#and i also see it as part of a broader tradition of stories about schools

[bluedalahorse]

boarding schools (and Hillerska specifically) in fact and fiction

The results of this poll about whether or not you’d want to attend Hillerska have been revolving around in my head over the past few days. I flippantly voted yes (spoiled Swedish teens feel like a piece of cake compared to reality at the moment) but in practice generally agree with many of the reasons stated in the no column. So, if you did vote no and say why, know that I agree with you. This isn’t a post to argue against you or anything, this is just an extended wondering about something else.

At the same time, I noticed that we heard a lot from the nos and not as much from the yeses in response to this poll. In complete earnest, I wish we could have heard more from the yeses. (If you did vote yes and want to message me about your ideas one on one, I’d love to hear from you and I promise I don’t bite.) I’m curious to know if some of the same things about Hillerska-as-a-setting appealed to you as did me when I first started watching the show. Because it’s an engaging enough setting that I, you know, do own the Hillerska hoodie and all.

On one hand:

I do want to acknowledge how, in creating Hillerska, the writers drew on harrowing stories of real boarding schools—class hierarchy, insular social mores, outdated traditions, secrets, horrific acts of hazing. The writers researched all of this, interviewing former students, and incorporated that into Young Royals to increase the sense of realism and play to the show’s class commentary.

On the other hand:

I also started thinking about how the show leans into boarding schools as a literary device. In youth-centered fiction, boarding schools are a kind of liminal setting that facilitates independence from adults and a higher level of agency for teenage protagonists. These teens are called to make decisions and sort out conflicts amongst themselves. There’s this idea of, who can you become without your family looking over your shoulder? In what ways do you feel pressured to be like them, or to break away from them? And all the gothic architecture and uniforms and secrets and traditions are easy for writers to convey through a lens of romanticism.

And… Young Royals does not fully reject that romanticism. Indeed, it embraces it often. It uses the romantic boarding school angle to market the show and grab our attention—for example, see all the promo material where the characters are in their uniforms getting photographed for student picture day and such. The creative team offers us the romanticism of boarding school the same way they offer us the romanticism of intense first loves between princes and commoners.

I actually think Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship and Hillerska-the-liminal-space as a setting are very much intertwined. Hillerska is a catalyst for Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship; if Wilhelm fell in love with Simon in a club or on a train, and not in the school chapel where Simon is singing a solo in defiance of posh students who heckle him, their story would be completely different. I can’t (personally) imagine Wilhelm and Simon’s story without the beats of school parties in the Palace, or their hugs-in-white-nightgowns on Lucia night, or their stupid grins at one another during rowing practices, or their stolen kiss at the Valentine’s ball. The school provides a lot of obstacles to their relationship but it also facilitates these iconic moments of connection between the two of them, and I feel like in the first two seasons at least that’s supposed to matter.

And maybe, stick with me here, but I don’t… think it’s like, wrong, or hypocritical or whatever, that YR leans into romanticism and realism re: Hillerska at the same time? I actually think it’s pretty common in school-focused stories to put these two modes of storytelling in dialogue with one another? The romantic (in the literary sense, not the conventional) elements of a boarding school story are there to honor the tempestuous emotions of the teenage characters in their coming of age, as they bump up against adult pressures and the first hints of the “realistic” adult world. (I’m thinking about like, Dead Poet’s Society, and A Separate Peace, and A Great and Terrible Beauty as other examples of this. They all make social commentary through their setting but they also immerse you in it and sweep you up into it.)

I know Hillerska doesn’t survive the series and Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship does, and I’ve heard that after season 3 there were some things said in interviews and some extremely mixed messages about the setting at times. But also like… look. For all the later stumbles with the writing, I’m a slut for setting and a slut for setting as a way to reveal character arcs and facilitate relationships and Hillerska is a setting that captivated me from the beginning and it’s a lot of what made Young Royals what it was.

No I would not want to attend the school in real life as a real life human. Yes I would love to spend more time there in fiction because that is how fiction works, you get to explore settings you wouldn’t want to explore in real life. Go ahead and accuse me of being at the devil’s sacrament because didn’t we all meet at the devil’s sacrament?

Credit goes to @heliza24 for the devil’s sacrament joke because she’s smarter and funnier than me.

[thebreakfastgenie]

this is one (1) redeemable voucher to complain about AO3's tagging system (if you like)

Thanks for the voucher!

I probably should have phrased that post differently because upon reflection what I hate is more downstream of AO3's tagging system. The system itself does what it's supposed to do: it organizes the archive. Of course, users get cutesy with it (and I'm guilty of this myself) and other users will use inaccurate tags on purpose to get more attention (this is not acceptable behavior), but neither of those things are the system's fault.

But because the tagging system is so robust and fics are tagged based on tropes, this culture has developed of hyper-curated, trope-based reading habits. This didn't exist before AO3 because it just wasn't possible to filter fics to that extent. Some of my favorite fic reading experiences have been fics that I stumbled across by mistake because I didn't know what they were or because I had to comb through broader categories.

And this is where I start sounding like Ted Gup. Ted Gup wrote this essay in the late 90s called The End of Serendipity about how computers being so efficient at retrieving information was going to bring about the end of people stumbling upon topics they wouldn't have otherwise explored. I had to read and respond to this essay in English class in middle school and I raked Ted Gup over the coals, because I was writing on my laptop with dozens of open tabs. I still think I was right to point out Ted Gup's failure to foresee the wiki walk, but now that I'm older and technology has developed more over the last fifteen years, I'm starting to think he had something of a point.

I was thinking about this in a fanfiction and fandom context because I recalled a post I reblogged recently saying (paraphrased) "I have nothing against shipping but some of you are too focused on shipping to the exclusion of everything else." I agree with that post, but for me part of the problem isn't even the focus on shipping, it's that the shipping content is often so formulaic. Fandom talks a big game about diversity and creativity in fanworks, but a lot of the actual output I see is incredibly formulaic. In my opinion that's related to the extreme focus on tropes. Tropes are great, but if you're only looking at fic as a list of tropes you're taking a very narrow view. I don't know what the direction of causality is here, if there even is one, but I think the tagging system and the way the tagging system is used facilitate this reductive trope-based outlook.

I'm from the fanfiction.net era and I find the character and relationship tagging on AO3 useful, but I don't really care for the additional tags. I had to train myself to even read them. I prefer to select fics based on titles and summaries, because those are created by the author. Obviously writing a summary is very different than writing a story (and in fact it's a different skill and it's hard!) but a summary is still written by the author, so it gives me some sense of their writing style. When authors actually include an excerpt in the summary it does that even more. Tags can be useful in conjunction with a summary, because well-selected tags make me curious how all the elements listed in the tags fit together. But I don't want to sort by Enemies to Lovers or whatever.

I don't expect everyone to read like I do, this is nothing more than one crank's ramblings about my personal dissatisfaction with the current state of fandom. Maybe it resonates with someone, and if it does they're welcome to reblog it, but I'm not trying to do social commentary here. Maybe it doesn't, and that's okay too.

I also don't know if the trope focus on booktok and in the traditional publishing world comes out of fanfiction or not but it's even more distressing to me there and I think it bothers me in the fanfiction sphere because of the possibility that fanfiction is contributing to that trend.

[livingthe-world]

GLOBAL FILIPINO CITIZEN

Imagine the world is one big school. Each country is like a classroom. The Philippines is our classroom, and we are the students. But even if we are in the Philippines, we can still make friends with kids from other classrooms! We can share stories, play games, and help each other. We might be different, but we can still be kind and learn from one another. Now, let me tell you about being a Global Filipino Citizen.

First let me introduce to all of you, what is Global Filipino Citizen? A Global Filipino Citizen is someone who is proud of being Filipino and also takes part in the global community. This means they value Filipino culture, traditions, and identity while respecting and connecting with people from different parts of the world. Being a global citizen means being open-minded, respectful, and responsible not only in the Philippines but also in the wider world. To understand the role of global Filipino citizens, we must explore the ideas of nationalism, internationalism, globalism, and parochialism. These concepts shape how Filipinos view themselves and how they interact with others. A true global Filipino citizen finds balance by loving their country and at the same time working with others to build a better and more connected world.

And now, let’s proceed to the 4 concepts of a Global Filipino Citizen. These are the Parochialism, Nationalism, Internationalism, and Globalism.

These may sound like big words, but don’t worry! I will explain them in a way that’s easy to understand. These 4 concepts will help us learn how to love our country and also be kind and respectful to people from other countries.

Let's begin~

Parochialism is a type of mindset where a person just only focus on a certain part of a situation rather than it’s broader coverage. They just highly prioritize their personal interest or even just relying on their perspectives. Exploring more things is not evident if you are in this state of mind. People tend to limit their boundaries believing that what they think of or practice is better. For instance, whenever we tackle about business, some often prioritize their own interest and goals rather than seeing it as a broader perspective. Like companies who doesn’t care about the effect of their project on the environment like mining industries. This can be a reason for environmental issue to arise. Also, when it comes to our political stand, some are not showcasing openness to others opinion and beliefs, that sometimes leads to judgement or worst conflict. That’s why it is important for us not show this kind of attitude since this will negatively affect us. Be open with other ideas, and always withhold judgement. Do not limit your boundaries and see everything as an opportunity to learn. Be respectful and inclusive all the time. Through these, we are able to assure that we can do more good and better.

Nationalism is a form of culture of a strong sense of pride and loyalty to one’s country. It is identification with one’s own nation, but more than just waving the flag and singing the national anthem, true nationalism means loving your own country for it to grow, improve, and be respected globally. Also, nationalism involves being aware of our identity as Filipinos, our culture, and our history, and using this awareness, we can contribute positively to society and growth. Nationalism can be seen in everyday and everywhere actions. For example, choosing to support local products and proudly speaking of our very own language. Also, being an OFW can show an example of nationalism. We all know that cooking food and sharing it with the neighbors is part of Filipino culture. Some of the OFWs do this; they often cook and share Filipino dishes with their foreign friends, co-workers, and neighbors. By this they’re introducing Filipino dishes and promoting our culture abroad. Furthermore, nationalism means loving and being proud of your country. Global citizenship means understanding that we are part of a bigger world. As a student, we don’t need to travel around the world to be a global citizen. We can start by being proud of being Filipino and sharing our culture with other countries to strengthen the Filipino Image.

Internationalism is about unity, cooperation, and mutual respect between nations. It is the idea that countries and people around the world should work together, understand, and support one another. Internationalism is not new for Filipinos, because we see it in many aspects of our daily lives. OFWs are one of the examples of internationalism. They live and work in different countries, adapting to foreign cultures and languages, and make friends with foreign friends. At the same time, they bring and promote Filipino values such as getting along with others, teaching them our language, and many more. Building global friendship and understanding each other’s cultures. By this, it shows that while we are Filipinos by identity, we are also part of a bigger, global society. As students, we can embody internationalism in many ways. Learning a new language and being aware of global issues like climate change. Also, by using social media, we can engage in conversation with different people around the world, share our ideas, and understand different cultures with our online friends. Furthermore, internationalism encourages us to be open-minded. It teaches us to respect diversity and to accept people regardless of their nationality.

Globalization is all about the inter relation of every country’s economy and culture. Through this, we are able to connect to different people around the world even move on other places. This allows us to learn more to one another particularly when it comes to our lifestyles and tradition as well. This bridges the gaps between certain limitations and boundaries among countries. This can be seen on our economy, since nations are having trade or exchange of goods and services helping one another to have supplies. Also, whenever we connect with other people around the world we can use online through different platforms. Every time we travel on different countries where we are learn about their culture and tradition. In addition, it involves technological advancement which is really useful nowadays, where most of the things we utilize are high-tech. It showcase how globalization also affected people’s lives improving every task with the used of technology. With these, we can see how globalization changed the world. Learning more about our various differences with regard to one’s culture, beliefs and tradition where it help us improve our knowledge and gain awareness as well. This helps countries to be more connected to one another boosting the global economy. Through globalization, it made them interconnected with others in addressing several concerns such as on human rights and environmental issues. Overall ,we can see how globalization positively affects the world.

In conclusion, Global Filipino Citizenship means being proud of being Filipino while also being open to the world. Parochialism focuses only on our local area, but we need to go beyond that to grow. Nationalism teaches us to love and protect our country, which is important. Internationalism reminds us to connect and work with other countries for peace and progress. Globalism helps us see the big picture and understand how we are all connected in the world. All of these ideas are connected in shaping a global Filipino citizen. A true Global Filipino respects their roots, loves their country, and also welcomes learning from others. This way, we can be better citizens not just in the Philippines but in the whole world.

And that’s the beauty of being a Global Filipino Citizen — we’re not just students of our own classroom; we’re part of a worldwide campus. By embracing our culture while learning from others, we grow smarter, kinder, and more connected. So let’s carry our Filipino pride wherever we go and keep building bridges — one friendship, one shared story, and one global adventure at a time. 🌍🇵��

[shivam95]

Harvard Business School MBA Essays: Crafting Your Path to Success

This broad question gives applicants the freedom to showcase their unique stories, but it can also be intimidating. How do you decide what to share? How do you create an essay that sets you apart from thousands of other applicants? This analysis will help you navigate the intricacies of the Harvard Business School MBA essays, guiding you to write an essay that resonates with the admissions committee.

Understanding the Harvard Business School MBA Essays Prompt

Harvard’s essay prompt is intentionally broad, allowing applicants to explore various aspects of their personal and professional lives. The admissions committee isn’t just interested in your achievements; they want to understand who you are as a person. They’re looking to see how you think, what drives you, and how you plan to make an impact on the world.

However, this freedom also requires careful consideration. The open-ended nature of the prompt can lead to essays that are either too scattered or too focused. The key to success in Harvard Business School MBA essays is to remain focused on the aspects of your story that truly demonstrate your fit for HBS.

Self-Reflection: The Foundation of a Compelling Harvard Business School MBA Essay

Before diving into writing, it’s crucial to engage in deep self-reflection. Consider the following questions:

What are the most significant experiences in my life? Think about both personal and professional experiences that have shaped your values, character, and aspirations.

Why do I want to pursue an MBA at Harvard? Reflect on your career goals and how HBS aligns with your broader plans.

What are my strengths and weaknesses? Be candid about your areas of excellence and where you need to grow. HBS values self-awareness.

How do I contribute to the communities I’m part of? Consider how you make a difference in your work, personal life, and volunteer activities.

These questions will help you identify the core themes and stories that should form the heart of your Harvard Business School MBA essays.

Choosing Your Content: What to Include in Harvard Business School MBA Essays

With a clearer sense of self, you can begin to outline your essay. While the content of your Harvard Business School MBA essays will vary depending on your unique experiences, here are a few key areas to consider:

1. Personal Growth and Leadership

HBS is in search of future leaders, so it’s essential to highlight experiences where you’ve demonstrated leadership, even in non-traditional roles. Leadership doesn’t only mean managing a team or leading a project; it can also be shown through mentorship, driving change, or taking on challenging responsibilities.

2. Career Progression and Professional Achievements

Your professional achievements are a critical component of your Harvard Business School MBA essays. However, rather than listing accomplishments, focus on the motivations behind your career decisions. Discuss the challenges you faced, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

3. Long-term Goals and Vision

HBS is interested in understanding your long-term vision. How do you plan to use the skills and knowledge from an MBA to make an impact? Whether your goal is to lead a major corporation, start your own business, or drive change in a specific industry, your essay should clearly articulate this vision.

4. Contribution to the HBS Community

Harvard Business School places a strong emphasis on the collaborative nature of its learning environment. In your Harvard Business School MBA essays, consider how you will contribute to the HBS community. What unique perspectives and experiences will you bring to class discussions, group projects, and extracurricular activities?

Crafting the Essay: Tips for Writing Harvard Business School MBA Essays

Once you’ve decided on the content of your essay, the next step is to craft your narrative. Here are some tips to help you write a compelling Harvard Business School MBA essay:

1. Be Authentic

Authenticity is crucial in Harvard Business School MBA essays. The admissions committee can easily spot an essay that feels forced or insincere. Write in your voice and be honest about your experiences, even if they involve challenges or failures. HBS values applicants who are self-aware and reflective.

