#though there are some arguments to be made about whether the fictional character and real guy are the same

[jesteradio]

Minnesota Fats possibly has an Extended Ryu Number of 4, though there is some room for argument. If only the real Rudolf Wanderone is considered, then the best connection would require counting a televised pool competition. However, when considering the novel/movie character we get a much stronger link through the same exact person as the pool competition: Willie Mosconi.

Willie Mosconi cameos in the film adaptation of The Hustler as himself (he is credited and referred to as Willie in the movie).

Willie Mosconi appears alongside Liberace in What's My Line S14 Episode 1 and Liberace appears in Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff with Peter Griffin, who gives a Fortnite connection. So the chain would be:

Minnesota Fats (The Hustler / ABC's The Wide World of Sports)-> Willie Mosconi ->(What's My Line)-> Liberace ->(Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff)-> Peter Griffin ->(Fortnite)-> Ryu .

If we are only considering the real man and the Wide World of Sports connection is invalid then the next best connection would likely be through the Johnny Carson show, but I have not delved into what the exact number would be there.

Minnesota Fats from Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend for the Sega Genesis

Rudolf Wanderone a.k.a. Minnesota Fats does not have a Ryu Number.

[iamnmbr3]

I saw someone on tik tok that made a video saying that book Harry would be disgusted by being shipped with Draco. And people in the comments were saying fr and saying that we are crazy for shipping drarry and someone even said that drarry was the most disgusting ship ever made in the Harry Potter fandom.

And what you think it would be Lucius and Narcissa reaction to find out that Draco and Harry are dating??? Love your blog

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like my blog!

First of all, making content like that with the intent of shaming/bullying other fans is silly, immature and just plain unkind. So what if people are shipping something you don't like? Or that a fictional character wouldn't like if they were real? Just let other people do their thing and have fun and curate your own content.

Second of all, drarry is the most disgusting ship ever made in Harry Potter fandom? Drarry? Really? Lol. Lmao even. *Insert the 'oh my sweet summer child' speech here*

Third of all, in the case of drarry there is actually a lot of canon evidence, so while that certainly doesn't mean people who don't want to have to ship or enjoy or be comfortable with it, based on canon it's rather unlikely that Harry would be disgusted by it... (Not that it mattes either way. But just saying...).

What Lucius and Narcissa's reaction would be is an interesting question. I think they probably wouldn't be that pleased, but would be kind of resigned. Post-war Lucius just wants to stay out of jail (or, failing that, he wants to get out as fast as possible and then avoid going back). The last thing he wants to do is be openly hostile to Harry Potter, hero of the hour, The Boy Who Lived Twice, Savior of the wizarding world etcetera, etcetera. He probably plays reasonably nice - though I doubt he and Harry will ever like each other.

Harry is certainly not who Narcissa would have chosen, but the fact that Draco does seem genuinely happy with him and that Harry truly cares about Draco and goes out of his way to help him and, just by being with him, rehabilitates his image, certainly makes her want to be cordial. Though again, while she probably pretends otherwise, I doubt she ever really changes her attitudes as much as she pretends. Though perhaps over time she does develop some grudging respect for Hermione (and this perhaps admits, if only to herself, that muggleborns aren't as inferior as she once believed). And well, she and Harry do have their love for Draco in common so that helps them get along even if the relationship is never an easy or entirely comfortable one.

I think there's a plausible argument that by book 7 Narcissa already suspected something was going on with Harry and Draco. In the end of book 7, not only does Voldemort think that Draco has run off to "befriend" Harry, but Narcissa immediately assumes Harry will know where Draco is and if he's ok. So she seems to also think that Draco has gone off to find Harry and she doesn't seem to think that he was looking for a fight. She asks Harry about Draco as though Harry not only will know what's become of him, but will care. Not as though she expects that any meeting between them would end in them fighting to the death like you'd expect given they are on opposite sides of the war. I think maybe she always planned to help Harry, and she just wanted to ascertain what her next steps should be once they got back to the caste - whether she needed to go in and find Draco or if he was already safely away or dead and beyond help. She thinks she and Harry are united in caring about the same person.

After all, she did see Draco lie for Harry at the Manor. And she saw Harry pull a wand from Draco's hand while Draco let him, and then not even stun Draco after. And later she found Wormtail's body in the cell that Draco went into alone and left entirely unharmed. Not to mention, after book 6 she would have read about how Harry named Snape but not Draco as being involved in Dumbledore's death (at first she probably dismissed it as Harry just not having seen everything, but later she puts it together with everything else and she starts to wonder...)

[agentnoun]

Expedition 33: On Painting, Fiction, and the Reality of Art

This one's going to be less concrete than my last big post, so I might as well say that upfront. This is less an "argument" about one of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's themes or story choices and more an exploration of how our minds interact with art and what that might mean in the context of a story like this.

I tagged this with spoilers so hopefully you're not seeing it at all if you're filtering those tags, but just in case, the full spoilers are under the cut.

Act I: The Part That's Textual

Throughout the story of Expedition 33, even before we know the truth about the world, there's a running theme about who is "real." If we really stretch we can even extend this all the way back to the prologue in Lumière, where people debate whether the Gestrals or "the Esquie" are real, though that just seems like a natural conversation to have in a fantasy world where you know little beyond the borders of your city (by the way, love giving Esquie a definite article--he truly is the Esquie).

(A side note: I don't really think reducing the debate to the idea that the Canvas world is "VR" and its people are "AI" is particularly productive, not because I necessarily think it's inaccurate, but because this is speculative fiction. While AI in real life is nowhere near "intelligent," AI in speculative fiction frequently is, and the question of whether AI is "alive" or "sentient" or not is a common one in science fiction especially. Even if you think of Canvas beings as functionally "AI," this remains a fantasy story--in fiction, AI can be alive, too.)

One of the earliest seeds of this question, though, is Painted Alicia's monologue when she visits Maelle at camp--the "those who know not that they are not" monologue. But it also comes up through the white Nevrons, as our characters come to wonder to what degree Nevrons are "alive" the same way that they are.

Though, of course, the question of reality becomes significantly more prominent in Act III, after we know that we've been in a Painted world, one of hundreds or even thousands of Painted worlds. And at this point, we learn that even Painters themselves don't seem to agree on how "real" beings within a Canvas are. Clea, notably, doesn't think of them as alive whatsoever, which is why she thinks nothing of Painting over her Painted counterpart (and her counterpart's lover, Simon). Alicia doesn't seem to have any issue with helping Renoir erase the Canvas, either, until she ends up living a whole second lifetime within it.

Even our player character, Painted Verso, doesn't seem so sure one way or the other. While he once strongly believed that painted beings had just as much right to live as their Painters (the "Verso" expedition journal), he either no longer believes this or has had enough cracks form in the belief that he's acting to the contrary. He refers to the world and its people as "made up" in his conversation with Maelle in the empty Lumière early in Act III and can optionally tell Monoco that neither he nor Monoco are "real" in a relationship conversation.

But he sure acts real, doesn't he? He has his own ideas and beliefs that have both changed over time. He even has his own will and acts counter to what the one who Painted him into existence wants. Surely that means he's "real," right? He not only displays sentience, but sapience as well, right?

And then there's the element that I consider the ultimate proof of, at the very least, sentience for Canvas beings: the white Nevrons. These are entities that Clea created specifically to be mindless killers, to kill Expeditioners so that their chroma can't return to Aline when they die. For the vast majority of them, that's exactly what they are. But some of them "woke up." Talking to them reveals emotions--it reveals they have desires, fears, worries, and hopes. They feel gratitude and betrayal. They're alive.

So what's going on here? Why are some Painters so certain that Painted beings aren't "alive," even though we can see clearly that they are?

Act II: Other Explanations

A brief section to mention some speculative explanations that I've seen other people post.

The Painters who think Canvas beings are real are simply wrong, possibly blinded by their own sentiment/grief/etc.

The Painters who think Canvas beings aren't real are simply wrong, perhaps rationalizing their godlike powers over them.

Canvas beings have a "soul" because of the fragment of the Painter's soul in the Canvas. In other words, characters like Lune and Sciel are "alive" because they're powered by Verso's soul.

Canvas beings are created to different degrees of "reality" and Clea possibly messed up on specific Nevrons, or those Nevrons inherited some of Painted Clea's desire for independence. This may also be supported by Painted Verso's ability to exist, at least temporarily, in that sort of limbo area outside the Canvas at the end, something he describes as "Maman's gift." Painters do seem able to imbue Painted creatures with some portion of their power--we see this with Painted Clea being able to make Nevrons, too, or Painted Renoir's limited ability to "erase" people, or even how Maelle can share her "Painted Power" with the rest of the team.

