#I’d love to see that summarised because it would literally be my whole life summarised

[zakizendetandi]

i want an ao3 wrapped to see how mentally ill we all are please and thank you

[allthesapphicstars]

In the books it's Mrs Coulter who decides she doesn't want anything to do with baby Lyra after the scandal, that's why she's given to Lord Asriel, not the other way around. The show changed this (and her character) completely. After the trial Lord Asriel is declared unfit for parenting and Lyra is given to a nunnery, but he decides to 'kidnap' her and brings her to Jordan College. And it's not like Lord Asriel is not left crawling as well, he used to be as rich as a king, after Lyra he had to swallow his pride and go beg colleges for funding (even 12 years later), whereas Mrs. Coulter (now a widow and free) is given funding by the Magisterium itself, so again, in the books she does achieve what she wants, in unconventional ways maybe, but she has her own research department and is never seen as subordinate to any man, until book 3 at least. And most importantly, in the books she subdues to no man, let alone Boreal. He's literally her puppet in the books 😔

I think you raise some good points here. But I want to say that my post about Marisa and the patriarchy was very much my own opinion and interpretation of both the books and the show from my own perspective as a woman having lived the experiences I have. That being said I do think I should go through your points and explain my own reasoning behind my interpretation.

1) Who got to take care of Lyra.

I never actually said that Asriel didn't want anything to do with Lyra. I do believe that both of them, in their own ways, do love and care about Lyra. They're just not very good at it.

But in terms of who took care of Lyra after she was born that responsibility immediately fell to Asriel. And there are probably lots of reasons for this. But, for me, I don't think that it was ever really a consideration or much of an option for Mrs Coulter to do so because of the environment of their world.

Marisa was married and had an affair that produced a child. In their world, women are second class citizens in comparison to men and as such any power or financial security that she may have would have been derived from her position as a wife. And a wife to a powerful man. To be able to keep a child requires resources that she would have only been able to get through her husband.

We know that Mrs Coulter kept her affair and also her child a secret because it would have ruined her. But also, I don't think we should forget, that she kept Lyra a secret from her husband to protect her too. As when Mr Coulter found out about the affair and Lyra he went to Asriel's house to kill them both, but Asriel got there first.

If you consider this, then Marisa wasn't really given much of a choice about what to do with Lyra. If she'd taken care of her herself then it's likely that her husband would have banished her from his home and therefore stopped her access to any resources, or he would have killed the child. Neither of those options look particularly good if you ask me.

Asriel's decision to "kidnap" Lyra and get her to Jordan is, to me, an act of desperation to protect his child in the same vein as Marisa's decision to not care for her herself.

Don't forget, by this point Marisa has been marked as an adulterer and a widow and is a pariah to most of society. She's also no longer under the protection of a man which is why the magisterium don't allow her to take Lyra back into her custody but instead give her to the nunnery.

Neither of Lyra's parents have many options when it comes to custody because of the patriarchal structure of their world. (although I highly doubt Marisa would have been let off as lightly as Asriel was in terms of breaking the rules about Lyra)

2) Asriel also had to crawl his way back.

Yes. You're right, Asriel did have to work his way back up to respected by society again. But as you yourself pointed out, his main obstacle was the loss of his money.

Asriel still retains his title. His academic standing is relatively untouched. He may have to beg to get funding but so does pretty much everyone trying to get funding tbh. The college's still listen to what he has to say. His name carries weight.

Let's compare this to what Marisa lost in the scandal. Yes, she didn't lose all of her finances like Asriel. But with the death of Mr Coulter she lost the male presence that in their society allowed her access to so many places. Without a husband she doesn't have the same security that she did before. She also lost her reputation, which for a woman (and not just in their world) is detrimental in how she is treated.

When I say that Marisa had to claw her way back into society I really do mean it. She wasn't just struggling to get finances like Asriel, she was struggling to be listened to, to be respected, to have any form of control over her life that having power gives you. Their world is deeply misogynistic so anything that Asriel struggled to gain, Marisa would have had to work against the same odds but also factor in her gender setting her back deeply.

3) freedom

Honestly I can't agree with your statement that Marisa is more free compared to Asriel.

Ok, so yes, Marisa gets funding from the Magisterium but that is explicitly because she is doing research that they want doing (experimenting with the concept of removing sin by cutting children) that they don't want to be seen doing because it's barbaric. Her research funding comes directly from the fact that as a woman, who's a pariah and not a member of the church authority, if what they were doing was made public she's easily expendable. Someone that they can deny ever colluding with. And Marisa knows this. She knows how vulnerable her position within the church really is. That the power the church gives her is an illusion.

So she creates her own power through using what condemned her in the eyes of the church against them. Her ability to seduce. They view her as a wanton adulterer so she uses that fear of her sexuality to arouse and then manipulate the men in power.

But this doesn't mean she not seen as a subordinate to a man. She 100% is. She has to answer to the male heads of the church. And is expected to bow down to their will when they change their minds. She doesn't have this freedom to do what she wants with her research that you say because she always has to justify her actions to a man.

4) Boreal

Boreal is not her puppet. Yes, he does do what she wants but that's because of his attraction to her. He doesn't submit to her desires because he respects her. He definitely doesn't do it because he sees her as an equal.

Boreal does what Marisa wants because he thinks that as a man he has more power over her. He submits to her whims because he think that if he plays along with her wishes and appeases her, gives her the illusion of having control over him, he'll be more attractive to her. All of Boreal's motivations come from wanting to sleep with her. And actually I'd argue that even more than that, Boreal is a collector (and this is something that the show drew on in the last episode) he wants to be able to say that he triumphed by being the first man to fully get Mrs Coulter to submit. He wants to own her.

And Marisa is fully aware of this. And yes, whilst being aware of how one is being manipulated does give you some power over the person doing the manipulating, it still doesn't negate the fact that the entitlement to her as a person that Boreal expresses comes directly from how their society views women.

Marisa's sexuality is both a weapon and also a cage. And I'm not going to go further into that here because tbh it's like a whole post on it's own and this is already way too long. (and also it makes me sad and stressed to think about).

I did just want to add on though to your comment about book three being the first time Marisa submits herself to a man. As you can probably guess I don't agree with that assessment, she is constantly having to submit herself to men and you can tell that it wears her down even if she pretends she's above it.

But even if you don't see all of her interactions as reflecting this then the scenes I think your referencing to in book three really do reinforce that submission is not a new act she's had to play. When Marisa is in Asriel's fortress and talks about playing the demure and naive woman with the generals, and even with Asriel (yes I know he's aware that she's manipulating him but I also think he's not aware of just how much), shows that it's not a new concept to her. It's definitely something she's had to do before. And honestly I think it's something she's had to do her whole life.

To summarise: yes Mrs Coulter is a figure of power in the books and is a master manipulator. But that doesn't mean she isn't constantly struggling against a world that condemns her as inferior because she's a woman. She's judged harsher because of her sex.

And you can't forget we only get her point of view in book three, but throughout the series you can see how her being a woman holds her back from everything that she wants to achieve and I still believe that going up against those struggles is a direct impact on her actions and who she is as a person.

She's spent her whole life fighting. And I think there's something really tragic about that.

[woodsiessilverduckies]

My view on Jumin Han and the MASSIVE effect his route had on me

Look it’s late I should be asleep let me rant about this legend, also I’m sorry this turned out to be an essay but honestly what I wrote is really important to me

He might just be my favourite fiction character ever because I relate to him so hard

From what I’ve played so far-

((I haven’t finished every route of every character, in fact I only played 1 Jumin route and I got a bad ending around day 9. Why don’t I play more if I claim to love him so much? SCHOOL))

-his route really managed to capture a lot of what I’ve been through, on a really personal level.

I think I started to realise we were in similar shoes when he talked about his father and his relationships (my dad has literally been with more girls then I can count)

Also my dad isn’t a good person, I’ll come out and say he’s an asshole to everyone. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like, that I don’t have fun with him sometimes and that I don’t enjoy being around him

I’ve read a lot of fan fiction, experience a lot of people’s ocs, seen a lot of media where terrible parents are made out to be absolute evils. But Jumin’s route was the first thing I’ve seen to make me go “...Finally. Someone finally understands.”

Another thing Mystic Messenger managed to represent wasn’t a hate Jumin harboured towards his father, or some type of warped love either. Just pure indifference when it came to the aspects of his father he disliked.

I can not emphasis enough how true this is!! I can’t count on both hands the times my dad’s picked me up from school with a girl I don’t know in the car, or when I walk into a room I don’t know with a woman in it I’ve never met.

I’m never confused, angry or disappointed when this happens; just indifferent. Try and be polite but also make sure not to get attached at all (both of which I do without even realising). Just pure indifference. Like how he was on his phone during dinner.

This was my second “Finally someone represents it right.” Moment.

From then on I was already attached.

Something I noticed about Jumin (though I may be reading too into things) is that he always has so much pressure on his shoulders. But, I don’t think that pressure is from his father, he seems pretty chill about Jumin’s whole “heir to the company” situation.

That pressure may have stemmed from his responsibilities, but Jumin put it all on himself.

I understand this so much. Both my parents have rather good jobs (or had... in the very least they had amazing education) and I’ve always been a smart child praised by them

But my mum puts no pressure on me at all. Well she does but only the normal amount. And my father the same, pretty much. Yet I still have to be at the top of the top class, the smartest of the smart, I’m always more disappointed in myself then they are in me.

I definitely feel like this is something Jumin struggles with.

Along with that pressure, he’ll never let anyone see him break. I’ve talked about my family life more in this post then I have to anyone irl. Why? Because I’m the smart, happy girl. The perfect student, perfect daughter, perfect friend, honestly I think I’m the empitomu of normal if I don’t consider my family life.

Jumin is like that too to an extent. He’s never going to let someone else see him break (unless they’re me of course, but we don’t all have mc’s in our lives lol). It really hits deep, ya know?

At this point I was beyond loving his character. Because Jumin was just incredible, beyond that even. A real representation of what I’ve been through, I’m genuinely in love with him.

Also, there are things we have in common on a basic level too; a love to an extent it’s practically religion for cats, casually formal and proper, and honestly I thought he was funny! Like seriously guys his jokes weren’t actually bad they made me laugh a lot!

It reached a point where I was so into Jumin’s route that every visual novel scene I would find my cat and cuddle with her while playing (funnily enough she’d a black ragdol so she looks a lot like what I imagine Jumin would look like if he was a cat).

So then, I vividly remember reaching a scene where Jumin starts talking to Elizabeth the third. He knew it was unhealthy that he trusted a cat more than any human being, and that the Elizabeth the third doesn’t actually understand what he’s saying, he’s just deluded himself into thinking that.

So this makes me look down at the cat in my arms, the cat who shared my bed most nights for the past eight years, the cat that’s seen my cry more then twice as much as any real human being, the cat who I’ve always spilled my heart out to and imagined as my best, most understanding friend.

//FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK//

I got the bad ending on purpose because I’d heard about the bad endings for Jumin and I was done being serious I just wanted some time to laugh and something to remind me that Jumin Han is not Jesus himself despite bringing me the realisation of a lifetime

Obviously I don’t relate to Jumin exactly, I’m not the son of a corporate legend and I’m sure Jumin’s never had to worry about his families financial status, and I bet he doesn’t have any of the problems I do with my health

Still crazy in love with Jumin though and this is how I am a Jumin Stan to death without being a kinky queen

I genuinely see him as a very wholesome and loving character because, well, because I see him as myself. I think he’d be so kind and gentle to MC because unlike anything else he owns, he can’t just buy a new one if she breaks, his money can’t solve any issues with her, and that’s what I think he needs

To summarise I need recommendations for wholesome Jumin fanfics or literally any Jumin fanfic lemon without all the kinky stuff please it’s surprisingly hard to find

[aqvarius]

[REVIEW] Her Love in the Force: Shusuke Soma - Who I Once Was

Guys, I’m supposed to be dieting during this quarantine period but Voltage is keeping me FED with all this new amazing Soma content. 

HLITF fans, we have been blessed with amazing Soma content recently. Soma’s S3 Love’s Battlefield route was probably one of, if not the, most memorable HLITF routes I’ve ever played. I also adored his PoV despite it not covering all the moments that I personally wanted to read. (I understand disappointment over it, but I found that the bonus scenes they gave us made up for it, and it allows me to play with my own imagination a bit and potentially write up some fic for the scenes not in his PoV hehe.)

Like the manic Soma fan that I am, I had to IMMEDIATELY buy and read this route. I love him so much I am willing to do anything just to understand him even a little bit better. To my delight, I’m not even a little bit disappointed. And the route even made me spend 300 more coins to buy Goto’s Episode 0 so well done Voltage lol. 

I will summarise my thoughts on this story and then get into some more detail in the cut below. With that said, if you know Soma’s back story already, there isn’t much information to spoil. But I’ll leave some of the more surprising details under the cut.

This story shows us an unfamiliar Soma. This is a Soma that is far colder than even when we first meet him as a Special Instructor at the Academy. He battles with his conflict over his future and what he feels like his life’s purpose is, which is all sparked over his sister Kurume’s comment that she sees him as a hero. Throughout the route, he struggles with aimlessness and his futile attempts to investigate the metro gas attack even while doing his work in the Criminal Affairs/Investigations department, where he becomes the mentor for new recruits Ichiyanagi and Goto. That’s RIGHT, we finally get the Soma/Goto/Ichiyanagi Criminal Affairs dynamics that I have been waiting for years for ever since finding out that they all worked there together! (The only thing missing is Hayase but I guess he’s from a different timeline lol). 

This is something that makes the route super enjoyable to read because we get to see a Soma who isn’t as gentle and reticent as the one we know. He’s a bit colder, a bit harsher, and has less tolerance for antics. We also see Soma as a mentor before he became an instructor and it’s so cool to realise that Goto and Subaru are so capable partially because of the harsh but fair mentoring of Soma and the way that he’s not only drilled the fundamentals of police work into them but also supported them emotionally through the trials of losing a loved one. This route really helps you understand why Goto has so much trust and respect for Soma (and I’d like to see more Soma/Subaru interactions!) 

