#And ergo how to effectively write a character interacting with the world who has it

[bonefall]

the clans use salt for healing and cooking if i remember correctly. im only saying this because would someone ever name their kid "saltkit"

Yes! Saltkit is a valid prefix in BB, but only after moving to the Lake.

Before then, they make a sort-of-salt out of burning dandelion root. They consider this material a kind of soot, fine ashes produced by burning something. The rough translation of this spice is "soot-salty-taste."

Salty (taste) = Byyle (Comes from blood-taste)

Soot (ashes produced by finely burning something) = Keybo (Used alone in artsy contexts, usually describes bistre, a pigment made from soot and water.)

Plant Salt (of coltsfoot or dandelion) = Keybyy

To specify if it comes from Dandelion or Coltsfoot, you'd say Keybyy Raerra or Keybyy Hakprru. There aren't two dedicated words for the difference; these are both considered "types of dandelions" by Clan cats.

Dandelion = Awpo Any flowering ground plant with fluffy yellow petals.

This is why they didn't previously have a word for salt itself! They would only ever encounter raw salt as an animal lick, which they'd call Byylebon. Salty-useful-rock. Because it was associated with humans, they wouldn't steal them or interact with them much.

Rraash is a Townmew loanword, a word they adopted for raw, powdered salt during their time trading with BloodClan. At the Lake, they now collect raw sea salt during "Salt Patrols," which are beach trips where a big collection of apprentices are brought to the ocean to learn how to collect and process salt.

So, depending on how the parents would like to name their child, those translations could be;

Byylemew = Saltykit The taste of salt. Could refer to the flavor of blood, the taste of the ocean, or the spice made from burned dandelion roots. Has a very food-y connotation, probably named by gourmands.

Keybyymew = Saltkit, Spicekit, Seasoningkit, Rubkit This is a very ThunderClan sort of name. They traditionally used a lot of keybyy in their recipes, as it's very important for a good marinade and making ham. Though, it wouldn't be too surprising to see it used in WindClan too.

Rraashmew = Saltkit, Brinekit Raw salt. Made from boiling ocean water during large expeditions to the sea called a "Salt Patrol." Used as a medicine AND as a spice, important in controlling parasite infestations, fighting infection, and preserving food. Could just be referring to an off-white colored pelt, food, or even strength in battle for its association with treating wounds.

[clumsyclifford]

ok hello i absolutely love all ur fics, you’ve just got a certain quality in ur writing that is just… mmm. yeah so anyway, do you have any advice on how to improve or just how to write?? (especially fic cause personally i struggle with that more than original stuff??)

hello!! that is very kind of you to say thank you <3

advice on how to write. oh boy. oh man. well i can try. i will do my best. i will also try to be brief but we all know how that song goes

update from having finished answering this: alright. okay. this is not only long, but decidedly english teacher-y. i’m sorry that i am the way that i am. this is what you get for asking a leo for writing advice. am i joking? maybe. maybe not. anyway. this post got away from me in a big way so here’s a read more. warning: LONG post under the cut.

1. study your characters. for RPF like the band stuff i write, that literally means watching interviews, watching them perform, seeing how they interact with each other, picking up on their mannerisms (behavior) - what they do with their hands, if they repeat themselves or stutter when they talk, the quality of their voice when they're talking about different things, and so on. also keep track of things they mention a lot in interviews especially about each other - for example jack has mentioned before that alex has an annoying habit of twirling his hair when he zones out. that kind of thing. IMPORTANT NOTE!: you don’t have to use all of this information. just like studying for anything, you collect all the information you can and then you parse through it and use whatever you think will contribute or be relevant to your story.

2. remember that characters are people. or at least they’re representing people, which is an important distinction (see #3). still, considering that your characters are people can be a helpful way to get out of your head. see, characters are supposed to be archetypical, and fulfill a role, and say certain things in certain ways and never really deviate from that. but people are highly unpredictable and behave in random ways for random reasons and have thought processes that are unfathomable. people will just do fuckin’ whatever. if you’re worried that your characters aren’t behaving in a believable way, keep in mind that you’re trying to make your characters represent people, and people’s behavior is justifiable any number of ways. people just do shit.

3. remember that characters are not people. sike! no but seriously, this is just as important to remember. unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, characters are never going to be people. that’s a good thing for stories, though. characters can pick up on nuance in senses that people can’t - they can distinguish between different facial expressions, different smells, different sounds - BUT ONLY INSOFAR AS IT MOVES THE STORY ALONG. in other ways, characters are ridiculously oblivious. you can use this to your advantage. in fact, a lot of the time, you have to. if your character notices right away that someone is flirting with him, then you can’t write a 30k slow burn, for example. characters don’t do that thing humans do where they go “what?” but then halfway through the re-explanation they register what’s been said. pretty much everything characters say has meaning. (by this i don’t mean semantic meaning, i mean significance - characters don’t really just say “what?” because they didn’t hear what someone said, they say “what?” because they can’t believe it or they don’t understand it or they refuse to understand it. characters never seem to run into the didn’t-hear-them problem. must be nice.)

characters can do whatever you want or need them to do, because you’re in charge of them. (sometimes this doesn’t feel true - mine do all kinds of shit and i just have go “well alright then” - but it is true.) they are gears in a story. you decide when and how they turn.

4. dialogue is your friend. i am super super biased here, because i looove writing dialogue. if you talk to sam about this i’m sure she would say that description and narration are the ways to go. but you came to me, so i get to say that dialogue is god. i don’t want to say that dialogue is the only method of communication (i know nonverbal communication is real), but dialogue is the fastest and most effective method of communication, and by extension, the most effective way to advance relationships between characters. now. obviously there are exceptions. if characters are kissing, they’re probably not doing a lot of talking. if they’re trying to be undercover or discreet, they’re more likely to rely on gestures and facial expressions than speaking. if you’re writing a very peaceful scene, you might not want to undercut it by adding a lot of chit-chat. but i maintain that dialogue is the best way to move a story along, for a few reasons. 

first, at least for me, too much description is just tiring. depending on how skillful the writer is (sam), i can read a fair amount before i hit my limit, but unlike in mean girls, the limit DOES exist. you don’t want to over-describe the world (see #5). second, i find that dialogue is a really really good indicator of a person’s character. this is especially true and relevant in fanfiction, which is a lot more character-driven than original fiction in many ways. also, in a sec i’m gonna talk about showing [not/and] telling, which is every english teacher’s bitch, but dialogue is a really good way of showing who a person is and also a good way to establish facts about the universe. you could just narrate and be like “Jack hated waking up early,” and that works and in many cases it’s perfectly legit. but you could also do something like this:

“What the fuck,” Jack mumbled, still half asleep. “You better have a really fucking good reason to be waking me up this early. Like someone better have fucking died.”

and sometimes that’s just a more fun way to say it. (for the record you can also show AND tell here! there’s no reason why you can’t have this line of dialogue and then a line in the narration confirming how very much jack is not a morning person!)

the last reason why i am particularly fond of dialogue is because i am also particularly fond of communication, which is a preference thing. let’s face it, guys: characters aren’t gonna communicate if they’re not literally actually talking to each other. dialogue means talking to each other. talking to each other means solving problems, fixing (or creating) conflicts, understanding each other better. i love communication, ergo, i love dialogue. And You Should Too. 

5. describe the world, but don’t over-describe. i opened this fic earlier and it was like “jack was excited to wake up to go to his first class at the university of baltimore” and i just. i was like is this really relevant. do i really need to know this. and i never found out because i closed the fic but in my defense it was on wattpad and i had only opened it out of curiosity. look. there are three ways to use details in fic. (a) introduce them right away (b) introduce them when they become relevant or (c) don’t introduce them at all. let me give you some examples. 

(a) say your character A (i’m using jack because i’m used to him) wakes up. he’s in his room in his house off-campus. character B (rian) walks into the room. this might be a good time to explain that rian is his housemate. to that point: “show not tell” is a good rule, but sometimes “show and tell” is just as good. e.g.: 

Rian walks in, holding Jack’s Green Day shirt and looking irritated. That’s really nothing new; Rian looks irritated at Jack roughly once a day. Being housemates for a year will do that to a friendship.

boom, now you’ve let everyone know they live together without throwing it in their face, and you’ve also told everyone that these two guys are friends and have been friends for at least a year but probably longer. you showed it by having rian walking in holding jack’s shirt - usual housemate behavior - but you also told it in a subtle way that established the relationship and some kind of history between these two. well done.

(b) sometimes you want a certain detail to make an impact. this is the kind of thing you hold onto and don’t specify, and in certain cases you leave the reader wondering, “well what about x?” and then when you finally explain x they go ohhhhhhhhhh. yknow. the italicized oh. consider the following:

(A)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says, referring to Jack’s ex-boyfriend of last year.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

(B)

“Alex is in my bio class,” Rian says.

Jack frowns. “So? Why should I care?”

“He’s my lab partner,” Rian says. “I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“I don’t care what you and Alex do,” Jack says. “But you should know he sucks at bio.”

Rian gives Jack a look. “First of all, that’s not true, he’s incredibly smart. And second, I’m telling you as a courtesy, because I thought you might not want your ex-boyfriend hanging around our house after he broke your fucking heart.”

the only difference between these two excerpts (which i just wrote lol they’re not from anything real) is that the second one doesn’t explain who alex is right away. that makes it way more interesting when rian reveals who alex is a few lines later. magic.

(c) take this college au that we’ve established here. where does it take place, you ask? easy answer: it doesn’t matter. you don’t need to say what school they’re at. this will make your job easier, because then no one can fact check you, and it also means you don’t have to decide what school they’re at. but even if you do decide, it’s not usually necessary to say. believe me, you can go thousands of words without ever needing to specify what school they’re at. you know why? because it doesn’t matter. and no one cares. and as soon as you specify in canon that they’re at a particular school, you are bound to be accurate to everything that school does, and that makes your job way more difficult than it needs to be. as hazel once said, work smarter, not harder. 

6. adverbs are also your friend. (yknow, words that describe verbs, typically ending in -ly, like “loudly” or “angrily” or “smoothly”.) ESPECIALLY when it comes to dialogue tags. (dialogue tags are the things you add to dialogue to say who’s talking and how they’re talking - like “he said” or “he whispered” or “he earnestly explained” or whatever). a lot of the writing advice you’ll see nowadays will usually guide you away from overusing dialogue tags other than the classic “says/said” and i STRONGLY concur with that advice. things like yelled, cried, mumbled, snapped - these are very good in moderation, when you’re really trying to emphasize the way a person is speaking. the more you use them, the less impact they have. in most cases, a simple “he said [adverb]” will do. instead of “he snapped” consider “he said curtly/sharply/coldly.” instead of “he mumbled” consider “he said quietly/clumsily/softly.” I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THESE ARE NOT DIRECT SYNONYMS. every word has a nuanced and slightly different meaning and that is the BEAUTY of the english language!!!! all i’m saying is that in many cases, a verb can be replaced with an adverb to achieve roughly the same effect, without making the reader feel like they’re scanning a thesaurus.

and speaking of a thesaurus: it’s not cheating to use outside resources like thesaurus.com to help you come up with words. i fuckin love thesaurus.com. i use that shit all the time for everything. i use it when i’m writing emails. i used it just now to write that last paragraph. thesaurus.com is your BEST friend.

7. grammar. (and spelling but that’s really a given.) unfortunately if i tried to teach you all of the essential rules of grammar this post would exceed tumblr’s previously-nonexistent word count limit. so i’m not gonna teach you any of them. this is just a general point to suggest that if/when you’re writing, have someone you trust, with a good grasp of grammar, look over it. of course it doesn’t have to be perfect or AP style or anything like that. readers will overlook a certain amount of grammar mistakes and every reader has a different threshold. but in general, as a grammar geek and former journalism editor-in-chief, i have a duty to my grammurai code to preach the importance of grammar in writing. good grammar does not necessarily mean good writing and vice versa, bad grammar does not necessarily mean bad writing, but bad grammar makes good writing a lot harder to read, and in some cases will even obscure your actual meaning. so please, have someone read it. for the record this is me offering up my services. i am very good at fixing grammar. i have lots of weaknesses in writing but grammar is one of my strengths. please prioritize grammar. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

***

okay so now that i’ve said all of this shit and pretended to be an expert and embodied everyone’s tenth grade english teacher, let me add one very important disclaimer:

none of this is always relevant.* writing is an art, not a science. you are never going to be following all of the rules, all of the time. you shouldn’t. it’s good to know the basics of constructing a plot, establishing a character, showing and/not telling, moving the story along. but a lot of this advice is really subjective and heavily influenced by my writing experience and habits and tendencies and preferences, and those are simply not generalizable to the world. i am a sample size of one and science dictates that that means my results cannot be statistically significant. i am just some guy. earlier i said you don’t want to over-describe the world. but maybe you do! maybe you’re really into worldbuilding and you want people to know what they’re getting into. maybe you’re like sam, and you just don’t feel as confident in your dialogue skills but you love painting word pictures. i said that adverbs are your friend, but maybe you just prefer to use verbs. maybe you don’t want ANY dialogue tags and you want the reader to interpret the dialogue based on context and content. i said that characters aren’t people and they won’t behave like people, but maybe you’re trying to write hyper-realistic characters. maybe you’re just going for believability over narrative. WHATEVER. the point is, rules are made to be broken. no one is going to have The Answer for How To Write Good because there isn’t just one answer. every single writing rule has exceptions and you can be that exception as many times as you want.

*except grammar. grammar is fucking always relevant.

i hope any of this advice was helpful to you, even though i english teacher-ed the fuck out of it. and for what it’s worth, i approached this as if you were a relatively novice writer, but i know absolutely jack shit about your writing prowess and experience and habits. so maybe you already know all of this and none of what i’ve said is helpful at all. if you have a more specific problem, i would be happy to try and help. if you’re hoping for more specific feedback, i’d have to read something of yours first - but again, happy to try and help. i don’t know if you can tell but i loooove writing and english and grammar and all of this shit and it would be my honor. i have now spoken so long that james madison himself is begging me to shut up so i’ll stop here but thank you for coming by and giving me the opportunity to expatiate a shit ton. and GOOD LUCK i forgot the most important advice of writing which is HAVE FUN LOVE WHAT YOU WRITE AND WRITE WHAT YOU LOVE OKAY BYE

[hopeymchope]

World’s End Club demo thoughts

As a follow-up to the ask I recently responded to, I downloaded and played through the demo for World’s End Club last night. It’s just a single level/chapter, and it didn’t take much more than an hour to complete it.

Overall, I really enjoyed it - primarily for how the “Game of Fate” unfurled across the first chapter. Said “Game of Fate” is the much-publicized Fake Death Game, and it centers around a setup that’s reminiscent of Danganronpa 3′s Future Arc. I’ll get into more detail much later after a Spoiler Cut, but suffice to say that everybody starts getting suspicious of one another immediately, and many betrayals occur in short order. The exact nature of how people would get knocked out of the game and why was what kept me most intrigued by the numerous cut scenes. Many people’s wristbands have rules that are tied in with other people’s rules, so there’s a domino effect of causality whenever someone is “eliminated” that quickly became my favorite part of the first chapter’s storytelling setup. Learning the reasons why someone suddenly teams up with a character they don’t get along with or why someone is eliminated for seemingly no reason? That’s a lot of fun.

Pielope the weird floating jester-like thing will be your Monokuma for the demo.

