#(like I said... complicated. and narratively compelling!)

[veinsfullofstars]

🕸️Kirbtober 2024 Day 2: Revenge 🕸️

(ID: Kirby series fanart of Dark Meta Knight and Taranza, the latter looming behind the former with violent intent in his four front-facing eyes, his six hands clenched into shaking fists and curled into claws and raised over his head to conjure a pair of glowing spiderwebs. Meanwhile, the knight stands in blissful ignorance in the foreground, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand, a rolled-up newspaper in the other, glancing off in confusion as a thought bubble over his head reads, “Why do I hear boss music?” END ID.)

Based on the implication from KTD’s Dededetour! that DMK might be responsible for Sectonia’s corruption, indirectly or otherwise.

Previous Day | Next Day | Prompt List (made by @/paintpanic)

Started on 08/30/24, finished on 08/31/24. | Kirbtober 2023 Comp

[glitter-stained]

Jason Todd Meta Masterlist

With all the misconceptions and (frankly insulting and at times sexist) assumptions I've seen about Jason Todd fans, I've decided to make a post gathering the meta I could find that helps make sense of why he's my (and so many other people's) favourite character. (Spoiler: it's not because I'm shallow, it's not because he's hot, not because I love guns and the death penalty, and not because I think he's secretly a woman.) This list is incomplete for a bunch of reasons: I haven't read all the meta that exists, if there's a good meta with like one sentence I disagree with I usually don't include the meta, there's a lot of meta I disagree with, and if there's a very good meta analysing dynamics or characters based on a comic I really hate, I will simply not include it (for example i've seen good analysis of Nightwing Brothers in Blood, unfortunately it's one of the worst comics i've ever tried to force myself to read so I can't include any of it in Jason analysis without betraying a fundamental part of myself). This will include some serious analysis commentary, some lighter/trivia stuff, and there's also a part dedicated to some misconceptions I've seen running around and posts that address it. Some of this is jaybin analysis/appreciation, some of this is red hood analysis/appreciation, some of it fits for both, and there's nuance here due to the fact I'm very critical about many parts of red hood's writing, so some jaybin posts might be red hood critical, but they're still parts of the reasons why I like jason so I'm including them. If you have suggestions for more meta posts to add, feel free to share them, though be warned that I may not be able to edit and include them all due to reasons previously mentioned! (And do not be afraid to share your own meta we love self-promo in here).

With all that said:

if you're a Jason fan looking for more meta, a comic fan who doesn't understand the hype and is genuinely wondering what people see in him, a fic writer determined to do his character justice, or new to fandom and wondering if it's worth it getting into him, this post is for you! And of course if you don't like him I'm not arrogant enough to assume I can change your mind, you're perfectly allowed your taste, all that I ask in return is that you do not try to police mine.

Now let's get to it!

Mental illness

So, this meta is kinda organized by how important those points are to me, and it turns out I'm a complete freak about psychopatholgy (the study of mental disorders). Now, is Jason a good depiction of mental illness? Eeeeeh... Compared to my other favs with stories building up around trauma like Mia Dearden or Jill Carlyle, he has a lot more material to sink our teeth into due to sheer number of appearances, and there's loads of interesting stuff in that, but he also often falls victim to dc's classic love for demonising metal illness. So what makes Jason's mental illness compelling to me, someone who loathes the Joker's character so much? That's a complicated question I attempt to answer in here. Now this is an ongoing compilation of different psychological analysis meta (we're playing meta masterpost matryoshka!! Yay!) and doesn't have all the answers yet because I need time to write this shit but anyway, if anything, it's a good opportunity to learn about psychology through Jason, and I think how much I love sinking my teeth into those depictions already shines into it. So basically: The depiction of Jason's mental illness, despite often very flawed, is extremely compelling to me.

On victimhood

Now say it with me: you can like several things at once. Jason's character isn't the only one who is a victim, and he isn't the only one where victimhood features as an important theme, and none of that diminishes the fact that the way victimhood is portrayed and handled in Jason's story is compelling both for its meta commentary on the narrative and the catharsis it can bring. Here are some meta that analyse Jason's character in relation to victimhood:

-Jason and Joker's other victims

-How Jason's story resonates with victims of SA

-Jason and childhood sexual abuse

-How Jason is blamed for his death

-Jason's UTH monologue is sincere, and he has a right to his anger

-Jason's point isn't about the villains, it's about the victims

-Victimhood VS Survival

Philosophy

Now when it comes to this section, a lot of people associate ethics (for instance what Jason considers right and wrong) and politics (what solutions/actions he thinks should be taken as a result of those ethical beliefs). Of course that makes sense with the way those concepts intertwine, but they're not the same question (crucially, you can agree with his position on one without agreeing on the other) so I've tried to separate the posts into those two categories the best I can.

Ethics

I couldn't find a jaybin post that was only on ethics (though the political jaybin posts cover it a little) but some of my favourite stuff about Jason is the discussion of ethics. Honestly I consider it much more enjoyable than the political part of the discussion, it has my preference for sure.

On love and Red Hood

A reading of UTH as an invitation to incorporate emotions into our ethics

Politics

I'm subdivising this one again because Jaybin and Red Hood wouldn't agree on everything here (I don't think the gap is irreconcilable, but it would require writers to put effort into bridging it which I never see dc do, at least not correctly.)

AS JAYBIN

Ethics, crime, grief and vigilantism

A philosophy of love and care

AS RED HOOD

Does Red Hood valorize organised crime?

Red Hood is a pimp (no, wait, listen)

On the death penalty

Jason's political thesis in UTH: you cannot rule through fear alone

Jason's point isn't about the villains, it's about the victims (yes, this one is here twice because it fits into both categories what do you want me to say)

Symbolism

You know I love me a character with some cool symbolism. I only got two posts on the matter so far but if anyone has articulate meta posts about Jason wrt Paradise Lost, Abraham and Isaac, Orpheus and Euridyce or literally anything else please share it I would love that so much I have so many thoughts about it but not all of them have a meta that develops them. Anyway here's another reason to like Jason Todd: he's got a lot of symbolism to sink your teeth into.

My thoughts on catholic Jason Todd

Jason Todd VS The Bible

Jason & Isaac

Abilities and skills

Now a lot of that was about what makes Jason interesting to me but one thing Jason is that he's also extremely fun. He's just all around an enjoyable character! To me his #1 best fun trait is how witty/funny he is, both as Jaybin and Winick's Red Hood, which is a shame because I don't have a post gathering panels of how funny he is (if anyone has one please feel free to share!). But his #2 best fun trait, to me, is that he's a hyper-competent jack-of-all-trades. And I don't mean a gary-stue! He's probably not one of the world's best at most of those things, but he's pretty good at a whole bunch of things and he's also very resourceful and underhanded, making for great battle scenes because it's always fun to watch pull tricks out of his sleeve! This is especially true for his villain era, because while hyper-competent heroes can become annoying, I find hyper-competent villains/antagonists super exciting. So here are just a tiny tidbit of metas I could find about some of his skills!

"The dumb Robin"

Jaybin is a skilled hacker!

Languages

Marksmanship (amongst other skills)

Jason and Bruce

Warning: if you're here it means you haven't blocked the anti batman tags but like, this isn't a super Batman-friendly blog. The meta in this part doesn't exactly hold Bruce in high regards so like, if you're a fan of him like, be aware of that.

With that being said, I find Jason's story, and the criticism of Bruce/Batman that ties into it, very interesting. I also am personally drawn towards stories around child abuse for cathartic reasons, and DC, albeit unintentionally, draws a very realistic depiction of abusive families within the batfam, which I also find really compelling. So here's a bunch of meta about Jason and Bruce and utter misery! Parenting tip: don't do that.

-Jaybin era Bruce was far from perfect

-Bruce projects on jaybin

-Parentification

-Analysis of Jason's grave

-Can you believe Bruce yellow-wallpapered Jason?

