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undertale-data · 3 years

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[Image Description: An Undertale chat box that has “WHY FANS LOVE UNDERTALE” at its center. Next to it are a line chart and an Egg from the Dating Hub on its left, and a CRIME measurer (also from the Dating Hub) on its right. End I.D.]

[Image Description: a pie chart titled, “LEVEL OF LOVE FOR UNDERTALE.” The textbox on the top right reads, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the least and 10 being the highest, how much do fans enjoy Undertale?” From the top going clockwise, 12 or 0% chose 5 and below; 23 or 1% chose 6; 98, or 4%, chose 7; 325, or 12%, chose 8; 529, or 20%, chose 9; and 1664, or 63%, chose 10. End I.D.]

It’s clear from all of the data analyzed so far that fans who took the time to answer our survey love Undertale. It is unlikely that they would have taken the time to answer so many questions if they had not, and even less likely that they would have come across our survey in the first place. Naturally, it comes as no surprise that 63% of our responders gave their love for Undertale a score of ten out of ten. 95% gave their love for Undertale a score of eight or higher, and only 12 responders responded with five or below, a number so small that their responses had to be lumped together to be visible on the pie chart. Of those, only 3 responders gave their love for Undertale a score of 1, and based on those responders’ other answers, it is likely that they were only intending to troll. We are very fortunate that the vast majority of responders took the survey seriously, enough so that responses like this are barely a blip in the data.

Now, for our final analysis post of the event, we will delve into the reasons that fans love Undertale so dearly.

(Essay and highlights under the cut.)

There have been countless essays on the impact that Undertale has had on people’s lives. I can hardly add more on the subject than what has already been said, but I hope this summary can provide a brief overview of what stood out among the over two thousand answers given in response to this survey. That said, due to the sheer volume of answers, I could not read every single one in depth—however, I did skim all of them, and some that stood out or were representative of several responses have been highlighted below. If you would like to see what every fan who consented to share their response had to say, you may view the full list of responses here. Note that these responses have not been edited in any way. This document may take a long time to load, as it is over 100 pages long.

(Warnings for mentions of suicidal thoughts in the following essay.)

Several responders loved the theme of choices mattering in Undertale. Whether people played the pacifist, merciless, or neutral routes, they enjoyed how the game reacted to their actions. For some, it even made them consider their own morality. One touching response explained the impact that the theme of mercy made on them. “I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.” Many fans left similar comments about how the themes of Undertale made them better people.

Undertale changed how its fans treat others, and it also changed how fans treat themselves. The theme of staying determined and the messages of hope in the game were a light to a very large portion of fans. I cannot list all of the fans who said that Undertale helped them out of a dark place, or that they would not be alive if not for Undertale. “DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.”

Undertale brought fans together in unexpected ways. Some said they met friends or significant others through the fandom. “I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale,” one fan said. A different fan who is non-native English speaking mentioned that the game and the fan community helped them to learn English.

It would be impossible to discuss Undertale without mentioning the fan community. Whether for good or bad, many responders mentioned the fandom in their responses. Overall the feelings towards the fandom seem positive, though many made references to “toxic” parts of the fandom without specifying which parts they consider toxic. Others rejected the idea of toxicity in fandom. One response said: “[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!”

One thing that makes the Undertale fandom unique is the way it embraces various AUs. Some fans are tired of AU content, but the majority of responses show a love for the creativity behind AUs. “Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.” The lack of a judgemental atmosphere seems present in the AU community, according to the responses we saw. There is an interesting balance between AU and canon (sometimes referred to as “classic”) content that another responder pointed out: “The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertale fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)”

Regardless of the many AUs the fandom has created over the years, the original game of Undertale still feels like home for many fans. They wished they could reclaim the feeling of playing the game again for the first time, but even though we can’t reset time in real life, there is still a special feeling for fans each time they play Undertale. One fan said, “Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.” This feeling is one that can be cherished time and time again. In the words of another responder: “It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it.” Others pointed out the strength of the found family trope in Undertale, which likely contributes to this feeling of “home” as well.

As mentioned briefly earlier, the music is part of what makes Undertale feel like home for fans. Even when responses focused on other aspects of the game, many would throw in a comment about the soundtrack at the end. One comment focused on the music said “IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.” Like with the game itself, the music has incredible replay value, an amazing feat considering most of the tracks use the same few motifs. “I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story,” another responder said. “They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.”

If the music sticks with fans in their hearts, then the game’s lore sticks with fans in their minds. Even six years after the release of Undertale, fans are still creating new theories and digging up new secrets. The way the game breaks the fourth wall in particular intrigued many fans and has stuck out through all these years. The awareness that the game shows for the RPG genre makes it memorable. The game plays with the player’s expectations and turns them on their heads, all while reminding the player that they’re in a game. There are few other games that do this on such a large scale, so it’s no surprise that fans cite this as one of their favorite things about Undertale.

Lastly, the LGBT+ representation in Undertale has been a huge draw for fans. Especially in 2015, the sheer volume of non-cishet characters was unprecedented, as one fan pointed out: “It's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. Hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. It's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.” The LGBT+ cast including Frisk, Chara, Napstablook, Monster Kid, Mettaton, Alphys, and Undyne each connected with fans in unique ways. It’s clear how important this is from responses such as: “There are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.” “It made me gay and trans so thanks for that.”

Once again I am overwhelmed with just how much there is to say about Undertale. One responder really understood when they compared Undertale to an iceberg, explaining that there are so many layers to the game that there is something for everyone: “everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans—from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers—is the mark of the coolest games!” I would have to agree with them.

It’s been six years, and despite everything, it’s still you. Thank you for reading, participating in this survey, and above all, staying determined.

Highlights:

DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.

I think the coolest thing was having the opportunity to watch the AU community grow from its bare roots. It's nearly insane how big and complex it's gotten, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.

i love how the lgbt rep is so naturalized... there are just gay people! and its nobodys business!

The music is my go to answer, but what I really really REALLY love is how the minor characters have so much personality to them when you talk to them. They aren't incredibly important to the overall story, but they're all so likeable and diverse that you just can't help but like them immediately!

I think it was the first videogame I have played that broke the fourth wall that much. Of course there has been other videogames that broke it but just for one or two tongue-in-cheek jokes. The guilt of killing mama goat was also something intense as well that I appreciated as an experience and that I didn't think a videogame could cause on someone.

I love how no character can be seen as completely bad! Everyone builds up Asgore as some horrible villain, but he turns out to be a 'fuzzy pushover' who's broken and just wants his family back by the time you meet him. Then you think Flowey's an irredeemable killer who engineered the suffering of the monsters across many timelines, and he is... but he also used to be the kind and beloved Prince Asriel Dreemurr, traumatized by his death and subsequent rebirth, projecting his best friend onto you.

The fact that choices matter in the game. Your first playthrough and getting the golden ending for the first time. I can never replicate those feelings again, wish I could erase my memories and replay the game from the start.

I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale.

(Toxic parts of the fandom aside) The community is possibly one of the kindest I've ever met. Cringe culture is completely dead, and I feel like I can be myself. I felt a very close connection to many of the characters, and I loved consuming content about them when I was in a rough patch in my life.

just everything, the whole game has just impacted my life so much. i know it sounds really lame, but when the game first came out, i would purposely put my hands in my pockets and sway slightly, like sans' idle animation. of course i dont do that anymore haha, but undertale still really impacts me to this day, and i wouldnt have it any other way :)

it made me gay and trans so thanks for that

I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.

The thing I love most about Undertale is no matter how many times I play or watch a playthrough it always makes me genuinely happy. It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it. Toriel still makes me feel all warm and cozy in her home, the Skelebros always make me laugh, and I still cry on the inside watching Frisk comforting Asriel. And on the flip side the No Mercy run still invokes the negative emotions in me as well. In short Undertale just feels like a second home to me and I always wish I could stay.

The reader inserts are my favorite way to decompress after a hard day

I think Undertale helped me discover my love for 8-bit games, and made me realize how IMPORTANT music is in video games.

the worldbuilding and character design are my favorite parts of the main game apart from the music! I’m also a huge fan of the random AU music- not for like underswap or underfell i like the stuff where someone makes a megalovania for a random au where gru from despicable me replaces sans as the character. i think its funny

Just... the vibe, honestly? Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.

there are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.

[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!

There's a scene where Frisk (the player) is going towards what is presumably going to be their death. They will fight Asgore and he will use their human soul to break the barrier and free his people. The music, despite the player's impending doom, is... triumphant. You are not the triumphant one here, and yet, the score invites you to experience the monsters' joy and happiness as they tell you the tale of their subjugation. The monsters are going to be free. This is their victory, but they don't hate you or want you to die. They're just... happy. That scene has always struck me very deeply. I feel it represents the best parts of Undertale.

I loved how well thought out the Geno route was. It really made me feel like I was doing something horrible, and the characters were very obviously reacting to dire circumstances.

I dunno? I like Undertale for it's characters, story, music, secrets and many more. I am not good with Headcanons but I also like the neutral endings and how different they can depending on who you spare and kill

I was very bad at english before, i thought i couldn't progress because i was very shy and not confident. But my sibling and i wanted to have the best experience with this game so we wanted to play it in english. It's this game and the fandom which helped me to make huge progress in english !

THE SOUNDTRACK. IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.

to avoid writing an essay i will say one word. Mettaton

It is like Toby specifically made the games to fit the iceberg meme and it's awesome, everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans - from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers is the mark of the coolest games!

I love almost everything about Undertale as a game on its own. The music, the art and especially the characters and how they interact. They made me feel at home. Undertale means a huge amount to me. (I even got a tattoo of the castle when you and MK walk together!) The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertake fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)

the mystery. toby fox refused to give answers to anything and i think thats very sexy of him.

I just feel guilty for liking it so much when I'm in my 30's. But I recently got diagnosed with ASD, so I guess it explains things a bit. Many ppl consider Papyrus to be neurodivergent, and some adult fans are too, so seeing that makes me feel a bit better.

i think about "Despite everything, it's still you" everyday of my life.

I like how it's just as funny as it can be serious. All routes are this way. I laughed as much as I cried when I played the Pacifist route and then once I opened the game again and Flowey was telling me to let them be happy, I immediately turned off the game. I somehow felt bad.

The Found Family Trope

The True Pacifist Ending is just...man. And the fanworks about saving everyone even when the game doesn't let you? MANNNNNN

I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story. They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.

there's honestly a LOT to love about this game, but i think one of my favorite things about it is just how many lgbt+ characters there are??? i can think of alphys, undyne, frisk, chara, mettaton, napstablook, monster kid, asgore, mad mew mew, the dress lion, the royal guards, and arguably even papyrus off of the top of my head, but im sure i'm forgetting a few from just undertale alone (there's even MORE in deltarune)!! it's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. it's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.

[Image description: A wordcloud in the shape of the capitalized word UNDERTALE. The text is white on a black background, and uses the font found in the game. Some of the most visible words are: Game, Love, Music, Life, AU, Store, Friend, and Feel, which represent the most common words in the essays people wrote about their love for the game. End of ID]

#undertale #analysis #results #undertale fandom census

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aceandart · 4 years

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Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.) the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc). the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else. hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were. (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot.

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.)

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast. I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season. aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot? spn should have it's own page for both.

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser.

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc. huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke.

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind" (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women. {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.}

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes" (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development.

usually Black men but in general men of color:

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color. again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc)

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie. they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub. the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically. (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.)

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.) other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.)

d) "buddy"

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???) minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are). How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one.

#spn #fandom stuff #inbox and admin stuff #//#also this focuses on canon #(and ok a little abt the cast/crew)#(though among other things not mentioned is how actors of color and actresses got treated re cons & crew demographics)#however fandom has it's own fucking list and I can come for them at any time too #anyway that was a very nice ask #and if you want actual details about any of these I could provide #but I wanted to stick with patterns because I feel like that says more than the individual things they do #of which there are legion #anyway a summary of what I and many other people have discussed over the years about how much this show sucks #////#i really do get the urge though #one of my mutuals makes s15 destiel sound good #but fool me once shame on you and fool me 50x fuck you spn #//////#this is long (you asked a very wordy person) but tbh I've written longer meta #and oh man back in the day this thing would have been full of links that would have taken you to other metas #///////#eta: fucked up my formatting I had to add a) because bullet points wont indent

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years

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Hell is For Children: Animorphs as Children’s Lit

[Guest post from Cates!]

So a couple of months ago Bug asked me to write a post about why Animorphs is Middle Grade/Children’s Fiction, not Young Adult. Since she asked, I’ve read several wonderful posts from other people questioning or explaining what the difference is between Middle Grade and Young Adult, where Animorphs fits, and why it matters. Here’s my two cents as a children’s literature scholar.

To start, Animorphs’ 20,000-30,000 word count per book is a big hint it’s not YA fiction. Obviously, a book with a low word count is not automatically a children’s book, and a book with a high word count is not automatically a book for adults. But if Animorphs was aimed at teens, Applegate would likely have been expected to make the books longer. While there are a lot of great YA novels that are as short as or shorter than your average Animorphs book (check out BookRiot’s list of 100 YA novels under 250 pages,) most YA series, and especially fantasy or scifi YA series, are expected to top 100,000 words. (The three books in the Diviners series by Libba Bray have a total wordcount of 520,000 words; Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy tops 400,000 words, for example.)

Animorphs’ word count isn’t enough on its own to exclude the series from YA classification, but Animorphs’ short word count also fits the trend of children’s—not YA—series fiction in the 1990s. In order to understand this trend, and why it produced books specifically for children, not teens, we need to jump back in time to WWII. Because so many American men were drafted into the military, women took over jobs that had been almost exclusively done by men, like mechanics, sales, electricians, etc. When WWII ended, thousands of men returned home, but women didn’t leave the workforce. Realizing they had an excess of young men and not enough jobs, the US government created the GI Bill, allowing soldiers to attend college for free or at a steeply reduced cost, thus stemming the influx of workers and giving the economy and industry room to grow.

At the same time, families were having children (and those children were surviving) at an unprecedented rate. Thanks to the GI Bill, college was no longer something reserved for wealthy white men, but something available to the middle and even lower class. A college education offered social and economic mobility, and the Baby Boomers, children of the GI Bill recipients, became the first generation to grow up with the idea that college was something that could and should be pursued by all.

Then, the Baby Boomers began having children in the late 1970s through early 1990s, meaning a large chunk of those children (including Bug and I) were in elementary school in mid 1990s to early 2000s. Thanks to their parents, a higher percentage of American adults than ever before had attended college. Thanks to advancements in women’s medicine, psychology, sociology, and education, among other fields, people understood as never before the importance of instilling a love of reading in children at a young age. The huge middle class was willing to invest lots of time and money in their children’s educations, because at this point not having a college education was seen as a barrier to success.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. (Kidding).

Children’s publishing exploded in the 1990s because children—or, more accurately, their parents—were seen as a huge, untapped market. Previously, children’s publishing didn’t receive as much money or attention because, the logic went, children did not have money and therefore couldn’t buy books. But then the publishing industry realized that there were literally millions of parents willing to spend money on their children’s education, and publishers like Scholastic, Dutton, Dial, Penguin, Random House, and others rushed to take advantage of this new customer demographic.

Of the ten books featured on this Scholastic bookfair poster from 2000, seven are series fiction.

Serialized fiction—ie, stories that took place over the course of several books about the same characters and/or in the same setting—was the perfect way for publishing houses to capitalize on this new market. And hoo boy was it successful. From 1993 to 1995, Goosebumps books were being sold at a rate of approximately 4 million books a month. That means roughly 130,000 books were sold every day.

Here’s a few names to bring you back: Bailey School Kids, The Magic Treehouse, Babysitter’s Club, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jansen, Horrible Harry, Secrets of Droon, The Magic Attic Club, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bunnicula, The Boxcar Children, The American Girls, Amelia’s Notebook, Dear America, Wayside School, Choose Your Own Adventure…we could keep going for days. All of those series have two things in common: one, they were either published between 1985 and 2005 and/or experienced a huge resurgence in the 90s, and two, they’re all middle grade novels. Some are aimed at younger children, like Junie B. Jones and The Magic Treehouse, and some are aimed at older children, like the Dear America series and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The point is, Animorphs is so clearly a product of its time (and not just because of the Hansen Brothers references,) it slots perfectly into the trend of series fiction for children. If you want to claim Animorphs is YA, you also need to claim all of the series I just listed above.

Now, let’s talk about the main argument I see in favor Animorphs being YA: the dark content.

This is my personal wheelhouse. I’m planning on someday doing my PhD dissertation on trauma, violence, war, and trauma recovery in Middle Grade—not YA—fiction. I always find it funny when people use descriptors like cute, sweet, innocent, silly, light, and simple to describe children’s books. While there are certainly plenty of children’s books that are one or more of those things, there are also dozens that are the polar opposite—dark, complex, serious, violent, and deep. I once read a review of The Golden Compass which said “it’s not like other children’s books with a clear cut good guy and bad guy and a simple message.” I don’t know how many children’s books the author of the article had read, but I’m guessing not a lot. Let’s just do a blunt reality check with a few of my favorites—including some picture books which are typically for an even younger audience than Middle Grade. Spoilers for all of the books I’m about to mention.

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki This book follows a little boy who is sent to a Japanese interment camp during WWII. He and his family deal with abuse, starvation, and sickness. Suggested reading age*? Kindergarten and up.

*(For this and all subsequent books I used reviews from Kirkus, the Horn Book, and School Library Journal to determine suggested reading age.)

Check out this picture of Shorty playing baseball while an armed soldier watches him from a guard tower. Isn’t it cute, sweet, and innocent?

Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco Pink and Say are 15-year-old boys serving as Union Soldiers during the Civil War. Confederate Soldiers kill Pink’s mother, Pink and Say become POWs, and Pink is hanged because he is African American. Suggested reading age? First grade and up.

Fox by Margaret Wild This book starts grim and just gets grimmer. Dog and Magpie have been burned in a wildfire. Dog loses an eye, Magpie a wing. Magpie rides on Dog’s head—she is his eyes, he is her wings. Fox comes and convinces Magpie to leave Dog and come with him. There are definite sexual undertones. The book ends with the possibility that Dog and Magpie will be reunited, but no certainty. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

[The text says “He stops, scarcely panting./ There is silence between them/ Neither moves, neither speaks./ Then Fox shakes Magpie off his back/ as he would a flea,/ and pads away./ He turns and looks at Magpie, and he says,/ ‘Now you and Dog will know what it is like/ to be truly alone.’/ Then he is gone./ In the stillness, Magpie hears a faraway scream./ She cannot tell if it is a scream of triumph/ or despair.”]

Tell me this isn’t a total punch in the gut.

The Rabbits by Shaun Tan The introduction of rabbits to Australia is used as an allegory for European colonization and the casual destruction of the Aboriginals’ lives and cultures. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble A girl spies on the British during the Revolutionary War while her brother fights. He’s killed and there’s actually a description of her finding the “bloodstained hole” in his coat where the bullet struck him. How cute and silly! Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

Meet Addy: An American Girl by Connie Rose Porter I think this works as a nice comparison to Animorphs because it’s another long-running, popular series aimed at kids just starting to read chapter books. Among other incidents, there’s a graphic description of Addy watching her brother get whipped by an overseer and a passage where another overseer forces Addy to eat worms. I actually give American Girls a lot of points for not shying away from the uglier parts of history. They don’t always get it right (*cough* Kaya *cough*) but those books are more complex than I think most people realize. Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville From the sight of a child starving to death to homeless children freezing in the streets, Coville certainly doesn’t avoid the darker side of human nature. Pretty sure most adults only noticed the funny green alien on the cover. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

“That was the day we crept, invisible, into a prison where men and women were being tortured for disagreeing with their government. What had already been done to those people was so ugly I cannot bring myself to describe it, even though the memory of it remains like a scar burned into my brain with a hot iron.

“Even worse was the moment when it was about to start again. When I saw what the uniformed man was going to do to the woman strapped to the table, I pressed myself against the wall and closed my eyes. But even with my hands clamped over my ears I couldn’t shut out her scream.”

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai The Vietnam War, migrants drowning in the ocean, refugee camps, racism…this book is a bit like Animorphs in that it’s got a surprisingly dry sense of humor even as awful events take place. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson A pretty harsh look at the realities of America’s foster care system as told by a girl who could give Rachel Berenson a run for her money. It’s not afraid to show that parents aren’t automatically good people. Suggested reading age? Third grade and up.

Stepping on the Cracks and Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn If WWII, bullying, dead siblings, draft dodging, and parental abuse are too light and fluffy for you, you can always read about a child consumed with survivor’s guilt because she started the fire that killed her mother. Suggested reading age? Fifth grade and up.

“‘How do you think Jimmy would feel if he knew his own sister was helping a deserter while he lay dying in Belgium?’

‘It wasn’t like that!’ I said, stung by the unfairness of her question. ‘Stuart was sick, he needed me! I wish Jimmy had been down there in the woods, too! Then he’d be alive, not dead!’

Mother slapped me then, hard as she could, right in the face. ‘Never say anything like that again!’ she cried. ‘Never!’”

I could go on (and on and on and on) about trauma narratives for children, but suffice to say while I think Animorphs is probably the most brilliant one I’ve ever read, it’s far from the only one. Kids’ books can be dark, which is good, because if we only tell stories about white, able-bodied children living in big houses with two loving parents then we’re excluding the majority of real children’s lived experiences from our narratives.

There’s one more point I’d like to address: without sounding overly accusatory, I think a lot of the compulsion to consider Animorphs YA instead of children’s fiction is born of the adult bias against children. I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but Children’s Literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva created the term aetonormativity to describe society’s tendency to value the adult over the child. Like I discussed above, we have this idea that children’s books are somehow sweet and innocent, while YA fiction is darker and grittier because it addresses so-called ‘adult’ topics like sex, drugs, suicide, violence, and death.

As I hope I’ve established above, just because a book addresses these topics that doesn’t automatically mean it’s for teens. Books about heavy subjects can, are, and should be written for children. I think most of us are fans of Animorphs because it’s a series that sticks with us long after we close the neon-cloud covers. It’s a series that strongly disputes the notion of a clear right and wrong, and doesn’t shy away from the atrocities of war. And it was written for children. It was sold to children. It was read by children.

Some of us adults are just cool enough to read children’s books that treat child readers with the respect they deserve.

— Cates

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reallygroovyninja · 5 years

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The Sad & Current State of Fear The Walking Dead by Stephen Vivian

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When Fear The Walking Dead debuted in 2015 it became the most watched pilot episode in Cable TV history. Today, in it’s current fifth season, it whimpers along with less than a million and a half of live viewers. While the show’s ratings have steadily declined since it’s debut to 10.13 million viewers just over four years ago, it’s current reboot under co-showrunner’s and executive producers Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg is a far cry from a success.

In fact, less than two seasons into their reboot the show has gone from an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to a 66% amongst critics. And even worse, the audience score has dropped from 72% to an abysmal 36%.

This steep decline in quality has been a concern for die-hard fans who believed the show had finally found its footing in its season three outing. During that season the show stabilized it’s ratings and improved it’s critical consensus and it appeared the show was on track to outpace its parent series in quality. But less than two years later The Walking Dead has seen a resurgence in quality while Fear has dropped to all-time lows.

