#yes this is specifically about how they show love to eliot

[trekscribbles]

Hardison shows love by giving people space. Parker shows love by taking space up.

[eliotqueliot]

Queliot & The Magicians Fic Reading Winter Challenge, part 1

I'm going to return to posting about my fic reading. Basically this is just a list of Queliot & Magicians fanfic that I read & loved! With a few little comments about why I loved it, in case you want to try it, too.

However--there's a little more to this challenge personally, behind the scenes.

I started reading Queliot fanfic before I had an AO3 account. While I always left kudos as a guest, at first, I didn't leave a lot of comments.

Meanwhile, this summer, I was out of town a lot. I did a lot of fic reading--but a lot of it was offline, with fic I downloaded so I could read them--and then I got super busy upon return and still haven't finished commenting.

And also--a lot of the fic I love, including several I'm currently reading, are LONG. I don't wanna stress myself out or shortchange the fic by telling myself to read a new-to-me fic every day, like I did the last time.

This time--my personal challenge is gonna include spending more time reading Queliot & Magicians fic (I love it the most, and I've been so stressed out lately that I haven't had time to read enough--yet ironically reading the fic would help so much with the stress!)--but also--taking the time to go back and add comments to some of the fic I've read but haven't yet commented on!

I'll be sharing the list here--because I hope more people will dive in & enjoy these wonderful stories--also to keep me on track and help me find the fic I love. I'll do my best to post every few days with 2 or more recs. My goal--starting today through Jan. 31--is to rec about five per week--for a total of 40 fic! Let's see how I do!!! <3 (Yes, you know me too well--I will be trying for more than 40 LOL)

By the way--this whole thing started thanks to @lizardkingeliot and specifically:

I really love this high school AU showing Eliot & Quentin's friendship--and just how important they become to one another, how quickly (platonic, not a romance). It's deep and moving and for me showcases just how well they connect. Please mind the tags. Thank you so much, @tbraves24

And I would have stayed up with you all night, had I known how to save a life - tbraves24 - The Magicians (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

2. Queliot romance--very hot!--very much like them--and so sweet! I love how their connection develops--it feels so true to them--and honestly I just love how they are together in this fic. Thank you so much, @veronicasawyer99

Making Friends After 30 - cold_wind - The Magicians (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

3. I can't stop thinking about this one. Mosaic fic--my favorite type of Queliot fic--oh, the sweetness! Eliot makes a puppet show for Teddy...also showing El missing Margo...omg. Thank you so much, @lizardkingeliot

in a land far away - peacefrog - The Magicians (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

[clarajohnson]

the magicians s1e5

being concerned about the fate of the friend who nearly permanently incapacitated you in a mind prison is sooooo babygirl of quentin

the way that q and julia (and like i'm guessing the other first years in the main cast? but not a given) are like, only probably 22 at this point. literal children.

traveling is such a neat concept one point to the magicians for that

i'm constantly shocked by s1 margo she's very sweet very shallow and not so acidic. also her outfits are shit. i'm so looking forward to no-bullshit heart of gold high king margo with her unbelievable fillory wardrobe.

(eventually) killing ted coldwater is one of the evilest things this show does

eliot wouldn't wear a bowtie. i know this. i should have run the magicians.

circling back to julia being 22 YOU MIGHT HAVE YOUR UNDERGRAD DEGREE AT THIS POINT DON'T PLAY HOUSEWIFE FOR THIS MAN

"if magicians could cure cancer why would anybody have cancer" "because we like secrets" this episode laying a lot of groundwork for fandom hand-wringing in the future

everyone here is so babyfaced and yes i'm talking about margo again

every julia scene makes me more and more nervous knowing how close we're getting to reynard. also more excited because we're closer to best bitches but mostly nervous.

margo's welters outfit i say yay yippee hooray hooray hooray

you know the physical kids are the main characters in this show because they all have fun character-specific welters uniforms while the nature students are wearing fucking maroon tunics

who knew you had it in you !!!!! you're so right margo we should get married

julia's s1 arc being like, ooh i'm a magic junkie is so embarrassing but you have to remember that their like Main Poster for this season used the literal tagline "magic is a drug" and it's like oh yeah they thought this would be harry potter for adults with stick and pokes

love the entirety of kady and penny's relationship being open and honest communication, excellent banter, and routine sex that is apparently consistently unbelievable. also very clear and pure love.

"you slept with me two days ago" "you're welcome"

this show really does villains well, they're always kind of polite and basically unstoppable, these facsimiles of civility that intend to turn you inside out and you can really only stop them by a miracle

eliot doing his best impression of a man who cares about alice >>>>

"what if i could fix him?" (narrator: he could not fix cancer puppy)

there seem to be two types of magic in this show: there's very involved tutting and there's a kind of... i don't know, like, magic that seems more like strong-willing things to happen. like some of it is about doing the right steps in a very specific order and some of it is about wanting it badly enough.

"get ready for the first spanking you won't enjoy" "that actually sounds kind of hot" they are my best friends

god alice/margo had so much potential

"penny i think you were in fillory" LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[ayotofu]

This is the leverage/9-1-1 anon again and my friend you are incredible you’re so right all of this is fantastic

Imagine also Elliot and Bobby getting a chance to cook with each other, for the families they made. I think they understand the significance of a meal shared, especially for men who were so resigned to their fate before they found the people who would support them enough to find their ways back home

I wanna see Parker have a moment with both of the Buckley children. Because Parker knows about feeling unwanted and unloved, sure, but more specifically she knows what it is to grow up alongside a ghost. She was a big sister like Maddie, and she lost a piece of herself along with her little brother. And even after being taken in by Archie, she wasn’t a part of a family but on the outside. Not quite fitting in. She recognises this feeling in Buck, this certainty that they both can’t quite shake that this will all end because it’s more than they deserve.

I can see Nate and Eddie butting heads quite a bit, a bit like Nate and Elliot do on occasion but there’s no foundation of trust to fall back upon.

Also Parker should totally get to help Buck on a really reckless rescue mission

(And Buck definitely convinced Hardison to help him stalk Eddie with different Hildy ads and products - eddie’d never have one in the house ofc but hey Buck is not above getting hardison to hack the digital billboard on Eddie’s commute to show ~very~ targeted hildy ads)

Oh man anon you are so incredible big brained yes thank you. eliot and bobby cooking together!!! eliot swapping cooking tips while arguing with bobby very passionately about the best way to make barbecue sauce (eliot is from the south bobby you HAVE to default to his expertise)

park with buck and maddie i just

ur killing me here

yeah i definitely think eddie and nate butt heads, because eddie's good at taking orders, yes, but from people he respects. people he trusts. he's also, sometimes, a bit of a wildcard and i think that aspect of his personality would be in full force with nate there.

i also think hardison would actually bond a lot with chim about maddie and parker/eliot. both of them are in relationships with very traumatized people and navigating that can be difficult. I think they take a couple nights to talk about it, how they had to be so, so careful to start, had to let their partners set the pace. they wouldn't change anything, but that conversation lets them feel a little more seen for the effort they put in.

(and yes, lmao. hardison would love tormenting eddie with hildy. just a little bit. as a treat.)

[soullessjack]

oh my god I know I’ve mentioned it before but I rlly cant stop thinking about it. don’t go into the woods is literally the pinnacle of autistic representation (to me). bear with me because I have a migraine and am struggling to stay conscious but. There are just so many various autistic experiences shown throughout the episode and what happens to jack in it. Like it’s borderline upsetting (for me) to watch because of how resonating they are.

firstly, jack actively wants to try and put himself out there. He wants to make friends and have normal human experiences even if he can’t exactly stop being ‘special.’ (Also, he does specifically say that he is “himself” again once his powers are back, so it’s like, yes that is something he more or less sees as an inherent part of himself, but I think the part he struggles with is the consequential nature of his powers and who he is. as I’ve said before, it’s one thing to simply be different than it is to be treated differently. )

furthermore, once jack realizes the kids are basically ‘safe’ to be honest with, as they’re aware of monsters, he’s the exact opposite of shy about his powers. that’s one thing about him I really love . Like he LOVES to show off and impress people and be praised/appreciated by others.it’s such a silly trait I wish was characterized more often. He also just instantly starts unmasking and info dumping Twice about Haitian zombie law (to Sam and Dean) and how to kill monsters god he’s so special you don’t understand. He is not a gatekeeper you WILL be forced to know about his special interests.

however even tho jack is shown to be very proud of his abilities and hunting knowledge the very Minute that he senses the other kids think he’s weird (Reminding everyone that they were judgy from the start and did not in fact invite him over because they like him) he just Cannot Stand It . That’s the consequential part yknow. Like jack does see and feel his powers as just an inherent part of him (which they Are), he’s literally said they feel like breathing. It’s just Who He Is yknow. but the consequential part of it is that people are either afraid of him, they hate him, or they think he’s weird. And jack doesn’t like any of that shit. He doesn’t like being cast out or defined by the thing that makes him a little more different.

