#Deliberate Values Dissonance (trope)

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

When a story is set in the Victorian or Edwardian age, the writers tend to have little trouble creating characters

with pro-Empire beliefs, even when it ultimately undermines their own standing in their time and society.

[koiukiy-o]

orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding. ─── 008. the email.

-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader. -> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance. -> wc: 3.3k -> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.

-> a/n: yum. good night, see you next week <3 -> prev. || next. -> orphic; the masterlist.

On the board: a rough, sketched spiral that narrowed into itself. Then—without explanation—he stepped back and faced the room.

“The Julia Set,” he began, “is defined through recursive mapping of complex numbers. For each point, the function is applied repeatedly to determine whether the point stays bounded—or diverges to infinity.”

He turned, writing the equation with a slow, deliberate hand, the symbols clean and sharp. He underlined the c.

“This constant,” he said, tapping the chalk beneath it, “determines the entire topology of the set. Change the value—just slightly—and the behavior of every point shifts. Entire regions collapse. Others become beautifully intricate. Sensitive dependence. Chaotic boundaries.”

He stepped away from the board.

“Chaos isn’t disorder. It's order that resists prediction. Determinism disguised as unpredictability. And in this case—beauty emerging from divergence.”

Your pen slowed. You knew this was about math, about structure, but there was something in the way he said it—beauty emerging from divergence—that caught in your ribs like a hook. You glanced at the sketch again, now seeing not just spirals and equations, but thresholds. Points of no return.

He circled a section of the diagram. “Here, the boundary. A pixel’s fate determined not by distance, but by recurrence. If it loops back inward, it’s part of the set. If it escapes, even by a fraction, it’s not.”

He let the silence stretch.

“Think about what that implies. A system where proximity isn’t enough.”

A few students around you were taking notes rapidly now, perhaps chasing the metaphor, or maybe just keeping up. You, however, found yourself still. His words hung in the air—not heavy, but precise, like the line between boundedness and flight.

Stay bounded… or spiral away.

Your eyes lifted to the chalk, now smeared faintly beneath his hand.

Then—casually, as if announcing the time—he said, “The application deadline for the symposium has closed. Confirmation emails went out last night. If you don’t receive one by tonight, your submission was not accepted.”

It landed in your chest like dropped glass.

It’s already the end of the week?

You sat perfectly straight. Not a single muscle out of place. But you could feel your pulse kicking against your collarbone. A kind of dissonance buzzing at the edges of your spine. The type that doesn’t show on your face, but makes every sound feel like it’s coming through water.

“Any questions?” he asked.

The room was silent.

You waited until most of the students had filed out, notebooks stuffed away, conversations trailing toward the courtyard. Anaxagoras was still at the front, brushing residual chalk from his fingers and packing his notes into a thin leather folio. The faint light from the projector still hummed over the fractal diagram, now ghostlike against the faded screen.

You stepped down the lecture hall steps, steady despite the pressure building in your chest.

“Professor Anaxagoras,” you said evenly.

He glanced up. “Yes?”

“I sent you an email last night,” you said, stepping forward with a measured pace. “Regarding the papers you sent to me on Cerces’ studies on consciousness. I wanted to ask if you might have some time to discuss it.”

There was a brief pause—calculated, but not cold. His eyes flicked to his watch.

“I saw it,” he said finally. “Though I suspect the timing was… not ideal.”

You didn’t flinch. “No, it wasn’t,” you said truthfully. “I was… unexpectedly impressed, and wanted to follow up in person.”

You open your mouth to respond, but he speaks again—calm, almost offhanded.

“A more timely reply might have saved me the effort of finding a third paper.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “I didn’t have anything useful to say at the time,” you admit, keeping your voice neutral. “And figured it was better to wait to form coherent thoughts and opinions… rather than send something half-baked.”

He adjusts his cuff without looking at you. “A brief acknowledgment would have sufficed.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “Right,” you murmur, choosing not to rise to it.

Another beat. His expression was unreadable, though you thought you caught the flicker of something in his gaze. 

He glanced at the clock mounted near the back of the hall. “It’s nearly midday. I was going to step out for lunch.”

You nodded, heart rising hopefully, though your face stayed calm. “Of course. If now isn’t convenient—”

He cut in. “Join me. We can speak then.”

You blinked.

“I assume you’re capable of walking and discussing simultaneously.” A faint, dry smile.

So it was the email. And your slow response.

“Yes, of course. I’ll get my things.” 

You turned away, pacing steadily back up the steps of the hall toward your seat. Your bag was right where you left it, tucked neatly beneath the desk—still unzipped from the frenzy of earlier note-taking. You knelt to gather your things, pulling out your iPad and flipping open the annotated PDFs of Cerces’ consciousness studies. The margins were cluttered with highlights and your own nested comments, some so layered they formed little conceptual tangles—recursive critiques of recursive thought. You didn’t bother smoothing your expression. You were already focused again.

“Hey,” Kira greeted, nudging Ilias’s arm as you approached. They’d claimed the last two seats in the row behind yours, and were currently sharing a half-suppressed fit of laughter over something in his notebook. “So… what’s the diagnosis? Did fractals break your brain or was it just Anaxagoras’ voice again?”

You ignored that.

Ilias leaned forward, noticing your bag already packed. “Kira found a dumpling stall, we were thinking of-”

You were halfway through slipping your tablet into its case when you said, lightly, “I’m heading out. With Professor Anaxagoras.”

A pause.

“You’re—what?” Ilias straightened, eyebrows flying up. “Wait, wait. You’re going where with who?”

“We’re discussing Cerces’ papers,” you said briskly, adjusting the strap across your shoulder. “At lunch. I emailed him last night, remember?” 

“Oh my god, this is about the symposium. Are you trying to—wait, does he know that’s what you’re doing? Is this your long game? I swear, if you’re using complex consciousness theory as a romantic smokescreen, I’m going to—”

“Ilias.” You cut him off with a look, then a subtle shake of your head. “It’s nothing. Just a conversation.”

He looked at you skeptically, but you’d already pulled up your annotated copy and were scrolling through notes with one hand as you stepped out of the row. “I’ll see you both later,” you added.

Kira gave you a little two-finger salute. “Report back.”

You didn't respond, already refocused.

At the front of the lecture hall, Anaxagoras was waiting near the side doors, coat over one arm. You fell into step beside him without pause, glancing at him just long enough to nod once.

He didn’t say anything right away, but you noticed the slight tilt of his head—acknowledging your presence.

You fell into step beside him, footsteps echoing softly down the marble corridor. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The quiet wasn’t awkward—it was anticipatory, like the silence before a difficult proof is solved.

“I assume you’ve read these papers more than once,” he said eventually, eyes ahead.

You nodded. “Twice this past week. Once again this morning. Her model’s elegant. But perhaps incorrect.”

That earned you a glance—quick, sharp, interested. “Incorrect how?”

“She defines the recursive threshold as a closed system. But if perception collapses a state, then recursion isn’t closed—it’s interrupted. Her architecture can’t accommodate observer-initiated transformation.”

“Hm,” Anaxagoras said, and the sound meant something closer to go on than I disagree.

“She builds her theory like it’s immune to contradiction,” you added. “But self-similarity under stress doesn’t hold. That makes her framework aesthetically brilliant, but structurally fragile.”

His mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. “She’d despise that sentence. And quote it in a rebuttal.”

You hesitated. “Have you two debated this before?”

“Formally? Twice. Informally?” A beat. “Often. Cerces doesn’t seek consensus. She seeks pressure.”

“She’s the most cited mind in the field,” you noted.

“And she deserves to be,” he said, simply. “That’s what makes her infuriating.”

The breeze shifted as you exited the hall and entered the sunlit walkway between buildings. You adjusted your bag, eyes still on the open document.

“I marked something in this section,” you said, tapping the screen. “Where she refers to consciousness having an echo of structure. I don’t think she’s wrong—but I think it’s incomplete.”

Anaxagoras raised a brow. “Incomplete how?”

“If consciousness is just an echo, it implies no agency. But what if recursion here is just… a footprint, and not the walker?”

Now he did smile—barely. “You sound like her, ten years ago.”

You blinked. “Really?”

“She used to flirt with metaphysics,” he said. “Before tenure, before the awards. She wrote a paper once proposing that recursive symmetry might be a byproduct of a soul-like property—a field outside time. She never published it.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She said, and I quote, ‘Cowardice isn’t always irrational.’”

You let out a soft breath—part laugh, part disbelief.

“She sounds more like you than I thought.”

“Don’t insult either of us,” he murmured, dry.

You glanced over. “Do you think she was right? Back then?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then: “I think she was closer to something true that neither of us were ready to prove.”

Anaxagoras led the way toward the far side of the cafeteria, bypassing open tables and settling near the windows. The view wasn’t much—just a patch of campus green dotted with a few students pretending it was warm enough to sit outside—but it was quiet.

You sat across from him, setting your tray down with a muted clink. He’d ordered black coffee and a slice of what looked like barely tolerable faculty lounge pie. You hadn’t really bothered—just tea and a half-hearted sandwich you were already ignoring.

The silence was polite, not awkward. Still, you didn’t want it to stretch too long.

“I’d like to pick her mind.”

He glanced up from stirring his coffee, slow and steady.

You nodded once. “Her work in subjective structure on pre-intentional cognition it overlaps more than I expected with what I’ve been sketching in my own models. And Entanglement—her take on intersubjective recursion as a non-local dynamic? That’s… not something I want to ignore.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he said. 

“I don’t want to question her,” you said, adjusting the angle of your tablet. “Not yet. I want to understand what she thinks happens to subjectivity at the boundary of recursion, where perception becomes self-generative rather than purely receptive. And many other things, but—”

He watched you closely. Not skeptical—never that—but with the faint air of someone re-evaluating an equation that just gave a new result.

You tapped the edge of the screen. “There’s a gap here, just before she moves into her case study. She references intersubjective collapse, but doesn’t elaborate on the experiential artifacts. If she’s right, that space might not be emptiness—it might be a nested field. A kind of affective attractor.”

“Or an illusion of one,” he offered.

“Even so,” you said, “I want to know where she stands. Not just in print. In dialogue. I want to observe her.”

There was a beat.

Then, quietly, Anaxagoras said, “She’s never been fond of students trying to shortcut their way into her circles.”

“I’m not trying to–.” You met his gaze, unflinching. “I just want to be in the room.” 

There was a pause—measured, as always—but he understood your request.

Then, Anaxagoras let out a quiet breath. The edge of his mouth curved, just slightly—not the smirk he wore in lectures, or the fleeting amusement he reserved for Ilias’ more absurd interjections. A… strange acknowledgment made just for you.

“I suspected you’d want to attend eventually… even if you didn’t think so at the time.” He said, voice low.

He stirred his coffee once more, slow and precise, before continuing.

“I submitted an application on your behalf.” His eyes flicked up, sharp and clear. “The results were set to be mailed to me—” After a brief pause, he says, “I thought it would be better to have the door cracked open than bolted shut.”

Your breath caught, but you didn’t speak yet. You stared at him, something between disbelief and stunned silence starting to rise.

“… And?”

He held your gaze. “They approved it.” He said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t a gesture of profound academic trust. “Your mind is of the kind that Cerces doesn’t see in students. Not even doctoral candidates. If you ever wanted to ask them aloud, you’d need space to make that decision without pressure.”

Your heart skipped a beat, the rush of warmth flooding your chest before you could even fully process it. It wasn’t just the opportunity, not just the weight of the academic favor he’d extended—it was the fact that he had done this for you.

You looked down at your tablet for a beat, then back up. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure it would matter to you yet.” His tone was even, but not distant.

Your chest tightened, heart hammering in your ribcage as a strange weight settled over you.

You leaned back slightly, absorbing it—not the opportunity, but the implication that he had practically read your mind.

You swallowed hard, fighting the surge of something fragile, something that wanted to burst out but couldn’t quite take form.

“And if I’d never brought it up?” you asked.

“I would have let the approval lapse.” He took a sip of coffee, still watching you. “The choice would have always been yours.”

Something in your chest pulled taut, then loosened.

“Thank you,” you said—quiet, sincere.

He dipped his head slightly, as if to say: of course.

Outside, through the high cafeteria windows, the light shifted—warmer now, slanting gold against the tiles. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. 

You’re halfway back to your dorm when you see them.

