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airlockfailure · 2 years

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Invictus AU Head-canons CG Commanders Edition: Fox

Canon portrays Commander Fox as duty bound and fearless. In Invictus I decided that wasn't going to be the case. Fox is still duty bound, but I chose to make him terrified of a lot of things, just incredibly good at hiding his fear from others.

He's overprotective of the Coruscant Guard (especially the shinies and the CCs) and close friends, worries all the time about his batchmates, is an arachnophobe (that's Lego comic canon), and like many other creators' head-canons Fox is prone to self-detrimental behavior. He's similar to the colloquial "mom friend" who goes "No one else is going to do it? Okay, I will" especially in regards to keeping parts of the Republic functioning. The Ingress? He streamlined refugee intake in order to 1. weed out CIS conspirators 2. make the workload on his men less cumbersome 3. make the workload on the nat borns less cumbersome and 4. Fox hates disorder. The prison system? He's been painstakingly weeding out the corruption and misuse of funding. The Republic is broke, after all, and they ought to prioritize war criminals over citizens trying to survive. (Fox is compassionate to a fault, and dislikes injustice.) The Senate? Fox does everything he can (and then some) to try and keep the CG and the clone army as a whole in the good graces of the Republic. He's not a politician. He's not...

He takes normal GAR stims (mega doses of caffeine) to keep going, but he also takes contraband stims that are illicit drugs and is somewhat too reliant on them. Why is he not addicted to them? He is, but Fox is brutal toward himself, and is repeatedly cut off cold-turkey from supply because he ends up injured or too busy. He usually hides in the med center in Myth's office when he's going through withdrawal (while still trying to get work done, damn it Fox). The last one he ever uses is in his fight with Dooku. He doesn't touch them again after that, and even stops drinking so much caf (because lightsaber versus guts equals digestive problems).

He's afraid of drowning, but taking inspiration from that one post discussing how the Force is an eldritch horror, the drowning phobia is a metaphor for his use of the Darkside. IMO the Darkside would be the natural state of Force users if they were not exposed to Jedi teachings. Jedi exist after thousands and thousands of years of trial and error learning how to mitigate the Force's negative affects on the user. Fox, having no training, and limited exposure to Jedi where he is not at odds with them (SKYWALKER), and constantly exposed to Palpatine, and relying entirely on instinct and emotion to power the fuck through every day, Fox is drowning in darkness. He's also preoccupied with saving other clones, and in his own opinion, sometimes selfishly so.

Why doesn't Sidious sniff Fox out? Well, Sidious is trying to sniff Fox out. Fox really only begins to use the Force in earnest after helping Slick. Prior to that, he's locked down, and accidentally does things due to strong emotions (resurrecting CT-2587 or being clairvoyant for brief moments when someone is in danger: see Dawn's situation at the start of Invictus). On top of that, Fox believes he's alone in his ability to use the Force. When Colt tells him that's not the case, and gives him intel on Slick, Fox mistakes Colt's words to mean that Slick is the only other Force-sensitive clone. Colt works on Kamino. He sees some weird shit. Colt knows 100% there's a shit ton of Force-sensitive clones. And it's the sheer numbers of them that help keep Fox hidden for so long. It's not until his showdown with Sidious that they fully recognize each other. Sidious has been hunting his nightmares, and Sidious does know about Slick.

I write Fox as a sex-positive asexual. Fox is tactile and shows physical affection toward other clones by hugging them, sharing his bunk or their bunk. He lets tired troopers sleep on his shoulder. He holds dying men until they pass (if possible, sometimes it's not safe). He's constantly offering comfort to those around him. He says he's not great with words, but for a clone, you could consider Fox silver-tongued. He can lie, and he can convince people to believe him. For the clones, usually it's the phrase "everything will be okay".

I ship Fox with Riyo (and headcanon Riyo as being about 23-25). Thorn is friends with Riyo first, via escorting Padme frequently. Riyo respects the clones. She faced her insecurities as a senator with the 501st and learned a few things about war, battle, and her distaste for callousness toward life. She can take care of herself (which is great because Fox is already juggling more than he can handle), but more importantly, in regards to Fox, Riyo wants to help the clones. She wants to help him help the clones. Fox has no voice in the Senate, so Riyo speaks for him. Fox is so starved of everything a normal human has, and Riyo gives him everything. He is not attracted to her, but he loves her.

It was initially Thorn's idea to get Riyo to ask Fox out for caf. Partly as a joke, and partly because Fox needs to stop working for five seconds. And then they became serious about it, and saved the Republic and the clones (and the Jedi).

Fox doesn't actually like the color blue (LOL) or red (he hates red, and blue he has the unfortunate association of the 501st causing more chaos for him to take care of sghsgskhfd). He likes what's described as "wine-dark" because he saw the ocean at sunset once on Kamino and it burned into his brain.

Fox's Phase I bucket belonged to another clone on Geonosis. Fox had to slice it's protocols because the clone wasn't a commander. The bucket is glitchy, prone to system failure and blue-screening, but Fox is attached to it. Thorn keeps it safe for him during the upgrade to Phase II. Fox's Phase II bucket is shattered in half by the end of the war because he gives Sidious a Force backed kov'nyn (headbutt).

Fox was officially adopted by the elderly Mandalorian Aren Kelborn who had been living among refugees on Coruscant. While Fox isn't sure he sees Aren as a father figure (more like a dangerous grandpa), his death is a major loss for Fox's mental well being, as he has to go back to saving clones on his own. Aren bequeathed Fox with his beat up Beskar armor, which Fox uses as a disguise when doing unsanctioned things.

It's called the Invictus AU based on the poem by William Ernest Henley, and because in the illegal gambling fights Fox was placing himself into to earn credits for decommissioned troopers, he held the moniker "Invictus" because he didn't feel comfortable being called "Mando" (he doesn't believe he deserves to be Mandalorian despite Aren's insistence and adoption). Fox has a tattoo down is spine in Mando'a that's a line from the poem (is there a space version of William Ernest Henley? This is fiction, so why not?)

I wanted to write Fox as undefeated. The only person who defeats Fox is himself.

Is Fox overpowered? Yes. But after all the crap people give him, I think he deserves to be.

#cc 1010 #commander fox #invictus au #swtcw #tcw #the clone wars #star wars the clone wars #force sensitive clones #asexual fox #force sensitive fox #airlock writes #clone wars headcanons

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i-did · 3 years

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Do you know when the racism and ableism accusations against Nora started? Because back when I was active in 2016/2017 and don't think they were a thing, or were very low-key. Was it something she said or are people just basing it off the things she wrote in the books?

From what I remember, the first time I heard the blanket statement of “Nora is racist/fetishizes gay men” blanket statement was early fall 2019 (which is so ironic for the fandom to say on so many levels lmao). There wasn’t a catalyst or anything, just she went offline 2016 and no new content was coming out and the aftg fandom is such an echo chamber that… an accidental smear campaign happened.

Before then, I would see occasional “Nora used ableist slur” which… is funny (not that ableism isn’t serious) to me people care more about that than Seth saying the f-slur. IMO this is because with Seth, it clearly shows the character thinking it and not the author who is writing about what will be an end game mlm relationship.

But anyways! Long story short, it's the fact that she’s an ace/aro woman who wrote a mlm book, and based off of the events in canon. There is no “Nora called me/someone else a slur” it’s “Nora wrote a book where slur(s) are used” and “the Moriyama’s are Japanese.”

Below I put my own opinion on these claims and go into more detail:

CW for discussions of: racism, ableism, mlm fetishization

Fetishization: (and mentions of sexism at the end)

To one question in the EC about her inspo for aftg she jokingly responded how she wanted to write about gay athletes. On other parts of your blog you could see she was a hockey fan and an overall sports fan (anime or otherwise) but I've seen this statement taken out of context and framed as “she's one of those BOYXBOY” shippers. Considering how… well-developed both Andrew and Neil’s relationship is, and it takes them until like the 3rd book and there is a whole complex ass plot going on around, you can see how that's just. Not really true. And considering the fandom is like… 85% women (queer women but still women) and I've gotten into a discussion with someone who is a woman and called Nora a fetishizer and was ignoring my opinions as a mlm, and I really just wanted to say “well what does that make you?” it's a very ironic high horse. She didn’t write 3 all 3 books to put Neil in lingerie pwp or crop-top fem-fatal fashion show, fandom did.

Also, I talked to an ace/aro friend about this, and she talked to me about how AFTG spoke to her very much so as an ace/aro story. Neil is demisexual, Nora didn’t know of the word at the time of reading it, but she did get an anon asking if Neil was demi after, and she said “had to look it up, and yep, but he doesn't really think about it” (paraphrased). Obviously it would have been cool if andreil were canonly written as wlw by Nora instead, (which would have increased the amount of wlw rep and demi rep) but tbh I don’t think tumblr would have cared about it nearly as much and everyone would just call Neil a cold bitch–like people do with Nora’s other published book with a main character who's a woman. Plus they're her OC’s, not mine.

The fact is that 50% of all LGBT+ rep in literature is mlm, mostly white mlm, and not written by mlm. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than everyone else, she already broke a shit ton of barriers in topics she discusses that otherwise get ignored. I’m grateful to these books for existing even if it's a mlm story written by a woman. I still will prioritize reading mlm written by mlm–and vice versa with wlw– in the way I prioritize reading stories about POC written by POC. But credit where credit is due, this is a very good story, and a very good demi story.

Ableism:

To me, AFTG is a story about ableism and how we perceive some trauma survivors more worthy than others. Neil and the foxes using ableist language shows how people actually talk. Neil thinks shitty things about Andrew, like the others do too, and thinks he's “psycho”. The story ultimately deconstructs this idea and these perceptions of people. Wymack, someone who says the r-slur (which is still not known by the general population as a slur even in 2021 much less the early 2000s when the book was beginning to be written and what the timeline is based off of) is a character who understands Andrew better than most of the others do, and gives him the most sympathy and understanding despite using words like the m-slur and r-slur. Using these words isn't good, but it is how people talk, and this character talks. Wymack is a playful “name caller” especially when he’s mad, the foxes think Andrew is “crazy” and incapable of humanity and love because of it. They call his meds “antipsychotics” as an assumption and insult in a derogatory way, when really antipsychotics are a very helpful drug for some people who need them. Even Neil thinks these things about Andrew until he learns to care about him. All the foxes are hypocritical to am extent, as people in real life tend to be. Nora herself doesn’t use these or tweet them or something, her characters do to show aspects of their personality and opinions and how they change over time.

Racism:

As for the racism, I've seen people talk about how racial minorities being antagonists is inherently bad, which I think lacks nuance but overall isn't a harmful statement or belief. However, Nora herself said she wrote in the yakuza instead of another gang or mob because she was inspired for AFTG by sports anime, (which often queer-bait for a variety of reasons). I haven’t seen a textual analysis acknowledging the racist undertones surrounding the Moriyama’s as the few characters of color who are also major antagonists, but instead just “Nora is racist”. Wymack having shitty flame tribal tattoo’s is just… a huge 90’s thing and a part of his character design. Her having a character with bad taste in tattoo trends doesn’t mean she's racist. There is the whole how Nicky is handled thing, but that's a whole thing on it’s own. The fandom… really will write Nicky being all “ai ai muy spicy, jaja imma hit on my white–not annoying like me–boyfriend in Spanish. With my booty hole out and open for him ofc.” and as a Mexican mlm I’m like … damn alright.

I think there is merit to the fact that she writes white as the default* and unless otherwise stated a POC a character was written with the intent to be white is another valid criticism, as well as the fact that the cast is largely white, but everything Nora is accused of I've seen the fandom do worse. That goes to the debate of, is actively writing stereotypes for POC more harmful than no representation at all? And personally I prefer the lack of established race line that lets me ignore Nora’s canon intent of characters to be white and come up with my own HC’s over the fandoms depictions of “zen monk Renee with dark past” “black best friend Matt who got over drugs but is a puppy dog” “ex stripper black Dan who dates Matt” vague tokenism. I HC many of the upperclassmen as POC and do my best to actively give thought behind it and have their own arcs that also avoids the fandom colorism spectrum of “darkest characters we HC go to the back and fandom favorites are in the front and are the lightest.”

*I however won't criticize her harsher or more than… everyone else who still largely does this in fanfiction regarding AFTG as well as literature in general. This isn't a Nora thing, it's a societal thing, and considering the books came out in like 2014 I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard than the rest of the world. She's just someone who wrote her personal OC’s and self-published expecting no following. I don’t know her race and I’m not gonna hold her to a higher standard than everyone else just because.

The criticisms I've seen have always been… ironic IMO, and clearly I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think most people say those things about Nora because they heard them, and it's the woke thing to say and do and don’t critically analyze their actions or anything, but just accept them.

#ask #aftg discorse #fandom culture #fandom politics #fandom psychology #mailob #damn cant wait for my words to be twisted lmao #sorry the ableism one is the shortest I wrote that one first actually

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laufire · 3 years

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those “a female character with a romance can still be compelling/strong/well-written etc.” slogans feel very empty when you take into account that the OVERWHELMING majority of female characters who get central focus on a story already come with a romance with a man attached.

yes, there are female characters without romantic entanglements with men (which sometimes comes with its own baggage as they’re women who are seen as “undesirable”, yes. but frankly, I’d put a lot more value on having a romance-free story centering one of these women that focuses on enriching every other side of her life, without it having to be validated by the presence of a man, because those stories run the risk of saying “yes, she IS valuable and she HAS a story worth telling... because this guy’s interest in her makes it so”), but are they the actual focus of the story?

how often are they one-note characters, or props to the central woman? there are romance-free stories who center women out there (or even stories about women whose romantic relationships circle around other women, for that matter, preferably without male characters ever encroaching in them), but they are, again, the overwhelming minority in this situation. how many shows that center around women whose journey is romance-free from beginning to end can you name, at the top of your head? how many are they ABOUT a woman who doesn’t put any stock on romantic entanglements and instead puts the spotlight on how she cultivates other facets of her life? not even in a “well, if it happens, it happens, but I’m not looking”, but a woman who actively wants no part of that and it’s never forced on her. because I’m drawing a blank here (with maybe the exception of stories about motherhood and family but... that’s another can of worms and I want stories about women who run from that too). maybe it’s because these would be the women I’d see myself in most, but I find myself often yearning for more stories like this.

and like many of my frustrations with the arguments in this site, it comes from a place of mixing personal attachments and tastes with a grander, more political picture, imo. stories that focus on and prioritize women’s relationships with men are a dime a dozen. that doesn’t mean people can find other things of value in them for a myriad of reasons (hell, it’s not as if I haven’t loved plenty of stories that fit this description and found them interesting and engaging. and if you really look beyond mainstream media, it’s not that hard to find them about the kind of women conventional fiction dismisses either), but pointing out there’s not a lack of more stories like that is not a personal attack on those who enjoy them. taking it as such and trying to flip the script so that YOU are the one persecuted and who’s ~fighting the power by defending something that’s as conventional as it comes is futile and if anything derides any serious conversation about the topic. it’s missing the forest for the trees, and all that.