‘he’s back to being the oddball.’ back to it, like that’s just the unfortunate default he’s stuck filling. (Also on another note I think it’s really sad on that he can already recognize the particular facial expression for “We Think You’re A Freak”). It’s like he can just sense the rejection and isolation before he even actually receives it, and the mere perception of that is enough to totally throw him off. Totally not an experience any autistic person has ever felt before. Totally not similar to a particular co-morbid form of dysphoria that commonly plagues autistic individuals. Not at all.

This episode has probably the most bleak ending to me? Not in a competitive sort of way, the show has gotten far bleaker I am aware. But in both the original script (that got entirely changed) and the actual episode, it ultimately ends with Jack just not having friends. We’ve all seen the episode I won’t recap that far. Head still hurts bad. But In the script, Jack only ever shows the kids various combat moves with an angel blade, and the accidental stabbing is by Eliot, and Jack healing Stacey is basically the Big Reveal of his powers and , as the script above shows, what he Really is. ?.

I guess all of the combined stress and just shock of the monster world (Eliot is previously shown to be basically paranoid of things out to get him earlier in the script) is enough for the kids to very gently let jack down and say they’ll see him again or something, but it literally ends with jack’s inner monologue that he knows he’s never gonna see them again, and going “so much for having friends.” The End.

And idk. To me It’s just so. Isolating. Like. You try and make friends and be a little normal and belong somewhere else for once but the entire time you get the vague sense that you’re still too weird and out of place, that everyone else also thinks you’re weird and out of place. You’re so used to rejection that the impending sense of it starts looming over you, but you still wanna put yourself out there! You still want to at least try! And then you get the pile of bricks dropped on your head. The Impending Rejection. Everyone leaves you alone again and you’re left with the solidified knowledge that you are in fact, too weird and too different to belong anywhere else, to have friends. You can’t be normal or accepted, you’ll always be alone and isolated and rejected.

Autism 101 yay

[bettsfic]

craft essay a day #6

a good craft essay is hard to find.

(this one is less a summary as it is me using the essay as an example of a specific craft term i like to teach.)

"The King of the Birds" by Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass 

filed under: cnf, prompts, objective correlative/magical objects

content warning for discussions of cancer, death, and abuse.

summary & my thoughts

this one is not actually a craft essay, but i didn't know that until i read it, and it's in a craft book, and i've got some Thoughts, so here we go.

Mystery and Manners is Flannery O'Connor's book of collected essays and lectures. i've taught some of these essays in intro to cw, not because i agree with them, but because i disagree with them, and generally like students to disagree with them also, to introduce what it means to have a dialogue with what you're reading. to be an active participant in what you're reading and not a passive recipient of it.

don't get me wrong; i love Flannery O'Connor. my thesis was largely inspired by her. her short stories are some of my favorites ever written. but, uh. she's got some bad writing opinions. generally speaking, the better the writer, the worse the teacher, and vice versa. O'Connor is a great writer and iirc was never really a teacher, only a guest speaker/visiting writer, and so we cannot really judge her on the sanctity of her pedagogy. no matter how infuriating i sometimes find it, i do try to listen to bad writing opinions, because they better inform my own (awesome and totally correct) opinions. hence the point of teaching O'Connor's essays.

this book starts off with a relatively dry foreword in which the editors admit they had a heck of a time putting the thing together. a very similar foreword exists in O'Connor's complete story collection. apparently, O'Connor had hundreds of manuscripts of essays and lectures, many with overlapping content, and so the editors had to face whether they wanted to publish all of the content, redundancies included, or none of it.

they decided, thankfully and with the permission of the estate, to do some cutting and pasting to pare out the redundant information and still try to get a complete recording of O'Connor's essays.

the first essay is not about writing. it's about peacocks.

"The peacock I had bought had nothing whatsoever in the way of a tail, but he carried himself as if he not only had a train behind him but a retinue to attend it."

because this is not a craft essay, i'm going to use it as an example of a craft concept: the objective correlative.

The objective correlative was coined by T.S. Eliot in 1919. He defined it as "a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion." this concept is more relevant to poetry, and more of an analytical tool than a craft tool, and honestly i probably take the term too literally for what it actually is (and potentially flatten it in the process [sorry, poets]), but i use it as a prompt in a lesson plan i call "magical objects."

for this class, i host show & tell. yes, show & tell, from kindergarten. one thing i've learned about teaching college is that college students--being overworked, underpaid, and blasted with constant brain-changing information--generally love elementary school activities. they also love talking about themselves, which is great considering i am a better listener than i am a speaker.

so i have everyone bring in an object that holds meaning for them, and we go around the room and talk about what the thing is, how it was acquired, its history and why it's important to them. (i also bring something, usually my dad's briefcase, and tell the story of how my dad taught me how to nail job interviews because he himself had so many of them, and quit the jobs almost as soon as he got them.)

my favorite thing is when students forget to bring something, and they have to take a turn anyway, at which point they pull out a highlighter or their shoe or something and have to wing a response. (and they get credit for it, because they're still being creative thinking things up on the fly, and being creative is the point of the class.)

the second half of the class is freewriting time. i ask them to write their magical object as an objective correlative. the goal is to tell the story of the object to invoke a particular emotion. for example, the story of my dad's briefcase, for me, invokes an emotion i can't otherwise define: the bizarre grief-regret-empathy-anger of losing someone close to you, who treated you poorly and neglected your needs and whom you loved anyway, and miss.

a simpler example is bringing in an old video game, and conjuring childhood nostalgia. or a piece of jewelry your partner bought you on your anniversary, and conjuring love.

students are often confused by this. i tell them not to think too hard about it. write about the object and the emotion will naturally come with it, because the object itself holds meaning. describe what the object looks like, how you acquired it, and memories that involve it. for example, i have a memory of being maybe four or five, and i was playing with the combination locking mechanism on my dad's briefcase, and he went, "what are you doing? i don't know the combination! i'll never be able to open it again!"

naturally i burst into tears. my dad laughed, and apologized, and told me he was just kidding. the combination was 000 because he hadn't changed it from when he bought it and didn't know how.

when i took the briefcase after he died, it had in it old road maps, a clipboard with a legal pad on it and a coffee stain on the legal pad, a union dues register, and some kind of millwright apprenticeship licensure.

it's worth noting that working at a steel mill in the 70s is what gave him cancer 35 years later.

i've spent hours inspecting the road maps. he had routes highlighted all through ohio, indiana, and kentucky. after being a millwright, he was a salesman, and he sold truck beds, apparently driving all over to do so. he was a great salesman but a bad employee. he couldn't stand having a boss, and tended to quit jobs the second anyone tried to tell him what to do. this trait always annoyed me--why couldn't he just buckle down and deal with it, so we could eat more than campbell's soup and toast? and yet, here i am twenty years later in the exact same boat, genetically predisposed to finding authority of any kind unbearable, quitting everything because of it, and wondering how the hell i'm going to keep making enough money to live. i wish i could say i have new sympathy for him, but i don't. it's a trait i hated in him; it's a trait i hate in me. it's something i had to accept then, and continue having to accept now.

that was one objective correlative. now back to the other: peacocks.

i felt this essay was a great example of the objective correlative because as i was reading it, i had absolutely no idea why it existed or what i was supposed to get out of it. it's written factually, in some parts like a research paper, describing the behavior and needs of peacocks, but the only evidence or citation is O'Connor's personal experience.

and yet, i was still feeling something as i was reading it. some undercurrent that elevated it from "Flannery O'Connor talking about peacocks" to an essay, a creative work with artistic merit.