So what went wrong?

ERICKSON OUT; GIMPLE, CHAMBLISS and GOLDBERG IN

Fear was co-created by Robert Kirkman, who created the original comic series The Walking Dead, and Dave Erickson. Erickson served as showrunner for the first three seasons and it was his vision for the show to set itself apart from its parent series by focusing on a gritty family drama set amidst the growing apocalypse. His focus on the Clark family was taking shape and by season three it was apparent that lead actress Kim Dickens’ character, Madison Clark, was being written to serve not only as the shows main antihero but it’s burgeoning villain. She had done everything in the name of survival and didn’t take bullshit from anyone.

Her defining moment came in the two-part season three opener where she declared that it was their fate to take the ranch from its current leadership and that it would be their right to take it if it secured their survival. And so began Madison’s manipulations, starting with her and her kids ingratiating themselves into the Otto’s lives to prove their worth and keep them apart of the inner workings of the ranch. This mission – and her brutality in carrying it out – were beginning to take its toll on the very people she strived to protect: her children.

Alicia grew wary of Madison’s tactics and started to grow into her own, becoming a leader who undoubtedly would have to one day deal with opposing her mother as Madison reached full blown villain status. And even Nick, who Madison was obsessed with protecting and keeping by her side, began to see his mother’s brutality as alarming when she killed Troy with very little hesitation.

The dynamic between these three and how it would further be explored had taken the show to new heights, but sadly the writing was already on the wall when it was revealed that Dave Erickson would be departing the series as showrunner and was to be replaced by Once Upon a Time alums Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, both brought in by Scott Gimple who had taken on a larger role in The Walking Dead Universe by overseeing the development of both shows.

GIMPLIFICATION

Fans were wary of Gimple’s new involvement with the series. He had overseen The Walking Dead for five seasons. And while seasons four and five of the main show were critical and ratings successes, the problems with his leadership began to pop up in a very divisive season six. By season seven The Walking Dead had seen a drastic downturn in both critical and ratings success, culminating with Gimple’s departure as showrunner after season eight.

Hallmarks of Gimple’s leadership – splitting up the cast, drawing out story arcs that reduced the pace of the show to a crawl, and having characters act and speak illogically and in repetitive monologues were now on their way to Fear, a show that had earned its success from separating itself from the identity of its parent show through showcasing a grittier, more realistic portrayal of the zombie apocalypse. Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg were just the nails in the coffin as they would take these hallmarks and double down on them with reckless abandon.

DRASTIC CHANGES OF REBOOTING

The reboot swiftly introduced a time jump to bring the show in line with The Walking Dead for the sole purpose of crossing over Morgan Jones, a character whose story arc had been on a rinse-and-repeat cycle on The Walking Dead for far too long. Having him crossover could have been a great way to explore his character and breathe some life back into him, but sadly the showrunners simply doubled down on what was wrong with Morgan’s character in the first place.

Worse of all they decided to stunt all other characters growth and put them on a trajectory to adopt Morgan’s boring character traits, ultimately watering them down to unquestioning, idiotic do-gooders who do not worry about any personal matters but instead the larger group mission of do good at all costs; even if it means killing themselves to save someone who refuses their help and is more-than-likely going to result in getting more people killed.

The problems were readily apparent right from the outset of the first episode – an episode dominated by Morgan and new characters Althea and John Dory. No OG Fear characters were introduced until the very closing minutes of the show. And in the following seven episodes the original cast took even more blows, as both Nick and Madison Clark were killed off the show. The core dynamic of the show and the interesting premise of the original pitch of the series had been decimated in less than 8 episodes.

It was clear that Andrew and Ian had no regard for the cast who had been there since day one and who had given such great performances to carry the show to critical success. And once again they doubled down on new characters that had no depth, dimension or individuality in favour of propping up Morgan Jones as the new lead of the show.

BIGGEST GRIPES WITH SEASON FOUR & FIVE

The new cinematography style was to strip out all colour and use a hideous grey filter. Since the show was split into two timelines – the THEN timeline featuring the OG cast at the Dell Diamond, and the the NOW timeline featuring Morgan Jones meeting up with our remaining survivors – it was assumed the use of grey filter was meant to contrast the generally bright colours of the NOW timeline. Perhaps a thematic device to showcase the differences in the state of mind of Alicia, Nick, Strand and Luciana as they were on a mission of vengeance. But when that story was resolved in the mid-season finale, it was assumed we would return to normal colouring. Sadly, we were not.

Characters acting dumb, delivering nonsensical dialogue and out of character in order to service the plot. This is always one of the worse creative decisions a writing team could make and it was clear it was one the new showrunners were embracing. As I mentioned before, Madison Clark was a growing villain who would stop at nothing to keep herself and her kids safe. Suddenly in season four she was a leader of hope for the show, doling out idiotic, non-sensical lines such as “no one is gone until they’re gone”. Go back to episode 3x08 and listen to Madison tell her kids about how she killed her father to protect her mother against his abuse and how she was going to go talk to another old man, Jeremiah Otto, alluding to her reconciling that she would have to kill him to protect Alicia and Nick and you will see a vast difference in dialogue.

Gimmicks! The plot doesn’t serve to move the characters or the story forward in any meaningful or realistic way. Instead it’s as if the writers came up with these “cool moments” they think will look good on screen, and try to just connect the dots with nonsensical plot points and character direction to make it happen. Let’s not even get too into the airplane that they flew despite none of the people on the plane being a pilot, or the nuclear reactor breakdown that was supposed to present a huge threat but was resolved very anti-climatically.

And the cardinal sin that the new showrunners have committed is sidelining the previously well-developed OG characters in favour of new, poorly developed characters. First of all, if the decision to kill Madison off was to actually serve a true purpose for the story and the characters instead of this superficial “it’s what Madison would want us to do”, then the show should have rightfully been inherited by and led by Alicia. For starters, Alycia Debnam-Carey has a large following as an actress. And, as a character, is the biggest draw for the audience. Not only is she the last Clark standing, but she was on a trajectory to becoming a strong leader in her own right. But instead they felt the show would be better served with Morgan as the lead. It’s a shame because the show had a lot of potential by shifting focus to Alicia, but as it stands now, not even our OG characters or Morgan, the shows misplaced lead character, are strong enough to carry this show.

CAN THE SHOW BE SAVED? CAN IT DO BETTER?

I sure hope so. I haven’t followed steadily since episode 4x09. That episode bored me to tears. And no matter how many times I’ve tried to sit down and watch episodes from the latter part of season four or episodes of season five, I just simply can’t bring myself to do it. There’s just no motivation for me to keep watching. Nothing ever really happens. No one has grown in new and surprising or compelling ways. The show hasn’t had a message or a narrative worth investing in, because let’s be real the simplicity of “we’re here to help” is not a story. It’s a singular ideology adopted by EVERY character, no matter how senseless and idealistic it is.

I think there’s several ways to reinvigorate the show and get it back on track. To start, the show could learn to take risks. The show isn’t willing to take any risks right now and it’s painful. Given the world they live in and the threats they face, we should be seeing characters go down darker paths or even killing again. We don’t even get any real sources of conflict. It’s all contrived conflict to make it seem like there’s a threat to our characters when there is none. At. All.

Why not kill off a character without fanfare and have the real ramifications be the source of conflict. I thought they might have been able to pull this off after Nick’s death, but that fell flat too.

Imagine June dying and John growing darker wanting to avenge her. Imagine Morgan going all “clear” mode again and not coming back from it. He’d be far more interesting as a loose cannon who could no longer lead or support the people he rounded up into his mission. Imagine Madison returning in her true, pre-season four form and struggling to adapt to the groups mission and suddenly start pulling Alicia, Strand and Daniel’s loyalty away from the group. There are just so many, endless ways the show could create conflict without having to outsource it to inadequate villains, such as Martha or Logan.

There are so many themes to explore in a post-apocalyptic show. Season three was dealing with scarcity of resources and how it was causing conflict amongst survivors struggling to find supplies. In season five, it seems that they have unlimited resources with battery power for their walkie talkies, generators, video recording equipment, planes and hot air balloons. Enough already. This isn’t realistic. Logan, the shows current villain, if you can even label him as one, would be far more dangerous if the resources in the area were dwindling, as they would be, and he was pushed to the brink by trying to secure whatever was left for his groups survival. He wouldn’t be politely asking for directions to oil fields. He’d be taking it at gunpoint and killing people to get it.

The possibilities in this genre are unlimited. But one thing is for certain, since the show lost it’s true lead in Madison Clark, the series hasn’t felt right. Kim Dickens was wrongfully dismissed from this show, in my opinion. And until she is brought back I don’t think that the show will ever truly recover.

In short, Bring Back Madison, have her be the bad-ass, manipulative antihero she is meant to be, and have her character be a source of conflict for the group and Alicia. Imagine Alicia’s loyalties being torn between the mother she thought she lost and the group she has now called a family. Madison would be the best kind of bad influence on both Strand and Daniel, who were characters who thrived in the grey areas of morality under Erickson’s leadership, creating a far more dynamic and distinct direction for the series. It would also be a direction worthy of the acting talent that this show has in riches but sadly doesn’t utilize to it’s fullest potential.

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roedusk · 5 years

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Natsume FFXV Crossover Notes

I’m trying to organize my thoughts and figured an update might not be a bad idea for the people without access to my thoughts. So here you go.

Let me know what you think?

(Will probably change as I write things, and I'm certain I forgot explanations and notes I was going to write because of tangents… So sorry about any confusion.)

World Notes

General World Notes

- FFXV setting with Yokai/Ayakashi based on Natsume added.

- Plot of Natsume happened during his teen years and he and his friends are now adults, 21-26 ish so they’re around Noctis and Co.’s age.

- I'm classifying some yokai or yokai abilities as “divine” for lack of a better word. This is yokai such as guardians of temples, and abilities such as Nyanko-sensei/Madara's purification ability. Yokai with this classification are generally more powerful than equivalent non-divine yokai, and have power over the world in some way. They so tend to be bound up in complicated rules most ayakashi don't have to deal with. In exchange Divine Yokai are generally not affected by yokai exorcism, or at least not to the same extent, it depends on the Yokai and situation, aka the plot. Yokai with divine abilities are also usually powerful, and tend to be exceptions to rules that usually apply to all yokai.

Astrals

- The Astrals are the same type of creature as the deities Natsume bumped into in the Moon Splitting Festival, powerful on their own but regenerate their power (if they use it up doing things like making the land fertile) through worship of humans. They all fall into the category of divine beings Madara can probably oppose and maybe manage a win, but it would probably get him cursed.

- Bahamut, Ramuh, and Leviathan are all at their original undamaged power percentage, having never taking a serious blow to cut their power. They are about equal in power to Fuzuki from the Moon Splitting Festival, since he hasn’t been diminishing his power like Hozuki was.

- Titan, Shiva, and Ifrit are at post-damage power levels. Titan however has a lot of worshipers and followers that he amassed while dormant, so his damaged power level is about equal to his non-damaged brethren. Shiva and Ifrit are about equal in power to Houzuki (who is not as powerless as they appear in the Moon Splitting Festival episode).

- The Astrals are both powerful enough to be seen by humans and chose to be so. The deities in the Moon Splitting Festival (unlike in Natsume canon!) can also make this choice, but generally chose not to.

- Each Astral has a realm of influence. Their influence changes the feeling of the area, such as how welcoming it feels or how prone its inhabitants tend to be towards settling in one place.

- Bahamut's influence is over Insomnia, and his disapproval of yokai/ayakashi makes them less common, and the ones who stay in spite of the encouragement to leave tend to be stronger and less family/group based. Insomnia tends not to be comforting, but has a feeling of purpose living there that generally feels lacking when moving away. This feeling of purpose can also feel grating tho, like being forced to do things all the time can be draining.

- Titan's influence is centered on his temple in Old Lestallum, but has also spread from his physical location at the Disk of Cauthess. He appreciates life that thrives but especially the kind of life that can cooperate to do so, like early settlers of the area or yokai living among the forests and human settlements in symbiosis. Titain's power is more attractive to those who are clannish and protective of their important people. It also exudes the feeling of being guarded, since Titan was injured protecting the area and those in it. This can be comforting or constraining depending on the individual and how they feel at the time.

- Ifrit's influence is lingering over Ravatogh, but is also present in the Meteor and it's shards. His influence is both the creative inspiration he gave to Solheim and the impulse to act that can both lead to good decisions without hesitation and quick bad decisions based on anger or lack of forethought. His anger at the war of the Astrals also lingers in the sphere of influence over Ravatogh making the area less friendly to living things that can feel it, but it has been largely tempered out of the Meteor by Titan's protective influence. Lestallum started based on inspiration of those drawn to the Meteor and thrives on those working with the shards now. Tempered by Titan's influence towards cooperation it's the most successful new settlement in a millennium.

- Shiva's influence is centered around her corpse, but is also present in Tenebrae where her messenger lived. It tends to encourage self-possession, people who know what they want and go for it regardless of what anyone else might think. This helps people like Lunafreya keep their strength up in bad situations, and allows people like Versatile and Ravus to pursue their goals without worrying about the morality of them. As the same time it also encourages self-restraint, not in matters of morality but in not revealing yourself too easily. This can be armor but can also make it harder for the individual to understand their more “firey” emotions.

- Leviathan's influence is found deep in the ocean, and while certain things can bring it to the surface it's much weaker up there. The strongest surface place is the Altar of the Tidemother, where she was worshiped and interested enough to look at humans in return. Her influence is part of the strange feeling the Ocean has, where it's huge and vast and cares nothing for if you live or die. If you want something you have to go after it yourself, there is no promise of divine intervention or idea that you may get ahead if you do things the right way. There's no judgement from a higher power for doing something underhanded, and if you want rules you have to find a way to build and enforce them yourself. This attracts those with a drive to get ahead and play the angles, eventually leading to the founding of Altissia. Leviathan herself takes interest in those who fight for what they want, but that's no guarantee she will respond to a plea for aid even from those she likes.

- I have no idea about Ramuh right now?

Starscourge

- ???

- As far as I can tell canon Starscourge is explained as a mutated malaria virus. But it also drives people mad before vaporising them and the resulting Miasma somehow both eats sunlight preventing it from reaching the ground, and generates demons based on the remainders of the mad dead people's egos that die instantly in sunlight. These vaporised egos can also apparently be used to power magitech armor but the ego in them makes them difficult to control??? And the "only"/prophesied cure to the disease is to kill Ardyn (who is neither the source or receptacle of the disease, nor the source of its recent resurgence, tho he did help it along in the last 30 years), then to die so we can kill his soul. This somehow purges the Miasma. (And spoilers? depending on if the book is canon or not it may be the last part needed for a world killing wave Bahamut wants to use?) I also can't figure out where in the game I bumped into the explanation that the Starscourge is from the meteor Titan is holding? Because it's something everyone in the fandom thinks is true now that I go looking but is apparently not canon?

- And a cure?? I have no idea, really??? But I have some thoughts???

- Has existed at least since Solheim, and was around long before Ardyn.

- It infects yokai/ayakashi as well as humans and animals.

- Is probably a miasma in the greek tragedy sense? (If my greek dramas seminar in college is to be believed) Miasma in greek tragedy apparently coincided with someone who was “to blame” and whose death was needed to stop the poison from killing people. The King does bad and the whole kingdom suffers kind of thing. But if they don’t kill themselves in penance then the person that kills them becomes the problem and the miasma continues. Not sure where I’m going with this but it matches nicely with the Natsume system of problem solving being about emotions and experiences?

- Probably need the modern trope of a Panacea to cure it? Something everyone worked together to get/make (in true Natsume fashion) to give to Noctis after the 10 years???

- How do I cure this??

- Did this disease ever even make sense?

Character Notes

Natsume

- Born in Duscae, Natsume’s family is descended from people who settled Old Lestallum a thousand years ago, so most of his relatives (who he was passed between as a kid) were from the Lestallum/Old Lestallum offshoots area. However he did have a few relatives in Insomnia he lived with as a child for a little bit.

- Natsume had never lived in Old Lestallum until the Fujiwaras took him to their home there. He loves the town because of the good memories there and intends to live there the rest of his life if he can.

- Because of his unique heritage Natsume has the ability to help purify Yokai/Ayakashi and help them move on (in the psychopomp way or just therapy way) even when those difficulties are caused by infection by the Starscourge. He’s unaware that he’s purifying the disease when he does this, thinking those cases are just more dramatic versions of what he deals with every day.

- Examples of the above are Shigure (the luck god trapped in the old school), Rokka (leader of the Masked Yokai), and Sui (the broken guardian and companion Gen was trying to save). The Mirror Yokai’s ill friend also has the Starscourge which is why he disappeared on her, not wanting her to get hurt when his emotions were bad.

- Natsume still lives in the Fujiwara’s house, and is technically employed by Tanuma’s father. He travels the area making sure the wards on the Havens are fully powered and has the rest of the time to devote to Ayakashi problems.

- Natsume feels like this should be a temporary thing rather than a lifelong job and that he’s taking advantage of Tanuma for employment, while Tanuma is worried they’re using Natsume for their safety the way others have tried to. But he’s happy and Tanuma is happy to be working with him so they reassure each other it’s ok.

Tanuma

- Due to slightly different setting details Tanuma decided to follow in his father's footsteps as a priest. He is currently his father's apprentice, but is mostly left to his own devices at their home temple while his father travels.

- The little used temple he and his father moved to in Old Lestallum is Titan's temple there. It was once the main one, but as Old Lestallum wanted in population and importance it was abandoned in favor of temples elsewhere, most especially the temple/tourist attraction at the Disk of Cauthess in modern day.

- Several temples to Bahamut have also sprung up in the area, much more regimented and grander than Titan's newer temples due to the active ancestor worship of Lucis being mixed in.

- While people in Old Lestallum kept the main temple building and living areas more or less clean, they didn't take much care of the grounds. Enough care to keep the wards up, but not much more (not that they were really aware of this, it was just muted respect and in case a new priest moved in).

- Since Tanuma and his father moved in the wards have strengthened. At the same time Natsume has been incidentally expanding and strengthening the weak wards around the town his grandmother had created by living there. This makes Old Lestallum a remarkably safe place compared to elsewhere in Lucis, and people have started attributing it to the temple's new care pleasing Titan. (Hense how the temple's income can support 3 workers now.)

- As caretaker to the temple, Tanuma has gained some strength from growing up there. He still has a weak constitution, which yokai/ayakashi can stress by being present, but his stamina/resistance is much better now.

Noctis

- Ever since he was little Noctis realized he could see things other people couldn't. In his case, unlike most others who can see yokai, the ones he saw were few and far between due to living in the Citadel, the center of Bahamut's influence. Pretty much the only one that interacted with him was Carbuncle, and they were a benevolent guardian spirit.

- After his injury, while in Tenebrae, he saw more “spirits”, but also learned Luna could sense them (but not see them) when she sensed Carbuncle with him. This lead him to believe the ability to see/sense spirits was tied to him and her being chosen ones.

- He tries not to worry his friends by any weirdness with creatures other than Carbuncle, but he doesn't try to hide that he can see them either, assuming it's understandable, so they just accept his little comments as well.

- After leaving Insomnia and entering Titan's influence he starts seeing a lot more, and less refined ones and is getting overwhelmed.

Lunafreya

- As one of the line of the Oracle Luna has the ability to sense people, such as knowing where they are in space in relar to her, and if they're sick or injured. This extends to yokai/ayakashi though she isn't able to see them unless they have the ability to make themselves visible to humans.

- Umbra and Pryna are yokai guardian dogs, what their divine abilities allowed them to assume a form visible to humans, which is how Lunafreya found them as puppies. They have since adopted her as their charge. Gentiana has accepted them as her guardians due to them being divine, she wouldn't have allowed any other yokai near her charge.

- Gentiana is also ayakashi and has the ability, from Shiva's power, to become visible to humans, though she can be more seletive of who can see her than most can.

Taki

- Taki grew up wanting to be able to contribute something to helping her friends that they couldn't just do without her. This lead her to joining the Hunters so she could keep them safe, and she has since become an expert marksman, (though she largely prefers the bigger guns hunters in the game use rather than pistols like Prompto).

- She generally sticks to Cauthess, because most of Natsume's travels are in the area, but she has become good enough at her job that she is asked to help further afield occasionally.

- She still remembers many things about yokai from her grandfather, and what she learned from growing up with Natsume, so she can sort of tell if ayakashi things are happening and ask for him to help. She still tries not to draw her circle until he (or Tanuma or Natori lately) tell her it's ok with the yokai.

Reiko

- A woman yokai speak of in fear and respect and humans talk about in disdain if at all, but nobody really knows anything about. She lived in Old Lestallum and in spite of bad experienced there saw the area as her home. This was enough to take protective barriers around the town, but weak ones.

- More concentrated barriers were created around places she camped/spent the night because of her deliberately attempting to create a safe place to sleep. These eventually became Havens once she realized she could do it deliberately.

- Unknown to her, or anyone else anymore, and independent of her ability to see yokai/strong spiritual power, she is descended from a bastard male child of the Oracle’s line. This altered her powers just enough to make her unlike any other human's.

- Towards the end of her life she met Regis and company out in the wilderness around Old Lestallum. A strange unapologetic woman who laughed at them and called them idiots before helping anyway. She gave Regis specifically some pointed advice before sending them on their way. (Not completely certain what it was yet but not sure if I need to know.) When Regis went back to look for her later in life people were confused why he cared about that strange woman and he could only find out she wasn't well liked and had since passed away.

Regis

- Regis has no ability to see or sense yokai, but he was best friends with Aulea, who could but kept it a secret. On his road trip to Accordo in his youth he bumped into Reiko, now an adult. She was unconcerned with who he was, and unthreatened by his retinue. She didn't want anything from him either, but gave him some pointed advice on the world being more than what he could see that stuck with him through his trip.

- When he returned home he realized Aulea could see things he could not, and managed to broach the subject with her. After convincing her to believe him, and that he believed her, this brought the closer, lessening a bit the stress being able to see yokai had put on her. He respected her wish for it not to be known, even to his friends, until after her death, when he explained a little to Clarus (and maybe Cor) in relation to Noctis.

Aulea

- Per Word of God she's Regis’ childhood friend.

- Born into a low ranking Noble house in Insomnia she was the first in generations to be able to see yokai. However it wasn't unknown to happen, and her family had been on the lookout for it since implications of collusion with any spirit other than Bahamut needed to be carefully repressed. She grew up learning her ability to see strange things was to be entirely ignored, trained in composure and people reading (to determine what other could see).

- She also grew up responsible for the family's guardian spirit, Carbuncle. They were the only yokai she was allowed to talk to and then only in private.

- As an adult this composure training made her known as someone impossible to startle, and she gave up trying to fake alarm at things other really did see because it was a good reputation to have. (Those close to her learned to read her microexpressions and she was comfortable enough with them to drop the full mask to her more normal reserved self. Deadpan is her favorite I joke.)

- Either way, as a child she stumbled on Regis out alone, and ignored him entirely because there wasn't anyone else around for her to realize he was human instead of a yokai. This intrigued him, and when they were next introduced (at a public event her family had been invited too) he insisted on talking with her.