#will i be ever free of people trying to morally justify their tastes in fiction #talking to the void #my thoughts #fandom nonsense #bitter lau tag #the writing tm

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ineffable-endearments · 3 years

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CW below for a discussion that relates to homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, acephobia, and related subjects. no specific stories, the themes just generally appear. i hope i didn't screw up and will fix it if i did.

so i was thinking about what makes Aziraphale and Crowley resonate as a queer love story, not just a "forbidden romance" (a trope that can be painfully cishet when it wants to be, which is often).

and i mean, obviously. there are a LOT of things. a lot. but something that didn't occur to me before is their relationship to each other relative to their sides.

at first, one would assume that they aren't supposed to be talking at all. this is probably true on a surface level. like, it's probably considered uncool to be caught chatting with The Enemy.

however, we do see that it's kind of normal for angels and demons to talk with a degree of civility. they don't trust each other deeply, that much is really obvious (Beelzebub says as much to Michael), and they do probably plan to kill each other eventually. at least, i think they genuinely believe that's how it's going to play out.

but! the front entrance to Heaven is in the same building as the front entrance to Hell! Aziraphale and Crowley literally walk into the building side by side! i know it's a funny joke, but Heaven and Hell aren't framed as stupid enough, by the end of the series, for that to be pure incompetence.

Michael has been in contact with Ligur for who-knows-how-long, feeding him information and presumably being fed information in return. Gabriel is entirely capable of speaking amicably with Beelzebub once it looks like their Plan isn't going through. and, of course, the Sides easily collaborate to punish Aziraphale and Crowley.

it's obviously normal for angels and demons to have a civil relationship of some sort.

a number of references are also made to the ways that the Sides are ultimately the same. Beelzebub and Gabriel are operating out of the same rulebook, after all; they both think the War is "written," they just differ on who's bound to win. to them, the most important thing is not even to thwart the other side on Earth - it's to get to the part where they're at war. they will absolutely collaborate with each other to reach that goal. they consider themselves part of the same Plan. consider even Crowley's thoughts in the book about how demons have "an unpopular job" but are "essential" to the running of the universe. they may be culturally different, but they all know they belong to the same society.

therefore, merely talking together is probably not strictly forbidden for Aziraphale and Crowley. even being sort of friendly probably isn't strictly forbidden. again, uncool? yeah. deadly? i doubt it, to be honest. heck, to their bosses' faces, they could use it as an excuse to spy on each other whether any actual spying got done.

what's the real problem? the thing everyone's upset about? it's not just that don't kill each other on sight. the real problem is that they prioritized each other. they got too intimate. their desires for a life together challenged the status quo, and even though they weren't the ones who were finally responsible for stopping the war altogether (that was Adam), they were blamed and sadistically punished for trying to preserve their relationship and their lives here on Earth instead of "growing up" and fulfilling their predetermined roles in Heaven and Hell.

in real life, society punishes people for prioritizing friendships in a way that most people assume is to be reserved only for romantic and sexual relationships. Heaven and Hell punish people for prioritizing friendship in a way that most people assume is to be reserved only for the glory of their cause.

and irl, when people are romantic or sexual (viewed as too intimate) with someone who is considered the "wrong gender," we punish them again for that. cisheteropatriarchal culture tends to expect men in particular to be not too intimate with each other and fuels a total hiding of emotion between them, although goodness knows women get pitted against each other and are expected to choose men over each other, too. also, the status quo does not know how to handle nonbinary people at all; the status quo gets angry if you even try to acknowledge that they exist. but if there was a widely-popular etiquette structure established for enbies, i'd be willing to bet it would also be a weird rivalry thing.

like, each gender sort of gets treated as "we all think the same in this gender, which is why we get along, but we don't like each other too much, because that would be gay."

"we're all looking to keep the Great Plan in motion, but we don't like each other too much, because then we wouldn't be on opposite sides."

basically, Aziraphale and Crowley read as a queer love story because their affection for each other and the lives they've created together challenges the traditional roles their shared society forces on them. it's a happy queer love story because not only do they manage to choose that affection over the status quo, they succeed and go on to enjoy themselves.

i'm a little nervous about posting this rant, because it's kind of saying, i guess, that Crowley and Aziraphale's queer relationship is characterized by their challenges to the status quo, and i don't think by any means that has to be true of all queer people. i mean, people can be quietly non-cishet, never let anyone know, never tell a soul, and they'd still not be cishet. and also, isn't the point that someday we'd get to a point where nobody has to deal with bigotry or even disrespect?

but at the same time, it is kind of impossible to look at the history and not see significant struggles, including ones that appear in stories over and over. i can't tell you how many posts i've seen on this site alone about how queer love and queer survival are themselves acts of resistance. and IMO, that's what Crowley and Aziraphale have.

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sorrowful-prince-pelleas · 4 years

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Imo, a major aspect of Kiara as a character is that while she projects onto The Little Mermaid, she doesn’t parallel her in a narrative sense, and that due to her inability to truly love others, she fundamentally doesn’t understand the narrative she loves so much.

During her childhood, where she was isolated and bedbound, one of the cultists gave her the book and so it was her only window info humanity and how “real people” behaved. For her, the characters of The Little Mermaid are idealized figures, and real-world humans not matching up to that ideal is what leads her to spiral down into who she becomes in CCC - a woman that doesn’t understand or caste for humanity, seeing herself as the only human.

(I want to point out that according to her bond CE, “on the brink of death, the girl holds a single book she treasures” - it’s possibly her only personal possession, or at the very least the only thing she has ever treasured, which makes her misunderstanding even more tragic!)

So, as a quick summary of The Little Mermaid : a Mermaid (who has a long life but no soul) saves a prince from drowning, and learns from her grandmother that humans have short lives but souls that ascend to heaven when they die - basically, humans have immortal lives after death.

She wishes to obtain a soul, but according to her grandmother,the only way for a mermaid to do so is to have a human love her so much that they share a soul. After this, she makes a pact with the sea witch to go on land - she trades her voice and tail for legs, and if the prince her she will gain a soul, while of the prince marries another woman she will turn to sea foam (as mermaids do then they die). However, the prince is already in love with a girl who saved him after the mermaid took him to shore, though he does care for the Mermaid as a sister.

Eventually, he is about to marry the other girl, and that night the mermaid’s sisters bring her a knife - if she kills the prince she will be able to return to being a mermaid. But seeing the prince and his wife, she can’t bring herself to kill him, and turns to foam. Afterwards, she meets “spirits of the air” that tell her that even if she doesn’t have a soul, if she works for 300 years as an air spirit, she can gain a soul.

It’s history is also incredibly important and interesting - Hans Christian Anderson was someone who was constantly faced with unrequited love, both towards women and men, and was also very occupied with the theme of religious salvation through love. So, him writing a story in which someone, despite their lack of a “soul”, is still able to gain a soul through good deeds as a reward for selfless love is very thematically resonant and also completely understandable.

CCC!Kiara funamentally lacks that sort of selfless love. While FGO!Kiara, still having a bit of who she was before the influence of CCC Kiara can learn selfless love through her relationship with Ritsuka, CCC Kiara is too far gone. She cannot conceptualize selfless love - she could never do what the little mermaid did and sacrifice her life for someone else’s happiness, because for her, other people are fundamentally not human and therefore don’t deserve to be saved, and their joy shouldn’t be prioritized; she can’t understand that the Sakura AI’s are beings that can feel real and legitimate love. No matter how much joy and comfort the book brought her, Kiara was never able to grasp it’s true meaning.

Unlike Kiara, BB parallels the mermaid, being an “inhuman” being with a potentially long life, but no “soul” in a sense. While Nasuverse humans are able to return to the root (the parallel of going to heaven for the Nasuverse), she’s an AI and so she can’t. This is further emphasized by her role in CCC - in the CCC Route Ending (which is the closest thing CCC has to a true ending) has BB sacrifice herself in order to save Hakuno and Sakura. Just like the little mermaid, she gives up her life to save the one she loves (who doesn’t love her back).

Unlike Kiara, BB is capable of the sort of true, selfless love that Andersen clearly admired, which I find to be super fascinating, and I love how FGO acknowledges that dynamic by having the summer mermaid Kiara embody Yaobikuni (who serves as a much closer parallel, being a holy woman that ate the flesh of a mermaid and became immortal) and Shen (a clam monster that creates mirages and changes it’s shape, which is what Kiara does very well!), and not the Little Mermaid herself.

#yes I am delivering the promised Kiara content #kiara sessyoin #fate grand order #fate extraverse #bb fate #hans christian andersen #Hans Fate #miss posts

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doux-amer · 3 years

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Okay, so I no longer have the energy to discuss Marvel stuff at length, but I enjoyed Black Widow, to my surprise. I went in with low expectations, but it ended up being solid. Was it a groundbreaking movie? No. But I’d rank it as one of the best MCU films and it felt like a nice change of pace from your standard MCU fare. The film avoided prioritizing action over character arcs and didn't interrupt the story with unnecessary and often distracting humor. It's become increasingly obvious over recent years just how much the MCU has started to suffer from what made it unique and innovative in the first place—an interconnected cinematic universe. Everything feels like it's a stepping stone to some big event (hah, in that way, it's emulating the comics well), with characters's stories hastily and sloppily pushed aside for The Main Team Event TM.

And that's why Black Widow worked. It didn't have world-ending stakes. It wasn't about one Big Bad (the big bad in this story, much like in CA:TWS, is the system which is why the "main boss" didn't have to be impressive and intimidating on his own). The story felt quiet and contemplative in between the action scenes. It was very intimate and the story benefited tremendously from that. What happened in this movie was something that would mean very little to anyone other than the people directly involved and would go unnoticed.

This isn't something that the whole world will know about and praise her for, and no one treats it as such, both in terms of the characters and the people behind the film. With the exception of a few lines and moments, this film isn't cringeworthy, in-your-face, and ultimately shallow GIRL POWER GIRLBOSS OMG FEMINISM which Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (and that one stupid as hell scene in IW) both leaned into and imo, were either hindered by or even suffered from. This story is very much one about the patriarchy, misogyny, agency, etc., but it tries to see what the personal ramifications are and how sickening and even banal it all is. It’s about how the world works and treats women, no matter who they are. It’s about how Dreykov, for all his power, is a dime a dozen. The world made it possible for men like Dreykov to exist and do harm. The world goes on without him there, and in the wake of his death and the destruction of the Red Room, his victims still have to deal with all the pain and figure out what they want to do, how they want to do it, and who they want to be afterwards.

Obviously, we also got to see more of Natasha and who she is, what makes her tick, and how her past formed the person she is now. And yes, I dislike Scarjo so I was ready to not care about the movie, but god, I love Natasha and miss her so badly. I ended up unexpectedly crying when the film started and didn't stop until the opening credits ended, not even because something was sad but because that was Natasha! When kid Natasha whipped out her gun and shielded Yelena, I recognized both that skill and heart instantly and it hit me hard. You got that repeatedly throughout the film, and it knits together all the little pieces of Natasha we got throughout the decade. It gives her consistency and strengthens what we already know drives her: her desire to atone and protect and her yearning for a family.

The supporting cast was good too. You could tell they had fun and you could tell they had the acting chops. I get very leery of actors who go over the top in the MCU because almost all the time, it ends up backfiring and undermining their character, but David Harbour had a lot of fun with Alexei and it never bothered me. And I think that's because, behind all of the bombast, there was real emotion behind it that he took seriously and the others did as well. Rachel Weisz...I mean, I don't think I need to say anything more. You expect her to be good and of course she was. And Florence? Yes, this might not be 616 Yelena in many, many ways and I can see how that's upsetting to people (this applies to the Taskmaster as well), but if you see MCU Yelena as her own person, man. Florence overshadows Scarjo which, well, isn't surprising considering her brilliance, but I will say, though, that part of it is because Yelena is a much more energetic character whereas Natasha is more introverted and even a little awkward and shy at times.

I loved the relationships and they all felt real to me. When they said they were a family? I believed them. When you saw them grapple with what they'd done in the past and what they did to each other and to other people? That felt real too.

And the action scenes! Wow, did I miss actually good fight choreography after three horrible shows full of goofy af fight scenes that had bad choreography and were terribly shot (the less we talk about Loki, the better, though TFATWS, which probably should have had the slickest shots had by far the worst cinematography). The fights were engaging and you really sensed the urgency and danger in every fight. I felt like Natasha was in danger, that she would get hurt. The hits HURT and you could tell how painful that walloping was (with the exception of the ridiculous scene where Dreykov punched her repeatedly in the face and there was no sign of impact). Everyone felt very human and very easy to break.

The flow was great and maybe it was slow for some people, but I liked that. I liked that the story took its time to unfold. I liked that you didn't sense any impatience or panic. Everything happened in its own time, but it never dragged for me. There was a great balance between emotional, quiet moments and bursts of action, and neither felt like they undermined the other, a frequent issue I have with MCU works (yet again, one of the best examples and most recent ones is Loki; I hated the fight sequences because they felt so unnecessary and they truly disrupted the flow of things).

Were there things that I wish we got more of or thought could have been tightened up better? Yeah. I wish we got to see more of the Widows, for one thing. I also think it would have been interesting for Natasha to mull over the brainwashing she had versus what Yelena went through; what Yelena went through was much worse and similar to what Bucky went through, but Yelena has the excuse of being a victim with little to no free will whereas Natasha? She was psychologically messed with, but she wasn't being mind controlled. It would've been interesting to see that explored more in depth. I wish we got to see more of the Taskmaster. Etc. etc.

