#yes i will always campaign for him to get more fanon love as he's not just ''the extra violent'' prime no.

[transingthoseformers]

Bayverse Optimus helping Sam with various bits of science homework and everyone can tell the mech is downright Ecstatic

[mxtxfanatic]

Just wanna say for those of y’all who came into this fandom late: just a few years ago, speaking on Jiang Cheng with anything less than glowing praise used to bring so much harassment that “angry grape”-related tags had to be created to circumvent jc stans finding and subsequently dogpiling your posts. I’ve since seen this tagging convention appropriated by his stans to be an “affectionate” petname for his character. If you wrote a wangxian fic in which Jiang Cheng did not appear, your fics would get bombarded with stans flooding your comments with their own headcanons on why Jiang Cheng isn’t around but “this is how he’d react if he was” and “everyone loves him, they’re definitely thinking about him, rn” and “when is he supposed to show up, op???” If you read a wangxian fic and Jiang Cheng did appear, there was a 95% chance that you would have to slog through thousands of words of abuse apologia paired with every character (except maybe Lan Wangji, maybe) claiming that Wei Wuxian deserved to be abused and should just learn to handle it better because abuse is really love. It took me a year of reading purely (only, exclusively) wangxian fics to find a single fic that had both 1) canon Jiang Cheng and 2) did not twist the other characters into fanon iterations to justify canon Jiang Cheng’s abusive behavior. When more canon writers started appearing, their fics got flooded with negativity, claims that the fic wasn’t realistic because “jc isn’t like that,” and demands to change things. They started moderating their comment sections. Eventually, jc stan writers even stopped tagging Jiang Cheng in their fics despite writing him as a major character because people began to avoid reading fics if they knew from the tags that his character appeared.

The “canon jc” tag was created on tumblr because jc stans said that if we didn’t like being attacked for canon opinions we should “create our own tag.” It was not a tag that always existed. Nobody used it until my friends created it. And every few months after that, we’d get a new “flood the tag” campaign by jc stans pissed at the name until it died down… until twitter refugees arrived, bringing with them a new faction of jc stans. That jc appreciate week or whatever they call it that starts on Halloween? Created by jc stans in an attempt to flood out Wei Wuxian appreciation posts on his birthday by making sure that new Jiang Cheng content would dominate all the major tags on that day. I watched the creators brag about that.

One BIG fandom upset happened when a jc stan wrote a horribly mistagged rape and murder wangxian fic and had their friends promote it so that wangxian lovers would read the fic and be traumatized. They gloated about having "successfully baited people," then tried to delete their tweets admitting it when they got them in trouble. I was there for that, too, and I only dodged being triggered because I saved the fic to read for later instead of cracking it open immediately.

Some of y’all may see me around now, but I’ve been watching this fandom for much longer than I’ve been making posts, before even the friends and mutuals I know now even knew I existed (yes I was a lurker lol). I’ve seen the development of all this play out across tumblr, ao3, and twitter (despite my best efforts to avoid the twitter side, that’s how ubiquitous it was). That’s how inescapable it was. I saw so much shit go down that I already had a mile-wide blocklist before I made my first post, and even then, I still got hate commentary on some of my posts the moment I dipped my littlest toe into metas. I had anon off for like a year because I didn’t want to deal with any harassment, and the moment I turned it off, I started getting bait anons (though not as bad as the others I’ve seen, holy shit). When I started this blog, all I did was liveblog and reblog other people’s art and metas. I was so stressed entering this fandom because the shit I had seen off rip was absolutely disgusting. That’s why I have very intentional rules of engagement that I try to hold to for myself. I may never be the first to start the fight, but I damn sure will defend myself and my friends. I also will never run away from admitting my mistakes, but I will also never be bullied into treating someone’s personal fantasies as equal to the actual factual text.

This isn’t to say that fanon enjoyers don’t get harassment. Another big fandom scandal was that a popular fanfic writer obsessed with canon had been harassing other writers through a series of bot accounts into leaving the fandom. What a lot of people don’t bring up in their bid to paint canon enjoyers as particularly prone to “fandom bullying,” however, was that the “canon” they were obsessed with was tied almost exclusively to the canon wangxian’s top/bottom sexual dynamic. I’d read that person’s works before—enjoyed them, even, before the scandal happened. They wrote fanon into their fics in other ways. The fanon/canon divide isn’t the problem; entitlement to unanimous fandom praise and recognition is.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying canon or fanon, nothing right or wrong or morally superior for either camp. But do me a favor: go into the main jiang cheng character tag right now, and count how often you see a post about Jiang Cheng that portrays him in a negative light. Not one that portrays him as an snarky asshole or a teacher’s pet or a helicopter parent or a crybaby who only wants to be loved, but one which shows him in all of his uncensored glory as a piece of shit antagonist. How often do you see fanart of Jiang Cheng that isn’t “best jiujiu” or “sad didi” or “badass sect leader”? How often do you see metas that don’t include some iteration of “everyone is just so mean about poor little jc who just didn’t have a choice in anything he ever did 😢”? Go to the main novel tag and do the same. Hell, go to the wangxian tag and see what you find while you’re at it. How many of those posts are viral compared to “look at jc with his dogs!” or “look, I made lxc and jc kiss!” Then tell me whether or not you believe that jc stans are being specifically targeted for some unique and undeserved persecution by the fandom at large.

[belphegor1982]

Top 5 OTPs (Shows, movies, books etc) and why. GO!

OH OKAY UM

The thing is that I rarely ship romantically. Like, at all. There's a small number of ships that I'll always ship (and/or have been for decades) and the rest is tiers of "yeah, that's nice" to "eh, apathetic" to notps. So... I guess?? In vaguely order of current rotation in my brain, kebab-style??

Pike Trickfoot/Scanlan Shorthalt (Critical Role, Vox Machina campaign/The Legend of Vox Machina) My heart, my soul, my liver. I love them with a determination inversely proportional to the small place they seem to have in the fandom. It's a relationship that evolves over time (slow burn? do you slow burn?) because the individuals evolve over time. Character development first, relationship development second! And there's hesitation, and Fucking Up, and so much love and hand-holding/taking before both seriously consider the other as a romantic partner/equal (as opposed to on a pedestal). Also they're pure chaos separately as well as together and I respect that.

Evelyn Carnahan/Rick O'Connell (The Mummy films) Speaking of chaos! And love! And respect and growth! I've loved them since 1999 and even more since 2001's The Mummy Returns gave us battle marrieds who support each other and clearly can't keep their hands off each other. They perfectly complement one another, they build up each other's strength, they have inside jokes, and they love one another so much they constantly annoy their brother(-in-law) and kid. Those films are my comfort food. Also very pretty and nice/fun to draw.

Reginald Jeeves/Bertram Wooster (P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves short stories/Jeeves & Wooster) We're leaving canon and entering fanon and what a fanon, ladies and gentlefolk. Over 100 years old and in love with rapier wit, art deco, and smart men and their (not quite) idiots. The thing with this ship is that it should be entirely unbalanced: Bertie is Jeeves' employer and above him in social status. Bertie should have all the power, and Jeeves none. But Wodehouse excels at showing us how much that isn't true, because Jeeves is very, very smart, and Bertie, while the smartest of his social circle (...yes, really) and as pure of heart as he is dumb of ass, relies on him 100% (and is basically the Jack Black pointing meme. He loves his manservant SO MUCH). I love a loveable idiot with a dose of self-awareness and self-esteem issues and an unflappable brain going "...ah. yes. unfortunately that is my idiot."