The characters are pretty thin as they are presented in this demo, but obviously it’s WAY too early to really know much about them. There’s even an end-of-demo twist that makes the characters’ behavior in this first level retroactively be even less revealing of their natures. The good news here is that everyone is well-voiced, and that helps them to be likable. Naturally, it’s particularly easy to grow fond of the characters who serve as a lifeline of kindness and sanity while the majority are betraying you.

Unfortunately, although most of the characters are voiced, there is one who isn’t: The protagonist that the player controls, Reycho. He’s one of those “silent protagonists” who isn’t silent at all; he talks, but the player simply never hears what he says. I’ve always disliked silent protagonists in games where everybody else is talking, so this just annoyed me, but it’s hardly a deal-breaker.

Perhaps he has laryngitis, and he’s communicating with surprising effectiveness by flapping his mouth and gesturing emphatically?

The first level consists more of cut scenes than actual side-scrolling gameplay, which is fine with me. Danganronpa games are similarly structured; you spend more time on the Visual Novel elements than on the interactive gameplay side, so this kind of balance is very much in my wheelhouse. Platforming is basically a non-issue in this chapter, and there were only three puzzles to solve in the entirety of the chapter, but hey, I liked them. One was painfully obvious, but the other two took me a little bit of thought. They’re far from hard IMO, but they took enough brain usage to make me feel good for figuring them out. The latest trailer reveals that future chapters will actually include boss fights (!), so that means we’re going to see some combat elements to the gameplay that aren’t even introduced in this demo. Sounds cool.

There are also a couple of “choices” you can make in the first level that can result in early Game Overs (with unique dialogue/scenes) if you do the wrong thing. If you’re a fan of games with multiple endings, I imagine that seeing all of the unique Game Overs could prove pretty entertaining, so this was another aspect I dug.

By the time the demo ends, there is still a ton of mystery around what’s happening in the game. That’s going to be the driving factor in keeping me invested, I suspect. Well, that and the voice acting. Both of those elements are what made me immediately wish I could go on to the next area.

If you want some kind of report on the technical aspects of the game, I can say that it’s got a cool soundtrack and the art style is appealing to me, but that stuff is subjective anyway. Character animations are frequently stiff and awkward, but who cares? If you’ve ever played Zero Escape’s latter two games, you should really expect that by now. :P And hell, the Danganronpa games aren’t animated at all most of the time, so let’s not act like we’re demanding some high-quality mocap in this sort of story. We’re here for the writing and characters more than anything, correct? 

Now I’ll actually explain the setup of the “Game of Fate” so that I can complain a little about it. Spoilers for the demo/first level.

Here’s how the Game of Fate works in brief: The cast is trapped in an underwater building-type construct. Each member of the cast is wearing a digital wristband that tells them the “goal” of someone else in the cast. The only way to learn your own goal is to find the person wearing the wristband that states your goal. However, as soon as any one person accomplishes their goal, that person wins and "there can only be one winner,” so it’s probably in your best interest to keep your wristband hidden... if you assume that not winning means you’re automatically a loser. (Note that this is never outright stated by Pielope, although “there can only be one winner” could be argued as implying that the rest become losers.)

The winner gets a “magic key” that can unlock any lock, but it can only be used on a single lock before it “disappears.” Given that they are all trapped in this underwater prison, the obvious place to use the key is the exit door that leads to the surface. As for the losers who get eliminated by failing their goals or rendering them impossible, the cast is told that anyone who “loses” will die. But of course, the creators of the game have already spoiled us on the fact that this is a fake-out. In terms of in-universe logic, however, it makes for a frightening motivator for the kids.

The kids might have been too scared to spot them, but of course I, the player, immediately saw the loopholes here. 1) No one ever says or even implies that only one person can pass through the exit or anything. 2) People who simply don’t reach their goals first (but don’t render them impossible to complete) aren’t automatically called “losers.” Ergo, there is little reason why everybody wouldn’t immediately help one person to complete their goal so that they can all survive and unlock the exit, right? Just walk out the door together! Nobody manages to think of this, though. Alas.

In fairness... near the end of the level/demo, we are given some information hat could be seen as a retroactive explanation for why this didn’t just happen, and I was grateful for it.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Fandom racism anon here and yeah absolutely (I didn't realise I had anon on lol)

Because while LOTR has problems within its themes (ie the orcs can be seen as to be coded as people of colour, especially since they ride elephants) the explicit message of the book is evil bad

Because the only people who work for sauron are evil. There are no morally grey people, they aren't misguided or tricked they just are evil and want to take over the world

And yeah I totally agree that this is more of a literal take on like empirical war (is that the word) and that makes total sense considering Tolkiens history

Whereas I would say that the allegories in shaowhunters is way more based on racial conflict within a country itself especially slavery, I can't remember if this is show Canon but is it that they have the warlock tropheys? I remember that in the books magnus talks about shadowhunters hanging warlock marks on their walls? (sorry to bring the books up)

Idk it's very hollow to me, unlike with LOTR though it's a different allegory it's totally irritating to show many of these supremecists as morally misled. LOTR says bad guys are bad guys, shadowhunters says well yeah they did follow a guy which thinks that downworlders are subhuman and should be eradicated but they just made a mistake

I want to compare this to tfatws which while it isn't really fantasy I just feel like it shows how the priorities of the writer can impact the message of the show so powerfully (I know u aren't up to date so I'm gonna be pretty vague)

There's a scene in tfatws where the new white perfect captain America does something bad and doesn't pay for the consequences - done to comment on white privelege and how America condones white supremacy and how Sam is in comparison to that

Mayrse and Robert revealed to be part of the circle! And paid no consequences Shock horror my parents were the bad guys (even rho they were either implicitly or explicitly extremely racist the entire time) also I haven't finished the seires but do the lightwoods ever try to get their parents to face the consequences?)

Only one actual really critiques the situation and the reality behind it whereas the other one is just to centre the white characters once again and present them in a further sympathetic light

AND ANOTHER THING! I was mostly talking about show Canon here and I'm sorry to bring up the books but I literally can't believe I hadn't picked up in this before.

So like downworlders = people of colour, Simon is a vampire so is coded as a person of colour. However in the books in the last one he stops being a vampire and becomes a shadowhunters instead, coincidentally that's also when he starts dating Izzy HOW IS THIS ABLE TO HAPPEN!!????

I mean I know cassandra clare is lazy right? The original seires is by far the worst of all her writings but come ON!!!!! By the allegory has he become the white man!????? These books made no fuckin sense when I read them at 15 and they make no sense now I'm digressing anyways

I don't know man I wrote this ask because I was trying to find some fantasy book recommendations on booktube and SO MANY of them were about slavery or general ly extrême préjudice with à White protagonist to save this 'poor souls'.

Also I was watching guardians of the galexy the other day and realised nearly every movie set in space is just bigger stakes imperialism - planets instead of countries. Literally star wars, star trek, guardians of the galexy 2, avengers infinity war - all are facing genocidal imperialistic villains without actually paying much, if any attention to those effected

Just writing this ask made me exhausted I'm so tired of lazy writing and exploiting other people's struggle. I'm white and I'm trying to be more critical about the movies, shows and books I watch and read but let me know if I said something off here❤️❤️ you gotta get up to date with tfatws man, Sambucky nation is THRIVING!!!!

i'm not sure i agree that the whole "the evil people are evil" thing is a good thing, because i feel like more often than not making the bad characters just like... unidimensionally evil just means that the reader will be like "lol i could NEVER be that guy" and when it comes to racism that is a dangerous road to take because white people already believe that racism is something that Only The Most Evil People, Ergo, Not Me, Can Do, which makes discussions of stuff like subconscious racial bias and active antiracist work become more difficult because people don't believe they CAN be racist unless they're like, Lord Voldemort

which is not to say that racism should be treated as morally ambiguous, just that the workings of racism should be represented as something that is not done only by the Most Hardcore And Evil, but rather as a part of a system of oppression that affects the way everyone sees the world and interacts with it and lives in it

yes the warlock trophies are mentioned in the show, albeit very quickly (there is a circle member who tells magnus that his cat eyes will make "a nice addition to his collection" and then it's never mentioned again because this is sh and we love using racism for shock value but then not actually treating it as a serious plot point or something that affects oppressed ppl). and you are absolutely right, shadowhunters (and hp, and most fantasy books) has genocide as its core conflict and treats it, like you said, in a very hollow way, treating racism as both not a big deal and not something that is part of a system of oppression, but really the actions of a few Very Bad People. it's almost impressive how they manage to do both at the same time tbh

i think you hit the nail right on the head with this comment, actually. for most of these works, racism is SHOCK VALUE. it's just like "lol isn't it bad that this bad guy wants to kill a gazillion people just because they are muggles? now that is fucked up" but it's not actually an issue. in fact, when this guy is defeated, the whole problem is over! racism is not something that is embedded into that world, it's not a systemic issue, it's not even actually part of what drives the plot. the things that led to this person not only existing but rising to power and gathering enough followers to be a real threat to the whole world are never mentioned. it's like racists are born out of thin air, which is dangerously close to implying that racism is just a natural part of life, tbh

anyway my point is, it is never supposed to be questioned, it is never part of a deeper plot or story, its implications are barely addressed except for a few fleeting comments them and there; so, it's not a critique, it's shock value, even though it is frequently disguised as a critique (which is always empty and shallow anyway. like what is the REAL critique in works like hp or sh/tsc other than "genocide is bad"? wow such a groundbreaking take evelyn)

about simon and the book thing: i actually knew about this and the weird thing about this is that, like... simon is jewish, and he's implied to be ashkenazi (calls his grandma bubbe which is yiddish, which is a language spoken by the ashkenazi ppl), and it seems like cc is always toeing the line between him being accepted by shadowhunters and then not accepted by them, which sounds a lot like antisemitic tropes and history of swinging between (ashkenazi) jewish ppl being seen as the model minority myth and thus used as an example by white christians, and being hated and persecuted. i'm not super qualified to talk about this since i'm not jewish and i'm still learning about/unlearning antisemitism and its tropes, and i don't really have a fully formed thought on that, tbh; it just reminds me of the whole "model minority" swinging, where one second simon is part of the majority, the other he's not, but always he is supposed to give up a part of himself and his identity in other to be "assimilated" by shadowhunter culture. this article (link) covers a book on jewish people and assimilationism into USan culture, this article (link) covers british jews' relationship with being considered an ethnic group, and this article (link) talks a bit about the model minority myth from the perspective of an asian jewish woman

it just really calls to my attention that cc chose to make her ashkenazi jewish character start off as a downworlder and then become a shadowhunter. i don't think she made that decision as a conscious nod to this history, because it would require being informed on antisemitism lol but it's incredible how you can always see bigoted stereotypes shining through her narrative choices completely by accident. it just really shows how ingrained it is in our collective minds and culture

and anyway, making a character go from the oppressed group to just suddenly become the oppressor is just. wtf. not how oppression works, but most of all, really disrespectful, especially because she clearly treats it as an "upgrade"/"glowup" that earns him the Love Of His Life

also, out of curiosity, are you french? it seems like your autocorrect changed a few words and i'm pretty sure extrême and préjudice are the french versions of these words, and since u said ur white, that's where my money would be lol

[sagemoderocklee]

Hello! For the meta asks, would you do 1, 5, 8, and 17?

you did not come to play, lilac! thanks for all these questions! <3

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  –   what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

oh lord. that’s a... question. i have. so many current projects, i don’t even know where to start. this is gonna be long so please bear with me lol i’ll probably give more detail for some fics over others, and i’ll only go over fics I’ve got documents for because otherwise we’d be here forever.

The Art of Love: so this one is obvious because it’s been in progress for the last 2ish years? no i think it’s three now. I won’t go into detail with this because the fic is roughly halfway through, so there’s plenty of content for that up! I’d say the progress with that fic is actually going really well, though. Unlike Alliance, which took 8 years--five years of writing, three of editing--TAoL has been up for way less time, and is already about to hit the halfway mark! I really need to get back to it, tbh because it’s been way too long since my last update.

Honor Bound (sequel to Alliance): so this is.... kind of on pause. I’ve got the first three chapters written, but my focus has been more on TAoL when it comes to my more complicated, long running stories, so HB has taken a backseat. I think I won’t get back to working on the Allied Nations Saga until after TAoL is done, in all honesty.

Find Me: this is my HS AU, which has been on the back burner forever and I feel terrible because I think it may honestly be my most popular fic. Unfortunately, AUs/slice of life stuff is difficult for me because I’m more interested in politics, so I lost momentum on this fic. It is about halfway done. I have a good chunk of chapter six written, but not enough that I could say I’m close to finishing it.

It Eats Your Heart: obviously I just started this one, and it’s a horror fic. I’ve really gotta sit down and do some major plotting on it because I only have some very vague ideas currently.

Pearl-Filled Lungs: this is one of like three ningyo AUs I have--the other are pirate/ningyo AUs (and ones actually a selkie not a ningyo). I started it last year for the GaaLee fest, and it’s been sitting unfinished for far too long. I finally sat down recently and plotted the whole thing out, so I’m hoping to get back to working on it soon! It’s only 5 chapters in total, so I don’t think it’ll take me super long to get through once I sit down and do it.

Who Dares to Love Forever: This is a working title, and I may change it. This is a fic idea I’ve had for a couple years, inspired by the song Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen. This particular fic is a vehicle for my sage mode!rock lee headcanon, and explores just how effective Chiyo giving Gaara her life would have been given she was an old biddy. So the idea for this fic is that Gaara’s running out of time because Chiyo only had so much to offer.

Absolution: this is another fic that I’ve had on the back burner for years. it was initially inspired by art by @brianadoesotherjunk but quickly spiraled into something much bigger because of course it did. This particular fic is one I’m extremely excited about. I need to go back over the first part, because I feel like it’s not quite right, but I do technically have the first part done. This fic follows Gaara struggling with bouts of narcolepsy that trigger nightmares induced by trauma and guilt from his childhood. These nightmares are incredibly dangerous for obvious reasons, but even more so because Temari’s baby is on the way. Temari and Shikamaru are married, living in the Kazekage estate, and with their baby coming and both needing/wanting to get back to work, they also need a nanny. Unbeknownst to Gaara, the year prior to the events of the fic, Maito Gai died, succumbing to the 8th Gate finally, and Lee has since been spiraling. His depression has become so self-destructive that he’s been taken off active duty. Shikamaru, along with the rest of the Konoha 12 (minus Neji and Sasuke), get together and discuss what to do. Tenten believes that Lee being a nanny would be the perfect thing. And so Rock Lee is sent to Suna, hired by Shikamaru and Temari as their live-in nanny...

We Need Not Be Yellow Tulips in a Garden of Gardenia’s, Yet We Go the Way of the Red Camellia: true to form, I decided that a hanahaki fic was something I had to do, and I was not going to pass up the chance at being as Extra As Possible with the flowery language, ergo the ridiculous title. I’ve gotten part way through the first chapter of this fic, but the whole thing is roughly plotted out and each chapter title is just as extra as the whole fic’s title.

Thirteen Strokes: so this is a fic I have--once again--had on my mind for ages, and--once again, because I am nothing if not a caricature of myself--inspired by a Florence+the Machine song, All This and Heaven Too. I started writing this the other night, as I wanna use it for GaaLee bingo. It’ll be 13 chapters, as per the 13 strokes that it takes to make the character for love, ai, in Japanese. The fic is from Gaara’s PoV, and follows his journey with and his relationship to love, with lots of worldbuilding and politics because it wouldn’t be an Eeri Original without those things.