- Regis spent a lot of time with her as a child, so he saw her eyes flicker to things that weren't there, picking up on it because of his own training to avoid threats to the royal heir. He noticed her aborted movements and how she would look over at him for context, but didn't realize what it all was. Instead he dismissed it as a child can as just how the other was.

- After meeting Reiko something she said made him think about what his friend acted like, and he eventually concluded he should just ask her. Tho she was startled, Aulea was able to avoid an overt reaction but also decided to just agree he was right, startling him and herself.

- Since them the two of them sorted out how to discreetly hint something was up and Aulea allowed Regis to ask about yokai she saw in private if she indicated no yokai were nearby to hear. This is how Regis learned about the dragon yokai that lived in the throne room but just watched, and about his family's new guardian spirit, Carbuncle.

- After Noctis’ birth Aulea was able to tell Regis he had the ability to see Yokai since he would play with Carbuncle. She passed away soon after but not before making a Carbuncle statue to help the guardian protect her family.

Nyx

- As a child in Galahd, Nyx grew up in the shadow of an old temple, still maintained out of respect for the protective spirit (no one said deity out of superstition the Astrals might get offended) that lived there and their followers. Unlike most, tho, Nyx had a little sister who swore she could see them.

- Nyx still isn't sure if he believes Selena when she told him about the Coeurl guarding the temple, and he regrets that she died knowing he wasn't sure if he could believe her. He doesn't realize him trying to believe her and standing up to the people who insulted her “stories” was more than enough for her. He even walked with her the second time, when they were very young and she was scared of the wild cats everywhere but wanted to pay her respects at the temple.

- Selena befriended one of the guardians at the temple, and he lead some of the others down to try and help (without permission) when Nifelheim attacked. The temple was destroyed in the attack and the guardian was unable to save Selena. Unlike the rest who stayed to try and find those who flead the temple's destruction, this guardian attached themself to Nyx out of regret, and has been protecting him since. This is at least part of his ridiculous luck.

Libertus

- Libertus doesn't believe in spirits or guardians, because wouldn't they have protected Galahd if they existed? He respects Nyx's wish to respect Selena's superstitions but privately thinks he needs to let go of the little rituals to move past her death.

- On the other hand, he took in Crowe when they first met because she reminded him of Selena (tho he keeps looking out for her because of who she is now), so he's not coping with her loss as well as he thinks he is either.

Crowe

- When she mentions she was driven out of her hometown, Crowe lets other people assume it was by the empire. She doesn't mention that fearful villagers drove out what they thought was a cursed orphan before they could be cursed in turn. She's still seen the evil of the empire and wants to stop them, but she didn't have the personal stake people assume she has until she heard what happened to her new family.

- In her travels before being picked up by other refugees headed to Lucis, Crowe ended up giving in and yelling at a yokai to leave her alone. A crow yokai, Yatagarasu, heard her and their flock took pity on her, driving the yokai away. Yatagarasu took it on themself to help Crowe navigate the world of yokai, since they had gotten involved already. They and a few of the crows from their recent flock accompanied her in her travels, becoming her signature talent and inspiring many people to point out her name.

- Crowe is able to blame most of her jumpiness on the crows, because they get between her and yokai all the time, and hasn't told anyone she can see yokai. She doesn't want to get driven away again.

Pelna

- Pelna is from one of the smaller islands in Accordo which was mostly evacuated during Regis’ attempt to oppose the empire there. He spent most of his young life as a poor refugee along the Lucian coast, eventually moving to Insomnia when he proved compatible for Kingsglaive.

- Family superstitions that he grew up with require an offering of thanks in return for actions above and beyond the expected response to a situation. The superstition started as something similar to a temple offering you give to the helpful stranger to make sure if they're a spirit it knows you acknowledge its help so it doesn't throw a fit. Also decent advice for dealing with Exorcists. But the specific reasons have been lost to tradition. Now it's just the difficult to explain idea that if someone goes above and beyond for you, you owe them a well thought out thank you gesture, so they won't think you put less effort into coming up with the gesture than they did helping you out.

- If someone is close enough to be considered family it's mostly moot tho, just give them the consideration and care family is due, and that will repay their care for you.

Matoba

- The Matoba clan is a wealthy family in Accordo which also happens to be secretly Exorcists. They do own an old house in Duscae but it hasn't been used for more than a staging ground in generations.

- When Regis came to Altissia to oppose the empire the Matoba family took interest. Hunting yokai and yokai turned demons in secret was tiring and difficult. If they could get involved with Lucis they could have an excuse to be at many more locations, and armed. So the family inserted several of their members into the resistance, and once they fled to Lucis afterwards some of them were able to enter the newly formed Kingsglaive.

- Over the years multiple Matoba family members were able to infiltrate the Kingsglaive, including Matoba himself. They have no loyalty to Lucis, but are definitely anti-empire.

Natori

- An actor who grew up in Old Lestallum, Natori is really an exorcist whose cover job was surprisingly successful. Probably mostly famous in Insomnia unless Nifelheim and Insomnia share movies.

- He moved out when he was of age, fleeing his family mostly, but came back to deal with an exorcist request in his old neighborhood. Since meeting Natsume he has been spending more time in the area.

- I think he lived in Accordo and has recently bought a place in Lestallum instead maybe?

- Was in Altissia when the signing ceremony happened, probably waiting to meet with his agent or at a shoot. He's been trying to get news of what happened since then, worried for Natsume and co in Old Lestallum more than the city tho. He's most worried Natsume somehow got involved because he does that a lot.

Plot Summary

Crowe's Path

- I know the least about this path right now, but it insists on being a separate one from the other two, so I'm going to try to honor that.

- This path starts first, ish, with Crowe's mission from the Kingsglaive movie. For those not in the know, spoilers, this is a mission assigned by Regis to rescue Luna from house arrest in Tenebrae and get her safely to Noctis in Altissia. Only she's attacked and killed on the way.

- In this fic she is on her bike with the black van coming around the corner at her when the crows start going nuts, but not because of the van. Nope, there's a rogue behemoth that just came out from behind the nearby stone structure and has seen her. It charges her, body checking the van as it attacks her. She loses her hand and watch to its teeth and is thrown from her bike by the force of it. The bike is pretty totaled and she's struggling to get away when she blacks out. The glaives in the van open fire drawing it's attention, and are too busy fleeing the behemoth to keep track of her.

- Dave (the hunter from FFXV) was nearby tracking the behemoth for Hunter tags, and his dog drags Crowe to safety for him. He gets her into the van with a tourniquet and rushes her to medical attention. Once she's safe to be moved she's transferred to Meldacio HQ for the monster attack specialists there.

- Because of her mission, when Crowe wakes up she doesn't ask to send a message to the capital of what happened. She tries sending Yatagarasu back but they aren't able to talk to anyone but Nyx's guardian and just presence alone isn't able to get the message across. Someone will know when she doesn't make a checkpoint but not soon enough.

- Note here: I'm making her leaving the city earlier, to give her more than 2 days to pull off an infiltration rescue, especially when the empire probably had Luna traveling for at least one of those days.

- With the help of a post surgery potion Crowe's wound and bad bruises heal up enough to move around in a little under a week. But she still has to do physical therapy and learn to move around with only one hand (The amputation to clean up the injury is under the elbow but she did lose the hand and at least half her lower arm). So she can't head back to report in then either, much to her annoyance.

- To keep her cover she had a physically present gun for protection, as anyone traveling beyond the wall would have had some sort of physical weapon the lack of one would be strange. Only now most of her fighting ability with it is diminished due to needing to somehow use it with only one hand. Dave asks Taki to stick around for a few days and see if she can work with Crowe on adapting her style to one-handed. Taki agrees and tho Crowe is generally untrusting and frustrated she is thankful for the assistance.

- Once she can fire and reload the gun, if not all that well in the latter case, Crowe insists on heading back to Insomnia even though she's not done with her recovery or used to the loss of her hand yet. Taki is resistant to clear her, but really the say is Crowe's. So instead she offers herself as a driver, and Crowe a place in her truck on the way there. Crowe grudgingly agrees, since she can't be sure she'll be able to drive herself back even if she could get her hands on a vehicle.

- The make it almost all the way back before Dave calls them to pull I et and turn on the radio. Insomnia has fallen, and the empire has it blocked off do they can't even get inside. Crowe is determined to try anyway, her family is in there, but Taki refuses to let her and Yatagarasu promises to scout and report back if she waits here. So she caves and the duo stop at the local hunter station to rest and wait for news.

- Yatagarasu returns with a report. Not sure exactly what they found or didn't. Crowe is unable to either locate or join Luna's group, and isn't aware any of the royals survived.

- Somewhere around here Taki realises Crowe can see yokai because she's doing similar things to Natsume. She tells Crowe a this, and about the circle she can draw to make yokai visible and her experiences with Natsume. Crowe is skeptical and alarmed but Taki refuses when she offers to just have the other drop her off somewhere and go about her business.

- Not sure what Crowe's plan is at the time or ends up being (other than learning to use firearms and other weapons one handed)? I know most of the flexibility in solving the main plot comes from her trip, since she's a completely new element to the story.

- Since I was unoriginal and went looking for crow yokai, then ended up with Yatagarasu instead of Tengu, Crowe's arc probably has something sun related to do, not sure what. Is it Solhiem related or is that too much of a deus ex machina?

- No matter the plot they have the support of Dave. If they need a boat to get to Altissia/the other continent he's probably the one who finds them one

Luna's Path

- Luna's plot starts with Kingsglaive. She's in Lucis as a pawn of the empire and the Kingsglaive is sent to rescue her. Pelna is able to locate her on the ship as in the movie, and gets her out just in time to be snatched by an Ultros demon. Iltros drags him away around the corner as Nyx gets to Luna, and he's forced to leave Pelna to get Luna to safety. (I have to assume he's struggling with this somewhat, because it's so against his established character to never mention it again.)

- Ultros is a yokai based demon, so when Matoba catches sight of it he's able to kill it with one of his exorcist arrows in one shot. When he comes over and finds out it's Peln who was injured he decides to use Pelna as assurance against them pro-king factor, proof that he is not on the empire's side in the coup attempt. In the interest of this he protects the inured Pelna from the other Glaives, helps him survive the airship exploding and crashing, then helps him escape the city when it would really have been a better idea to leave him behind. Even when their powers fail he steals them a car and gets them to the exit, where Pelna is able to reunite with the others, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

- Back with Nyx and Luna, the Glaive who was stabbed in the back still manages to explode most of the ship, and Nyx and Luna manage to escape onto another before Luna jumps on to the Citadel and Nyx goes after her. They intervene in the battle with Glauca and escape with the King and Clarus when the Mist Dragon (and Nyx until the last minute) keep Glauca busy.

- Regis still gives Luna the ring for safekeeping and puts up a barrier to force them to go on without him and Clarus.

- Before he dies Glauca is able to get Nyx's call for backup and direct him to the trap with Luche. He also gets the call from Libertus on the revolutionaries’ line, and incidentally reveals himself through his wording. This is around the time that the Glaives’ power from the king cuts out, signifying his death. Libertus arrives at the location given to find it's a trap for Nyx and Luna, and is able to apologize to Nyx, and reveal Glauca is Drautos. The three of them get in Libertus’ car and escape through the battles raging in the city.

- At the outskirts of the city they stop to find a change of clothes (less Kingsglaive) and a way to escape the city. This is when they regroup with Pelna and Matoba joins the team.

- After escaping Luna insists she needs to fulfill her calling rather than heading to Altissia immediately. Pelna points out the empire is probably blocading the sea as well and they need a place to lie low and plan. Matoba recommends a compromise, and suggests they seek sanctuary at the temple of Titan in Old Lestallum. It's not where the empire would expect her to go due to it being neglected in favor of the Disk of Cauthess these days, and he can vouch for the priest taking them in secret. Pelna backs him up, saying it's a reasonable idea, and with no other options this becomes the plan.

- Matoba wanted to be able to try to bug Natsume again, and also knew Natsume and Tanuma would take them in and wouldn't betray them, so a win for him either way. (Pelna had been having trouble reading him and eventually asked what he would take as a thank you gesture, which surprised Matoba. He was disappointed to find that Pelna was traditional instead of from an exorcist family tho, and informed him that he wanted to head to Old Lestallum to seek sanctuary with a friend and asking Pelna to back him up if they ask where to go.)

- Once they get to the temple and Tanuma agrees to hide them from the empire there the party meets Natsume. They don't get to talk much but he is aware Luna is the Oracle and was there to make a covenant with Titan. He also helped the others get things from town that they needed. (Luna calls Nyanko-sensei cute which he approves of.)

- Matoba tries to get Natsume to agree to join his clan for protection, but is turned down, and Pelna interrupts, feeling guilty about helping get Natsume into this position. Matoba is entertained by this rather than upset tho.

- Once Titan awakens Luna heads to the Disk with her guards to talk with him. Then she announces she needs to get to Angelgard to awaken Ramuh. This is a bit more difficult but eventually they are able to haggle a trip over out of a fisherman willing to do a favor for the Oracle. They hide below deck until arrival, when Luna gets out and awakens Ramuh. On their way back they're flagged down by a larger vessel with Nanase on board (Matoba's clanswomsn with the spectacles) asking for him. She got is message and is here to take them to Altissia. Since they need to go anyway they accept his offer to accompany him, even if it is suspicious.

- It turns out Matoba is part of a major Altissian family, and they're able to enter the city unnoticed at his private dock. However Luna needs access to the Altar of the Tidemother, which requires her to negotiate with the government, essentially turning herself in to them. Matoba leaves the party but the other three all insist on accompanying her to be her guards even while they're on house arrest pending the First Secretary's decision.

- Once Noctis arrives and negotiates successfully with the First Secretary she comes to lay out her terms to Luna. She is to send her guards to help in the evacuation of the citizens, same as Noctis, and in exchange they will be allowed access to the Altar. However, Ravus is threatening war if she is not released into his care, so Luna needs to convince him to let her do it herself. He is asking for a private audience first, to keep her safe from Ardyn, and Claustra intends to turn Luna over to prevent this if she can't convince him. Luna agrees.

- The Glaive refuse to leave Luna alone with the enemy commander, so Ravus and Luna have their talk but now with an audience. They argue and Ravus threatens but eventually he says something that gets Nyx to interject. They argue about trusting the magictech troopers Ravus has to ensure her safety if the Chancellor countermands his orders, and about losing little sisters to the empire. Luna takes back the conversation at this point and is somehow able to convince Ravus to let her go through with the covenant? He places the burden of her safety on Nyx before storming out, and when Luna tries to protest she promised Claustra their help in evacuation Libertus says the Secretary is just going to have to deal, she can spare their best to guard their Oracle.

- Lunafreya still gives a speech, but it might be a radio address instead of in person? And it's a better speech.

- Luna and Nyx are on the altar when Leviathan responds to the summoning, and Nyx is later able to prevent Luna from getting stabbed by Ardyn long enough for her to summon Knights of the Round power-up for Noctis of it's still needed, and not from hp this time.

- Natsume arrives on Madara's back in the middle of the fight between Astrals and is able to help Carbuncle heal Luna after she nearly kills herself healing Noctis. All of this adds up to Luna surviving and being alive when Ravis and Ignis arrive.

- Ardyn really wants to know how Natsume can fly.

- Elsewhere Matoba petitions Leviathan for power to fight the demon hunting him. She is impressed enough by how strong he is fighting that fate to not kill him immediately and says she might even consider it before disappearing.

- After a group effort manages to drive away Ardyn again Luna and Noctis’ groups combine into one, and end up staying at Matoba's Manor until they're well enough to be on their way.

- Not married to this flow of the fight scene, so there are other ideas floating around about Misuzu or Sasafune from Natsume showing up… Much thinking to do.

Noctis's Path

- This plot starts 99% the same, only Carbuncle is a companion character who texts Noct's phone to talk in texts that people who can't see yokai can't see. The others sort of realize he's Noct's guardian but not that he's physically present.

- Until Titan's covenant is complete it also goes almost exactly the same, maybe with a bit of dialogue about about seeing more yokai as they get to Duscae or some conversations with Carbuncle from time to time.

- Unknown to Noctis and co, Titan vanished in the crater to retreat to his Temple to recover (he knew the basic size of the temple and shrunk to a taller than human but still small form to not crush it). Natsume panics at the bleeding yokai (since Titan chose to hide himself while recovering) and Tanuma and him bandage all his injuries and tuck him into a bed in the temple, only later finding out he's Titan himself.

- Not sure if they realize who he is only after Noctis shows up (because he's unconscious until then) or if he wakes up earlier than that. Nyanko-sensei can speak astral tho, so that should help (since we don't have Luna or Ardyn to translate).

- I still have no idea where the Meteor ended up??

- In the trial with Ramuh the revelations aren't just scenes from the past to teach the audience context. They're actually something helpful to Noctis himself. I have no idea what yet.

- Noctis and co retrieve the regalia, but ping into Ravus (and Ardyn), then head back to Lestallum to find Jared dead. Iris leaves the city with them to get her to safety, but the guys decide to stop at Old Lestallum and head to the nearby Imperial base to get vengeance for Jared.

- Somehow this ends up with them deciding to visit the temple of Titan before moving on. At the Temple Noctis sees Titan injured and is startled to realize the gods he's been calling on are people too. Should be obvious in hindsight but it's hard to wrap your head around. He also meets Natsume, who startles him by being able to see Carbuncle too and realizing Noct can see Carbuncle as well.

- This leads to Noct having to adapt to the revelation that seeing these creatures isn't a chosen one exclusive thing. Natsume is also struggling with meeting a child as clueless about yokai as he was as a kid and being able to help with that but unsure if he can handle it. With some encouragement from his friends he decides to go for it and he and Noctis have awkward conversation together.

- This somehow (how ??? For future creativity to figure out) ends up with Noctis and co coming back to visit on their way up to the Vesperpool. Natsume is glad to see them but on his way out, explaining he's headed to Meldacio HQ to look into a request from there and check on the nearby Havens. Noct offers for him to come with them, since they're headed that way themselves, and Natsume is startled but appreciates it. (Noctis preens a little at being able to help his new friend.)

- Because of this new unknown being there, Gladio hesitates for a bit to leave Noct instead of protecting him, but his need to prove himself better than both Ravus and his father wins out and he leaves the party here, meeting Cor at the Crow's Nest instead.

- Natsume worries his presence drove Gladio away, but tells himself it's a silly thought.

- Natsume separates from them at Hunter HQ and they go into the dungeon with Aranea. Staggering out with their prize they bump into him staying in the caravan at HQ. He offers to share since they look exhausted and they're tired enough to agree. The trio bond with Natsume a little independently, and the next morning Noct asks if he'd like a ride back. Natsume admits his job ran longer than he was expecting so he still needs to check out the havens before he can head back. The guys surprise him by suggesting they accompany him then. They see him safely to the Vesperpool and Myrlwood havens and Noct even gets to do some fishing.

- After dropping Natsume off back in Old Lestallum they head to the cape, only to be sent to Lestallum to refine the mythril. (Gladio rejoins party like main game but maybe Noct recognized his voice at least?)

- Meanwhile Natsume is worried about the party and startled by the impulse to go after them. (Probably because he's realized who they are and that they're going to leave to get put in danger again.). Nyanko-sensei tells him something along the lines of if he wants to he should just do it, and Natsume decides he’ll at least offer to help however he can. He heads to Caem to try and find them, is startled by the dragon, has to stop a fight with Madara and the dragon, and is almost treated as a threat to the people there before Iris speaks up for him. Then he gets to hear the first person who remembers his grandmother fondly when Regis mistook him for her for a second.

- Noct and co return to find Natsume waiting for them, wanting to help. They're flattered but not sure they want to put him through that, but he insists he wants to help the people important to him instead of waiting and wondering if he could have helped. (Something along those lines.). In the end they're convinced to bring him because Noct could use some help figuring out the yokai thing and no one else they know can help with that. Plus everyone but Gladio thinks he's a good guy from traveling together a bit. (Mild personal conflict between him and Gladio as a recurring plot point.). And of course Nyanko-sensei is going too.

- (Back in Old Lestallum Tanuma ends up telling the Dogs’ Circle that Natsume went on a trip, which ends up being spread around to everyone it might concern as gossip pretty quickly.)

- Natsume heads with the party to Altissia, where Natsume bumps into Natori, who is oberjoued that he survived the Imperial Invasion alright and horrified to realize he's gotten dragged into things again (tho he's ok at hiding this). The party is suspicious of him, but Natsume is clearly happy to see him so they decide he's trustworthy. Natori offers himself as tour guide for their first time in Altissia and they accept.

- Then they bump into Matoba on the street. The party are unimpressed with yet another Ardyn type character, and neither Natori's or Natsume's body language reassures them. Matoba offers for them to stay at his Manor while in town, since he's a part of a powerful family they would have greater protection and more leeway in Altissian politics than staying at the hotel. They agree to think about it and get his business card before he leaves them to it.

- Natori is able to bring them to Maagho where Weskham is able to give them information on the people they've bumped into. (He's interested in the fact that Natsume, someone he knows nothing about, is somehow connected to one of Altissia's oldest families and a famous actor known as a bit of a loner.) He advises them to take up Matoba's offer, since he can provide protection, but they're still hesitant about what he might ask Natsume for in exchange.

- Natori is willing to out them all up in the Leville, but Natsume wants them to accept Matoba's offer, so he insists on going with them instead. Matoba's perfectly happy to have him staying at his house too.

- The party is startled to learn Matoba knows where Luna is, since she stayed with him when they all got to Altissia. Information that she had 3 Kingsglaive members with her is appreciated as well, tho his own background as former Kingsglaive doesn't help their suspicion. Matoba is, of course, unsympathetic.

- Natsume is among the currently undecided factors that help keep Luna alive. I have at least one possible scene of Natsume bring carried by Madara through the Titan vs Imperial Army battle, then helping Carbuncle heal Luna while Nyx, Ravus, and Ignis face down Ardyn. So might use that or it might change.

- After the battle the combined parties bump into Matoba, who offers to let them stay at his family home again, they accept because once again he's a non political option and theoretically a bit safer.

- I have no idea of they manage to convince Ravis to join the party here, but that is a possibility.

- And… this is where I know very little about how things are going to go.

- The party is still interested in getting the Crystal and probably all insist on going.

- If Gladio has anything similar to his macho episode on the train it needs to be better written so he's not just being an asshole and is going to have several people vocally angry with him. Not sure if Ignis blinds himself tho.

- If Prompto gets knocked off the train Pryna goes after him. No idea if other helpful yokai are involved yet and if so how he'd tell.

- Also, does Ardyn have illusion powers or not? If so I need him to use them earlier and have limits/specifics. If not I need to rewite those scenes.

- Noctis meets a Phoenix yokai in Tenebrae. No idea if he's important later or just a handy visual metaphor.

- Not even sure if Noctis gets sucked into the Crystal, but I think he probably has to be?

- Somehow at this point, Noctis or no, the main problem is the Starscourge, and between Prompto and Noctis we should have enough notes to make a guess as to what it is, a disease instead of an unknown. So we do the Natsume thing and everyone starts working together to find a way to solve this without needing the Prophecy because that requires Noct to die (which we now know how…? Luna maybe? Does she even know?). By the time Noct returns (if we lost him) we have a solution.