The bench is impossible to miss—leaning like it’s given up on its academic potential and fully embraced retirement. Dog is curled beneath it, mangy but somehow dignified, and Mydei’s crouched beside him, offering the crust from a purloined sandwich while Phainon gently brushes leaves out of its fur.

They clock you immediately.

“Look who’s survived their tryst with the divine,” Mydei calls out, peeling a bit of bread crust off for the dog, who blinks at you like it also knows too much.

“Ah,” he calls, sitting up. “And lo, they return from their sacred rites.”

You squint. “What?”

“I mean, I personally assumed you left to get laid,” Ilias says breezily, tossing a leaf in your direction. “Academic, spiritual, physical—whatever form it took, I’m not here to judge.”

“Lunch,” you deadpan. “It was lunch.”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s what I’d call him too.”

You stop beside them, arms loosely crossed. “You’re disgusting.”

Mydei finally glances up, smirking faintly. “We were betting how long it’d take you to return. Phainon said 45 minutes. I gave you an hour.”

“And I said that you might not come back at all,” Ilias corrects proudly. “Because if someone offered me a quiet corner and a waist as sntached as his, I’d disappear too.”

You roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts. “You’re projecting.”

“I’m romanticizing,” he counters. “It’s a coping mechanism.”

“So,” you ask, settling onto the bench, “Mydei, did you get accepted?”

Mydei doesn’t look up. “I did.”

Phainon sighs and leans back on his elbows. “I didn’t. Apparently my application lacks ‘structural focus’ and ‘foundational viability.’” He makes air quotes with a dramatic flourish, voice flat with mockery. “But the margins were immaculate.”

Ilias scoffs immediately, latching onto the escape hatch. “See? That’s why I didn’t apply.”

“You didn’t apply,” you repeat slowly, side-eyeing him.

“I was protecting myself emotionally,” he says, raising a finger. 

“Even after Kira asked you to?” you remind him.

“I cherish her emotional intelligence deeply, but I also have a very specific allergy to what sounds like academic jargon and judgment,” he replies, hand to chest like he’s delivering tragic poetry. 

You snort. “So you panicked and missed the deadline?”

“Semantics.”

The dog lets out a sleepy huff. Mydei strokes behind its ear and finally glances up at you. “I still can’t believe you didn’t apply. The panel was impressive.” 

You hesitate, staring down at the scuffed corner of your boot, when your phone dings.

One new message:

From: Anaxagoras   Subject: Addendum   Dear Student, I thought this might be of interest as well. – A.  

There’s one attachment.  

Cerces_MnemosyneFramework.pdf

You click immediately.  

Just to see.

The abstract alone hooks you. It’s Cerces again—only this time, she’s writing about memory structures through a mythopoetic lens, threading the Mnemosyne archetype through subjective models of cognition and reality alignment.

She argues that memory isn’t just retentive—it’s generative. That remembrance isn’t about the past, but about creating continuity. That when you recall something, you’re actively constructing it anew.

It’s dense. Braided with references. Challenging. 

You hear Ilias say your name like he’s winding up to go off into another overdramatic monologue, but your focus is elsewhere.

Because it’s still there—his voice from earlier, lodged somewhere between your ribs.

"A brief acknowledgement would have sufficed."

You’d let it pass. Swallowed the dry implication of it. But it’s been sitting with you ever since— he hadn’t needed to say more for you to hear what he meant.

You didn’t know what to say. Maybe you still don’t.

But you open a reply window. anyway.

Your thumb hovers for a beat.

Re: Still interested Nice paper, Prof. Warm regards, Y/N.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

He replies seconds later.

Re: – “Warm” seems generous. Ice cold regards, – A.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

It’s a small, almost imperceptible warmth spreading across your chest, but you force it back down, not wanting to make too much of it. 

Then you laugh. Not loud, but the sort of surprised, almost nervous laugh that catches in your chest, because somehow, you hadn’t anticipated this. You thought he’d be... formal. Distant. You didn’t expect a bit of humor—or was it sarcasm?

Your fingers hover over your phone again. Should you reply? What do you even say to that? You glance up, and that’s when you see it—Ilias’ eyes wide, his face scrunched in disbelief, like he’s trying to piece together the pieces of a puzzle.”

He points at you like he’s discovered some deep, dark secret. “You’re laughing?”

You groan, dragging a hand over your face, trying to will the heat out of your cheeks.

He doesn’t even try to hold back the mock horror in his voice after peeping into your phone. “Anaxagoras is the one that;s got you in a fit of giggles?”

Ilias gasps theatrically, pressing a hand to his chest. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Is he funny now? What, did he send you a meme? ‘Here’s a diagram of metaphysical collapse. Haha.’” He deepens his voice into something pompous and dry: “Student, please find attached a comedic rendering of epistemological decay.”

You’re already shaking your head. “He didn’t even say hello.”

“Even better,” Ilias says, dramatically scandalized. “Imagine being so academically repressed you forget how greetings work.”

He pauses, then squints at you suspiciously.

“You know what?” he says, snapping his fingers. “You two are made for each other.”

Your head whips toward him. 

He shrugs, all smug innocence. “No, no, I mean it. The dry wit. The existential despair. The zero social cues. It’s beautiful, really. You communicate exclusively through thesis statements and mutual avoidance. A match made in the archives.”

“I’m just saying,” he sing-songs, “when you two end up publishing joint papers and exchanging footnotes at midnight, don’t forget about us little people.”

You give him a flat look. “We won’t need footnotes.”

“Oh no,” Ilias says, pretending to be shocked. “It’s that serious already?”

You stomp on his foot.

-> next.

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(send an ask/comment to be added!)

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hi Ralph, a friend of mine has been accusing me of being anti-Semitic for posting Anti-war and pro-Palestinian content. The thing she specifically points out is when I say things about Israel “colonizing” Palestine- she takes offense to that saying I’m being dangerous because Jewish people are indigenous to the land and therefore, can’t be colonizers. She’s invoking her grandparents who were in progromos and how they didn’t have any safe land to go to and that Jewish people need and deserve a safe place in the world to go to when they are violently displaced. I feel really scared and lost. I know in my heart what I’m saying and doing is right but I just don’t have the words to express it. Can you help?

Oh anon - sending you love. This is very hard to navigate. I think you're already doing the important thing - which is holding onto what's right in your distress.

I don't think it's lack of words that are the problem. I'm going to talk a little bit about what I think is going on for you, as well as what's going on for your friend to help explain my suggestions.

You don't describe your own position to the conflict - so I'm going to assume that you're neither Jewish nor Palestinian. Sorry if that's incorrect - but it matters enough to what I'm saying that I do have to assume something.

Of course you're finding it distressing that your friend is saying your actions are anti-semitic. It feels horrible to be told you're doing something that is both bad and against your value system.

The first step is to make sure that you're staying away from anti-semitic tropes and not talking in a way that focuses on Jewishness. I'm sure you're doing that, because you don't describe your friend mentioning any anti-semitism. But it's important to articulate it, because in this moment it's essential that those of us who are neither Jewish or Palestinian are scrupulous in staying away from anything that suggests of anti-semitism.

The next step is that those of us who are neither Jewish or Palestinian, to understand that part of the work in this moment is keep describing this genocide, knowing that people are going to call us anti-semitic for doing so. And whatever we feel, not getting distracted by the fact that we are being called anti-semitic (even though it's likely to cause significant distress) and remain focused on the genocide.

I call that work very deliberately. That may seem hyperbolic - but I do think it's really hard to have the discipline needed to hold onto what is important. I think the struggle some goyim white people in the British left had taking both those steps massively harmed the Corbyn project. And I think in some ways acknowledging that it's work does make keeping going, even though you're distressed, easier.

I don't know your friend obviously - I don't know how far she is down the track to genocide apologism. I'm going to assume you guys have shared values and you still want to be friends with her.

She will have grown up hearing the stories of her family and how close danger is at all times. Trauma will have been passed down to her and woven through who she is. And her entire life she will have been told that Israel makes her safe.

I think listening to non-zionist Jews can give you a deeper understanding of this experience. I've talked about Jewdas before. If you haven't read Naomi Klein's Doppelganger then I recommend it. I just listened to her episode on Bad Hasbara and thought about this ask as I was listening.

Now - assuming she's not fully committed to genocide (and probably even if she is) - she's experiencing a huge amount of cognitive dissonance. She believes that her safety and the safety of her family depend on Israel. The Israeli state is doing terrible things that however much she tries to avoid it she can't fully unknow. This cognitive dissonance is distressing for her (I think the recent interview with Howard Jacobson is very revealing). She knows its monstrous to provide safety for yourself by supporting genocide. She also knows on some level that that's what she's doing. But she hasn't found a way out (there is a way out as so many anti-zionist Jews know - real safety does not and cannot come from oppressing other people).

She's fighting you on the way you talk - because it offers a false way out - where she doesn't need to think about what's actually happening. She can retreat back into her feelings about trauma and safety and not look at the things that are causing her distress.

I don't think words that you say about the nature of Israel will help you or her find a way out of this (or a way to keep your relationship). She's responding to things she doesn't want to hear by focusing on her feelings as safety. If you engage with her on those terms - then you're just going to keep her activated questions of her feelings of safety that are tied up with her experiences of family trauma. Any conversation you have on her will only reinforce those pathways and connections.

So my advice is not to try and find the perfect words to persuade her and instead don't engage. How you do that will depend on your friendship (you might find some of Captain Awkward's advice about being boring useful). Try and find a phrase that feels reasonable to you that shows that you're not changing your mind, but you're also not arguing with her.

I think implicit in this question is how to change her mind. Listening to Jewish voices who are either explicitly anti-zioinist or articulating the distress and contradictions they feel may connect. I only listened to the beginning of Ezra Klein's interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates - but Klein says that Coates description of West Bank ran true to him - that might be a starting place. As might Jon Stewart's interview with Coates. There's not shortage of material - including that mentioned above.

If you are going to connect with her in a way that will make a difference it's going to be when you are being vulnerable to her and that allows her to be vulnerable and allow the competing things she is feeling to exist and for her to face them. It's a very hard thing to do - particularly while trying.

It's also possible that your friendship might not survive her support of genocide. If that's the case then you haven't done anything wrong. I think if I've got anything to offer it's a reassurance that this is all very difficult.

Finally - I do think there is something you can do when you feel distressed - and that's take action. Go on a demonstration, go to an organising meeting, take part in the boycott, put up posters. It's horrific that we can't do more, but that makes it even more important that we do what we can.

[immoonprincess]

EC OCs as TV Tropes Part 2

Pride Twins/Trios

Knight Templars: Due to Sins of Pride influences, They becoming more blindly on believing that what they doing is justified like killing animals as their way of getting stronger

Roaring Rampage of Revenge: They have grudge and hatred toward Banica to the point that They will tracking her across Multiverse

Hero of Another Story: Pride have own their adventure even before They met Banica or becoming Sinners

Fallen Hero: Pride were once beloved Heroes in their world and once They becoming Sinners, They getting more arrogance and violence combined with Easier to Manipulated by Other Villains (which are other Sinners)

Deliberate Values Dissonance: Killing Animals, robbing people or attacking whatever Enemies encountered can be physical assaults or other Crimes but in their World, this is common

Pint-Sized Powerhouse: like most of New Sinner, They are Small and look like children but in Hime (Pink one) case, They able to lifting up heavy sword or axe without any ease

Red Oni, Blue Oni: Pink Hime is more energetic, didn't strategize too much, acting in more of melee roles opposed to Blue Mikoto who's calmer, try to strategizing the plan and in range or support role

It's All About Me: when Pride got sent the world where everyone have superpowered, instead of losing their ego. They eventually get into Superhero shtick like everyone else but it's clear that They just want praises and rewards over what's right (until They got back and remembered why They even ended up here) which obviously boosting their ego instead

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: Demon Pond

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

At times, Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond feels like two different films awkwardly stapled together.

The first is a hauntingly atmospheric arthouse horror movie about forgotten folklore, self-destructive superstitions, and the conflict between “traditional values” and “modern rationality.” The opening montage is particularly impactful, elevated by the immaculate sound design: the oppressive howl of the scorching, dusty wind; the mocking “crunch” of parched, cracked earth underfoot; and the resounding “thud” of a stone hitting the bottom of a bone-dry well elegantly convey the borderline post-apocalyptic desolation of the setting—a remote mountain village ravaged by poverty and drought.