-Jason as a meta character

-Jason's isolation wrt his relationship with Bruce

Jason and Mia

-Green Arrow: Seeing Red makes a great point about victim-blaming

-On defense of jaymia : So, this one requires some explanation. It's kinda funny to include this in a meta masterpost/character manifesto since 1) the ship is not canon and 2) i do not ship nor particularly like the ship (no offence to those who do!). However, a lot is said about these two characters, and as a fan of both characters I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on the matter, and I believe this post is a good breakdown of some conceptions and views wrt these two characters, even outside of the shipping length. I have more analysis about Seeing Red in the works, but it's bound to take a long time to happen!

Some other misconceptions I found interesting to mention

-Jason isn't a loner

-A quick forray into pre-crisis: Jason and Dick's backstories were similar, but they had their fair share of differences! They're far from the same character.

Trivia

And finally, as a palate cleanser after all that stuff, some trivia for your writer's needs.

Jason's taste in food and drinks

Jason's music taste

Books Jason Todd has read

Anyway, shout-out to all these amazing people for all that meta, and please note that just because I included one of their post in my meta and character manifesto doesn't mean they have to agree with everything I said (should be evident but like, just in case. Leave those people alone if your issue is with me.)

I'm leaving you with these comic recs from laufire!

Hope you enjoy ✨✨

[myheadsgonenumb]

I know a lot of people accuse the marauders fandom of being misogynistic because of the way they pair male characters together and sideline female characters to do it. And maybe there is an element of truth in that for some people.

But I see wolfstar and remadora being used as an example of this - as if the wolfstar ship hadn't existed for four years before Tonks was introduced to the readership, as if it wasn't six years old before remadora was introduced, as if it isn't perfectly reasonable that readers read Tonks as queer coded before she was straight jacketed into being a stepford wife and as if remadora was a well seeded and compelling relationship that anyone might feasibly have any interest in.

I don't like Tonks - not because she's a woman, but because she knocks things over and says "wotcher", and there is no excuse for that. She is an irritating character that adds nothing to the narrative. But even so, if Remadora had played out differently, I could have got on board with it. I want Remus to be happy - and if Tonks is what makes him happy, so be it. I like Romione and Hinny, after all. I'm fine with canon ships where it's clear the characters like each other. But married Remus isn't happy, and it is not clear that he and Tonks like each other at all.

I am a wolfstar shipper, but even if I wasn't, I wouldn't like Remadora. I unashamedly love the HP books and there is very little that I will criticise them over, but Remadora is one of those things, and this is why.

Remadora is a hot, toxic and abusive mess but it's her not him.

Whether she likes his reasons or not, whether the readers or the fucking Weasleys like his reasons or not, Remus is entitled to his boundaries. He does not want to be in a relationship with her because he believes it is a bad idea. He knows, better than any of them, what his life is really like; the toll the prejudice he faces takes on him and how this will impact Tonks' life. And he doesn't want to be responsible for that - and that's fair enough.  

So he says "no" a million times (actual quote) and removes himself from the situation. Which is the mature and sensible thing to do.

She doesn't accept it. For a start - he shouldn't have had to keep repeating his "no", that is enough to tell us she is repeatedly forcing the issue, that she doesn't respect his answer or his feelings and is not listening to him. She thinks that because she loves him despite his condition that that is enough. He is old enough to know the reality of their life together will be far more complicated than that and recognises that he does not want it (and fears that eventually neither will she).    

But she won’t listen and she won't respect his decision and so she goes around airing their dirty laundry in public, getting his friends to side with her and agree he is being "ridiculous" (again - actual quote). She is losing her powers over him and no - that is not him draining the life out of her, as I have seen said - that is her being a melodramatic twat. She is not the first person to be unlucky in love, her reaction is what is ridiculous. Meanwhile, Remus is being the grown up and getting on with his life. Yes he's going out of his way to avoid her (which is proving necessary as she won't let their relationship lie) but it's still necessary work and it’s work only he can do. The fact that he might be relieved to have an excuse to get away from her speaks to her bad behaviour not his.  

She changes her patronus to match his and this is just so... everything that is wrong with them and with her encapsulated.  For a start, we only see two sets of exactly matching patronuses in HP - Remadora and Snily, both examples of unrequited, thwarted love. Healthy relationships might have complementary patronuses, but relationships where one person's patronus assumes the shape of another's suggests that one person is being subsumed by the other. And yet this is not a relationship or level of control that either Remus or Lily are interested in having, so it is a sign - not of control or abuse from them - but of how obsession is eroding Tonks' and Snape's core selves. But that isn't the fault of the person they are obsessed with.

The remadora example is far far worse though, because a doe doesn't have any special significance to Lily, that is just the shape her patronus is. Remus's is a wolf. He hates that, and chooses to cast an incorporeal patronus when he can. Being a werewolf is his greatest source of pain and shame, and he sees his patronus as an extension of that, almost of it outing his condition. Tonks - the absolutely fuckwitted stalker that she is - bears absolutely none of that in mind, changes her patronus and blithely casts it around to all and sundry to deliver messages. She is taking Remus's darkest, most shameful, most secret part of himself and using it to wizard text. And she doesn't even get why that's a problem. It just shows that he is correct in believing that she doesn't understand the reality of his situation and is not ready for it; she doesn't appreciate or respect the toll it takes on his life and frankly she doesn't respect his feelings (which we already knew from her not accepting his "no").         

It all comes to a head when Dumbledore dies. Remus loses control of his emotions at this point, and Harry is so startled that he thinks of it being "indecent" to see Remus vulnerable like this. Remus is not just grieving Dumbledore, he is processing the fact that without Dumbledore the war is lost; Voldemort will win; everything has been vain and the whole world is going to tumble into darkness. Every sacrifice he has made, Sirius, Lily, James - it's all been for nothing. That is where he is at that moment.

And fucking Tonks - fucking Tonks -  makes it about her and their relationship. And it’s not just that she corners him when he is at his most vulnerable. But she does it publicly, in front of their friends, in front of the kids. She grabs hold of his robes and physically shakes him. She physically shakes him . If he had physically shaken her we would not be having a discussion on if she was unreasonable to not want to marry him.

Even at this moment, he tries to stand his ground, He knows what is right. He knows getting married is the wrong thing for them to do. But she won't back down and all their friends back her. It's unbelievable.

And he is a weak man. He knows it, we know it, and he never claimed to be anything else.  Under this much pressure, he gives in. But he later says it was done very much "against {his} better judgement". He was co-erced into marriage- both emotionally and eventually physically.

So - yeah - Tonks gets pregnant. There are many clues throughout the books that the wizarding world is a no sex before marriage society and that they don't have contraception. Babies often follow hot on the heels of marriage. Should Remus have refused to consumate the marriage he entered against his will? Probably. Would Tonks have accepted that? Hell no! She'd have been back round Molly Weasley's for "tea and sympathy", telling the whole Weasley clan he won't shag her.  Having gone through with marriage, despite his misgivings, he gives in and goes through with it all. And Tonks gets pregnant.

And she is delighted. Because despite his fears of what this will mean for the child - Tonks couldn't care less. Remus says they don't know if the baby will be a werewolf or not. werewolves don't have kids. She is bringing a child into the world who could have a chronic, debilitating illness that will make them a pariah, and she doesn't even care. She doesn't think it's a problem. She thinks love will be enough, because she has no actual understanding of what she is dealing with, and shows no interest in gaining that understanding. She thinks "I don’t care” (about her family being werewolves) is the answer to the problem.

Meanwhile, Remus is spiralling into depression because he is facing the reality of the prejudice his condition is now forcing on his wife and child, He cannot take the guilt of how he is going to negatively impact their lives. And while Tonks is within her rights to say she doesn't care about that, Remus is within his rights to say the guilt is too much for him and he doesn't want that. He is entitled to his boundaries and his feelings as well, but Tonks, the other characters and a hefty portion of the readership don't seem to recognise this.

So Remus is now trapped. He admits it was a mistake to marry Tonks and he knows he shouldn't have - but he was pursued until he couldn't stand against it any longer, and the depression and guilt is killing him. Harry is worrying about him, he is so clearly miserable. AND TONKS DOESN'T EVEN SEEM TO NOTICE! She is described as being "radiant", she is blissfully happy. She has what she wants and she can't even spot what the teenage boy whose only spent a couple of minutes with them since they got married can see is glaringly obvious.

