#but there’s always an inherent angst to me in like. the loss of identity?

[synnthamonsugar]

Synnth’s Fic Rec Friday ….......... #3!

Inspired by the fic rec listed started by @a-driftamongopenstars and the Friday fic rec series by @flowers-of-io. I thought I would throw my hat into the ring with my own weekly(ish) whenever I feel like it series. (Tag: Synnth Recs)

Newness of Breath

By @scribonia-art

Read on AO3

Fandom: Destiny | Rating: General | Characters: Original Hive Lightbearer & Original Hive Ghost | Word count: 4,043 | Warnings: No archive warnings (see chapter notes for additional CWs)

A Hive Wizard awakes from the thoughtless sleep that had been death and she experiences the world for the first time. A Ghost is panicking because she had not been expecting an idle experiment to work.

If you've followed this series so far, you know I love Destiny fanfic that engages with the conventions of Destiny storytelling — most notably the venerable lore book, backbone of Destiny narrative, unparalleled for its ability to establish wide swaths of world-building, poignant character pieces, and memorable standalone works of fiction in short-form.

Newness of Breath leans into the style of Destiny grimoire to brilliant effect, delivering an unforgettable study of the Hive Lightbearer, Melammu, in around 4k words and 8 chapters.

There is sun on my skin. Dappled by thin scrub and short trees that grow on a rocky brown crag above me. Smears of white against the incredible blueness of the sky and the hot white orb that stings my eyes but delivers such sweet warmth that soaks down into my flesh. I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun. I feel its embrace.  If this is what Being is like, I am glad to Be. 

I'm a sucker for newly-revived Lightbearer stories. As someone who enjoys the narrative arc of the bildungsroman, but cannot stand any of that teenage angst stuff, Guardians, as a concept, are tailor-made for me. Imagine: An adult who has to figure out their identity and place in the world ... and they have an enigmatic little companion and cool powers. It's perfect.

I love the way this fic handles being newly born into a strange new life, the way it delivers the perspective character's inner monologue and the physicality of existence. Even something as simple as breathing or enjoying the sunshine is elevated from Melammu's point of view.

"I can't believe I just did that," says the thing as it frets above me, spinning in its many smooth chitin parts around its little core of silver and luminosity. It darts to and fro as if the motion would help it find its answer. I watch it from my rocky perch, blissful in the sun's warmth, claws folded together in my lap as I wait for it to speak to me. With no teeth or tongue I wonder how it speaks at all, but maybe its words are also new things like sparks struck from between unseen ineffable objects.

But the story of a new Lightbearer is never only that. The Ghost is always the second half, or should be. The terrified surprise felt by Ghost as their decision to revive a hive wizard settles in, pit against the curious naïveté of their ward makes for a fascinating dynamic.

"... what if I don't defend myself?" "They'll just kill you anyway." I look down at my claws and the Ghost cradled in them.  "Oh."

Loss of innocence as the main character comes to terms with the reality of their station is a staple of every "coming of age" story and this one is no different. I love how this fic grapples with the injustice faced by hive lightbearers, who, as with any other, are born with no inherent agendas or loyalties, and casts a spotlight on the hypocrisy of those who judge Guardians by their pre-Light lives.

Still, Melammu and Ghost care for each other, despite their strange and frightening circumstances and the acknowledgement that a mistake was made. I love the tenderness and compassion with which they treat each other, despite - or because of - their hardships.

We move at night. Fewer of my estranged cousins-in-the-Light are present in the darkness and, though the crisp moonlight shines brightly on the white of my frilled carapace, it is harder to see us.

The proceeding chapters are vivid and heartwrenching, and build to an emotional culmination that I dare not reveal here because it should only be experienced firsthand. (This is your cue to go read it now.)

Destiny is very much a story about devotion, duty and sacrifice, played out on cosmic scale but also in the interpersonal relationship between every Guardian-Ghost pair, and this story is exemplary of that most tender and bittersweet dynamic. As well as larger questions of what it means to exist, the meaning of life, and what to do with the life one is given.

Final rating: Will be thinking about this one forever/10

[theshadowrealmitself]

Something something something angst about the mantle of hero identities getting passed around to new people, the duty of other heroes to accept this because it’s important that civilians keep feeling safe, villains being the only ones to truly get to mourn the original heroes and choosing to step out of their villain identities because they liked fighting the person not the hero, etc etc etc

[bigskydreaming]

Dick has said it out loud explicitly, to Damian, that the mantle of Robin was his to pass on. Why do people still feel entitled to talk over him?

IMO? For the exact same reasons that people harp on so much about it being a retcon that Robin was Dick’s mother’s nickname for him and that originally he based the name on Robin Hood. To be perfectly honest that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in regards to the fact that either way the point is still that Dick created Robin and it wouldn’t exist without him.....but the constant attempts to minimize its emotional significance to Dick and any kind of special attachment to it that he has and that the others can’t claim to share....

IMO these are just attempts to distance Dick from the mantle and make him seem less relevant or important to its very existence....freeing up people to focus on the importance of Robin as a symbol and a mantle to everyone else but without having to attribute any special credit or significance or respect to Dick as the originator of the mantle and the character that the other Robins are literally the legacy characters of.

It’s pretty annoying and very shortsighted IMO as actually, emphasizing the connection Robin has to Dick’s first family just enhances the weight and poignancy of Dick ultimately giving each of the other Robins his blessing when he didn’t have to and thus literally choosing them as his new family even without having to rely solely on a connection to each other via Bruce.

Of course people don’t seem to really want to do that either....given how rarely Dick’s blessing even gets acknowledged amid all the angst about who replaced who and who was fired and who wasn’t. It’s kinda ironic...I know so many fans HATE the version where Bruce fires Dick and so whatever they can not to acknowledge it and dismiss it as a retcon....and the ironic thing is? I get it. I totally see why it’s not something they want to run with and to be quite honest I can take it or leave it myself. I like exploring versions of events where Dick was fired, I like exploring ones where he wasn’t. Both have room for digging and delving imo.

My only beef with people who are soooo loud and quick to always dismiss the firing as just a retcon that doesn’t count.....is that in the pre Crisis version of events where Dick voluntarily gave up Robin and decided it was time to move onto a new identity....he gave Robin to Jason himself. The significance of that version of events isn’t JUST that it was Dick’s own choice to move to a new identity and that there was no conflict between him and Bruce about it...it was equally of significance that the Robin mantle was still viewed as inherently his, made by him, and his and his alone to pass on to a successor.

There is no version where Dick gave it up voluntarily but had no role in choosing Jason. The very premise of that mix and match honestly makes no sense because why make such a fuss about Bruce not having overstepped and fired Dick when it was never his place to say what he could claim as his identity or mantle on his OWN (fire him as his partner, sure that was always Bruce’s right, but tell Dick he couldn’t be the hero persona he created for himself? Fuck off Bruce LOL).

But my point is that mix and match makes no real sense because why preserve Bruce’s character from stepping between Dick and the mantle he created to honor his first parents....only to then turn right around and have Bruce still treat it as a Wayne family hand me down that Dick had outgrown when it was only EVER a Grayson family hand me down whose only connection to the Wayne family was through Dick being a member of both families and a bridge connecting them?

Whether Bruce fires Dick as Robin and gives it to Jason or JUST gives it to Jason without Dick making that choice....the one isn’t any better than the other because in both cases the actual offense is still the same: it was never Bruce’s to do ANYTHING with other than what Dick wanted done with it. Take on a new partner? Sure. But give him the mantle made of Dick’s work, Dick’s past, Dick’s every action as Robin? Nope.

So really the mix and match only serves one real purpose, for anyone who is intent on dismissing the firing as just a retcon but sees no need to uphold Dick choosing to give Robin to Jason instead of Bruce doing that...when Bruce doing that is literally part of the exact same retcon they’re so intent on discarding!

The only real purpose that mix and match serves is to keep Bruce centered in the Robin succession with his choice to give it to Jason being the basis of Jason associating Robin with Bruce. It keeps Bruce as the person Jason thinks of and feels connected to every time he thinks of why he’s Robin at all....because Bruce is the one who gave him the symbol that was already well known and full of meaning when Jason stepped into those shoes.

And then of course at the same time the mix and match also ‘lessens’ Bruce’s offense to Dick in taking Robin against his wishes WHILE also suggesting that Dick has less basis of feeling resentful of Bruce passing it on to someone else without his say so because it’s not like he was using it anymore right? And that was his own choice right?

But so what if it was? That doesn’t make it any less his creation and his legacy. It doesn’t make it any less a Grayson family connection and somehow more a Bruce Wayne family connection.

And that’s my beef. That’s the big irony of how flat out counter intuitive the mix and match retcon thing is and always has been. It only accomplishes half its objective....keeps the later Robins more connected to Bruce via it than they are to Dick via it....because it ultimately still runs through Bruce. But it fails to accomplish its secondary objective simply because refusing to acknowledge that Robin is intrinsically tied to Dick Grayson and not Bruce Wayne like....doesn’t actually make it any less true.

And that’s why imo the question should never have been “does your fic go with the version where Dick gives up Robin or the retcon where Bruce fires Dick” ...no, the right question in my mind should have always been “does your fic go with the version where Dick gives Robin to Jason or the retcon where Bruce gives it to Jason.”

And here’s the sticking point:

People always point to Bruce and Dick’s initial connection as the basis of their entire Dynamic Duo partnership. They understood each otrher via their parallel experiences losing their parents to murder. Bruce saw himself in a young Dick Grayson and he wanted to help Dick figure out a way forward to life after his parents’ death by drawing upon his own experiences.

But at the same time, they aren’t the same. Even with Bruce guiding Dick forward through his trauma and grief by following a map made of his own prior experiences, the end result was not the same for both....but it still used some of the same road marks on their respective journeys.

And this is why the Dynamic Duo were always emphasized as partners, as complementing each other, balancing each other....things they could only do because they were not the same and even using similar coping mechanisms to deal with their PARALLEL tragedies....produced entirely different results.

Both used their tragedies, their traumas, their PAIN to fuel their pursuit of justice and desire to help protect people. Both built new personas for themselves to use in their shared missions here....personas which embodied what they wanted to accomplish in these guises while at the same time reminding them why they were doing this.

