#you would assume that fans of an adult series would have basic reading comprehension

[kareofbears]

persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort. 

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind. 

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao). 

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence? 

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch.  I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest. 

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there. 

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list! 

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters. 

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.  

The format of the game 

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting. 

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie). 

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.  

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters. 

But let’s talk about some of the new characters! 

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda. 

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!! 

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia 

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister. 

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle! 

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she  probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable. 

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me. 

And then sophia had a persona awakening. 

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me. 

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start. 

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it. 

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy. 

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji. 

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game. 

You know what else i love? Akiryu. 

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo). 

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally. 

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot. 

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game 

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean) 

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks.  This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

[theexistentiallyqueer]

I really hate waking up to see that there was good meta that was circulating during the night and I have so many things I want to say but I have to go to work like a responsible adult in this capitalist hellscape. I’m specifically referencing this, this, this, and this, and I just got home from work and it was balls to the walls fucking crazy today, so excuse me if I seem incoherent and disjointed.

All of this made me think of a few very specific theories I have, which I’ve already mentioned in passing, but now I feel the urge to lay them out all together in one post, which are:

Loki is Goro’s original persona, and Yaldabaoth hand-picked him for a reason

Yaldabaoth, disguised as Igor, served the function of psychopomp cognitive guide to Goro that Morgana serves to Akira, Teddie serves to Souji, and Mitsuru serves to Makoto

Goro used Loki’s berserker power on himself so he could kill Wakaba

Robin Hood is the persona born from Goro’s bond with Akira and represents the justice he wishes he believed in

Goro is not a true wildcard and never was one

Plus some other ones reading today’s meta made me think about

So, without further ado.

Loki as Goro’s original persona aligns most strongly with two things: 1. actual dialogue during his boss fight, and 2. the larger framework of the game Yaldabaoth was playing.

For his boss fight I’m referencing specifically the JP-ENG comparison of that scene. One of the things the anon who did the comparison repeatedly references is that “psychotic breakdowns” is an incredibly erroneous translation of what Call of Chaos actually does:

!! 暴走させる means “to make [something] run wild/rampage/act reckless,” not to drive the psychotic. While it can be used to refer to someone wildly lashing out at others, it can also be used for a runaway car, losing control, acting without regard or just being reckless in a potentially dangerous way. In the Persona series, this term has also been used in reference to losing control of one’s Persona, and to a Shadow going berserk (for those who’ve played Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, the JP name for Shadow Frenzy, シャドウ暴走, also uses the term).

Goro’s ability makes people act recklessly without regard for others; it doesn’t make them outright psychotic. (Strangely enough, the first scene at Leblanc in the game translates the incidents related to this ability as “rampage incidents,” which is closer to what it should be, yet they consistently screw it up in later scenes.)

And the original dialogue follows up on that:

Makoto (JP): あんな、人を操ったり狂わせたりする力を、自分自身の心から生み出してたなんて…(“To think that the power to manipulate and drive mad others was born from his own heart…”)

And more subtly:

Futaba (JP): なのに人生ソロプレイだったから、目覚めた力は、自前の『嘘』と『恨み』の、たった２個だけ… (“Even so, ‘cause you went through life in single player, the powers you awakened were just your "lies” and “resentment”…“)

I feel like the original text upholds this argument, especially considering Goro consistently refers to Loki as his “true” power, and he is way OP with Loki in a way he’s not with Robin Hood–almost as if he’s had more time to level-grind with Loki than he has with Robin.

As for Yaldabaoth, I think the context of what Yaldabaoth actually wants is very clear: Yaldabaoth wanted Goro to win. He created a blatantly unfair “game” modeled after the normal “game” played between Philemon and Nyarlathotep, and the first thing he did was give a persona to one player two years earlier than the other. Yaldabaoth wants to destroy and remake the world, and he would have cherry-picked the angriest kid in the barrel to make that happen. Goro didn’t have some psychopomp cognitive guide in the form of a talking cat to explain the metaverse to him, and I think it stands to reason that Yaldabaoth groomed Goro as much as Shido did: Yaldabaoth was Goro’s psychopomp cognitive guide. Goro’s not-dumb enough to be immediately suspicious when a random app installs itself on his phone; it stands to reason that he only paid it any attention because some half-bald fucker with a nose longer than Goro’s Robin Hood mask planted the idea in his head of what it could be used for. Akira tries to delete the app twice, and it’s only after Ryuji accidentally triggers the Nav that he stops trying to get rid of it.

(I’ve seen the Goro was a subject in Wakaba’s research theories too as an explanation for how he could know so much of the metaverse without Morgana around to catsplain it to him. I’m not a fan of them, mostly because I think subtle writing is a concept Atlus is very much not at all engaged with, and if he really was a research subject that would have been dumped on us with all the subtlety of trying to assassinate someone by dropping roof tiles onto them, and I like my HCs and theories to be as in line as what can be explained most comprehensibly with canon until I decide to throw the entire baby out with the bathwater and say MY PLAYGROUND NOW. It’s a cool theory, it’s just not one that I’m into. The people who play with this theory are smarter and more valid than Atlus will ever be. And who knows, maybe Royal will prove me wrong. I am open to being proven wrong and Krist is already starting to feed me food from Royal that has me second-guessing, but I’m going to wait until the international release in March to have takes on this.)

As for Goro himself–I’ve always, from the first time I played P5 when I thought Goro as interesting enough in concept but wasn’t really ready to be a Goroboy, thought that Goro represented the Justice Arcana in reverse, which is interesting in that this Persona game you can’t reverse confidants’ cards. Goro is reversed Justice in and of himself within the main context of the narrative.

I don’t really jive with the idea that Goro started out with Robin Hood as representative of his ideals before he was manipulated and twisted by Shido, because it contradicts the context in which he had his awakening and it removes whatever degree of culpability or autonomy Goro did have in what he ultimately became. Goro is full of rage, and Goro acted on that rage. Goro got the slightest taste of power and went from 0 to acting on a desire from revenge in about thirty seconds flat. He definitely didn’t realize he was signing on for murder and Shido definitely groomed him into being his psychopomp hitman, Goro is the one who took the initiative to approach Shido in the first place because Goro wanted to destroy the man who destroyed his life and who did, in some sense, kill his mom. Not that I think it’s disingenuous to say that Goro did originally believe in a justice that was, well, more just, but there’s a vast chasm between the boy who used to pretend to be a hero of justice and a boy who decided what he wanted most was to humiliate his fascist of a father. Goro’s sense of justice was already hugely warped by the time he awakened to his persona. Justice is exposing Shido publicly and holding him accountable; justice for Goro was making Shido’s life a living very personal hell.

Loki’s power isn’t even necessarily to make someone go berserk. Goro actually explains how Loki’s power works at the start of his boss fight, and it’s carried through pretty well in the English translation.

Goro (JP): ちっぽけな存在でも、心の枷が外れると、桁違いの力を得る事がある。 ("Even a tiny being, once you remove the bonds on its heart, can gain unimaginable power.”) Goro (EN) Even the feeblest existence can gain tremendous power once the chains on its heart are broken. !! 枷 has a double meaning of both literal restraints (shackles/chains/etc) and more metaphorical ways to bind someone (such as relations to others, or societal restrictions on what you’re allowed to do). While “chains on its heart” is a valid translation, it fails to maintain that wordplay in English, and given how the power he’s talking about works, it’s almost certainly on purpose.

