for simply clawing out some modicum of progress for the remaining generations, some small respect or accommodation or freedom hard-won from the humans. Iorveth, on the contrary, leans in more heavily to this idealism, to the idea that Saskia is their best and greatest hope for freedom in the north, that she will win, that she will make things better, she must, she simply has to, because otherwise Iorveth has staked his hopes on her for nothing. And it's also very interesting to have Geralt kind of mired in the centre of all this, an ally and object of affection for both of them, faced with their bravado and cynicism and idealism, as muted or misguided as it may end up being. Geralt is there, Geralt takes part in the battles, Geralt is asked to share in the beautiful dreams.

There's so much more that one could examine even just relating to this little sample, especially if one traverses adaptations and references multiple canons -- Yaevinn's book characterisation versus his game characterisation, for instance, or what Iorveth in the games borrows from Isengrim as a character and how that influences his structure as a character, the inclusion of other characters, like Toruviel, who is linked to Yaevinn and his long-standing rebellion, or Ciaran, the loyal adjutant at Iorveth's side, and what their interpersonal relationships mean to them in the context of their ideals and their motivations for continuing their battle against the oppressive humans. Something I find really intriguing in the context of this matter is the notion that Yaevinn expresses in TW1 that he did once live among humans for a time, and that also shaped his views of humanity and the rebellion, while Iorveth does not seem to have had that experience of intermingling. This is such a small little passage of dialogue and I really think about it a lot. There’s so much that can be extrapolated from so little.

[blinday]

I'm done with it. I shall criticize my favourite silly little comic because this is my life now, I suppose. No good criticism? I shall do it. And build another tag because the an.ti.l.o are so fucking annoying and childish (yeah let's call someone a bitch because she was 'agressive' in their response to a post). So, this must be a safe space for anyone who wants to actually criticize, comment or analyse this cute comic we love.

I'll start telling my experience and then applying what I know it was not done in an ideal way. In the beginning, i thought it would be very silly and boring, but boy, was I wrong. I mean, it is silly, but SO cute and entertaining! The art style is so charming. I am a very scrupulous artist, following the anatomical rules as much as possible even in stick doodles, so how freeing it was to meet an art style that literally threw that out of the window. It shows what's happening in a non realism way and passes the emotions of both characters and author. (The horniness of some moments lmaooooo). It made me connect in such a wonderful way, and I felt so intensely for each character! It's kind of a new feeling for me.

It's not perfect, of course, as I will explain.

The narrative structure doesn't exactly follow a line of thought, wich gives off some pacing inconsistensies. I for one can never really tell how much time has passed from event to event. Some people say Hades and Perse didn't know each other for more than 2 months, others claim it was close to a year, so the fandom is also very divided in this aspect.

Some characters are stabilished in a way and then act incoherent. Yeah, it deepens the character, but what I'm trying to say is, if your character has shown to have [this] behaviour, and react in a way to some situations, it will be weird if they betray this patters without explanation. Like Eros, who is shown multiple times having a great emotional maturity, and then leaves with no questions asked because he was spooked by Psyche, and then went on a rampage because of that. Wtf was that Eros, how am I supposed to poor meow meow you if you HISS AT PEOPLE!!!

Jokes aside, it was pretty weird, and I don't blame Aphrodite for hiding Psyche from him after that tantrum.

Apollo is another one. When he was first introduced he was your typical jock who isn't used to girls not wanting him and finding a quest on Perse. But suddently he is not only a psycho, but also an emotional abuser and rapist. I think it would've been way less uncanny if the change was slow and gradual, because in the same chapter he assaults Persephone he had previously stabilished good terms and accepted how she felt about him. Yeah, a person can hide their true nature, but that's not how it's done. Anyways he is a bastard and I hate him. Terribly written, yes, but a bastard nonetheless.

It also bugs me how some things are completely brushed aside and then treated as a mere trivialty when the writers remember it was there in the first place. Like the photographer incident with Hades pulling his eye off. He took SO LONG to do that, and it served no narrative purpose other than make him look badass. And then, back into character inconsistensies, Hades basically changes and this aspect of his personality is forever forgotten. It was probably because Rachel wanted to make him look cool and badass but then realized that it wouldn't be coherent to have him be both cruel and a blue cinnamon roll.

Another inconsistency is Persephone's relationship with her classmates and her grades. The writing goes back and forth with Persephone's priority list because sometimes grades are everything, and others she isn't even enjoying the college. After the rumor about Hades' violence on Perse's classmates EVERYONE stops talking to her? You telling me this pink sugar cube couldn't make better ties with ANYONE in that damn campus? I no believe no.

Artemis is constantly changing from badass huntress who can read others and deduction genius to dumbass who can't read the room, and it's frustrating because she is my favourite character. She's kinda dumber in latter chapters. Still my favourite tho.

I have more, but I think it's enough for a tag-building post. I hope you like it, and please, remember: just because I criticize, it doesn't mean I hate the comic. We can recognize both flaws and strongs in a piece and still love it.

Keep respectful and healthy, okay? It's safe, and every opinion is just that: an opinion, can't hurt anyone. I'll try to analyse characters next time. Any ideas on who?

[scorpionyx9621]

Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

[d-criss-news]

20 Questions With Darren Criss: How Acting Has Helped Him Make New Music

While Darren Criss has graced our TV screens with a range of characters, from high schooler Blaine Anderson on Glee to serial killer Andrew Cunanan on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, he was last spotted just being himself, on our For You Page on TikTok. “I’m walking to rehearsal with a guitar on my back with a Trader Joe’s bag ... I did not bring an umbrella because I forgot that it was raining. I’m rocking that NYC musician life,” the Glee alum explained in the hilarious clip posted three days ago.

While Criss’ acting work has earned him acclaim and stardom, he leaned into making music during the pandemic. On Aug. 20, he dropped a new EP, Masquerade, featuring five new tracks that Criss says were inspired by the different characters Criss has embraced throughout his career. After Criss wrote songs for his musical comedy web series Royalties and Apple TV+’s animated sitcom Central Park before the pandemic struck the United States, he then used those experiences as a precursor to his new EP. As Criss continues to promote his new music, he answered 20 of Billboard's questions – giving us a peek into how his new EP came together, and how growing up in San Fransisco shaped him as an actor, singer and all-around artist.

1. What inspired your latest project, Masquerade?

Although I would have preferred that it come at a far less grim cost, I finally had the time. Before the pandemic, I had written 10 new songs for my show Royalties -- along with an original song for Disney and another for Apple’s Central Park. These were all assignments in which I was writing for a certain scenario and character. Go figure. It was the most music I had ever written in a calendar year. This really emboldened me to rethink how I made my own music— to start putting a focus on “character creation” in my songs, rather than personal reflection. The latter was not proving to be as productive. The alchemy of having this time and having set a new intention with my own songwriting and producing made me put on a few of my favorite masques and throw myself a Masquerade.

2. How do you think your background as an actor complements your music?

They are one and the same to me. I treat acting roles like musical pieces— dialogue is like scoring a melody; there’s pace, dynamics, cadence, tone. Physical characterization is like producing -- zeroing in on the bass line, deciding on the kick pattern. Vocal characterization is like choosing the right sonic experience, choosing the most effective snare sound, and mixing the high end or low end. It goes without saying that it works in the complete opposite direction. Making each song is taking on a different role literally and employing the use of different masques to maximize the effectiveness of the particular story being told.

3. On Instagram  you wrote that “Masquerade is a small collection of the variety of musical masques that have always inspired me.” Which track do you identify with most in your real life?