But the personas they created ended up looking very different despite being born of similar crucibles...because they prioritized different things....and because they were honoring different people.

No matter how much Bruce and Dick have in common due to circumstances they are very different people who are both products of the families and places they come from....and thus even when using similar PROCESSES to build something out of their parallel tragedies, what emerged from the fires once they were done creating from their traumas.....don’t look the same. Aren’t interchangeable.

And neither are their creators.

Bottom line, it in my opinion flat out does not work to attribute more connection to Robin and the succession of that mantle to Bruce than Dick.....because Bruce would never, COULD never create that specific mantle out of his grief and pain any more than Dick ever would or could have created Batman out of his. Because they are too different. They needed different things out of their journeys forward, they were commemorating having had different journeys behind them, they were walking a shared path side by side but you can’t switch the clothes they made to wear going forward anymore than you can switch their footprints beneath their feet....they don’t fit into what the other made because it wasn’t made BY them and it wasn’t made FOR them.

So riddle me this, Batfandom: how does it make sense to focus on their parallel tragedies and how they moved forward from those in similar ways and on a shared trajectory, emphasizing how this is the entire basis of the Batman and Robin partnership from its very inception.....

Only to then view the role Bruce’s grief, his loss, his pain played in birthing the Batman mantle as something sacrosanct, undeniable....these things go hand in hand, there’s no separating them even when others end up wearing the Batman mantle as well, even through multiple generations....

But at the EXACT SAME TIME....treating Dick’s grief, HIS loss, HIS pain and the role all THAT played in birthing the Robin mantle....as something that barely comes up as a footnote the second you put the costume on anyone other than Dick? Something the others never even feel inclined to THINK about when reflecting on the mantle they’re wearing and where it came from and why it exists?

Why is the one rated as so less significant than the other....if the entire point of Batman and Robin is that both heroes were born from the ashes of tragedies so similar they understood each other in ways most other mentors and sidekicks never came close to?

How’s that work exactly?

Look, you’ll never catch me arguing that Bruce isn’t and shouldn’t be central to the Batman mantle, mythos, succession, etc. And I loved Dick as Batman too. But it ultimately should always come back to Bruce no matter how many people add to it in their own ways. Because it’s not just about what Bruce made.....it’s why he made it that matters too. The act of creating Batman is as important to the story of Batman as the created Batman.

And those very same reasons are precisely why Bruce shouldn’t be regarded as central to the ROBIN mantle, succession, etc.

To dismiss the Graysons as not being definitive to the greater Robin mythos is to say Thomas and Martha Wayne bear no special significance to the Batman mythos.

I love that being Robin connects these siblings and ties them all together as part of the same family. I love it being a shared family tradition that encompasses all of them and marks this family of choice as having been specifically chosen by not just it’s patriarch but each other.

But it’s not Bruce’s family tradition and it’s not a Wayne or even a Batman hand me down.

Because it doesn’t even come from Bruce’s family.

It comes from Dick’s. He brought it with him. It’s what connects him to what came before life with Bruce because as everyone knows but so many people often forget to give MEANING....

Dick Grayson, for as much as he is Batman’s son and is undeniably Bruce’s family, had a life of his own before he ever met Bruce.

He didn’t begin with Bruce Wayne. He didn’t come from Bruce Wayne.

And neither did Robin.

[sirowsky]

The Flowers Always Know

Description: When a mad scientist uses you as an experiment while you’re on holiday, the Heroics only just manage to save you. And in your recovery you become very close to the leader of the group. (Slow burn)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Language, Angst.

Link to Masterlist

Comment: This was painful to write. If you don’t do well with angst, I recommend skipping this chapter. BUT - there is a happy ending!

Chapter 30

  “Ah, there you are. We’ve been waiting. Now, before you try anything, I have fail-safes in place in case you try and stop me, and they all end in tragedy. Like this nasty little explosive underneath their chairs, for instance.”

  You stood frozen to the spot, trembling with fear, and not an inkling of it for yourself.

  “Don’t… Don’t do this.”

  “Not to worry, my sweet. With the help of your data, I’ve been able to streamline the process. Theoretically, I should be able to directly transfer powered cells from Marcus into his daughter. The familial DNA should help alleviate any foreign-cell attacks. Though, I’m afraid it will still be painful.”

  “My data? Someone’s been feeding you my medical information?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t think you realise just how many people in this world are interested in levelling the playing-field. I mean, how’d you think I got out of prison?”

  While he spoke, he made the final calculations to start his experiment, and as the machines started whirring and clicking, your fear escalated into full-blown panic.   They were both unconscious, for the time being, but you knew that once the pain started, they’d be forced awake. You didn’t actually remember that from your own experience with this experiment, but you still knew that it was true.   You sneaked a ghost hand towards one of the machines and unhooked a tube that was connected to Missy’s arm, at the other end, trying to buy time.   The machine started beeping to indicate that something was wrong.

  “Now, now, sweetie. Don’t go sabotaging this, or your precious family might not come out of it quite as alright as both of us would like.”

  As he walked over to reconnect the tube, he tapped on something on his belt, and you recognised an identical device to what the Inventor had used to protect himself against powers. Someone in HQ had betrayed you all, and the feeling burned through you with an aftertaste of hate.

  “My family are not your fucking toys!”

  The room shook significantly, and he looked around with real wonder in his eyes.

  “That’s impressive. See, didn’t I give you a wonderful gift?”

  “No. I would’ve preferred to stay ordinary and dull for the rest of my life if it had meant not having to live through that shit.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that? Look at where you are. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t taken you. You should be more grateful.”

  “I do see where I am, and I would rather have never met them at all, if it meant they were spared from this.”

  “People are inherently selfish, which is why I don’t believe you. Now, let’s get started. And a word of warning, my dear – if you disrupt the process once it’s already started, you’ll kill them both. And I doubt if you could bring both of them back from the dead without killing yourself.”

  He hit a button on the computer keypad, and the Machine connected to Marcus came alive, and started siphoning out powered cells from his blood-stream.   He woke up after just a few seconds, unable to move at all, and you could see the pain in his eyes.   Helpless to do anything else, you reached out to him with your ghost energy, trying to let him know that you were there and that you were trying to save him. You could feel him trying to use his powers, but the machine disrupted it, and caused him even more pain.

  “Please, stop!”

  The second machine, the one connected to Missy, started whirring and moving, and your blood instantly flipped from freezing to boiling.   You couldn’t stand the thought of her even knowing this amount of pain, much less being forced to suffer it, for god knows how long.   And as she woke up, and that pain became visible in her eyes, something old and sure and endlessly powerful took over your mind.   There wasn’t a single thought, not so much as an echo of anything rational or logical or sensible. The maternal instinct was all-powerful in a way that nothing else could compare to. And the power it created together with your abilities, was beyond belief.   The house disappeared, and so did Dr. Prince and all of his equipment, and you could feel the moment that both Marcus and Missy’s hearts stopped beating.   But it didn’t frighten you, because you were a healer.   Moving up to crouch in between them, where they now laid on the bare ground, you took one of their hands in each one of yours, and exchanged your life for theirs.   You had hoped to be able to stay alive long enough to see their faces one last time, but the energy required to heal them, combined with what you’d already spent, was too much, and you needed the single grain you had left, for one last thing. One small, but so very important thing.   You fell away without seeing anything but the blue sky above you.

  It was okay, though. They were worth it.

 ***

  Marcus was working in his office when Missy came to find him. It had been a long day, and he was so tired he could have fallen asleep sitting up.   But he knew that even if he were to lay down in a soft and cool bed right then, he still wouldn’t have succumbed to that blissful nothingness.   He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a time, since the incident, and he was long past exhausted.

  “Dad, are you coming?”

  She came to get him every day after school. She had for the past month, and he didn’t have the heart to ask her not to.

  “Yeah. I’ll be right there, sweetheart.”

  She turned and headed off to medical, and he got up to follow her. A part of him wanted to turn around and run in the opposite direction. A part of him wanted to never have to set foot in that fucking room again.   But that was just the fear. The love was so much stronger, and it relentlessly dragged him back there, day and night, no matter how badly it hurt.

  Missy was already hopped up on the bed, sitting cross-legged by your feet, when he walked in. She was so hopeful still. So positive. All Marcus could feel was pain.   Every time he saw you, he saw those moments. Those short, few seconds that had taken everything away.   He’d seen it in your eyes just before your power erupted. The complete lack of thought as your mind reverted to pure instinct, to protect your daughter. His daughter.   He’d seen how you’d dispatched the entire house, and everything that threatened your family, into one of the dimensions that you had access to, a feat that had almost completely drained you.   Then, he’d woken up to seeing you fall, and in his heart, he’d known that you couldn’t be saved. Not this time. But he’d still tried. He’d tried so hard that Missy had eventually been forced to be the one to beg him to stop before she lost him too.   He’d never screamed so loud for so long before.   And yet, somehow, that still hadn’t been the worst part.   That had come the next morning, when medical had informed him that you’d been examined that day because of nausea, and that they’d discovered that you were pregnant. The timeframe had matched that day in his office, when your bodies had reacted so differently, and you’d cried out of pure love for him.   It had broken parts of him that he had never even known before.

  He walked silently to your side, and took your burned right hand between his. He tried not to look at your face, and the tube that disappeared down your throat, the slight blue tinge to your eyelids, and the way your skin hugged your collarbones.   When the team had reached the disappeared house, they’d wasted no time in getting the three of you back to HQ, and you’d been rushed here immediately. They’d found residual brain-activity, and the decision had been made to keep you alive artificially, in case your powers had somehow been able to protect you. In case you could have found a way to cling to some thread of life and hold on until your strength could be returned.   There had been no change in your condition since that day, and if it hadn’t been for Missy, he would’ve already asked them to just let you rest in peace.

  “Hey, alma. We’re here. So, today’s story comes from Noodles. He managed to get out-witted by a squirrel, and it is too funny not to share.”