And this leads back to her being obsessive about Remus, but actually seeming to know or care about him very little. She doesn't respect or understand his feelings and has no interest in doing so. She wants him. She has him. The end.

So - unable to cope with the guilt of what he has done, the societal stigma he is inflicting on his own family, the coldness of now having to deal with that prejudice in his own home via his in laws (and I've seen people try and gaslight him by saying he is imagining that, Ron and Molly spout anti-werewolf rhetoric, no Andromeda is not chill about her only daughter being married to one) and having no one on his side who will even listen to his fears - he suffers a total mental breakdown and runs away.

And is told to go back.

Fuck that. Anyone is entitled to leave a marriage they are unhappy in. Yes, he can't leave in such a way that he is not around to support the child and it was wrong of him to try (though understandable that he did not think that through in the circumstances) but he does not have to stay with Tonks, if he thinks it is for the best that he leaves. Especially when the impact the marriage is having on his mental health is taken into account. 

Harry is a teenager, who is seeing the situation through his own lens of being orphaned. And he is absolutely right to refuse to be Remus’s cover here. Remus is doing the mental gymnastics that if he leaves his child to protect James’ child then it’s all OK, and Harry is right not to be OK with that.   But he is wrong to unequivocally think Remus should go back to Tonks. This is an adult relationship that Harry is not yet old enough to understand, which took place under duress, and Remus is miserable in it. Why should he stay? 

They get lucky, and Teddy is not a werewolf, but that does not mean his fear around that was not reasonable. And he dies before they ever have to face up to the reality of life together for any length of time.

He is not proven wrong just because he does not live long enough to be proven right.

He just goes back, because there is nowhere else for him to go and no one willing to help him. and buries his head in the sand. But he is the expert in the experience of life as a werewolf. If he says it’s awful, if he says Tonks is going to face mistreatment and stigma because of it, then he is right. And it is all very well for a young and in love Tonks to say that doesn't matter, but he is older and wiser and knows how prejudice wears you down through the years. He knows reality will get the better of them in the end. And even if it doesn't - even if Tonks was to remain cheerful in the face of blatant discrimination for her and her child for the rest of her life - Remus is not unreasonable to say he is not willing to be the cause of that, that he can't live with that guilt, and to choose to remove himself from the situation so Tonks and Teddy can live normally.

I think the books do Tonks dirty. She is a different character in each of the three books she appears in, and each incarnation is worse than the last. But I can't like her because ultimately her actions are so abusive and she is so oblivious to the pain Remus is in. The only good thing about the ship is that the mental breakdown gives Remus something significant to do in DH, when otherwise he would have been totally sidelined - and the breakdown to coming back with Sirius and James and Lily gives him a nice redemption arc. But in terms of both characters it doesn't make sense and both need to be totally broken to make it work. 

Remadora is one of the best written examples of an abusive relationship I've seen. What's weird about it is a) it’s in a children's series and b) the conclusion is that the victim of abuse is being very silly and should return to his abuser.

So please, stop telling wolfstar shippers that they are misogynistic because they are more interested in the potential of the 40 line stare than they are in this toxic wasteland of romance. It's just bad. And it's OK not to ship it because it is bad.

[wavesalwayscrash]

sorry for the long ask lol… lots of musings about things

i really, really appreciate the way you write abusers in this comic. it may be a bit of a weird thing to say, but so many write abusers as just one dimensional characters who are bad when they’re… Not. they’re people, who do bad things, with reasonings that could be all sorts of things (which doesnt mean their reasonings are Justified). i feel like the narrative around “abuser one dimensional bad” makes it harder to recognize how complicated actual real life abuse can be. a character can still be bad, in the wrong, and an abuser while genuinely caring and having some semblance of a reason in their head for what they do. in my experience abusers don’t tend to realize they are in the wrong/tend to try to justify it, they’re not always fully consciously acting bad just because/for the sake of causing harm, and theres not always a premeditated plan out of it, either.

this was all sparked by reading some of your asks about the king. about how love can co-exist with abuse (and that doesnt negate the abuse, either, but makes it harder to realize and break out from). it isn’t as black and white as it seems, i like seeing the depths of that more than the portrayal of an abuser being wholly morally black and terrible

i’m super excited to see more of the king, i’m putting him under a microscope. analyzing his actions. he disgusts me but i’m compelled. i want to put him in a microwave just to see what would happen. im especially fascinated by mariner, too, he’ll be a fun beast to dissect (i looove the taixu pmv and how it contrasts him and the king)

and of course - i really appreciate how you write lain’s response to all this! it can be a lot to unpack. i simply feel like i always see more appreciation for the writing of an accurate deconstruction of trauma versus the writing of a good abuser (good in the sense of the writing, not the character). thank you for all the work you put into this wonderful comic! i feel (so far) its an excellent reflection of all the muddy in-between that goes into motivations and actions. there seems to be some semblance of a power corrupts theme going, too, and im super excited to see that develop (whether im proven right or wrong there)

(and because im sending this publicly i don’t condone abuse, i just enjoy dissecting abusers in fiction. enjoyment of a character does not mean i condone those actions in real life)

Hey, I really appreciate this ask. A lot of my writing and my thoughts regarding abusers come from both my own experiences with them as well as interacting with other abuse victims like. everyday (my wife and people in my close friend group). And I agree with everything that you said here. I don't really like the "abuser is one dimensional bad" kind of idea, and in fact kind of works against how hard it is to realize you were abused in the first place. Making abusers Bad All The Time has made me think "well what I went through wasn't that so it couldn't have been abuse" before. Which isn't the case. Abusers can be kind, can be caring, can comfort you when you're upset, can help you out, and can still abuse you. While not the only reason, it's one of the reasons why it's so hard to leave an abusive relationship/realize it was abuse in the first place.

I'm trying not to get super into my own experiences of abuse (I don't wanna just trauma dump on ya lmao), but a lot of the parental stuff in regards to The King is drawn directly from my own experiences (The sexual part is drawn from my wife's (again with permission/encouragement)). I know intimately that a parent can love their child and still treat them like shit. It was only when I started going to therapy and telling people about my experiences that made me realize what I went through Wasn't The Norm and I was in fact abused.

As well, the reason I write abusers like the King and Mariner having reasons for their actions is honestly just a comfort thing for me. I will never know why my abusers treated me the way they did. I will never know the reasons as to why they did what they did, I'll never know what was going on inside of their head. I can guess, but I will never get that kind of closure in my real life. But in this fictional world, I do get to make reasons for their actions. I can give them reasons and justifications and I (the author) get to decide why. and that, at least to me, offers the smallest bit of comfort.

+I'm glad you're enjoying the story <3 Mariner's one of my favorite guys, he's a little freak and I love him soooooooo bad.

[fallenandinlovewithhumanity]

Watched 9-1-1 for the first time (and caught up) Here are some unsolicited and unfiltered opinions about our fave gay firefighter show.

Bobby Nash: Must be protected at all costs. Traumatized dad doing his gosh darn best. So happy he is loved by the 118 and that he seems to be accepting that more now.

Athena Grant: There's a post out here somewhere about how people named after gods/goddess embody that deity. And Athena? Yeah she does exactly that. That woman deserves so much respect for the badass she is.

Howie "Chimney" Han: Silly goofy man who needs a hug and appreciation. His storyline with Kevin and every parallel to Albert made my heart hurt.

Evan "Buck" Buckley: Sweet baby boy, the firefighter Dean Winchester of another universe. I LOVE THIS MAN. Seeing him smile on screen is so infectiously amazing and I want to send a strongly worded letter to all the writers who are clearly trying to make sure I stay in the "fix-it" tag of Ao3. He is by far my comfort character in the show and someone needs to tell that man that he is loved.

Eddie Diaz: If I had to describe my type in two words it would be "Eddie Diaz." Holy fucking shit. (<- written by Buck.) But seriously, I've seen some stuff about how he's not the "best" latino representation because he does not have any specific cultural storylines ( I would love to see celebrations or other cultural things too, maybe for 8B and onward) but I for one feel represented plenty by his complicated relationship with expectations coming from his parents, partners (former or otherwise,) and himself.

