#and adults with such a disconnect from youth that they end up acting like everyone UNDER the age of 18 is a problem

[fabulouslygaybean]

maybe it's just cus i grew up with close family that were significantly older than me (older siblings who are 14+ years older than me, cousins triple my age, etc), but y'all really need to step back and realize that viewing any/all casual or friendly interactions between teens and adults as unsafe or predatory doesn't help anyone. it's one thing to have a preference for who you personally interact with (especially if you're 18+ and have an explicit blog/account/whatever), but acting like nobody should interact with anyone outside their age group both in person and offline is incredibly stupid.

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 14 part b

Alright time for more reactions to Homesqaured- oh jeezus

the last one of these I did was from october last year, hoo boy alright brain time to get back on the time train things are happening fast

we last left off with me thinking they just fucking hilled Harry but I remembered the wrong house so Harrys fine, John not so much

Yeah, John sad but ooh Karkat shows up!

They seem to have a mutual conversation about lost youth and stuff, really makes these characters feel oold

“JOHN: jeez, i'm sorry karkat.

JOHN: i had no idea how much time had passed.

JOHN: i must have gotten a bit distracted by my house being blown up.“

Oh man, John thats a whole ass MOOD

lol at sburb allocated blow job

yeah Karkats right tho, John does kind of need a kick in the pants to see how he might have been useful here, but Johns still stuck in this rut of not seeing anything around him as Real real, so hes blind to all of the consequences of inaction

John its called derealization and depersonalization, you can get help for that yknow

But I mean, cant really blame him, hes being smothered by the fires of Doom all around him

Its interesting to see that Karkat, a Blood player, is more comfortable navigating through things that constrain them and tie them down, since constraint is something Blood and Doom have in common, Chains and Barriers and Laws and etc

Whereas John the Breath player, just gets bogged down, hes totally out of his element

so it ends up being like John: “Id like to cling to some funny moments of my youth pls and try to lighten the situation up a bit because I cant do anything when so heavy”

versus Karkat being like: “BUCKLE UP FUCK TITS THIS SHIT IS YOUR LIFE NOW GETS USED TO WADING KNEE DEEP IN THE SHIT LIKE THE REST OF US GROWN ASS ADULTS”

John: ):

Hmm, both Vriskas have been captured, but Annie basically rescued herself, knowing Vriska Prime she probably has a plan or an idea about that, see well see how that goes

“KARKAT: JANE'S PLAN FOR THIS CONFLICT HAS THUS FAR CONSISTED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF KIDNAPPING VARIOUS HIGH PROFILE CHILDREN.

KARKAT: IT'S BIZARRE.

KARKAT: AS THOUGH WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR OF ATTRITION, WHERE THE MAIN RESOURCE BEING UTILIZED IS THE OFFSPRING OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.KARKAT: IF IT WASN'T ONE OF THE CORE TENETS OF HER FASCISTIC PHILOSOPHY, I'D BE TEMPTED TO SAY THAT CURBING REPRODUCTION MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA, IF ONLY TO PREVENT THIS KIND OF FUCKSHIT NONSENSE FROM HAPPENING.

Oh. Well I guess that was Dirk’s “plans” for Jane all along. Obviously he was using Jane as a vehicle to gather “players” for his eventually next session, interesting

But who has Jane kidnapped in total thus far?

Does Tavros count? he was certainly trapped with her for some amount of his life, but I dont know if that counts as a kidnapping, John certainly tried to kidnap HIM though from the epilogues

Annie certainly counts as being kidnapped

Vrissy has JUST been captured so that counts, and Harry so far is still fine

Which bodes so well for Harry’s future Im sure

Yeah, Vriska should have been able to not outwit any capture attempts, but my guess is either Vrissy got capture and Vriska dove in, OR, Vriska’s doing an inside job so to speak and got caught on purpose, dragging Vrissy along as well

I guess we’ll see when we see their “prison”

Anyway John, don’t get so down on yourself, you’re just ignorant to everythiong around you! thats why nothing makes sense and you can’t connect to anything, easy fix! Just try to learn more and care more about stuff lol

Man does this feel like a strong metaphor between people who are into/care about politics and people who feel like they can’t get into it though

Crossing that hurdle from one side to the other is rough

“KARKAT: BUT NOTICING THE PROBLEM AND MAKING MEANINGFUL PROGRESS TOWARDS SOLVING IT ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.”

yup

man, this is all feeling startlingly relevant to the current times, I should have read this sooner

“ KARKAT: PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME YOU JUST HAD ANOTHER EMOTION THAT WE NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING IN ORDER TO DISSECT. “

hah, oh wow, Karkat when you phrase it like that, it’s almost as if you’ve become self aware of your tendencies to Moirail people out of their problems

Not really that out of character for a Blood player to end up being the Therapy Friend though lol

Just don’t burn yourself out on that though

JOHN: karkat, we still haven't spoken about *you*!

KARKAT: ABOUT ME?

JOHN: yes.

KARKAT: ABOUT *ME*?

JOHN: about you.

KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT ME.

JOHN: well...

JOHN: you know, how you feel!

KARKAT: HOW I FEEL.

I know Karkat has probably matured past misunderstandings like this now given he’s really come into a great understanding of his Blood aspect, but by golly do I wish Karkat would misunderstand this as John’s attempts to be Moirail-reciprocal sdkjfhwlijebr

What a perfect way to continue their relationship, on top of more misconstrued romance quadrants XD

Spades is old Hat, Diamonds are in now babey

Oh

this started out funny, but Karkat’s emotional rant just ended up being depressing not funny ):

I have to say though, it is REALLY interesting to see John’s depression manifesting in a very breathy sort of way

Karkat in these panels was more closer together, connected, but as John gets more and more depressed over the course of Karkat’s rant when he realizes Karkat doesn’t know dave died, the panels get seperated by lines of blue, and slowly drift off away from John and from eachother

but thats basically been hows its been manifesting all along

the more John feels Disconnected and Seperate from the reality he finds himself in, the more he finds his will untethered, the more depressed and unable to act he gets

and right now its so much so that even a fuller fledged Blood player is having trouble grounding him back down

I don’t know, I always viewed the depression metaphor as a dark watery void to sink into and feels heavy and encapsulating (but probably thats just my Light-y interpretation of it)

so its interesting to see the depression metaphor as this floating disconnection instead, so much that it leans towards derelaization/depersonalistion/dissociation as well

I wonder if John will start dealing with bouts of actual full blown dissociation as this gets worse?

I mean, Breath aspect has given the literal ability to ghost around wherever he pleases in all other ways, why not literally and physcologically as well?

So John seems to be fully overembracing his aspect here, to a very unhealthy degree here, which I see you asking “aha Dahni, but hes doesn’t have overblown self esteem here, quite the opposite, is this not an inverted state instead? or something else because hes acting like hes inverting to Breath?”

and I say not so! reader, for overembracing is the idea that through your aspect, your will is overwriting the wills of others, and in someone like Vriska, this manifests in a very selfish and over self esteemed way

but is not John’s will overwriting Karkat’s here? Through Breath? And isnt John also being a little selfish here? Considering how he feels about things, more important than how anyone else feels? How Karkat feels?

John is too dissociated to understand that this reality is Real and has Consequences he needs to care about, and Karkat is trying to fight against that, trying to instill his belief that no, this shit is real and it Matters Why Don’t You Care, trying to ground him, trying to give him that dose of Blood he needs

but John’s overembracing Breath is just, blowing that all away, its becoming too strong

Roxy in the epilogues dealt with this as well, when John was really in the shits with it and started to believe Roxy’s whole personality was somehow fake and his own construction, because he convinced himself Roxy would never choose to do the things she did, but Roxy was able to snap him out of it and make him understand and respect it was her own choices that led down his path, not the idea that John’s choices are somehow overriding everyones

But man, John sure is riding that Breath train way too hard, and he keeps snapping back into it as well

Further and Further

[veryvincible]

Do you think you could share some of your Tony Ty youth/relationship days hcs? hehe

Yours truly,

Tys obsessed fan

Oh boy! I have been sitting on this for a few days now, because there is, uh, a lot. Also, I adore you, and I love every Ty ask I receive.

I think this post would end up far too long if I responded the way I desire to in my heart, so I’ll keep it relatively simple (edit: it did not stay relatively simple, and also it branched out slightly into other topics. This is so very long. Be warned.)

Content warnings here for psychological/emotional abuse/domestic abuse/child abuse!

I like to think they didn’t really have a “let’s get together!” moment. I think they ended up becoming close, they were casual with each other, and it just kind of... became what it became. I think they probably ended up using labels at some point, but I don’t think there was ever an official, “Would you like to go out on a date with me?” or “Would you want to be, like, boyfriends?” moment. 

I think Tony was a generally isolated kid (obviously, he gained acquaintances like Bruce and potentially Reed as he grew older, but you know) and Ty was... probably also a generally isolated kid. Ty may have had a few other “friends” around, given what we know about him; he’s certainly charismatic. I don’t think Ty would have really developed close friendships with many people, though, given that his personality seems more rotten the closer you get to him.

We don’t see a lot of their childhood together at all, so this is almost entirely shit I’ve come up with for the sake of fic writing and general note-taking for the sake of coherency with how I write Ty, but.

One thing I tend to lean toward is the idea that Ty had kind of an awful home life. This isn’t really an, “Aw, boo, so sad, what a tragic man,” sort of thing so much as it is that... I think Ty and Tony are at their most interesting when they’re contrasting forces, and the idea of Tony (a victim of abuse who broke the cycle) becoming friends with Ty (a victim of abuse who perpetuates the cycle) at a young age, not in spite of their differences but because of them, is something I really like to think about.

We don’t actually get much of Ty’s parents in canon-- they’re kind of implied to be, like, Fine Parents. They’re contrasted with Howard Stark, who pulls the shark-eat-shark business motherfucker thing and basically causes Mr. Stone’s business to, like. Drown, or whatever. You know. The contrast there is implied, and I respect that for what it is. That being said, that’s not what interesting for me to write, and as such, I’ve chosen to tweak these little details for the sake of my more personalized (and slightly more self-indulgent) fic writing experience.

I think there’s a lot of potential in considering the differences between how they act at home as opposed to how they act with each other, too. I think Home Tony is generally apprehensive and subdued, but more uncertain and anxious than outright fearful 24/7. In IM Vol. 1, Howard was shown to be unpredictable; we got to see a lot of bad, but there were also sparkling moments wherein they seemed to be bonding as a father-son duo, and Tony would actually get to work with his father and learn from his father. I think that very well could have exacerbated the anxiety he felt, because he’s not being taught to never touch anything ever-- he’s being taught that there are very specific circumstances under which he’s able to explore as he’d like to, and those circumstances are 1) virtually impossible to accurately predict and 2) subject to change at the drop of a hat. So, Tony has been shown to be at least a little bit capable of testing the waters with what he’s allowed to do in the house and what he’s not allowed to do. That doesn’t make it any less anxiety-inducing, it just makes him a tiny, tiny bit of a more active child than one who’s constantly paralyzed.

Home Ty, to me, would be the opposite-- he is fearful 24/7, and as such, his behavior as a child is kind of... flawless, at least in the eyes of parents who think that children should be seen, not heard (and sometimes not even seen). I think both of his parents were abusive-- his father more so than his mother, but certainly both of them, if only because I think it would be yet another nice contrast between him and Tony, whose mother wasn’t perfect but certainly tried harder and felt more for Tony than Howard did. I like to think Ty was kept on a very short leash at home; boundaries were predictable, there were no “glimmering moments” he could grasp onto in order to make him feel like there was ever a chance of having normal family dynamics, and he was too afraid to really... do anything about it.