More than anything, though, what left me sad and disappointed after my initial joy and feeling of enjoyment dissipated, was the fact that this came too late. This is a movie that should have come right after CW, and we should have gotten a Black Widow movie right after the Avengers and before TWS or at least after TWS. This is, by far, the most unanimous take and it makes me wonder how everyone at Marvel feels about that, that this is, more than anything, the opinion that's being echoed consistently amongst reviewers and moviegoers alike. And it will never ever ever ever ever fail to piss me off that Markus, McFeely, and the Russos didn't know the Black Widow movie was going to even happen and they ended up offing her. That's a massive decision and I don't know, MAYBE you should have had some more communication! Maybe if that happened, Natasha wouldn't have been fridged (she shouldn't have been in the first place, and one of the things I deeply appreciated about this movie was that it pushed back on the wrongs that male directors and writers have done to her (e.g., Whedon's awful approach to her forced sterilization in AoU, the Russos and M&M saying Clint couldn't die because he had a family as if someone who isn't a parent is less important and less deserving to live and as if Natasha's relationships didn't matter)). Maybe we would have gotten more solo movies with her. We can still get more BW movies, sure, but Natasha herself deserved more.

And that's why, despite thinking this is one of the best movies of the MCU even if the story itself isn't particularly sensational and not being blown away by it (again, I didn't think it was impressive, but I thought it was very solid), despite being pleasantly surprised by the fact that I enjoyed a MCU movie which is rare for me and walking away with barely anything to be disappointed about let alone upset about, despite thinking that this is the story Natasha deserved and being relieved and happy that this is what she got and this is how she's going to go out, I was still left sad for what could have been and what she deserved.

#JK APPARENTLY I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS #black widow spoilers

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anghraine · 4 years

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forgive me if you've answered this, but why do you think faramir was able to go from the way we saw him in ttt & early rotk (including seemingly having some prejudices against the rohirrim) to him suddenly being softer (& falling in love w/ a rohir) once in the houses of healing? it always seemed a bit of a jump to me & occurred so fast (although i guess having a near death experience is as good a catalyst as any) & id love to hear your thoughts on it (if you have any & want to of course!)

Hmm, it’s an interesting question!

I will say that while I’ve seen the “Faramir is wrong and unfair about the Rohirrim in TTT” thing going around, I think it pretty actively rejects Tolkien’s values and themes. I don’t think Tolkien remotely intended Faramir’s arc to involve coming around to respect the valorization of war and glory in Rohan and increasingly in Gondor. He never does and he never will. If anything, it’s the reverse; Faramir’s reservations about the prioritization of martial prowess in the modern societies around him are Tolkien’s reservations, and Éowyn’s adoption of his ethos / at least partial rejection of Rohan’s is a conversion to a more mature and right way of thinking about these things in Tolkien’s treatment of it.

I mean, it’s fine for people to be uncomfortable w/ that (there’s a degree to which I am myself). But I think that people sometimes ignore that Faramir is the character most like Tolkien and part of his function is to deliver Tolkien’s views within the story and influence other characters towards the values that Tolkien held. So that’s part of what’s going on.

Jumping back in-story, though:

I think the main issue is that in TTT, Faramir is acting as a commander among his men in a very tense situation, with people he believes might have betrayed his brother to his death, and who certainly know more than they’re saying in any case (brief detour to the meta level: the ambiguity over what Faramir’s really like and what he’ll do in TTT also helps maintain tension in some very talky scenes).

Meanwhile, in early ROTK, he’s still acting as a commander but with his own leader, whom he disagrees with about both his previous actions and their current tactics. Denethor is also his father, of course, and Faramir’s conduct there is influenced by their messy and painful mixture of love and opposition, but Tolkien notes in the letters that another major factor in how Faramir relates to him is that Faramir views himself as a Númenórean before the last Númenórean head of state. This is a big deal for him.

And then he falls in battle, and when he wakes up, Denethor is dead and Faramir is the Steward of Gondor. Even though he still has someone he’s going to relate to in that Númenórean-to-Númenórean-lord way (Aragorn), it’s not the complex, concentrated thing it was with Denethor, nor the high-octane intensity of his situation in TTT. There’s no Ring, no soldiers, no dubious captives, no authority to answer to. He can simply act as he sees fit. Faramir with Éowyn is, I think, Faramir at his most natural, without these incredible pressures on him. He can afford to be softer, gentle, and compassionate, vulnerable in some ways, confident in others.

It’s more headcanon, but I also think that ... yes, losing his family is freeing in some ways, but it’s also horrible, obviously. And I think part of what’s going on with him is that he’s dealing with loss, first with Boromir and then Denethor, and with the latter, that loss happened with everything unresolved, and he’s got to know there are things people aren’t telling him about it. I’ve talked about it before, but I do think there’s a lot going on in his head at that point, and he’s the sort of person whose grief makes him more sympathetic to other people’s. So I think that’s part of what’s going on, too.

And then after all of that, he just falls like a ton of bricks for this incredible woman. I don’t think he’d ever have minded that Éowyn is Rohirren—IMO his TTT remark that “we love them” is foreshadowing for this—but if he did at some point, he’s well beyond giving a single fuck about it by then. As we see with the very public kiss, of course.

So that’s pretty much where I stand on it all!

#anon replies #respuestas #faramir #legendarium blogging #anghraine's meta #anghraine's headcanons #jewel of the seashore #lord of the rings #éowyn #denethor #jrr tolkien #otp: and the sun shone #Anonymous

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 3 years

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Croatia brings no men in a hamster wheel to Rotterdam 2021

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Now could this be the teddy bear uprising invasion Muse has warned us about 12 years ago?

And LITERALLY, these review series make me feel like Croatia is openly taunting me - I watch the days go, I’m losing track of time, and when another day comes, I’m screaming “oh no I forgot to publish a review sooner than wanted!!”. Guess I’m for one glad there’s a time related song this year, hum?

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Repping the Adriatic coast nation that got all the sea instead of Bosnia & Herzegovina is some 22 year old Albina Grčić, who first popped up on X Factor Adria back when that was a thing, and got lumped into a girlgroup in later stages, but to that she said “hvala ne” and moved on with her life, getting eliminated just like that. Queen <3 She did get her second chance to compete as a soloist and make a more prominent mark on her career when she ended up on The Voice in Croatia. She did well, placing third overall in the season, but somehow, during the duel stage, her coach initially favoured her fellow Dora 2021 contestant Filip Rudan:

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Her Voice success landed her a record deal with the Croatian division of Universal Music, she released a debut single, sometime later ended up on Dora, and here she is now, on Eurovision.

“Tick-Tock” is the song, a standard upbeat pop song, and one of the ones that talks about a girl leaving a terrible relationship and being so well over it that she “found [her]self and [she’s] finally free”, and the “tick-tock” here is used to represent the time passing by, not the sound of her heart, unlike a fellow ESC entry of a similar title. The tune (or its lyrics only) is co-authored by some dude you might’ve heard of from France’s 2018 preselection Destination Eurovision, and that is Max Cinnamon - some half-English guy with a half English song about love (”Ailleurs”) that did moderately averagely in the final... I don’t even know if his influence shows, I just love how 2021 has sort of become revenge of the NF flops but they’re writing other entries instead (Suzi P, “Adrenalina”).

REVIEW

I often don’t really fully vibe with female bops in Eurovision as much as I want to, like, for the most part they’re overhyped, and I let the “yass queeeeen” audience gorge on the everything their favourite bops give them. But this year there are plenty of great ones to choose from, as I think that it’s safe to say that most, if not all, are tucked in somewhere inside my top 20, top 25 at the very minimum. Croatia managed to even do the impossible and land into my top 10.

Why?

Well, the answer is that the song is just so damn good.

I mean, what’s NOT to like about it? It’s a catchy and upbeat song that incorporates xylophones (or whatever is it that sounds like them), guitars and synths; has a good bassline in the chorus; and it’s just... a very good composition overall, like, all the instruments in it are just in their right place and uplift the song massively. I also like Albina’s performance on it, both live and studio, it clearly shows that she’s a very good singer (also shown on her cover of the scandalous Oscar award snubbery “Husavik”). Sounds like a song a common pop loving Eurofan could gear themselves towards. Besides, it also has possibly my favourite pre-chorus section of the 2021 year? Oh wait, there’s also Switzerland, scratch that. “Tick-Tock” has one of my favourite pre-chorus sections of 2021. It builds up so well instrumentally and the way Albina sings it is even better. I obviously like to believe Albina heard those voices from far away that helped her to escape, has found herself, and she’s finally free from her “partner’s” bad lovin’ and restraint. Yas queen go be free you didn’t deserve his tomfoolery anyway! 👏 (Also I admire a section that’s not quite the pre-chorus but is still before the 1st chorus, the one that goes “If you pull me down then I'll come around” - literally just a lot of the parts of the song are full of nice vocal performance and I don’t regret ranking this in my top 10 not a second.)

If it has any drawbacks, it’s just that it gets a tad too repetitive after the halfway mark... like, the pre-chorus before the second chorus is the one to be repeated once again, and no new verse, nothing - but it does launch itself into something extraordinary, and that is a chorus in Croatian, which I assume she would perform in Eurovision because there’s no Eurovision version on the song promo bundle, I suppose. Comparatively the Croatian chorus is not as complex in lyrics as the English language one, and flows slightly differently too. But the song still has a long chorus by the end, and song with too many choruses is never a good sign for those that look for a song that’s constructed well, but I guess it’s a good factor for those that value the song’s catchiness. I guess that’s what one of the two Eurovision 2005 hosts valued the most when writing the Ukrainian 2006 entry “Show Me Your Love”, which if you ask me, is straight up 75% chorus, lol.

So yeah my verdict is that almost everything about this song, I like. I’m just a little devastated that in a usually very easily gorged on category of female bops, this just tends to lag behind in love, like a fellow song I really like this year, Israel. Instead people tend to prioritize Cyprus (which I get because they’ve established themselves as a girlbanger nation since Fuego swept Eurovision) and... probably even Azerbaijan? (which I might also get because Eurovision rarely has this thing called an ethnobop anymore, and it has more ethno than “Cleopatra” did, but still unnecessarily underwhelming lol.) Well then, in a year of female bangers, I would just like Croatia to not be swept under the rug come semis I guess. Yeah “Tick-Tock” may not sound like it brings something totally never seen before in a Eurovision environment (foreign language lyrics, themes about a break up, hell even her dancers looked like they were wearing the same hats as Tamta’s dancers), but you got to have a lot in you to sell a worn out idea to the new heights, and Albina does exactly that in my eyes.

Approval factor: Yeah! There is a lot of it in here for me. Follow-up factor: A great follow-up, not so great in regards to panini but musically it’s just going up and up from what we had in the past few years. I’ve actually not minded “The Dream” for the most part but I knew it was a chanceless plodding ballad and Roko harboured heaps of wasted potential working with Jacques Houdek and having wings as part of his performance, uff. *_* And then there’s “Divlji vjetre” which I also like a lot - a much better male ballad winner choice! If the Dora re-up winners keep being decent imo just like this, I have a feeling I will follow it a lot more often than I did just this one time this year. I am just saying that panini-wise, it was a sucky move from HRT for not allowing their last year’s winner promote his new song with Tijana (from Serbia 2017) on the Dora night, so we sadly only heard a pre-recorded opening version of “Divlji vjetre” to start off with :( Otherwise I think it’s not Dora’s fault in itself that Damir himself chose not to even submit an entry this year because he hadn’t found a good one - much like with Diodato for Sanremo (he was NOT rejected, if you think he still was, shush). But aside that, musically, it just keeps going up for me. Well done Croatia, for you’ve used to be a Eurovision country I don’t necessarily care about, that you brought two pretty damn good entries in a row. Qualification factor: I can absolutely trust in Albina bringing in a little bit of her charisma and well-likedness, and on top of that, a great vocal performance, in Rotterdam. Don’t ask me why, I just do. She doesn’t really perform her song live on pre-parties as much as I’d like to hope she would, but you heard girlie on the national selection, she didn’t win for nothing. Yeah yeah there might as well be female uptempo songs hungrier for the last spot, but I’d like to think Albina is one of the ones ready to devour than to be devoured. Go girl! Take us all dancing!

NF CORNER

To be honest with you, “Tick-Tock” winning Dora caught me by surprise. Ever since its re-up, the last two editions were kind of won by male ballads, and maaaaybe the dancey females were doing moderately well enough for themselves, but not overall? But look, juries were very keen on Albina, probably because she can SANG and she creates one hell of a fancy presence on her performance. And somehow she ended up snatching a win out of the hands of 5G conspiracy theorist 2016 representative Nina Kraljić, who was at first too drunk to care, but too unexpectedly sober to yell all over the soc. media how she was robbed and how the contest was rigged against her with her being on first and all that. Which is a shame that she is one of THOSE people, because her NF entry “Rijeka” is kinda nice? We did have the Balkan-esque ballads coming from Croatia in recent memory, but we haven’t had a truly proudly folksy one at that from Croatia for a long while, if not ever. Nina could’ve very well brought that to Rotterdam (and another mismatched wardrobe choice oops). But instead she was the one screaming “oh no, oh no, oh no”.

Actually I regarded Nina as one of my faves pre-show, and Albina was on her way, though she didn’t really cement the personal fav status until after all performances, thus making Nina and Albina switch spots for me. But truly, the one song that was my top favourite, iiiiiiiiiiis

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GIMME AN OCEAN! OF LOVE!

2021 made me realize that damn, maybe anything that’s funky is my favourite music genre afterall. Up until then I vibed with entries like “Tonight Again” and “What’s the Pressure?” that had this sort of energetic flair and very rhythmic kinda sound to it, but 2021 just simply cemented it to me that my music world has probably been about nice and smooth and funky all along. I owe so much gratitude to ToMa first and foremost along the lines of more to have come in this year’s lineups - I just can’t not want to dance to “Ocean of Love”, and ToMa is quite alright at selling it live as well. There are small gripes with some instrument usages but that doesn’t detract from the fact that I love love LOVE funky guitar tunes.

Aside from that, I can give shout outs to Beta Sudar, whose song not only was underrated, but also had an underrated meme format throughout its performance:

My other props go to Bernarda, who not only competed in a national selection singing a song about seeing “Colors” while blind (and ironically there was a song called “Blind” in that same NF sung by a well-seeing guy!!), but also for finally putting this every country’s reject to rest. Seriously. That particular song was passed on to everyone in need of a competitive Eurovision bop, from Poli Genova to Helena Paparizou as of recently. Oh well, at least the song died a honourable death - well performed slice of good typical Eurovision pop (maybe even overperformed a little towards the end), that got a good rank with the regional juries, but somewhat murdered in televote, fellow Boris Milanov composition “Chameleon” style.