We also get to see Kurume for what I believe is the first time, which is incredible to be able to put a face to the name. I am such a sucker for big brother Shusuke and seeing more of his life with Kurume really adds depth to our understanding of his character and why/how losing him has made him lose perspective of his own life and identity. 

(I don’t know if I can explain in words how devastated seeing the two of them together made me feel...)

The route also gave some more insight into the Goto/Kazuki situation which was used really well to offset Soma’s own situation regarding vengeance and unresolved grief. We also get to see more of the relationship between Soma and Goto and how much Goto respects him as a senpai even though Goto transferred to Public Safety first (on the recommendation of a certain elite ;)). There are also some great Ishigami/Soma moments which I’ll elaborate on under the cut, as well as some things I discovered while cross referencing between this story and Goto’s Who I Once Was. 

I love that there’s a theme running throughout the story, which is about defining a hero. This is a crucial question which underpins Soma’s incessant yet pointless attempts to figure out his identity and purpose in life. I love that we begin to see him figuring out what being a hero means to him and that Goto’s own grief and slow road to recovery, and the way that he’s affected Goto’s life, is what sets him on this path towards figuring out where to go from here on out. This path is then what leads him to his MC, who we can see is someone who grabs him by the hand and pulls him ever forward. 

To put it briefly, this is a route you’ll enjoy if you love Team Ishigami. You get to see both Soma and Goto pre-trauma (you get to see a younger Goto than in his own episode 0), but then you see both of them forced to confront grief head-on, and then you can see how they both help each other to move forward in their own subtle ways. This story also showcases the best of Ishigami, a man who is collected and analytical but is always thinking of how he can help those around him who are hurt. Like how Ishigami and Kaga are saved by Namba, I would say that Soma saves Goto, then Goto returns the favour, and then Ishigami saves them both. 

Keep reading under the cut to see my further thoughts on Soma: Who I Once Was. I provide extra details about the story and provide some analysis on his relationships with his colleagues and his MC with lots of screenshots for evidence!

Okay so first off: Soma’s parents are ALIVE??? Why have we never met them?! You would think that they would come to Kurume’s grave on Soma’s birthday to see their children at least. For some reason I genuinely thought it was just him and Kurume but no it turns out that he’s had parents this whole time?! Either way, it’s so wonderful getting to see Soma’s home life from back when he was a teenager.

In the past, I’ve made joking comments about Soma being confused over familial and romantic love and wondering if he just cares for his MC like he cares for Kurume because how can you have sex with someone and then still wonder if you just care for them like a SISTER. But this story definitely helped me understand his mindset a bit better and why he sees similarities between his MC and his sister.

So I think we’ve discovered quite early on that Soma’s sister died on his 19th birthday. We also see scenes of them when Kurume is in high school and already having to fill out forms about her future. So she would be 15 at the very least while Shu would have been probably in his first year of uni? I think he’s mentioned that Kurume and his MC would be around the same age but I was really reminded of that in this route.

Honestly it devastated me to read that conversation because her future was just stripped away from her like that. And to see her get all excited about all the possibilities her future held just wrecked me emotionally. She was considering being a florist or a baker or a pharmacist. She would have been around the same age as the MC :’( To see Shu suggest that Kurume could consider studying agriculture made my heart ache because it made me think of how much care Soma puts into maintaining his plants and how much it means to him that his MC takes care of them for him when he can’t, especially because that’s what Kurume did. I also now believe that Soma is so invested in doing whatever it takes to guide his MC towards the best possible future for her because it’s his way of almost atoning for Kurume never being able to live out her dreams and future.

So rather than mistaking familial and romantic/sexual love, I think it’s rather that Soma sees his MC as symbolic of how his sister might have grown up. Rather than thinking of his MC as his sister, he wonders if he’s just fond of her because she’s similar to how she might have been, sort of like how you might make friends more easily with people that remind you of other friends or siblings/people close to you. That’s why he gets so confused when he feels more beyond just affection and can’t control his emotions, because he’s never felt love beyond just worrying and wanting the best for someone until his MC.

On a side note, Soma did a 4 year degree at a university before joining the police academy? What did he study?!?! I want to know!!!!!

I also love that we got to see Soma not really wanting to be a mentor. We get to see him at his most candid, and at a time in his life where he’s still figuring himself out and doesn’t have any goals except for getting to the bottom of the Crimson Wings case. So when he has to take two rambunctious young men under his wing, it’s so amusing to see how much they annoy him at first with their bickering. In the main stories, we only really get to see a bit of this when he deals with Kurosawa but when he does that, it’s kind of jokey and snarky but man Subaru and Goto really pissed him off at times LOL. Like I mentioned, we’ve only seen him as a seasoned instructor who goes out of his way to help you develop, but he is so reluctant to look after these kids at first. He calls them goons, the gruesome twosome, annoying, a pain in the ass… It’s so funny seeing this side of Soma.

I did think it was so cute that Subaru immediately jumped to calling him Shu and Goto was so polite and called him Soma-san but then somewhere down the line ended up calling him Shu as well (which is what he still calls him to this day. I would literally DIE to see some present-day Subaru/Soma interactions – will someone who’s played Goto’s Adversaries let me know if the two of them interact? Subaru is so alpha male especially now, I’d love to see him defer to Soma in the present day.) It was also so cute that they tried to throw him a birthday party (but also very tragic because his birthday is also the anniversary of Kurume’s death and none of them knew that).

I also loved seeing Soma’s response to Kazuki’s death and the way that Goto’s loss and Soma’s loss kind of play off each other. He knows how it feels to lose a loved one, he’s been dealing with the repercussions of it for at least around 5 years at this point with frankly very little progression. If Goto was not able to move forward because he was stuck in time, Soma is not able to move forward because he is lost. Goto’s grieving puts in in a static place where he can’t move, but Soma’s grieving has him constantly moving, but without direction. He’s haunted by Kurume’s words and even says as much: “I had no idea where I was supposed to go… I just let myself float along”. 

This is why Soma scolds him both in his own story and in Goto’s story, and it is Soma’s experience that allows him to guide Goto towards his growth. It’s also (at least partially) because of Soma that Goto ends up in Public Safety.

Ishigami approaches Soma for an evaluation of Goto, stating that “students raised by an elite teacher are elite themselves”. Soma’s evaluation sets the stage for Goto to eventually be able to confront his grief and develop as an undercover specialist through Ishigami’s guidance; Goto even calls him his “benefactor”. In Goto’s story, he says “It has to be him. The one who found me on the neon-lit street” and Goto then mentions a line about being blinded by revenge that I’m pretty certain is something that Soma said during their nighttime (and thus presumably neon-lit) back alley chat. So I’m not 100% certain who Goto has in mind but 95% he’s thinking about Soma, especially since he later thanks him for the transfer. 

 We know that Soma essentially helps Goto without trying because he’s confused when Goto calls him his benefactor. In evaluating Goto to Ishigami and cornering him in that dark alley, without even knowing it, Soma effectively helps to push Goto into facing his future – the two facets that Goto says makes someone a hero. 

We also discover that Soma is recruited to Public Safety through a recommendation by Goto, who is presumably “the elite who nominated” him.  I love that if Soma pushes the frozen-in-time Goto into moving forward, Goto helps the lost Soma begin to find some direction.  

For years, Soma has been chasing this elusive concept of “being a hero” without even knowing what that means, which is why he never gets closer to fulfilment, because he doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be like to “feel like a hero”. No matter what he himself does, he is never able to see himself as a hero either because he couldn’t prevent the death of the one person he wanted to save. I will say probably that the thing that first changed Soma into making him feel like he has more sense of purpose in becoming one step closer to the “hero” that Kurume said he was is that Goto basically called him his hero. I think it’s so special because here we can really see the links drawn between Goto’s life, Soma’s life, and the narrative theme of being a “hero”.

Something that I thought was missing was how Goto (and potentially Subaru?) finds out about Soma’s past. We never see him tell him about it, but I wonder if that’s the reason why he nominates Soma to join Public Safety? We know that Ishigami knows about it, but I think Goto would probably have found out through Soma himself?

On another note, I actually wondered why Soma, Goto and Kurosawa all have fairly similar strategies and strengths as detectives while Kaga and Shinonome have more specific specialties. Now I realise it’s because Goto trained under Soma, and Kurosawa trained under both Goto and Soma.

These two routes made me realise that Goto needed Soma, Soma needed Goto, and they both needed Ishigami and Public Safety in order to be able to keep walking forward without being trapped in neverending grief. I just need to talk for a little bit about how incredible Ishigami is. Ishigami’s judgement in picking his team is amazing. The fact that he finds these people who have personal vendettas who are working covertly and independently to achieve vengeance and then sees how they evaluate each other shows that he is actively building a team that respects each other and work well together. He sees that they have the skills for Public Safety work but also that they have personal issues that Public Safety can help them deal with, and then he does everything he can to help them attain their peace. Ishigami is unbelievably supportive. He works quietly and diligently within the system to get his subordinates to where they need to be and I LOVE THAT SO MUCH.

Okay with all this said, I cross referenced between Goto’s Episode 0 and Soma’s Episode 0 and found some timeline discrepancies? Right after Kazuki’s death, we know Goto spends a while completely depressed until Subaru drags him up to go to Kazuki’s funeral. Then after her funeral, he becomes obsessed with working independently to try to avenge her death. This goes on for long enough (weeks) that Soma has to corner him in a back alley to lecture him (which by the way happens surprisingly often with Soma lol). Goto transfers to Public Safety soon after Kazuki’s funeral. We know this because he transfers and we see him start doing work for Ishigami but when he goes to see her grave and Subaru says that he’s transferring to SP department, this happens on the monthiversary of Kazuki’s death (not even her funeral). Then, it says that Soma transfers to Public Safety a few weeks after Goto’s transfer (meaning it would have happened within a couple months at most after Kazuki’s death).

In Soma’s route, we know that he goes to see Goto a few weeks after Iijima (Kazuki)’s funeral with the bananas. This occurs while Goto is still at Criminal Affairs because Soma references “the other day” when Soma lectures him about his personal life getting in the way of his job. I’m assuming this happens after the back alley lecture when Goto has returned to normal life for that one week before he gets called to transfer to Public Safety. However, later Soma, still working in Criminal Affairs, says “Years have passed, but the one responsible for [Kazuki’s] case wasn’t caught”. This suggests that Soma was still at Criminal Affairs for years after Goto’s transfer to Public Safety rather than weeks? So what’s the TRUTH?

I also just briefly want to gush about how much I love the CG. We see those typical important Soma elements (his hair and the bonsai) but I just love the look on his face. I mean he looks impossibly handsome, but he looks so serious and determined while at the same time still lacking the warmth that we see in later CGs that he only develops after meeting his MC. Am I reading too much into this? Maybe, but let me PRETEND. 

Finally, I want to end my thoughts on how this relates to his relationship with his MC. Soma says that she’s helped him to face the future. As I previously discussed, I genuinely believe that part of this is because his MC lets him see glimpses of what Kurume could have been. Soma is attracted to her brightness, her bravery, her diligence, her conviction and her optimism. (He also starts enjoying everyday life with her when they pose as a married couple and let’s not forget that he does find her physically attractive even before he falls in love/realises he’s in love lol). But more significantly, I feel like this is because of how important he is to her.

Soma has previously said that he doesn’t trust Public Safety, but for some reason they seem to trust him. This reveals that he’s not sure of what his value is to his department or to his colleagues. While he has moved forward, he’s still working towards being that “someone who pushes you to face the future” and “helps people without trying”. Even though Goto basically implies that Soma is the one who has helped him face his future, Soma sort of interrupts so he doesn’t explicitly voice it. However, when his MC confesses how important he is to her with that unwavering conviction of hers, I believe in that moment he suddenly realises his own worth. His MC, who in some ways is a vicarious symbol of Kurume’s potential, helps him see that he has already been a “hero” to those he has saved through his Public Safety work and to his colleagues. This, combined with her trust in his colleagues and them actually coming to the rescue, is what makes Soma able to trust his colleagues. Because he finally knows his own worth, he can finally see how significant he is to his colleagues and how far they would go for him. I think this is also what makes him believe in Public Safety as an institution. For years, he’s been unable to trust or forgive Public Safety because of what happened to Kurume, but now he can finally see that they as an institution have actually helped people and saved people’s lives, and this is partially due to his own involvement.

Finally, the last facet of his relationship with his MC that I want to talk about is how mutually important their relationship is. I’ve already discussed how his MC sees him as a hero by those guidelines that Goto helped him set down, but by those same guidelines, his MC is also his hero. I mean first off, he first became conscious of her as a woman when she gave a ridiculous display of bravery. But more importantly, if a hero is someone who helps people without trying and someone who pushes you to face the future, she has done both of those for him. He says so himself: “With her, I think I can focus on the future and moving forward”. And she has helped him just by being herself. This theme really comes to a head when she literally throws away her own future to help him finally get closure. When he decides to cut his hair, he says this:

“I’ll make the cut, draw the distinction between the past and the future, because I love them both.

I have to let go of what I’ve lost and look to what I can still gain.”

He learns this because of her.

Soma: Who I Once Was is an incredible story that really helped me to understand my favourite character’s psyche, history and relationships just a little bit more. For that, I’m so thrilled and so grateful. I’m so pleased at the quality of this content and all the insight it provides, and I’m excited to see how Soma and his relationships continue to grow and develop in the future.