I think there are merits to, and arguments against, all of the above, but I'm not really writing this post to discuss those. I have a weirder idea.

Act III: The Part Where I Spin Wildly Off Into Speculation

There's this idea I really like about fiction and what a written story actually is. When I write a story, I often bear in mind the idea that the story isn't really the words on the page, nor is it the images I have in my head. The story is instead what happens when someone reads those words--it exists in the interaction between the words and the reader's mind. This is part of why I enjoy literary analysis so much, as it's possible to read a text through many different lenses. Those lenses can be personal, cultural, historical, academic, or any combination of those. And each lens shows you a different story. Each person's lens shows them a slightly different story from each other person. It's part of the beauty of storytelling.

Really, I feel that way about art in general. While an artistic experience is centered around the work in question--for example, you can't exactly view a painting without there being paint on a medium for you to view, right?--the experience of it is something that happens in some hypothetical space between the viewer and the work.

When you look at a painting, what you see is never exactly what the painter saw, or what someone viewing that painting a hundred years ago saw, or even what a person standing right next to you sees. Your experience of that painting is something between you and the painting, a construct of your mind and the artist's, meeting across time through the medium of art to create something unique, personal, and living.

(To be clear, this idea is not an original one of mine, but a philosophical conception of art and subjective experience that a lot of people have written about. I just really like it!)

What if we apply that to capital-P Painting as well? What if that's true of Canvas worlds?

The people in a Canvas are real, are alive, the same way that characters in a story are. They are real because we see them as real, because we understand them as real. Their emotions are our emotions, but also their Painter's emotions--a conversation between the two, manifested as people.

As others have noted, maybe the Painted people are an extension of Verso's soul, but I think it goes further than that. They are part of Verso, yes, but also part of Aline, and Renoir, and Clea, and Alicia. And they're part of us, as well.

Maybe that's part of why the Verso ending, "A Life to Love," strikes such a hopeful note. While Verso's Canvas is gone, as long as its people live on within Alicia, they are just as alive as before--they were always, to a degree, a part of her. As long as she remembers them, she contains their essence, and can Paint them anew in a new Canvas, and maybe that is just as much the "real them" as if they'd been re-Painted in their own Canvas.

This is, of course, wild speculation based on some philosophical ideas about the nature of art. I wouldn't say I necessarily think this is "canon" or that I'm arguing that this is "in-universe truth." But at the same time, given Expedition 33's extended metaphor about art and memory--how it literalizes the idea that artists put their soul into their work, for example, or treats Verso's Canvas as a physical representation of the Dessendre family's memory of the deceased Verso--I think it's an interesting avenue of thought, if nothing else.

It's also an extremely inconclusive answer to the initial question, and I can't help but love that in a shitty little gremlin sort of way. Are Painted beings real? They're as real as you see them as, my friend. The little literature devil inside me loves it when a question's answer is just as much of a question as the question itself.

If you read all of this, I have completely wasted your time, on purpose, and I thank you for the opportunity.

[the-secretary-of-baker-street]

A Case of Identity

The Disappearance of Lady Frances-Carfax was, truth be told, an opportunity for Holmes and Watson to have a break. If not to push the narrative that Watson was a married man, who need not hang around a Bohemian bachelor, but to prevent a further argument. During a morning conversation which began amicably enough (although Holmes dismayed at the fact Watson left home to bathe) Holmes asks that Watson take a trip to France to do some investigation. Holmes, under the guise of being too busy to go, alludes to a fascinating single woman, “one of the most dangerous classes in the world”, seeing if he can tempt Watson to go. Whether Watson understood this implication or not, he takes the opportunity for a holiday. 

Unbeknownst to Watson, Holmes finds time to escape his work in London, realising he may have pushed it too far. Additionally, he is still concerned about the innocent woman who had disappeared, so travels to find Watson. Although Holmes did this with good-intentions, Watson feels betrayed, as though Holmes didn’ trust him to investigate alone. Still, the situation is tense. They have little time to reconcile as the case moves on. (Admin work here, Watson alludes to a saloon fight one of the characters in this story is involved in, and writes that it occurred in 1889. It didn’t- Watson wrote this case up a very long time after it occurred and forgot the real date, so he chose to give the saloon fight the year the crime happened.) 

Truthfully, Watson tells us of The Man with the Twisted Lip, dated in June of 1889. He remembers the date clearly, given it was the day he first entered an opium den to find one man, and finds Sherlock Holmes there as well. Although Holmes reassures him that he has not added opium to his list of vices, Watson is hard-pressed to believe him given their recent history. Despite correctly stating the date, Watson forgets his own name, calling himself ‘James’- I’m at a loss as to why he made so obvious an error. Perhaps he hoped that, should Holmes ever read this case, he might recognise that the intimacy usually granted between married couples, to call each other by their first names, was not given to his fictional wife. This was awarded to ‘Sherlock’ alone.

Watson was on a streak of honesty: also correctly reported in 1889 was the events of The Engineer’s Thumb, one of the few unsolved cases Watson dared to report. Though, there was a slight diversion from the truth: Mr Hatherley, after losing his thumb, reported directly to Baker Street, finding Holmes and Watson in their shared quarters. Any awkward conversation as to why the ‘married’ man was living there is not described. 

Now, there was arguably a chance of reconciliation. How that transpired… Perhaps we should allow Holmes and Watson to keep that to themselves. Why they were able to forgive each other might be discovered in the opening paragraphs of A Case of Identity. Holmes addresses Watson suddenly, philosophically announcing how “life is infinitely stranger than anything with which the mind could invent.” To prevent myself from quoting verbatim what is said, I will paraphrase their unusually poetic conversation: Holmes believes in facts and the accuracy of a story, which is never the same as another; Watson recognises how situations can repeat themselves, and no matter how much one imagines, one will never be able to alter reality. 

They begin to understand and respect each other’s perspectives. 

Holmes has hope for the future, whilst Watson is bogged down by reality. Are these faults or facts? There is no point arguing. 

In this case, a short-sighted woman, by the name of ‘Mary’ Sutherland, is being seduced by someone who will never be able to be who she needs them to be, a fictional man. Is it wrong to assume that, when Watson finally put pen to paper to describe this story, it was a love letter to Holmes, telling him that he understands. Holmes had been led on by a ‘perfect’ man who promised a future but became scared, and, regrettably, Holmes was unable to see this before it was too late. Is that why the protagonist has the same name as the doctor’s supposed wife? 

When Watson publishes The Speckled Band, he writes with the intention to fix the cold-hearted, enigmatical machine he had described in The Sign of the Four. He can’t erase what he has said, he can’t remove his mistakes, but he wants the world to know that Sherlock Holmes is more than a brain without a heart: the man has a heart, and perhaps it’s too large for him to cope with.

Holmes also understands why Watson took such precautions by inventing a wife. This is why, in the beginning of The Crooked Man, the following case, he points out that Watson smokes the same tobacco as his ‘bachelor’ days- a joke he hoped might convey his approval.  

After three publications, Holmes and Watson are becoming a well-known (and now, non-scandalous) duo. The following year is 1890- the last before the fall.

[thebroccolination]

🚨TOP KRIST TOP KRIST TOP KRIST TOP KRIST TOP KRIST TOP KRIST!!!🚨

Okay.

LISTEN.

Well, wait. Hang on.

DISCLAIMER: Top/bottom dynamics are not in any way outwardly obvious in reality with real couples at all period. BL is a fictional genre, so don’t ever eeeever use the top/bottom dynamics in BL as your foundation for understanding real queer people ever ever ever ever ever. Real queer people are nuanced and complex and there are tons of videos on social media of people (even queer people!) looking at a queer person and trying to guess top/bottom/vers and getting it wrong.

So, now—

There have been little hints all along that Krist is playing the top role in “The Ex-Morning” and now with the cover portraying his character as taller, that seems to be the strongest confirmation yet.

Traditionally in BL, the top is physically bigger and taller and more masculine than the bottom who tends to be smaller, shorter, and more feminine. Thai BL hasn’t really leaned too hard into that from the ones I’ve watched, which made them feel more realistic to me, but fans in countries like Japan and China love that visually obvious size and gendered difference in their achillean pairs, so we’ll see if Thailand tries appealing to those markets more by leaning harder into top/bottom BL stereotypes going forward.