"Those [peacocks] that withstand illnesses and predators (the hawk, the fox, and the opossum) over the winter seem impossible to destroy, except by violence."

what i get out of this essay, given the context of its placement in a book on the craft of writing, is another example of the obsessive tendencies of writers. i'm reminded of a lecture i attended during which Jamaica Kincaid spoke for an hour in intimate detail about her garden. she showed us pictures and went over each individual plant. i enjoyed it, even though it took me a while to figure out what she was saying.

that too was an objective correlative. what she was trying to invoke, and which she made clear at the end, is that a writer cannot only write. a writer must have something to write about. and so a writer must be obsessive, and love something so much they can speak to it in myopic detail. an object of fixation, a magical object, must always anchor the work.

craft essay a day tag | cross-posted on AO3 | ask me something

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Okay, so we've all been thinking about Harvey's tea-spilling attempt not to spill Magicians tea since yesterday, and IT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE NOT TO SPECULATE, so I'm speculating. Ground rules first? Yes, always, for safety.

The rules to celebrity gossip are, I don't know shit about shit and this is all for fun. Seriously, I'm just bullshitting here, trying to spin an interesting story, this absolutely did not happen the way I'm suggesting, how could I possibly get this more than like, 5% correct? I'm just some asshole on the internet.

Okay. So first off, we know Harvey and Hale are tight, so whatever Harvey knows, it almost certainly reflects what he's heard from Hale, i.e. what he's aware of is Hale's version of what the set was like (and probably Summer's as well, as she seems solidly part of that friend group).

And I don't want to overanalyze specific word choices from that interview, since when you're babbling on the spot, sometimes you don't use the exactly perfect wording. However, there does seem to be two tangled-up threads in Harvey's babble -- the business about how everyone was young and hot, which perhaps let slip that there was some romantic drama happening, and also the business about lead roles, of course it's an ensemble but there are leads, which seemed to indicate that there was some friction over status within the cast -- who are the leads, precisely, and who's just in the ensemble? And from the way Harvey jumbled all that together -- I'm inclined to think those issues were jumbled together, or were perceived to be.

Now, in mid s3 when Harvey first came on set, what was he coming into, script-wise? Well, you have Jason pretty solidly centered in the overall story -- almost anyone would understand him as the series lead, reasonably enough; the show is based on books where Q is indisputably the protagonist. How's everyone else faring?

It's hard to tell whether I view this neutrally or not, but it seems to me that consistently throughout the second and third seasons, the best stories and most robust character development have been going to Team Fillory -- to Eliot and Margo specifically, who have kind of risen out of the s1 "ensemble" of People Quentin Knows to anchor their own ongoing stuff about trying to rule Fillory. Julia is also anchoring s3 plots of her own, all the stuff about her God Spark that's been the fallout from what she was given in s2 with Reynard and Martin and Persephone. Penny and Kady seem to have been cemented as supporting players; they get some scenes, but they're not really driving any conflicts or getting to do anything with high stakes, especially after Penny 40's death. What's always been noticeable to me is that Alice is operating very separately from the rest of the cast, and will be until deep into s4. After her relationship with Q falls by the wayside, she's very atomized -- sometimes she interacts with Julia, but they don't seem to be close friends. Alice doesn't seem to have close friends in the main cast.

So if someone's unhappy with what they're being given to act -- well, it could be anyone, a young ambitious actor could always want a more up-front role, but if I were in Olivia's shoes, yeah, I'd be kind of tense! She entered the show playing the protagonist's main love interest, got written out of that role, and not only does the show seem to fumble around when it comes to what to do with her, you have these two other characters who were almost comedy relief in the first season, and they're eating up episode after episode of drama and adventure. One of them, as of oh, mid s3, looks a little like he's starting to be positioned as the protagonist's new love interest.

Awkward, yeah? Now. Imagine on top of that pressure as people are comparing their relative roles and screentime -- imagine the series lead is hanging out kind of a lot with certain members of the cast. Imagine some people are turning up a lot on each other's Instas, and imagine, perhaps, that in this cliquey little circle, there's a higher than average degree of flirtiness among hot coworkers.

So now that's the narrative, right? Better scripts and more screen time are flowing to certain people, not because no one else has the acting skill to handle it, but because certain people are always in Jason's hip pocket. It doesn't take long for that, in a high-stress environment, to become a circulated story: that the best way to become a lead on this show is if you're besties with Jason -- or if Jason seems to really want to fuck you -- or if he is fucking you. That's how it goes with hothouse rumors, right?

I mean, I'm not trying to pin it on Olivia specifically and entirely -- this shit takes on a life of its own sometimes. But you get this certain swirl of resentment and jealousy and factionalism happening, and suddenly we're headed into s4, and some really interesting things start happening. Hale gets to play a really fun, scenery-eating sort of role, the kind actors love. The early scripts really drill down into the building tension of Quentin being willing to risk everyone else to save Eliot. And then--

Something happens, right? The Monster plotline, which has dominated the season, wraps up abruptly and anticlimactically. Qualice is back on, without much reason given. And Jason, we later learn, resigned at some point.

Again, I'm not trying to single out Olivia -- for this to become widespread On-Set Drama, it can't have been attributable to any one person. A lot of people had to believe that 1) Jason had too much power over the course of the story, and B) was misusing it to benefit people he had a personal investment in. It's not hard to see how that could escalate -- into the writers trying to jerk his chain to prove he didn't control them, and into Jason deciding he was fucking over being in the middle of all this.

The beauty of my story here is that it makes sense out of all Harvey's remarks, if you view him as Hale's friend loyally taking Hale's position circa mid-s3. There were sparks, everyone was young and hot (read: whatever fooling around happened, it happened for ordinary showmance reasons, not out of any self-dealing on Hale's part), and there were leads in the cast (read: Hale's high profile at that point was earned, he wasn't given favors; he was being treated as one of the second leads because he was good at his job).

[daisychainsandbowties]

I love your writing. I love how vulnerable you allow the characters to be. I love how you make ugly things beautiful and pretty things holy and reverent. I am extremely thankful for you and all that you do.

But I'm curious:

Are there any writers/works that you would say have had an influence on your style?

crying and crying. honestly yes! ugliness is very beautiful to me it’s very human & vulnerable & good to be ugly & i think life tends to be very imperfect & messy but we can be very beautiful (and yes, holy) inside of it.

hmm so first thing is that i’m mostly a poet & i came to that in my usual way which was deciding one day to teach myself how to Poetry. i figured it could not be very different from math and lo & behold it was not very different from math

i grew up using recitation of poems as a calming technique so those certainly influenced how cadence occurs to me, patterns of language (some poems were as gaeilge). some of the poems i memorised growing up were Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen; Ode to a Nightingale by Keats; a whole bunch of Dickinson & especially Persimmons by Li Young Lee. the waste land by ts eliot too. i did adore shakespeare & how easy it was to commit to memory in iambic pentameter.

but then when i was 16 i decided to ‘git good’ at poetry (i was, in fact, very bad at it for many years to come) so i picked up Ariel by Plath & a load of Anne Sexton. Richard Siken too. and i read those books about 50 times each. could never read them too many times.

realised that poetry should be kind of like eating good food or having good sex. an experience that bears repeating.

so yes Sexton & Siken especially i think are explicitly influential to my style. also recently have learned a lot from Ocean Vuong (Night Sky With Exit Wounds but also please read ‘Not Even This’. listen to Ocean perform it) oh & also very recently impressed with Hull by Xan Phillips, & Danez Smith’s ‘don’t call us dead.’

language was made for puncturing & those poets know how to turn a sentence, a stanza, a turning of thought into a lung collapse, a harpoon.

i do firmly believe that it’s pointless to mimic style. it can happen that other words bleed into yours but it should be an accident, like the mirroring of language that forms the basis of so many interpersonal movements. language IS an exchange but we all bring something to the table.