In contrast, I think Boarding School Ty was probably a lot pushier, a lot more risk-taking, and generally just... took up more space. I think he was still pretty fearful of authority and nervous about punishment, but he was well aware of the fact that this was distinctly different from being at home and that most people at school didn’t give a flying fuck about him. It likely could have been both liberating and anxiety inducing for someone so used to being around people who found it important to control him. I think he was probably pretty manipulative at this point, but I don’t think it was at the point where you would point to him and go, “Oh, what a fucked up, toxic person!”, especially since he was, like... a little fucking dude. Like, a fucking young’un. But I think the seeds were sort of planted here, and given that he had no healthy relationships to model himself after, he worked off of the assumption that in order to have control as opposed to being controlled, he needed to 1) possess things, 2) protect them aggressively, and 3) make sure his authority wasn’t threatened.

Boarding School Tony (from what little we’ve seen of him, though we can imagine he was probably similar to pre-boarding school Tony for a while, just with more Issues now) was probably the opposite-- less willing to take up space and less willing to take risks. It’s not unimaginable to assume that he might have thought his (extremely) mild exploratory tendencies might have had something to do with the abandonment, and he very well could have adjusted accordingly; if him causing trouble for people was what pushed his parents to leave him, he would very simply not cause trouble. A lot of this is nabbed from Adult Tony tendencies, wherein pretty much everyone else is prioritized over himself and he’s practically incapable of finding himself worthy of anything at all.

It’s the classic “extrovert friend-adopts an introvert” trope, except... it’s a severely damaged child feeling gutsy enough to finally, finally take up space and find something to possess and control for his own for once... friend-adopting a severely damaged child who very likely feels like the best way to proceed in relationships is to very clearly identify boundaries, figure out what it is the other person wants from him, and try to adhere to those desires as much as he’s able.

Of course, canon portrays the relationship as a “friendly rivalry” that Ty takes much more seriously than Tony does. From what we’ve seen of Tony, though, Tony doesn’t actually want to be better than anyone. In fact, he tries his best to make it seem like the opposite. He treats everyone like they’re on the same level, he tries to simplify the concepts he’s explaining so no one feels inferior to him, and, generally, he just... isn’t much of a braggart. That isn’t to say competitive/proud people can’t be kind and gentle and want to level the playing field often, but in Tony’s case, it seems that competition is best for two things: 1) having two intelligent, capable people trying to outdo each other and, in the process, creating better and better technology for the betterment of society at large, and 2) lighthearted fun.

For Ty, it very clearly wasn’t just lighthearted fun, and I think most of their childhood rivalry would have become formulaic at a point: Tony would put a good amount of effort into their competitions, but if it seemed that Ty was lagging behind too much, Tony would simply back off and let things even out. I don’t think Ty was predictably a sore loser; in fact, I think he was unpredictable, and I think a part of Tony that had only known life to be unpredictable found some level of sick comfort in that.

For Tiberius Stone specifically, I tend to read more into the unintended consequences/implications of his character based on one-off lines that... weren’t really intended to say much. The story canon gives us isn’t incohesive, exactly! It’s a pretty good story, especially if you’re not hellbent on analyzing character motivations. There’s just a lot about Ty that doesn’t seem very stable. Obviously, he’s not a stable person, given that he, uh, freaked the fuck out and tried to take over the world. But when I say Ty doesn’t seem very stable, I mean his character doesn’t seem the most stable at a second glance; we’re given conflicting accounts about his motivations, his intentions, his past, and even what he’s trying to do in the moment. And some of these inconsistences can be found in dialogue from Ty’s own mouth.

Now, if you read into it from a point of view that’s canon-adjacent as opposed to canon-compliant (i.e., assuming there’s much more of a story there than canon offers, and canon’s “case closed!” for the timeline of Ty’s life isn’t actually a closed case), you can gauge not only some level of dysregulation, but also... a level of delusion, almost. Ty seems disconnected from reality, but it’s not like there’s one single alternate timeline of events that’s cohesive in his head. It feels like his view of the world and, most importantly, himself (and this is excluding dialogue wherein he’s explicitly lying to Tony in order to manipulate him).

Most notably, we can kind of gauge fluctuations in his own views of his self worth. He engages in constant competition with Tony, he refuses to come back to America after leaving until he’s more successful than Tony, and pretty much everything he does is to prove he’s better than Tony. So, he thinks he’s better than Tony, right?

Well, not really. Because so much of his life was spent with the understanding that he wasn’t better than Tony. That was the whole reason he was gone for so long. He said he’d come back once he’d beat Tony, and... he still hadn’t beaten Tony. The beginning of the narrative leads you to assume that he thinks his big victory was being richer somehow, but it was all a set-up to bait Tony into Dreamvision. He comes across like he wants to kill Tony at first, and when that doesn’t work, he wants to... keep Tony. Like a pet, almost. But he also wants Tony to... kill him?

It’s a lot. It’s messy. It’s inconsistent. And that’s kind of what’s interesting about it. It (unintentionally, probably) suggests that Ty doesn’t have consistent motivations, which is something you do see often in people who are in survival mode in environments that don’t necessarily warrant it. It suggests a psychological wound that’s easy to poke at.

Essentially, Ty just comes across as very... hurt. Which, y’know, doesn’t justify shit and doesn’t make him any better of a person, but it provides the opportunity for some interesting narratives to sprout. Figuring out all the ways that Tony could unintentionally pick at this psychological wound of his and all the ways Ty could poorly respond is neat, I think, and I feel like these kinds of narratives tend to be very... raw, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. They just kind of hit hard, especially for those who have experienced similar situations.

It’s just something that’s terribly common in abusive relationships-- any implication that the traumatized abuser is doing something wrong can be a trigger for a borderline nervous breakdown, which makes communication practically impossible and, if the victim of the abuse feels obligated to stick around or take on the role of caretaker, turns the relationship into a cycle of insecurity and misery on all fronts. That’s not to say the abuser and the victim are suffering equally or are equally justified/valid, but it is a kind of relationship dynamic that can be incredibly cathartic to both write and read, and it’s also just... I don’t know. It just, as the kids say, hits different.

So, rewinding about four paragraphs there (whoops, this is getting long), I think most of my feelings about youth/relationship days Ty/Tony kind of center around this concept of two suffering people handling their trauma in totally opposite ways. I think it’s especially interesting to look at it from the point of view of them as younger adults (or teenagers, or children) who aren’t so set in their ways quite yet. You see these redemptive qualities and you see these children and these teenagers who are so, so ready to be helped and saved and cared for, but with the knowledge that they just... don’t get that. Not for a long time, at least.

It can feel fatalistic from a narrative standpoint, and... I mean, it kind of is. There are very few circumstances under which I could see Ty getting a redemption arc of any kind, and that’s kind of what makes a younger Ty so tragic. Everything he does is born of insecurity and anger, and everything Tony does is born of insecurity and love.

I think (for a short period of time, at least), they molded each other. Ty’s anger and competitiveness only solidified Tony’s inferiority complex and Tony’s inability to really, genuinely stand up against Ty in a way that would make any lasting meaningful changes only cemented the idea in Ty’s head that this was an acceptable way to be.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are some more simple and concise headcanons, because you asked for them and I’m sorry this became so terribly long and broke off in so many different directions:

- I think Tony and Ty bickered a lot as they got older. I don’t think Tony was totally incapable of standing up for himself, but I do think Tony probably had a tendency to call Ty out in the moment, and when Ty became too agitated and too unreasonable, Tony just left it alone and let it settle. 

- I think Ty can play house extremely well. He probably remembers all of Tony’s favorite foods, favorite songs, favorite fabrics, favorite... I don’t know what other favorite things you could have, but you get my point. I don’t think he always used this information, but I think it would be incredibly important for him to know how to make someone feel loved, even if he didn’t always employ these methods (and in some cases, may have actively withheld certain kindnesses as acts of pettiness). I think it was also incredibly important for him to know Tony’s dislikes, for... obvious reasons.

- As I said before, I think Ty had a tendency to become terribly dysregulated; I think he was more than capable of both premeditated manipulation and unintentional manipulation. I think he very likely could have fallen into a spiral of thoughts that could make it pretty clear just how easily his self worth and his view of Tony’s worth fluctuated. 

- Tony’s just... a stronger person than Ty. That’s a given. That’s been proven. And I think a lot of Tony’s willingness to put up with Ty would have come from this idea that he was more resilient and Ty was more fragile and volatile, so if Ty needed to take shit out on him every so often, that was fair enough.

- Another factor that may have played into Tony’s tolerance of Ty’s behavior in their youth (which, again, wasn’t nearly as awful as what Ty did as a grown ass man, given how Tony responded to Ty post-Dreamvision and how he pretty much immediately broke things off-- though, I very much enjoy the concept of Tony making some effort to make amends and Ty failing to meet him in the middle yet again) could have been the fact that it feels like Ty probably didn’t have a lot of other friends at all, especially not close friends. I think Tony would very much carry the weight of this “Maybe I’m the only person in the world who loves him” mindset. He values human life quite a bit, and I believe that even on a less intimate scale, if Tony tried to view the situation through the perspective of an outsider, he would still feel terribly, terribly saddened by the very human tragedy of being forced to take more than you can reasonably handle and becoming difficult to redeem as a result of this-- not because there’s no good left in you, but because you’re so frightened by the idea of even touching the trauma that you can’t force yourself to acknowledge you have a problem to begin with.

- I don’t think Ty feels the same comfort and warmth from physical contact that most people do, not because of anything innate (i.e. a natural preference), but because the only physical contact he received for a long, long time was, uh... Awful! That being said, I think he enjoys physical contact on the basis of being the center of attention, and he probably initiated physical contact quite a bit. I think Tony’s very big on physical contact, and Ty would very much play into Tony’s preferences here, too. Just to make himself seem like a better, more attentive boyf.

- This one is less tragic-- I think Ty and Tony get pretentious together! While I adore in-canon comparisons between Tony and the rest of high society, I also think a long-forgotten part of Tony’s character in fanon is the fact that he really does fit in with a more yacht-having crowd just as much as he fits in with your average Joes. He was raised by them and with them, after all, and his education was shaped by this. Of course he doesn’t love a lot of the culture around it, but with regards to the more harmless aspects of being a privileged kid in the environment he was in (the experiences one might have that aren’t inherently negative, that is, like having certain extracurriculars or being exposed to certain educational content), I think Ty and Tony really mesh here. Tony’s sense of humor with Ty would be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Steve, which would also be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Rumiko. Tony’s incredibly well-rounded, and I think he could match Ty’s Classics-loving, borderline classical theater kid tendencies very well.

- This one is 100% headcanon, based on virtually nothing other than, like, one comic panel... that isn’t even awesome evidence. It’s just a personal hc. I think Ty’s gay. Like, obviously, he’s gay for Tony, w/e. But I think Ty’s gay as in, Ty is exclusively attracted to men. The only women he ever had eyes for (or showed interest in) were the women that Tony had shown interest in/dated first, implying that there’s more of a possessive/competitive aspect than anything really... genuine. Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t be bi, pan, or anything else (or straight, obviously, but this whole post is about him and a guy he likes to fuck, so that doesn’t really fit into the theme, here), but I prefer to write him as someone who’s only really interested in men (Tony specifically), and I prefer to write Tony as a bisexual man with a preference for women. This wasn’t really intended to be a big contrast between them; I had the headcanon for Tony already set in stone (haha), and for a long while I wrote Ty as a bi man, but recently I’ve kind of shifted things around to better accommodate my feelings about these characters.