- No I don't know what that solution is yet. My current best guess is a magically quest created Panacea. Are we going to throw it at Ardyn? Is it a spell like Holy in 7?

- Somewhere in here Noct does fight Ifrit. He's learned that Astrals are people too and wants know why Ifrit is so angry. The Astral is able to describe what happened in Solheim (need to figure out what I want this to be for this fic) and afterwards, and is able to let go of anger at humanity. He was mostly holding onto it because he felt betrayed by his fellow Astrals. The fact that Lestallum managed to use the power he left to make hope is helpful. So he contracts with Noctis after Noctis cures him of the Scourge (with help).

- Ifrit's purification removed his empathetic link with Ardyn. Ardyn loses most of his rage. Not uis feelings of betrayal, just the burning rage he had absorbed from Ifrit. Usually he absorbs the fill echo of the killed person but Ifrit was alive still, so purifying him took the emotions away again. This may or may not be important in curing the Starscourge…?

- Details for the future as I get there I suppose? But really, how and when does Crowe get involved???

Side Path: Regis

- This one is a plot point I've had for later reveal, but basically essential to Nyx's survival, so I guess I'm ruining the surprise now.

- I mentioned in Aulea's entry that there was a dragon yokai in the throne room. She's based on the blue guardian dragon from Natsume more or less, but much larger, and her abilities are inspired by (liberal interpretation of) the Mist Dragon. She arrived in Lucis somewhere in the middle of the 2000 years it has existed, and settled in the throne room to watch. She doesn't move around the Citadel, and mostly treats it like an interesting that show she enjoys watching and piecing together.

- This got more complicated when Aulea married into the royal family and told Regis she was there. The show started to address her own presence as a watcher, if only two of the characters. Made it slightly more personal, especially when Regis started complaining about things under his breath while sitting on the throne and idlu asking her opinion tho he know she couldn't respond.

- When Aulea died outside of the throne room, Regis came privately to tell her before the royal announcement of her death, crying and unable to share with anyone else the secrets Aulea held but let him see. The dragon responded by summoning a light mist in the throne room in mourning, which made everything look very ethereal for weeks. People talked about an I'll omen, while other conjectured the crystal was mourning. Regis appreciated it tho, and took it as a sign she cared, so he extended a formal invitation to the funeral. And for the first time in centuries the dragon left the throne room to attend, summoning a similar mist over the event.

- Regis still spoke to her now, and she sometimes even showed she was listening by summoning a wash of mist that swept through the room. Mostly she still just watched tho, ignoring the little prince who could see her too. Regis didn't invite her anywhere else, but did ask her to look after the kingdom while he rushed to Tenebrae with his son. Then they both witnessed Nifelheim's demands for the peace, and Regis spoke long into the air about his misgivings. The dragon settled in to watch what unfolded, but feeling angrier than she had in situations like this before.

- On the day of the signing, whole lingering in the throne room after speaking with Nyx, Regis told the dragon (uncaring of Clarus’ presence) that they were going to have the signing in a different room, because the Emperor would be slighted if only Regis has a throne, so she's welcome to come. And so she goes.

- She's angry when the battle starts, how dare the empire try to end her watch? Mist swirls around ankles, and then Glauca appears. And she's not about to let the rule of Lucis end in such a way.

- She uses the power she's never felt a need to before, summoning a physically present form out of the mist. She snatches Clarus out of the air as he's thrown, the sword thrown after him passing harmlessly through her Misty neck. And then the Mist Dragon engages Glauca alongside Clarus and Regis.

- When Nyx and Luna arrive she fights alongside the Glaive, buying time for everyone to escape down the elevator, then disappears to arrive after them. Regis puts up the shield and she stays with him and Clarus as Nux and Luna escape.

- Glauca is not used to the opponent having as cheap an ability as he does to reduce damage, and this battle is much more even. At the end he disengages and escapes back up the elevator shaft, where he has time to receive Nyx and Libertus’ calls before the dragon finds him. She able to deliver a final blow to his already severely injured self and he dies early.

- She returns to Regis and Clarus who are trying to figure out what to do now. Regis insists on heading back to the throne room to summon the Old Wall, but Clarus isn't going to let him warp up the elevator alone. The dragon ends up taking them.

- ? Not sure what the cost of summoning them is this time, but there has to be one. It's just not deadly.

- Afterwards Clarus insists Regis disappear, cut off the surviving Glaives so it looks like he died and focus on getting out of the city alive. Regis isn't happy with that idea, because it would require him not to help anyone they came across as they left. And Clarus doesn't like their odds of surviving even without a fight. They kind of decide their only real option is to make a last stand here.

- Clarus asks if the dragon could take the king to safety while he made a last stand, which Regis objects to. The dragon says she could carry both if them to safety, but why should she? Regis asks her to, please, because he doesn't want Clarus to die for him. She agrees on the condition that he do as Clarus says and fake his death, cut off anyone who could claim otherwise beyond Clarus himself, and stay where the two of them decide he is safe. Regis isn't happy but agrees.

- Clarus suggests they head to the hideout in Cape Caem, and agrees to give the dragon directions. So she grabs them both and flies them away in the night, using the battles and darkness as cover for them to escape unseen. Once at Cape Caem Regis and Claris switch to everyday clothes and live in the ship bay. (If she can assume human form like Nyanko-sensei the dragon is probably the one to buy food, if not Clarus is.) They aren't discovered alive until Iris and co. come to Cape Caem, and it's Cid who discovers them (and nearly gets attacked by Clarus).

- When Noctis arrives in Cape Caem there's an unseasonable mist, and above the cape is the dragon from the throne room back home. She sees him and goes to circle the top of the lighthouse, which is enough for him to sprint over and warp up to the ladder rather than wait for the elevator or anyone yelling after him. Up too he finds Clarus and his dad and they have a reunion.

- Regis’ friends refuse to let him go with Noctis to Altissia. Not willing to let him reveal himself just yet. So Weskham doesn't know he's alive, and Noctis isn't supposed to tell him. Not sure how that will end up.

- And not sure how Regis changes the plot yet either. But he's there at least?

#natsume yuujinchou #natsume's book of friends #FFXV #my fanfiction #fanfiction idea #this is apparently 17 pgs long #no wonder it took so long

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zombiiesque · 3 years

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(photo: Clearwater, Florida)

NA Mood Lifting Scents

Originally published 2/11/2018

Hey y'all! I've actually been working on this idea for a while, and it's a little unusual, but I figured I can't be the only one who goes through struggles, and so for this I've asked for a few contributions from my fellow Nocturne Alchemy fans in the House of Nocturne Alchemy Tent (also affectionately known as the Tent, and my family!). I want to say straight away, I'm not a doctor of any kind, and I'm not here to tell you what will definitively make you feel better, but merely make some suggestions for you to try, if you struggle with similar issues. Also, I offer big, gentle, e-hugs.

I struggle. I struggle a lot with mental issues - they even keep me from writing, which is my joy, truly. Y'all probably noticed it took me quite a while to get back to this blog after dear Laura passed. And it wasn't just that, although I did have a hard time moving past it, and I'm still not fully over it. I miss her dearly. But shortly after that, I started spiraling into a rather deep depression, which combined with my anxiety and PTSD, and all the junk life was throwing at me, seemed to go on for quite a while. I'm slowly climbing my way out of the pit now, but it's not easy.

And honestly, when I'm struggling with these issues, there's not much that gives me ease. Scent is truly one of those things, and for me, music. It gives me the ability to take some deep breaths and get out of my own head, and tell myself, I'm OKAY. It's going to be okay.

So, all that said, I thought I might offer up some ideas, and I asked others what soothes them.

The biggest point to make, though, I think, is that scent, and what makes us feel better in scent, is intensely personal, and varies so widely from person to person. My aromatherapist friend, Rain, says that a lot of folks associate pine with Christmas (or Yule), and for her pine is death - she's literally severely allergic to it, and so for her Christmas is scotch tape and paper and MINT. So that's a great example of how personal scent actually is. Therefore, I'm going to reiterate that these are merely suggestions.

Now that I've beleaguered that point, I'll give you a list of notes that I love and then some particular suggestions, both from me, and my NA Tent family!

What started all of this, for me, was in the fall of 2015, Nocturne Alchemy had their Halloween Part 1 release, and sent out samples of Bastet Halloween 2016. This was actually part of the permanent catalogue (PC), at that time in the VA section under the All Hallows' Eve heading. Every year they put out a Halloween perfume in the PC for the following year, so it's always available, and that year they put out a matching pair, so both Bastet and Anubis were released, and the sample I got was instantly loved, and upgraded to a full bottle. It's become such a comfort scent to me, and has pulled me through some very dark days. I realized that I found myself reaching for it constantly when I was at my lowest points.

Notes that I really love when I'm down or anxious are sandalwood, frankincense, copal. So resins, they feel like a nice warm hug. I find the NA oudh absolutely sublime for this, too. And there's something very comforting about Nocturne Alchemy's ambers, too. That kind of falls in between two categories for me, as I also like fresh, clean scents, or herbal scents, and the ambers can be very fresh, and also resinous. I love sage, chamomile, patchouli, citrus, and occasionally lavender from the fresh/herbal/medicinal/clean category. Citrus can be such an uplifting note (or notes!) when you need your day brightened. I also find NA nag champa,or incense heavy blends, soothing.

But a lot of times it's sort of a gut instinct/strong scent memory that makes you feel like you're wearing scent armor. Rain mentioned that she loves her Eternal Ankh Anniversary during such times.

So a little list of possible scent suggestions.

From the SLs, Hessonite, Ember, Santal Ombre, Patchouli Ombre, Santalum, Pyramid Santalum, Frankincense Ombre, and even the new Oud Ombre. Eternal Ankh Anniversary, Eternal Egypt Anniversary are others to consider, if you find vanillas to be your "blanket" you might like Crystal, Crystalline, Kobalt, etcetera from that line. I really love the OP line, it gives me a boost of confidence and the incense is incredibly settling for me, particularly OP Baba, because of the nag champa and black musk - musks are a power scent type for me. I forgot to mention I like myrrh also as a comforting resin, so definitely Myrrh Ombre, one of my first purchases!

From the PCs, I cannot recommend the OM NAs enough. Temple NA, Eternity, and Balance in particular, although I should really try Khet, as it sounds lovely. Gabriel from the 7 section has both frankincense and myrrh. I like to layer Raphael, as I find it clean and fresh, with Santalum. The Royal Amber section is a veritable treasure trove of comfort scents, particularly Bastet Amber, Sekhmet Amber, Thoth Amber, Temple Amber, and Sky Amber. I'm wanting to add Priestess Amber to my collection, as all of the sandalwoods and amber sound like an amazing combination and I've been lucky enough to smell Rain's bottle and fallen in love. I have a full bottle of Black Frankincense from the Desecrated Tomb section that I find absolutely heavenly, and it layers well with so many SLs - and the Prehistoric collection, too, for that matter, but that's for my LC suggestion list. There's also a veritable treasure trove in the Eternals, but I will say for me the biggest one is Eternal Egypt. It's become just such a signature scent for me. I

Another set of oils to consider are the NA Purpose Oils, which can be found offsite at The Blackest Rose. I have Protection, and I find it absolutely fantastic, but I really want to get Strength and Guidance.

Now, there's also several LC (limited, seasonal collections) perfumes that I absolutely adore for these purposes, which have been occasionally brought back as Resurgence, but you could put out an "ISO" (in search of) in the NAVA Marketplace or Indie Perfume Lovers groups on Facebook. For me Horus Haven 2 is a warm hug of a scent. I also really love Polter-Guests, it's got that herbal/clean thing going on. And I always, always reach for my Holiday Egyptian Frankincense for layering. There's a whole treasure trove in the Prehistorics, Pteranodon is fantastic for adding sandalwood to any perfume, and of course I love Cryolophosaurus for the patch and amber. Camarasaurus from last year has become a huge favorite of mine, because copal just makes me feel like myself again. I'm going to go ahead and mention NA oudh, the Icons. I find their oudh to be so gloriously beautiful, and the ones I own are Egyptian Temple Oudh, Labyrinth, and of course my beloved Copal Oudh. Phantasm Kiss from the 2016 Halloween release is so good, I bought 2 bottles of it, and I wear it alone and layered with other perfumes to boost my spirits. There was a series of Dream Bottles that came out with the winter collection the year I started collecting NA, and it taught me that I could, indeed, wear and love lavender, so I'll mention the Blue Egypt and Dead Can Sleep Dream Bottles. There was a sandalwood as well, which I totally regret not nabbing! But although those were pretty exclusive and hard to find, you can still find the original Dead Can Sleep and Blue Egypt in the PC section.

I'm going to close this by giving you various suggestions from my Tent family. But I also wrote and asked if the NA crew had any suggestions for you, and Freja said she would recommend OM NA: Balance, Crystalline, and the Purpose Oil: Inner Love (which is also one of my friend Rain's favorites!). Suggestions from fans include Lavender Santalum, Pink Grapefruit Frankincense, Moonstone, Holiday Egyptian Sandalwood, Myrrh and White Amber from the LC Holiday 2017 Collection, OP Set (huuuuge fan of OP Set so I second this motion!), Santalum, OM NA Eternity, Orange and Sandalwood Vanilla which is an LC Holiday scent and SO comforting!...from my lovely friend Heather - Santal Ombre, Ember, Pteranodon, Protection, Speaking with Spirits! So, some great suggestions there, and definitely worth hunting down, I particularly had forgotten about Speaking With Spirits, and would add from that same LC Halloween 2017 collection, when I'm really struggling with sleeping, Sleep Elixir is absolutely divine. I can't wear it without falling asleep in minutes.

So, really there's a wide range of possibilities here, but just know, whatever makes you feel most comforted in a scent will really help you when you feel down. I forgot something that I should have mentioned, I also like peppermint for uplifting, and two LCs I absolutely adore are Victorian Candy Cane Crystalline and Bastet's Pink Snow. I'll close with a quote from the Eagles:

I wish you peace when times are hard

A light to guide you through the dark

And when storms are high and your, your dreams are low

I wish you the strength to let love grow,

Oh I wish you the strength to let love flow.

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ladylynse · 7 years

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Family - Rise of the Guardians fanfic Summary: Jack had thought, now that he was one of the Guardians, he wouldn’t be spending Christmas alone. But Christmas is more than just a day. Main characters: Jack Frost, North Length: 2.5 K Rating: K Pairings: None Warnings: None AO3 | FF.net For @paperhoodie, as a thank-you for her beautiful piece of fanart you can see here.

December 25th came and went. Jack had spent the week leading up to the day making sure all his believers (especially Jamie) had the white Christmas they’d been wishing for. The kids of Burgess who were in town for the holiday came out to have a gigantic snowball fight that afternoon. Jack happily took part, but while there had been much babble about the dreams Sandy had given them the night before and the presents they’d opened from North that morning, and while they had all had fun, something had still been…missing.

He had begun remembering more of his family, of his life as Jack Overland, since he’d relived the memories kept safe by Toothiana. He had never had much, but that hadn’t mattered. He was sure that wasn’t what was missing now. After all, he had a family with the Guardians now. It was official. He wasn’t alone. He even had believers.

But Jamie and the other kids had eventually gone back inside to be with their own families.

And Tooth and Sandy were as busy as ever, and North was never busier than now, and Bunny had already kicked things into high gear with his Easter preparations.

And he was still alone.

But that was okay. Really. He knew he wasn’t truly alone. At the very least, he still had the wind.

So why did he still have that aching, hollow feeling in his chest?

Jack pushed that feeling away and focused on the more important things, like keeping the sense of fun alive in children everywhere. The wind took him from farmhouse to city apartments and back again, spinning around skyscrapers and barns alike. He travelled from country to country, continent to continent. He brought with him frigid air and sparkling snowflakes, painting rich patterns of frost over every surface. He would occasionally see Sandy’s Dreamsand swirling amongst his flakes, sculpting itself into a physical form before filtering through the windows to find a sleepy child. Twice, he came across Tooth’s fairies, though neither was Baby Tooth. Both fairies merely nodded their heads in acknowledgement before flittering away, disappearing with their precious cargo.

Jack kept up his work—his art—as he had for so many years before, not sure why he had thought this year would be different. They’d only gathered together to collect the teeth and prepare for Easter because it had been necessary. North had called them together a few times, usually when there seemed to be signs of Pitch’s resurgence, but aside from tracking down a few stray Nightmares, the rest of the year had been relatively quiet. Earth’s children were protected, and there was no great indication of anything important—wonder, hope, dreams, memories, or fun—dying away. It wasn’t necessary to gather when everyone else was so busy.

Still, when Jack caught sight of the aurora borealis lighting the skies over Reykjavík, he was glad. Even knowing it must mean bad news, it gave him a reason to go to the North Pole. Since the call had gone out and the others were coming, Phil wouldn’t refuse to let him in again. Just because his frost had gotten a little out of hand last time….

The wind picked up, pushing him north. He passed Bunnymund as he blew by towards the door, smiling as the kangaroo started cursing under his breath. Bunny still hadn’t entirely forgiven him, especially after the mess of last Easter, but Jack didn’t mind. If Bunny were really angry, he wouldn’t bother retaliating. When their ongoing rivalry stopped, that’s when Jack would worry.

The door slammed shut behind them, and Bunnymund huffed and stamped the snow from his feet. “Colder than a penguin’s chuff,” he muttered. Phil offered him a steaming mug of cocoa, which Bunny took with a nod of thanks. “Well?” he asked as Jack stared. “Don’t you remember the way, Frostbite?”

Jack turned his bewildered gaze to Phil. “You made him hot chocolate? Why?” Then, before either of them had a chance to answer, “What about me?”

“Wouldn’t be hot once you got your hands on it,” Bunnymund pointed out, “but there’s more than enough if you want a mug.”

Jack blinked

“You hit your head on that staff of yours, Snowflake? You’re looking a bite short of a bickie there. Take a cup or don’t, but get a move on. We’re already late.”

Phil offered the tray—it still held three cups—so Jack took one, careful to contain his frost this time. The mug cooled immediately in his hands. Phil nodded, an improvement over his usual glare, and he disappeared into the bustle of the shop. It didn’t appear as busy as usual, though Jack had to swerve to avoid more than one group of elves laden with plates of sweets. For once, there seemed to be more empty shelves than full, and the yetis at the benches seemed to be tinkering more than working. He thought he even spotted a few of them with mugs of their own.

The meeting room yielded more sweets—these ones hopefully not licked by the elves—and a blinding swath of Christmas decorations, including a huge tree in the middle of the room that was laden with handmade decorations. The branches were sparser than the trees in the homes of Burgess, but a single lit candle flickered at the end of each bough. Intricately carved decorations hung from the ceiling, spinning gently as tiny bursts of Dreamsand drifted past. Every wall was plastered with notes written in a child’s hand, with some of them sporting bright crayon pictures. It was hard to know where to look first.

“Jack!” came North’s booming voice. “Bunny! Welcome!”

Tooth flitted down in front of him, beaming. “Jack, you made it! And your teeth are as white as ever!” Her eyes darted to the drink in his hands before she met his eyes again. “You’ve been very good about brushing and flossing.”

“Uh, right.” Jack was familiar enough with proper dental care from Tooth’s occasional lectures—she was very well-meaning—but the truth was, he never needed to do anything. He just didn’t have the heart to tell her that.

“This is your first year with us,” Toothiana said, “so this year will be even more special.” He caught sight of a swirl of colour behind her and realized some of her fairies were still hanging decorations on the tree. “North likes setting aside time for us to get together. Christmas means so much to him.”

Jack frowned. “But Christmas is over.”

“Christmas is just day, Jack.” He hadn’t realized North had come up behind him, but the Guardian’s voice was unmistakeable. “Meaning of Christmas—that is what is important. We keep alive meaning, we keep alive spirit, no matter what day we celebrate.”

“He likes to celebrate on January 7th,” Tooth mouthed before she moved away, darting over to greet Bunny who was talking to Sandy.

“Christmas,” continued North, “is not day celebrated by everyone. But meaning, spirit, that is felt even by children who do not know me. Toothiana, before she became the Guardian of Memories, was child like that. Does not mean she does not value what Christmas means. Does not make children like her less deserving of wonder.”

Jack opened his mouth, but a group of elves tumbled over in their attempt to use candy canes to ensnare a still-steaming plate of chocolate chip cookies. When the cacophony of bells quieted and a glare from North had sent the elves scattering with their stolen sweets, North sighed and knelt to sweep up the crumbs. “Is your first year as Guardian, Jack. I try to make this Christmas special. You like tree? I pick for you.”

North seemed to be waiting for something, so Jack put down his mug and took a closer look at the tree, crouching on the top of his staff so he could appreciate its height. He didn’t get too close—he didn’t want to accidentally extinguish the candles or freeze the buckets of water Phil had probably insisted be placed nearby—but he got close enough to recognize the tree as a jack pine. Moreover, he was close enough to realize that each decoration had been lovingly crafted by children. He smiled in spite of himself. It might look a tad more straggly than the typical Christmas tree, but he thought it was perfect.

No, not quite.

Jack reached out and touched the tips of the nearest branch, letting his frost spread until the entire tree sparkled in the candlelight.

Now it was perfect.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, alighting beside North.

A giant arm wrapped around him, nearly squeezing the breath from his body. Jack didn’t try to wriggle away, even though one of North’s swords was digging into his ribcage. “You are family, Jack. We are family. Sandy, he feel your sadness when you touch his Dreamsand, and Tooth’s fairies report that you seem lonely. You should not be. We are here for you. You know this, yes?”

“Well, yes, but you’re all so busy, and—”

“Busy? Jack, we are not so busy we cannot stop when you need us. We left you alone for too long. Bunny, he always speak of your pranks. Grumble and complain, but that is Bunny. He call you troublemaker. Tooth and I, we always think we are too busy to look for you. That was mistake. We did not listen to Sandy when he tell us we should speak with you.” “And Sandy’s not much of a talker,” Jack concluded. Besides, the Guardian of Dreams was even busier than Tooth, who had her multitude of helpers. “It’s okay, North. You already apologized. Everyone did, even the Kangaroo.” Bunnymund’s apology hadn’t even been perfunctory; Jack knew he wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t sincere.

“No. Is not okay. We should have known you before Man in Moon point us to you. We should have done more for you. Sandy’s dreams to children of you were not enough to spark true belief in them, and we all know pain of nonbelief.” North was silent for a moment, and then he finally released Jack and gave him a huge smile. “But that is in past, yes? This is Christmas. Our first as family. We must celebrate. Come, Jack. See notes from children.”

Jack went, bemused by how North would point to a note or a drawing and launch into a story about that child. He snagged a shortbread cookie from one of the many trays, chased that with some cider, and stopped to admire a gingerbread house before stealing a deer-shaped cookie from under Bunny’s nose. Bunnymund rolled his eyes when Jack stuck out his tongue, but North was still talking and didn’t notice, though Sandy smirked at them.