2. Be Concise

While the essay prompt is open-ended, it’s important to be concise. Harvard doesn’t impose a word limit, but that doesn’t mean you should write a lengthy essay. Aim for clarity and brevity, focusing on the most impactful parts of your story. A well-structured essay that makes a strong point will be more effective than one that tries to cover too much ground.

3. Show, Don’t Tell

Whenever possible, use specific examples to illustrate your points. Instead of stating that you’re a strong leader, describe a situation where you demonstrated leadership. Instead of saying you’re passionate about social impact, tell a story about a project you worked on that made a difference. Showing your qualities through actions is more powerful than simply telling the reader about them.

4. Seek Feedback

Before submitting your Harvard Business School MBA essays, seek feedback from trusted friends, colleagues, or mentors. A fresh pair of eyes can catch inconsistencies, unclear sections, or areas where you might need to elaborate. However, ensure that your essay remains true to your voice, even after incorporating feedback.

Conclusion

The Harvard Business School MBA essays are your opportunity to provide a nuanced and personal view of your candidacy. By focusing on self-reflection, careful content selection, and clear, authentic writing, you can craft an essay that resonates with the admissions committee. Remember, there’s no one right way to approach this essay. What matters most is that it authentically represents who you are and why Harvard Business School is the next step in your journey.

[suddenlystolen]

A Piece of a Filial Pious Heart: Jin Guangyao through the Lens of Filial Piety

“The Jin Guangyao in my eyes and the Jin Guangyao in your eyes – as well as the Jin Guangyao in the eyes of the world – are all completely different people.”

Lan Xichen says these fateful words in episode 43 of CQL. And honestly, I think it's really interesting to see the varied “Jin Guangyaos” in the eyes of different people in fandom! 

Everyone weighs differently — how much Jin Guangyao’s varied motivations (from ambition to the search for dignity) contributes to the choices he ultimately makes; and even the choices available to him in the first place! 

But in the English-speaking part of the fandom, I think what’s less explored is how much of a hold the traditional Chinese virtue of filial piety (孝 xiào) (deference to one’s elders, usually parents) had over Jin Guangyao’s motivations and choices available to him. 

I suspect that an appreciation for how deeply entrenched the virtue of filial piety is in Chinese culture might make one more likely to be sympathetic to Jin Guangyao as a character. After all, the many self-defeating decisions that we see Jin Guangyao make regarding his father and mother — so much of it feels startlingly similar to stories of filial piety celebrated in Chinese culture. In countless other parables and proverbs about filial piety, Jin Guangyao would be valorised. But in MDZS, what we have is a tragedy.

In this post, I’m going to try to get at this, through exploring how filial piety might have influenced Jin Guangyao, namely through two of his fateful decisions — to continue serving his father even as he was being abused and going back for Meng Shi’s remains. I’d like to suggest that both can be read as a deconstruction of filial piety, as part of MXTX’s broader deconstruction of traditional family values as a modern author. But caveat as always that this is heavily coloured by my own experiences with the value of filial piety :P And this post is going to be long….

The Importance of Filial Piety

Filial piety is central to morality in Chinese culture. It is heavily emphasised throughout its major schools of thought, but most prominently in Confucianism. 

For instance, there is the common saying: 百善孝为先 — of a hundred good deeds, filial piety is foremost. Indeed, filial piety is seen as a basic expression of one’s humanity. If you cannot even be filial to your parents, then are you even capable of any kind of meaningful connections in human relationships? There’s another saying about filial piety that goes: 羊有跪乳之恩，鸦有反哺之义 — the lamb kneels as it suckles milk in gratitude, the crow feeds its parents out of honour. This implies that if even animals know how to return their parents’ love, then all the more humans should know how to repay their parents! If you cannot, then you are worse than the birds and beasts — 禽兽不如! Thus, one of the most stinging rebukes you can shoot at someone is buxiaozi ���孝子! Unfilial child! 

All in all, as Aris Teon describes, “Filial piety, as it is inculcated in children and as it is viewed by the society, is a key social indicator of a person’s sense of responsibility, maturity and reliability…Children who display filial devotion properly are regarded by the whole community as trustworthy, honourable and respectable. Being unfilial, on the contrary, can result not only in a sense of shame, but also in a bad reputation.”

Filial piety is thus an inextricable part of how you are taught to be a good person in Chinese culture. It can lend a deeper appreciation of the value of familial ties and the effort it takes to continually nurture them, especially for families where however flawed everyone may be, they’re still trying their best in their own way.

Why did he Stay: Jin Guangyao in Jinlintai

But what if…...your parents are abusive or are horrible people? 

Towards Abusive Parents

This is where filial piety can understandably be hard to practice. Especially under Confucian thought, you are still supposed to be filial to them. In general, the nature of the relationship between parent and child is not conditional or contractual— where a parent has to be good to their child, for a child to have the duty to be good to their parent and vice versa. If a parent is neglectful or abusive, the moral duty of a child to be filial to them remains. There genuinely is no answer drawn from traditional Chinese philosophy that goes: “oh you can just cut your toxic and abusive parents off.” The failure of the parent to do their duty does not mean that the child can fail them in turn. 

In fact, there are certain cultural works that set a very high bar for how much children can endure against neglectful or abusive parents. This can be seen from the Twenty Four Filial Exemplars (二十四孝). Composed in the Yuan Dynasty, it’s a collection of 24 stories of filial piety that is often taught to children even today. Some stories are very wholesome, like the story of Huang Xiang cooling his father’s pillow with his fan in the summer, and warming his blanket in the winter — so his father can sleep better at night. 

But some would definitely be frowned upon if they happened in real life. Here’s a sampling of the more ‘messed up’ stories:

卧冰求鲤 — to lie on ice seeking carp🐟 A boy named Wang Xiang lives with an abusive stepmother. But when his stepmother craves for carp in the winter, he undresses and lies naked on the surface of a frozen river until it cracks so he’s able to catch carp for her. This moves his stepmother who turns over a new leaf.

芦衣顺母 — wearing reed clothes, obeying one’s mother 🥼 A boy named Min Zi Qian is bullied by his stepmother who favours her two biological sons. For instance, while his stepmother gives her two biological sons winter clothes padded with cotton, she instead pads his clothes instead with the fluff from reed flowers. Zi Qian shivers so badly from the poorly made cloak that he accidentally drives his family’s carriage into a ditch. Angered, Zi Qian’s dad beats him until his clothes tear and the reed fluff comes out. Realising that his son was being mistreated, Zi Qian’s father wants to expel the stepmother. But Zi Qian pleads for his stepmother to stay saying that if his stepmother stays, only he suffers, but if she’s sent away, both he and his stepbrothers will suffer. His stepmother then has a change of heart. 

孝感动天 — filial piety moves the heavens ⚡️ Shun’s biological father, his stepmother and stepbrother, all try to kill him. While he’s repairing the roof of a barn, they set it on fire. When he’s digging a well, they try to close up the well while he’s still inside. Even after surviving their murder attempts, Shun still loves and respects his parents and his stepbrother. The heavens, moved by his filial piety, send animals to help him complete his arduous chores. His family repents. The Emperor Yao, hearing of his filial piety, makes him the next Emperor in the Xia Dynasty — a mythical golden age in China.

Lest y’all think that these are old fashioned stories, the 24 Filial Exemplars is still quite often used in education today. I myself know these stories from being sincerely taught them by teachers in some classes (and having teachers in other classes rag on some of these stories as ridiculous). To emphasise, the 24 Filial Exemplars and the Analects is by no means the only point of reference for filial piety in Chinese culture. Across history and to this day, there have been critiques and challenges of these representations of filial piety. There is the term 愚孝 yu chun for instance. Meaning foolish piety, it is used to describe acts of filial piety that seem excessive or pointless. Nonetheless, the 24 Filial Exemplars continues to be taught today to children.

Therefore, when Jin Guangyao was willing to stay in Jinlintai despite his father’s and stepmother’s abuse, it’s not because he’s stupid. You can read one of the reasons he stays in Jinlintai as that he’s doing what a filial child is supposed to do in the face of parents that mistreat you — at least according to a prominent frame of reference in Chinese culture. A filial child must be a positive influence upon their parents, and reform them through unwavering acts of love, respect and service. 

Towards Parents that have Done Wrong

Again, filial piety can be extremely difficult to practice for a child if their parents are doing evil deeds. Under certain understandings of filial piety, the child cannot bring in the criminal justice system, and must instead take on the duty of reforming their parents themselves.

This is evident from the very controversial saying 13-8 in Confucius’ Analects. In it, the governor of She proudly tells Confucius: “In our village there is an upright person named Gong. He bears witness against his father stealing a sheep.” Confucius responded: “In my village, an upright person is different: father does not disclose son’s wrongdoing, and son does not disclose father’s wrongdoing, and the uprightness lies in it.” To this day, people still debate what Confucius’ reasoning was and whether he was right. But the gist of the idea is that the father or son of the sheep stealer is meant to gently guide them onto the right path. This is easier accomplished by maintaining familial bonds, which would otherwise be broken if you send them off to be punished by an impersonal system of justice. So broadly, if a parent commits a crime, then under Confucian philosophy, the child is supposed to remonstrate with their parents, urging them to reform, rather than just handing them off to be punished. 

Thus, according to this understanding of filial piety, when Jin Guangshan orders Jin Guangyao to do something evil, what realistically are his options if he wants to be a filial son? He’s not supposed to betray his father by exposing his evil deeds. He’s supposed to stay by his father’s side to look for openings to guide him back onto the right path. 

But what must he do to stay? 

In light of the massive power imbalance between father and son, Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao, is this idea even realistic? Who is more likely to influence the other in the direction of good and evil?

Here, I think it’s very interesting to contrast Jin Guangyao’s tragic story arc in MDZS with that of Zuko’s from Avatar: The Last Airbender (ALTA) — one of the most iconic redemption arcs in popular culture. It illustrates well how culture can shape stories told of confronting parents who are abusers (but feel free to skip the rest of this section if you’re not familiar with ALTA).

There are many similarities between the stories told of Jin Guangyao and Zuko. Both are sons who are trying to earn the acknowledgement of their fathers, despite a history of being abused by them. Their fathers are also rulers — Jin Guangshan is the Jin Sect Leader, Ozai is the Firelord of the Fire Nation. Thus both Jin Guangyao and Zuko are in the position of owing not only filial piety to their fathers, but also loyalty as subjects to their fathers who are also their lords. MDZS is set in a xianxia version of ancient China, whilst the Fire Nation in ALTA is an East Asian inspired setting.

The crucial choices that Zuko makes are very different from that of Jin Guangyao’s. As the culmination of his character development across multiple seasons, Zuko supports the effort of the Avatar to defeat his father, the Firelord, in a climactic battle. He acknowledges that it is the Avatar’s destiny to defeat his father and restore peace to the world, and that his destiny lies instead in training the Avatar to do so. By the end of the original series, Zuko also imprisons his father in a dungeon to neutralise him as a threat to the world. 

Zuko’s story is emotional and powerful: in taking viewers through his journey, of learning how to break free from his need for his abusive father’s approval, and mounting a challenge to his father’s warmongering way of rulership.

However, CoolHistoryBros has an interesting video suggesting that there is a “cultural uncanny valley” that Asian audiences might feel while watching Zuko’s redemption arc. Specifically, while ALTA’s aesthetics may be Eastern-inspired, but its underlying philosophies are more Western/modern. 

After all, the actions Zuko takes as part of his journey violates filial piety and loyalty between the lord and subject. These are seen as the foundational relationships in society under Confucianism, which has embedded itself in the cultural consciousness of most East Asian societies. As CoolHistoryBros describes it, under Confucianism, Zuko “betraying his father is a massive no-no, especially when his father is also his lord. So that’s a double whammy. Not only had he disregarded the ethics of filial piety, but he also betrayed his country……Zuko should have taken an active part in reforming his father, instead of leaving him to the Avatar to deal with [according to Confucian values].”

So if ALTA had wanted to be more period-accurate to an ancient East Asian setting, then Zuko would be shown struggling more with filial piety: with the questions of whether he is allowed to cut his father off, whether he is allowed to be disloyal to his nation — or will doing so make him a bad person? He would also have to deal with social stigma heaped upon him for his “unfilial” and “disloyal” choices. Such a story would have been one way to deconstruct the notion of the filial duties a child feels towards abusive and malicious parents, as the child slowly figures out how to let go of it. 

The other way to do so is to make the child stay by their parents’ side in the story, and from there, give weight to the consequences of expecting a child to be responsible for toxic parents through the story told. This, I would suggest, is the direction taken with Jin Guangyao’s storyline.

Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangshan: A Deconstruction of Filial Piety?

Hence, for an audience who has absorbed filial piety into their value system, I would suggest that there’s an additional layer of tragedy to Jin Guangyao’s decision to stay. Jin Guangyao was acting in such a way that’s recognisable as being faithful to one ideal of what filial piety is like. He remained in Jinlintai much longer than most people would because of his strength of character, and not because of weakness. But unlike in countless other stories of filial piety where the protagonist is rewarded for persisting in their filial piety towards bad parents…...it was never going to turn out well for Jin Guangyao, because his father is Jin Guangshan. So when Jin Guangyao snaps and murders his father — the most heinous crimes through the lens of filial piety — it’s because he’s been pushed past human limits — for how long anyone can hold out for even a crumb of love. It is dramatic because it is sympathetic. To borrow a turn of phrase, it is a moment of 爱之深, 恨之切 — the deeper the love, the more thoroughly it turns to hate. How horribly Jin Guangyao wanted his father to die is inextricable with how filial he was, before he heard his father insult his mother (at least that’s how I read it).

It then raises an interesting question for those who read filial piety into the character arc of Jin Guangyao — is there such a thing as being too filial? Is it possible to be a good person to others if you never repaired your relationship with your parent? And thus never learnt how to treat others well through them? At what point is it necessary to give up on being filial? Can being too filial actually make you worse as a person?

In such an interpretation that brings in filial piety (孝), Jin Guangyao’s story becomes part of MXTX’s deconstruction of familial bonds. It would then add to a broader cultural debate over what exactly filial piety is, how it should be practised, and how it fits in with other cherished cultural values.

Why did he Stay: Jin Guangyao in Guanyin Miao

Likewise, I think you can read into the things Jin Guangyao does for his mother Meng Shi as being influenced by the cultural value of filial piety.

As part of the worldview of filial piety — to be able to finally repay one’s parents by caring for them — it’s often seen as an essential part to having lived a complete life. It’s why in popular media you’ll often have a scene of a child beating themselves up and scolding themselves with the phrase 孩儿不孝 — this child is unfilial — as they stand before their parents’ grave or kneel before them, apologising for not being able to give their parents a better life and letting them suffer for so long. Like in the WWII war movie The Eight Hundred, one of the most moving moments is how this character, before he suicide bombs some Japanese soldiers, he shouts: “mother, this child is unfilial”  — “娘，孩儿不孝了”. This line is meant to tap into the depths to which a certain Chinese audience might keenly feel the loss of a chance to finally repay one’s parents.

Relatedly, there’s a famous saying that goes: 树欲静而风不止，子欲养而亲不待. It means: “the tree longs for silence still the wind blows, the child yearns to care for the parent who could not wait”. Especially that latter half of the saying, it's used to describe the intense feeling of grief and regret when one’s parent passes away before you have a chance to properly be filial to them, by giving them a good life in their final years. It’s this agonising feeling that I think is evoked for instance in the ending of Ken Liu’s short story The Paper Menagerie, when the main character finally hears what his mother wrote to him in her last letter to him before she passed away.

So regarding Jin Guangyao’s grief and guilt over his mother’s death while he was still an adolescent — if you’ve been instilled with the cultural value of filial piety it's easier to imagine how intense it must be. In fact, in other stories of filial piety, the intensity of Jin Guangyao’s grief would be valorised. 