The second is a fairly conventional Japanese ghost story reminiscent of Daiei’s 100 Monsters and Daimajin, with all of the tropes that one would expect from the genre: morally corrupt humans desecrating the natural order, wrathful gods and guardian spirits exacting terrible revenge, cataclysms of every conceivable variety (floods, typhoons, tsunamis), and hapless innocents caught in the crossfire. Shinoda’s unmistakable authorial voice, however, enriches this familiar narrative structure. The scenes depicting the Dragon Princess’ heavenly court, for example, deliberately embrace the inherent artificiality of live theater—much like the director’s earlier effort, Double Suicide (in that case, he was emulating bunraku puppetry; here, kabuki serves as the primary influence). The relatively simple yet dazzlingly colorful makeup and costuming of the monstrous retinue—lumbering ogres, grotesque Cyclopes, wizened Shinto priests sporting fleshy catfish whiskers—reminded me of Tomu Uchida’s equally evocative The Mad Fox.

While I enjoyed each of these plots on its own merits, as a whole, Demon Pond never becomes quite as compelling as its individual components. The inconsistencies in style and tone create a sense of dissonance and disharmony; the frequent shifts between the mundane and fantastical worlds feel contradictory rather than complementary. Ultimately, it’s just a muddled, confused, incoherent cinematic experience—occasionally enjoyable, but difficult to recommend.

[macgyvertape]

I was reminded that this day last year I saw this movie, and I should rewatch it now that it has a 4k re-release.

As Dan Olson once put it:

"I believe in the value of failed art; art that is driven by carelessness, by unchecked and untalented ego, by spectacularly low-stakes greed. It has a tendency to be novel, to be unpredictable, in a way that deliberate art never can. This is why it's so much fun to watch bad movies."

To me that really sums up this movie, there were other Hammer Horror vampire movies that chased trends in the 70s due to the studio's financial issues but this one has the most charm as a bad movie.

It was written by Brian Clemens, and was directed by him as well for his first and last time directing; there are multiple times that the camera choices aren't something a more experienced director wold have chosen. The film swings between being a sort of swashbuckling comedy and a horror film, and I don't mean all the comedy is intentional. Captain Kronos looks hilarious dual wielding a saber and a katana (which makes no sense for a medieval setting), and the setting and props are a weird mishmash of time periods but that dissonance is what makes is so fun as a bad movie.

The highlight of film for me was one of the sword fights in the bar, where Kronos with a katana does the trope of killing someone with a single stroke, then there is a delay before the slices appear and the opponents fall over dead. Definitely inspired by Sanjuro which released a decade prior, and it was so funny to see.

My occasional reminder that Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974) is a masterpiece and turns 50 this year and so I'll probably watch it ten times and it's awesome and so is the comic from a few years ago.

[a-tale-never-told]

Oh and if it does, Deliberate Values Dissonance is the primary trope here, bold it if you need to.

I will be sure to bold it.

The lore itself is already enough for a Tv tropes page. And you know what? We are only on the tip of the iceberg, we have a long way to go.

[olderthannetfic]

I think a lot of people that are into omega verse or at least don't mind it had a 'to each their own, but not for me phase'.

Ultimately, it's just another AU that can be styled in a myriad of different ways. I like the power dynamics, the kink, the trope subversions, the angst and the additional level of complication. But that's because I generally like that in my AUs and fics.

There is of course a bio essentialism scale to it. The one thing I absolutely cannot stand are plots that start with an independent and self-determined omega who then gets told that the alphas and betas in their lives know better than them and the plot 'proves them right'. The omega took surpressants that have some nasty side effects and their circle of friends find out and now their staging an intervention because surpressants are illegal and harmful and you don't know what you're doing and what's best for yourself. I hate it. I have read the 'the plot proves them right' version of this, where the protagonist becomes meek little thing, a little to far a couple of times, because I do like the version where the plot proves them wrong.

I just don't get why that's an interesting plot to read/write? It slaps of bio essentialism, pro life, lack of bodily autonomy, ultimately really lack of any autonomy for omegas/women. It's like reading the Hamdmaid's Tale but you start in the resistance get captured and slowly start to see that Gilead was right all along without a glimpse of dissonance after 2 days of initial stumbles. It doesn't make sense to me. It makes my hair stand on end.

It really doesn't read like kink and I'm usually pretty good at spotting that, also there are kinky versions of that and they sound different. Same for fics that are deliberately dark and aware of that, that explore the visceral horror of your mind being changed like that. Maybe the point is that it is meta level horror? But it seems unlikely to me.

Can cognitive dissonance allow for someone that actually support those values to write M/M omega verse romance on ao3? Doesn't seem unlikely, now that I've written out the possibility. Not common, of course, but not wholly impossible either.

--

I find those fics tedious, but it's laughable to think we can always spot other people's kinks in how they write.

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

I feel like the duffers throw too much into the pot anymore to see what sticks, or simply because they can, and the show duffers because of it. Too much plot, too many characters, and the plot and heart of the show, including the relationships between the kids, suffers. It feels like they got carried away with their success and have them budget to do whatever they want now and fully forgot what made S1 a universally praised show. S3 was panned and yet they keep going that way. I’m so let down

I see what you're saying. I'm not sure I agree with you, but I can easily understand why you'd think this. I was getting uneasy listening to them break down the trailer with how they kept saying "we always wanted to do this" when they talked about certain elements. It came across as them trying to make certain things work instead of them taking advantage of natural opportunities to work them in.

There's always the risk of a popular franchise going off the rails. Executive meddling can often try to push things closer and closer to what is profitable instead of what is, well, good. I don't think that's happening here, though. The Duffers have stated before that the reason they went with Netflix in the first place is that they were given the freedom to make the show they wanted, as other offers required them to make fundamental changes to the show.

I think you're overstating the view of season 3. There was a definite change in tone, but it was deliberate dissonant to what was happening in the plot. It was all saccharine and Americana with the consumerism and values, but underneath we saw corruption, bad relationships, and a monster literally taking over good people. It was supposed to seem odd. This actually does fit with the spirit of season 1, which largely relied on giving us the expected 80s tropes, but then turning them on their heads. Things not being what they seem has always been at the core of this show.

Yeah, it was different from the first couple of seasons, but I don't consider that a bad thing. The kids are growing up, so their view of the world is changing. Puberty was a big theme of the season, according to the Duffers, so they worked it into how they crafted the story.

New characters can be a concern, but they've managed it well so far. The characters that didn't die the same season they were introduced have become good additions to the story, I think. The others did the job they needed to do, then were killed off. The only one I wish didn't die was Bob.

As for the relationships, well, I think that was still a big part of season 3, and it will be an even bigger part of season 4. We already see hints of that with Lucas seeming to be exploring interests away from the Party, Mike and Will seeming distant, and the new friends for the older teens.

Have faith, my friend. These are still the same people who made the first two seasons, and they've been saying for a long time that they've had the general story worked out from the start. Yeah, they might be adjusting the details as they go, but they do know what they want to make. I'll admit I'm a bit nervous with how ambitious season 4 appears, but I'm trusting them to do it right.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 2 – Look up here, I’m in Heaven: the height metaphor

[The chapter title comes from David Bowie’s Lazarus. Lazarus is a cracking song, and you should listen to it. X CN: death, disturbing imagery]

It’s worth stating here that this whole meta has a cn for death and suicide – this one is analysing the literal peaks and troughs (height is important in this episode) that Sherlock goes through in order to look at how close he is to dying throughout.

In my reading, EMP theory begins once Mary shoots Sherlock in HLV – I’ve linked the reasons for this in Chapter 1 X, so I’m not going to run through them again here. I think Sherlock comes the closest to death that we see him in the EMP at the end of HLV – if you remember, he’s been put on a plane in ‘exile’ by Mycroft, but in reality is being sent to his death. This plane/height image is really important. In the Christian tradition (and therefore majority Western tradition that the writers are writing in), the sky is associated with heaven – Sherlock’s plane taking off being synonymous with his death seems a pretty straightforward metaphor in that regard. (It’s even one that’s used in Cats, though I don’t know if that’s a good thing.) Further to that – it ties in nicely with Sherlock being ‘high’ through a lot of s4, which represents the moments in which he is most repressed and his repression is most tied to self-harm. We have further ideas to buttress the height/aeroplane metaphor with, however – do you remember the plane in ASiB?

Sure, as I recall it never gets off the ground. But everybody on it is dead. Aeroplanes have an association with death already in this show, and the choice to put Sherlock on a plane rather than lock him up for four minutes or anything equivalent – and probably less expensive to shoot – suggests a deliberate throwback. We’re supposed to think of it as a kind of metal coffin.

[Obviously, there’s another, more notable use of an aeroplane in the programme – you can see where I’m going here. But bear with me – there’s more first.]

I want to quickly talk about what grounds Sherlock’s aeroplane. Moriarty appears on screens everywhere, and then we have the following exchange between Sherlock and Mycroft. I’ve already made a post about this that’s done the rounds on tumblr X, so if you already know this bit you’re ahead of the game.

As far as I can tell, nobody ever tells Sherlock that Moriarty is back. It’s possible Mycroft tells him offscreen, or that he googles it from his phone, given that he’s already breaking flight rules, but given that it’s the entire trigger for TAB, it seems a pretty odd thing to leave out. In EMP theory, it’s also the thing that downs his plane – in terms of the plane metaphor as well as literally, it stops him from dying. It’s pivotal, but we don’t see it. I therefore want to hypothesise – what does it mean if Sherlock is never told that Moriarty is back?

The first thing it tells us is that Sherlock is in his Mind Palace, because he knows that Moriarty is back without needing to be told. But the second is that Mycroft, the brain, is waking Sherlock from his dying stupor to tell him that England needs him, meaning that Sherlock’s brain equates Moriarty coming back with the word ‘England’ in some way. Perhaps this is a tenuous link, but the seed is planted back from ASiP, when we’re taught to associate John with his armchair.

Don’t mind me, I’m just crying. Basically, Sherlock knows that John is in danger and that’s what pulls him back from the brink – and we know it’s serious, because Mycroft, the brain, is warning him. Via call.

The fear of Moriarty coming back might sound like a tenuous symbol for John being in danger, but when we probe deeper the two are actually quite obviously equivalent. The only threat that Moriarty has ever posed to Sherlock is a threat to John’s life – the Semtex, burning the heart out of him, John Watson is definitely in danger, the sniper at the fall. This is Sherlock’s pressure point, and by getting rid of Moriarty, he’s getting rid of any danger to John – we know from his drug abuse etc. that his regard for himself is much lower. So Sherlock being woken from the dead to save John makes complete sense. He died for him, and now he’ll resurrect himself for him.

There are several layers to how John is in danger – the bottom one, which for me s4 is about getting to the heart of, is that without Sherlock John is suicidal. This was established in ASiP, and I believe is the metaphorical plot of TLD (see Chapter 9 X). However, there’s also the problem of Mary, newly discovered as an assassin, and Sherlock trying to work out who she is and where she comes from – more on that later, but there’s certainly a chance she’s linked to Moriarty, given the Morstan/Moran connections. ‘Did you miss me?’ works for both of those layers – the danger John is in from criminals is something that was really apparent in s1 and 2, but John’s endangerment from suicide is also something that was there at the beginning of the series. Sherlock changed these things – and didn’t realise he was the changing factor, but something in his subconscious is telling him that with him gone, John Watson is once again in danger.

So, his plane comes back to the runway – still in his mind palace, of course, but coming down. TAB – of which more on later – seems to be about the return of Moriarty, and Sherlock puzzling through it, which is jarringly absent from TST and TLD if you’re reading it on a surface level – it takes TAB for Sherlock to puzzle through this and to pull him down from death, as he comes to understand the Moriarty threat. This all sounds pretty vague – the TAB chapter will deal with it in more detail. For now, let’s move on to the other places where the height/heaven metaphor comes into s4.

One thing that several meta-writers have pointed out is that Ella’s office is… fucky. It’s not the same office as John repeatedly visits outside the MP – it’s possible that Ella has moved premises, but it’s a weird thing to draw such obvious attention to by the weirdness of the room. This isn’t a subtle change, like John and Mary’s place, it’s a really dissonant one, and the oddness of the room pulls our attention towards a character and space that by rights belong in the background of the story. It’s a really odd move – and that’s why I’m so convinced that it’s important.  