& again it’s food - personal and cultural and loving and it’s about need and want and desire and death (food & death so tenderly intertwined in so many cultures). so i think reading good writing lends you instinct; the ability to look at what you make and know if it is good or at least true and therefore ‘getting there’ and therefore beautiful in the attempt regardless of imperfection.

i believe in purple prose and also Just Saying Things & i really think (i teach creative writing sometimes at uni) that i can bring out beautiful writing from anyone. it’s not always about skill it’s about heart, and then skill creeps up on you. i can always tell when someone is just performing writing and when someone has a story to tell.

so like!! the #1 thing that has influenced me is learning to love the way that writing makes me feel (powerful, stupid, profound, unoriginal, death-defying, mortal). i think reading so so much & just internalising different language-textures helps a bunch! i get so much inspiration from reading textbooks, wikipedia articles, random journals & i think poetry even if you are not & don’t wanna be a poet is very good at showing you the bones and sinews and connective tissue of meaning.

i am also so influenced by sci-fi & fantasy. particularly the Book of the Ancestor by Mark Lawrence (more gay nuns lmao) & N.K. Jemisin with The Broken Earth trilogy. 'the slow regard of silent things' specifically by Patrick Rothfuss (not a person to learn pacing from but astounding at sentence-level). also i am very influenced recently by This Is How You Lose The Time War. as a kid by Garth Nix (particularly Lirael, Sabriel) & artemis fowl.

of course on that note it’s usually the non-literature things that inspire actual writing from me. it’s principles in physics or math or thinking about Voyager 1 or philosophical questions that actually produce the sort of rabid pursuit of meaning that writing is. truly immersing in curiosity is an excellent way to approach making art. it's about reaching out & touching for a moment the fabric of everything - & you might find it is wet & sticky or dry and dusty or soft or that it hurts your hands to touch, but the chasing of meaning is worth it, & making meaning is divine.

i hope that is (somewhat) of an answer

[dedalvs]

I posted 135 times in 2022

That's 135 more posts than 2021!

80 posts created (59%)

55 posts reblogged (41%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@belovedlittlecorpse

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@zjofierose

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I tagged 83 of my posts in 2022

Only 39% of my posts had no tags

#conlang - 58 posts

#language - 43 posts

#valyrian - 24 posts

#high valyrian - 22 posts

#hotd - 20 posts

#house of the dragon - 19 posts

#got - 12 posts

#game of thrones - 11 posts

#orthography - 9 posts

#langtime - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 47 characters

#the vowels that are untouchable like eliot ness

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Hi, welcome back to Tumblr! Your Trigdasleng posts back in the day were fascinating, even though I never watched the show they're from. Keep on keepin' on.

Thank you! It's good to be back, and this is as good a place as any to talk about why I'm here and what I'm doing.

First, I left Tumblr when many others did when they instituted their infamous "female-presenting nipple" policy. It's not as if my Tumblr was ever a nsfw blog, or as if I had any female-presenting nipples, but I felt it was the wrong response to the difficult situation they'd been put in. It was something that hurt a lot of people who had a lot less of a voice and not much of a platform, and so I felt it was my responsibility to use the platform I had to take a stand, even if ultimately it didn't change anything.

As it happens, years later, Tumblr has finally reversed the policy (well done, @staff!). Tumblr may not be the wild west it used to be, but at least they aren't targeting anyone presenting a specific gender unfairly. I've missed my time away, and the people I got to know here, so I'm happy to be back!

As I see it, I'll probably be reblogging stuff less here, even though that's how I made my name way back when, and instead responding mostly to asks in my inbox.

To give myself a fresh start, I have deleted all 3,999 of my asks. I'm starting fresh—with this one, which was the first! My inbox got too overwhelming, so this was needed.

To answer some questions some may have, if you haven't followed me elsewhere recently:

I'm most active on Instagram, where I am @athdavrazar.

I have a YouTube series with partner and significant other Jessie Sams, who is @quothalinguist on Instagram. That series is called LangTime Studio, and we create a language from scratch together live on camera (we work on two hours a week every Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific).

Jessie and I work together almost exclusively now, and we've done work on Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem (which I hope you loved, Tumblr!), Peacock's Vampire Academy, the second season of Shadow and Bone (forthcoming), Amazon's Paper Girls (though you can blink and miss our stuff), and the second Dune film.

I worked on HBO's House of the Dragon, and got to create a writing system for High Valyrian, which I'm very excited about.

I created the Sangheili language for Paramount+'s Halo with Carl Buck, who is on Instagram as @tlacamazatl (he's on Tumblr as @tlacamazatl too!). We are presently working on season 2.

I worked with Christian Thalmann on Shadow and Bone seasons 1 and 2. The breakdown is this: Christian and I jointly created the Fjerdan language; I created the Ravkan language and orthography as well as the Kerch and Zemeni orthographies exclusively; Jessie Sams and I created the Shu and Zemeni languages jointly; Christian created the Shu orthography. I can't wait for you to hear and see our work in season 2!

Yes, I left Twitter (quite a bit ago). I'm now more active on Discord, where I'm on a few servers.

I created a wiki for all my languages, and am unevenly working on all of them, and some languages have a team of people working on them (in particular High Valyrian).

Despite being double-vaxxed and getting not one, not two, but three boosters, I got Covid in June, and that PoS hasn't completely left me alone since. (Note: I'd only had one booster before I got it; two have come since then, including the new one, which will hopefully be the last!)

I am traveling again, so I hope to announce those here when they happen.

If there's anything I missed, you let me know. I look forward to answering asks again, and joining in the general silliness of Tumblr! <3

139 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#4

The Elder Runes from The Witcher

See the full post

157 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

#3

198 notes - Posted November 13, 2022

#2

Well now I HAVE to ask how to say/write "chicken" in your various languages!

Oh here we go...

🐔🐥🐤🐣🐓

Azrán: upózh

Bodzvokhan: dǝq

Castithan: chikano (< English)

Dothraki: jiz

Hen Linge: mak

High Valyrian: ñoves (rooster), qulbes (hen)

Irathient: tisese

Kamakawi: iki (animal), i'iki (food)

Méníshè: t'òdír

Noalath: vokach

Övüsi: kuge

Ravkan: shuk (rooster), shuka (hen)

Trigedasleng: omi (generic), egleya (hen)

Yulish: bökki

Zemeni: wela

Zhyler: levžel

That's not all of them, but that's a lot of them!

(Btw, I was sitting here coming up with this list, and @quothalinguist glances at it and is instantly like, "You're coming up with words for 'chicken'? Méníshè's got one!' And, of course, she was right!)

682 notes - Posted November 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Do you have any thoughts on the translation scene in Goncharov? I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it but it's a pretty pivotal scene and given that what they're doing is not dissimilar to a conlang imo i figured you might have some good insights

*sigh*

I figured someone was going to ask this eventually...

So listen, the whole translation scene in Goncharov is not technically conlang-related. It's actually even more brilliant, but it's hard to explain.

Since the tutor doesn't speak Russian and the nurse only speaks Italian, the aphasiac Soviet spy has to use an impromptu series of hand gestures to indicate that he either does or doesn't understand. I mean, you can glean that from the subtitles, so that's no big revelation.

But this is where it gets weird and...I mean, linguistically controversial, to say the least, but it was the 70s.

As the tutor and the nurse attempt to communicate with him and each other, they begin to winnow down their vocabulary to words that are cognate between Italian and Russian. And through this back and forth, the languages seem like they're blending, but what they're actually doing is reversing the sound changes of Italian and Russian until they both end up, improbably, at Proto-Indo-European. It's like something you'd see in Fantasia, but aural! It's...utterly bizarre.

And, of course the final word that the nurse and the tutor utter simultaneously, the one that brings the spy to tears, is *bʰewdʰ- "awake, aware"—which, I mean, knowing how the rest of the movie goes...yeah. Bombshell. And it's crazy to me that they didn't subtitle it! Like, you pretty much have to be a PIE scholar to get that, and the entire subplot hinges on it! I mean, bold isn't the word for it. Unfathomable. Cannot believe they got away with that...

