#on my third rewatch of foundation

[drolta]

Wild how every time I fall in love with a show my brain insists that we have to watch it a million times consecutively.

[jonasiegenthaler]

What are the best games for a newbie hockey fan to watch to see that patented 1386 chemistry

ooh this was a fun one anon, thank you! this is more like, foundational (imo) games of the "this is nico's team now" era more than anything. but this did get. Very Long. so sorry about that lol

20 APR 2021 - NJD @ PIT: to me, really truly the start of a new era, couple games removed from moving zajac and palmieri at the deadline, in the middle of a 15-game (kinda, they had one win so like, is it really a win) losing streak. down 6-0 at the end of the second period they score 6 (!!!) goals in the third period and fall juuuust short of a comeback leading to this moment

29 APR 2021 - PHI @ NJD: the first of 3 games against philly because covid season was a fever dream individually great games from jack and nico but more importantly one of my favourite hughes to hischier power play goals of the season

19 OCT 2021 - SEA @ NJD: cursed jack shoulder injury game so like, maybe don’t watch it, BUT one of many captain games from nico, absolutely killing it once jack went down, played incredible defensively and kept the team afloat in jack’s absence

31 DEC 2021 - EDM @ NJD: honestly this game has everything (except defense)! jack goal! nico goal! dawson goal! jack ot goal! surprise hugs!

02 JAN 2022 - NJD @ WSH: the very first jack to nico overtime goal! against the caps! rejoice! (and sheldon keefe take notes)

22 JAN 2022 - CAR @ NJD: pride night game, jacknico(sevo) pp goal, post-win shenanigans, lots of them!

24 FEB 2022 - NJD @ PIT: 3 point games for both jack and nico, and 2 (!!!) power play goals, fun game, we love wins, we love pp goals, we love wins with pp goals

22 MAR 2022 - NYR @ NJD: of the ‘prom pose across the ice blown up into a mural at the prudential center where people now take couple photos’ fame. historic night for devils nation, and therefore the world. but also just. such a good game, made you believe in the team and the core (and then they lost 5 of the next 6 because they wouldn’t be the devils if they didn’t). top 3 hischier to hughes goals. the perfect game. obligatory fuck the rags.

28 OCT 2022 - COL @ NJD: second game of the 13 game win streak, we didn’t know what to expect and they gave us an absolute defensive masterclass from nico and a jack power play goal as a treat

disclaimer: not gonna put every game of the win streak here but like. you should watch all of them. just for the pure joy.

10 NOV 2022 - OTT @ NJD: another jacknico ot goal! i.e. things you love to see! truly bonkers overtime, if you don’t want to rewatch the full game just watch the overtime because akira subbed in with like 10 minutes left in the third, ice cold, held it down with ottawa pushing and played SO well in ot

17 NOV 2022 - NJD @ TOR: nico goal, jack ot heroics, and a little hurt/comfort, yknow, the good stuff

15 DEC 2022 - PHI @ NJD: my mind retconned this one as a win and turns out they did lose BUT it is a win solely for nico going after tk in jack’s honour, juicy narratives

07 JAN 2023 - NJD @ NYR: jack going nuclear, jacknico power play assists to jesper (big three goal!) +++ jacknico overtime goal which, okay, sevo scored the goal and neither of them got an assist on it but it’s the essence of it all. also burger king jerseys my beloved.

16–24 JAN 2023: the stretch from the sharks game to the vegas game where they were inexplicably red hot on the power play/6v5 and dougie’s shot was automatic and they put us through an absolute roller coaster. 

23 FEB 2023 - LAK @ NJD: hughes to hischier! with the net empty! with like 40 seconds to go in the third and then dawson gets the ot winner and it’s beautiful and life is wonderful and everything’s perfect.

25 FEB 2023 - PHI @ NJD: 2003 cup anniversary game! jack goal! nico goal! something something passing the torch, something something looking up at the rafters hoping that’ll be your name up there someday

22 APR 2023 - NJD @ NYR - GAME 3: jack power play goal pulling them right back into the series what a game what a time <3

28 NOV 2023 - NYI @ NJD: hughes to hughes to hischier power play goal, that’s family baby! also of course “nico is a horse” game because why be normal about your captain when you can do whatever jack’s doing.

09 MAR 2024 - NJD @ CAR: first jack to nico 5v5 goal! put it in the history books! One of the few bright spots from last season that’s hopefully gonna carry forward this season, jack and nico finally starting to click at 5v5.

22 MAR 2024 - WPG @ NJD: unremarkable in the grand scheme of things but so many power play goals, therefore so many jacknico moments, bon appetit <3

[halloween4life]

The Orange Side is going to represent Impulsiveness and the rest of y'all are wrong: a thread

For obvious reasons the title of this post is a joke. But anyway, hi hello. I wanted to talk about my theory of what I think the Orange Side is gonna be! Now this post is going to be looong so for the sake of everyone it's going to be put under the cut.

Disclaimers that I want to get out of the way now: I have just recently re-entered the fandom and I haven't been into Sanders Sides in years. I'm not a Patreon supporter nor do I have Twitter so I lack any information that may have been revealed there. Also I am still in the process of rewatching the series. So as of now, I don't really have a complete understanding of the series. I apologize if I get anything wrong, and if any of this puts you off, totally valid.

Oh also, general spoilers for like, anything Sanders Sides related but specifically Working Through Intrusive Thoughts (if you still somehow have not watched it). Honestly I recommend watching it before reading this as a refresher, because most of this theory is based around/supported by that video. It's like, really the only foundation for this theory as I don't really delve much into the other episodes.

First things first, I am going to lay down some rules on what the Orange Side could represent:

1) The concept needs to in some way be the "opposite" of logic. Realistically this doesn't have to be the case in the series, but based on how the other Dark Sides function, it makes the most sense for now.

2) The concept needs to be generally considered negative for them to be considered a Dark Side.

3) Whatever they represent needs to REALISTICALLY make sense as an aspect of C! Thomas' identity. I think a lot of people forget that the Sides are that, Sides of a whole person. So I tried my best to make that work.

Now, with that out of the way,,,I'm going to "debunk" some theories first. Yes sorry there is a lot of set up to this theory, but I feel like it's important. Also, reminder, if you believe in either of the theories I am going to debunk, that is TOTALLY 100% VALID! I'm just going to discuss why I don't think they work, so this is all just my opinion!

Theory 1: The Orange Side represents Rage

I'm pretty sure this is the most popular theory right now, and I know a lot of people also disagree with it. I think this one mostly came about because our only real evidence of the Orange Side is through Logan's anger fueled outbursts in WTIT and Learning New Things About Ourselves. While I definitely understand this line of thinking, I don't think it's right.

First and foremost, it breaks the third rule set up earlier. Again, all these characters are facets of Thomas' personality. And from what we've seen of him, it just doesn't make sense with his personality. Now, again, this could obviously be different in the series, we could learn that this is actually his rage and he's just been repressing it, but I doubt that'll be the case. (Also I feel like this could break the first rule but I don't know how to explain why).

Secondly, and I just think that rage in and of itself is just, way too specific of a concept to be represented by a side. This kinda works in tandem with the first point, since again, it just doesn't seem that large of an aspect of Thomas that it would be represented by its own side. As well, all the other sides represent either much larger concepts or multiple at a time. For instance, Logan, Patton, and Roman represent logic, morality, and (good) creativity respectively. While Virgil and Janus do represent anxiety and deceit, those titles are rather reductive, as they also represent vigilance and self-preservation respectively. (Really I think we need to talk more about the fact that Janus is canonically Thomas' self-preservation but is really only viewed as "deceit"). Remus is a fun case as although he is viewed as "intrusive thoughts", he as a whole represents the bad side of creativity. TLDR: Rage is too specific a concept to be its own side.

Theory 2: The Orange Side Represents Emotion

Okay I'm going to be honest, I've only seen one person on here with this theory (and for the life of me I can't remember their name). But I just want to say that if you are reading this, this isn't me calling you out or anything (honestly I really agreed with your theory until I came up with this one). If I remember correctly, this theory is more built on the Orange Side being an opposite to logic, and how emotions tend to cloud logic, similar to the reasoning for rage.

I think this theory most obviously breaks rule 2. Now emotions as a whole do have the capacity to be bad, I think the concept of just emotion is not generally considered bad. Definitely not enough for it to be considered along with the Dark Sides. It's simply too big of a concept to be either "good" or "bad".

On that subject, I think this theory has a similar issue to the rage theory, but in the opposite direction. While rage was too specific, emotions are waaay too broad to just be one singular side. Especially given that all of the current sides have some sway over Thomas' emotions. And it's also possible that this side would be considered too close to Patton. While yes, it is not explicitly stated that he is in charge of Thomas' emotions, he definitely has the most sway over them. Ultimately, I think this theory is just too vague to work.

Okay, now with that all out of the way, let's get into my actual theory. So,

Why do I think the Orange Side will represent Impulsiveness?

I'm going to start this off by comparing my claims to the rules I made up. Because tbh, that's how I came to the conclusion in the first place before I started finding evidence to support it (but isn't that how all good hypotheses work?)

1) Does impulsiveness act as a counter to logic?