It looks like Heaven, for want of a better description. The window with the light streaming through looks like the very top of a church window, and the beams suggest that the ceiling is like a kind of spire – and the spire in a church is meant to be closer to heaven, that’s part of the imagery. So there’s that side of things, and I really don’t think that’s a coincidence. However, the even weirder part is the partitioning of the room, for want of a better word. The wall ends at about chair height, and from there to the floor is – nothing? These aren’t mirrors because the chairs aren’t reflected. I have never seen a room partitioned like this, and nor has anyone I’ve shown the image to – again, it draws attention to itself. If the creative team had wanted us to take this scene at face value, they would have put Ella in an office. This is not a psychiatrist’s office. The partitions mean that it isn’t even private.

I don’t know if I’m right about the partitions, but there’s only one thing they remind me of, and that’s a closing door. It’s a trope in an adventure film – I first saw it in Indiana Jones, but it’s in many a movie. It also features in Doctor Who on multiple occasions.

It’s the moment when the door is coming down and you only have a few seconds to get under it, otherwise you die. Indiana Jones famously goes back for his hat. That one. That’s what the space under the partition looks like. Sherlock, thinking he’s solved the case of Norbury and therefore Mary (more in Chapter 7 X) is ready to pop off – he’s nearly gone. But in a moment of self-interrogation – making sure he got everything right, that John’s safe now – he realises he isn’t, and so he comes down. That sinking downwards is represented by the water imagery, as he sinks deep into his subconscious – LSiT has written a fantastic meta on water in S4 which you can read here X, as I’m loath to take credit for this idea!

I’m going to talk about water a lot more in the chapters on TFP, because of John in the well and pirates and so much, but the obvious thing to talk about now is the plane in TFP.

This is a point where surface level plot breaks down – because this cannot be in Eurus’s mind. When we watch film/tv, we make one of two assumptions – either we have the omnipotent view, like in most films, where we’re guided by the director but everything we see is ultimately objectively true, or we see through somebody else’s eyes (rarer). These can be played with – think of a film like The Usual Suspects (please skip to the next paragraph if you haven’t seen this film because it’s fantastic) where the film lets the viewer rest on their laurels and slip into normal, objective viewing patterns when of course it’s a subjective, flashback narrative, which Kevin Spacey is deliberately obscuring to trick an audience. This rug pull can be fantastic, but we don’t have such a rug pull here. Either it’s a poor man’s version, or there’s something else going on. Mug drop.

New paragraph – spoilers gone. Moments where the perspective was actually subjective and we missed it or forgot it are great rug pulls, because the clues are there but we don’t spot them. We love a good unreliable narrator. This isn’t the case here. The plane scene, as visualised, exists only inside Eurus’s head. Eurus is emphatically not our narrator during TFP, so when it comes out that the girl on the plane isn’t real, we just feel lied to.

If we accept that s4 takes place inside Sherlock’s MP, this makes more sense, because all of the characters are manifestations of different parts of Sherlock’s psyche and so he can jump between perspectives. It also means that the terror of being on a crashing plane that Eurus has felt ever since she was a child is not hers – it’s Sherlock’s. If we remember that planes are synonymous with dying in this show, an association that’s reinforced because of the “sleeping” people on the plane, a clear throwback to the dead passengers in ASiB, the climax of S4, when Sherlock is trying to save John and work out his repressed memories, is all fuelled by a child’s nightmare of dying, a terror that has resurfaced.

I think Eurus represents Sherlock’s queer trauma, and I’ll explain that in more detail in Chapter 5 X, which is completely devoted to Eurus. Her representing trauma, though, makes a great deal of sense in this situation. The problem of the plane, the threat that she hinges on, is one that has been repeating and repeating, though repressed, inside Sherlock’s consciousness, and he breaks through it with not only kindness, but the recognition that it is all in Eurus’s (and by extension his) head.

This doesn’t diminish the trauma that Sherlock experiences – one of the things I begrudgingly like about the ending of TFP. Sherlock can’t get rid of the problem and possible danger that is his trauma – but he can stop it from careering to the point of destruction by recognising it, he can learn to live in harmony (see the violin duet) with it, he can accept its existence.  Pushing through that trauma is what makes him able to abandon the plane and (we hope) return to the real world.

The positioning of the aeroplane problem in relation to the John-trapped-in-a-well problem is also pretty important. I’m of the firm belief that Eurus represents queer trauma, and this is the trauma that throughout the entirety of series 4 is both pushing him towards John and blocking him from him. Sherlock needs to wake up to save John, and has to push through the trauma to recognise this – but the trauma is blocking his way. She’s stopping him from helping John – it’s a terrible moment when Sherlock is telling John that he’s busy whilst John is drowning in the well – but it’s also pushing through the aeroplane moment that allows him to save John in the MP. This is the paradox of queer repression, right, and the paradox in Eurus’s behaviour – she’s simultaneously blocking Sherlock and leading him on to the solution.

When Sherlock finally reaches Eurus’s room, he tells her that he’s on the ground and he can bring her down too – and what is most striking is the way Eurus is sitting. She’s actually incredibly grounded, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and given that the house is burned it’s likely that this is the ground floor as well. The dark room is a far cry from the bright lighting of the plane – everything suggests that she’s been pulled back. And of course, the lovely touch that all she needs to do is open her eyes. That’s all the creators have ever been asking people to do – open their eyes to what is hiding in plain sight – and Eurus is allowing Sherlock to see things afresh for the first time. But also, this final breakthrough is what’s going to allow Sherlock to open his own eyes, right? So that phrase is doubly powerful.

And there was me hating on TFP for three years. That’s a brief journey through the highs and lows of series 4, though if anyone can explain the planes in TST to me that would be wonderful! The next chapter will do a run through of HLV before we move onto TAB and series 4.

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

Scoundrel’s taking the lead in the dance with the Inspector

clearly was an intentional transgression, designed to draw everyone’s attention, most especially the Kuttekahs’.

[pass-the-bechdel]

The Good Place season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

49.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twelve of the thirteen; seven of those are 50%+, and two of those are over 60%

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Eight who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and three who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Eleven who appeared in more than one episode, three who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Solid; the nature of the show is such that they really need to be making a concerted effort to reflect positive, progressive morality, and as such faults in the content would also almost certainly be considered faults in the show itself (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent! It’s a wonderful ride, whether it’s your first time through or not. Just delightful.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

So, let’s talk about plot twists. In the current entertainment landscape, it seems like everyone is intent upon ‘subverting expectations’, and the good old-fashioned plot twist is very much swept up in that, since a subversion is almost always going to play as a ‘twist’ by definition. The unfortunate thing about this current landscape is that it’s rife with ‘subversive twists’ which are really just bad storytelling; they’re only there because of some pathological fear of predictability, or worse, because the creative minds just want to feel cleverer than their audiences by delivering content that no-one saw coming, serving their own egos at the expense of coherent narratives. If your ‘twist’ is about your own (supposed) intelligence, if you’re baiting the audience by playing into a common trope and then laughing at them for thinking you meant it, if you’re changing the story out of nowhere just for shock value without bothering to build toward the twist because you’re too afraid that someone might figure it out before the reveal...that’s not a real twist. It’s not even a real subversion, it’s just a bad-faith gimmick. It’s not there for the story at all, it’s there to make the writer feel special, because apparently feeling special for delivering quality storytelling isn’t good enough anymore. A proper, genuine plot twist should:

1. make sense in the context of the narrative (it should not be tonally dissonant or jump the tracks into a different genre)

2. make sense with the content of the narrative (it may recontextualise previous events or character choices, but it does not contradict or ignore them in order to function)

3. be foreshadowed (if it comes out of nowhere, that’s not a twist, it’s a random event. It’s a deus ex machina. There’s no story in it if it isn’t built into the fabric of the narrative)

4. ultimately further the storytelling (if it has no consequences for plot or character, it’s a shock-value gimmick, not a real twist).

The above points do not guarantee that a twist will be good storytelling and not just a subversive contrivance for the fuck of it, but they should at least ensure some logical cohesion and protect the integrity of the plot instead of sacrificing it in the name of empty surprise. That covered, it’s easy to see how – even (or perhaps, especially) in this twist-saturated tv landscape we currently inhabit – the big twist for season one of The Good Place still manages to be – in technical parlance – dope. The writing protects the twist not by being ‘too clever’; it simply offers a decoy issue to drive the plot. Eleanor is a Good Place fraud; that’s the first twist in the plot, and it compels the entire season forward. Other twists - Jason’s reveal, Eleanor’s confession, the introduction of the ‘real’ Eleanor - set the stage for this being A Show That Has Twists, but in a way that makes so much contextual sense that it doesn’t set us up to be looking for the next one (a common problem for those shows that rely on ‘cleverer than the audience’ twists - they’ve set themselves up as mysteries for the audience to unravel, and then they kill their own storytelling as they twist in knots trying to keep ahead of millions of intelligent viewers). The Good Place actually tells us outright that something is wrong with this supposed ‘happy afterlife’, it just fools us into thinking that we already know what’s wrong, so that we don’t see the signs of the truth for what they are. Crucially, however, it doesn’t matter if you figure it out before Eleanor does. You can have your suspicions (or have had the show spoiled for you in advance), and you can still appreciate and enjoy it as it unfolds, you can pick up the clues and have a good time with them, and that’s something that all of those gimmicky-subversion plots out there are missing. Their ‘twists’ are not proper functioning pieces of the narrative, and so the story doesn’t work if you already know the reveal; there’s no juicy build-up to enjoy, or worse, you expose your own illogical contrivances or outright plot holes that were created in the course of writing a crappy twist just to feel relevant. The Good Place works because - like any good story - it isn’t about the twist. It’s about the journey.

An important part of what makes the twist work also is that it interweaves the sins of Tahani and Chidi with the discissions of morality without drawing too much attention to them; if all four humans had simply been frauds, it would have been narratively empty, especially if the reveals were coming late in the piece. Jason’s works because it comes out early, and because the Jianyu cover is interesting and distinctly different both to Eleanor’s ploy and to the behaviour of the rest of the neighbourhood, but if the others had turned in the same way it would have been too contrived, too easy, and it would toss out the personalities we had gotten used to (which would violate Good Twist point #2). Since the show DOES pull that trick with Michael (which works because he’s the architect of the whole situation, not a pawn within it), it’s essential that they’re more subtle with Tahani and Chidi’s reasons for being where they are, and in playing it as they do they also reinforce the show’s central deliberations on morality. It’s an inspired framework for approaching what are traditionally considered ‘heady’ themes (and y’all know I’m into it), and every decision about how to approach and balance character behaviour is coming from a position of ethical consideration, weighing not only the acts themselves, but how they compare to the moral theory of various different and conflicting philosophies. It just goes to show that you don’t have to make something ponderous and inaccessible in order to have a cerebral conversation through television - you can do it just fine with afterlife comedy.

As I noted above the cut, the nature of the show automatically lends itself to careful consideration of any feminist and/or progressive content, and as such it should keep a pretty clean bill throughout, or risk cracking its own concept. I do wish they would come out stronger on the queer side of things (as I said in the episode posts, they really aren’t vague about the idea that Eleanor is attracted to women, but her saying words about hot women is still not delivering a lot on the representation front, especially when she is known to do more than say words when it comes to dudes, and the only other queer content we get is the fact that Gunnar and Antonio are soulmates, and that doesn’t technically mean they’re romantically or sexually involved (especially since they’re fakes anyway, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing)). In the mean time though, we have a female lead, 100% on the Bechdel and an essentially balanced number of male and female characters abounding, plus some really nice variety in racial backgrounds (and great names to go along with those - it’s a bit of a peeve of mine usually when show’s include multicultural characters but land everyone with Anglicised or ‘white-friendly’ names. Let the Bambadjans of the world keep their names). We’ve taken a clear stance on even ‘benign’ sexism (i.e. the stuff that’s just men saying inappropriate things - ‘just a suggestion! just a joke! just trying to get a reaction out of you, why are you so sensitive?’ - it’s all literal demon behaviour here), and I won’t pretend that I’m expecting them to get into the real nitty-gritty, but that’s ok. I’m happy to have something which is making a point of not being problematic, because such refuges have real value. So, maybe there won’t be a lot for me to tease apart as the show progresses, but that’s not a bad thing. At the moment, we have green lights across the board, and that’s a hard thing to find. I’m going with it, and we’ll see where we end up. 