Everybody absorbs songs differently. Some key into the lyrics, some into the melody, some the production, some into vocal performance. When I listen to songs, I consider all of their value on totally different scales. So it’s hard to say if there’s any track I “identify” with more than any others, since I -- by nature -- identify with all of them. I think I just identify with certain aspects more than others. If it helps for a more interesting answer, I will say I enjoy the slightly more classical, playful -- dare I say -- more Broadway-leaning wordplay of “Walk of Shame,” but that’s just talking about lyricism. I enjoy the attitude of “F*kn Around,” the batsh--t musicality of “I Can’t Dance,” the relentless grooves of “Let’s��� and “For A Night Like This.” All have different ingredients I really enjoy having an excuse to dive into.

4. What’s the first piece of music that you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

Beatles audio cassettes: “Help” and “Hard Day’s Night.” I just listened on repeat on a tape-playing Walkman until my brother and I got a stereo for our room with a CD player in it, which was  when I just bought the same two albums again, but this time as compact discs.

5. What was the first concert you saw?It’s hard to say, because my parents took us to a lot of classical concerts when we were small. But I guess this question usually refers to what was the first concert you went to on your own volition, and that my friend, was definitely Warped Tour ’01. My brother and I went on our own— two teenagers going to their first music festival, in the golden age of that particular genre and culture. It was f--king incredible.

6. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid?

My dad was in private banking and advised really, really wealthy people on how to handle their money. My mom was, by choice, a stay-at-home mom, but in reality, she was my dad’s consigliere. They discussed absolutely everything together. They were a real team, and I saw that every single day in the house. They both had a background in finance (That’s how they met in the first place.) and were incredibly skilled at all the hardcore adulting things that I absolutely suck at. They were total finance wizards together. So of course, instead of becoming an accountant, I picked up playing the guitar and ran as far I could with it. Luckily, they were all about it.

7. What was your favorite homecooked meal growing up?

My dad was an incredible chef. For special occasions, I’d request his crab cakes. They were unreal. I’ve never had a crab cake anywhere in the world that was good as my dad’s.

8. Who made you realize you could be an artist full-time?

I don’t know if I’ve actually realized that yet.

9. What’s at the top of your professional bucket list?

The specifics change every day, but the core idea at the top is to continue being consistently inconsistent with my choices, and to keep getting audiences to constantly reconsider their consideration of me. But I mean, sure, what performer doesn’t want to play Coachella? What songwriter doesn’t want to have Adele sing one of their songs? What actor doesn’t want to be in a Wes Anderson film?

10.  How did your hometown/city shape who you are?

San Francisco. I mean, come on. I was really lucky. The older I get, the more grateful I am for just being born and raised there. It’s an incredibly diverse, culturally rich, colorful, inclusive, vibrant city. By the time I was born, it had served as a beacon for millions of creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to gather and thrive. I grew up around that. The combination of that with having parents, who were unbelievably supportive of the arts themselves, laid an incredibly fortunate foundation to consider the life of an artist as a legitimately viable option. It’s a foundation that I am supremely aware is not the case for millions of young artists around the world. I was absurdly lucky.

11.  What’s the last song you listened to?

I mean probably one of mine, but not by choice. I know, lame. But I’m promoting a new EP, what’d you expect? But if you wanna know what I’ve been listening to, as far as new s--t is concerned: a lot of Lizzy McAlpine, Remi Wolf, and Charlie Burg.

12.  If you could see any artist in concert, dead or alive, who would it be?

The Beatles is an obvious "yeah, duh." Sammy Davis, Mel Tormé, or of course, Nat King Cole. I would’ve loved to see Howard Ashman give a lecture on his creative process and his body of work.

13. What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen happen in the crowd of one of your sets?

I feel like just having a crowd at all, at any one of my sets, is pretty wild enough.

14. What’s your karaoke go-to?

The real answer to this I’ll write into a book one day, because I have a lot to say about karaoke etiquette. I have two options here: I can either name a song that I like to sing for me, for fun, or I can name a song that really gets the group going. The answer depends on what kind of karaoke night we’re dealing with here. So I will say, after I’ve selected a ton of songs that services a decent enough party vibe for everyone else, then I would do one for me, and that would be the Beatles’ “Oh! Darling.”

15. What’s one thing your most devoted fans don’t know about you?

What I have up my sleeve.

16. What TV show did you binge-watch over the past year?

Dave is a stroke of genius. There are episodes that I believe are bona fide masterpieces. Also, My Brilliant Friend is a masterclass in cinematic television.

17. What movie, or song, always makes you cry?

It’s A Wonderful Life.

18. What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

Get used to sharing everything about yourself and your life now, or more astutely, to the idea that you don’t necessarily get to control how your life is shared. I know it’s not really your thing, but you’re gonna have to get used to it, so start building up those calluses now. And don’t worry, all the stuff you love now will be cool again in your mid-thirties, so keep some of those clothes because you’ll be a full-blown fashion icon if you just keep wearing exactly what you’re wearing. Oh nd also, put money into Apple and Facebook.

19.  What new hobby did you take on in the last year?

I’ve always been a linguaphile. My idea of leisure time is getting to study or review other languages. This past year, I took the time to finally dive into learning how to read, write, and speak Japanese. Other than making music, it was one of the biggest components of my 2020-2021.

20. What do you hope to accomplish or experience by the end of 2021?

I hope I get to play live shows again.

[catgirlxox]

A Deconstruction of The Flame Keeper’s Circle & The Audience’s Common Complaints | Catgirl

As the title states, I’ve been reminded of a couple complaints made about this episode that stem from a large portion of the audience’s general disliking of the way both Ben and Julie were handled during the run of Ultimate Alien. In fact, I recently read a "review" of “The Flame Keeper's Circle,” or, more of a parody, actually, since a review would actually have some kind of substance to it and not just...a slew of insults thrown at a show you claim to like. It's almost like you're looking for something to be mad at, but anyway.

One of those was the OP actually asking someone to (probably joking, but anyway) explain "how Ben's mind works" to them.

And I was like, gladly!

According to the comments under the review, it seems like the general audience didn't really like this episode all that much when it first aired. Which, I bring up because, I on the other hand, actually did. And for a reason: because it proves my previous defence points right.

There's a lot of talk about Ben coming off as a “jerk” or a “douchebag”...but, in a situation such as the one presented within “The Flame Keeper’s Circle,” I would argue he did exactly what he should have done. So that's where I beg to differ.

This episode puts Ben in a position where he, once again, needs to deal with the overlap of a romantic relationship and his priorities as a superhero. The only reason there is conflict here is because they are both important to him.

A bad boyfriend would only care about himself, but Ben clearly cares about not only the safety of his (clearly, quite naive) girlfriend, but also the safety of the rest of the earth. Which, as I’m going to be stating several times, should be something expected of him considering everything else within the series that establishes who he is as a character.

So, on the topic of things that are important, ask yourselves, why would Ben prioritize going along with Julie's idea of joining a cult more than keeping her, and the rest of the world, safe when he realizes the trouble she could potentially be getting herself into?

Throughout the episode, and the fandom’s discussions from what I’ve seen, there is so much focus on "oh, he laughed at her idea so he's a douchebag and therefore a bad boyfriend" and not enough focus on the fact that he's not blindly following an alleged “good cause” because he isn't naive and that's in character based on everything we know about him as a character.

Context matters. And this kind of thing only further makes me question the people who want to cry "inconsistent" writing or characterization because he's acting the way he's been conditioned to.

Arguably from the age of ten, Ben's been dealing with situations where he needed to fight to survive and decide who to trust. Sometimes he trusted the wrong person, which wasn't done out of any other reason besides wanting to help and do the "right thing."

For example, Michael Morningstar in the episode “All That Glitters,” who fooled Ben and his team into thinking he was innocent all while abusing school girls for their life energy and almost killing Ben's cousin.

Or, Simian in “Birds of a Feather," who fooled Ben into thinking he was royalty and into helping him steal something that would aid the Highbreed in their mass murder plot.