Scarification: this is another idea for bingo based around the prompt shinshoubyou, which is a fictional disease where your emotions cause physical marks on you

Fill in the [  ]: another bingo idea, based around the prompt bouaishoukoigun, the fictional disease where you forget the person you love if it’s unrequited.

The Eagle’s Augury: an idea that allows me to play around with more worldbuilding and focus on Karura. In this fic, the curse (mentioned briefly on the Naruto wikia) that has led to every single Kazekage being assassinated, is coming for Gaara, and Karura is trying to warn him from beyond the grave. At the same time, Temari and Shikamaru’s marriage is approaching, and their ceremony is being held in Suna, with all the fan fair a marriage for someone from the Kazekage line should see. Again, another fic inspired by Miss Florence+the Machine, the song is Mother

Pomegranate Sun: this is a fic that I am... so excited about. Another fic that was originally inspired by a Queen song, Under Pressure, and has of course taken on a life of its own. This fic, I am actually going to be writing with @ghoste-catte! It’s an arranged marriage trope, and I’m super pumped for it! We’ve only got a little bit started, and it has obviously not taken priority for either of us since we both have a lot of fics on our plates.

The Ballad of the Dragon and the Phoenix: this is a fic I’m really excited but is going to take a LOT of research to get off the ground. I had this idea sometime last year, I wanna say? This fic is another self-indulgent headcanon about Lee’s origins, his family, etc. This fic starts when Gaara shows up on Lee’s doorstep, asking him to accompany him to another country for reasons Lee cannot understand. Gaara has been in talks with Phoenix Kingdom, hoping to forge a new relationship only to find that the Emperor wants to use shinobi for militaristic purposes. Lee doesn’t understand what help he could possibly offer the Kazekage, but he can’t very well turn him down.

okay, i’m gonna stop there. these are the ones I have titles and documents for, and honestly that’s probably way more than you wanted to know about lol

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with? 

Despite the fact that most of my fics end up from Gaara’s PoV, I actually identify with Lee the most!

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

Yes! Which is hard to find, tbh, because I am a sucker for political dramas with slow burn romances, but I don’t see a lot of that in the GaaLee fandom. I’m not as into like slice of life or short stories where the characters get together quick, I’m really not into established relationship fics unless it’s a sequel, so I tend to avoid those. I like AUs but it really depends on the AU, because I ultimately prefer the canon and I love seeing the way people write the shinobi world and all its rules and cultures and things. I’m just a big fan of worldbuilding, politics, and slow slow burns. Not this 25k SLOW BURN! crap because that is NOT a slow burn. I wanna see a fic that’s 200k words in and they still haven’t even figured out they’re in love! I like stories I can really sink my teeth into, ya know?

17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

Oh gosh. I generally don’t think too much about it except like hoping people don’t think I’m like a stuck up asshole because of how I talk about my writing, writing in general, my hcs, etc. I mean, obviously I don’t expect everyone in this fandom to like me--and there are ppl I’ve gone out of my way to be vocally against because they do nasty shit--but largely I feel like I come across as too intense, so even the general population of GaaLee fans that I do want to interact with I’m always a lil nervous that people secretly don’t like me and basically are like “oh god this bitch again” when they see me in the tags. But I just get really excited and invested in my ideas, and honestly for the longest time this fandom was SO small and there weren’t a lot of people putting out content regularly so it was like a handful of us so I think it made me more emphatic about GaaLee lol I think I always like assume people aren’t as excited about my writing as I am or that people are like “too much politic, i need more romance”.

I’m always surprised when people really love my AUs, like Kado or Find Me have had such fantastic reception, and it’s like people just eat that shit up so much. And then I look at like Alliance or Art of Love and get kind of confused because I think by comparison those are more interesting and more developed than my AUs. I put a shit ton of work into everything I write, especially anything that requires research, so it’s not to say that I do less work per say, just that I feel like TAoL and things like it are more interesting and more developed, and the relationship feels.... somehow more to me there than in an AU.

a lot of my motivation really just comes from the lack of content this fandom had for so many years, and the fact that Naruto could have been a much more interesting series and I love worldbuilding so much. I think my motivation for each fic is different though. Like Alliance was started because I wanted to write something different from what was mainly in the fandom at the time because mind you I started that in 2010. But my motivation for TAoL is more wanting to tell a beautiful story with a complex narrative that looks at the failings of the shinobi world. Whereas like any slice of life fic is really just meant to be a fun break. And sometimes I write something literally just because I wanted to fulfill that trope for the GaaLee fandom--again, a lot of my ideas have been sitting for years and years and years (TAoL was an idea I had literally right after starting Alliance, but I didn’t get to it until 2017), so a lot of ideas that are old are because at the time that trope hadn’t been fulfilled yet in the fandom though that’s changing a lot with the recent GaaLee Renaissance of the last couple years.

[seyaryminamoto]

May I ask - why Ozai likes Ursa more than Azula? Keep in mind you're not the only author who choose this portrayal and I'm as confused by it as Azula is

Oh, I know I’m not the only author who portrays it that way. These guys

did it too! :’D Though this guy

backtracked on it, to a fault, merely turning Ozai into someone who gives zero shits about anyone ever. Which means he gives the same amount of shits for Azula and Ursa. His Ozai is surprisingly fair on that front!

Alright, all jokes aside, the main reason many of us interpret Ozai’s relationship with Ursa as a little more complex than originally presented, it’s because of this shot: 

(Credit: former Piandao.org screenshots, now turned into a Google Drive folder)

That’s the same fountain-pond-thingy  where Ursa had been sitting in earlier flashbacks of that episode.

(Credit: same as above)

It’s such a small, simple moment that I suppose most Ozai haters would say it amounts to nothing, yet it actually speaks lengths about his character: why would Ozai stand here, melancholically, before a fountain that is no longer functioning (because in his screenshot, it’s not), a place where his wife used to sit, right on the morning after she left? This is a guy who literally just got EVERYTHING he ever wanted. He is Fire Lord now, thanks to the scheming and conniving and wicked plotting that took place over the previous day. He finally overcame his father and brother’s shadows! So… why would our first shot of a man who finally succeeded at everything he wanted be not a shot of said man rejoicing in triumph, but a shot of a man who is, by all effects, in mourning?

This suggests that Ozai may have cared about Ursa. The fact that we don’t see them angry, arguing or bickering through this episode also suggests that their relationship, while far from a lovey-dovey happy mushy thing, is that of two people who at the very least coexist peacefully. We don’t see any direct interactions between them, so yes, it’s possible they were far more troubled than the episode suggests (I, personally, interpret it that way), since everything in Zuko Alone is seen through Zuko’s eyes. But IF Ursa and Ozai were in such a bad place, to the point where he would have even convinced her to leave as he does in the Search… why would he do this? Why would he stand by that fountain as though honoring Ursa somehow?

All this being said, I personally find Ursa a much more interesting and dynamic character if her relationship with Ozai isn’t that of a victim and his abuser, but of a woman with such sharp wit that, even without being a bender, ergo, representing no physical threat to her husband, still wielded such authority that she could keep this fierce, savage man in check, capable of respecting her when she’s around, and even honoring her when she leaves. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: in my very humble opinion and headcanon, if Ozai ever got close to genuinely loving someone, it was Ursa.

As ever, disclaimer necessary: this does NOT mean Ozai was entitled to Ursa’s love in return, this does NOT mean Ursa is to blame for the man Ozai becomes, I’m not implying this is a situation where “love” would have absolutely saved Ozai from being the man we know him to be. While I do believe that if he had chosen her above his ambitions he might have been ~better~, it was Ozai himself who had to make that choice. I don’t blame Ursa for how her relationship with Ozai turns out, whether in canon or comics or Gladiator, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. Relationships like theirs are complex, difficult and not straightforward: both characters have faults, and both deserve to be held accountable for them. So Ozai deserves being held accountable for sacrificing everything for power, and that’s that.

But finally, getting into your question… why would Ozai like Ursa better than Azula?

Personally, in the way I want to portray them through flashbacks, it’s because Ursa makes NOTHING easy for Ozai, since day one. She isn’t trying to please him, she isn’t just a doormat waiting for him to stomp all over her: she has demands of her own, the first of them respect, and Ozai finds himself giving it, even if he doesn’t quite reason with why he’s doing it. He wants her to care about him, probably as starved for affection as his daughter is later on too, and whenever he made her happy, even if just a little, he would have felt a sense of accomplishment that was absolutely unprecedented for him.

Zuko canonically has described his family by saying they were “happy”, at some point. While no one can say for sure what time period he refers to (it could be the happy times ended when his mother vanished, or perhaps a little before that), I’ve always assumed he wouldn’t have seen Ozai and Ursa as they were in the Zuko Alone flashback and thought “wow my parents are so happy, look at their poker faces! That’s happiness!” So, I believe they actually were happy once, enough to make each other smile or laugh. There’s a simple scene in the first comic trilogy where they’re at the beach with their children, simply sitting together at the sand while their kids play in the sand and water: who’s to say those aren’t the kinds of moments Zuko refers to as happiness?

Compare that to the Ozai we meet in canon: do we ever see him happy in Book 3 about anything but his advancements and achievements? His smiles are always smirks. Every situation he’s in, he’s merely basking in becoming more powerful and fulfilling more of his often-pointless ambitions. While he seems to respect Azula to a fault (she interrupts Zuko in a war meeting and she gets no Agni Kai as punishment, Ozai is Mr. Hypocrisy Incarnate), did we ever see anything that suggested genuine affection for her? While I write him as directly involved in her training, canonically Azula has been trained by Lo and Li, two non-benders. Even a tiny canonical hint at how Ozai may have been involved in helping Azula reach her full potential as a bender could be, to a fault, interpreted as him caring for her a little more than he originally planned to, being invested in her growth for what it is and not only for what advantages it offers him. But instead, the entire extent of what we know about their relationship is that he sends Azula on missions, basically in the capacity of a military agent or leader: as much as this allows Azula to show she’s a badass, does it show Ozai cares about her? Do we have a single hint that he actually is emotionally invested in his daughter?

AT BEST… the lack of punishment for having lied to him about Aang’s death can be, somewhat, interpreted as unwillingness on Ozai’s part to punish Azula too harshly for a huge mistake. Even then, by the finale he outright yells at her before offering her an important “mission” that he can only entrust to her. And that’s their canon relationship, isn’t it? Missions, missions and missions. He hands her missions, she delivers. The consequences aren’t too steep if she doesn’t, but he might even yell at her if she tests his patience too much.

Basically, my take on Ozai respected Ursa, even though Ursa has no power of her own to threaten him beyond her disapproval and displeasure. Because she earned that respect, she was the only person he NEARLY considered an equal. He was willing to surrender if she was adamant about certain things (this is no spoiler, since chapter 9 we all know that, in Gladiator, Azula never learned swordsmanship with Piandao because Ursa didn’t want her to, and to Azula’s eternal outrage, Ozai gave in to Ursa’s demands, just like that!), he was willing to listen to her opinions on whatever was happening in the world, he would argue with her and they’d have disagreements because they were both stubborn as hell. All of this means Ursa’s opinions, beliefs and decisions mattered to Ozai, enough that he would sometimes back down and let her have her way.

Azula, however, has been his pet project, the perfect child, for as long as she has lived. He raised her to be his heir, to uphold his legacy, molded her after himself (even if the result wasn’t at all like him :’D), and Azula dreamt of following on his footsteps for a long time (until her own equal shows up and his influence serves to change the way she sees the world…). Azula, then, is his most loyal ally, and Ozai takes her for granted because of that. She will always be on her side because he raised her to be, and that’s that. 

Ozai’s first blast of reality that shows him Azula is NOT unbreakable, that she is NOT undefeatable and that he shouldn’t send into danger willy-nilly? It’s in the White Lotus Attack arc, where he finds her terribly sick in her room and she’s mortified that he’d see her that way. That was the first moment an actual surge of fatherly instincts came over Ozai since Azula was a very tiny kid.

Azula’s rebellions against Ozai in Part 1 are relatively small, and she’s constantly terrified to her very bone whenever she opposes him at something, as in her birthday. Ozai was displeased by it, and she was troubled and wondering how to improve things between them again later on. Pleasing her father is a behavior ingrained in her head from an early age. She wanted to make sure she was on his good side, even if she was growing much more aware of his mistakes, his shortcomings and everything wrong about him by then. Not being on good terms with her father was terrifying for her in those days, terrifying in ways it never was for Ursa: in Azula’s case, it’s learned behavior acquired mainly by seeing, through Zuko, what happens to someone Ozai considers unreliable and disposable. She absolutely doesn’t want to be that.

But it’s not until Part 2 that Azula outright starts to take a stand against her father. And yes, she was terrified too in the Festivals, but she went toe-to-toe with him in front of all his military leaders. Then she took his attempt to punish her, by forcing her to give a public speech she wasn’t ready for, and spun it on itself to both present herself as her father’s soooo loyal daughter while providing the entirety of the Fire Nation with new values to abide by in regards of how they treated slaves and honorary citizens. Ozai’s reaction that time was a petty, small revenge… but he actually was amused by what she’d done. And THAT… that was actual respect from Ozai, for once. He saw his daughter could stand up to him, and get away with it safely. Suddenly she wasn’t just his obedient child-soldier, which was what he had taken for granted that she was: she was a potential leader in her own right. At this point, their relationship changes.

That change takes a turn for the worse after she fails to convince him to carry forward her slavery laws project, and then she discovers Seethus’ assassination spree. At this point, the falling out between them is absolutely dreadful. Ozai doesn’t attack Azula physically, however: he argues with her, snaps back and does his best to convince her that he’s in the right, but she’s 100% certain of the opposite. By this point, Azula is behaving a lot more like Ursa than she ever had before: she defies him, stands up to him, and unlike her mother, she does have literal firepower to back her up. 

Point being: AZULA BECOMES A THREAT.

And while they’ve managed to kind of establish a low-key peace after that (though as you may imagine, this new arc is yet more trouble for the relationship between the Princess and her father), Ozai still sees Azula as a threat ever since. He’s willing to trust she won’t do anything too far out of hand, not as long as he makes enough concessions for her, not if he abides by her advice once in a while… but that makes her no less of a threat anyhow. He needs to make her a reliable ally again, and he can’t do that by wielding his authority over her head anymore. Not when she has already shown herself perfectly willing to ignore it.

And that means he respects her in an entirely different way than how he respected Ursa: he didn’t have any reason, Gladiator-wise, to think Ursa wasn’t on his side, they had disagreements but she was his wife and she supported him through thick and thin even in some REALLY shady stuff. Right now, Azula is starting to look like the entire opposite of that: she was the one he raised to be his wholehearted supporter. The one person who would only ever treat HIM as the hero, the winner, the good guy. And now she’s changed her mind about him, he knows it, and he’s worried about what that entails.

It’s ironic that it’s because of Azula’s rebellious bouts, and the cracks in her mask of the perfect daughter, that Ozai’s bottled-up affection for his daughter emerges. I won’t say that somewhere in the depths of his dark heart he loves her… but I will say that every time Azula rises up against him, he sees some of Ursa in her and he automatically takes her more seriously because of it.

Meanwhile, whenever Zuko stands up to him, he basically feels like it’s an ant shouting at the boot that’s ready to crush it. On a REALLY subconscious level, Zuko seems to embody Ozai’s weaknesses, the side of himself he would much rather pretend doesn’t exist. He despises Zuko for it all, because he’s a reminder of his own shortcomings and failures. And even when Zuko tries to rebel, Ozai continues to treat him as a weakling, unworthy of respect, that only warrants being crushed. He’d never be able to act like this with Azula or Ursa.