[serenagaywaterford]

Here's the thing:

If I wanted to watch something "real" about how bad people never change and that's just how things are, I'd talk to my family, go on Facebook, walk down the street, turn on the news, pick up a history book, log onto tumblr...

Reality is chock full of depressing, awful stories of bad people who never change, never try to do better, never learn anything, and spend their whole lives fucking other people over. Like, I get it. It's everywhere.

The thing is The Handmaids Tale ain't a fucking documentary! It's a fictional TV show that draws from elements of history and current events. That doesn't mean every single character must be "real".

"Well, in real life, someone like Serena wouldn't change."

Yo.

Newsflash.

This is TV.

In reality, June would be DEAD. How about that reality check? She woulda been executed a long time ago. Janine would be dead. Emily would be dead. Rita would be dead. Nick would be dead. Aunt Lydia would be dead. Hell, Serena and Fred would probably be dead too.

In reality, if Emily even survived to 2x13, Nichole would be DEAD. They both would have died in that river.

In reality, Moira and Luke would be fucking miserable in some tent city refugee hellhole, not a beautiful spacious apartment in downtown Toronto. In reality, Canada would be a fucking mess too.

In reality, nothing past S1 would have happened.

In reality, Serena would never have done anything she did in 2x07/2x08, she wouldn’t have been affected by Eden’s death, she wouldn’t have read from the Bible, she wouldn’t have given Nichole away.

In reality, June would never think she could lead a full scale revolution. Are you fucking kidding me?

In reality, not a single Martha would give a fuck what she has to say. And Lawrence sure wouldn't.

In reality, Hannah would live and die in Gilead. So, like, why are any of you hoping she'll make it out? That's not reality!

In reality a system like Gilead would have fallen apart already (cos the world-building kinda sucks, I'm sorry.)

Do we really want to play the "but in reality" game? With a fictional TV show that is already bordering on soap opera?

Look, I am the queen of giving Serena more credit than she deserves. I know that. I'll admit it. (I actually think her motives in 3x05 are deeper than it seems but that's another story.) I also know people like her "in reality" often (usually) stay horrible forever. These are both things that generally are true.

BUT

I do not want to watch a TV show that is "real". We literally don’t need that right now. We have the real world for that. I want to watch a show like this to give me hope. That hope may be hard earned, it make come with frustration, it may even come with some anger along the way... but that's exactly it: it's a journey. There are paths where characters who are given significant prominence and screentime should follow. They should have some sort of movement. Maybe they stumble along the path, maybe they try to run back, maybe they take the long way, maybe they fuck up along the way, but they are meant to be going SOMEWHERE. Somewhere different than where they began.

That is the entire point of storytelling. Am I wrong?

The problem with Serena is precisely that as arguably the second lead character behind June, she hasn't fucking moved in 3 seasons. Main characters should have movement. But nope. None for Serena. Why? Because they keep setting her up along a path, only to fucking tear up the road in front of her for plot twists and shock and oooooh the contrived drama!!!

And yet, all these other characters are doing completely unrealistic things almost constantly (June, darling, I'm looking at you.) and that is just fine. Why is Serena the only character that were supposed to hold to some strange "but in reality!" standard?

I want a show about women that actually DESTROYS harmful stereotypes about women. I don’t want one that upholds the tools that maintain patriarchy. I don’t want the same tired tropes and cliches.

I want hope that even the worst people can change if given the tools.

I want to see women breaking down the systems of oppression that isolate them, including those of their own design. I want to see women of privilege recognizing their role in the oppression of others, understanding that, taking deliberate action to rectify and support those women they kept down. I want then to feel shame and change.

Isn't that the whole point of callout culture? Of protesting? Of education? To change people, even the shitty ones! That's the sort of thing I want in my depressing, dystopian fiction. That's inspiring.

Otherwise, what's the point in anything at all? If people can't and don't change, why not just kill all the people you don't agree with and that's that?

I want angry women, sad women, troubled women, supportive women, difficult women, but ultimately women that face down a system and destroy the motherfucker. Together.

What I don’t need is a reality check, thanks.

I don’t need to be reminded that bad people exist. There are PLENTY of those to choose from on THT. That is what my TV already does. Why can't we have one female character of privilege, one shitty woman who is a MAIN CHARACTER and thus able to be given the screen time, one awful woman go through change for the better?

"That's not real!"

Fuck "real". I'm not saying she has to become a hero. I'm not saying she should ride off into the sunset absolved of all her guilt and crimes. I'm not even saying give her a full redemption arc. I'm not saying she shouldn't suffer intensely.

I'm saying we don't need another story about a rich white woman who is horrible and never fucking changes. In a story where the system itself (and the ideology behind it) is the true villain of the story, where you have a council of men in power keeping it going, what's the issue with using Serena to explore the women that both are victims of it and benefit from it? All that dissonance!!! All the psychological shit that they dipped their toes into before! That's some juicy shit right there. Mmmm. There are more than enough bad guys to choose from.

Right now that conversation has been effectively killed. There's no complexity, there's nothing important being said. It's a cookie-cutter evil lady vs good lady soap opera fairytale. Who the fuck wants that basic shit except children?!

Ugh.

I am just so sick of this show thinking it's so progressive when it just pulls out the same worn out tropes, and sexist ones at that, over and over.

Sorry, THT, you're not saying anything of relevance anymore. You can give June all the cussword-laden voiceovers with Moss' meme-level closeup Anger Face and fade into 80s pop music all you want, but you're not inspiring anyone by not writing actual hope for change into these stories. Because you're not addressing what casual viewers want to see in their fictional TV shows.

"Tee hee! All the stupid viewers thought Serena was actually changing?! WHAT DELUSIONAL LOSERS! Let's just rehash the same shock value tricks we keep doing every season! Yes, we are doing groundbreaking TV, lads!"

And please do not give me that "but in reality!" argument when June Osborne still exists.

Telling us, "Well, people suck. You'll never be able to be allies with other women in power, because nobody every fucking changes. Don't even bother cos look what happens." is not helpful.

Bish, please.

WHAT A FUCKING WASTE OF MY TIME THIS SHOW IS.

[mindnumbing-brain-candy]

Oh no, I get it I feel like. After binging 3 of his books in a month. It's like.

With Abby, a lot of it is stuff I could see about myself even and cringe. Like, "girl why are you worried about how you'll be perceived by XYZ when ABC abuuusssssse is happening and MUCH WORSE?" - you can kinda see why Abby thinks that way but also girl come on.

With Grace, Patty and the book club a lot of it is values dissonance due to setting, which to me again adds to showing us this is a different date and time. It's the TV trope of deliberate moral dissonance. Especially when there's an outright allegory going on about white supremacy.

These characters are still immensely compelling and to me it adds to that interesting savory flavor of the book? Compared to a blank slate character where the author didn't want them to have flaws. We aren't getting a pathetic mewmew who's nevver dun anything wrrroonnng. You're listening to your cousin tell you this fucked up story and thinking damn bitch, you good? What happened?

hiii, i hope u don't mind being asked about smth u posted a while back!! i just came across it and i couldn't stop thinking about it. back in December u said smth along the lines of grady hendrix is proof u can have an unlikeable mc but still have an enjoyable story. i just finished reading the final girl support group and while i wasnt big on lynnette i didnt find her that bad! at least not after the ending, tho somewhere in the middle i really disliked her. i havent read any other of his books yet but i was wondering why u disliked his mcs (since u tagged his other books in the original post as well)? or really, what were ur thoughts on lynnette specifically? im very curious and also excited to hear another opinion. the fandom for this book seems inexistent... thank u and have a nice day!

I think I worded my original post kinda badly. Its not unlikable as much as a little annoying. In high school, my biggest gripe with a lot of the books we had to read was that the main character was not compelling or likable AT ALL. I would read the book and be like "why do I want this guy to win?", yk? With GH's books, I find the main characters somewhat annoying at times, but still pretty compelling. That is probably due to the writing quality and the genre as well.

With Horrorstor and FGSG, I find the main characters to be not super likable, but I still want them to win. I do not agree with most of Lynette's decisions (which is arguably the point of her character), but I don't want her to fail. Same with Horrorstor. I found Amy to be a little grating, but I still wanted her to "win". As I read more of his work I think that GH's characters are compelling because of the situations they are placed into and the work that goes into telling the story around them. Lynnette and Amy are crafted for their environments, whereas a lot of books with unlikable characters and stories that are not compelling seem to craft environment and characters seperately.

This is kind of a ramble but yeah! I really like how he writes characters that we want to win while still making them realistic and giving them interesting flaws (i.e. letting his characters be annoying sometimes).

[midnightresearchers-blog]

TROPES

Abusive Parents: Desmond’s father, a veteran of the first World War, is a physically abusive alcoholic, though the movie goes to lengths to humanize him despite his faults (Mel Gibson himself has problems with alcohol). It is shown quite plainly that he does love his sons and wife, but his experiences in the horror that was the Great War and his subsequent alcoholism have turned him into the person he is. It also helps that he saves Desmond from being court-martialed by presenting a letter from the Brigadier General.

Adorkable: Desmond Doss. Just look at this first interactions with Dorothy in the hospital.

Adult Fear: Desmond’s parents get a heavy dose of this in the beginning when Desmond and Hal get into a fight ending with the former knocking the latter unconscious with a brick. Hal thankfully survives, but Desmond and his mother are aware that Desmond could’ve killed him.

The Alcoholic: Desmond’s father is a slave to the bottle.

Artistic License – Military: During the basic training scenes, none of the recruits have shaved heads, which is the standard for recruits going through boot camp. Given the hard work Gibson put in to make certain the film was as historically accurate as possible, this is very puzzling.

The Atoner:

Badass Pacifist: Doss, a conscientious objector who ends up saving 75 of his comrades during one of the most ferocious battles of the Pacific War as a combat medic. Without firing a single bullet.

Batman Grabs a Gun: Towards the end, Doss is seen picking up a M1 rifle. It’s ultimately subverted as he still stays true to his “Thou Shalt Not Kill” belief and is instead using the rifle as a grip for a makeshift stretcher to evacuate Sergeant Howell.

Bayonet Ya: The Japanese soldiers use their bayonets to make sure their enemies are really dead.

BFG: Smitty Ryker wields a M1918 BAR with lethal effect, mowing down dozens of Japanese soldiers.

Big Damn Heroes: Desmond of course saves the lives of his fellows as a medic. More surprising is when earlier in the film, during Desmond’s trial, his father arrives with a letter from the Brigadier General that exonerates Desmond, saving Desmond from being court-martialed.

Biopic: Of Badass Pacifist Desmond T. Doss.

Blind Alley: Hiding behind a dead corner in the tunnel, Desmond successfully evades capture by the Japanese.

Boom, Headshot: A lot of people take this, and we see the results that aren’t Pretty Little Headshots.

Both Sides Have a Point: The army is not inherently wrong for being anxious about having a soldier who doesn’t want to kill anyone, or even touch a weapon. But Doss, who believes that it would be wrong for him to not be a medic on the battlefield, feels that doing so would violate his religious beliefs, and it’s noted that forcing him to do so would violate the same constitutional rights they are fighting for.

Bottomless Magazines: Some scenes have soldiers firing their guns a lot longer than typical. Most notably with Smitty and his BAR and Sergeant Howell with his M3 “Grease Gun”.

Bulletproof Human Shield: Smitty uses a rather gruesomely mangled corpse of an American soldier as a shield while charging the enemy.

Catapult Nightmare: Desmond has two. In the first, he relives a memory of his fight with his father (see The Atonerabove), waking up abruptly when the gun goes off during the struggle. The second one is during the night on the ridge as he and Smitty are resting in a foxhole. Desmond sees a flare go up overhead and lifts his head to look out of the hole, only to find himself face-to-face with a squad of Japanese soldiers, who then proceed to storm the hole, killing Smitty while one of the soldiers is about to kill Desmond with a bayonet. Desmond wakes up right as he’s about to be killed.

Chekhov’s Skill: Sergeant Howell makes fun of Doss’s double-loop knot, but Doss later uses this knot to help lower wounded soldiers off Hacksaw Ridge … including Sergeant Howell.