KristSingto have always been fascinating from that standpoint because physically and height-wise, they’re pretty much equally matched.

There’s no “obvious” top or bottom if you’re judging them by the usual tropes of the genre. So they were unexpected on multiple levels as the pair to begin the massive BL wave in Thailand.

However, Arthit is the bottom in SOTUS, whether or not he fits the physical description. So that’s essentially been the expectation for Krist going forward, to keep doing bottom roles in BL.

And see, people can get very weird about the top/bottom dynamics in BL. Especially among the heterosexual female fans who wouldn’t recognize a real-life queer person if the closet door hit them in the forehead. In Japan, where BL was born, doujinshi sections and markets will even divide the Character A/Character B books from the Character B/Character A books. Even though they’re the same two characters, they must be divided by who tops and who bottoms, otherwise fans can get quite intense about it. I had a Japanese fan once politely ask me why AO3 lists WinTeam with Team’s name first if Team is commonly accepted as the bottom, and I explained to them that AO3 intentionally tags the pairings alphabetically to avoid arguments in the fandom about who tops and who bottoms. So it’s not just in Asia, though I see the fighting over top/bottom dynamics much less in western fandoms nowadays. (Granted, I’m not in many of them.)

I’ve never been comfortable with the division, personally, because I think it can falsely influence how heterosexual BL fans view real-life queer people. And it’s not just me. The application of traditional heterosexual gender roles on fictional BL couples is long-loathed by many queer people for the same reason.

That’s why I’ve been screaming for years to see a BL where Krist plays the top role. While he’s only played two (full) BL characters as Arthit and Kawi, both were bottoms, and I super hate the way some fans have treated Krist himself as a result. Tons of internalized misogyny in the way female fans have feminized and patronized him and told him to behave like a meek little wife, and some of them seem to have fallen into that camp of “so-and-so is the bottom and I refuse to accept any other dynamic.”

(However, while he played the bottom in ���Be My Favorite,” that actually ended up being a bit of a subversion since Kit’s older than Gawin, but of course Gawin wasn’t the original choice for Pisaeng, so it was just a subversion by chance. Krist was always going to play Kawi regardless of his partner.)

Funny enough, KristSingto started off in a partial subversion of roles in SOTUS. Kongphob is younger than Arthit, but Singto is older than Krist, so it was only a subversion for the characters. If the casting had stayed with Krist as Kongphob and Singto as Arthit the way it was originally conceptualized, then it would have been a complete subversion on both sides.

So now we have “The Ex-Morning” in which Pathapi (Krist) and Tamtawan (Singto) seem to be the same age, so if Pathapi is the top, then that’s a subversion for Krist as the younger actor who has traditionally played the bottom role.

I think we already had confirmation for the top/bottom dynamic last year—

—but every little additional hint is the wind beneath my wings.

The OG pillar couple switching their onscreen dynamic up this late in the game is supremely cool.

(Of course they could just be vers, too, which I would also be giddy about, but that seems less common, so I have my money on Top Kit.)

[rametarin]

It's important you let terrible people, expose themselves.

Imagine how uphill the battle for public opinion would be against people such as, the KKK, or any given hate group, OR groups that try to purport to just be "clubs" with a suspicious concentration of a kind of person and have a record of noxious statements by their own hands.

Be it some manner of genteel southern politician that suffers from foot-in-mouth disease for making unflattering comments about people on the basis of their heritage, or an organization with suspicious behaviors, it's important to believe who some people are when they expose themselves.

Now, benefit of the doubt is also fine. Lord knows we have instances of journalists running hitpieces on people that turn out not to be true. Certain individuals, like Kyle Rittenhause, they want nailed to a board and slandered before their trial has even started and vaguepost about how "people LIKE him" were tried and punished with guilty verdicts. But, when the news actually manages to catch something heinous, it's important not to let "benefactors" bury the story, since so many of them Of The Cause operate at the occupational level specifically to bury stories and make sure their ideological alignment has as few imperfections as possible, while every single one from their enemies see the light of day.

And the biggest example that comes to mind today would be the power struggle that previously was so strongly taken up by the religious right, and the hard left, over the basis of censorship in videogames.

Back when the hard-left were more perceived as the "plucky, sex positive, liberal, maybe even Progressive types," video games were a haven for sexual expression, mature subject matter and ideas, and those that objected to them were prudes and book burning fascists if they didn't like something like the horrors of sexual assault or the negative consequences of rape in a work of fiction.

The conservatives made the arguments that such topics exacerbated the interests of the sinful mind, and as usual, argued instead for more whitewashed material that omitted the bad things, "because that would be more morally upright for society."

And sensing the opportunity to look more worldly, open minded, intellectual, socially liberal (even by the ones that decidedly are not liberal, they're capital P Progressive. There's a difference.) they marketed themselves as being open to expression of speech and art and literature, as higher, liberal arts. Also barbing about directed at religious censorship, the power of the believing mob, and even the very rare, occassional remark about coloniaist bigotry and slavery and white supremacy, though they tended to stick to the historical kind and not the, "Capitalism is slavery! You're a slave right NOW!" rhetoric.

And it worked. Radical Feminism got to look good by comparison, pretending they gave a shit about positive sexual expression of women in videogames. Even would compliment how games and gamers were open minded, sexually inclusive and how plentiful female protagonists were in the space. Since, y'know, the vast majority of the people making said videogames, industry-wide or not, were secular and liberal.

The religious fundamentalists trying to get their flocks to boycott videogames and assert themselves as a gatekeeping force over the content based on its morality were constantly hit and squashed under the very real pillars of our society. We are secular first. Our state and our government does not recognize or enshrine their religion (in this instance, Christianity) as the last word on interpreting whether something is harmful or detrimental to the moral character of the people, or not, and the system puts a cap on just what the religious right can reasonably do and expect to get away with or not. And it got smaller and smaller, the more radical the fundamentalist religious right got, and the smaller their megachurches got, and the more people that voted with their money without consideration to the fears of the religious society got.

And it was clear by the Adam Sessler Vs. Jack Thompson debate, the power was in the ballpark of free speech and liberal society. The religious right did not have the power to do more than protest, and didn't have the legal nor numerical nor soft power of advocates in law, to have their will done. They'd just have to stick it in their pipes and smoke it.

The problem arose when, having sensed this, the Hard Left elements saw a power vacuum and the recession of the predator opponent that filled it. Assuming that because the religious right opponent left the field of relevance, that they, being left wing, must be the ones in charge. And that meant, they got to write the rules of why a thing is bad, unacceptable, to be gatekept out of literature, to be omitted, censored or browbeaten out of art and literature "under good, healthy, secular pretenses." Ones that aligned to their social political theories. Ones that aligned to radical feminism, which they always maintained only bad people opposed because only bad people oppose something as good as feminism (right?)

2006 saw Sessler and Thompson, like two little microcosm expressions of the culture war between the last flicking embers of soft religious hegemony over American society's population, debate on whether video games made people into perverts and criminals. And public opinion was not kind to Thompson, and neither was the Florida bar.

It wasn't but four years (perhaps LESS) before the radical/hard left decided, "hey, we should try and assert more authority over REAL morals and decency and start dictating acceptable norms and lines in the sand to people." And so, by 2010 at the latest, it was so. You started to see more people enter college and make vitriolic what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about posts on imageboards and other forums and invade fandom spaces like infected zombies, ranting about how female characters with their boobies out, "were just toxic, white supremacist, objectifying male fantasies using female iconography for capitalist profit," and other nonsensical bullshit. Nothing was innocent anymore, everything was the evil, evil white capitalist patriarchy hegemony. It was the late 80s/early 90s, part two. And I saw it for what it was, because I remember the last time it showed up and made a big mess culturally before wearing out its welcome.

So you started seeing more people (primarily, girls that'd taken courses in their freshmen year of college) being more brazenly "Progressive," like trying on a new convert's wardrobe. They thought they were doing the ethical and morally correct thing, that it couldn't be a cult since it had no overt religious imagery. Except, when it came down to it, much of their crap was just the same mental gymnastics of why their group should get to gatekeep and dictate acceptable sexual norms and standards and push their gender values and what was what, why and how, just wearing shaved sides of their heads, or two-tone feminine hair dye, or pride symbols for LGBT.