[omegafrisk]

omegafrisk is om-over-frisk, apologies, and unreleased stuff

i want to preface this by saying that every time i admit to a mistake i get people trying to minimise it. if you’re getting ready to do that, please don’t. it makes me feel terrible. even if you don’t agree with how i feel, i violated my own morals, and that means a lot to me!

so, omegafrisk is definitely over. it’s partially that i was in a bad bad place when i started this comic and it’s always gonna be tied to that for me, partially that i’ve just become a much better writer since then and i’d have to reboot the whole thing to be satisfied with it, and partially just that i’m not into undertale enough to make a whole comic anymore.

and speaking of being in a bad place: letting that bleed through into my writing is what i want to apologise for. i’ve come to realise i was a victim of grooming when i started this comic (and as i continued to write it). it messed me up, and i wrote messed up stuff because i just didn’t know better. the child gore, the flippant use of suicide, the extremely inappropriate jokes about kids, probably other stuff i don’t remember - it all disgusts me now. i’m so sorry i put that out into the world and that it took me so long to address it.

i thought about password protecting this blog and shutting it down altogether, but i’ve decided i won’t do that. after wrestling with tumblr a bit i think i’ve deleted  the worst stuff, but if you think there’s anything else i should get rid of please bring it to my attention through IM, or through the submit box if you’re shy (you can submit anonymously if you log out).

again, don’t defend me. if you don’t agree keep it to yourself. i will block you if you try to minimise this.

heavy stuff out of the way, onto the content, which i’m sure most of you are much more interested in.

ABOUT THE STORY

i thought about releasing my entire plot outline, but... it sucks. that thing predates mad mew mew. it’s terrible. there’s barely even any detail. whatever you’ve come up with yourself is more interesting.

i do have plenty of stuff to share though! this summary got long as hell, so the rest is going under a cut.

since it’s so long, i’ll put the one thing i am mostly happy with here (obviously sui/child death implications):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1modE5IQiwNIwRPHBBkwADAEbPttbpIzJBWFaBZlvYHY/edit?usp=sharing

this is the script for an ask i was planning for ages. first written in 2016 apparently?? with the help of the fantastic emouse. it’s a look on what was going on in the original timeline while frisk and chara were off gallivanting through spacetime.

the one thing i’m not pleased with is i don’t think it’s totally ic for flowey to start resetting again. i left it in though ‘cause i don’t feel like updating it.

another thing i’ll leave you is the playlist of instrumental themes i collected for chara and frisk, which i don’t think i ever released. this must also be from about 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVSr-S6q61wCF5IFuBO2Ipl0Nb-u3r4xo

it starts out with frisk’s themes, life/universe and high score are shared themes, and after that chara’s themes begin.

summaries of the rest of the event and the ending under the cut!

A WRINKLE IN TIME

i can at least summarise the rest of the event i had planned. mettaton was about to turn the tables on everyone by having a camera crew burst through the ceiling (which were gonna be some people’s cameo’d ocs). he’d broadcast the debate over who got the soul live to try and bully everyone into giving him it. he had some fair points - he’s the only one of them that’s literally indestructible (at least to monsters and small children) - but both asgore and undyne were determined that they would be the ones to take it.

flowey would then pop up with his own plan. he’d kill everyone in the room except for charadyne (and mettaton just because, again, indestructible to magic). it would’ve been a cool little animation that scrolled past everyone’s shocked faces as bullets appeared behind them with that jarring sound effect they have in game, then cut to black with a cacophony of them all turning to dust.

this was all to force charadyne to load their save. he thought they’d be able to load to before undyne absorbed chara’s soul, which would be impossible as that moment would’ve been undyne’s first save point. (i’m only now realising the hole in this - surely he would’ve known that after his fusion with chara? but wait, he didn’t know about resets until he was revived, can beasts just not save? fucking undertale man)

regardless, chara and undyne would try to reset to, in chara’s words, “the last time you were... filled with... determination”. i wanted to do an animatic to half of [this song]. sweet chimes as undyne rifles back through her memories for that moment, building up to her getting ready - a blast of sound as it rips the timeline to shreds.

chara’s soul is so fragmented, only exacerbated by being in a foreign timeline, that they can’t reset properly. i was thinking of styling the catastrophic glitch that resulted after an undertale corruption because those things scare the shit out of me and also can be fucking hilarious. love me some comedic horror.

chara and undyne would eventually figure out they had to leave the timeline and manually straighten it out. because it was knotted. it was wr. there was a wrinkle. in the timeline. a wrinkle in time. because the event is called. it’s c. a wrinkle in time

that’s where i was hazy on details - you can see just how much was made up as i went along. somehow, they’d be separated, and undyne would have left enough dt in chara’s soul that they’d be able to go down to the human village and yoink some souls from the mausoleum there. (i had worldbuilding stuff around that - the soul jars used in the underground are based off what humans use for burial in general. burying your body in a grave = having your soul stored in a mausoleum. there’d also be equivalents to cremation and such)

i hadn’t really thought much about that - the actual idea was that chara would find their old house and we’d get a flashback sequence about their backstory (eugh, glad i didn’t get around to that). and then, idk, the mausoleum would be empty or something? i didn’t think about what might happen if they were actually able to get all those souls. that is to say, i didn’t think about the story implications - i totally thought about chara becoming a cool shapeshifting rainbow beast because i’m like that.

THE ENDING

rest assured there was gonna be a happy ending. chara and frisk were gonna have a big cool battle bursting through various timelines where frisk tried to talk chara down and chara tried to kick frisk’s ass. at the end, frisk would’ve given up and let chara kill them. but chara wouldn’t have been able to. as viciously as they attacked, they could only do a single point of damage - they and frisk are both made of magic now, and magic works on emotion, and chara cannot truly hate frisk enough to end their life.

so they would’ve made up, broken the barrier in their original timeline together, and lived happily ever after with no more resets.

i remember daydreaming an animatic of the two of them trying to break the barrier, stumbling a few times and gradually achieving synchrony, to [this song].

you might notice i don’t mention flowey here. i was kind of struggling to figure out what to do with everyone else in regards to like, actual methods of character development. i had some ideas about chara bringing wrinkle-in-time flowey along with them on their adventures and him somehow getting his memories spliced with og-timeline flowey’s near the end but didn’t really think them through.

here’s a shittily-sketched old concept of what i might’ve done with him though:

not exactly my most beautiful work but it’s all you’re getting. it’s just visual notes, so i didn’t think it through much.

i daydreamed a lot about a cute ending animatic to [this song]. i don’t remember my thoughts well enough to summarise, but i hope you can come up with something cute yourselves!

aaand that’s all for this post. thanks for reading!

[steven-falls]

Steven Universe Future reviewed: Prickly Pair

‘Prickly Pair’ explores the negative feelings Steven has been having as of late and I’m a little worried those negative feelings are going to rub off on to this review.

‘Fool!’

Before I say anything else, I will clarify that Steven cactus is the MVP of the episode. In an otherwise angsty affair,  he provides the most enjoyable and comedic parts. Which is a bit messed up considering he’s being mistreated throughout the whole thing.

I will split this review into four parts; My overview of the episode as whole, my thoughts on the opening scene, a discussion of Steven’s view of the other Crystal Gems, and finally my thoughts on the episode’s conclusion.

Overview:

I think what’s difficult about watching ‘Prickly Pair’ is that it’s a pretty big downer the whole way through, with only a couple brief uplifting moments. Steven was a sad sack in the previous episode too, but that was balanced out by everyone else in the episode being pretty happy in their lives. You don’t get that levity in this Steven centric affair.

‘I gave up running the school, but now I don’t know what comes next.’

Ah that feeling of giving up your job because it isn’t right for you, but not having an idea of what you want to do next. So you start filling your time with hobbies to distract you, like gardening or writing reviews of children’s cartoons… ahem. 

Almost every plot beat has Steven be depressed or anxious about something new. We start with Steven questioning what he’s doing with his life, which progresses to him venting about his problems to his newly born son, Cactus Steven. This results in Steven mistreating the cactus when it starts parroting him in front of others, exposing all Steven’s insecurities to his loved ones. Finally, this cumulates in the two fighting. And, despite ultimately making amends with the cactus, it still decides to leave him. 

This does at least lead to Steven experiencing a growing moment. 

‘I’m sorry I mistreated you, you’re just learning from the only role model you’ve got!’

He learns the moral that impressionable children can internalise and replicate their parents unhealthy behaviours and attitudes.

Despite learning this, I’d argue that Steven is in a worse place emotionally at the end of the episode than he was at the beginning. Steven at least had his plants to distract himself from his depression, but after the cactus fiasco I can’t imagine he’d be able to go back to that. Now he has no hobby to consume himself with, and has to deal with his family knowing about all the negative feelings he was trying to keep hidden from them. 

This is probably something that will benefit  him in the long term; the gems are aware how much he needs their support now. But in the meantime he’s left feeling pretty low.

And that’s sort of how I feel about this episode. By itself I don’t really enjoy it that much because of how negative it is, even though in the long term I can acknowledge this was probably a necessary step in Steven’s journey.

That acts as my general overview of the episode, but now to get into more specifics.

Potty for Potted Plants:

‘This little smarty is named Connie.’

Awkwardly drawing attention to the fact that we haven’t seen Connie since the movie… a movie she was barely in.

The episode opens with an introduction to the plant colony Steven has been growing, each of the plants being named after one of his friends. Steven naming his plants after his friends is something that could be seen as cute, but it’s portrayed as an unhealthy coping mechanism from the get go; as Steven rambles about how the plants can’t leave him. A dark reading of this behaviour suggests that he wants his friends in a position where they physically can’t leave him, and also depend on Steven to care for them for their own survival.

While I can appreciate the subtext I still didn’t care for this scene in general. Particularly the part when Steven starts talking to the Lars plant.

‘You’re stuck in the ground aren’t you not going to zip into space and leave everyone behind’

 I personally find it annoying when a character just starts rambling like a crazy person for comedic purposes. Particularly if the content of what they are saying isn’t that funny: Steven’s pretty much just summarising his insecurities for the audience right here.

Steven’s plant obsession is supposed to be comedic in its creepiness, but I just don’t find this creepy behaviour comedic. 

It does serve its plot purpose, although having Steven literally name the plants after his friends feels so on the nose. Just have him ramble about how plants can’t leave and we’ll get it.

I’ll give them the onion joke though

I’m assuming Garnet’s ‘You should keep a close eye on your cactus.’ line is her using her future vision but…. What exactly is she seeing? Her later line of dialogue ‘that cactus really bounced back’ suggests that she was just warning him about over watering it, but that seems like such an inconsequential thing for Garnet to care about. Did she see the events that played out in the episode, where the cactus comes to life and started attacking them? I feel like if that’s so then she surely would have known about Steven’s mental state from the beginning. Also her warning Steven about the cactus is ironic as it is inadvertently what caused those events to happen in the first place.

I don’t know, I think she knew something was up with the cactus but I’m not sure what.

It does at least act as an example of her ‘high and mighty advice’ Steven complains about later in the episode. Speaking of...

Steven VS The Crystal Gems:

This episode contains Steven’s most sinister character moment yet; slagging off the crystal gems behind their backs. Let’s break down each of Steven’s ‘critiques’ of the crystal gems to assess their validity. 

‘I can’t let Pearl know how I feel because she’ll blame herself and spiral out of control, and I’ll have to pick up the pieces!’

This is by far the harshest of Steven’s outbursts, and a pretty low blow considering all the trauma Pearl went through. But on the other hand Steven had to resolve a lot of Pearl’s issues for her from a young age, so I can’t really blame him for feeling this way. In fact if this complaint had been made before the Pink Diamond reveal I would have been fully in Steven’s corner.

It is ironic because you could say that Pearl unloading her trauma onto Steven traumatised him. And now in turn  Steven is unloading all his issues on to Cactus Steven. Definitely a message in here about parental figures passing on their baggage to their children.

‘I don’t want any more  high and mighty advice from Garnet.’

 I found this one funny because it just reminded me of his impression of Garnet in season 1’s ‘Tiger Millionaire’

‘I’m not going to say anything, but I expect you to understand that was wrong.’

Ah, the more things change the more they stay the same.

‘And I’m so sick of Amethyst acting like she’s so mature now’ 

This is the rant that comes most out of left field, especially as Steven was the one who first labeled Amethyst as ‘mature’ back in ‘What’s your problem.’

His issues with Pearl and Garnet make more logical sense as those are reactions to problems he feels he needs to deal with himself. But Amethyst's maturity isn’t something that negatively impacts Steven. 

In fact, in the very next scene Amethyst's maturity is the thing that encourages her to reach out and ask if Steven needs any help. Steven’s distaste for Amethyst maturity comes across as plain pettiness towards her growing as a person. The two have somewhat switched roles from the episode ‘Steven vs. Amethyst’. 

‘Great and now you’re even more mature than me [...] Now I’m the worst Crystal Gem’

Here, Amethyst was bitter that Steven was starting to excel past her. Steven improving as a person made her feel worse about herself. Both of them have felt bitterness towards the other showing maturity and character growth . But of course, being resentful of someone else’s maturity only makes you seem more immature. 

The Final Fight

It takes Steven having a physical fight with the cactus to realise the only reason it is being so aggressive is because it’s copying him. Which is weird because Steven knew the cactus was learning by copying him from the beginning.

Like, come on man you already knew that, it should have been pretty self evident. 

But obviously Steven was so preoccupied by his annoyance the cactus that he completely forgot this.

The reactions to the cactus pricks make for some great visual gags. But I feel they overplay this joke, it’s done like 5 times in the final scene alone. 

Because the cactus only copies Steven, all of Stevens' anger directed  the cactus is really  just anger at himself. This metaphor is made even clearer by the cactus literally being a cactus version of Steven. So Steven’s realisation that he shouldn’t have been so hard on the cactus doubles as a realisation that Steven shouldn’t have been so hard on himself, (although I don’t think Steven made that connection)  So there’s a double moral here that one should be kind to them self as well as others.

[lost-caticorn]

Why I think Shigeo Kageyama (Mob) is autistic

Quick word before analysis:

I don’t know what the author of mob psycho 100% had in mind when he created this character. This is only me sharing my point of view. Take it for what it’s worth.

Autism is a spectrum, the following characteristics don’t represent its entirety. Also english isn’t my language. I’m just doing my best to convey my thoughts ^^

1. Lies, being fooled, implicit meanings

Since the first episode, Shigeo is a character that appears to be very gullible and is often qualified of “softy”.He clearly has trouble telling if people are lying to him or having malicious intent. He seems to believe everything that he’s told as if other people were as honest as him (sad truth being that they’re not).

Some people might just see this as an endearing character trait or a quirk but I think this is a first hint at autism. Most people on the spectrum have trouble to distinguish between lies and truth or sarcasm and honesty because we have difficulty reading between the lines.