So, why would I say he cares more about Ursa, or that she’s his actual #1 while Azula is #2? Because Ursa was never a tool, never a source of self-fulfilment: she was someone who he wanted to impress, whose respect he craved and he offered her his own. He valued her, everything she offered him, even if things between them became complicated for an array of reasons. Ursa has always been a sort of blind spot for Ozai, the one person who made him happy in a sense that didn’t involve ambitions and advancement. She was a good influence on him, all around, even if he seldom knew how to react to her influence positively.

That’s not the bond he had with Azula. She was his perfect heir, and that was all he ever expected of her. Canon-wise, that’s all she is. Gladiator-wise, once she stops being ONLY that, Azula doesn’t simply become someone Ozai respects and approves of: she becomes a threat. She is the one and only person in the Fire Nation who can tear down everything he has worked for, and it sure looks like she wants to do exactly that. He has been molding her all her life, only to find she has become his worst possible enemy and now he has to be much more cautious about how he deals with her.

One day, maybe, once his characted develops some more… Ozai might start respecting Azula on the actual same level he respected Ursa. One day, he might realize that, while craving Ursa’s affection and love, he had already earned Azula’s but he threw it to waste. By then, it may be much more difficult to determine who is his #1 indeed… but until that point is reached, he will continue to hold onto the memory of his wife while ignoring that his bond with his daughter is what will determine if he can attain either true salvation or eternal damnation… :’)

[seenashwrite]

Notes From Nash: Season 15 Episode 2

We're back! And by that, I don't mean back for episode #2, I mean we're back in the little town, same little town we were in for the majority of episode #1. And as far as how ep #2 compares with ep #1.... um.....  

The writers ain't in no damn rush to advance the plot or further character development, are they? So this is basically ep #1 all over again with some guest star overload as a substitute for those two very important aspects of storytelling I just mentioned.

[stares at date]

They've got *how* many eps to wrap up the show? 

Hoo-boy.

Spoilers below the cut.

Changing it up from last time (see link at bottom), I thought I'd go in order of the ep this post. All right. Let's roll.

From the mom who gets 86'd in the opening------

And, PS: That's not disemboweled. Don't use the word if you (a) don't know what it means and/or (b) won't let make-up/effects do their job.

-----to the rest of the people, I care nothing. There was no point giving all these extras lines and whatever little backstories, I give no fucks. Mainly because, gee, I don't know, I signed up for a show about two brothers goin' out there and gettin' after it, and thus far we've gone about two inches and gotten nothing.

Are we still in this little town?

More questions, borrowing from the dialogue some here:

"Remember when we did the thing with Amara?"

"God's sister?"

"And the soul bomb? And here's how it worked? Remember? Because you participated? REMEMBER?! I'm not just saying this for the benefit of, oh wait, no one, because the chances of brand new viewers coming into the game this late is virtually nil, so everyone - including us, here, in this scene, our characters - already know this backstory, ergo the only reason for exposition anvils is to benefit those viewers, who - as we've already established - likely don't exist. So let's run through this for the benefit of, I have to assume, the writers who don’t actually, you know, watch the show as evidenced by--- well, we’d be here all day."

Nope. No, no. Those aren't questions I had. Because I've been watching the show for a good while now. This exchange should’ve been something to the effect of - “I was thinking - remember how we did the soul bomb, with Amara? Do you think you could pull off something like that? To trap them?” and then Rowena responds with uncertainty but will give it a try, etc. I mean, the writing in this ep is thus far pedestrian.

There's still no explanation for why these ghosts - especially these super notorious ghosts like Ripper and Lizzie and who-fuck-ever - were lingering so close together that they were able to be trapped by the stupidest ex machina spell in the writing world. And what of the others? The entirety of hell escaped. We've seen, what, maybe 20? Could there maybe have been a throw-a-way line to Belphagor something like “Did you corral the worst douchebags together”, or “Is there a bar in hell where the worst douchebags hang out or something”, or “this is just our luck that the worst douchebags landed here” or WHATEVER, just SOMETHING to acknowledge they (the writers) recognize that Convenient Super Bad Ghosts Are Convenient.

IT'S KETCH, BITCHES!

I love this character. What a breath of fresh air that snarky piece of ass has been. I hope he doesn't get killed. He will. Because we can't have anything good. But there is some good, which is the Ketch-Rowena flirting. Honestly, I'm fine with Rowena getting action from anyone. She's awesome and she's earned it. Ketch is primo catch, though. (I'm not sorry for that sentence. I am, but I'm not.)

The repeated use of Belphagor's name pleases myself and my podcast co-host. Should you wish to know more about that demon, please do check out our podcast. Don't look him up first, trust us. That they have chosen this particular demon's name is just *chef's kiss*, though I do hope it's not a foreshadowing for how the rest of the season is going to go. Okay fine, I'll spoil it: he's a shit demon. He deals in poo. Literally. I'm not lying. Go forth to the podcast @youtotallymadethatup​ - just about every post links you to where you can listen. /shameless self-promo

IT'S AMARA, BITCHES!

Let's hope that wardrobe does her better than that ill-fitting black dress this go 'round, she deserves better.

"You're the darkness, I'm the light."

STOP IT. STOP. FUCK. STOP.

Are we still in this little town?

Blah blah blah Castiel Dean angst repeating essentially what's already been said at the end of 14 and last week blah. "You know what's real? We are." Not if it's an alternate timeline, my love. 

I keep forgetting just how many spaced-out chains you need to have strewn about your standard meat packing plant and/or factory, well played, set dec and props. That.... that was sarcasm.. (Look, I got no beef with the crew, they're just playing the cards they've been dealt, and their hands are garbage, just a pile of same ol' same ol' stereotypical, unimaginative stuff, so bless them. I hope every single one of them has a job lined up next year, truly. They have more than paid their dues and earned it. Lord knows especially since certain parties took the reins, good night nurse. I've digressed. )

IT’S KEVIN BI----

This is dumb. This is actually dumb. In case you didn't see my half-time post, and I quote:

That is *three* in under twenty minutes. Like, it’s episode 2. You’re blowing your wad. Pace yourselves. AND MAYBE SOME STORY ADVANCING, THAT WOULD BE AWESOME

This bullet thing could be hella interesting. It *could* be. I wonder if it will be. 

These ghosts are painfully uninteresting. The guy playing the Ripper is horribly miscast. This needed to be someone who... who.... I dunno, is a good actor. He's not. Sorry, Pops. I mean, even Osric (who is an excellent actor) couldn't elevate that scene.

This episode is painful.

Are we still in this little town?

Ketch got knocked out, left alone with ghost, deffo gonna get possessed. 

Are we still talking to these ghosts? Why? Why is Kevin thinking he can go up against them alone? I'm not exactly sure what threat they are to him, can't he just disappear and whoosh somewhere else? I missed something, I must've missed something. It doesn't matter, none of this matters.

Okay, Belphagor says there's at least a hundred. Still, what would that be, like 1/2500000000th of hell? Why are the Winchesters, of all people, and now Rowena concentrating on this stupid little town----

Are. We. Still. In. This. Little. Town.

---why in the fuck aren't the most renowned hunters of modern time and their angel friend and the powerful witch friend and the friend with immense tactical knowledge regarding weaponry for supernatural shit not at the bunker strategizing and planning and... and... and.... I just.... 

Lookit, I've said this before: especially in fantasy/sci-fi stuff, if you are logical in every possible place you can be, if you nail the simple shit, then the audience is exponentially more likely to buy into the fantastical stuff, and also to be more forgiving (or not notice altogether) when you inevitably whiff, because nobody's perfect, of course. But this show in later years has notoriously screwed the pooch on the easy stuff, and here we are, in some needlessly convoluted mess right out of the gate in the last season ever.

::sighs::

Oh, look. Because of course he's possessed. You left him alone with a ghost. I'm neither a professional writer nor a psychic, I'm just thinking "What is predictable as possible?" and saying that. You try it. It's worked for me so far.

"I tried to heal him it didn't work" - well maybe he's still residually possessed. Or maybe you suck. Sorry Cas, you don't deserve that. It's not you. It's not me, either. It's them. It's the writers. I don't know what this line is about unless they're teeing up Cas to be even more neutered than he already is. I legit don't know, I can't think, I'm so irritated right now. 

"Nothing to hold you anywhere" - what? Really? Seriously? So what are you and Dean? Y'all ain't his family? Let that little badass haunt the bunker. He'd be the most awesome research assistant ever. Now THAT is a good plot point, have ol' Kev be home base, helping coordinate whatever's coming. Oh here we go, swishy swishy hand, magic hole, nobody knows why this demon can do all this shit, and Kevin's gone. Why? WHY. My idea is better. No way Osric would blow your guest star budget, it appears to be shaping up to be immense, especially with all the money you've saved so far on location(s). 

Shoulda kept him rest of season, let him assist, then his final reward is getting into heaven for reals when Cas (they'll probs kill him, tho) or Amara (maybe, seems too obvi a choice tho, and she doesn't give a shit about beng a ruler, we knew that back in whatever season that was) or Jack (because why not, it's the most ridiculous idea, since he's got the mind of a toddler, meaning it's something the writers would think is a great idea) or Billie (wild card guess) is the new God. Or have him brought back to life, fuck, I don't care.

So is the bullet trapping Chuckster on earth, is the question, and if so what kind of all-knowing deity puts a weapon in the hand of a potential enemy that could render him even a *touch* weaker? Where's the long game, there? What could any possible reasoning be? 

Okay, well, the scenes between Emily and Rob have been the best part of the episode, as well as the interaction with Ruthie and DHJ. Everything else fell flat. J2M seemed to be bored and phoning it in, and it's not often that can be said about any of those three.

I swear, if the preview shows that we're still in this little town for episode #3.... wait, is that the crypt from ep #1?.... are.... are we..... 

ARE WE STILL IN THIS LITTLE TOWN

What have we learned? Other than Chuck, no character development. The plot remains that some ghosts-interchangeably-used-with-souls from hell are trapped in a confined area, and it was via a tenuous spell provided by a demon whose motivations are unknown, and there's something up with that bullet wound. We knew those already.

(There's possibly something wrong with either Cas or Ketch -- or else that's something that will be completely forgotten was ever mentioned -- but we don't know either way and we don't know what it is, therefore we didn't learn anything; if this does ultimately turn out to be something, then we'll count it as a learned item for that episode.) 

So, minus learning that Chuck is weakened somehow and that at least for right now Amara’s not exactly in his corner, we're in the exact same place story-wise that we were in last week. 

And looks like we'll be back there again next week. 

See you next week, I guess.

=================================

Past posts, from newest to oldest (and I sometimes do addendums if a response warrants)

Episode 1

.

[romanticsuspense]

Is Outlander Claire’s Story or Jamie’s?

The first time I came across this question was just a couple of week ago, when I read @gotham-ruaidh‘s answer to that very question.  To be honest, I was a little miffed by the supposition that Outlander was Jamie’s story more than Claire’s.  Didn’t Diana set out to write a story about a marriage?  How could Outlander be more Jamie’s story than Claire’s?  Aren’t their stories intertwined in such a way as to be almost inseparable?  

Well, today, while perusing the Outlander tag, I found this post by @lburks226.  Liesel’s perception of the books align closely to mine—It’s Jamie and Claire’s story.  But, I wondered what Diana had said on Twitter to cause such a brouhaha...  

So, I went to Diana’s twitter and it seems that this uproar started when Diana made a comment about inserting Claire into the Outlander story to add “sexual tension.”  I read some of the fan’s replies, and it seems that some fans interpreted this to mean that Diana viewed Claire as a sexual object and nothing more, only there to titillate the male characters. (One fan used the phrase “sexual pawn.”)  Which, if you ask me, is twisting Diana’s words.

As I read through her tweets, a lot of them sounded very familiar, and then I remembered that Diana has answered this same question before on TheLitForum.com.  In her very detailed explanation, she essentially says the same things she was trying to convey on Twitter, but she gets her point across much more effectively (not having to deal with a 280 character limit).  So, under the cut, I’ve quoted Diana’s post about this in it’s entirety, as well as a few screencaps of her tweets on March 19th.  I hope it gives some fans who may be irritated by Diana’s comments a bit more context and clarity.  The statement “It’s Jamie’s story as told by Claire” makes a lot more sense to me now, after reading Diana’s explanation.

My two (or five) cents:

1. Twitter is not the best place to have a productive discussion about Outlander.  There’s just not enough space for it.  And it’s difficult to read a person’s tone on Twitter.  

2. From a structural standpoint, the Outlander series is Jamie’s story (in the sense that it’s Jamie’s time and place), as told from Claire’s first person point of view.

3. Outlander is primarily about Jamie and Claire and their marriage...But, it’s about a lot of other things and characters, too.

4. The idea of Outlander started with “a man in a kilt.”  An Englishwoman was added into the story for sexual tension, conflict (being an Englishwoman among Scots), and to be the reader’s eyes into a strange world.

5. But, that doesn’t mean Claire isn’t an important character.  She has just as much agency and complexity as Jamie does.  I particularly love Diana’s final paragraph, so I’m quoting it here above the cut:

So. You introduce Claire into Jamie's time (and his life) and she immediately enters the much more adventurous, vivid context. A lot of what happens to her in OUTLANDER (and later books) has to do with who Jamie is and what he chooses or is forced to do. This doesn't mean she's a bystander, onlooker, or in any way a nonparticipant; the fact that she's _there_ is vitally important, both to Jamie and the story overall, and she makes personal choices that shape her own life, as well as dealing with circumstances forced upon her. But it's Jamie's context in which both of them live their lives together. She's telling it, because she's the outlander, the fish out of water, the stranger--we identify with her, because that's what our role would be in similar circumstances, and it's a much easier way to tell a historical story, if you can use modern idiom and perception.That doesn't mean it's principally her story, or that her part in it is either more or less than Jamie's--as previously noted, the story itself doesn't exist without both of them, and both of them _together_.

So, what do y’all think?  Does it matter to you if it’s more Jamie’s story or Claire’s?  If it does matter to you, why?  Does Diana’s explanation of how the Outlander story came to be and how Jamie and Claire fit into it make sense to you?  How do you interpret the statement “It’s Jamie’s story as told by Claire?”

“You know, it's possible that many writers go about their work with a lot more pre-thinking than I do. <g> All I had, when I made up my mind to write a novel for practice (no one was EVER going to see it, so I could have perfect freedom to do anything I felt like, try anything I wanted to experiment with (in order to increase my skill), etc.)--was a man in a kilt. Period. That's it. Man in a kilt.

So if one is going to say that OUTLANDER is "about" any one character (and it's not, but put that aside...), it would be The Man in the Kilt. However, about the third day of writing--and I didn't think about what I was _going_ to write, I just wrote about whatever vague thing drifted into my mind, just to put fictional words down on paper (ergo, those first two days were entirely focused on the Man in the Kilt (nameless, then)....

Well, I'd gone to the university library (I was an assistant professor, which gave me really good access and borrowing privileges) immediately, when I decided to set my practice novel in 18th century Scotland, and as of the third day, I knew a few things <g>--mainly, that the Big Conflict in Scotland in the 18th century was the Jacobite Rising of the '45. Which--on a very superficial level (superficial is all you _can_ be, with two days' research)--seemed to be a war between England and Scotland. (It was, of course, much more complex than that, but then, all wars are a lot more complex than they seem on the surface.)