In that way, Ben and Julie could have related in this situation because they were both trusting people in the interest of doing something “good.” Both Michael and Simian made Ben believe that they had something in common, or a common goal they could work together to reach. But, he trusted them blinded by his ambition and drive to save the world. Much like Julie is blinded by the promise of being a part of a group trying to make the world a better place.

As such, Ben has made the mistake before, so he's extra weary of how things could go very wrong. He's not against his girlfriend just to be a “jerk” - he's been through things like this before, and we’ve seen him go through those things.

Furthermore, the situation in which Julie is trusting The Flame Keeper’s Circle involves her indirectly agreeing to work with Vilgax. Who, as anyone familiar with Ben should know, is one of if not Ben’s biggest, and more importantly, most dangerous enemy.

Again, she, at the beginning didn’t know that he was involved, or what Ben had gone through already to make him act the way he does in this situation, but she does know what his job entails at this point in the series. She should probably infer that he’s suspicious for a good reason, as should the audience.

Not trusting people blindly is something he learned from being the leader of his team, while trying to protect the earth, namely from the Highbreed invasion back in Alien Force when he was putting together a stronger team. It would only make sense for him to then apply that to a situation in which his significant other gets roped into that which he fights against.

Speaking of fighting against, that brings me to another odd criticism of the writing of this episode. It’s no surprise that the flawed belief of Ben coming off as an alleged “sociopath” is brought up again, considering this episode takes place after The Ultimate Kevin arc. And yes, I realize the problematic connotations of using that term as a borderline insult as part of the issue here. But that aside, in this episode, the fact that he begins to fight Vilgax in his apparent “weakened” state is what is being attributed to that description.

Besides the fact that defending Vilgax is questionable in itself, he’s never needed water to survive for the many times he actually tried to kill Ben. I can’t find a solid answer from a writer that knows for certain if his need for water is genuine except for one who is only assuming that is the case when he’s in this state.

But regardless, (since he clearly survived long enough to morph with Dagon and become a bigger threat to the earth later on) we are still defending Vilgax the LITERAL INTERGALACTIC WARLORD.

Y’know, the guy who’s only in this position because of his own immoral actions? Who absolutely would not hesitate to take advantage of his opponent's weakened state in order to further get away with his immoral actions? Such as he is in this very episode, taking advantage of the people wrongfully worshiping him?

If we are trying to imply that Ben is “just as bad as Vilgax,” then I would assume you’d easily find the flaw in that being Ben’s motivation for incapacitating a dangerous offender who is, at the moment, manipulating naive humans to work for him and help him continue get away with his immoral actions. Which is, needless to say, not the same as Vilgax, at all.

Again, you’d think that’d be obvious.

The Flame Keeper’s Circle’s mission is to end human suffering and find a solution to certain issues happening across the globe with the help of alien technology that is much more advanced than what everyday people are used to. And, while the end goal seems like a good cause, even something Ben as a superhero would be all for, the means through which they attempt to get there aren’t a good idea, at all.

A lot of people find it hard to navigate the use of technology considered advanced by human standards in the real world, so you can only imagine the various things that could go wrong if those kinds of people were suddenly exposed to something much more powerful. In short, a lot could go wrong.

Again, Ben has been in that exact position as soon as he was armed with the Omnitrix. Which is exactly why he’d see the flaw in what these people are trying to do, and therefore not be convinced that it’s such a good idea to allow them to continue, much less endorse it.

This is why I love when the writers actually allow Ben to speak for himself instead of cutting him off for drama or plot. Once he actually gets a word in, or more accurately, has his moment of heroic monologue, he makes himself very clear and, I think, only further proves what I’m trying to say about him.

Here he is, explaining exactly what I’ve been trying to highlight throughout this body of work:

Ben: “Even if Dagon was real, using alien technology to accelerate a planet’s natural development won’t bring utopia, it’ll bring disaster. It’s happened before. Why do you think the Plumbers have those laws? But even that’s not the point, because that isn’t Dagon! His name is Vilgax. He’s not a hero, he’s a selfish, evil warlord who’s using you. And if you let him get in his ship, he’s going to fly off and start an interstellar civil war.”

It’s not that only he can use alien technology to save the world, it’s that his status as a hero proves that he knows what he’s doing, unlike these businessmen in fancy robes leading a cult for profit.

That is not what I would have assumed reasonable people would consider “douchebag behaviour.” That’s actually smart, and going back to my first point, exactly what he should be doing in a situation like this.

The actual episode does end off on a positive note for both Ben and Julie, which is omitted from the review and most of the comments I have read from others on the topic. And, I bring it up because it’s actually vital to wrap up everything brought up within this episode that I have just expanded on. Not only because they make up and seem to understand each other’s perspective after all is said and done, but because they both agree to be open to further discussion on the topic, as Ben offers to go out for dinner.

Which, needless to point out I hope, but once again, is not “douchebag behaviour.”

[taetaespeaches]

“I find you absolutely fascinating.”

namjoon x reader (oc) genre: fluff word count: 2.2K

a/n: Lovelies! Namjoon and Daisy/reader are being cute and soft and in love again :(( I mean at this point you probably know the drill. These two are about to take a big step and thinking back on how they started... they deserve this! I hope you all enjoy, and thank you for reading! :))

Strolling through the museum halls, you found it quite difficult to focus on the masterpieces surrounding you as you watched Namjoon stand in front of a colorful contemporary painting. Inspecting the piece, he leaned closer to it, his gaze bouncing from feature to feature within the work.

Nodding to himself, he put his pen to his notebook, jotting down a thought. You couldn’t help but grin at the way he absorbed knowledge, every piece of art intriguing him and inspiring him. It was something you truly loved about him.

Looking up from the paper, he slowly dragged his eyes from the piece to you, his orbs meeting yours as he noticed your smile. A bashful grin overtook his features, his dimples appearing as he stepped closer to you.

“Are you amused?” He asked, you nodding.

“Always by you,” you beamed. “I find you absolutely fascinating,” you confessed, amping up the cheesy tone of your voice to emphasize your playful teasing, though the words were genuine.

Shaking his head as he let out a breathy chuckle, he draped his arm around your lower back. Pushing his lips to your forehead, he snickered against your skin.

“Are you ready to go?” He asked, just before leaving a sweet peck to your temple.

“If you are,” you told him, Namjoon nodding his head. As he started leading you down the hall toward the exit, you halted, the man looking at you curiously. “Dimples, what do you think of this one?” You pointed to a painting, Namjoon’s head darting to the piece.

Humming in thought, he squinted at the painting. “I like the palette,” he nodded. “The colors are cool in tone, it’s interesting,” he continued, his eyes drifting back to you as you stared at the piece intently, feigning a serious expression. A smirk curved up on Namjoon’s lips as he watched you pretend to critique the piece. “What are you doing?” He chuckled, you fighting to hold back your grin.

“It’s phallic, is it not?” You asked, Namjoon’s eyes widening as he cocked his head, looking back to the painting.

“What?” He asked in shock. “Is it?” He questioned further, holding back a laugh.

“Yeah,” you held your hand out, dragging your finger in the air to draw the shape you were seeing. “Like that, see?” You asked, turning your head toward Namjoon.

“Fucking hell,” he chuckled, squeezing his eyes shut as he lowered his head, trying to hide his amusement.

“Jot that down,” you nodded to his journal with a smirk, Namjoon taking a deep breath as you began walking away from him. As you left down the hall, your boyfriend watched you go, shaking his head in utter amusement and fondness, a massive dimply smile spread across his face.

Crowds of people surrounded you as you walked down the busy Seoul sidewalk, your hand intertwined with Namjoon’s. After about thirty minutes of walking, and finding yourselves at Olympic Park, Namjoon bumped his shoulder against yours. “Are you hungry?” he asked, looking to your face to see you smirk.

“Starving,” you giggled, Namjoon chuckling as he nodded.

“Good, come with me, babe,” he said mysteriously as you led you further into the park, your confusion growing.

“Are we getting something delivered?” You asked him, the man simply smiling.