This one Mia Negovetić chick was promising too! Her song was written by the Debs and you might be tired of them trying to continue infiltrating Eurovision at this point, but a lot of their Eurovision songs are usually something I enjoy, “She’s Like a Dream” is no exception. Nothing but 3 minutes of pastel-dressed Croatian Ariana Grande doing what she does best <3

Oh and also some dudes tried to play chess on stage too I guess. But their song is not worth looking into, because one of the acts on it is apparently also a conspiracist, and maybe because oft this their entry is aptly titled “Sing, for the freedom has arrived!” lol I wonder what exactly is the kind of freedom you’re thinking of my guy

Was this the “better mood game” Laura was warning everyone about? Beats me

NF CORNER (NON-COMPETITIVE)

• It’s still hilarious to me as to how one of the acts this year, Brigita Vuco, was planning to bring in backing dancers, only for them to show a fake COVID test or something and outright BARRED from coming with her on stage. <3 Whatever she intended to do with them dancers, I have absolutely no idea, but at least she committed to her song being about drunken nights visually by having all these blurry shots

• Nina Kraljić’s greenroom shenanigans, from the “1-2-3, 1-2-3, drink” to numb the sadness over some results (and the 8 she got from the region Rijeka for the song “Rijeka” lmao), to whatever she saw on the phone that made her smile or go neutral

• Greenroom reactions in general. I swear, this year had cameramen in every single corner everywhere just to make sure something covers up for a human audience instead of severals of Zoom screens permitted to act as an audience. Random people in greenrooms were doing some sort of emotions after random acts, and also randomly they ended up pointing a camera towards an act that lost, but the act didn’t treat losing as if it were such a big deal <3

• All the other memes the Croatian Twitter might’ve noticed me for:

seriously Bernarda was locked in a bluelight mathematical dice contraption. how fucking cool is that

ANY LAST WORDS?

I just fucking hope that Albina shatters any doubts that people have had about her song come rehearsals, and somehow Croatia AND Israel slip through, because never too many female bangers I appreciate in the final, if they all are the bangers I appreciate, lol.

#eurovision #eurovision 2021 #rotterdam 2021 reviews #croatia #Albina Grčić #albina #tick-tock

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painted-crow · 4 years

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I think Tiffany's a Gryffindor primary. If you look @ her strong decisions - her decision to become a witch, her decision to save her brother & Roland, her decision to help Annagramma - it comes from a place of, "NO. That's wrong." She chooses to be a witch because a woman had been lynched, & she helps Annagramma because Granny was setting her up to fail & Tiff didn't think that was right.

Tiffany has a LOT of Gryffindor primary to her, but I still think she's a Slytherin, she just has a very strong Gryff model. I discovered a lot about her in the process of writing this, though!

Tiffany's loyalty

I think there are two reasons that Tiffany's loyalty doesn't really look the same as we're used to seeing from Slytherins.

First, Tiffany is loyal to a lot of communities, but that's not because she's a Hufflepuff. Her loyalty is protective/possessive--Slytherin flavor, in other words. She's an extremely Internal primary person: self-defined, ready to stand her ground against monsters, fae, demons, and even Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany isn't loyal to every community, and it's not that she sees the others as less deserving; they're just not hers, so they aren't her priority or responsibility.

But she chooses her loyalties based on her Gryffindor. It's right to protect and care for these people, she's thinking. The reason she does it this way is something I'll get to in a minute.

Second, her foremost loyalty is to the Chalk, and that makes her motivations not always obvious because the Chalk isn't a person. The reason she leaves to accept her apprenticeship (which was incredibly hard for her) is for the Chalk. She promises at Granny Aching's old shepherding hut to come back better than she left. This loyalty is what drives her while she's in the mountains, isolated and lonely. It's how the Feegles kick the hiver out of her head.

There's a reason Tiffany's biggest priority is the Chalk rather than a person. The reason is that the person is no longer around.

Granny Aching

Let's talk about Granny Aching. Tiffany grew up in a household packed with siblings. Her mother favors her baby brother. Nobody really pays attention to Tiffany. But someone used to. Granny Aching made space for Tiffany, accepted Tiffany as she was, had a special nickname for Tiffany... and this was a special, personal bond between these two. Granny Aching didn't have relationships like this with her other grandchildren. Just Tiffany.

And Granny Aching was a Gryffindor primary to the bone. Tiffany occasionally remembers stories about her in the narration, things she did in her role as the Chalk's wise woman, all of which tell us that this was an old woman with good instincts and a lot of experience and a very, very solid moral compass.

Specifically, her moral compass pointed due Chalk. The land and its people were important to Granny Aching, and she decided this with her Gryffindor. Tiffany prioritizes the Chalk, but when it's not immediately relevant, she chooses other loyalties based on her Gryffindor model, the same way Granny Aching chose the Chalk. Her decision to help Annagramma (and, by extension, Miss Treason's old steading community) was one of these decisions.

Tiffany idolizes Granny Aching. In fact, Tiffany is very clearly trying to be her. Remember that argument with Miss Tick over whether Granny Aching was a witch? Tiffany was insistent that she was, and determined to become one too.

A lot of what Tiffany does makes loads of sense when you realize how much Tiffany models herself after Granny Aching. Burying the old lady's cat was something Granny Aching would have done, and that's all the reason Tiffany needs to do it.

In short, I think Tiffany is a Slytherin, and she has a very strong Gryffindor model because Granny Aching was her first Important Person.

And still is. Tiffany didn't let go of that loyalty when Granny Aching died. She just switched it to the Chalk. To Tiffany, Granny Aching was and is the Chalk. Granny Aching cared for the Chalk above all else, and Tiffany is determined to take up that mantle in her stead. The Chalk is her loyalty to Granny Aching, her inheritance, her community, and her home, all rolled into one.

There's a whole arc in Wee Free Men about the shepherdess figurine. Tiffany is ashamed of having given it to Granny Aching, thinking that Granny had taken it as a personal slight, as if Tiffany were suggesting that this fancy doll was what a shepherdess should look like, and Granny's patched-up clothes and sackcloth hood weren't good enough. Tiffany ruminates on this a lot, it's really important to her. Seeing Granny Aching's spirit happily wearing the frilly dress and all those bows (but still her comfy, serviceable boots underneath) means A LOT to Tiffany, and it's part of the climax of the first book for a reason.

Appearance and aesthetic

This is also interestingly symbolic, too: Granny Weatherwax (who often reminds Tiffany of Granny Aching) is fairly dead set against glittery props in witchcraft, because she sees it as a distraction, and potentially harmful if you come to rely on them. Tiffany is also fairly minimalistic in this regard. Her aesthetic is very much for herself; she holds on to reminders of the Chalk in particular. But she's careful not to let herself rely on them. You could say her feet are always firmly on the ground, in serviceable boots.

Actually, this gets more overt: one of the first scenes in Hat Full Of Sky is her leaving for the mountains with Miss Tick, and she's wearing new clothes, including a shiny new pair of boots that are too big for her and pinch her feet. Tiffany expresses disdain for their shininess--boots are supposed to work, not shine--and she's uncomfortable in them. Miss Tick suggests that she stop and switch back into her old ones. She does, and feels better.

Hat Full Of Sky plays with this a lot: how much focus on appearance is too much? When is it for you and when does it stop fitting and start making you uncomfortable? (This is a good message for a book whose audience includes a lot of young girls, imo.)

Tiffany later gives away the stuff Hiver!Tiff bought on her shopping spree, and gives back Granny Weatherwax's hat (which she could have kept as a status symbol). She knows that's not where her power and stability comes from. So she goes back to wearing blue and green, and makes the sky her hat, as Granny Aching did before her.

-----

Sidenote: The way Granny planned the Annagramma thing was a stroke of genius. That plan produced GREAT results for her. Annagramma learned useful witchcraft under the tutorship of the other girls, Miss Treason's steading had proper support (remember, there wasn't a good candidate to fill her place at the time), the younger witches became closely networked and learned to rely on and support each other, and of course, Mrs. Earwig was thoroughly embarrassed.

Granny knows Tiffany really well and predicted that she would help, although I don't think she knew for sure that Tiffany's rallying of the other girls would turn out so well. Tiffany actually calls her on it later and Granny doesn't even bother denying it. She's actually a little proud that Tiff figured it out, I think, which is pretty funny and completely in character.

#sortinghatchats #slytherin primary #discworld #gryffindor primary #gryffindor primary model #meta #asks #paint speaks

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: season 4 and the greyest morality ever

While I was trying to write a rewatch review of episode 4x12 The Chosen, it turned out I had too many thoughts on the complicated moral issues and lack of obvious right and wrong stance – so I’ve decided to put them in a separate post.

I don’t think the show has ever achieved this level of moral ambiguity as in these last episodes of season 4. Yes, there are many situations in the show where all options are bad in one way or another, but this is maybe the only time in the entire show where I really can’t say that there is a right or wrong choice. It’s probably the most horrible thing the characters have had to do – leave a number of people to die a horrible death just because there’s not enough place.

And all of them have to do it, whichever side they’re taking. There is no option here where everyone is saved*. Twilight’s Last Gleaming was the episode where the show first showed me how bold it was – but this time, unlike in that episode, things aren’t made easier by having everyone volunteer to be killed.

*Or rather, there was an option where everyone – or at least the majority of people in the area – could have been saved. But pretty much everyone has forgotten about it. As we’ll find out in the next episode, the Nightblood solution works. If they had tested Clarke, they would have probably known that. If they had tested Emori, they also would have probably known that. In the end, Clarke’s heroic choice to inject herself with Nightblood and volunteer to be tested – ended up saving only her.

It’s interesting that, even now when it’s really in fashion to hate Abby for all sorts of things, no one seems to blame her for basically blowing up the chance to save hundreds – maybe thousands – of people from Praimfaya, which could have also spared them from the horror of the bunker. Abby herself feels so much guilt that she wants to die because she was being utilitarian and willing to test people in a radiation chamber order to find a way to save everyone, which made her feel she was becoming an “evil scientist” – and not because she blew that chance in the end. That’s probably because people generally feel that prioritizing your child over everything else and not being able to risk their life for the human race is completely understandable and not something people (especially mothers) should be blamed for. (…Except when it comes to Clarke in season 5. Hmm. I guess that’s different because people see Clarke’s fear of the Flame as irrational. While Abby’s fear was based on the fact that the radiation could kill Clarke and she had just seen a man die a horrible death that way… but wait, it was also based on a vision she had. Never mind.

Season 4 in particular revolves about the question, which is more moral, thinking about the “big picture”, saving as many people as you can, or saving concrete people that you know and love, or even just people who are in trouble right there in front of you? It’s not a question with a definite answer, and characters have been blamed by others or felt guilty both when they were willing to potentially sacrifice concrete individuals for the salvation of the human race, and when they decided to save people right there and then, risking the fate of the collective in the future.

I used to hate Jaha when I watched seasons 1-3 for the first time, but by season 4, I found myself understanding him better and appreciating him as a character (this was the first time he made my Top 10 characters list!), even if I don’t agree with him most of the time. I get where he’s coming from – and I was with him in 4x10 when he pointed out that the Final Conclave was an idiotic way to resolve the issue of the survival of human race. Someone had to say it. But his reasoning is all wrapped up in the fact that he sees himself as the leader of the Arkers, “his people” – as a group, and prioritizes them over others (like the Grounders), but at the same time, has always been willing to sacrifice any individual person for it, which made his care for “his people” feel not just tribalistic (just as much as any of the Grounder leaders who wanted the bunker just for their clan), but also very cold and impersonal. I certainly didn’t care for him trying to guilt-trip Bellamy by telling him he condemned 314 people to death by opening the bunker. If he hadn’t opened the bunker, he would have been condemning 800 people to death! And if it’s all about “your people”, who’s “your people” more than your family, people you love? Jaha seemed unable to understand that (which is why he didn’t predict what Abby would do to save Kane), since he had already lost the people he loved the most and sort of sacrificed his own son – which never stopped haunted him, but seems to have convinced him that his role of the savior of “his people” is something everyone should be able to sacrifice their loved ones for.

I’ve always mostly leaned to the view that opening the bunker was a better choice than leaving it closed – because it saved a greater number of people (1200 as opposed to 400+). Now, after seeing seasons 5 and 6, I’m starting to question that to an extent, because the bunker turned out to be such a horror show, and now, after the bunker and the gorge, only about 400 people from it survived. However, saving just a little over 400 people in the bunker would have been too few, and others still may have died in and after the bunker, so I still think saving 800 people at the expense of 300 other people was the right choice. This made it a good “Head” choice, as long as Bellamy was right that Octavia could prevent the Grounders from trying to kill Arkers (and ruin their own chances of survival, since they had no clue how to operate any of the devices necessary for producing or recycling air, water and food). And some of the arguments brought up by rebellious Arkers in this episode don’t hold water: “Jaha found the bunker” ignores the fact that he could have never found it without Gaia’s and Indra’s help (and Kane’s and Monty’s – and both of them were also going to be left out of the bunker to die); as for the idea that Arkers deserve more places in the bunker because they’re the ones who are necessary for everyone’s survival for their skills in operating the machines etc. – well, not all of them are necessary for that, and most of the people in Arkadia didn’t like that kind of reasoning back when they learned about the list, did they? If they thought it was wrong when applied to their lives, it’s also wrong when applied to the lives of Grounders.

However, there’s one other line of reasoning that had never crossed my mind before I heard it from a YouTube reactor I like. He thought that it was right that each “clan” got 100 people, because the surviving humans should reflect the diversity of cultures, without any of them dying out. Ironically, that’s IMO the first strong argument why the Arkers maybe should have gotten a lot more than 100 places in the bunker. His argument assumed that all of the 12 Grounder clans have very different cultures. But does what we’ve seen on the show support that? The only genuinely different Grounder lifestyles we’ve seen were from non-warriors like Luna’s Boat people (all dead anyway) and the Shallow Valley community that Madi was from (all died in Praimfaya – we don’t know who the 100 people from their clan in the bunker were), but other than that, it’s hard to see any cultural or other difference between Azgeda, Trikru, Trishanakru etc. except for minor things like the type of warpaint. It’s the same language, religion, social structure, same prioritization of warriors. While Arkers are distinctly culturally different (and even different in their origin – since it was from 12 different world nations, rather than just USA and maybe Canada) from Grounders, but, thanks to the decision to become the “13rd clan”, are now all but extinct – with maybe 30-40 people surviving to season 6, and all but absorbed in the Grounder-dominated culture of Wonkru. In spite of the fact that Grounders have never won any battles against Arkers, while the latter defeated the Mountain Men, Grounders have always been able to dominate the Arkers by the sheer fact that there was just that many more of them. And the fact is that Grounders did try to screw over Arkers by coming up with the Final Conclave (they were all trying to screw each other and leave all other clans outside, of course, but making survival dependent on being able to win in a Grounder-style fight seemed like a sure way to leave Arkers to die – again), while refusing to share the bunker – and then, when “Skygirl” Octavia won that tournament against the odds, they were happy with her decision to share the bunker. (When you think of it, no one in that Conclave fought to have all the Arkers survive.)