Chel/Tulio/Miguel (The Road to El Dorado) Come on, I HAD to sneak in an OT3 :3 I shipped them before I even really knew what shipping was. I love me an OT3, and this is a perfect example. You start with a dreamer with Determination (all open heart and sunshine) and an insecure flamboyant conman who is very good at lying (especially to himself) who would die for each other a thousand times, and you add a jaded cynic stifled by her environment who sleeps with (and catches feelings for) one and gets on well with the other and BAM, perfect recipe! Because Tulio and Miguel are ride or die for each other and I don't see that changing with Chel in the picture! ANYWAY. Love them and only want good for them.

Scrooge McDuck/"Glittering" Goldie O'Gilt (Carl Barks and Don Rosa Disney Ducks comics) Ooooh them. I have a soft spot for asshole pairings, and they deliver. Reading The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (and other comics) really bring into focus all the might have beens and the missed opportunities either by way of fate or one or both of them being dumbasses. They can't live with each other, they are 100% incompatible, but also they carry each other's heart and they will probably never love anyone else That way. Will they get a happy ending? I don't know! Do I want them to? I have no idea!! I just love them in a "Le Tourbillon" (the French song) way: people who find each other, lose sight of each other, find each other again, and the whole cycle starts once more. Sometimes it's not about having, it's about wanting and yearning and reminiscing <3

Thank you for the opportunity to ramble, dear anon 💜

[xenomorphicdna]

Op I love you

I was planning on making a post but you done it for me so I'm simply gonna add :]

Look, I love this game and the community here has all sorts of cool things going on, but dear god could I not disagree more from a lot of very common fanon interpretations. Iterators on the string is my main thing and I've made several posts about that so I won't be mentioning it.

There is a lot of ancient depictions as cruel assholes. Which I personally really hate because what do you mean they were all evil and horrible towards their iterators ??? They literally say how they have parental obligations for them, they literally stand up for Five Pebbles when some guys send in hate. And all the depiction of ascension being bad, oh the ancients all wanted to die and take everything with them.

Why is everything always assumed that is is done with the worst intentions??

Maybe there was IS love behind their reasoning. Ascend all the creatures? Yeah because life is hard, yes there are joys but there is also pain, survival is difficult. Creatures will die, they sleep hungry, they will lose their young, they will get hurt. There are joys in sitting in the sun, in eating the odd bugs, in playing with fellow packmates. Maybe ascension isn't bad if they can have all the good without the bad. Did the ancients see that? Did they see that and decide they were all deserving of transcendence?

Maybe all they tried to do was done with love in mind.

Ok I got super off topic cuz this post is about Five Pebbles. But yes, Pebbles ain't a kid. And I really despise how common the portrayal of him being incapable of anything is. Same with fanon arti.

And actually I will just copy n paste this from discord cuz I mentioned it there:

Arti spends a while living life in hatered. We dont start the campaign as fresh to the whole deal. Arti has been killing scavs for a while she is LOCKED at the -100 (or whatever it is) scav rep. By now, shes so far gone in this hatred of hers. When she meets Pebbles he literally says how he finds her actions appalling,, and i think after watching an animal go and dedicate herself to genocide,, yeah he has a point.

Pebbles isnt a piece of shit asshole, arti is unreasonable in her slaughter. But pebbles is willing to tolerate her, its just an animal afterall, whatever, he has more important things to do, and right now, he has a scav problem. Let the animal clear out the pests.

He reads pearls to her, but thats sorta about it. He cant hurt her, so he might as well ignore her if shes bouncing around his chamber.

And arti has no reason to be sticking around and bothering a puppet in a box with pretty lights. Arti is so full of anger, she's so willing to kill and to me, shes so deep in the rabbit hole she just isnt crawling back out. She's damaged permanently.

And while i love my happy endings, arti doesnt get redemption

and i dont think arti's ascnesion ending is about her overcoming that urge to kill, but its accepting that all this slaughter she caused,, its not about her pups anymore and that they are dead. At some point she started killing for the sake of it, she convinced herself that scavs are evil or something. It roots in getting justice for her pups but its gone so far beyond that by the time the campaign starts

the nightmares she has arent spending happy time with pups, its not her remembering them, they were at the start but they're not anymore. Its her killing a scav over and over again

Artificer is a vicious murder, and Pebbles has made mistakes looking for fairness in the world. Arti would not get along with hunter either, hunter is here trying to help moon, there is so much love in their heart and hunter stands for the exact opposite of what arti does.

i think pebbles is portrayed as a kid who is incapable of doing anything by himself. Bestie,,, that is an incredibly intelligent supercomputer not a child who cant do anything right

he makes mistakes, yes, but they arent "omg hes so stupid baby"

Pebbles got a good heart, he's also perfectly capable of doing things on his own and doing things right. But like, theres so much about pebbles just being some pathetic loser and i actually hate that representation so much. As if this isnt the same guy who saw sliver's death, saw her life cut early just to solve a riddle that if unsolved will leave them to a horrible fate and went, "its not fair"

This guy actually cares so much about everybody. He's trying so hard to fix things, to help everyone everyone find the solution so that when the time comes they have a way out, he's doing so much and all of it under a horrible disease

And its not until rivulet to where he finally gives up, and he gives his heart to moon because at this point he has no use for it, not anymore.

There boom done

(Why I Think) Five Pebbles Is Not A Child

hello, all. it is 2am and i have An Opinion. you know what that means! essay

...okay, i might have lied; this will likely not be a proper essay because (upon looking through his dialogue on the wiki) this is very fucking hard to collect evidence for. not because it is unsupported in the text, but rather because it is attempting to refute a position that, in itself, i have seen little of others' specific reasoning for. It is a response, so to speak, to an argument that does not exist.

still, I will try, even though it's difficult, because this specific interpretation irks me and one thing about me is that when someone gets my blorbos slightly wrong I will attempt to write an essay about it regardless of whether i need to, want to, or should.

of course, mandatory disclaimer that you shouldn't, necessarily, trust me on this. I'm just some creature on the internet, what do I know? I'm not necessarily right about any of this, and you shouldn't feel pressured to change your personal interpretation because i, hollow gunpowder-arti, made a late-night post about it.

THAT BEING SAID,

I, personally, believe that Five Pebbles is not a child. I, personally, am somewhat uncomfortable with depictions of him as such.

the only proper 'evidence' I have heard for this stance is that he 'acts immaturely' (i believe generally referring to his behavior before and during spearmaster's campaign? i.e. the moon incident)--which I will concede, he does. but there is a difference between acting immature and being a child.

I will point out, also, that many times these narratives push either Moon, the Artificer, or both into a maternal role towards him--you all know my grievances with Fanon Motherly Arti, but even beyond that, it feels very.... iffy, to me.

I find that many times this idea attempts (either overtly or likely unintentionally) to absolve him of blame for his actions. which... five pebbles is not an unsympathetic or villainous character by any means. I mean that wholly and fully, in fact, I do relate to him in several ways (or... did, moreso when the hyperfixation was in full swing :P).

the situation is very complex, and Five Pebbles is not a bad person. That being said, he made terrible mistakes with terrible consequences. he acted rashly, impulsively, and, yes, at times cruelly. interpreting him as a child (and therefore not to be blamed for acting childishly), however, takes away a lot of this complexity--i would say almost as much, if not as much as interpreting him wholly villainously. because he was partially to blame. congratulations, you have made a perfectly good complex character and made him into a sweet innocent mockery of himself, who cannot be held accountable for his errors because he was a child and it was in his nature and he could not help it.

...if you cannot tell, this interpretation is very, very frustrating to me.

I... would like to go on, but I feel like I would just end up restating what I've already said. So. That's it, I guess.

One last reminder (which i do not think will be necessary, but you never know) to please not harass people on my behalf of course. This is not to say those who follow this interpretation are Problematic, simply to explain my reasoning for disagreeing with and even disliking it.