Loki’s power works by shattering the restraints on a person’s heart that stop them from acting recklessly in ways that hurt other people. I think a case could very much be made that the reason this seems to always result in violence on the part of those of Goro’s targets (and Goro himself) is because when you’re in that state, you stop feeling sympathy or empathy, and the dark impulses you bury deep inside (which everyone has) can reign unchecked.

When I first started to choochoo along the “Goro went berserk to kill Wakaba” train, one of the first things I started to speculate was that he was the first person he used Call of Chaos on. I started to reevaluate that today when I read all of that delicious food and found myself rethinking how Goro would have approached Shido, and I found myself drawn the conclusion that Goro brought Shido two things–the ability to gather secret knowledge and the ability to drive people berserk–but Shido would have wanted proof. And Goro’s an idiot, but he’s not dumb; he would have had that proof ready in advance. Goro would have been causing some psychotic breakdowns on a smaller scale before he approached Shido, just enough to make the news and catch Wakaba’s attention in her research, but not enough to cause widespread chaos on the scale that’s referenced in game, before he stepped foot through Shido’s door.

I find it very hard to believe that Goro didn’t know the basics of Wakaba before he killed her: single mom, no father in the picture, daughter roughly his age. Goro is the type to hoard information because it makes him feel in control, so he’d be given this name from Shido and want to know everything he can uncover about his target first–also he’s the one with the metaverse nav app and he’d need to know as much about her as possible to figure out what her distortion is.

(This is assuming Wakaba had a palace as opposed to residing in Mementos. I have no grounds to base this theory on, but I think she did. I won’t go into it in too much detail, but I HC that Wakaba’s palace was modeled after the Library of Alexandria, and Wakaba’s shadow was Hypatia. I’ll save the thematic whys of that for another post because they’re neither here nor there.)

I have a hard time buying that a teenager would just go from zero to being okay with murder without having some pretty critical hangups in the process, especially a teenager who kind of thinks of himself as a hero who has to get his hands dirty. You can’t really justify murdering an innocent woman who did nothing wrong when you measure her against people like Okumura. Especially when so much of that single mom’s life story should probably logically resonate with you.

(This is another reason I get upset that nothing in canon ever has Goro actively acknowledge his murder of Wakaba, because if it did it would have to grapple the between Goro and Futaba and the fact that Goro did to Futaba was exactly what was done to him, but way more directly. Atlus is not subtle and is also not capable of nuance or depth.)

So the logical line of thought is that Goro used Call of Chaos on himself to break the chains on his own heart (the feelings that would make him sympathize with Wakaba and see his own mother in her) so that he could kill her. I’d also argue that layered on top of of all of this is that Goro didn’t know killing her shadow would kill her, because Shido guarded her research closely and Yaldabaoth wanted a boy who would be willing to smash things. They were both grooming him to be their perfect little murderer.

By the point we meet him in the game Goro is heavily tied up in Shido’s conspiracy and all that that entails. His already jaded sense of justice will by this point have been warped beyond repair–until he meets Akira. Akira is probably the first person Goro has ever bonded with in his entire life, and a wildcard’s power is rooted in the ability to form bonds. Positive bonds specifically, because it’s only through those that their power can grow. I think we can all look at Goro’s life and agree that his relationship with Akira is the only positive one he’s had since he was like…….never years old.

And I specifically think that it’s through his relationship with Akira that Goro starts to reawaken to his true sense of justice. It’s textually canonical that Goro is jealous of the fact that the Phantom Thieves found a way to achieve their goals without collateral damage. I think that bonding with Akira–in a way Goro has literally never bonded with anyone else before–is what caused Goro’s second awakening and his tentative re-embrasure of the belief that justice is about helping, not hurting. Except he’s in two such different places at this point. I’m very on board with the BPD!Goro hc that’s become a thing lately, thanks to Krist and the goroboys discord server, but I’m not going to go into specifics because I’m not BPD. I just think that from what I’ve read of BPD it sounds valid, and if a person who is BPD says they get that mood from him, that’s extra valid

But Goro’s sense of self is clearly very split between Loki and Robin Hood and what they thematically represent. He wants to be a hero, but he still dresses like a tokusatsu villain half the time. He wants to be a hero, but he’s also a murderer. He can’t reconcile these aspects of himself.

Goro isn’t a true wildcard because he lacks the ability of connection. While the wildcard ability is granted by a cosmic entity (Philemon/Igor/Yaldabaoth/etc.), the degree of its manifestation is dependent upon the wildcard’s ability to connect with other people. The case could be made that Adachi and Namatame are wildcards because they’re both selected as game pieces by Izanami, but only Souji manifests the wildcard ability because only he is able to connect with others. The implication to be taken from that is that a cosmic force can grant an individual a persona and the corresponding wildcard ability, but that ability can’t manifest itself unless the individual is capable of wielding it–which Goro is not.

And very much unlike a wildcard, if you take the necessary steps Goro’s two personas do fuse into an ultimate whole. If you complete the development of Goro’s character to the extent the game requires, then Loki and Robin Hood fuse to become Hereward. I have some thoughts about this in relation to the fact that I can’t find any evidence that Hereward is tied to the Robin Hood myth, but all that aside: Goro’s warped sense of justice and his true sense of justice fused together in a way that’s, uh——-

Robin Hood is very bara and Loki is very twink. Hereward looks extremely similar to Robin Hood, but has a dark grey, an almost black, color design. Hereward literally represents Goro embracing that justice is grey, and that it’s okay for Goro to both want to be the hero and to want to see people struggle with the hard questions of how the hurts they’ve inflicted, intentionally or not, have impacted the people affected by them.

Goro was never a true wildcard to begin with. Yaldabaoth chose him because he was isolated. That he found his other half in Akira was dumb luck of the draw.

[unculturedmamoswine]

AoS McKirk Recs

At the request of @fireinmywoods​ I’m finally getting around to making a McKirk rec post, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. All these fics are McKirk endgame. This isn’t organized in any way whatsoever, and is also not a comprehensive list. I mostly just scrolled through my bookmarks and picked the things that weren’t outright porn. I always wish reccers would include their own notes along with the author’s summaries so... I did that. Hope y’all don’t mind. I’ll try not to be too spoilery, but I think it’s valuable to see what other fans like about a fic. Also, always heed the author’s notes, warnings, and tags. Definitely check out other fics by these authors, because I’m mostly not reccing a bunch by each person in order to keep this post slightly less long. And please consider leaving comments on the fics!

The palimpsest verse by fireinmywoods (series is 100k words)

Author’s summary (of the first fic in the series): “Skip to the point, Jim. The sooner you spit it out, the sooner I can refuse and get back to work.” “It’s really no big deal,” Jim says as the door slides closed behind them. “I just need you to come down to Hearth with us…as my husband.” The Enterprise has been sent to negotiate reaccession to the Federation with an isolationist religious group known as the Kindred. While there, Jim notices that some of the children seem to be gravely ill. The problem is, the Kindred practice faith healing and refuse to allow a doctor to be brought in. So Jim does what he does best: he improvises.