And in the end all they really did is show their values aren't liberal, or Liberal (capital L), that they ultimately distinguish between just being left and liberal (they see themselves as the REAL left, and liberals as "practically right-wing lite", and their answer to Horseshoe Theory seeing excesses of left and right as authoritarian communism and militaristic nationalist fascism as wrong, huffing the copium of, "fishhook theory" (where they're correct for being all the way on one side, and liberals are on the same side as fascists) and doubling down on that.

The problem here is that if someone like me sat someone else down and just TOLD them this nonsense, we come off like we're just running hitpieces on the left wing. The Hard Left are not liberals, and they're on some crunchy, hard, authoritarian and dogmatic shit. And the only thing that stops them from being classified as Conservative Left is they more or less own the academic circles, and do angry backflips screaming about how, "that can't be possible since we're not creationist, militarist, nationalist capitalists! And militarism, creationism, nationalism and racism are all right-wing! You can't be authoritarian and tyrannical and leftist!"

Without them having diarrhea of the mouth, without journalists finding every horrible thing a lousy member of their group says and posting it everywhere for the general public to see, without video evidence of them saying heinous shit right up alongside catching a racist yelling slurs to prove it's not just hearsay or rumor but true, they built up a stunning image in many hopeful, tearful, recalcitrant young antiracists eyes, as they grew horrified at the carefully curated history outlining western colonialism and misogyny. It would be impossible to tarnish the reputation they cultivate by both entrenching in the positions of media allowing hitpieces on socialists and communists that allow them to smear your garden variety neo-nazi or bury police brutality from public consciousness.

And in the 90s, you could find tons and tons of material paraded openly about how terrible white supremacist skinheads were. For good reason. But you'd note the strange absence of left-wing riots, anarchist misbehavior pointed to as organized and deliberate, the instances of bigotry and prejudice patterned to the Hard Left. Almost as if they tried to go very hard to compliment the verbal boots on the ground talking about how racist and Nazi-filled our society was, while omitting the anarcho-communist bullshit from the conversation.

The Hard Left did this shit a lot, and the right wing really didn't see the value in posting about it. They were too busy trying to plug up the holes created by gay rights and trying to drown everything out and make everybody religiously Christian again by loudly playing acoustic guitars. There was also the stigma in the public discourse about how "grandpa's seeing communists under the bed again! *rolls eyes* HEY HOW ABOUT THAT 'COUNCIL ON UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES' STUFF. LOL. YEAH THE RIGHT-WING WHITE SUPREMACISTS DID WITCH HUNTS TO FIND INVISIBLE COMMUNISTS."

I don't understand how they could've been so out of touch. The right people chose to be silent that could've touched upon this. The wrong people shot off their mouth. You'd think among the right wing or nonpartisans you would've had SOME journals highlighting left-wing radical violence, but.. no. I don't understand how they were so asleep at the wheel on this topic.

The Hard Left got to hide and pretend to be liberals. The right higher-ups knew they existed, but I'm not sure they even had any idea on how to deal with them. They must've. But they didn't... why!?

Whatever the reason, they proliferated. It wasn't until the era of digital cameras accessible to every schoolboy in the phones that we could catch the cryptids of those horrid abusive culture-warfare guerillas. The sort of bulldykes that'd antagonize men by badmouthing them; The radical feminists running around calling men, "moids," and talking about the usual radfem shit you can see on tumblr posts every so often. Suddenly it wasn't some right-wing white supremacist conspiracy, people could have personal experience not just seeing them in the wild, but interacting with them, and forever be changed by the experience.

It is so, so important that people be allowed to witness bigotry of its type in action in the wild. Without it, those that do experience it without proof, can't be believed. I never want to go back to that era, again.

[sdv-confessions]

I'll say another thing in regarding to Clint I suppose.

The only reason I am adamant in the way I will defend my likeness for his character is because of how much hate and honestly verbal/textual harassment I've gotten for it, But then when you properly start defending yourself and the character you enjoy, people tend to treat you asthough you were some form of villain for it even though you were just stating something as simple as a character brought you joy, and defending the fact they do, it's cruel. And it just kinda like, makes it hard to enjoy the fandom without quickly resorting to anger?

Which has made me relate to Clint on an even deeper level than just liking his character.

I don't think people are actually paying attention to how their words of hate do genuinely effect people who like those characters. it's not just about moral arguments at a point, it's about whether or not you're just being cruel or playing on the hate from a familiar or joking trade. I get speaking hate on a character in the funny funny haha way, Hell, I can find Clint hate funny sometimes, like the little comment you made. But there's a difference between that and genuinely just being malicious with your words yknow? It's gotten to a point that alot of the people I know personally who like Clints character are actually scared to even bring it up lest they get hate for it :[.

not saying all the you's/yours as in the mod running this, just using a general pronoun. I know I probably don't need to clarify that, just feel a need to, I don't want to seem like My words come from ill-intent, not ever, which is why I'm trying to write in a softer tone, no clue if thats working because I can't convey tone regularly.

I don't mean to get like, real with this? Or stuff, or just be perceived as soft, I'm sorry if anything I've sent myself has caused any form of influx in these sorts of asks, I just got too into what I had to say, Clint discourse has actually been tearing at me for awhile. It's wild to think that like, simply expressing to a person you know in real life that liking a fictional character would make them shun you and stuff, which has happened more than once, which is Really really weird?? I know afew people irl aswell who I genuinely would say Clint is like in his writing. They started out semi difficult to be around, but after I had truly gotten to know them I care so deeply for them, I'm someone who has always like to help people, and Clints story reminds me of those people? I think Clint is a good representation of certain people. I don't mean to try and change your views of Clint, Your opinion is valid! I just feel like people perceive him wrongfully.

People stress me and I give their words too much thought I guess, Also really really sorry if this came off as vent-ish? I just wanted to get my though process behind this out properly in a form someone could perceive.

I truly believe people shouldn't hate a character to the point of being willing to harass others and stuff. Especially if they have no context behind the reasoning to someone liking that character? And I do not want my defenses of characters to be percieved the same hostile way. Fandom space is toxic in most scenerio and I don't want to feed that.

.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 33 - Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

This was the third work of really classic sci I read in June, and the second that’s probably more famous as the raw material for an adaptation than as a book in its own right. Though in fairness the Tarkovsky movie is as far as I’m aware a better adaptation of this than Shadows of Chernobyl is of Roadside Picnic. Anyway, all to say that I think I’m starting to get used to the sort of abruptness and lack of narration regarding the protagonist’s emotions that seem to have been common in sci fi from the 60s-70s.

Solaris takes places on an eponymous alien world, almost entirely covered in a vast and strange ocean-like body with only half a Europe’s worth of rocky islands scattered across its surface. The story follows Kriss, a scientist, as he arrives for a posting on the skeleton crew living in a station floating above the ocean and studying it. As he arrives, he learns that the only member of the crew he personally knew had died the day before, and that the only two residents are acting paranoid and erratic; this all starts making sense when something that seems to all appearances to be his dead ex-girlfriend appears and starts talking to him, and he learns that the other two have doppelgangers of their own bothering them. Things spiral from there.

So, I’m not sure if this is a cosmic horror story, exactly, but it’s not not one either. The overriding theme is the limits of human rationality and understanding, the total impossibility of what we’d recognize as communication with something truly alien, the feeling of smallness and insignificance in the face of vast and strange and awe-inspiring. The first chapter of the book includes an intellectual history of the Solarists, going over decades of study and all the discarded theories and failed experiments that have made the posting such a dead end as the bright lights of science moved on to more promising problems. The ocean is Other, beyond human comprehension, and even at the end of the book none of the characters have come any closer to determining whether the phantoms it conjured out of their memories is an attempt to reach out and communicate, an experiment to see how they react, a reward or punishment, a purely reflexive response by something that isn’t even really properly conscious, or something else entirely.

I honestly don’t rightly know just what sort of science fiction a Polish guy in 1961 might have been writing in conversation with, but from my perspective there were definitely a few passages that seemed to be taking shots at what most space opera treats as aliens. ‘We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.’ and all that. But again, that could very easily be me projecting – easy enough to read it as commenting on a dozen other things.

It was interesting that Rheya was the only doppelganger we ever meet – the story’s quite claustrophobic, and the other two scientists go quite out of their way to make sure Kriss absolutely never sees whose haunting them. Interesting, too, that Kriss is the only one whose actually got anything to be guilty about with regard to his – or, at least, according to Snow the other two were the subject of intrusive thoughts or unbecoming fantasies, whereas Rheya did in fact kill herself a couple days after the two have them had a particularly cruel argument and ugly breakup.