Jack didn’t realize North had been shepherding him to his private workshop until the door shut behind them. He glanced back at the sound, and by the time he turned around, North had his hands behind his back. His smile, if possible, had grown even wider. “Merry Christmas, Jack,” he said, bringing out a present wrapped in bright blue paper and bound with silver ribbon.

Something in Jack’s chest tightened. “Really?” His voice cracked. When North nodded, Jack set his staff against the nearby shelves and took the gift.

The package had looked small in North’s hands but was easily double the size of most of Jack’s snowballs. Jack pulled the ribbon off carefully, feeling North’s watchful eyes on him as he set it on the counter, and then decided that the best way to open presents was to tear into them with reckless abandon. The wrapping paper fell to the floor in pieces, and then he was into the cardboard and searching through the tissue paper for North’s gift.

His fingers brushed smooth wood. He pulled out an intricately painted doll, cradling it in one hand as he put the box aside with the other. “Is matryoshka doll,” said North. “You already have centre.”

Jack traced the doll, which was painted in North’s likeness. The detail was incredible, right down to the tattoos on his arms. “You made this?” Jack whispered, even though he knew North had. He turned it over in his hands; he could barely see the seam where the doll fit together.

“Open it,” North said happily.

Jack did. He set the pieces on the desk before examining each doll in turn. The second one was painted to look like Bunnymund, his boomerang clutched in one hand and a painted Easter egg held delicately in the other. The third doll was Toothiana, every feather in place and resplendent in colour; her hands were together, cradling a tiny fairy that looked just like her. Baby Tooth, Jack knew. Sandy was the fourth doll, eyes open and sparkling, golden Dreamsand seeming to shift and dance on the unmoving figure. He pulled apart Sandy’s doll before reaching into the pocket of his hoodie and taking out the little Jack Frost North had given him in the spring to help him find his centre.

“I love this,” Jack said as he put the dolls back together. They fit perfectly. “Thank you, North.”

“Is reminder of family,” said North. “We do not need to be blood to be family. Man in Moon, he help us find each other, but we are strong now. Pitch will not break us apart again. You are Guardian, Jack, and always will be. Now come, let us rejoin others.”

Jack laughed, tucking North’s gift into his pocket and picking up his staff again. The door opened on warm light, lilting laughter, bright chatter, and the tinkling bells of the elves. Maybe this Christmas celebration wasn’t on the traditionally recognized day. Maybe it wasn’t even on the twelfth day of Christmas. But if Tooth had said this was the day North had chosen for them all to celebrate, then it was their Christmas. And since Jack had spent the last three hundred Christmases alone with no one but the wind, this meant more to him than anything.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

He had family, friends, believers. He brought fun to children and protected them along with the other Guardians. No one, not even Pitch, would ever be able to take that away from him.

And right now, with the other Guardians gathered around the tree and a handful of elves making off with the gingerbread house he’d admired earlier, everything seemed perfect. He didn’t want to ruin this moment. He’d even wait on hitting the Easter Kangaroo with a snowball; there was more than enough time for that.

Jack wrapped one arm around the Guardian of Wonder and hugged him. The man might have had him kidnapped, but he was good at his core. He was special, and not just because he was a Guardian. As far as Jack was concerned, North held their group together better than the Man in the Moon, and Jack was thankful for that.

“Merry Christmas, North.”

(see more fics)

#rotg #rotg fanfiction #rotg fanfic #jack frost #rise of the guardians #fanfiction #north #nicholas st north #my writing #ladylynse #christmas #rotg snippet #snippets #paperhoodie #enjoy!

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan?

When the anime Attack on Titan premiered, it was an instant smash hit and quickly became one of the most visible and popular anime series in the world. As time has gone on, though, the anime, manga, and its fandoms have run into issues with the messages in the text itself, which some say is fascist and antisemtitic.

Attack on Titan holds the same cultural space for younger anime fans that a show like Game of Thrones or even a book series like Harry Potter does for people a generation older than them. Its first volume of the manga is still topping the charts on Bookscan 10 years after its release.

"It's hard to overstate how important Attack on Titan is," Geoff Thew, who makes videos about anime on the YouTube channel Mother's Basement, told Motherboard. "It's not just this really good 24 episode action thing. Now it's this full fantasy epic that is coming to its culmination. It's probably the last anime that every anime fan either watched, or had a very strong reason not to watch."

The manga reached its final volume this month, and as fans are saying goodbye to the series, they're also revisiting some uncomfortable, and unresolved conversations about what the story is all about.

When Attack on Titan's anime adaptation came out in the summer of 2012, it was at the beginning of a shift in culture for anime. Prior to that moment, anime wasn't very accessible other than to people well versed in internet piracy, or had enough of a disposable income to buy expensive DVDs if the series they were interested in ended up being licensed in America at all. But by 2012, the world of streaming video had caught up with the world of anime in the west. Crunchyroll, which had begun to air series simultaneously with their schedule in Japan starting in 2008, had already had a hit on its hands that year with Sword Art Online, and Attack on Titan would go even further than that. Attack on Titan would catapult anime into the mainstream in a way few other series have been able to outside of Japan, at least not since Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon would air on cable television in the decades prior.

The premise of Attack on Titan is so enticing that I was completely unsurprised that the show was a smash hit when it premiered. The show takes place in a world where the last of humanity is living in a walled city, surrounded by giant human shaped creatures called Titans who live outside the walls. Titans love to eat humans—not even for sustenance, just for fun—so the people inside the walls live in fear of those walls being breached. In the first episode, they are.

It's one of the best opening episodes of an anime, ever. I remember watching it, and then inviting multiple groups of people over to try to get them to watch it with me too.

Image source: Funimation

The discomfort with the story of Attack on Titan began in earnest when the manga revealed where the Titans come from. When the lead character Eren Yaeger first left home to join the military and fight Titans, his father gave him a key to his basement, saying that he should return to investigate it when it's safe. In the basement there are books that reveal that the outside world isn't uninhabited at all, and that the Eldians, the race to which Eren and his father belong, are being kept in ghettos in a fascist society where they wear armbands to identify themselves amongst their oppressors, the Marleyans.

Although the Eldians are portrayed as being subjugated in the present day, in the past they are presented as oppressors themselves, and for some Eldians, the long term goal of all the Titan nonsense is to create a new world order.

"It should be uncontroversial to say that to a certain degree, Attack on Titan is about fascism because, I mean, they have coded Jewish ghetto," Thew said. "I think, given the resurgence of fascism globally in the real world, you can expect to see elements of that seeping into popular culture."

To some fans, it all feels a little too close to the broad arc of most antisemitic conspiracy theories, which say that the Jews rule the world through an ancient conspiracy. In some variations of the theory, Jewish people already secretly run the world government, just like the Eldian Tybur family does in Marley, where they live as honorary Marleyans and secretly control the other noble families. This aspect of the series has made other parts of Attack on Titan stand out, especially the character of Dot Pixis. According to the artist and writer of the series, Hajime Isamaya, Pixis, a military general in Attack on Titan, was inspired by real world World War II general Akiyama Yoshifuru, who is considered a hero in Japan, but also has committed war crimes against China and Korea.

These themes have been pointed out before, with some even saying that the work itself is fascist and antisemetic. While Attack on Titan boasts a huge audience, it also has a noted and vocal right wing fanbase as well; the New Republic even called it “the Alt-Right’s Favorite Manga.”

Image source: Funimation

Trying to understand the line between the allegory that the manga’s creator Hajime Isayama is playing with and his own personal beliefs is where anime fans have gotten themselves tangled up. If you search "Attack on Titan antisemitism" on Google, the first three results are articles discussing the show's fascist themes. Also on the first page of results is the rant of a frustrated fan on Reddit, complaining about people on Twitter shitting on their favorite show.

The question, then, as the series wraps up, is figuring out how to engage with it, and figuring out whether a show can deal with fascistic themes in the way it does without being fascistic and antisemitic itself. The manga’s creator Hajime Isayama, for his part, told the New Republic that he didn’t want to weigh in on the controversy, stating that “Being a writer, I believe it is impolite to instruct your readers the way of how to read your story.”

A big, recurring controversy in the fandom is figuring out how to discuss or even deal with these issues at all.

As a show, Attack on Titan has taken a position of reverence among anime fans. Even if you don't currently watch the show, or read the manga on which it is based, you've at least seen the iconography from the show, especially its military insignia, in the wild. For a lot of people this was their first anime, and their first introduction to a genre of fiction they love. It's the position that makes it uniquely difficult to criticize. In the case of Attack on Titan, not being able to discuss the issues in its fiction has led to a long simmering, never resolved conflict within the fandom itself.

At first glance, it would be easy just to dismiss Attack on Titan as being unambiguously pro-fascist. The anime plays into the militarism at the heart of the story; the show's first theme, a certified banger and classic meme, opens on the lyric "Are you prey? No, we are the hunters," sung in German.

"It’s important to note that the use of fascistic, war, or even Nazi imagery is not necessarily an endorsement of these ideas or regimes, as strange as it may sound," Joe Yang, who makes videos about anime at the YouTube channel Pause and Select, told Motherboard.

Both Yang and Brian Ruh, author of Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, suggested that multiple anime and manga series at least seemingly try to separate fascist iconography from the acts the horrifying regime committed. Whether they succeed—and whether this is even possible—is another question altogether. Yang noted that one of Isayama’s biggest influences is a visual novel called MuvLuv and its anime adaptation Schwarzesmarken, whose storyline includes an alternate universe German state that uses fascist imagery in its uniforms and also features a fictional version of the Stasi as characters.

"If you look up Schwarzesmarken and Muv-Luv Alternative, you can find images that are heavily reminiscent of the imagery you’d see in Attack on Titan," Yang said.

Image source: Funimation

Ruh cited the forward to one of Japanese critic Eiji Otsuka's books, Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan. Otsuka writes, "Why do [anime fans] feel that the war machines of Nazi Germany are 'beautiful'? In Japan, as compared to the West, there is a tendency to detatch criticism of Nazism and the Holocaust from the cultural items that they brought about."

"In this way, when something like Attack on Titan makes historical references it may not be with the intent to evoke a full comparison," Ruh said. "Whether it's wise or responsible for a popular artist with a global reach to play with history in such a manner is another matter entirely."

It should not be controversial to suggest that Attack on Titan includes fascist and antisemitic themes. What the fanbase and critics must grapple with is how to talk about them and whether the show is actively causing damage.

Thew told Motherboard that he hadn't totally caught up on Attack on Titan because he was kind of dreading unpacking its controversial politics, especially on his channel. Part of it is because talking about Attack on Titan and its relationship to fascism is so complicated. Another part of it is because the fandom has, by this point, dug in its heels.

"It's because this conversation keeps happening, but it's also not," Thew said. "There's some really good criticism of Attack on Titan, and I think it's important to criticize it, but a lot of people come at it strong and condemn it. That does as much to kill the conversation as people being like, 'shut the up about politics,' because it reinforces the argument that people are just trying to cancel this good show that you like for flimsy reasons."

Image source: Funimation

For a long time, anime fans had no way of knowing what their favorite writers and artists even looked like, let alone what they thought about the world. Because anime was, until recently, a niche culture, and one that has occasionally been unfairly maligned for being pornographic and violent, anime fans in general have avoided talking about the politics of their favorite shows.

"Some Anglophone and American anime fans say that politics in anime is too foreign to comprehend, I think that's a minority position. A lot more people these days seem to have some accurate knowledge about sociocultural politics in Japan, but in my experience they're equally likely to combine a dollop of knowledge about current circumstances in Japan with their own preconceptions about Japan and Japanese society," Andrea Horbinski, an independent scholar with a doctorate in new media studies and history, told Motherboard. "Ironically, while it's never been easier to access cultural and political discussions directly from Japan thanks to the internet, relying on their own preconceptions and only taking on board information that supports them definitely does keep anime fans in this position from appreciating the range of views in anime generally."

This doesn't just affect how fans view shows like Attack on Titan, but also how some anime fans might view shows that deal with feminist themes or LGBT content. According to Horbinski, some right wing fans of anime insist that certain kinds of political themes must be imported from western culture.

"[These fans] insist that feminism and trans people don't exist in Japan and that any anime depicting either is 'woke garbage' or similar. These fans are extremely angry at attempts to discuss the depiction of female characters in anime as something that could often use improvement, or the inclusion of trans characters period." Horbinski said. "They may cite 'evidence' to support their views that is wholly out of context, or they may just insist that their views about Japan are correct because they're correct. Attempts by Japanese feminists and LGBTQ activists to provide corrective information online do not go down well, particularly on Twitter."

Image source: Funimation

Given the global reach of shows like Attack on Titan, framing anime as something that is not, or should not, be influenced by culture outside of Japan doesn't make much sense.

"Anime does come from Japan, but it’s been a global medium for a very long time," Yang said. "The problem with understanding anime as a distinctly Japanese media with Japanese politics is that it makes very specific claims about Japaneseness, that it is only Japanese, that it is only the Japanese who can understand this, and that this somehow absolves the text of its messages."

Shutting down conversation about the inspirations for Attack on Titan, its themes, and how fascist imagery is used, and whether it enhances the story to use it in the way that Isamaya does, means that gaining deeper meaning from the text just stops being possible.

Given its popularity, Attack on Titan clearly resonates with the people who live here beyond just fans of anime who are deeply enmeshed in its culture. The attitudes that some fans of the show have about Japanese culture and its politics have been predominant in the fandom so far, but Attack on Titan is so much bigger than just an anime. It's a sign that anime's space in broader mainstream culture is changing. Maybe it's time for anime fans to put away old ideas about how to read and interpret this text, ideas about Japan just being too foreign to understand. Clearly, hundreds of thousands of Americans have watched Attack on Titan and seen something that they relate to.

"I think it does hold anime fans back, because aside from veering pretty close to Orientalism, it also arms them with excuses on why they don’t need to seriously grapple with the messages that certain texts can convey," Yang said. "If someone presumes a text is sexist simply because 'that’s how Japan is, you wouldn’t get it' not only does it ignore some of the subcultural connotations or history imbued in these signs, but it also speaks volumes about that utterer’s beliefs about an Othered, 'far off' Japan."

Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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medschoolash · 7 years

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I wanted Jonerys to be canon since season 1 then season 7 happened and Dany pissed me off. I was introduced to Jonsa through your meta and it convinced me of Jonsa but let me tell you I haven't fully embraced them yet because I am skeptical. Most of the times the fans come up with these amazing metas only to be disappointed so I will not let myself get too attached to this ship. However what I want to know is that How did you start shipping Sansa and Jon? What made you see them as a couple?

First, sorry it took me forever to answer this ask. I’m so sorry, I got busy and I’m a terrible procrastinator.

I’m super honored that my little ole Jonsa meta introduced you to this ship and convinced you. You have no idea how happy that makes me. I don’t blame you for being skeptical tho anon. I’m used to shipping non-canon less obvious ships so it’s easy for me But I know a lot of people have a hard time latching on to things that are heavily built on subtext and go against what appears to be the more blatant direction the show or text wants you to go in. I’m a hoe for subtext and nuance so Jonsa was right up my alley but I know everyone isn’t like that So yeah I don’t blame you for not wanting to get attached because it’s hard to see good theories go to hell because sometimes viewers are smarter than the creators. I don’t think that’s the case with GOT/asoiaf which works in our favor.

So you want to know how did I start shipping Sansa and Jon and What made me see them as a couple. Here’s my journey:

When season 6 started I was looking forward to seeing what happened with Sansa. Last we saw her she was jumping off the walls of Winterfell with Theon. I knew it was inevitable that if she Survived the jump she would make her way to the wall and Jon. I had been waiting for a stark reunion for seasons and even tho Jon and Sansa were the last two I expected to reunite first, I couldn’t wait to see the reunion happen. I knew no matter what it would be emotional and satisfying. I was not prepared for how big the reunion felt and what came after. The way it was handled gave me serious emotions that I never expected to feel so strongly and found the way they handled to be interesting but I never looked deeper into it because I didn’t see a reason to. However the season continued and gradually Jon and Sansa’s relationship started to feel like a really big deal. It was more than just two starks coming together after all this time, it felt like the start of the resurgence of House Stark with Jon and Sansa at the center as equals. This was surprising to me because as I said I never ever predicted these two stark siblings to be the most linked as the series starts to get wind down. Every one of their interactions felt important and game changing even before I saw the potential for romance and it wasn’t just because they were starks but it was because of the way they were written and the way their scenes were framed. Sansa touching Jon’s hand felt huge even if I couldn’t quite figure how why. Sansa giving Jon his cloak modeled after their father’s felt like a monumental development, Jon deciding to fight a war he has no interest in fighting for Sansa and his family felt like it was huge for Jon. I felt like being around each other brought some important developments to both Jon and Sansa as characters at a crucial time and changed things for them and the entire plot of the show. Even without romance you just got the sense that these two people together were important for a reason beyond just being newly reunited siblings . The narrative centered the two of them and Sansa as a character in a way they had not done for Sansa and other couples in seasons prior and I didn’t know why at the time but I remember feeling like the answer to why would come and would surprise me and everyone else.

They very clearly put lots of effort into how they handled Jon and Sansa in season 6 and they were the driving forces behind the resurgence of house stark so it was clear that the future of the house connected to the two of them in some way. Marriage/romance just never crossed my mind because based on the knowledge I had Starks don’t do incest. When I noticed an odd tension that could be interpreted as sexual/romantic towards the end of season 6 (particular the tent scene, the forehead kiss and everything post BOTB) I brushed it off for the reason I mentioned above but my fascination with that tension never went away. It was there, but I didn’t know why and I couldn’t wrap head around a possible answer so I just didn’t dwell on it.

Season 6 ended with the Jon being a targaryen reveal and obviously that was a big reveal and would be major but IMO the moment Jon was named King in the North was the bigger game changer of the two. Jon had amassed power and loyalty before but it was always connected to the wall which was isolated from the rest of the storylines. Suddenly that wasn’t the case anymore and Jon is given power over the entire north. Suddenly Jon is in the middle of the game at a time where it’s stakes are about the be the highest they have ever been…..and only one person was at his side when it happened….Sansa. Jon being named King in the North shook me because up until that point he and Sansa were equals in the future of house stark, neither wanted to be elevated above the other. Jon didn’t even seem to want to be an equal he seemed content to hand Sansa what was rightfully hers. We even watch them discuss who would take the Lord’s chambers and both believe the other deserve it. They talk about being in this together and trust and it’s clear that they just want to rebuild their home together, as equals but then suddenly Jon becomes the power player. It made me wonder where that would leave Sansa, who clearly wants to be and deserves to be at Jon’s side and an equal. The scene where he’s named King even starts with Jon and Sansa side by side listening to their bannermen and the lords of the Vale together. At that point I was like “aww the stark siblings are gonna run Winterfell together this is perfect” then Jon is named King and Sansa is left at his side with an ambiguous expression on her face but appears to support him and I was stuck.

Jon being named King changed everything to me. Kings don’t run their kingdoms with their sisters unless they are a targaryen who’s married to one lol. Basically after that there was no way Sansa could truly be Jon’s equal unless she somehow became his queen and Sansa can’t be his queen because she’s his sister and Starks don’t do incest. Sansa clearly had a role to play in the north but now I wasn’t sure what that role was going to be. We went from a narrative where Jon and Sansa were centered to one where Jon alone is being centered when it comes to the north but I knew there was no way Sansa would just disappear into the background. LF had already let it slip that Sansa could sit at his side on the iron throne so Sansa was still a factor in the larger game. That was my line of thinking so it caused this dilemma where I wasn’t sure what to think or where this was headed but I knew that Jon and Sansa were not gonna be torn apart on season 7 like they wanted us to believe and that Sansa’s rise to power would not be ending with this.

Then season 7 started and Right away my confusion from the end of season 6 disappears. Immediately Sansa’s position is clear:

“Ned starks bastard has been named King in the North and that murdering whore stands beside him” -Ceresi Lannister

Right off the bat Sansa is positioned at a power player at Jon’s side, as a de facto queen, not as a sister chillen on the sidelines as her brother rules a kingdom. Cersei’s quote immediately stood out to me because it was an odd but direct parallel with Ceresi and Jamie. Ceresi rules as queen as her lover and brother stands at her side. It felt like an odd connection to make at the time but it fit and was too blatant to deny so my spidey sense immediately went off.

Next we actually see Sansa at Jon’s side in exactly the way Ceresi described. Jon attempts to rule with Sansa at his side and Jon clearly has command of his people but Sansa isn’t a silent passive prop like a sister of the king usually would be. Sansa intervenes in front of the Lords leading to some awkward tension and and confusion on my part.

Then we see them bicker and the way it’s framed becomes too obvious for me to ignore. They are framed like a husband and wife, they hit below the belt and compromise and seek validation from each other like married people do. Nothing about that Shit felt like two normal royal siblings so I was fascinated. They Lord over Winterfell like they are Ned and Catelyn reincarnated which is super weird for two siblings. There was also this sense that there was something being left unsaid between them. Like this weird tension that’s unexplainable didn’t just come out of nowhere. After this I was pretty much convinced that Sansa was gonna be positioned as a queen at Jon’s side and I found the prospect to be exciting and fascinating , but that confused me because I had the same block I had before…..how can Sansa be Jon’s queen when she’s his sister/cousin and Starks don’t do incest? I felt the urge to ship but shipping them romantically didn’t make sense because Starks and incest don’t go together. So once again I brushed my feelings off and stopped myself from shipping it thinking I was reading too much into it all.

In the following days after the premiere aired the stills for episode 2 dropped and we get a picture of Jon leaving Winterfell looking back at what’s more than likely Sansa with such hesitation and overwhelming affection in his eyes and we get one of Sansa looking out to Jon leave as if she’s saying goodbye to her husband aganist her will be she determined to hold their home down while he’s gone. I was like “holy shit why do they look like husband and wife separating” I was shook shook shookity shook. I was basically Jonsa trash from that moment on because the Shit was undeniable but I was still in denial because….you guessed it, Starks don’t do incest…..

Then somebody finally decided to put me on game and told me that Starks actually do practice incest between cousins and that Ned’s parents were cousins and that it’s actually really common in Westeros among noble houses and after that it all made so much damn sense I hopped my ass on board and knew I would be going down with this ship.

I started to see them as a couple and as a legitimate possibility because the politics made sense they always made sense and far more sense than any alternative. Sansa bend the key to the north since and being groomed for ruling since season 1 started to come full circle. The connection to build on was clearly there, they were so important to each other and came to each other at a crucial time. Their affection felt tangible even tho neither is keen on expressing it verbally. The two of them just fit and them being centered as the roots from which house stark gets to flourish once again in season 6 started to make all the sense in the world and appeared to indeed be deliberate like I thought it was. Sansa was clearly the queen the North needed and the queen Jon needed at his side. He would do anything for her, he would love her in a really pure and overwhelming way that she deserves after all she’s been through. They had a dynamic that allowed them to challenge each other and still have a very healthy and loving dynamic. Sansa and and Jon are better together. They share the same core values and beliefs and where one is weak the other balances them out.

they are at their best when they are closely bound and at the center of their house and nothing could seal that like a potential romance/marriage. Sansa was the balance that Jon needed to be the great ruler that he is clearly meant to be. Jon was the man that Sansa needed to make all the scars hurt a little bit less. I started to see them as a couple because they were framed as one and acted as one and could actually make a really great one. Once I realized that the incest hurdle was conquerable it was actually super easy to see Jon and Sansa as a couple and see them as a legitimate possibility for the future.