Gotta start with the gal whose fault this list is! When I read the first fic in this verse I was really at a low point in my McKirk obsession. This fic really brought me back into the fold in a big way. The whole series is just very very full of love. I ALMOST read one of the sequels first but thank god I heeded Em’s warnings to read palimpsest before reading the other fics. Seriously. You need to go into the thing unspoiled. Anyhow, if you want Jim and Bones way way super in love, for sure read this fic.(And listen, if you don’t want to read it because you hate fake marriage please read it anyway. I dislike fake marriage and I read it and loved it. Give it a shot, I beg you.)

Manhattan (Weeks Gone By) by blcwriter (8k words)

Author’s Summary: For the jim_and_bones St. Patrick’s Day challenge, because only I can turn a flash fic prompt into 8000 words. I haven't been able to stop listening to Frightened Rabbit’s “In Living Colour”  from their Winter of Mixed Drinks album as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say for my next story, and then this challenge came along, and literal writer! is literal, so, there you go.The prompt was "Manhattan," and the boys wanted to be married in modern times and run a bar in the Village with the whole gang involved.  Non-happy-fun-times ensue before things sort of resolve.

I love a lot of blcwriter’s stuff, but this one is my favorite. It’s a modern day au, and Jim and Bones’s marriage is in trouble. It’s a really wonderful look at people in a long-term relationship struggling to keep it alive and wondering whether to just let it die.

Something so right by blcwriter (series is 13k words)

Author’s Summary (of the first fic in the series): "Don't say we aren't right for each other, the way I see it is.. we aren't right for anyone else."

Okay, I said I wouldn’t rec lots of things by one author and this is my one exception. I HAD to rec this one as well as Manhattan. An utterly fantastic modern day chef au. Jim and Bones knew each other at culinary school but now find each other again as real grown-ups. And the sequel is a Christmas fic! Also contains Jewish Jim, which I’m always a slut for.

That Monogamy Thing by silverlining99 (11k words)

Author’s Summary: Jim thought he was doing it RIGHT.

I also need to mention the fic The Thing About Realizing You Are In Love With Your Best Friend by JenTheSweetie because these two fics are so identical in premise I can only assume they were written for the same prompt. They’re both great, but I slightly prefer That Monogamy Thing, so it got top billing. Both fics are set during the five year mission, or at least they’re set on the Enterprise. Basically, Jim and Bones start sleeping together and Jim assumes they must be now in a Monogamous Relationship(TM) and gets with the monogamy program. Of course, at no point did anyone say they were in a monogamous relationship, so Bones is not on the same page, shall we say. It’s a classic “miscommunication causes delicious but short-lived angst” kinda vibe. You get it.

The Repairs verse by shinychimera and Yeomanrand (series is 69k words)

Authors’ Summary (of the first fic in the series):  Young Jim Kirk is unstable and self-destructive, Leonard McCoy is withdrawn and wary, and the obstacles to surviving their first term at Starfleet Academy are not easy to overcome. A dark and brutal tale of the tangled borders between healing and hurting, where hard choices between emotions and ethics have far-reaching consequences; dealing with abuse and alcoholism, affection and neglect, piercings and bar fights, hot and cold sex, complicated questions of consent, and loyalty and love between people who aren't comfortable with either. A whole new spin on "I want my pain, I need my pain."

This one is kinda...whump porn. Like, read the tags. JIm is suuuper messed up and traumatized but sometimes that’s what you need in a fic, yanno? It’s an Academy fic that deals heavily with Jim having been violently abused as a child, and him growing to trust Bones while also kind of learning how to be an adult, rather than living life as the abused child he’s spent so long being. The abuse in this fic was not sexual in nature, jsyk.

En Promenade by newsbypostcard (series is 86k words)

Author’s Summary: After three months of weekend bar-hopping and a slow process of elimination -- with finding the right bar, that was, and tragically not discovering who Bones was into -- Jim was starting to narrow it down.

A very cute Academy fic that nevertheless deals with a bit of heavy shit for both Jim and Bones. Starts out with Jim bound and determined to befriend Bones by... discovering the perfect bar for them to hang out in. Has a lot of really great exploration of Bones’s character, and he’s written in a really entertaining way.

Future Imperfect by Savoytruffle (50k words)

Author’s Summary: Leonard wins the kid in a hand of poker. A hand of poker he plays in the dirty back room of a dive bar in East Bumfuck, Iowa, two weeks after his humiliating divorce is finalized, and on the sixth day of a bourbon-fueled bender that’s somehow taken him from his high-rise loft in Atlanta to a fleabag motel in the middle of nowhere.

This fic is an Academy fic, but in a pretty dark universe. Maybe not Mirror Universe dark, but it’s one where slavery is practiced on Earth. Jim is, in this fic, Bones’s slave. Not in a sexy way. He’s part of an underclass of people who weren’t designer babies. Bones goes to the Academy and tries to become a Starfleet officer, accompanied by Jim, his newly acquired slave. They grow closer as they deal with their pasts, and I guess I should stop there for fear of spoiling too much. This one talks a lot about childhood sexual abuse, so be warned. The story overall though has a hopeful ending.

Let Me Come Home by yawnralphio (7k words)

Author’s Summary:  “Someone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.”

For someone who theoretically dislikes modern day AU’s, there are actually a fair few that I really really love, and this is one. Jim and Bones run a travel blog together and journey around the US in a van. It’s a really lovely mix of angst and romance.

The Switch series by Ceres_Libera (series is 269k words)

Author’s Summary (of the first fic in the series):  The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense. A Starfleet Academy story, set in the ST:XI universe.

I don’t need any sass, people. I KNOW you’ve all read Switch, and I know you’re all tired of seeing it on rec lists and I don’t care. It’s famous for a reason! It’s not just long, it’s WONDERFUL. The big, epic Academy fic that kinda sets the Academy fic bar. Goes from Jim and Bones meeting all the way through the end of the 09 film. And that’s just the main fic. I really love that both Jim and Bones are depicted as realistically flawed people, especially earlier on in their acquaintance. Neither of them are angst sponges, they’re both just... kinda messed up dudes. But they’re good people who learn to love each other. Also I guess it’s technically slow burn?

The Greater Good by emiliglia (29k words)

Author’s Summary: Doctor Leonard McCoy thinks he's getting by, working as both a surgeon and a researcher at UCSF Medical Center. A chance encounter with Lieutenant Jim Kirk - who's changed since they first met five years before, and not for the better - forces Leonard to face reality about his own situation while trying to keep Jim from heading down the same path.

This is the only fic on here not on Ao3, as far as I can tell. Anyhow it’s modern day AU. Jim and Bones help themselves by helping each other and falling in looooove.

The aftershocks series by canistakahari (series is 30k words)

Author’s Summary: Jim Kirk turns down Pike’s challenge, and doesn’t get on the Starfleet recruiting shuttle. But neither does Leonard McCoy, who’s actually been in Iowa for six months already, doing fuck-all. Becoming drinking buddies seems like a natural progression.Sometimes the path to the stars is just a piece-of-shit dirt road. You know, the kind that’s filled with potholes and surrounded by brambles and conveniently happens to be located in the bottom of a ravine. But every once in a while, when confronted with such a twisted mess of circumstance and cracked foundation, the universe still does its very best to fill in the holes.

I haven’t read this in a long time, but I remember it being really good and kinda mindfucky. Not in a dark or stressful way, though. Jim and Bones don’t join Starfleet at all. I feel I shouldn’t say more because I don’t want to spoil things, but the tags should give you more information if you want some.

i think i’ll keep you (like a secret) by hoosierbitch (3k words)

Author’s Summary: Bones came to Starfleet with a hell of a lot of baggage. Jim came empty handed.