Hen Wilson: GIVE THIS WOMAN A BREAK. I love her and it seems like she is always hurting when it comes to her family. Please give my queen a goddamn break. Some domestic bliss would do her kindly.

Maddie Buckley Han: When I say that I would die for her to be safe and happy, I mean it. The Buckley siblings have dealt with so much but Maddie, her storylines not only hit something compelling and dramatic but they are also too fucking real.

Christopher Diaz: I love him. Amazing. A fucking king. No Notes. Please come back to your dad(s).

Carla Price: LOVE THIS LOVELY HUMAN.

The Grant-Nash Fam: Harry and May are interesting characters and I really do love seeing them on screen, I understand why we see less of them though. Michael and David were lovely as well.

The Wilsons: Imma repeat what I said earlier, give them an episode where the biggest thing to happen is juice boxes getting left behind. They need a break. And give Karen more damn screen time that isn't just crying and fighting with Hen.

Josh Russo: the pre-Glee/ post Glee explanation was gold.

Captain Vincent Gerrard: Grumpy old man that needed a cozy job. Loved his "taking you under my wing" moment with Buck.

The Bigger Love Interests (Eddie):

Ana: I really liked her character, but saw how much anxiety was embedded into that relationship. She was never sure of her place and he was never sure he was ready.

Marisol: This felt weirdly rushed and like it happened mostly off screen. The nun thing was... catholic guilt intro I guess??

Shannon: Oof. The drama, the need for closure. I enjoyed having her on screen and I cried when she passed.

The Bigger Love Interests (Buck):

Abby: He was much more invested in the relationship and I think part of it was the circumstances but the way she left him was so damaging to his psyche. Not a fan.

Ali and Natalia: They did not leave a lasting impression on me. Though Natalia being interested in Buck because he died did raise some red flags.

Taylor: Listen... I love her fierce independence so much. But she did Buck so dirty. Trust issues and abandonment issues for Buck coming right back up.

Tommy: Narratively speaking, I tried to understand why he happened but I don't. His confusion at the beginning of the relationship just made me think that he just went along with what Buck thought he wanted. As a character, that man felt a bit one dimensional, and when he showed an ounce of personality it was always an interaction with Buck that made him feel lesser than. I feel blessed that man is off my screen.

The Writing/ The Plot:

At this point I am watching for the two idiots sharing a brain cell. But.. the disasters and plots are out of left field and really interesting. It takes a lot for a procedural type show to not fall into formulaic/ average 911 calls and I feel like at least one writer has a subreddit or something pinned to get ideas. I am far too invested in the 118 to leave now.

What do I ship at this point?

Buck and Eddie.

Athena and Bobby.

Maddie and Chim.

Hen and Karen.

Would I recommend this show?

Abso-fucking-lutely... if you enjoy some pain, I swear all these characters go through so much and the tissue boxes are not enough.

Thanks 9-1-1 for bringing me back to Tumblr.

And if anyone has headcanons, I would love to hear them!

[vigilskeep]

avoiding most reviews like crazy for fear of spoilers, however I’m scared that some have said that rook can do no wrong even when picking the most aggressive impolite options, there’s never any social consequences for *choosing* to be rude, or even dismissing others worldviews and beliefs.

i will say a lot about inquisition, but at least it let the player have complicated relationships with the party by not having everyone agree to everything they say as the word of god

us getting to have complicated relationships with the party in dragon age inquisition is, frankly, news to me

personally i’ve seen more of people suggesting you can’t be as rude in the first place, than people saying the game doesn’t react when you are? to which i have to say, yes, interactions with the party are going to be different in veilguard than in previous dragon age games. they’re writing a protagonist who the plot requires to be more of a hero type who chose to join this venture, every party member is essential to the main plot, and they’re openly going for a “found family” dynamic, which (i would strongly argue) they’ve never done before. the group is intended to work as a whole, to be people who all care about each other, rather than simply being tied together by your player character. you’re not going to have a situation like in every other game where companions can get thrown out or betrayed or aggressively belittled by the protagonist, because this party simply would not work if you were doing that to certain members. the story they are telling this time would not make sense

however, i’m yet to see that that means we can’t have complicated relationships with the companions? in fact, we know it allows for main plot choices with lasting, drastic consequences on our relationships with certain companions. we know you can disagree with characters and still progress your relationships with them. there are new opportunities that we never had in previous games for all companions to be closely involved in what’s going on, and thus for all companions to have opinions that matter on all of rook’s decisions. i’ve already seen footage of companion commentary absolutely not holding back on challenging even relatively small choices

i think challenges from this style of companion can be very compelling in their own way. if all these companions are considered equally good-aligned by the narrative and care about each other, and they still sharply disagree, it suggests fewer conflicts with simple right answers. i think that could be a breath of fresh air from previous dragon age games which have often and regularly fallen into the trap of “obvious good answer” and “the answer your slightly evil companions will like”. there’s a reason so many worldstate decisions and quest endings are overwhelmingly popular, right? isn’t it possible it will be just as interesting to engage with a story where you are definitively written as good-aligned, but that means you get real choices between options just as justifiable as each other—or as bad as each other?

it’s a change so it’s by nature not going to be for everyone. you’re not going to be able to play certain kinds of character that you could in previous games and if that’s what you were looking for in another da game, that’s a disappointment. but i don’t think dragon age should necessarily be restricted by that forever? like i don’t think it’s necessarily conducive to good storytelling to always have to input evil/mean options and reactivity just for the sake of it. and i completely understand why it would be detrimental to the game they’ve chosen to make this time. their primary selling point and concept is the complex team dynamics. can you imagine the sheer bulk of writing it would take to have these companions as thoroughly invested in each other’s lives as they seem to be, and let you be horrible to particular ones? for how many players’ benefit? for what story coherency, when building these relationships is the plot of the game? i don’t really see the point

that’s how i feel about it idk. i’m optimistic. i also don’t rlly think jumping to conclusions at this point is worthwhile. the reviews are largely positive. it’s coming out in a day and a half. let’s just wait and see?

[veliseraptor]

got tagged in this one by @paradife-loft a while ago and decided to finally get around to it!

tagging @brawlite, @silvysartfulness, @anghraine, @ameliarating and uhhh anyone else who feels like it

5 Things You'll Find in My Writing

Grief/mourning, or loss more generally. I'm not totally sure why this has been such a recurring thing in my fic (and has been for years) but it is certainly something I keep circling back to. I think there is something to me very compelling about both the emotion itself and the...presence of absence, if that makes sense. The way someone can still be there even when they aren't there anymore. It doesn't come up in everything but I think even when it's not direct it's often there obliquely in ways that don't have to do with death itself.

Recovery arcs. At one point I might've said "redemption arcs" but I actually think that's less accurate to the kind of stories I'm more interested in, which are less about atonement or making good than they are about people going through it and finding some way to "get better", whatever that might mean - and it can mean a lot of things. It's much more about the character's internal experience and outlook on the world than it is about any external validation or judgment by the narrative. I'm much more interested in how characters reconcile with themselves than how the world reconciles with them, is maybe a pithy way of putting it.

Poorly adjusted trauma reactions. I mean this goes hand in hand with the kind of characters I tend to write, who generally have some kind of trauma baggage and are handling it in the worst way possible, usually externalized and often both self- and other people-destructive, but at least other people-destructive for sure. I find this particular kind of ugliness and messiness very compelling to explore, both in terms of what it says about how trauma can shape people for the worse and also, on some level, as a way of exploring the idea that people who do bad things can still be worthy of compassion.

Very different people coming to an understanding. Usually when I'm doing this the people hate each other, but it's not necessarily a requirement - I do like to start from a place of distrust at the very least, though. It's a character dynamic that I can trace going all the way back to some of my earliest (original) writing. I think in a lot of ways one of the things I'm fascinated by in writing terms comes down to communication - how people communicate with each other, how they don't, where it breaks down. What it means to communicate with someone when it's the last thing you want to do. I think that's what this is really digging into at the base of it, but the form it specifically takes most often is this one: people with profound differences, often outright hostility, finding some way to cooperate. It's curious to me that on the face of it this seems like a very utopian trope but I never intend to execute it that way.