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, Impulsive is defined as "prone to sudden illogical changes of mind, ideas, or actions". Now I was gonna go on a big explanation of how they are opposites but it literally says illogical in the definition. So uh, yayy 🎉🎉🎉

2) Is impulsiveness seen as a negative thing?

Now, truthfully there is no way for me to prove that impulsiveness is either "good" or "bad". That being said, I feel like a lot of people generally view impulsiveness as a bad thing. While in small amounts it can be seen as good and fun, the more frequently you engage in impulsive behaviors, the more destructive it can become. Often leading to bad decision making, i.e. avoiding work, making big financial decisions without much thought, and generally just doing what you want over what may be important.

3) Does this fit within Thomas' personality?

Yes. It has been shown time and time again that Thomas has an issue with his impulsive behaviors. Oftentimes manifesting in him avoiding chores and general self-care in favor of doing something easy or entertaining. The most clear example of this being the video "Growing Up." While yes, most of these decisions are made due to Patton, it's not entirely uncommon for the sides to be affected or swayed by the others. (Also if I'm being honest, I don't think it entirely fair to analyze the earlier episodes with the same critical lens as the later ones, it's definitely not fair to Thomas (the real Thomas) to criticize the early episodes for not perfectly aligning with later lore).

Now, finally, we can get into some evidence to support all these claims I'm making. First things first, as of right now Logan and the Orange Side are one in the same. We haven't been given any proof that they are at least physically different beings (unless you want to count the orange eyes in the Sanders Sides anime intro parody). So all of our evidence is just Logan acting really out of character. So, where does Logan act impulsively?

Our first major incident of this (I'm pretty sure) is in the episode "Learning New Things About Ourselves", specifically the scene where Roman essentially pisses him off so much that he throw's a crumpled up note card at him. Most important is his reaction afterwards, being shocked at himself.

He was basically pushed so far that he reacted without thinking (impulsively some may say? ok I'll stop, I'm sorry). Which, obviously, is EXTREMELY out of character for him. He is logic, he is supposed to think first before he acts, go through possible scenarios and decide the most favorable outcome. Yet, here he loses all control.

Our next example is less of Logan acting impulsive and more so how I believe his actions are affecting Thomas. In the episode "Working Through Intrusive Thoughts", Thomas basically spends the whole time being tormented by Remus because he can't keep his mind off of the risky text he sent Nico (I'm aroace but I'm gonna assume valid? So real?). While Logan is simultaneously trying to keep Thomas on schedule, accommodate his struggles, and accommodate Remus' actions as part of Thomas' identity. Basically, it's a lot, and when he's finally at his limit, well

Yeahhhh, a certain something makes itself known. And while Logan doesn't act particularly irrationally or impulsively in this moment (literally all he does is yell at Remus), it is what Thomas does after this outbreak that I find interesting. As immediately afterward he gets a call from Nico, inviting him out. And given the choice between what he has planned to do and needs to get done for the day, vs spending the day with Nico?

He decides suddenly to just drop everything he is doing for Nico. A rather impulsive decision if you ask me. And while yes, technically none of what Thomas was doing needed to get done that day (it was mostly chores), it was part of a plan and he promised himself to stick to it. Logan doesn't react well to any of this, both his own outburst and Thomas deciding to just leave him behind like it's nothing. And I don't think it's gonna spell anything good in the future for Logan and the rest of the gang.

So, where does that leave us now?

Well, moving a bit on to what I think is going to happen next. Obviously things are going to get worse before they get better. Logan will fall more and more into impulsive behaviors, which will only become more destructive for Thomas. As well, I think (hope, pray) that there will be some sort of team up between Logan and Remus. They're the only sides who I think could "properly" get along (I know that Janus and Remus have some sort of friendship, but it can only work so well as Janus being self-preservation can only really run counter to Remus' intrusive thoughts). Most likely they will feed into each other in a horrible cycle of "I can make him worse." I don't think that would be either of their genuine intentions, as I don't like labeling the Dark Sides and "bad", but I definitely don't think they would be good for each other. I do also think this will come about because Remus either knows or understands something about Logan that the others don't, not even Janus. As well I do hope that Logan and the Orange Side are one in the same somehow, and not just Logan being influenced.

Anyway, sorry for the insanely long post and sorry if it started to devolve towards the end. I am quite literally writing this on no hours of sleep, so give me a bit of grace. Also, another sorry if I have gotten anything wrong or if I have missed something. It has been very long since I've engaged with Sanders Sides, but I'm trying my best. Anyway, thank you for coming to my ted-talk, I hope Logan gets to commit murder in the next episode.

[magnorious]

I figured out why I didn’t like Arcane Season 2!

Randomly, while at work.

I do not have the energy or time to intensely rewatch all 18 episodes right now so if you’re going to harass me about some minute detail in episode 7 that I’m forgetting… go off I guess?

My issue when I watched it was a lack of connectivity between the buildup of S1 and the payoff in S2 and how the whole thing felt rushed. I did not like Ambessa but couldn’t figure out why. She’s a fine character, but every time she was on screen she just felt unnecessary. I know she’s there for Mel’s arc and is a threat to Piltover.

But the initial conflict that divided Zaun and Piltover wasn’t from without, it was from within. Zaun had been suffering under Piltover’s boot and the runoff of Piltover’s pollution for generations. They were disenfranchised and both left to rot, but still under Piltover policing. Their issues were never about magic or its existence, it was always politics between them and only them.

Enter the hex cores and Ambessa from Noxus. Having the big resolution of the entire series, that felt like it was building up to explore the many different realms for the game’s other popular characters, to then funnel it back into a snake eating itself, with Viktor being the mage that Jayce saw all those years ago felt… limiting. Viktor’s “the solution to world peace is removing free will” impacted Vi and Jinx in that they’re all three Zaunites, but after all these years of bad blood, one team-up against a third-party military is the solution to fixing the relationship between Piltover and Zaun?

It took what I thought was going to be a political story working at how to give Zaun justice for all the shit done unto them and said “wait, put all politics aside we gotta fight these robots”. The show does not have a “everything’s perfect now” happy ending, but that’s a whole lot to be left to interpretation.

I’m still in disbelief that this was apparently the plan from the beginning, when they crammed just so much into this season. You open the entire series on a genocide that orphaned the two poster characters, because of systemic issues between two nations, and resolve the series with someone else’s villain while these two run support.

I don’t hate any of the characters, despite being a bit disappointed that they brought Vander back to just… die again, like they could not come up with anything better to give these two. Ambessa wants the hexcore and wants to take over Piltover. Great. Yeah, that’s a threat to Zaun, assuming she plans to make life exponentially worse for them, but it wasn’t the original threat to Zaun. Viktor wants to solve all suffering by mind-controlling everyone. Great. Once he’s gone, does everyone just toss their grievances aside?

Could season 2 not have been building up the extent of the damage that the hexcore was doing to both nations, giving them all time to understand that they’ve got to work together to clean up Piltover’s mess with Viktor as the villain? Then go and expand the world into the Ambessa problem in season 3, once these nations have built at least the foundations of an alliance. Nobody would have complained about having more show to watch.

[kazuallh]

arcane predictions!!! but mostly kaz's unintelligible rambles

no like now that we're done with act 1 i kinda wanted to get in on the fun of like guessing esp because i KNEW the enforcer act would backfire immediately spoilers duhhhhh

isha or maddie is gonna die bc like. the tropes are right there.

someone said that ambessa is gonna be the final boss villain and idk if thats league lore im missing out on, someone pls enlighten me

loving ambessa btw the reveal that she was behind the 'attack' during the memorial fucking GENIUS

bc it was kind of a breaking point of the dark caitlyn arc!!

vi pitfighting arc next which im sad about bc like wdym i gotta watch my girl going THRU it

i mean this is a stretch but heimerdinger,,, bro defo has a bigger part to play right

yk like all of this has got me thinking abt the ending bc it cant be something like and they band together and live happily ever after!!! its gotta have some major casualty

so im kinda expecting it ... either vi... or jinx...

i love the vi is caitlyns weakness trope - it happened in s1 and remember how ambessa exiled mel bc she weakened her think THAT and cait being ambessas target and cait cutting off vi... would love to see it more in play.

jinx doing smth sacrificial bc girl has zero self preservation skills

SPEAKING OF JINX

i love the shift in perspective bc s1 felt like we were watching it from jinx first person pov and rn it feels like jinx third person and also her saying 'its so quiet now'

her character arc seems to be taking the hero's path which is so cool!!!!!!!!!!

that guy... yk the enforcer guy who left when cait was declared leader... who tf is that guy

ALSO WHO IS WARWICK SORRY I DONT KNOW LEAGUE LORE SOMEONE EXPLAIN BC WHAT IM SEEING IS... WORRYING...

ekko badass moment

i have NO idea whats gonna happen w viktor but jayvik nation i extend my condolences

yk idk how theyre gonna add more lore - if theyre gonna add more lore bc act 1 lays down the foundation, sets the scene, everything else builds up from here na. just fascinated on where its going frfr.

okay yeah i know this is not very predictions but wtv wtv i just wanted to say ik people say the pacing felt off but it felt perfect to me tbh - keeping in mind i finished my s1 rewatch last night - it felt like elements sorta clicking into piece, yk? the cogs of a machine taking their places.

thats all i can think of for now, lmk ur thoughts!!!!!111

[grifff17]

hi I've heard you do podcast recommendations

I've just finished Desert Skies after relistening to Midnight Burger for the third time, but there's still a burger-shaped hole in my heart that Welcome To The Horizon just doesn't seem to fill.

do you maybe know of any podcasts with a similar vibe? for me it's very about "outcasts in a very surreal scenario with a dash of comedy and strong characterisation"

if so, much appreciated ❤️

I decided to break down you request into "outcasts in situations", "surreal", "comedy", and "strong characters", and recommend some shows that have multiple of these traits. I've roughly listed the traits in order of how prevalent they are.