Some good ole Jim angst. Prominently featuring: Tarsus things! Allergic-to-everything Jim! Jim allowing himself to be vulnerable around Bones! All that good stuff. I just love me some vulnerability.

How Whales (Sorta) Brought Jim and Bones Together by highschool-facelesshellion (4k words)

Author’s Summary: For Leonard, first dates are flowers and small, homey restaurants where you talk quietly like you're sharing secrets with your potential girlfriend.They are not supposed to be at a table covered with aquarium maps and aquarium souvenirs. And they are certainly not supposed to be spent with a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy rambling about whales.(Or: Where Leonard is the only person that doesn't think Jim's too crazy for his whale obsession and Jim notices.)

Fairly goofy, slightly cracky remix of The Voyage Home (the one with the whales). It’s just silly and charming and I don’t know why I love the idea of Jim being a whale aficionado, but I really do. 

Any Road Will Take You There by shoreleave (63k words)

Author’s Summary: Slow-developing K/M, beginning right after the shuttle ride and showing what happens the first year at the Academy. Told from McCoy's POV.

This fic is verrrrry good. I know I have a lot of Academy fic on here, but please treat yourself and read this one. Shoreleave is really good at both plot and characterization. I really like this fic in part because it explores the root of Jim’s complete lack of trust in authority figures, while also showing just how dangerous that lack of trust can be for him.

Seeing Stars by lindmere (1k words)

Author’s Summary: Inspired by Chris Pine's wig in Bottle Shock. Jim sneaks into Riverside for an old-fashioned Fourth of July.

A very sweet, sort of domestic established relationship fic.

His Eyes are Opened by tresa_cho (21k words)

Author’s Summary: Lt Colonel Leonard McCoy thought his service days were over. After the Great War, he was ready to disappear into the sanctuary of anonymity, but the government had other plans. Strange men whisk him away from his comfortable existence to investigate an airship crash unlike anything the United States had ever seen before. The year is 1947. The location, Roswell, New Mexico.

Despite the summary saying ‘Great War’, this fic is clearly post WWII, so I think that must be a typo. There is a dearth of McKirk fic set in the forties, and hot damn does this fic ever hit the spot if that’s what you’re looking for. Usually fics that are set in modern times or earlier take out all the sci-fi elements of Star Trek, but not this one! Just a very well done fic with a unique premise.

Investigations by AceOfSpades (series is 93k words)

Author’s Summary: The first thing Jim noticed about McCoy, and what started him on this whole messy path, was that McCoy was just a little…off.

GOD DAMN I love this fic. It’s a Doom (2005) fusion, but you don’t need to know anything about Doom to get this fic. It might even help to not know anything about Doom. God knows I don’t and I adore this fic. Academy era, with Jim simultaneously befriending Bones and trying to solve the mystery of this weird Leonard McCoy guy. Theoretically we’re getting a sequel sometime, and it can’t come soon enough in my opinion. Never fear, though, the fic is complete as-is and has lovely closure. Really really really recommended!

The Galactic Adventures of Major Zeph by winterover (14k words)

Author’s Summary: Jim is a comic book nerd who’s finally found his one true sidekick. Leonard is a convention virgin who really needs a drink. There is only one bed left in San Diego.

Academy fic! For some reason I always love fics where Jim is into some kind of craft or art, or is just generally a nerd about something. This fic provides that twice: Jim is a comic book nerd as the summary says, but also really into cosplay. And Bones just happens to look like the sidekick of Jim’s favorite comic book character. Romantic hijinks ensue.

The Man Who Held Up Atlas by thalialunacy (7k words)

Author’s Summary: Five times Leonard McCoy fixed Jim Kirk’s back, and the one time he didn’t have to.

Really really lovely 5 plus 1 fic with reverse chronology. Starts with Jim and Bones as old old men and moves back in time from there, showing little snapshots of their relationship.

and i can lend you broken parts that might fit (like this) by jeyhawk (17k words)

Author’s Summary: Academy Era. First they fall into bed. Then they fall in love.

Funny and sweet. Nothing too heavy, just loads of Jim and Bones being wildly in love with each other. And sexytimes.

[cullinankatsudon]

Let’s get super damn real about representation/education and coded protection

So this is a series of asks I just got, which is actually one ask, which I can’t answer publicly without only answering one, so I just screenshot the whole mess and now I’m “answering” by using this as a jumping off point and going from here. And when I say GOING I mean fucking going, because JFC do I have some goddamned thoughts. There is so much to unpack here, both the stuff said and the stuff which is unsaid, which the asker may or may not have been thinking, but I know other people are so I’m just going to say it and everyone can either listen or leave. I don’t really care. The title of the blog is Just Here For The Ships and it is true. Please skip this and go back to the pics of Victuuri being awesome if you like.

I am not 24. I am 44. I am the author to over 25 published novels of LGBTQIA romance, many of which have won awards and have been translated into...I’ve lost count of the languages. Like, five? Lots. I’m not Big Shit but I’m not some peon who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I write about sex, though, and sensuality. I have written an asexual romance, and BDSM romances, and moderately sexual romances, and a romance with an autistic hero, several with heroes with anxiety/depression, May/December relationships, and a great number of new adult novels, which is basically the next step away from young adult, and often features 18yos so basically I write, often, teenagers having sex. And as I have said, I am 44, so I guess from the perspective of a 24 year old I am an ancient old creaky person perving like fuck. But we will cover this more in a moment.

I am also by identification a queer woman. No one has any right to that information whatsoever, it is none of your business. But I am public about it and I volunteer it for a specific reason which I will also underline later in this conversation. Now to the answer to the ask.

The incredibly short answer to this ask is, if you don’t like what other people are doing, don’t look at it. Don’t read their shit, don’t read their blogs, don’t engage. I keep quoting @fencer-x in this discussion because her opinions and mine align, and I respect her way of dealing with frustrating topics: she blocks people when she knows their views and hers clash and interactions with them will only make her angry/frustrated. My god, what an adult reaction. She doesn’t chase people down and harass them (not adult). She simply says, “This will make me ranty. I’m going to end this before it can start and go on with my happy ways.” Incredibly proactive because she has high-volume interaction on Tumblr.

But this ask isn’t a harassment, it’s an honest ask: why would an adult want to read about two teenagers having sex. I find it a frustrating ask, but I’ll honor it because I’m in a waiting-for-email loop and anyway, I’ve been seeing this go by my feed for months, Fencer keeps hammering at it and why should she have to keep saying the same thing? I’ll take an axe swing for the team. Just be ready because I am here with some fucking receipts.

Answer A: Assuming that adults people are reading about teenagers having sex because they are getting off is incredibly juvenile and reveals shallowness of comprehension of literature in general.

I don’t have hard sales on YA romance in front of me, but I’m a member of Romance Writers of America and could probably get it pretty quickly with a few emails; what I do know is that YA romance is doing fine, more than, and it’s not being read by only teens and whatever magical cut off is considered not-gross in legal adulthood. I don’t have any comprehension over what moment that is, when an adult human becomes old enough and now reading about teenagers is gross--is it simply always someone younger? Am I not allowed to read about thirty-year-olds fucking?--but whatever this is, I don’t care, because I don’t subscribe to it, largely because I know that readers of romance in general but especially young adult romance are rarely reading for sex alone. There are some people, yes. There’s nothing wrong with those choices, but they’re rare in any event, and we’re not talking about them yet. 