  She told you one story every day. Something that had happened during her day that she knew you would’ve wanted to hear about, and would’ve listened animatedly to, before enthusiastically sharing your thoughts about it.   Marcus didn’t hear the stories. He came and sat with her while she talked, because that’s what she’d asked him to do, but for him, being there wasn’t about hope. It was about survival. He didn’t want to hope, didn’t want to give himself that potentially crushing second wave of loss. But he also needed to see you. He needed you, and no amount of pain could crush that feeling.   Since they didn’t have a home anymore, they were living at HQ during the weeks, because it was closer to Missy’s school than Anita’s house. But they still stayed with her over the weekends.   Marcus made Missy dinner every evening, and sat with her to help her with homework or watch some show before she went to sleep, trying to keep her life as close to normal as these circumstances would permit.   But as soon as she fell asleep, he came right back here, curled up next to you on the bed and cried until there were no more tears, and sleep forced itself over him.

  This night was no exception. He walked in on legs that were impossibly heavy, refusing to look at the machines and the tubes, focusing on your hands and the parts of your skin that were bare and unbroken by needles.   It was so strange that your body was unharmed, that there wasn’t a mark on you to signify the violence and destructive nature of that incident. You were still perfect, even in death.   Wrapping one arm over your chest, careful not to disturb the breathing apparatus, he took his usual place on your left side, burrowed his face into your neck and breathed in the familiar scent of your shampoo.   He was so tired that the tears fell without the laboured breathing, or shockwaves of grief rocking his body, the way it usually did. He just laid there, completely drained of will and hope and desire, waiting for the restless, nightmarish sleep that would inevitably drag him under.   A sudden incessive beeping of one of the machines, tried to gripe at his attention. He closed his eyes and burrowed deeper into your neck, certain that if he turned his head towards it, all it would tell him would be that the time had come. That your body had finally weakened to the point where not even artificially sustained organs was enough to keep you there.   He hadn’t wanted to hope, and he’d thought that he didn’t have any left, but as he laid there and waited for the machines to declare your final departure – he realised that he had. A small part of him had clung to some imagined scenario where you could’ve somehow clawed your way back, and now that part was dying with you.   It felt as though someone had shrunk his lungs. He struggled to draw in more than tiny gulps of air, and his arm involuntarily tightened around you, pulling you into his chest, as though your lifeless body could somehow free him.

  A hand found his arm, and held it lightly, but he didn’t look up to see who it was that was trying to soothe him. He didn’t want to be soothed, he wanted to drift off into the nothingness with you.   But then the doors to the room opened, and he could hear it. So, why hadn’t he heard the person that was holding his arm, when they entered?

  “Oh, my god… Marcus, look.”

  It was one of the twins, and the tone of her voice made something inside of him wake up.   He pulled his head away from your neck, and the first thing he saw was your hand, holding his arm. The touch was light because it was weak, not soothing.   Not daring to believe it, he moved his arm, so he could take your hand, and when you squeezed it, ever so faintly, he fell apart.   He sobbed and hugged you, and tried to tell you how much he loved you and how grateful he was, but the shudders and trembles that kept coursing through him made it all garbled up and unintelligible.   He never heard the twins working around you, never felt them change the equipment, after they’d removed the breathing machine, and made sure that you could breathe on your own, before pulling the tubes out of your throat.   He didn’t notice Anita and Missy walk in, however much time later, but he felt them hug him, and he wanted to thank them, to tell them how much he loved them too, but the relief was so overwhelming that all he could manage was grunts and sobs.

  They let him cry himself into absolute exhaustion. He was so tired that it didn’t take long. He fell asleep still cradling you to his chest, and they didn’t have the heart to lift him out of the bed.

***

  A couple of days later, Marcus was sitting on the side of your bed, just staring at you while you ate.   You had to eat carefully and slowly, since your throat was still sore from the tube, but you were already strong enough to sit up in the bed, and eat by yourself.   You’d been expressly forbidden from trying to speak, until your throat was less swollen and irritated, or you might permanently damage your vocal cords. But it didn’t bother you. You and Marcus knew each other so well that your eyes and expressions were enough to let you know what the other was thinking. And Missy was enjoying getting the opportunity to blab incessantly without you being able to stop her with a well-placed quip.   You knew that big conversations would have to be had, in the near future, and while you could feel how nervous and anxious Marcus was about that, you really weren’t. There were things you needed to tell him, things you needed to try and help him understand, but none of it was bad. Not from your perspective, at least.

  You finished eating, and took a few long and slow sips of water. You could tell that there was something on Marcus’ mind, and when you put the glass down, you shot him a look to say ‘tell me’, and he sighed.

  “It’s not… I don’t wanna talk about it until you can actually talk to me.”

  You just kept giving him the same look, crossing your arms in front of your chest to let him know that you weren’t leaving the subject alone any time soon. Whatever this was, it was causing the wrinkle in between his eyebrows to deepen, a clear sign that it was something that hurt him, and he’d been hurting for so long already, it was time for him to start getting some of it out.   He saw your persistence, and he knew you weren’t gonna let it go. His eyes dropped to his own hands in his lap, and he took a minute to consider how to phrase it.

  “They told me… about the… baby.”

  His eyes were still downcast, so he didn’t see your face soften, or your eyes turn warm. But you wanted him to keep talking, so you made no effort to get his attention yet.

  “And I know that you did what you did to save us, and that you couldn’t have made it a priority right then, and I don’t blame you for doing what you had to. I just can’t help but think… what if that was it?”

  His hands were trembling slightly, but you couldn’t tell if it was with sadness or fear. His voice seemed so small.

  “What if that was our only chance? I’ve never felt the kind of… loss… that I felt when they told me that. The loss of what could have been, of the possibility. And I just…”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I had no idea how much I wanted that baby, until it was already gone.”

  He finally looked up at you, and blinked a couple of times with confusion as he took in your expression. Because you weren’t sad. You were smiling.   You picked up the notepad Amaire had left you for answering medical questions, and scribbled down the few words required to explain yourself, before turning it around to show him.

  --The baby is safe—

  You watched his eyes as he read those words, staring at them for several seconds as though he couldn’t understand them. And then his eyes snapped back to yours and there were a million questions in them, but he had no idea where to start or probably even what most of those questions were yet.   So, he just kissed you instead, and the depth of emotion that he poured into that kiss, had you both in tears.

Authors’ Note: I love criticism, don’t be shy to let me know if there’s anything you like/don’t like/have questions about.

@blueeyesatnight​ @farfromjustordinary @allmyspideys @hrk-fic-recs @strawberryperegrine @lucrezia-thoughts @computeringturtle @sarahjkl82-blog

[cblgblog]

Clois or Steggy?

Wow, so here’s the thing. I have shipped Clois soooo much longer. Like, at least 3 times as long as I’ve shipped Steggy. I’ve shipped them through soooo many different iterations. They were my childhood version of a fairytale couple. Yes, I was a nerd even as a child, it’s a thing. So Clois has so much history and it evokes so many more feelings when it comes to like, childhood and nostalgia. And because they’ve been through so many iterations, my brain associates them with soulmates who’re destined to be together in every lifetime, so there’s that.

Steggy is...so much the opposite of that. Like, really. I didn’t ship Steggy until The Avengers came out, because I hadn’t watched Cap 1 until right before then. Steggy reminds me of a very specific time in my life, where Clois is, yes it’s childhood, but I’ve also had a version of Clois to watch or read pretty much nonstop my entire life. Steggy, I firmly believe I fell in love with them because of Chris and Hayley. Don’t get me wrong. So much of their characterization comes from the script, and their parts of the script were great, so there was going to be awesomeness there regardless of who got the roles. But Hayley and Chris, the chemistry there...I cannot see anyone else playing those roles. Which, to be fair, the MCU is built on continuity in a way DC isn’t. We’re all used to different DC people running around in different universes. But even if the MCU wasn’t structured as it is, it's so hard for me to picture Steve and Peggy as played by anyone else. Those actors embodied those characters, made me fall in love with them as they fell in love with each other.

And also, because Clois were already married in the comics when I started reading them, and on the show I was watching at the time, Clois is comforting in a different way than Steggy. Clois always feels inevitable, destined to happen, even if  we’re at a point in the story where they’re rivals, she hates his guts, secret identity in the way, all that. They always feel like they will get their happy ending. Steggy...did not feel like that. For the longest time, and anyone even vaguely familiar with them who shipped them from the start knows why. They were beautiful, but in such a tragic way. They were not the main canon couple in the comics. We watched him bury her for god’s sake. Because of the nature of their story, and what was going on in my life during the time most of it unfolded, they’re associated with pain and longing and missed opportunities. There’s so much more angst inherent in their story.

But then Endgame came out, and the message of that story completely changed. There’s still pain and loss and angst, but then there’s hope and second chances, and sometimes if you’re patient enough, after all the bad things, you somehow get your happy ending, with the person you’re meant to have it with. It’s just...ugh.

So, to answer the question 17 paragraphs too late...Steggy. Because I consume far more Steggy content today than I do Clois. Because their whole rollercoaster of a thing resonates with me differently at this point in my life than Clois does. I adore them both, Clois will always be Clois, for all the above reasons that I’ve loved them basically my whole life, but Steggy hit me hard enough that I’ve had to write hundreds of pages of content for them, in a relatively short time. 

So, one word answer becomes an essay, full geek/romantic on display for everyone, ugh. Both are fantastic, they have so many similarities...but at the same time they are so incredibly different for me personally, and almost impossible to compare, but here, compared anyway.

Anon or not, make me choose between 2 things.

[captjameshookthoughts]

So this is something from the THING I am writing that’s actually from nearly the very beginning ad not just random fluff or angst or whatever. Makes a change

The water was cold and oddly still, each moment felt like it took an eternity to pass. This had to be the end, James thought, at last he could rest. He had fought, like he had so many times before, and he had lost like he had lost before. Unlike his previous losses, his previous failings, this defeat felt different. Final, he thought. The end. In the water, bleeding, the incessant tick-tock that had plagued him growing ever closer and the imposing silhouette of his ship fading further away. James Hook was not afraid. He had been afraid for so long, afraid of death, afraid of being alone. But now, as his end was coming, he was not afraid. The crocodile would take him. Of that, he was sure. The crocodile was bigger than any crocodile should be, big enough to swallow a grown man whole. Big enough that no hunter on the island had dared try to make a prize of it. It had haunted James for a very long time, James had once sought to kill the beast, he had come close to doing it too. This animal, like so many other entities in Neverland, was aligned with Pan - or at the very least controlled by him. It had been this way ever since James had lost his right hand, and now the beast was upon him, ending what had been started so long ago.