Rumor has it that Morris Halle consulted on the film, but he's adamantly refused to talk about. (For years, he'd end all his guest lectures with, "Are they any questions about anything other than Goncharov?") He never once confirmed whether or not he was involved (of course, he wasn't credited, but that wouldn't be unusual for the time even if he was involved).

I can see why you'd think it would be a conlang, but the reverse-engineered sound changes were so precise, and the whole thing so by the book, that there really wasn't any actual invention. It was all Indo-European!

2,227 notes - Posted November 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[anticute-marshmallowmars]

i was super prepared to be really in despair with the ending

but actually?

it kind of makes narrative sense, as is my take with a lot of this show.

are there some characterization/relationship-related decisions that i am not 100% on board? absolutely.

but honestly? outisde of those issues - it's kind of an ending that DOES work, and like? no one died, dude. i was prepared for deaths. (zelda aside :c but even then she just goes to another branch anyway.)

esp with tHIS kind of show? where they DON'T let their charas be happy??? where they don't take care of their charas (and yes - i would say they still don't in some ways. but that's...another post.) like, they always dangle the solution/happiness carrot - only to take it away.

so, like - honestly.

it's overall oddly...positive, actually, in terms of an ending, in terms of the actual circumstances that played out and could play out? it's open-ended enough. and doesn't leave THAT sour of a taste in my mouth as i was prepared for. bc again - it mAKES sense.

there's potential and hope* they'll find their way back to each other.

no way they won't. there's julia and penny. and once eliot gets his footing. (tho my feelings about where they end up in terms of relationships are... meh. bUT newayz.) and kady's figuring out the circumstances amidst the moon madness situation.

and on the other end: alice? margo. and what josh can contribute.

so, yeah. there's enough talent between the two factions to make this happen. no WAY they won't figure it out.

(alice being realized as master magician in her would-be-initiation/graduation, suggests and implies the rest of them also became master magicians, in my mind)

this show never was gonna give our charas a happily ever after, and certainly NOT with them together under one roof. it wouldn't have FELT right in any case. it'd be too perfect of an ending, and this show? does not do perfect endings. and i do not expect it. it wouldn't have been in the spirit of the show. and this ending - DOES maintain that spirit. even if - again - i do have my personal conniptions.

this show, time and time again, separates the group, into factions. it makes sense they would end the show with them separated, for them to figure out a way to get back to each other again.

(do i want my polycule and somehow q revived - absolutely!!!!! but that's not what the show was ever going to give, tonally. right from s1.)

it's hard to give a satisfying ending in any show. and i wouldn't say this was satisfying bc again, there's things i'm not too happy about. but narratively it MAKES SENSE.

and i will say: in any given show - and specifically any fantasy show - the ending SHOULD be open ended enough, so that you believe that world and those charas continue on even after the finale. you don't get to see it, but you know it happens.

and that's really what we get at the end, actually!

it's an ending that does work, tonally, thematically, and again - narratively. is it the best? no. is it the worst? really, really, no. ESPECIALLY given how media has been effing up finales in the last few years.

(and i say this, as someone who LOVES eliot and margo. they were pretty much what i was leaning hard to survive, as i went through s5 in terms of invested relationships/friendships. but i GET why they separated them. that's a separate post.)

and as writers should - you SHOULD give the building blocks for your audience as a gift - a hope of 'hey this world continues even after the creator is done with it.'

i want to see it, of course. but at least they gave that kind of ending rather than completely butcher everything. i'm secure enough to believe that it DOES happen, mainly bc these charas are dogged as shit. and again. there's hope*

*HQ and hope and the themes of home literally embodied in a pregnancy plotline with julia (which i have conflicted feelings about). and of course, the world seed arc. i just wish they had done it a little better? but there's lots i would have liked to be executed properly**

**obviously no quentin is heartbreaking. and what could have been the would-be queliot situation. but arguably quentin WAS going to be that type of hero at the end of the day. that's a separate post too.

there's just SO MANY THOUGHTS.

[thekimspoblog]

My WIPs (or at least the ones I can remember)

Portal:

"Opera Beneath Aperture": Where the Geekenders version is vaudeville, mine is more pop-opera in the style of "Phantom" or "Wicked". Basically just remixing the soundtrack and adding lyrics. There will be comedy, but at the end of the day, playing the melodrama of "Portal 2" straight is just easier. (Progress 30%)

"Rat Race": An homage to the US "The Office", but one by one the characters are axed off as Aperture becomes a more and more dystopian place to work. (Progress 10%)

"Portrait of a Lady: A Romanticized Horror": Prequel character-study on Caroline, obviously. She's preppy like Kim, but being born in the 1930's she's more sexually repressed, and therefore even more of a manic-pixie-nightmare-girl. She blacks out and murders her gynecologist for malpractice in Chapter 3; yeah it's that kind of a story. Also she's pretty racist? To the extent that any person from that era running a dystopian secessionist megacorporation would have to be. (Progress 50%)

Better Call Saul:

"Sheepdog": A traumatic event causes Kim to question the nature of her own reality. We the fans love Kim... but we do not respect her. (Progress 50%)

"Slippin Kimmy": This is my SERIOUS entry for what I think should happen next in the story. Basically a lot of white-hat Heisenberging around. She stops a shooting at a Planned Parenthood in episode 2; yeah it's that kind of a story. If that's what "WYCARO" ends up being, I'll be happy. If not? Hey it's free money, Vince. I'll just leave it on the table 'til you're done being done again. (Progress 5%)

"Last Clear Chance Doctrine": In 6x05 Jimmy calls Kim to say he's going to be late; Howard wants to fight him in the ring. Kim says she'll be right over. (Progress 0%)

"Just Take the Money": Parallel "Breaking Bad" timeline, where Walt accepts Eliot's hand-out. It'll make you wish he had stuck to cooking meth. I'm probably going to include a subplot where Saul bangs Skyler cus it makes me smile. (Progress 0%)

Crossovers/Other:

Steven Universe: "Warp Congestion": Steven figures out how to remove his gem and live as a normal human for extended periods of time. And if you think this sounds like a contrivance to write Rose Quartz back into the story... it is! Pearl was supposed to hold onto the gem for the day, but as the administrative headaches of helping to keep Little Homeworld organized pile up, Rainbow Quartz starts to revert back to v 1.0. (Progress 5%)

Steven Universe: "Roughhousing": You ever have those moments with your spouse, where one minute you're joking around and everything seems fine, and then one little comment gets taken wrong and suddenly everything gets a bit ugly? Even Ruby and Sapphire have those moments. And it made for one hell of a night at Beach City Underground Wrestling. (Progress 100%... but it's in the format of a Torts practice exam. Yes really)

Barry: "A Plan for Sally": My OC, Rita, has been going around to various netflix shows and selling life-insurance and family planning policies to the love-interest characters in crime dramas. Well, Rita will call them "insurance policies"; what they really are are Faustian bargains. If you thought the ending to "Barry" was weird, rushed, or maybe even a little saccharine, Rita is why. (Progress 0%)

Midnight Mass: "The Girl Who Ate the World": Erin Greene wakes up lying in the grass to find herself - not just alive - but sparkling in the sun like a million little diamonds. It's a miracle! Second only to the bad-miracle of news that the Angel survived and is transforming people in the Portland subway system as we speak. Rita is in this one too. (Progress 50%)

"Crack Fic: Torts and Torts": Kim Wexler, Dolores Abernathy, and Love Quinn attend a mobwives convention in Napoli. After a few drinks, Kim and Love get into a tense conversation about dead brothers, and more specifically when/how a spouse is at-fault for the death of a brother-in-law. Kim forgets the argument after she sobers up, but Dolores warns her to watch her back. Sure enough, Love attacks Kim with a katana and they must battle it out as frenemies. (Progress 2%)

"300 Million Cowboys": I re-write Better Call Saul as a pulpy beach-read about vampires. With enough changes to the plot that it can be legally sold on Kindle. Kim is now named Jean Troy. Jimmy is now named Sammy McCormick. Mike and Chuck have been merged into one character. Kevin and Howard have been merged into one character. (Progress 2%)

[smallblueandloud]

I posted 4,246 times in 2022

160 posts created (4%)