- I love, love, love tattooed Ty. Get this man a quote in Latin on the base of his neck. Get this man some symbolic tattoos. Let this man be a poet who simultaneously wants to appear profound for appearances and wants to have these symbols on his body just because he likes them, and he likes to look at them, and they feel reflective of who he is. I have very specific Ty tattoo thoughts that I do not remember at all, but this is the gist of it.

- I think Ty handles the “normal” adventurous stuff, but he’s far more of a, uh... I don’t know, a pussy? than Tony is. Tony deals with actual threats; Ty deals with fake, stupid threats. Ty is the guy who rids the dorms of cockroaches when Tony’s too afraid to and Tony is the guy who handles home invasions.

- I think the vast majority of Ty’s abuse is emotional/psychological, not only because this is what comes most naturally to him and it’s easy for him to fall into these manipulative tendencies without necessarily thinking about it, but also because physical abuse would cross a line for him in his head that would be very difficult to ignore. I think, if you take into consideration how volatile he seems, his flip-flopping back and forth between how he feels about both himself and Tony could become more exaggerated and more severe, possibly leading to an irreversible breakdown of his psyche. I think there could very well be an, “Oh, I’ve become my father” moment if that were to happen, which is exactly why it doesn’t happen. Ty’s too wrapped up in this idea that, so long as he doesn’t cross that line, everything he does can still be justified. Which is garbage.

- Tiberius did not like Sunset Bain. Sunset Bain did not like Tiberius. 

There’s a lot more that comes to mind, but this is already upwards of 30 paragraphs, and I, uh. Do not want to make this longer than it already is! So, do with that what you will.

Again, obligatory note here that this is canon-adjacent and canon-inspired, but not an analysis of canon material in the sense that I’m attempting to pick apart what the intents of the writers were. What canon provides is much more straightforward. These are headcanons, this is for funsies, and a lot of less important background details have been tweaked for the sake of the narratives that I, as a fanfic writer, would like to write and see written.

Thank you so much for the ask! This was legitimately so nice to write. I rarely ever get to spam about this, which is very likely why there’s just so much text every time I receive an ask like this, but. Again, it was very nice and I’m very grateful for you, anon.

[dilfdoctordoom]

Star sapphire Bette Kane AU???!!

Yes!!!! It’s been on my mind for a while now & I really, really wanna write it ‘cause I think it could be fun. I don’t really. Have a plot. But I do know some of the things I want to happen! I’ve got the love interest down, at least. Not quite who I’d expected it to be, but, like, I’m a sucker for characters that nobody knows anything about.

And it ended up way longer than I first thought, so I’m gonna be putting it under the cut.

Bette has always had a connection to love, this is just an objective fact. Everyone she meets, every team she joins, she always tries to care about them, no matter what

But all the teams she’s on (Titans West & LA) have dissolved, everyone going their separate ways. She still talks to them but she feels kinda disconnected. There’s this overwhelming belief that she’s the second choice, that none of them genuinely care about her, that’s been instilled in her since she was Bat-Girl

So she leaves LA behind her, tries to forget the ghosts of all her dead friends, and moves back to Gotham. It’s home, even if she keeps trying to escape it, because a part of her will always be that little kid in a homemade mask, trying to impress her aunt, her cousin, the entire world to a lonely kid

And she finds that her older cousin Kate is back in Gotham too. They used to be close when they were younger, with Kate acting as a big sister to her at times, but since her teens, they haven’t talked all that much

Bette still wants that connection though. She loves her cousin (she loves all her family, even when that feeling isn’t returned) and since they’re both here, why shouldn’t they spend time together?

Kate always seems to blow her off and never gives a reasonable explanation. It gets to the point where Bette thinks that maybe Kate doesn’t want to spend any time with her, that maybe she’s the second choice once moe

Then she sees Batwoman

Then she knows

This is Bette Kane. She was a child when she discovered the original Bat-Woman’s identity and now she’s an adult, years of training and detective work under her belt, and she doesn’t even need that. She’d recognize Kate Kane anywhere

She’s been meaning to get back into the game anyway. She’d promised herself after LA she wouldn’t but after only a month back in Gotham, she feels that itch. She wants to be jumping from building to building, wants the adrenaline rush that only comes with freefalling off a rooftop. There are many things that Bette Kane loves and being a superhero is definitely one of them

She works as Flamebird alongside Kate and for the chance to spend time with her family, she pretends that Batwoman’s dismissal of her doesn’t bother her. She fixes on a smile and she goes along with the entire Plebe thing, even though she’s been doing this longer, even though she’s a fully capable hero in her own right

She’d take all the little comments, all the judgement in the world, to spend time with somebody she cares about

And in this world, like in so many others, Bette pushes herself until she breaks. Harsh words from her cousin, from somebody she adores, and she goes out into the field an emotional wreck. She should know better at this point but there’s an anger boiling under her skin and she needs some sort of release

She goes out on patrol and she comes across the Hook

She’s angry and she’s desperate to prove herself and that is never a good mix

She’s not so angry anymore when Hook leaves her bleeding out in the streets

She’s not angry at all

She just wants to apologize. She doesn’t think she’s going to make it (blood, there’s so much blood, there shouldn’t be this much blood) and she wants to tell Kate, Bruce, Kathy, Dick, Gar, everyone she’s ever tried to impress, that she’s sorry for being a disappointment

She wants to tell them that she loves them all, so so much. She wants them to know that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for them

She doesn’t get a chance

But instead of the DEO coming across her almost dead body and using her a bargaining chip, instead of becoming a pawn in a game that nobody told her about, there’s violet light

There’s a voice, soft and kind, and it offers her an escape. It’s a ring and it asks her to accept it, to join its fight, and she says yes. How could she not?

The world fades out in a violet hue and when Bette opens her eyes, she’s no longer on Earth

Zamaron is so different to everything she’s known, the Star Sapphires a whole new ball game, but this is Bette

This is the girl that saved Batman when she was just a kid

This is the girl that was told to quit by her hero and refused

This is the girl that would do anything to spend time with the people she loves

She takes it all in stride. She’s been friends with aliens before, known an interdimensional imp. She can handle this

It helps that Carol Ferris takes her under her wing for training

Carol is everything that her previous trainers were not; kind, helpful, compassionate, caring. There’s no snapping at her if she gets something wrong, no refusal to acknowledge her skills. There’s a certain amount of respect and Bette has never been treated with that

She still doesn’t tell Carol much about her life on Earth. She doesn’t mention being the original Bat-Girl (doesn’t want to hear the overly familiar ‘but wasn’t she a redhead?’), doesn’t mention Kate or Bruce or Dick or the Titans

Out here, in the depths of space, with a ring powered by the love in her heart, she’s allowed to be Bette Kane. There are no expectations, no writing her off because of a dumb mistake in her youth. There’s just Bette, the power of love, and the growing feeling that maybe she can be accepted

And you have to remember, Bette isn’t like Dick. She doesn’t work with the Justice League and she doesn’t know much about the Lanterns outside of vague allusions from Bruce

When she meets Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner, she finds that she likes them. Really, really likes them. Guy isn’t the asshole that Bruce made him out to be and Kyle ━━

Kyle is the exact kind of person that Bette always ends up befriending. It certainly helps that Carol enlists him to help Bette control her abilities

(Because here’s the thing about the furthest ends of the emotional spectrum ━━ they’re dangerous. Rage can rip your mind apart, can change you as a person, can blot out any form of logic. And love, love is so powerful, so overwhelming, and Bette is so full of it. Control sometimes slips away from her and it’s always a battle to keep her head on straight)

So. She’s away from Earth, away from her family, and that should be scary. That should terrify her

But it’s so hard to be afraid when she’s surrounded by people that support her, that lift her up instead of knocking her down

And she knows that Kate and Bruce have only ever had good intentions. She knows that they were just looking out for her, but she’s starting to think that maybe they did more damage than good

On Earth, she was always, always thought of as the dumb kid, the airhead with a crush on Robin

Here, though, on Zamaron, she’s just the latest in a long line of Star Sapphires. She’s known for a mean right hook, the copious amount of sparkles added to her suit and her ability to befriend everything and everyone she comes across

Bette’s a likeable person. This is a fact; look at the teams she’s been on, look at the number of people she’s managed to work with

Bette’s also a lonely person. She puts her whole self forward and she’s never been treated in kind. She’s everybody’s second choice, the cast-offs, the stand-in until they can get someone better

(Maybe that’s not true. Maybe, maybe Bette doesn’t see it, the way Garfield brightens up when she arrives, the way Hank’s anger disappears because she’s making him laugh, the way Kate hugs her like she’s something important)

(But maybe, maybe the years have gone by and nobody has ever said those three little words to her. Maybe she’s spent her life without hearing anyone say ‘I love you’)

(And maybe that affects a person)

With Carol, with the Star Sapphires, with the Green Lanterns she’s slowly starting to befriend, it doesn’t feel like that. She’s not anyone’s consolation prize ━━ she’s a respected member of a powerful force of love

Can you imagine what that’s like? Going from your lowest point, bleeding out with the belief that you’re a failure to everybody you’ve ever loved, to a hero of the cosmos, with violet light sparking off you at every second? Can you imagine the thrill of it?

And flying! Bette has always been an adrenaline junkie, hasn’t bothered to keep it a secret, and this, soaring through the stars, is a high like no other. It’s pure joy and it’s all hers, not the product of someone else, not some false happiness designed to appease the people around her

Bette’s a nice person

A too nice person, some would say

And maybe Carol gets her first glimpse of this when, in a fight against the Sinestro Corp, Bette gets taken, prisoner

She’s a terrible choice, to be honest. Anyone, Yrra, Carol herself, would have been better

Because Bette knows how to make people like her

It’s a talent, really. One that’s been honed since she was a kid desperate for approval and one that might be a little out of practice (because with the ring on her finger, she never needs to pretend to be something she’s not), but it’s always there

You can’t spend years twisting and turning into a different person to please whoever you’re around for such a skill to go away

So Carol gets to see this, and the kindness, and that ability to make friends with anyone, when the rescue mission gets called off

Called off because Bette makes it back to Zamaron, offering Lyssa Drak a kiss on the cheek in thanks

Called off because fear doesn’t do much against a girl shaped by it. Because the machinations of the Sinestro Corp has nothing on the terror induced by the gaps in her memory, the razor-sharp smile she sees in her nightmares, the feeling she got on the edge of death

Called off because once Bette Kane sees somebody she thinks is attractive, she can’t stop herself from flirting

Called off because Bette is used to being friends with villains. Because Bette has forgiven everything Hank Hall has ever done, has rolled her eyes and told Tara Markov that her past doesn’t have to define her. Because she forgives, coming from a place of unending love

That’s not to say that things go perfectly all the time

She gets hurt. Sometimes it’s physically, when a threat is a little too much for to take, even with her training, even with her ring. She’s only human, after all, and humans falter all the time

And sometimes, it’s emotionally. She gets hurt when she goes to Thanagar and sees the face of one of her oldest friends, when she’s struck with the memories of his funeral

She gets hurt when she has to fight Charley Parker

She gets hurt when she feels the love radiating off them both regardless of what side they’re on

She cries for the first time in a long time on that day and she tries to hide on some desolate planet, away from Carol and her kindness, Guy and the way he always understands, Kyle and his calming presence. She wants to feel the hurt, feels like she deserves it (because she failed him, didn’t she? She didn’t look into his death and now one of her closest friends has become one of her greatest enemies)