My new adult novels, however, while they are read by some college age people and some high school students, are largely read by adults, many of them my age or older. For the queer identifying reader especially, the books featuring young protagonists starting out in life often move them to write me passionate letters which in turn make me cry. But the heterosexual readers will often feel just as strongly. 

Why? Because it will possibly surprise (or depress?) a number of twenty somethings to discover that when people hit their thirties or especially forties/fifties, they look back at their twenties/youth and feel nostalgia, regret, and sadness over possibilities lost, time slipped away, and in the case of many women and queer youth, opportunities never granted. For many bi/pan people in particular of my generation, we quietly slipped into a heteronormative path because it seemed like the only choice, and while we may have made happy marriages, there are parts of our selves which never got to see the light of day, and that hurts. These books, these explorations, are ways to have those moments. 

Writing fiction is an even more empowering way to explore those same themes--and not everyone wants the hell of chasing down a publishing career, so fan fiction is a nice alternative. 

Perhaps you’re about to say, “But Heidi, those straight women are FETISHIZING!!!!!!!!” Oh, sure, maybe some are? I don’t know. I imagine you’d like to point them out to me? I suspect you have a list prepared. I bet you know who alllll those bitches are, eh?

Let me tell you a story. 

In the publishing world, people do the same thing. Readers and published authors alike loooove to play that game, imagining who is entitled to do what, and every so often someone decides to go on a witch hunt. Now sometimes there are truly people who have been deceiving others and the betrayals are horrible to see unfold, and they always break the community. And then sometimes--several times in my tenure--I have watched people go after “straight” women who have “dared” to step wrongly in queer romance...and all the while I have known that these women are in fact not straight, but rather are simply not out. I have done what I can to help, but there isn’t much to do, except that I keep a list--a real list--of the people carrying torches and I do not engage, do not highlight, do not give oxygen in any form, ever. So be very careful when you make your judgments of shippers FETISHIZING!!!!!!!! because you might be completely wrong, even if the bio on that person’s blog says they’re straight. If you don’t like what someone is doing, you should probably take Fencer’s approach and simply block them.

One of the reasons I am out--though only one--is because it is more uncomfortable for me to think about being jumped by assholes from my own team wanting to accuse me of appropriation than it is being accosted by an antigay bigot. I would like you to think about that for a long time before you ever approach someone about being allegedly straight.

But even the straight shippers have plenty of agency to enjoy writing about teenagers having a relationship which may include sex. That brings us to the next answer, though.

Answer B: women have a lot of unpacking to do in this damn world about sex, and in nearly every culture they are saying, over and over, romance between male same sex pairings helps them do this work. Including young pairings.

This answer comes with a ton of controversy and has taken me eight years of being published to come up with, and my way of speaking to it is ever evolving. While it is true that I have many gay male readers and nonbinary readers for my books which are largely about gay males falling in love, I also have many female readers of all orientation, though a large chunk of those are straight. This phenomenon has been the butt of jokes and point of ire depending on who is writing the article or asking me questions over my years as an author. 

This is a whole other essay, gnarly and deep, but the main gist is that women’s sexuality is so fraught and politicized that many women--worldwide, across cultures--feel more comfortable exploring issues about sexuality when the pairing is between two men than a woman and a man or two women. Now: personally, I want us to move beyond this and evolve, to move to two women as well as two men, to add in some heterosexual pairings but have the man be different as part of a trope--but we aren’t there yet, clearly, for so many reasons.  I think it’s important we keep pushing and trying, but it’s going to have to evolve there, not be shamed there or rammed there. 

We have a patriarchal culture; it’s no surprise that to undo this women pit two men against one another and attempt to undo the power structure by domesticating it, by rewriting it (literally), by remixing it on their own terms. Now--speaking as a queer woman, I do think we must, especially when writing gay men, be respectful and be aware we are writing about a marginalized group. However, this is a marginalized group writing about a marginalized group--women/gay men--and especially if the pairing is about white men, it’s an even power match. Gay white men in fact can seize more power than white women, if they want it--they must deny their orientation, but the choice is there.

It’s true that women writing about gay men can and have been sloppy, that descent into rape fantasy and feminization harm the relationship between gay men and women of any orientation. It’s also true that there are gay men quietly reading those same tropes the same way women in the 70s and 80s read rape fantasy and rescue fantasy in romance as part of their own evolution to claiming power (and yes, that is a thing). 

But wait, Heidi, you say, what the hell does this have to do with teenagers having sex?

Plenty. 

Because we’re talking specifically about Otayuri, yes? Yurio having sex with Otabek, who is not an adult, but is for some reason to some people, and we’re talking about adults reading about this. They are a gay pairing. And unlike Victuuri, they are not canon, not yet, maybe not ever, and this is very important right now, because there is more power in a non canon ship when you are writing them yourself, because you are creating the link. When you write Victuuri you’re celebrating a couple the creators literally put rings on. When you write Sterek or Sheith or anyone else who is not in their actual fictional show a couple, and when you are taking straight men and queering them up in a pairing, you are claiming power. I don’t care what your orientation is. You are taking a big dildo and aiming at the patriarchal system of the world through fiction and you are saying, “I am going to fuck with this, literally.”

To do that with young men is another statement on top of that. I don’t know, do people bitch about Sterek? Are there people freaking out about TEEN WOLF, TEEN Sterek and the older guy, the mentor, the adult graduate jailbaiter who gets shipped with him? I don’t have a problem with it at all, but if you want to go legally by the show, those are the terms. Why do people do it? Because there’s something in that power play that speaks to them. Something specific about Styles, who appears weak and young and vulnerable, and Derek, who is older and powerful but has a vulnerable side. 

Derek is the patriarchy, and Styles is how you bring him down. It’s more complicated than that, nobody thinks like that, but if you want to get deep as fuck with it, and I do, that’s what’s happening, and why it’s important. Styles is a kid, technically. As an actor I get that he’s an adult. Maybe that’s why there’s no freak out?

Okay let’s go to Sheith. Shiro is 24 and Keith is 18. Legit no legal issues here, plus they’re in space and in the future, but still youth is on board, and we have an age difference. Age differences are powerful. May/December is a thing and they’re heady in gay romance. Boy do people love the idea of a younger man bringing an older man to heel through love. This is not May/December, 24/18, but that age gap is enough to make people feel the pull, and the power dynamic is another. Shiro is the leader. Patriarchy. Keith is the feisty underling. You want to know why that ship is hot? That right there. Staid patriarchy needing feisty youngling to fuck it from underneath and get it to unlace.

You want to know why gay romance is so alluring, why people love gay ships, especially with straight characters? Because we are so goddamned desperate to change our culture and it won’t change and we don’t know how to do it and we feel like we have no power, and materially we don’t have a ton, but what we do have are these stories and a few hours a night to read or write subversive literature.