...how do I end this post. Bye, I guess?

[luciferloveschloe]

goodbye, lucifer (but not really!)

I cannot BELIEVE that I just watched the last episode of my favourite show.

I usually cram everything I have to in tags under gifsets I reblog, but for this final season I'll go through the pain of actually writing shit down. I'll try to keep it short, and I'll try not to ramble. (Edit: Did not accomplish that.)

what i loved

SCREAMS

God, soooooooo much!!

Deckerstar baby

Okay, so when Rory showed up in the trailer I was like "Ugh, another annoying angel? Meh." FORGIVE ME, my sweet murder child! Of all the things I thought they might do, a Deckerstar baby was DEAD LAST on my list. And a daughter no less, I just... When she says she's Lucifer's daughter, I was like *SCREAMS*, but when we learn she's Lucifer AND Chloe's daughter, I completely lost it. My boyfriend's on a trip with his friends this week and I'm sooo grateful for that, I made the weirdest, loudest, ugliest noises while watching this season, I ran around our apartment like a maniac, I squealed and laughed and cried and just generally lost my mind. But when she says that?? Oh my God. Also the way Lucifer reacted when Chloe shows him the pregnancy test? Straight outta fanfic.

Lucifer being a father

Oh my God?? I've always said he'd be the BEST father, and actually seeing it on screen... I love the parallel of him being ridiculously over the top with Rory at first, just like God and Lucifer in S5. The way he looks at her when he sees her playing the guitar? Their duet?? Instantly one of my favourite scenes. Them driving in the Corvette, their last day together, how he keeps her from killing Le Mec? Just murder me.

Established Deckerstar

All the hugs and kisses?? The declarations of love, the besotted looks, the absolute power couple we got? Their look from Maze and Eve's wedding, OH MY GOD???? Just, these two are so pretty and we got SO MUCH. Also, their scenes with Rory?? I just love them so much...

(More under the cut!)

Ella's storyline

I wanted a reveal for her so badly, and the way it turned out was brilliant! I loved her figuring it out for herself and calling everyone out lmao. I especially loved poor Carol returning to that room full of shocked people. They had some GREAT punchlines and gags this season, absolutely hilarious! I also love Lucifer's parting gift for her and that she finally found a good one with Carol.

Hugs, so many hugs!

That's it, that's the paragraph.

The Police storyline

As a white person who has literally never once had a problem with the police, I know this is not my place to say, but I think they did a good job? Not giving into the "a few bad apples" excuse but acknowledging that the whole system needs to change? I also really enjoyed the scenes with Amenadiel and Officer Harris, showing what policework could and should look like.

Maze and Eve's happily ever after

I'm so glad auntie Maze and auntie Eve got their happy ending! And that wedding was a bomb. Also, "You're my hell!", lmao.

Dan's ascend to heaven

First of, great to know his only torture was Belios' lack of table tennis skills. Secondly, how very fitting for the show that they didn't hand Dan his happy ending easily, that he fought and won it for himself. Him as a ghost and him as Le Mec was equally funny, and his talk with Trixie was just perfect, literally tears you guys.

Amenadiel becoming God

I mean, dude's perfect for the job! From the loyal, distant, obeying servant to a God who wants to work as a team with his siblings, who wants the Celestials to experience the human world, who hates injustice and loves fiercely? In this universe, I couldn't imagine anyone better suited to be God.

Nobody misses the case of the week

At least I don't! God, I wish they'd tried this out sooner.

The bittersweet ending

Let's preface this by saying I HATE bittersweet endings. Give me a happily ever after or else. And yet, and yet!! I think the ending they settled on is perfect. Would I have loved it if Lucifer had a life on earth with Chloe, Trixie and Rory? God, yes. Do I get emotional over him being alone in hell, again? Goddd, yes. But still. I so love that he found his calling in the end, that they reunited, and that he actually makes good on his promise from S5 to change the system. Also, I don't care if this is canon or fanon for now, but they totally spend time in heaven with Rory and visit earth whenever they like. And this would have been my ideal ending - them being free to go where they like, and I don't see why they shoudn't. It's definitely more satisfying than just traipsing off to heaven indefinitely, so I really, really loved that.

what i didn't (do feel free to skip this!)

Lucifer missing out on Chloe's life on earth and being alone in hell again. Chloe being left again.

Time travel shenanigans. I just finished Dark and that was enough of a mindfuck. Do not want to think about loops for this show, thank you very much.

Chloe felt a little too housewifey in the first episodes, but it thankfully didn't stay that way for long.

Lucifer and Chloe talking about keeping secrets for a whole episode, and then NOBODY TALKING ABOUT URIEL AND CANDY. I mean, ahhhhhhh! If you don't want to talk about it, then don't, but don't remind people of it constantly and then NOT discuss it. It drives me mad, honestly, how many times they referenced these storylines only to completely ignore them when there were opportunities to resolve them. Ahhh. That's what fic is for, I guess.

Adam. Like, why? Bye, dude.

what i'll keep with me

When someone I'd just met at my boyfriend's cousin's wedding in 2019 recommended this "funny, little show" to me that intrigued them because they were interested in finding their faith, I really didn't think I'd write all this three years later.

Lucifer is my third fandom, and it won't be my last, but it sure as hell - ha - will stay with me. I resonate so deeply with Lucifer as a character because he fights with the idea of God, fights with this concept of a benevolent father that everyone seems to believe in but never fit his experience. I come from a Christian family and studied theology, but somewhere along the lines I had to come to terms with the fact that the faith I had as a child and teenager didn't fit me anymore. I want to believe again, and maybe someday I will, but right now I don't know that. So Lucifer's journey with that meant a lot to me. I'd like to find what Ella did, I guess.

Although I never really thought Lucifer needed redemption, I loved the whole "anybody can be redeemed" message as well. And hell reform! Hell is such a weird, awful construct - speaking as the theology expert - bringing a bit of purgatory in in this universe is really fucking cool.

Also, I binged Lucifer when I was alone in hospital late at night. That experience alone I'll never forget.

So, I guess - thank you!! Thank you to the cast and crew, to the fans who campaigned for season four, to Ildy and Joe, to the writers and the directors and the people who brought lunch: Thank you so much for this incredible show. I'm not ready to say goodbye, not by a long shot, and I hope this fandom feels the same.

Yabba dabba do me, I love my stupid little show!!!

[gringoslur]

Curious Beginnings: Mollymauk (Part 1)

I’m re-watching campaign 2 focusing in Mollymauk’s behavior and trying to analyze it. I don’t know i will continue this, or the reaction that this might get, but here it is. It’s a simple way to divide canon/fanon Molly that i enjoy doing, so just...you can read it and comment your opinions if you want. Sorry if there’s any mistakes or nonsense in my writing, english isn’t my first language. (next part) (all parts)

The first encounter is easy: both Molly and Yasha enter the bar where the rest of the group just met. This is interesting because it makes you think why Molly, who is just leaving invitations and selling the event, needs security there? Did something happend in the past that made them do this together or is just simply two besties deciding to do a walk together while they spread the news of the circus? Matt mentions how Molly jumps from table to table ~the tiefling engaging in some distant conversations, leaving a slip of paper, walking to the next table. Gauging the atmosphere, not leaving a slip of paper, and quickly moving on~ this honestly makes me think that something DID happend in the past and thats why Yasha is there, especially because Molly is a tiefling and he has a bold personality. But he can read the situation and remove himself from it quickly before having to deal with the consequences, even if he is someone that a lot of times tries to be persuasive. Matt mentions that the table where the group is, is very awkward and tense. Taelisin asks if he sees any coin and Matt answers that no. The combination of awkwarness, tension and no coin is not good for someone that is trying to sell something, but Mollymauk for some reason still decides that he will talk with this group. Which also means that the other tables that he did not engaged a lot with, it wasnt for the lack of coin or the amount of awkwardness\tension.