It’s not what the book was about, but I’m honestly kind of sad we didn’t get more insight into Rheya’s psychology? A simulacrum that knows she’s a simulacrum, created by by some unknowable agency for some purely instrumental purpose, not even in her own right but entirely to prod someone else with, unable to spend too long out of sight of him without some control mechanism sending her into a panic attack. There’s some real meat to dig into there, right? Just think of all the juicy existential angst.

My library’s copy of this is the old Kilmartin-Cox translation, which I’ve since regrettably learned is considered pretty rough and low-quality relative to the newer editions. Still, even given that, I kind of adored a decent amount of the prose in this? Or the descriptions of the alien environments, to be specific – the lengthy descriptions of the constructs thrown up by the ocean and how the appearance of the station shifted so dramatically with the rising and setting of each of the system’s two suns were just legitimately beautiful, and make me extremely eager to watch one of the movie adaptations when I can conscript some friends for it.

[braemjeorn]

CHAPTER XI [masterlist]

pairing: bang chan x ofc

genre: general audience

notes/warning: regency period drama; lightsickness; christmas; gidts; loving eyes; paternal bonding

wordcount: 2.1k

summary: i hope you'll like another sprinkle of sickfic and winter fluff!

also available in ao3, if you prefer that format

© Do not repost, copy, or republish into another site or under another name.

⚠️ All characters that shares the name of real life person in this story are represented in a fictional manner for entertainment purpose, and not to be alluded with real life.

TAGLIST: @spookykryptoniteperson @nixtape-foryou @do-you-know-what-else-is-big

The Commodore’s responsibilities as landlord were of little significance to Seungmin and Jeongin. Not that the other boys now and then peered into the study to greet their father, but the two youngest had a penchant for wandering in and admiring the odd contents of his desk. Mari's scoldings and reminders for them to remain out of the door were futile. It was clear when she saw the Commodore’s eyes sending her a pleading gaze over Jeongin’s mop of hair, she was alone on her side. 

“He made a good revelation as to what I should do with the bridge down east,” Commodore Bang reasoned. He did not object to the boys wandering about his room. Mari had protested—but then the Commodore continued that he had set the boys some rules upon the matter, with firm consequences should they be broken, especially when guests visited. With some shame at thinking him too lenient as a father, Mari relented. 

“But why should they disturb you when they already have you for lunch and afternoon?” came her weak argument. It was not untrue; the Commodore had set a routine to involve himself with the boys from lunch to bedtime. He’d take anyone willing in his lap to read or practise English or hear the older ones grumble about their day. He took it in an easy stride, sharing their wonder and giving them his well-thought responses to questions. Even through the distractions, he was a ready ear and aid, easy hands fixing their toys and tying their puppet strings.

It might have excluded Mari from attention or necessity, which she suppose will happen in any other house. The boys, however, never ceased to mention her before the Commodore. Like she was not sewing a mere few chairs away, and capable of making her defences. They rambled on about the things she had shown or explained to them — or not know, much to her chagrin. Something she mentioned in the past summer, or the morning class. She reminded herself to be more careful with her words in the future, though the boys merely reveal them to seek their father’s opinion. The Commodore, to her surprise and delight, did not sneer or refute her words—he might have done that a season ago. “Did she?” was asked with a teasing brow, otherwise he corrected nor refuted her (or the boys' reiteration of her knowledge). He spoke to his boys about what he knew of the matter while keeping his eyes on her. Like some form of peacekeeping, and acknowledging her part in it. She appreciated it, though Mari still had to defend herself on her stance in the reiteration. Otherwise, they make mild arguments of their differing opinions, or she divulged the subject deeper and easily correlated it with the Commodore's understanding.

“You must teach us both sometimes,” Seungmin piped up. "And explain things together."

“Don’t you think this is already a class, lad? An afternoon class?” the Commodore asked back.

It didn’t take long for Mari to notice how involved she was in the family of eight. For goodness sake, yes, she’s employed by them! But she knew not whether it was by the lack of a maternal figure or that they genuinely were fond of her (both ideas made her huff to scold herself) that made the boys seek her for advice and comfort. Perhaps she was only used to seeing children in the class till the afternoon, and those weeks of constant presence developing deeper into trust came as a surprise to her.

She had wondered if her scolding or discipline could come too harsh for them, that they would shirk away. They did in petulance, which only lasted for hours before they shyly asked for her help, like a veiled request for a truce. In a way, they seemed unable to make do without her company. Like that time Hyunjin had pulled her out to join them in a walk with their father. Mari had thought they might enjoy the company of their father, but the lad had said it would not do without her. That was all there was to it. Something warm swelled inside her at the inclusion, though a firmer thought had nudged it from blooming. Mari could only wonder what the end of her stay would be for them all, entangled in their midst.

An additional thought to these mullings, Mari might as well chide herself for acting so friendly with the Commodore. Their afternoon conversations had settled the air between them into something lighter. They might tease one another, and it was easy enough to sound their displeasure without sounding too brash. These mullings did not please her as she sat before bed in front of her mirror. Such casualty with her employer will not bode well, she thought with flushing skin. And yet, how bad could it be, to esteem her employer as a friend and respect him in the same regard? She might even speak with him in the easy way Minatozaki-san and Mr Kang spoke with him, sans the familiar address. Yet with the two having known the Commodore before his fortune, Mari was not sure if she would have the same leeway.

Not that the Commodore seemed to have any reservations about her seeing him in various dishevelled states. Either mere flushings as the boys teased him, or red-nosed with hair all awry, hurrying to join his boys on the floor before the fire after his excursions.

Jeongin fell ill one day, with sniffles and a warm body. Commodore Bang offered to look after him when Mari brought up his breakfast. Thus a plain table and chair were settled by the bed for him to continue work. Jeongin sleeps after breakfast, and Mari is content enough to start the other’s lesson. Jeongin was in good hands, and she promised the two to come back by lunch.

When she returned, the room and the table were vacated. Mari turned to the adjoining playroom, looking in from the broad open door with the strewn toys and books. Jeongin was kneeling upon the rug, the Commodore lying prone on his back before him. The boy clutched his fox doll, his other hand stacking wooden beads upon his father’s long nose. The Commodore’s palm rests upon his chest like a corpse, his eyes shut. Yet he was smiling, making the beads roll away from the planes of his face, even as Jeongin placed them on his flat forehead or lodged them on the crooks of his eyes and nose.

“Appa, don’t laugh,” came Jeongin's soft demand, followed by a sniffle. The words only served to make the man shake with laughter. The beads tumbled away, and Jeongin huffed. But he noticed Mari approaching, and rose to meet her.

“It’s lunchtime, little kit,” she said, taking him into her arms. “Shall I call for it here, or are you up to going down?”

“Will you eat with me here?” Jeongin asked.

“If you like.”

The youngest considered this and then spoke again. “Can I go down?”

“If you’re feeling better,” Mari allowed, for his skin’s cooler after his medicine and an early nap. He will be well by the next day.

“I’d like to go down,” Jeongin decided.

“Very well.”

Mari turned to the Commodore, still prone on the floor watching their exchange. He didn't seem disturbed at Mari finding him on the floor, smiling wider when their eyes met. She leaned down to speak with him, the way she does with the boys.

“You’re too good for us all, Miss Son,” Commodore Bang declared before she could say a word.

Mari gaped, perplexed by the sudden words. But with a short laugh, she brushed it away and continued, “I thought you would still be busy at these hours, Commodore.”

“There was little work today—or I arranged it to be so,” he smiled. “For my youngest was skilful to divert my attention to him.”

He sat up from the floor, rising first and then offering his hands for Mari. Jeongin stretched his hands, and Mari sighed at his request to be carried. Commodore Bang laughed at them, giving his hands for the youngest to hold. 

With Christmas approaching, Mari spared some hours from studying to teach the boys how to craft garlands and boughs. With Mr Park helping them fish twigs and ferns (and mistletoes) from the park, it was quite an exciting little project. Christmas decorations had not started, but Mari would return home before the twenty-fifth. She can only help them bind the greens, not hang them. Many sullen faces appeared at this arrangement. Yongbok dared to mutter that it would be boring to stay with their father for two weeks.

“Boring?! No, indeed!” Mari laughed. “Weren’t you having good fun with your father these days?”

“But it's not the same without you,” Yongbok said, who had curled beside her like a cat.

“Come now—at least your father did not come home after Christmas this year.” Minatozaki-san’s reminder did nothing to ease the pouts. Yongbok slumped deeper to Mari’s side.