There are so many examples of this side of him like the fact that he doesn’t even suspect Reigen of lying to him about having psychic abilities or him not thinking that Dimple (エクボ) has malicious intent when he follows him around. But I think the following dialogue summarise this point perfectly:

2. meltdown (the whole 0-100% concept)

First of all what is a meltdown? A meltdown is “an intense response to overwhelming situations. It happens when someone becomes completely overwhelmed by their current situation and temporarily loses behavioural control. This loss of control can be expressed verbally (shouting, screaming, crying), physically (kicking, lashing out, biting) or in both ways”.

Shigeo being in a cycle of slowly getting to 100% and exploding with psychic powers is really similar to the way meltdowns work. We see him getting through the day accumulating small things like unexpected events, social interactions, conflicting feelings or an overload of sensations all of which bring him closer to loosing control of his emotions.

In my opinion this sounds exactly like a meltdown.

3.  facial expression

Something quite common for people with autism is to have trouble expressing feelings not only with words but also with facial expressions that don’t match what we’re trying to convey. Mob isn’t expressionless but the changes between his usual face and his others expressions are quite subtle.

4. Lacking social skills

His problems in socialisation are obvious from the start but it becomes even more prominent in the third episode of season 1 with Dimple’s sect. This episode shows us how Mob was always left out of group with children his age because he simply couldn’t read the atmosphere.

In the anime this line is translated by “get a clue” but it doesn’t really match the Japanese words used here “空気を読む” which means “read the situation/sense the mood”. Also I think it’s worth mentioning that in episode 4  he literally names it the “reading-in-the-mood technique” (空気を読む技術). This just illustrates how non-natural this is to him.

Again this is something anyone on the spectrum can probably relate to. Mob is clearly hurt by people constantly telling him to read the mood when he just can’t! 

5. Trouble expressing feelings:

In the same episode with Dimple and his sect, it is made very clear that Shigeo has two difficulties: Reading the mood and expressing how he feels. It’s not that he doesn’t want to smile I’d even say that at one point (when Dimple uses his power on him and it doesn’t work) he wants to laugh like everyone else but he can’t. 

Dimple then assumes that Mob has no emotions which leads to him saying this:

How many times have people on the spectrum heard this because they couldn’t read and express emotions the same way than most people do? My heart sank when he said that to Mob...

6. Monotone voice

I didn’t find a video of just Mob talking to illustrate this but it’s really obvious in the anime (I only watch in VO so I don’t know about the dub). Mob always talk with the same tone except when he’s at 100%

This is also something widely experienced by people with autism who often say something with the “wrong” tone of voice and it ends up sounding mean, sarcastic or uninterested.

7. bad at sports

This might seem unimportant but I found interesting that Mob was introduced to us as someone absolutely terrible in sports because usually heroes in Shonen mangas are more on the athletic side.

While Mob being bad at sports doesn’t automatically means he’s autistic, I think this is a hint more in that direction as most people on the spectrum are often affected by dyspraxia.

What is dyspraxia? Dyspraxia is “a form of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a common disorder affecting fine and/or gross motor coordination in children and adults”.

8. Bullied in parallel reality

So season 2 is incomplete for now but I just watched episode 5 and I decided to add this point to my list. Apparently some people are arguing about the accuracy of the version of mob in the parallel reality that Mogami showed him. In my opinion it was very accurate.

Mob’s environnement is perfect for him. His power (even thought he doesn’t use it much in his daily life) helps him connecting with others (his brother, Reigen, bodybuilding club,...). Because he is in such a good environnement he can thrive and become a better version of himself.

Not everyone is born with the chance Mob has. Growing up in a loving family, making caring friends, having kind teachers or meeting an adult that will guide you...These are probably things most of us wish were part of our life. Especially for neurodivergent people that are often confronted to rejection.

In my opinion this episode showed very well how people who identifies with mob’s characteristics are actually treated in the real world. In a world where they don’t have a cool power that creates ties with other people. In a world where the harsh reality of being bullied, hit, ignored, mocked and harassed is common for people that are considered “different”.

This episode physically hurt me while watching but I hope I was able to make a point without being too emotional. 

Conclusion:

So that’s it. These are the main reasons why I think Shigeo is on the autism spectrum. There are still a few but they would be more arguable so I’m going to keep these to myself. Feel free to disagree with my opinion but please be respectful.

In the end I think this show contains so many powerful life advices that can help anyone who’s neurodivergent. Mob is such a wonderful character and I’m glad others are not making a fool out of him like it would have been the case in so many others anime/TV shows.

I’d like to conclude with a quote of Reigen. This is in my opinion one of the best speech in the history of anime:

“Listen, just because you have psychic powers doesn’t change the fact that you’re a human. People who run fast, people good at studying or people with strong body odour. Psychic powers are just another characteristic. You must embrace that as a part of yourself and continue to live positively. The truth behind one’s charm is kindness. Become a good person. That’s all.”

If anyone read this until the end thank you!!

[lyricalafrica2]

‘Emergence’ National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Bulawayo September 6th - 19th October 2019 A few pics that I’ve finally managed to upload and a summary of my processes and review of the show and how I felt it went. In my usual way, fairly personal in places. I wrote it immediately after the show and views are always going to change within time. It’s been a few weeks now and I’ve made the transition from Zimbabwe to Botswana, I’ve had time to recover and chill for a little while. Not much drawing going on, but a whole load of sweating as the the season heats up! I feel at this point to write a review of the creative processes of my show may be a little warped in light of the fatigue I’m feeling, however my intention is to do one again come the end of the month when the dust settles to see how my opinions change. Given the subject matter, I’m also curious as to the impact on my own sense of self, immediately after and going forward. I found it strange that immediately afterwards, my focus was drawn to myself, how I looked in publicity photos and not the actual way the show went. Vanity you may think, though that old devil of self-consciousness. This hit me within a couple of hours of the show ending. Going from the heights of adrenaline and excitement, swiftly to over tired and self-critical. I questioned why more artists didn’t attend, berated myself for looking fat, my habit of nervously over gesticulating and the over animation of my facial expressions. Being struck with all of this just after midnight after two hours sleep if that and venturing onto social media in an attempt to quell my restless mind. Before bed, I’d bounced around the cottage in a fir of sheer delight, like an excited child might, amazed and happy that I’d successfully made it to completion. This midnight hour saw me overanalysing everyone and everything, even down to a known artist who turned up, said nothing to me and shuffled off into a corner to eat popcorn and nuts on his own. Not a well done, nor a comment on the content, just nothing, perhaps a slight look of disdain though. Was I just imagining this? Was this silence comment enough on what lay before him? These thoughts are just as responsible for limiting behaviours and in voicing them honestly, I’m hoping they simply release into the ether and just disappear. So, the exhibition was divided into three rooms, for which I wanted to take people on a journey, from conception. Not to say I incorporated every bit of work that I produced. I tried to curate carefully, it was interspersed with pieces that were a bit more literal, leading to much more abstracted concepts. Wording and symbolism, not just because; but because they are a powerful means to switch on the brain and indeed the heart. Positive and powerful. If you think positive, positivity will perpetuate, and vice versa with negativity. You don’t make it anywhere telling yourself that you’re wrong and a terrible person. For this reason, I was pleased that there were a number of children attended. I think instilling in children how important it is to love and respect themselves properly, allowing those little flames of excitement to become brightly burning and sincere passions are important. Most realise only too late where they went wrong and how detrimental it can be in trying to adhere to societal norms. Be yourself, they’re the most important person you will ever encounter. I tried to covey through my mixed media approach, the fragility, but also the resilience of the human spirit. How it could be quashed when handled wrongly, we’ve all had our wings burnt so to speak, we’ve no doubt all had our wings clipped too. Been told to be too cautious, know our limits, not been supported properly at the mercy of someone else’s ego. It can be hard not to absorb these things as we make our way through life, we are constantly in awe of someone else, rather than looking within for the amazing facets we already have. I hold my hands up and confess I am absolutely guilty of this, but in also being a therapist, it becomes so clear how things invariably work. It can be heart breaking to watch someone go through life, never realising there potential, thinking they have to conform to x, y or z, just to be accepted, so they can consider themselves a worthy human being. Whatever happened to simply being a good person and just allowing yourself to shine? Doing your thing, being encouraged to discover all that you are? I have that philosophy of, if we all learnt how to truly accept and love ourselves, our lives would be far easier. We would be able to perpetuate that to our neighbour, to the animals that surround us, to our environment. Can you imagine if we all lived consciously taking a little more care like that? The recurring themes of fragility, fractured, bound and freedom were used throughout the exhibition, never asking people to see the point, but encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. Flashes of mirror, captured people in the moment and very much made them a part of the exhibition pieces. Veining, flight paths, patterning and themes which were very much more emotive were all explored in different ways. Liberal and freeform use of diluted oils on damp surfaces allowed mixed colours to merge and bleed, blown, feathered allowed to run and bloom. Free to behave how they needed to behave. Added texture and collage offered additional light, movement and the suggestion of dynamism to these much more abstract pieces. I’ve never used oils in this way before, but I enjoyed it and would explore it further in the future, potentially with more colour in the background. The mainly white backdrop was an attempt to maintain some form of purity, as in the essence of just being. Smaller pieces formed a panel, with suggestion of cuts and scarring that can be recovered from. It’s never too late to learn to use your wings and take flight! Again the use of the wording ”Public Notice”, I wanted these pieces to be vital in drawing people in, in for introspection, an invitation to look for their own potential. To untangle themselves from societal norms and controlling hierarchies, to find what they were really about and to love and accept that. I wanted people to walk away with a sense of wholeness, or at least an impetus to do some self-exploration. A deeper sense of knowing that they are about so much more than the façade they present to the world every day. The façade that they have built in in reaction to the rules and regulations laid down to keep us all in line. The final room was a room I set aside to be filled by my installation pieces. The recurring symbolism of the eyes, the distorted, obstructed retinas, the colours that represented the opportunity to discover potential. The gaze, from one eye to the other, connected by the knowing, the denial, one an authoritarian with the same infinite potential as the next. Likely undergoing their own demons and using that control to supress and satiate their own need. But what if they found themselves a little more, looked at themselves a little kinder, would there action on the rest of the world still have to be so outwardly commanding? Is all this required because we can’t validate ourselves, we seek to control others, because we can’t control or accept ourselves? Paper bark, shards of blunt glass, fishing wire and chicken wire were all used to create a somewhat ethereal, spiritual effect, because well this was a fairly spiritual topic, but not in the head in the clouds kind of way, more a put yourself up there with the best kind of way. Take accountability for your own height, don’t accept that ceiling just because. It’s usually glass and if someone has led you to reinforce it, it’s about time you smashed it down yourself! So why leave the comments on the butterfly till now? Aside from the very free nature of the butterfly and the way it emerges from the cocoon to reveal its true identity, I wanted that sense of liberation. Detachment from what had come to be expected of it. The Commodore butterfly really did bring it home and in that sense, never accept that you have to be second in command. Be the captain of your own ship. Know that you are precious and that you deserve to be the best version of you, which can only be granted by you and only ever you! The fractured painted mirror adorned with glimpses of butterfly and glass again, was there to suggest that we can all be a bit broken, but we’re still beautiful. Use you power to transform that power into something positive, let it make you strong, don’t let it drown you. Life is tough yes, but it’s also sweet and beautiful. And in that, my final piece invited people into a little box, through the abstracted eye, to see what they could see. I see you, what do you see? It seemed an appropriate if more abstracted carry on from my oil portraiture collection, “Who Am I?”. After having seen my exhibition for the first time alone since Friday need to summarise my feelings here. Am I happy? Yes, after feeling so out of sorts over the weekend. Could there be improvement made on the way that I broach the subject? Of course, but isn’t that the meaning of life? To live and keep learning and to try and improve oneself and approach daily? I really enjoyed the installation and sculptural work. It’s not something that I generally do due to constraints on space, tools and materials aren’t so hard to source back home, but I tend to simply get caught up in painting. It was good to be able to combine that and be able to produce such a multifaceted body of work. I’d very much like to continue exploring this. Feedback from the audience was positive and most people pointed out at least two favourite pieces. The large bright eye and butterfly, the fractured mirror piece and the other sculptural pieces went down well and were said to be a quite unexpected addition to the exhibition. In this sense I was pleased I managed to offer something that was different to the usual standards of exhibition. If I were to do it again, what would I do differently? I’d perhaps pay more attention to the interactive element, maybe think it through for longer, use ribbon instead of thread as it is fiddly and time consuming to tie onto the chicken wire backing. I’d also likely do more sculptural elements. That for me has to have been the highlight, besides the different and at times intoxicating use of the oil paints. Of course the invitations went out rather too late and the carefully selected soundtrack went virtually un noted, the aromatherapy oils that I had infused the room with evaporated and disappeared off into the ether through the open doors. All things that need tweaking, but as they say, not bad for a first attempt at a National Gallery.

[gawaine]

I will express this coherently at some point but to summarise;

this became longer than anticipated.

some common criticisms of the finale and why I politely think that, for the most part, they’re (respectfully) fucking wrong

what was the point of the whole show if not the Targaryen storyline?! The ascension of House Stark. The entire series is about the ascension of House Stark. How Bran the Broken’s forefather rejected the throne and died a traitor, like his fathers before him; how Arya escaped King’s Landing and returned as (however which way, or accidentally) a lauded hero, there to save others; how Lady Stark, who was mercilessly abused at the hands of Joffrey and held accountable for the sins of the Lannisters butchering her family, took forward their cause and everything that they died for. Love. Respect. Honour. The North. I’m fucking fine ok no I’m not my baby I’m emOTIONAL

there were good parts but it was a shitty ending! so anti-climactic! It’s the final episode. The penultimate episode of GoT is always the big one; the dramatic fight, the huge scenes. The ending is always quiet. It’s always about the aftermath. The but what is the result of that? That’s the GoT structure. GoT is about politics, human nature, cunning. If you expected anything more than that in the final episode of the final season, you haven’t been paying attention.