So--in possession of that fact <g>--I thought, well, obviously, I need a lot of Scotsmen here, because of the kilt factor, and if it's a war, we'll have them--but maybe it would be a good idea to have a female to play against them; then we'd have sexual tension--that's conflict, that's good...and if I make her an Englishwoman, then we'll have _lots_ of conflict. So...

I introduced An Englishwoman. No idea who she was, what she was going to do, etc.--she was just An Englishwoman, whose only purpose was to interact on some unspecified level with The Man in the Kilt, in order to escalate the sense of conflict and tension.

So that's who Jamie and Claire were, to begin with. <g>

Now, it was my husband who observed to me, sometime last year (when people started saying that Outlander was "Claire's story"), that in fact, it was Jamie's story as told through (and by) Claire (who was naturally an integral part of said story).

I mentioned this quote to someone, observing that I thought he was right (not that I'd ever thought about it myself)--and now we have all this nonsense. (Not blaming you for it, I hasten to add. <g>)

What _I_ think is that a) of COURSE it's Jamie and Claire's story. How could it not be? It wouldn't be the same story without either one of them--as is quite obvious when you see the separate tracks of their lives in the first part of VOYAGER. And b) what is behind my husband's observation is true, but it has nothing to do with the importance of either character _as people_.

It has to do with the fact that Jamie lives in much more interesting (read, dangerous, unpredictable, and to a large extent unfamiliar) times. Claire's post-war, 20th-century life without Jamie is, on the surface, not real interesting. Re-establishing emotional connections with a husband (but in a context of mutual safety and mutual desire to make those connections), or (later) dealing with the challenges of becoming a professional woman and balancing those challenges against the responsibilities and emotional draw of motherhood.

Yeah, you can make a good novel out of such material--hundreds of Women's Fiction novels do. But the raw material is not intrinsically interesting. What makes it interesting is either an intense and unique personality of the main character and/or cultural interest/outrage on the part of the readership. Women respond to this kind of story because they face those challenges, and they want to see how other women might manage them. Men, not surprisingly, don't; that's why it's "women's fiction."

So, Jamie's story. He's a wanted outlaw, constantly at odds with just about everybody, from the British government to a large segment of his own family. There's incipient social unrest surrounding him (and his whole culture), with the constant potential for violence, subterfuge, mistrust, and imminent execution. In other words, he lives in a high-stakes context; Claire lives in a very personal (but overall low-stakes) context. Adventure (and the demands of such things on character, for good or evil), vs. "My husband KNOWS I take care of a squalling baby all day, how can he bloody invite people to DINNER without asking me?"

So. You introduce Claire into Jamie's time (and his life) and she immediately enters the much more adventurous, vivid context. A lot of what happens to her in OUTLANDER (and later books) has to do with who Jamie is and what he chooses or is forced to do. This doesn't mean she's a bystander, onlooker, or in any way a nonparticipant; the fact that she's _there_ is vitally important, both to Jamie and the story overall, and she makes personal choices that shape her own life, as well as dealing with circumstances forced upon her. But it's Jamie's context in which both of them live their lives together. She's telling it, because she's the outlander, the fish out of water, the stranger--we identify with her, because that's what our role would be in similar circumstances, and it's a much easier way to tell a historical story, if you can use modern idiom and perception. That doesn't mean it's principally her story, or that her part in it is either more or less than Jamie's--as previously noted, the story itself doesn't exist without both of them, and both of them _together_.

But if you're looking at the structure of the story, then yeah, it's Jamie's story as told by (and lived with) Claire. So what?”

Below are some screencaps of Diana’s tweets on March 19th.  Remarkably similar to the above explanation, right?

[thelightningawardsofficial]

Review | K A T H A R O S

Judged by Shawn (Snowwhitewolf09)

Category: I'm Not A Mary Sue

[ Author: ArimaMary ]

>Title (5/5): I'm a sucker for Greek and Latin words, and Katharos is a word I find to be on the beautiful side of the Greek language. The title itself gives much of the work immediately, the chosen word obviously being a reference to Kiyoshi's emphasis on purity. Ergo, readers know what to expect the story to revolve around. However, I like the charm that it has to it, a lingering sense of mystique that persists.

>Summary (7/10): It's short and sweet, and manages to summarise what Katharos is. I am just docking a few points because I feel that you could have added a bit more to give a better picture of the story and hook readers. I also wouldn't really call Kiyoshi an 'average student' of Teikoku, since he seems to be more of an outcast if he gets flack for being a "foreigner".

>Plot (22/25) -> [17.6/20]: The overall plot is straightforward, and there aren't any twists and turns that make it complex. It might not be an intriguing stand-alone story, but since the book is a spin-off that is supposed to highlight the character and philosophy of Kiyoshi, I'm lenient regarding that matter.

I like how each chapter shows an important part of Kiyoshi's personality. They are well-picked, highlighting different facets each time, and adding a little bit more background on why Kiyoshi thinks like this or acts like that. I didn't feel a 'filler chapter' and that gives you quite a boon. The pacing was also adjusted enough to show the perspectives, though perhaps it leans a bit to the slower side.

The way I see it, though it is in third person, the narrator is attuned with Kiyoshi, appropriately moving slowly where Kiyoshi would be slow himself, like the almost-drooling-over-Kidou scene. Sometimes, it would feel a bit dragging, but that doesn't affect it too much, since it is covered with splendid character portrayal.

I didn't give you full points because the plot didn't make me crave to know what would come next (Partially because of the speed, and partially because there wasn't really much action to be looking out for), and it feels a tad lacking in events due to brevity and (I assume) the focus.

Regardless, the plot itself managed to bring out Kiyoshi's character with events, dialogue, and the pacing, so kudos to you.

>Characterization (18/20) -> [13.5/15]: I've little to say other than you've done great with Kiyoshi. After going through some of the chapters, his actions seemed to become easy to understand, since his character had been shown well. I enjoyed seeing his convictions and his vulnerabilities, as well as his view on 'purity'.

If purity is staying true to oneself, I find Kiyoshi to be creating many exceptions: he is merely staying true to what he feels at the moment, believing that it is his true self. He says rather early that he needs nobody else, reinforcing what he felt at the time. Later on, he shows that he actually is rather lonely, and convinces himself to mend his relationship with Keima. It's an interesting, yet utterly desperate (fitting of his character), way to view purity.

I do have a problem with how he saw Teikoku as his Paradise, as the earlier outburst gave me the vibes that he was not exactly fine with his place in school. Considering his vulnerable side that is shown later on, such irritability rubs me off as the result of having a negative view of the people in his school. Perhaps he frequently convinces himself that Teikoku is Paradise (which is why he also had his view of Teikoku changed into some sort of place of dark deals). Maybe it just strikes me as odd.

Keima is also well-done, but I honestly feel like he just seems a bit lacklustre before he talks with Kiyoshi about mending their relationship. That said, I look forward to seeing a bit more of him.

Grammar and Writing Style (13/15): While I did spot a few sentences that were oddly constructed (either run-ons or have pronouns that seemed to be ambiguous) and 'Hachidan' alternated with 'Hachi-dan', that is not what I want to mainly discuss.

The way you unfurled Kiyoshi's character was made effective by the well-written descriptions and the use of figurative language/symbolism. Of course, the most prominent would be the mention of the Garden of Eden, as it was what summed up Kiyoshi's motivations.

I also appreciated the use of 'Kin' as a human face for weakness and past mistakes, as though I am not sure who this Kin is, Kin has come to personify concepts that Keima and Kiyoshi find negative. I also particularly liked how his box of dreams was a literal cardboard box that had his hopes and dreams contained within—now that he was dead-set on following them again, they did not need to be boxed up and kept to the side anymore, but brandished. The hissatsu of Keima comes to me as a sort of representation of his reformation—Cortana was the blade that had its tip cut off, similar to how the once forceful Keima was trying to cut off his 'edge'—and makes me think of how much he contrasts with Sir Tristan of the Round Table (Tristan being the sorrowful Knight). He also had the Tristian-Igraine relationship with Kiyoshi back then, as Tristian married another person named Igraine, but always compared her to his first love.

It was a little hard to catch, but I saw a subtle "light at the end of the tunnel" derivation which made me read again just to make sure. As Kiyoshi was doubting whether or not he would actually be able to reach his dream through these dirty methods, walking through uncertainty, he drew nearer to the end. That was where he would face his dream. The scene was a transition from doubt to hope.

There's also this little bit that gives me a better view of Kiyoshi and Keima's relationship. I didn't get it at first, but I then realised it after studying up the names. Kiyoshi was the dragon to Keima's knight back then, reflected in their names Ryuugamine and Keima. Kiyoshi was the one who challenged Keima's moral code.

The mention of a red oni brought into my mind the 'red oni, blue oni' trope. The red oni is a symbol of passion and desire, or simply emotions. The red oni within Kiyoshi was being quenched, the void of loneliness being filled with the forgotten feeling of having someone to complete you.

I had to dock points for the little mistakes and some portions with descriptions that seemed to be a tad long, but those are just minor problems.

>Originality (9/10) -> [4.5/5]: Okay, I docked a point for the Teikoku Spy trope, and the lack of much things that are 'shockingly original'.

However, I will say that Kiyoshi himself is someone I find to be original in some ways amongst IE fanfiction characters. His desperate view of purity is something I haven't really encountered, and I find his foreign blood to be uncommon (Though Suabara also has foreign blood). I also liked how Kiyoshi was learning Killer Slide, a hissatsu that doesn't get much love, as it usually is seen as a show of brutality.

Also... Kiyoshi's later motivation for being a spy is refreshing to see. It was first much like desperation, but later on hope and optimism. Guess Keima did rub off on him.

>Feels Factor (14/15): I have to say, you made me feel much for Kiyoshi. He reminds me much of a friend of mine, and I sometimes I would be whelmed by Kiyoshi's shows of his desperation to cling to purity and what little bit of his dreams he has left. His mother was portrayed well enough for me to almost want to slap her across the face, while the contrasts made between Kiyoshi and Keima's backgrounds made it much more difficult to not feel anything for the blond.

I felt less for Keima, though it was to be a given since he was not the focus. Nonetheless, your words managed to make me connect with his doubts about how he treats others, though I feel like there could have been a bit more to him.

Seeing Kiyoshi come to terms with his dream and his interactions with Keima was a blessing. You averted one of the things that I find too often—a spy doing it because of some threat. You gave Kiyoshi a positive reason to become a spy, which is not to prevent damage to himself, but to finally reach his dreams that had been suppressed.

I had to dock a point because of Keima and how I wasn't particularly craving to know what would happen next, but that's minor.

🅞🅒 🅡🅔🅥🅘🅔🅦 -> [➊➍.➊/➊➎]

>Name(5/5): Ryuugamine means "dragon's peak", and is not too odd of a surname. The contrast with Keima's name gives it a little bit more substance, though the name itself isn't telling of too much. Additionally, I thought of the Seiryū, and how its connection to Wood fitted soundly with the elemental affinity of Killer Slide.

Kiyoshi's name reflects who he is, as well as the ideal that he strives to achieve. Ultimate purity, stainless, at all costs. Kiyoshi's name means "pure," and is fitting.

>Appearance (6/8): I get enough description from Kiyoshi to have a general idea of what he would look like in a crowd, but details of his physical appearance aren't as focused on as Kidou Yuuto's.

I like the little detail that he likely has some pimples on his face, as it makes him look more human in a world where practically every character looks like their face never needed cream nor shaving their entire life.

I had to dock points for the scarcity of description. Aside from the colour of his hair, the presence of red-rimmed glasses, and his pimples, there is little else. His physique nor skin colour isn't touched upon, even his eye colour isn't something I've found.

Furthermore, I cannot seem to get around him being called foreign-looking because of his blond hair, considering the fact that there are many who also have blond hair, and that green hair isn't anything odd.

>Personality(10/10): Kiyoshi's personality is definitely well-developed and well-shown. I've already touched most of this in the Characterisation, so it'll be redundant here. You've done a good job of showing how strongly he clings to his idea of purity. Especially that fixation on Kidou, that is almost unsettlingly detailed.

The development of Kiyoshi's character with Keima as the trigger was pleasing. Early on, he was against having friends, and came off as an individual who was fiercely independent. Just as he was back then, according to his talks with Keima. But talking with Keima showed that Kiyoshi still had the capacity to truly connect; it had only been boxed up and put to the side like his dreams.

>Strengths and Weaknesses(11/12): His vulnerabilities are well-exploited. His desperation made him lean to Kageyama, and his hesitation to act upon his passion was made apparent many times. You managed to show Kiyoshi's weaknesses and bloodily ripped them out for people to see.

His strengths don't really shine all that much, though they do show themselves. The most prominent is his dedication, especially to his own idea of purity and his dream. Kiyoshi's skills were mentioned or shown, though not particularly highlighted—he has great body coordination, notable skills with technology, and a commendable cooking ability. It's a bit hard to see, but Kiyoshi also has a sort of childish charm at times that slips through the cracks.

>Interaction With Canon (10/10): It doesn't wreck or affect canon all that much, and happens at a time when Teikoku likely would have sent spies to Kidokawa, so no problem here.

>Relationships With Canon Characters (5/5): It's mostly Kidou, and they share a relationship I see as something that wouldn't be off. Kidou maintains an attitude towards him that is like most Teikoku subordinates, while the crush that Kiyoshi has doesn't seem to far of a stretch considering his status and charm.

Kiyoshi's relationship with Kageyama isn't expanded much, but it can be seen that he has a pretty... typical relationship with the man. It is not odd, rather it is something that is reasonable given Kageyama's notorious reputation. Kiyoshi seems to see him as the blood-stained path that would lead him to his dream, the evil benefactor that offers him his deepest desire. He sees that Kageyama is shady, and Kiyoshi seems like he does not want to concern himself with the Coach anymore than he has to, but he is willing to put those aside for football.

[Raw] 74.6/100 + 47/50 [Scaled] 88.7/100 [Final] 88.7%

Banner by -artxyuki

[kingofthewilderwest]

Maybe I'm too late to ask this, but I found a hater recently that said Stoick's death was too cheap or too convenient there. Your thoughts? (Mind you, I didn't watch the rest of his argument againts other things in httyd2 that, while valid, hurt too much to continue)

It’s never too late to ask something or discuss topics! Honestly? I’m very emotionally invested in this topic, so I’m excited you gave me the excuse to talk about it! I’ve seen these critiques, too, around the internet, and while I understand the angle, my personal take is that Stoick’s death isn’t cheap or convenient - but a crucial and powerful storytelling element.

I talked about this years ago here, here, and ESPECIALLY here, but there’s still more to talk about and/or be said again.

So here we go!

Of course there are many ways to write a successful story,but well-structured narrative plots often include a protagonist with an internal conflict. During the story, they learn the difference between whatthey think they need versus what they actually need. This may also tie into how they interpret and act upon their sense of identity. Bothinternal character struggles and external dangers drive story forward… in theend helping our protagonist realize that what they thought the solution totheir internal conflict might not be right.

Oftentimes, our protagonist will develop and changethroughout the story, but there will be several key impacting scenes - takeawaymoments, if you will, that are formulative in what they end up learning. There’sno takeaway moment more important than their deepest low, which usually occurs about twothirds to three quarters through a narrative. During the deepest low, the character is at theirworst - everything seems hopeless, everything’s going for the worst,everything points to the villain winning and the protagonist losing hope. Theprotagonist will probably feel like they can’t conquer the big external badguy, and they question their identity and internal sense of beliefs. In short: everything’s collapsed around them.