She wants to be alone to punish herself and maybe if she was still on Earth, if she was with the Bats, that would be allowed. They are, after all, the masters of brooding on their lonesome

But she’s not on Earth. She’s in space, she’s surrounded by people that care about her and all their numerous friends

It’s Hal Jordan that finds her and she thinks there’s something funny about that. Something that would drive Bruce insane and she can’t help the choked back sobs when she thinks of him and his disapproving looks, his petty demands designed to stop her from being a hero, his funeral and the darkness that descended after it

There are plenty of people that know about regret, about feeling like you’ve let down the people closest to you, and the man that launched himself into the sun looking for redemption, who made his time as the spirit of vengeance offering second chances, is one of them

Her life as a Star Sapphire so far from perfect, but it’s better than the one she had on Earth for one simple reason ━━ she’s no longer defined by her past

Or by her future

She hasn’t told them that she was a hero. She knows that Carol suspects (she was, after all, the one that treated Bette’s wounds when she first arrived, the one that saw the Flamebird suit), but she doesn’t know about Bat-Girl. She doesn’t know how to tell any of them about her past

She doesn’t think she can tell them about her future. It looms over her, as it’s always done, this impossible reality where she will die, where she dons a Batwoman costume of her own

She used to want that, to be Batwoman, but the years have gone by and the mantle seems drenched in red. It’s not for Kate, not for the woman that deserves to be Batwoman. No, it’s soaked in blood for the girl that didn’t notice the holes in her aunt’s story

(Or maybe she did. Maybe somebody made her forget)

She’s never wanted to die, but now, when it seems like the universe is finally on her side, the idea is terrifying. She’d accepted it before, on some level, let herself run headfirst into danger because she doesn’t die yet, the future version of her said so, there’s still so much to do before the green of the Lazarus Pits takes her over

That acceptance has been gone for a while

She laughs with fellow Star Sapphires, gets drinks with Guy Gardner, goes flying among the stars with Hal Jordan when it all gets too much. She talks strategy with John Stewart, those years under a master manipulator finally paying off, she rests with Kyle Rayner while he sketches. She spars with Yrra Cynril, feels the rush of adrenaline that comes with the knowledge that this woman could kill her, and she talks about make-up and fashion with Arisia Rrab. She sneaks away somedays for a secret meet-up with a woman that’s supposed to be her enemy, indulges in the destructive nature of Lyssa Drak for just a moment, lets herself be consumed in soft kisses and whispered threats

And in all of those moments, the need to live is a thrumming, living beast within her

She knows she has to go back to Earth at some point, has to face her future head-on, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to die by an old friend’s hand

She doesn’t want to watch Duela Dent kill her. She doesn’t think that even a Lazarus Pit could really bring her back from that

Bette is afraid. She’s not a Green Lantern; she’s not supposed to be fearless

And really, it’s not her death that she dreads. It’s what comes after it. It’s the glow of a pit, the hollow smiles her future self gave. It’s the emptiness of her eyes

It’s the missing ring on her ring

(She thinks that might explain why her future self seemed to be missing something)

She doesn’t have the words to tell anyone this, though. She’s been taught to keep her fears to herself, lest they ben used against her, and besides

How do you tell the people that you love care about that you’re destined to die?

Bette Kane believes in destiny. She has two friends granted powers by the Lords of Order and Chaos, has seen twisted paths all lead to one final destination. She knows that she’s going to die, going to be thrown in a Lazarus Pit, going to fight against her family

(Her old one, at least. Future Bette never mentioned her new family and she hopes (she prays) that it’s because they’re safe, just far away from Earth)

She’s still Bette Kane, though, and a Bette Kane that’s spent so much time with Green Lanterns, with the champion of love. She learns about stubbornness in the face of an immense threat. She learns about survival through sheer willpower, through the endless power of love

She thinks she might be able to manage it

Bette Kane has always had a connection to love. Her ring works off of it, feeding off and into it, an endless loop that lets her soar among the stars

She’s seen love accomplish the impossible

She doesn’t see why she can’t just use love to stop that future

So she avoids Earth, the place she’s destined to die

It’s not that hard, not like she has to go there often

It’s not like anyone would want her back, anyways. She remembers her final conversation with Kate, remembers all of the times Bruce told her to give it up. She remembers her friends splintered and going their separate ways. She remembers slipping away for a year in between Bat-Girl and Flamebird and remembers nobody even noticing

What reason does she have to think that’s changed?

Which helps her decision to avoid Earth

And she does avoid it. It’s not hard, with all the different aspects of the emotional spectrum breaking out into fights, the Rann/Thanagar tensions, the million and one issues running through the universe

It’s easy to pretend that she isn’t even avoiding it

Until Carol needs her help

Until Carol asks for her help

Until somebody that she loves needs her

Okay, that’s all I have so far... it’s a work in progress. There’s still, like, what’s going on Earthside to work on.

But yeah!!!! This is the BS my brain has been focused on. It makes no sense, it’s bad & I love it.

[richincolor]

#ReadingAfrica 

Catalyst Press held a #ReadingAfrica Week during the first week of December. The campaign just ended, but we encourage everyone to #ReadAfrica all year long. Here are some of the Young Adult books we’ve enjoyed and recommend:

It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Adapted for Young Readers) by Trevor Noah - Delacorte

The host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tells the story of growing up half black, half white in South Africa under and after apartheid in this young readers' adaptation of his bestselling adult memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.

Trevor Noah shares his story of growing up in South Africa, with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child like him to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government.

How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana, Abigail Pesta - Katherine Tegen Books

This profoundly moving memoir is the remarkable and inspiring true story of Sandra Uwiringyimana, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, and overcame her trauma through art and activism. Sandra was just ten years old when she found herself with a gun pointed at her head. She had watched as rebels gunned down her mother and six-year-old sister in a refugee camp. Remarkably, the rebel didn’t pull the trigger, and Sandra escaped. Thus began a new life for her and her surviving family members. With no home and no money, they struggled to stay alive. Eventually, through a United Nations refugee program, they moved to America, only to face yet another ethnic disconnect. Sandra may have crossed an ocean, but there was now a much wider divide she had to overcome. And it started with middle school in New York. In this memoir, Sandra tells the story of her survival, of finding her place in a new country, of her hope for the future, and how she found a way to give voice to her people. 

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Harper Perennial

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together. Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

Aya: Life in Yop City by Marguerite Abouet, Clément Oubrerie (Illustrator) - Drawn and Quarterly

Ivory Coast, 1978. It’s a golden time, and the nation, too—an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa—seems fueled by something wondrous. Aya is loosely based upon Marguerite Abouet’s youth in Yop City. It is the story of the studious and clear-sighted nineteen-year-old Aya, her easygoing friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It’s a wryly funny, breezy account of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in Yop City. Clément Oubrerie’s warm colors and energetic, playful line connect expressively with Marguerite Abouet’s vibrant writing. This reworked edition offers readers the chance to immerse themselves in Abouet’s Yop City, bringing together the first three volumes of the series in Book One.

Hope is Our Only Wing by Rutendo Tavengerwei - Soho Teen [Rich in Color Review]

For fifteen-year-old Shamiso, struggling with grief and bewilderment following her father's death, hope is nothing but a leap into darkness. For Tanyaradzwa, whose life has been turned upside down by a cancer diagnosis, hope is the only reason to keep fighting. As the two of them form an unlikely friendship, Shamiso begins to confront her terrible fear of loss. In getting close to another person, particularly someone who's ill, isn't she just opening herself up to more pain? And underpinning it all - what did happen to her father, the night of that strange and implausible car crash? Rutendo Tavengerwei's extraordinary debut takes an honest look at hope, and the grit and courage it can take to hang on to it. 

This Book Betrays My Brother by Kagiso Lesego Molope - Mawenzi House Publishers [Rich in Color Review]

What does a teenage girl do when she sees her beloved older brother commit a horrific crime? Should she report to her parents, or should she keep quiet? Should she confront him? All her life, Naledi has been in awe of Basi, her charming and outgoing older brother. They've shared their childhood, with its jokes and secrets, the alliances and stories about the community. Having reached thirteen, she is preparing to go to the school dance. Then she sees Naledi commit an act that violates everything she believes about him. How will she live her life now? This coming-of-age novel brings together many social issues, peculiar not only to South Africa but elsewhere as well, in the modern world: class and race, young love and physical desire, homosexuality. In beautiful, lyrical, and intimate prose, Molope shows the dilemmas facing a young woman as she attempts to find her place in a new, multiracial, and dynamic nation emerging into the world after more than a century of racist colonialism. A world now dominated by men. There are no simple answers.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor - Speak [Rich in Color Review]

Sunny Nwazue lives in Nigeria, but she was born in New York City. Her features are West African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. And she has a lot of catching up to do. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But just as she's finding her footing, Sunny and her friends are asked by the magical authorities to help track down a career criminal who knows magic, too. Will their training be enough to help them against a threat whose powers greatly outnumber theirs?

Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor - Viking Books for Young Readers

A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book. Eventually, Sunny knows she must confront her destiny. With the support of her Leopard Society friends, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha, and of her spirit face, Anyanwu, she will travel through worlds both visible and invisible to the mysteries town of Osisi, where she will fight a climactic battle to save humanity. Much-honored Nnedi Okorafor, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, merges today’s Nigeria with a unique world she creates. Akata Warrior blends mythology, fantasy, history and magic into a compelling tale that will keep readers spellbound.

[maddie-grove]

Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up (November/December)

Playlist

“Fallin’ for You” by Sheila Nicholls (The Perilous Gard)

“Come on Over to My Place” by the Drifters (A Gentleman Never Keeps Score)

“Bobby Jean” by Bruce Springsteen (Eleanor and Park)

“Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks (One Perfect Rose)

“A Sailor’s Prayer” by Ann Price and Marilyn Maltzer (Broken Wing)

“Winter Lady” by Leonard Cohen (When a Duchess Says I Do)

“Dance Music” by the Mountain Goats (What Hearts)*

“Sweet Talkin’ Guy” by the Chiffons (Jean and Johnny)

“Know Your Onion!” by the Shins (Lost at Sea)

“The Snake and the Bookworm” by Cliff Richard (Tempting the Bride)

“Everybody Loves Me but You” by Brenda Lee (Someone to Remember)

*I also seriously considered both “I’ll Meet You Halfway” by the Partridge Family and “Sports Analogies” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It’s a complex book!

Best of the Bi-Month

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1974): In the late 1550s, grave, awkward Kate Sutton is banished to a remote castle in the east of England. She’s greeted by superstitious locals, shady servants, an often-absent lord, and the lord’s guilt-ridden (and hot) younger brother. Bored and irritated by all the drama, Kate questions the circumstances of the tragedy that haunts the family. I didn’t have high expectations for this book, which I bought primarily for the gorgeous Richard Cuffari illustrations, but I was blown away. Pope creates a sublimely uncanny setting in a surprising way, and Kate is a wonderful protagonist: principled, rational, and compassionate beneath her no-nonsense exterior.

Worst of the Bi-Month

Someone to Remember by Mary Balogh (2019): In her youth, Lady Matilda Westcott rejected Charles Sawyer’s proposal at the urging of her parents, who thought him too wild. Now she’s fifty-six, loved by her extended family but stuck caring for an unappreciative elderly mother. The marriage of her niece and Charles’s estranged illegitimate son brings them together again, but she never expects anything to come of it...like a total fool. This is a cute novella with compelling family dynamics. I also appreciated the solidly middle-aged protagonists, although Balogh presents them a little too timidly, like a mom trying to get a picky eight-year-old to try asparagus.