James closed his eyes, waiting for the jaws to encompass him, to break through his bones, destroy him completely and free him from this cursed life. Then, just as the beast opened wide, Neverland said 'No'. A huge wave grew beneath and crashed against the sandy shore, bringing both James and the crocodile with it. James coughed, the salty water exited his body just as violently as it had entered, and suddenly he was enraged. A storm brewed overhead, he stood and looked to the sky.

"What do you want from me?" James screamed.

He had never before acknowledged Neverland as something with its own desires. He didn't exactly believe in that. He had heard it said that Neverland was more than a place, that it was a living being with desires and needs. He had heard Neverland described as something like a god, but older than any god he had heard of. It was clear now that if Neverland was alive, if it wanted things, then right now it wanted James alive.

"Do you just want me to suffer?" He asked, still looking into the sky.

He swore loudly as the rain began to pour and the crocodile approached him once more. James reached for the large, and heavy dagger still attached to his belt. The calm he had felt in the water was now gone, all he had was rage. He wanted to fight, he wanted to kill. James moved swiftly, not thinking on his actions at all. Instinct guided him. His mind could barely keep up with his body. It happened quickly, the crocodile lurching forwards, its jaws closing around the hard casing that enclosed what remaioof Jame's right arm, and then a dagger plunged into the back of the beast's skull. The crocodile stopped suddenly, blood pouring steadily from the wound, and then the beast collapsed. Dead. James yanked his arm free of the beast and tried to remove his dagger from the lifeless body of his old foe, but it was stuck. The more he pulled at it, the bloodier his hand became and the harder it was to make the dagger budge. He took a deep and frustrated breath, considering his next move.

His ship was gone, but it would return - it always did. He was cold, and wet. Aside from the metal hook he had in place of a right hand, he was weaponless. As it stood, even his hook seemed useless, it had been blunted by the battle upon his ship. James screamed, and kicked the motionless crocodile beside him, feeling much more like a pirate again, feeling more like the monster people believed him to be.

"Fuck."

This was not how he thought his day would go. He had awoken as Captain James Hook, on his ship with plans of drinking his own weight in rum and forgetting his troubles for a while. Instead he had been accosted by Pan and his lost children for another battle he couldn't possibly win. For a brief moment he had thought it would be his last battle. No more Captain Hook on the seas. The water should have taken his body, washed the pirate away, leaving only a trace of the man behind. Hook had been ready for death, ready to shed his darkness and be just James once more. Neverland clearly had other plans. The fight had felt like an end, but really it had just been another beginning. The start of something else. The pirate groaned, his back ached, and he was cold.

"Fuck."

He stretched his arms in front of him, trying to ease the pain, but it was no good. Stretching didn't help, it hardly ever helped. He turned and looked to the trees in the distance. It wasn't so far, he thought, to the cave where he had left a chest for situations such as the one he was in. Only an hours walk for someone who knew the way.

Just as he made his first steps towards the forest, the pirate stopped. A bright light approached him. Many people would have thought this to be a fairy. James Hook knew otherwise. Neverland was home to many strange and mystical things. Fairies, mermaids, nymphs, ghosts, and the things that he knew as 'spirits'. He did not trust the spirits, he didn't trust many things, but he trusted the woman who they often worked with. He stared at the light, waiting.

It spoke in many voices all at the same time.

"You shouldn't leave the beach." It said

"It's raining. I'm cold, wet, I'm tired, and I'm covered in blood. I want to go somewhere dry to make a fire and get some fucking rest."

"She wants you to stay."

"I don't give a shit about what that witch wants right now. I'm going."

"As you wish, Captain Hook."

Hook's blood froze when the spirit uttered those last two words, it sounded more like a prison sentence than a name. Like he had lost an opportunity to be James once again without even knowing the opportunity was there in the first place. He stormed towards the forest, and away from the beach, full of anger. He was angry at himself for having become this way, and angry at the world he lived in for forcing him into this role. He thought he would have been better off had he just let the crocodile have him, death would have freed him. He would have died alone, and unloved, but he would have been free. Free of Neverland, free of Pan, and free of himself. He laughed, bitterly at himself. When he was younger, when he really was just a young man called James, he had believed piracy to be freeing in its own way. It had freed him from his father, it had freed him from much of his past, even in his earlier days in Neverland he had felt free. The gold, riches, and power he had accumulated in this strange land had felt like freedom. James hadn't noticed how he had been changed by this freedom until it seemed all too late. He hadn't been evil, of that he was sure. Sometimes he had even been kind, but stories of kindness and virtue were never so interesting to the masses as stories of violence and cruelty.

His reputation had become a cage that seemed impossible to escape, he had been a monster, a murderer, the devil, a warning to ill-behaved children.

"If you don't behave, Captain Hook will come and take you away."

He had been a demon, a thief, a nightmare, a criminal, and even fear itself. These were the stories that lived on, how few people remembered that he had also been a lover, an intellectual, an ally, someone who had provided food to the hungry. Sometimes he even forgot these things about himself. It was easy to play the part of a monster when that was all people could see in him.

Hook often had these thoughts about himself, his role, and his identity. It always sent him into a pit of melancholy and hopelessness. On this night, as he finally approached the cave, he felt lower than he had felt in a long time. Being without his ship, in the rain only served to emphasise the complete loneliness that appeared to be inherent to his very existence. Who could ever see a monster and want to come close? Who could ever see the man beneath when Hook could hardly see it himself? Who could ever love him when so many of those horrifying tales were true?

He tried to clear his mind as he entered the cave and began feeling around for the chest he had left behind. The cave was cold, but at least it was dry. As he fumbled with the chest latch, Hook found his thoughts to be more and more intrusive. He bit at his lip at an attempt to distract himself with the sharp pain.

"Just let me get this fucking fire lit."

He pleaded with himself, begging for a moments peace, to no avail. He swore loudly as he burnt his fingers, too distracted to keep the tinder still. He continued stubbornly with a set of strikers, after burning himself once more the fire was lit. Hook breathed deeply, soaking up the new warmth and then returned to his chest to take out an old bed roll and blanket. He doubted that he would sleep that night, but he had to try. If he was asleep, at least he wouldn't be thinking.

[matildainmotion]

Mean Truths and Generous Lies: A Response to Sibling (and every other kind of) Rivalry

My children fight. They have their moments - small photo opportunities of love and harmony- a hug, a lego collaboration jointly presented – but on the whole, they fight.

I buy two flake chocolate bars as a treat.

“I’ll have that one,” my son says.

“No, I want that one,” my daughter jumps in, panicked.

My son examines them both closely. “Oh, actually you can have that one. I’m having this one,” he says, giving her the one he has been holding and taking hers.

“No, that one was mine!” my daughter wails.

I point out that they are identical, but it seems there is some microscopic difference that I cannot see.

“Oh all right, I’ll have this one,” my son says. They swap back, and, for now, peace and chocolate follow.

This has happened often enough that my daughter talks about matching things – socks, lego bricks, biscuits – as being “identital,” the four syllables said with the clumsy care of her age.

When I am brave I go to the supermarket with both children. Often the children see the shop aisles as corridors of space for racing down, or the floors as smooth surfaces to lie on, to loll beside me as I try and shop. I do not like supermarkets. Last time we went my son spotted a trolley with not one, but two, identical baby seats attached to it.

“Hey, we could both go in there!” he says, running up to it. I consider. They are both big. It will look absurd, but it is better than the aisle-racing and the floor-lolling.

“Okay,” I say, and lift my hulking eight year old and smaller-but-definitely-not-a-baby-three-year old up beside him.

My son is delighted (self-propulsion has never been his thing – he likes to be carried, wheeled, pushed, pulled along). As he giants in the baby seat he starts to play a gleeful game of lifting items that we need over his head so that they drop down into the trolley behind him. I permit this with the smaller items. My daughter wants to join in.

“Okay, let’s take it in turns.”

But then certain items are more desirable than others.

“I wanted to drop the Yoyo bars in!” my daughter complains.

“But it was my turn,” my son counters.

“Look, we get through these fast. I’ll get two packets,” I say reaching for another.

“NO, I wanted to drop the first packet!” my daughter cries. I pick the packet in the trolley back up and give it to her. “Here, then.”

“No, I wanted to drop the first packet, FIRST!” she explains, in misery.

“But it was MY turn,” my son explains in his angry voice.

My daughter is crying hard now. “How about you choose something now you really want to put in first?” My daughter is crying too hard to speak but shakes her head.

“That’s not fair!” my son protests, riled by her crying – he could be about to get violent.

I look at them both – crying and fuming. I start to fume too and I want to cry. We are standing in a supermarket, a palace of plenty, filled with food, tinned, wrapped in plastic, priced, shelved- and they are arguing over who gets to put what packets, over their heads, into the trolley, as they sit, oversized, in baby seats.

Their privilege is not their fault. The gross global inequalities in the distribution of wealth are not their fault, but then again that is exactly what is at stake here: the distribution of wealth, of goods, of every kind – tangible and emotional. The decision about who gets what, how much, and when. So whilst their rows seems ridiculous, and their apparent pettiness exasperates me, I realise, once I am home from the supermarket, that the questions driving them are serious and fundamental. I recognise them. I am, in truth, no better.

I hear about another woman with young children who is writing a novel and who lives nearby. I read a brilliant book and check on the sleeve to work out the age of the author – she is younger than me and has already written three successful books. In both instances I feel threatened – I hide it, but it is there. This may seem different to my children’s angst over who has the privilege of putting the Yoyos into the shopping trolley. It is not. Yes, there are other issues in the mix to do with insecurities about my ability, my age, what I have and have not achieved to date, but in essence the level of ridiculousness in my sense of rivalry with the others around me is the same. The idea that someone else’s success is not good news for me, whether that someone is as close as a sibling, or as distant as a stranger.

I have done everything I can to help my children know they are both loved, that I do not favour one or the other, but still they fight. Competition. It is in the air we breathe. It is the foundation of our economy. It is in our science. The Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative tells us that competition is inside us, in our bodies - it is part of the story of how we were formed.