This Big, Dark, Emotional Low is a HIGHLY effective storytellingdevice. I mean, we sometimes call it a TURNING POINT for a reason. This is a dramatic,climactic event which takes us from the worst to the best. Deep lows:

Tie together the entire story: the centraltakeaway of the narrative, the character’s internal struggle, and the story’sexternal conflict.

Have the character triumphing out of the deeplow, finding a revelation that may be central to the story’s narrative theme / moral message.

Have the character triumphing out of the deeplow, realizing what they actually need, and getting a key to who their identityIS. The character may question everything of who they are, even the things they thought they believed… before coming together into a stronger, more resolute person who’s found their answer.

Have the character triumphing out of the deeplow, finding the strength and solution on how to defeat their external enemy. They become our hero.

Give a realistic sense of vulnerability audiences relate to. We know what it’s like to hit rock bottom. This can give us “enjoyable” relatable pain in story. When the hero climbs out of the pit… it also gives a sense of inspirationfor how we ourselves can triumph past life’s struggles.

Provide a sense of heightened danger before theclimax. The darker and more hopeless the low point, the more successful anddramatic the moment our hero triumphs. Without a sense of hardship, it’sdifficult to find a “FUCK YEAH!!!” moment for our hero winning. Ergo, theentire story feels more satisfying and successful when our hero saves the day.

In short: deep lows are GREAT storytellingdevices.

The best “deep lows” are those that combine the drama of theouter conflict in a story… and integrate it with a protagonist’s internalconflict of identity. Triumphing from the deep low allows our protagonist to understand what they actually need (rather than what they firstwanted), and it gives them the power to defeat our Big Bad. This alsocan tie to the moral theme of a story, the takeaway message of the fiction.

Stoick’s death is that deep low.

I’ve talked before, in posts three and four years old, abouthow I believe Stoick’s death is necessary to make HTTYD 2 as effectiveof a story as it is. It’s not a contrived plot device or unnecessary death, butsomething I find central to everything HTTYD 2 is about.

In HTTYD 2, Hiccup’s internal conflict is his identity.Specifically, it’s the question about who he is and how he can change the world. Stoick believes it’s time forHiccup to become chief, but Hiccup doesn’t feel ready. Hiccup can’t see himselfas a good leader in part because he doesn’t connect to Stoick’s brand ofleadership. Hiccup knows he loves dragons, but he can’t piece together aboutwhere he’s headed in his life. As Hiccup tells Astrid, “I’m not like you. Youknow exactly who you are. You always have. But… I’m still looking. I knowthat I’m not my father… and I never met my mother…. so, what does that makeme?”

Astrid tells Hiccup that the answer is in his heart - and she’sright - and that’s the exact journey HTTYD 2 will take. Hiccup’s centralinternal conflict is that he doesn’t know what his identity is; what he thinks heneeds is to understand himself since he’s “different” from his father and not “fit”to be chief.

Throughout HTTYD 2, this is developed. Hiccup and Stoickquarrel about how to handle Drago. Stoick’s brand of chiefly leadership believesthat “a chief must protect his own.” But Hiccup wants to change Drago’s mind in the same way how he tamed dragons in the first movie changed Hairy Hooligans’minds. Hiccup, the dragon trainer, thinks he can peacefully reach diplomacy withDrago, a dragon conqueror. Hiccup tries to use his connection to dragons as away to change the mind of one of Drago’s subordinates, Eret. But Stoickdisagrees with Hiccup’s philosophy so much that, in the end, Hiccup runs away…

…and meets Valka.

First in the movie, we see how Hiccup isn’t Stoick, Hiccup isn’tthe same brand of chief. The next part of HTTYD 2 shows how Hiccup is both likehis mother… but also not her, either.

Valka is Hiccup’s second half, a dragon lover and dragonprotector. She and Hiccup both see this. They both want tocreate a better world for dragons. This excites Hiccup, so he thinks he’s foundsomeone who will side with him and confront Drago in the same way he wants. Instead, his conversation with Valka bears striking similarities to how hedisagreed with his dad:

Valka: This gift we share, Hiccup, it bondsus. This is who you are, son. Who we are. We will change the world for alldragons. We will make it a better, safer place.Hiccup: That sounds… amazing. This is so great! Now you andI can go talk to Drago together.Valka: What? There’s no talking to Drago.Hiccup: But we have to…Valka: No. We must protect our own. 

Hiccup is learning that he’s not his father, who stands toprotect human Vikings and will fight a man who conquers dragons. Hiccup also gets a hint here he’s not his mother, who stands to protect dragons but won’tconnect to humans.

The external conflict of HTTYD 2 is the fact that Drago is adangerous warlord who will crush Berk, the Bewilderbeast’s sanctuary, andanything in his path. The inner conflict of HTTYD 2 is Hiccup trying to findhis identity - specifically his passion for how he can change the world. Bothof these conflicts are developed in how Hiccup interacts with his parents and Hiccupwants to handle Drago. Hiccup believes that, because he convinced the HairyHooligans that dragons are safe, he can also negotiate with Drago and convincethe warlord to preside in peace.

In fact, one of the things Hiccup clings to the mostis that he believes he can negotiate with Drago and change his mind.

And then… he meets Drago.

Hiccup will find out that both his parents are right - Dragois a danger to humans, Drago is a danger to dragons, and Drago cannot bereasoned with.

It’s then our Deep Low Event happens.

Toothless. Kills. Stoick.

And Hiccup, crying, suffer through his father’s funeral.

This is the moment where EVERYTHING about HTTYD 2′s narrative comestogether.

Hiccup is destabilized. Entirely destabilized. He’s been ina quest to understand his identity and what he can do to change the world forthe better. In the midst of his self-searching and self-questioning, the fewthings he thought he understood about his identity have been wiped fromhim. Hiccup thought that his revolutionary friendship with dragons could givehim the background experience to negotiate peace with Drago. Hiccup thoughtthat he was right and his father was wrong about how to handle Drago. Hiccupthought that he couldn’t be chief. And yet here he is: he’s going to be forcedinto leadership on account of his father’s death. He didn’t just fail tonegotiate with Drago, but his relationship with dragons was cut away from him:TOOTHLESS was used to kill his FATHER. All the stabilizing elements in Hiccup’slife - that Stoick could keep being chief, that Hiccup’s identity was connectedto his peace with dragons, that Hiccup could be a peace-creating diplomat - these have been stripped away exactly because of what happened betweenDrago, Stoick, Hiccup, and Toothless on the battlefield.

This is Hiccup’s giant questioning moment. It’s destabilizingand effective because it tackles EVERYTHING Hiccup has been going through inthe story. It’s about the external baddie, Drago, who turns out to be even MOREformidable and deadly than Hiccup could have imagined. It’s about the internalconflict, in which Hiccup’s quest for identity and impact have been cut outfrom under him. What he thought he wanted - negotiations of peace - aren’t possible. And this giant questioning moment ties in every other important plotthread - Hiccup’s relationship with his father thinking he’s not a chiefly son;Hiccup’s relationship with his mother and their passion for protecting dragons; Hiccup’s relationship with Toothless and believing theirfriendship is inseparable.

We get this Deep Low clearly stated in Hiccup’s tear-felt mourning: “I’mnot the chief that you wanted me to be. And I’m not the peacekeeper I thought Iwas. I don’t know…”

This moment even ties together what Astrid told him at thestart of the film. The solution to who Hiccup is, and what he’s meant to do, isalready inside him.

In the midst of this darkness, Hiccup finds his turningpoint. The solution to his problems: both his questions of identity, and how tohandle Drago.

The solution is that Hiccup is both his parents.Hiccup has already subconsciously found who he is. He has “the heart ofa chief and the soul of a dragon.” Exactly because he’s a mix of hisfather and mother, he’s able to do what they couldn’t alone: unite humanity anddragons in a way that can defeat Drago. Hiccup didn’t think he wanted to bechief because he wasn’t like his father - that’s what Hiccup thought -but the truth isn’t what he wanted or expected. Hiccup is someonepassionate enough to take on the mantle of chiefdom… because he’s his ownrevolutionary, unique self who’s willing to take a stand for what he believesin. Hiccup finds his identity here as a man of BOTH human and dragon worlds. Hiccup will learn that a chief protects his own, like his father says, andthat the Alpha protects them all, like his mother says. This together helps him realize the story’s moral theme: protect them all. Know when you can negotiate peacefully (save mind-controlled Toothless) and know when you need to stand your ground (fight Drago) to protect everyone you can.

This turn around moment is the bindingglue that will allow Hiccup to pierce the Bewilderbeast’s mind control, reunitewith Toothless, become chief, and use humans and dragons both to fight off Drago’sarmy, and triumphantly declare, “This is what it is to earn a dragon’s loyalty!”

Thus, Stoick’s Ship is the turning point that gives Hiccupthe strength to say that he’s going to try to be a great chief, and that he andhis friends are going to go back and tackle Drago a second time. It’s thesolution to everything: that Hiccup can find out who he is, and that Hiccup canfind a way to beat Drago – albeit by a different way than he first thought.

So. If you take away Stoick’s death, you’re taking away theculmination of everything the story has been building up to, and you’re takingaway Hiccup’s momentous turning point that leads to the story’s conclusion.

Awesomely enough, the turning point is the moment he turns around to face his companions, a fiery look in his eyes, and the determination to do what he knows needs be done.

While you could try to generate other possibleturning points as substitutions to Stoick’s death, I honestly don’t think any substitute could be this effective (not without reworking the story’s scaffolding). If Stoick werestill alive, Hiccup wouldn’t be as driven to become chief. If Toothless didn’tkill anyone, or if Drago just took Toothless away, then Hiccup wouldn’tstruggle through the same destabilizing he needed to go through to in hisDarkest Hour. Hiccup’s beliefs wouldn’t have been as challenged as so obviouslycrushed. Stoick’s death is what leads our hero to his heroism - dark as that truth may be.

Dean DeBlois wrote HTTYD 2 thinking about his own coming ofage and loss of his father. He would have scripted this storyspecifically around the psychological turns that happen when you lose a parentand have to be forced into adulthood. Dean didn’t write this as a contrivedshock value death (though of course there’s shock), but as an intentional cruxpoint for the emotions he wanted to impart in this narrative. It’s a story about what happens when you must step into adulthood and be your own.

I’ve seen people say Stoick’s death wasunnecessary and that Hiccup could have learned to become chief while his fatherstill lived. We audience members are all going to interact and respond to mediadifferently. As for me, I think that Stoick’s death isn’t just a good writing element, but what MAKES the film.

This is the REASON why I love HTTYD 2 so much. It’s why I CONNECT. I love good narratives, and this part is apowerful, culminating narrative moment. I’m also someone who love emotionallyresonant and painful moments in fiction - and it struck me hard to seeour main protagonist go through a real loss that couldn’t be “fixed” and“forgotten” by the end of the film. HTTYD 2 was willing to write our herosobbing on his father’s body, and to carry that weight with himeven after he conquered our villain. The realness of it - while still being aninspiring rather than cynical story - is why HTTYD 2 remains one of my favoritemovies today.

[eeveelutionsforequality]

I recently had a conversation with a friend, because they shipped two characters in a piece of media, but it was later revealed that said characters were siblings, and my friend said that they felt bad for shipping them... I wasn't really sure what to say other than that if they liked the characters' interactions then they liked the characters' interactions, that there's nothing wrong with that, that the characters are fictional so no harm done. I feel like I could've said more though, or been more helpful.

It's important to note that, especially when there's that big reveal coming up and the writers don't want to give it away, siblings in fiction aren't always portrayed in such a way that our brain processes their interactions in the same way that it would view our own siblings in relation to ourselves - just saying "they're siblings", especially long after we've gone through the process of emotionally interpreting their relationship, isn't always enough to elicit that emotional reaction.

I know because I write, because I have to try to convey certain relationships between characters, and because I sometimes have to try to alter somebody's interpretation of a relationship or personality through a surprise twist (and I know how easy it is to fail at that). You lead the reader along and make them feel a certain way about a character, then pull the ol' switcheroo and give them a shock and/or conflicting emotions, but if you don't adequately convey that change emotionally to each individual reader then you get "he wasn't a villain, he was just a misunderstood baby" and similar scenarios - only in the case of certain people shipping incest ships, the initial interpretation stems from the writer (possibly unintentionally) not hitting your personal "family" buttons and not them intentionally pulling a bait n' switch, and said reveal may not have gotten you in sync with the writer either. You can view them as siblings logically, but if the emotion isn't there then it isn't there, and it's not your fault (nor anyone's fault, even the writer's) that this specific portrayal just doesn't click right in your head... think about how many people don't gel with certain canon romantic ships - it's not at all uncommon for portions of the audience to react differently to others, because a writer can't hit the right note for everyone when everyone's brain needs a different note.

(Of course, in my friend's case, maybe they felt bad because the characters did hit the sibling buttons after the reveal - but that wasn't the impression that they gave. That said, if you feel bad about a certain ship suddenly after a reveal, maybe it is because the writer effectively altered your interpretation of the characters and intended that reaction - that's something to applaud them for, not condemn yourself for. Don't feel at all as though there's something wrong with you or some kind of problem within you just because you didn't pick up on a cue or see them that way, it's perfectly fine - possibly even intentional - that you didn't. My friend didn't judge the writers, but some people judge writers for causing such reactions - they say that a writer who writes a story that makes you feel disgusted is glorifying that thing... no, you ninny, nine times out of ten you feel disgusted because they were trying to disgust you. But I'm getting sidetracked.)

Shipping two characters that you didn't initially register as siblings doesn't mean that you're attracted to the concept of incest (in fact, it's an indication of the opposite, especially if you feel conflicted about it upon discovery), and it definitely doesn't mean that you're bad in any way, it just means that it wasn't written in a way that led to your brain solely viewing their relationship in that specific way - and that's fine. We all have different experiences and different things that we associate with other things, so it's completely understandable that an interaction that one individual sees as solely platonic and familial can come across as romantic to another.

That said, even if you enjoy the dynamic of them being siblings in a romantic context in fiction, that's fine too. It's fiction.

Part of it being fiction means that you can warp things, leave out the bad bits, explore dynamics that wouldn't actually present in such a way in reality, make them into something that they wouldn't really be - as long as you're aware that it's a (quite possibly romanticized) fantasy and not an attainable reality, as long as you maintain the separation of fiction and reality, then you aren't going to suddenly change your opinions of the real world (and maintaining that differentiation is something that you're likely doing by default right now and constantly, unconsciously, naturally, because of the inherent differences between fiction and reality, and how our brain interprets stimuli from each).

When it comes to shipping "problematic" things, people seem to forget that, and they call it harmful normalizing/romanticizing. In reality things don't work how they work in fiction, the bad bits are still there, so you're not going to start being okay with the reality because it's those very present bad bits that you are not and were never okay with, it was those bad bits that you needed to take away to enjoy the concept at all. They're still there in reality and you're still not okay with them, ergo you're still not okay with it in reality even if you enjoy it in fiction.

Our brains naturally view fiction and reality in different ways, we interpret them differently, we react to them differently, and our brains are aware that we're currently safe and sound while reading a book, that it's not actually happening (excluding in very specific circumstances like certain mental health issues), and our brains have a different emotional reaction to a real physical loved one than to words on a piece of paper (that's why seeing certain violent actions against a loved one in real life was a traumatic event for me, but watching people get their intestines pulled out by zombies was enjoyable - in the latter, I was safe, and nobody was being hurt because they weren't real).