#Jonsa #jonsa commentary #Jon x Sansa #answered

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liliannorman · 4 years

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Lack of diversity in his field has troubled this mathematician

Reaching the top ranks of mathematicians isn’t easy, even when you’re really smart. But Edray Goins managed just that. He works at the intersection of algebra and number theory. He likes studying so-called Diophantine equations. These have certain patterns of integers. One example: “Pythagorean triples,” such as the 3-4-5 right triangle, where three squared plus four squared equals five squared. And don’t worry if you don’t understand that — many adults don’t, either.

In his career, Goins has worked at some of the top universities for math, such as Caltech, Stanford University and Harvard University. But he noticed something. At every one of them, there were few women and minorities, especially Blacks and Latinos. “It’s always depressed me,” Goins says. “I complained about this over the years, saying this isn’t right. Something needs to change. But I realized I can’t complain unless I’m willing to do something about it.”

So last year, Goins took a job as a professor at Pomona College. It’s in Claremont, Calif., not far from where he grew up. He’s still tackling those complex math problems. But his real goal is to help train the women and minorities in college who will be the next generation of scientists and mathematicians. In this interview, Goins shares his experiences and advice with Science News for Students. (This interview has been edited for content and readability.)

What inspired you to pursue your career?

When I was in elementary school, the space shuttle was launched for the first time. Watching that got me fascinated with science and how the world works.

And so, when I went off to college at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., I majored in physics. During the first few weeks, I saw a book at the campus bookstore entitled Algebraic Geometry. I knew what algebra was. I knew what geometry was. But I’d never heard of “algebraic geometry.” I purchased the book and tried to read it. I saw a few pictures in there that looked pretty but couldn’t comprehend what I was reading.

I purchased a second book, An Introduction to Number Theory. Again, I had no idea what this was. I started to read. One day my calculus teacher said there’s a guy named Harold Stark coming to Caltech to give a series of lectures. This was the guy who wrote the book I was reading — the book about number theory. So I went to the talk. I understood maybe the first 45 minutes. After that I had no idea what he was talking about. But that book and the guy discussing what was in that book — that’s what convinced me to be a math major.

How did you get where you are today?

At first, I was embarrassed to tell people I was majoring in math. I did it to indulge in the subject. I kept the physics major because I figured I could be a physics professor and do research in physics. That was something I could see myself doing. But I didn’t understand the career paths of someone who majored in mathematics. I didn’t tell anyone I was a math major until maybe my third year of college.

I felt very fortunate to be at Caltech. Some of the world’s best physicists were teaching there. For example, Kip Thorne — who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics for helping discover gravitational waves — worked on all of this while I was an undergraduate. Seeing that when I was 18, 19 years old motivated me to become a scientist to change the world. I didn’t just want to get A’s in my classes. I wanted to make a huge discovery, to do something that had never been done before.

Edray Goins celebrates with his mother after completing his PhD in mathematics at Stanford University in 1999.Courtesy of E. Goins

Then I went to Stanford, in California, for graduate school. I had the time of my life. By my second year or so, I decided I would be a math professor.

To keep one foot in the physics world, I’d also been going to the National Society of Black Physicists conference every year since I was a sophomore. One year it was held at Stanford. As the conference was winding down one night, it was just me and Stanford physics professor Doug Osheroff sitting at a table. I was very intimidated because he had won a Nobel Prize some years before. But you know, he was just trying to be encouraging to people at the conference.

We got to talking, and I told him I was embarrassed that I wasn’t a physics major anymore. I didn’t think I was very good at physics. He asked me about the training I had as an undergraduate. He stopped me at one point and said that I was so good I could’ve entered grad school as a third- or fourth-year PhD student.

No one had ever told me that I was that good. That really gave me a lot of confidence. And now I was saying, “I can really do this.”

What’s one of your biggest failures, and how did you get past that?

I don’t know if “failure” is the right word, but if I could do it all over, there are two things I would do differently. One, I think, is having a family, having kids. I spent a long time saying, “I’m going to focus on the research. I’m going to get these big results. I’m going to become a famous scientist, a famous mathematician.” And I woke up years later and realized, what’s the point? I could spend my whole life doing research, but what am I really doing if I don’t have a life outside of that? I’d say that’s perhaps my biggest failure.

The second thing is, I think I consider taking a job at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., a failure. I knew within my first year that it wasn’t going to work.

I grew up in southern California, a large, sprawling metroplex. There’s lots to do, lots to see — beaches, mountains, the movie culture, the car culture, all of this. Indiana has none of that. There are no large cities, no mountains. And for most people — you go to work, go home at 5 p.m., spend time with your family, that’s it. People don’t go out. And if you’re someone like me who didn’t have a family, you can find that a very difficult place to live.

Also, I hate to say it this way, but Indiana is a racist state. I’m not saying California is not, but you can’t be Black in this country and not know that the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan was in Indiana back in the 1920s. And you see that everywhere. There are Confederate flags. There are these so-called “sundown cities” where, even to this day, if you’re Black, it’s dangerous to be in that town after sundown.

Also, in my department there wasn’t a lot of collegiality. People were there to work. And when they were done, they went home. There really wasn’t a sense of, maybe we can work together, maybe we can make this a more interesting department.

Science is not something you do in a bubble. You don’t just come up with a great result, publish a paper and become famous. I had a hard time finding people to collaborate with. Even in areas where I was considered the expert outside of Purdue, people there weren’t willing to listen to me.

Yet I kept telling myself, I can find a way to make this work. I am a problem solver. I eventually did make full professor. But of the two to three thousand faculty at Purdue, only 20 to 30 were Black. And only about 10 of us were full professors. That’s less than 1 percent. When I realized I was in such a small minority, that’s when I really did respect that it was very difficult to make it to that high of a rank. Ultimately, I realized that I had no reason to do this anymore. I had nothing more to prove.

What’s one of your biggest successes?

A big success for me today is being able to be back here in Los Angeles to help take care of my parents. That may sound a bit silly, but often we’re in a culture where people think a scientist or mathematician has to be the crazy person locked up in a room working by ourselves. I bought into that for a long time, thinking it doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of life you have — that all that’s important is doing the math.

But as I watched my parents get older, I realized it would be nice if I could be around to help them. Little things like taking them out to the movies, taking them to restaurants and amusement parks and other places. It’s comforting to know that, yes, I’m here at work. Yes, I’m teaching classes. Yes, I’m mentoring students. But when everything’s done, I can go home and spend time on weekends knowing I’m there to help my parents also have a good life.

How do you get your best ideas?

I think I get them by being an information junkie. I love to watch documentaries. I will turn on PBS. I will turn on the History Channel. I love science and discovery. Watching documentaries gives me ideas of how things work.

I also like attending conferences where I watch other mathematicians give presentations on their research. I don’t always understand what people are saying, but there’s always one equation they’ll show that gets me thinking, “Where did I see that before?” Then I start making connections and trying to figure out why they would use this equation here whereas others use it in a completely different context. What’s the relationship?

I try to get information anywhere and everywhere. And eventually I start seeing how these things are all related.

What do you do in your spare time?

I’m big into watching movies. Any kind of movie — small independent films, large blockbuster films. I get into conversations with my students about movies all the time. I think 1917 was one of the best movies in recent memory. I’m a big fan of the Avengers — the whole Marvel cinematic universe and the 20-some-odd movies that have come out over the last 10 years.

Also, there are things I did quite a bit when I was younger but haven’t really done the last 10 years. I’ve now gotten back into playing classical piano.

What piece of advice do you wish you had been given when you were younger?

Try to determine what your passion is — not necessarily something you’re good at, but something you really like.

This Q&A is part of a series exploring the many paths to a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It has been made possible with generous support from Arconic Foundation.

Lack of diversity in his field has troubled this mathematician published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

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nemesis-nexus · 8 years

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Full Crow/Worm Moon HAIL MARDUK, Great Father and Original Earth Defender/Water Protector, HEAR US! Tonight we celebrate the Full Worm Moon which this year comes before the Vernal Equinox and the official Rebirth of the Planet! It is so called because this is the time of year when the worms are underground toiling away, aerating and tilling the soil, preparing the plant life and vegetation for the Grand Regeneration of Life! When the Season of Death is drawn to a close and the Earth once again begins to awaken from its hibernation, when the birds who flew South return North, the bears come out of their caves and all manner of Life resurges and the cacophony of and bustle of Nature is in full swing yet again! I would like to take a moment to touch down on something even more personal. Four years ago in January or 2013, I began Walking the Gates of the Necronomicon and I was told before I even started that the true "Initiation" of the Deities on the 'Ladder' would begin AFTER I finished, if I was permitted passage in the first place AND I chose to keep going until the end, which I did. First I want to acknowledge that the Necronomicon is a FICTITIOUS book and NOTHING in the story is legit EXCEPT the Enuma Elish which is part of the Magan Text, the Descent of INANNA into the Underworld to confront her sister ERESHKIGAL and the names of the Babylonian Deities mentioned. Everything else is just the work of a literary genius whose gift was such that people are STILL convinced that it is completely REAL! This is why I love HP LoveCraft's work, he truly was one in a million! The reason I wanted to mention my Walking is because the book, though fiction, is still a great tool to utilize for personal introspection because when you are Walking the Gates, you are NOT just ascending into the Astral, you are also DEscending into your own psyche or as Freud put it, your own Abyss (hence the Dark Night Of The Soul which is the time just before the Vernal Equinox we take a good hard look at ourselves and see what it is that we are doing or not doing that is hurting or helping us), to establish a deeper connection to that which is Within to that which is Without. This is absolutely necessary to do because we all accumulate various forms of energy all throughout the year and sometimes we don't realize that some of the things we are doing or not doing are actually not helping a situation no matter how pure our intentions may be! What makes my Walking more interesting (at least to me anyway) is that ISHTAR/INANNA is the third Deity on the 'Ladder' and she represents the Divine Feminine, Fertility, Birth/Rebirth, Female Strength, Honor, all the attributes of the Spring Season and her personal holiday during this month is Ostara, this is interesting because with everything that has gone on in the last year ESPECIALLY during the Seasons of Degeneration and Death (Autumn and Winter) the Earth is in DESPERATE need of a Rebirth that will reawaken not just Nature itself but each and EVERY Earth Defender and Water Protector! The Worm Moon is also called the Crow Moon and what are Crows most famous for? They are the Bridges between Death and Life! With all the negative energy that has accumulated even since just September through the end of November of 2016, it is no surprise that the SURGE of support for those who have and are Protecting the Water, People and Planet has EXPLODED, where there was once only DEATH there is now a great deal of LIFE charging forth and taking the lead - the Crow has taken flight and all those who feel their sense of duty are heeding its call to bring back the Balance between Death and Life, Chaos and Order! As Satanists it is our duty to uphold our Fathers Honor and to earn his Respect by taking our cue from him when the Qi is rendered Unbalanced and restoring it to its Balanced state! There are many who still think that Satanism is about constant Chaos, Death and Destruction and while all three are utilized by Nature itself to keep things circulating, WE are NOT one-dimensional Beings! We understand that Order, Life and Creation are equally important or else NOTHING can exist in ANY state! We do not revel in anguish or the suffering of others as some would have you believe nor do we wish to destroy the world as others would have you believe! Rather we are the ones who will make the tough calls and step up when things get rough, we also have no problem with getting our hands dirty if it is necessary to defend anyone we call Family, whether Blood or Spiritual, Human or Animal! Some Core Values of Satanism are: 1) ALWAYS stand against injustice no matter WHAT form it takes or who the aggressors are; it is easy enough to stand up to an enemy who poses a threat but it is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to do the same with a friend or family member because of the emotional ties and the fear of losing that connection. Be that as it may what must be the deciding factor is the greater good especially if it means exposing tyranny and corruption in a well established organization. 2) ALWAYS Honor your Family both Blood and Spiritual because "We are ONE even though we are MANY and we stand STRONGEST when we stand TOGETHER!" what that phrase means is that even though many of us consider ourselves to be strong individuals and loners, no man is an island. We all call on our Family (Human and/or Animal) for support when the chips are down and as such we should demonstrate the same regard for them as we would have them show us - at all times! 3) NEVER stop pursuing education and knowledge because the world is ever-changing and the only way to keep up with these changes is to never stop learning! Some of these changes will be good, some will be bad, the only way to know is to seek out the information ESPECIALLY the information they AREN'T telling you because that is always the most vital information which can change even the most stalwart persons mind if it is so persuasive or devastating that it needed to be hidden in the first place! 4) PHILANTHROPY is not just a buzzword, a true Satanist aids in the care and maintenance of their respective communities, lending a hand where it is needed because we live here too! This assistance should not be limited to our immediate areas as what is happening in other parts of the world may be happening THERE but that DOESN'T mean that it WON'T affect us sooner or later and even if it doesn't we should do what we can to lend a hand if we are able! All too often we see people on the street who are being passed by from people who call themselves "good" or "righteous", there has even in recent years been businesses putting up SPIKES to prevent the homeless from being able to sleep where it is warm! Apparently the so-called "righteousness" of these company owners disappears during business hours! It's quite nauseating! The Domestic Terrorism that has been used against Water Protectors by the so-called powers that be in all its forms is UNACCEPTABLE and as such many people the world over have risen in resistance and even though they could not be in the immediate areas where it was occurring, they STILL did what they could to send aid in the form of money and physical items as well as spiritual reinforcement! Philanthropy is necessary to keep fighting the good fight and to do what must be done at the time it needs doing for the sake of protecting the people and planet! The world is now realizing that the Divine Feminine needs to be honored as much as the Divine Masculine and that Life needs to be valued more than money or material wealth and as such it is going through yet another huge transition that may take years to come to full fruition, however as Rage Against The Machine stated in their song Guerilla Radio, "It has to start SOMEWHERE! It has to start SOMETIME! What better place than HERE? What better time than NOW?" That being said, we ALL need to rise up and resist TOGETHER and as such I am posting one of my favorite prayers to inspire all those who are willing to do what needs to be done to Protect and Defend our great Mother Earth and all those who dwell in, on, above and below the surface! For the women, it is reinforcement of YOUR power and wisdom, for the men it is representative of YOUR own ability to stand in solidarity with the women rather than being threatened by them which demonstrates your own strength of character and security in your masculinity that enables you to instead of reducing women to being the alleged "weaker sex" see them for what they truly are = EQUAL! We now more than ever MUST work together to restore the Balance to the Multiverse, failure to deprogram from all those false teachings of money is everything, that people are only worth as much as their bank statements dictate and trying to force absolute authority over other humans and nature itself demonstrates a person or groups prowess will only end in the utter destruction of the Human Race and quite possibly with a MYRIAD of "collateral damage" in the form of the extinction of many animal, plant and insect species! We MUST do what we can to slam on the brakes of the train that is trying to railroad us all to oblivion and put those wheels in reverse so that not only do OUR children and subsequent lineages have a future, but so all life forms that currently reside on this planet are also able to keep going! The Human Race needs to remember that we are neither above nor below the Natural Order of things, that we are all part of the Circle or Hoop of Life and as such we need to repair the broken links so that we can resume doing our part in keeping the Qi flowing rather than being the weakness that is disrupting it and making things that much harder for all life forms! The Human Race lets go of its own ego and remember WHY it is that we are able to do the things we are especially as far as Magic, Technology, Medicine, Travel and Science are concerned, we were given the ability to Master all these things BECAUSE we were always the Guardians and Protectors of the Planet and everything that comes with it! We are here to work with nature, not exalt ourselves above it, the sooner we remember ourselves, the better off we will be! We can start by making sure that all those who are causing the hate, pain, destruction and devastation are brought to Justice so that they may be dealt with them accordingly and we can then resume our duty as assigned by our INFALLIBLE Father Satan! AVE SATANI! Illustrious Lady ISHTAR Do Not Mistake Her Kindness For Weakness, She Will Prove You Wrong! Do Not Think That Anything You Do Escapes Her Eye, She Sees All! Do Not Think That You Can Commit Acts Of Aggression And Not Be Judged, Her Judgment Is Severe And She Is Not In The Habit Of Being Lenient! When The Drums Sound, Heeding The War Cry, She Emerges In Full Armor! When The Names Of Her Children Are Slandered, She Will Strike Down Their Detractors! When The Children Of Her Children Are Attacked, She Will Destroy The Guilty! When Those Who Instigate Are Relentless, She Will Drive Them Into The Ground! SHE Who Removed Every Piece Of Protection And Ascended To EGURRA! SHE Who Faced Her Sister ERESHKIGAL And Her Horde Of Demons! SHE Who Died And Rose Again To Retake Her Place On The Throne! SHE Who Does Not Back Down From Any Battle No Matter Who Engages! SHE Who Comes To The Aid Of All Her Children In Their Time Of Need! Lionhearted Lady Of The Battle, I Call To You From The Earth, I PRAY YOU HEAR ME! Gentle Spirit Of Divine Love, I Call To You From My Soul, I PRAY YOU HEAL ME! Triumphant Goddess Over The Netherworld, I Call To You From My Heart, LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH THAT I MAY DECIMATE ALL ENEMIES! You Who Are Most Loved By The Gods, You Defend Your Own With Your Life, SPREAD YOUR ARMS AND EMBRACE THOSE AFFECTED! You Who Fears Nothing And No One, Who Will Meet Any Threat Head On, BRING FORTH YOUR SWORD AND SHIELD! You Who Lets It Be Known That She Will Not Be Disrespected By Anyone, SMITE THOSE WHO ARROGANTLY CURSE THINE OWN AND SATANS NAME! You Who Are An Inspiration To All Those Who Have Had To Die So They Could Live, WE ARE ETERNAL FOR WE KNOW YOURS AND SATANS LOVE, HONOR AND PROTECTION! --- ZI ANA KANPA! ZI KIA KANPA! MAY THE DEAD RISE AND SMELL THE INSENCE! Etiamsi MULTA Et Nos UNUM Sumus Nos Sto Validus Ut Nos Sto Una! Semper Veritas, Semper Fideles, In Diabolus Nomen Nos Fides! AVE SATANÍ! (We Are ONE Even Though We Are MANY And We Stand STRONGEST When We Stand TOGETHER! Always TRUTHFUL, Always FAITHFUL, In Satan's Name We Trust! HAIL SATAN!) Ave URURU! Ave EA! Ave DIMUZI! Ave ININNI! Ave GILGAMESH! Ave ENKIDU! Ave TIAMAT! Ave ABSU! Ave MARDUK! Ave SARPANITUM! Ave SATANÍ! HAIL SATAN! HPS Meg "Nemesis Nexus" Prentiss

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Until very recently, it felt like romantic comedies — at least the big-budget Hollywood kind — finally might have died. The culprits blamed for the genre’s decline ranged from the death of mid-budget movies to the genre’s reputation for being “unserious” to, uh, Katherine Heigl.

But this summer, it’s come roaring back, specifically thanks to three movies that made waves with audiences: the big-screen hit Crazy Rich Asians, and the Netflix sensations Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. All three hew to romantic comedy conventions but with a twist, and suddenly it feels like rom-coms may be back after all.

Vox’s culture writers love a good romantic comedy. So to celebrate the burgeoning rom-com renaissance, we sat down to discuss the limits and possibilities of the genre, the hang-ups that hold it back, how rom-coms can be more inclusive, and what (and who) we’d like to see in rom-coms in the future.

Alissa Wilkinson: Some of the most beloved films of all time are rom-coms, but the label is often used as shorthand for “unimportant,” “fluffy,” and “inconsequential.” There are a few reasons for that, one of which is that rom-coms are seen as geared toward a female audience, and films for women have often been considered less important or less substantial than “prestige” films. Couple that with the lasting sense, in some quarters, that comedies just aren’t as worthy of serious consideration as dramas and you end up with rom-coms being sidelined.

Yet I believe, and I think you all do too, that there’s a lot of value to rom-coms, and a reason they endure as one of the oldest and most beloved forms of storytelling. What, in your view, do rom-coms do well? What makes them have so much staying power?

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. Warner Bros.

Constance Grady: I think any defense of rom-coms has to begin with the idea that it can be enjoyable and worthwhile to watch two attractive people trade banter, face complications, and eventually fall in love, and there is nothing wrong with that. That basic plot template is not inherently less valuable than the one about the sad, mean man who is really good at something and so has no excuse but to be terrible to the people around him, or the one about the people who fight in a war and are very brave. The fact that we treat rom-coms as frothy nonsense for dumb people stems from the fact that romantic comedies are generally marketed to women, whom our culture does not like — not from the genre’s inherent value.

At their very best, romantic comedies are sheer joy. They are about forging human connections and people changing each other for the better — all of which is complex stuff that is worthy of sustained aesthetic attention — and they approach their subject matter with glee.

I was reminded of that fact when watching Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, two of the best rom-coms of the summer and the result of Netflix’s decision to try to fill the long-ignored rom-com market niche. Romantic comedies are about happiness! It’s a joyous experience to watch Set It Up’s Charlie and Harper accidentally fall into a slow dance and then painstakingly drag a pizza up a New York fire escape. It’s a joyous experience to watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’s Peter Kazinsky bashfully splash water at Lara Jean because he can’t quite bring himself to tell her he likes her.

This is a genre that’s about delivering joy to the audience, and what is wrong with that?

Genevieve Koski: It’s also a genre whose success is heavily dependent on charisma, which is the sort of cinematic juju that’s tough both to define and to replicate. Note, charisma is not the same thing as chemistry — I’d argue that a lot of the most successful rom-coms of the past 30 years or so feature leads with chemistry that’s lukewarm at best. But at least one half of your romantic duo, and ideally both halves, need to possess that tricky balance of relatable and aspirational qualities that makes it possible to engage with and care about characters whose narratives are usually, but not always, defined by contrivance. (See: the notorious “meet-cute.”)

Rom-com nonbelievers love to roll their eyes at this kind of narrative, characterizing it as cheesy or clichéd while willfully ignoring the fact that this type of storytelling has been around since the days of Shakespeare’s comedies. But with the right character(s), played by the right actor(s), those contrivances become a path to the sort of joyful human connection Constance is talking about. You need to care about the characters; even if you don’t necessarily like them, you need to be invested in them, and by extension their journey. And while that starts on the page, with the writing, it’s ultimately dependent on the people who bring those characters to life onscreen.

Ugh, as if! Paramount Pictures

So when we talk about the rom-com drought (and possible resurgence), for me one of the biggest issues at the heart of the trend is, as Vox’s own Todd VanDerWerff put it, many actresses’ reticence to do rom-coms. This is all tied up with a lot of other issues facing the genre, like the perceived lack of prestige that you note, Alissa — and which I definitely want to come back to, since some of the most beloved and respected films of the 1940s and ’50s are rom-coms, directed by legendary directors and featuring some of the biggest movie stars in history!

Somewhere along the way, they took on negative (and, yes, gendered) baggage, thus limiting the pool of actors who are both capable of and willing to bring life to this kind of story. The fact that this baggage has denied us the Rachel McAdams-led rom-com wave we all need and deserve is a grievous wrong that must be righted.