I am not trying to deny the theory of evolution, but as a mother, in a supermarket, with two squabbling children, our inherent competitiveness is not a helpful story. I cannot leave them to it and see who wins, who survives. My son because he can hit harder? Or my daughter because she can scream louder and is, at this point, cuter? Who is fitter? More fitting? These are not the questions I want to be asking or sharing with them. It is also not a helpful story to me as a maker, a writer. It does not make me generous and good writing, for me, requires generosity. I have got to be able to give it away. It is also not a helpful story for the world right now. We have followed a capitalist, ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative to its ruthless end and it is proving to be, potentially, the end of all of us, fit or otherwise. But let me bring this back from the apocalypse (also not a helpful story) to the level where I can do something constructive in response: a sibling row over Yoyos in the supermarket and my worry over rival writers. What would be a better narrative?

I go to the bookshelf, to the parenting books, to one in particular: Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I first read it almost before it applied, when I was still a zealous new mother of two and my daughter was too small to be an articulate rival. One of the chapters is headed “Equal is less:” I read:

“To be loved equally….is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.”

Yes, that makes sense. Equal is still in the paradigm of quantity. Equal implies that you could have more than me, even if right now we have the same. It explains my children bickering over identical chocolate bars – they both have exactly the same, and that, in the end, is not enough, not what they want. They want their differences, not their same-ness. Similarly with taking turns – one for you and one for me, fair’s fair. But it isn’t fair, or it might not be – as long as we remain in the world of quantities, of equal signs, then there is always an implied risk that one of them could lose out  - minus, subtraction, less, loss. One of them might not be equal to the other, not as fit. One might not survive.

I get it. I get the theory. At least within the small society of our family, neither capitalism (letting everyone compete and seeing who comes out on top with the most), nor communism (getting everyone to share so they all have the same) results in harmony.  I need to focus on diversity, on the uniqueness of each child. I need to cultivate an economy of gifting, (see another book – Lewis Hyde’s The Gift), of the gifts in each person being honoured. The ‘givens’ in us, the things we did nothing to earn, that are there for us in turn to give away, but like the magic porridge pot, the more we give, the more we feel filled, fulfilled. Like breastfeeding, when it works: the more the child nurses, the more there is. I was lucky enough to be able to breastfeed both children till they were old enough to explain this to me.

However, despite their experience of extended breastfeeding, my children remain committed to a story of scarcity and competition. I try to talk them out of it, but I know I am unconvincing and unconvinced.

“Yeah, yeah” my son says, “I know – It’s not about winning. It’s about the playing. Yeah yeah I’m unique - Blah blah. You’ve told us that a thousand times. But I wanna win!!”

Whatever I am currently telling myself and my children is not enough. Not enough. How to get away from not-enough-ness into a more abundant place?

I think I have to tell the gifting story better. If I don’t quite believe the story – because the other story, the one of lack and loss is everywhere - then I have to practice lying, really well. To do this I go to a different part of the bookshelf – not the parenting one. Actually it’s my husband bookshelf, to a book he told me he used to carry around everywhere with him: “The Shaman’s Body” by Arnold Mindell. There is a passage in this book I want to read again. It describes an exercise I did before I became a mother, but that I think I should revisit now. Here it is:

“Experiment with telling a lie. Tell a lie to yourself in your imagination. Try lying even if you are shy or embarrassed about doing so. Tell the lie as if you were a great story-teller. This may be difficult because myth-making is a deep process, but try until a real lie turns into a story with a beginning and an end….consider your lie to be true…Act like the person in your lie….How are you already living this myth? How have your dreams already discussed this change.”

It occurs to me as I reread this that children are very good at this kind of lying. It’s the answer, for example, to the famous question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Last time they were asked my son was going to be an inventor and my daughter was going to be a cat.

The quality of the grand myth is even present in how my children talk about their favourite colours. In this context they are proud and happy of their differences. My son loves blue, light blue. It is his colour. My daughter likes red, bright red – that is hers. They are mythic enough about these to behave as if everything in the world that is blue and red respectively belongs to them. My son owns the sky. My daughter owns the sunset. These are generous stories. They do not squabble over blue or red. Suddenly ‘their differences’ become a key to peace, not a synonym for conflict. The squabbles start when the stories the world offers them are small and mean, when the lies aren’t magnificent, when we are in super-markets, buildings built not for myths but measurables.

What magnificent lies can I tell that might help us? What myths? Well, one myth I realise I am already working on is called Mothers Who Make. You may know of this, but let me tell a version of it to you now.

It begins when I became a mother. I had a baby boy. I did what I thought you were supposed to do - I attended several mother and baby groups. They were meant to be supportive. All too often they were not. They were informal, social gatherings and within them I witnessed a fair amount of ‘maternal rivalry,’ sometimes subtle, sometimes more overt: whose baby was sleeping well? How was the breastfeeding going? Or was it not going? And the weaning? I would come away feeling more, rather than less, isolated. As an artist I experienced similar things too – networking events, workshops, in which the rivalry simmered under the surface of each exchange: Have you got funding? What work do you have lined up? So I started a group, welcoming to mothers of every ilk, and makers of every kind too. I called it Mothers Who Make. It was explicitly a peer support group – we gathered in order to support one another. That was the point, the purpose.

The group went well. It grew into more groups, meetings began happening monthly in theatres, art galleries and arts-related venues across the UK. Then slowly groups emerged in other countries too. Online communities formed. It was becoming a worldwide movement.

At first it consisted of simply peer support groups and Facebook pages, but then other events began to spring up as well, under the Mothers Who Make banner: exhibitions, performances, workshops, skill shares, talks, commissions, retreats, festivals. To sustain all of this activity we needed to invent a new kind of support, one that would reflect the ethic of the movement. I called it ‘Matronage.’ Not the Patron, looking down from on high and patronising us with his wealth, deciding who is fit to support and who is not, but mothers and others, giving sideways, on a level with one another, £3 per month to sustain themselves and each other in their mothering and their making. I called these people ‘Matron Saints.’ I signed myself up as one of them.

First there were only fifty of us. Then there were one hundred, then two hundred, three, five. A year on and there were one thousand MWM Matrons. Word kept spreading - it kept growing. Eventually there were over a million of us across the world. Together we were creating an abundant culture, a gift economy, women*-led. Slowly we were changing the atmosphere, between artists, between mothers, between children. I knew we had had an impact when one day I looked up the word ‘Matron’ in the updated edition of the OED. It said there were three definitions for the word: 1) a woman in charge of domestic and medical arrangements at a boarding school or other institution. 2) an older married woman, especially one who is staid or dignified. 3) Someone actively engaged in mothering, be that a child or a project, and in supporting others engaged in related maternal and/or creative endeavours.

There, that’s my great myth. Remember the end of the exercise? : “Consider your lie to be true…Act like the person in your lie….How are you already living this myth?” I think, if I can remember this myth next time my children fight, it might help. I am not sure right now what I would do, but I might be better at continuing to believe in their differences as gifts rather than as a sign of my maternal failure. I will be better able to trust that my children each have their own place in this stunning, stunningly complex, difficult and generous life.

So, here are my questions for you for the month: Where do you see rivalry? In your children? In yourself? And, underneath the fighting, what are the differences present, as in the givens, the unique gifts that are longing to be given away? What generous lies can you tell about these? What myths? And if you want to help me to live closer to my lie, to support me and all the other mothers and makers out there, you can go here to become a MWM Matron Saint: https://motherswhomake.org/support-us

There are 67 of us right now, but one day there will be a million….

[ganymedesclock]

Can I just say I love your Coran metas? One thing that really frustrates me in reading (otherwise excellent) VLD fanfic is ~angst~ that could be cleared up if everyone just talked to Coran! Especially Allura, who canonically discusses her fears and grief with Coran.

So I really like the elemental symbolism for the five initial paladins and I think it informs a huge amount of their character, that led me to try and ascribe elements to Coran and Allura. Because I think even when Lance, Keith, and Allura shuffled positions, they retained their respective symbolism.

Lance working with Red still acts like a leg, still acts like a water-aligned person. His focus is still on support, coordination, empathy, interpersonal connection. We don’t see him taking up a “firelike” disposition as VLD codifies that, or operating more according to passion and loyalty as Red’s virtues. He also doesn’t act like an arm pilot, with that kind of high-energy, slightly volatile and fractious disposition.

This is, I think, the nice underlying implication to the paladins’ all having their own colors that they retain whatever Lion they’re flying. It’s because their inherent nature, what initially drew their respective Lions to them, remains unchanged. 

So Allura has her own element, her own identity, and working with Blue doesn’t negate that because Lance’s character wasn’t negated working with Red, nor was Keith’s working with Black.

(I promise, this comes back to Coran, and what you’re talking about in him being overlooked in fic, but bear with me)

With Allura, the element I think that best describes her is light. Not just because she’s conflated with it practically- all of her shows of power come with these flares of radiance- but it’s also reflected by the arsenal of the Castle, which is functionally Allura’s Lion.

The Castle shields itself in a barrier of light, and it attacks by raining devastating beams of far greater power and intensity than any of the other laser attacks we’ve seen. And its dominant color is white, like Allura’s gorgeous, eye-catching silver hair. 

It’s also worth noting that Allura is the only paladin who appears to have multiple colors- she’s associated with white, cyan, to a certain degree the same darker blue as Lance, and her ‘signature’ pink. This would seem to again create an image of Allura as a prism, as light, opalescent in her associations.

In personality, while Shiro is often more of a strategic head in small scale, Allura is the leader of the coalition and she’s the leader of the paladins- she’s their guiding light, and beacon of hope. When it seems like she’s gone in s2e13, the situation is depicted as actively unwinnable. It helps that both the pose she assumed in s1e8 literally reviving the Balmera, and the position Voltron holds when she empowers it in s4e6 are very stereotypically messianic- arms spread, palms upright, head thrown back to the heavens, standing upright and gazing skyward.

So why am I talking about Allura in reference to Coran? Because I think a lot of Coran is informed if you consider both Alfor (fire-aligned) and Allura (light-aligned) and their incredible importance to him.