Rest of the Bi-Month

A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian (2018): Once-popular Hartley Sedgwick is languishing in the huge townhouse his godfather left him, shunned by nearly everyone for his sexuality. Then Sam Fox, a black pugilist-turned-tavern-keeper, tries to sneak into the house to find a nude portrait of an embarrassed friend. Moved by Sam’s decency, Hartley offers his assistance in finding the portrait. As I explained in my post about my favorite Regency romance novels, I adore this book for the way Hartley and Sam’s love story is mirrored and enhanced by portrayals of many other kinds of love, between brothers and friends and parents and children and neighbors and also one very homely dog. 

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2012): Park, a geeky half-Korean teenager in 1986, keeps his head down and barley avoids outright ostracism in his poor, mostly white Omaha neighborhood. Eleanor, the weird white girl who shares his bus seat, is tormented at school and at home. They have no interest in being friends, but they slowly bond and fall in love over music and comics. What I liked most about this bittersweet YA novel was the ways in which the protagonists improved each other’s lives. With Park and his loving family, Eleanor gets to let down her defenses, while Eleanor’s boldness inspires Park to embrace his differences. I do wish that Park’s side of things had been developed more, however.

One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney (1997): Upon learning that he’s terminally ill, Stephen, the Duke of Ashburton, freaks out and goes on an incognito tour of the English countryside without telling his family. He ends up joining an acting troupe run by the boisterous Fitzgerald family and falling in love with their adopted daughter/stage manager, Rosalind, despite the many reasons they have no future together. (Or do they?) This is a good, old-fashioned weepy romance that’s elevated by Putney’s serious attention to the theme of reconciling with one’s mortality. There’s also some extremely late-1990s New-Age-ish stuff going on, which sometimes felt a little silly but was still charming.

Broken Wing by Judith James (2008): When unconventional countess Sarah finds her long-lost little brother at a Parisian brothel, she’s overjoyed, appalled, and relieved that he was protected by sex worker Gabriel St. Croix. Grateful, she offers Gabriel a reward and insists he come to live with her and her family. This is another tear-jerking, charmingly dated romance; I felt like a teenager again, reading top-shelf angsty fanfiction. It’s best in the slow-burn first half, during which Gabriel must adjust to a massive reversal of fortune after a lifetime of trauma. The more action-packed second half makes great use of the unusual late 1790s/early 1800s setting, but it does feel hurried.

When a Duchess Says I Do by Grace Burrowes (2019): Widowed Matilda Wakefield, the Duchess of Bosendorf, has been on the run since getting mixed up in her diplomat dad’s clandestine activities. An encounter with scholarly Duncan Wentworth lands her a live-in secretarial position at his rural estate. They connect with each other, but how can love grow when they’re the object of multiple sinister plots? While this entry in the Wentworth series is not as incandescently lovely as My One and Only Duke, I’m still a sucker for spooky country houses, responsible-household-management plots, and sad early-middle-aged heroes. Burrowes is also an excellent writer, and I’m glad that I discovered her.

What Hearts by Bruce Brooks (1992): Sensitive Asa excels at school but struggles at home, thanks to his mother’s severe mental illness and his stepfather Dave’s emotional abuse. Divided into four novella-like sections, the novel follows Asa from his parents’ divorce in first grade to his first love in seventh. I liked parts of this weird, sober book when I read it as a kid, and I felt the same this time. It’s got brilliant moments, most involving Asa and Dave’s relationship, but there’s a lot of telling-not-showing in between. Brooks also can’t seem to decide on the time period; it’s probably supposed to be set 1965-1971, but it always feels like 1963, and you can only blame so much of that on the North Carolina setting.

Jean and Johnny by Beverly Cleary (1959): Short, bespectacled, and working-class, fifteen-year-old Jean feels invisible at her high school until handsome upperclassman Johnny Chessler starts paying attention to her. She’s thrilled, but her parents and sister warn against chasing him. I didn’t like this book much in middle school, but I revisited it because it occurred to me that Jean was a lesbian. Having reread it, I know I was wrong on two counts: Jean is unfortunately not a lesbian (she clearly thinks Johnny’s hot), and the book’s not that depressing. Jean’s no sad sack who’s doomed to a life of grimly chaste square dancing; she’s a legit snack who becomes increasingly self-assured and assertive. 

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O’Malley (2003): Raleigh, a Canadian eighteen-year-old, hitches a ride back home from California with some classmates she hardly knows after a meeting with her long-distance boyfriend ends in heartbreak. Lonely and a little disconnected from reality--she maintains the belief that her mom somehow sold her soul, which now resides in a stray cat--Raleigh slowly makes friends with her travelling companions and finds some piece of mind. Although nothing much happens in this short graphic novel, it’s one of the most authentically just-graduated-high-school stories I’ve ever read. I could relate to those feelings of fear and disappointment even in the face of exciting new possibilities.

Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas (2012): David Hillsborough, Lord Hastings, has desired Helena Fitzhugh, first-wave feminist and successful fiction editor, since they were kids together, but he’s always hidden behind insulting remarks. When Helena’s affair with a married man ends in scandal, though, she unhappily accepts David’s offer of marriage in order to cover it up. Then she gets hit by a carriage and loses every memory she formed after her mid-teens, which happens to be when she met David. Thomas always has an engaging style and deals with even outlandish plots in a sophisticated way, and her take on the 13 Going on 30 plot is enjoyable. However, it is rushed at the end.

[sincerely-womanonthemountain]

Internet and the Youth

The internet can be one’s friend along with someone’s mortal enemy. In today’s society, an individual can access the internet from almost anywhere. From the Himalayan mountains, to the city of San Francisco, if someone has a smartphone device or a GPS unit, there is access to the internet. With incidences and further research, we have found that with power, comes great responsibility, however the power has no true owner and it is getting a little out of hand. Today, I will be touching upon the ideology of mine v.s. ours, the lack of human touch, and modern parenting, or rather, the lack thereof.

There is a clear understanding that the internet belongs to no certain individual. Because of that, everyone is entitled to their own slice of the interweb. With that slice, the user has the artistic freedom to do whatever they want with it! This kind of mentality can be problematic as that slice of pie is public, and anyone on the internet can see what is going on. It raises question once you begin to, “...explore the extent to which that conduct is morally and ethically sensitive. That is, to what extent do our habits of connectivity coincide with an inclination to pursue our own agendas rather than increase our sensitivity to the perspectives of others and our attachment to communities? To what extent do we treat the Internet as my space versus our space?”(77). In regards to “my space”, I would like to first begin talking about Instagram influencers. Instagram is a great platform to share photos, quotes---really anything! Initially, the platform was used to share photos, but with creativity comes making things unique. In the sense of unique comes a certain breed of instagram users that go by the title, Instagram Influence. This title has good and bad connotations. It definitely pushes for a “my space” kind of format. If someone stumbles upon the influencer’s profile, there is a my way or the highway mentality. You can form your own opinions about that person, comment positive or negative thoughts, shoot them a follow, or even copy their style! At the end of the day, they post whatever gets them their fan base, and with more followers comes more money. As the youth, or even adults stumble upon these influencer accounts, there is a sense of wanting to belong, or perhaps an empty feeling of wanting to become as popular as that particular individual. Maybe that influencer sells sexual poses and dresses in black lingere, but hey, sex sells! Maybe you should give it a try. Maybe, JUST maybe, it will even make you new friends.

This mentality is nothing new! All ages have always had access to various influencers. The only difference is many of the influencers had a talent as opposed to being a rich trust fund baby and incredibly good looking. But hey, if you got it, flaunt it. It does however raise questions to our precious youth. One thing that the book did not cover is a “finsta”. This is where I believe the trouble truly lys. “Finstas” were created for a specific user base to see. Typically there is a photo of a fake user, there is a fake name, a fake bio, and the account is set to private. This makes it impossible for children’s parents to find the account, and also makes it easy to post whatever, and whenever they want! This allows the youth to be just like their instagram influencer without getting scolded by their parents or school. As a dance teacher, I have caught my students making these “finsta” accounts and posting provocative photos, posing inappropriately, and writing disgusting, bad language. All of which is unacceptable. In these cases, I cannot help but blame their parents for gifting them the expensive new iPhone as the children are not mature enough to use the tools at hand.

Next comes the loss of human touch---thanks to all of the lazy parents for this one. When I see a young adult with a child, and the child begins to cry, instead of tending to their child’s needs, they put a screen in front of their face. Whether it be an iPhone, iPad, or whatever other smart device it be, it is easier to distract the child with a t.v. episode or a game rather than deal with the issue in that instance person to person. We find that, “in accordance with J.L. Austin’s speech act theory, the deeper meaning behind our words--- the illocutionary dimension---can be lost when facial cues and intonation are absent. The intended effect on our audiences---the perlocutionarydimension---is therefore vulnerable. The use of emoticons (e.g., :) ), abbreviations (e.g., LOL, J/K), and other cues of intended tone and meaning can certainly help mitigate misinterpretations, but these markers are far from foolproof”(80). Human to human communication is being interfered by a screen. These emoticons and slang words are normalizing electronic communication and condoning hiding behind a screen. Secrets do not make friends, but communicating through a source such as instagram message or snap chat makes it much easier to hide messages from parents, or really anyone. Again, this is an issue. Not to mention, words shared electronically can be easily misinterpreted. A message such as, “Hey, want to come over tonight and watch a movie,” these days can be widely misinterpreted. I know I, for instance, went over to what I thought was a friend’s house to “hang out” when really he meant “hook up”. It made me feel uncomfortable and violated. Luckily, I am old enough to drive and brave enough to say no and leave. I cannot say the same for someone else put in a similar position.

Last but not least, I wanted to go over what it means to be a modern parent. Everyone always jokes around and talks about there not being a handbook to parenting. Every upbringing is different, and unfortunately there is no guidebook, but there is open communication and a set of rules that a parent can enforce from the get go. As I have worked with children for 12 years, I have met many parents with various parenting practices. I can agree that, “overall, adult conversations with youth often contribute to and strengthen the blind spots we often observed among youth. Thus, a key component of the ethics gap is the mentorship gap. Although parents and educators may be well-intentioned in their emphasis on personal safety, their over attention to such concerns leaves little room for discussions about ethics and social responsibility on the web may also result in insufficient support for youth to successfully utilize the great promises of the Web, such as the opportunity to participate in civic and political life”(108). It is important that parents know the difference between mentoring someone and dictating them. Sometimes parents go by the “my way or the highway” saying, but where does that really get you? It is important to work with your child, to pay attention to them, and to become their mentor with a touch of friendship. Till this day, I see parents stuck in the old way of yelling, being violent, and playing the bad cop role constantly.  Instead of looking to that person as your hero, you learn tactics of how to be sneaky and ignore them.

I think that parents need to stop being close minded and accept that there are modern ways of parenting. They cannot continue to hand their child a screen at such a young age to shut them up. This only teaches them bad habits. Adjusting to a screen at such a young age only feeds the underlying addiction to internet access. Internet is a privilege and should be treated as one. I do not see anything wrong with owning a cellular device, but I do not think youth should be given a smart phone until they prove to their parents they are responsible and mature enough to handle the accessibility the internet holds.

Book Referenced:

Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap By Carrie James

[lesbianchemicalplant]

Love to be cis and regurgitate transphobic misinformation about how Transitioning Is Too Easy And Accessible Without Really Thinking It Through These Days and Big Trans Is Allowing Children To Do Irreversible Things With Their Bodies They Grow Up To Regret

Imagine how disconnected from trans people you need to be to think that trans people are being traumatized by being allowed to transition too early and too easily, and that we’re not “presented with other options or lives to lead” by pretty much fucking everyone around us.