So I kind of get the Arkers’ anger. But whatever the case may be, what was definitely not a good choice was starting another war less than a day before Praimfaya. I guess it was time for Arkers to do that, too, after we’ve seen similar with Grounders before the Final Conclave when they were insisting on fighting a war between each other. Because that kind of thing is a general people problem.

In terms of the “Heart”, of course Bellamy was not going to agree to sacrifice his sister, and Abby was not going to agree to sacrifice her lover. No one should be asked to definitely sacrifice their loved ones for the “greater good”. This kind of choice would leave one feeling like they’ve killed their own heart. I generally think that people really exaggerate Clarke’s “Head” role – which certainly doesn’t mean she doesn’t often act on emotion – but I think that season 4 is when she was being “Head” the most, in the sense that she was doing her best to focus on the big picture and save the human race. Bu that ended up making her feel like she had grown cold and turned into one of the people on the Council… or specifically, that she’s turned into Chancellor Jaha, someone she used to see as everything she hated. But there were always limits to how far she could go in prioritizing the big picture. If Bellamy and Abby haven’t been in the bunker, I don’t believe Clarke would have stolen it and kept it closed, either. But the fact that she was ready to leave her friends like Raven, Octavia, Monty to die (just like the earlier fact she hadn’t put some of her closest friends on the list) made her feel deeply guilty. She’s not proud of being able to make those tough choices to sacrifice people close to her for the wellbeing of the collective. But her willingness to do that has always hit a brick wall when it comes to Bellamy: the list, letting Roan blackmail her into giving Azgeda 50 seats, and finally, not being able to shoot him when she thought that would ensure the survival of the human race. (We luckily never learned if she would have given ALIE the password if her initial plan of torturing Bellamy had materialized.) Of course she was never going to be able to shoot him – but the very fact she thought, for a moment, that she could, shows how much she had tried to suppress her emotions in order to achieve the goal of saving the human race.

This is one of the reasons why Bellamy, in a way, is Clarke’s heart: she needed to get back in touch with that part of herself, back to who she used to be. It’s also why her final mission in these last two episode of season 4 is not to save the human race, but to save the people she loves; why she goes with Bellamy to save Raven, and then stays behind and does everything to save her friends, even when she thinks she’s practically already dead.

And it was Bellamy – the “Heart”, the one whose season 4 arc was all about saving individual people, not just those he loved by saving who we can today – whose season 4 arc ended with him having to make the heartbreaking decision to leave behind Clarke, one of the most important people in his life, because it was the only reasonable decision in the circumstances and the only way to save others.

#the 100 #the 100 season 4 #the chosen #the 100 4x12 #the 100 rewatch #praimfaya #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #thelonius jaha

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foegold · 5 years

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people be wanting to know about a lil blue bastard. this ones long as hell so its under the cut jsdhfg

Your character wasn’t an adventurer, what livelihood would they lead?

farmer! he’d just keep living the way he’d been living. it’s the sort of life he imagines he’ll return to one day, after he’s seen and done enough. ‘enough’ is a really arbitrary end goal though

Who in the party would your character trust the most with their life?

who in the party wouldn’t he trust with his life tbh. in the most literal sense he’d trust Eli with it just because he knows Eli can bring him back from dying in some stupid and ill-advised way

What are your character’s core moral beliefs?

frogs are good, try to be nice to people but if they’re mean to you first then at least a few bets are off, the rich should probably be eaten. killing is sometimes necessary but maybe try some other stuff first

What relationship does your character have with their parents and siblings?

he doesn’t have any siblings, and his relationship with his mom and recently present dad is. a little weird, and not all the way comfortable, and not like really bad, but just confusing? it’s confusing. at least he’s had more transparency from his mom recently than just about any other time. it’s a start

Does your character have any biases for or against certain races?

he trusts other tieflings a little quicker than other races but its not really saying much because he’s not smart and if you’re good at talking and sound like you know what you’re talking about he’ll just believe you. he doesn’t have the good sense to second think it without prompting

What is your character’s opinion on nobility? On authority?

so far just about every interaction with nobility has been messy or bad or scary or all three so right now the opinion is “not great”. also thats just too much money. whaddahell would you do with that much money. he’s generally uneasy with authority figures at best, and flat out paralyzed by them at worst. he’s easy to bully when he doesn’t have anyone backing him up and he knows and hates it

Describe your character’s current appearance: clothes, armor, scars they’ve picked up along the journey, etc.

he cycles through an assortment of sweaters but the one he wears the most is the heart sweater he got in Wunjo that’s been altered a few times in the last few months. he do keep collecting those scars tho, before starting adventuring he had a handful of minor scars just from working around the farm with the animals and the equipment and from romping around in the country. now he’s got all sorts, but the most prominent ones are: the thin scar on the left side of his face, starting just below the eyebrow and curving gently below his eye (the last time Leo would leave a mark on him); the twisted angry scars across his torso from being mauled by a giant undead horse(?); and the fluid, patterned necromancy scars slowly spreading across his back, creeping along inch by inch

What location encountered in the campaign has your character felt the most “at home” in, or just generally liked the most?

besides his own house, Roman’s house has been the nicest! its warm and theres soup and friends there. there was a run down little ranch house somewhere at some point, but he’s not so sure anymore that he didn’t just dream about fixing the place up with his best friend

What deity, if any, does your character worship? What’s their opinion on other people’s worship?

he doesn’t have a god he actively worships, but he’s peripherally aware of the god in the mountains that’s responsible for some of the most brutal storms in the region. he doesn’t care much about religion but hes got the same amount of concern most people would have about evil deities and what their followers do

If your character had time to pick up any artisan’s tools, game set, instrument, etc., what would it be?

probably woodworking! its handy, it’s useful for living out in the country where you have to either make the tools or furniture or fun items to put on a shelf you want, or go out of your way and also spend money to get them. maybe an actual alchemy set and/or poison kit but 1) playing with poison just a fun hobby for him and Xan to get into when they have the time and the plants for it, and 2) man he wouldnt follow the instruction manual anyway so whats the point

What aspect of your character’s future are they most curious about? (If they could know one thing about the future, what would it be?)

will his friends be okay? will he be okay? is there an FAQ for tieflings learning that they’re much closer to fiend lineage than they originally thought? that would be convenient and helpful. is john gonna figure out more about the little men named ‘adam’ that’re allegedly everywhere? if he could know one thing about the future, he’d like to know if everything will end out okay. if things will turn out as nice as he’d like them to.

What colors are associated with your character?

looks at the camera like im on the office

blue, white, and black are the big ones but im trying to pepper in a few other colors. reds and yellows are a close second

Who in the party would your character prioritize rescuing, in dire circumstances?

everyone sits squarely in the #1 spot on the rescue list

that aside john and roman are extremely high priority, they’re not the sturdiest and if something looked at them too hard they might keel over. baster and xan come next, he knows baster’s a shit brick house but he keeps seeing bad things happen to her and really hes just had Enough of it. eli’s a little lower priority because they can heal themselves if they’re in a tight spot, and then blu considers himself least concern. he knows he can get thrashed around some and still survive, he’d rather take a beating and know he’ll walk out of it than let someone else take it and wind up dead

Is your character the most swayed by ethos, pathos, or logos?

pathos, it’s easy to make him feel for u. legit any of them work though as long as you talk it up good enough he’ll believe you and if there aren’t any glaring conflicts between what you’re selling him and his base morals then it’s relatively easy to get him on board

If your character was granted a single use of Wish, what would they use it for?

idk probably something really simple that he put all of .5 of a second of thought into. hes not smart and doesnt have good foresight so he’d probably ask for a frog or smth unless there was something very much more pressing and present

What is your character’s favorite spell? If they don’t use spells: what is their favorite personal weapon/combat maneuver/skill/etc.?

favorite(?) spell is life transference. it hurts a bit but it keeps his friends safe so it’s worth it. invisibility is up there too, its fun and easy to steal from stores when ur not visible

How does your character feel about keeping secrets from the rest of the party?

he doesn’t like lying and also lies really poorly. he’s usually just honest from the get-go, its easier and feels better. if he has to lie its through omission, bold faced lies really just dont work

What type of creature in the world is your character the most intrigued by?

all sorts....bro the world is full of animals and lots of them like to be pet

When they were a child, what did your character want to be, or think they were going to be, when they grew up?

he thought he’d grow up and be a farmer like his mom, the adventuring thing was extremely unplanned and impromptu. he hoped he could be a kind and brave person though, the way Canna described his dad.

The player character to your left admits that they’re passionately in love with your character. How would your character respond?

random roll says it’s Roman, he’d probably laugh because the only reason that would happen is because the party is fooling around with potions again. Roman’s very married and very in love with his husband and makes sure everyone knows it all the time

If somebody (an NPC, someone from their backstory, etc.) your character trusts/loves asked your character to do something against the party’s best interest, who would they side with?

that doesn’t seem like a very viable circumstance, the only npc thats important enough that he’d listen to for something like that is his mom and she actively encourages him to take care of himself and his friends, and lets him make his own decisions about what he’s doing with his life, so

What unusual talents does your character possess?

idk if its all that unusual of a talent but he got really good at stealing and pickpocketing and he can do a sick flip. also does some black magic sometimes

What does your character’s name represent to them? (Or: why as a player did you choose your character’s name?)

it’s his name, u kno. bluebell is his middle name, but Canna called him bluebell growing up and he latched onto it a lot more than arden, and he thinks its a nice name, and a nice flower, and it sure would be nice if people would stop laughing when he introduces himself as “Blu”,

(blu was originally a stand-in name until i named him something else but it really grew on me and it fit him so! it didnt change, he just got other names too)

What major arcana tarot card best represents your character?

The Moon. 👀

What is your character’s relationship with magic? Are they scared of it, wish to know more about it, indifferent to it?

he’s def scared of magic sometimes, especially his own. he also really wants to understand it better though, and be less scared, or at least control it better. imo it’s a healthy fear, theres been lots of magic mishaps

How did your character learn the languages that they speak?

he learned common and infernal from mom! and he’s learning draconic from xan. it’s a nice downtime activity, sit down with ur best friend and homie and learn a new language just for fun

#asks #hohg.....thats a lot of questions lksjflsahfdg #c: blu

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ms31x129 · 5 years

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MSR/other/long winded responses

@likos064

This is from another blog discussion @likos064 responses in italics and then my thoughts. The other thread was getting long and the tumblr kept timing out for me.

‘Personally, I have no interest in Mulder or Scully/Other. Regardless of whether it is before they met, during the show pre or post relationship, though I ignore any breakup because I find it redundant, even though I understand the limitations of a TV show and Drama 101. What I cannot ignore, however, are double standards when it comes to writing these Other-relationships. Generally, when its Mulder/Other, regardless of whether he and Scully are involved or not, Mulder is portrayed as the bad guy. Excepting pre-X-files, but even that might be a stretch.

Conversely when it is Scully/Other she is portrayed to be in the right, a woman who is simply being true to her desires and taking what she deserves. It doesn’t matter whether she is involved with Mulder, at the cusp or committed she is still entitled to have sex with whoever she wants. But this only applies to her. Even in fics portraying a breakup she is allowed to move on while he has to wait for her to come back, if he wants companionship. And at that point, I don’t want them together any longer.

Retrograde as mentioned above is a good example. I don’t want her anywhere near him and I find it preposterous that he is completely alone so that she can prey on him in his weakness. People can write, like and headcanon what they want. But I am disturbed by the abuse that is so often encouraged towards him. Why make her as damaging as Phoebe and Diana?’

I agree with pretty much everything you said above and perhaps that’s why the ‘break-up’ eps have bothered me, I have trouble with getting into Scully’s mind – perhaps that’s a result of male writers? And no ‘show bible?’ I am a Mulderist through and through and I try not (I might not always succeed) to ‘cut’ Scully down in order to praise Mulder.

Through the seasons I think there have been hints as to Scully wanting a relationship/family – at some point, and it’s actually hard for me to pinpoint when she really chose Mulder – although running away with him in the Truth was a pretty good statement. Jersey Devil, Revelations (her instinct with Kevin,) Home are 3 right of the top of my head. (What’s wrong with a woman who doesn’t want children?) In the back of my mind I think I could always see Scully as being the one to move on and be just another person who left Mulder.

Mulder I think does want a family, I just don’t know if he thinks he deserves it? He really is so good with children in the eps – is that due to his psychology background – maybe? He didn’t ‘bond’ with Kevin in Revelations partly I think due to the Religion aspect although he doesn’t naysay Scully when she wants to keep Kevin with them either. In Home Mulder is telling Scully a happy memory of being a kid, baseball his sister – that dialogue stood out to me as well as the remarks about the kind of home he’d like to settle down in. Cliché it is, but I think he’s was searching for the family he lost the day Samantha disappeared. Even if he hadn’t believed it was Aliens I think Mulder would have kept searching regardless.

‘You’re right she did want to be with him. However, I don’t view the desire to be the same as action though there is definitely emotional cheating on Daniel’s part. A Platonic Romance can be just as threatening to marriage as one with a sexual component. Nevertheless, the fandom interpretation takes the relationship in a direction far different from the one that Gillian intended and that’s what I thought of when you complained about Scully’s involvement with a married man.’

Hmm… I could be wrong, but I thought GA said in several interviews that she intended for it to be obvious Scully and Daniel had been lovers. Even though she knows Scully’s character is Catholic and had been brought up to respect marriage it was one of Scully’s rebellion’s? GA doesn’t have a strict religious view point, so I thought this part of AT was more GA than Scully especially since she seemed to scoff at her sister Melissa’s more open / nature new age beliefs. At the same time within the ep I could view it as did knowing Mulder allow her to open up to other religions? Ideas? IMO it would have been nice to let Mulder know that occasionally.