And when Jin Guangyao risks everything to go back for Meng Shi’s remains — it's not out of some silly sentimentality. He’s acting exactly according to the script of what a filial son should do. 

One of the few remaining ways you can be filial to a parent who has passed away is to consistently pay your respects to them. It’s taken very seriously as a sign that you love that person and honour their memory. It’s also part of a broader cultural tradition of ancestor veneration. For instance, there is an entire festival emphasising it — Qingming (清明), where traditionally, all return to sweep the graves of their parents and ancestors and to pay their respects.

bring boyfriend to pay respects to dead adoptive parents

In any other story, Jin Guangyao’s decision to go back for his mothers’ remains would also be valorised as a sign of the strength of his moral character as a filial son. In MDZS though, it sets up the circumstances for his brutal death.

Meng Yao and Meng Shi: A Deconstruction of Filial Piety and Parental Expectations?

“A-Yao, your hat musn’t be slanted when you wear it”

Another way in which you can repay your parents even after they have passed on under the paradigm of filial piety is to make something of yourself. Through your exemplary behaviour, people will remember, honour and praise your parents for what a good job they did raising you. This is perhaps most evident through the story of possibly the most famous mother in Chinese culture — Mother Meng. She’s most prominently featured in the story of Mother Meng Moves Thrice (孟母三迁). In it, a single mother uproots her and her son’s life, to move to three different locations, just to find the right environment to put her son on the path to become a scholar. When her son does not take his studies seriously, she famously tears the cloth she had been weaving for a very long time, to impress upon him that to do things by half-measures is useless. She is venerated to this day precisely for how she pushed her son to do better — until he eventually became Mencius, the second most famous thinker in Confucianism after Confucius himself. 

CQLfeels has a really good post explaining how fans that blame Meng Shi for pushing Meng Yao too hard to climb up the social ladder and seeking a place by his fathers’ side are missing the point. Meng Shi, especially by ancient Chinese standards — is nailing it in following in Mother Meng’s footsteps, and pushing her son to strive for more (it has a lot more details than what I’m covering here). (And yep it’s the same surname Meng 孟 that both women have).

The story of mother and son is a tragedy precisely because Meng Shi did everything right according to the standards of her culture, and because Meng Yao also did everything he could to meet the expectations bestowed upon him by his mother as a filial son. But unlike in the story of Mother Meng Moves Thrice, Meng Yao moves thrice, from Qinghe, to Qishan and Lanling — alone. He is also thrown down flights of stairs three times in repudiation, rather than recognition of his worth as a person.

There’s a famous saying 望子成龙 — to wish for one’s children to become dragons. It’s used to describe the universal desire that all parents have to see their children succeed, and explain to children why their parents are pushing them so hard. But read through a particular lens, the story of Meng Shi and Meng Yao may prompt the question — but what if parents push their children hard to succeed in life, when life is fundamentally rigged against them? What kind of a toll might such a drive to succeed take upon a child? It’s a similar dynamic with Madam Yu and Jiang Cheng. She pushes him hard out of love. As you do as a good parent according to her cultural milieu. But it is also true that this gives Jiang Cheng a number of complexes.

Of course, had Meng Shi and Madam Yu lived, it’s entirely plausible that they might have adjusted the way they parented and advised their children upon seeing the effects it was having upon them. But it is an unfortunate fact of life that we never know which moment might be the last we have with our loved ones. All the parents in MDZS die too soon and their children never get a chance to resolve various issues they may have had with them. 

But there’s an interesting contrast to Meng Shi and even Madam Yu’s parenting in this aspect. It is the parenting of Wei Wuxian’s parents. There isn’t much we know about Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren. But we know that they gave their child the name Wei Ying (魏婴). 婴 Ying means ‘child’ or even ‘baby’. Which seems bizarre as a name. Until you realise what it conveys: that all his parents ever wanted or expected of him is to be as happy and innocent as a child. It’s not clear whether it’s Wei Ying’s parents or Jiang Fengmian who later gives him his courtesy name. Nonetheless, it complements his personal name. The idea of 无羡 wuxian — no envies — is a concept that suggests keeping away from the petty competition for status in society. 

Altogether it's a completely different strategy for survival passed from parent to child on how to navigate a society that seeks to exploit those lower on the hierarchy. For Wei Ying/Wei Wuxian, his names convey to him that he should keep some distance from cultivation society — which the novel proves time and time again is treacherous. His filial duty to his parents is merely that he should be as innocent and happy as a child even in the face of societal pressures, and keep out of the struggle for social status. Which makes sense as Wei Wuxian’s parents were rogue cultivators. Meanwhile, the wisdom Meng Shi imparts to her son is that if he has to work twice as hard to get half as far as others — then he must — to stay on top of cultivation society. So, a rise in social station — until he is in a position where he is treated with respect and dignity — is what she wants for her son. And for that she would need him to manage his image and reputation. Which makes sense because Meng Shi had wished for her son to one day stand by the side of a Sect Leader. 

I think these two different parenting styles can reflect different schools of thought in ancient Chinese culture — philosophical Daoism and Confucianism. Under philosophical Daoism, the stories told are of being able to escape the trappings of society — to try to discover the natural self apart from all of society’s constructs. Hence the title of Cangse Sanren or Baoshan Sanren — which means scattered people. It’s the idea of eschewing organised society. It is the Wangxian happy ending where the two just get to wander about the world together as rogue cultivators, away from the struggles of Sects. But under Confucianism, the stories told are of those of humble origins rising to become a scholar/official, that in turn strengthens the state and builds a more virtuous society. For a while that is what Jin Guangyao does as the Chief Cultivator, in establishing the watchtower system.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either parenting style. It is just that Jin Guangyao’s attempt to be a filial son given Meng Shi’s parenting style ends up sending him on a very thorny and bloody path — not because of Meng Shi’s unreasonableness — but because of the intensity of societal discrimination against him. 

All in all, you could read one of Jin Guangyao’s motivations for striving so hard to climb to the top of cultivation society as trying to give Meng Shi a place of honour in society through his accomplishments. So one day she might be respected — like how Mother Meng is so honoured for raising a son as outstanding as Mencius. So society will finally stop heaping stigma upon her memory just because she earned a living through sex work. It is one of the few ways Jin Guangyao can repay Meng Shi as a filial son now that she has passed on.

Final Thoughts about Filial Piety and Jin Guangyao

All in all, I hope this doesn’t give anyone an exaggerated impression of the impact of filial piety on the way Chinese people think, or worse, think of filial piety as “exotic”. I think every culture has its own dearly held values that can lead to unintentional consequences, and these are subsequently explored in their cultural works. An example from the West I suppose is the American dream. Anyone who’s been exposed to American culture has encountered it, and can identify when others are pursuing it at immense personal cost or gratifying reward. But certainly everyone has different opinions on it, and is influenced by it to varying extents. Understanding the allure of the American dream also makes you more prepared to sympathise with characters such as Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, rather than dismissing their actions as just greediness. (Though I do wonder about the extent to which MXTX intended to write Jin Guangyao as a subversion of what a filial son is). Regardless, these kinds of stories allow readers to achieve a sort of transcendence. To ask themselves if they are able to imagine choices and possibilities beyond the value systems that their society has raised them within. Or if they can uncover other traditions within their own culture — that allows them to act with true agency in the face of their unique circumstances where the answers they have been taught do not seem to work.

But also ultimately, I don’t think it's that important to factor filial piety into a reading of Jin Guangyao. In Chinese, we have a saying that we misattribute to Shakespeare, that goes: 一千个人眼里有一千个哈姆雷特 — in a thousand people’s eyes, there are a thousand different Hamlets. 

The last memory of Su Minshan and Nie Mingjue respectively

Like many tragic figures in literature, Jin Guangyao is a complex character that is supposed to keep people guessing as to what his motivations ultimately are, and where it all went wrong with him. So I think it's great that people interpret his motivations through the lens of their own personal and even cultural experiences. That act of interpretation is where all the fun is, especially in fandom! I think it’s not necessary to bring in Chinese cultural references if it does not resonate with you. After all, whether Jin Guangyao acts out of filial piety does nothing to diminish the harm that Jin Guangyao has inflicted, or the good that he has accomplished. But at least for me, I do enjoy interpreting and writing about a Jin Guangyao whose thoughts, actions and values stem to an extent from a piece of a filial pious heart — 一片孝心。

Special thanks to Crykey, Atsubushi and Tiffillustrates for looking through earlier drafts of this post! Also feel free to disagree with this post :3

[katakaluptastrophy]

In world, part of the issue is that we see a tiny slice of the society, which doesn't give us a broader picture of the religion.

But House theology seems to be drawn heavily from Revelation: the Houses understand themselves to be something akin to the first resurrection who reign with god and who look forward to the second resurrection when all the dead will be judged. Teacher specifically refers to Alecto as "the devil", and she is imprisoned like Satan in Revelation. The theology of cavalierhood also draws strongly on Pauline ideas about marriage, and the Sermon on Necromancers and Cavaliers expresses ideas about how the Houses understand themselves to be made in the image of god. The more ancient understanding of the River seems similar to concepts of Purgatory.

I do think we see genuine religious sentiment in other characters. Judith talks candidly about her relationship with religion in As Yet Unsent and explicitly thanks god. Abigail, while heterodox, prays spontaneously before trying to summon Nonius. And we see Silas grappling with how what John has asked of them clashes with how he understands his faith. We also see Cohort soldiers making some kind of ritual gesture at the Lyctors.

While we don't get broader details, beyond the Ninth there are references to concepts of prayer and sacraments, to some form of confession, to blessings, sacramentals, and relics. Abigail had an icon of John on the wall of her childhood bedroom.

As for the oddness and inconsistency of how House religion draws on Catholicism, it's worth bearing in mind that John was probably some form of (cultural?) Protestant: he attended an Anglican boarding school and was baptised as a teenager at a non-denomonational music festival. While Anglicanism obviously does overlap with some aspects of Catholicism, it's rarely as baroque as the kind of influences we see in the Houses. M-'s nun (who later became Cristabel) seems to have been the main Catholic influence on John, but that would only have been pre-res, so I think John was mostly fumbling around in the dark with a Douay Rhiems Bible (quoted by several House people!) and a skim-read copy of Catholicism for Dummies, bodging together something that works for him and his ego.

Metatextually, TLT is a book that strongly explores Catholic themes - though that doesn't mean it entirely presupposes a Catholic metaphysics...

The event at the heart of the story of The Locked Tomb is one where a man declares himself a false god on the basis of power and immortality gained from the violent consumption of another's body. Like traditional vampire mythos, Lyctorhood is an evil that is typologically an inversion of the eucharist. And the consequences of Lyctorhood - of trying to style oneself as a Catholic god without self-giving or love or forgiveness - haunt the story.

Per Tamsyn Muir, ATN apparently starts with something akin to the Harrowing of Hell or Dante's Inferno, so I suspect we'll be seeing more of these themes...

RE: TLT and catholicism

You know those churches in the Netherlands who ertr sold and now are public buildings , faculties or shops and services ? If you entered them you might not notice their previous use at all but it's very easy to recognize it you're used to churches. There's the nav, the altar, the orientation and of course the shape and the places where the saints and images used to be .

The Locked Tomb Universe is kinda like this . Gaius, a former catholic, created his "religion" based on the rites and imagery he knew but devoid of all the substance of it ... or almost all since the resurrection for them is also a huge point even if it's not The Ressurection we know of .

He got his saints, and the prayers ,and the rites, and specially for the readers who see it from the perspective of the Ninth, even a Holy Mother , that for them is Alecto. In HtN John explicitly says in a way she's everyone's mother .

Lastly Harrowhark devotion for her church and the Body and said Mother resonates a lot with so many catholics including me. Specially by the end of Nona after she has learned the truth about Gaius and decided she was still a daughter of the Ninth and went in search of God by herself after letting the pretender behind .

So yeah, in summary, it's the imagery and Harrowhark devotion and faith that makes these books so Catholic at least for me.

Thank you!

So, the answer turend into some rambling, but anyway)

Yes, I totally agree that John just used imagery he knew to create whatever it was he created without any substance to it. I am not sure whether it is right to call this cultural appropriation, but I guess it is. John appropriated everything, so)

Anyway, I often see familiar Christian/Catholic symbols with wrong denotation in this day and age, so I just thought "aha, here we go again" and stopped thinking about it. I mean, there is an in-universe explanation for this, which I like a lot, but still.

Also, apart from the Ninth House and the Locked Tomb cult I do not remember any forms of organized religion, theology, I do not see genuine religious feeling in anyone but Harrowhark. And as far as I understand, Anastasia was the nun, so it seems fair that she was able to create a genuine religion in the Ninth House. (I mean, their memories were erased, but it looks like personalities, body memories, perhaps sunconscious remained).

And to summarize answers I received, Harrowhark is a Catholic character. I have read the arguments, and yes, I agree. I applied her worldview to my earlier experiences in the Church, and I see similarities.

Thank you again for sharing your personal feelings, I really appreciate that.

[impalementation]

spike, angel, buffy & romanticism: part 1

I said a long ways back that I thought the switch from Angel to Spike as Buffy’s primary love interest represented an interesting evolution in the show’s attitude towards—and interrogation of—romanticism, and I finally felt like expanding on what I meant by that. This is very long, very meandering, and not terribly academic or well-edited, but I hope there’s something of interest in it nonetheless. It is about 20,000 words in total, and will discuss, in more or less chronological order, the arc of the show’s attitude towards romanticism as it is embodied in Spike, Angel, Buffy and Buffy’s relationships with both of them. I was going to release it as one long post, but because it’s so long, I figured a series of posts might be more readable. Here’s the first one.

* 

“When you kiss me I want to die”: Angel and the high school seasons

Both Spike and Angel are at once capital-R Romantic figures, and lower-case romantic interests, and in both cases that Romantic/romantic duality is what makes them such effective avatars for ideas around romanticism. In the case of Angel, the show is aware from the beginning that he is very much a Romantic idea of something. In “Welcome to the Hellmouth” Buffy describes him as “dark” and “gorgeous”, evoking the “tall, dark and handsome” cliche. He’s mysterious. He gives her a necklace and his coat, gestures out of high school romance fiction.* In “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” Giles lampshades the romance of him: “A vampire in love with a Slayer. It’s rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.” Initially, Angel is basically designed to be a teenage girl fantasy, and it’s no coincidence that his successors like Edward Cullen or Stefan Salvatore conform to similar tropes.

*(Think of how five seasons later, a vampire will give Dawn his letterman jacket in “All the Way”. It’s hard not to read as a deliberate echo of Angel’s gift in season one. Once again, a vampire makes romantic gestures towards a high school version of “Buffy”, and later turns on her. But more on this much later in the series.)

The difference between Angel and those other, more typical Supernatural Romance love interests however, is that the show ultimately attempts to subvert the romance of him. As part of its commentary on Gothic themes, season two makes Angel more Romantic than ever (the Claddagh, the tormented past), and makes the romance between him and Buffy central to the story in a way it wasn’t in season one. And then, of course, the season tears it all apart. The first time we learn what Angel did to Drusilla it’s horrifying, but still somehow abstract. Something that seems more like it’s meant to contribute to Angel’s dangerous, Byronic image. As in, something to make him more Romantic. And then suddenly it becomes real. Suddenly, it’s something that Angel could do to Buffy, or the people Buffy cares about. It turns out that his darkly romantic aura was not just an aura, but genuinely dark all along.

In turn, Angel’s devastating transformation is a metaphor for broader disillusionment about romantic ideas. It’s less to me about a “guy going bad after sex”, and more about what it means and feels like to have the scales fall from one’s eyes in that sort of situation. As Buffy copes with the fallout of Angel’s transformation, and later is forced to kill him, I see it as being about the tragedy of having to see the world in ways that are less simple, easy, or pretty as one gets older. As Buffy and Giles say in “Lie To Me”:

BUFFY: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get. 

GILES: I believe that's called growing up. 

For more on this, I recommend this livejournal post on “Lie To Me”, which goes into great depth on the way season two frames stories as pretty lies that one needs to look beneath, and how Buffy’s romanticization of Angel symbolizes that.