Fire in VLD is associated with illumination and enlightenment, as well as passion. Instinct in this case refers to a kind of certainty, but also a kind of higher knowing, distinct from the learning and adaptation embodied by the Green Lion and wood. Keith is, functionally, the team’s prophet- and Alfor, his predecessor, was Voltron’s. So this creates a very strong image of a fire that casts a bright light into a dark cavern. Which makes sense- Alfor and Allura were very close to each other.

I think Coran’s element is darkness.

Because the thing is, Allura and Alfor are characterized as luminous people. Charismatic, front and center, brilliant and colorful, seizing attention and connections. And Coran was a part of that; he wasn’t ignored, or pushed aside, but rather, it’s his nature to follow. Light and darkness can be seen as mortal enemies, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Allura at full strength, seated at the helm of the Castle, is a kind of archetypal force. The castle’s size and shields outstrip those of Voltron itself- it can rain devastation on entire imperial fleets. And it is also a symbol- literally, being the castle of a kingdom that long after said kingdom fell to ruin, the sanctity of its castle was never truly defeated. It’s been invaded- some have come close- but in effect, this is the unbreakable will of Altea’s legacy, of Allura as its last living princess. It bears the same sense of lore, decorum, and ideals entwined together with sheer determination that Allura herself does.

Conversely, Coran has no ship of his own. He can work the castle’s systems, but not all of them, and not perfectly- that sort of thing is really reserved for Allura. And he was spectacularly rejected by the Red Lion in s2e6. This, to me, is a pretty glaring indicator that despite his great adoration and fondness for Alfor, Coran and Alfor are wildly different mentalities. Different essential characters.

(Allura was also rejected by Red- but Red let her in, Red allowed her to sit at the console, and Allura is able to understand Red clearly when he calls for Lance, which suggests that they do have their notes of harmony- and Red was likely denying Allura to guide her towards Blue, who would do her more good in that situation)

But think about that. Coran has no signature ship, but he’s able to work Allura’s. Because of this, while all of the other paladins, and Allura even without a Lion, are glaringly obvious, known entities to their foes, Coran? Isn’t. Coran is a virtually untraceable ghost to the team’s enemies. It would take a foe far more attentive and far more focused on them than even Lotor to notice the red-haired man running the microphone for Voltron events is more than he seems.

And with Alfor and Allura both being very light-aligned people... bright lights cast very large, dark shadows. In that sense, a shadow can be perceived as a loyal thing- something that follows light.

Allura is a kind of archetypal active force at the height of her power. On foot, she’s a match for her castle- supernaturally powerful and a potent front line attacker either with the weighted staff she used in season 2 or grappling and immobilizing foes with a bayard. 

Coran, I think, is a kind of archetypal supporting force.

His own identity is probably the most well-developed given his age and maturity compared to the rest of the team. But at the same time, it’s very difficult to pin down. It doesn’t have an obvious glaring hallmark of its presence. We don’t see a signature weapon or ship from Coran to clue us in to his affinity. If my theories about his comment in s1e9 reflecting his weapon of choice are true, then even him revealing said weapon and taking the field as a combatant won’t clarify the matter, by wielding something fundamentally formless and impossible to define.

Because darkness doesn’t clarify itself. It obscures, it vanishes, it acts behind, underneath, and through with the certainty of always knowing what it is, but comfortably remaining an unknown factor.

Coran- happily and comfortably- lives as the man behind the scenes. He is not the king, he is not the princess, he is not the leader- but he will follow them, to the ends of the universe if need be. He will do, and be, what they need of him.

And he’s compassionate, and he’s nurturing, and we see that sort of accommodation also applying to the paladins. After all who could you possibly count on to have your back in any situation, always, but a shadow?

And I think this also comes back to the fact that Coran, quite frankly, has the full capacity to be terrifying and we’ve been treated to multiple innocuous or otherwise offhanded nods in that direction. Such as.... so why was Coran, seemingly, the go-to guy for explaining how to wrestle with one of the deadliest enemies in space back in the day in s2e9? At the same part of his life where he was very noticeably muscular as hell?

(it’d also lend some hilariously meta context to his adolescent emo phase that we found out about in s2e1)

Hell, Coran in s1e11 alludes to us that he was actively planning revenge on Zarkon over Altea. Friendly mustached dad figure seems to have mostly dealt with the loss of his planet by neatly compressing a grudge, bundling it up neatly with cloth, and not acknowledging it until he is actively in a position to shoot Zarkon in the face, in which case he unfolds it like a lovely picnic lunch.

So how this all comes back to what you were saying, anon, about Coran and fanfic and him being overlooked is that- it’s arguably Coran’s quintessential character to be easy to overlook. He’s a really fascinating head to get into with a huge amount of depth, but, you really have to trawl those depths to get to the good stuff. And I’ve said it before- there’s a lot of perfectly good fanwork whose primary struggle is not scratching any of the characters deeply enough. Coran is just a case where it shows very often, because he’s so at peace with, and arguably pretty much lives in, his own depths, that unless you’re paying attention it is beyond easy to forget he’s even there. And the show’s begun to poke at him, his history and deeper undercurrents- 

S4e4 may have been comical on the surface but it is an incredible case study in just how much the team means to Coran, what he’s willing to do and what he’s able to fight off just to be there for the team- and, hell, the fact that he needs to be hijacked by a brain parasite for him to ever push them the way that he did.

-but there’s still way more with Coran than we know. It’s a reason I keep comparing him to Iroh from ATLA: because he very much does the same thing.

Iroh is a master firebender with personal ties directly to the royal family, grieving the loss of his son, and also part of an organization against the fire nation’s aggressive politics, not to mention his own lengthy history as a warrior (see, his history with Ba Sing Se and his mythic defeat of a dragon) and for all that... the first impression he gives is Zuko’s goofy tea-loving advisor. And after coming to understand the serious side of him, it makes it much clearer that he is, in-universe, doing that completely on purpose.

Even Azula, who arguably knows a lot of Iroh’s history, dangerously underestimates him in not immediately going “oh, crap” when he stands up and goes “Do you know why they call me the Dragon of the West?” in a particularly knowing and unconcerned tone.

The thing is we haven’t had Coran have his obvious moment of flexing those hidden claws- there’s been small ones but not really a massive “oh, holy shit, don’t mess with Coran” .....yet. I frankly think that’s completely inevitable, given these guys and again, given every underlying nod to his capabilities. But I think if you’re not really delving in and carefully poking at things, it’s easy to read Coran as someone who just doesn’t have much depth since he’s very much, to a degree, the unsung phantom of Team Voltron. His work is important but often not particularly glamorous or narratively “heroic”.

But really... I think that’s kind of the point. Especially if you consider that Zarkon places a great deal of importance and focus on Alfor, and on Allura- the people he considered worth dealing with.

Coran? Coran was a lesser noble and an attendant to Alfor. In Zarkon’s books, exactly the sort of person he probably would barely even make eye contact with or speak to.

But Coran was the one who flew the castle away from Altea. Coran was the one who made the Black Lion disappear out of Zarkon’s hands and comprehensively denied him that decisive victory ten thousand years ago. It’s arguably on Coran that there’s any ability to counterattack at present.

And Coran- who lives in darkness, who thrives on eyes being turned away from him. Coran, who actively has confessed to holding a grudge and his not acknowledging it since tells us after that season 1 finale, he just folded it right back up and kept it there, maybe rolling it around between his fingers every time he hears more about what happened to Shiro, every time he sees what’s become of the universe under Zarkon, every time he remembers what became of Alfor, of Altea, because they trusted him. Calmly saying things like “Alfor’s affection for his former colleague blinded him to Zarkon’s true intentions.”

Coran is really not someone Zarkon should be ignoring, if the dear emperor has any ability to evaluate serious threats.

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (Peridot-specific: L - M)

Reference:

Primary Peri Post ▼ Primary General Post ▼ Full Article

Lack of Empathy/No Sympathy: Standard traits of the Pre-Earth Manipulative Bastard Peridot; very prominently shown in the flashbacks during Chapter 1 of Act III.

Lap Pillow: Is this for a fatigued Steven in Chapter 5 of Act III.

Laser-Guided Karma: Considering how much of a Manipulative Bastard Peridot once was – so much of one that she ended up being responsible for many of her fellow kind’s demise due to her ambition to rise to the top – the moment Peridot actually got promoted was a bit of an unpleasant wake-up call as now her colleagues largely consisted of gems that were superior to her under conditions that wouldn’t allow her to bully her way into success like she had before (and, in fact, Peridot herself ended up being seen as a target for said gems to bully). Peridot tried to take it in stride and see it as a challenge (as the lack of challenge from her former position induced so much boredom, it likely played a role in Peridot going out of her way to stir things up to begin with), but then her first mission’s level escalated to the point where she required assistance, leading to Peridot meeting her new escort, Jasper. Peridot came out of that encounter so traumatized that it nearly shattered her identity. She was forcibly put in her place and finally had to face reality that her aspirations and perception of herself were purely delusional – while this by no means reformed or redeemed Peridot, it did almost entirely erase many of her absolute worst traits, which in turn made her more receptive to Taking a Level in Kindness not long after this when she was captured by the Crystal Gems.

Last of Her Kind: Peridot is the first and only ascended gem in existence and will likely remain that way for all time now that Homeworld is destroyed along with the Diamond Authority. By that token, she’s also one of the two remaining Diamonds in existence, though most might consider this subverted since Peridot isn’t a pure, natural Diamond.

The Law of Power Proportionate to Effort: Also invoked on Chartreuse Diamond, but is more evident with Peridot as she has much greater limitations on how to utilize her potential, and unlike her Alter Ego, performing greater feats runs the risk of depleting her stamina or even inflict pain.

The Leader: Honestly, Peridot bears various traits of all four flavors of this trope. But primarily, she can be best defined as a Mastermind-Charismatic hybrid.

Left for Dead: Presumed to be this until it’s brought up very early on in Act II that there is a much greater chance of her still being alive, as Peridot can be better utilized by White Diamond as a Hostage MacGuffin to entice Steven back than to be one of her millions of drones or just killed outright.