4,086 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@cthulhu-with-a-fez

@tanoraqui

@aethersea

@nereb-and-dungalef

@aurorashard

I tagged 4,245 of my posts in 2022

#a queued post - 3,231 posts

#xmen - 312 posts

#laugh tag - 284 posts

#fanart - 265 posts

#star trek - 249 posts

#sb and l rambles - 212 posts

#humanity - 203 posts

#tiktok - 193 posts

#star wars - 175 posts

#queer things - 163 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#searching for someone to tell him how to be a jedi. when he needs to realize that he is a jedi and he gets to decide what that means for him

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

like. yeah, okay, the ot3 is never going to be canon. we know this. we accept this. it's already a lot more than i thought we'd ever get in this day and age

BUT EVEN SO

eliot is just? so CLEARLY a part of the parker-and-hardison unit? they're a FAMILY! he and parker join breanna in teasing hardison! he and hardison have mandated Stealing Practice with parker! he had matching halloween costumes with them, for god's sake!!

like, yeah, the ot3 is never going to be confirmed as Fully Romantic, and that's a bit of a bummer. but these characters are a family anyway. parker and hardison's romantic relationship NEVER comes above their relationships with eliot. he's part of their unit! and that's so special

92 notes - Posted November 25, 2022

#4

See the full post

99 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

#3

i love rewatching firebringer because you can hear the audience get dead silent for the chorn part. all the laughter after that part is either slightly quieter than usual or much more hysterical than usual (because of the leftover shock of chorn). can you imagine. you spend months excited to watch starkid's newest musical about prehistoric society and in the last ten minutes it very briefly becomes a beautifully sung scifi opera before it IMMEDIATELY dovetails back into the emotional arc of the show. i would lose my shit.

150 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

#2

also just like. more and more, i am convinced that the way i headcanon cosette's personality isn't just interesting for me but is actually canonically supported? like, yes, she's the most classic Blonde(tm) i can think of, but also i think she's always aware of her situation and how she can affect it in a way that marius, bless his heart, just isn't. and i have receipts!

[tried to make this a bulleted list but tumblr mobile apparently CANNOT handle those anymore so! guess we're doing this formatting now]

first off, the entirety of in my life. "what's the matter with you, cosette?" shows a self-awareness that i wouldn't expect from her if she were just her archetype. immediately after, she laments how she doesn't know what her situation is, and it's making her antsy. later, she questions her father about his past, and he blows her off in a way that implies she's asked these questions before. she also criticizes him for seeing her as a child, which he ignores. (specifically i'm thinking of the way she says "i'm no longer a CHILD, and i long for the truth that you know!")

secondly, the general theme in a heart full of love of marius representing doubt and cosette representing stability. see: "i am lost" / "i am found", and "do i dream?" / "i'm awake". later, she actually seems to lead marius to realizing this is real, beginning the "and it's not a dream" line and then letting him join in.

then there's the attack on rue plumet. which, okay, we know i am obsessed with, but also the cosette characterization implied there FASCINATES me. let's go over the events of that song and the previous one from her perspective, shall we? she meets her idiot love-at-first-sight at her gate and has a beautiful duet with him. then, while she's gazing soulfully into his eyes, they hear a scream. he appears to recognize it, identifying the screamer as his friend éponine, who's trying to warn them that someone's coming. (ignoring the possibility that she recognizes the name as her childhood friend's,) marius disappears and immediately her father shows up, panicked about the scream. cosette, without hesitation, shifts tunes to a comforting song, claims that it was HER scream, and then uses her childhood melody to slip in the fact that it was three men she saw that he should look out for.

it's my theory that she does this -- literally and musically aging herself down -- to calm him down, because there's no way she did it out of the joy of her heart: she literally SAYS several songs earlier that she doesn't enjoy being treated as a child. the only reason it DOESN'T calm him down, why it instead makes things worse, is because she accidentally trips over his javert feelings, something she also told us she doesn't know anything about.

and then, of course, there's a heart full of love (reprise). where marius is drowning in his sadness and unanswered questions and cosette tries to pull him out of it. she starts off with their love melody (a heart full of love) and then reminds him, "and it wasn't a dream", which marius actually! starts off with her, instead of her having to pull him into it! she sees how he's feeling, sees how to pull him out of it, and does it successfully! i am a big fan of looking at when characters use leitmotifs and whether they're doing it "on purpose" -- i don't think valjean and javert, for example, use each other's tunes on purpose, i just think they're similar. but cosette is definitely someone who would be aware of what leitmotifs she uses, or as "aware" as a character in a musical can be, and i like that a lot about her!

158 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

oh ALSO i recently realized for the first time that hades challenging orpheus to not doubt eurydice on their way back to the surface is... him challenging orpheus to be better than hades himself. just like orpheus will always turn around, hades will always grow jealous again. hades let persephone go to the surface because people were starving but now cannot bear to have her leave him to go to the surface... orpheus lost eurydice to the underworld because she was hungry but now cannot believe she might follow him in the dark again...... i am thinking INTENSELY

194 notes - Posted August 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[thegreyscalerainbow]

I feel this in my bones. I just got a hold of a copy of the Ultimate Edition of the 1998 recording and it has two hours of interviews on it with the people who worked on it. How it came about, what it’s about, etc. It had information I didn’t find in any of my deep dive searches. They worked SO incredibly hard to bring the show to life because pretty much everyone around them that holds money and makes decisions were either laughing in their faces or keeping their hand on the lid of the box. In fact, just weeks before opening, the only venue that said yes to host them tried to cancel on them, and then made a ridiculous ultimatum because they were worried they would have a flop. They would rather have a quick flop than a long drawn out one, so ALW ended up having to promise he personally would pay about 75,000 pounds in 1980s money (roughly, I’m paraphrasing here) if the show failed in the allotted time. 

The people who knew T.S. Eliot’s work the best saw what the show would be, and they straight up said in one of the interviews that the show is living proof that art is the result of passion, not corporate planning and it hit so hard. People love to talk about being punk and rejecting corporate culture, rejecting capitalist control over art, but CATS? They love to shit on it. That show was mostly funded by people who had no money but believed in the people who wanted to make this thing. They knew it never would have opened if they had to go through Broadway producers first. If you care about there being more indie projects taking off and giving control back to the artists, please stop bullying people who like this show and participate in it.

The names are creative, and most of them say a lot about the characters if you analyze them and the words they came from. Each character has a through line of development the whole show that is developed by each dancer. The story is told through dance, not dialogue. The most important parts of it are unspoken, you FEEL it. 

I find most people’s annoyance with the show is their reluctance to just let things be. To just...enjoy the spectacle and let it inform you in other ways. People get so fixated on trying to understand it and asking “WHAT IS GOING ON” they end up talking over what it’s trying to say quietly. It’s a show that’s trying to have fun but also tell a story about forgiveness and community. 

No other show is like it, others have tried and failed. You have to be highly skilled to be in it, and it’s connected people across the globe for having been cast in it. They will literally be in other productions and when they find out they’ve all been in CATS they are found in the green room showing off their moves and competing.

There was also a line in the interviews about how they were trying to avoid the show being a disaster at open and with the costumes, they did not want a pantomime where everyone is dancing around in the animal costumes that were often seen on children’s television. The show had to have style, so the costumes and makeup were specific choices to be taken more seriously. The 2019 movie misunderstood what the entire point of the look was and turned it into the exact thing John Napier was trying to avoid. Hollywood also tried to add a bunch of fluff to it in order to “Fix” the story and it didn’t do it any favors. It also was very mean spirited towards the characters that are supposed to be respected.

Anyway, CATS deserves way more respect than it gets, it had the record of the longest running musical for a reason.  

“Oh this is so embarrassing for the actors involved having to wear those costumes and pretend to be cats” <---SHUT UP watch their stories, TikToks, and behind the scenes footage. They have a BLAST.

one of the worst things about the 2019 Cats adaptation to me personally is the fact that they adapted the original musical in such a hatefully unflattering way while in the process exposing the concept of Cats The Musical to way more people than ever should've known about it, thereby forcing me to see opinions about it from countless people that were Absolutely Not the intended audience

[gnar-slabdash]

I suddenly woke up stupid early on my day off with multiple weird random aches and pains and a revelation about the Leverage chess metaphors.