SCP: Find Us Alive (strong characters, surreal, outcasts in situations, comedy): This show might be the closest thing to Midnight Burger out there, but it's still very different. It's set in the SCP universe, where a covert foundation studies and hides things that break the laws of the universe. The show is set in a Foundation research site that gets transported into a pocket dimension, and focuses on the characters adapting to their weird situation and attempting to escape. It's also in some ways a workplace comedy. You will get more out of this show if you are already familiar with the SCP universe, but since the show is entirely contained within a pocket dimension you don't miss too much.

Wolf 359 (strong characters, outcasts in situations, comedy, surreal): Wolf 359 is an absolute classic audiodrama, a good percentage of modern audiodramas are inspired by it. The main characters are the crew of Hephaestus Station, a deep space outpost looking for signals from alien life. For the first 10 episodes or so it's a comedy, but after that the plot really picks up. Fairly similar vibes to Midnight Burger, though the way the characters are written is very different.

Girl in Space (outcasts in situations, strong characters): A girl has spent her entire life alone on a spaceship orbiting a star. The only people she has ever talked to were her parents and a dysfunctional AI. All she wants to do is do science and rewatch Jurassic Park. Of course, other people have to come along and ruin it. This show is a lot like (and probably inspired by) Wolf 359, in the "set on a remote space station with lots of weird hidden secrets in it" sense.

Midst (surreal, strong characters, outcasts in situations): Midst is hard to describe. It's somewhat similar to Midnight Burger, but only in that both of them are so different from everything else out there. Midst is a surreal space western with very unique worldbuilding, and, in favor of a full voice cast, three narrators who narrate together, like people sitting around a fire telling a story. If you aren't sure about this one, listen to the first 2 minutes of the first episode, it stats off with a bang, literally.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris (outcasts in situations, strong characters): Think the tv show Firefly, but its super queer. That's basically TSCOSI. In a sci-fi setting where the human government is evil, the main characters are a group of smugglers being gay and doing crimes on their ramshackle spaceship. It also has a little bit of comedy, but less than Midnight Burger.

Mission Rejected (comedy, outcasts in situations, strong characters): "This is your mission, should you choose to accept it." What happens when the superspy declines a mission? The backups are called in, of course! A pencil pusher, an intern, a failed actor, and a hacker on work release are brought together to take on the spy missions that superspy Chet Philips declines. This show is a parody of spy tropes, with surprisingly strong character writing for such a silly comedy. Hope you like volcano lairs, silly accents, and villains that refuse to stay dead!

Fall of the House of Sunshine (surreal, comedy, strong characters, outcasts in situations(in the later seasons) ): This show is as surreal as it gets! A terrible noir detective investigates the murder of a kids tv show host via a bullet fired through a rift in space time, and gets sucked into a secret war between a cult of dentists and living puppets. Oh yeah, and its a musical! If you like the sound of that, this show is for you. Every season is an escalation of the previous one. Like Mission Rejected, I care about the characters shockingly much for how thoroughly ridiculous this show is.

If you want some more recommendations, I can find you some more, but these ones are the closest I found. I'll admit that the last couple are a stretch, but I just really like those shows and take every opportunity to recommend them.

[imthepunchlord]

Just a random question, but do you like adrien and marinette being the main duo, or do you think two other people would've been better?

Yes and no.

It's kinda complicated.

So, with my long break from Miraculous, clearing out my salt mines, and doing a gradual rewatch of the show with fresh eyes and enjoying the nostalgia of what used to be, I can say I am reminded on why, we as a fandom, enjoyed them as leads and as a pair.

There was some yin-yang potential in their dynamic, specifically playing off Lady Wifi introducing the Head vs Heart idea.

Marinette's an Empathetic Head. She's observant and perceptive, the planner and quick thinker, typically, she responds logically to what's presented to her. But she does feel deeply for others, and that empathy and kindness drives her to step up and help others.

Adrien in turn is a Reasonable Heart, at least, meant to be. He works off his feelings, goes with his gut, his wants; but he's also meant to be the emotional reason, knowing what to say to ground those that are getting caught up in themselves, offer support and direction, one they didn't consider or see before.

It nicely places off that theme that there's a little bit of the other in the counterparts, which is why the two halves have those dots, a little bit of yang resides in yin and vice versa.

And between the fluff and the snark and the support/loyalty they do offer each other, that potential for them as partners and users for the Cat and Ladybug is there.

Unfortunately, the writers' bias and stubbornness ruined that dynamic. What's meant to be a partnership of equals never becomes equals. Adrien never steps up as a leader and shares the weight of responsibility, and Marinette never feels like she can ease back and trust others to handle things, making her feel like she has to solve everything and be THE solution.

There's also the factor that they decided to prioritize the romance over the friendship, which did not really help Adrien as a hero as he focused more on his romantic pursuits than being a hero, flirting at the wrong time, not taking anything seriously... it was a bad look. And then Adrien and Marinette as civilians, despite being stated to be friends, I kinda question if they truly are. Adrien never actively goes to hang out with Marinette on his own, most of the time, there's a social expectation for them to hang out as civilians, or a favor is involved.

One of the aspects that has a romance work is having a good friendship to be that foundation. But the writers don't value friendship, not between actual friends and not between the love interests.

And the third issue is their means of growth.

Thomas, unfortunately, echoed the idea that girls grow through suffering. So Marinette's growth is just having the narrative against and giving her a hard time and she just can't win no matter what she does. Damned if she do, and damned if she don't. And I got to see that she developed anxiety and has an Atlas Complex and is very stress and just...

And with Adrien, he's just stagnant. He doesn't get involved in his own plot. He doesn't step up to the responsibility of being a hero, nor does he seek to share the weight of leadership. He's handed things on a silver platter, is allowed to be upset and petty and recklessly use his power.

And all of these factors just throws a big wrench into the potential of their partnership and them as leads and as the Cat and Ladybug heroes.

Better writers can make them work. And I bet there are a lot of good fanfics out there that have made them work.

I can see that potential and promise there. It's just really poor execution that ruined it.

I also will say, personally, I do think narrative wise things would flow better if they had a kwami swap at the start. Though, this is largely working the direction canon did go and I can see how a kwami swap could've combated that.

Plagg is set up to be the ideal foil to Marinette and have her grow, as she's too much of a giver, overthinks, piles too much on her plate, and struggles to put herself first. Extra bonus that they could've been a hilarious duo to see.

Tikki's big appeal with Adrien is that she would've gotten him involved in his own plot. Would've pushed for him to figure out who he is, what he wants to do, to be more involved if not be the leader, and to think more before he acts. And there could've been some good fluff as Tikki fills the void his mom left, as she can be very affectionate and supportive.

There's also the factor that Adrien needs someone to straight up tell him when he did something wrong or uncool. Anything that's a vague hint that Plagg occasionally gives just goes over Adrien's head or is ignored.

And there is that big appeal of shifting up the dynamics. Canon's issue is that Marinette and Tikki are initiators, while Adrien and Plagg are reactors. Mixing up these dynamics would've done wonders for their characters and interactions.

So, yeah over all, they can and could've worked as leads and holders of the Ladybug and Cat. The writing just really screwed them over. Though, I will say, doing different leads for Ladybug and Cat isn't an impossibility either.

[absolutebirth]

READ THIS ON NEOCITIES @ ABSOLUTEBIRTH.NEOCITIES.ORG

I watched Revolutionary Girl Utena for the first time on my parents thrifted green velvet couch, HDMI-plugging my Dell laptop into the TV to stream on 9anime (HD to the youtube mirror's fuzzy graphics), and after every episode I would slide onto the floor, pull my laptop toward me, and search up Vrai Kaiser's Utena analysis. I felt an overwhelming amount of pity for those who went into Utena without that sort of guide. It's a beautiful show without a second thought, sure, but like its older brother NGE, analysis is what takes it from a surrealist shoujo with the conventional twist of a lesbian relationship to one of the greatest pieces of feminist television of all time.

THIS WAS ALL WELL AND GOOD, BUT SO IMPRESSED WAS SHE THAT THE PRINCESS VOWED TO BECOME A PRINCE HERSELF ONE DAY

On a first watch, it's difficult to do much more than take in the beauty and strangeness of Ikuhara's mind. Kaiser's analysis is what saved me from immediately needing to rewatch all 38 episodes, what prepared me for the End of the World and let me leave episode 38 feeling like I understood the foundations of Utena and so could confidently say that I was, of course, obsessed.I did rewatch it a few weeks later with a friend, in the insufferable sort of way RGU fans are likely familiar with, pointing out every piece of color parallels, half explaining the shadow girl snide remarks, gasping at early-show visual parallels and giving my friend just a quick "no, no, nothing."