The Aftermath. In some ways this goes back to the grief/mourning thing and probably that has a lot to do with this, but one of the things I am always most interested in digging into is the what comes after of a situation. This is most obviously what's behind the ex-villain project, which is specifically asking the question "what happens when your redemption equals death gambit fails", but it crops up other places too. It's probably why on AO3 "Post-Canon" is one of my most frequently used tags. This doesn't even have to be about a post-canon scenario, though - it's about looking at something that is typically an ending and tugging at it to go but what here remains unresolved? What is still complicated? What now?

Another thing I thought of that does come up a lot is questions of agency/choice, but I thought of it later so I stuck with the ones I came up with first.

[transformersconfessions]

not to add to all the megastar confessions lately, but i would like to add my perspective as someone who is a big starscream fan and also has megastar as my current favorite ship.

first of all, i think its important to mention that obviously not every fan is going to be into it in the same way. some people may choose to play with them in more comedic, light hearted scenarios while others may be more interested in darker scenarios that dig into it as an abuse dynamic. for some people it really does boil down to finding it hot in some way, and for other people it may be a combination of all of this, or some other reason entirely. i personally am open to most intepretations of the dynamic, but i do gravitate to stories where they are framed as an abusive relationship, because thats what i find most compelling.

i think its entirely fair to feel uncomfortable by certain types of content, especially when it deals with triggering subjects. but those stories still serve a purpose for the people reading them. is the same reason some people read tragedies, because it's an evocative story, and a lot of people are interested in complicated characters and relationships purely because it makes for a good story, and not because they lack the ability to tell its wrong. people are generally capable of engaging with complicated themes in fiction without wishing to advocate for them in real life. i think the only reason ships like megastar end up being so controversial is because theres this idea that shipping involves viewing something as romantic, when shipping can also just be about finding something interesting. i dont see why liking terrible characters is deemed okay, but liking terrible relationships is not. why is one more dangerous than the other inherently? people have an aversion to dark subjects when it applies to romance and sex specifically. and this is fair on a personal level but cannot be used against others with different boundaries and limits.

when it comes to people finding it hot, i think people have a very reductive view on it. power dynamics are a common aspect of kink, and some people choose to explore said power dynamics through fiction. it doesnt mean you cant acknowledge that a dynamic like that would be horrible if replicated, but fantasy is rarely meant to be 1:1 with our real life desires. most sexual fantasies are not literal. and where does the line between finding something interesting and finding it erotic begin? where does it end? most people i know who find the relationship hot are very self aware of the nature of it, and simultaneously care a lot about it on a narrative level and are very dedicated to analyzing it and giving it thought. fiction can evoke multiple feelings on a person, and its not going to make you feel the exact same as if it was a real situation. stories are not meant to be treated exactly like real life, theyre meant to be treated like, well, stories.

this isnt to say abuse apologism cant be expressed through fiction, but it honestly doesnt look like what most people think it does. fanfiction with problematic relationships in a sexual light is often meant to be read within a fetishistic context where its already understood that these relationships are an exploration of certain fantasies and not supposed to be replicated, while there are certain stories that, for example, attempt to justify the abuse or act like its not happening because the author genuinely believes it is okay, and part of reading things critically means being able to understand what message the author wants you to come across. this absolutely applies to fan works as well. its a very nuanced discussion that has more to do with being able to understand the themes of fiction works and their purpose, but people boil it down to "dark fiction is inherently bad, and using fiction to explore dark sexual fantasies is also bad and means you believe abuse is okay."

i would also add that as someone who has been abused, the reality is that for a lot of victims it does leave us with complicated feelings for our abuser that are difficult to reconcile, and fiction is an avenue to explore that. my sexual fantasies were definitely impacted by my trauma, and thats a really ugly and uncomfortable truth, we dont like to think of victims as having complex feelings on our trauma or "gross" trauma responses, but it happens, and judgement like this certainly doesnt create safe spaces for those of us with unpalatable responses.

.

[desmon1995]

Derailed: The Anthem of Anxiety

Derailed this is more often than not held as at least one of the top five songs from the album and I wanted to make an ode to it to analyze I think why it's easily one of the best songs that shows that LMM and Eisa Davis are masters of their craft.

*Derailed* hits like a warped reflection of one of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s iconic madrigals—the kind where overlapping voices collide into a storm of sound and emotion. If it had a kindred spirit, it might be *Blackout* from *In the Heights*, but twisted into something darker, more unhinged, like anxiety given a melody.

What makes *Derailed* particularly striking is how it opens from Cleon’s first-person perspective, recounting the moment her life was literally and figuratively derailed at a train in Dekalb. If we assume the album takes place in the same gritty 1979 as the film, it’s tempting to link Cleon’s story to the infamous 1961 train derailment at Lincoln Highway and Fourth Street. The idea of her being a child caught in the chaos is a chilling one, though history complicates the narrative—this wasn’t a passenger train, and the only children involved were in cars nearby, not on board. Still, the imagery of that disaster looms large, adding an eerie layer of plausibility to Cleon’s backstory.

The crash out Cleon is having is understandable considering she saw one of her inspiration Cyrus gets shot in the head and she managed to actually witness Luther committing the murder.

(also note the Davis stated that she sprinkled some Hamilton references throughout this song and the world falls down is the first one).

I think this is where one of the more compelling parts happens because Luther and by extension his gang begin to rally everybody around the idea that the Warriors are the ones who diced Cyrus.

Musically, we can hear just how powerful Luther's voice is because this song shifts into being a Black Sabbath styled riff that has the honor of being the first time Rock being introduced into the album.

I wanted to hone in on this that Luther and by extension the cops are defined by rock and roll/metal is another really clever use of thematic storytelling.

For those who may not know, these genres WERE CREATED BY POC, primarily African Americans with Chuck Berry being the father of rock and roll along with big mama thornton, and heavy metal owing its creation to Jimi Hendrix.

Luther and his gang were given a seat at the cookout and metaphorically and literally used that opportunity to devastate said community with a full-blown hate crime while simultaneously appropriating something from that culture as if it's theirs.

Tangent asid, Luther takes advantage of all of the chaos and blames the Warriors which all of the predominant male gang members just follow because at the end of the day the loudest white voice in the room will always be a guiding voice unknowing or not in a very eurocentric country.

if you watch the movie, Cleon is literally being attacked by the Rouges and Griffs because she can't really see a place to escape and as she's being overpowered she yells for the Warriors to escape.

I do find an interesting that both Swan and Ajax are both the ones coordinating the girls through all the chaos with Ajax telling everybody to stay down and Swan trying to find an opening for them to escape.

Cochise seems to be the primary muscle during this portion as well.

Something I didn't really noticed until I actually looked at the lyric video today was that in the background you can hear the other gang saying things like " Cyrus GOES DOWN and Sirens" which is really neat.

Derailed is also super important because it's the one that introduces all of the motifs of the various characters.

Ajax near the end laments that she hates running, Luther as I said, is in the background yelling that Cyrus went down which foreshadows his own song going down, and then there's Fox's character Arc.

Fox’s melody and lyrics here are both reprised in Reunion Square, where the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ are changed to ‘I’ as Fox fights the cop; interesting to note that the cop also sings this melody underneath Fox in Reunion Square, harmonising to show that he, too, has only one goal – survival – in that moment.

Pippa Soo is the phenomenal actress that plays both Eliza Hamilton and Fox, and in many ways these characters mirror one another since both of them want to keep their loved ones alive but Fox sort of pulls a Philip Hamilton because Fox starts off as being kind of the most haughty of the Warriors and as noted on the reddit, she even speaks in a much more sultry voice during her Cypher verse and to make yourself seem on the level as her older sisters (she seems to be trying to emulate Ajax).