“Something like that,” he said, giving you no further hints, you huffing though you couldn’t hold back your grin.

You walked for a few more minute, watching other couples stroll the park, people play with their dogs, parents as they watched their kids run around, until your eyes landed on a couple across the field who looked quite familiar.

“Wait is that Jin?” You asked your boyfriend, pointing at the recognizable man and his fiancé.

“Ah,” Namjoon simply said, changing the direction of his walking to get to his friend. “I almost walked right past you guys,” your boyfriend called out to them, Jin lifting his arms into the air.

“I thought you already did, you took forever,” Jin complained, you looking between the three people completely lost.

“What is going on?” You asked, just before giving the girl a hug, not missing the way she randomly held your face between your hands as she beamed at you, though you chose to ignore it for the time being as you simply giggled at her. Namjoon smiled shyly at you just as you followed his gaze to the picnic setup in the field and slowly realized what was happening. “Wait is this for us?” You asked in surprise. “A picnic?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon chuckled. “These two set it up for us. And cooked everything,” he explained, you looking to the couple with widened eyes.

“Oh my god, guys, that’s so sweet, thank you,” you expressed your gratitude, Jin brushing you off with a wave of his hand.

“It’s all Namjoon’s idea, he just needed some help with the execution,” Jin explained as your lips spread into a warm smile, your eyes glued to Namjoon as he ducked his head slightly, the man bashful under the attention.

The couple didn’t stay long, leaving you and Namjoon to enjoy your picnic alone, however your friend kept looking back at you both as she walked away with Jin.

“They were acting weird, don’t you think?” You pointed out to Namjoon as you both sat on the cute little picnic blanket.

“I don’t know, they seemed about normal,” Namjoon countered as he opened Jin’s old picnic basket.

“No seriously, look, she keeps looking back at us,” you nodded to the couple, your boyfriend looking after them with a small chuckle.

“She’s always strange though, is that really any different to how she normally acts?” He reminded you of your friend’s sometimes weird behaviors. Giggling, you nodded.

“Ok, kind of true,” you confirmed. “And I’m letting you dissing my friend’s eccentricity slide for now since you planned this adorable picnic” you teasingly added as you watched Namjoon lift a bottle of champagne from the basket. “Ooh, fancy,” you smirked, Namjoon’s dimples on display as he dug further inside the basket, setting different food containers onto the blanket. “Jesus, it’s a feast.”

“You said you were starving,” he pointed out, you giggling as you reached forward and opened a container of fruit. Bringing a berry to your lips, you watched the man as he uncorked the bottle of champagne. His face was full of concentration as he twisted the metal cage that held the cork in place. Dropping the wire on the blanket, he pushed up on the cork, both of you flinching at the sound of the pop, the cork being sent a few feet away and landing in the grass. “Oh, shit,” Namjoon mumbled as he set the bottle down, nearly knocking it over as he hurried after the cork, you having to catch it before it spilled all over your picnic set up.

Chuckling to yourself, you looked toward the man as he adorably made his way back, holding the object out toward you with a goofy grin on his face. There were several moments, nearly constant actually, where you looked at Namjoon and remembered all over again just why you wanted to spend your life with him. And as he sat back down, less than gracefully, dropping the cork on the blanket proudly, you found yourself in yet another one of those moments. What a blessing it would be to spend forever with this man.

As you enjoyed the meal your good friends put together for you, all you could think about was how unbelievably lucky you were in this lifetime to have found Namjoon. And how privileged you were to be on the receiving end of his love, along with his forgiveness. The man could have given up on you early on in your relationship, leaving you behind when you gave him nothing but insecurity and inconsistency. But he stayed by your side, showing you the care and patience that you’d never been given before him. He was a treasure, and he was yours.

The sun was setting over the city, casting Namjoon in a heavenly golden glow. Staring at him fondly, you wondered if he understood how beautiful he was; how beautiful you found him to be.

“You’re gorgeous,” he suddenly interrupted your thoughts, your jaw dropping slightly as he stole the compliment you were just about to give him.

“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” you grinned, Namjoon letting out a breathy chuckle. “You really are gorgeous, Dimples,” you appreciated him sincerely. “I never tire of looking at you, or talking to you, sitting with you in silence,” you shared, Namjoon’s eyes softening as he stared at your face. “You really are the most fascinating thing I’ve ever come across,” you whispered.

Namjoon’s adam’s apple bobbed against his throat as he swallowed nervously, a warm smile overtaking his features. “I have something for you,” he announced, digging inside his bag. Watching him curiously, your eyes fell upon the envelope he pulled out. Presenting it to you bashfully, you beamed.

“What’s this?” You asked as you took it, reading your name that was written across the front of the envelope. Carefully, you opened it, pulling out a folded piece of paper. You weren’t sure what the contents of the letter would be, but you had a feeling this was going to be a major moment for you and Namjoon. Opening it carefully and slowly, your eyes scanned the words across the page, mostly scribblings with crossed out words. But the first sentence told you exactly what you were looking at.

Etched in hangul were the words person and love. And below that, You make live to a love, was written in English.

Your heart raced as you realized this was the draft he started with when writing his song Trivia: Love.

Other single lines were scratched across the page such as, What if I go? If I go, would you be sad? And You’re my person, my desire, my pride, my love, my one and only love.

You could feel tears pricking your eyes as you read over the paper, the sentiment of the lyrics hitting you all over again; the love and vulnerability and purpose he revealed on the page, all feelings you caused him. The word destiny was written with an arrow pointing to, we’re meant to be. Do you feel the same?

At the bottom of the page, he abandoned single lyric ideas where he instead decided to write his thoughts plainly.

“This is love. I know it is, I just feel it. I’ve never truly known it before, but this is it. Like how the moon rises after the sun. You give meaning to my memories. Will you make memories with me forever?”

Lowering the paper to your lap, you looked across the picnic blanket to find your boyfriend holding a ring between his fingers, his eyes soft and large as he stared at you nervously. “Will you make memories with me forever?” He asked you, your breath leaving your lungs as the love you felt for the man rushed through your frame.

You couldn’t even form words as you began nodding, smiles overtaking both of your faces as you stood on your knees. Namjoon mimicked your actions as he met you in the middle, your mouths crashing into a needy kiss. Ignoring the other park goers, you and Namjoon were lost on cloud nine together.

Trailing kisses across your face, he wrapped his arms around your body, pulling you against his frame as he held you close. “I’ve wanted to marry for years,” he chuckled against your hair, you smiling against his neck in response. “I wrote this song knowing I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“I’ve known for years too,” you assured him. “You’re incredible, you know that?” You asked him, chuckling as you pulled away from him to look at his stunning face. His eyes held your gaze for a moment before they landed on your hand, his fingers grasping your hand as he slid the ring into place.

“Here’s to a lifetime of being forever fascinated by each other,” he said cheesily with a massive dimply grin.

“A lifetime,” you beamed. “That sounds perfect.”

Staring at each other for a moment, Namjoon broke the moment first by lunging forward, pushing you to the ground as he positioned himself above you. Kissing you softly, your hands brushed over the sides of his face.

“I almost put the ring in your champagne glass but I was afraid you’d swallow it,” he giggled adorably, your finger tracing over the dimple in his cheeks before dragging over his smiling lips.

“Now that would have been a story,” you teased as Namjoon kissed the tip of your finger. “Thank you, Joon,” you said suddenly, his eyes widening in question. “For believing in us even when I couldn’t.”

Smiling softly, he shook his head at you as if he shouldn’t be thanked for such a silly easy thing to do. But instead of speaking against your gratitude, he chose to gently press his lips to yours. Because it didn’t matter how you started your relationship or who believed in what. You were there, and you were in love. And he knew you both would be loving each other for as long as you both lived in this lifetime, and even into the next.