And this is one of the more widely-followed (cis) lesbians on this site.

I’ve posted all this before, but if anyone is seriously wondering about “Children And Teens Doing Permanent Thins To Their Bodies!!!’, her fearmongering flies in the face of established scientific knowledge and actual medical practice (if you think there’s actually anything true to “transitioning too early is so easy and so many people end up with regret”, please read)

Puberty blockers deliberately provide a lengthy period of time for the careful consideration of an individual’s gender identity and developmental course. These are long-acting injections or implants which temporarily prevent the development of the permanent physical changes that accompany puberty. This treatment does not have permanent effects – it is described as “completely reversible” in medical literature (de Vries & Cohen-Kettenis, 2012) [emphasis mine]. Instead, this protocol delays puberty for a number of years while the child and medical professionals can consider whether more permanent transition treatments like hormone therapy or surgery are appropriate. A child or teenager has the option of discontinuing puberty blockers if they decide they don’t want to transition; their own puberty can then proceed as normal. Such cases have been described by pediatric endocrinologists (Shumer, Nokoff, & Spack, 2016):

“A 12-year-old biologic male presented to the gender clinic after referral by a mental health professional. The child had been having dysphoric feelings about his male pubertal development, and was found to be at SMR rating 3. Treatment with a GnRH agonist was initiated. The child continued in therapy and by age 14 had developed a better understanding of their gender identity. The child accepts that they do not identify completely with a male or female gender identity, and begins to refer to themself as genderqueer. They prefer to be referred to using the them/they/their pronouns. After discussion with the family and mental health professional, the decision is made to withdraw the GnRH agonist medication and allow male puberty to progress with continued supportive counseling in place.”

If this protocol really did inexorably guide every child into a more permanent medical transition, this period of extended consideration would not be standard clinical practice. This time specifically serves to identify those youth who will stop experiencing dysphoria and will not want to transition. While Julie Bindel and others may speculate at length about how they “might” have pursued a medical transition, there is every indication that even if they had ever received puberty blockers, they would have had ample opportunity to recognize that transitioning wasn’t what they wanted.

Contrary to these media depictions, puberty blockers and transition treatments are not delivered in a scattershot or reckless manner. While Ditum asserts that 80% of children with gender dysphoria will lose this dysphoria in adolescence, this isn’t simply a spin of the roulette wheel. During the extra time provided by puberty blockers, extended evaluations are conducted to observe the course of an adolescent’s gender identity development, reliably distinguishing those who will continue to experience dysphoria from those who will not (de Vries & Cohen-Kettenis, 2012):

“During the diagnostic trajectory, information is obtained from both the adolescents and their parents to assess whether the adolescents meet the eligibility criteria. Therefore, first it is ascertained whether adolescents are suffering from a very early onset gender dysphoria that has increased around puberty, or whether something else brought them to the clinic (e.g., confusion about homosexuality or transvestic fetishism). About one quarter of the referrals in Amsterdam do not fulfill diagnostic criteria for GID and most of them drop out early in the diagnostic procedure for this reason or because other problems are prominent”

There are various specific factors that are recognized as potentially related to an individual’s likelihood to persist in experiencing dysphoria (Steensma, Biemond, de Bohr, & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011). These factors can be of diagnostic value during treatment:

“Starting around the age of 10, and for the subsequent years, the persisters indicated that their cross-gender preferences and behaviour and their gender identity remained stable, but that their dysphoric feelings intensified. The intensification of gender dysphoria was attributed to three factors; (1) Certain changes in their social environment, (2) The anticipation of and/or actual physical changes during puberty, (3) The first experiences of falling in love and discovering their sexual orientation.

… In desisters, the gender discomfort gradually decreased over the course of grades 7 and 8 (age 10 to 13). Both boys and girls indicated that their changing interests and friendships, and the physical changes during puberty made the gender discomfort diminish and eventually disappear. The desisters also reported that their first experience of falling in love and awareness of sexual attraction were factors that resulted in the disappearance of their gender dysphoria.”

One key component of this diagnostic process is that these youth are allowed to experience the earliest stages of their original puberty, which can be critical to their developing understanding of their gender (de Vries & Cohen-Kettenis, 2012):

“If the eligibility criteria are met, gonadotropin releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa) to suppress puberty are prescribed when the youth has reached Tanner stage 2–3 of puberty (Delemarre-van de Waal & Cohen-Kettenis, 2006); this means that puberty has just begun. The reason for this is that we assume that experiencing one’s own puberty is diagnostically useful because right at the onset of puberty it becomes clear whether the gender dysphoria will desist or persist.”

In effect, Bindel, Ditum, and others are baselessly criticizing these medical providers for supposedly failing to do something they have in fact been doing all along. Again, even if these individuals had undergone treatment with puberty blockers, this protocol would likely correctly determine that transitioning would not be appropriate for them.

…

Modern diagnostic criteria also make a clear distinction between clinically significant experiences of dysphoria, and a simple discomfort with cultural gender roles or desire for the social privileges afforded to another gender. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 (2013) states:

“Gender dysphoria should be distinguished from simple nonconformity to stereotypical gender role behavior by the strong desire to be of another gender than the assigned one and by the extent and pervasiveness of gender-variant activities and interests. The diagnosis is not meant to merely describe nonconformity to stereotypical gender role behavior (e.g., “tomboyism” in girls, “girly-boy” behavior in boys, occasional cross-dressing in adult men). Given the increased openness of atypical gender expressions by individuals across the entire range of the transgender spectrum, it is important that the clinical diagnosis be limited to those individuals whose distress and impairment meet the specified criteria.”

The APA’s DSM-IV-TR (2000) similarly specified as part of diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorder that individuals experience “A strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex)”, and further explained:

“Behavior in children that merely does not fit the cultural stereotype of masculinity or femininity should not be given the diagnosis unless the full syndrome is present, including marked distress or impairment.”

Professional clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria explicitly warn against misinterpreting gender nonconformity alone as an indication that dysphoria is present. The speculation that these treatments serve to target gender-nonconforming cisgender gays and lesbians is completely unfounded and contrary to modern medical practice.

Bindel and others imagine that they would have been guided toward transition if they were children today, and while this is vanishingly unlikely under current practices, suppose that all of these individuals ultimately did transition during puberty. What would the outcome be for them? Multiple studies have found no cases of persistent regret among youth who were treated with puberty blockers and later went on to transition (Cohen-Kettenis & van Goozen, 1997; de Vries et al., 2014). It’s also been found that after treatment, this group experiences psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety at a rate no higher than that of their cisgender peers. These commentators must invent hypothetical cases of regret because of the lack of any actual cases of regret that would support their argument. But what is supposed to be regrettable about this outcome – that a happy and well-adjusted transgender person exists?

Cis people would rather that a million trans people go without medical access than one cis person go on puberty blockers, reidentify with their AGAB, and finish puberty with no real lasting side-effects from those puberty blockers.

The OP of this particular post is widely followed on the cis lesbian side of tumblr. The notes on this post have a lot of TERFs, but also a lot of other cis lesbians who just happen to agree with this misinformed, transphobic tripe.

Incidentally: one of the TERFs in the notes also reblogged this post repeating the Gender Dysphoria Desistance Myth:

The ~study~ they link heavily cites data from Kenneth Zucker’s clinic, i.e. literal conversion therapy performed on trans youth, which is largely responsible for where all of this kind of “Genuine Concern” about “Not presenting dysphoric youth with other options” comes from in the first place. 

If cis lesbians could stop repeating misinformed and transphobic talking points about ~How Such Easy Access To Transition Is So Harmful To Dysphoric Cis Afabs And Is Basically Anti-Lesbian Conversion Therapy UwU~, or thinking that being dysphoric themselves makes them ~basically have as much a stake in these issues as trans people do~, that would be great!! :)

[lovegvvd]

❝ She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world. ❞ SARAH PAULSON? No, that’s actually LUNA LOVEGOOD-SCAMANDER. Only FORTY-TWO years old, this RAVENCLAW alumni works as a MAGIZOOLOGIST and is sided with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. SHE/THEY identifies as AGENDER and is a HALFBLOOD who is known to be ECCENTRIC, BLUNT, and UNSELF-CRITICAL but also NONCONFORMING, INNOVATIVE, and PERCEPTIVE.

LINKS: stats, pinboard, character tag. CHARACTER PARALLELS: orla mccool (derry girls), misty day (ahs), dale cooper (twin peaks), phoebe buffay (friends) HELLO once again a note from me mar, that a lot of this is open to discussion and alteration as i’m going off the little canon that i have and because luna is a character with a few already existing ties. so yep! this is all up for discussion! yeet! also i apologise for the length of the history section akdfhsdkjf. also i always forget that luna is married to rolf so pls remind me x

history

luna’s parents were traveling when they became pregnant with her and decided that they would settle in whatever place their child would come to earth --- a game of chance, perhaps, but one of fate, too, they thought. they’d always been dreamers, romanticists, adventurers, and why not let their child decided where they’d end up, even before her birth? and so they settled near a small town in south west england, where luna was born under a full moon and thus named luna. for the moon, that had followed her traveling parents everywhere they went, for the moon, the only thing that would be able to match their child’s powerful and mysterious spirit, for the moon, which she was born under.

the house they lived in was built by her parents, and luna loved it. the house twisted and curled and offered plenty of room for her imagination, from day one. life growing up was complete, was free, it was close to perfect ---- and yet, somehow, it shattered.

[ parental death, trauma tw ] at nine years old, luna watched her mother day. it was supposed to be a day of excitement --- every time her brilliant mother invented a new charm, they would have an extravagant dinner and celebrate until way too late and laugh widely and loudly. nothing like that happened. luna watched her mother die in stead and hammered on her chest to try and get her heart to start beating again but nothing, nothing, nothing worked. the world was a mystery and death was, too, but still one thing was clear: her mother was gone, in one way or another.

luna struggled to accept this truth, as she often did with truths. her father grew fragile and obsessive and she grew nervous and quiet and good at being on her own. she started painting and tried to combat flashbacks to that day during the day, only to have nightmares at night. having a wide imagination was a gift, most of the time, but with this, it was a curse.

luna was traumatised. simple as that. her father wasn’t the best support system, but he was there in a way. the roles of father-daughter shifted, slightly, as luna took care of him, too, but he was still there. and so the last two years before hogwarts were hard. terribly, horribly hard. it was trying to learn how to live in a house where something so vital was missing. it was tryign to understand what death was, which is something that simply refuses to be understood. it was fucking hard. period. (not that luna admits that to herself, even now.) [ end of tws ]

luna arrived at hogwarts and was sorted into ravenclaw very quickly and easily. she noticed that she was odd --- or, actually, other people noticed that she was and told it to her, and she shrugged her shoulders and kept moving on. luna had grown reclusive after the death of her mother, and didn’t mind not fitting in. it was lonely, sure, but she didnt see a reason to befriend people who looked down on her beliefs. she didn’t mind being called loony, but when her belongings started to disappear, she grew angry, deep down. she let most comments and acts of cruelty slide off her back, but when a bad word was muttered about her father ( who she already worried so so much about ), she was prone to explosion.

but she was lonely, and then she was not. the details are fuzzy, but at one point she found friends at hogwarts! finally! she did it! luna learned to come out of her shell, learned how to handle compassion ( though clumsily and in her own way, of course ) and the wonderous world of having friends. she painted them on her ceiling and loved and laughed and ---- things were good. she loved. she laughed. she wasn’t alone, and while she had never considered herself alone or lonely, it wasnt until she gained friends that she realised that she had been awfully alone.

upon graduation, luna took to the world. she traveled far and wide and learned from amazing, genius people across the world. she studied magizoology and wrote her first essay on a newly discovered species a year into her travels. she returned home often enough, of course, to see how her father was doing, to see her friends. friendship had once been a scary and new thing to luna, but as she grew older, it became natural and easy and something she couldnt do without.

at some point, she and fellow magizoologist rolf scamander got it going. they married, had a pair twins and a new chapter of luna’s life opened up. once again, the complete details about her and rolf meeting are fuzzy, but i imagine it was LIT. i do think she settled more, then, especially when the twins were born. luna hadn’t really had rooted herself down after graduation ( the cottage she owned in the hills of england was a home she barely called a home, as she wasn’t there much ), but that did change.

luna is still the person she was before, she’s just more. she’s more grounded, but not any less in love with keeping her eyes wide open and her head in the skies. she’s a parent. she’s married. she’s got a successful career and a group of people surrounding her that she loves. she has grown up, but she hasn’t compromised. she’s learned how to use perspective and how to be more subtle, without shedding eccentricity or open mindedness.

the quibbler, by the way, still exists and has grown into even more of an underground, activistic magazine. luna writes for it every month.