Drogon didn’t kill Jon! The argument that Drogon has always showed slight (albeit significantly less than with Dany) deference to Jon; we see he’s wary of him and I guess we all knew that when it came down to it, it would take something fantastic for Drogon to allow Jon to ride him, but we see it as Jon enters the castle and in multiple scenes throughout the season. Him not reacting to Jon isn’t well explained, but there’s an argument there that Drogon senses Jon is at least part Targ. And fire cannot kill a dragon.

what was even the point of Jon being a Targaryen if he’s not king? ... All of it. He chooses to be a Stark first. He denounces fire and blood. He denounces his own free will and choices, even if it means saving whatever remainder is left of House Stark. This is about the rise of House Stark. It always has been. Their suffering, their loss, their triumphs. I can’t remember when, but i remember posting once that as much as fans argue otherwise, we travel with the narrative. Our two narrative threads, that we’re led to follow as an audience, are the Starks and Daenerys. Jon symbolises that; more than that, he IS that. He is us in that world. The world isn’t that simple. Also, he goes down in history as the man who saves Westeros.

they played us with Dany. Right. No, they didn’t... And yes, they did. Her storyline has been there from the start. The schism between dual supporters of House Stark and House Targaryen only started around season 7, which was when Daenerys conveniently started exhibiting behaviour that indicated she wasn’t as stable as we’d been led to believe/before. I’m not anti-Daenerys, but there have been breadcrumbs this whole time. I’d go so far as to say that the writers probably overestimated the intelligence of their audience; that’s not me being abrasive, that’s fact. The nuggets people looked for in earlier seasons is based on source material. The nuances people enjoyed became ignored for the ‘bigger picture’ - but everyone assumed what that was based on the monolith that the show became (past tense! urgh), not on what the show has always been/was meant to continue to be this season. Was it poorly written? Yes. Absolutely. I felt betrayed by the voice over in the penultimate episode. It was lazy and shoddy. I may not like what Daenerys has become, but she deserved so much more. Also, there was a lack of consistency. This episode highlights her belief in her own benevolence and yes, it’s meant to be ironic and show us how stupid we’ve been - with Jon - and I would’ve respected it more if she’d been written to stand by her fury. But she’s also not her brother. She will purposefully not act that way whilst ignorant to her own faults. She’s delusional. I could write a whole essay on Daenerys’ mental health (did the show write it as misogyny? Yeah, I see it. Is that the basis of her character’s madness as a narrative? Um, no)

what the fuck was Tyrion’s speech? The writers assumed the audience was smarter (in their sense of the word) than they are. So they spelled it out for us, just in case. Clunky, lazy, etc? Yes. Fitting for that scene? Also yes.

lol the episode was so bad, the only good part was Jon petting Ghost It now makes sense why they didn’t have the budget for two Ghost scenes (you know about 70% of their CGI budget went on Drogon in this episode). There’s a reason for that; the season structure of GoT so far [see above], and the reminder of the true theme here - House Stark’s rise [see above]. Jon is at home in the North. At the Wall, he’s not a Targaryen, or a Stark; he’s Jon. It’s the only place where he can be just that. And that includes being half a Stark (ironically, the only consistent thing in his life), but not only that. Does it make relatively little narrative sense to have the Unsullied be invited to stay in Westeros, just to demand Jon is made a prisoner and then leave? True - but the point is, the door is kept open. That’s life. People move, people change, cultures adapt. The Unsullied are now a part of Westeros, no matter how far they go. Plus, Jon in the Wall... Knowing Bran knows the future... urgh, I see it. Poor writing, badly executed (props to the actors and production teams for doing a fantastic job with the material given), but I see the point being made.

the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives - what bullshit! Incorrect. Everyone assumes that’s meant literally; that’s only in times of war, that it’s literal (which is why it’s all we’ve seen so far; it’s eight seasons of war  against the Starks, or involving them). They are together. They are united. They are safe and they are happy. Personally, it’s all I’ve ever wanted from this series. I see others’ disappointment, I do. But Sansa is home. People saying she’s lonely and suffering the burden of ruling... No. Yes, she’s alone. But she’s not lonely. She’s home. With people who love her. With not just her father’s and forefathers’ legacy behind her, including in rebellion against the Targaryen’s for independence of the North/the ‘greater good’; but her mother’s and Robb’s, too. She’s always been somebody else’s. “x’s wife”. “x’s assistant”. “x’s chess piece”. Like Jon beyond the wall, she is just Sansa Stark in Winterfell. Like Jon, it was a legacy she craved - a home - and now she has it, without being the forced bystander she was as a child. Same with Arya. She always wanted to be free to do as she pleased, without losing her identity. House Stark is no longer against the world, fighting to survive. It has. They are a family. Your family aren’t dictated by who’s closest to you. They have survived. They’re not alone. This is the beginning of the series whilst it isn’t, because what’s changed? They know their loyalties lie. The pack must always survive. They have. They know that, after this, no matter what, they always will.

I could go on for hours but you get the point.

It wasn’t the greatest season. My favourite will always be seven. But that finale was one of the best episodes this season, because, as much as it may not feel like enough, it tied the strings relevant to the story it set out to be; which was ALWAYS about House Stark. 

The promo? Of their statues in Winterfell’s crypts? They bury their old selves. They become someone unrecognisable, born from who they were at the beginning.

But the point remains, they are, and always will be Starks first. Daenerys will always be a Targaryen first. You cannot escape your family. You can try and do better, but you can never escape who you are and how who that is affects you.

I fucking love it. Everything else can - bad pun intended - burn. The story this was meant to be got its ending. The stories in between may not have and that’s dissatisfying; but the ending to the original story was there.

[happojin-blog]

I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, but consider me inspired by @xerantic‘s detailed post for this one. Although I’ve got my fair share of speculations on All for One’s relationship towards Shigaraki, I’m not a fan of the interpretation of Shigaraki as being just a brainwashed victim. It does a disservice to his character to think that everything that he thinks and does (and looks like) is because of All for One’s deliberate manipulation. 

He was most certainly groomed to an extent, but viewing All for One as the source of wrong in his life is I believe mistaken, as it misses a key to Shigaraki’s character, motivation as well as his past. Shigaraki was a victim of the hero society first and foremost, and he is not its only casualty. Take this line of Twice’s, from chapter 115:

For whatever reason, miserable little Shimura Tenko was never saved from his circumstances by a hero. Instead, he was saved by a villain. Regardless of that villain’s reasoning and agenda, that villain became his hero. He grew up in a world turned on its head, where the man who saved him was called evil, and the people who didn’t - and the people who hurt his hero - were revered as good.

We see it demonstrated multiple times that Shigaraki is quite tired of everyone acting like ideology is somehow more important than deeds. For example, he calls out All Might and the heroes’ use of violence, which is allowed, versus the villains’. He also doesn’t understand why Stain’s murdering is somehow seen as at least morally grey, while his is called evil. After all, weren’t they both “just destroying what [they] didn’t like?” (He similarly punishes Overhaul for being hypocritical in being against quirks, yet keeping his own). He can’t stand those double standards.

If we want to understand Shigaraki’s worldview, and indeed his whole character, we can’t just view it as him spouting villain propaganda taught to him by All for One. No, Shigaraki is responding to the world as it has been shown to him, as he lives it. His destructiveness is enabled by his master, but even so All for One also restrains it (giving him fewer noumu than requested) for the sake of educating him. (Is education always manipulative, or only when done by villains?)

We know that All for One wants Shigaraki to think on his own, a task he seems to have struggled with, likely because Shigaraki’s issues did not start with him. And you know I love to speculate on fucked up aspects of their relationship, I’ve got no illusions that it was benevolent or selfless, but I’d probably call it misguided over malicious. We saw how All for One treated his beloved brother, who resisted him: the visually similar Shigaraki is likely to have received more affection, as he embraced All for One instead. But I’m getting off track.

The fact that Shigaraki was never saved by a hero is very important too because it highlights that the society is not always just, as Twice also explains. We’ve seen cracks in it, cracks that Shigaraki is currently exploiting, and foreshadowing of growing dissent. He thinks that society is rotten, and he saw All Might up there, upholding the system that failed him - and harming his hero with his “justified” violence. These are the important things to remember when we think on his motives and drive. What All for One symbolises to him (his hero) instead of what their relationship is like (unclear). 

What kind of villain would Shigaraki be, if he was nothing but a gaslit puppet, with no thoughts on his own - who’s only a villain, who’s only justified in his villainy, because he literally had no other choice?

Instead he is one of the most dynamic characters in the series, who’s shown incredible growth in his thoughts and applications. But as he states in chapter 69, he’s always had his creed, his own motives, stemming from the system, stemming from All Might, stemming from his hero... His journey is about understanding how to utilise it, how to think for his own, how to be a succesful villain on his own - All for One deliberately removed himself from his life so that he could grow without being reliant upon him, because he wanted him to evolve beyond him.

So to summarise, I caution the downplaying of Shigaraki’s personality, villainy and own motivations that comes from thinking All for One is the cause of it all, and I also don’t like how that view lets the society that wronged Shigaraki initially get off scot-free. Many things have influenced him, continue to influence him: he’s still learning. Let’s give him some credit.

[themildestofwriters]

Writing Ask Game

Thanks to the magnificent @gottaenjoythelittlethingzz​ for tagging me in this wonderful little tag.

I don’t think I’m going to choose one WIP rather just the universe itself – The Divine Intervention universe. By that, I mean I’ll be doing it for these two novels I’m working on: Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality? & The Trials and Tribulations of a Virgin Goddess.

1. Describe the plot in one sentence.

Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality? 

A goddess and a girl meet at a bus stop and while things are a bit awkward at first, they soon begin hitting it off and begin regular correspondence, however, there’s something more lurking under the surface that neither of them wish to peruse and that one thing is forgiveness and love respectively.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Virgin Goddess

Sex and Babette go together as well as water and oil, yet it was not always this way and in this story she decides to heal herself, to improve herself, and to choose love over her almost selfish desire to dwell on the past and wallow in a pit of guilt and suffering.

2. Pick one sight, smell, sound, feel, and taste to describe the aesthetic of your novel.

Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality?

Flashes of blood, death and gore in the small hours of the night. The smell of petrichor as rain descends. The sound of deathly silence. The feel of soft arms holding you tightly. The metallic taste of blackened blood coughed from the lungs.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Virgin Goddess

Bodies intertwined in a lover’s embrace. The smell of lust in the air. The sound of ceaseless screaming. The feel of suffocating pain and smooth stone. The bittersweet taste of lip balm.

3. Which 3+ songs would make up a playlist for the novel?

Because I’m not very knowledgeable on music myself, this list is filled only with songs I have on my phone.

Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality?

“Viva La Vida” by Coldplay; “Accidentally In Love” by Counting Crows; “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” by Five for Fighting; “Stressed Out” by Twenty-One Pilots; “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran

The Trials and Tribulations of a Virgin Goddess

“Somewhere Over The Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole; “All of Me” by John Legend; “Let Her Go” by Passenger; “Like A Virgin” by Madonna; “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri

4. What’s the time period and location in which the novel takes place.

Both books take place in the modern era and mostly in Salisbury/Adelaide, South Australia. WCAI? takes place in 2016 and TTVG takes place in 2017. However, at least specifically in TTVG, it does take place in other countries with Babette visiting Japan, America and perhaps even England as either a part of her job (Street Performer) or as the plot demands.

5. Is this a standalone or a part in a series?

Well…

6. Are there any former titles you’ve considered but discarded?

For WCAI? I only had Divine Interruption and for TTVG there was “Babette Visits A Sex Shop” “Babette Visits An Adult Shop” and The Weird and Wonderful Sexual Awakening of Babette Mewlyn.

7. What’s the first line of your novel?

I have a tendency to only have a single line to begin a book.

Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality?

“The sky was a dark crimson haze.”

or

“It was supposed to be a bright and sunny Saturday morning in suburban Adelaide.”

The Trials and Tribulations of a Virgin Goddess

“We had planned this for nearly an entire week now and today was the day.”

8. What’s a dialogue you’re particularly proud of?

“ “心配しないで,” she said, a devilish smirk twisting onto her lips. “少なくとも 見る かわいく 、ジョセフィーン様.” “ – Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality? Chapter 2(draft)

If you’ve got a problem with my Japanese, please tell me because I’m winging it on Google Translate and outdated information.

“ “It—it hurts.” It took all my power to just say that and once I did, I was hit by a new wave of grief���of agony—of heart-rending guilt. ” – The Trials and Tribulations of Babette Melwyn Chapter 3(draft)

9. Which line from the novel most represents it as a whole?

“It—it hurts.”

10. Who are your character faceclaims?

Babette… well, I’m tossing up between these girls: Jaimie Alexander; Abbey Lee Kershaw; Amanda Seyfried; Astrid Berges-Frisbey; Zoey Deutch; and Willa Holland.

For Josephine, she’s a bit difficult to find a face claim for. If you’d like to help, that would be appreciated but so far, I’ve not found anything that fits her yet.

11. Sort your characters into Harry Potter houses!

Babette Melwyn – Slytherin

Josephine Williams – Hufflepuff

Henrietta Phillips – Ravenclaw

Maria Camhain-Schmidt – Gryffindor

Kurt Schmidt – Gryffindor

Flynn Camhain-Schmidt – Hufflepuff

Adrien Williams – Hufflepuff

Samuel Meric – Gryffindor

Sofía Meric – Hufflepuff

Harrison Williams – Ravenclaw

Alyssa Williams – Gryffindor

Samantha Bailey – Ravenclaw

12. Which character’s name do you like the most?

Respectfully, I love them all, specifically the girl’s names. Henrietta, Josephine, Babette, Alyssa, Maria, Sofía.

13. Describe each character’s daily outfit.

Babette Melwyn; Babette’s daily outfit could be summarised as well cared for rags with a history with radioactivity. By this I mean, Babette hasn’t changed out of the dress she wore when a group of revolutionaries decided to nuke her. While incredibly old, magic makes a great cleaner and preserver for the cloth and during the course of this novel, she’s usually seen wearing it often. It’s a plain black form fitting V-neck dress with long sleeves that reach up to her hands. The skirt used to be long and flowing, but since being nuked, it’s much shorter, ending around her calves—jagged and looking like some kind of tattered flower blooming from her waist down.