“The thing is Miss Son, hadn’t it been for you all these might not have happened—Appa might not even stay,” Minho pointed out. “We ought to celebrate it with you.”

“That is my reward?”

Minho hesitated at her teasing stare. “Of a sort.”

Mari laughed. “Will allowing me to return home not be enough reward for me? For I haven’t seen my good mother and sisters for a long while, and why shouldn’t I spend a good time with them on this lovely Christmas?”

“We would not detain her here,” Commodore Bang said, having just stepped into the room and sat on a low stool. “After all, I promised her that she would receive her seasonal holiday as is her right. I would not persuade her to do less. She has her own family to go home to, and we will go see our own.”

“We’re going to Grandmother’s!” Jisung recalled, rather pleased with the recollection.

The air shifted with more pleasure; Mari’s gaze drifted to the Commodore and smiled in gratitude. He nodded, and turned again to his boys, “There now. You shall see your cousins and your uncles—and you have much of the sea to discover anew.”

Yet as if still in revolt to being unable to stop her departure, they pile upon her many gifts to bring home. Minho insisted that she must not leave empty-handed, thus with his brothers, packed condiments and preserves for her. The basket was soon full of jars of jellies and tins of biscuits. Mrs Park, the cook, scolded them for a good hour. More for ransacking the pantry than sending Mari with it. The Commodore gave them a mild lecture, before insisting that a goose be brought from the poultry. Mari stammered as she took the basket, seeing a book from the library above the napkin. The boys slipped hellebore blooms in her hand and beckoned her for kisses. She laughed and hugged them.

“I long to return home now — but be assured my thunderous little gentlemen,” she said. “In twelve days, I shall be wanting your company again.”

Thus she returned to the little white cottage over the hill, finding some sobriety from the three women. Mari relished the calmness, even while relaying them lively tales of her charges; every penchant of mischief the boys had to laugh over tea. She gazed long out of the snowy garden and hummed as she walked to the church or around the neighbourhood, feeling the comfort of the familiar pine trees. Like a warm blanket after a cold and tiring day.

“The finest goose and venison our Sukja did ever see,” Mrs Ahn commented upon the Commodore’s gift. While Inha had rambled in her surprise and excitement—”You spoke well of him lately, but to have a family favour you so, you are the luckiest employed woman among us!”—the elderly woman gave her fond praise of Mari’s employer and the boys.

“Such finely prepared condiments—a kind family, indeed. To have such warm generosity when you are a patron of so many individuals—there is no greater blessing than to have such a leader to look up to. And to think of your earlier descriptions of him being cold and distant! But, you have told us, Mari, he has changed now. A very good man you are, Commodore Bang. I hope that nothing but joyful times will come to his life and his family. After all the tragedy in his life, he deserves to be repaid with nothing less.”

[lightshade07]

I was feeling silly so I wrote an entire essay about my current interest in mock trial then realized not every school had it so here's a persuasive essay on why they should!!

    The Real-World Benefits of Mock Trial

Mock Trial would undoubtedly be an extracurricular activity that would benefit your school and its students. By participating in Mock Trial, students have the opportunity to develop a variety of skills including teamwork, analytical thinking, confidence in public speaking, and the ability to think on one's feet. This essay will address the benefits of incorporating at your school. These benefits include the skills addressed above, evidence from my past school of its success, and lastly, the fact that this club would appeal to many students.

Firstly, Mock Trial at your school would help students with both their individuality and teamwork. Mock Trial helps students practice public speaking in a rewarding way because when students “work in the courtroom” they can present their arguments. If they have carefully pieced together their arguments, then it all comes down to confidence. Public speaking is an important skill for most careers and in any role on a mock trial team, whether a witness or a lawyer, this skill is put to use. 

Analytical thinking is also practiced in and out of the courtroom as students look at the case from different angles, and eventually put that thinking into action as they write out scripts. As they use these different angles, they are also able to better see other people’s perspectives. This skill can translate into student relationships as well, as they learn to understand other people’s viewpoints more clearly. 

Mock Trial builds both individuality and teamwork. Students need to put their heads together, communicate, and trust each other as a full team to compete. The bond that forms between the student acting as a lawyer and the student acting as their witness especially shows this. 

As further evidence that Mock Trial would be beneficial to your school , I can also add my own personal account as well as support from the Illinois State Bar Association. The year I served at my school, we practiced roles for both the prosecution and defense.  I was the defendant of the case while we presented The Defense. When we were The Prosecution, I was the prosecutor in charge of the defendant's cross-examination. I can personally attest to the fact that Mock Trial changed me for the better. I became more confident in myself, I was able to communicate with others more effectively, and it brought me closer to my dream of pursuing a career in law enforcement or law. In the end, my team and I became a family fighting for justice, even if it was fictional. 

The connections made with others aren’t temporary and remain even after the conclusion of the case. I’ve heard other students express their gratitude towards the club and how much it helped,  and on a less serious note, the fun they had. There are also multiple supporting accounts from students from Illinois, and the Contra Costa Bar Association. These students have all attested, in one way or another, how Mock Trial has helped them. For example, in 2023, Imani Barnes, after her time in Mock Trial, applied for law school stating “I gained a higher level of comfort with public speaking which was (and still is) very difficult for me. I also developed better critical thinking skills when having to use evidence to tell a compelling story in a competition, and by modifying and improving the strength of our case as the competition progressed.” 

Though there is likely currently a Debate Club at your school and this could be seen as an overlap, I beg to differ. While the debate team offers some of the skills noted above,  Mock Trial differentiates itself by appealing to more students. For example, for those who participate in theater, playing your persona as a witness is quite similar to playing your character on the stage. It also appeals to students like myself who would like to pursue a career involved with law. It also has the benefit of arguing both sides. In Debate Club, you may have a counterclaim, but in Mock Trial, you are given the opportunity to serve as both the prosecution and defense for the same case. 

In conclusion, I believe Mock Trial would be a beneficial extracurricular activity at your school because it helps students both individually and with teamwork. There is evidence of its success and appeal to a variety of students.

Please ask one of your instructors or myself about mock trial if this interests you. Spread awareness and start your own clubs!!!

[fictiongarden]

Fan Fiction Review: Twilight of the Gods by blueenvelopes

Fandom: Star Wars

RATING: MAJESTIC

Blueenvelopes on fanfiction.net/blueenvelopes935 on ao3 has made something of a second unpaid career writing about Sith lords. Her Sith lords span antiquity right down to Darth Plagueis and beyond. Whatever may draw a person to create over twenty-five fanfic stories mostly about Sith lords, it’s my bet that blueenvelopes is female, older, well-read, and perhaps works in an artistic field. You’d certainly have to be all of those to create the damn-near-perfect masterpiece that drifts around fanfic land under the title Twilight of the Gods.

The story is thirty-nine chapters spanning the time between A New Hope and the end of the original trilogy and will take you several days of dedicated reading to finish. Happily, you will read it on the edge of your seat even though the author tells you how it will end in her copious story notes.

The story appears to have two main themes: One, to get the miserably widowed Darth Vader past Padme Amidala and married off to another wife; and two, to argue against a central premise of Star Wars that the reader may or may not agree with. It also brings back Darth Plagueis as the real star of the show in a capacity that will startle many readers.

Fortunately, when a writer with some talent thinks deeply enough about the paradigm and philosophy behind Star Wars to write thirty-nine chapters of coherent argument against it, the result is usually a well-thought-out and engrossing read. Even if you don’t agree that Snoke is Darth Plagueis or that the whole point of the GFFA isn't to stamp out darkness forever, the characters are so well drawn and the story is so intriguing that you should give it a chance anyway. It’s a hell of a good read whether you agree with blueenvelopes or not.

One of the story’s greatest strengths is the clear, convincing characterization. Darth Vader becomes even more nuanced here than he is in the hands of George Lucas, and that’s saying something. It takes real talent to make paragraphs of solid introspection, which this story features in abundance, just as riveting as an action scene. If nothing else, you will get lost in Darth Vader’s fascinating mind and beg for more when it’s over.