I will confess that I too have some reservations over her behavior in all things. According to Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter, Mulder and Scully are already involved in all things. The scene at the beginning with Mulder in bed was to indicate an ongoing sexual relationship not the start of one. Gillian knew this and still wrote Scully as deciding to leave Mulder, per the original script, only to change her mind again.

Well unfortunately we can’t take what FS or CC says for granted. I would love to read those statements though the only one I can recall is Frank S. reminding fans that AT wasn’t the first time M&S were in each others apartments overnight. How many times were we told William is Mulder’s son. For me that rankles as just another way to hurt Mulder, regardless all those years he thought he had a son out there.

‘My issue lies more in that this confirms Mulder’s fears, something that I see him being mocked over consistently; primarily when he runs away from her in Detour. I see numerous complaints about how he waited too long, but I always interpreted it, beyond TV show limitations and the patterns that existed in the 90s, as her not being ready for a relationship. Nor did I see an invitation of wine and cheese as a guaranteed sexual offer.’

I agree with this, I also wonder how much the whole experience with Scully almost dying affected him and wanting to be more, and of course Bill’s reaction I’m sure dug a little spot in his mind too. What is dying but another form of abandonment in a sense. I didn’t like ‘3’ either, but that was much earlier in their partnership so it was a little (very little) more palatable.

‘Nevertheless, I’m curious about your aversion to Scully’s attraction to older authoritative men. I don’t understand why you think she’s too smart for this. I always saw it as a father complex, an extension of the affection and more importantly approval she so desperately wanted from her father. Similarly, I viewed Mulder’s attraction to older women as a mother complex rooted in the affection his mother deprived him of following Samantha’s abduction.’

I know my aversion is mainly from a life experience and a friend’s story. I only took one college class and you could just see the professor eyeing up every girl that walked in until it landed on my friend. She was a straight A student, she wasn’t shy or outgoing we all thought her feet were planted firmly on the ground. He praised her, but you could also see subtle ‘put downs’ – you shouldn’t do it that way only an infant would things like that some worse. And all of us were shocked when she started a relationship with the professor who was 17 yrs older I think. Long story short he was married had 3 or 4 kids, she got pregnant he dropped her like a hot potato, she got an abortion and tried to commit suicide. We ended up finding out she’d been sexually abused as a child by her father or step-father. She moved and I haven’t seen or heard from her in over 30 yrs.

I know there wasn’t any hint of that in Scully and her father’s relationship, but the whole older-man/daddy issue has just always made me angry/disgusted in general.

’I see Daniel as an authority figure as well as a teacher who values her intelligence and makes her feel as though she matters. While Jack has a more obsessive quality towards his work, like her father who prioritized the navy over her. Both would have given her approval because they were teachers and she did her assignments. She mostly met their expectations. Until she didn’t.’

I agree with some of that. Mulder is different than those two men, I don’t see that many similarities. In NA when people say Mulder was treating Scully like her boss – jerk is the term I see most. Well technically he is the dept. head and he could assign her things. When they jointly investigate cases it makes sense to split up when their particular skills are better utilized – he thinks outside the box and she provides the facts/science when possible.

I always saw it as how much trust had formed that Mulder knew Scully would handle things. When he sort of scoffs at Scully handing off the case, I don’t take it as him not trusting/believing her – I think he was looking for any excuse to come back – I could be wrong.

And as I recall Scully has made jokes about Mulder’s dating or ala Jersey Devil Mulder’s “I have a life” reply to Scully. It seems okay when she does it but when he does it’s wrong.

‘Phoebe was manipulative but her mind games could still lead to rewards.’

I’m curious what rewards do you mean?

‘Diana I see as terribly accommodating but just as manipulative as Phoebe.’

Groan – I just hate the character of Diana for so many reasons. I hate when shows just drop in a character for shock value. I can’t believe in almost 5yrs of working together Diana’s name never once came up. That Scully never saw her name in a case file. That the LG never mentioned her before either you’d think there’d have been a comparison of the two, unless DF wasn’t a ‘work’ partner.

This is the man who opens up to Scully on their 1st case together and tells her about his sister in a very intimate way - even though he initially thinks she’s sent to spy on him. Yet when DF appears – initially its just generic basics about her, she gets shot and FTF come out with the whole ‘almost kiss’ scene. I’m sure DF would be too confusing for the ‘new’ fans Fox/CC were hoping to entice.

Then the Beginning – no mention of a kiss – Mulder appears so frustrated with Scully, but he trusts her completely with Gibson and it makes sense she’s the doctor. In the other eps with DF we never see Mulder seeking her out, yet he doesn’t seem to be sharing with Scully why he trusts Diana or the audience. To me that whole season (6) was Mulder making a choice to be with Scully at work and after work on cases like Dreamland.

I think the perfect time to introduce a new set of agents would have been right after FTF, are we to believe scientists worldwide wouldn’t have gotten notice of seismographs going off - tremors in Antartica they wouldn’t be down there investigating the cause.

Maybe that’s one of the problems with XFiles trying to straddle that line Aliens – but also real world cases happening in real time?

‘In both cases, Mulder’s need to please and be acknowledged would’ve been satisfied. I feel that Mulder and Scully partly satisfy these complexes in each other. Mulder is in a supervising role and Scully does want his acknowledgment and unless the script says otherwise, see Never Again, she gets it. Likewise, Scully acknowledges Mulder and appreciates him, unless the script calls for otherwise, like in all things. And if you decide to acknowledge the season 10-11 breakup.’

Quite the difference in DD and GA’s script(s), especially in the Unnatural it’s all about learning, a connection to someone, something even though neither M or S are in the ep, but for 7-8 minutes. I know some still get mad for the ‘ticking of her biological clock’ reference, but that is a common saying and Mulder was using it in that light-hearted way. Hollywood AD was a quirky ep and one of the ones that it’s hard to put in the XF ‘case’ universe, but even it had some poingnant moments and again M & S spending time outside of work together enjoying each other’s company.

And then AT – all about Scully, more of a character study. Mulder is flirty with his projector in the beginning and she’s stabbing her salad and snapping at him. I definitely didn’t care for snarky Scully. In the whole ep the only section I like is their conversation on the couch, the way DD plays Mulder and the way he looks at her – that man is in love, period.

S10-11 Breakup = stupid. As per the ratings immediate drop from week 1 to week 2 and kept on going. The idea that Mulder had to choose Scully over going back to work for the FBI – if that’s what he wanted to do is just wrong. And Scully just happening to work for a hospital and one or more of the patrons/dr.’s happening to experiment on his own children. There would have been the perfect ‘case’ to draw Scully back to working on the X-Files with Mulder and if they’d set up those other agents in S6 who knows how the series would have ended.

One other thing that bothered me as the show progressed is what I call the dumbing down of Mulder. In Deep Throat Mulder has the line about his hotshot pilot friend and asks a technical flight question in other eps he also would pull facts both unusual and technical out in dialogue. Then it seemed that slowly faded. Was it to prop Scully up as being smarter? I don’t know I just missed those little moments of Mulder’s brilliance.

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laufire · 4 years

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Black Sails s3

This one took me longer because RL got in the way LOL. I’ve loved it as much as the other two (even if I am IN PAIN over you-know-who’s death DD:). I don’t know when I’ll have the time to finish the last season, but I wanted to post about this one before starting it; otherwise it’d accumulate with the 10+ and counting metas I want to write about this show once I have the full picture LMAO.

Max

As always, I have to start with her because she’s THE FUCKING BEST. This woman is currently competing for the number one spot among fictional characters in my heart LOL (I mean. I have loved Caroline Forbes --who I actually think Max has a lot in common with lmao. Everything I love is the same, as I always say-- for too many years for her to ever be truly dethroned; unless something goes really wrong with Legacies I guess. However, it’s still remarkable that a character could make me doubt).

I’ve absolutely adored her plot this season; watching her growing sphere of influence, the way she affects and upends others’ lives. That’s very much being present since season one, especially with her and Silver in tandem (I have a lot of Thoughts(TM) about those too as a driving/disruptive force in the show --they’ll go to one of those metas--; I’m put off by the fact that I didn’t get to enjoy them conspiring together this season lol. Though her reaction to the fake Long John Silver letter was kind of hilarious xDD. Still. I kind of wish we’d seen the scene where Silver tells her he renounces to his part of the price. It could’ve been very interesting --I guess he could’ve told Jack but that wouldn’t’ve been as good, so this is my headcanon).

The most obvious storyline where this manifest is in her relationship with Anne and Jack. I love everything about it, but well. I have to admit, the ~betrayal/different sides element appeals to me xD. I like that Max prioritices herself and her safety. That she sees the writing on the wall with the English invasion or with Vane’s execution and acts accordingly, the way she calculates her decisions and forms alliances without letting past grievances get in the way --with Eleanor, Rogers, Mrs. Mapleton...--, the choices she makes because she doesn’t want to be “on the outside looking in” ever again and how they always end reverting in her benefit, ultimately (I’m getting ahead because I am spoiled of quite a few things about s4, but I LOVE that eventually she mends her relationship with Anne and Jack. Because it fits into this: how even the possible mistakes and emotional compromises she makes are within a very specific frame that works out for her in the end).

Her relationship with Anne gets even better this season. I think my favourite scene is where Max tells Anne that she nows Anne “cannot fathom leaving me”. Can I get this woman’s confidence LMFAO. But seriously. I luff them. I love how Max convinces Jack of going along her plan to replace the gold with good easier to transport (and how THAT ends up being Flint’s treasure asdñlfkasfj. MY GIRL DIRECTLY CAUSED THE EVENTS IN TREASURE ISLAND OKAY) by appealing to their mutual love for Anne. That she trusts Anne with the story about her father. That she knows just as well as Jack that Anne wouldn’t give up the treasure so easily and she’ll try to save him (and that Anne won’t stomach the thought of Jack being tortured because she couldn’t bear MAX’S torture. My heart).

Another highlight of the season for me was her relationship with Eleanor, which keeps being a huge surprise no matter what xDD (even if, again, never in a shippy way. I’m very glad the season doesn’t go there). I love the reversal of expectation in a general fandom landscape: how ultimately, Eleanor doesn’t have an emotional hold over Max (and that she lost it as early as 1x02, IMO. I’m not saying “Max doesn’t feel anything about Eleanor”, but the truth of the matter is, narratively Eleanor serves Max, not the other way around. And I’m happy and relieved about it, ngl), and that the same isn’t true the other way around. I thought two very telling scenes where a.) Max hosting parody trials of Eleanor that paint her under a completely undignified light, but clearly deriving no pleasure from it: it simply was yet another thing she does for practically, level-headed political reasons; and b.) that Eleanor orders Rogers’ men not to hurt Anne in the exchange because Max’s love for Anne.

Continuing down with Max’s relationships, I’ve grown to really like hers with Idelle. I think Max find Idelle fun, likeable, uncomplicated (the scene where Featherstone tells Idelle he hopes his pardon doesn’t diminish her attraction to her was hilarious and clearly the moment Max was enjoying herself the most in the whole season lmfao. BTW, I kinda liked Idelle/Featherstone since the moment he told Jack he wasn’t concerned because “he was in love with a good woman” and Jack was like “Idelle??”. Yes, it’s fun because client-falling-for-sex-worker is a pitiful cliché, but here’s the thing: he’s right xD. He didn’t say “I’m in love with a woman who loves me”. He said he was in love with someone GOOD and Idelle IS a good woman, dammit xDD).

Max doesn’t concern herself much with the idea of Idelle going behind her back because Idelle loves her, respects her, and is a loyal friend (and yet clearly sees Max exactly as she is and doesn’t have any delusions about it. Luckily for her Max is probably the type to feel angry but not vengeful about this lol, if only because it could reflect on her). And Max is right about that. But I love that Idelle still has it in her to take a different path by allying herself with the pirates. I’m curious about the reasoning being after Max makes Mrs. Mapleton madam again; it’s clear the girls aren’t happy about her and she didn’t seem like she took good care of them in s1, to put it mildly, so there’s some of that, but I like to think part of it was Idelle going, “seriously Max? I’m right here! I could be the Madam!” xDD.

Her dynamic with Mrs. Mapleton was really interesting too; I like how she too puts aside any old grudge and decides to put her bets with Max over Eleanor or Rogers, because she has confidence that Max and her methods (“I choose to let the players reveal themselves to me, least I make an enemy out of someone I might wish to call a friend one day”) will outlast them (btw, that line/her approach in general --as well as Silver’s “liked is a good as feared” MO--, kind of reminded me to Sansa Stark’s “If I am ever queen, I will make them love me.” line. Food for thought). Yet I think Mrs. Mapleton instructed Georgia to attempt to ~seduce Max to get information out of her, which is very much in line with her. I loled at Max’s reaction basically being “gurl, who do you think you’re talking to. I practically invented this. GTFO” xDD

Basically, her entire storyline this season was pure gold. I love how all of those dynamics come from her maneuvers to keep herself safe, in power, and with influence (because those go hand in hand). I love her pride and her confidence, the way she refuses the scraps Eleanor and Rogers intend to give her at first (and how she firmly says to Eleanor “people do not speak to me that way anymore”, how she establishes a new normal between them), and how she pays her way out of trouble/into power with the gold she stole from Flint & co xDD.

My favourite moment of hers is devided between “in another time, in another place, they would call me a queen”, and “I AM Nassau” (that made me decide that if I ever write fic where Max needs a last name for any reason, it’s going to be Nassau. It is law), and how meta they’ll turn out to be :DD. I also have Thoughts about the evolution of her styles (beyond the obvious “omg she’s soooooo beautifuuuuul” lmao) but I’ll leave that for another show-encompassing meta too :P

Madi

She catapulted herself to Forever Fave status pretty quickly (I may have too many of those in this show. W h a t e v e r xDD). I love how self-assured she is (“when I speak my men listen, and they do as I say”), and how she always thinks of the big picture (like when she fought her impulse to order her men to fight against the pirates after one of them beat one of hers). And I have a lot of Feels about how this is explicitly linked to her heritage, her mother and father, their ~legacies.

Speaking of: one of the few major spoilers I seem to have avoided was that Mr. Scott was Madi’s father LOL. I was DELIGHTED by that reveal, and how it makes you reconsider his story. His relationship with Eleanor could’ve been a frankly off-putting cliché, but this completely circumvents that; it’s true that he’d shown more independence from her than I would’ve expected in another show, by leaving her side to do his own thing and further contributing to her vulnerability. But giving him a real* family, one that he prioritises over Eleanor and HID FROM HER, using her position to their benefit... That’s on a whole other level.