They’re all wrong.

Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nate’s shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe you’re going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line. 

Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.

Couple important things about kings in chess: 1. They don’t move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because 2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), it’s game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.

This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesn’t just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. He’s almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy you’ve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, it’s not game over, in fact, it often isn’t even a PROBLEM. Let’s look at a few times that happens, just for fun: - In The King George Job, Nate’s getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says “NOPE, don’t do that, I can fix this without blowing our cover” and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isn’t up and she’s not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it. - In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. That’s just called LOSING. -In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nate’s going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job. 

So if Nate isn’t the king, who is?

Hardison.

Let’s look at our points about kings again:

1. Doesn’t move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because that’s where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range -- you don’t want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little. . . uh. . . interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time. . . .

2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But that’s just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. He’s our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no “well he’ll be fine for a few minutes” and no “well he kinda had it coming.” No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)

So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isn’t in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?

Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything -- she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parker’s whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. She’s the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story -- a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as “the crazy one” and ultimately becoming the mastermind.

Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knight’s deal is that it’s sneaky -- it’s the only piece that can turn corners -- and it can jump over obstacles. Sophie’s whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldn’t need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)

Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one -- it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. It’s also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. It’s your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but I’m jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, it’s not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. That’s where he likes it. 

Bishop: Finally, here’s where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I don’t know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isn’t necessarily the one making the plans -- that’s the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but we’re operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.

[reflectingiridescent]

@the-ocean-is-trans put this response on my reblog of Sophie/Nate and my response ended up being so long, so I'm making it its own post:

@reflectingiridescent I want to hear more about why you love their relationship and are stunned we get their story if you're willing to share!!

I have a soul-crushing amount of work to do and really need a break, so yes! I will talk about this, especially since I recently watched The Zanzibar Marketplace Job which really struck me as a nicely subtle and telling pointer to Nate’s “white knight” past.

Tl;dr: Nate and Sophie’s relationship is all about compromising for a relationship in a way that does not compromise yourself, and becoming better people not for a relationship but for family/friends and also your own physical/mental/emotional wellbeing. I honestly have never seen another show do that better in such a short amount of time, give it as much attention as Leverage gave this relationship, or make it such an integral part of the overall story.

And now I will wax poetically about why (and this will involve the other three, because you cannot talk about Sophie and Nate without talking about Hardison, Parker, and Eliot – I argue you cannot get Sophie and Nate to the place that they’re in without Hardison, Parker, and Eliot).

Something I think Leverage does incredibly well (and subtly, unlike a lot of American workplace dramas did at the time) is show like yeah, these individuals are the best. But they’re also very broken. And they’re not good at their jobs because they are broken (because that is the trope: good at job, bad at personal life – because it’s very entertaining to watch and perfect people do not make for good dramas). All five people in this crew have rather become very good at what they do because they were all to certain extents interacting within and raised by broken systems.

Even Nate, who was deeply affected by his father’s time as a mobster before Nate ever lost his child, to the extent that the show (and to a lesser extent, Sophie with “We chose crime” – which is one of the times that Sophie accidentally hits the nail on the head; she doesn’t know it yet, but that actually hits very well on how Nate was messed up as a kid because Nate didn’t really choose to be in a crime family either) takes the time to distinguish how Jimmy and Nate are similar, spends like 3-4 seasons on it.

For all of them, the type of crime they do becomes a way of getting back the control that the system has taken from them, for better or for worse. So we have Nate, who is uniquely affected twice by systems involving his father and his son; Parker and Hardison, who are affected by the foster system – Parker to a greater extent but like on a meta level Hardison is the most marginalized by race; Eliot, who is affected by the US military industrial complex so deeply – and specifically the way that it feeds upon people from lower income backgrounds – that he doesn’t really come around to seeing that until much later in the show; and Sophie, who we get the least background about but if you take her at a holistic level, laying aside the way so much of her story is about identity (which is also important), a lot of the way that she conducts her business has to do with gender, respect, and playing around with the idea of “belonging”.

The difference between Sophie & Nate and the ot3 is that while the ot3 largely exercise control through their jobs (which The Fake Car Job establishes are Parker and Hardison’s lives in a way that the job is not Eliot’s life; rather, Eliot sees his job as a duty/bare minimum to help but not completely offset his past; at that point in time, each of the three is very okay with that), Sophie & Nate extend their need for control into…like every area of their lives (and they do distinguish between life and work – not very well, but the distinguishment is there for them in a way it isn’t for Parker and Hardison, because Nate had a family and Sophie had stage acting which she compartmentalized away from grifting…maybe a little too well).

Eliot probably has the best work-life balance out of everyone, but the bar for the crew is…low in the og series okay.

And so that need for control extends into their relationships. This is originally shown to be a Sophie problem (her bit about all relationships being about manipulation) pre-Nate’s shift toward thief and toward who he really is. But this is also Nate’s problem, to the extent that we’re supposed to accept, at least on a narrative level, that this is one of the reasons he’s better off drunk than sober in the earlier seasons. Drinking is supposed to temper Nate’s rage, need for control, and to a lesser extent, his need to win (arguably the drinking helps that last one the least – like that’s all the end of s2 is about).

This is why I find The Zanzibar Marketplace Job so good on a rewatch. It’s the only episode of the original series that has all the big players in it (the crew of five + Tara, Maggie, and Sterling). But you also get nice nods to the way that Nate and Sterling used to work together (partner detectives who maybe weren’t each other’s favorite people but worked together quite well) and the way that Nate and Maggie used to work/live together.

Nate and Maggie actually work really well together. We were told this in s1, but we’re shown it here. Maggie’s never held a gun before but like yeah she’ll electrocute this dude with Nate. She’ll argue with him the whole time, but they know how to work together.

But Nate…questions her in a way that he doesn’t question Sterling in the earlier scenes? And I find that very telling. He has a whole bit where he’s running around trying stuff that she’s already tried while he was passed out because he can’t take her word for it – he needs to see it for himself.

Control issues.

He also pedestals Maggie in a way that…never…really…goes away (see the way he reacts when he finds out Sophie’s roped her in on The Last Dam Job). It doesn’t become some insurmountable problem for him and Sophie, but Maggie and Sophie definitely sit there united on the “dude, listen” front.

The thing is, Nate can’t pedestal Sophie. Her flaws actually make it impossible for him to do that. And it’s not for lack of trying on his part. The entirety of s1 not only deconstructs how they’ve put each other on pedestals but also basically ensures via Sophie’s betrayal that Nate never does that again. Sophie’s ambitious and selfish (albeit in her very “grift is an exchange” kind of way) and ruthless and relentless, and she does choose to pull back from the uglier parts of that as the show goes on, but s1 nails that home in a way that we’re never really supposed to forget. And no one forgets it.

But it also makes very clear that Sophie's not the only one who is messing this up. If anything, she's the first one to come around. Actually the entire Leverage og series finale hinges on all of us (and Sterling) believing that Nate still has the hubris to fuck his whole team over, if that's any indication of how long that takes. Meanwhile, when Sophie comes back in s2, we pretty much never question her loyalty again.

And so the progression goes something like this, which you can track by season:

Oh you’re not the person I loved/thought you were, but I still love you, but we have to walk away literally because of our own actions and desires (Sophie’s greed, Nate’s revenge)

Okay maybe we’re not who we thought we were but I’m still into you…but also I’m really really not okay (Sophie’s more onto this realization than Nate is)

Actually we’re equals, we’re great on the same side, and we’re uneasily sitting in each other’s darkness but we are actually sitting

In a not-relationship relationship that is clearly working but will not last unless we deal with the last bits of big baggage (for Nate, this is his father; Sophie is…still sort of kind of manipulating Nate but he deeefinitely opens the door to that and wants her to a little – he’s the one who asks her to dinner in The Hot Potato Job; he’s actually always the one who asks her to dinner; and it’s also very clear by now and has been for some time that Sophie’s gonna stay for the team over Nate) but also we keep choosing each other

At ease with each other in a way that even pedestrians notice it when they’re off the con, choosing each other in a way that they don’t even have to do – they just want to (for Nate, this is motivating like all of his interactions in s5 which to be fair, after s4, he had the farthest to go out of everyone; for Sophie, this is when she tells him in The Fake Car Job that she genuinely wants him to be happy even if that means she’s not around)

That is a ridiculous amount of development to achieve in five years. I have friends from high school who are still on their same bs (I’m pretty sure I am on my same bs), and we’re nearly twice as old as we were then (and younger than Sophie and Nate are, but I digress). I ship the ot3, but I also find that line “we change together” applies to Sophie and Nate. They don’t really change for the relationship. They change for themselves (because they’re hella destructive people when we first meet them; Nate more outwardly but we find out Sophie’s been ripping herself up inside for quite a while, in ways she didn’t even realize), but they’re also changing for the crew.