About five years later, it's time for my third rewatch, this time with my girlfriend. There isn't anything quite as dyke-ish as watching Utena with a girl you're enamoured with. It's the sort of thing that makes you feel really, deeply connected to all those late 90s, early 2000s lesbians wearing Sailor Moon t-shirts over chunky long sleeves, introducing their own college girlfriends to Revolutionary Girl Utena, sitting on a tan corduroy couch in their parents basement. There's something cosmic in the simple timeless genius of a show like that. Since I began to read theory and smoke weed, I've only become a worse movie-watching partner, and so to spare her the misery I've decided to focus my analysis outwards, into a resource like Kaiser's.

BUT WAS THAT REALLY SUCH A GOOD IDEA?

This blog aims to be, starting 5/22/24, a biweekly Utena watchthrough with analysis for each episode, with the end goal of both allowing anyone following along with the blog to participate in a communal rewatch and creating a future resource for anyone who wants to read along with something as they watch Utena for the first time, like I had. I also aim to make a trigger warning resource for Utena, because the currently available ones seem to me to be flawed to the point of unusability. If there are any other first-watch resources you wish had been around on your first watch-through, let me know! I can be reached in the comments section of any post, at my email wittctm108@proton.me or at my personal tumblr, @carbootsoul. My About page has more information on my Utena biases, the lenses I'm the most inclined to view the show through, favorite characters, general personal background, post format, and more-- if you're interested in that sort of context, please check it out. Otherwise, stay tuned. Smash the world's shell.

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: The Bad Buddy Rewatch Edition, Part 1 -- Where BBS Came From, What It References, and More

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I kick off the first of four (or more, whoa!) posts on Bad Buddy. I'll look today at Thai BLs that preceded Bad Buddy that BBS spoke to, the tropes and themes that BBS reshapes and adds to the genre's existence, and I'll also take a look at singular commonalities among Aof Noppharnach's shows.]

Links to the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series are here: part 1, part 2, part 3a, part 3b, and part 4

Since April of this year, I have been watching drama after drama, BL after BL, to get myself familiar enough with the Thai BL genre in order to understand... at least, much more about Bad Buddy than I previously understood when I first watched BBS in January. Today, I'm going to test my mettle, my newfound exposures to the genre, in taking a look at what made BBS so special by way of what came before it.

(Let me quickly note that in no way, shape, or form do I consider myself an expert in the Thai BL genre. That honor is for the people who've been through the trenches for years, people like my dear friends @bengiyo, @so-much-yet-to-learn, and more.)

As usual with my OGMMTVC analyses, here's a little outline for the lovers:

1 ) Some quick additional thoughts on how BBS reshapes Thai BL tropes, building off of meta from the time of BBS's original airing,

2) How I think earlier shows spoke to BBS by way of influence, as well as shared writing and/or directing teams in some instances, and

3) Similarities in the emotional structures of some of the most important protagonists of major GMMTV BLs, including Third, Sarawat, Phupha, and Pran.

Just as a quick reminder from my preamble post a couple of days ago, one of the inspirations for my creating the Old GMMTV Challenge was from a discussion I had with @miscellar regarding the Thai BL tropes that Bad Buddy referenced and reshaped. This post is what I have permanently linked as a means of partly explaining the context of why I created the OGMMTVC, but I also want to direct your attention to this other post by @miscellar regarding from whence BL tropes often stem from -- namely, conventions of reference from the het romance genre.

I want to posit two points to get this started. I think that, fundamentally, the general fandom loves what BBS did by way of both including and reshaping Thai BL tropes. Tropes do indeed give structure to many Thai BLs very often, as @miscellar notes in their second linked post. Even director Aof Noppharnach and the cast of Bad Buddy note this point as a central structural foundation to their show.

I would also posit that us as a fandom (or, at least, just speaking for myself)... happen to love many (but not all) of the tropes themselves, or at least to some extent, particularly by way of nostalgic reference. When I was really getting underway with the OGMMTVC watchlist earlier this spring, I could see in watching, say, Love Sick or SOTUS, the birth of the tropes. Phun and Noh hosing each other down, Kongpob and Arthit not only being engineers in SOTUS, but seeking out careers in the field in SOTUS S. The hubby/wifey language, the strong seme/uke energy in Make It Right, in Together With Me, and so on.

I felt that the Thai BL trope framework, in the course of my watchlist progress, first truly coalesced as a means of a coded and referential artistic infrastructure in Love By Chance. Love By Chance, based on a novel by MAME and written and directed by the longtime BL creator, New Siwaj, had it all. Engineering students in a university setting, rich boy/poor boy, seme/uke/top/bottom dynamics, queer revelations, beach trips, the guitars and the singing, all of it. Back in June, I called LBC the first derivative structured BL -- clearly a BL that came from those that preceded it.

To @miscellar's points in their second linked post: LBC also had, I feel, quite a lot of problematic elements. Before I watched TharnType, I was already calling out a discomfort I felt about homophobia within MAME's material in LBC. I also noted very strong macro cishet romance elements in the way Ae approached his engagements with Pete, romantic and intimate.

We know now that Bad Buddy just grabbed these tropes, and even some of these problematic elements, like the demand for a clearly binary seme/uke dynamic -- and turned them on their heads. Pat and Pran were equals and partners, full-stop. No seme/uke, no top/bottom, no gay for you, no wifey this and hubby that. Bad Buddy took SOTUS and LBC by their shoulders and said -- not today, not on my watch (and BBS AND A Tale of Thousand Stars did it AGAIN in Our Skyy 2!). Especially in closing out Bad Buddy through Our Skyy 2, I love how very specific Pat and Pran were about their verse relationship, with both guys, throughout the series and in OS2, asking each other for each other's ratings of their nightly performances. Yes, it was hilarious and cute and flirty, but those conversations were also very pointed -- and they very much harkened way, way back to themes that Aof and his colleague, Jojo Tichakorn, had explored as screenwriter and director of Gay OK Bangkok (here and here), and in Jojo's The Warp Effect, all of these shows preceding their work in BLs.

I think the turning-on-the-heads of these tropes, within an otherwise classic Thai BL, created an utterly unique fabric by which a new kind of nostalgia for the particular show that is Bad Buddy could be created -- something that almost cannot be RECREATED by the way of the construction of the universe of equality, love, mutual respect, and miraculous communication that Pat and Pran had established between each other. The equitable dynamic in Bad Buddy between Pat and Pran, of the honesty and incredibly open empathic communication that these two had between each other, seems to me to be truly unique -- ESPECIALLY in the face of the massively biased and dysfunctional communicative styles of their parents.

Moreover, now that I'm at this point of the OGMMTVC list -- AND including what I know about his shows post-Bad Buddy, in Moonlight Chicken, Our Skyy 2, and Last Twilight, which is airing now -- we now know that Aof has created HIS OWN SET OF TROPES THROUGH HIS SHOWS. He is the queer filmmaker in Thai BLs par excellence to create a conversation among his shows, and shows made by his colleagues, that speak to each other by way of symbolism, and, I believe, a harkening back both to previous expectations of older queer media AND to older Asian media, particularly by way of either open-ended and/or melancholic endings, as well as general explorations of melancholy and bittersweetness in his shows on behalf of queer characters.

(Before I give some specific examples of Aof's own trope structures by way of inspiration and influence, I do want to note that the aforementioned New Siwaj does this, too, particularly by way of his making references to The Love of Siam in his shows. Love of Siam is known for having a relatively tragic ending between two young queer men. The movie itself is shown and referenced in New's Absolute Zero and My Only 12% -- and the actors who play Tong's parents, who interfere in Tong's relationship with Mew, are reunited as parents in New's Until We Meet Again, where they support Dean's relationship with Pharm. However, I tend to focus on Aof in admiration as his art is generally more consistently excellent.)

So! What are the new tropes that Aof references in his shows -- the new trope frameworks that he's created for himself, to reflect his own interpretation of the Thai BL genre? We have upside-down smiley faces in Bad Buddy -- but we saw them first in Still 2gether! We have picture boards all over the place in Aof's cinematic universes -- in ATOTS, in BBS (TWICE!) (in two different apartments!), in Moonlight Chicken between Alan and Wen. We have scenes of temples, of culturally-rooted spirituality, from He's Coming To Me, to Moonlight Chicken, and now in Last Twilight. From Phupha's internalized homophobia in A Tale of Thousand Stars, to Jim's internalized homophobia in Moonlight Chicken, Aof doesn't shy away from examining the impacts of the pasts of traditional childhoods in rural settings. Call me a cheesy mom, but I happen to love Aof's tendency to punctuate light moments with cute sound effects.

But beyond tropes and trope frameworks, I think the ways in which Bad Buddy speaks to prior shows -- and vice versa, the way that prior shows ended up contributing to Bad Buddy -- were far more impactful by way of larger, macro-level themes.