Aside from the dress, she wears leather strapped calf-high sandals and her ruby necklace—her ruby necklace is a constant with every single last outfit she wears.

After settling down on Earth, she finds herself wearing other bits and pieces. She feels comfortable outside her tattered remains and has a small wardrobe filled with a verity of clothing. Her aesthetic could best be described as gothic and Victorian gothic. Expect lots of lacy black dresses of varying lengths along with several sundresses and perhaps a few gowns. Hats are usually wide-brimmed and floppy, and she will not wear heels.

Josephine Williams; Josephine doesn’t have a daily outfit because she’s a normal person who doesn’t have a set outfit and often changes as the clothes she wore previously gets dirty. However, she has that kind of… art student vibe to her, befitting her artistic inclination, though she does were certain jewellery or outfits that have a certain Hellenic aesthetic. What you’ll mostly see her around in is either some kind of cardigan, perhaps a really large jumper while wearing a dress, whether short or long with some leggings underneath. She mixes it up, shirts and shorts, pants and with different colours as well. She keeps her options wide and varied but if you spent enough time with her and paid attention, you’d notice similarities.

Heels, like her girlfriend, is a no-no, but her outfits are certainly more colourful then Babette’s who prefers black and occasionally other colours.

14. Do any characters have distinctive birthmarks/scars?

Babette has a lot of scars but specifically there’s the scars across her heart—two, specifically, one on her back and on her chest, both from being impaled by a weapon that wiped out all life in a galaxy. It wasn’t fun getting that one.

Josephine once had a scar on her calf, but I think she might not have any major scars nor any tattoos—yet. I might give her a distinctive back tattoo that’s basically a string of astronomical symbols which relate to the Underworld in Greek Mythology.

15. Which character most fits a character trope?

I wouldn’t be able to say for sure but I’m sure that Babette and Josephine both fit into a character trope/archetype.

16. Which character is the best writer? Worst?

Babette, hands down. Babette’s not so good at writing songs and whatnot but she’s an academic and a Bard, having transcribed ancient texts, her own stories and a few she’s plagiarised from Earth because Earth Copyright doesn’t exist outside of Earth. Out of the main characters, I’d say that Josephine isn’t so good at the writing of things and prefers visual art. Like, she could write a story, but it’d read like a synopsis.

17. Which character is the best liar? Worst?

This entirely depends on when we take the characters. Before Babette was unceremoniously dethroned, she was a magnificent liar who would often use the skill in her youth on the run. However, at the same time, she’s spent literal aeons alone and her skills at lying have atrophied. She still does it, she’s just noticeably worse. I would say the worst liar would probably be Adrian because out of the children characters, he’s younger and got the biggest tells out of the lot of them. And yes, I have to pick children because everyone else are massive liars whether it’s lying to themselves, their parents, or others. In my experience, everyone lies at least once and their skill isn’t proportional to how much they

18. Which character swears the most? Least?

Henrietta swears like a fuckin’ sailor, Josephine can swear but only does it rarely—or at least where people can’t hear her.

19. Which character has the best handwriting? Worst?

Babette, again due to living for millions of years and the necessity she had to perfect her handwriting. So far, I’ve described her handwriting thusly:

‘…it was clear that it was one-hundred per cent handwritten, and it was a masterpiece. Each letter, each word was written in a way that made reading it clear and easy to read, but also incredibly pleasing to the eye. Cursive, almost like calligraphy but written in clear bull-point pen, as if someone managed to distil handwriting into an artform then decoded to perfect it because why not?’ – Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality? Chapter 4(draft)

Unfortunately, she’s not so good at art unless it’s literally putting the image in her mind onto paper using magical means. Nevertheless, I could see her girlfriend asking Babette to do some calligraphy for her blog.

Flynn has the worst but honestly you can’t blame the kid… he’s a kid!

20. Which character is most like you? Least like you?

I’d probably have to say Babette, but it’s a close tie between her and Josephine because both of them contain facets of me but are also their own people with different desires and personalities.

Least like me are the other characters, pretty much. Henrietta, Maria, Kurt, Samuel, Sofía, Flynn, Harrison, Alyssa, I’m not really like these characters at all.

21. Which character would you most like to be?

Josephine. Hands down, Josephine. Listen, I like Babette and all and she’s an extension of myself in some ways, and, honestly, I’d feel a lot more comfortable in her skin then my own, but Josephine is just a quiet suburban girl with her own slice of the Earth doing her own thing. She’s an artist, she’s got a loving family, a healthy online presence, a healthy sleeping schedule, and… yeah.

To tag some folks, I think I’ll tag: @randomestfandoms-ocs; @rose-writes-and-drinks-tea; @ariellaskylark; @focusdumbass; @i-tried-and-i-loose; @undinisms; @alixismad; @sweet-scribes; @sunlight-melodies and literally anyone else who wants to try it!

[sieben9]

“her handsome hero” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

We got another fun one! ::does a happy little fannish dance::

well, for a given amount of “fun”, anyway. my OTP are on speaking terms again, so that qualifies.

Which might come as a surprise, seeing how two characters I care about a great deal spent something like 40% of the episode sniping at each other, but more on that later. Really, this episode just had all the good things. Solid flashback parallel, a good amount of main story advancement in the B plot, and of course a

… OK, and it was Rumbelle centric. I will admit that I’m not entirely objective on those. I still liked it! More on that under the cut.

Just as a little warmup, I present to you the most bold-faced, shameless lie I have ever heard on this show.

“I don’t have issues”

I can’t even get sarcastic over this. I just start giggling helplessly. Emma, your issues have issues.

The side plot, as mentioned, was pretty decent. Didn’t drag unnecessarily, kept the tension high, and y’know. Ruby.

Always a good thing. ::cuddles the wolf girl:: And I will admit, I’m always a sucker for Swan Queen doing magic together. It’s just one of those things that never fail to make me smile.

have a picture.

The only annoying thing was that Emma was just about to talk about her fears of letting people go, and being abandoned and that maybe, just maybe, taking her entire family to hell with her wasn’t the best idea she ever had… and it just got handwaved with “no, we chose this, shut up”. I mean, yay for Snow supporting her daughter, good for her, but at the same time… These are serious issues. That Emma clearly has. Maybe let her work through them, and support her by listening? Just a thought.

Other stuff I liked: the flashback.

they switched gastons in the previouslies. they thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did!

Like I mentioned, good setup and parallel to the present-day plot. A good reminder that Belle was always one to see people (and ogres; still not sure where they fall on the sapience scale) for what they really are rather than what the world thinks of them.

Right, Gaston?

Knowing that this happened also has interesting consequences for the present-day plot. She knows that Gaston is like this. She has seen that he really is a “monster”, and she was still willing to help him move on. That’s… I mean, wow. Better person than me, is what I’ll say.

It’s also interesting that Belle was only willing to marry Gaston to save her people. So, literally the reason she went with Rumple later on. Poor girl probably thought she was in a frying-pan-to-fire situation. Good thing that turned out better for her.

slightly off-topic, but DAMN that was a kiss…

Yes, despite everything. Turbulent as this relationship has been, this episode was practically a 40-minute study in how Gaston would have been so much worse. At least Rumple and Belle actually love each other and want to be together because they… well, want to be together. I would not trust Gaston as far as Belle can throw him.

Oh, and before someone mentions it: yes, Belle was very clearly pregnant, but it’s not like they could do something about that and they made a token effort to hide it, so I’m willing to honour the fiction there. It’s still hilarious in context of how desperate Maurice seemed to marry her off, but never mind all that *g*

Back in the present day…

Bickering!

So much bickering.

An almost unreasonable amount of bickering, really.

But here’s the thing about that: after all the heart-rending, world-ending, life-shattering drama these two went through it just felt so amazingly normal.

Because this happens sometimes, doesn’t it? You fight with a person you love, and you’re still angry, but you also still love them, and maybe you can’t avoid each other until you’ve calmed down, so you have to vent that anger somehow. That’s what this feels like: blowing off steam. But the bickering is still based on a very close relationship, which is why it didn’t feel nasty or vicious to me. Just… y’know. Annoyed and vaguely pissed off. Which is fair, really. These two have a lot to talk about and not that much time to do it.

mainly because people keep INTERRUPTING them whenever they start having a reasonable conversation!

The whole plot with Gaston in the Underworld was… yeah. Some people learn while they’re in the Underworld and grow into better versions of themselves, and some people are just committed to staying the asshat they were in life, I guess.

I did a giggle out of Belle’s first conversation with Hades, though. When he offers the deal and she basically goes “what do you think I am—an amateur?”, my heart grew three sizes. (I also got an unreasonable amount of joy out of Belle calling Rumple “my husband”, but that’s a whole other thing)

And Belle is just… so done, guys. She didn’t sign up for this Underworld nonsense. She just wanted to feed some babies and suddenly she’s having a baby, only not, because her husband technically signed it away before they’d ever met, and now people are shooting at her and this absolute creep is trying to tempt her to the Dark Side or some nonsense, and there’s Gaston, which is just never a good thing and… yeah. Belle is having just The Worst day and she’s this close to tearing someone’s face off if it means getting 1) her baby back and 2) some goddamn rest. Preferably, but not necessarily in that order. Someone fetch this woman a hot chocolate and a soft pillow before anybody dies.

Anybody else, I mean.

Yeah, that was rough. I won’t go deeply into the whole deal with That Damn Dagger™, because I don’t actively enjoy sounding like a broken record. One sentence version: The way the show treats that thing as a narrative shortcut without acknowledging the violation of autonomy that happens every time is annoying and frankly disturbing, but I think I’ve grown numb to it over time.

That said, I think Belle was sincere when she said “I always knew who you were” (see flashback) and also when she said “I love you”. I’m even pretty sure the kiss was genuine, if maybe a tad premature. It was just… a multi-purpose kiss.

Mainly though, this scene was heartbreaking for the simple reason that you could see a bit of Belle’s innocence dying. Some odd writing choices aside, she’s always been a very kind and optimistic person. Somebody who truly believed that it was wrong to hurt others, even if they’d proven themselves to be dangerous. She never meant to hurt Gaston, she only meant to protect Rumple. (And what a nice little parallel we had there, with Belle throwing herself in front of Gaston’s arrow to shield a “monster” from his attack both in the flashback and in the present.) But her actions still resulted in his second death, and that killed a bit of her, too, that she’s not going to get back.

yes, hello, show, please stop hurting these poor people. any time now would be good.

And please look at Rumple’s face here. He’s almost as heartbroken as she is. He never wanted that for her. He never wanted her to be in a position where she’d have to do something like this. It’s probably a vain hope, but I desperately want to have a scene where they talk this out. It doesn’t have to be the only thing going on—they can be running from some hell-hound or another, if that’s what it takes. Just please, let them have this…

By the way, Hades in this scene? Still not menacing, I’m afraid. The weird line delivery is really starting to impact the character by now. I did, however, feel a strong urge to tear off his head and fill it with snakes, so good work on that, I guess.

To close this out, please take this moment with me to appreciate Belle’s face when Hades starts talking about the smell of dead hope on that poor flower.

this is what they put in the dictionary next to “the fuck is wrong with you, mate?”

Interesting to note that the reason “nothing grows in the Underworld” is very clearly because Hades won’t let it. I don’t know how to put this, but have you considered that some of your problems may be your own fault?

Alright. To summarise: the Rumbambino (with thanks to @violetfaust) crisis is still not solved, and my spider sense is telling me that Ruby has a role in the next episode. Dunno why. Just a thought. Something to look forward to, at least. (::fingers crossed for more Mulan::)

[justmysicklypride]

P-P-P-Play that shit: ptv analysis - Part 2

 Hi what’s up everyone and welcome to this week’s pew news. This is a continuation of my last post where I pretty much summed up Pierce The Veil’s career from the beginning to present and gave an overview of their rise and downfall. You can check it out here, but if you already know about everything or have read it already then feel free to ignore it. In any case, I was originally gonna make these two posts as one but ran out of room bc who the hell would read that much text in a blog post (me) so here you go - part two of this fucking conspiracy theory because I didn’t even get to share any of my thoughts in the last one. (I also forgot to put headers with each new topic smh apologies to the English language)

Edit: it’s been fucking eons since I wrote the last one/started writing this one like legit I even changed my user. The reason why this has been put off for so long will be explained later but yh smh

Gigantic obligatory disclaimer: Everything that I will discuss whether it be in this post or my last, or any future posts that relate to this subject IS NOT going to touch on the subject of the “sexual relations with a minor” incident in itself. I will not go into detail about my own views on this specific matter as there is literally no way to win because whatever I say could be taken out of context by literally anyone. That being said, I do not condone pedophilia, I do not condone sexual harassment or rape, and I do not undermine the importance of consent. I respect the laws of different states, as I know they vary with time and place, and I understand that everyone has their own opinions and I do not wish to impose my own onto others.

In regards to this, however, I do have to acknowledge that I, first and foremost, do not think that Mike Fuentes is innocent, and I strongly believe that how the band handled this situation was just plain terrible, but I do also have to acknowledge the fact that this situation is to stay between the accuser and the victim, as well as their respective legal teams and that I should not go nosedive headfirst into anything like this when it does not directly affect or require my judgement as a necessity, lest I face any legalities or blacklash as a result. Furthermore, everything that I will be talking about are conspiracies only and I do not in any way assume or imply that any of this is true.

In other words, I don’t mean to offend anyone but if you end up getting offended then that’s on you, not me. Let’s begin.

Introduction 

The points that I am trying to highlight in this essay post is, in simple words, that Pierce The Veil’s... well, everything, comes off as kind of a conspiracy, almost, to me. I have had these thoughts for a long-ish time, and so this post is basically me finally making a post that covers all things that I have been thinking of in the past. Unlike my previous post, this one is a lot less fact-based and a lot more opinionated, so if you’re not into that, then that’s fair. Otherwise, I will be discussing the following things (in this order): the topic of kellic, Misadventures, and the accusation + response.