(Parker’s “Be Nathan Ford. Be the guy we came back for” comes to mind. But also the way Sophie doesn’t hesitate to step in for Nate when he’s in prison; the way Sophie was always going to come back, and sending Tara was catalyzed by the other three calling her constantly; the way Sophie pushes for a casual relationship in s4 partially because she doesn’t want to hurt the team dynamic.)

So like, if you’re going to change for the better and kind of have your relationship as an afterthought (but def a thought – like Sophie and Nate never really forget each other even when Sophie’s dating someone else; it’s just like, they have other shit going on), that requires giving up…so…much…control?

It negates literally everything “relationships are about compromise” is taken to be about (by young people at least? I feel like y’all who are in your 40s-50s reading this are gonna be like oh child you have so much to learn…which like, I’m sure I do). And it is…so hard won. And therefore very satisfying to watch. They are so uncompromising when we meet them. Nate’s still working on control issues by The White Rabbit Job (ugh and I wrote about this somewhere else, but he never completely lets Sophie take the helm, but Sophie very easily is able to give it to Parker when it’s time). But he knows he has them? He tries to tell Sophie that all season that he's kind of trying to see if he can let that go himself. But he works on that largely alone/doesn't make it her problem.

And while I stand firmly beside my opinion that the wine bottle bit in The Corkscrew Job is one of the best indications of where they’ve ended up as a couple (Nate lets go of that whole mystery woman construct he had about her that attracted him to her in the first place + is able to tell Sophie that in a language that Sophie understands), I’m going to point to The Frame-Up Job because it’s easier. Because that’s maybe the most literal interpretation of like, we got better for all of us + ourselves and look how it’s made the two of us better.

Because the other three aren’t there (though Sophie and Nate both mention them at the beginning of the episode), and they really just dance through that whole episode. Bringing up every single issue they’ve had with each other before except like, it’s very clear that they’ve accepted each other and are willing to work with it. Like it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to one-up the other/manipulate each other into a relationship. They’re just in one, one that is very real, that makes each of them better people?

And for Leverage, a show about trying to repair damage done by broken systems, having people broken by a system/systems able to overcome that damage and build something together? Is yet another win against that system. Every single one of these people is able, through each other but also through genuine desire + hard work + support, find people that love them in the way they would like to be loved and also love in the way that they would like to love.

(Do not EVEN get me started on the way generational trauma in the Ford line is resolved during the show...or to a lighter extent, how Nate and Sophie move to lighten the generational trauma the others may accumulate because of them.)

And god this should not be longer but I also want to mention that if you track that alongside what else was on TV at the time (Serenity comes to mind), it’s so rare that a relationship got (1) this much attention (2) without taking away from the main plot (3) while being treated as an adult relationship and (4) didn’t involve weird jealousy side plots? And (5) neither of the characters needed to make up for the development by dying? (Ok Nate dies before Redemption but that's a different story and does not count.)

And there is also a reading of the Sophie/Nate relationship where, if you take into account how they started out, it’s basically the enemies to lovers trope taken to quite fantastic heights. To have gotten that? From a straight couple? In the AUGHTS? I pinch myself every day.

[zykamiliah]

Eliot Spencer' Character Development and The Leverage OT3: pretty much not dead I assure you

Unpopular opinion but I don't get the people who's unsatisfied with leverage redemption, particularly on the topic Eliot's character, romance plot, and the current status of the OT3

Putting aside all the stuff about "the world is not ready for a full polyamorous relationship on mainstream media bla bla bla" (which is bullshit) I must again repeat myself

Leverage is not about romance

The jobs, the Found family and character development are always going to come first, not always in that order. THAT'S what leverage is about.

Ignoring Word of God, what the original series showed was the OT3 was half platonic, half romantic, and half sexual; it's just that Parker and Hardison are the only ones doing the sexual part. Does that lessen their love? I think not

This is gonna sound pretty mean but: You need to manage your expectations people, either way you're always going to be disappointed: your mind =/= what actually happens in real life, not to mention the media you consume. You can analyze and predict some stuff accurately, yeah, but it's not going to make all your wishes come true

What Leverage Redemption Was: All the good stuff about the original + Callbacks and Parallels, Found Family Settled-in Edition, Sophie and Parker Masterminding, Leverage International, Hardison being the great leader he was always going to be, NewbiesTM, Representation that's not forced or just dumped to say "there, take it"

That said, what Leverage Redemption showed us about Eliot Spencer is amazing and complex: he still needs to work on some stuff, especially on the matter of how he perceives himself and how he needs to accept the fact that even if he made unforgivable things in the past, he's come a long way, he's different, and he deserves to be happy. And that means finding out someone who truly understands him AND accepts him.

Like, I don't think he ever got that realization in the original Leverage? In s5 finale he knows he wants to be with this people and protect them; he knows what role he wants to play in their lives, but he's still pretty much settled on making up for his mistakes for the rest of his life.

And that's where his romance plot with Maria comes in. They were great, yeah, he seemed happy, but in the end she didn't accept him. What she did do was repeat over and over that Eliot deserves to be happy; that helping people is good, yes, but he also needs to do things for his own happiness.

It doesn't escape me that this happens coincidentally when Hardison (Eliot's emotional support hacker) is out of town; that put the OT3 off-balance, and upset not just Parker but Eliot too. Who is the one he can spend hours talking with? Who's the one that he gets to talk about his dad and other personal stuff with?

Not to mention that everyone was encouraging him to go out with Maria, and the fact that he was SO reluctant, that he can't do casual anymore??? Almost a decade of living next door to Meaningful Romances(Nate&Sophie, but specifically Parker&Hardison) has made him long for something like that.

Hell I'm still a bit shocked that he openly admitted that HE ALWAYS ADMIRED PARKER AND HARDISON'S RELATIONSHIP???

He not just loves them individually, he LOVES their relationship; that's no longer subtext, IT'S FACT. And they are his home, and if it's ever possible, they're going to spend eternity together.

And I'm not gonna get into Parker being weird (jealous) about Maria, because that's another whole post, but!! The fact that even being like that, her priority is Eliot's happiness, even if she isn't actively happy herself with him having a serious girlfriend (tho she tries lol I love her)

Like!!! The OT3 vibes of this whole situation kind of confirm my headcanon that while they are a unit, Eliot has been still dating casually on the side all that time, playing his role as the third wheel; he gets to be sexually intimate with someone AND he has his two partners at home waiting for him.

BUT!! Suddenly after being together as a unit for a really long time Hardison needs to go away... And that's when their things go off-kilter and Eliot starts to feel weird. He can't do casual, he doesn't flirt with others unless he has to, and he tries to find a romantic partner that will accept him for who he is...

While still not noticing that he doesn't have to look for that anymore, because the two people he swore to be loyal to, the ones that are his home and accept him for who he is, ARE RIGHT THERE LOL

Or maybe he came to that realization after the season finale; who knows

But I kind of like the energy of that; the undercurrent that nothing can separate them, that what matters the most is their happiness, that they'll always stay together.

That's not only their vows renowned, it's also the fact that sometimes what you're looking for it's been in front of you all this time, and you just haven't realized it yet; much like Sophie deciding to stay because she doesn't need to chase a dream to be who she is, I hope Eliot Spencer realizes that he doesn't need to keep chasing for happiness and acceptance, that those things are just there by his side, if he only allows himself to see it.