Another thing that I want to comment on is the Griff's " WHO WILL SAVE US"

This cry could be said to draw a comparison between Cyrus and a messiah figure like Jesus.The vision she shared with the crews of the 5 boroughs promised them a city they could feel safe in if they trust in each other, similar to the promise Jesus makes to deliver the Israelites to a land of milk and honey if they trust in him (Exodus 3:8 KJV). She also encourages them to view each other as brothers and sisters under this new truce and to protect each other accordingly – also similar to how those who follow the will of God are viewed as brothers and sisters in the eyes of Jesus (Matthew 12:48-50). Overall, this vision promised some form of salavation for the crews of New York just as a messiah promises salvation to their people.The fact that the Riffs ask who will save them now suggests they viewed Cyrus as their messiah for a promised future and that without her, that future is lost.

Masai largely echoes the sentiment later on in " Still Breathing" were after he finishes beating up Cleon he ends up puking his emotions out.

It's been talked about the death, but I feel like at that point Cyrus and the fact that you was a woman did it register she ended up becoming something completely non-binary, a symbol.

While the way her game went about it was completely wrong, it shows that her spirit can metaphorically be embodied by anybody regardless of who they are but it seems like most of the gangs saw her as more than your average woman which mistakenly causes them to revert back to punching down on others like marginalize women.

The song ends with Luther chanting his iconic "Warriors come out and play" as the Warriors run away through the cemetery.

Although you can't see it, in the movie Cleon completely dismantle Luther which again foreshadows what's about to happen to him later on.

Luther for whatever reason has headcannoned the Warriors is being a bunch of weak little girls that are running away for their lives but in actuality they're a pride of lionesses the know how to maneuver their way through tough situations even when society is beating them throughout the night.

He finds out the hard way when he and Crosby ride into their den on Coney Island and Swan gives him a one-sided beatdown.

And that's the analysis.

Derailed is incredibly loaded in a good way and out of literally any musical number I've seen for a while does a great job of establishing everything without beating you over the head.

[copperbadge]

Hi, please ignore if this is too personal, but as someone with Jewish ancestors who is considering conversion, I'd love to know your reasons for converting? For me it's more about community and reconnecting with that part of my family (there's a complicated family history there) than about religious belief, but I'm worried that might not be enough of a reason, if you know what I mean?

I don't know, I think conversion to Judaism is hard enough that if you don't have "enough" of a reason, you'll find out -- but I also think that one doesn't have to have a "sufficient" reason to convert to any faith which allows it, just determination and respect. If you want a connection to your ancestors and community, that's a very powerful motivation. And if it's not enough to sustain you through conversion, that's still a huge self-discovery for you, and while some practice should remain closed, you can still connect through things like traditionally Jewish foods and appreciation for Jewish art and culture.

For me, it's not that it's too personal, but it's difficult to vocalize; often when I'm asked about converting there's an assumption that I'm marrying a Jewish person, and when I say no, I usually add, "I just hear a call." Which admittedly is much more often said by Christians joining a ministry, but it's the most truthful I know how to be in short. Something in Judaism speaks to something in me. I have very little Jewish ancestry (although every time the DNA websites reevaluate their calculations it ticks up a percentage point, which is hilarious to me; I'm up from 2% to 6% currently) but the attitude towards the divine, the strength of tradition, the respect for learning, they all speak to my soul.

Even the hard stuff -- content in Torah or Talmud that I find difficult to reconcile with modern sensibility -- is at least something to challenge me, and Judaism is a faith that encourages argument, so I'm allowed to have a critical opinion of it. I think a lot about a quote I read from someone (possibly a reader, if so I am so sorry I can't find your name in my memory) who said, "I keep kosher, but sometimes I eat bacon when I'm mad at G-d." I think a lot about my Methodist confirmation class, where I was almost kicked out because I thought the Parable of the Wedding Feast was stupid and continued to argue against it after, realistically, I should have stopped; if it had been a class for a Bar Mitzvah, we might have been allowed to really examine it instead of glancing across it awkwardly and moving on. (As I found out years later, it was basically about how anyone can be a Christian but Jews should be punished for refusing to convert, so you know. Even as a kid I was very Jewish in my approach to theology and knew anti-Semitic propaganda when I heard it.)

I like that so many of the traditions involve things that I find compelling: bread, fire, water, the written word, the cycle of the harvest. I like that there's a search for truth and precision in Jewish scholarship, and that scholarship often seems to reward a neurodiverse approach to faith and study. As someone committed to philanthropy and versed in radical compassion, the exhortation to care for others baked into every foundational Jewish text is also very attractive. Some of the prayers I find viscerally satisfying (particularly the Traveler's Prayer, for some reason).

I find faith in a single divine entity extremely difficult, but one of the first things that got me to seriously consider Judaism (something I'd already been interested in) was being told that you can be an atheist Jew. To be able to commit to a faith community while still struggling with faith itself feels special to me. Whether a divine entity caused the miracle of the oil we celebrate this time of year is immaterial to me; the beauty of the narrative, the righteous rebellion rewarded with eight nights of light, is enough for me.

I might never finish conversion; realistically while I've done a lot of studying I still haven't worked extensively with a rabbi on a conversion path, and I do not call myself a Jew and won't until I complete conversion (I do observe a lot of the holidays and prayers, but mainly because that's generally advice to converts, so they can understand the demands of the faith and the myriad issues with being Publicly Jewish). But that's fine too; Judaism has been around for thousands of years, it'll wait for me, and if I never convert I'm still enjoying the journey.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

You're telling me after she goes ride or die for him like you said and all the stuff she did this episode she's still hesitating between him and the ex eunuch? I saw some people who read the novel say she does some very messy things to him even later on and I'm dreading it so much.

I'm genuinely going to try to not be snarky here, but relationships are complicated?

If you want a cdrama that goes from the spectrum of love, mutual ride and die, and no mess, there are a lot of very fluffy modern cdramas that will cater exactly to your taste.

But here, the drama (and the novel which the drama has been following decently) makes it clear that Li Rong is this character who doesn't necessarily understand love. Not because she's incapable of it (all of her actions in fact reveal her as a character with deep capacity to love), but it doesn't exist in that palace environment she grew up in where her own birth mother is willing to sacrifice her for her brother's and her clan's power. So of course there is messiness! She's unlearning her damage!

And her and PWX's relationship is complicated and nuanced. I will note that even PWX himself is not forcing her to return his feelings after his confession in the rain. He understands that there is a lot of history between them (and with her and SRQ, who after all was her companion for 20 years). But what's so compelling about her and PWX's relationship is that even though they can't quite label it, they consider each other as family.

TL;DR - relationships are complicated. It's perfectly fine to nope out of a narrative you don't like. But the way these characters act make narrative sense.

[utilitycaster]

Saw a post in the tags; did exandria historically have a thing abt persecuting ruidusborn? The post mind you was largely lambasting the gods along the lines of "these gods should shut the fuck up abt their extermination when their followers in modern day are going after ruidusborn" which... Doesn't seem like the same thing for a number of reasons but also I wanted to ask a wiki person because i didn't think that anyone was actually doing that

Hi anon,

I don't know if I've seen that post precisely - there's a very good chance it's from someone who I have blocked and haven't thought to check to see what wild stabs in the dark they're making now, to be blunt about it - but this is pretty much entirely incorrect and/or deliberately leaving out crucial context.

Exandria historically had a stigma about Ruidusborn. There has been no evidence of widespread persecution specifically for being Ruidusborn. What little negative responses we have seen and have evidence of has either not actually been specifically "this person is Ruidusborn" but rather "this person has uncontrolled and invasive psychic powers that are negatively impacting me specifically and so I am, understandably, put off"; or has been a mere acknowledgement that a stigma exists. Notably, this has not specifically come from followers of the gods. We haven't seen any information about the presence of religion in Gelvaan and Laura herself as Imogen has alternately said once that she did pray to the gods and multiple times that she didn't, so anything here is entirely presumptive. (We also know that Imogen literally didn't know what Ruidusborn were until it was told to her, so I think we can pretty safely say that prejudice against Ruidusborn simply for being born under the moon, rather than like, the invasive psychic powers, was not the issue there). Alma, Orym's mother, mentioned that the Ashari attempt to avoid having Ruidusborn by delaying birth simply because of that stigma (episode 3x66) and the Ashari aren't affiliated with a deity.