As someone who is introvert, Mollymauk's attitude is ridiculous but i know it works, he is fantastic at his job. Even if has a very strong presence, and he notices that Jester and Beau are the ones that seem to be more able to communicate with. When Jester asks if he performs, he says "AH......i'm less of a performer and more of an intermediary for these parts" you can feel his brain going around and changing the tactic to not lose the excitement that Jester is showing, thats why also he might not be so comfortable in what he is saying, unlike his first rehearsal speech "I do on occasion perform...ah...i can read fortunes-" he doesnt go too deep into anything, either because he's throwing things and seeing if he can catch anything or because is possible that the perform part is not that truth, or at least he's not that confident in selling that part of himself. So he goes with what he knows: fortunes. When Jester responds to that very excited, his seller confidence and ego go high again. (Jester) "You are so smart!" (Mollymauk) "thats what they tell me". And he sits down, completly confident on whatever he plans to do. Sidenote: he does this in the middle of Beau saying "I don't...think...". She kind of fascinated with this event and seemed very interested in the "good time" that Molly was selling without any animosity, thats it, until the mention of the cards. This is where this relationship starts to shift in the one that we all know.

Now, he's looking for coin. And Jester is right there. (J) "Do you know my name?" (M) "What is your name?" (J) "Jester" (M) "I know your name now!" *both laugh* ah, thats so fucking cute. (M) "And we are friends now!" like yes, Molly wants money from her, it might be kind of fakey, and thats not actually a bad thing in my mind. He's doing his job, trying to live and make others have a good time while he does that. I do think that he likes Jester, she seems a very nice client, i'm sure that he has to deal with some assholes. His job is engaging with the public, we all know that that is a nightmare. He introduces himself and then Yasha, adding that "she's a charm!" and then laughing. This happens, i think, because for him, Yasha IS a charm, he loves her. But he also is very aware of the importance of looks and presentation, which makes his words funny if you don't know her. He continues trying to sell the forture, and he is very sure on how much he wants: this is business, this is his nature and he is in his sauce.

Ok, let me stop a moment because...i knew that doing this was gonna kill me because of the Yasha and Molly moments but man, this is an early start. When Molly is trying to do the fortune for Jester, Yasha says her first long sentence "He's really quite good, you all should line up and get your fortunes told". Sure, she is selling the business but she's also selling his friend's "talent" and this is just such a sweet thing to say.

Fortune moment. Insight and sleight-of-hand. Matt focuses the insight in "what this person, Jester, wants". The proper reading consists in giving the client what Mollymauk feels that they want, again, gaining money but also making the other person happy. First card: Silver Dragon. "Pure, virtue, wonderful human being!" Love that, go secure: the bs that the horoscope always sells and makes the person happy. Adventures in your future, you have a destiny! (queue to Yasha doing "ohhhh" with Jester. guys this is so cute). And then Taelisin, or Mollymauk decides to grab another card when he hears about the snake adventure: the serpent card. Oh, he is now sitting in the throne of his own bullshit and he loves being the king: "i'm a simple vessel for highter powers"'. Jester can't be more happy. Curious and suspicious Caleb tries Detect Magic, nothing shows up. Without actually knowing how this fortune thing works, he whispers to Nott "he's bullshiting her". Tealisin laughs. But i can see also Mollymauk laughing to be honest. And then, the Eye card (which is interesting because there's so many mentions of eyes in this campaign), "you've already found the clue" which we know its true, because of Beau, the card and the Gentleman. Mollymauk was looking for a mysterious route, Taelisin at least knew that this was the beggining for Jester and this was the group that will be with her. He says that the specifics are much more expensive, and i cant blame him for looking for more money. Then, as the master seller that he is, he makes the compromise of doing an extensive reading if they show up at the show.

The barmaid comes back with Yasha's ale and is on the house, because Yasha is intimidating as fuck. Both Molly and Yasha seem celebrate this and i can already see how this dynamic works and how they unite to get the most money and the least cost, honestly? bestie goals. Why the fandom doesnt have more stupid adventures of these two doing this kind of stuff?? gay disasters. and talking about gay disasters, Beau asks what Yasha does, and she answers that she puts the tent because she's very strong, but doesn't do anything in the show. She doesn't seem to make a big deal out of this. Molly immediately jumps and with some fancy language, he basically says that Yasha is "capable of keeping issues contained", implying the trust that they have in Yasha with their security, an important job in their line of work.

He shows even more of his skills of selling with Nott and Caleb, saying that they are gonna waste MORE money if they don't go to the show. He sells it so naturally that if you don't stop and think for a second on what he's saying, you totally buy it. I think that something similar happens with Percy in the last campaign, people think that he's really smart even when his plans mostly fail and sometimes what he says is just bullshit-but the confidence is what makes it all great.

Do you guys remember the moments where Fjord tries to make Beau more charming? that's exactly what i'm seeing with Molly and Yasha. I do think that they have those kind of conversations, especially hearing their goodbyes. (M) "You are all the most charming people that i've met in-" and then Yasha tries to clumsy copy it (Y) "Yep, nice to meet you all. You're so, uh, wonderful". Mollymauk, without laughing or making a joke of it, or at least i don't feel it, gestures to Yasha saying "Charm! Pure charm!" This feels like someone seeing their best friend trying to do the best and he encourages it. His interventions make Yasha's awkwardness less awkward, and shows his support.

And then they leave.

(I just watched one hour of the first episode, if someone likes this i can continue)

[eldunea]

So You Want To Run Through Preuzien?

i’ve received a fair few messages from people interested in having their muses go through prussia, with one person even being interested in making a preuzien OC, so i thought i’d do this post setting up some necessary boundaries and limitations for any character who intends to challenge the prussian league and make a name for themselves in my fakémon region. this applies primarily to muses who wish to start their prussia arcs before lotor became champion, although some of these points still apply to a certain extent even after he won the position.

without further ado…here we go. >:3

[TW: Mentions of death, animal abuse and human abuse. If these topics trigger you, do NOT have your muse do a run through pre-Lotor Preuzien.]

First Things First: Your Muse Probably Won’t Be Champion Anytime Soon

i’ll be blunt. unless your character 1) is willing to kill lotor and all of his pokémon, most of whom are sapient, 2) is willing to risk their life and the lives of all their partners in the championship battle, and 3) can also singlehandedly defeat a five-core complete forme/ragnamax zygarde that has world-ending capabilities and is comparable in power to eternamax eternatus, they don’t stand a chance. for #1 and #2, though lotor has dismantled most aspects of the fight to kill clause, he still keeps the part that says all official championship battles must be fought to the death. he does this as a deterrent to challengers--and he is not afraid to slaughter his opponents in their moments of hesitance should they express any reluctance to kill. and while he doesn’t own ragnamax zygarde, he has definitely single-handedly defeated it, as it’s how he became champion in the first place.

i want to make it clear that this doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable in every scenario. he can still be defeated in a less high-stakes setting where he isn’t allowed to kill or cripple his opponents, or destroy everything around him in a 5-mile radius. one of his big weaknesses is that ever since his championship battle in kalos against diantha he’s gotten real rusty in traditional 6v6 style battling; this is because he has spent all his time perfecting the prussian style of battle, and because if any criminals are stupidly polite enough to do a traditional 6v6 against him, his unprincipled bitch self will just bring out his entire team to gangbeat their ass. but in an all-out campaign match where he gets to use deadly force and unleash the full apocalyptic extent of his pokémons’ power, he is not going to lose to any muse who 1) is not as fully psychologically ready to shed blood as he is, 2) is not psychologically able to handle seeing their pokémon get killed or the mere thought of their pokémon being killed, OR 3) could not also pull off what he did. that is a FACT.

i do hc that lotor stops being champion eventually, but i haven’t figured out when would be a good time for lotor to lose his spot, or even whether i’d want him to lose it rather than stepping down. there are many different possibilities that can be explored and i may make different verses for them, such as the possibility that he loses/steps down from the championship some time in the near future (5 - 10 years) when he feels that his work is done/feels the pressure is too much, or the possibility that he feels his work will take literal decades and he steps down as an old man once he is satisfied that the region has finally reformed. if you are interested in lotor’s championship spot though, please know that as of writing this, i am IFFY about any plot where a muse defeats lotor and then returns prussia to its original ways. this is because despite my love of “ow the edge,” as the creator of preuzien i do want to write a happier ending for a region whose people have seen nothing but suffering. if this does end up happening, it will have to happen in a separate verse.