Combat Medic: Doss joined the army for this, as despite his religious convictions in regards to killing he did believe the war was justified. However, the army’s job description and his personal belief eventually clashed and led to his court-martial. He eventually fits more in the role as The Medic.

Compressed Adaptation: Some events have been time-compressed.

Cool Boat: The Iowa-class battleship supporting the troops offshore counts, as it saves Doss from getting assaulted by the Japanese at a critical point in the battle.

Cut Himself Shaving: Doss not only refuses to name the men in his unit who beat him during the night, but he goes a step further by denying he was even beaten at all, saying to an astonished Howell, “I sleep pretty hard”.

Daydream Surprise: Desmond has one where he and Smitty are killed by Japanese soldiers. It’s only after his Catapult Nightmare that the scene is revealed to be a dream.

Deliberate Values Dissonance:

Determinator: Doss was resolved to save as many lives as he could, even if there’s just a remote chance of helping them, until he either collapsed or died trying.

Dies Wide Open: Smitty. Doss closes them while in tears.

Doesn’t Like Guns: Desmond’s become allergic to guns as a result of his traumatic confrontation with his dad when trying to protect his mom.

Domestic Abuser: Desmond’s father would sometimes be physically abusive to Desmond’s mother.

Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Stated in-film by Tom Doss, Desmond’s father, when he lectures his son about how everyone wanted to do the cool thing, and then die from it.

Drill Sergeant Nasty: Naturally, Sergeant Howell mocks Doss for his pacifist convictions during training. He also ends up turning the rest of his squad against Doss for claiming he doesn’t want to pick up a gun because he’s a coward. However, after Doss gets beaten up by his squad members, Howell takes pity on Doss and shows greater respect for his principles. But he still believes Doss doesn’t belong in the army and should quit.

Drowning My Sorrows: A defining characteristic of Desmond’s father.

Earn Your Happy Ending: After going through absolute hell to rescue the 75 men, Doss earns the respect and admiration of his comrades and superiors and eventually gets back to the US where he lives a long happy life with Dorothy and their son Tommy on a small farm in northwestern Georgia, despite his injuries and the lingering effect of the tuberculosis he contracted during the war. Desmond and Dorothy were together for just shy of 50 years, until her death in 1991. Desmond remarried Frances Duman in 1993, and remained with her until his death in 2006 at the age of 87.

Et Tu, Brute?: Desmond suffers a moment of this when even Dorothy calls him prideful for being unwilling to at least hold a gun. She quickly takes it back though, realizing that she loves him because his principles make him different.

Expy: Smitty Ryker resembles Richard Reiben from Saving Private Ryan. Both are athletically built BAR gunners with generally abrasive personalities and initially butt heads with the protagonist of the film until finally resolving their differences during the concluding battle of their respective films. Unlike Reiben however, Ryker does not survive the story.

Fire-Forged Friends: Doss and Smitty Ryker start off very antagonistic, even before Doss’s status as a conscientious objector was revealed, but they end up being close to another to the point Doss refuses to abandon his dead body even when in imminent danger of getting killed by the Japanese.

Foregone Conclusion: Those aware of Doss’ achievements know that he’ll survive the horror of Okinawa.

Get It Over With: In his Troubled Backstory Flashback, we see Desmond pointing a gun at his drunk father who begs him to pull the trigger.

Gorn: It’s a film about World War II directed by Mel Gibson; this is to be expected. The battle sequences are drenched in horrific, bloody, realistic violence. People have their limbs blown off, intestines spilling out of their bodies, bodies exploding in bloody fashions, exposed nerves and bones and a decapitation. The camera does not look away from any of this.

Grave-Marking Scene: After Desmond enlists, he confronts his father about his decision at the cemetery where his father’s three best friends are buried, all killed in the battlefields in France during the Great War. Thomas revels over the anguish he’s faced in the wake of their deaths, and does not wish to face the same with his sons.

Grenade Hot Potato: During the Japanese fake surrender scene, Doss sees two Japanese hand grenades coming and smacks one away with his palm and kicks the other away, but one ends up wounding him.

Heroic B.S.O.D.: Doss has one after Smitty’s death. He asks God what he should do and finds his answer in saving as many injured as he can.

Hey, Wait!

Honour Before Reason: Doss refuses to hold a weapon, even for training purposes at the threat of court martial.

How We Got Here: The film begins with Desmond being carried on a gurney. Then, the scene cuts to him as a child.

I Have a Family: A wounded soldier frantically says he has kids when another medic soldier tells Desmond to give the solider some morphine and leave him. Desmond gives the wounded soldier some morphine, but doesn’t leave him.

Improvised Weapon:

Irony: A pacifist soldier ends up saving the lives of over 75 soldiers, even after being branded as a coward and even beaten by many of them.Sergeant Howell: Private Doss does not believe in violence. Do not look to him to save you on the battlefield.

I Surrender, Suckers: A group of Japanese soldiers emerge waving a white flag, but then toss grenades at the Americans.

Jerkass Has a Point: Jerks they may be, the men in army are right that a battlefield isn’t the best place for a pacifist.Captain Glover: If one of them attacks you and some wounded soldier, what are you gonna do? Hit him with your Bible?

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Smitty. He acts quite assholish to Desmond because of the latter’s nonviolent beliefs, even smacking him with his bible. He was also against another group of men for beating up Doss for the reason. And later on, he proves to be quite brave and selfless in battle, and even admits that he can be an asshole.

Jumped at the Call: Desmond Doss does this and enlists in the Army despite his pacifist beliefs. He states that he could’ve just stayed home working at a plant, but felt it was his duty to go out and that it wasn’t right to sit at home peacefully while boys go out and fight and those who couldn’t waste away at home.

Jumping on a Grenade: One American soldier contains a grenade’s blast by forcing an enemy soldier to jump on one. Another protects his company by trapping a grenade between the enemy and himself, though he doesn’t die and is recovered by Doss later.

Kiss-Kiss-Slap: Desmond kissing Dorothy without her concent - yet also without much resistance - lands him a slap afterwards.

The Lady’s Favour: Before heading off to Basic Training, Dorothy gives Desmond a compact Bible with a picture of her inside. He loses it after he gets hit by a grenade, but his comrades manage to recover it from the battlefield and give it to him before he is shipped to a hospital.

Libation for the Dead: Opens with Tom Doss pouring out some whiskey at the gravesite of his fallen comrades from World War I.

Love at First Sight: Desmond falls for Dorothy the first moment he sees her.

Ludicrous Gibs: As covered under Gorn, and being in a battle as bloody as the one from Saving Private Ryan, both the struggles and post-struggle battlefields are a messy shower of dismembered bodies.

Made of Iron: Andy “Ghoul” Walker. In the first assault on Hacksaw, he gets blown away by a mortar round and comes off with a head bump. Later, he gets wounded again in the Japanese counter-attack. Despite that, he still is present in the final assault on Hacksaw at the end of the film.

Man on Fire: The Americans use flamethrowers, and there are several shots of men in flames running about as well as scenes showing still-burning corpses.

Meaningful Echo: When Doss makes a double-loop knot at basic training, Howell mocks it by saying he’s supposed to be “tying a bowline, not building a bra”. Doss jokingly repeats it back to Howell as he uses the same loop to lower Howell down the ridge to safety.

The real reason for Desmond refusing to hold a gun was because he nearly killed his father with his own gun after having enough of his abuse to his mother and himself and despite having all the hate in the world for his father, he doesn’t kill him and this incident shames him from ever holding a gun.

And while it may not have completely cleaned him of his sins, Doss’ father coming to his defense with a letter exonerating Doss from the court-martial.

Desmond was not actually wounded and evacuated in a daylight assault at Hacksaw Ridge. He was wounded a couple of weeks later in the Okinawa Campaign.

In reality, Desmond’s bible went missing as he dragged himself to safety. Months after he was shipped home, he found it in the mail; his entire company, who once mocked him for his convictions, searched up and down Hacksaw until they found it.

After Doss’ first date with Dorothy, he kisses her without consent, resulting in a smack. While it does show that even she found it creepy and unsettling and was ultimately quick to dismiss it, his actions does show how differently they treated things like this back in the 1940s.

Given the time period, the racial slur for Japanese people, “Japs”, is used quite frequently.

During the Japanese counter-attack, a few soldiers take mortar shells, clang the primer on their helmets, and throw them at the incoming Japanese troops.

Inverted when Doss uses an M1 Garand as a grip for a makeshift stretcher for Sergeant Howell, never using it to fire at his enemies.

Messianic Archetype: Doss’s dedication to saving people comes from his religious belief, so the movie frames him as a Christ figure. This is a favorite trope of Mel Gibson’s, and he employs a lot of Christological imagery.

A Minor Kidroduction: After the How We Got Here scene, Desmond (with his brother, Hal) is seen as a child a scene later.

Missing Mom: Smitty tells Desmond that his mother left him at an orphanage as a child and he’s never seen her since.

Momma’s Boy: Desmond gets his strong faith from his mother. The reason he starts his belief on never holding a gun is because of his actions trying to protect her mother from his father.

Mr. Fanservice: The only reason to have Milt ‘Hollywood’ in the picture.

Multiple Demographic Appeal: The first act centers around the love story between Desmond and Dorothy which clearly caters to the female audience while the second and third act are depicting the brutal reality of war which is more appealing to the male audience.

My God, What Have I Done?: Sergeant Howell is clearly shocked when seeing the beating Doss received from the other men in his unit, and knows a lot of the blame is on him since he’d been repeatedly telling the men they couldn’t rely on Doss to help them in combat, and punishing the entire unit for Doss refusing to pick up a rifle or work on Saturdays. Situations like this are the very reason why it is now strictly forbidden to punish an entire unit for the actions of one member.

Naked People Are Funny: Milt 'Hollywood’ Zane suffers from this after Sergeant Howell forces him to complete training while naked.

Narrating the Obvious: Just so the audience knows what going on, Desmond says out loud “We just lost our cover.” when the Navy ends its bombardment of the battle field.

Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Played literally when a private calls Captain Glover to make him aware of 'Hollywood’ and other injured having returned from the battle field via Doss’ hands.Private: Captain. There’s something you gotta see.

The Nicknamer: Sergeant Howell during the start of boot camp assigns several nicknames, a few stick like 'Ghoul’ and 'Hollywood’. Desmond also earns the name 'Cornstalk’.

No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Several draftees of Doss’ unit beat him to a pulp at the training camp for his refusal to fight as it caused them to suffer as well.

No One Gets Left Behind: This is Doss’s raison d'être after the first battle. Resolved to save as many lives as he can before either collapsing from exhaustion or dying, he continuously pushes on regardless of his own safety. When he’s finally forced to flee, he takes Smitty’s body with him.

Not Afraid to Die: Even before setting foot anywhere near Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond is fully prepared to give his life for his country and the men he served alongside with, exemplified by the fact that he was willing and daring to die unarmed.

Oh, Crap!: Doss has this moment while he’s pulling wounded off the battlefield after the other troops have pulled back. The Navy ends its bombardment because there are still soldiers on the ridge, but for Doss, the explosions were the primary things forcing the Japanese soldiers to keep their heads down and the dust and smoke raised by them kept him from being seen.Doss: We just lost our cover!

Orbital Kiss: Downplayed. When Desmond and Dorothy kiss on the mountain top, the camera does a 180° turn around them.

Papa Wolf: Desmond’s father fought his way into the military proceedings to deliver a letter to the judge that would keep Desmond from getting court-martialed.

Peek-A-Boo Corpse: Desmond’s Oh, Crap! moment when bumping into a hanged Japanese in the tunnel system underneath the battle field.

Pet the Dog:

Playing Possum: Desmond plays dead on the battle field in order to avoid being detected and killed by the enemy forces.

Pocket Protector: Surprisingly averted. The attention given to Dorothy’s bible opened up the possibility for it to play a larger role in saving Desmond’s life but it didn’t come to be.

Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Captain Glover delivers one for his company in the final assault attempt at Hacksaw.Glover: Let’s go to work.

Punch a Wall: While incarcerated at Fort Jackson, Desmond finds himself backed into a corner, being treated like a coward, a traitor and now a criminal just because he WON’T kill, pushing him close enough to the breaking point that he dukes it out with a brick wall.

Reactive Continuous Scream: The first day on the ridge, the unit’s cover is blown when a “corpse” sits up and screams, causing the soldier facing him to scream as well. This goes on for a couple of seconds until both are killed by enemy gunfire.