[saby-chan]

Why the ATLA comics fail when it comes to Zuko and his family

To whom ever took their time to actually stop and read this post, thank you in advance for not skipping my post and willing to stay and read my humble opinion! I hope I won’t disappoint you!

As a relatively newcomer to the ATLA fanbase since 2020, I’ve come across a lot of interesting debates, comments and rants about the show, characters and fandom in general, but nothing has captivated me as much as the dumpster-on-fire that are the ATLA comics, more specifically: The Promise and The Search. 

On one hand we have the hardcore fans who want them to be animated or serialized into the Netflix live action, praising the comics for the new views and subject matters they’ve brought into the show’s lore, while on the other hand we have the furious Azula fandom who is really angry for the fact that best girl didn’t get the redemption arc she rightfully deserved so much after the painful event that was the Last Agni Kai and the even more angry fans of the Urzai ship (yeah, the people who actually ship Zuko’s parents unironically) who hated the retconning of the show’s cannon since the comics basically took a huge fat dump on what was previously established as official cannon, when the Search entered the scene, but between these two sides, who has the more valid point? In the end, are the comics good cannon or bad written fanfiction?

Well... Here are my two cents on this matter since I myself happen to be an Azula and Zuko fan and had huge expectations from these comics (since I wanted more from my fave hot-headed fiery siblings duo) but ended up disappointed: the comics are indeed a huge mess and actually bad written fanfiction when it comes to Zuko and his family! Don’t click off yet, because I actually documented the reasons why exactly the comics fail in this area:

1. The author of these comics is not part of the BryKe duo

Yes, I would like to start with the fact that if you actually take a second to look up who in the heck took the time to write these two books, you won’t find Bryan, nor Mike, but a fellow man named Gene Yang. This is important because while the wiki of both The Promise and The Search state BryKe as the creators, that doesn’t mean that they were the actual minds behind these comics, but rather because ATLA is their “baby” and these comics involve their characters, over which they have copyright. Mr. Yang here is the actual brain behind the plot, as the main writer, which explains why we find huuuuge inconsistencies between the show lore and the comics, especially Zuko wise.

My main issue with Mr. Yang isn’t that he isn’t BryKe specifically, but because he did an unforgivable mistake in his writing process: He projected himself into Zuko’s character, based on the relationship Zuko had with his father. This is a documented fact from an interview in which he explains that he sees himself and his dad’s relationship into Zuko and Ozai and used that when writing their interactions and built Zuko’s character in the comics. And this is wrong because when you have an already very developed and complex character such as Zuko, you can’t just come in and be like “Oh, I was an angsty teen just like him in my teenage years, fighting with my dad and whatnot, so he must have the same thought process as me!”. NO! This is bad fanfiction writer behavior! Zuko has his own personality and philosophy, which he developed over the course of 3 seasons and is not defined by only 1 unfortunate aspect of his past, so you can’t just base his whole mindset and actions off of your own personal experience just because you had the same daddy issues he had!

2. The whole “Promise that you will kill me if I turn out like my dad!” nonsense in The Promise

Reason number 2 why these comics fail and go under the category of “bad fanfiction” is because they fail to convey the core essence of the source material. The whole point of Zuko’s redemption was that he realized the wrongdoings of his ancestors and his own mistakes. He outgrew his desire of gaining his father’s acknowledgement in favor of choosing his own destiny. Having him worry that he’ll turn into his father is utter nonsense and feels like poor angsty drama material for the sake of angst. At this point in time, Zuko has overcame that obstacle in his life a long time ago and should be at the level where he himself is the “Uncle Iroh” for other people and in no way someone concerned of becoming their own worst enemy!

Not only that, but the whole point of Aang’s journey and the story of the show as a whole was to teach us, the viewers, the importance of forgiveness, empathy and love in life. Aang didn’t spare Ozai, aka “the ultimate evil” just to flex in front of his pals or because he is a “ 12 y/o vegan pacifist monk kid”, but because he knew that killing someone, no matter of what they did or wanted to do, wouldn’t restore balance into the Universe, on the contrary, him killing the villain would have meant perpetuating the “endless cycle of hate” that plagued the world. So having Aang promise to kill his best friend in case “they turned into an evil maniac like their dad” contradicts Aang’s whole character and it’s a nonsense that throws into the trash what we’ve learnt throughout the entire TV series.

3. Azula deserved (and was supposed) to have a redemption ark

This might still be pure speculation, but I count it as a documented reason because I’ve heard quite a few people saying that there should’ve been a book 4 in the show, aka “Book 4: Air”, and no, it wasn’t The Search, but actually Zuko and Azula’s journey as Zuko helps his younger sister heal her broken mind by being her very own “Uncle Iroh”. Sure, they prolly were going to end up looking for Ursa, but the journey should’ve ended with them actually being happy and a family again and not the bs we got in The Search where a still very unstable Azula runs away and becomes the “Next Joker”! The only problem is that M. Night had to pop up and curse the world with his movie, which forced BryKe to delay the project (and eventually abandoned it in favor of Korra).

All in all, either if BryKe had this preplanned or not, it made sense for Azula to get a redemption ark, she deserved it because she was just a broken 14 y/o child! If Katara’s mom’s murderer deserved to be forgiven, so did this poor child who had no fault for what happened to her since she had a dysfunctional family! What Gene Yang did in his poorly written fanfiction was to just antagonize a broken child, turning her into a monster for the sake of friggin angst!

4. The Search is the worst of the two, being flat af character wise

And finally, getting to the point that I personally find the most annoying about these comics: The Search. This one... This one is a mess on a hella lot many levels, and just to list a few: characters are flat as fudge, being either black as vanta black (like Ozai and Azula) or pure white like Gene’s Gary Stue OC, Mr Ikem (or how I like to call him, IKEA man) and his ‘victim’ rendition of Ursa, Azula gets to suffer more for no reason (see reason number 3 to why I find this as a no no), Ursa’s whole character sucks ass (man, I could write a whole thesis on why Yang’s version of her is terrible and doesn’t match the strong woman we got in the show) and Zuko does morally wrong stuff (my man literally used his unstable sister to bribe their dad into spitting info about Ursa... Show Zuko would never do that!;-;)

Oh boy, as a person who’s seen a ton of anime and other media and read many books, I can’t begin on how much I despise this type of writing: flat characters are the worst!

 ATLA characters in the show are nothing close to being flat! What I mean by that is that none of them fall perfectly into pure white (aka goodest of good characters with no imperfections) or vanta black (aka lowest and darkest twisted monsters out there), each of them are various shades of grey (like Aang who is a very light grey because despite being a very kind and nice character, he still isn’t a “perfect hero” since he ran away from his duties, practiced tax fraud with Toph, had insecurities and even threatened to kill people on ocassions like with the sand benders who took Appa) and this is a good choice because that prevents them from becoming what’s globally known as Mary Sues and Gary Stues (aka those either “perfect” characters with no flaws and/or unlimited power, or the twisted monsters full of flaws).

And the other reason why many other people hate The Search: it literally negates previously established cannon. And here comes my short essay on why this comic fails Zuko’s family (since we’ve already talked enough about Zuko himself).

In cannon and even interviews with BryKe, it was clearly stated that Zuko’s family was “once happy”. Where is this “once happy” family in The Search? All I see is pain, deception, lies and betrayal, nothing close to anything that resembles happiness. Okay, some of you might come in and say that “It’s because it was never the case! It was only lies and Zuko trying to convince himself that he didn’t live in hell forever!” and here is WHERE YOU WERE ALL WRONG! And why? Because, my dear fella, where were depicted the flashbacks of Zuko’s “happy family” in The Beach? Ember Island. And what do we know and had been even quoted in the show?  "Like waves washing away the footprints on the sand, Ember Island gives everyone a clean slate. Ember Island reveals the true you." (direct quote from the show). Exactly, no matter who you are or how hard you try, you can’t hide your true self when you are on the Ember Island, best example being Azula, who’s impenetrable though shell cracked and revealed the true vulnerable child that was underneath. If Azula couldn’t resist the “spell of the island”, no one can. So this means that Zuko’s family was indeed happy once and yes, Ozai wasn’t always the douchebag we got to know in Season 3 (I have a whole nother essay on my theories regarding what could be his real past story and why he’s actually the “Zuko” of his generation, based on stuff I gathered from old wiki entries and character analyses I made, but that’s for another time, lemme know if ya’ll are interested).