While you can become desensitized to fictional portrayals, without extraneous factors that desensitization doesn't translate into reality or real behaviour - like I said, the bad bits are still there in reality and they still affect you. Sitting alone and reading words on a page - in a safe environment where nobody involved is real or able to get hurt - is a very different scenario to engaging with real people in a potentially harmful manner, and influencing you to do the latter takes a lot more time, power, targeted manipulation, tactics that are effective on your personality, coercion, etc (often alongside things like social ostracizing and severe mental ill health) than that book alone has (and notably the effectiveness and power of any radicalization or manipulation tactics are dependent upon the severity of the intended action, your upbringing, your susceptibility, your vulnerability, your pre-existing morality, and so forth, so if even that is so wildly varied then something like a fictional story, something substantially less targeted or invasive, something that entirely lacks intent and entirely lacks the ability to adapt to the individual's weaknesses, does not have the power to corrupt vast swathes of the population). Scientology would be a lot more popular than it is if humans were that easy to radicalize - there's a reason cults have to put so much effort in, and still often fail - if it was as simple as a good fanfic then we'd see "Dan and Phil ascend to a higher plane through the Church of Scientology (tw dubcon, tw bananas)" because they'd be on that like it was catnip.

The fact that someone, for example (and not the ship that my friend was talking about), thinks that Stan and Ford's character designs and interactions aesthetically suit one and other, and/or make for an interesting dynamic to explore in fiction, doesn't undo years upon years, decades, of interactions and experiences in the real world, it won't undo how they fundamentally feel about their own siblings - those things are far more ingrained in them than a couple of cartoon old men can ever undo.

Most importantly though, fiction (and yes, even shipping... yes, EVEN SHIPPING) can be about creating emotions other than happiness, arousal, or positive emotions - hurt/comfort fics, angst fics, self-harm fics, and so forth, come to mind. You're not just getting sexual gratification from a pairing, you may not even be getting that at all - you're exploring a fictional dynamic and you can be doing that to achieve all sorts of emotions (yes, even disgust). To assume that someone is shipping because "it must turn them on! why else would they ship it!?" is naive to human behaviour and to the nature of entertainment - shipping is not some special area of entertainment that is reserved for only one emotional goal.

Horror movies, Black Mirror, stories about affairs, these things don't exist because we're happy about fictional people being hurt - "entertainment" isn't just about enjoying good things for good reasons in a good way and feeling good as a result, it isn't just about eliciting positive reactions, humans are strange and sometimes we seek out the negative or neutral feelings too (and it's healthy and useful to do so in a safe environment and via fiction that harms nobody). People aren't just watching I'm a Celebrity because they are happy when someone eats a spider - most people are looking away and cringing while that's happening, they're decidedly uncomfortable, and yet they're entertained. We're all weird.

The association of "entertaining" and "eliciting a positive reaction" needs to get on a spaceship and start searching the galaxy for an intelligent species that's actually hardwired for that to be the case... because we're not that species. Things can be gripping, intriguing, profound, hard-hitting, helpful, and even entertaining, specifically because they are dark or distressing, specifically because they do not make you feel good.

Do you even really want to live in a world where you're never allowed to feel disturbed, grossed out, upset, offended by fiction? A world where you're never allowed to learn or explore various premises, feelings, stories in a safe environment? A world where someone has to break the fourth wall and ruin the immersion just to tell you "this is bad, by the way", instead of trusting you and your developed mind (hence age ratings) to interpret morality properly and of your own accord? (...and if you say that "they don't have to break the fourth wall to do that", you should take a look at the number of people arguing that even specific overtly negative portrayals are "romanticizing" or should be censored, because I believe that it shows quite clearly that people who disagree with this stuff often do not give a fuck about how well written it is; and I'd argue that writers/creators shouldn't have to clarify at all, overtly or otherwise, because you should be capable of maintaining your morality even when faced with something that disagrees with it... do you disagree? congrats, you've proven my point, you can indeed maintain your position against something even while reading something seemingly or actually in favour of it.)

If you don't want that world, does that also apply in regards to sexual or romantic content? If you are okay with disturbing content in general, but not with fictional portrayals of sexual taboos, fictional portrayals of unhealthy or abusive relationships, or fictional portrayals of sexual violence, why? Why is it okay to elicit fear or sadness with a fictional brutal death, but not with a fictional rape?

Did you say that it's because "you're using things that traumatize people for entertainment"? So what makes the trauma of losing my loved ones, of being beaten, of nearly dying, different from the trauma of being raped in this scenario? There's no logical reason that stands up to scrutiny for deeming The Human Centipede okay, Rec/Quarantine okay, but Gothika not okay, The Hills Have Eyes not okay.

Or maybe you just said "It's gross" or "Why would you even want to read that!? Surely it speaks ill of you that you want to!" It's gross... and? The others aren't? What makes it special? What makes it more damning than wanting to watch brutal zombie films? The truth, as I've said, is that it has nothing to do with how people feel in reality or what their desires in reality are - but that most of us just aren't built to only seek out uncomplicated, positive feelings in fiction.

And remember that you're not obliged to ship/watch any of these things - they should have age ratings, trigger warnings, adequate tagging, etc, so that people who need/want to avoid them can do so. There's no obligation to enjoy such things - if you're the kind of person that gains nothing from them, that's okay, that's perfectly fine. However, you need to understand that not everybody creates or indulges in content just to feel good - even if you don't relate to doing that or are unable to envision yourself doing that, it's unfair of you to make vast and incorrect assumptions of so many people (which directly contradict what those very people are telling you that they're feeling).

But I got really sidetracked again there, so to summarize:

If you interpret fictional characters in a way that doesn't elicit an emotional sibling reaction to you, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that your brain happens to read certain cues differently to how the brain of the writer reads them.

If you ship them despite reading them as siblings, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that the lack of risk factors and such that would be present in the real world (ie nobody can get hurt in fiction, there's no genetic risk factors because they don't have DNA, etc) meant that you were able to explore an idea.

If you ship them because you enjoy exploring emotions other than arousal or joy, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that (like every human on the planet) you aren't sunshine and daisies 24/7.

If you're out there feeling bad for liking a ship or pairing - whether it's in spite of canon context or because of it, whether it's because it makes you feel good things or otherwise - please remember that it's okay to ship whatever you ship. It's okay to feel bad about the ship sometimes too, to think that it's gross or silly - maybe the canon creator or the fic creator is trying to elicit that reaction, or maybe you're just not in the mood for that pairing today, or whatever - but don't feel bad about yourself for shipping something, and don't ever feel like the potential interpretations of your ship/s dictate or convey your morality whatsoever.

[nerdgatehobbit]

Blog Updates

Jungle Fury Disc 1

Welcome to the Jungle, Part 1: Master Mao ultimately chooses Lily, Theo, and Casey to guard the box containing Dai Shi… but rejected candidate Jarrod ends up releasing the villain when he lashes out at Mao.  Master Mao pulls a Jedi/Ascends.  The trio goes to Ocean Bluff, where they meet RJ and Fran.  The former saves the trio from the Mantis monster and the Rin Shi minions as he’s their new ‘master’.  He then gives them their Ranger uniforms and morphers, sending them out when the monster, minions, and Camille are seen on one of his TV screens.  Theo and Lily successfully morph and start fighting Rin Shi. Casey fails and gets grabbed by some minions when he spots the monster going after Fran.  10/10

Welcome to the Jungle, Part 2: Although Casey figures out how to morph, none of the three know how to supersize when the monster does so.  Master Mao’s spirit briefly saves the day.  RJ refuses to teach them the technique until they’ve each mastered their weapon.  Theo ends up mentoring Casey on his.  Now a cohesive whole, they can form the Jungle Pride Megazord to defeat the monster. A fly-creature named Flit apparently lives in Camille’s stomach, coming out to cheer on the Rangers during Megazord battles.  Fran also gets hired by RJ.  10/10

Sigh of the Tiger: Casey wants to be mentored by RJ in order to catch up to Theo and Lily… but instead gets assigned various menial chores in between the trio fighting off Buffalord. Poor Fran gets stuck hosting a children’s birthday party down in JKP alone.  Everything works great in the end, though.  10/10

A Taste of Poison: The Five Fingers of Poison are called upon by Camille.  Casey gets ‘barely’ poisoned and Lily tries to take on Rantipede on her own in response.  RJ has made a vehicle for Casey which is helpful.  The show tries to sink the Lily/Casey ship to lackluster effect. And Fran’s already getting annoyed with her coworkers.  9/10

Can’t Win Them All: Theo loses his self-confidence after failing to defeat Gakko.  Ergo, RJ takes him out into the woods for some odd but effective training (and a lecture).  The characters continue to interact fantastically (I swear this group of five has the some of the best team chemistry in the franchise).  With renewed confidence, Theo takes point in destroying Gakko.  Dai Shi is getting frustrated with his minions’ ineptness.  9/10

Dance the Night Away: Theo gets jealous of Lily and Casey growing close… and Casey doesn’t react well to Theo insisting he’s the new guy.  Lily is not amused.  RJ makes the Claw Cannon, which when used properly is very useful in defeating both Toady and Stingerella.  9/10

Pizza Slice of Life: RJ goes on a de-fishing trip, leaving Casey in charge.  Not wanting the responsibility, he decides to ‘share’ it with Theo and Lily, which ends in disaster.  Things go much smoothly after Casey realizes he needs to step up to the plate as a JKP employee like he does as the Red Ranger.  Meanwhile, the villains have a largely internal conflict.  9/10

Way of the Master: Lily is determined to learn how to wield the Jungle Mace from the retired Master Phant when the Pangolin with its tough armor attacks Ocean Bluff.  Dai Shi decides to use the three life talons to revive the three Overlords, first going in search of the Sky Overlord.  The first episode without Fran, but RJ wore purple! 9/10

How am I already a fourth of the way through this season?!  I’m also done with the first Book of Fire disc for ATLA regarding my blog. I’m enjoying this season just as much as I did back in 2008.  Three episodes are team-centric, RJ mentors Casey in one episode and Theo in another, Lily and Casey shared one, Casey mostly had one to himself, and the final episode featured Lily and the titular master.

Mighty Morphin 2 Disc 5

The Great Bookala Escape: The team helps the titular alien (and his ‘lightning diamond’) escape from Lord Zedd’s grasp.  Billy’s the one who bonds the most with him.  5/10

Forever Friends: Aisha’s childhood friend Shawna is not happy about Kimberly and Aisha growing close. But the two brunettes end up bonding while captured by Goldar.  6/10

A Reel Fish Story: Four aquatic monsters are created as well as one out of an inner tube to try to destroy the Rangers.  Of course, the scheme fails.  A one-off character conquers his fear of there being monsters in the lake to rescue Bulk and Skull.  6/10

Rangers Back in Time, Part 1: Lord Zedd turns the heroes (and the rest of Angel Grove, if not the world) several years younger, making them in particular children.  Adorable antics ensue, but the episode ends with Photomare trapping the six in a photograph.  9/10

Rangers Back in Time, Part 2: This is the series’ hundredth episode.  Once Alpha gets the team back to normal, they readily undo the villains’ scheme.  8/10

The Wedding, Part 1: For some reason, Lord Zedd’s ‘recharging’ occurs on the weekend the team goes to Australia (it’s school-related but not plot related). Rita Repulsa returns and gets Finster’s aid in her scheme to rule the universe by putting Lord Zedd under a love potion’s influence.  Finster also turns Alpha 5 evil as part of the plan to capture/defeat the Rangers. The robot is hilarious as a bad guy. 7/10

The Wedding, Part 2: Alpha’s efforts to be evil are amusing but effective.  The Rangers do make a breakout, only to fail in a supersized battle and get teleported back to the theater.  Lord Zedd is now lovesick over Rita Repulsa to Goldar’s self-centered worry. 8/10

The Wedding, Part 3: The titular hitching goes off without a hitch (heh).  The happy couple’s scheme to destroy the Power Rangers… not so much. Billy removing the disc returns Alpha to normal.  7/10

Return of the Green Ranger, Part 1: The Wizard of Deception creates a Tommy clone to be the evil Green Ranger as part of his scheme to destroy the team.  The others end up tricked into a situation where they get sent back to colonial times.  8/10

This disc ended on the cliffhanger of the two Tommys meeting as well as the other Rangers being back in colonial times.  Billy and Tommy each got an episode, while Aisha and Kimberly shared one.  The rest were largely either team or villain centric. It’s hard to believe I’ve watched over a hundred episodes of Mighty Morphin now for my blog.  I’ve moved on to writing April’s posts now.

Special note- the ‘the’ is missing in the DVD menu and in the title bit in the actual episode for the ‘Green Ranger’ first-parter, so I’m not using it despite it being on the DVD case and in the booklet.

SG-1 Season 6 Disc 1

Redemption, Part 1: Rodney’s back, huzzah!  But more seriously, Anubis has deviously attacked Earth through the Stargate. Jonas is trying to find his place at SGC… though he wants it to be as a member of SG-1.  Drey’auc has died to the grief of Rya’c and Teal’c; Bra’tac works to mend the ensuing rift.  5/5

Redemption, Part 2: Sam, Rodney, and Jonas combine brainpower to find a way to save the day (with Jack as the ‘muscle’.  The SGC nearly shuts down before Bra’tac, Teal’c, and Rya’c show up with the news that they destroyed Anubis’ device powering his scheme (that was their subplot as well as Rya’c proving himself as a warrior to both himself and his father). In part to avoid having a Russian teammate, Jack has Jonas Quinn join SG-1.  4.8/5

Descent: Jonas proves himself helpful and brave during the mission to investigate a mothership that has neared Earth and ends up in the Pacific.  Jacob Carter & Major Davis are supporting roles.  They end up rescuing Thor’s consciousness.  4.7/5

Frozen: Time to go back to Antarctica when the SGC scientists there find something- or rather, somebody.  It’s a rather bittersweet episode that ends on a cliffhanger.  4.4/5

This season has been surprisingly good so far, given the loss of Daniel.  I suppose that just highlights that the series relies on multiple pillars beyond its four leads.  Good job, show.  I can’t wait to see what’s next for the team!  My blog can be found here.

[le-regard-au-caire-blog]

From Barthes, to Sontag, to Socrates, to Assange. Week 5 - Part 1.

Barthes’ investigation into the unyielding power of the photograph is as timely as ever. From my limited understanding, Barthes refers to the human/camera interplay as a photographic ritual.

Essentially, this ritual is the subject of the photograph recognizing the camera, and its innate power, and then posing for the photograph as a result. Ultimately, we live in a reality that is so heavily buttressed by images that the camera’s subject, sometimes wittingly and sometimes unwittingly, attempts to mimic those poses they have previously viewed in our reality’s pervasive imaginings.

This ritual, Barthes argues, is a way to maintain our individualized identities.

However, the reconciliation between our true inner ‘self’ and the ‘self’ we have deliberately positioned in a premeditated fashion to convey our ‘self’ within the frame of a photograph, is never quite complete. The true inner ‘self’ becomes frustrated because no matter how one attempts to position themselves perfectly to convey their true ‘self’ in a still image, it can never truly be embodied by the photographically captured ‘self’.

Thus, the true ‘self’ is left with a frustrated detachment from the photographed ‘self’.

There is no reconciliation, just a general and growing unease with the camera.