Aja Romano: I think another significant factor in the denigration of the rom-com is that they are built so heavily on tropes; their predictability is a huge part of their appeal, but like every other genre that relies heavily on genre tropes, the rom-com has been treated contemptuously by “serious” creators and authors for decades.

The mainstreaming of geek culture has gradually granted legitimacy to all the other heavily trope-based genres — comics, fantasy, sci-fi, video game narratives, horror — because they appealed to men, and male nerds have been ascendant. Yet trope-heavy genres dominated by women, which are mainly rom-com, erotic romance, and young adult at this point, have continued to struggle to gain any kind of cultural legitimacy.

I think it’s significant that a lot of the most critically successful recent films in this vein (Silver Linings Playbook, Young Adult, Lady Bird, Eighth Grade) generally attempt to layer a rom-com structure onto another kind of narrative — the teen comedy or the family dramedy. It suggests to me that Hollywood is most interested in giving these tropes attention when they’re approached ironically or at angles.

That makes the recent immediate success of Netflix’s rom-coms, as well as Crazy Rich Asians, an ebullient reminder that the audience for these tropes is mighty and vocal, and they know what they want and are very interested in owning it, being positive about it, and having it delivered unto them. I see Jupiter Ascending as a significant precursor here: Female fans lost their minds over that movie precisely because it was so open and unabashed about embracing its romance tropes and catering to viewers’ desire for self-indulgent id-fantasy — which, of course, was the very same reason it was critically trashed.

This also plays into the huge dominance of fanfiction culture’s sincere embrace of tropes, where fans are very upfront about wanting endless repetitions of coffee-shop meet-cutes and high school teen romances and office rom-coms, and there’s no high/low cultural divide, or any shame attached to loving these tropes. There’s a huge overlap between these transformative fans and the audiences turning out in droves for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Crazy Rich Asians, and that is, I hope, a sign that the female-dominated side of geek culture is finally starting to make inroads toward the cultural mainstream, and that its desire for these kinds of stories is starting to become more widely understood and accepted.

Todd VanDerWerff: Allow me to say a few words in favor of my beloved television, where the romantic comedy has migrated in these recent years of trial. You’re the Worst has had its rough patches, but whenever it turns its eyes toward being a straightforward rom-com with an acerbic point of view, it’s aces. Similarly, Jane the Virgin has had, like, 17 different rom-coms stuffed into its candy-colored confines, and that’s only a slight exaggeration. And Crazy Ex-Girlfriend deconstructs rom-com tropes better than almost anybody else.

You’re the Worst is one of TV’s most acerbic — and funniest — comedies. FX

But there’s also something to the idea that the best format for a romantic comedy is a movie, because you get to have the happy ending climax of the lovers walking blissfully into the sunset without any of the complications that follow, which TV inevitably has to get into. You also get to see attractive people enacting those tropes, which gives film a boost over novels in this regard. (At least for me. I’ll take the controversial stance of saying that I like pretty people.)

I wouldn’t say that the rom-com completely disappeared in the past 10 years, so much as its many tropes got submerged into different movies. Judd Apatow’s entire oeuvre is based on transplanting rom-com tropes into movies aimed more explicitly at the guy-heavy raunch-com audience. (I like a lot of his films too! I’ll even stan for Funny People, which I realize isn’t his most popular title.)

And a lot of the very perfunctory romantic subplots in superhero movies feel ripped directly from the rom-com playbook. Like, it’s really easy to imagine a version of Iron Man that’s just Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow falling in love, with him occasionally flying off to fight evil. That’s how much fun it is to watch them banter.

But I look at rom-coms and see something similar to what happened to horror, where the genre got laden down with a bunch of relatively unpleasant movies in the mid-2000s, which turned off a more general audience, and it went into hiding. But where horror has experienced a resurgence, thanks to the rise of a whole new indie horror aesthetic and the relentless work of horror super-producer Jason Blum, rom-coms are still searching for their next big launchpad. My hope is that the rom-coms of summer 2018 are that launchpad, but I’ve been burned before.

My question has always been why some Jason Blum wannabe doesn’t just make a deal with a studio to make a bunch of cheap ($5 million and under) romantic comedies, just as Blum did with Universal and horror. But my fear is that for a variety of reasons — including the genre’s perceived appeal only to women, and the fact that its dependence on strong actors means studios have to pay those actors more, which adds up quickly — this is unlikely to happen.

That leaves Netflix. And while I love some of its movies, a lot of its rom-coms are kind of reprehensible. And a bad rom-com too often isn’t just a bad movie; it’s also propping up some pretty toxic worldviews. So I want to believe in Netflix as a savior, but I have my doubts.

Will Netflix save the romantic comedy with films like Set It Up? Netflix

Alissa: What we’ve been saying, in many ways, is that what makes a rom-com great has a lot to do with who is in it and how it uses (and sometimes messes with) the tropes of the genre, many of which have been around for centuries. The rom-com is surprisingly durable, and as Genevieve pointed out, some of the most respected films of the 1940s and ’50s are rom-coms — it’s just that they’ve attained such canonical status that people talk about them as “classics,” not “rom-coms.” (As if “classic” can be a genre anyhow, but I digress.)

That does lead us down an interesting path, though: If the story and the stars are a lot of what makes great rom-coms work, and Hollywood is feinting toward more inclusive casting and storytelling, how will rom-coms evolve going forward? The rom-coms marketed at the “mainstream” audience have often starred white actors portraying straight characters. Is that going to change? And are there films, maybe some that have flown under the radar for some moviegoers, that have already challenged those rom-com conventions?

Constance: For my money, part of what makes this year’s rom-com revival so exciting — and what gives me hope that it will have some sort of enduring effect on the industry — is the kind of stars it’s making.

We’ve talked a little already about how vital the charisma of a star is to making a rom-com work, but the reverse is true as well. The rom-com and its stars are in a symbiotic relationship: The right stars will make a romantic comedy sing, and the right romantic comedy can jump-start its stars’ careers. Because when you watch a really good romantic comedy, you fall a little bit in love with the actors involved. You want them to succeed. You might even be willing to go to a different movie just to see them again.

Landing the leading role in a good romantic comedy can transform a working actor into a household name. And right now, the stars that the rom-com revival is making aren’t just white people.

One of the biggest narratives of the summer has been that with movies like To All the Boys and Crazy Rich Asians, Hollywood is finally letting Asian people fall in love. It’s hard to say for sure if this is a blip or a genuine sea change (way back when The Joy Luck Club came out in 1993, the narrative was that Hollywood was finally telling stories about Asian people, and then no one made another Asian ensemble film for 25 years), but while this moment lasts, it’s putting incredibly talented and previously overlooked actors into the spotlight.

Constance Wu has been killing it on Fresh Off the Boat for five seasons, but after Crazy Rich Asians, now she’s a movie star. Lana Condor has spent years languishing in action movies, not even daring to hope that she could get placed in a romantic comedy, and now she’s the face of one of the buzziest hits on Netflix.

For as long as Hollywood continues to make romantic comedies that center on marginalized people — and there’s no way of knowing for sure how long that moment will last — it’s going to keep giving actors from marginalized communities the chance to make audiences fall completely in love with them. And that means there’s a shot that they’ll become genuine stars.

Aja: I think, too, that we’re seeing a renewed awareness that you don’t necessarily have to subvert rom-com tropes to create fun and enjoyable stories that people respond to — you can just have fun retelling them again and again, because so much of the validation does come from watching charismatic actors carry the storyline.

And that makes the rom-com a really fruitful space, I think, for marginalized communities of actors and creators who’ve traditionally been barred from telling stories like these, because now there’s nothing stopping anyone from remaking It Happened One Night or Bringing Up Baby with a whole new ensemble. There’s every indication that the audience will be there — for instance, look how successful K-dramas, with their shameless embrace of rom-com tropes and their tendency to retell well-known storylines, have been, both overseas and in the US.

Zoe Kazan and Kumail Nanjiani starred in The Big Sick in 2017. Amazon Studios

I also want to mention Love, Simon and perhaps even Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name here, because while those latter two aren’t rom-coms, and Love, Simon might be arguably more of a teen comedy than a rom-com, they collectively indicate an emerging positive space for queer romance. It pains me endlessly to realize that the last queer rom-com I can remember making a mainstream splash is 2005’s Imagine Me & You — which is also one of the few really pure, trope-a-licious queer rom-coms.

That film capped a decade starting in the mid-’90s when indie queer rom-coms (Jeffrey, Trick, The Opposite of Sex, But I’m a Cheerleader, Big Eden, Touch of Pink, the long-rumored original cut of Bend It Like Beckham the world deserved, sigh) were pretty easy to find but often deeply flawed, tinged with understandable sadness and sociopolitical edge, and more than a little weird. We are overdue for a queer romance renaissance in which the gays just get to have fun and fall in love without having to undergo a social reckoning.

That’s a huge part of why Love, Simon is so important — and I’m hopeful the love and support queer romances have been getting lately will open the field for more mainstreamed queer and genderqueer rom-coms that allow queer people to participate in universal love stories. In other words, I want to see queer and genderqueer remakes of His Girl Friday and The Women, let’s do this, Hollywood!

Todd: It’s also exciting because this is really one of the first times in Hollywood history where you can just make a rom-com around LGBTQ themes, aimed at a large audience, that doesn’t need to be explicitly about the larger experience of being LGBTQ.

Even 10 years ago, there was at least a minor expectation that these stories needed to be filtered through a cis/hetero lens, and they always contained a certain element of, like, “being gay, explained.” There’s less of that now. A movie like Love, Simon can just exist, can just be thoroughly adequate. That’s revolutionary in its own way, but we’re rapidly approaching a point where it won’t feel revolutionary, which is even more impressive.

Love, Simon garnered mixed reviews, but that’s part of why it’s important. 20th Century Fox

But I think the larger point I’m nodding toward here is cultural specificity. There’s far less need to indulge in explaining things to the audience over and over again, out of fear that not everybody will “get it.” The mahjong scene in Crazy Rich Asians simply flies by, trusting you to get the emotional impact of what happens even if you can’t explain all the machinations within the game itself. It works because we’ve all freaked out about pleasing the parents of someone we really care about.

Similarly, The Big Sick trades on a conflict rooted in incredible cultural specificity — the main character’s desire to choose his romantic partner, rather than his parents getting a say in the process — that broadens out to a more universal consideration of the way family can make it harder to fall in love.

This means a lot of the old rom-com tropes feel ripe for exploration again. And thus, I hope more actors try their hand at the genre. Which performers would you like to see appear in a romantic comedy? I’d love Michael B. Jordan to get a shot at one after seeing the romantic scenes in Creed. I suspect we’d all fall in love with him.

Genevieve: I’m going to table that question for just a moment, Todd, because this is probably a good place to acknowledge that the past 20 years or so have seen their fair share of black romantic comedies, very few of which have been able to break out of that unfortunately niche distinction but have collectively established a roster of black actors with a proven history of carrying a rom-com.

Taye Diggs, Gabrielle Union, Sanaa Lathan, and Queen Latifah have all had multiple go-rounds in a subgenre that has produced a handful of “surprise” box office successes in the past decade or so, some of which trade in exactly the sort of cultural specificity Todd is describing.

I’m thinking of 2011’s Jumping the Broom, which “overperformed” in its debut and went on make back five times its production budget; 2012’s Think Like a Man, a cameo-festooned adaptation of a Steve Harvey book that took in $33 million its opening weekend — that’s right around what Crazy Rich Asians pulled in — and produced a 2014 sequel that opened nearly as big; and 2013’s The Best Man Holiday, a sequel to Malcolm Lee’s beloved 1999 film The Best Man, whose $30 million-plus opening weekend debut “trounced all expectations.”

The box office performance of The Best Man Holiday in particular started a dialogue about the assumptions around these films that lead to these “surprise” big openings, assumptions that combine misconceptions about the rom-com with misconceptions about black films: that mainstream audiences don’t show up to black films, and that, as one studio executive told Brown Sugar screenwriter Michael Elliot, “Love does not really resonate with black people. Comedy does.”

Think Like a Man was a big box office hit in 2012. Screen Gems

What exactly am I getting at here? I’m honestly not entirely sure, and I don’t want to suggest I’m some sort of expert on black romantic comedies — I’ll guiltily admit that I haven’t seen most of the films I just mentioned, though I am quite aware of how they are often misperceived by the industry, and of how my ignorance of them contributes to those misperceptions.

But I think if we’re talking about the broad assumptions surrounding romantic comedies, and if we’re talking about more inclusive storytelling, and if we’re talking about bankable romantic leads who aren’t white, and if we’re talking about whether romantic comedies can succeed at the box office, we can’t not talk about the lack of consideration that’s been afforded to black romantic comedies over the years by the broader film community.

When Vulture published its 2015 list of the best rom-coms since When Harry Met Sally, a list that included no films with black or LGBTQ leads, it did so with the admission of its own “blind spots,” conceding in its intro that “there are movies this list needs.”

All that said, there has not been, to my knowledge, a financially successful black rom-com film since 2014’s Think Like a Man Too, which came out almost five years ago at this point. (Diggs co-stars in Set It Up, but he’s more of a romantic antagonist there, and I don’t think anyone would dare categorize it as a black rom-com.) If we are indeed in the midst of a rom-com renaissance, I hope those looking to revive the genre remember the legacy-within-a-legacy of the black rom-com, if for nothing else than to help correct what might be the mainstream rom-com’s biggest, most shameful blind spot.

Anyway, please cast GuGu Mbatha-Raw, of Beyond the Lights and Black Mirror’s “San Junipero,” in a romantic comedy, thank you.

Alissa: Speaking of dictums aimed at Hollywood! Suppose a studio executive approaches you at a cocktail party and says that they think the rom-com is about to have a resurgence, and wants your best piece of advice for making a great one.

What do you say?

Constance: I’m going to take my inspiration from To All the Boys and get really earnest here: I think the most important thing for a romantic comedy to have is emotional honesty.

Part of what killed the romantic comedy in the mid-’00s was that the biggest studio rom-coms, your How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or your Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, were getting increasingly slick and smarmy and cynical. They followed the formula of a rom-com on a surface level — aspirational jobs, fancy clothes, beautiful people — but they were made with a palpable contempt for both their characters and the people who enjoy watching romantic comedies. These movies didn’t care about their characters or why they should fall in love; they were just putting them through the motions. And watching them didn’t feel escapist and joyous and fun. It felt gross and slimy.

That’s part of why it’s felt so refreshing and exciting that this year’s best romantic comedies are suffused with sincere affection for the genre and for their characters. It’s because we can feel that these movies love their characters that we’re able to fall in love with them too, and that love is something that can’t be faked. It has to come from a place of honest respect and affection.

Crazy Rich Asians loves its characters, so we do too. Warner Bros.

Todd: I would double up on Constance’s suggestion: Sincerity is key. If you don’t believe in the love story, then there’s no good reason to tell it.

But I would also encourage this imaginary exec to continue exploring the ways that falling in love can feel universal, even when rooted in very specific experiences. A film I didn’t talk about earlier was Azazel Jacobs’s The Lovers, which is maybe a little too dark to be a classic rom-com but definitely has the trappings of one. What I liked about that movie was how it rooted its rom-com shenanigans in the very specific milieu of a long-lasting marriage, between two people exiting middle age for their elderly years who are just pretty sick of each other. It gave what could have been a tired story an extra boost of dramatic stakes, and that was all it took.

But really, so long as Matthew McConaughey is nowhere near this rom-com renaissance, we’re doing something right. Sorry, Matthew. Love your smarm, but not in this genre.

Aja: My suggestion is probably why I don’t wind up getting invited to many cocktail parties: I’d tell them to read more fanfic. Because in fanfiction, especially queer fanfiction, writers tend to simultaneously embrace and explode rom-com tropes. They do that by treating them extremely seriously and with that much-coveted sincerity, but also by centering them within very self-aware lived experiences, making conscious choices about how to either subvert the tropes they’re working with or reframe social issues in order to shamelessly leverage those tropes to create even more shameless fantasy.

Fanfiction is all about cultivating a fantasy version of reality where challenging romances can thrive, but fanfiction also never lets us forget that its creators are driven to build that fantasy version of reality because the real one sucks. I’m reminded of the 2009 sci-fi romance Timer, which is explicitly about that fantasy/reality divide. It’s not a happy movie, but it inadvertently created a massively popular recent fanfiction trope, because people who write romances have increasingly used the genre and its tropes to thwart socially imposed norms that tell us what love should be and look like.

I believe the way to keep this genre resurgence going is to keep writing it within that framework — by embracing romantic fantasy as a powerful palliative and social remedy. Tension between fantasy and reality makes romance stories more passionate, and the more people we have telling these stories, the more diverse and fascinating real-world experiences we can draw on as we create new fantasies for everyone to enjoy.

Genevieve: I’m going to second all of this, but conclude with some cold pragmatism that might seem to undermine what we’ve been talking about. Just bear with me, because studio execs in particular need to hear this: Please don’t think of rom-coms as potential blockbusters.

So much of Hollywood’s modern movie model is built on the quest for big openings and big international box office tallies, and those are not expectations that this genre is in a position to meet. The latter is particularly tough for a genre built on two things — comedy and romance tropes — that don’t easily translate between cultures (give or take the occasional cross-cultural property like Crazy Rich Asians).

I worry that a studio exec who’s deeply internalized this model might hear the words “rom-com resurgence” and be tempted to throw millions at these movies, paying through the nose for bankable international stars and big-name directors with the expectation of a return on investment that is unlikely to happen.

As previously mentioned by Todd, the recent indie/Blumhouse horror revival is the model to follow here: Think small but distinctive, cheap but memorable. Invest in lesser-known talents with a passion for the genre who are eager to bring something new to it while respecting its roots. At the very least, you’re likely to get a good return on investment; if you play your cards right, you might even get some prestige shine in the deal.

The rom-com could and should be a strong part of a studio’s portfolio, but overinvesting in a genre that tends toward the small and the intimate by design is a recipe for a resurgence that’s DOA. As I think we’ve proven with this discussion, there’s plenty of enthusiasm out there for the genre; if Hollywood wants to capture that enthusiasm, it needs to let the rom-com succeed on its own terms.

Original Source -> Why romantic comedies matter

via The Conservative Brief

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happydarkthoughts · 6 years

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A Skeptical Believer Rates Magic

If you know me at all you must know that I’m somewhat weird or just a product of my generation and Urban Outfitters marketing and so I do believe in magic. My overall theory on magic or I guess I should say magick with a “k” (like doing spells and shit) was that it doesn’t matter whether it’s “real” or not, that what it most likely does is creates an action and ritual that sends a message to your subconscious mind, kind of like a mantra, and that the repetition and devotion of time and materials to whatever it is helps you to create it in your own world because it reinforces something in you. Recently the resurgence of psychic mediums (see “Psychic Seatbelt” on Lifetime) has gotten me questioning all of it. I go through this phase every so often in my life, where I question everything. I think the questioning is important. I belong to some “magic” or “witch” communities (mostly online, but somewhat in person too) and the thing I find very frustrating about those groups is that none of them seem to want to question it at all - but then when I’m asking for examples of their experience or how it works for them they just get really defensive. I dunno, as I’ve written about re: Esalen I’m super wary of cults or of not shaking things up and recalibrating every so often. I have always loved this TED Talk about the interconnectedness of faith and doubt. I think that sums it up for me.

youtube

So anyway that said, I’m a little annoyed with all the woo woo shit right now (even though a part of me does love it and “practice” it) so I’m going to go ahead and rank it all on a scale of 1 (being total bullshit) to 10 (meaning it’s legit) so that I know at least where I stand personally as of August 2018:

ASTROLOGY (9/10) I love astrology, it’s one of my faves. At a party some dude got all annoyed with us for talking about it and said it was bullshit and I said, “saying it’s bullshit is bullshit. That’s like saying poetry is bullshit. The point isn’t necessarily for it to be “accurate” -- if you read certain astrologers it’s more like they’re offering a weekly sermon that’s just based on astrology charts. It’s one of those things that really depends on the astrologer, first of all, and how you use it in your life and it’s not about it being ‘real’ it’s about the emotional value you get from thinking about your life in that paradigm.” Yeah, I still stand by that. I think it’s why astrology has never let me down and why I’ve questioned it the least out of everything. Most of the astrologers I read never try to predict the future anyway -- it’s always very much more about what’s going on in the present moment and what you are navigating, how to cope, what your soul lessons are, etc. I read all the ‘scopes at this point because as you might know if you follow my tumblr some weeks I feel more like a Taurus than a Cancer and maybe that’s because my Jupiter is in Taurus lol. Anyway, I think there’s something to it - it’s not so radical to me that the movements of the actual Universe would reflect something in our universe, and beyond that most astrologers have to do a lot of actual study to be any good and the practice is ancient too so it feels less bullshitty to me. It’s like the right brain’s version of astronomy.

TAROT (6/10)

Maybe a 6/10 is too generous, or not generous enough. I could go on a super long tarot rant but I’ll try to keep it succinct. I feel very strongly that you should be very careful who you do a tarot reading with. I have definitely encountered more scam artists this way than not. The thing is most people don’t know what the cards mean and so it’s easy for them to not go into depth on anything and just make up shit people want to hear. I believe some readers are good and genuine, but I think they are generally not working out of a psychic store, you can probably follow them online, and hopefully they don’t charge insane amounts. ALSO I think in my understanding for tarot to really work it should be a conversation with the client about what’s going on in their life. I think we all go into a reading expecting the reader to be psychic and it’s more like a parlor game where we want someone to know some magical specific facts about us to prove it’s “real.” I think it’s mostly not real though. I think that the value of tarot, in my experience, is that the cards do have a lot of imagery and meaning and so you can use that to spark ideas, make connections that you were struggling with, or bring to the surface something you knew but didn’t know you knew. That’s when it’s been most effective for me and when it’s felt like it’s “worked.” And a good tarot reader is just like a good therapist - they help you ask questions and come to understandings but you do the work with them and they (and in this case the cards) are a catalyst to get to those conclusions. Tarot to me is a word association tool. “Eight of Cups” means “moving on from a situation” and I asked about my friendship with so and so and I’m feeling like we’re growing apart and so this just confirms to me that might be the case and to feel okay and peaceful with it -- and I know some people think you shouldn’t read for yourself but I feel like you maybe should only read for yourself (unless you find someone who really knows the cards and isn’t trying to pull a fast one on you) and also take it with a huge grain of salt. I’ve been using my tarot cards while writing lately. It serves the same purpose. It helps me reconnect with the ideas I already had but had forgotten, and then sometimes I pull cards that don’t resonate with me at all for my project so I just throw them back in the deck. In summary: I don’t think tarot is totally magical or mystical or provides divine messages, but I don’t think that means it’s useless either.