And what I guess is the biggest proof why The Search did this family’s past trash is comics Ursa herself. My dude, if this woman were indeed the victim of years of endless abuse and never loved her husband, I guarantee you that she would’ve been closer to what we saw in Todoroki’s mom from BNHA and Zuko would’ve gotten that scar or even worse long before the Agni Kai, not from his “daddy dearest”, but from “mommy dearest” herself, because no sane woman would be soo affectionate and attached to a child that’s the perfect copy of their abuser, sepecially appearance wise (again see Todoroki’s mom’s case from BNHA because the stories are really similar) and in no way would’ve she been willing to sacrifice her life for said child’s sake. With this ocassion, I remind ya’ll folks that according to the ancient ATLA cannon wikis on Nick’s site, Ozai was designed with Zuko’s appearance in mind, being meant to be like a “grown up scarless version” of Zuko. So yeah, remember this with a grain of salt that whenever you simp over grown up Zuko, you involuntary simp for Ozai too.

So yeah, I guess this kinda concludes my “not so short” rant about why the comics fail and are bad fanfiction. Lemme hear your thoughts in the comments and if you agree, feel free to leave a like and even reblog.

Bye bye and remember that Momo is the true strongest character of the show!

 Saby out.

[jadelotusflower]

It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.  

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014.  But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen?  Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?  

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak).  And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination.  How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

[rawr-ily]

A Stupidly Long Oikawa Analysis

   The main issue with Oikawa is that he's not naturally gifted, which is emphasized a lot in the show. For example, the last episode of the season one match of Karasuno vs Seijoh was named "Oikawa Tooru is not a Genius". Despite that, he's still the best player on Seijoh, and is highly respected by his teammates as a setter and their captain. Due to not having any natural skill or technique, Oikawa resorted to compensating with his own tactics. He knew that, no matter how hard he tried, he would never have the same technical skill as a genius like Kageyama. Instead, he used his own skills in analysis and communication to bring out the best in his spikers.

   This is why, despite being called Grand King, Oikawa is depicted as a mighty general. He leads his soldiers, and in return, they trust him with their lives and fight with him. The amazing thing about Oikawa's leadership is that his teammates trust him because they know he can lead them. They understand that Oikawa has honed their skills and improved them all as players. He's helped them all, and when a game comes, they understand that all he asks of them is to keep trusting him. Trust that he'll send them a good toss, trust the strategies he'll formulate, trust his leadership.

At the end of the day, Oikawa knows he doesn't have the technical skill of a genius, so he dedicates his focus to improving his whole team. The origin of this focus would probably come from the episode where he almost backhands Kageyama in middle school. Iwaizumi intervenes and literally knocks some sense into him. They fight and yell, but then Iwaizumi tells Oikawa, "There are six people on court! The team with the best six players is the best!" Oikawa seems to have an epiphany then. He seems to realize exactly what his best friend is saying. It seems very straightforward at first, but it clearly not all that simple. Oikawa thought that he had to improve himself as a setter so he could carry his team to victory. He was trying to be a king. Luckily, he had Iwaizumi to cut off that train of thought very early on.

I loved how the show compared what Iwaizumi said to multiplication and addition. Oikawa thought that he had to improve himself because he thought you just mushed together the strengths of each player. That's wrong. He learned that you multiply the strengths of each player instead. It took me a bit to understand that one too. The way I look at that, it means that each player will affect one another when in a team. They can't just play as individuals that happen to be on the same side of the court. By trying to add the powers of your team, you just stack them on top of each other. By multiplying, you take what you already have and make it greater by merging it with something else.

If you like visuals, think of oil and water vs baking soda and vinegar. Adding oil to water increases the overall volume of liquid, but they never combine. If there is a cup of water and a cup of oil, you get two cups of liquid. Baking soda and vinegar doesn't just stack; it explodes. If you have a cup of vinegar and a cup of baking soda, they'll make way more than two cups when they combine. The players get stronger when together.

So, Oikawa stops trying to become a king. He obviously does keep trying to improve as a player, but he starts to focus more on his spikers. He realizes that he can compensate for his lack of natural technical skill by using his own natural skill of reading people and adjusting his responses adequately. Oikawa is a versatile player, and a very flexible setter. He gives his energy to improve his team, and they respond by giving their energy to get better and win. I found it interesting how loyal his teammates were to him. It brings me back to Oikawa being a general and not a king. Kageyama is high, untouchable, and barks out orders as the king, while Oikawa is the brave general who leads the soldiers. Oikawa fights alongside his soldiers. Kageyama stays in his palace, highly revered, but alone. The difference between them is that people are forced to follow Kageyama because of his unparalleled power. People follow Oikawa because they trust him with their life.

It's actually one of my favorite pieces of symbolism in Haikyuu. Kageyama was a genius from the beginning. His skill was something he was born with, and now he's king. When the eldest prince is born they have the birthright to become king. Kageyama got his title simply because he was lucky (

I love Kageyama, and I know he worked very hard, but he was mainly able to get there because he's a natural born genius. Generals have to rise through the ranks and work for their position. Some soldiers in history were actually more loyal to their general than to their king. Generals risk their lives with their soldiers. The king commands from the palace. The analogy doesn't really work for their relationship, but it's great for their individual characters.

As for Oikawa's relationship with Kageyama? It's complicated, as most things with Oikawa are. Oikawa is Kageyama's upperclassman, and It's evident that Kageyama once looked up to him. At first, I never understood why Oikawa hated Kageyama so much. It was fairly obvious that his underclassman basically worshipped him, and I thought it would do wonders for his ego. However, it seems so much more obvious after a bit of rewatching. Middle school Kageyama was a natural from the start, and middle school Oikawa was just a mess of overworking, burning out, and crippling insecurity masked by egoism.

Oikawa hated that he worked himself to death to make the cut, then some random bright eyed prodigy first year just comes in and steals the show. Maybe it wasn't reasonable to hate him so much, but middle schoolers aren't reasonable. Some people say Oikawa was supposed act more mature and responsible, an that he should have had more self control with his feelings. They seem to forget he was a CHILD. He was a literal child; he just entered adolescence, and he was still learning. He shouldn't be expected to handle things like an adult when he isn't one. Oikawa was just SCARED. He loved volleyball and didn't want to be replaced by Kageyama. He overworked himself so he wouldn't be dispensable. I agree that he should not have tried to hit Kageyama. However, you can't say that it makes him a bad person or character.

Oikawa wasn't really in his right mind at the time. It was clear that he was in the middle of an adrenaline rush of sorts from overworking himself. He was visibly agitated and overwhelmed, but, Kageyama approached him. This isn't Kageyama's fault either. While I do think he should have been able to tell it was a bad time to ask, Kageyama was an even younger child. He was never good at reading people either, so Kageyama can't be held accountable. Imagine, though, how Oikawa felt. He was in the middle of training so he wouldn't be replaced, and who decides to interrupt? The person he's trying not to be replaced by. Again, not Kageyama's fault, but you must understand that Oikawa was afraid. He was stuck in this swarm of negative thinking, and the very source of so much of his fear and insecurity was suddenly right in front of him. It wasn't right of him to do that, but you can understand why he did it.