So I did everyone but Yurio. Let’s talk about Yuri P. Yurio is fifteen, a baby, a precious baby. He is not a baby. He tells you over and over he is an ice tiger. He got an upgrade in the BD where he explained how he wanted to dress himself and do his own music and he got his friend boyfriend to help him get dressed and pick a song and choreograph a new skate overnight, and then when he saw Victuuri was going to one-up him he came up with something to top them on the fly and it was hot and sexual and not at all contrived. The boy bled sex all over the ice, and if he had skated that routine up against Eros and Chris’s ass grab he would have won the competition. The boy is not a boy, he’s a young man and he is aware of his sexuality. He gets to play with it and claim it.

And people get to play with it too. It is a real thing, it is there, and it is ripe for the exploration. It is valid and on the table. Which brings us to the last answer (except there are about fifty more, I’m just only going to give one more because this is long as fuck and I have a family and I”m getting bored of this)

Answer C: Sex is fabulous and it is okay to like sex (and okay to not like sex)

Okay at the moment I am answering this in the theoretical, as a hysterectomy and PTSD over a past trauma regarding sex and way too much work-related stress have made the actual having of sex not something I’m interested in personally, but theoretically I find sex to be a wonderful, beautiful thing, and I’m currently going to therapy once a week to get my shit straight so that someday I can have it again because I do like it a lot and I believe in the power and beauty of sex and everyone’s right to have it and enjoy it (or not) in whatever way that pleases them so long as it is safe, sane, and consensual. I’ve written books that open with a blow job (true story) and books that are described as about “fisting cowboys full of feels” and also books with nothing more than two kisses and make out sessions holding hands and books where the sex is awkward and books where the sex mostly fades to black and everything in between. 

This includes sex by and for teens, because they have it. It’s okay for them to have it and it’s okay for me to read about it (and watch shows where they have it) and find it hot if it is because there is not an age limit where this happens. It’s an amazing thing, but I read books and find things hot or funny or sexy or scary or happy or sad and I don’t feel they are happening to me personally. I don’t feel that I am now that person. I don’t think that I am entitled to that character’s life, and I don’t mistake that I am suddenly that age. 

Nobody, by the way, would ever say this of someone about a horror novel for teens, or anything else for teens, and amazingly, nobody would ever and has ever said this about men reading fucking Lolita, a “literature” book about a goddamned girl and the pedophile who ogled her. Well, women. But people usually tell them to shut up because literature. Nobody says this to Woody Allen or the other men who have done all kinds of nasty shit. We are talking here, in a coded way, about “older” women reading about young men having sex. Because that’s a dirty act.

It is not. I am not old. I am older, yes, and so much wiser, and I can argue like this all damn day. 

But I might not do it every day because I also have a lot of work to do. Really, to sum it up: if you don’t like it, don’t look at it. Absolutely nobody on here is the morality police and nobody is entitled to protect anyone. The odds are really good you’re fucking up and hurting a lot of people if you try.

Just be here for the ships. Your ships. And everything will be fine.

[doberbutts]

Progress Report

Debating changing my tag for Japanese learning from “Adventures in Japanese” to an actual phrase in Japanese, like “Japanese studies” or something. But then I don’t want to confuse people since I started with this tag before I knew how to construct words outside of one/two word vocabulary.

Apparently the ebook and app I’ve been using, Human Japanese, has Windows/Mac support as well as iPhone/Android. Both versions (Beginner & Intermediate) are only $10 on the phone apps and well worth the money. If y’all are really interested in following the same path I’m taking, then this is probably the better place to start if you’re strapped on cash or like to learn on the go.

I also have Tae Kim’s Guide, which feels less intuitive to me but is a huge resource for not only kanji but also alternate explanations of various particles and verbs that can be a little tricky. It’s free in all forms unless you want a physical book- but the author worked hard on it and you should consider at least donating even if you snag the free PDF or app.

I’ve purchased the first set of Genki textbook/workbooks but have not yet cracked them open- I want to get through the first two before I start sitting down with a textbook every night. I’m through 2/3 of HJB and will start HJI while learning through TKG once I’m done, then we’ll see about solid books.

I also have the first of the series Remembering the Kanji and the Kanji Learner’s Course next to order on my list to help fill in any gaps that are left before purchasing the JPLT N5 Practice Test, though likely I will be purchasing a few o my “Odds and Ends” books prior to actually sitting down and trying to take the practice test.

I’m also using a few other apps, but not nearly as extensively. They are mainly flashcard-style apps to help with memorization/retention than true learning.

And, after my N5 test, I will be finding someone to directly tutor me further. There are various reasons for me to want to get to N5 on my own, but most importantly so that I can be taken seriously as a student and not assumed to be Yet Another Anime Fan (tm) and also so I can feel more comfortable myself in the language before approaching someone I consider an expert.

Odds and Ends books to purchase below the cut:

Making Sense of Japanese (What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You)

Not honestly sure what this one will offer me as both Human Japanese and Tae Kim claim that their ebook/apps are things textbooks don’t offer new students, but for $12 it’s worth a look.

How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese

There’s frequently times when doing my notes when I think- “I wonder how Japanese-speaking high school students would write a persuasive essay” or “I wonder how, if I were a scientist in Japan, I’d phrase this to communicate my findings to others”. This book seems to promise to show how to break out of basic grammar and into actual adult topics, something I’m sorely missing when I practice with friends on social media who frequently use basic sentences to communicate how their day was or how their cat is doing.

Common Japanese Collocations

Something I’ve grown up always calling “Americanisms” or “Britishisms” for the English equivalent (you can thank my Spanish professors for that)- the easiest way to tell where someone is from is to listen closely to the words they use for everyday speech. When I speak with my Southern American or my British friends, I can always pick out the bits of their speech that’s different from mine. To me it sounds child-like, like a half-understanding of the same language. This book claims to fix the same problem from occurring when going from English to Japanese by where things are different between the two languages.

Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs

Because it’s always nice to have a list of things like this!

Basic Connections: Making Your Japanese Flow

The chapter I just passed in HJB actually may have negated the need to purchase this book depending on how much farther the Intermediate level pushes this concept- until last night I felt very afraid to write at length in Japanese because I feel the longer my paragraphs, the more like an idiot I sound. This was on my list as something to possibly fix that, but ch30 on HJB also started me on that path, so we’ll see if I feel I need it.

Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

Something that came very highly recommended to me by multiple people, so I figure it’s worth a look.

Shadowing: Beginner to Intermediate

Many people who were dissatisfied with Genki said that Shadowing was the better option. This is in my Odds/Ends list as a backup, just in case I also end up not liking Genki as much.

Dictionary of Japanese Particles

Much like the adverbs/adjectives list, it’s always useful to have one of these lying around.

Japanese Graded Readers: Level 0

The first in a series to help learners of the language stop memorizing and start actually reading. To buy along with Yotsuba&! when I finish HJB.

Etiquette Guide to Japan

This is not so much a Japanese speech book as it is a social graces guide, but I feel as though language and culture of any country are very closely tied (look at all the ways you can accidentally offend someone in English by swapping a vowel or a syllable!) and so this is fairly important to learn as well.

Living Language Japanese

Another suggestion made by folks unsatisfied with Genki, though I am more hesitant to purchase this one as it does not wean off romaji and I am nearly through with that myself, so I would rather not continue to rely on romaji when it’s more important that I stay sharp with my kanas and begin memorizing kanji.

The Japanese Mind

Another culture book- though I am hesitant to read this one as it’s written by a white dude who married into the country.