In other words, no matter how one may try, through physical expressions and positioning of their body, there is no way to prevent a photograph from resulting in a limited and static representation of a human form, which may exist in perpetuity.

Bottom line, it is impossible for a photograph to genuinely capture the human form, a complex electrical grid that is constantly evolving and, even while sleeping, whirring with biomechanical wonder. It will forever remain illusive; a two-dimensional image will never fully contain and convey the true ‘self’ of the photograph’s subject.

Accordingly, a moment/image does not a ‘self’ make. Correspondingly, a photo cannot genuinely capture or convey the true ‘self’.

Interestingly, this leads into Susan Sontag’s book, On Photography, which explores similar limiting aspects of photography, albeit from a different philosophical direction. Although her argument is different than Barthes, one contention clearly overlaps.

Specifically, “To photograph is to appropriate the thing that is photographed... Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire” (Sontag, On Photography, Pg. 4).

The intersection is interesting, because Sontag takes the above statement and then proceeds to illustrate how there is an innate drive within the human mind to apply meaning to photographs (or in Barthes’ terms, the signified). Ultimately, the viewer of the photograph is essentially framing the viewed image through their personal experiential understanding of the world, which is ultimately myopic and limiting. Ergo, the ‘true’ meaning will forever remain allusive.  

These overlapping ideas are extremely interesting and not necessarily novel.

Socrates long ago railed against the written word. His argument was steeped in a similar logic to Sontag and Barthes. Anything that we know about Socrates, his life, interactions, philosophy and beliefs, are only in humanity’s historical canon as a result of Plato, Socrates’ student, writing down these interactions.

Socrates never wrote anything during his lifetime because he strongly believed, and advocated, against using the written word. He contended that the written word was far too limiting for genuine understanding of the thoughts attempting to be conveyed.

In other words, it is only through a verbal exchange with another individual (or set of individuals) that can bring one into a sense of genuine understanding.

In other words (pun intended), written words could never become a complete representation of the knowledge that is attempting to be delivered. Much like the photograph will never be able to capture the true essence of those who reside (temporarily) within its frame. 

In Plato’s writing titled, Phaedrus, he retells the dialogue between Socrates and a man named Phaedrus. Interestingly, the culmination of his main argument begins with Socrates retelling of a fable set in the city of Naucratis, Egypt located on the western periphery of the Nile Delta.

“(Writing) will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

In a similar sense, Socrates could have been conveying the same sentiments regarding photography.

Ultimately, Socrates advocates for the understanding that words are to knowledge, in a similar manner that both Barthes and Sontag propose, what photographs are to the subject. More specifically, both manners of conveyance – written words and photographs – are inherently and persistently limiting.

The revelations published by Wikileaks this past week, regarding the CIA’s ability to covertly spy on just about any device connected to the internet, makes these contentions more timely.

According to a 2010 interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Alphabet/Google, user generated content on the Internet is expanding exponentially.

“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.”

Keep in mind, Schmidt’s comments were delivered in 2010 and the amount of data that is created on a daily basis has grown tremendously with the proliferation of Internet connected devices. Further, this is expected to continually increase, especially as long as Moore’s law is upheld.

That being the case, the CIA will almost certainly attempt to one day make a case for being able to capture the essence of an individual by assembling all of the text and photos the individual in question, or their friends, has uploaded. 

This begs the question, could Barthes’/Sontag’s/Socrates’ contentions be overridden via a wide dragnet assemblage of text and photos, rather than a single example? Could this large aggregate of information in the form of text and images, which are uploaded by an individual or an individual’s friend, truly create an accurate representation of said individual?

Unlike a single picture or single set of text, the CIA would likely postulate, that a large amalgamation of said content could provide a more accurate understanding of said individual.

Given these tools of communication are flawed from the get-go, it seems a stretch.

Conversely – as Socrates, Sontag and Barthes argued within their individual spheres of expertise – will the combination of both limited sources of understanding (photos and text) combine to create an even more limited comprehension of the individual since those who aim to understand the individual will apply their own experiential frame to each set of photos/text in question? Photos and text that we can agree are limited in conveying information. 

In other words, will the CIA Agent’s experiential frame, through which they view this content, risk establishing a far more distorted understanding of the individual they are attempting to comprehend, than say an individual photo or individual set of text?

After all, we have to account for the viewer’s confirmation bias while chunking large volumes of information and trying to deduce broad conclusions. Further, as we have been privy to in the recent past (think: weapons of mass destruction) these agencies are not adverse to picking-and-choosing information that fits a pre-determined narrative.

Further, since the Panopticon is now a verified reality that seems to reside in the pocket of the majority of human begins, no longer just internally divined as a result of fear seeded within our individual minds, aren’t these assemblages of text and images quite possibly an even more muted version of said individual? After all, it has been proven that individuals, who reside under the constant threat of surveillance through Panopiticon, will adjust their behaviors accordingly.

Further compounding this issue with veracity is the fact that lying on social media is commonly accepted, thus a great deal of information that is posted about said person should be considered deceptive at best. 

As a result, I cannot help but wonder, in reference to the whole of humanity, if we are witnessing the mass degradation of our ability to convey information to one-another via non-verbal communication. Many agree these forms of communication, text and images, are limiting in their very nature. Thus, if we are further debasing the already limited ability of these tools to convey a particular message, then aren’t ultimately going to become as useful as a dull knife?

One could pursue this argument further while considering emojis, which are a more recent form of communication and quite possibly an outgrowth of the erosion of textual and visual communication. After all, why is humanity so quick to embrace and integrate this new, and very limiting, form of communication? It seems odd that we are moving from a forms of previously accepted communication, which was considered a technology (i.e., text and/or image) that humanity created in order to be more effective, efficient and above all accurate in its ability to convey information and understanding, toward a far more limited form of communication that is wildly open to interpretation by the individual (i.e., emojis).

Yet, emojis continue to be pervasive and proliferating at an exponential rate. 

[afestival-blog]

A Scratch Night Review by Thomas Graham

Monday this week saw the start of the Lawrence Batley Theatre’s first ever arts festival, for which they are offering a fantastic collection of both workshops and performances all hosted by artists living and working in the Huddersfield area. On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend A Scratch Night, an evening that (in keeping with the festival’s promise to present ‘new ideas’ and ‘different voices’) enabled four artists the opportunity to share and discuss their current works in progress with an engaged audience. It was incredibly uplifting to see that the event had turned out to be even more popular than expected, with Lawrence Batley staff members having to add more rows of seating to the ones already assembled on the theatre’s main stage. As the audience filed in, you could hear titters of excitement at the sense of intimacy created by such a proximity to the performance space.

               After we had settled, Victoria (the creative director of the LBT) opened the evening by welcoming us all and providing a short explanation of how the night was going to run. She explained that we were not going to see completed pieces of work, rather a presentation of current ideas that we could explore and discuss with the artists in a group conversation after their twenty-minute-long performances. She encouraged us to bear in mind that all the artists were at various stages of their creative process, and that we should try and stay away from offering criticism or suggestions as we may interrupt the natural progression of their development. Instead we could focus on how specific sections affected us, highlight beautiful moments or imagery, and ask questions about the next steps the artists were planning to take.

First up and performing an extract from their debut show, was brand new theatre company Make, DO Theatre - a collection of energetic individuals, whose aim is to affect positive social and cultural change through their work. Drawing on elements such as verbatim story-telling, performance poetry, and physical choreography, they had created an original non-linear collage of experiences in response to the homeless crisis currently affecting Huddersfield and the surrounding areas.

               The audience was immediately drawn into the reality of the situation as the performance both began and concluded with extracts from an audio recording of an original interview with a homeless man. Starting small and climbing to crescendo, the eight members of Make, DO then instigated a soundscape, coupled with physical movement, that effectively recreated the busyness of a town centre. They compiled a selection of common phrases often said to those living on the streets such as ‘smile more’ and ‘get a shower’, that (as one audience member highlighted in the post-show discussion) you think nothing of when heard on their own, yet when they are presented together in such a torrent provoke a highly emotive response.

               Other elements of the performance included stylized physical movement (both individual and ensemble), live performance of music that poignantly set the scene as a cold Christmas on the streets, and two monologues adapted from interviews with homeless people. The first, a dejected but hopeful man from London who had come north with his girlfriend looking for work, only to find himself with nowhere to go as the relationship disintegrated. The second, a touching piece about a woman in Manchester who sells original poetry, written on paper cups or bus tickets or anything she can find, for donations.

               Overall Make, DO’s work was incredibly well received, with the audience recognizing the potential of this talented young company who managed to portray this snapshot of homeless life with the delicacy and nuance it requires. They are hoping to have this production (currently nicknamed Bridges) completed for October this year, however they have another scratch performance booked at Huddersfield’s artistic hub Northern Quarter (Wood Street) for the 16th of April, and are also inviting members of the public to join them in a series of creative workshops– more information can be found on their website www.makedotheatre.com

Next, visual performance artist Frances Kay (who focuses on the effects of endurance, duration, and pain in her work) tested some live art from her piece Little Red. The audience watched in anticipation as the stage was covered with a protective sheet, a rug laid down, and four bottles of both perfume and bubble bath were placed (one of in each in each corner) along with rounded lumps of charcoal. Various other props were set such as red and black marker pens, boxing gloves, and sunglasses, and finally Frances herself as she took centre stage wearing only plain black underwear. The still of a young woman stood naked on stage, vulnerable yet determined, was incredibly powerful and set the tone for the performance: the metaphor echoing an actual and recognizable reality.

               A soundtrack of electronic synth pop that segued into recognizable songs such as ‘Kiss with a Fist’ by Florence and the Machine underscored the piece, which otherwise completely eschewed verbal expression and focused more on the presentation of repeated choreography. She used and returned to visual motifs such as the blackening of her hands with charcoal, writing on herself with the markers, and an excessive use of perfume (which provided an acute sense of immersion as each wave of scent reached the audience) to illustrate the abusive relationship with the cosmetics industry experienced by many young women in our society; the repetitive nature of the piece conjuring parallels between the modern female experience and ritualistic ceremony.

               Though the bulk of what Frances presented was composed of these repeated patterns (each time pushing herself further), her performance was intermittently broken up by standalone sections that added depth to the psychological journey we were watching unfold. We saw her discard traditional ideas surrounding femininity and don the boxing gloves as she prepared to defend herself against the onslaught of social expectation. She presented a woman who had simply had enough and wanted to forget all about it by dancing away her sorrows (all the while hiding her charcoal-marked black eyes with large sunglasses). By providing us with insights into this character’s life outside of her ritual, the artist successfully created an intricate portrayal of the issues explored. To read more about Frances Kay and her art, please visit her Facebook page @franceskayart

After these two emotive performances, we exited to the foyer where long tables had been set out and free wine, soft drinks, and food provided. Audience and artists got the chance to mingle and converse about what we had seen so far and deliberate on what might be to come. The creatively conducive atmosphere created by the staff at the Lawrence Batley was simply delightful to experience and ensured that as we returned to the theatre we had retained our ability to engage with the material.

Upon returning, the audience discovered that the rows of seating had been rearranged into four separate circular clusters and, having taken our new seats, Victoria announced the next artist. Front Room Productions were to perform a section from their future site-specific piece Murder on the Middleton Express, experimenting with invisible theatre and song. Based in Leeds, Front Room are already well-known for their productions in unusual locations (their current play Look Out, Jess being performed “in a bedroom near you!”) and a flirtation with invisible theatre, a form developed by Augusto Boal where the performers disguise the fact that they are performing, serves as an exciting off-shoot from their original style.

I am reluctant to disclose too much information as to detract from the mystery, however I will say that we had been told to interact with the characters and were given ample opportunity to do so as (after the company of four entered singing a prologue detailing that at some point soon the conductor of the train would be murdered) they divided, and each sat a while with their own cluster of audience, before rotating round to the next group. Due to the very nature of this piece, a phenomenal aptitude for improvisation was demonstrated by the whole cast, and even some audience members who received secret cards that gave them their own character and instructions about how to act throughout the show. The rest of us were simply left to converse with the performers and try to piece together what was happening.

The completely immersive qualities of this piece were truly awesome, with much of the audience enjoying the absence of a detective in this murder mystery and relishing the opportunity to take on that role for themselves. It was clear from how everyone wanted to know when and where they could see Front Room’s production in full that they had provided us with an excellent show. Murder on the Middleton Express will be performed on a train at Middleton Station in Leeds. More details can be found at Front Room Productions’ website www.frontroomproductions.co.uk

Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing award-winning poet Rose Condo perform before, will have notice the marked difference in her countenance as she assembled her props on the stage. The poet, who usually exudes confidence and wit, presented a noticeably anxious persona that nervously explained the purpose of her ‘experiment’. After a brief introduction on the scientific method (as if her character felt the need to justify why she had gathered us there), she explained her hypothesis: By having constant access to our phones, we spent less time interacting with the world around us; ERGO, we spend less time applying our capacity for empathy; ERGO, if we give up possession of our mobile phones for any period of time, we will have more time to interact with the world, and therefore be more empathetic.  

               Although we were in a theatre and thus not expecting to check our phones anyway, the audience was visibly ill at ease at the prospect of relinquishing our treasured cellular devices, reluctantly doing as instructed and turning them off before putting them in a box on the stage. She then asked us to make ticks on a piece of card we have been given prior, every time we felt the urge to check our phone. A moment of still that quickly grew uncomfortable punctuated this abrupt lack of connection and Rose’s character suddenly felt the necessity to entertain her participants to pass the time.

               Throughout the rest of the ‘experiment’, Condo exhibited her fantastic performative range and masterful command of language with ease (in spite of the nervously disposed character she was playing); incorporating elements such as a hilariously horrifying and incredibly recognizable modern fairytale ‘read’ aloud from a book of children’s stories, a playful yet moving poem listing all the things she needed to ‘Look up’, and some audience interaction pertinently reminiscent of Marina Abramovic’s  2010 piece The Artist is Present. This poet demonstrated her incredible proficiency as an artist, facilitating internal mediations on a range of topics, by taking her audience on an intimate and emotional journey that was didactic without being dictative.

               Originally from Canada, Rose lives and works in the West Yorkshire area. She can often be found performing in local venues (check out her gig-list on www.rosecondo.net), and more information on The Empathy Experiment can be found on all social media platforms – the irony of which is not lost on us.

All in all, a fantastic evening was had by audience and artists alike, culminating in a chance socialize in the theatre’s bar afterwards. The Lawrence Batley Theatre’s festival continues into next week, concluding with six performances at the weekend. The lineup includes a stirring one-woman performance by local artist Sameena Hussain about her relationship with her father in a world that is both prejudiced and patriarchal (Baabul, Friday 3oth March, 5:45pm), and other shows designed to articulate the feelings of oppressed minorities that encourage their audiences to engage with the issues.  Furthermore, the theatre is holding a series of performance workshops ranging from a practical theatre education seminar led by Chol Theatre and Vicky Storey (Practitioner Training Session, Thursday 29th March, 4-6pm) to a chance to practice poetry performance skills with Rose Condo herself (Performance Skills for Poets, Monday 26th March, 7-9pm).

                It is important that as a community we support the Lawrence Batley Theatre in their endeavor to provide high-quality art, and attendance is essential. The Scratch Night has only increased my excitement for the rest of the festival and I sincerely hope to see as many of you there as possible! To book tickets for any of the events, go to the theatre’s website www.thelbt.org, call them on 01484 430528, or drop in to their box office where their friendly staff can explain the excellent offers and multi-buy deals available.