The whole arc of the season is Buffy’s failure to see the danger presented by Angel. In this opening scene that danger is foreshadowed. More to the point for this essay, Angel goes on to lie to Buffy about having encountered Drusilla. He doesn’t want Buffy to know about the nature of Angelus – which means that his first inclination is to mask the danger he presents to Buffy. This is one episode after Halloween, where Buffy’s romantic fantasies about what Angel wants (a damsel) nearly get her killed. Nor is she completely over those fantasies, as she notes that the mystery woman talking to Angel had a pretty old-fashioned dress. So against the backdrop of Buffy’s fantasies about her dark and mysterious boyfriend we have the truth about what he is, which is quite horrifying.

Season three then takes this to another level, by not just pointing out the darkness of the romance of Angel, but in fact puncturing his romantic image. Instead of emphasizing his dangerousness, as season two did, season three emphasizes his adulthood. It emphasizes the way that Angel is someone Buffy sees in secret, or away from her friends. He’s not integrated with her teenage, high school life, and doesn’t fit with the peppy, high school movie aesthetic that characterizes a lot of season three. By doing this, the writing indicates that at this point in their lives, Buffy and Angel are ultimately incompatible and holding each other back. Regardless of however much they might care for each other, Angel can’t fully appreciate her teenage longings like dances, and college, and having a boyfriend. And Buffy can’t fully appreciate his adult need to find himself on his own terms. By the end of season three, Angel is less of a shadowy, tragic figure, and more just an adult man who needs to finally grow up a bit.

Season three also starts making jokes where the punchline is that Angel isn’t living up to the romantic aesthetic he embodied in seasons one and two. In “Helpless”, for example, he and Buffy have an exchange where he waxes sincerely about wanting to “keep [her heart] safe, to warm it with [his own]” and although Buffy says the sentiment is beautiful, a second later she deadpans: “Or taken literally, incredibly gross.” To which Angel replies, “I was just thinking that, too.” Or in “Graduation Day, Part 1”, Angel trips on a doorway instead of making a silent entrance and Buffy again deadpans: “Stealthy.” Angel’s romance slips at moments when Buffy herself is feeling weak, either because she has lost her Slayer powers, or she’s investigating the scene of her sister Slayer’s crime. Her Romantic Slayer half is betraying her, and her romantic girlish half is feeling insecure. This is echoed by the reminder that Angel is no longer a straightforward fantasy man--or a terrifying, larger-than-life villain--but a guy who is sometimes both verbally and physically inelegant. 

(Notice how one of the few times season two makes similar jokes about Angel it’s in “Lie to Me”, the very same episode that begins to peel off the layers of deceptions and unknowns about him. Angel slumps around Willow’s bedroom and jokes about “honing [his] brooding skills”, he insists that the vampire wannabes know nothing about vampires right before a guy walks by wearing his exact outfit, and Xander runs color commentary, saying “you’re not wrong” after each of Ford’s observations. In “Lie to Me” one of Angel’s hidden faces is his dangerousness, yes. But another hidden face is simply his human awkwardness.)

There’s an interesting Slayage piece by Elizabeth Gilliland that discusses the idea of Angel as a Gothic double for Buffy, specifically connecting him to the story of Jekyll and Hyde. It argues that Angel’s split identities represent Buffy’s fears that her human and Slayer halves are irreconcilable, and she cannot fully control either half. In season three, the fact that Buffy and Angel must continuously resist a loss of control with each other, and are treated as romantically incompatible, reflects this fear. 

In Season Three, replete with various factors in Buffy’s life that threaten to put her role as Slayer and girl into imbalance once more [...] Angel once again returns [...]. The season culminates in an attempted attack on Buffy’s classmates during graduation, which essentially forces her to “out” herself to her community and combine her roles as Slayer and daughter, classmate, and friend for the first time publicly (“Graduation Day: Part 2” 3.22). The worst has happened: her secret has been revealed, the entire school knows about both of her personas, and she has not only survived, but emerged with a stronger sense of self [...] Buffy has conquered her first Gothic fear, and proven to herself that she can not only exercise control over both dualities of her persona, but allow them to peacefully co-exist. Thus, Angel’s continuing struggle with Angelus can no longer act as her shadow, and he literally and metaphorically leaves her to continue the rest of her journey.

It’s an interpretation I mostly agree with, and see a lot of evidence for. But in keeping with the focus of this series, I think you could also read Angel as embodying a duality between the romantic and the unromantic. In this view, Buffy’s struggle between her human and her Slayer halves is not just a struggle between personas, but a struggle to see the world correctly. In season one, it’s not Angel that revives Buffy in “Prophecy Girl”, because Angel is a vampire trope just like the Master. He cannot help her, because he is exactly the kind of traditional romantic concept--like a candle-lit cavern, an ancient Nosferatu-looking vampire, or a Chosen Hero duty--that Buffy is trying to escape. In season two, loss of control is specifically associated with passion, romance, and romanticism. Buffy’s human half longs for the romantic, but her Slayer half, and Angel’s vampire half, prove that sometimes the romantic is something dangerous and violent. The fact that Buffy’s Slayer identity and Angel’s Angelus identity both end up being outed by the end of the season (especially to Joyce, a figure of Buffy’s human home life), echoes Buffy’s loss of innocence. Season three then continues this suspicion of passion. Buffy fears that like Faith, enjoying the violence and power and desire of being a Slayer, means that she will go down a dark path. She also fears that indulging in her sexual and romantic desire for Angel will unleash Angelus. To some extent, these fears are even borne out, given that her love for Angel results in her attempted murder of Faith, and near death at Angel’s hands. But to some extent they also aren’t, given that she, Faith and Angel all live. 

To me, what really gets resolved at the end of season three is not quite the issue of Buffy’s human and Slayer halves, given that Buffy will continue to struggle with that duality until the end of the show. Rather, what gets resolved is the need for binaries. Binaries are romantic things. When Giles gives his speech to Buffy at the end of “Lie To Me”, it is the language of binaries that he uses:

GILES: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after. 

BUFFY: Liar.

In season three, Buffy thinks she must resist both Faith and Angel. She thinks she can only be either a human girl or a Slayer leader. Many plots in season three have to do with the danger of binaries, whether that’s the witch-hunting parents in “Gingerbread”, Willow dealing with her vampire self in “Doppelgangland”, the various alter-egos in “Beauty and the Beasts”, or Cordy choosing a Buffy-less world in “The Wish”. And no character in the Buffyverse embodies the concept of binaries so starkly as Angel does. Thus by the end of season three, Buffy collapses the binaries within herself by merging the human and Slayer parts of her life, as Gilliland observes, and taking on Faith’s traits. She acknowledges her shadow by kissing her tenderly on the forehead, and bids farewell to the illusions and binaries that Angel embodies. Buffy is leaving that part of her life behind, and starting a new chapter where she can no longer split either the world, or herself, into any one thing or another.

part 2: “Love isn’t brains, children”: Enter Spike as the id

[rgr-pop]

a few months ago i helped a friend pull together some representative-seeming history of sexuality syllabi to help them argue for credit transfer. i accidentally found this delightful one from the one and only margot canaday, and i’ve become totally captivated by this assignment:

Select an established historian of sexuality and read their “canon.”  Write an intellectual biography describing what you see as their central preoccupations, methodologies, and contributions.  What are the questions their work raises and does not answer?  How do they exemplify (or fail to exemplify) the broader development of the subfield?  What is the relationship between earlier and later work?  Note that in order for this exercise to be successful, you will need to select someone who has written at least two books and several articles in the field.  (See me for suggestions.)

i’ve been thinking about this in the context of several popular (left theory) reappraisals i’ve watched happen over the past few years--not necessarily a new approach, but definitely something i’m noticing, not as much in the form of a zeitgeist (although the most recent zeitgeist around ep thompson has interested me) as personal scholarly preoccupations. the biggest example in my mind is sophie lewis picking up firestone as a kind of duty and personal dedication, and lewis does this kind of long-arch marxist reappraisal intellectual biography a lot. this piece on lillian faderman, for example, which i didn’t like--i almost never like anything at the baffler, awful editing--but which is essentially good work. gabriel winant’s work on barbara ehrenreich is another great example. winant does a lot of really i think field-shifting reappraisal of thompson, but ehrenreich is really his blorbo. i’m totally blown away by his ability to pick up one of the most well known public intellectuals of our time and force us to look at their body of work in its context, asking brand new questions--can’t even describe it. “a place to die” is the name of the article he primarily does that in, it’s one of the works of history that has impacted me the most. that’s kind of the work i’m imagining can come from the prompt above--that and something like an intellectual biography. that, and the introduction of gayle rubin’s deviations, which is like...one of my favorite things i have ever read. the way she tells us the story of her own work in its own times is such a treasure, in part because her way of historiciizing her own thinking serves as an emulation of the project of particularizing social life that her work was doing. it’s very clever. i think also of katherine mckittrick’s work on sylvia wynter, and certain (non philosopher) traditions of writing about your mentors--robin kelley on cedric robinson, for sure. there were some other scholars who did some interesting work on betty friedan, but i can’t think of them.

i’m thinking of chasing after this: who are the thinkers i am compelled to reevaluate, but who i also really love, enough to become their keepers? with the kinds of big bodies of work that require keeping? (margot canaday is an excellent example of a scholar whose intellectual biography i’m fascinated with, who i adore, and whose work i think is underratedly important, but who, because of the conditions of the institution under which she w,orked, has no “body of work” to speak of.) who are the thinkers that i keep finding myself thinking, nobody really knows what they were about, or up to? 

i’m very interested in this approach to historians, who don’t get approached like this very often, and who, over the past twenty years or so, have stopped producing bodies of work [structurally] as such. charles and louise tilly come to mind since their appearance in rubin’s autobiographical notes (whole side interest on the intellectual couples biography--the other one that has for some reason always hung me up is joan ockman and robert slutzky). old public school laborists--sidney fine is probably the most bizarrely forgotten labor historian, i have an attachment to him because i came across him early (since he wrote about flint). leon fink and dorothy sue cobble--basically people whose work show us something about an extinct relation between labor thought and public education. historians who were able to produce criticism alongside their monographs (other than just as timely pegged promotions of their monographs...)

i have a lot of this already with architecture thinkers--venturi and scully maybe obviously, but particularly charles jencks, who i became quite obsessed with when the public was looking toward “late modernism” and found themselves very wrong about both skyscrapers and what jencks said. i still think i love him, as a writer, more than almost any of them. above all though, insanely, and i think really getting at the heart of this prompt, are the critical/cultural turn/media studies 90s-on capital-T Architectural Theorists that nobody will even touch: beatriz colomina, reinhold martin (who has produced the most writing of anyone that i’d describe as “exactly the book i want to write exactly how i wouldn’t write it”) and, more than absolutely anyone, sylvia lavin. she’s one of the most powerful thinkers in architecture but the self-consciously populist critics loathe and ignore her, no one cites her, no one outside of MIT reads her, and everyone thinks she’s a huge bitch. sylvia lavin is one of only a handful thinkers who published something that fundamentally changed everything i thought about everything (outing that venturi and scully both lied about the antennae on guild house, which she says is the foundational myth of postmodernism). i would really love to understand everything she’s written, and how it came to be. also uncover the truth about whether she fired charles jencks from ucla (my white whale). also to say something stupid and insane like “actually she was a materialist. here’s why.” 

but there is one figure above all else, the most important and famous and widely assigned and influential culture writer of the second half of the 20th century who absolutely no one seems to ask any questions about, or really know anything at all about, or be able to summarize in any comprehensive way, or make any claims about: rosalind krauss! with the distance of being outside of her discipline, and in a historical moment where lacanians are kind of camp, and also kind of in need of defending from us (marxists), i may decide to become a rosalind krauss guy.

[snigepippi]

They are Jotuns, not Giants

Ranting.

A little tired, bear over with me.

tl:dr

Remember that litteral translations sometimes means the content get lost. And please try to use Jotun instead of Frost giant.

Norse neo-heathenism is different around the world. I think it's because we are raised in different cultures, so our view and interpretations differ.

I'm Scandinavian. This means that I can read several translations in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and English without problems, thereby getting a broader variation of interpretations. I also means that I have access to more texts about the Old Norse, because it's a common interest and I will often find news articles about new findings all around me, and Norse myths are a part of the school curriculum.

I also means that I grew up with the names and meanings of the gods as a integrated part of my culture and language. I live in the Town of Odin. I've climbed Frey's Hill several times. Tyr's Lake is a city I pass through by train. I live 500 metres from an old Viking ring fortress.

And several of the words we find in Norse Mythology, is still living words in my language. The idioms, the kennings, the way we spin words, are the same. This means that when idioms are used in the Norse myths, I know them... and am sometimes exasperated when they are translated directly into English without explanation, giving people a wrong picture of what's happening in the myth. ("Red Glowing" as idiom, means "glaring daggers" or "very intense/emotional" not that anything is red or actually glowing.)

And I absolutely abhor the English use of Giant and Frost Giant, when it comes to the Jotuns. It's such a bad translation that really should be changed in all new books and interpretations.

The Jotuns are not necessarily Giant. Jotun means Great or Exceptionel or Monstrous. Not giant or large. Theis size can be anything. smaller than humans, larger than mountains. They are Jotun all the same.

And why are they using 'Frost Giant' about every Jotun? Only Jotuns from the frost world Niflheim are Frost Jotuns. Those from Muspleheim are Fire Jotuns and those from Utgard are Jotuns. And in the stories we mainly met Jotuns from Utgard. We have no named Jotuns from Niflheim, and from Musplheim we only know their leader Surtr. Loki, Skadi, Gerda, Thjazi, Utgard-Loki, Skrymir, Hymir, Gunlød, Suttung and so on, are from Utgard, and therefore not Frost Jotuns.

And what in the world is Rökkatru? As far as I can see, it was invented in New Zealand. It is certainly not Scandinavian. My Old Norse dictionary tells me that it means something like Twilight-True. Maybe they wanted it to be closer to Rögva-True, (though it should be regin instread of rögva according to gramma rules), which means All-Powers-True. Regin are all the entities, including asir, vanir, local spirits and Jotun. But if you only want to use Jotuns, why not just use Jotuntru?

I also see plenty of these people invent new names. I'm fine with adding new gods to our collection. It's an old tradition to use neat gods you find on the way. But please, please please, remember to mention it's new and not something you can find in old texts. Too many people from outside Scandinavia, try to tell me that this or that modern name is definitely are a integrated part of the Norse mythology. They aren't, and please accept that, or find the reference in original Old Norse. Again, you are free to use new gods, just be aware they are new. (Space Mom is on my altar with a hand giving out bipolar medication).