[ grief, death tw ] so things were going well, and then everything changed. grief came into her life again.  harry is dead – harry, one of her first friends, harry, who named his daughter after her, harry, who she loved. friendship is something incredibly important to luna — she painted the faces of her first ones on her bedroom wall, once — and when he died, she got scared by how grief took a hold of her. the first time she lost someone that significant to her, she was much younger, you see, and dealing with shock & trauma as well. this time, she was an adult, settled and grown up. she is more aware of her grief, and that is TERRIFYING.

she’s also less passive in her mourning. before, she was a kid. family friends visited and her father was on her side. now, she’s a parent, a friend; she visits the kids of friends in stead and sticks on ginny’s and everyone else’s side, in stead. luna might come across unfazed or disconnected from her pain, as she talks about it like she is, but she is not: she has her own way of mourning (as everyone does) and she can say some really Truthful and Raw shit at times.

she misses him so much. that’s what it boils down to. she misses him so fucking much. [ end of tws ]

of course she helps reinstate the order. there’s no question about it. luna doesn’t feel like a revolutionist or a soldier, but she does know how to fight, and she does know what is right. she’s good at strategy and defense, mostly, and at keeping spirits high and offering new perspectives.

so here we have luna: a parent, a fighter on the frontlines, a friend. she’s determined. she’s horribly saddened. she’s still herself, despite everything.

personality & tidbits

i think i already touched on this but i think it never hurts to repeat yourself so --- luna is a more grounded individual, at this point. she still has her head in the clouds, but her feet are standing solidly on the ground. she’s a dreamer, yes, but more of a realist, too. ( nothing like one of your best friends dying to make you realise how shit the world is, after all. ) luna isn’t very different from the luna we know in canon, but she’s matured. she’s more. she’s gone through a lot of positive development.

luna is constantly and always in awe of the friends and family she has, especially because she was so lonely for the biggest chunk of her youth. she’s extremely loyal and defensive of them.

luna is agender and has been aware of this for ... most of her life, really? she thinks gender is a big old construct and one she doesn’t want to apply to herself. if others do, she of course doesn’t mind or judge --- she’s veyr openminded when it comes to gender and sexuality. she prefers both she/her and they/them pronouns --- sometimes she doesn’t mind which one people use, and sometimes she will prefer one over the other.

is good at trying to keep up morale without it being an escapist ... kind of situation? offers fresh perspectives a lot, likes being a positive force and yes, sometimes it is easier to focus on the positive, and she will, then.

she really loves the stars and moon and astronomy and astrology!!! wow!!!!!!!

wears iconic outfits and we ALL know it

idk what more to write ive already written so MUCH

possible plots

first of all? i would love someone who can be kind of a mentee? because fuck yeah? i love that? any other magizoologists in this building that need some mentoring? hit me up!!!!

same goes for the quibbler, if your character somehow writes for the quibbler, hmu? i think xeno is still the editor but lbr the man is OLD

fellow trio era characters should hit me up so we can talk about the good old school days and CRIE

order members that are ?????????????????? at luna, that are a bit skeptical, etc etc?

fellow art buds

death eaters that want 2 eliminate her ig lets angst this up

idk luna is fairly easy to plot with so just hmu and we can figure something out!!!!

[tumblunni]

okay to talk about EXACTLY HOW i would handle giving charon a big good boss fight and also sympathetic backstory and redemption and all that jazz

there are approximately ten million words beneath the cut, and also ten million raspberries in my shampoo, and these charon thoughts are just as sweet as that

alright so ALREADY i kinda did feel like he was sort of a friendly enemy when i first played the game?? like his Thing of being the constantly never fightable dude actually was kind of sympathetic in a way. it always just felt like he was Chilling Out and not giving much of a shit about being evil and also had nothing personal against you the player. he doesnt follow any of cyrus’s big philosophy and he’s clearly only here for the money and really phoning it in, and that kinda makes him not your enemy at all, even though he’s on the team youre fighting. Like I always found it a good establishing moment that in the Valley Windworks when they first introduce “hey this time there’s two galactic teammates here” and all, CHARON IS STANDING DIRECTLY IN EYELINE OF YOU RUINING EVERYONE’S PLANS. he’s just standing there! and of course he’ll never do anything to warn mars about you, the game just isnt programmed that way. but it fits really well with his character if you think of it as an intentional thing? just imagine this random gramps sitting there drinking tea while all his teammates actually Care About Things and Use Effort. He’s always criticizing team galactic’s plan too and like WHY IS HE DOING THAT TO YOU if not because Nintendo Wants Him To Be My Best Friend ok. Like he doesn’t fuckin trust anyone on his team so why would he spill the beans about his big secret plans he has to make money off of this villain plan and then bail before they actually do all the dumb shit with legendaries and such. Yes ok its PROBABLY just because its a videogame and they need to exposit stuff to the player that the character is probably just thinking and not saying out loud. But wouldnt it be so much better this way!!!! Also even when you finally face off against him personally in the postgame for his actual dumb money plan he’s still like ‘lol fourth wall breaking time im gonna not have a boss battle cos if you beat cyrus’s ass i aint got no chance’. Dammit nintend i still wanted to fight him but thats endearing so i cant stay mad at u! And he has several lines during it with stuff like “i like seeing children trying so hard BUT YOURE TOO LATE” and “youth like you can live in idealism but for me its all about the money”. Like man u remember that time i had a big angry rant about how his manga version was super OOC cos they didnt just choose to make him eviler but made him murder a child? like the only time anything involving children is mentioned in canon its him being mildly more polite to children!!! MILDLY FRIENDLY! LET ME HAVE THIS...

okay so YEAH the first big change would be just giving him more screentime and more fleshed out character in these early scenes. Make him a full on friendly character who is technically on the opposite side but has no beef with you and no loyalty to the greater plan of his team. So he’s just comically like “oh hi again! yeah lol today’s plan sucks huh?” and makes idle conversation while the main character villain admin of the day is actually doing important plot stuff. like have him along for everyone’s scenes not just mars at the start, dissappear for hours until the very end. And yes definately keep the thing of the game constantly lampshading that he’s a new character for the third version of the game, and everyone in the team thinks he’s useless and forgets he’s even there. it was annoying in the original game cos he actually didnt get any love from the writers themselves, but yknow you could give him an expanded role and rewrite that stuff to be more like “oh poor guy he’s the underdog”, yknow? am i the only one who felt inherantly sorry for him?? i mean he’s a tiny grandpa!!! and he looks so sad on his official art!! Oh oh and also add the additional running jokes and expanded characterization he had in his very brief anime appearance, which was honestly the only well written part of the entire team galactic arc. It fleshed out a bit of his relationship with jupiter who never really appeared alongside him in the game except to say “im not teaming up with you” at the end. Having the context that she finds him annoying cos she’s very serious and also very dedicated to cyrus so she hates this opportunistic bastard pretending to be dedicated when its an obvious lie. And also she thinks his laugh is obnoxious XD Oh also I liked how they expanded upon that one scene of Saturn being sarcastic at gramps and made it into an actual thing that him and charon most often work together and have a mutually sassy dynamic. I found it humanizing that anime saturn is very serious but can comically overreact to very minor teasing from this grandpa! I thought that was better than the games where he’s just serious or the manga where he was 100% changed to be 100% silly and kinda stole charon’s personality for reasons i will never understand.

ANYWAY! IN SUMMARY! show scenes of charon being endearing by being not really interested in the big evilness, being underdog-y by always failing at his smaller evilnesses and getting disrespected, and also maybe drop in some more interpersonal relationships between the admins to hint that charon does indeed have some friendship going on even if he’s a tsundere bitch who’d never admit it. Also maybe the other thing from the anime where they made him a cool computer guy? cos srsly it was lazy that the games just said “he’s the science” and never clarified wtf he actually does at his job. cos cyrus is already a science boss??? he kinda already did most of the big sciencey plans?? why does he need this man if its not for mechanical or legendary pokemon stuff OK HEY MAYBE COMPUTERS! also its funny to imagine him being a memey blogger but sun and moon actually made faba canonically that so i dont think you could improve on him. TAKE NOTES FROM BEAN MAN, NINTENDO

Also maybe you could hint at the rotom backstory before it actually happens? like could just show some mild implications that he is sad, cos the ‘friendly enemy’ thing would already be decent foreshadowing for him potentially having a soft spot. “Wah i am an emotionless evil money man” says local villain, while gossipping with Dawn about his coworkers and sharing lemon squares. But like I mean i don’t really want him to be LITERALLY that, i still like him being grumpy and guarded about his secret good heart. I’m just saying “friendly” as in.. sort of a disconnect between what he says his personality is and how he actually acts. The stuff he actually says is very grumpy but like.. hey he’s saying stuff to you when he doesnt need to, and nobody else on this team is casually talking to you as if youre not an enemy. Like he’s SUBCONCIOUSLY friendly and doesnt realise it? He’d never SAY “i am lonely hello please talk to me” but he’d sure as hell walk over to you and talk to you anyway. About grumpy things! Grumpily! And maybe express occasional compliments in a sort of “haha im surrounded by idiots you’re way more down to earth than all these adults who act more like children”. Cos in that fourth wall breaking moment he has, he respects that you’re a badass and decides thats why he’s not gonna have a boss fight. “You’d just kick my ass, so lol fight these grunts instead while i run away and do my evil plan” That is the kind of sympathetic charon i want!! He’s doing a douchey thing by breaking the script of how boss battles work and making everyone else fight you instead even though he knows that they’ll lose. But he’s also likeable because breaking the script of boss battles is unexpected and comedic! And he’s also accidentally being complimentary to you so its like SIMULTANEOUS JERK AND NICE AT THE SAME TIME. Thats the good stuff!! That quality grumplegramp content!!! if he got redeemed and just 100% changed his personality to lose all the sass and sneakyness then that’d be boring yo...

OKAY WHERE WAS I? Okay hey once you’ve established that, maybe now you have a basis for the sad foreshadowing!! Like you could have one scene where he’s suddenly NOT friendly, he’s not just grumpy in the funny sort of way but actually seems cold and stoic and actually does something useful to the team’s mission or whatever. Sort of a ‘whoa what’s wrong with him today’ thing and it could be subtle cos on the first playthrough you’d just think he was being a jerk cos he’s a jerk and all. but maybe it happens on a scene of team galactic doing some evil plan in eterna forest/other place that’d potentially relate to the rotom sidequest. like he’s just really fuckin depressed to be reminded of his one big failure in life. OH maybe it could actually be at the unnamed junkyard thats mentioned in his backstory but doesnt actually feature as an area in the original game? It could make sense that it’d be part of their plan cos team galactic attacks various energy sources and other technology related places to find the stuff they need to make the big world erasure machine. could just be simply them robbing some old generator parts after their attempt to take the whole power plant failed.