The Ruidusborn page on the wiki is here, and you can cross-check with the citations (I am flattered that you ask me as a wiki person, but a wiki is a public document anyone can edit - if you are wondering, and especially if you are trying to debunk something, please cross check citations for the source of truth). I cover the key ones below.

Per Call of the Netherdeep, page 6, the widespread superstition about Ruidusborn themselves is that they are "destined to bring suffering to others, or to experience great tragedy in their own lives". This is actually less harsh than the superstition about those who study Ruidus, who are believed to be "compelled to cause misfortune and woe". Estani, in Episode 3x19 states the following: "Many important, whether for honor or great sorrow, individuals of history have been claimed to have been born under such a ruddy light." We also know, from Call of the Netherdeep, that Alyxian the Apotheon was both Ruidusborn and a devotee of the Prime Deities, receiving blessings from three of them. Obviously Fearne lived a weird and sheltered life, but we didn't find out she was Ruidusborn until we met Birdie, and she never experienced any prejudice about it during EXU or early C3 or really after that, unless you count the fact that people attuned to the conflict on either side (see next two paragraphs) like Otohan and Groon noticed it. In short: the lore about Ruidusborn and the responses to Ruidusborn in history are varied and complicated.

Finally, just from watching the show: people who do not know Imogen is Ruidusborn nor related to Liliana and whom she does not use her psychic powers on tend to respond pretty positively to her now that those powers are largely under control. I've talked before but there is a certain type of fan of Imogen that leans heavily on the "stripped of choice" narrative in which she has never done anything wrong in her entire life and has always been a victim of cruel circumstance (and more generally tends to abdicate all responsibility for their blorbos - and, frankly, themselves - not realizing that people who squirm out of their obligations are loathed for good reason and they're only worsening the response to both their blorbos and themselves). Anyway, the idea that she was persecuted simply for the circumstances of her birth and not that those circumstances led her to do things that are genuinely extremely offputting, even if done involuntarily, is a relic of that "stripped of choice victim" false narrative.

Now: it is technically true that followers of the gods in Exandria in 843 PD are going after a large number of Ruidusborn. If you have been watching Campaign 3 of Critical Role and are not absolutely fucking stupid you may have noticed this is because the Ruby Vanguard, which heavily recruited from Ruidusborn, have instigated widespread unrest and are actively trying to kill the gods by unleashing Predathos. They are not going after all Ruidusborn; in fact, they've worked with several Ruidusborn prior to Imogen and Fearne and their main reason for suspicion was "you are literally the children of generals for our enemies, and also all other Ruidusborn we previously worked with ended up leaving to join the other side", not "you are Ruidusborn and so you are bad." They are going after the army that recruited Ruidusborn to kill the gods. The Ruby Vanguard shot first.

Really, it's the same nonsensical circular logic being put forth re Aeor and Ruidusborn. The people who specifically plotted annihilation of the gods first were Aeor (with the Factorum Malleus) and Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard (with the Malleus Keys and the intended unleashing of Predathos). To be clear: I am not denying people may have had negative experiences with the gods, but in both cases, their response wasn't to spite them: it was to attempt total annihilation. It was to create something with the intent of destroying every single god. We do have a word for that, and people keep solely using it about Aeor while ignoring it was the instigator. The gods (and their followers) are in both the case of Aeor and the Vanguard responding to an attempt at their extermination, and then these people are like "um, why won't the gods just sit still and let themselves be executed? Figures that these horrible entities are trying to stop the firing squad that has their guns pointed at them. This is just more proof that they should die - what kind of terrible person doesn't lie down and let themselves be killed!"

For what it's worth, I do not think that if Bells Hells and the Exandrian Accord foil Ludinus and the Vanguard's plans they will then proceed to exterminate all Ruidusborn, because their intent is stopping people from unleashing an existential threat that would kill all the gods, not murdering people because they were born during Ruidus flares. The goal here is not extermination; the goal is their own continued survival which requires the painful and difficult choice of sometimes killing those who are dedicated to trying to kill them. This isn't like, a novel concept in fantasy, history, nor ethics, but we are not dealing with the brightest stars in the fandom firmament here.

I mentioned before that I have yet to see a post that posits all the gods should die or that sides with Aeor entirely that isn't riddled with factual inaccuracies from the lore, and that I wish we had "readers added context" options on Tumblr; sadly, we do not. I am happy to answer questions like these, but I do want to encourage people to check the actual text. If anything seems off? You can definitely ask me (and I do have all the CR sourcebooks so if you don't, I get it) but also we've got searchable transcripts that I highly recommend using. Don't take any posts - mine included - at face value if it doesn't line up with what you personally understand. But also make sure what you personally understand is supported by the text.

[lurkingshan]

Unknown (2024)

A Plug and a Content Warning

I have watched the first two episodes of this drama and this is, hands down, the best bl I have seen out of Taiwan in years. The creators have a firm grasp on the story they are telling, the characters are extremely well drawn, the relationships are compelling, and the production is strong enough to support the narrative. The show is based on a novel by Priest, and the confidence in the writing is evident.

That said, I cannot give a blanket recommendation for folks to pick this show up. For one, it’s centered on a romance between (essentially) adoptive brothers. So right out of the gate, if that trope is a no go for you, you will not like this. The family bond is very real and I expect it to be a very real complication.

On top of that, this show is quite dark. Our little family have survived some very rough childhoods. CWs for the first two episodes alone: child abuse, including CSA, child abandonment, homelessness, poverty, gang violence, blood, PTSD. If you decide to watch, please know that some of the content is truly upsetting. Please take care and know your limits.

Priest has a pretty strong track record with writing complex trauma and nuanced family dynamics so I am inclined to believe this has a strong chance of holding up, assuming the adaptation remains solid. All caveats above aside, I’m excited to have another strong Taiwanese drama to sink my teeth into.

[wolfsetfree-if]

Another anon's two-cents if you'd like,

I think it's okay and even good that it might be frustrating. It makes a ton of sense for a game about healing to have frustrating moments because healing itself not garunteed to be a smooth or even linear process which IS frustrating when you just want to heal and return to normalcy. It isnt throwing a wrench in the works fot the sake of padding the plot or weighing down the pacing, it feels natural and serves a narrative purpose, lending weight to the idea that healing is a long, sometimes complicated process that isn't always smooth sailing. so the narrative, if anything, is advanced when mc encounters a potentially frustrating wall or set back. And not only does it make for an understandable and relatable story, but if you want to give potientially frustrated players a way to vent that within the story itself it could turn a frustration with the story's mechanicals or pacing to a way to empathize with mc.

Giving mc the chance to experience and react to setbacks through hope, frustration, or dejection in these situations literally builds their character, and being able to interact with that character building process in different ways depending on our mood or the kind of character we want to play through choices, even if its just an emotional response, is a big part of what makes interactive fiction so compelling in the first place!

Sorry for the wall of text, either way I'll enjoy the story, Im already invested in mc and their new pack and looking forward to updates 🥰

Thank you so much for this very thoughtful ask, anon. I completely empathise and agree with everything you said.

It is why I have decided to go with this path, because as you said it fits the main theme of healing of the game, and healing is painful, frustrating and can bring one step forward and three steps back.

I'm going to try my best to both describe MC's emotions and give the players varied possible reactions to the setbacks MC will go through.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #62 – Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

This is the latest in my now-extremely-belated attempt to read all the nominees for Best Novella from this year’s Hugos (only need to hunt down a copy of Seeds of Mercury somewhere now!) It was a well-done, enjoyable read – nothing to change your life but, frankly, would have been far more deserving of the prize than Thornhedge was.

This is the fourth in the Singing Hills Cycle, following the itinerant archivist-monk Cleric Chih as they travel across a vaguely Chinese fantasy setting collecting histories and folktales to be collected into the monastery archives. After nearly three years walking the earth, they return to the titalur monastery itself to discover Cleric Thien, a very senior cleric and their own mentor, has died in the intern. Of more pressing concern, two members of their family are outside the gates – one of them a corporal in the Imperial Army with her command of two war-mammoths – demanding their body turned over to buried with their family and ancestors instead of interned in the monastery catacombs. And if that wasn’t enough of a complication Myriad Virtues, Thien’s companion neixin, has been driven to self-mutilation and a total withdrawal by her grief. It is, needless to say, an eventful funeral.