When Life Gives You Lemons, You Ship Them Together And Call It Lemonade

I refer to my last post and assume that everyone understands how “kellic” came to be and what it means. To summarise to the bare minimum best of my abilities, it’s the ship name of Vic Fuentes and Kellin Quinn, aka what people call it when someone wants or is keen on the idea of these two frontmen having an affair with each other in a (typically) fictional setting. It happens all the time, especially in this day and age where you can easily just find someone with the same obsession as you with a click of a button. That’s why King For A Day, and inadvertently Collide With The Sky, became such a huge success. It appealed to the right demographic of teenagers and tweens who were ecstatic at the prospect of shipping, and went on to achieve even more impressive feats following that. How you ask? Well, by going on a tour around the world of course. Together. Playing shows every night that ends with one of them literally carrying the other off the stage. Gotta give the people what they want, hey?

I have a strong belief that the key to success is through beating the system at its own game. In this case, the game is simple - get fans, get money. Unfortunately, as we all know, getting fame isn’t as easy as simply earning it through grit and determination. To achieve fame, one must find a way to do something at the right time in the right way so that people will notice. If one person does, and your fire doesn’t die out right away, then you’ve got yourself a forest fire. Then later on, all you gotta do is keep this forrest fire going, but assuming that there isn’t someone standing on the other side with the whole fire department’s resources in tow, then the only thing stopping this fire is itself, because with all things in life, fire dies out, and fame stops accumulating after a while if nothing is done about it. Humans need entertainment. If something starts to fail to pique their interests, then they move on. That’s why YouTubers are required to change up their content every now and again in order to try and relight that spark they once had, and even then there’s a good chance that they won’t. 

I was originally going to write another blog essay about this whole YouTube analogy thing but quickly realised that for one, I don’t have time bc I’m getting my ass fucked by university on a daily basis; and that for another, there’s most likely a billion other videos or essays about this topic as is, so I’ll just link one or two of them here. I haven’t watched them all yet or I don’t remember much of them, but all they do is pretty much summarise up stuff like how YouTubers become successful and their downfalls and all that, and even though they kinda focus on a specific person or group of people, I feel like it could be generalised.

Even without the YouTube metaphor, we know shipping works. It is evident in multiple works across various media that giving the fans what they want is often what gives these people their continued success, such as Dan Howell and Phil Lester, who have all but stopped trying to create their own individual branding (save for their separate merch stores that are probably there just to get more people to buy their overpriced clothing), and who at this point have become such an overused example that I actually hesitated writing that. Why do you think movies and shows and cartoons mostly have a romantic subplot? Romance is an essential trope in literature and easily one of the most popular genre out there for various reasons. According to a Bustle article written in 2016, romance often gives the readers a sense of hope or gives them a way to live out their fantasies in the easiest way possible, and while this may not apply to everyone, (personally I’m not a romance fan much at all but I can appreciate good literature), it’s hard to deny the phrase “sex sells”.

Given that, you’d think that any company with half a brain would learn to exploit it, but for some reason this wasn’t the case in Pierce The Veil’s management, and no matter how I look at it, I can’t really see the reason why. It’s not like the band members are uncomfortable with the ship - Jaime Preciado has been seen kissing Vic Fuentes on stage (not on the lips guys chill) (I had forgotten how fucking difficult it takes to find this one specific clip so here’s a couple different fuenciado pictures instead to make up for it smfh), and Vic Fuentes has mentioned kellic in a live stream once jokingly - and Kellin Quinn is notoriously known for being completely okay with it (so long as he doesn’t have to look at it), so just what is the reason?

This Ain’t A Hiatus, It’s A Goddamned Arms Race

I’d be lying if I didn’t miss all the memes that all stemmed from the Pierce The Veil boys not being able to release an album when they’d promised, before postponing said album yet again and disappearing off of the face of the earth digitally for another year or two, giving them a total of four years as their unofficial, unannounced hiatus. For this, I have several questions.

We all know Vic Fuentes loves taking his sweet ass time releasing music - he’s admitted to remaking his first album a second time before releasing it, as stated an interview a couple years back - but you can’t honestly tell me their management just let them get away with it. Sure, through this time they’ve been pushing out new merch to no end, but something tells me that this giant gap they’ve wedged between the new album and Collide With The Sky isn’t gonna be good publicity, despite all the memes that’ve sprouted from it. There’s been fans who stopped taking interest in this band because of it, as well as fans who have just gotten fed up with having to wait so long. They scrapped a whole completed album in the process of creating Misadventures too, and while it’s not uncommon for bands to throw away near-completed ideas at whim, it’s also not unlikely for there to be some external factors or reasoning behind why they did it. Could it be that the album they threw away stayed too close to their roots and management or some other person told the band to start again, so that they can create something more appealing to this day and age? Or could it be something else that is hard to see at face-value?

You’ll Never Get Ahold Of Me Now

Finally, I’m gonna address the overdue elephant in the room. If you want to read the full thing, here it is because I’m tired of having to reiterate what happened. Mike Fuentes received a sexual allegation by some girl(s) and the band released a shitty statement that has since gotten deleted - that’s the general gist of it. 

Like I said, it’s been literal months (or weeks idk my perception of time is severely fucked) since I actually started making this post so literally no one cares anymore, but regardless of what past me has promised or written down, I’m not going to be discussing the allegation in itself, but rather what and/or how the band and their subsequent management has handled it, in that they handled it so bad that I honestly can’t believe they did it like that. 

Edit: I wasn’t gonna bother finding another copy of the statement bc no one’s gonna give a shit but then I’d be doing some baseless shit and I honestly can’t stand people who half ass these things, despite my growing urge to do the same thing, so here’s the statement. 

For starters, who the hell waits one whole month before releasing a statement? From what I can remember, their excuse was allegedly that pretty much management forbade them to talk or make a statement about it earlier for... reasons? (Just realised I don’t actually have the source for this so idk take it with a grain of salt I guess because I was sure I had read this somewhere but I can’t back it up.) 

That’s not even the worst part, either. The statement itself gave zero closure to literally everything. Yes, they acknowledged the allegation, but that’s just about as far as they went. The whole point of a statement is to clear things up, whether the accuser was right or wrong, and what steps will be taken from there, whether an apology is to be issued or not. No shit you know about the incident, who in the fandom wouldn’t? Instead pointing out the straight up obvious, what they should’ve done was 1) not waited an entire fucking month before talking about it, most likely hoping the whole thing to blow over by then and 2) actually talked about the incident in their statement instead of tiptoeing around the subject like some sort of time bomb ready to go off. There is no right or wrong answer, because literally all they had to do was tell the truth - as in write down a statement from Mike (not the whole fucking band mind you) about his take on the whole thing or get him to say what had happened from his point of view. Then resolve it privately with your legal team and whatnot if they really feel the need. Hell, all he needed to do was apologise. Whether something like that classifies as assault or rape or whatever is up to you but the fact of the matter is that she’s underaged at that point in time. Even if she was fully aware of the risks and whatnot and gave legitimate consent, under the eyes of the law and pretty much 80% of the people reacting to this incident, it will be deemed illegal and inappropriate behaviour. All these people had to do was literally just be open and honest about it regardless of whatever the hell happened, because this is all happening on a public platform where everyone can see/read it to their hearts’ content. Viewers can’t judge or make a decision to support or not support you if you don’t tell them your side of the story, so for the love of god, why the hell didn’t they?

The statement was filled with bullshit about how they love the fans and all that shit, and honestly my thoughts can be accurately summed up in this video right here. So much backlash could have potentially been avoided had they just told it as it is, because now all we have is a vague ass response that gives no closure and tell us nothing as to whether Mike actually did it or not, because in the statement he manage to spout some bullshit about how he’s “never intentionally manipulated or abused anyone in [his] life” and that he’s just a ball of empathy which at first glance could suggest he at least thinks he’s innocent, but then they go on to say how Mike’s taking a temporary leave from the band for, you guessed it, absolutely no reason. At least, no reason that they’ve given us (what else is new) (I’m becoming more petty as the night drags on it’s literally 1am). Honestly, .@piercetheveil, please tell me why the honest to god fuck did you have him leave just after suggesting that he might be innocent? I know the world isn’t black and white but when you’re making a stance and defending yourself or admitting to something, it really is - black and white that is. Either you’re innocent or believe that you’re innocent and stand your ground by not leaving the band, or you admit that you are guilty, in which case your leaving of the band would actually feel justified, because now it’s like you’re gonna come back as well, so what does that even mean? Mike isn’t gone indefinitely, he hasn’t pleaded guilty or innocent, and now the band is telling us they love us? Fuck out of here with that bullshit.

Yes, I support the band’s decision to pull out of the All Time Low tour and to not have Mike out there in case fans feel threatened or unsafe or whatnot, but if you’re pleading innocent, then honestly the whole band should’ve just said “hey we’re gonna go on hiatus for a while until our legal team’s finished with taking care of everything”, and not just said hey guys we’re gonna kick him out because he may or may not have done something that we’re not gonna tell you because we’re shady fuckers like that. I know they are on hiatus right now, but at the “start”, they only said that Mike would be withdrawing temporarily or whatever so it’s kind of like, okay? Sure? It’s a right mess I assure you. Honestly, throughout this whole incident, it was this statement part that made me really fed up with this band. My interest in them had died down significantly from since I hit fifteen all those three years ago, and right now when I dug up an old iPod shuffle to bring with me to university to save my phone battery throughout the day, I can honestly say that I won’t be adding any Pierce The Veil songs onto it anytime soon unless I get peer pressured to. Personally, I feel like that’s kind of the mentality of a lot of had-been Pierce The Veil fans, too.

That’s Great And All But What’s Your Point?

Pierce The Veil’s management sucks ass.

There’s no easy, lawsuit-prone way for me to say it but, and this is just a conspiracy theory I swear to god if I get the fucking ASIS kicking down my door in the middle of the night you better read the fucking disclaimer, there’s obviously some shady shit going on in there no matter what way you slice it. Either they’re sabotaging Pierce The Veil’s success or whether it’s all some big confusion or misunderstanding, or if they’re just plain dumb, we can all agree that this whole thing - the kellic fan service, album making, allegations and subsequent statements - should’ve and could’ve been handled a hell of a lot more gracefully and professionally. Believe it or not, waiting until things blow over is frankly just childish and solves literally nothing, so either they can pull their act together quickly with this next “special secret” album to redeem what little quality/dignity they have left, or they can just fade away into irrelevancy and become a band that no one cares about anymore. 

History repeats itself. This band is quickly becoming just another Leafyishere, and as ominous as that sounds, it’s honestly not unlikely at this point. I am intrigued as to where they go from here, because if they manage to breakthrough again, then I would be very surprised given their current situation. I want to know how they choose to handle this - whether it’ll be the same or not, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thank you so much if you read through this honestly like I am beyond happy that this is fucking over because I have a bunch of non-band related post essays I’ve been meaning to post but this one’s been nagging at the back of my mind for the past few months or however long it’s been. I’ve clocked in at around past 3k words for this one, and none of this is edited because I’m honestly so done with this you don’t understand. Like I said before, this took ages because I was gonna make another post talking about other shit that relates to this before realising that there’s way too many people that’ve addressed the whole YouTube thing so me doing it would literally be pointless, and even though no one really reads this shit, as big of a nerd as I am, I do enjoy writing bullshit because maybe then I’ll stop ranting to my friends and family about topics they don’t care about.

Regardless, that’s it for this two parter thing, and until next time or whatever.

Catch’ya x

[morethanmonotonous]

MMXX

As I sit in my beautiful city apartment, sitting 48 floors (well, really 38 floors) above ground level looking over the vast and sprawling western Sydney suburbs, it is crazy to be writing another blog post summarising the year that has been, especially after reading last year’s 2019 post. 

2020 was a wild ride, and it’ll be fascinating to see how 2020 is remembered globally as a year, and how much of the world wide chaos will continue into next year, given that after all, 2021 is just another collection of days strung after these has passed. 

We rung in 2020 in a beautiful big house in the blue mountains with 14 amazing people, crawling down the hallway as slugs, drinking, doing too many drugs, and purely in love with life and each other. 

We kicked off the year as we spent 2019, with lots of gigs, big plans of travel, and lots of social outings.

We went to unify in January with Ritchie, Brad, Maddie, Blake, and Elliot. it was the worst weather we have ever encountered there, and that’s a huge call for unify. The new venue was awesome but the 50km+ winds and torrential rain meant lots of time under the gazebo holding it together and listening to enter shikari on the speaker. There was glimpses of festival vibes, seeing Kubla Kahn, Knocked Loose, The Ghost Inside, and Columbus, but also lots of missing shows and general carnage. Also out tent leaked damaging all of our things but still, I wouldn’t have missed unify for the world. There was an amazing crew, with Steph and DJ, fruit and nut, and many other amazing people - what more can you ask for?

We were lucky enough to go to see Dealer, Tiny Moving Parts, Hellions, Crystal Lake, Northlane, and Trophy Eyes, and The Brave, 

I started baking a lot more this year. Celia bought me the beautiful Christmas gift to do a baking stall in Glebe markets, which I fortunately managed to do in Feb. It was so fun and we sold so much and it just invigorated my love of making tasty things for people I love. 

Keira and I also went to a yoga retreat earlier in the year which was awesome, it was great to spend time with her, even finding out she was pregnant! This year in October the family was changed forever in the most beautiful way with the birth of little Baby Ellie. My parent’s also sold their family home to move down to Canberra which was a big adjustment for me and us but they’re all so happy down there together and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work from Canberra quite a bit to spend time with the family. 

So now we get to the COVID summary I guess, it’s 2020 after all. In Feb we were kind of joking about this whole COVID thing, not understanding the scale of what was about to change in the world. I started working from home on the 14th of March 2020 and have only been back to the office for one day in between waves of outbreaks. It was a huge and at times very lonely and sad year having to cope with the few month lockdown, closures of gyms, and not being able to see friends. While in lockdown, I started to learn to make peace with being alone and being still. I started making bath bombs, cross stitching, playing lots more fish game, and finding crafts to make me happy. It has given me a huge appreciation of how hard the introvert’s life must be living in an extrovert world, being being forced into a introvert life for months was draining and exhausting. I spent a lot of time at F45 bootcamps and walking around the harbour looking at fish, listening to Enter Shikari and Bright Eyes. 