Reality Is Unrealistic: Mel Gibson decided not to include some of the more unbelievable aspects to the story.

A Real Man Is a Killer: Doss does his very best to avert this.

Redemption Equals Death: Smitty dies in battle not long after he and Doss bond and move past their initial antagonism.

Right Under Their Noses:

Runaway Groom: Discussed. The priest at Desmond’s and Dorothy’s wedding mentions this trope as a possible reason for Desmond’s no show.

Save the Villain: During his excursion in the Japanese tunnel system, Doss ends up face to face with a wounded Japanese soldier. After a moment of registration, Doss simply applies first-aid onto the enemy soldier despite knowing full well what the Japanese could do if they found him. Also noted is that the Americans picking up the wounded that were lowered down from Hacksaw Ridge mentioned that Doss not only lowered down their fellow soldiers, but wounded Japanese as well.

Say Your Prayers: Desmond draws strength and courage from his faith through prayer through the ordeal he faced at Hacksaw Ridge. The second attack is held up for 10 minutes because Desmond was still busy praying.

Seppuku: The closing scenes of the battle on the ridge show the Japanese commanders going through this to show that, this time, they really have been defeated.

“Shaggy Dog” Story: During the Japanese counter-attack, Doss encounters an injured medic from the unit that merged with Doss’. He attempts to administer aid, but the medic insists that the plasma infusion should go to someone who needs it more than he does. Doss then finds a wounded Andy “Ghoul” Walker and administers aid with the plasma, but a stray bullet ends up shattering the container. In the aftermath of the battle back at the wound station, it was revealed that the medic who refused the plasma didn’t make it because he ended up going into shock due to lack of plasma.

Shell-Shocked Veteran: Desmond’s father is this, having witnessed horrors during the Great War.

Shell-Shock Silence: Desmond has such a moment at his first visit to the hospital when all voices around him drown out as he is looking around the busy emergency room.

Shoot the Medic First: As per the environment of the Pacific War, a fellow combat medic points out to Doss that the Japanese put a premium on medics, and he advises Doss to remove all medic markings while giving Doss a helmet without a cross.

Survival Mantra: Doss carries on through the night seeking out surviving wounded men and carrying them to the ridge by repeating “Please Lord, help me get one more.”

Survivor Guilt: Desmond’s father is hinted to have this, as he lost his three closest childhood friends on the battlefields in France during the First World War.

Sympathy for the Devil: Desmond’s father may be a physically abusive alcoholic, but one can’t help but feel sorry for him as more of his past is seen. He served in the Great War, in which he bore witness to seeing his best friends killed and now feels he’s the only one who seems to bother remembering them. He’s not abusive towards his family just for the sake of it and he clearly does love them, it’s just that he’s in so much pain inside that he can’t help being what he is.

Thousand-Yard Stare: Some of the fellow soldiers Desmond and his troop encounter during their arrival at Hacksaw Ridge have this blank look on their faces due to the horrors they have witnessed.

Thou Shalt Not Kill: Doss’s conviction through and through. He is even a vegetarian because of it.

Title Drop: “That’s our objective! Hacksaw Ridge!”

Troubled Backstory Flashback: The traumatic incident where Desmond points a gun at his father is explored in two flashback scenes.

Very Loosely Based on a True Story: A number of events were changed or left out of the movie:

Vomit Indiscretion Shot: One American soldier pukes on-screen.

War Is Hell:

“Where Are They Now?” Epilogue: The film ends with video and photos explaining what happened to Desmond after Hacksaw, along with clips from interviews with the real-life Desmond, his brother Hal, and Captain Jack Glover. Desmond was later awarded the Medal of Honor by Harry S. Truman for his courageous actions at Hacksaw Ridge, was married to Dorothy until her death in 1991, and passed away in 2006 at the age of 87.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!: Sergeant Howell’s reaction twice to Doss using a M1 rifle to make a makeshift stretcher and to Doss using a double-loop knot (which Howell had mocked during training) to lower him from the top of the ridge.

Zerg Rush: True to World War II Japan, the Japanese soldiers attempt a Banzai charge that only ends up being stopped by a battleship dropping shots directly on the battle area.

Doss is initially persecuted by those he later saves.

Doss’ shower after his long night on Hacksaw Ridge looks like a bucket of water baptizing him, as water and blood flow down, the same as flowed out of Jesus on the cross.

After his second day at Hacksaw Ridge when he is med-evac’ed, Doss’ trip down on a gurney is shot as though he was ascending into heaven.

Sergeant Howell, whose has been one of the many military personnel to give Desmond a hard time because of his nonviolent beliefs, is visibly disturbed at the beating Desmond took by some of the other men. And, for the first time, he gently tries to persuade Desmond to just pick up a gun.

As much of a Jerkass Smitty was during boot camp, even he felt that some of the other men attacking Doss in the middle of the night while he was sleeping was taking things too far.

Smitty offers one of his cigarettes to one of the soldiers who has been at Hacksaw Ridge longer and is traumatized by it.

After being injured and taken off the battlefield, Doss actually rolled off the stretcher when he noticed a man more injured than him and demanded they take him instead. While they were gone, he was shot by a sniper, shattering his left arm, and he crawled 300 yards by himself in the hellfire of battle to safety. This was omitted because Gibson feared that nobody would believe that had happened.

While lowering men down the ridge, a Japanese soldier had Doss in his sights several times, and every time he did, his gun jammed, preventing him from shooting him. This was also omitted amidst fears of unbelievability.

Doss has the idea to cover an injured comrade and himself with dirt to hide from incoming Japanese soldiers.

The Japanese are revealed to have the entire ridge tunneled, allowing them to show up anywhere.

While dodging enemy fire, Doss hides inside a Japanese tunnel, where he must dodge more enemy soldiers. In one corridor, patrols miss him because he uses the darkness to his advantage by standing in a corner facing the wall and possibly because the Japanese never expected an American inside said tunnel.

The event of Desmond almost shooting his father after a fight with his mother. In real life the fight was between Desmond’s father and his uncle, and his mother stepped in to take away the gun, getting Desmond to hide it. Desmond also had an older sister, Audrey, who was not portrayed in the film.

Desmond didn’t meet Dorothy while she was a nurse at a hospital. In fact she didn’t become a nurse until after the war. They met when she came to his church selling Adventist books. He also didn’t miss their wedding by being put in a holding cell, as they were already married by that point.

Desmond’s prior combat at the Battle of Guam and the Battle of Leyte is skipped over, making it seem as if the Battle of Okinawa was his first combat experience.

The assault on Hacksaw Ridge seems to only last a few days, although Desmond’s Medal of Honor citation covers events over about 3 weeks, and the Battle of Okinawa itself lasted 82 days.

There are also the events covered above under Reality Is Unrealistic which were left out as Mel Gibson felt the audience wouldn’t believe them as part of a true story.

The film does not shy away from any of the gore and savagery that happens between the Japanese and the Americans in the fight for Hacksaw Ridge.

Doss’s father invokes this when both his sons sign up for active service, as Desmond’s younger brother Harold enlisted in the Navy. Having survived the Great War, he naturally doesn’t want them to go into battle only to suffer as he did, and tells them that whatever they might think of war, it’s infinitely worse than they can possibly imagine.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/HacksawRidge

[cassandraclare]

on the rights of women to own their own work. crummy crabapple speaks!

Yes, this stuff is still going on. I was hoping it would have ended after this, but it hasn’t, and being called a bitch whore murderer gets wearing fast when it’s based on nothing.

Look, frank talk about this stuff on Tumblr is often discouraged — when you have a small but pretty active group of “haters,” as happens nowadays to most successful creators, especially women, the general rule of thumb is not to talk to or about them. Blocking them on twitter excites them: it’s attention. Replying is pointless, explaining is deliberately misinterpreted, the truth is a lie, lies are truth, up is down, winning is losing. You can’t win in this situation, anyway: nobody can or does, everyone loses. The creators, the fandom, those caught in the middle (actors, etc.) Everyone.

This business about me killing Alec isn’t a rumor. It’s a lie. A purposeful lie told to make a point: that I am a bad person unworthy of my creations and that if I am a bad enough person, it’s okay to say they don’t belong to me, that I didn’t create them, that there is essentially no value in the act of creation, especially when it is done by a woman.

As we all know but mostly don’t talk about because If You Speak It They Will Come, there is a small group of anti-TMI-book fans who believe the books and the show are at war.  (They are not the show’s fans. They are something else entirely. I talk to perfectly nice show fans all the time: these are less people who love Shadowhunters than people dedicated to the idea that if they scream about it long enough, the show will cease being based on this particular book series: an ultimately doomed goal that nevertheless leaves them plenty of opportunities to annoy the rest of us.) Instead of being able to accept that art is partly subjective, they are in a constant battle for an imaginary moral high ground in which they are the keepers of a version of the Mortal Instruments that has been objectively purified of all problematic elements. 

The problem there being, of course, that there is no such thing as perfect, unproblematic media. Art comes from humans and humans are flawed. If you expect perfection you will be bitterly disappointed every single time: I’ve watched it happen over and over, as the this showrunner is a gift tag turns into the This showrunner is not a gift tag,  and many of those who last year spoke glowingly of wrapping Ed Decter, their unproblematic hero (who once said to me in wonder, “You really worked a miracle with Malec, you know, people care about them as if they were a normal couple”), in cotton wool and fuzzy socks, now refer to Todd Slavkin as “Toad.”* Plenty of articles about the problematic elements of Shadowhunters have now been written and plenty of posts posted. (If Ed hadn’t been fired, he might have stuck around long enough to get called Ediot; these things are, after all, just a matter of time. (i get called “Casserole”, seriously, I am not kidding you, you cannot make this shit up.) ) 

To clarify: I am definitely NOT saying that a (potentially problematic) work should remain uncriticized to spare the feelings of the creators because they are flawed humans like everyone else. Criticism is valid; criticism is useful; criticism is important. What I am talking about in this post is not criticism. Telling a creator that her creations should be taken away from her because she “doesn’t deserve them”: not criticism. Making up funny names and mean hashtags for creators you don’t like: obviously hilarious for some, but definitely not criticism. And to some extent everyone knows this – so if it’s important to you that a creator be denied the right to claim ownership of, and pride in, her own work, it has to be because she is not just problematic but corrupt, evil, and cruel. She has to be morally bankrupt such that removing her from the narrative of her own creation is a moral good.

And so the lie that I’m planning to kill Alec (framed within the true narrative that killing off LGBT+ characters is a serious fucking problem in media) is a natural development: because wouldn’t that be awful and mean the books were morally very bad and wrong and shouldn’t creators who create bad wrong things have their creations taken away from them? Which would be just another Misogyny Tuesday on the internet except for the fact that it’s exploiting the fears of a vulnerable group of people (LGBT+ fans for whom Alec means a lot, in whatever format -- fans who have seen over and over LGBT characters die for nothing, for shitty reasons, for straight people, on TV and in movies and in comics and in books and are therefore in a place to be incredibly hurt by it happening again), to score a point in what is basically a ship war. And that is really shitty.

And yes, it’s a ship war.

There was really a “salty casserole” joke in there begging to be made. Missed opportunity!

So, why am I salty, you might ask? There is this belief that I must be Upset With The Show because people care about Malec on it more than Clace: my friends, the field where I grow my fucks is barren on this topic. I made up both couples. I don’t care which one you ship more, especially in a format where their story is not being told by me and for all I know, the showrunners don’t even want you shipping Clace at the moment. They seem into Climon and oh God, I have bored myself with this tangent.

I invented Clace and Malec. I’m writing a trilogy about Malec because I love Malec and have a story in my head about them, despite being offered three times the money to write one about Clace, as they’re “more marketable.” I do not have a favorite. Maybe writing works that way for some people but I doubt it. I’ve always said I don’t ship in my own books, and that is precisely what I meant. 

Moving on: Are there things that have upset me about the show and the way it was developed? Yes — being told my mostly-female audience wasn’t a desirable one because they’re female; the fact that the female artist of color who created the runes has never been paid or credited for their use; being told Isabelle was “tits and ass”, being told Alec being gay was “a strike against his likeability”, contractual shit you will never know about because that stuff isn’t public — but for some reason I’m supposed to give a flying fuck about who ships what canon couple on the show? For viewers, as it should be, this is a TV show: for me this is part of my brand and has real-world consequences for my life. Unsurprisingly I care about those, not some imaginary ship war.