[maybe-homestuck-now-or-something]

I wanna connect the ideas in this post with the ideas in this post because they seem relevant to each other.

to give a basic idea of what's in each one, the first is a post that talks about how homestuck is notable as a creative work that effectively uses the language and format of the internet, in a way that resonates well with people who grew up online. my addition extrapolates to talk about how this quality also made homestuck's style of content creation appealing for others to use, and spawned a lot of creativity from the fans. basically, homestuck is a collage, not just of images, but of methods for delivering information to the audience. it uses a broad variety of experimental techniques, but the purpose of them is to make storytelling accessible. in order to convey an idea, you can use any method you want... whatever suits your purposes. by constantly varying the type of art, writing, and formatting that the story uses, it keeps the story from getting boring for the author and the audience. varying the quality and style of the visual art also implicitly accepts and encourages any kind of artwork, at any level of skill or effort, from fans. and at the same time, the story pioneers new techniques that I legitimately haven't seen used before. at some points it even leverages the design of the web page itself to service the story... it's awesome. this gets people thinking about how to tell stories in non-traditional ways, and further encourages the act of being experimental with your storytelling methods, and having fun exploring your chosen medium.

the second link is mostly just me talking about the merits of homestuck's early acts, and at one point I put a particular focus on the idea of science in homestuck. specifically, I was talking about how homestuck handles science in a way that feels very childlike, which is a positive remark. when you're learning about science in school as a kid, efforts are made to present the material in a way that is fun and interesting... and you're given a lot of tools for exploration within the context of science classes, which a lot of people don't really experience having outside of a school setting, if they aren't going into some branch of science for their career. I was observing that homestuck's aesthetic kind of calls to mind the feel of learning about science as a kid... something about the stark readability of the objects and characters, and the bright color coding of things that are important.

the connection I want to make between these two posts is that homestuck hinges a lot of its interest on the concepts of exploration, and creation. it holistically includes a lot of different themes and ideas, and it does it in such a way where the characters don't have to make it explicit... more often than not, you'll end up thinking of it yourself. homestuck simply introduces elements, and lets you form your own ideas. it puts a lot of stuff out there, and links it all together in this messy web of interconnectivity.

for example, check out this post where I added some commentary about the punch card alchemy system, and how it links the concepts of technology and philosophy. the idea is that captchas determine your humanity... but unlike real captchas, which do this by making you read something that a computer can't read, it instead makes you think in a way that a computer can't think. in order to give you access to items, this crafting system requires philosophical justification for the creation of said items. grist isn't just made up currency that exists to make you work for what you make... the amount of it that it takes to make something is only high if you think that the object you're making should be too powerful or important to be gotten for cheap. you prove your humanity by having a psychology that can assign the object meaning, and thus, value.

or what about the broader themes of biology and mythology in homestuck? there are many mentions of genetics... the goal of the game is to produce a universe via breeding, and there are the origins of each of the kids, or the fact that the chess pieces that fight on Skaia's battlefield are made in test tubes in the labs in the furthest ring... etc. but this theme also exists symbolically in the players of each session. they are people who bring their identity with them into the process of making a new universe. each player is given their own planet, which is responsive to the person it's meant for, and features a personal quest for them. and once the new universe is made, the players will preside over it as deities, and help define its culture with their values, interests, and personalities. in this way, homestuck blends the concepts of biology and mythology. in a biological sense, the kids provide the universe with traits. if they are strong/adaptable/resourceful enough to win their game, they get to pass on their influence to a universe of their own. this is why it is relevant that all the players' chumhandle initials are some combination of A, C, T, and G, which are the letters denoting nucleotide bases in DNA. but this concept also applies to heroes going through trials or completing quests to prove themselves worthy of being known as heroes. SBURB's lore automatically mythologizes the players in the role of legendary heroes to the consorts and carapacians, which pushes them to step up to the task of earning their title, and in doing so, complete the game's objectives... and the game gives them the tools to do it.

really, science, mythology, and religion all wrap into each other here in terms of the way things are named and explained. the punch card system and the frog breeding are both referred to as "alchemy" at various points, which indicates both magical and scientific roots. and the highest title that the players aspire to obtain in the game is "god tier" which implies a sort of religious connection between the players and the game's native characters who know them as legends. the magical abilities that the characters display are ambiguous as to whether they are magical, divine, or something else entirely. a lot of them are defined heavily by a character's personality and identity. the malleability of the different elements that homestuck juggles works entirely in its favor... and all of it is geared towards this sense of growth and creativity.

in homestuck, these things exist on micro and macro levels. the growth of one kid into a slightly different person as they get older, vs. the growth of an entity that will encapsulate the universe. the creation of a piece of music, a drawing, a story, a machine, a person, a plan, a planet... it all just keeps escalating, but it's all rooted in specific characters doing specific things, so we don't get lost in it all. the characters bring it all back around, letting us focus on their smaller actions while the bigger plot remains in motion. and all of this exists at the same time as all the surface level reasons to enjoy homestuck. the comic is funny, and charming, and made to be enjoyable as that. but the fact that the broader elements color the tone of it all, leaves you with the impression that there is a lot of potential in every situation. potential places for the characters to go, or things for them to do, or people for them to talk to, or things for them to make, or even ways to grow and change themselves.

and there's potential for you too. you could throw your ideas at the wall to see what sticks in this exact same way. part of reading homestuck is feeling a sense of recognition and identification with the characters. many of them are based broadly on the kinds of people who make up homestuck's audience. with interests in things like music, art, writing, RPing, programming, playing games, watching movies... they're meant to represent you, in part as parody, but in part as a way to make you feel seen and included in this narrative. as lofty as some of these concepts may seem, the people who engage with them in the text are a bunch of dumb awkward teens. you are at least as accepted as they are, and people love these characters a lot, often in spite of/because of a lot of cringey qualities or major character flaws. homestuck is here to tell you not to be self conscious. play around with your world. make your art. write your story. think your thoughts. be funny and laugh at stuff. don't be afraid of doing it badly.

this is what an accessible creative process looks like.

[capechicago]

CAPE Network Forum Newsletter: West Chicago

In this issue of the CAPE Network Forum Newsletter, we are excited to celebrate the newest after-school partnership between CAPE and West Chicago School District 33. What began as an idea from CAPE teaching artist and resident of West Chicago, Anni Holm, has now blossomed into a robust inquiry-based arts integrated after-school program serving over 350 students and community members across four schools.

From early conversations beginning in the summer of 2020, to the navigation of complex federal and state grant management systems, to the kick-off of programming in January of 2021, this program is testament to the power of partnership in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CAPE is grateful to Anni Holm for making the initial connection, District 33 leadership’s openness to expanding their after-school program, and Hannah Martin, CAPE’s West Chicago Program Coordinator, who is doing incredible work behind-the-scenes to make the whole program function. CAPE is also grateful for the incredible creativity and energies of all the West Chicago teachers, staffers, and the many new CAPE artists who have made this all possible and greatly expanded CAPE’s Network of Artist/Researchers.

Below you will find the perspectives of Joie Frankovich, District 33’s Coordinator of Partnerships, Yaritza, a fifth grade student at Currier Elementary, and documentation of in-process work from many of the online classes transpiring in West Chicago.

— Joseph Spilberg

Interview with Joie Frankovich, District 33’s Coordinator of Partnerships

Tell us the story of your relationship to CAPE and how this partnership came to fruition.

I'm the Coordinator of Partnerships with District 33. The district has had a 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant for eons, and for the last 10 years of that grant, we worked with a somewhat local partner, and they were always our applicant on it. With COVID-19, they felt that the program was no longer aligned with their mission and chose to step away from the grant. That left us needing to find a new co-applicant.

We reached out to a lot of different organizations and just tried to put feelers out there because it's a fairly hefty grant. I mean, there's a lot of red tape and a lot of requirements, and an organization needs to have capacity to do it. We actually had a lot of organizations turn us down because we were in the middle of a pandemic, and all these organizations are just doing their best to stay afloat, the same that the school district was.

Anni Holm, who I know is a CAPE teaching artist and a District 33 parent and staff member, had always raved about CAPE as an organization and the kind of the model that CAPE uses. She had sent a connecting email to Joseph and me just saying let's see if there's anything that can come from it.

So I reached out to Joseph. I just said, “You mentioned you're looking to expand your reach. You're looking to be in more suburbs. You’ve worked with 21st CCLC grants. Are you interested in being our co-applicant and seeing if we can figure something out?” And Joseph said yes immediately.

I think ISBE approved of the grant on January 18th. So in six months, we created a budget, and we put a program together. Then the program started running February 1st!

What does collaboration look like for District 33?

I think the relationship between District 33 and CAPE has already started with an intention to be collaborative from the very beginning. I remember when Joseph and I were first talking, one of the big things that I was focused on was the fact that the district still wants to work with other partners. How do we blend other organizations and people into this program?

It's just kind of this constant throwing ideas out there and saying, What makes sense? How can we work together? We've been working with a lot of our local partners to the park district, the library, some help from some of our local health partners, and finding ways to embed really collaborative family opportunities on top of the traditional kind of classroom stuff that's going to happen in the afternoon, spring, and summer programming. And it's been absolutely wonderful.

For the future, I just envision this continuing to expand and really grow, because we only really started in February with Joseph. I have been referring to this semester as our pilot, like, let's just go for it. Let's see how it goes. Let's learn lessons. And then for next year, we can really think about how we build this out even more, make it more robust.

And for us, when we talk about collaboration, a lot of times what we talk about is that often, whether it's education, nonprofit organizations, people are asked to do so much more than what they should have to do. And a lot of times it's beyond the scope of their position. Teachers are being asked to be counselors.

For us, these collaborations are really about bringing in everyone’s expertise and passions. Really work together so we can just do the things we're good at and let others do the things they're good at so that together we're really working towards those goals. CAPE has this beautiful model, inquiry based arts integration. So CAPE tells us how that looks, because you have that expertise. District 33 has some other expertise. How do we work together to create something really beautiful for students? I mean it's all about the students and families in the end. So how do we work together to create something that's really special for them? It’s been just incredible how open and ready everyone's been to just say, OK, let's figure this out. Let's be creative. Let's bounce ideas back and forth. And we just make it work. And it's pretty awesome to have a partner who's just has a bent towards wanting to operate that way.

Family Night is where the community’s families come together and share out what they’ve been learning in CAPE programs. CAPE has hosted a few Family Night events over the spring semester. How does Family Night serve the district?

Students don't exist in isolation. They are a family unit in some way, shape, or form. It looks different for everyone, but you're a part of something larger. If you want to support students, our belief is you need to be supporting the guardians or the adults or whoever else is in that home with reaching their goals and removing barriers for those folks.

We do a lot of activities and events where we try and bring families together to do shared learning or just have shared experiences together. For example, we offer ESL classes for parents and guardians. And in the evenings we know that often child care could be a hindrance for them to be able to attend. We also offer a child development program for the children of parents and ESL class where the children are doing their own learning.

The other big thing we really focus on is this idea of doing things with families and communities, not doing them to families and communities, and really providing opportunity for families to say, this is what I want this to look like, or this is how I think you should be. And not just assuming we know better because we're, I don't know, an organization or professionals or whatever.

So the Family Nights that we've had so far, it was amazing. I mean, I think I shed tears a couple of times. So cool to see and particularly knowing everything's been virtual for us this whole time. Yeah, I still see the impact that's happened in the relationships that have been built has just been phenomenal. It really gives an opportunity for parents to be able to kind of get that insider view of the program, and also a chance for students to just show off, show their parents what they did, and ask, How cool is this? And I really enjoyed being able to see the teaching artists and our district staff show off, too, because they were doing a lot of the sharing. It's just so incredible.

I think down the road, what would be amazing is that when we have these events in person, hopefully in the near future, that they also are really embedded in the community, too. So people have an opportunity to really learn more about West Chicago and the community that they live in and contribute to. So it's really supporting a broader community engagement too, not just that inner family engagement.

Student interview with Yaritza, a fifth grader at Currier Elementary School

Why did you join CAPE after school?

Because I like after school programs and theater. It's fun learning more stuff after school.

How is this after school like class and environment different than what you do during the school day?

It's different from the school day because I get to move around a lot more and play more and have more fun than just sitting there and writing notes.

Can you describe to me what kinds of things you've been doing in this class (Life Out Loud!)?

We play fun games. And we have time to spend quality time with other kids, and draw everyday. We do theater games and create stories and fun scenes. And we write some of our ideas down.

What is something that you hope to do with the class before the school year is over?

One thing that I like to do with the class before the class is over is do the puppet shows we’ve started. And learn more games.

If you were to tell someone of the kids at your school, a reason to join CAPE after school programs or this after school program, what would you say?

I like doing after school programs because it gives you more time to spend time with other kids and not be on the on your screen, and to create things on your own with artists.

At Gary Elementary School, students show off their trolls before the mischievous creatures run away, led by artists Anni Holm and Buddy Plumlee and teacher Jacqueline Neidhardt.

Students at Leman Middle School share their Alebrijes and masks inspired by traditional Mexican art, led by artist Sarita Garcia and teacher Carlos Osorio.

For the parent class at Leman Middle School, parents practice drawing still lifes using objects that represent their identity, led by artist Jessica Mueller and counselors Graciela Moreno, Lori Koch, and Melinda Ayala.

[fuckyeahwarriorwomen]

Copy of article below thge cut, should the original ever go away

Leading up to the 20th anniversary of the March 10, 1997 premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Yahoo TV is celebrating “Why Genre Shows Matter” and the history of how these shows have tackled universal themes (e.g. how much high school sucks) and broader social issues.

Perhaps because they seek to imagine the world that’s possible rather than the world that is, genre shows have a long tradition of striving to expand the horizons of what’s possible for women on television. Within the realm of space operas alone, there’s a direct line that connects Lieutenant Uhura’s prominent perch amongst the Enterprise‘s largely male bridge crew on the original Star Trek to The Expanse‘s fiercely independent engineer, Naomi Nagata. And each point along this continuum helps inform the next: commanding officers like Babylon 5‘s Susan Ivanova and Voyager‘s Kathryn Janeway are linked by a devotion to duty, if not necessarily temperament, while Killjoys‘ scrappy bounty hunter, Yala, could have been a student of Firefly‘s highly-skilled soldier, Zoë Washburne. On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate the accomplishments of one such influential intergalactic heroine.

Her name is Aeryn. Officer Aeryn Sun if we’re being formal, one of the interstellar outlaws at the center of Farscape, the wildly ambitious Australian/American space serial that ran from 1999 to 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel. Bred from birth to be a loyal Sebacean soldier in the Peacekeeper army that patrols her section of the galaxy, Officer Sun switches careers after inadvertently ending up aboard a living spaceship named Moya that’s occupied by a motley crew of jailbreakers. These convicts-turned-comrades include towering warrior Ka D’Argo, blue-hued priestess Zhaan, flatulent deposed despot Rygel XVI, and John Crichton, an Earth-born astronaut who is very, very far from home. Created by Rockne S. O’Bannon and produced by The Jim Henson Company, Farscape enjoyed a bumpy four-season stateside run that ended prematurely when the network declined to fund a fifth and final year. (Sci-Fi later aired, but didn’t finance, a wrap-up miniseries, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, in 2004.)

The original cast of ‘Farscape’ (Credit: Everett Collection)

One of the joys of Farscape is that its defining house style is the lack of a defining house style. Episodes can range from standalone homages to body-switching comedies and vintage Loony Tunes cartoons to densely plotted multi-part stories that don’t conclude with conventionally happy endings. The primary constant amidst this narrative and tonal juggling is the turbulent love story between Aeryn Sun and John Crichton. Revisited today, Farscape stands as something of a bridge between eras of space opera, linking the last wave of episodic space adventures like Star Trek: Voyager and Stargate: SG-1 to the intensely emotional serialized narratives that later drove Battlestar Galactica and its ilk. Aeryn is both a traditional and transformational figure as well; raised to be an impersonal enforcer in the Imperial Stormtrooper mold, she comes to live out a promise that John makes to her in the very first episode: “You can be more.”

“Oh, I’ve got chills down my arm,” says Aeryn’s alter ego, Claudia Black, as she reflects on the character and those prophetic words nearly two decades later. “Her evolution as an individual takes off in an extraordinary way [after that].” Over the course of Yahoo TV’s hour-long conversation with the Australian actress, it’s clear that she does regard Aeryn as an individual unto herself, one who took on a life that sometimes superseded the actress’s own. “I was always happy to hand the character off,” Black says. “I would say [to the producers], ‘If I’m going in the wrong direction then please find someone to serve Aeryn, please. Because she deserves to have the full love of a person who can give you what you need.’ She was honestly such a privilege to play, and I never abused that privilege.”

And Black very nearly didn’t get that privilege. The role had already been cast when she first auditioned for Farscape, but the creative team encouraged her to read for Aeryn anyway. That reading later led to a screen test opposite Tennessee-born Ben Browder, who would be playing John Crichton. (Interestingly, Browder’s casting is, in part, what opened the door to Black inheriting the role from the English actress who had originally been chosen as Aeryn. “Because of the Australian co-production agreement, if they brought in a lead actor from America, the second lead had to be Australian,” Black explains. “So thank god for our union!”) Immediately recognizing the crackling onscreen chemistry between them, Browder pushed hard for her to land the role over network skepticism. “I was a controversial choice for sure,” Black says now. “I was just lucky in the end.”