Be Prepared for a Long and Potentially Traumatizing Haul

the prussian league is a thirty-six-badge-long, MULTI-YEAR ordeal. there is no way around that. i hc other leagues usually take about a year to complete. the prussian league, on the other hand, takes a MINIMUM of 4 years to finish for trainers who start their journeys in preuzien, 3.5 years for trainers who have already entered the hall of fame for a foreign league, and 2.5 years for trainers who have entered the hall of fame in more than one foreign league. for some perspective on its difficulty--lotor, the guy with the 200+ IQ who beat ragnamax zygarde and stopped ragnarök during his championship battle, STILL took multiple years to complete his league challenge. can your muse clear the league in, say, half a year or a year less than the time it normally takes? yes, but i will be selective about who gets to have that honor. please don’t be “that person” and say “well my muse is capable of doing it in less than a year”--no. they can’t. why? because i said so.

another thing to note about the prussian league is its difficulty. this is part of why it takes such a long time for any trainer to get through preuzien: your muse will not have an easy time going through it, NO MATTER WHAT. yes, even if your muse has legendaries…joke’s on them, preuzien’s entire culture is geared toward beating the shit out of legendaries, and i daresay they’re damn good at it. yes, even if your muse is “really, really strong”…everyone in preuzien is also really, really strong, and not to mention, strength in preuzien is different from strength in most of the pokémon world because historically, the prussian league has put its trainers through situations--both on and off the field--approximating WAR. again, for perspective: lotor has one of the highest IQs on planet pokéarth and literally saved the world from the previous deity champion, and preuzien still had times when it PUSHED HIM PAST HIS LIMIT. so if you state that your muse is somehow able to just breeze through every gym and the national tournament like it’s nothing, that’s something i’m going to have a real hard time believing.

as to the trauma part of this section, prussia is a much friendlier place now that lotor is champion…provided you’re not an abuser or a member of a corrupt ruling class. but if your muse is entering the league pre-lotor’s championship, when the region was still under the rule of wilhelmine von hohenzollern, your muse WILL suffer some sort of trauma. there is also no way around that. if they started in preuzien, they would have started in mandatory trainers’ school, where they would have been both physically and emotionally abused by their teachers. the only ways to avoid this abuse are to 1) be a junker’s child whose parents are the rare prussian unicorns that do not support child-beating or 2) become a total kissup to the teachers and other authority figures of the school, screwing over your fellow students to save yourself, and i doubt most peoples’ muses would want to do that. if they started outside the region and came in…they still have the below section to deal with.

Your Muse Will Lose Pokémon

this is no longer a guaranteed if your muse is joining the prussian league under lotor’s rule. but in the time of wilhelmine, under the fight to kill clause, you may be ordered to kill your opponent and their pokémon for the entertainment of the crowd. and you can’t back out from this either, because if you do, you will be publicly executed for failing to provide the audience entertainment. this aspect of the fight to kill clause is no longer in effect, but when it was, it was responsible for so many young peoples’ deaths that the region’s age dependency ratio went completely out of whack. what’s more, the fight to kill clause also states that gym leaders can choose whether they wish to kill you without warning and/or your pokémon at any point during their matches, which only adds to the danger. in a region where the league literally requires you to fight for your life, it is NEARLY INCONCEIVABLE that anyone could get through this without losing at least one of their trusted partners. there is only one person in the entire history of wilhelmine prussia who managed to go through all the gyms and the prussian national tournament without losing a single one of their pokémon (and his name, by the way, is not lotor). i am going to keep it that way.

what’s more, if the brutality of the battles don’t get to you, the lack of healthcare will. preuzien in its pre-lotor days was infamous for the shortage of both human and pokémon healthcare that plagued its system. healthcare was only guaranteed to junkers, the military, and those who are deemed “victors,” aka those who fought long and hard enough to get the government’s attention and be seen as worthy. for the rest, they have to struggle through long and potentially life-ending lines at pokémon centers and doctors’ offices, all of which come from the fact that preuzien glorifies pokémon training and militarism to the point that almost every other profession is suffering a shortage in professionals and that includes healthcare. even if we go with the fanon that nurse joys are always in abundance because they’re actually ditto spawn that can be mass-produced, preuzien would deliberately make it so that there’s a lack of healthcare so they could force people to kill each other over who gets treated. so yeah. under wilhelmine, this is a region in which losing at least one pokémon is a 99.99999% certainty.

Your Muse is More Likely to Fail than Succeed

i’m gonna be straight up right now: i won’t let more than a handful of muses succeed in winning the prussian national tournament--at least, in proportion to the rest who fail. why? because if i as preuzien’s creator let too many people have a successful run through prussia, the difficulty of the league will lose its meaning. it’s not “the hardest league in the world” if every muse and their mother is capable of receiving all 18 type specialist badges, receiving all 18 other strategic badges, and clearing all four stages of the 256-person prussian national tournament. by having too many muses being able to achieve this extraordinarily difficult feat, it cheapens the accomplishment of the few who did. i might be more lenient on this for muses that enter the league after wilhelmine is deposed, seeing as the fight to kill clause is abolished and that explains a big chunk of the prussian league’s difficulty. but even so, given the unique demands that prussian-style battling foists on its trainers, they’ll be hard pressed to rise to the challenge--especially if they were not raised like most prussian trainers are to take it on.

if you want your muse to succeed, i will be tough about this. i will play devil’s advocate and come up with every single possible way in which your muse could fail, whether psychologically or strategically. even the best strategists which basically every muse seems to be can crumble and be broken by a league specifically designed to mentally shatter its participants in order to “weed out the weak.” and even the strongest-willed people which basically every muse also seems to be may lack the particular intelligence needed to handle strategic situations that require one to think less like a trainer and more like a MILITARY COMMANDER. this applies mainly to wilhelmine’s preuzien, because her league is brutal on a scale that is unseen anywhere else in the world and what’s more, it’s not afraid to play dirty. if doing a run when lotor is champion i will be less exacting, but i still want to keep the success to failure ratio low. please don’t take it personally when i start grilling like it’s a BBQ--i just want to be realistic and a hardliner about whether your muse really has what it takes. like the officials of the prussian league itself, i want to make sure that ONLY THE BEST OF THE BEST make it through. 

i will, however, say this: just because your muse fails to get to/through the prussian national tournament, doesn’t mean it’s the end for them. they could join tournaments for the badge level at which your muse stopped, or join the coordinating scene that has gained new life under lotor’s leadership. they could move on to another region and enjoy their newfound capacity to beat the shit out of almost everyone they come across, because sometimes even the people who fail in preuzien are leaps and bounds stronger than those who succeed outside it. or they could divert their efforts from trying to climb to the top, thank their lucky stars that they still have their mental health mostly intact, and start taking care of pokémon who were abused by the system. there’s still plenty to do after an unsuccessful prussian run--your character’s story will not necessarily end there, and even in prussia’s darkest days, it would not necessarily end in disaster. to sum it up, failure to complete the league is still a plot point that you may find worth exploring.

in closing, i would like to say: your muse will have it extremely rough going through prussia but honestly…the struggle is half the fun of writing it. >:3

[grouchomarxiste-blog1]

Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite: Marx and Violence

Warning: A majority of this was written pre-pandemic, so please excuse my overly optimistic tone. It was a different time.