Japanese for All Occasions

Speaking of tying culture to language- the idea of formal vs informal speech, verbs, sentence patterns, etc are probably the hardest thing for me to wrap my English-speaking brain around, likely because my own speech is so blunt and informal. This also ties into my hesitancy to practice- I do not want to offend people accidentally by using the wrong verb form or forgetting to slap an O onto the front of a noun. This, hopefully, will help me push past that.

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs

Another list-type book, because you can never have enough of those.

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication

Another I hesitate to buy due to reliance on romaji, but it did come highly rated.

All About Particles

In case I am still confused on when to use certain particles where, and compound/complex particles

Elementary Japanese Vol One

Another suggestion from those dissatisfied with Genki.

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

A post-Genki suggestion, for when I have finished the full Genki course.

Japanese: The Spoken Language

A little older, entirely in romaji, but still very highly reviewed and respected. Always something that catches my attention.

Japanese for Professionals

Another “how to sound not like a child” book.

Fundamentals of Japanese Grammar: Comprehensive Acquisition

Another grammar book.

[mild-lunacy]

TFP explained (YMMV)

monalisa72 replied to your post: What is a plausible theory?

So looking at your older post, you talk about checking to see whether a theory fits the plot arc, whether a reading integrates with character development. What do you do when faced with a canon like TFP, where things have gone so off the rails that it seems we’re expected to suspend even the laws of physics? How do we determine what is a reasonable theory when faced with implausible canon?

This is hard for me to answer, ‘cause I have to assume and integrate a response that I just didn’t have as a viewer, myself. Still, I’ve been trying!  

Basically: separate what’s implausible from what’s not your headcanon, a genre mismatch issue, or simply flawed execution of a fundamentally sound resolution on its own terms. A critique can coexist with comprehension, or seeing how a development does fit into Sherlock’s arc... even if it’s not the way I would have done it. I’m sure confused people would prefer more details, though.

The ‘laws of physics’ or genre issues.

Like I said in response to @marsdaydream’s post, I don’t think it’s so out of nowhere or shocking as all that, genre-wise; however, I admitted in response to @silentauroriamthereal’s plot-hole post that certain things (like, for example, jumping out of 221b) were hand-waved too easily, and we weren’t meant to think too much, which is lazy. 

Basically: you’re not supposed to suspend physics, I think? Just... Mofftiss want the audience to squint a bit, but they did that in TAB and TLD too (just in different ways, so in that sense I find TFP continuous and/or the problem to have started around Series 3, as @porcupine-girl described). However, Series 3 and Series 4 have pretty significant genre continuity. Obviously, YMMV.

Moriarty use issues and/or why is it even ‘The Final Problem’, anyway.

I answered this in my comment on Ivy’s post. A lot of this is people being unhappy with how Moriarty is used, which I can only shrug at. I changed my mind about Moriarty being alive with TAB, and in my last farewell to that theory, I mentioned that it made sense that the ‘Act II villain’ would be a lot more grey than the Act I ‘black and white’ villain like Moriarty.  

Essentially, in TFP, Moriarty is still 'the virus in the data' at Sherrinford just as he actually was at the end of HLV, so that TAB clearly provides a fair amount of foreshadowing in this regard.

Note: some people thought this meant Mary would be the Big Bad, but I thought this was unlikely ‘cause she was never really the type to think on a grand scale of villainy; she’s only concerned with herself, which is not how a Big Bad operates. Basically, like Ivy said, Mary just makes really bad knee-jerk decisions. Neither Moriarty nor Mary were cut out to be the ‘Final Problem’ in this show.

Eurus being too deus ex machina, out-of-nowhere and too powerful.

In many ways, that’s a valid critique. I do wish they’d set it up better and planned out the show better in general. I agree with @girlofthemirror about Moffat and Gatiss’s intent and the entire interest in Sherlock’s origins being difficult to accomplish in an open-ended serialized context, so this is partly an issue with execution, and partly a structural concern. 

I still agree with Ivy that TFP plausibly addressed Sherlock’s relationship and intimacy issues as part of his arc, so it’s not out-of-nowhere and it fits, even if it’s a retcon and therefore distasteful.

Sherlock’s childhood issues and/or his arc being in response to Eurus being too much of a retcon, not enough attention paid to realism.

As I mentioned re: Eurus, I’m probably most sympathetic to this. It is a retcon, and it is problematic structurally. Still, as I said about this earlier, what ‘made’ Sherlock the way he is was always a question (particularly in TAB), and so there was set-up. As I agreed later in the thread, you can critique the writing, you can say this is an unfortunate direction for them to have gone, but past trauma has certainly been a hinted at potential for awhile now (see: Redbeard in TSoT). 

The issue with realism and the trauma not being shown continuously... that’s more about personal priorities. If one’s suspension of disbelief breaks based on psychological realism and the lack thereof, that’s more or less a genre mismatch thing. I still respect @porcupine-girl’s argument that a Sherlock Holmes story also requires really strong ‘archplot’ type causality because of his very nature as a force of deductive reasoning. All I can say is that while I relate, it’s still a personal priority as a Holmes fan. Sherlock the character in BBC Sherlock has never really been as fundamentally rational as ACD Holmes (see: Sherlock’s presentation of himself as a pirate in TFP). BBC Sherlock is a ridiculous man in a ridiculous show, more or less.

As in the thread critiquing TFP on these grounds, I still have mixed feelings about this. It depends so much on what kind of thing you consider to be ‘enough’ or the right kind or degree of realism, and I don’t think stories are necessary to judge on that metric in any case. 

Some of people’s responses are probably generated in part because Sherlock has only shown continuous and intense psychological consequences in response to John, because John is his ‘conductor of light’ in all ways, realistic or not. Still, for what it’s worth, Victor mirrors John.

The ‘plot holes’ like John’s chained feet (or John’s letter in TST).

I’ve explained why I don’t think the letter is an instance of ‘Chekhov’s gun’ or even a plot-hole (though it depends how you define it). Overall, sometimes there are definitely some (or many) plot-holes, but it’s a genre and/or writing style thing which has always been there on Sherlock. Trying to fill in plot-holes to force the plot to line up too much is probably less rational than letting them be, but YMMV.

In general, I agree with many details in @thecutteralicia’s comment in that list of people’s nitpicks of the show, particularly that they are often simply opinions in disguise (though we obviously disagree on actual fandom-related opinions). 

The characterization stuff like Sherlock not following ‘Vatican Cameos’ or John not being worried enough about Sherlock’s solution to the John vs Mycroft scenario at Sherrinford, Sherlock being called ‘the adult’, etc.

The two of them being in ‘soldier mode’ explains a lot; like I said initially, I read TFP as John being back to the ‘good old days’ after they’d resolved their major issues at the end of TLD, so what do people really expect? This is definitely an issue with people’s characterization headcanons conflicting. 

As for Sherlock... initially I said that this is just Sherlock still thinking he can handle it himself when push comes to shove (he didn’t lose all his old flaws), but you can also argue that’s Eurus’s canonical effect in play.

Sherlock being called ‘the adult’ by his mum when she’s mad at Mycroft doesn’t seem too surprising to me. She’s upset with Mycroft. (Of course, a lot of things don’t seem too surprising or implausible to me... the same old caveat.)

Sherlock and John’s relationship overall being too shallow/not close enough compared to the other eps.