Whatever the circumstances of how she got the role, Black climbed aboard Moya with strong ideas about how to play Aeryn. Superficially, the character is part of the wave of warrior women that swept through genre shows in the ’90s and early ’00s, whose ranks included Xena, Buffy, and even Cleo of Cleopatra 2525 fame. But as conceived by O’Bannon and carried forward by executive producer David Kemper, who became a driving creative force behind the show, Aeryn cuts against that archetype as well. Unlike Xena, she doesn’t necessarily relish battle; it’s something that’s been programmed into her. (Although, as Aeryn memorably remarks in The Peacekeeper Wars: “Shooting makes me feel better!���) She also reverses the arc traversed by Buffy and Cleo, which begins with them in places of perceived weakness — as a cheerleader and exotic dancer, respectively — and leads towards empowerment.

Because of her militaristic upbringing, Aeryn starts from a place of fierce strength. Her journey over the lifespan of the show, then, becomes about softening what Black describes as Aeryn’s “jagged edges” without surrendering her agency. “I’ve always loved science fiction because of the way it affords us an opportunity to look at humanity from an outsider’s perspective,” Black says. “And Aeryn really gets to experience it firsthand the best way that humans can, which is through love, in all of its forms. When I look at humanity, and my own life, we have to break before we can grow. That’s really what happened with Aeryn; she became stronger with softer edges.” (For the record, Aeryn may start out as a superior fighter to Buffy, but Black says that Sarah Michelle Gellar would easily mop the floor with her in real life. “Sarah has a black belt in karate, and I have two left feet! I always felt like a bit of an imposter [as Aeryn] just on the physical front. If I could push the reset button, I’d go back and get good at some form of martial art.”)

But that stronger-to-softer arc is also more treacherous to navigate than a traditional empowerment story, flirting, as it does, with the fanboy-friendly stereotype of the buttoned-up ice queen whose resolve (and inhibitions) melt when love, generally in the form of a strapping male hero, comes her way. The risk of falling headlong into that tired trope is something Farscape had to deal with throughout its run, especially as the core of the show was always the romance between John and Aeryn.

And while that romance takes a number of unexpected twists and turns — most boldly in a Season 3 storyline that saw Aeryn committing herself fully to a cloned version of Crichton, only to see him die and then have to re-learn how to love the original John — it ultimately culminates with two staples of a standard love story: a marriage proposal and a pregnancy. “It seemed pretty clear to me that Rockne’s intention in the pilot was that this was going to be a love story for the ages,” Black says. Not only that, but it was a love story penned by a largely male writing staff who had their own opinions about how to depict Aeryn’s gradual acceptance of Crichton’s love that sometimes ran counter to Black’s feelings. “I recall moments where they wanted me to be more vulnerable with Aeryn, and I didn’t want to be because I didn’t think it was time and I didn’t think she was ready,” she says. “But it wasn’t my place to say.”

Nevertheless, she persistently found ways to make her voice heard, whether it was by talking one-on-one with specific writers or her co-star, who was equally eager to avoid certain genre show clichés. Black recalls one instance early on in the show’s run when Browder actively pushed back against Sci-Fi’s directive that John Crichton demonstrate the same sex drive as James T. Kirk. “They wanted Crichton to have an alien girl of the week. Ben put his foot down and said, ‘No, he’s not that kind of guy. This isn’t the story I want to tell.’ And on my side I was saying, ‘Yeah, what does that say about Aeryn if she’s going to fall in love with a guy [like that]?’ We wanted to investigate and have them experience the more positive aspects of attraction, as well as what’s worth fighting for and what’s worth dying for,” she says. “Maybe the show would have continued longer if we’d been able to please the network! They know what they’re going to need in order to keep [viewers] interested and tuning in. But we’re very proud of what we managed to make regardless, because of those choices.”

The ongoing battle that Black personally waged throughout Farscape‘s run was ensuring that Aeryn maintained control over her own body. In the genre shows of her era, the female leads were stronger and savvier than ever, and that translated into fashion choices that expressed their own body confidence and sexuality. Xena rode into battle in a heaving breastplate, while Buffy fought vampires in halter tops and Relic Hunter‘s Sydney Fox always donned a tight tank top before exploring some ancient tomb. But flashing cleavage, leg, and midriff also made those characters desirable pin-ups for the male audience courted by networks and advertisers. (Farscape added its own version of a pin-up type midway through the first season in the form of Chiana, a grey-skinned con artist with a plunging neckline and a voracious sexual appetite.)

But those fashions didn’t make sense for a soldier fighting in an army where men and women’s bodies were interchangeable. In fact, Black remembers reading a very specific direction to the makeup department in the production notes for the pilot. “When I take my Peacekeeper helmet off [for the first time], the note read in big print, ‘She looks masculine.’ They thickened my eyebrows — which are already thick! — and shaded my face in very minimal makeup. All of the on-set gallery images of me in the first season are with that very masculine makeup.”

Aeryn in her ‘masculine’ Season 1 appearance (Credit: Everett Collection)

By Season 2, though, Aeryn’s appearance underwent a noticeable change; her hair got longer and straighter, and her Peacekeeper uniform gave way to outfits that walked a line between practical and revealing. Black, who describes herself as a feminist, agreed to these cosmetic changes as she felt they were part of a “natural progression” for Aeryn. “I was honoring where she had come from at the same time having to find a way to let her grow into whatever it is she was going to become,” she says. (This clip from Farscape‘s aforementioned Looney Tunes-inspired episode, “Revenging Angel,” neatly summarizes — and satirizes — the female body types commonly featured on genre shows that Aeryn deliberately defies.)

Already objectively beautiful, Aeryn’s sexuality continued to emerge as she grew into her new self. Even so, Black could sense it wasn’t emerging quickly enough to satisfy certain expectations. “I felt that I was being pushed to show more flesh than was necessary,” she admits, pointing to one incident in the show’s fourth season where it was written into the script that Aeryn would sit poolside in a bikini. “I just said, ‘I will get in a bikini for you if it makes sense, but this woman’s world is falling apart.’ It was the last thing I thought Aeryn would do [in that moment]. It felt really frivolous and superficial to me.” (Black had already donned a bikini to play pregnant Aeryn in a hallucinatory scene in the Season 4 premiere. “They not only had me in a bikini, but they gave me a pregnant belly as well, which is really hard to pull off and make it look naturalistic,” she says.)

Black remembers shooting down an even more egregious bit of flesh-flashing in an earlier episode. As an international production, Farscape frequently shot extra scenes for certain ad-free European markets that would fill the time normally allotted for commercials. The cast referred to these filler sequences as “Euro scenes,” and they rarely involved big story or character beats. According to Black, this particular episode dispatched D’Argo and Aeryn on a planetside mission, and the writers cobbled together a Euro scene that she describes as “absurd.” “They said, ‘Let’s have a scene where we cut to them by a lake, and Aeryn turns and sees a bunch of soldiers across the lake. Aeryn takes off her clothes, swims across the lake, and fights these soldiers completely naked, then comes back to D’Argo and off they go.'”

In later seasons, Aeryn naturally progressed towards more revealing fashion choices (Credit: Everett Collection)

“There were so many things about it that were so bizarre,” she continues. “I said, ‘You know what, please explain this to me, how this honestly can fit in.’ In the end, they just said, ‘All right, fine — we won’t do it.’ That’s what I felt I was having to haggle for a lot of the time: my right to keep my clothes on until it was appropriate. I’ve always felt as an actor — and I’m sure other females have felt like this as well — that when you sign on the dotted line and enter the business that somehow you’ve given your body away as a piece of property, and you spend the rest of your career haggling for pieces of it back.” And the actress credits Browder with backing her up in her fight for Aeryn to be in full control of her own femininity and, by extension, her destiny. “Aeryn is really as feminist as I am, but she’s nothing without Crichton, which is an interesting statement to make,” she says. “So as much as we praise Aeryn, we must give full credit to Crichton and to Ben for shaping him the way that he did. It’s the space that he gives her. He’s such an exquisite champion of her growth and development, that it becomes possible for her to grow to her full size.”

In the 13 years since the concluding Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, rumors have occasionally flown about Farscape‘s return. At one point, there was talk of a webisode series following John and Aeryn’s child, D’Ago Sun-Crichton, but funding never came to fruition. (The show did continue in comic book form for a time, but publication ceased circa 2011.) Black, whose recent credits include stints on The CW genre shows Containment and The Originals, has no updates on any future revivals, and jokes that if Aeryn and Crichton ever do return, they’ll be “tired, ornery, and not really wanting another battle.”

Claudia Black as Dahlia on ‘The Originals’ (Credit: Annette Brown/The CW)

In a way, though, Aeryn’s larger battle has already been won. One of the breakout characters on Battlestar Galactica — which premiered in December 2003, nine months after Farscape‘s series finale — was Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, who displays some of the same steely spine, and jagged edges, of Officer Sun. And today’s genre TV landscape is populated with women who, consciously or not, reflect Aeryn’s assertiveness, independence, and refusal to conform to societal (or genre) norms of appearance or attitude, whether it’s Orphan Black‘s Helena, Sense8‘s Nomi, or Jessica Jones.

For this Scaper, she lives on off-screen as well. When my wife and I learned that we’d be having a daughter, we thought about all the things we wanted for her life. To know that she, and she alone, is in control of her body. To be strong in the face of injustice. To be confident in her own power. And to know that when she chooses to give her heart to another person, that person will be her champion, and give her the space to grow to her full size. And so we picked a name that, for us, would embody all of our hopes and dreams for the individual she’s becoming with each passing year.

Her name is Aeryn.

[kadehenry]

What the world needs now...

[FOR CONTEXT]

During my second year of graduate school I served as president of the LGBTQ graduate group at the Divinity School (aptly named DivOut - yes, all the LGBTQ groups had pun names). One of my favorite things about that role was that every week I sent everyone on this private list an email that contained: a quote from a different queer figure, a power anthem, a pep talk, and their schedule for the week.

I'm no longer in grad school, but given this year generally and last night particularly, I felt compelled to write something to those folks, and I thought perhaps it might speak to other folks as well.

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Power Anthems (Courtesy of Resistance Revival Chorus)

Joy in Resistance

This Joy That I Have

All You Fascists Bound to Lose

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Dearest Divoutees,

It is clearly the case that I am no longer the DivOut president, nor - sometimes to my chagrin - a graduate student at all. To say I miss you all would be an understatement, as being in class and on campus with you all was one of the great privileges of my life.

And yet when news broke last night of the inevitable Supreme Court confirmation, I found myself compelled to write you all. If I'm honest, it was one of my first impulses.  And I've spent the morning reading interviews with Angela Davis and pondering what it is exactly that I want to say. This has, I'll admit, also been complicated by the reality that so many of us harbor religious trauma deep in our bones, and so in deference to that, I always tried to speak in the broadest possible terms.

But in this moment I find that such an approach does not serve me, as it does not adequately express the thing I most want you to know. Which is my utter conviction that the hope of the Christian faith lies in the life and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that hope is, I believe, worth clinging to as the bottom continuously seems to drop out from under us, tempting us to despair.

As I said, I've been reading interviews with Angela Davis, and so to the point of life - and moreover the living of it - as hope, I share this insight from the National United Committee to free Angela Davis:

In these times, when the fight to uphold one's humanity is a revolutionary act, the false difference between 'personality' and 'politics' can no longer be maintained. It is in this light that we must understand the life of Angela Davis, for, as she said, the struggle of a true revolutionary is 'to merge the personal with the political to the point where they can no longer be separate.' In the profoundest of ways, it is one when 'you don't see your life, your individual life, as being so important'  that it begins to become important, politically, for others in the common fight for freedom. -  The National United Committee to free Angela Davis, 1970    excerpt from "A Political Biography," If They Come In The Morning: Voices of                                                                   Resistance

We, together with our comrades and allies, friends and lovers, classmates and neighbors, make up that fight. You are, even now,  part of the coalescing "us" that rises in the "common fight for freedom." In my tradition, that is also the highest aspiration of the church, but you might call it community, coalition, or chosen family. Regardless, it is this commitment to the other, that full embodiment of all that we are for the purposes of the freedom of the person next to us-  even as we work to see more clearly how our self-understandings of our own embodiment are disciplined by powers of imperialism, racism, ableism, sexism, colonialism - that forms the foundations necessary for revolution, for freedom.  And it is in these foundations, I believe, that we also see the weaknesses of those disciplining forces. We are shown, as we reflect the desires for freedom of those around us, the limits of all those powers and principalities that would seek to establish our meaning for us.

This is what we see too in the life and works of Christ - a vision and a way of moving through the world that stays fixed on freedom, with a vision broader for that reality than simply the freedom of oneself.

So too then we come to resurrection. Many of you know this story, but in my first year at YDS I struggled deeply as the things I was learning and being exposed to shook foundational assumptions I had about who I was and what I had to offer the world. These things came to a head early in the Spring semester, and I found myself one cold Sunday night leaning against the stone wall outside Betts House sobbing and heartbroken. How could I go on? I wondered earnestly. What was the point of completing this program, or trying to preach, of doing anything when so much power and weight stood against me.

And then, to my utter surprise, came a thought - unbidden and more clearly than I had ever experienced in my life.

But the resurrection.

It rang out in my mind with a clarity I could not place, expanding and warming and settling in my soul.

But the resurrection.

It was so solid, so tangible, so present - this moment in time, this eternal moment, where God dismissed death out of hand. There in the lowest moment, the one most filled with doubt and despair, was this promise that it does not win. And more than a promise, a reality. A definitive statement. A grounding deeper than the roots of oppression and violence and hopelessness and governments.

It did not make everything better all at once. It did not absolve me of struggle and doubt. But I clung to its solidity. I placed my faith in it. And it carried me through. The resurrection is the fertile soil from which the seeds of hope sprout, racing upward, insinuating their tendrils and shoots into the places in the walls of despair where the mortar is weak. Slowly hope grows, and slowly the structures of injustice are destabilized, and in all of it we are offered the possibility of seeing life where before death seemed to have reigned supreme.

And so I offer you these words of hope, of life and resurrection, not because things are easy, but because things are hard. Because the shadows are building and the powers are coalescing and the message being blared at us is about domination and control.

These things are heavy. They are designed to crush us. And it is okay if right now it feels like they're succeeding. You are not always required to be strong.

But this is why you are part of an "us" - so that I can do the work on the days your hands are tired, and describe hope when you cannot see a way toward it. And you do the same for me, for zir, for them, for her, for him, for us.

There is life. There is resurrection. And you are DEEPLY loved.

in glitter and solidarity,

Me

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach - Name Games

Not a family by name or blood, but a kind of found family. (at least the way they were originally presented)  This time I’m tackling the Visored! And while I’m at it I want to address some of the broader thematic elements going on with their original character designs.  Buckle up, this is a long one... 

Hirako(平子) Shinji(真子)

Shinji’s name is actually kinda of a false start to this one.  His names read as “Flat-Child“ and “Real-Child“ but that’s keeping in mind that -ko(子) for “child” is actually just a really common suffix for names, and not one generally used to ascribe literal meaning.  (Typically because of its diminutive implications it denotes a female given name, but it applies neutrally to family names, and even generally is not uncommon in male names.)  So his name kind reads as “Flat Reality“ or “Flat Truth.“

But this one isn’t actually about the meaning of the words, it’s a different kind of name game.  As we all remember, when Hirako introduces himself to Ichigo’s class at Karakura High during his original entrance at the start of the Arrancar Arc, he writes his name on the board mirrored and mentions how he’s “good at doing things backwards.”  At the time it was a reference to him being a hollow (Remember that when Ichigo’s inner hollow was given a chapter cover, his “name” was Ichigo’s but written mirrored) and would later influence his zanpakutou, Sakanade(逆撫)

As an aside here, Sakanade(逆撫) has been kind of erroneously translated as “counter stroke” in English, which is technically accurate as a literal translation but is kind of needlessly vague; For one the word “Stroke” here specifically refers to the act of stroking as in petting, patting, or smoothing over, and not something like a sword stroke; secondly the “counter” here should read more obviously as “reverse,” “opposite,” or “inverted.”