Yes, another Bong Joon-Ho film. Can you blame me? The guy’s a genius. Parasite was another one of those great films that will never leave you. You can watch the movie simply without doing a major analysis in your head and you will still agree that it’s a great movie. Which personally, is why I believe it's made its way into the major American awards season. Parasite winning Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes was one of the few decisions I’ve agreed with. I didn’t see any of the winners in the film categories besides Parasite, and I’m very much ok with that. It’s making its way into Hollywood and the favorite lists of celebrities. Elon Musk said he loved Parasite (he also turned Grimes, the former “anti-imperialist,” to the mother of his future child). Chrissy Teigen loved Parasite (a lot can be said about her, so let’s not). Obama loved Parasite (but I have some serious doubts about the authenticity of his yearly favorites list. Mainly because I can’t imagine him listening to Summer Walker). I was completely boggled at all of those tweets. How? How is one so blind? How did one watch Parasite and not feel a thing? After I watched Parasite, I rushed back to school to attend the discussion section of my Political Theory class so I could read and discuss primitive accumulation through dispossession with revolutionary fervor. I recommended it to everyone near me. I even wrote a note to my professor who tucked it into his book. But is that the problem- that all these beloved figures (not mine) end up loving the sheer adrenaline of the story and tweet to their followers about how great the movie is. Those followers, with their favorite celebrities’ seal of approval, watch the movie, not putting it together either. Bong Joon-Ho is critiquing those very figures! In every post-Parasite interview, Bong Joon-Ho has said that Parasite is about America and capitalism, but we have just reduced those statements to memes on Twitter. As funny as they are, Parasite is rich for its class analysis. The Hollywood reaction is just as important. Marx is all over this movie, there's no question about it. I also want us to understand these controversial moments from a Fanonian perspective, again all with relation to Marx. I hope for us to understand that everything about this movie is intentional and every bit of it is worth pages and pages of discussion. I nearing 11 pages as I write this. I also hope that this film can be a way for us to understand economic exploitation in the 21st century. While many celebrities have misunderstood it, it is important that you, us, the people, the working class, grasp every bit of this radical film.

I’m not going to bother with another one of my “brief summary” because I’m assuming, we’ve all seen it. It's on Hulu now and I believe Apple TV. If you don’t want to pay for either platforms, watch a pirated version online, I genuinely don’t think Bong will mind.

I want to talk about the home. I know we all had the same reaction to that beautiful home: awe, admiration, and envy. The Park’s home itself is significant, but also in contrast to the Kims’ home. The Kim’s live in a small semi-basement home, where they have to reach up in order to look out their window and see the street level. Their home is dirty, cramped, just not a place where anyone wants to be. But immediately, I thought of Fanon and the native sector. I know that Parasite isn’t about colonialism, but space is important to Marx (I’ll return to Fanon). In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels attribute many things to the process of proletarianization. To name a few: literacy campaigns and public education, the politicization of the proletariat towards the end of feudalism, expansion of media, etc. One that stands out, is the mass migration and urbanization of the proletariat. Through that, the proletariat was concentrated into the poorest parts of the city where they shared their most intimate quarters with workers like themselves (Marx and Engels, 15) One might dismiss this as a historical example specific to Europe, but if we go back to my thoughts on Memories of Murder, we’d note how Korea’s transition to a modern capitalist society, was a fairly recent one (from 1987 onwards). As the agricultural sector suffered, Koreans living in the rural provinces were forced to move into the major cities. Park (Song Kang-Ho’s character in Memories) was lucky enough to become a successful businessman, unlike the Kims who earn their livelihood by holding pizza boxes- the most insignificant work. Along with urbanization, the proletariat also occupied the small space of the factory, where they are reminded of the everyday brutality of their work. The Park’s home is not cramped, but the one scene where everyone is rushing to hide from them, results in Ki-taek, Ki-jeong, and Ki-woo hiding underneath a coffee table overnight. After that lengthy battle with Geun-sae and Moon-gwang, the Kims are exhausted. They do not want to be laying side by side hearing the Parks have sex. My friend Sef also reminded me that the Parks had weird sex as Mr. Park recalled how their old chauffeur possibly had sex with a drugged-up prostitute, a scenario that previously made Mrs. Park scream out of disgust. Revisiting this, I believe this definitely deserves a psychoanalytic analysis.

This isn’t their breaking point, but also hearing Mr. Park say that Ki-taek smells like the subway is a factor. Once making their break they run outside where it's raining heavily. They come to their home which is flooded and destroyed. Here is where I’ll start talking about Fanon. [READ NOTE]. Again, I know the colonial system is not the case in Parasite. Fanon was a Marxist and expanded on Marxist theory in the colonial context. I just want to warn you that I am using Fanon as carefully as possible, not using concepts that are distinctly racial. I know there’s probably also much more relevant work out there on spatiality and violence, but I think Fanon’s prose style in The Wretched of the Earthis quite appropriate for the film. Let’s consider the colonial bourgeoisie as the Parks and the natives as the Kims. Fanon calls the colonial world, a “compartmentalized world.” The colonists’ sector is clean and protected whereas the native sector is overcrowded, envious, and starving. Sounds about right so far.

The colonist’s sector is a sector built to last, all stone and steel. It’s a sector of lights and paved roads, where the trash cans constantly overflow with strange and wonderful garbage, undreamed-of leftovers. The colonizer’s feet can never be glimpsed, except perhaps in the sea, but then again you can never get close enough. They are protected by solid shoes in a sector where the streets are clean and smooth., without a pothole, without a stone… The colonized’s sector or at least the “native” quarters, the shanty town, the Medina, the reservation, is a disreputable place, inhabited by disreputable people. You are born anywhere, anyhow. You die anywhere, from anything. It’s a world with no space, people are piled one on top of each other. (Fanon, 4)

This becomes extremely relevant when the Kims run out of the Parks’ home in the pouring rain. I kept noticing that they were all barefoot, only focused on getting out of there. My toes curled in the movie theater watching that. Running away from that traumatic house to find your own home destroyed, relocating to a displacement camp, THEN going to work the next day for your unaffected employer who has the audacity to audibly take a sniff of you. I don't know about you, but to me, this sounds like the conditions for a proletarian revolution. Besides the literal allegory, the tone sharply shifts. One could argue that it began to change when they found Geun-sae in the bunker or when Moon-gwang hit her head but that was just some good old dark comedy for me. After the flooding, things are different. Ki-taek has this unmoving face. Things turned grim and we knew something climactic was about to happen. Fanon’s most famous chapter, “Concerning Violence,” maintains that decolonization will always be a violent event because colonialism is a violent system itself. Something that I absolutely love about this chapter is that it isn’t some dense, theoretical work. It’s a revolutionary call to arms for all colonized people. It has a strategic pace which parallels Parasite so well. He sets the scene- the compartmentalized, Manichaen world. He slowly intensifies the antagonistic relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, until this culminating point:

The colonized subject thus discovers that his life, his breathing and his heartbeat are the same as the colonist’s. He discovers that the skin of the colonist is not worth more than the “natives.” In other words, his world receives a fundamental jolt. The colonized’s revolutionary new assurance stems from this. If no longer strike fear into me or nail me to the spot and his voice can no longer petrify me. I am no longer uneasy in his presence. In reality, to hell with him. Not only does his presence no longer bother me, but i am already preparing to waylay him in such a way that he will no longer have any solution but to flee (Fanon, 10)

As corny as it sounds, when I first read that, it brought me to tears. I’m not sure if it was just because I was up for three days straight writing my midterm and I was finally breaking, or because it just meant that much to me. But that section in which the colonized discoversthat his life is worth as much as the colonizer is such a crucial moment. This parallels the infamous birthday scene. Geun-sae gets out of the bunker, stabs Ki-jung, the Park’s kid (I’ll look his name up later) has a seizure, and Chong-sook is wrestling with Geun-sae. Shit is going down. If we recall, Mrs. Park mentioned that it takes a few minutes for her son to die after a seizure and needs to go to the hospital immediately. So much is going on and Mr. Park starts screaming at Ki-taek to give him the keys. Ki-taek is immobilized at this point. His daughter has been stabbed, son attacked, wife almost killed, the Parks’ got him dressed up in some cultural appropriation, Hollywood Indian regalia. In fact, I find it very fitting that he’s dressed up as a Native American at this moment. I see this as Bong’s satirical nod to old ultra-capitalist Hollywood. But if enough wasn't going on, Mr. Park sniffed. He got close to Geun-sae, a man who’s been living underground for 3 years and audibly sniffed him in disgust. The same way that he sniffed Ki-taek. Of course, there’s probably a difference between a “subway” smell vs. “I haven't showered in 3 years” smell but at the moment it feels as if it's almost the same thing. In my initial viewing, I thought what happened next was because of that, but no. Ki-taek realized that his life was worth the same as the Parks, and their presence no longer bothers him, but he is now plotting against him, and the time of action is now. Ki-taek stabs Mr. Park and flees. Annoyingly, the YouTube section for this clip is filled with people feeling bad for the Parks and discussing how what Ki-taek did was wrong. Of course, the average viewer will view the Parks as some sympathetic rich suckers who only treated the Kims kindly. The casual reader who picks up Fanon for the first time would also dismiss his theory of violence as immoral in comparison to non-violent methods like Gandhi’s. A lot can be said about Gandhi, but Fanon says that non-violence is a strategy created by the colonizer to deter decolonization and paint the colonizer as a gentle ruler who wants peace. This is not the case. Colonialism is a violent system. Capitalism is a violent system. Colonialism can only be undone violently. Capitalism can only be undone violently. Now I don't mean to make this all about colonialism, as my friends say I often do. But the similarities are clear. The question isn’t whether the murder of Mr. Park was a justified act, but what were the conditions that forced Ki-taek to murder. Geun-sae killed Ki-jung, but no one in the comment section is having a debate on whether his murder was ethical. Because in our heads we feel bad for him, and the life that he’s lived- why don’t we feel the same towards Ki-taek? Geun-sae and Ki-taek are two sides of the same coin. Geun-sae’s exploitation is naked. He’s confined to the basement, controlling the lights of the home. A feature of the house that Mr. Park doesn't even pay attention to, never mind considering that there is someone manually operating it. A clear example of how our labor is alienated. All while blindly worshipping Mr. Park- a man who knows nothing of his existence. Honestly, I hope some of you see yourselves in Geun-sae the next time you defend billionaires online. But Ki-taek is just another exploited worker. I understand this can be hard to understand in our current understanding of the world. How is Ki-taek exploited? Him and his family conned their way into their jobs and leech off of the Parks. Again, we must return to the system as a whole to understand. None of this wouldn’t have happened if the Kims weren’t desperately poor in a capitalist society, which enables families like the Parks, to live a life of excess at the expense of the Kims. Capitalism is a system of exploitation; we cannot forget that. Quite simply, no one is rich without thousands that are poor.

          The levels of the home are also this unforgettable feature. I just want to make this quick note about the issue of the ghost. Did you forget about the ghost? Da-Song didn’t (yes, I finally looked his name up!). I find the story of the ghost such an interesting touch. Not just as a way for Bong to warn the audience about Da-Song’s history of seizures. When Mrs. Park tells Chung-sook of the story, she says “they say a ghost in the house brings wealth.” This, of course, is true since the exploitation of those like Geun-sae are responsible for the wealth of the Parks, in the larger picture. I’d like to look further into this. There's a twofold meaning to this. I do believe that this ghost is symbolic to the exploitation of the Kims, and the proletariat in general, but that’s Mrs. Park’s understanding of this ghost. The way she understands this ghost, is as a source of wealth. Maybe Mrs. Park isn’t as ditzy as we imagine- she to some degree, understands her class position. But like most, she doesn’t question the ghost, or her class position. She knows that if she looks into either, it would result in the ugly truth. Da-Song, however, is just a child. He’s too young to really understand the economic and social relations which are responsible for his wealth. He’s also too young to consciously suppress any desire to investigate the matter like his mother. He is a child after all and is naturally curious. But his first encounter with the ghost was the one that resulted in a near fatal seizure. This can be his body’s reaction to the life-threatening figure of a ghost. The ghost isn’t just a threat to his mortal life, but his wealth, some may argue that these are the same. Mrs. Park pays for therapy for his “trauma” so he could forget the event, but he still knows. He saw this ghost and is the only one to seriously consider its threat. Mrs. Park knows it's real but chooses to not think about it. I want to return to the Manifesto. Let's hear these famous words: “A specter is haunting Europe- the specter of communism… Two things result from this fact: Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers itself to be a power...” (Marx and Engels, 8). Don’t think I’m just including this because he’s talking about a specter, in fact, I think this story of the ghost is an intentional allusion to the specter of communism. Da-Song represents this figure of the bourgeoisie who is in constant anxiety over the threat of his wealth. When he reappears at his birthday party, he has another seizure. Also, at this time, the family, and all of their guests are witness to the horrors of their wealth and what it's created. This naked, hideous display, this moment of confrontation is a pivotal point in the dialectic. Of course, this murderous moment is not seen as a success to the viewer with Mr. Park, Ki-jung, and Geun-sae dead, Ki-woo presumed to be dead, and Ki-taek missing. This just shows us that the bourgeoisie are their own gravediggers- to again invoke the Manifesto. On a larger scale, this would be the moment of a revolution- but we don’t. Ki-woo survives with Chung-sook and is put on probation. Ki-taek is missing to the police, but Ki-taek realizes that he’s living in the bunker in hiding. Ki-woo declares that he will make enough money to buy the home and free his father. At first, I wondered “why couldn't he just sneak him out of the house when the new owners were asleep?” “Why did he have to buy the home?” As much as I wanted to portray the Kims to be revolutionary figures, Ki-woo has the common fate of most. Instead of usurping power from the bourgeoisie, he believes he can free his dad from the home, by owning the house. Everyone who lives in the basement is stuck there for a reason, because someone is forcing them to stay there. A perfect allegory for the relations of production as I have repeatedly mentioned throughout this text. Ki-woo desires a bourgeois life (as most working-class folk do!) in order to lift his father out of the despair of poverty. He believes the only way he can save his father is to own the home, which could easily be seen as the means of production. A nice touch which I had to look up, was as Ki-woo tells us of his desire to buy the home, a song plays called “546 years”- the amount of time it will take for him to earn enough money. I wish this song title was more obvious for the American viewer. I am not trying to take away from this film by saying that, but for a viewer who knows Korean or the song title, they’ll understand the tragic nature of his dreams. Whereas the American viewers will sympathize with his dreams- as we’ve done with immigrants and “the American Dream” or the bootstrapping mentality of some people. In some way I do think Bong didn’t want an overtly revolutionary ending. I don’t think the average viewer, especially in this day, could handle an ending like that. Not to say that we don't understand class inequality and such. We are not living in, say the 60s/70s where there were Marxist movements all throughout the world. I don’t think we have the conditions for a revolution at this moment, although I do think the mass unemployment and the other severe economic consequences of this virus will radicalize the working class in large numbers, to a degree that we haven't seen in a long time. But to make my point, I feel that we are living in historic political times and we are coming to understand ourselves in a liberating way.  It is my hope that films like Parasite will awaken the revolutionary potential in us all.