While we see on BBS the impact of shows like SOTUS (in SO MANY PLACES in BBS besides Pa's gay-for-you reference and the husband/wife reference, including here and here), I Told Sunset About You, and I Promised You The Moon (I'll have more on IPYTM in a post next week about pain, trust, and separation), we also see what themes the future Bad Buddy team was trying out in their own previous shows. Besides Aof's Still 2gether and A Tale of Thousand Stars, the writing team of Au Kornprom, Bee Pongsate, and Pratchaya Thavornthummarut worked on Theory of Love together. Besides becoming a HUGE fave of mine through the OGMMTVC project, I think Theory of Love held possibly some of the most important proto-BBS themes that I saw along the cinematic way to get to Bad Buddy.

Theory of Love, generally speaking, is about how one person can try to change for another person -- and how that other person, and/or the world, accepts that change.

To fast-forward to the end of BBS: we know that the boys take inspiration from Uncle Tong that they will not let the world of their own intergenerational traumas from their families keep them from loving each other, and being in a devoted relationship with each other. Their empathy for their parents dictates that they'll spare their families the pain of being open about their relationship, and they'll keep the somewhat transparent secret that they're together from being discussed in the open.

Pat and Pran negotiate the impacts of how their relationship may change the people around them -- and they make an empathic decision to spare the families the pain of the upfront realization of that truth. Remember what they say in episode 12:

While Bad Buddy focuses on how the team of Pran and Pat negotiate how their relationship will change others -- I see in Theory of Love the testing of this theme within the potential romantic relationship of Khai and Third. I see Au, Bee, and Pratchaya playing with an idea of change and saying, hey, this is how it can work, and this is how it may not work, realistically. I think Khai and Third end up being a successful couple because -- unlike Pran and Pat -- they don't have to negotiate a generational divide to allow change to infiltrate their lives. (In fact, Third's own process of change, and his acceptance of Khai's change, reflects Pran's journey to welcome Pat into his heart, and Wai's journey to accept Pat's and Pran's relationship.) I love how we see this getting played with, literally by the Bad Buddy squad themselves, in Theory of Love.

It was @lurkingshan who first noted the similarities between Third and Pran for me, and I want to expand on that conversation for a moment to talk about another importance fencepost in Aof's thematic universes -- what our dear friend @bengiyo calls The Knowing of queer male characters in BL dramas.

Third is not Aof's character -- Third belongs to X Nuttapong as the director of Theory of Love -- but Pran, Sarawat from 2gether/Still 2gether, and Phupha of A Tale of Thousand Stars all belong to Aof, and Third was written by Aof's usual squad of writer homies. Third, Sarawat, Phupha, and Pran are all characters written with The Knowing of their being queer in their bones and existences, dealing with a certain amount of suffering and realistic realizations related directly to that Knowing -- in large part, carrying with them painful assumptions of unrequited love, and/or the inability to live openly in love with those that they pine for, until a happy or somewhat-happy ending meets them at the end of their dramatic journeys.

I've unwound quite a bit in my past writing (namely regarding The Love of Siam and the endings of Gay OK Bangkok) of how it moves me incredibly deeply that Aof doesn't shy away from pain, reflections of pain, and either painful and/or open-ended endings in his works. With Third, Sarawat, Phupha, and Pran, us viewers were treated to detailed and empathic journeys of realization and change as these characters negotiated their own paths to intimate honesty with their eventual partners. But those paths were DAMN hard. Many of us still can't shake Pran walking away in crushed tears at the end of episode 5. I'm forever moved by Sarawat's meditation to Earn about the meaning of his relationship and of his love for Tine in Still 2gether as he and Tine are temporarily separated before their school competition.

As an out, queer man, Aof treats his Knowing characters with the greatest empathy. Not all of them, interestingly, are great communicators. In my humble opinion, Third treads chump territory many times throughout Theory of Love. Phupha's, like, one of the worst communicators ever, and this was absolutely solidified until the very end of Our Skyy 2 x ATOTS. We had to have Pran compete with Pat throughout all of episode 6 of Bad Buddy for them to finally confirm their relationship as boyfriends -- and a huge part of that was about Pat revealing to Pran that Pat's competitions with Pran are really more about getting closer and more intimate. The incredible @telomeke (via their side blog, @telomeke-bbs) has written about Pran's outside façade vs. his inner sanctuary, and how so very often in his external life, Pran feels compelled to be visually far more organized than he feels internally. The stress and pressure of that will naturally cause some amount of dissociation, emotional confusion, and distance of the kind we saw at the end of episode 5.

I'm going to unwind more about this in an upcoming Big Meta on pain, trust, and separation in many of Aof's shows, but I want to highlight these melancholic themes and infrastructures here now, because I really think they lend emotional depth and connections to shows either led by Aof and/or his close colleagues. These are tough themes to think about. The endings can absolutely be interpreted as happy endings in most cases -- even though an Asian viewer like myself, very much raised on Asian content, can read between the lines of these endings to understand their melancholic underpinnings.

Bad Buddy is perhaps the most popular of Aof's dramas, I'd posit, because while the ending of the series is a little sad to contemplate -- it ends, as it began, with utter equality between Pat and Pran as protagonists who deeply care about each other, to the point of establishing what I might term as a radical re-envisioning of the broken and traumatic paradigm that their parents forced upon each of them as children. By engaging, essentially, in radical empathy to each other, they triumphed over the global framework of what was set before them by their own private familial society.

I think this emphasizes the tremendous largesse of the personal changes that Aof's characters undergo in their emotional processes -- whether these characters are Knowing characters, or if, like Pat, they've experienced queer revelations within their shows. To hand to these characters these TREMENDOUS emotional journeys, and to situate these journeys in shows that treat these characters with the utmost respect, lends to Aof's shows -- especially Bad Buddy -- a safety net for us as viewers to trust fully in the journeys we're watching.

Aof takes tropes and problematic themes and reorganizes them, like a Rubix cube. He takes themes that Asians and queer family know of far too well, like intergenerational trauma or social outcasting, and shows how his characters can still find happiness, while realistically keeping these traumas within a character's horizon. And, he's created his own trustworthy frameworks of art that we can depend on as fans. I love and appreciate the patterns in this, and I continue to remain in awe at the power that Bad Buddy had in encapsulating so much of what was percolating in Aof's mind and fingertips as he constructed this show with the influence of others -- making this show a truly legendary one.

(Tagging @dribs-and-drabbles and @solitaryandwandering by request! If you'd like to be tagged, please let me know!)

[First BBS OGMMTVC meta down, and more to come! Stay tuned next week for a Big Meta on Pain, Trust, and Separation in Some Asian Dramas. The piece will hew close to Bad Buddy, but I've got some other GMMTV and non-GMMTV dramas (and even a Japanese dorama BL) in there to analyze as well.

Here's the complete OGMMTVC watchlist as it stands today. Tumblr's web editor is utterly jacking with this list; for a more accurate look at what I've watched, please mosey over to this link!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (The BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series is ongoing: preamble here, more reviews to come) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] (watching) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) The Eclipse OGMMTVC Rewatch For the Sake of Re-Analyzing an Politics-Focused Show After Not Me 39) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 40) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 41) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 42) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults) 43) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here) (I’m including this for BMF’s sophisticated commentary on Krist’s career past as a BL icon) 44) Wedding Plan (2023) 45) Only Friends (2023) (tag here)]

[greatjobjeremy]

tumblr about you survey

tagged by @regina-bithyniae

Last song – My Swamp - Blorg

AI has enabled a whole new level of high-effort shitposts. i've always loved comedic music (weird al) so when i'm not listening to the same old shit i've always listened to i'm listening to blorg/glorb

Last book – Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa

pretty good. it feels reductive to say "it's like an anime" because that's probably just the general vibe of japanese culture bleeding through, but it rings true. obscene amounts of training, badass sword fights, dark horse protag, scrappy protege, holy-man trainer, smallest possible definition of a "harem". god i wish i could swordfight irl without threat of serious injury or death. i guess thats what video games are for

Last movie – My Bloody Valentine (2009)

it was alright i guess. copped a copy of the 3d dvd so it was psychedelic to the point of bewilderment. this one is only for the most dedicated of horror fans. does nothing new but keeps a kind of ridiculous energy that makes it just good enough to never turn off

Last TV show – Aqua Teen Hunger Force

nostalgic rewatch. first few seasons are unrelenting comedy gold. it's kind of disgusting how much of this is is foundational humor for me. later seasons are alright but i guess i stopped watching at some point so it's not quite burned into my memory.

also watching The Boondocks right now. still good. you absolutely could not make this show today.

Last thing I googled – realtor exclusivity contracts

fuck em.

Looking forward to – being a homeowner. expensive as fuck. but fuck paying rent.

Current obsession – 372pages.com

"bad book podcast". they go over the plot, what they liked, what they didnt, read out funny sentences, do skits, whatever. it's what i have on while i'm cleaning up around the house and not feeling like listening to an actual book. after Musashi i tried listening to Wuthering Heights but fell back onto this because that shit was impenetrable. this makes my third (fourth?) go-through so i guess i'm technically obsessed.