Another well-drawn character readers will enjoy is the Alderaanian art dealer Vader falls for and ends up marrying, a redhead named Astral Sidhu. (Is it my imagination, or is every female OC in Star Wars a redhead?) Unlike many OC In both the fan and professional worlds, Astral is older, in her mid-forties, so she beats many of the fanfic tropes right there. Her art world is so well-drawn and the character is so authoritative in her knowledge of it that we are swept right along into her world. There’s also the vicarious pleasure of being along in Astral’s wedding shoes as she’s recruited to help save the Empire’s second-in-command during a crisis, comes to know him more personally, and then ultimately falls in love with him and marries him. Yes, the sex scenes are included … a bit more realistically than in many other fanfics as well. (Yes, Darth Vader can be impotent … at least now and then.) Vader’s doctor and house staff leap right off the screen as admirable individuals in their own rights, too, although readers may not appreciate seeing fan favorite Firmus Piett trashed in this fic.

Another strength of this fic is the element of surprise. Not to reveal too many details, but who knew this much could go on between Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Plagueis between Empire and Return of the Jedi?

The last point I can’t praise this work highly enough for is the strength of the writing. Not only is this writer at near-professional level (and as the widow of an award-winning novelist myself, I can say that), but the musings of the characters contain so much wisdom and so many truisms about war, about peace, about regret, and about middle age and the slide into life’s decline. You don’t find this kind of thought in fan fic usually, and that makes this a rich and rewarding read.

Of course, even the best-written published novel has its faults, and Twilight of the Gods does, as well.

The most obvious is the oft-repeated fan trope of having an OC stand in for the reader in the vicarious experience of getting intimate with a favorite character. Sadly, this trope is so often done that even when it’s very well done, it can’t escape the unfortunate associations with all the other thousands and thousands of the same thing that came before it. When even the creators of deeply loved film and TV series get accused of writing “Mary Sues” themselves, there’s no getting around it. It’s a plot device that’s not original. Here, at least, it’s well-done and enjoyable.

I say the writing here is “near-professional” quality because it has a number of noticeable flaws. First, and worst, there are too many Earthisms. No one in the GFFA has any idea what a Mary Sue is or what an eggplant emoji is. There’s nothing worse than being all caught up in such a tense, thought-provoking story only to get jarred right out of it when GFFA characters use Earth American slang or suddenly drop out of the high-minded diction for which they are known. The Darth Vader of the screen, for example, would never use the word guy.

Characters sometimes go off on tangents that are wildly out of character. A particularly grievous sequence has Hego Damask worried about his dramatic entrance when everyone has far more important things on their mind, and the Hego/Plagueis of Darth Plagueis fame would never. At least, not out loud or at the length he does here. The long, long chapter notes are a trademark with this writer. Personally, I would never be so brazen as to spend paragraphs and paragraphs believing my work is so good people will want to read pages of me explaining what was in my head as I wrote it. Blueenvelopes does, however, and it seems many agree with her. The danger here is that one may slack off in the work knowing one will explain it in story notes that are long enough to be a whole chapter by themselves. (The story is supposed to do the job, not your “liner notes.”) This, happily, turns out not to be the case, and many commenters are as fascinated with the story notes as they are with the story. If it works, do it. Overall, this story has ambition, scope, great characters, and enough surprises to keep you reading. It’s rich and thought-provoking enough that your mind will come back to it all day until you finish it. For good measure, there’s a happy alternative ending for those saddened by the conclusion.

My conclusion is, faults aside, this is one fan fiction not to be missed. *I will be posting these reviews on ao3 and my Substack, Garden of Deceit. Fan Fiction Review: Twilight of the Gods by blueenvelopes (substack.com)

[glassanimalcollective]

I think your problem is that you don't understand that Seol isn't supposed to be a 1 to 1 representation of neither real life Japan nor Korea. I would actually say that if anything I think it's more inspired by China and Japan rather than Korea. Like the racists in game even call it the "Shao empire". But it clearly isnt trying to be real China or Japan

Is just a fictional culture

And I don't think the argument of "Taking inspiration of two different cultures to make a fictional one is bad" has a lot of merit when you fail to criticize the fact that Revachol in itself is clearly taking inspiration from both France and a post sovietic Republic, I've even seen people saying that Revachol reminded them of Manhattan. Very different cultures, but Revachol isn't either of them

And I wouldn't say whether they did good or not in how they handled the inspiration because truly, there's almost no content about Seol in the game as it doesn't aim to focus on that, but rather in Revachol's history. So how can I judge something that isn't there?

And BTW, hiring a consult for what is like 20 lines in a game with a million words isn't very viable either

By what I see on your posts, my guess is that you didn't play a lot because you didn't like it. Which is fine, but how do you expect anyone to take your criticisms seriously if you don't know what you are critiquing. Is like me saying that homestuck is bad, transphobic and problematic™️ because of something I've read, even though I've never even watched Homestuck, just seen some accounts of it.

Also, his name is Kitsuragi because is a reference to an Evangelion character, Masato Katsuragi

me with my eyes closed about the actual problem being pointed out. you can continue to enjoy your game but you wanna hear something real upsetting? this long ass message to me, trying to explain my own feelings about a badly written character is actually a pretty insensitive and (gasps) racist thing to do. Why don't you listen to other people's experiences? I played the game for a little bit and it made me so uncomfortable i haven't touched it again.

Talking to a consultant for the entire second character in your game actually makes a lot of sense. If you truly care about making something good and consumable by all people (ESPECIALLY THE PEOPLE YOU'RE TRYING TO REPRESENT?) you'll do that very basic work.

Maybe you should stay on your disco elysium blog and continue reblogging pics of your alcoholic meowmeow because you are not qualified to tell me about my own feelings here. This amount of grasping to tell me I'm not looking right at this game that could'nt even do research into the people it included in the story. They were *clearly* trying to write an asian experience but couldn't even be bothered to make sure their mashing of random cultures together wouldn't be upsetting to any of the asian people playing their game. It screams "didn't talk to one, not a single asian person during this game's creation."

Telling me the character is named after a random anime character is crazy too. that's still a japanese name when we claim the character isn't japanese, he's apparently part of a fake, poorly thought out franken-culture that can be basically described as "ambiguously asian." are you dumb?

[booklovertwilight]

Venting anon

I’m not sending this because you think he has a PD, I’m sending this because i want to explain why he does not and is still a terrible person nevertheless

…ok, actually, I wrote it like a month ago right after intense arguing with a person who was adamant on him being a psychopath using this arguments (like “he killed people”) and I wanted a confirmation from some popular account that this arguments are bad. It was kinda cringe, now that i look at it

Thanks for writing back and explaining, and thanks for being more coherent this time. Part of why I replied the way I did the first time around was because I barely understood what you were trying to say. Here, then, is my genuine opinion on this subject.

Not everyone who kills people has a personality disorder. And, much more critically, the overwhelming majority of people with personality disorders are not murderers. From a purely statistical standpoint: P(A|B) ≠ P(B|A).

There is an argument to be made that Light has a PD -- though NPD makes more sense to me than ASPD, if that was what was meant by 'psychopath'. But the argument for that has nothing to do with what he's done: rather, it includes things like him having a really fragile ego (see: "you think I'm evil? I am justice! I protect the innocent and those who fear evil! I am the one who will become the god of a new world that everyone desires!" said in response to, literally, one single word of criticism), a sense of grandiosity and self-importance (expressed as a de-facto assumption that his own morality is the only one that matters), an extremely surface-level understanding of what 'normal' teenagers act like, and the way he so clearly bases his entire sense of self-worth on the praise he gets for his school grades.

Whether or not you believe the statement "Light is a terrible person" is a separate query, which is a lot more subjective, and has more to do with your morality than his actions. A pure utilitarian would see the (IRL unrealistic, but canon) outcome of his actions (that is, reducing crime and stopping wars), run some numbers, and call him a good person. Many other people would look at the sheer body-count and call him irredeemably evil; still others would say the same thing due to his motivations. I'm not endorsing any of these arguments, btw, I'm just saying they exist.

"Light Yagami is a psychopath (=has a PD) because he kills people" is indeed a bad argument in many ways, but to be honest, the biggest flaw I see with it is actually the way it stigmatizes people with PDs. Cluster B patients have more than enough stigma to deal with from all the people armchair-diagnosing their abusers with narcissistic PD or their overly-attached ex-girlfirends with borderline PD. They don't need people armchair-diagnosing their fandom's resident murderer with antisocial PD.

Ultimately, however much we as fans care about him, Light Yagami is a fictional character. His crimes are likewise fictional. But people with cluster B disorders are real. And every time somebody armchair-diagnoses a villainous character with a commonly-demonized mental illness, I (with my special interest in psychology) die a little inside.

[super-hero-confessions]

Here's something I found pretty interesting. I've seen plenty of Clois/Lark shippers call SuperWonder shippers misogynists or harass them and fic writers.