*I know some people are going to object to this qualifier. Fandom gets like that about found families, adopted families, etc. And I get it, but this is NOT like those situations. Mr. Scott was Eleanor’s SLAVE, FFS. That is incompatible with being her family, her father figure, no matter what she thought. And I love that the show made it explicit, when Madi tried to talk about his “two daughters” and he said “NO. ONLY YOU” in his deathbed (I might or might not have cried, okay. It may be one of my favourite scenes in the whole series). Especially when there’s a very obvious trend of characters of color COINCIDENTALLY being written as prioritizing white characters over their biological families, at the cost of their health and even their lives (I am still not over Monty being forced to kill his own mother to protect Octavia in The 100. Fuck that shit, seriously). Black Sails deciding to do the oposite here is FUCKING REVOLUTIONARY and I love it to pieces.

Another thing I loved is that they picked an actress that looks more like Mr. Scott than like her mother or Max (darker skin etc.): aka how the few black female characters that usually get what Madi will from Silver --that ~eternal devotion, willing to go against anything and anyone for her etc.-- tend to look.

Unsurprisingly, I like Madi/Silver VERY MUCH lol. I like that he is immediately ~drawn to her, in a subtle way, and viceversa (like in the scene where he’s still in the cage watching how she has trouble breathing after seeing her wounded father, or when they hug after his death). All their talks about power, responsibility, succession etc. are really good. And her concern for him is as palpable as probably inconvenient for her xD. I love the scene where she holds her hand as his leg is treated, or her worry one Silver calls himself a “one legged creature”. Though my favourite might be when he smiles when she shows concern for his state after killing Dufresne, and she’s like “well duh, if you fall apart the alliance between my people and yours is screwed” xDD

And though there hasn’t been much development yet on that side, I’m already so onboard with Flint/Madi/Silver lmfao. I love that nod of ~acknowledgment between Flint and Madi with the Maroon Queen’s voiceover about how Madi will have as much authority as Flint in his own ship xD. Her concern about Silver’s relationship with him is kind of ironic knowing that they’ll eventually find themselves more aligned between them than with Silver, by virtue of their many commonalities LOL. And there’s already traces of that ot3 feels, like when Madi tells Silver that the mistake of those “other people close to Flint” that he’s so scared of following to the grave was trying to deal with Flint alone (Madi’s seduction technique: kindness, understanding, and offers of partnership. I dig it).

I want more scenes of and with her mother, too. And between her mother and Silver, since apparently the Maroon Queen trusts him among all the pirates NOT to betray them for money (Jack saying the irony wasn’t lost on him and Flitn was hilarious xD) and that has to be thanks to Madi’s opinion of him. I’m kind of bitter we never got a Mr. Scott & Silver scene, too, especially after Silver and Madi become romantically involved. I love that stuff.

Miranda

I could just upload a bunch of gifs of various crying/in pain/etc. states here because WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS THE PAINNN. I was ~feeling Flint’s grief the entire time, I swear (though... did it have to express itself by shaving his head... asking for a friend). The violence he kept inflicting in her name (her word will be the last word); how he convinced his crew, Silver included, to go into the storm rather than surrendering, for her (and narratively speaking Silver is right, he did conjure it xDD). How fucking tired he is of it all (“you can talk your way part it”, “I don’t know that I have any more lies left in me”).

As far as I’m concerned he could be hallucinating her the rest of the show (I’m going to miss seeing her so much... especially in light of the ending), as painful as I find those scenes. At this point “But when I lost you... I am ruined over you” is an instant tear-jerker, ugh. So is Flint wantint to let go and “be with her”, and ghost!Miranda saying she’d resent him for giving up. Though my favourite is when Miranda basically describes herself as his “maker”, about how she ~shaped him *clenches fist*. I love those kinds of ships.

BTW: I think the moment Rogers mentioned Thomas, Miranda’s ghost, Flint, and I, yelled “HOW DARE YOU SAY HIS NAME” on the inside xD

Flint & Silver

Sometimes fandom gets it right because the relationship between these two is... A Lot. A LOT. I anticipate a lot of suffering on my part in the near future xD

I loved the evolution in the first half of the season, from Flint telling Silver that “in my head, you’re not welcome”, or Silver resenting that Flint’s words convinced HIM (HE’S the convincer!! It’s not supposed to happen to ME!! xDD) and rambling about how Flint is “able to ~conjure the reality he desires”, to Silver finally confessing about his part on the Urca gold robbery (which I’m at least 60% sure Flint suspected already tbh. That was not one of Silver’s best lies lbr) in order to force Flint to “account for ME” --but ofc still grabbing the nearest weapon as he confeses, just in case xDD. I am also incredibly delighted by the fact that the fandom calls that episode “shark date” asdñflkasjdf (*Flint and Silver barely manage to kill one shark*; Flint, challenging: again? *Silver grins*. Shark hunting = foreplay now, apparently).

I want it known that I end up ENRAGED every time they talk about their ~partnership lmfao. It comes off very intimate and gives me too many feelings xD. “When you and I talk with one voice, we can convince them of anything”; “your words opened that door [Flint convincing the Maroon Queen to spare their lives and join their fight]”; “you didn’t tell me the journey into the dark feels good”; “he doesn’t know how to say no to the both of us at the same time”; “I’m afraid I will be the end of you”. JUST STOP YOU ASSHOLES XDD

One of my favourite moments is when Silver convinces Flint to live. To go on, to talk to the Maroon Queen without a safeguard (that knife would’ve been his doom) and get her on their side (which Flint does with a super passionate speech about fighting England’s empire. ILH). Another is when Silver tells him he enjoyed killing Dufresne WITH HIS PROSTHETIC LEG OMFG (I personally think killing Dufresne was very valid of him lmfao), or Flint says Silver enjoyed punishing Dobbs (which in Silver fashion, worked perfectly for him because it made Dobbs MORE susceptible to him). Though obviously everything pales when compared to the scene where CAPTAIN FLINT COMES OUT TO LONG JOHN SILVER OVER A BONFIRE LMFAO. I loved that scene; it was so gentle. And then Silver made it about him and their relationship xDD (this show is not subtle). Flint’s apparent lack of concern about Silver replacing him is stressing me out though. I dread the series finale xD

Outside of Flint/Silver, Silver’s journey remains awe-inspiring. I just... love him. I love that he gave up his share of the Urca gold because he had to hold onto the crew, but that he is terrified of their bow to take care of him. His concern for his image in front of them was heartbreaking and hit waaaaay too close to home, too. And I wonder how he’s going to react to Billy’s King Long John Silver stratagem xD

BTW, I lowkey shipped him with Muldoon LOL. They should’ve had ~tender sex~~ (on screen, I headcanon it did happen off-screen, whatever) at some point (if only so there was one measly mlm sex scene in the show amidst all the rest. It’s troubling, to say the least, that there’s not a single one when it has a queer male lead tbh. And I get why they didn’t go that route with Flint outside of Thomas and can even see why they didn’t do it with Flint/Thomas even if I judge the hell out of them for it, but given how they go out of their way for the other options... yeah, I side eye them).

Jack

I LOVE HIM SO MUCH AND I WISH HE HAD MORE SCREENTIME, OKAY. Every time he opens his mouth the show gets just a little bit better, if you ask me xD. “If you’re going to behave like children, I will be your daddy” WHO SAYS THAT JACK XDD.

I loved him even more when he decided to deny Rogers & co the cache, Spanish invasion or not, to not give up and assure “his legacy”. And OF COURSE he could write his intentions in a way that only Anne would understand (Max reaaaally understimated him there). Their relationship remains the sweetest (weird adjective, maybe, but it’s true) part of the show, btw. I love that how Jack describes how hurt Anne would feel after knowing she might’ve unwittingly betrayed him. Or when he knew Anne giving up to easily meant she had a plan and he cheerfully told Rogers Anne would find a way to save him xD (the scene where he absolutely drags Rogers about his privilege --“but did I make up a lot of ground to catch you!”-- is perfect. And their reunion kiss was so, so cute.

Other highlights were when he threw away the key of the cache in front of Flint to secure it, or made his pitch to be his fellow captain in the fight. I also take a petty pleasure in the fact that Vane sacrificed himself when he went to his rescue LOL.

I like that he convinced Blackbeard to fight alongside them, but sweetie, you have NOTHING to prove to that asshole. His opinion is worthless (between his “strife is good” and Vane’s “comfort is for women” takes... ugh. They remind me of the exact discourse among leftism I hate okay xDD. In Vane’s case I at least get where he’s coming from and I even agree in part, but Blackbeard is even more boring).

Misc

-I love Billy’s more and more insidious antagonism towards Flint lmfao (yes, Flint is also one of my Forever Faves. This is compatible AND the kind of thing that would make me appreciate Billy more. I love irreverence, period). It starts with subtle ways of trying to poison Flint and Silver’s relationship (telling Silver Flint doesn’t see him as an equal, sending Silver to deliver Flint’s message instead of Flint himself, etc.). I laughed at him saying he’s all for Flint sacrificing himself for the crew since it’d be the “first selfless thing I’ve seen him do!” lol. Or that he “wants a good view when things catch up with Flint and the world makes sense again”. And ofc, creating the legend of Long John Silver. You just know he remembered Flint’s out of left field “I AM YOUR KING” and said “not on my fucking watch” xDD. And I love the irony of him being the one delivering black spots LOL.

-Did it really took that long for Anne and Flint to share some freaking words smh. Barely, but I’ll take it. I liked the moment where Jack references Max as “Anne’s lost love” and Flint does that Closeted Queer Observing A Queer Couple Look lol (he did the same when he was witness to Max and Eleanor’s fight. You need more queer friends, Flint :P).

-I liked Mrs. Hudson from the moment that she told Eleanor that the only difference she saw between her and other ladies is that their families have better lawyer --which meant Eleanor was the first one she could be rude towards xD--, and accused her of living of her father’s nepotism LOL. I hope she ends up in a good place and safe back with her kids.

-I can’t say I care much about Vane or his relationship with Eleanor, but his death and her hand on it were very well written IMO.

-I find Rogers so inherently unlikeable in every way LMFAO. And as hypocritical as it might sound, part of it is the extramarital affair ngl. I hate storylines where a man married to a more “conventional” woman is ~attracted to one he perceives as “stronger”, “fiercer”, and more worthy of himself (as if his opinion on the matter is worth shit) --only to eventually try and make the new woman more conventional once he “has” her. This one hasn’t gone all the way there but it has traces of that trope and I loathe it with all my heart.

-The only moment I managed to pay attention to Blackbeard was when he mentioned he had shrapnel advancing towards his heart, and for anyone who knows me a little, you know it’s because my brain linked that to Tony Stark lmfao. *Sighs* I just never like any version of Blackbeard, period. I find them so boring. He’s the opposite of Long John Silver that way, because I’ve loved every single version I’ve encountered so far.

-The way Spain is portrayed in this show is so... unusual. Especially for USA content in my experience. One day I’m going to have to do some more research and write about how Spain (and in particular Spanish violence -inter and intranational) is portrayed across the ocean.

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theliberaltony · 5 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last Thursday, the 2020 Democratic candidates covered a wide range of topics during the three-hour debate, including health care, race and criminal justice, immigration, gun control and climate change.

But what issues do voters care most about? In our FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we surveyed the same set of respondents both before and after the debate to find out what issue was most important in determining their vote in the primary. And what we learned was Democrats are most concerned about defeating President Trump — nearly 40 percent of respondents said this was their top issue. For reference, the next-most-common top issue — health care — was picked by just 10 percent voters before the debate and 11 percent after.

So what issues should the candidates be talking more about? Less about? And if Democrats care more about winning this year, what’s the best way to talk about beating Trump?

A lot of Democrats really want to beat Trump

Share of respondents to the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll who said that each issue is the most important to them, before and after the debate

Share for whom issue is most important issue Pre-debate Post-debate Ability to beat Donald Trump 39.6%

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39.6%

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Health care 9.9

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11.0

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The economy 8.0

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8.7

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Wealth and income inequality 7.9

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8.4

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Climate change 7.4

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6.5

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Gun policy 4.2

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4.8

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Immigration 3.3

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3.7

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Something else 3.3

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3.5

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Social Security 3.4

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3.2

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Education 2.5

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2.4

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Racism 3.0

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2.4

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The makeup of the Supreme Court 1.7

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1.7

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Taxes 1.3

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1.3

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Jobs 1.9

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1.1

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Foreign affairs 1.3

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0.7

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Crime 0.7

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0.4

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The military 0.3

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0.4

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Sexism 0.1

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0.2

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From a survey of 4,320 likely Democratic primary voters who were surveyed between Sept. 5 and Sept. 11. The same people were surveyed again from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16; 3,473 responded to the second wave.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Well, to state the obvious, the candidates should be talking about their ability to beat Trump.

It’s important to a ton of Democratic voters.

And the more it goes untalked-about, the more other candidates are ceding that ground to Joe Biden, IMO.

Electability is a very fuzzy concept without a ton of data behind it, so pretty much any candidate can make a plausible argument for their “electability.”

sarahf: What are some ways candidates can do that, though?

I know Biden has leaned into his performance in head-to-head polls against Trump, but as we know … general election polls don’t really tell us that much about the strength of candidates in the primary.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I mean, it’s a little tricky. If you talk too much about electability, you raise the salience of the issue, which might work to Biden’s benefit.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): On the other hand, the fact that electability is a fuzzy concept can also be difficult for the candidates to address directly — for example, the female candidates.

nrakich: Amelia, if you ask me, the female candidates should be trotting out the studies that show women do just as well as men when they run for office!

ameliatd: Well, but those studies aren’t about presidential candidates! Most political scientists agree that people don’t cross the aisle to vote against a woman (or for that matter, to vote for a woman) — party loyalties are stronger than gender bias. But that’s not an easy sound bite, and it also may not be especially reassuring to voters who think sexism was a factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.

natesilver: In particular, I think it’s risky (by which I mean dumb) for any candidate other than Biden to talk much about his or her head-to-head polls against Trump, because Biden still does better than any other Democrat in those polls by some margin.

sarahf: But is that what will convince voters someone is electable?

nrakich: Amy Klobuchar is pointing to her past election results, where she really ran up the score in the swing state of Minnesota, as evidence that she’s electable. The problem is that she just hasn’t gotten a lot of attention for it (although voters in our poll thought she was slightly more likely to beat Trump after the debate).

sarahf: How else can candidates talk about their ability to defeat Trump without getting into their performance in head-to-head polls?

natesilver: I thought Warren’s response to Delaney in the second debate was good. Basically, like, if you’re not running on ideas, then why are you even running?

nrakich: If you’re Klobuchar, you can also argue that a moderate candidate is better positioned to win over swing voters. Or if you’re Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, you can argue that a black candidate will have the most success increasing black turnout (which could help Democrats win back Midwestern states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and might put new states, like Georgia, in play).

natesilver: I’m not sure that the candidates themselves do a lot of good by litigating more complex points about electability with the public. Their campaigns might do it on background with journalists, but it’s probably best left there.

ameliatd: I agree with that, Nate. One recent study did show that people were more likely to rate female candidates as electable when they were first reminded about how many women won in 2018 — but I don’t think having the candidates make that pitch will necessarily work.

sarahf: But if the best way for a candidate to run is on their ability to beat Trump, how can their stances on other issues help them accomplish that? Or make them seem more electable?