Last Game - Flatout 2

totally kickass racing game with a destruction derby twist. like burnout. would recommend to anyone that likes racing at all

@doedaisie @glaciersun @snakespeare @mawfrost

[bereft-of-frogs]

is friday. have a list.

reading:

(finished) Notes on an Execution - Danya Kukafka: Still excellent, still thinking about the ending

(in-progress) The Great Transition - Nick Fuller Goggins: I got this from the person who runs the horror book club I go to. The blurb compared it to Station Eleven, perilously high praise, but I'm weirdly enjoying it. Weirdly because I was afraid the structure would get annoying and weirdly because it's doing a bunch of things I usually find annoying but I'm not annoyed? I think it's because even though there's a lot of social justice themes, it never really feels like the characters are lecturing at the reader. Like there have been some scenes where characters are lecturing other characters - but so far they've all felt like they were more about revealing about the characters and their relationships rather than being like 'see, I know about solidarity, look how good a person I am!' I also really like that the exposition is being given through one of the POV characters (a high school student)'s essays, which have comments from her teacher and the comments are all PERFECT - and sure enough the author's day job is as a teacher. XD

(finished) Light of the Jedi - Charles Soule: still not my favorite, but it does pick up once you get past the first part. I think the narration of that action goes on for a bit too long and doesn't leave much space to take in the characters or setting because so much is happening, one thing after another. But, as I said last week, infinitely better than doomscrolling

(in-progress) Into the Dark - Claudia Gray: Ok the thing about Light is that I didn't really care about any of the deaths in it....until this book made me care. I think Gray is just a little bit more adept at character writing, I really started to fall in love with the High Republic and its characters in this book. I am sad though, given I'm probably going to have to skip Midnight Horizon to avoid getting derailed again, this might be where Reath and I part ways. I ended up loving Reath so much! But alas! Midnight Horizon was not my cup of tea, so I will have to say farewell.

(in-progress) Lord of the Rights chapter-a-day reread: Pelennor Fields today. DEAAAATTTHHH!!!!

watching (tv):

(finished) Silo (Apple TV): WHY am I still thinking about that finale?? why was that so good? WHEN is season 2 coming out?

(in-progress, rewatch) Altered Carbon (Netflix): to stop myself from just watching dumb commentary youtube videos while I'm cooking/eating dinner/etc I started rewatching Altered Carbon and damn it's just so good. I'm almost finished with the first season, I know the second is controversial/isn't quite as good but I still enjoyed it so will continue on

I'm in kind of a hangover post-Silo for the show I watch as part of my bedtime routine. I watched 2 episodes of Foundation and precisely 30 minutes of Severance before I fell asleep last night (I was just really tired because a certain Void Creature had me up at 5AM, not Severance's fault), so idk which I'm going to continue on with. Probably Severance, I'll get back to Foundation eventually.

watching (film):

The Strangers (2008): That scene where Liv Tyler is smoking in the kitchen and the intruder is standing unseen in the background is my LITERAL NIGHTMARE.

Hell House LLC II: The Abbadon Hotel (2018) and Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire (2019): This is such a bizarre series because the first is slightly above-average found footage, the fourth is actually surprisingly scary, and the middle two are SUCH hot garbage, but. Completionist. I have seen them all now. The best scene in the third is with the cultists/demons scuttling around and I realized why it makes me laugh, they remind me of the wraiths in What We Do in the Shadows XD

Dune Part 2 (2024) - I SAW DUNE AGAIN IT WAS STILL GOOD. Aside, is Austin Butler in something the Youths (TM) like? Because I only know him from the awful Elvis movie I suffered through last year. The girl selling my ticket was like 'yeah I've seen it twice as an audience member and then I keep going up to the projection room to watch the duel because Austin Butler *heart eyes*' and I was like.....him? Really? Are the kids just horny for Harkonnens? I have questions.

video game update: I'm unstuck on cult of the lamb! I had the run of my life and got past the underwater level, it was great.

craft update: Skein still tangled, don't want to talk about it. But I've finished the short rows on the sweater vest and am onto the repetitive part! The next real milestone will be getting to where it joins the back under the arms, and I no longer have to purl. I can't wait.

weekend list -- just kidding it's a WEEK list because I'm on vacation! (technically I am dogsitting but I'm still taking a week off from work to go hang out with a dog, so that counts as vacation):

focus up to get through the workday. friends, it is 11AM and that is not going well, let me tell you

go for a run

pack / tidy up apartment so I don't come back to wreckage

non-writing things to do while at parents' house:

many walks! dog cuddles!

try out their fancy peloton thing, see what this cult thing is all about

knitting - planning to work on sweater vest, despite the fact that it is black and my parents' dog is so, so yellow... (she's a yellow lab)

laundry. so much laundry. everything that is in my apartment that can be put in a washing machine, is being brought. We've got sheets, we've got towels, bath mats, etc etc. My parents are paying me for dogsitting services in water usage.

read: I'm bringing 3 books I took out of the library yesterday which seems...ambitious...but maybe doable if I-

--don't scroll. seriously. I've blocked so many things, if I can just stick to occasionally checking my tumblr dash and maybe pinterest once in a while, I can get so much else done

writing to-do:

main project: longfic I am tentatively calling 'the station' (probably will change but this is at least better than my last working title which made no sense so I'm keeping it for now), I have 25k in a very rough draft, and am on chapter 2 of 12 in the rewrite (about 8k words). (It's probably going to be much longer than 25k, that was essentially just the self-indulgent scenes that came easily, now I'm doing the hard plot work, connecting scenes, etc, trying to go roughly in order so I don't have to do another full draft.)

start on the final part of 'omens and all kinds of signs': ideally finish a rough draft but we'll see, I have not started it at all, but I know it will feel good to finish it, if I can get some of the pieces together, that would be great

rough draft of the third variation on the tattoo theme (I have...900 words so far)

rough draft of an alternative POV to an already posted fic that's just an excuse to be shamelessly self-indulgent (I have ?? words scribbled in a notebook about it)

[meta-shadowsong]

An Argument With a Particular Word of God Quote

Note: I wrote this essay a while ago--several months ago--and then just kind of sat on it; but the quote it focuses on has been crossing my dash again the last day or so and it popped back into my head and I decided to go ahead and share.

So. There is a George Lucas quote, I believe from the Attack of the Clones commentary. And I have. Extremely Strong Negative Feelings About It.

The quote in question:

“[The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally] and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”

Okay. To be clear, my problem here is not with the attachment definition/philosophy that’s being posited here, nor with the description of Anakin’s attitude towards it. The first half of the first sentence, the part that’s bracketed--that’s all completely reasonable/true enough and I don’t have a problem with it.

It’s everything after that.

TL;DR: I think it undermines other key themes and conflicts with certain story/dialogue points in the rest of the saga (meaning episodes I-VI); and I feel like it says some pretty uncomfortable and/or negative things about emotional growth, childhood trauma, Shmi, and the Jedi Order.

Let’s break it down.

First, this only works if you look at the PT trilogy, Anakin’s fall from grace, in a complete vacuum, and ignore the OT and Luke’s journey. Because guess what? Luke was also raised outside the Order, to an even older age than Anakin, and while he struggled in ESB and he did in fact have to learn the hard way, he did learn. (Also, I haven’t rewatched ANH recently, and it doesn’t tend to get referenced much in these discussions, but I think it’s worth nothing that--yes, everything in that movie takes place over like three days and he doesn’t have a lot of time to think/process/start wallowing in his grief; but when you compare the way he handles things there with the way Anakin reacts in similar situations, and he’s already working from a more solid foundation, one that had nothing to do with being raised by the Jedi.)

Second, it’s a…weirdly deterministic take for a series that otherwise places a lot of emphasis on choice. On people choosing to do better (or to not do better). Again, that’s all over the OT, particularly with Luke and Han and again with the second half of Anakin/Vader’s journey. So this particular quote undermines that broader theme/message in a big way.

Third, it completely ignores the fact that this concept, about change being inevitable and you have to be able to move on and let go? Is articulated first and (arguably) most clearly by Shmi. Right there. In the movie just prior to this. That this man also wrote. (“You can’t stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting.” That entire scene.) The mother whose parenting Lucas is essentially blaming for Anakin’s tendency to codependency/unhealthy obsession in relationships.

I am. Really not okay with Shmi being thrown under the bus like this. And, like, there’s probably a broader cultural whatever about how motherhood is simultaneously idealized and ignored in modern (Western) culture and art, and how that influences the way Shmi is portrayed and used and eventually fridged, let alone how she’s talked about outside the text itself. But like. She did in fact say this. The fact that Anakin didn’t grasp it and internalize it is not her fault.

Which is sort of tangentially related to a sort of…broader issue I have with the worldbuilding, especially when it comes to this idealized philosophy, which is that…yes, of course the Jedi are the Good Guys, and the philosophy they live by is a good one (and also acknowledging its real-world Buddhist roots). I am not in any way disputing either of those points. But the idea that only the Jedi, and only by accessing Jedi training/philosophy/etc. through this pretty narrow set of idealized circumstances, can allow you to be a good person in this specific idealized way/to follow this philosophy of non-attachment and learn how to love without codependency, leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Especially when you have the same lesson/philosophy/ideal coming from a completely different angle in the same goddamn film. In short, the Jedi aren’t wrong, but they don’t have a monopoly on being right.

Okay. Uh. So those are (that last tangent aside) the writing/structure problems I have with this quote. Namely, it doesn’t entirely line up with the themes and storyline of the six films as a whole, and it doesn’t even mesh with the prior movie in this same trilogy.