YOGA (10/10) Much less to say on yoga because it’s more straightforward. It’s great exercise, I love flowing, some teachers are better and resonate with me more than others and provide a work out that I like more for my body. It helps me connect with my breath and work muscles I wouldn’t otherwise. There’s a spiritual component sure and I do believe that the body carries emotion and so moving your body helps you work through emotion (ie. you feel less depressed when you work out more than when you’re sedentary all the time). So yeah. Yoga is great. MEDITATION (10/10) I use headspace and I don’t always meditate 20 minutes a day. Lately I’ve been a little lazy about sitting and breathing (which is ironic because sitting and breathing is seemingly doing “nothing”) but it’s really helped me to become more mindful of everything and I feel significantly more peaceful than I did a year ago. At the beginning of July I remember thinking, “wow I can’t believe how much better I feel than I did a year ago and it’s like nothing outside of me has changed, and the only thing that has changed is myself and so maybe it’s good nothing externally has changed yet because it’s helped me to see how far I’ve come internally.” Meditation is all about training the mind, knowing yourself, creating space for your emotions, acceptance and self-acceptance, finding peace and calm, not trying to change anything, learning how to just “be,” etc. I find that the practice can be totally secular and there is science behind it too. Meditation is very slow to work and to see “results” and you are technically asked to do it without seeing any results because results are not the point because meditation is essentially not about achievement, but it has really helped me more than anything else. I’ve quit smoking weed for the most part and am really cutting down on alcohol too. I don’t think I could have been able to do those things without meditation. I am also 90% vegetarian now. I dunno. I love meditation. It’s subtle, a life-long practice, has practical results and applications. Plus, a totally personal journey and so you can’t be scammed so much. PSYCHIC MEDIUMS (0/10)

Psychic mediums are totally bullshit and also gross because they’re exploiting grieving families. If you asked me if I believe in an “after life” I’d say “I don’t know” because that’s honest. I’ve been a little obsessed with near death experiences at various points in my life and I’ve read everything from people who had these weird mystical LSD-type experiences and people who were just unconscious and it was nothing. I oscillate on what feels true to me on this, but I think regardless of whether there is something or not I feel very strongly that no human has access to “the other side” on demand for “readings.” I’ve had dreams about loved ones who have passed. I’ve heard stories about people where loved ones had passed and they heard a warning from them that helped them save their life. It is not beyond me to think that maybe there is a possibility we can connect sometimes with some other dimension of life. Even my grandma once told me when she was younger she saw a ghost-type presence of a boy who had passed down the street from some weird disease when he was young (I think, or car accident, dunno, he was young and dead) and he said, “there’s nothing to worry about, this is just the next step” to her. But then if you ask my grandma now she mostly thinks it’s nothing or more like whatever “energy” you have that is your soul just goes back into all of it and you cease to have a unique identity or presence, which also feels logically and practically right to me. Well, whatever, we don’t know, but I do feel uberly certain that no one has 24/7 access to other people’s dead relatives. If someone tells me they had a personal experience, I’d be more inclined to believe them. And even those people aren’t going to be able to “call” on it whenever they want and especially not charge lots of money. So yeah I guess I’m just a little angry about it for some reason, haha. It’s the ultimate scam and also not how this all works if it does work. DREAMS (8/10) I like dreams and think there is value in recording them down. I rarely know what mine are telling me. I don’t have psychic dreams which I think is really good. My friend used to have psychic dreams, but it freaked him out so he asked for it to be “turned off” and then he stopped having them. I wish I could lucid dream sometimes. I have books on lucid dreaming. But... I haven’t really been able to figure that out and my brain is already tired so maybe being consciously aware while I’m sleeping subconsciously isn’t what I want, haha. I think all the things that are personal experiences I’m cool with... I think I’m running into issues with the areas where nothing can be proven and people can be exploited. Hard to exploit your own dreams. They are what they are and they happen for you however they happen for you and maybe eventually we learn what they mean to us too. SHAMANIC JOURNEYING (?/10)

I don’t know a ton about this. Shamanic journeying is also a very different practice depending on what culture you’re talking about... shamanic journeying could mean taking ayahuasca or it could just mean banging some drums and imagining shit in your mind. I’m interested in learning more about it, but it’s also a weird area because it is something that some people feel is being exploited by white people -- and there have been similar concerns about yoga. I wonder about that myself because I don’t want to culturally appropriate someone’s spiritual practice but also I am on my weird, constant spiritual quest and kind of looking for what feels true and what works for me so I’m open to it all. I’ve heard really interesting stories about people who practice shamanic journeying. I would never do any version of it that involves drugs. But I think I understand it to be “conscious dreaming” or like a more active, involved form of meditation. Shamanism also usually involves animal totems and I am all about animals and their symbolism so generally I’m into this idea but haven’t practiced it or delved deep. PALM READINGS (5/10)

I know less about this too, but one time my uncle apparently saw a palm reader and they said “you’re going to get divorced and re-married and have two girls” and then that happened!!! Coincidence, perhaps. This definitely seems like an area where you are susceptible to being scammed, but I would still be interested in finding someone who could legit read palms and had studied the lines and could at least tell me what mine said. I’ve looked at palm reading books before but I just have a hard time telling which line is which or what it’s saying. I guess the jury is out on this one but I think my rule is like, “don’t give anyone money until they’ve proven themselves to have some legit background of study in this area.”

SPELLS (5/10) See above. I don’t necessarily think they “work” I think they just help you connect to an idea and intention in your own subconscious that gives you a stronger likelihood of making it happen for yourself. CRYSTALS (6/10)

I just listened to the Spiritual Gayz podcast on crystals and it was really helpful and I felt like I learned a lot more about them. I think in general my own take is the same way I feel about “spells” in general. That working with them is more about working with your own mind and intentions and the crystal is an object that carries that meaning and is a reminder to you. Also in the spiritual gayz podcast they were talking about how crystals generally have their meaning but that sometimes it’s more about using your intuition... like someone used a citrine to heal their back but it’s not known for healing. I think in my personal experience I mostly don’t believe in them a whole bunch, but they are super pretty and so for some reason I own a ton of them. I meditate with them sometimes and it doesn’t feel any different than when I don’t. This is what I tried to ask my online witch community about haha! Do I not experience anything because I’m a novice at this shit or because it’s less about the actual magic of any of this stuff but more about how it helps you connect with your subconscious so you can go deeper into yourself and heal yourself? I feel like their silence and lack of clarity is sort of my answer. I lean towards this is a little bit BS but they are super pretty and I am still open to being proven wrong and learning more about them.

REIKI (3/10)

Well, I don’t know. I think I lean towards thinking it’s total bullshit but I give reiki three points because there are three points that I think are worth considering: 1) I’ve definitely heard stories of people who took reiki classes or got reiki attunements where they had some weird spiritual crisis / energy shit happening personally and so it seems like it does something. 2) I have heard stories about people who had reiki after a car accident and the doctor told them they did six months of healing in one month and had no idea how. 3) I got a “womb healing” once haha, which is a form of reiki specifically for your womb which is like I guess a creative energy center. I was in an abusive relationship at the time so I think I felt like I wanted something to work for me to help me navigate that. I don’t know that I felt like it worked or not to be honest, but the reiki woman did tell me “you come from a line of very strong women” and that is super true and was like what I got out of that experience. She also gave me some rituals to do that I did do .... and I mean I have come such a long way since that time, and I think all of this esoteric weird “spell” shit has helped me in that process, but again I think the results of this work have been more about my persistence and desire for the psychological change rather than something outside of me creating it. IRISH TEA LEAF LADY (7/10) I go to my Irish Tea Leaf Lady on the 3rd street promenade in Santa Monica once a year since 2011. She has been super right about some things and then not right about others... which for a supposedly psychic reading is sort of low returns maybe, but the stuff she’s been right about has been so weird and uncanny and sometimes specific too that I keep going back. I also love that she doesn’t charge like $40, she’s entirely donation based so you could just give her $5. I think giving her $5 would be a little shitty because even on a purely entertainment value basis she’s worth more than that. But still she sits with me better because I never feel like she’s scamming me. I feel like she reads tea leaves because she’s a weirdo who loves it and it’s not about the money for her. I’m so sensitive about scams, obviously. I think she’s most off in her timing. Her predictions have happened for me but not always when she said they would. She finds the timing based on where the leaves are in the cup so maybe that’s not her specialty. A lot of what she does is reading symbols so lately I try to focus more on the symbols she’s giving me too rather than trying to get her to predict the future per se -- like what symbols to look out for in my own life. Anyway she’s the only psychic I return to on a regular basis and I’d say she’s about 60% accurate but for psychic shit I think that’s really good and again I always have a good time with her and it’s a fun yearly thing to do in January.

PRAYER (9/10)

I dunno, to be honest. Someone said prayer is like talking to God and meditation is like listening to God. I pray sometimes, although usually it’s just me rambling out loud to myself in my car and pretending I’m talking to someone else. For me it’s just helpful to work through some things sometimes, kind of like an invisible therapist. Sometimes I ask for “signs” and I feel like I get them and something feels like it clicks and I’m like, “oh okay I get it.” There might be “no God” and I have my thoughts on “God” anyway. I think prayer is a really nice, harmless activity no matter what way you slice it or no matter what is real or not real. I think generally one prays for guidance or for something positive and so I think “putting it out there” isn’t bad, even if it’s only you talking to yourself ultimately it’s still better to have some kind of relationship with yourself, in my mind, where you’re communicating and trying to work things out (rather than being quiet and keeping it to yourself all the time). In my experience there have been some returns on my prayers, but also sometimes my prayers end up being like existential where I’m like, “sometimes I don’t know if you exist. I hope you do, but sometimes I feel like it’s all bullshit and then I feel a little depressed. But I guess if everything some really strange cosmic accident it doesn’t matter in terms of how I need to live my life. Anyway I’m just feeling a little lost so dunno just thought I’d check in with you to see if you exist today” type of thing. I’m mostly agnostic, I guess, oscillating between being totally convinced of there being more to this world and other times being totally convinced there’s nothing... and I guess with all of it I find prayer to be one of the least harmful things you can do and the most optimistic whether you’re in an atheist mood or not. SYNCHRONICITY (9/10) I love synchronicity. Sometimes I experience so much of it at once I feel like the world is on spiritual fire and that even though I’m sober I might as well be on psychedelic drugs (which I have never taken beyond weed). Sometimes the random coincidences feel so over-the-top to me that it feels undeniable. I couldn’t have made it up and it’s not just me “looking” for connections. I love when that happens. It just makes me feel... calm and connected. It’s like some reassurance that there is connectedness and meaning and that there’s some kind of path that’s adding up over time... And sometimes I go on for so long without any of it that I start to doubt my prior experiences and wonder if they were all bullshit... but usually something happens again to make me feel like, there has to be more to this world than what we can see or know. So I love synchronicity because it feels like tangible external evidence of a deeper feeling and it’s never something I’m forcing or creating on my own. I don’t always know what it means right away, but sometimes something catches my eye and I just know it’s more than I can explain and later on it might make more sense to me to. I feel like Twin Peaks is sort of a representation of this to me. 😬 IN CONCLUSION:

Experiences and practices that are personal and are not about someone else interpreting or translating to you are good and worth pursuing. Most magic practices probably lean towards being bullshit but it doesn’t mean they can’t have or add value in your life. Try not to spend too much money on figuring out the future unless it’s fun and you have reason to trust your reader. There is probably more to the world than we know, and I think a lot of it has to do with the subconscious mind, but I lean towards feeling like any “real” magic in the world is a very personal experience and cannot be conjured by someone else. Sort of like we’re an antennae and psychic phenomenon is a radio station. We can’t control the radio station or what it’s putting out or when it wants to broadcast shit, but we can just be receptive and open. But also no one is a super antennae -- I don’t believe anyone has constant access to the radio station and therefore has the right to charge $400 an hour to listen to what the radio station is saying. Or if they do then they’re working for the FBI right now and we don’t know about them publicly and they are definitely not using those gifts to scam grieving people. But most likely not.

And if someone in a tarot reading says “they’re giving me a message that... blah blah blah” I think that’s a red flag and an indication that they’re putting on a show for you. If they’re just reading the cards and going in depth on their meaning I think that’s more something I’d personally trust more. I’m skeptical of anyone who isn’t a little bit skeptical. I think this can be like a placebo effect. I believe so much that I create the meaning and the connections and then I start seeing more reason to believe it’s all real. I’m also skeptical of people who are totally doubtful too. Anyone who is convinced this is all bullshit feels like bullshit to me. That’s a certain kind of dogma and close-mindedness I can’t abide by because that feels as wrong to me as diving off the deep end. The place I’m at now is wading in the uncertainty and being open but also not fully accepting it all either yet until I get more evidence that it’s worth proceeding further. I’m interested in finding out what reality is and how consciousness works and what humans are capable of and at the moment I can only try things out and measure against my own experiences and anecdotal evidence. So this is where I’m at with it all.

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theseventhhex · 6 years

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Gang Gang Dance Interview

Lizzi Bougatsos, Josh Diamond & Brian Degraw

Photo by Ari Marcopoulos

Gang Gang Dance marks their return with the release of ‘Kazuashita’: their new full length record. ‘Kazuashita’ is an intoxicating mix of shoegaze and electronic ambience, all held together by Lizzi Bougatsos and her otherworldly vocals. Bougatsos, alongside founding members Brian DeGraw and Josh Diamond, formed the group as an improvisational outfit in the early 2000s, and have consistently worked to blur the boundaries between music and art; as comfortable today performing at the Whitney Biennial as they are at Coachella, and count Dash Snow & Nate Lowman, Tinchy Stryder and the Boredoms as previous collaborators. With Brian DeGraw self-producing, the album was recorded in whatever space would play host to them. The band were joined by a number of collaborators including drummer / percussionist Ryan Sawyer and Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel Pink / Lansing Dreiden) who was enlisted for additional production and the mixing of the album. Gang Gang Dance’s two decade career has never acknowledged a barrier between the art and music worlds – consistently offering an impressive array of diverse sounds across seven releases to their credit. ‘Kazuashita’ epitomises this hard working group of individuals with a body of work that is truly captivating and immersive… We talk to Josh Diamond about recording in various spaces, the perils of social media and imaginary celebrity guest lists…

TSH: After a seven-year break, how would you sum up the band dynamic and chemistry as ‘Kazuashita’ began to take shape?

Josh: I think we are coming together in a new way and I think we are still forming our dynamics as we are starting to play gigs again, so the record maybe started the process but now the dynamics are beginning to take form even more. I guess for better or for worse we are adults now and I think we are doing the band because it is very special to us, so we can perhaps voice things we wouldn’t have been able to with each other years ago. I think everyone has been feeling very positive about our project and we have so much history together, therefore I think we can approach it with extra love and respect - I think the break helped this to happen.

TSH: It’s been noted that there was a conscious effort to configure the arc of the record as one piece of music. Do you feel this is why it works as a whole piece of music so well?

Josh: For most of our records we have tried to make a more or less seamless listening experience, where songs and interludes run together and we often do a similar style in our live sets. That said I do feel this record has a kind of narrative arc that works very well as a single piece of music. I find that listening to it as a whole piece of music is more interesting than listening to it chopped into individual “songs”.

TSH: With the album being recorded in New York studios and art spaces, this was very much a different process due to the band being in various places through the whole thing; until close to the end – was this a challenging way to work or did you simply take it in your stride?

Josh: I think it was a challenging way for us to work, it really was a new sort of process for us and it wasn’t always easy. I really like the immediacy of the material coming together with everyone improvising/being in the same zone together. I think having a different process this time around was a good learning experience and also yielded interesting results. A challenge is good and a difference in process can be as well, some avenues perhaps close but others open up. I think it was good for us to even attempt something new.

TSH: In terms of themes and narratives, what sort of subject matter does the album primarily reflect upon?

Josh: Well I can’t speak for everyone, as I’m sure different people and other band members could have slightly different ideas about this. I think in some ways it is difficult to extract our history as a group for so many years from what I feel as far as the themes and narratives of the record. I think it has to do with the passage of time, the fragility and beauty of our planet, and how we are destroying it. Also, the madness of social technology which can be used to create beauty but can separate us from a more pure human experience, and isolate us. I think it’s both despairing and hopeful with more hope than despair. It’s about our family that we have made together through Gang Gang, the title comes from our dear friend Taka’s baby.

TSH: For your guitar work on this release, did you experiment with any new techniques and gear?

Josh: I am always trying to expand my palette on the guitar, a lot of the guitar on the record was done with overdubs, mostly due to the process that was brought up before - that we were in different places for most of the recording process. So each song, or each little part might end up with a different sound or effect depending on what fit to the song in that moment. Jorge, who did a lot of production work in the last leg of the recording helped me dial in a lot of sounds. As for new gear, I normally play the guitar synthesizer and trigger a bunch of synths and samplers as well as the normal guitar sound. On this record I did less of that and mostly played straight (as straight as I get, ha!) guitar, so I guess gear-wise it was a bit stripped down for me.

TSH: What was the process like as the band fleshed out and structured the excellent track ‘Lotus’?

Josh: The track started on Brian’s Electribe - he had a basic skeleton of the song including a melody line that I ended up playing and embellishing on the guitar. I went upstate where Brian was living at the time and him and Liz and I worked out a live version - just the three of us that we performed once at a small venue up there. Then we recorded it, it went through some editing and I think we reworked it again at some point. I remember it used to have a different ending that was scrapped at some point. A lot of this record started very simply, then was reworked and rearranged over a longer period of time.

TSH: Moreover, can you tell us more about ‘Young Boy (Marika in Amerika)’ originating from improvisation…

Josh: I guess what I consider the centering part of the song - the guitar and synth line that happens in the beginning and re-emerges in the chorus, this part was improvised. There was improvisation in our entire process, not just in this song, but the larger process I think this was done through re-editing and re-approaching songs until they felt right.

TSH: Lizzi’s vocal style has always been so stellar. What’s it like to see her style close up and to see her add unique touches to compositions?

Josh: Lizzi is very unique - she comes up with melodies that I think defy expectation - there isn’t anyone quite like her at all. It’s always exciting to hear her vocals on some instrumental that Brian and I have been working on - a song form we have can be completely transformed and elevated when she adds her vox, often in ways that surprise me, despite having worked together for so long.

TSH: You’ve previously talked about wanting the live shows to be a separate medium to the record releases. Are there certain changes that you’re looking to imply for the evolution of your upcoming live shows?

Josh: I love the immediacy of our live shows, and I think we will continue to try and bring that when we perform. We are currently performing some of the material from the new record in our live shows, but we often change our live material from our recorded material and I think they are very much different experiences. We are currently playing a version of ‘Kazuashita’ that feels very cathartic to perform; it has elements and melodies from the recorded version but is also very different. I really like the live version actually - it’s one of my favorite songs of ours to play at the moment.

TSH: I understand that Lizzi became a huge fan of London’s grime music scene many years ago. Has she been delving into the resurgence of UK grime in the last few years?

Josh: We were all into grime many years ago. We heard some of the pirate radio stuff happening in the early 2000’s, through a friend of ours Oliver Payne. I remember I had a cassette set called ‘UK crews 2003’ that we used to listen to a lot which had Roll Deep on it. Grime was definitely an influence (particularly the grime live radio sets from that time) on our early sound. Tynchy was on a jam from our record Saint Dymphna and we did a show with JME years ago. I don’t know if Liz still follows what’s going on now? I personally like the original raw sound from back then and haven’t really gotten into much of the resurgence. I am open though, if you have any recommendations on what to listen to?

TSH: Having never been on social media, what are your views on this medium in general?

Josh: I am sort of terrified of it but interested at the same time. I come from a time when being humble, or self-deprecating, or mysterious, or not wanting to share every intimate detail about your social life was sort of the cooler way to roll. I like meeting up with people in real life and having conversations into the night. I do think social media entails very real risks. I think it can isolate individuals. People get all of this validation from how many “likes” they can get, and this becomes a sort of addiction - it’s an artificial world in many ways, and people just get lost in it. Of course everyone has experienced the modern phenomenon where people are out somewhere with friends but everyone is on their phone, and no one is actually experiencing their actual time together? Somehow the artificial world becomes more important than the one we are living in together. I think it’s also sort of problematic to share such a large part of yourself with giant corporations that spy on you, and target you for ads. It’s nice info for the government to have as well, which they may or may not do anything invasive with, but you never know what sort of corrupt demagogue could be the next president - we have Trump now so clearly there are terrible possibilities - it all makes me a bit paranoid. Another danger of social media is group thought - while it can be a very good medium to organise protest (which I think is positive) it can be very dangerous to have so many people so aligned instantly with some idea that can often be dangerous. Beyond social media I think we are living in an age where information has in some sense flattened our experience of time. No matter where we are we can Google what something is or access a piece of information that would be sought out through means not as instantaneous. We can instantly go on YouTube and be exposed to music that in previous times would have been very difficult to find - one could perhaps naively imagine that it was special somehow because to discover something new could be difficult. I think before there was more of a sense of history, and healthy respect and admiration for those who came before you which was learned with experience - like living in the lower east side with the remnants of Warhol’s factory crew... now this experience of the connection to our past is all easily obtained from an online search. There is something which is good about all of this information being available at all times - it is very helpful, and it makes communication around the world so much easier, and information is probably meant to be free. Still, there are certain dangers, particularly with the social component that I am uncomfortable with. It truly is “everything time” as Taka said on our previous record.

TSH: How have your solo show ventures been since you started a year ago?

Josh: I’ve really enjoyed them. The first one I did felt like a giant accomplishment for me personally - I am somewhat shy about what I do, and am more comfortable collaborating, but it felt so good to be able to get in front of people on my own and play. I would like to do more of them in the future and I really want to make a record as well. A lot of the stuff I make feels half-formed to me and it usually prevents me from releasing it - still I think there is something nice about this suspended quality. Playing a live set was my attempt to “finish” loose ends-because if I can play for 45 minutes with a beginning and an end it turns into something that is whole, at least for the night I do it. I want to record the live set as well and am hoping to put something out there in the coming year.

TSH: What brings about most vocal input and band laughter when Gang Gang Dance is on tour?

Josh: Ah, anything can set us off into laughter. I am fond of the imaginary guest lists we make of random celebrities who will be “attending” our gigs.

TSH: Outside of music, how do you maintain a positive headspace?

Josh: It’s so tough, ha! Music is a special medicine for me. I’ve been making music since I was 4 years old which is needless to say a long time ago. I guess I sort of depend on it to keep myself focused in as positive a direction as I can manage. When I’m not doing music I often don’t maintain a positive headspace and I am prone to depression. However, I do like taking walks - a simple but effective way to keep your brain and body in a state of positive flux.

TSH: Finally, looking ahead with Gang Gang Dance, what matters most with your musical endeavours?

Josh: I want it to continue. I love Gang Gang. I have grown up with this band and have invested so much of my creative energy and time into this thing that we started to build so many years ago. I care deeply about our music, and feel like we have so much more we can create. I think what matters most at this point is maintaining a proper balance with the band and our separate lives. We aren’t in our twenties anymore, and we also have never really had “financial” success or whatever that means these days. I want us to do the things we want to do together and ignore the noise that tells us we have to do this thing or that thing for our career, which can put too much pressure on this project that we do only because we care about it, and each other, and because we want to - not because we will get rewarded for it somehow. If we can find a balance, we will make more music and more records, and I am very hopeful about this. I think we can figure it out, haha!

Gang Gang Dance - “Lotus”

Gang Gang Dance - “Young Boy (Marika in Amerika)”

Kazuashita

#Interview #Gang Gang Dance #lizzi bougatsos #brian degraw #josh diamond #Kazuashita

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