That's another very interesting part of Oikawa. It was his worst fear come to life when he was subbed out for Kageyama in one of their games. It was too much for him, and he just finally snapped. Thankfully, Iwaizumi's lecture struck a chord in him, and he made an apparent effort to remember it. However, I don't think it made his fear go away. In fact, I think his fear of being replaced originated much before middle school. Obviously, I have no idea when exactly, but I would have to guess it started around the middle of elementary school at the latest. This is mainly because I believe Oikawa's obnoxious personality is a sort of defense mechanism used against this fear. Oikawa is objectively very good-looking, flamboyant and charming; he's also very popular among girls.

I found it very interesting that he was portrayed to be a heartthrob by the media, but was seen to be very immature and honestly quite annoying. Around his friends he acts very childish, but switches again to his charming persona when around fans or other classmates. It was fairly clear that something wasn't right. I wanted to believe it was just inconsistent writing, but one of Furudate's greatest strengths is building characters; I also saw no clear consistency problems with other characters. I believe that Oikawa switches personas depending on what reputation he's trying to uphold. We know Oikawa is insecure at heart, and we see him trying to play it off by being prideful.

If we go back to his fear of being replaced, I find reasonable to believe that Oikawa acts the way he does so that people don't get bored of him. He wants  a reputation, because that means people will know about him. Something that is consistent about his personas is that he's very sociable in both. He's childish, loud, and constantly wants attention, or he's always laughing, flirting, and joking. It's almost as if he believes that everybody will find someone new if he doesn't remind them he's still there. He thinks people will get bored of him, so he constantly tries to make sure people stay interested. A lot of people say that Oikawa is too annoying and narcissistic, but he does it because he's afraid people will get rid of him if he doesn't keep their attention.

That also leads to another major part of Oikawa's character. I actually believe this may be the biggest part of his overall character. There's something that sets Oikawa apart from every other character. Regardless of if you like him or not, you can't deny that there's an energy about him that's just different. He's the closest you'll get to an antagonist in Haikyuu, but you also get to see his soft sides. We see the love he has for volleyball and for his teammates. It's strange to see so many different sides of a character. It's also interesting how Ushijima wanted Oikawa join Shiratorizawa. It's understandable, considering Kageyama still hadn't developed and Oikawa was the best setter in the prefecture.

So, the question I always wanted to answer: Why didn't Oikawa go to Shiratorizawa? Yes, the fandom exaggerates it and loves to joke about it, but it was a real question for me at first. Oikawa wanted to go to Nationals, and joining Shiratorizawa would have guaranteed it. Best ace and best setter in the entire prefecture on one team? They would blow the competition away. It would have been much easier if Oikawa had indeed swallowed his pride and joined Shiratorizawa. However, it seems that it wasn't necessarily about all about "worthless pride". Of course it was a factor, but Oikawa wouldn't let his pride get in the way of his dreams; he's smarter than that.

It was then that I started to notice a recurring pattern with Oikawa. He's a direct opposition to the main characters. He refused to join a powerhouse team for an easy ticket to Nationals. He uses his personal strengths to improve instead of being upset over what he doesn't have. Oikawa is an incredibly unique character because of his sheer will to do things the way he wants. Oikawa is a setter; he's a control freak, but in a less direct way than Kageyama. He doesn't force everyone to adapt to him, yelling, "You better follow me!" Rather, he goes his own way and says, "Follow me if you dare."

He carves his own path, regardless of what others say. Seijoh was destined to lose from the beginning. Furudate loves symbolism in Haikyuu. Notice how every national level school is represented by an animal? The mighty eagle of Shiratorizawa, the wild crow of Karasuno, the clever cat of Nekoma, the soaring owl of Fukurodani? What does Aoba Johsai have? A castle. Aoba Johsai translates to Blue Castle. While the other teams fight, jump, and soar, Aoba Johsai is beautiful, strong, and reliable, but they will never fly. It was almost as if Oikawa went to Aoba Johsai simply to prove he didn't need Ushijima to go to Nationals. Looking at it like that, it indeed makes it look like Oikawa refuses to go to Shiratorizawa out of pride. However, I like to see it as more than that.

First of all, Oikawa's greatest wish was to defeat Shiratorizawa in order to go to Nationals. OIKAWA DOES NOT SETTLE. He refuses to settle for only half his dream. Maybe it's too prideful, but it would invalidate the years of hell he put himself through trying to accomplish it. It was like Ushijima was telling him, "Hey, you tried your best, didn't you? You can't beat me, and all your years of work are for nothing. Just join us and give it up." It was insulting to him. Oikawa's sheer perseverance was what got him where he was. He took everything the world threw at him and threw it right back. Suddenly, it all stops and he's offered an olive branch of sorts. The world doesn't offer everything he wants, but it's something. Just enough to get him to stop fighting back.

Oikawa wants all or nothing when it comes to his passions. It's risky, maybe not a very smart decision, but that's just who he is.He doesn't want the olive branch; he wants the whole damn tree. Oikawa wants to look at Ushijima, to scream from the top of the world, and tell everybody who didn't think he could make it, "I DON'T NEED YOU." He wants to show people they were wrong. No, he's not a genius, but he doesn't need to be one. He wants to follow his dreams his own way or he doesn't want it at all.

Second of all, Oikawa wanted to go to Nationals with Iwaizumi. Oikawa and Iwaizumi were together their entire lives. They played, they laughed, they cried, they won, they lost, but they were always together. Oikawa needs Iwaizumi specifically because he trusts that he'll never be dispensable to his best friend. Iwaizumi is his support, the way he grounds himself when things are too much. Oikawa and Iwaizumi want to go to Nationals together. It's not some fantasy they conjured up; it's their childhood dream. Oikawa wouldn't be willing to let go of that. Again, Oikawa refuses to settle. He wants to lead a team to Nationals with his partner, or he doesn't want it at all.

   Oikawa was willing to risk everything. He wanted to go all in. Maybe it was wrong, and maybe it was just worthless pride. Regardless, it shows us his unparalleled passion for the sport. He deserved so much better than what he got, but life isn't fair. Haikyuu shows us that. It's almost discouraging to see Oikawa lose. If you look at it, between Oikawa and Kageyama, Oikawa is actually the underdog. Kageyama is the genius player and Oikawa just tries his best. Haikyuu is an underdog story, but sometimes the roles are not as we think.

(⚠️!!SPOILERS FOR THE LAST CHAPTER!!⚠️)

When Oikawa is seen as the "final boss" as the official setter of Argentina's Olympic team, it's the cherry on top to confirm what type of character he is. THIS MAN WAS SO DAMN PETTY AND DETERMINED TO FOLLOW HIS DREAMS THAT HE IMMIGRATED TO A DIFFERENT HEMISPHERE. He was so determined to make his own path that he made a name for himself on the other side of the world. He was virtually unknown, and had to start from scratch all again. What happened? He actually did it, and now he's the main focus of his team. I have such a ridiculous amount of respect for Oikawa. The determination that man has is unparalleled.

I believe Furidate also uses Oikawa as a model to teach us that, yes, it's discouraging to be surrounded by people better than you, and failure is inevitable. However, it you can use those failures as a lesson to improve yourself, and if you stick to your goals until the very end, the world will get tired and it'll work out in the end. Oikawa tells us that it's okay to be bold; he tells us to understand that it takes time to succeed, and you will succeed. He tells us to treasure those who support us, because the trust they have in you is more than you could ever know. In the end, Oikawa really accomplishes his dreams. Maybe Iwaizumi isn't with him, but Oikawa has learned by then how to live without him and vice versa. Instead, he gets to fulfill his promise of defeating him when they face each other.

Oikawa never got to go Nationals, but now he's at Internationals. Now he finally gets to beat Ushijima, Kageyama, and Iwaizumi all in one spot. We don't even get to see the result of the match, which is actually something I love. Oikawa is the only one we know in Argentina; it would be unrealistic to try to decide a winner between the two teams if we don't know the strengths and weaknesses of each player. Regardless, we finally get to see Oikawa get what he deserves. Maybe it will work out for him, and maybe it won't. Something amazing about leaving an open ending is that we get to analyze the characters as we please, and we get to imagine what happens ourselves. It's actually one of Furudate's best pieces of symbolism in the whole series.