Note: I wanted to use Fanon’s theory of violence and diagnosis of colonialism as a violent structure, in relation to capitalist society. I don’t want us to interpret his writings as something that can be isolated from the racial structure of colonialism, but i do think it is a beneficial guide to understanding this film.

Work Cited:

Philcox, Richard, translator. “On Violence.” The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, Grove Press, 2004.

Joon-Ho, Bong, director. Parasite. Barunson E&A, 2019.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. International Publishers, 1948.

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

*1/7* Nyxelestia's (& princeescaluswords) latest self insert victim blaming/abuse apologism - pro TP/Scott Mccall delirium "The fact that people claim Posey insulted or slammed on Sterek fans is one of the ways people twist him into something he’s not in order to justify hating him. Posey never called Sterek fans 'bizarre, weird or twisted'. Crystal Reed got asked 'Is Allison going to dress like a slut this season?'

*2/7* So it’s not just Posey watching himself get marginalized - it’s watching a friend of his get mistreated, too, and that’s on top of the overall show getting drowned in a fanon/crackship. And given how often Sterek fandom has overtaken everything else about the show, I don’t blame him for overtaking a single question that was directed at Tyler Hoechlin.

*3/7* All of this is accompanied by a long history of hatred of Scott - the main character of the show, and Posey’s character that was largely perpetuated by Sterek fandom. Things like not knowing TP’s the main character of his own show, claiming that the show is all about Stiles, people trying to remove Scott from his own story by claiming it’s really about Derek and that everything is from Stiles’ POV, erasing all of Scott’s character development…*4/7* All on top of a long history of erasing Derek’s abusive behavior while calling Scott a rapist and victim-blaming him. Calling Scott selfish for making tough decisions to save as many lives as possible, blaming Scott for Gerard’s villainy and making a choice to save as many people as possible while ignoring some of the Hale mens’ own actions, and erasing Scott scenes to paint him as putting Stiles and Derek in danger so he can spend time with his girlfriend

*5/7* For all that people claim Scott-stans and non-Sterek fans go into Sterek tags to bully them, most Sterek fans seem to have no idea just how much Sterek infects other fandoms/the rest of fandom. Yes, there were crazy fans from all ships sending hate to all the actors, for a variety of reasons. But a lot of people fail to realize the sheer scale of the Sterek fandom compared to all the rest of Teen Wolf fandom combined.

*6/7* …In conclusion, If my understanding of a ship was predominantly made up of people erasing me from my own TV show, saying I deserved to be raped and murdered, and making the rest of my friends uncomfortable or harassing them in the process? ‘Bizarre, twisted and weird’ would be the nicest way to say what I think of them. (In my case, it really is.)“

*7/7* Oh, she also called Hobrien “RPF Sterek”? Because of course Nyxie lives in her own little delusional AU in which TP’s unhealthy and creepy af unrequited obsession/affection/industry friendship/infatuation for Dylan O'Brien is ‘true love’ and Hobrien never EVER existed. Of course… Their “undeniable chemistry” is just not real, okay?! #SureJan

As always with Nyx, her little rants are fairly easy to unpack. 

Calling Sterek “bizarre, weird and twisted” is what now? A compliment to the people who like it? Fans were hurt. And the thing with other people being hurt, you don’t get to say “Oh, that never happened!” Their hurt did happen. Was it an overreaction? That’s not my place to judge, and it’s not Nyx’s either. 

Nyx fails to understand the history of Sterek. She fails to understand that the show was pro-Sterek, that the show runner was pro-Sterek, and that the PR was pro-Sterek. They encouraged the ship. They teased it becoming canon. 

Sterek isn’t just something that fandom created and exists in a vacuum. From the Daily Dot: 

But this isn’t just any slash pairing.

Ironically, fans had seen Sterek as a welcome change from the usual dismissal that slash fans usually get from their creative teams. Sterek is something of a historical first in a lot of ways, purely because Teen Wolfcreator Jeff Davis was so welcoming and supportive of the idea. Creators have a long history of viewing slash fans as weird, obsessive, creepy, or crazy. Davis saw them as passionate, creative, and loyal. With his blessing, the show embraced Sterek in numerous ways. O’Brien and Hoechlin filmed promos for the Teen Choice Awards together; MTV’s unprecedented Teen Wolf fanfic contest welcomed Sterek and other slash pairings. And in turn, the Sterek fandom rallied around Davis, creating a “campaign” to show love for the pairing and the show.

Re Crystal being asked if Allison is going to be dressed like a slut. What’s the point of this? That sometimes people ask stupid and offensive questions? That a question from some random fan in any way equals someone with authority (the star of the show) telling a vast number of fans that something is weird, twisted, bizarre and they’re watching the show for the wrong reason? There’s no equivalence there. 

Nyx is so proud of herself for pointing out that some people, people who casually scroll past Teen Wolf stuff, just don’t know that Stiles isn’t the main character, isn’t she? Just like how many of them don’t know Tyler Posey is a POC, probably. It proves popularity, which does not equate to erasure. Fuck, going by my dashboard there are only two characters in Shadowhunters. And funnily enough, neither of them is the main either. And if we go by Star Wars content, BB8 is the main character. (I will fight anyone who says BB8 isn’t, actually.) Sometimes he’s accompanied by his gay space dads though. 

Once again, @nyxelestia and @princeescaluswords are relying on purely anecdotal evidence. I think they’d find that by following few Sterek blogs and more pro-Scott blogs, their world view, or int his case their Tumblr view, would change. 

Because they can claim all they like that Sterek fics ignore Derek’s history of violence. I say, no. No they don’t. If they do, you’re reading the wrong ones. (I would also say, if they do, so what? You have no right to tell a writer what to include, but that’s a discussion for another day.) If you don’t like the fics you read, read different fics. There are tens of thousands of them. 

In conclusion, If my understanding of a ship was predominantly made up of people erasing me from my own TV show, saying I deserved to be raped and murdered, and making the rest of my friends uncomfortable or harassing them in the process? 'Bizarre, twisted and weird’ would be the nicest way to say what I think of them. (In my case, it really is.)“

Sterek is predominantly made up of people who say Tyler Posey believed to be murdered and raped? That’s ludicrous. Did Posey cop hate after his comments? Yes, he did. Threats of rape and death? I don’t know, but I very much doubt the majority of Sterek fans were saying those things. (If you’re reading this, Nyx, that’s what “predominantly” means. Words and their meanings matter.) You think he was justified in saying what he said because his friends were “getting harassed?” By “harassed” do you mean “getting paid to be asked questions at conventions by fans that shipped a pairing the show and the PR pushed publicly and loudly”? 

That’s weird. Because I think he said what he did because he didn’t like the fact that Sterek was more popular that his character.

Any Nyx needs to work on her timeline. The pushback against Posey happened after those comments, not before. It’s almost like it was cause and effect, in fact. 

But hey, he’s has a few years now where Sterek isn’t an issue at all on the show.  I wonder how that’s worked out for the ratings and stuff.