LEGO Gemetics: Due to diamond dust and a diamond shard being mixed in the injector fluid that would later create her, Peridot emerged as a Peridot/Diamond hybrid, albeit her Diamond traits were benign and naturally wouldn’t have developed until hundreds of years later. But then White Diamond (who, along with Blue and Yellow, were behind several similar cases of gems being Unwitting Test Subjects) forced the diamond bits in Peridot’s gemstone to condense and form a proper diamond prematurely, resulting in Peridot now being simultaneously a low-caste gem and a Diamond simultaneously.

Life Isn’t Fair: A sad fact of life that Peridot tries to drive into Steven’s head during her Get A Hold Of Yourself, Man! speech in Chapter 6 of Act I.

Like a Duck Takes to Water: Per canon, but often discussed in the GA continuity. While it’s acknowledged that Peridot by no means had an easy time adjusting to Earth at the start, she nonetheless has adapted to Earth life and culture at a steady pace. In less than a year’s time, Peridot has shown to be better adjusted to Earth than all her fellow gems – an especially remarkable feat, given the other Crystal Gems have lived on Earth for thousands of years. In Chapter 7 of Act I, Ruby expresses her envy of how easy Peridot makes it look, when she herself (and Garnet, by extension) still struggles adapting to Earth even now.

Like You Were Dying: Instead of sorrow and despair for failing to escape Homeworld when she was inches away from joining her friends, Peridot is last seen smiling and laughing at Steven and Garnet when Act I concludes. Even after they escape, Peridot’s taking her loss in stride by grading the results of her mission. Deep down, though, she’s obviously broken.

Literal-Minded: Per canon; while she’s made a lot of progress with Steven teaching her about Earth lingo, there are still plenty of moments where Peridot is dumbfounded by certain phrases of Steven’s, which he then takes time to explain for her. Since moments like this were a large part of the foundation of Steven and Peridot’s relationship, Steven is always happy to teach her new phrases and metaphors when they come up.

Little Miss Badass: She gets her moments of this in the latter half of Act I. Understandable, as Peridot’s the Hero Protagonist of this story. She does fairly well for herself for what limited abilities she has. Fast-forward to Act III where she’s gone above and beyond to resist White Diamond’s influence for nearly a week, and even after she falls… Peridot just becomes an Empowered Badass Normal who can kick ass even more. Really, though, the scene that best displays this trope is the final confrontation with White Diamond towards the end, where Peridot teases a Backstab Backfire and only stops because of how much satisfaction White Diamond’s fear of her brings.

Little “No”: Peridot lets out a few of these as she desperately begs for the life energy, now fragmented and fading away, to return to Pumpkin moments after her death. This doesn’t happen, but what does come shortly after this is the Angst Nuke.

Logic Bomb: Deliberately invokes this to fry every terminal in her old workstation and consequently poof every fellow Peridot in the room by tricking her former coworkers to input a code that would make their systems divide by zero and cause them to overload. This also happens to Yellow Pearl, though that was done by Peridot directly hacking her terminal while she was distracted with other business.

Long-Range Fighter: The counterpart to Bismuth’s Close-Range Combatant; Peridot is much more effective in combat when fighting at a distance, as she simply doesn’t have the strength nor the size to stay in a fight for long if she’s right in the line of fire. While this technically might no longer apply post-ascension (Peridot and Chartreuse have done some close-range attacks since then… to mixed results), Peridot still prefers to hang back and wait for an opportunity before acting; the element of surprise is still where she shines best, which is often best utilized when she’s far away from an opponent.

Loss of Identity: Develops a major case of this once she ascends to become Chartreuse Diamond. While she’d prefer being able to alternate between these forms rather than being stuck with one forever, the fact that She is What She Hates versus the irresistible feeling of being relevant and powerful really messes with her mind, and it often makes Peridot worry her Diamond Alter Ego will make her identity as Peridot completely obsolete.

This is Who I Am Chapter 3 reveals Peridot had a case of this long before the events of GA in the early phases of her Earth mission after learning about the Crystal Gems, when she had to return to Homeworld for reinforcements in Jasper and Lapis. After an unpleasant first encounter with Jasper, Peridot was no longer the stoic, sociopathic Manipulative Bastard she once was notorious for being. She was strong enough to not completely succumb to the submissive tendencies inherent to her kind, but Peridot was brought down harshly enough to be permanently shaken from the experience. Incidentally, this allowed Peridot to become more receptive to a Redemption Arc in the future.

Love Confessor: Peridot – albeit very indirectly – confesses to Lapis that she has a lot of feelings for Steven and is terrified of having to define their relationship, fearing life won’t ever be the same once she chooses to primarily see Steven as a friend, family member, or a soulmate. She leaves out a lot of details, but Lapis is pretty good at getting the message for the most part, so when she sees Steven and Peridot getting intimate much later in Act I (while thinking no one else is looking at them), Lapis isn’t the least bit surprised. To a lesser degree, this trope applies to Bismuth as well, as Peridot gives Bismuth an abridged version of what she confessed a couple of chapters ago moments before she and Steven are reunited.

Made of Iron: While Peridots are made to be durable, Hero Protagonist Peridot emerged as a next-level variant, as she was notably the only Peridot in her facet who didn’t experience any kind of pain when her limb enhancers were first equipped (something that normally gives Peridots, at a bare minimum, some minor discomfort – but usually visibly pains them). This aspect of Peridot was the foundation of the reputation she would gain in the future as a sociopathic Manipulative Bastard. However, her first meeting with Jasper, as revealed in This is Who I Am Chapter 3, downgraded this trope for Peridot significantly. Peridot can still take quite a bit of punishment, but she’s lost her ability to completely No-Sell her pain.

Male-to-Female Universal Adaptor: Justified, as post-ascended Peridot has the ability to shapeshift her body at will. She still had to study human anatomy thoroughly to make it accurate, of course. And Chapter 2 It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is confirms that Peridot could do it either way if she really wanted to… Steven: “So… nothing’s gonna pop out from there, right?” Peridot: “Mm… nope. Not unless you want me to. I haven’t really put that into practice, though… I’m still getting used to the fact I can shapeshift at all these days.”

Mama Bear: To Pumpkin. Everyone learns this the hard way in Chapter 8 of Act III.Manipulative Bastard: Pre-Earth Homeworld Peridot in a nutshell. Shows shades of this in Chapter 4 of Act I with her dangerously sadistic plan to capture Yellow Pearl and use her gemstone as a Skeleton Key, but that was likely invoked by Heroic Safe Mode.

Meaningful Name: Nickname, more accurately. Beyond “Chartreuse”, the only name White Diamond will address Peridot by in Act III is “Twilight” – a pet name akin to Steven’s “Starlight” designation. At first, it just seemed random and arbitrary, but just before Peridot ascends to become Chartreuse Diamond, White’s incantation indicates Peridot represents the “twilight years” of an endeavor where gems were randomly experimented upon for several thousand years. Since Peridot was one of the final gems created from Homeworld terrain, she was literally the last opportunity any Diamond had to experiment on a gem pre-emergence. Therefore, Peridot herself marks the end of an era of innocent gems being used as Unwitting Test Subjects. 

Memory Gambit: Peridot thought she never had real memories of Homeworld; just feelings. Once she returns to Homeworld, Peridot regains these memories and none of them are pleasant ones. Many of them were repressed because at the time, Peridot considered them not worth remembering or not relevant to her life on Earth (under the assumption she’d never return to Homeworld). However, some of them were buried out of utter shame early on during Peridot’s redemption arc in canon. 

Mental Affair: After nearly a week of torture, only to end up imprisoned within her own subconsciousness, a very exhausted Peridot (or, more accurately, the Determinator part of her) concedes to this with her idealized interpretation of Steven (who was unwittingly used to cause Peridot to get into this position to begin with). It’s implied this isn’t the first time it’s happened, and with Peridot still under the impression that she’s stuck on Homeworld forever, she’s more than ready to succumb to this as she believes this is the closest thing she’ll ever have to Steven again.

Mental Picture Projector: Post-ascension, Peridot is able to do this via her gemstone. Basically, a very convenient exposition device.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Even though Peridot has made peace with her strong sense of imminent death during the mission, she’s determined to at least see it through to the end no matter what happens.

Mind Rape: The only way White Diamond was able to break through Peridot’s stubborn resistance to her influence was to shock her into unconsciousness and separate the defiant part of Peridot’s personality from her mind and lock it down; this way, she would be rendered more submissive with virtually no self-confidence or self-assurance… and consequently, far easier to manipulate to White’s side. Chartreuse Diamond could barely function at first due to this and could only be restored to normal by Steven’s efforts… although doing so inadvertently made Steven suffer this trope second-hand.

Mismatched Eyes: Blue and Hazel, revealed at the end of Act I.

Supernatural Gold Eyes: A gem not in a fusion with heterochromia is the Mark of a Supernatural; specifically, an Unwitting Test Subject created with diamond dust embedded into her gem (and in Peridot’s case exclusively, a shard of Yellow Diamond).

Moment of Weakness: Has a few of these, but by far Peridot’s biggest one takes place in Chapter 2 of Act III, when after resisting White Diamond for nearly a week, Peridot finally succumbs via Delirious Misidentification when Master of Illusion White Diamond tricks Peridot into believing Steven really came back to save her. That small distraction lets White finally overwhelm and overpower her. This results in the birth of Chartreuse Diamond.

The runner-up is the moment in Chapter 7 of Act III, when Peridot (as Chartreuse) is made receptive to a forced fusion between herself and White. A simple Armor-Piercing Question about Peridot’s inability to fuse with Steven and the evidence pointing to her being little more than a Poisonous Friend to him makes her guilt-ridden and vulnerable enough to make Peridot give in, and thus Celadon Diamond is born.

More Expendable Than You: Besides acknowledging it’s her duty as The Leader to be the last one to head for the escape route even though Sapphire’s vision clearly dictates that whoever is the last to leave will ultimately fail to do so, Peridot strongly believes that out of all the Crystal Gems, she’s by far the one they can best afford to lose. This isn’t something she says in Act I, but in her messages to her friends throughout Act II, she all but outright states this to discourage them from trying to go back and rescue her.

Mortality Phobia: Even after seeing Sapphire’s vision and taking on the role as the one who will supposedly get left behind after “falling”, Peridot makes it clear she’s going to do everything in her power to avoid that fate. Throughout Act I’s final chapter, Peridot makes a point to be careful and vigilant with every step she makes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out.