Their stories are not over yet. Maybe Oikawa loses again, but he keeps going. Maybe he finally throws the towel. Who knows? Characters are ever changing, but I believe Oikawa will stick to it. Then again, maybe his knee injury will force him to quit. Life is unpredictable, but Oikawa's determination has been constant throughout the whole show. The way he grew as a person, a player, and leader, just enraptured me to no end. Oikawa is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever come across. I don't like picking favorite characters, but I genuinely believe Oikawa is the most well written and complex.

That concludes my 3,000+ word rant/essay about the wonderful anomaly that is Tooru Oikawa. Honestly, there's definitely more that I forgot to incorporate or have not thought of, but this is what I have!! Thank you for reading through all that?? Also, I'm not going to go through that and edit it, so feel free to comment if anything makes no sense :)

[mirandalinotto]

Why I hate the CAOS video essay that came out a week ago

Did anyone else get extremely angry at the way Friendly Space Ninja discussed all of the female characters in CAOS? like, don't get me wrong... I understand most of the points he's making, and agree with a lot of what he says in the video essay (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: A Frustrating Waste of Potential), but when he speaks about Zelda, Lilith, Prudence, and Rosalind, I don't know... i just get a bad vibe. It's like he's doing a "bad faith” analysis, and it bothers me, because CAOS has so many parts to validly criticize, and yet he missed the mark more often than he hit it, in my humble opinion.

He basically says the same thing over and over again: that the actors were good, but the characters were bad, because they were all boring, shallow, and one-note, or whatever... and it's like... dude? of all the things you could say (especially about Zelda and Lilith in particular), the characters being “boring" isn't really the biggest criticism one ought to have of this show...?!? and it isn't even accurate?

Like why aren't you criticizing the trauma porn? Why aren't you criticizing the butchering of Lilith's mythology? Why are you ignoring all of the character development that does happen (particularly with regard to Zelda, whom he actively seems to hate) in favor of insisting none of these characters have an arc? It’s not beneficial to anyone if you’re going to criticize a show’s characters by actively misrepresenting them!

Which brings me to my next point: one of the things that bothered me the most was just how surface-level his analysis was. You could tell he hadn’t watched the show in a while, and clearly wasn’t interested in celebrating any part of it—which is okay, if you just want to roast Roberto for an hour, be my guest—but why does it feel like this video essay was the YouTube video equivalent of writing a book report on a novel you only skimmed…? He made a lot of generalizations that made it seem like he only watched the first season, and then paid no attention to the rest.

For example, some of his arguments are just so random and insignificant? Like why does he make shallow observations the basis of whole arguments about characters, such as when he goes on about how Zelda says 'Praise Satan' too much and “it got old"...?!?! Like what kind of bullshit analysis is that...? How is that even close to being something worthy of talking about in a video essay that is an hour and twenty minutes long...? Why are you taking such a trivial aspect of her character and making it a talking point in a video that is already much longer than it needs to be?

And while I agree with what he said about Lilith's motivations being inconsistent/unclear at times, and that Zelda's character growth wasn't as linear or developed as it could be, it really feels like he didn't even try to understand these characters at all. I realize I'm biased, because all I do is try to understand them and explain their motivations... but still! If you're making a video about the wasted potential of CAOS, why do you immediately dismiss almost the entire female cast, pretty much out of hand, when they're the foundation of the show...? They ARE the potential?! The good parts about them ought to have been given some credit? Like why does he fail to acknowledge all of the trauma these female characters went through that very much informs their decisions, and instead makes it sound like nothing the characters do make sense? While I might not always agree with every choice these characters made, there usually is something driving them to do whatever it is they’re doing, and particularly in the case of Lilith and Zelda, it’s not that hard to understand why they make irrational decisions sometimes, when they’re literally surrounded by abusers and everything is constantly blowing up in their faces.

Also, something smaller that really pisses me off is that he includes Zelda sending Blackwood out of the room during the birth of the twins as an example of the show's misandry and "bad feminism," but that's literally not what that moment is about? If he stopped to think about it for a moment, the moment is perfectly logical. Zelda is a midwife, who was most likely trained in the 1800s, when men literally weren't meant to be around when the the birth happened, so how is she being a misandrist just by doing what she’s been taught, especially when they’re all in a crisis situation? Men not being allowed in the room is an established part of the history of women’s health/childbirth, and it isn’t exactly obscure knowledge! Men used to be forced/asked to sit in the waiting room during labor, and before that, when home births were the status quo, midwives definitely wouldn’t allow men in the room as a matter of course. In fact, it wasn't until the 1970s that men being in the delivery room became a more normalized practice. So, men being present/witnessing a birth is a far more "modern" thing than I think people realize, and the exclusion of them from the delivery room has absolutely NOTHING to do with women hating men...? like fuck off with that “misandry” argument, in this instance. do some research before you start reaching that far, so as to act like Zelda was being hateful for simply following “industry standards,” if you want to call it that. There are medical articles that still come out to this very day that argue that no one should be in the delivery room besides the person giving birth and the doctors and nurses, because the husband/partner often gets in the way and distracts the medical team at critical moments. (Also men tend to faint or get sick at the sight of the birth, which then forces the team to split their focus in order to see to the unconscious man on the floor.)

And don't get me started on the anti-Zelda rant he goes on towards the end!! While I agree very much that Zelda is a flawed character, he uses an example of her degrading Hilda that isn't even something she actually did?! It's from a dream sequence!?!?!? like dude, did you even watch these episodes/scenes before you talked about them?!? He uses the example of dream-Zelda criticizing Hilda's appearance as a reason why Zelda is such a bitch, and I'm like... seriously? that literally wasn't her? just because Zelda said it in Hilda's nightmare, doesn't mean Zelda said it in real life, and should be criticized for it...?!

But yes, Zelda is abusive to her sister, and classist, and rude, and many of the things that he says--but when he tries to argue that because she's a woman, nobody cares that she's like that, and it’s a problem, because that’s evidence of more misandry… that’s where he loses me. He sees it as yet another issue with Roberto's writing—that he gives qualities that would be condemned in a male character to a female character, and allows that woman to be one of the "good guys" ...but yet again, dude... you're completely missing the point?!? Women are allowed to be flawed, without you seeing it as some gross failure of feminism?

He also at one point claims that Zelda resents Ambrose, and hates having him around, when I would argue Zelda actually really values Ambrose and has a close relationship to him...? Like did we even watch the same show?

I didn't expect to get this heated about a video essay that made a lot of other points that I agreed with (mainly the dragging of Roberto parts). But in my opinion, this guy got really offended by Roberto's fake feminism (which is valid), but then proceeded to tear down all of the female characters for an hour and twenty minutes straight...?! All he did was talk about how they're all misandrists and shallow characters and therefore the show isn't worth watching? like okay... but here's the thing... plenty of women have made it through shows that have misogyny at their very core, and have still managed to find the good points...? Game of Thrones is like the most popular show of all time, even though there's misogyny in every aspect of it, for historical “realism" purposes (*rolls eyes*). Zelda and Lilith's defining qualities aren't solely related to hating men, so it really pisses me off that he made it seem like that's all that shapes them, and that every time they insult or manipulate a man, it’s completely unjustified.

idk. I feel like I just watched an 83-minute roast on a show I love despite it's flaws, and that roast wasn’t mostly focused on all of the biggest flaws that I would’ve brought up, but rather on how all of the female characters are terrible and their misandry makes the show unwatchable.

So let me get this straight: you're hating on the female characters... in order to show how much of a feminist YOU are, as opposed to Roberto...?

Wow. Much feminism. Very enlightened analysis.