But there are other issues here, too.

For one thing, this is…this really doesn’t paint the Jedi or their teachings in a very positive light.

Like…this is basically saying, “of course the Jedi can teach people how to love appropriately and avoid attachment/codependency/obsession/dangerous emotional tangles, that’s What They Do, after all--but only if the student starts as essentially a blank slate and has nothing to unlearn.” That’s…not a good look.

Also, it’s kind of a shitty take on childhood trauma? Yes, it’s hard to learn and grow past these things, but the idea that it’s not possible, aside from the implications about the Jedi Order’s pedagogical abilities, is super discouraging for people who come to this path/philosophy later in life than the Ideal. It implies that emotional growth and healing aren’t really feasible and, again, the only way to be capable of this kind of nonattachment is to start from a blank slate. Which a) I don’t think that’s how people or emotions work; and b) again, a super shitty and discouraging thing to say to anyone who might want to try.

(And before anyone comes at me with ‘there is no try,��� that quote taken at face value has the same issue; but if you look at it in context, it’s about committing to a course of action and knowing what you’re capable of, especially in a fairly simple situation/when faced with a fairly straightforward problem. When you also take into account the later conversation about trying to reach Vader, there’s also an acceptance of the fact that there are other factors that are completely out of Luke’s control here, that all he can do is put his commitment and genuine good faith effort and make the attempt to the best of his abilities, but he can’t simply ‘do’ without the other party meeting him halfway. But that’s another essay for another time.)

Lastly, and this is a much more…it has as much to do with modern fandom discussions as with what Lucas specifically said twenty years ago. But there’s this tendency to use entry into the Jedi Order as analogous to adoption. And that’s not wrong! It’s in fact a pretty good analogy! Even before it got reinforced by certain conversations in the Obi-Wan series! But quotes like this highlight the problem with that analogy, especially when coupled with the age restriction on entry into the Order.

Look. There are a lot of issues with the modern adoption system. I’m not nearly qualified to comment on all of them, beyond acknowledging that Some Shit’s Fucked Up. (Not all of it! But Some.) And one of those issues is that, unless the child in question is a [healthy, white] infant, the chances of them getting adopted are extremely slim. Because there’s this attitude that they won’t really belong, they won’t really be a part of their new family, they won’t really bond/bond properly with their new parents, unless they’re brought in as a blank slate. That the (perceived) greater Difficulties in taking in an older child are Too Much/Not Worth It…that kind of attitude.

And, I mean, I’m not a parent, adoptive or otherwise. I’ve never been fully responsible for raising a child (or for any other human being), and I know that it’s a complicated and difficult decision/task even under the most ideal of circumstances. But the idea that older kids aren’t good enough/don’t count/will never really be the children of their new parents is something I know I’ve seen broken down as a toxic mentality before.

Especially in a culture (fandom) that places such a huge emphasis on found family/family of choice and the bonds that grow from there (aka, the refutation of that idea), why is it that, in certain Jedi-positive circles and when looking at quotes like this one from Lucas, it’s just accepted at face value when it comes to the Jedi Order and their adoption/recruitment practices?

Full disclosure, the age limit is basically The Problem I have with the PT-era Jedi Order’s general practices and the one thing that I genuinely think does at least as much harm as good (or the harm it does is significant enough) and should be re-evaluated when Luke (or Rey, or whoever) rebuilds; I’ve written about this before, but, among other things, this idea tends to become a feedback loop which sets the few exceptions up for failure, which then reinforces the idea that older students will fail, and on and on*; this aside from the issues it presents to the people who aren’t lucky enough to be found in the right age bracket or have the combination of Circumstances working for them that Anakin did to become one of the exceptions; the fact that there are no viable alternatives for training and/or support for said potential latecomers is also a huge part of the problem. Anyway, that’s definitely coloring my views here, especially when we look at the Implications rather than the parts where it’s contradicted by other points in the text itself.

I’m going to sort of wind up here by saying that…after all of that, I don’t think that this quote is entirely wrong, exactly. I’ve written about this before (although maybe not posted it, haha), but I do think that the Order’s habit/background of generally not accepting latecomers, combined with Anakin’s particular background and issues, mean that the Order as it stands in the twilight of the Republic was not necessarily a good fit for him when he was brought to their attention, and that he might have been more stable/successful if he’d been brought in earlier, or if the initial refusal had stood and he’d found a different path for himself.

But boiling that down to, essentially, ‘Anakin Wasn’t Raised Right,’ and in so doing a) ignoring the entire other half of this saga/some of the key themes of this saga as a whole; b) forgetting what Shmi said in the last movie/throwing her under the bus; and c) making everyone involved in this situation look bad…I don’t know, that’s really not the way to do it.

*To avoid yet another long tangent…there is an interesting essay that could be teased out about that one line in the mantra, ‘there is no ignorance; there is knowledge,’ and how it relates to the idea of preconceptions. We see this in this particular discussion, both in a sort of positive light (when someone with no preconceptions approaches the Jedi path/philosophy, there is a strong tendency for them to succeed at it), and in a negative light (the feedback loop re: nontraditional students I mentioned). But it also comes up in other areas--look at how Force Ghosts are handled, for example. How much effort it takes for Qui-Gon to connect with Yoda; how the first assumption is that Yoda is hallucinating. Compare that to Luke, who has absolutely zero preconceptions/prior knowledge about how the Force works and how it relates to death, so that when he starts hearing (and later seeing) Ben, his response is ‘this makes as much sense as anything else I’ve learned in the last week sure let’s go with it.’ And, of course, Yoda that line about how wonderful the mind of a child is, uncluttered by such things. Not to mention the bit I mentioned earlier, about raising the X-wing from the swamp, and how that relates to preconceptions and expectations; also related is one of my favorite Qui-Gon quotes, “Your focus determines your reality.”

Anyway, I just think that’s interesting to contemplate--Jedi are people, after all, and this is a very People problem to have.

[arbitrarygreay]

Culinary Class Wars

I prefer my food competition shows to sell me genuine hype (a concept of what next-level, upper-tier, relatively objective "best/special" food execution is). I want the show's execution to make me believe that that hype is being delivered by the competitors. Can I believe that the "best" chefs here can compete against the "best" chefs in the other shows? And I love learning new things, having my concept/knowledge of the hype expanded. Am I picking up new vocabulary, names of techniques, dishes, ingredients, cuisines? Iron Chef Brazil remains the champ so far, but Culinary Class Wars also delivered enough to push Netflix Iron Chef USA down to third place. And I want you to understand what it means that CCW managed to do so even though NICUSA had a more consistent performance. That is, CCW had more elements I didn't care for than NICUSA, but CCW's highs were so much higher enough that they compensated. I got to see chefs at the top of their game demonstrate what being at the top of their game looks like, and like Iron Chef Brazil, lens that through core cultural assumptions around cuisine that differ from the European foundation. Even as CCW's champion won with a specialty in Italian, CCW sold to me the hype of Korean cuisine (and, very amusingly, secondarily Chinese cooking, as well as the distinctions between East Asian techniques). What I liked the most about CCW was actually the judging. Never has it been more explanation friendly, using novel gimmicks designed to remove bias and make their decisions unassailable. And both judges also sold to me their hype: their qualifications and their extremely clear reasonings. And like ICB, they allowed a lot of spectatorship by contestants without an immediate direct stake in things, so that we can get joyful evaluations free from the need for drama. The ways in which the chefs punctured the hype machine (when they would talk to each other as companions rather than rivals) only increased the show's cred. Also the fact that CCW allowed themselves to namedrop Top Chef, Master Chef, and Iron Chef was great, hah. No franchise/network siloing here! The parts I disliked weren't even really mistakes or anything, where I would have done something differently. It was the unavoidable pacing issues of their ballsy structural decision to do every kind of competition cooking show in a single season with a truly gigantic cast, to where every challenge (some of which could sustain an entire show on their own ) required multiple hour-long episodes and swaths of contestants not getting any focus. But because those decisions were a key part of selling the hype, I can't prefer that they did something different. I will say that those parts make CCW much less rewatchable than ICB or NICUSA.

[minecraftrelatedrandomness]

burn the night away: writer's annotations

The benefits of writing from p!Martyn's POV is that I have more flexibility to be anachronistic — I default Pirates to be set in the first half of the 19th century, but p!Martyn, being from our real-world time period, means that I can let the guys play custom Monopoly if I want to. As for remaking and customizing boards from scratch, I tried that when I was a kid using mostly paper, so it's not impossible.

I am also unfortunately unable to write from a p!Saus POV for any extended period of time (especially since my giftee seems to be a fan) — I've taken unprecedented amounts of psychic damage (re)watching his VODs, and I don't think there's any way I can replicate that in my own writing, at least in my current state of mind. I did try to make sure he had a major presence in the fic, though.

Speaking of, this is my first time posting from Martyn POV and my first time writing Kyle and Scar in general — I've written a fic draft on p!Martyn and p!Shelby a couple of months ago, but never finished and posted it.

Most things I've written about the characters and their experiences have some sort of canon or canon-adjacent basis — and yes, I did so much research for this. A few are admittedly headcanons due to a lack of information, and p!Scar's characterization is in part inspired by Hermitcraft Season 8 and the Life series, since both series are referenced in his POV. I'm leaving it ambiguous as to whether he is the same character throughout those series, though.