Motivational Kiss: Gives Steven one in Chapter 6 of Act I while he’s freaking out over Bismuth executing White Pearl. Doubles as a “Shut Up” Kiss.

Ms. Exposition: Justified in that she’s the only Crystal Gem who’s lived in the modern-day Homeworld and therefore best knows how things work there, where to go, and what to do in order to reach their captured friends. Peridot exposits not only about nearly every aspect of Homeworld and what life is like for the working class, but also concepts like pallification, restoration stations, and using certain gemstones as Skeleton Keys. In Act III, she’s also this for catching her friends up on what they missed with her before returning, and for White Diamond in general. Post-GA, Peridot continues to provide relevant details of Homeworld life (despite Homeworld itself no longer existing); towards the end of This is Who I Am, in tandem with 5XF, they explain the concept of natural gem reproduction, how it’s done, and why all gems have the means for this despite this method being illegal on Homeworld for almost its entire history.

Murder by Inaction: While Peridot didn’t shatter 3UI with her own hands, she not only did nothing to stop 3UI from being executed but was the one who decided 3UI should be executed in the first place. This was definitely how Peridot got much of her competition eliminated outside of that single example.

My Significant Sense is Tingling: Once she returns to Homeworld, this is invoked any time Peridot comes across a familiar location, gem, or concept that results in Déjà Vu jogging her repressed memories.

[theconservativebrief]

Dan Nosowitz was scrolling through Instagram when he saw it: an ad for a cooking device whose sole function was to heat up raclette cheese.

“I had to click through because I had no idea what it actually was,” he explains. “Finding out that an algorithm believed I would be interested in a discount ‘traditional Swiss-style electric cheese melter’ is sort of comfortably bumbling. It’s like watching a Roomba bonk into a wall.”

Whether the humor inherent in the ad comes from the fact that the gadget is so oddly specific, or because raclette is an incredibly high-maintenance cheese and therefore hardly a common grocery item for most people, is difficult to say. What we do know, however, is that the complicated set of algorithms that serve targeted ads on social media are the most brutal, most incisive owns of our time.

In Nosowitz’s case, he figures he likely saw the raclette warmer because he’s a food writer who Amazon surely knows has previously browsed cooking tools on its site. That’s because Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of the internet track your every keystroke and will then use your history to show you things they think will make them money. So it’s no wonder that it feels so deeply personal when we get targeted ads for, say, “dressy sweatpants,” colonoscopies, underwear whose selling point is that they are easy to take off, preparing for your own funeral, or, somehow the biggest attack of all: tickets to Jagged Little Pill: The Musical.

The simplest explanation for why targeted ads are so creepily intimate: Your phone, your computer, and the internet in general contain a gargantuan amount of information about you. Google, for instance, knows essentially every website you have ever gone to in your life, and thanks to geolocation can tell where you live, where you work, and where you’ve traveled and when. Credit card companies know what you buy, and the brands that sell those items can use that data to predict the things you’ll buy in the future — in Target’s case, it can tell that you’re pregnant before even your family knows.

There are ways to prevent at least some of this, but the more the internet entrenches itself in our lives, the more difficult and time-consuming it is to opt out. The consequences are, of course, potentially democracy-shattering. For our purposes here, however, the thing in danger of being shattered is our self-esteem.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who has written a book on how the internet uses your data, has himself experienced the strangeness of being targeted by a Facebook ad for hair loss cream despite never having posted anything about balding.

“It was a little like being in a Seinfeld episode,” he explains. “I had never worried about my hair and always thought hair products were a total waste of money. And now I had to wonder, ‘Am I crazy? Should I actually be taking a product for hair loss?’” (He, however, ended up deducing that it was probably because two-thirds of men start losing their hair by the time they’re 35, and that the ad simply targeted all men around that age.)

I just got a Facebook ad for hair loss product. Are they using my pictures to figure out I am balding? I am pretty sure there is no other way, using my internet behavior, for them to know that.

— Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (@SethS_D) March 29, 2018

Facebook, undoubtedly the platform with the worst and most prolific targeted ads, said in a memo this April that while it allows companies to target their ads to users that fit a certain profile, it keeps users’ actual identities private from them.

But companies are able to target specific people by other means, namely through sending Facebook a list of emails, which Facebook can then use to find associated accounts. If you’ve ever bought anything from, say, Urban Outfitters, the brand could use the email you used to either make the purchase online or the one you gave at the checkout counter to specifically target you. And if you happened to be browsing Glossier.com, while still logged into Facebook, you might return to the social media app to find ads for Boy Brow.

Plus, the blog post doesn’t mention the fact that marketers can take advantage of your data that isn’t simply demographic — it theoretically could, for instance, reach users who seem to match a specific personality type or emotional state, thereby taking advantage of already vulnerable people. So ads for funeral preparations or musicals about mid-’90s female angst could be more than just a coincidence and instead referendums on your actual current mood.

The most horrific item I have ever seen in a targeted Facebook ad was a sweatshirt emblazoned with a bunch of Celtic knots that implied the superiority of having “Jennings blood.” Ignoring the possible white supremacist connotations, the ad was ironic mostly because you can buy the exact same sweatshirt replaced with literally any last name that sounds vaguely Irish and about a zillion other versions, too. “God made the strongest and named them Rubin,” reads one. “Never underestimate the power of a person with name’s Brooke,” shouts another, despite the fact that this sentence does not make sense.

It’s obvious why this specific ad showed up on my feed: Facebook knows that my last name is Jennings, and marketers can easily target users with such information. What’s more complicated is how the hell all those last names ended up on a sweatshirt.

To be clear, they didn’t. The reason so many T-shirts and sweatshirts with oddly specific phrases is because online clothing companies have tasked algorithms with the heavy lift of actually filling in the specifics and photoshopping those results onto digital images of clothing. The sweatshirts themselves don’t physically exist until you hit “purchase.”

Michael Fowler had been in the T-shirt business for 20 years before creating a simple computer code that would change his life in 2011. It took a common phrase, such as “Kiss Me, I’m a [blank],” compiled hundreds of thousands of words from digital dictionaries, created a list of phrase variations using those words, and then generated images of T-shirts with each phrase. According to The Hustle, Fowler’s company went from just 1,000 T-shirts that were designed by actual humans to more than 22 million code-generated ones. Through targeted Facebook ads, he was eventually able to sell 800 a day.

Unfortunately, his success was not the reason Fowler would make international headlines. Two years later his algorithm was responsible for shirts that read “Keep calm and rape a lot,” among other disturbing and misogynistic variations on the famous World War II slogan. Fowler said he had no knowledge of the items, and in fact, they’d been available for more than a year before anyone noticed. But even though he quickly deleted the offending shirts, his company still ended up folding.

Robot-written word salad T-shirts, however, have managed to become one of the internet’s purest inside jokes. On the subreddit r/TargetedShirts, members share the most egregious versions they come across, be they weirdly antagonistic (“Walk away, this forklift operator has anger issues and a serious dislike of stupid people”), uncomfortably sexual (“I don’t need therapy, I just need to get f#ed in public by fourteen werewolves”), birthday month-related (“Never underestimate an old man who is also an air force veteran and was born in November”), or utterly nonsensical (“Good girls go to heaven, January girl go hunting with Dean”).

The sub even has its own parody versions, like “These titties are protected by a skinny white guy in his mid-thirties who wears DC shoes, yells at me in public and is addicted to percs who was born in February,” or “Only heros with an IQ of 121, work as a pizza delivery driver, have 3 spoons of sugar in their coffee and love reptiles & mice, were born in March by C-section 2 weeks before their due date.”

Its founder, David Moreno, launched the subreddit just ten months ago, but it already has more than 40,000 subscribers. He explained to Vox that the first time he saw a targeted ad, back in 2011 or 2012, “it did fuck with my brain for a while because it had my last name and month of birth and at the time I didn’t realize what was going on.”

These days, however, the practice makes sense to him. “Funnily enough, I work in marketing, so while it might seem like a desperate strategy, it is actually a very good way to target a very specific group of people without spending too much cash,” he said.

The best versions, of course, are the ones seen in the wild. The sub is often populated by surreptitiously photographed people in the offending shirts, like this one, with comments that lightly roast the wearer. They’re the best because they are the saddest — the catalog of folks who were not only owned by the algorithm, but scammed by it.

That’s the other part of what it’s like to see a hyper-targeted ad for something incredibly on-brand: sometimes they read us more clearly than any actual humans. This is an inherently depressing thought, considering that this is sort of the job of the people we love and the society we live in. But the more intimate our phones and our data become in our lives, it might increasingly be the case.

The prevailing cynical attitude towards targeted ads — tweets that say things like, “i just got an ad for preparing for your own funeral, what are you trying to say to me youtube” — can sort of be compared to the FBI agent meme of the past year and a half or so. The idea is that every internet user has their own personal agent monitoring their behavior through their devices, but instead of this being incredibly creepy, the joke is that the agent acts as a friend or frustrated mentor to the subject.

me: (sitting back down on my bed with a bowl of chips ready to binge a new series) hey so what does “fbi” stand for anyway

fbi agent inside my computer: uh Faraway.. Buddy.. Insideyourcomputer

me: cool. so what do u wanna watch next

fbi agent: i heard grace and frankie is fun

— jonny sun (@jonnysun) February 1, 2018

A Mashable article earlier this year explored the surprising poignance of the meme: “The agent wants the best for their subject,” writes its author Chloe Bryan. “The narrator, conscious of how boring their life must be to observe, tries to entertain the FBI agent. They have pleasant conversations. They develop a forbidden friendship. They become quiet, lightly subversive allies.”

In both cases, we’re taking our deepest technological anxieties — that the internet stores and sells our data and that the government is spying on us — and turning them into lighthearted jokes. Which is fair! It’s a lot more fun to pretend Big Data is actually just there to dunk on our most embarrassing shopping habits instead of manipulating U.S. elections or contributing to the rising wealth of the world’s richest people.

Which means there will probably come a day when an ad on Instagram for an enormous cheese-warming gadget targeted specifically to a person using a complex set of his internet data will no longer be funny. But we may as well laugh while it still is.

Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? Sign up for our newsletter here.

Original Source -> The joy and horror of targeted Facebook ads

via The Conservative Brief