Moreover, Sakanade(逆撫で) is an actual verb already, so it doesn’t actually need to be broken down in the first place.  The word actually means exactly what it sounds like as well as having a colloquial use as, “rub the wrong way.”  Yes, other than just meaning to literally “pet in the opposite direction” (as with petting a cat or dog from tail to head) it means “to irritate” or “to annoy,” (which the former action invariably does) and that is an apt description of Sakanade’s powers.

Anyway...  About Hirako’s name not being about the meaning: the joke is that whether you write the name forward or backwards 平子真子 -vs-  子真子平, you still get Shinji(真子) out of it.  As in, his name is still legible both forwards and backwards.  Plus both kanji, 平 and 真 have horizontal symmetry, so they don’t change when mirrored..

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Okay... let’s do an easier one...

Sarugaki(猿柿) Hiyori(ひよ里)

My personal favorite Visored, has a nice straight forward name Saru(猿) as I’m sure anyone amply familiar with anime knows means “Monkey” and the Gaki(柿) is the word for the fruit “Persimmon.”  The image of a monkey in a persimmon tree references an old folktale present in various east-asian cultures about a greedy monkey who cheats other animals before eventually receiving its comeuppance at the hands of the animals it has wronged.  In this case it’s reflective of Hiyori’s general image, sandles, track suit, decidedly tomboyish and unladylike; the “mountain monkey” is a poor, rural character type in Japan, not dissimilar to the American hillbilly of the Appalachia.

In that same vein, the name Hiyori(ひよ里) has a peculiar rural slant to it, in that it uses hiragana in place of the first component.  The ri(里) is a common place indicator in surnames meaning “village” or “hamlet” but like many Japanese surnames that reference landmarks like -kawa(川)“-river,” “-yama”(山)-mountain,” and “-da”(田)”-field,” the important part isn’t actually the locale but the descriptor preceding it; Which mountain?  Which river?  Which field?  Which village?  In the case of Hiyori, it’s not clear...  The fact that the village she appears to be named after doesn’t have a kanji again lends to this impression that, like the peasants of Soul Society’s Rukongai, the person who named her didn’t know how to read or write kanji.

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Muguruma(六車) Kensei(拳西)

I think this one has gotten pretty good visibility in the fandom already because of the relation with Hisagi Shuuhei.  The eventual explanation of Hisagi’s 69 tattoo would be that it was copied directly from Kensei’s, and that Kensei’s comes from a mix of his name Muguruma, and the fact that he was captain of the Gotei 13’s 9th squad. (Personally I don’t like this explanation, and I think there’s pretty reasonable cause to assume this was a later decision and not a part of Kensei’s original conception or design.)  But the reason behind that being Muguruma(六車) Mu(六) which is the Japanese numeral “6″ and Guruma(車) meaning “wagon” and later updated to mean “car.”  In the Turn Back the Pendulum sidestory, this name is played upon in how Kubo styled Kensei’s 9th squad as a Bousouzoku(暴走族) the term for a Japanese biker gang (although they often include sports cars), where the “Six Car” reading becomes emblematic of his gang.

There’s a lot about the Bousouzoku that is culturally specific to Japan, but much of the familiar American cliches do actually carry over.  One distinct aspect of how the Bousouzoku opperate however, is that they are predominantly a youth culture phenomenon, as any wide spread, organized criminal activity among adults quickly steps on the toes of the much better established Yakuza scene.  For this reason it is very rare for Bousouzoku to persist in direct group activity into their adult years, although often bikers become easy recruitment targets for Yakuza.

Kensei(拳西) is actually an odd one for me.  It’s both super straight forward yet somehow together really obtuse.  Ken(拳) for “Fist” and sei(西) for “West;“ both are pretty singular in their meaning, so it’s not like there’s any uncertainty to what each one means, but I can’t make heads or tails of the two together.  For one,  Ken(拳) is usually something you’d see put on the end of a compound, and when it’s used that way it tends to denote a kind of martial arts style or technique.  It might still be meant to read as “Western Fist” or essentially “Western [style] Fist” and Kubo just liked the sound of Kensei over Seiken.  It might be a reference to the fact that Kensei’s original design was largely reminiscent of a kind of military look and feel, with a combat knife for a zanpakutou, short hair, combat boots, and pants that look like they could be part of military fatigues. (the tank top sorta throws the look off, though.)  But this was a theme that was dropped by the time the Visored got reincorporated into the story after their long absence.

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Yadoumaru(矢胴丸) Risa(リサ)

...is another odd one.  Her surname, Yadoumaru(矢胴丸)  has pretty clear implications, Ya(矢) means “arrow” and dou(胴) means “hull” as in the part of a ship, and maru(丸) doesn’t actually have an explicit meaning.  The kanji does generally mean “round” or “whole” both in reference to a circle, but it is most notably a suffix used in naming both naval ships, and frequently boys.  Given the rest of the name the imagery seems clear, Yadoumaru(矢胴丸) is meant to read as “Arrow-Hull Ship.“*  And although the uniform has heavy ties to school girl aesthetics and fetishism (which in turn link to her preoccupation with adult books) the tie here actually seems to be to the origins of the Japanese school girl uniform as a modification of the European naval uniforms introduced to Japan in the 1800s.

*edit: I’m an idiot.  A Yadou(胴丸) is the sleeveless chest plate and skirt piece in traditional samurai armor, which also carries over into kendo sports armor.

Adding to this, the name RISA (sometimes romanized as LISA) being written in katakana and not kanji or even hiragana works together with the naval associations would seem to imply she’s of mixed birth?  Possibly the daughter of a foreign naval officer stationed in Japan, hence a Western name and a ship as a surname?  In fact, most Japanese ships would be named after some mythical figure or indeed named like a person, so the literal descriptor of “Arrow-hull” actually sounds like what someone would call a ship they didn’t know the name of, tacking “-maru” on to the end.

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Let me also take a moment here to complain about the fact that Kubo originally wrote Rabu(ラヴ) and Roozu(ローズ) as katakana, pretty clearly denoting them as the English words LOVE and ROSE and while those seem pretty implicitly like nicknames it also implied in conjunction with their designs that they were both foreigners.  So the fact that he retconned them to being nicknames based on more conventionally Japanese when he decided to make them previously SoulSociety shinigami names bugs me...  But that being said

Aikawa(愛川) Rabu(羅武)

Man, what is it with Kubo and black people and “love” gimmicks?  Zomarri’s Amor, and PePe’s The Love, Love’s whole thing...  The name Aikawa(愛川) means “Love River,” and Kubo’s clever shorehorning of kanji into the phonetics for Rabu that he’d already used for the nickname Love use  Ra(羅) for “silk,” but specifically a thin or sheer kind, and bu(武) for “warrior”/”soldier.“  The associations with sheer silk and negligee seem very intentional, so his name really is basically “flowing love, [sexy] silk soldier.“  And that’s it, it’s actually super straight forward.  I dunno why he looks like an unemployed slacker, in a tracksuit and sneakers, lounging around reading manga, though.

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Otouribashi(鳳橋) Roujuurou(楼十郎)

This might be my favorite as far as name games within the Visored.  The given name Roujuurou(楼十郎) means “Watchertower 10 Son;” Rou(郎) being an exceedingly common suffix in boys names meaning “son.” (this is incidentally how anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with Japanese knew for certain Yuushirou(四楓院) was a boy at first glance, where as a bunch of other people thought he was a girl.  In case any of you were around certain fandom circles for that whole drama...  More on him later though, because he’s got a fun name too.)  It’s not super clear if the arrangement here denotes the “Son of the 10th Watchtower [family],” or the “10th Son of the Watchtower [family].”

The surname Otouribashi(鳳橋) is a great little work of poeticism, where Outouri(鳳) is the Japanese name of the Chinese Feng(鳳) which in the most colloquial sense could be translated as “Phoenix,” but there’s a little more to it than that...

See, the Feng is itself the male half of the mated pair of mythical birds together called the Feng-Huang(鳳凰).  The Japanese pronunciation Outori is actually directly taken from Ou(王) meaning “King” and Tori(鳥) meaning “bird.”  The mythical Feng-huang is in fact king of birds, but more broadly represents a union of yin and yang, and is a common visual element of Chinese weddings evoking harmony.  As a part of this theme of unity it is said to share features of many different birds, and also of the 5 fundamentally opposed colors associated with Chinese daoism and fengshui: Red, Blue/Green, Black, White, and Yellow.  This particular feature has been tweaked over time to depict the Feng-huang as more broadly multicolored, and associated with the rainbow.  (it’s also the basis of the Pokemon Ho-oh, if that wasn’t apparent)  For a number of different mythological similarities, the Feng-huang have become erroneously thought of as “the Chinese phoenix,” but I’m not going to get into all that here...

So, getting back to the name, Bashi(橋) means “Bridge.”  The, again false equivalence based, but more easily understood translation of Otouribashi(鳳橋) thus being “Phoenix Bridge.”  But what is shaped like a bridge and directly associated with the Feng?  A rainbow.  His family name is just a really fanciful and kind of poetic reference to a rainbow.  In conjunction with the “Watchtower” referenced in the name Roujuurou(楼十郎) I’m tempted to take to the meaning of “10th [Floor of the] Watchtower Son” as it implies a high floor, and in the common mythological motif of rainbows as actual physical structures, a high tower would be the sensible entry point to a rainbow bridge. 

Also this is why he has a bird mask.

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Kuna(久南) Mashiro(白)

Let me just come right out and say that I haven’t got a damn clue on this one.  Mashiro(白) means “White.” Ku(久) means “long time,” na(南) means “South.”  She dresses like a super sentai character, specifically one of the original Himitsu Sentei Goranger team, and her mask is a nod to Kamen Rider, with its antenna and big round bug-eyes.  I don’t really see a connection with the name and the tokusatsu theme though.

Small aside, Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese TV and film that was originally named for its emphasis on special effects like camera tricks and editing in post, used most noticeably in children’s shows like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.  That distinction became less and less relevant as special effects became more widespread, and so it is now used mostly to refer to live-action costumed super hero shows.

Super Sentai is btw the source material for the American franchise, Power Rangers, from which Saban Entertainment originally bought the footage that they would cut together with their own original footage, and later from which they would buy the costumes in order to shoot their own shows from scratch.

Also of note is that Ishinomori Shoutarou, author of the original Cyborg 009, was also the original show creator of Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.  His work created the transforming(henshin) hero, the body suit and helmet aesthetic, and the heroic billowing scarf, effectively inventing the Japanese superhero almost single-handed.

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Ushouda(有昭田) Hachigen(鉢玄)  

Another funky one...  “[To] Exist [in] a Shining Field” might be the best way to read Ushouda(有昭田)?  Its really the U(有) that gives me trouble here, as it just means “Exist”/”Existance.”  And Hachigen(鉢玄) seems to read Hachi(鉢) meaning “bowl” and Gen(玄) meaning “deep,” “mysterious” and in certain contexts “occult.”  I’m not sure if that “deep” is really a physical deepness or just a sort of “profoundness” that would fall more in line with “mysterious” and “occult.”

Either way I think the general meaning is actually pretty clear, “bowls of rice from a shining field” evoke an image of kind of mythical field of magical produce, eating from which grants a kind of magical quality and sustenance.  In other words, his name is saying that Hachi is such a huge guy and so gifted at magic because he ate a lot of food that grants magic power.

I have no idea why he has the tux or the shaved hair though.  Stage magician?  Fancy gourmand?  But again then why the shaved head and the cross bones?  And Kubo did eventually come up with for him is strangely Balinese looking?  It seems reminiscent of Barong, king of spirits; A benevolent lion/bear monster that defends mankind from Rangda, the demon queen and master of blackmagic.  But apart from the superficial appearance and broad ties to magic, there’s not a lot really tying the two together.

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It’s hard not to just go off on all the weird little design choices, and loose ends, dropped plot points, and retcon’d details that surround the Visored in Bleach.  They really were just such a great concept utterly wasted by terrible pacing and some truly confusing priorities as far as publication goes, eithe ron Kubo’s part, editorial, or both...  But that’s a story for another time...

[sixth-light]

Chekhov’s Garden Shed

For the last four or five years, the RoL fandom has had a masterpost of Chekhov’s guns/unanswered questions from the series – the last version, with links to the original, can be found here. Past contributors include @deviantaccumulation, @the-high-meggas, @maple-clef, @uncommonsockeater​, and @flannelgiraffe, as well as others who I have doubtless forgotten. [If that’s you or someone you know, please speak up!]

Ben Aaronovitch has indicated that he views the various open questions of the series as less of a set of ‘guns on the mantelpiece’ (which must be taken down and fired before the series is finished) and more a ‘garden shed’ of things he thinks might be useful one day but could also end up rusting in the back after getting buried under other things. The fun is finding out which is which. (Thanks to @ilikesallydonovan for originally reporting this and chasing down the link!)

So, without further ado, here is the renamed Chekhov’s Garden Shed Of Stuff That Might Come Back Later. It’s separated into Answered Questions, Partially-Answered Questions, and Things Still Buried At The Back Of The Shed. I enthusiastically welcome comments, corrections, and missing items. Contains spoilers for all published RoL-related material including the novellas, comics, online snippets, and interviews with the author. A mirror of this version can be found at Dreamwidth – I will try and keep it updated as I update this one.

ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What the fox said to Abigail in WuG It was warning her about Chorley’s involvement with/interest in Skygarden. 

·        Peter’s father needs a few thousand for dental work; his mum is very keen to get the money so that he might re-launch his career. They’ve already done a gig (beaucoup money) for Ty. Will this be a vulnerability for Peter at some point? Apparently not; his dad’s band do regular gigs for the demi-monde, his dad has his new teeth, and Ty doesn’t seem to have been involved at all. Peter just has to live with his parents being better-informed about his work and new world than he might like! 

·        Will we see Awa Shambir again? Her of the suspiciously expensive hijab to be cleaning the offices (of a front organisation for an evil wizard) in… Goodbye Awa Shambir the Somali cleaning lady, hello Lady Caroline Elizabeth Louise Linden-Limmer, surreptitiously aerial scion of nobility. 

·        What was Molly doing in the tech cave? Is she on facebook/twitter/tumblr/a cooking forum? Looking up recipes? Has she discovered online shopping? Molly is active on Twitter gossiping and swapping recipes; it’s not a secret from either Peter or Nightingale, they just pretend not to know. 

·        Is that watch Nightingale gave Peter going to have any future relevance? Peter and Caroline had a watch-off in The Hanging Tree which Peter won, and the practitioner habit of wearing mechanical (and hideously expensive) watches enabled Peter to identify Chorley as the Faceless Man. 

·        Who is Mr. Nolfi’s mother? Where did she learn magic? and Have any other Newtonian wizards continued to practice in secret and/or trained apprentices in other parts of the country, without telling Nightingale? (Broader: was Nightingale mostly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain or really, totally, 100% wrong?) and What about the “female affiliates” of the Little Crocodiles? and How many wizards did Wheatcroft actually train and where are they now? Most of an answer to all of these: there’s a long-standing tradition of women practicing and teaching each other Newtonian magic dating back to before the founding of the official Folly. Mr Nolfi’s mother and the ‘female affiliates’ of the Little Crocodiles could well have come from this tradition. And Nightingale was totally utterly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain. Practitioners exist trained by ‘hedge’ wizards and witches, trained by Little Crocodiles, immigrated and bringing other traditions with them…that cat is not only out of the bag, it was never even in it. C.f. Patrick Gale and co. in Detective Stories and Lies Sleeping. However, many Little Crocodiles never really learned magic at all, or managed to brush it off after university as unimportant – unfortunately for them, Martin Chorley targeted them as tools and bait.