The year made a lot of people weird in ways I’ve never seen before. Something like the Black Lives Matter protest is a good example. It was a fantastic thing that people were out screaming on the streets about inequality for racial groups and for indigenous rights, but somehow this became a polarising issue. People started denying COVID, becoming anti vaxers, Blake just didn’t reply to be for 6 months, and I feel like the left and right are so extreme and seperate now with the crazy media and information spreading, it’s interesting to watch. I feel like in the past I wouldn’t have even known my friend’s clear political stances, but this year, it’s top of mind for everyone and discussed frequently and fuck me it’s hard to be friends with literally anyone who sympathises with the right. I guess locking people up in their homes for a year does crazy things to them. But at least Trump got voted out, there’s always good things to focus on I guess. 

Between waves Sydney opened up again to seeing friends. We forged a new little group of Jake and Jami, Matt and Jordan, and extra people at different times, but it’s sweet as it’s the first time that Ritchie and I have really made friends together and it’s so lovely having a new home with these left wing inner west emos that I didn’t know I’ve always needed. Celia and Tash have been beautiful constant support this year again and I’m so grateful for such amazing humans to share my highs and lows with. 

I started seeing Chrissy in June this year, once gyms opened again and I wanted to start building some muscle and curves and because I realised I liked lifting heavy stuff more than cardio. It genuinely changed my life. I’m eating more than ever and feeling great in my body, and it’s amazing being focused on performance goals rather than aesthetic for the first time in 10 years. I competed in my first power lifting comp, where I squatted 64kgs, benched 39kgs and deadlifted 100kgs. I know these aren’t huge numbers but I was so proud of my little body for being able to do that (with body weight of 58kgs), and given that I’ve never thought of myself as a strong person. I haven’t missed a workout (except when I got my wisdom teeth out) since I started with her and I am proud of how I’m transforming my body and mindset. 

We spent a weekend in May in Jervis Bay with my family for our birthdays which was amazing and the start of what I think will be a new family tradition. I really love my family so much and feel so damn lucky that I enjoy spending time with them so much. 

We moved homes in June too, upgrading to a 2 bedroom and multiple balcony amazing apartment in the city, just up the road from our old place. Moving was so much damn work but this place is incredible and so much more amazing than I ever thought I’d live in. I’ll always look back at the Waldorf affectionately, as a beautiful place that we created a home in for the first time and shared with so many amazing friends. But damn this place is gorgeous. 

Work was pretty crazy but also not at all. I’ve been at RB again all year this year, that makes almost 2 and a half years which is pretty big for me! I started the year by winning the extra miler award, and being generally very well celebrated as CSM, before being moved to being a NAM. Working under Dani was awful, and the job was literally the worst thing I could ever imagine someone having to do. The bullshit and admin and hours and pressure are something I would never wish on anyone, and after having frequent panic attacks and throwing up out of stress at Hyde park, I realised that life is too short do a job that makes you miserable. While it’s unfortunate that this took me 27 years to work out, I think it’s great that I got there and learned a very valuable lesson in work life balance and happiness. I had to resign from RB at that point, but conveniently, Amna resigned on the same day, making an empty role as CSM for Coles. I pushed for a senior title and now have an awesome job. While working under Chris isn't ideal in some ways, I have a boss that cares about me and a colleague (Ellie) who is smart and awesome. I’m happy working in an interesting and great job that makes me excited do go to work. And even though it won't be my forever job, it’s a great ‘for now’ job that I enjoy, getting great experience on the resume, and that will hopefully take me overseas some day. 

I ended every other blog with hopes and dreams for the next year, and it’s a little sad that I’m so reluctant to do that this time, because I have literally no idea what’s to come next year. I really hope we will be able to travel and see gigs again, it’s hard having the 2 best things in the world ripped away from me. However, honestly, as long as I am surrounded by as much love as I was this year, I know that things will be okay and I’ll be happy. 

[someidiotgotablog]

Yeah. I’m doing a New Year’s post. Sue me.

I was going to write a long winded post about myself on Instagram, and what this year meant to me. But then I thought I’d do something else. (I also then realised there’s not enough space on Instagram for this)

So let’s talk about the people in the photos that summarised my year. (I based this off of the photos because there are literally too many people in my life. But trust me, if you’re in one of these cliques, assume I’m talking about you too.)

Obviously I love Mark, Lorna and Kim. Need I say more? They’re great.

Daniel, Amanda, and your whole group (yeah I’m afraid I’m going to forget someone if I list you all off) are such a funny and warm group. I’m not around you guys all the time, but when I am, it is so clear to see how much you’s love each other and care for each other. You guys are a bunch of good eggs.

Julie, Megan, and Andrew became some of my closest friends this year and practically kept me sane throughout TY. You guys are so caring and watchful and again, so full of love. From dumb IT projects (the andrewpocalypse) to meals in our favourite numbered cafe, you’s have made me feel so welcome and involved throughout this year. Thanks for putting up with my insanity. You guys rock. (Core four!)

Georgia and Sarah both hide massive personalities under calm exteriors, and honestly that still freaks me out a little bit. You’s both seemed to feature more heavily in my life this year than the prior years and man did you guys remind me what emotions were. You’s see the good (and bad) in your emotions and aren’t afraid to accept them, and that is so admirable.

Everyone from Ruach is brilliant, and although I’m not around every week, when I am there I feel such love and trust in God from all of you’s. I am so blessed to be a part of such an amazing group of people, who just do some of the most insane things and still manage to not forget what it’s all about in the process. Keep being awesome guys!(Also Adam listens to way too many of my dumb stories and that should honestly be applauded in itself.)

I only met Alexandra and Nicole this year at Louise’s camp, but they were both brilliant working with the kids there and teaching them. I definitely feel I learnt a lot from you’s so thank you for that.

Louise of course gets her own bit because she’s just so full of life and love for those around her. She is a fantastic dancer and performer and I’m constantly trying to keep up with her INSANE energy. I love working with you and everyone at stagezone so thank you for making me feel worth your time and the time of everyone in the classes.

Now the stagezone family is mad. We all drive each other insane yet at the end of the day, when the music starts playing, we’re able to successfully remember a full dance number. (Sorta) This group is changing all the time yet you guys seem to just keep moving forward, and it’s wonderful. There’s no judgement cast when someone wants to try something and you’re honestly so supportive. You guys understand what it means to succeed while having fun and that’s what makes this group so special. Thank you for that.

The next photo is from Avenue Q and I honestly have no clue if you guys will read this. Olivia, Chloe, Aoife and Daniel are so talented and I was so proud to perform alongside them. Not to mention those outside of the picture, Rory, Sadhbh, Jaime, Eva, Amanda, Zoe and Claudine. Avenue Q was the highlight of my year, and I hope it was for you’s too. To watch up close such a wide array of talent be fine tuned and put into action was amazing, and everyone was so fantastic. I got to know you all a bit better and honestly you’re all such great and kind people who seemed to love performing as much as I did. That made me feel so at home so thank you for that.

And finally. John, Jack, Darragh, Jaime, Oisin, Shane and Morgan. Lads. You’re all so full of life and bring so much joy to my life. You guys find a way to laugh at literally anything, and put up with so many of my terrible jokes. Yet you also care so much about each other and I know you’s would literally die for each other. (Too far? Nah.) I’m so glad I get to be your friend, despite me not having an Xbox and arguing relentlessly with Shane over the necessity for pineapple on pizza. (Of course all this applies for the girls too, I just couldn’t find a photo I liked of all of us) Thanks so much for being so great to me this year.

There was a point to this.

This year has at times been a mess. Within the greater world things have seemed to have gone very downhill very fast. Yet, despite the drama and tragedy that occurs on a personal or global scale, there are still good people. Great people. People who should be told when they are great because maybe they just need to hear that today.

Maybe I’m mad. I don’t really know. But here is this list. These reasons why you are all great and why my year was made immensely better by being surrounded by all of you. Believe it or not, I’m very happy to have met you all.

So Happy New Year.

And thank you.

[mimmerr]

How do I start my own education blog?

The other day, I was mentioned on Twitter as someone to talk to if you want to know about blogging. I know - madness. The compliment inspired me to write this post, passing on everything I’ve learnt onto you, should you wish to join the wonderful world of #edublogs!

Do I need to tell you why writing online is a good thing? If not you can skip this part, I won’t know. Blogging is a great way to connect with other educators, share your worldview and have your opinion challenged. You’ll learn loads, improve your patience and writing skills and a bonus - someone might read it and think it’s fab!

So where to start? Setting up.

There are many websites you can pick from: Wordpress, Weebly, Medium and Tumblr. From what I have seen, Wordpress is the most popular: it is an easy to use site which serves a beginner well. 

But Molly, you use Tumblr! 

Yes, yes I do. Tumblr is less popular but I picked it because it’s very simple to post and edit my blog’s appearance. 

Your site has .co.uk not Tumblr. 

That’s because I bought the domain after getting used to blogging. You can do this with most blogging sites but don’t worry about this for now.

The URL

There are loads of great articles on picking a good URL by people that are much smarter than me. Do some Googling to find them. In the world of edublogging, you’ll be glad to know that it’s quite easy to get right. Many people will just copy their Twitter URL across: simple, effective and links your accounts together. Other people may have more of a brand style title like mine. 

The blank page

So it’s all set up but what to write… that was the whole point! Disaster strikes as the blank page stares at you, reminding you that you can’t do this, leave it to someone else. No! All writers, new and experienced, have periods of creative waterfalls and pitiful puddles, you will be no different, forgive yourself and make hay when it’s sunny: aka write loads when the ideas come. 

During those trickier times here’s what I do to get ideas:

Read education news sites and write an opinion piece. It goes without saying, don’t plagiarise the post and if you use any facts/quotes, link back to the site.

Create a blog series that has a concept, enabling you to continue adding to it. See my examples: #MusicalOddities, #CommunitySpirits.

Find someone to collaborate with on a post, sharing ideas on what to do.

Complete a writing challenge. These enable you to read other pieces and join a community with other writers. Also creativity is high when you are given constraints or a theme. Try Hannah Wilson’s daily one.

So if I run an education blog I can only write about education? 

No hun, you are a chameleon, teacher in one light and a film buff in another. If there’s one thing I would change about #edublogs is that I’d love to see people write about their interests outside school. It shows your reader who you are *insert Disney song here*, can engage non-edu people and encourage others to have a life outside school.

The Dos(ish) and Don'ts (ish)

The reason for the ishs above is that it's very easy for me to say: people hate reading, 500 words or less only! Or only write about current issues. Whereas in reality, these rules are more nuanced and are dependent on who is reading. Therefore, I would say:

Vary your word choice depending on the purpose. Research pieces are rightly longer whereas opinion pieces are shorter. Always think: does this need to be explained/described or will my audience already know this info?

Have a mix of different purposes (research, opinion, creative, response) or have a style all your pieces follow.

What about structure, planning and SPAG?

You are not taking your SATs! These components of writing are important but should you find yourself less confident about one area, please don’t let it stop you starting a blog. So what if you spell a word wrong? If I see a spelling mistake in someone’s work, I just think, That’s a spelling mistake, never mind. And that’s the end of it. I’ll go and make a cup of tea and never think about it again. 

Structure is hard to get right at first but planning using bullet points or a mind map as well as proof reading refines this skill quickly. You don’t necessarily need to have a point per paragraph, let it flow. 

My tips would be: 

Scan your work for repeated words, ideas and phrases

Argue with yourself and consider the opposing view, these easily build paragraphs which link

Vary paragraph size where appropriate

Read your work from conclusion to introduction to ensure the ending is as good as the beginning.

But these are my preferences, not a prescriptive list.

Reception (not the year group)

A lot of people can be apprehensive about blogging because they worry about employers finding their sites. And to this I say...fair enough *shrug*. We are constantly telling our children that what we share online sticks and this rule applies to us. What your blog is about will dictate how this affects you. On one side of the spectrum, we have those who anonymise completely and on the other, are those who link their blogs to school accounts. But unsurprisingly, most of us sit in the middle, known as one name (Molly or Mr/Miss A for example). 

Some guidance though:

Don’t name staff, children, specific and identifiable situations. No one should read your blog and think that’s literally me or my child… :(

Unbelievably, you can criticise something without sounding rude or unprofessional. But consider: is your blog the right platform for this? For example, exploring why you believe academisation is bad on your blog sounds reasonable. Explaining why your school shouldn’t become an academy in excruciating personal detail is questionable and blogging is not the place to have the debate. It is in your head’s office, hopefully with tea and biscuits. To summarise, wider issues good, smaller ones in identifiable detail linked to you, bad. Some effective phrases are: ‘Across the country,” “In many schools,” “It is very common to see...”

And follow any advice from your teacher training/employer on e-safety and privacy. A blog (unless you change the settings) is a public space everyone can access.

Reality’s bitter sting

You’ve spent an hour on the post, tweeted it out and sent it to your mum. And she is the only reader. Now, I learned my lesson that sadly, the world doesn’t revolve around me and my blog. Shocking, still upset about it. But, there is nothing I can do to change this; I can’t expect someone to drop everything in their life to read my post on why dogs are the best thing that have ever happened to me (and the planet/universe).  So, do go in with a mindset that anyone reading your blog is a real bonus, an honour. Even better if they respond to you. Then you’ll be less disappointed at first. 

If you are super keen to have your work read, most people on #edutwitter are genuinely lovely people who will, if you tweet them a link and ask them to retweet. But it is crucial should they do the same, you return the favour, kindness costs nothing.

That is my advice for anyone starting out and as I’ve mentioned, this is very much my opinion, and what has worked for me and my strange little brain. I am sure someone could go through every single point and explain why I’m wrong but hopefully no one has time for that. 

You are more than welcome to visit my Twitter (@mimmerr) and tell me your blogging tips or ask a question. I’ll be writing more advice as soon as I’ve learned more myself.