Let’s start with an issue that a lot of voters also care about (it was the second most popular pick for top issue in our Ipsos poll) — health care.

Should Democrats being talk about health care more?

Less?

nrakich: Exit polls showed that health care was the most important issue to voters in the 2018 midterm elections, which obviously worked out well for Democrats. So I think that’s good ground for the candidates to focus on for the general election.

For the primary, maybe less so — it depends on their position on health care!

natesilver: I remain convinced that health care is the best issue that Sanders has going for him.

Although, according to our poll, Biden actually gained ground with voters who prioritized the issue. Warren and Harris have been somewhat stuck in the middle on health care, though, and I think it’s a real problem for them.

nrakich: But Nate, what about those polls that show that a single-payer health care system is less popular, even among Democrats, than building on Obamacare (with, say, a public option)?

natesilver: At least Sanders has leadership on the issue. True, Biden has the most popular position. But Harris and Warren got nothing.

sarahf:

Who voters think is best on health care

Among the 435 respondents who said health care was the most important issue to them in an Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight poll

candidate share of respondents Bernie Sanders 32.9%

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Joe Biden 28.8

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Elizabeth Warren 16.5

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Someone else 6.4

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Pete Buttigieg 3.3

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Kamala Harris 2.8

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Amy Klobuchar 2.2

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Julián Castro 1.5

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Beto O’Rourke 1.3

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Andrew Yang 1.3

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Cory Booker 0.9

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Poll was conducted from Sept. 5 to Sept. 11 among a general population sample of adults, with 4,320 respondents who say they are likely to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus

Yeah, going into the debate, Sanders had the lead among voters in our poll who prioritized health care. (But Sanders wasn’t the only candidate to gain potential supporters among voters who prioritized health care after the debate — Biden, Yang, Warren and Buttigieg all made bigger gains.)

ameliatd: Part of the challenge, too, is that people still don’t understand the details of all of these plans — for example, Medicare for All, as Sanders and Warren talk about it, involves getting rid of private insurance. That could be more and more of an issue for the candidates on the left. Warren and Sanders keep saying people don’t like their insurance — but that’s not really true.

The health care debate is hard because people want something better, but they’re also afraid of losing what they have.

sarahf: Yeah, the branding of “Medicare for All who want it” that Buttigeig and others are pushing is pretty ingenious, even if it’s just as difficult or costly to pull off as the version of Medicare for All that Sanders and Warren are pitching.

ameliatd: It is weirdly off-brand for Warren to not have a detailed plan on health care. But maybe she’s trying not to get beaten up in the fight over Medicare for All.

natesilver: It’s very off-brand. And, sure, there might be tactical reasons for it. All of which goes to my theory that Warren is more of a politician than she’s assumed to be, which you’d think is a pretty normal thing to say about someone who’s a professional politician but will probably come across as something of a hot take.

I dunno, sometimes Warren’s strategy seems predicated on the idea that she doesn’t need to throw a lot of elbows or make a lot of tight pivots to beat Sanders.

sarahf: Well, if part of the primary is to pitch voters on big ideas, it makes sense to me that Warren isn’t curtailing her vision for Medicare for All just yet.

ameliatd: I wonder also if she thinks there’s too much competition on health care. It can be pretty difficult to follow which candidate is proposing what and what the actual differences are. It’s simpler to just say she’s with Sanders.

nrakich: I do find it interesting that Warren is doing so well in the polls despite not really emphasizing the top two priorities that Democratic voters cited in our poll (electability and health care).

sarahf: In its analysis of swing voters in 2020, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that in addition to issues like health care, where Democrats have a big advantage among voters (18 percentage points), Democrats also have a whopping 38 percentage point advantage on climate change.

So … should the candidates be talking about climate change more?

(According to an analysis by Bloomberg, only 6 percent of the third debate was devoted to it.)

nrakich: I think you have to draw a line between the primary and general election for a lot of these.

As you alluded to with that poll, Sarah, I think the eventual Democratic nominee could have success by talking a lot about climate change next year.

But the differences between the primary candidates on climate change are pretty in the weeds, so I’m not sure whom it would help to talk about it more.

I also think the failure of Jay Inslee’s campaign to win on climate change showed that the issue just wasn’t a big differentiator either (although IMO he had other problems too, like not being very inspiring on the stump).

sarahf: That’s interesting, Nathaniel. So unlike health care, where there’s an incentive for the candidates to hash out their differences, maybe something like climate change should be saved for the general?

Do others agree?

nrakich: Yeah, I think there are pretty major differences between the candidates on health care. And having a nominee run on single-payer vs. a public option could be important to swing voters in the general. But I don’t think Republicans will attack a nominee any harder if he or she is trying to get the U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 instead of 2050.

ameliatd: Well, another difference between health care and climate is that they’re both fairly technical, complicated issues, but one has a direct and personal impact on people’s health and bank accounts, while the other is more diffuse. It’s harder to get concrete on climate change, too. Which is sometimes why you end up with candidates talking about banning plastic straws.

natesilver: Also on climate — the political willpower to get things done when Joe Manchin is the median vote in the Senate is far less than any of the Democrats’ plans would like.

In some ways, I’m surprised Democrats haven’t spent more time talking about structural issues, like gerrymandering, adding new states (Puerto Rico, D.C.) and things of that nature.

sarahf: I mean, they did wade into blowing up the filibuster in the last debate.

Do you really think that’s good politics for the candidates, though?

natesilver: Oh yeah, sure. I think it’s a good way for Warren to differentiate herself from Sanders, for instance.

ameliatd: Blowing up the filibuster seems like it’s become a way for candidates to say they’re serious about passing their agenda. So it’s kind of a proxy for how far the candidates are willing to go, and how much they care about compromise.

nrakich: I think it has the potential to be good politics, Sarah. People don’t like it when they perceive the system to be unfair, and Democrats can pretty easily make the argument that the system is currently biased against urban dwellers, people of color, and others.

Gerrymandering is a good example of something that few people defend. But no Democrat is out there shouting about it from the rooftops.

Voting rights also don’t register very high on the priority list when voters are asked what issues they care about, but there is a lot of political science research that says that politicians can influence what voters care about. And I bet the issue would become more salient if a top-tier candidate talked about it more.

ameliatd: I have also wondered why the Supreme Court hasn’t been a bigger issue so far — it is more unpopular with Democrats than it has been in 20 years, and progressive activists are advocating for some pretty big court reforms, like increasing the number of justices on the bench. And if you’re talking about roadblocks for your progressive agenda — a Supreme Court with a conservative majority is certainly at the top of that list.

nrakich: Maybe it hasn’t been very salient in the primary because it’s assumed that every possible nominee would appoint pro-choice, pro-voting-rights, generally liberal justices?

ameliatd: But there are differences between the candidates on how to approach the Supreme Court — big ones! At least seven candidates still in the race are open to the idea of adding justices to the court, according to The Washington Post. And some have talked about changing its structure in other ways (adding term limits, for example) which would also be quite dramatic.

nrakich: Good point. Maybe Democrats aren’t bringing it up, then, because the issue risks activating Republican voters in the general election?

ameliatd: It is definitely true that the courts historically have been a motivating issue for Republican voters and not really for Democrats. But I think there’s potential for the Democrats to make the Supreme Court into an issue that their voters care about.

natesilver: And I think after Kavanaugh’s nomination last year, there’s still an open question about whether which party gets most motivated by the Supreme Court has shifted. In a Gallup poll just before the midterms, roughly as many Democrats as Republicans called Kavanaugh an important issue in deciding their vote.

That said, I don’t think calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment is a very wise general election position.

ameliatd: No, I agree — a focus on impeaching Kavanaugh seems tailor-made to rile up Republicans. I think part of the issue is that there just isn’t a clear message among Democrats about the Supreme Court or the judiciary in general. Some people want term limits. Others want court-packing, or they want more talk about the type of judicial nominees the candidates would nominate.

sarahf: But what about an issue where Democrats don’t have an advantage (like the economy) and are in a weaker position among voters than Trump? In that same poll on swing voters, KFF gave Trump a 12-point advantage for his handling of economy. And in our Ipsos poll, we found that economy-focused Democrats gave candidates worse marks across the board than voters focused on four other top issues, suggesting that economy voters were maybe unsatisfied by what they heard in the debate.

nrakich: Yeah, I think Democrats could stand to talk more in the primary about the economy in the traditional sense, like jobs.

For the general election, though, that does seem to be a good issue for Republicans (for now).

natesilver: Isn’t the obvious way for Democrats to talk about the economy to talk about inequality and how the economy ain’t workin’ for some people?

Unless the economy actually goes way south, in which case you have a lot more things you can say.

nrakich: Yes, but we did offer “wealth and income inequality” as an issue in our poll, and those voters seemed to have different perspectives than the “economy” voters.

If we’re talking about the primary, I think Warren and Sanders have gotten pretty far by talking about inequality, but our poll does suggest there’s a subset of voters for whom that isn’t what they want to hear about the economy.

sarahf: And while trying to motivate voters around economic inequality sounds good in theory, in practice, I don’t think it actually moves the dial much. Although, there is evidence that voters are keen on a tax on the uber-wealthy, so maybe that’s a good tack for Democrats to take in talking about the economy more?

ameliatd: Right, talking about making the wealthy pay their fair share seems like a smart way for Democrats to approach this.

But what do you think voters want to be hearing on the economy front, Nathaniel? In our poll, “jobs” was listed as a separate option and not that many people seemed interested in hearing about that.

nrakich: Yeah, Amelia, I’m not quite sure. Given their candidate preferences (i.e., voters who prioritized the economy also liked Biden and were much less likely to be considering a vote for Warren or Sanders), maybe those are the fiscally minded voters who oppose Warren and Sanders’s efforts to redistribute wealth.

In other words, business-friendly Democrats?

natesilver: I do think Democrats need to be careful on this issue.

Socialism is still not a popular concept with swing voters. Maybe it will be once the millennials and zoomers take over. But for now, it’s a big general-election vulnerability for Sanders, for instance.

nrakich: Wait, this is the first time I’ve heard zoomers as a nickname for Generation Z and I love it.

natesilver: “Let’s get the economy workin’ for workin’ people and make the rich pay their fair share” is probably fine for a general election message. “Let’s topple the entire system” maybe isn’t.

sarahf: But as Nathaniel said earlier … this is the primary. And isn’t socialism more popular than capitalism among Democrats?

So, similar to some of the candidates being more radical on health care, isn’t there an argument to be made they should dream bigger on the economy, too?

natesilver: Well, yeah, but part of what smart candidates do is avoid driving wedges on issues where it might give you a slight advantage in the primary but a big disadvantage in the general election.

nrakich: And while it’s true, Sarah, that Democrats think more highly of socialism than of capitalism, their views of capitalism are still mostly favorable, according to the Pew Research Center. We’re also forgetting that 40 percent of Democrats think the most important thing is to beat Trump! I can imagine plenty of pro-socialism Democrats being persuaded to tone down the rhetoric (but maybe not the policies — Warren is basically doing this) in order to avoid being general-election poison.

ameliatd: Also, isn’t Warren’s wealth tax, which would be applied to rich people’s accumulated fortunes rather than just their income, be an example of Democrats dreaming big? She seems to be doing a good job of selling it as “just making the rich pay their fair share,” but it’s still a pretty radical change from the status quo.

sarahf: That’s fair, Amelia.

And to wrap, if candidates could only run on one issue — and it isn’t beating Trump, because let’s treat that as the overarching argument of everyone’s campaign — what would it be?

nrakich: I think it’s got to be health care, especially if you’re not a single-payer Democrat. Follow the playbook that worked in 2018.

natesilver: It depends on the candidate. For Biden, it’s electability. For Sanders, it’s health care. For Warren, it’s … I’m not sure, exactly? But I think probably inequality.

nrakich: Breakin’ Sarah’s rules (“and it isn’t beating Trump”), Nate …

Intriguing side question: Is it a problem for Biden if he runs on an electability argument during the primary and then doesn’t have a clear rationale for running come the general?

sarahf: What other issue does Biden have to lean into? Health care, maybe?

natesilver: Maybe Biden could adopt a signature issue — or two.

I’m not sure what it would be, though. Guns, maybe?

ameliatd: We didn’t talk about gun policy, but I’ll be interested to see if that has sticking power as the primary moves forward. That’s a big priority for voters right now, but maybe it’s also an issue like climate change where the candidates struggle to differentiate themselves.

Also, I am shamelessly dodging the question, but personal characteristics are also important to voters. A Pew survey from last month asked Democrats to name the most important factor for deciding which candidate to support, and 28 percent named something like honesty or competence. About the same share pointed to a policy. So … maybe policy just matters less than we assume?

nrakich: Great point, Amelia. We basically just did a whole chat on issues while ignoring the fact that people mostly don’t vote on issues!

ameliatd: Shut it down, guys.

natesilver: But you can still vote on the aesthetics of a candidate’s policy positions even if you don’t care about policy per se.

Like, people can like the idea that Warren has a plan for things, even if they don’t know what those plans are, exactly.

nrakich: Right, but to the original chat prompt, does it matter, then, what issues are and aren’t being discussed?

As you pointed out, Warren doesn’t have a meaty health care plan but still gets credit for being issue-driven.

ameliatd: I wonder if Warren’s focus on an overarching theme like corruption can also help with the perception that she’s honest, or something like that.

But then it does make you wonder how much the details matter, as opposed to how the issues fit into a candidate’s overall brand.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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