For all that, it’s not a particularly exciting novella, let alone an action-packed one. It’s very much, and very consciously, About Grief in a few different ways. Compared to earlier stories in the series, the narrative is far simpler, with none of the playing around with framing devices, unreliable narrators, or stories-within-stories that have kind of been the cycle’s trademark until now. The freed up space is instead used to make Chih far more of an actual character than they have been previously, rather than just a cipher to experience the narrative happening around them.

I do find myself slightly annoyed at the book because having set out such a genuinely messy and compelling conflict – both on the level of ‘who gets to decide what funerary traditions to follow and where the body is kept, the religious institution or the aristocratic family?’ being the sort of thing that has absolutely started wars, and with ‘who decides how someone should be remembered and grieved, their family or the people they choice to build a life with’ being a theme with a certain amount of contemporary resonance even without the whole thing where clerics are universally refereed to as they/them and Thien’s granddaughters kept insistently referring to them as a man – the book gave itself an easy way out on several different levels. But that’s just me being irritated it isn’t a different story entirely – this is a gentle, elegiac story; the central emotion is the melancholy of quietly organizing a loved one’s things after they’ve passed. On that level it works quite well and is even beautiful at points.

I’ve said before that this series would adapt near-perfectly into a high budget miniseries with a 40-60 minute episode per novella, and I stand by that. If anything, it feels like it’s only getting more true. It does feel like a bit of a loss, though – maybe I’m remembering it as more than it was, but I think Empress of Salt and Fortune had a level of thematic and narrative ambition that all of its sequels have kind of lacked. This and Into the Riverlands especially feel like they exist in a different and...shallower? Simpler? Clearer? Register than the first two entries in the Cycle.

Ah well. It would have to far a long way before it was even in the conversation for most disappointing book I read because of a Hugo nomination. On balance, lovely read with a dog cuddled up beside you on the sofa.

[magerywrites]

magery hello,,!! i hope this isnt too forward but i discovered you via _maiqo on twitter a long while ago and have been absolutely enamored by your works ever since — your writing is an enormous inspiration to me and i sincerely hope that my works can one day match the same level of excellence.

you absolutely dont have to indulge me at all, but is there any advice you can give in terms of writing character studies? :’D if not its totally ok !! and anything works !! i just figured it’s worth a shot haha

Thank you very much! It's always lovely to learn that what I've written has meant something to someone. I appreciate it.

In an attempt to answer your question, I'll talk about how I think about and approach character studies. It may be that much of what I say fails to be useful to you, but I hope to be of some small aid regardless!

To begin, I think the most fundamental element of writing a character study—as a piece of fanfiction, though much of this can be applied without significant difficulty to orginal works—is to have a firm vision of who the character is to you.

This is separate from having a firm vision of who the character "really" is. Nobody can have that—every way we engage with media is coloured by our own values and perspectives, and that bleeds into the way we think about and write characters. This is sometimes a difficult dichotomy to balance against the principle of "they would not fucking say that", but to borrow some old and too-simplified physics, I think it can be useful to consider that a character is in many ways like an electron in an electron cloud. Their precise and perfect characterisation is not something that we can ever truly locate, but we can identify the area of narrative space it is most likely to be in.

The task of the character study, I feel, is to hammer down on the part of that narrative space that you find most compelling. To take the meat of their character and cook it the way you would want it served to you. A character study is not to please anyone else. A character study—or, at least, the kind of character study I write—exists for you to get your feelings out about the character you have been rotating in your brain onto the page. It also exists, of course, so that you can try to show those feelings to other people and hope they feel them too, but you will never succeed in actually capturing those feelings in the first place if you don't allow yourself to write your authentic vision of the character.

They don't have to be your blorbo, or your problematic fave, or your three corners of the OC design triangle, or whatever, but when you write them, for that space and time they do have to be yours. Otherwise, what's the point?

Once you have that vision, you can put them in practically any situation you like and as long as there's something in it for them to bounce off, you're going to be able to tell a story that reveals something about the character. If you look at the "plots" of a selection of my character studies, we have "one guy folds sheets, another guy asks him questions" as a plot, we have "a pair of exes talk across a tabletop after a party", we have "oh LAWD they FAWKING" like four and a half times, we have "retelling the plot of something else" twice, and we even have "two people on a helicopter flight for an hour". It's not really complicated stuff. It doesn't need to be. The character, or characters, just need to be in a situation where they're going to have some reason to think about, and maybe even talk about, whatever conflict or idea or relationship you find most compelling about them.

With that said, it should be noted that it's... well, for me, with the way I do things, it's very very difficult to conceive of writing a character study in any situation without a clear and central conflict the character or characters are grappling with. All of my character studies revolve around a problem a character has and how they react to it. And yes, "having a conflict" is, like, the quiddity of a story, the most basic plot diagram there is. But what I'm trying to say here is that even in the story I mentioned where two people sit in a helicopter and talk to each other, the story is intensely focused on the internal struggle one of those characters is having with the choices that led to her sitting in that helicopter and how much they do, or don't, make her like the person she's sitting opposite (both more and less than she knows). And that's the sort of thing that I think is key. The conflict, in my eyes, needs to be philosophically central to the way you view the character and what you want to say about them. It needs to be tightly intertwined into what you find most compelling about them—the thing that you just want to sink your hands into and squeeze, for good or ill. That's how you get to really show the world who they are and why you care about that.

After that, I really think that in a lot of ways it just comes down to the prose. How deeply can you write into your character's head? Are you colouring even your description of the world around them with the way they would see it—or are you taking the opposite path and presenting the character entirely through someone else's eyes, so that you can characterise them through the distance between what the other person thinks about them and how they present themselves? You don't need frame-perfect metaphors or the Inanna-Ishtar LGBTQIA+ sharingan-coloured prose to do that, but you do need to focus on writing in a way that expresses the character.

This does take focus. How much focus depends on how specialised you are into that style of prose, but it is focus nonetheless: you need to think of your sentences, each and every one, as tools to communicate something about your understanding of the character that you want the audience to know. Some of them will inevitably instead become vehicles to reach a point where you can communicate that understanding, but something as simple as what a character notices first when they walk into a room tells you something about them. Lean on that. Lean into that. After all, if you're writing a character study, the writing should study your character.

(Colour this advice with the fact that I am, as you've probably realised from reading my writing, very much a prose-focused writer. I have spent near on fifteen years, since before I even graduated high school, honing my prose for poetry of language and interiority so that I can write in the way I most enjoy reading. That affects what I value in writing, and it affects my opinion on the way people should write. I believe what I am saying is true and good and useful, because I have faith in the way I engage with my art, but my advice does not chart the sole and singular course to the ever-distant utopia.)

To tl;dr myself, my advice for writing character studies fundamentally boils down to to the idea that I think a character study is most potent when it presents a vision of a character that the writer has clearly obsessed over. That they have layered with their thoughts, their perspective, and their heart to the degree that it drips even from their prose. A character study with the confidence to say this is what I think is compelling about this character, and I want you to see it too.

I may not agree with it, I may think "They Would Not Have Fucking Said That", I may even think the writer has just invented an unsustainable interpretation of the character that demonstrates startling reading incomprehension and I can't believe I have to share the same fandom as these people.

But at the same time, I know people have thought and said that about my own works—and I'm still happy that I wrote them.

I have far more respect for someone who's written an entirely committed and deranged interpretation of a character that I think is Flatly Fucking Wrong than I do someone who presents me with the most milquetoast interpretation I can't disagree with. If I choose to read a character study, it's because I want to see you study the character. That's, as the meme goes, why I'm here.

So, really: focus on determining who you think the character is, write them the way you want to see them written, keep your prose tight to who you think the character is (not just "would they say that?" or "would they think that?" but "how would they describe that?" and "what would they see in that?"), and commit to the bit.

(If you've managed to read to the bottom—thank you for entertaining my rambling, and I hope it helped!)