But I actually haven't seen them going after the SuperBats or Clex shippers even if there is blatant or misogynistic undertones (though to be fair it's pretty hard to compete with Golden and Silver Age Lois if you wanna make her look bad). Which is weird I guess?

I'm sure it's happened. I wouldn't deny the experience of it from someone. But I find it very curious as I've seen similar if not the same rhetoric at the prospect of Superman being with Maxima and other claims the like that if a story focuses on Clark moving on and moving forward, it can only be misogynistic fridging.

But with the catch "only when he moves on to another woman" (never seen this argument against him moving on with a man).

And to that I say... What the fuck? No, seriously what the fuck? The logic makes no sense as it did to begin with. If the problem is Clark "moving on" specifically with women, then he should never "move on" from Lana and never marry Lois. Everything said about accusing those shipping him with women other than Lois after a relationship with Lois can be equally said and applied to shipping him with any woman after Lana if we're to believe any of that crap.

Meaning shipping him anyone other than Lana would be misogyny that devalues Lana and makes Lois and others look bad.

You can't have it both ways. If it's misogyny, it starts after the FIRST girl. Clark's ACTUAL first choice (by virtue of becoming his wife, Lois must be his literal last, final choice, and she is for a time and that's fine). And it should be applied to any ship after the fact, not just the ones with women, whether you fear being called a homophobe or not. Where's this "bravery to defend" Lois with the men at play, huh? Do you have any idea how many fics make Clark cheat on Lois for Bruce?

A lot. It's a lot...

And even then with the arguments made it should be LANA getting the defense, not Lois.

And look, I'm a multishipper, I like all the ships in actual good and nontoxic portrayals of them, but I hate a good deal of shipping discourse and more ridiculous arguments that are used to be against ships and often more specifically against certain female characters.

Maybe the Clois shippers don't bother SuperBats or Clex shippers because the misogyny is more often against either Lana or Diana. And I don't mean fair criticism of the characters, certain portrayals or even making a minor villainess or love rival for story and drama purposes. I mean using the lady as the butt of a joke and making her unreasonably OOC in order to make the men look better and "less misogynistic" by shitting all over this woman.

And this kinda shit isn't exclusive to this part of fandom or fiction in general either but it is all equally stupid and old and especially terrible when you have people being disgusting and egging it on in real life like with the Bieber nonsense. What the fuck people, let them live.

These accusations are frequently without merit and sound a lot more like confessions. No one shipping for fun ties the value of the women in these ships to the men they are with besides the worst of the worst in the shipping and real world. The actual misogynists that love purity culture and think only men and a body count can define how much a woman is worth.

So in essence. Slut shaming.

Ya sound like some goddamn Andrew Tate Fanbois, misogynistic slut shaming and all.

If you like a ship. Fine. If you dislike a ship. Fine. But accusing others of who they are based on FICTION. That makes YOU the asshole, not the other way around.

And more people need to ship Clark Kent with Jimmy Olsen. That right there is the real OTP and who DC shoulda chose from the start. He got saved way more than Lois back in the day, and always cared for and was nice to Clark.

[cenobittten]

Since the release of the first novel trilogy, fans have been asking what the relationship between the books and games looks like. Do they take place in the same continuity? Can details from the books be used to solve the games? Or are they unrelated, separate narrative universes?

Over time, these questions have only become more important as the last game, Ruin, begins to directly reference concepts only seen in Tales from the Pizzaplex. Now, the question of whether the books are key to understanding the games is pertinent to lore building.

So how do I see the answer to this question? Well, I think things become a lot clearer when you accept a few things.

- All books and games are products released in-universe. They are ultimately shaped and crafted by Fazbear Entertainment as 'fiction'. All are 'fictionalised' to varying degrees, with details changed to distance themselves from the real events.

- This doesn't mean that the stories are complete fiction. The events shown to us in FNAF media are 'real' but specific details and narrative points have been altered. We never see these events 'in real life', just the retellings. This is why the books and games share common events with different details - they stem from the same root inspiration but take creative liberties in the retelling.

- Even since The Fourth Closet, FNAF has been metafiction. Metafiction is where a work emphasises that the viewer is experiencing a fictional work. This often involves fourth wall breaking - such as a novel containing a character with the same name as the author. Acknowledging this makes the relationship between all FNAF media even more complicated. There are multiple layers of metafiction going on throughout the series - sometimes with worlds within worlds.

This has created multiple parallel universes where some stories overlap but they are ultimately their own self-contained narratives. As time goes on, the different series entries reference earlier media, creating complexity. This is seen especially with Security Breach & Ruin with Tales From The Pizzaplex, which blur the lines between one another.

For the interest of simplicity, the graphic I have made shows the simplest version of this theory. Arguments can be made for combining different narrative universes or separating them out further. In summary though:

- Games 1-6 are self-contained from a lore point of view - fictionalised versions of 'real events'.

- Security Breach, Special Delivery, Help Wanted and Ruin are set in a narrative universe where games 1-6 are in-canon fiction.

- The Fourth Closet and Fazbear Frights reference games 1-6 while retelling real world events. However, they are also fiction in their own right.

- Tales from the Pizzaplex is another universe encompassing all the rest of the previous FNAF entries as fiction - with question marks over Security Breach and Ruin, which could take place in the same universe but likely just have elements in common.

My line of thinking

Layer 1 universes simply retell 'real-world' events

Layer 2 universes retell 'real world' events AND comment on the greater impact of Fazbear Entertainment as a company.

Layer 3 universe retells 'real-world events' and comment on the impact of working for and living around Fazbear Entertainment.

Can the books be used to solve the games?

Yes and no.

Both the games and books are 'canon' but they exist as distinct narrative universes.

If you are looking to build a timeline or to understand game event specifics, you won't get very far. The books do not offer details to help solve these specific aspects - the 'retellings' of game events stand alone.

However, the books do contain clues as to the broad Fazbear universe 'real world' events from a storytelling point of view. It fleshes out characters and adds supplemental information to help understand a wider narrative.

It also provides crucial worldbuilding, revealing more about Fazbear Entertainment's various dodgy practices. While the 'unrelated' stories may seem irrelevant to solving the games, they hold concepts and clues to understanding the lore. For example, it recontextualizes early game content understanding, changing Afton from being a lone, crazed murderer to a scientist experimenting for corporate interests. This is done by revealing more of the world around him and the impact Fazbear Entertainment has on lives.

[gallopinggallifreyans]

this is a ramble about bad actors on social media bear with me or ignore me either is fine

Sometimes I worry about whether or not kids on twitter know about the concept of "bad actors". Like, if someone posts something particularly obtuse/rude/ignorant on tumblr, I can safely say death threats and the like aren't in the repertoire of rebuttals used by the majority of tumblr's userbase. And I can say this with confidence because I've been here for ten years, and the only times I've seen that here are from bad actors.

On twitter though, it's something I regularly see. Someone posts something particularly obtuse, or rude, or ignorant, whatever have you, and the quote retweets are suddenly full of death threats. Like, this is a terrifyingly common response. And the only thing I can say to that is to be careful of what you post online. Things you say, especially on a site as broken as twitter, will be twisted and used against you. It's not a good idea to post something that would otherwise make you think, "I might get hate for this". Because the hate speech on twitter is far, far worse than on tumblr.

And it definitely sounds like I'm victim-blaming, and in a way, I kind of am. (I welcome criticism here, my view is not absolute.) But you have to be balls off the wall stupid to not recognize the kind of culture twitter propagates, especially when it comes to death threats etc. It's so easy to tell someone to go kill themselves, and then you've got a very real problem on your hands. The types of arguments I see this in are so...inane? Who sends death threats over a fictional character? I mean this in complete sincerity, people like this need help. Earlier I said kids on twitter—it's not just kids. It's genuinely concerning how invested people have become in the lives of fictional characters. Not just fictional characters actually; I've seen people go to war over BTS and Taylor Swift. Who, might I add, are most definitely not what they present to the public. Everything is carefully curated so that you see their good behaviour. Yes, even Taylor. It's not that these celebrities are lying to you, it's that you're fighting over a product, over a brand. This isn't even about Taylor, I just have some swiftie friends so I see this drama more often than others.

Anyway. My point is made, I think. Twitter has propagated a culture of bad actors. It's not normal to send death threats at all, let alone over some character or celebrity. These are people's lives and it is fucking gross to see these threats get thrown around so casually.