PARTIALLY-ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What happened at Ettersberg that caused magic to disappear? Answered in various interviews: magic didn’t disappear at Ettersberg as an objective thing, but a lot of practitioners were wiped out by the war and the Nazis, as well as a lot of genii locorum and other fae and magical people. Nightingale over-indexed on this because he was depressed and traumatised, and the magic ‘coming back’ is a combination of a new generation of gods, fae, and practitioners growing up, and Nightingale noticing the ones who were there all along.

·        Where are the notes Peter was promised? Peter has a deal with Nightingale about getting questions answered in return for magical progress; we haven’t seen him look at any old wizard’s notes specifically but he doesn’t seem to be waiting on them. 

·        What was Nightingale doing in the 70s that he managed to miss the original FM’s adventure in Soho? Working with the Met, apparently - he was called in when Woodville-Gentle got his at Lady Helena’s hands, but too late to determine whether it was magic. Seems like he just wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on around him!

·        What was Peter doing after he left school and while he was a PCSO? Why did he have problems during his A levels? Why did he join the police? Peter flatted and worked retail for a while after he left school (possibly while he was at school, too). We still don’t know what happened with his A-levels or what led him to join the police. 

·        Outwith the Met, does the Folly answer to the Home Office (or higher)? There are hints at that (cf. Walid in RoL), but nothing more and Who is Nightingale’s boss/who does Postmartin send his files to?  No direct answer to who they answer to beyond what we already knew, but we learn in THT that they have their own source of funding and aren’t an official part of the Met. Nightingale does not appear to have any direct supervisor beyond the Commissioner (or presumably they would have been informed/called when he was kidnapped in Night Witch). 

·        How do “Hedge Witches” practise magic; how does it differ from formal Newtonian magic and will we get to meet any? Are “Hedge Wizards” simply rusticated Newtonian wizards, or do they also have informally-developed skillz? Per the one we meet in Black Mould: hedge witches and wizards have informally-developed skills rather than just being rusticated Folly wizards, but how close their magic is to the style Peter is learning, it’s hard to say (because it was a comic.) Others are probably from the female tradition, ex-Newtonian wizards, etc – it’s a mixed group.

·        How old is Postmartin, exactly (Peter thinks he looks older and frailer than his Dad, who’s in his 70s, but that’s just his guess)? How did he get that job, and is he ‘just’ a civilian affiliate, like Walid, or something else? Who does he answer to, and what happens if/when he needs replacing? What’s his twitter handle?! Postmartin served during the Korean War, so must have been born between 1928 and 1936 (per @sparrow-wings) - he’s currently in his 80s, as it’s late 2015 in current book time. His Twitter handle might be “dyingforafag” (who Molly is chatting to in Body Work). 

·        What sort of experiments were the Nazis doing with vampires? (Do we want to know? Proooooooooooobably not.) and Can the Rivers be killed, if they’re badly injured enough far enough away from their river? What happens then? We found out in Lies Sleeping you can use ‘tinned vampires’ to kill and hurt genii locorum and discomfit practitioners, so that’s…you know…fine. Rivers can definitely be killed in general, c.f. the former Lugg whom the Methodists got to. It’s only functional immortality.

·        What’s the deal with Mr. Punch when Peter’s leaving London at the beginning of Foxglove Summer? Is he coming back? Is it only Peter who senses him? If so, why? and How are Lesley and Punch connected? And What powers does Lesley have now aside from face-changing, if any? Martin Chorley was trying to murder Punch, who was a god of chaos and vengeance, in order to 1) gain magical power 2) ????? 3) glorious white supremacy. Lesley agreed to help Chorley to get back at Punch, but may still have some connection to him, having survived possession by him; she certainly has magical powers of her own now, being able to change her face at will. They wanted Punch powered up so he’d be a better source of magic when taken down. Punch was still pinned to London Bridge, but was freed by Peter. He can be talked down by his daughter Walbrook, but for better or worse, he’s out and a player in London’s magical ecosystem. Let’s hope Peter’s right and he plays an important role in it.  

·        How and why did Isis become immortal, since just marrying a River doesn’t appear to do the trick? Kelly tells Tobi Winter in The October Man that sometimes the partners/spouses/better halves of Rivers do just pick up immortality, although even she as an elder River doesn’t know exactly how or why that happens. Probably it’s what happened to Isis. Why it hasn’t happened to George McAlister is an open question.

·        What does it mean that Michael Cheung is ‘the new guy in Chinatown’? and Is there something going on with Guleed (PLEASE NO) or is she just picking up things about the demi-monde via her friendship with Bev (…and others)? Michael Cheung is the latest of a long line of people who have responsibility for any magical shenanigans in London’s Chinatown, so 1) the Folly/Nightingale don’t have to worry about it and 2) Chinatown doesn’t have to be offended by their attempts to worry about it. He’s dating Guleed and teaching her cool martial arts magic. Whether she has other demi-monde contacts is not yet clear.

·        Who is Chorley’s mole within the Met?  Probably not Seawoll, Stephanopoulos, Richard Folsom, Guleed, or Carey, due to the security practices put in place during Operation Jennifer. But if not any of them….then who?

·        How/why the fox knows about [Skygarden and Chorley], (and why it would tell Abigail) According to Abigail, the talking foxes view themselves as secret agents, and someone like Chorley would naturally draw their attention. Why they do so and who they think they should be reporting to is still unclear (but may be elucidated in the Abigail novella).

STILL BURIED IN THE SHED SOMEWHERE:

·        What about the paintings of Molly and a blue-eyed elderly man who looks like Nightingale that Peter found in the coach house?

·        Are there really werewolves or just creepy magic trackers called werewolves? (I’m waiting for them to turn up.)

·        Why does Fleet have a captain of dogs? What do her dogs do? (Is this related to the werewolves? Were-dogs?)

·        What’s the actual connection between Wheatcroft, FM1 (Woodville-Gentle, if that’s him) and FM2? Did he train them both, or did W-G train FM2? NB: Unlikely to be directly answered now Chorley is dead.

·        What’s up with Abigail’s apparently useless protection charm?

·        Is there a special reason that Nightingale is called The Nightingale? (+ is he strong/good at magic because of hard work or something else.)

·        People I’d like to know more about: Nightingale’s uncle, David Mellenby, Nightingale’s family.

·        How much do senior officers in the Met really know about the Folly/Nightingale/magic? Is it well-known that Nightingale has been running the Folly since the 1940s?

·        How did Nightingale learn the language Father Thames speaks?

·        How much does Nightingale and/or Walid know/suspect about the deaging thing? How much of this aren’t he/they telling Peter?

·        How did Walid and Nightingale meet?

·        Are there aliens?

·        Was the 1911 decrease of odd magical activity in Herefordshire linked to Molly?

·        Why does Seawoll dislike Nightingale so viscerally?

·        Did Peter really drop architecture because of his draughtsmanship or was it something else? Is it related to why his chemistry teacher wrote that letter to the newspaper?

·        How active is the ex-wizard grapevine, really? Is the FM connected to it at all?

·        What was the Faceless Man actually planning on doing with his Crossrail lair? Why build it so close to the Folly?

·        What happens if one river tries to userp, unseat or in any way properly fight another? Are the results ‘mythic’?

·        Was Emma Wall really a waste of space? As a character she is a bit of a smoking gun - red herring, or something else? She was living next door to our two, and *in* one of the flats where… stuff was being put. Any happily waltzed out on d-day. Peter never really got a chance to speak to her - but Lesley did, and was the one to dismiss her from suspicion. Which is suspicious (to me)!

·        Although we found out after that he’s been around for much longer, Nightingale said that Father Thames was definitely the same person in 1914. So presumably they met then… In what circumstances?

·        Are fae genetically different to other humans? Are they human? What about changelings (like Zoe in FS) - and will she get in contact with Dr Walid? NB: Dr Vaughan is getting some genomes sequenced, so answers to this question may be forthcoming....

·        What did Lesley say to her family about what happened to her face? Do they know about magic?

·        Just how much of an age gap is there between Peter’s parents?

·        Why did the Virtuous Men blame the British for Ettersberg? What was the agreement between them that Nightingale was referring to?

·        Postmartin made a show of wanting to get Peter alone to have a ”big” talk with him. Yet, the discussion we, the readers have witnessed was relatively small. Nightingale only arrived to The Eagle and the Child an hour later. What was said between Postmartin and Peter in the meantime?

·        Peter’s narration at certain points (like Chapter 14 in Moon Over Soho) waivers between past and present tense, and he is occasionally referring to events in (presumably) later books. Just what point in the future is Peter actually narrating these books?

·        When Nightingale got an infection in MoS, how did Walid know? Did Molly phone him and do her Nightingale’s being an idiot silence, or was he just visiting anyway?

·        What does Molly do on her days off?

·        When Nightingale doesn’t go to Peter’s parents’ for Christmas, did his not wanting to leave Molly excuse have any truth to it, or did he just say that so Peter didn’t realise that Nightingale planned to work (and so Peter didn’t feel he should be missing his own Christmas to help)/ he had a reasonable excuse to not go to Peter’s family’s Christmas celebrations?

·        (tongue-in-cheek) What would have happened if Peter and Lesley had given Molly a Heston Blumenthal cookbook?

·        What’s the deal with Lady Helena (and Caroline) - are they connected to Chorley and/or Lesley’s face being healed?

·        What does Caroline want to escape from? What was she doing posing as a cleaning lady at the County Gard offices? 

·        What do the Virginian Gentlemen want, and how connected are they with the American government?

·        What’s their specific definition of a ‘shade’? 

·        When and how did MI5 learn about magic, and do they have any practitioners of their own?

·        Was Christina Chorley a practitioner, possessed, or something else? 

·        Who sold and bought Molly, Foxglove, 'Charlotte' (the Pale Nanny), and 'Alice' (the Pale Lady)? Where were Foxglove, Charlotte, and Alice before they were put in the oubliette and rescued by Woodville-Gentle and then Chorley? Where is the fifth girl who was with them before they were split up?

·        Is it important that Walbrook is also Isis of London? Are there any other Isis-figures in the UK and Europe (aside from Isis who is married to Oxley, and is probably an Isis of Oxford?)

·        Are there any other non-Mama-Thames tidal Rivers? What exactly is Lea’s relationship with Mama Thames, as they see it?

·        What WAS Chorley's master plan, aside from ‘become Merlin, Profit!’?

·        How is the Difference Engine linked to magic, and why? NB: May be answered in ‘False Value’, which is about computing to some degree

·        Who or what is killing talking foxes (as Peter discovers in The Furthest Station)? Why?

[ryqoshay]

Got any comedic NicoMaki headcanons?

Humorous headcanons? Of course, I have plenty. Most of them have already been covered in HtHaN and I’d like to believe many will find their way to HtHaM at some point, though translated to a fantasy theme appropriate version as warranted. However, many are situationally specific, so would only really make sense and/or be at their funniest in the context of the story; I believe reading them there would likely be the best way to experience them, even if that means I’m shilling my own fic.

Also, a lot of what I find humorous in my fics are not necessarily a NicoMaki specific headcanons. I am amused by alliteration and love finding ways to include it in my writing. I also enjoy hiding Easter Eggs in my writing; e.g. references to/lyrics of a song not covered in the anime or maybe not even in the LL franchise at all, movie quotes, inside jokes that only a select group might have a chance at catching – like my fellow denizens of Sukutomo or an old D&D group – or my ridiculous naming methods for some characters.

That all said, I suppose I have a few broader headcanons that I find amusing, so I suppose I can list some of them here. Please bear in mind that humor is by no means universal. Thus, what I personally find amusing may be something some or many readers merely accept as part of my story and are rather indifferent toward it.

I will never cease being amused by my headcanon concerning Maki’s insatiable libido. The idea that being drunk, sick or half asleep does little to diminish her desires amuses me, moreso as I’ve known a couple women actually like that and quite a number of men who claimed to be; whether or not they were is probably debatable. To that end, I see Maki as being more single-target sexual toward Nico while Nico is broader in her fancies of the female form, though unquestionably prefers Maki. I don’t believe I’ve covered that last bit in either of my NicoMaki fics yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s in my notes to address at some point. And I’d like to believe I can present it in a humorous manner.

While not NicoMaki specific, I am highly amused by bachelor-mode Maki. And I like the idea that Nico fusses over it partly because she wants Maki to be more responsible, partly because she was raise to do that kind of work herself and partly because she wants to spoil Maki by being the one to such things for her, as opposed to Maki’s penchant for just hiring help when things get too bad.

I’m amused by the headcanon that over time, both Nico and Maki come to actually enjoy their meaningless bickering. With Nico noticing more consciously and Maki more unconsciously that it helps build trust and establish boundaries and comfort zones while preparing them to better handle the inevitable bigger disagreements life will give them. They come to appreciate that they can both be honest with their opinions on things and can rest assure that no matter how heated their argument may become, they won’t lose their friendship over music, pizza toppings, house chores or whatever. Fears of losing their friendship due to romantic confusion is a different issue of course.

Another non-NicoMaki-specific amusement of mine is the Everyone Can See It trope, which is why I’ve included it in all of my fics thus far, not just my NicoMaki fics. As for HtHaN, Nozomi is likely the most obvious, but even less romantically inclined Honoka and Rin catch on, as do many of their fans and even rivals like Etsuko. Heck, spoilers for those who haven’t read it, but their own mothers had a bet going for years over who would eventually be the one to ask the other. Expect more scenes concerning this trope going forward because I love it.

On a similar topic, I’m amused by Maki being romantically dense, while Nico comes to terms with her feelings much quicker, though remains uncertain as to Maki’s feelings in return. I believe I’ve brought up my reasonings in my Author’s Notes before, but in general, I see Maki as having been raised with many traditional Japanese values and was likely warned about boys and whatnot, and being somewhat literal-minded, there ends up being a disconnect when it comes to her realizing she’s having those feelings for a girl. I’ve read some other cultural differences between Japan and the U.S, but I’m not sure how deep I wish to delve into them in a mostly happy fluffy fic. I also believe Maki is quite good a lying to herself, insofar as convincing herself that she “doesn’t have time to date” despite more-or-less dating Nico. Taken from personal experience, I can easily see a hyper-focused-on-studies, bachelor-mode Maki going a month or two without realizing she hasn’t seen seven of the former members of µ’s or possibly even her parents, but you can absolutely bet she’s still having dinner with Nico a couple times a week and crashing on the couch in Nico and Nozomi’s apartment regularly enough that her parent’s seldom worry about her whereabouts if she’s not home every night. Maki will go to great lengths to ensure that there always room on her calendar for time with Nico, again, all while claiming she lacks time to date. And that dissonance between Maki’s beliefs and reality amuses me.

On Nico’s side of things, I am amused by the deference she gives to Maki, specifically Maki’s opinion of her. Maki calling her gross annoys her far more than the same insult issued by Nozomi or Rin or some random individual on the net. And on the flip side, Nico may preen and pose when being praised for a particular performance or costume or whatever, but all Maki has to do is reach up to twirl her hair, blush and admit Nico might, perhaps, just this one time, be cute to send the twin-tailed girl’s heart into orbit. And when Maki starts being more honest with such admissions, the moon may not be far enough out to catch Nico.

Though I believe I’ve only touched on it in HtHaN at this point, I am amused by the headcanon that Nico is actually the one with a wider, initial appreciation of music. Certainly, she prefers the genres covered by the school idols with whom she is obsessed, but I don’t see her as the kind to openly reject other kinds, or at least not look down on those with different tastes; songs are for everyone, after all. It’s Maki with her initial, likely unintentionally elitist, dismissal of genres she doesn’t like, who has to learn to broaden her musical horizons; joining µ’s helps, but developing the tradition of sharing headphones with Nico does far more in this regard. I’d like to one day write a more in depth discussion/argument/whatever about music between Nico and Maki, and I do hope it ends up at least half as amusing as my ideas for it already are to me.

So there we go, a somewhat decent list of things I find amusing about NicoMaki. As with previous similar lists, this is in no way all-inclusive. Short of rereading all of my own work as well as that of several other authors I enjoy before delving through the depths of my WIP warehouse and notes, it’s what I can come up with on the spot. But here’s hoping it is a satisfactory answer to Anon.