I genuinely have a spreadsheet listing 39 of the 40 "Never Have I Ever" prompts I'm using for this fic, along with who answered what and a tally counting who actually did win. Mind you, the statistics are slightly skewed by the fact that several of these people are lying their asses off a good chunk of the time.

Among them, I ended up having to change one of the prompts and rewrite a small section less than 12 hours before my deadline because I found out that every single character here (other than Jellie, for obvious reasons) has at least somewhat played a musical instrument in the series! Music is a foundational basis for p!Kyle's lore, p!Saus has his "(snake)skin flute" heirloom, Scar did so briefly during his 2nd stream, and everyone else played something on Oct 13th (SMP Day 76), mostly while in Cultist captivity.

The details about p!Scott's accessories are actually inspired by my own personal experiences. I have a bird necklace in real life (admittedly just a generic bird in flight) and thought I'd let my guy have an equivalent to that, as a treat. As for the badge, when I was in secondary school, I had a house badge that I used for all my six years there, and by the time I graduated, maybe a third of the coloration has been chipped off.

Like fic!Martyn, I considered whether I should have him lie about his brief engagement to r1!Water. If I had the chance, I would have had him give r1!Water's kingdom to be Isopteria — from Isoptera, the infraorder name for termites, but I don't think c!Martyn is knowledgeable enough in entomology or cares enough about it to make that reference (it's the biology student brain at work here, so forgive me).

The dumpling ban is actually a reference to a one-off line from the Oct 13th (SMP Day 76) VOD. It was a Heron base ban in an earlier draft, but I changed it after rewatching the VOD to make it a bit more canon-compliant. (As if the timeline isn't already non-compliant as it is, but it is my solemn archivist duty to stay true, alas.)

The full process of writing this fic has been harder than I expected, to say the least. I've had this idea for a couple of months before the event, but decided to put it aside. I took a couple of weeks off from working on it at all after the event started because of finals and then oopsie daisy, my family lost Wi-Fi for four days, so I couldn't even write and could barely VOD-watch during that time, since I could only access the Internet using my phone's data plan! Then I had to take another couple of days off to study for and take my TOEFL exam, and then I caught a stomach bug that I'm still recovering from as I post this (+ burnout on my final day)! In other words, the AO3 author's curse was out to get me, even after I got an extension. And that's discounting how I still don't quite know how to write shipfics on account of being inordinately aro/ace (that VS my perfectionism, fight!), as well as my computer buffering from the sheer number of tabs I have open!

Also, this fic was originally supposed to be like 1K or 2K words long… but it just kept getting longer and longer and now it's ended at nearly 5K.

I don't even know how I pulled all this off, especially since I haven't even watched all the VODs I wanted to watch for research, but here I am.

[iamfarfromvibingrightnow]

Thanks for the tag @arcturion-the-joke (sorry i took ages to respond im on tumblr at ungodly hours so i kept saying id do it in the morning and then forgetting)

1. Three Ships: I feel like im exposing myself by saying these even though theyre already all over my blog. but now i must narrow it down to three oh dear.

ok i have never hid my love for macdennis aka the greatest will-they-wont-they in sitcom history.

i mean

LOOK AT THEM

ok moving on ive recently reentered my rilaya era, depsite my uhhhh conflicted opinions on the actual show to say the least. but ye the queercoding with these two is insane and platonic or romantic these two were wholeass soulmates

theyre lesbians harold

and of course the ship that is built into the foundations of this blog in fact one half of them is my icon

flarrie my beloved. invented enemied to lovers. still mad netflix cancelled their show.

2. First Ever Ship: I believe my first ever ship was Pricefield, which i now have mixed opinions on but i think i still like it for the most part

3. Last Song: Sick of Losing Soulmates by Dodie (which may or may not have been while i was listening to my rilaya playlist) <33333

4. Last Film: uhhhhhhh i think it was the first Now You See Me, a franchise im unhealthily obsessed with. i was talking about it the other day to someone and they go "is it about like magicians?" its so much more than that its a found family of neurodivergent magicians performing an anti capitalist heist and learning to trust others as a result. i tell you the breakdancing i did when i heard about the third movie announcement

5. Currently Reading: im on my millionth solitaire reread. im struggling to find stuff i actually like. gimme recs please i beg

6. Currently Watching: im on an always sunny rewatch. ive also finally started the podcast. best decision of my life

7. Currently Consuming: what. (checking if this means eating or something else entirely) ok its just food. have you ever cut a block of cheese into cuboids, wrapped them in ham and put them in the microwave? you should. i just did

8. Currently Craving: lasagna. the cheese ham thing is how i cope with lasagna cravings, which i deal with way more than i would like to admit.

9. Favorite Childhood Book: there was this book series i dont remember the name or author of (help pls if you can) i used to read as a child about this little boy and his teddy bear/imaginary friend. i remember the last one being about his teddy bear giving him permission to grow up and let him go and honestly it was beautiful and a big part of my growing up so yeah.

ok imma tag @ferawrri @cosmicyam @bealblath @bluewallowner @narcissusbrokenmirror @thatoneuniverse @gryffindorcompaniononpigfarts @funfeons

9 people you’d like to know better

I was tagged by @rose-n-gunses for this one— thank you, dear heart!

1. Three Ships: Hellcheer, who inspired me to write again. Mulder and Scully, one of the OG ships for 90’s younguns. And most recently, Jessica Fletcher and Doc Hazlitt. 😜

2. First Ever Ship: Dicey Tillerman and Jeff Greene (I will give a thousand Losty-points to anyone who knows who they are)

3. Last Song: Circumstances, by Rush

4. Last Film: does Rifftrax count? I watched the Rifftrax version of “Birdemic: Shock and Terror” yesterday. God it was awful.

5. Currently Reading: just been slowly making my way through all the fics on my Marked for Later list… currently ridiculously slowly reading to get my soul known again by @staceymcgillicuddy

6. Currently Watching: way too much Murder, She Wrote. It seems to be one of the few things my still-covid-addled brain can focus on.

7. Currently Consuming: a large mug of citrus mint green tea

8. Currently Craving: spicy tuna sushi

And I’m adding a bonus Losty question because I felt like there should be 9 questions lmao

9. Favorite Childhood Book: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli

Absolutely no pressure with these tags (but if you do play, please make a new post instead of reblogging this one!!!)

@roxymorondraws @renaroo123 @tnmdfhgkg @khaleesa @danafoss @sare--k @pipergirl17 @paladinmoony @sasusc

[senkicho]

The vilification of Itachi

I don’t usually scroll into the naruto fandom, but i rewatched the entire series this week and i felt like looking at what other people were saying. I was going through the anti-hiruzen hashtag ( because that man deserves the worst and was a horrible person ), when i realised something that was really surprising ( to me at least ). When people take a look at the decimation of the uchiha clan and all that led up to it, they rightfully blame Hiruzen and Tobirama, but also weirdly Itachi. Which is really surprising to me because i’d never seen itachi’s involvement in the massacre as anything but unwilling . Granted, this is a very small portion of the fandom, but it still stuck out to me. So i wanted to give my two cents on it. 

First of all let us remember that Itachi Uchiha was 13 at the time of the massacre . 13 . A CHILD.  I can guarantee you that he had no say in the final decision or in the long process that led to this decision being made. And whatever power you might argue that he might’ve had, would  not have been authentic or truly his own. Itachi was part of the Anbu, and had been since the age of 11. The Anbu were loyal to the village, and were taught to be mindless puppets who obeyed orders without question and pretty much gave up on their identity.  What’s worse is that the one controlling the Anbu at the time was Danzo. That is extremely alarming when taking into account the man’s personal relationship with Itachi. We can assume that Itachi has been under Danzo’s titular since his enrolment, given the mans interest in the Sharingan  and the fact that he was the one who appointed Itachi as captain and assigned him to the Anbu in the first place. There was no way he had any true say in what happened. He was a puppet. A sword used and then left to die. 

What’s more, Itachi was in a position, where he either had to take his clans life, or see his village plunged to war. It was literally said that “ an Uchiha coup would lead to intervention from other villages and ultimately start another World War”.  As someone who was present during the third shinobi war and was heavily traumatized by it how was he supposed to support that. He started acting as the third hokage’s spy, because he wanted to find a peaceful solution . But that was impossible. On one hand the Uchiha’s had been oppressed since the beginning of the villages foundation and were rightfully outraged and fed up. On the other hand, the third Hokage who was unwilling to resolve that issue, was enabling his council who were asking for a military response . Do y’all see the position he is in? Once again, Itachi was a child when all of this was happening . Can you imagine the sort of pressure that is for a 13 year old? Asked to join in a revolution against a system you’ve been groomed to follow since your earliest years, a revolution that will very well lead to a world war; or tasked with the extermination of your entire family in the name of protecting the village. 

Itachi was a child failed by all the adults around him, and was put in a position he never should’ve been in. He didn’t deserve any of it, and while i do understand people’s outrage at what happened to the Uchiha’s ( i get it i am very much against all of it too), i truly believe that people’s anger is misguided .