This is more subjective, obviously. All I can say is that I didn’t see it that way, and I still agree with Ivy that the natural conclusion of TLD is implicit Johnlock, which makes them a solid unit and a ‘family’ in TFP. Even in the platonic partnership sense, they are not as distant or estranged as they have been in Series 3 and most of Series for by TFP.  

Specifically, they have planned their little prank on Mycroft together and it was John’s idea (which is huge!) The sheer casualness of Sherlock saying John’s family and John accepting it is unprecedented, even if it’s always been true. And John actually calling Sherlock to watch the emotionally-loaded second message from Mary, because they share these things, they’re honest with each other now... and they coparent. That isn’t shallow. That is real intimacy, sans drama.

I also agree with Ivy that the Johnlock-friendly reading certainly requires one to fill some blanks and read between the lines, and this requires one to either disregard what they say or simply focus entirely on the text. One can certainly do that easily enough, even if I find the lack of confirmation frustrating and problematic. So yeah, once again, as with any shippy reading issue, YMMV (although I still think Johnlock is unique in the way it makes the story work).

In the case of BBC Sherlock, Authorial Intent is very hard to discern properly and is only important socially in fandom. It definitely seems like intent and what’s on the actual show have... diverged at some point. It’s certainly quite possible to disregard it and see Johnlock in TFP, and I have done an implicit Johnlock reading myself.  

The use of Mary and/or Mary narrating the last few minutes.

I agree with Ivy that the narration isn’t a big deal, and ‘someone had to narrate it’. I realize that plenty of people think John ‘should’ have narrated for various reasons, but that is an opinion. It is not a fact.

Mary’s resolution in TST was complicated in many ways, and reasonable people may disagree. Only addressing her role in TFP: it was minor. YMMV.

The marketing and Series 4/TFP promotion mismatch and/or TFP not ‘making history’.

I wouldn’t trust promos; promos aren’t really trying to be honest and reflect what actually happens so much as drum up excitement. In regards to the specific promo pic promoting TFP, it does make sense on the metaphorical level as a reflection of the plot. 

I also find it plausible that Mofftiss would have thought that the new take on Holmes’s past is groundbreaking, because I think they’re kind of self-involved, like @gloriascott93 suggested.

Well, this is probably more or less the best I can do. I’m definitely still game for answering more specific questions or concerns if people have any. I do have more caveats about the limitations of anyone explicating plausibility in a text as polarizing as this one, though. At certain point, the divergence in fannish priorities and in the audience response is just too deep. Alas.

Still, understanding and integrating other people’s responses to fiction was always sort of my hobby in fandom, so I tried. However, there’s only so far I can go in like, addressing the concerns of people who fundamentally process things differently and/or have fundamentally different expectations for fiction or interpretations of the characters. Like, for example, do you think Ivy and Archie’s debate about Mary can ever be resolved? I use that as an example because these are probably the two people in fandom whose readings of canon I trust the most deeply and have relied on in my own analysis the most frequently. I suppose that’s more evidence there’s something insidious about Series 4, something wrong, if two people whose readings I always respect and admire so deeply can be so far apart.

At the same time... I feel like a lot of the stuff Archie said there is colored by her subjective response to Mary and her brand of manipulativeness/emotional abusiveness to John (and Sherlock). That’s a valid response, but it also a subjective issue that colors analysis, surely. With Ivy, she’s on the other end of the spectrum, closer to where I am-- focused heavily on pure close reading, trying to see what the characters are trying to say, what sense can be made of their behavior with the intent to integrate it into an arc. So I myself do see both their perspectives as valid, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure they’re irreconcilable. To get to Ivy’s reading, I think one needs that underlying desire and the openness to being wrong or having an incomplete reading, not to mention a blissful disregard for Authorial Intent. Basically, I think reader/viewer response and their inherent biases count for as much as the textual inadequacies and actual continuity of characterization or plot issues.

Anyway, like I’ve said, I get that TFP ‘feels’ wrong to people on a very basic level, but I also think there’s very good structural reasons why it’s not. However, I definitely think the writing has pretty deep-rooted structural problems, and I take @girlofthemirror and @plaidadder’s critique of the self-indulgent writing as well as the pacing issues @plaidadder highlights in TFP seriously. This, even though I align with Ivy’s reading of TFP and its ‘purpose’. I see all these problems, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand or that I didn’t enjoy it. As I said to start with, I feel that critique is separate from understanding or enjoyment-- mostly because I can separate what I wanted or expected from what I can understand, or even see in the context of the larger arc if I reevaluated some of my assumptions, like with Mary. Like I said about this sort of analysis earlier, this is a difficult and drawn-out process that sometimes involves simply... changing your mind about things that were dear to you. You have to be willing to do that in order to integrate things that give you trouble initially, basically.

I think that for most people who’re not as obsessively committed to the process as I am, the cognitive dissonance that truly recalibrating one’s reading to fit new canon requires is probably too painful. I tried to redo my reading of ASiB recently, and that wasn’t so bad, but I’d already given up on the explicitly Johnlocky reading by that point. I think I’d be more upset if I could convince myself that Sherlock was into Irene for real or was straight somehow, but that’s... not possible. If nothing else, ASiB is too ambiguous and all the suggestiveness is between John and Sherlock if you take even a peek beneath the surface. No surprises there. Still, that’s pretty typical: there’s usually good news to go with the bad news. It depends how far you’re willing to bend and how genuinely interested you are in what the show is ‘really’ like, stripped of many of the preconceptions behind the stuff you may have liked about it to start with. 

For example, with most of the Johnlocky readings-- some were probably not there and/or it wasn’t that straightforward, while some of it was actually blatant, like Gatiss intentionally ‘flirting with homoeroticism’. Some things were certainly unintentional, and some weren’t the work of Mofftiss but apparently added in by the actors. There’s an alchemy involved in what makes up the show, beyond anything I ever imagined, that’s for sure. In a way, that makes it more beautiful to me, though. That’s true even though I’m still annoyed at being seen as the crazy one. Johnlock is like that tree falling in the forest: if no one notices, admits, or cares that you’re being rigorous and rational, does it matter?

Well... it does to me? I just putter along, one piece of the puzzle at a time.

In the end, a reasonable theory is about integration into the arc secondarily. First, any solid theory has to simply be reasonable. In other words, ideally, it’s the most elegant, least elaborate explanation for the facts as they develop. There’s usually at least a thin path from A to B that’s visible within the plot or characterization if you discard some underlying assumptions about the characters or the text. For example, as Ivy said so eloquently, John was in character in TLD, because that potential was always there, even if I agree with @materialofonebeing’s point that the show didn’t have to go there. But it is what it is, so here we are. Canon acceptance is the first step.

Essentially, canon can sometimes overturn or redefine itself, but a plausible theory still can’t overturn canon, or it becomes unreasonable and/or transformative. In other words, it becomes fanon rather than simply a close reading of the text. I do realize that TFP has retconned a lot of what seemed pretty solid about the show, so you have to simply decide to accept canon absolutely and redefine the puzzle. The puzzle itself may change: that is the prerogative of an ongoing canon, in that it can always ask the audience to expand their parameters for understanding. The audience can refuse and break the reader/author contract, or attempt to walk the new path even if it’s not in an expected or desired direction. If the new parameters hold together on the surface level first and foremost, then it works (even if it’s not ideal).

I’m really well-practiced at adjusting my expectations and recalibrating in response to new data, basically, so in general this means I can adjust what ‘plausibility’ means to some degree. YMMV.