I was thrilled Shadowhunters won a GLAAD award for Magnus and Alec.  (I was thrilled when the movie of Mortal Instruments got a GLAAD award nomination for Magnus and Alec though there was so little of them in the movie, it served to really underline the paucity of LGBT+ storylines in major film and tv.) I congratulated Matt and Harry on twitter; the comments below mine are something of a primer in why female creators are fleeing the internet in greater and greater numbers.

https://twitter.com/cassieclare/status/848497330999369729

The message is overwhelmingly: “Shut up, bitch, how dare you open your mouth and remind us that this show exists because your books do, even though you didn’t actually say that but you see, we like to pretend you’re dead and it’s inconvenient when you speak.” I’d imagine every one of those commenters would tell you they were a feminist, too. The idea that nothing is gained by shutting up women or denying that their intellectual property has worth or value is apparently one that seems good in the abstract, but falls at the first hurdle of but I don’t like her.

The abstract often does fail when it comes into conflict with the concrete. Being a feminist ally means being an ally even to women you don’t like, because being an ally only to people you like requires no effort and less thought. That doesn’t mean never criticizing women or their work. But it does require interrogating what’s going on in your own head. One of the most unpleasant haters I see on twitter, who viciously loathes me though we have never met, has read all my books; she has Malec in her username, and a quote from the books in her bio. She has Cassandra Jean’s art on her twitter page, and Valerie Freire’s rune designs in her text and background. That’s a lot of mental and artistic real estate devoted to the work of three women she refers to as 
“garbage trash.” (Though I think Cassandra Jean and Val are mostly garbage trash because they associate with me and should instead have waited ten years for the TV show to come along so they could draw pictures of it or something. I don’t really understand it: the cognitive dissonance that allows to you dedicate your life to “Malec” while crapping on the person who created both characters and their relationship is so enormous that I can only follow it so far and no farther. I understand thinking that the show version is better, but not whatever warped fantasy tells you that if the books had never been written the show (now called “Evilchasers” perhaps) would have heroically found a way to invent the  story of a gay demon-fighting warrior and his biracial warlock boyfriend anyway because that very specific story was floating around the ethereal planes waiting to be discovered by the psychic powers of Disney and it is only by great misfortune that I got to it first.) Point being: if your username is “Bubbles loves Malec” yet your twitter is dedicated to spewing venom at the person without whom the thing you love would not exist, it might be time to ask yourself some questions about cause and effect, and also, what that hate of yours is doing for you, psychologically speaking.

Look, I am going to get a lot of shit for this post, but whatever — the upside of being constantly screamed at for things you have not done (slut-shamed Isabelle, planned to murder Alec, thus contributing to the fucking awful homophobic trope of killing off gay characters, "stabbed the actors in the back”, promoted incest, poisoned the earth’s water supply) is that you no longer bother worrying about being screamed at for things you did do. I won’t do set visits or conventions since coming back from NY Comicon to stuff like this:  

I’m not going to comment on the specifics, save to say they represent a massive and almost hilarious (though probably deliberate) misinterpretation of literally everything that happened on that panel. (If the network didn’t want book fans there, asking me questions, they wouldn’t have brought me there. I was there to do promotion for the show by talking about the show and the books — I am the author, and what the literal fuck else do you think they brought me there to talk about? The history of Belgian cabinet-making? They don’t think attention paid to the books takes away from the show: only a small group of asshats think that, and it’s weird that the OP never paused to think that if they didn’t want me there talking about the books, they could simply NOT HAVE INVITED ME. Also did it seriously never occur to them that panelists are asked to speak at certain junctures or in reference to certain questions, or gestured at to do so, we don’t just randomly interject? Lord.

I will admit it was extreme of Harry not to leave me lying there on the floor or maybe drop a chair on my head while no one was looking. He should reconsider his choices.)

But that’s the thing: posts like this one are the reason I haven’t gone back to set, or gone to another convention, or promoted the show. Would you go to a convention if you knew people like this were going to be feet away from you in the audience? I’m a grown-up, I can take being called Crummy Crabapple (did the whole kindergarten class vote on that one or was it a decision by fiat…?) but the sheer hate that underpins the silliness of the post makes the idea of being near people who think like that fairly shuddery. 

I gathered a few such posts together to show to FF, and the network’s never blamed me for not wanting to go out and physically promote again. The sad part of all this is that mostly I pretend the show doesn’t exist because the downside of mentioning it is being screamed at for days by asshats (Let me be very specific what I mean by “asshats” = people who send threats, who use insulting gendered language, make anti-Semitic slurs, and repeatedly tell me I should not be allowed to own my own work — if this is not stuff you do, I’m not talking about you. Criticism of the books is fine and irrelevant.) 

We all know these asshats exist — and we are all sad about it: me, the network, the actors, the showrunners, because the net result of them existing is that I don’t talk about or promote the show, and that’s a loss for a show that could really use that outreach. Losing me, my online audience, my worldwide publishers, as potential promotional partners is bad, not good, for a show that these people theoretically love. Losing the book fans the show depended on as viewers, but who can’t stand the toxic atmosphere, is bad, not good, for the actors and writers they claim to support. Screaming “INCEST FREAK!” at every twelve year old who comes online and timidly asks when they will see Chairman Meow is not going to raise the show’s ratings. If someone is more interested in driving away the show’s potential audience because they regard them as moral degenerates than they are in getting it renewed, that’s their bliss to follow, but the reason I’m mentioning these people at all is 1) I’m disturbed by the narrative women shouldn’t be allowed to own their own work and 2) many many posts have now been made about what an awful place the Shadowhunters/TMI fandom is, and that sucks for everyone. Sadly, it doesn’t take that many people to ruin an online space.

The idea that the books and the show are at war for kibbles is a fannish one (most people, including my publisher, regard TV shows based on books as advertising for those books because from a book perspective that’s what they are) seems to come out of the fact that fans argue about which they like better, something that has happened since the dawn of adaptations. I remember it from when I was in the Harry Potter fandom: Alan Rickman understood Snape better than JKR, the movies gave Draco more depth, etc and so on. Looking back now I can see the irony of people with usernames like Lupinfan talking about how Lupin was sidelined in the books but not the movies, but distance gives infinite perspective, I suppose. If you like Malec better on the show: awesome. They still exist on the show because they were invented in the books. That statement will be interpreted as the height of arrogance, but it’s just flat fact. They matter in both formats to a lot of people. There will never be a hand of God that reaches down from the sky and declares either one better. It will always be a matter of taste and opinion. The fact that art is subjective is something we all have to live with.

This is what I mean about the “killing Alec” lie: it has become part of the justification for my unworthiness to claim to have anything to do with my own characters. Killing Alec would be a bad thing to do to Alec (and Magnus); thus I would be terribly maltreating Alec (and Magnus); thus I don’t deserve to have anything to do with Alec (or Magnus). Thus it is okay to tell me to get the fuck out – how dare I even open my bitch mouth to congratulate the actors playing my characters if I would do something so terrible to them, after all? And who cares if it’s a lie and no one can source it? (Come on now, be real — no one tried.)

Whether I deserve Alec and Magnus is somewhat beside the point: I invented them regardless, and there was a large and profoundly intense Malec fandom before the show ever aired, whose existence is in fact directly responsible for the fact that Malec are a thing on the show at all. (Initially, neither of them appeared or were even referred to in the pilot.) Reality doesn’t really intrude into the fantasy that Magnus and Alec and Isabelle and Jace descended, pre-created, from a sky cloud, though: the fan/creator ownership dichotomy has existed since before Arthur Conan Doyle was bullied into bringing Sherlock back from the dead. Fans and creators don’t always agree and creators aren’t always right. What they are, however, always, is creators.

(In case I had forgotten that I am not, in fact, a hot dude actor. ASTONISHING INFORMATION.) It is mysterious to interpret congratulating actors as taking “credit for Matt and Harry’s hard work”;  I neither need or want that anyway because I am not an actor; I am already credited on the show as the author of the source material, which is what I am. (I’ve won plenty of book awards but would be very puzzled to win, say, a Nobel prize for chemistry.) I congratulated the actors knowing I’d get a raft of shit for either doing so or not doing so: I chose to do so despite the inevitable annoyance factor because I like Matt and Harry; I wanted them hired; I like how much they love the characters, and I’ve always found them to be kind people who would loathe and despise the kind of tweets these folks are sending on their behalf.

Ironic, that.

But yeah, I also sent it because I’m proud of Malec. Deal with that. Women need to be allowed to be proud of their work sometimes without that being considered a deep evil. I don’t think the Magnus and Alec I created are perfect (by which I mean my writing of them, not their endearing flaws ;) but they represent years of work and love, and like any author would be, I’m thrilled to see the screen version of them acknowledged twice as something special. That’s very normal: for the GLAAD win, I got flowers from my publisher, congrats from the network and from my agents at CAA, because why wouldn’t you congratulate an author on something good happening to an adaptation of their books? The idea that when discussing an adaptation of their work, an author should reel back in terror screaming “I AM UNWORTHY TO BE MENTIONED IN THE SAME SENTENCES AS THE CHARACTERS I CREATED!” is so bizarre to most people that if you tried to explain to them that some women, not all women hahaha of course, but SOME WOMEN JUST DONT DESERVE TO BE ALLOWED TO TALK OR CLAIM THEY CAN “OWN” THINGS AMIRITE, they would back quietly away muttering that they had an important appointment to get their hedgehog dyed blue because they would literally think you were probably a serial killer.

This situation is not unique to these books, to me, or to this show: however, there is a special angle to this particular situation. Many commenters on all this have noted that the books are a female creation, the show a male one. Ed, Todd, Michael, Matt, McG, and Darren are all men, and in many ways, people find it much more comfortable, much easier, and much simpler to give uncritical admiration to men. They’re men, and therefore they have authority I don’t, and my continued existence as the author of the source material of Shadowhunters is seen as even more horrible because it makes it a girl thing, and “girl things” are less serious and less worthy. One of the things I often see the haters say is that the show is “older”; in fact the audience of the show is statistically younger than the book’s audience (I’ve seen the numbers) but I think it’s hard not to want to dismiss something so imbued with lady germs as being inherently inferior (and what’s more inferior than young women? It’s trendy to bash YA, which is seen as the province the young and the female – surely preferring men’s work makes you, you know, a more serious person? And surely if I had the sense God gave a weasel, I’d stop writing, give the book rights to some guy, and retire in shame? GO FORTH HARLOT AND WRITE YA NO MORE.)

Feminism does not mean you cannot criticize works by women. I’ve said that before, but I’m saying it again because it’s so easy to dismiss essays like this by saying “She’s hiding behind feminism and claiming we can’t criticize her because she’s a woman!” Nope. (Though it does mean you look for patterns. It’s kind of interesting there’s this small group of people who believe these characters/storylines really came alive when control of them was handed over to a series of ever-changing white middle-aged men. I mean, coincidence perhaps, but…?) I haven’t addressed criticism here really because it’s not the point: there is a huge gap between writing a bad review of a woman’s book and crusading for the idea that she shouldn’t be allowed to own her own intellectual property. Men taking away, literally taking away the money made from and authorship of women’s work is an ugly part of history (“Colette and [her husband] separated in 1906, although it was not until 1910 that the divorce became final. She had no access to the sizable earnings of the Claudine books [she had written]—the copyright belonged to him”) and it’s disturbing to see a group of primarily women argue that it should be repeated.

If the idea that a woman created Magnus and Alec, or any characters or world, is so horribly, terribly bothersome that you have to make up lies that, in your mind, render her unworthy of her own creation so that it’s all right to “take it from her” by discounting her role as a writer, her ownership of her own intellectual property, her right to exist as a person and to stand on the same stage at a convention as the “gem-like saint” male actors playing her characters —  maybe think about why?* What does screaming that I’d better not think Alec and Magnus have anything to do with me get you, really? Except the knowledge that if, one day, you write or create or draw something people love, you’ve helped create an environment in which it’s a veritable certainty you’ll get treated like you’re a piece of shit for doing it?

*And “bitch” is “bitch”, friends. It doesn’t matter what letters you take out, it’s still misogynist and still shitty. You know what you’re saying, and so does everyone else. Try asshat, really. I recommend it.