Oh and also maybe add a lil something to his last scene at the galactic lab? Cos like.. what we already have in the game has potential to be a moment where he did a good thing but no its not. Like when you look at it, hey he kinda helped you out here by being all “hey lol saturn the kid is here, bye im not stopping u, feel free to take the lake trio”. Even if saturn is the one who actually SAID feel free to take the lake trio and actually had a good hint at redemptiveness moment and all. Please never take that away, that was good, you just coulda had both of them do it, yknow? And we dont wanna make charon go full good guy all of a sudden when he hasnt even finished his characetr arc, so instead make it more of a moment where its like “im a bad guy but this is going too far”. Like maybe ACTUALLY HAVE A PAYOFF for the foreshadowing that he has no loyalty to cyrus and is blatantly plotting to betray him at some point. He never actually did!! He only tries to capitalize on cyrus already being defeated in an entirely optional sidequest that fails at delivering a proper payoff.

So hey! My idea! Add some complexity here by making it clear that charon is evil in a more petty and mundane way and not in a.. like.. actually dangerous way. Once things start getting actually dangerous he starts chickening out! Like he’s a jerk who does mean things to get money but he’s just MEAN and not friggin murderous or worldending. Give him a moment of “oh shit cyrus was actually serious oh god how do i get off of this train”. Like it seemed that he never really believed that team galactic would ever truly create a new world, and he certainly didnt give a shit about it, he just thought he found an easy opportunity for a paycheck in some dumbass’s deluded plan that’d never really work. But OOPS i guess it actually is happening, oh fuck! Give him a bit of a crisis where he realizes what he actually helped this man do, but not like a full on “everything ive ever done is bad and i dont wanna be evil anymore”. Not YET! Just friggin.. “oh fuck i cant spend money if the universe doesnt exist and also i am dead”. “PLEASE HELP ME CHILD, CYRUS IS GONNA TAKE AWAY THE MONEY!!” xD It’d be fitting for his character and a good light moment of comic relief after the emotional and dark stuff happening around this section of the game. Like he already kinda does that by having that scene of saturn snarking at him, but it could be even more funny! Move the first him and saturn bickering scene to earlier on and have this be like a satisfying scene of saturn actually winning? cos in the anime it was always charon being smug and making fun of him while saturn gets all grumpy about it, now it could be the reverse with smug charon having a breakdown and realising his whole money plan is in shambles and its his own fault.

Also maybe it could have additional payoff with Charon actually helping you take down cyrus? Again, not actually because he’s switched sides but because he's still evil but evil for different reasons than cyrus. That good ‘reluctant teamup with minor goofy villain to take down big actually scary villain’ thing. With the added bonus that the minor goofy villain is objectively a worse person than the scary villain and the scary villain is still redeemable, as opposed to in the manga where they used this same trope in the form of “cyrus is good now and we’re making charon the big scary villain to prove how good cyrus is cos charon is worse”. That was dumb. It was especially dumb cos WHY ON EARTH would you pick charon for this??? like they still had moments of him being comedic and wimpy yet at the same time wanted us to believe he was legitimately threatening? ANYWAY my idea for this is that charon’s computer skills could pay off and it could be something like “oh i always put a failsafe kill switch in my computer just in case i need to grab the money and run”. Like him being a paranoid untrusting selfish asshole was actually the reason he was able to save the day! Also it would explain why cyrus’s machine only fails and summons giratina in platinum version. the manga actually did say that charon sabotaged the machine so thats one actually good thing that came from it! Congrats u filled one plothole while making twenty more XD

OH and perhaps this same section could also foreshadow the rotom thing? like I was thinking about how he could actually choose to give up and let you take the lake trio and have it still be 100% in character. It could be an extension of his “shit, i didnt think things would get this serious, please save me from the consequences of my own actions!” moment. Cos I think that any normal dumb greedy money man would still be horrified at the idea of mutilating a thousand year old majestic unicorn of mythology and then flushing it down the toilet when it outlives its uselessness. Like he doesnt do it because he wants to help you save the day or anything, just cos the idea of killing the lake trio is just too evil for even him. It could be kind of a meaningful moment about how cyrus is doing all this for good reasons yet they caused him to do these actions that are even more evil than the actual dude with evil motives. And maybe you could establish this through a scene of him and cyrus inetracting, which could also help amp up how intimidating cyrus is, in preparation for the big climax? Have charon trying to wimp out of “disposing of the useless specimens”, but cyrus is having none of it. Like it could start off funny with him making up loads of other excuses cos there’s no way he’d admit he’s having Feelings and all. “Wait but let me have them! if theyre useless to you then i can just sell them right?? ha ha thats the only reason im saying this, lol you know me i’d never be swayed by any sentiment” But cyrus sees through it instantly and gets right up in his face like fuckin Raw Cold Fury, no you are NOT going to disobey me. He is PISSED OFF because the only reason he kept this useless senile old bat around is because he’s the only one in this group who isn’t a simpering moron at the mercy of their pitiful heart. If you can’t even do that, then what’s the use of you? So everything charon tries fails and all he accomplishes is getting fired on the spot for even TALKING ABOUT defying his boss. And cyrus just orders saturn to dispose of the lake trio instead. Saturn of course is smarter and says nothing in defiance, but then the both of them work together to let you take the pokemon and just act like they failed to stop you rather than doing it on purpose. And its kind of an uncharacteristically quiet and intense moment between these dudes that are usually at each other’s throats with funny banter. They’re united for a moment but for very different reasons. Charon knew that cyrus wasnt a good guy from the very beginning and he just underestimated him, and is now feeling in over his head and worried this could be the end. And saturn always thought cyrus was good but is starting to struggle with doubts. And maybe charon actually tries to warn saturn about it? Like “hey i knew this all along but i never told you but HEY CYRUS MIGHT ACTUALLY KILL US ALL” and saturn starts on his usual speech about cyrus being the greatest but he starts to question it and AAAAA! but ultimately this moment isnt the moment where he makes the right choice, and he does end up going back to cyrus and continuing the plan. and also charon is on the edge of actually doing something good and trying to stop cyrus’s big ol doom time (albiet for selfish reasons of No Money In The New World) but he also wimps out from this chance and instead decides to grab as much cash as he can and run the fuck away, as if its even possible to outrun the destruction of a whole dimension. but at least him and saturn agreed on the lake trio rescue operation, thus their moment of almost-redemption helped the player even if they didnt actually turn good. AND then you’d have the surprise moment of charon actually stepping up at the last minute and doing his thing to sabotage the machine and all. which again doesnt really solve the whole thing and doesnt really make him turn good but at least it downgrades the threat from ‘cyrus actually succeeds in destroying the world’ to ‘okay we just need to deal with a slight case of poke-hell and one collossal centipede’. Srsly man sinnoh’s plot has the highest stakes cos in platinum you straight up actually fail and cyrus actually would have destroyed the world if not for giratina! Oh and also a random note is that i think it’d be funny if charon helped you out while still running away? like you just learn about the machine sabotage being his responsibility cos it flashes his goofy hacker logo from the anime or something. Maybe instead he hacks your Poketch and is like HEY HELLO IM GONNA SPLODE THE THING BUT NOT COS IM A GOOD GUY, BTW I AM A SAFE DISTANCE AWAY PLEASE DONT LET CYRUS KNOW I DID THIS

SO YEAH! whatever! whether or not we get that added bit of teamup with charon in the climax, we’ve still given him a bit more screentime so the player actually remembers him and actually cares about doing his optional sidequest in the postgame. so him not having a boss fight would be less of a letdown and all. But having the teamup plot would be a good opportunity to turn the wifi event into not a wifi event! maybe during his panic charon drops the key to his secret lab and thats how you get it? cos really it makes no sense at all that the magic wifi gods can just hand you something you’d have no idea existed and never have an opportunity to get. none of the other wifi items are literally a thing owned by a significant character that needs to be teleported out of his pocket by plot magic! Also it sucks that a chunk of important backstory would be hidden in a wifi event so if they still wanted rotom’s alt forms to be a wifi event then JUST make it the ability to get the forms and not the charony diary bit. Cos it makes no sense that the ENTIRE REASON CHARON EXISTS is to introduce the rotom form event yet you’d have no clue he was connected to rotom until after youve already finished the event. It gave no damn indication you had to take the key to this particular dude’s lab in team galactic!! ANd click on an otherwise unmarked wall!! Put the diary somewhere else and hey there’s a Charon Clue(tm) and now you can actually find the damn event, there you go, fixed. Also annoying cos nothing in the event tells you you have to go somewhere entirely different to catch the one rotom in the game, and click another unmarked piece of scenery that only has a staticky screen to indicate rotom if you happen to be playing at night. Seriously this is why serebii.net was such a lifesaver!!

Okay so WOOP there we go, here we are at a point where the player has seen more of charon and had oppotunities to grow to like him as a character and be suspicious that maybe he could have some sympatheticness. And if he drops an Importante Key Itemme right before the end of the game then thats a hint that postgame stuff exists involving him, and at least one clue where to find it! All the rotom diary stuff would play out exactly the same except that its less of a hell to find, lol.

BUT THEN the big difference in Stark Mountain is that now you have the full context of charon’s backstory and the game actually reacts to you having that knowledge. Like maybe if you dont do that step first then either charon never appears at stark mountain until you do, or you get an abbrieviated version of the quest without the redemption plot? I was thinking actually maybe make it one of those daily repeatable quests, to avoid the player doing the quests out of order and permenantly losing the chance to redeem gramps. Like if you dont see the rotom diary then instead of a big actual quest you just get some five minute “oh we’ve seen team galactic sneaking around stark mountain, defeat them for Some Money Or Something hey thats weird that they were only stealing money hey yknow who’s all about the money? charon! maybe go follow up on his Importante Key Itemme to continue the plot.”

SO THEN once you return Emboldened By The Knowledge Of Good Gramps, you get the proper thing. And... it would actually play out totally the same as in vanilla platinum. Charon doesn’t have a boss fight, all his minions leave him and say he sucks, he gets anticlimactically taken out by someone else in a cutscene, and his last moment is someone making a crack about him being so frail and useless that the hot volcano breeze could knock him over.

BUT THAT ISNT THE END

Its just a fake out that its gonna have the same funny ending as every other charon appearance, and the same lack of him being remotely threatening.

cos NOW WE FINALLY GIVE THE MAN A GODDAMN BOSS FIGHT

and yknow how i said i hate the manga where he’s all super evil and owns three legendaries and kills a guy? okay take away all that stuff but KEEP THE MOMENT OF GRANDPA GETTING TO DO SOMETHING BADASS FOR THE ONLY TIME EVER

Maybe he surprises everybody by actually not being down for the count! And by now he’s just SO pissed off from a whole game’s worth of failing and being disrespected that he does something desperate and stupid at the last minute. If he was meant to be the dude who invented the red chain, maybe he could use it to control heatran even if looker took away the magma stone? like i feel it’d be in character for charon to secretly steal a prototype red chain for himself during the whole “oh fuck my boss is legit destroying the world i need to get out of here” thing. Grab some stuff to sell now your last paycheck is dissappearing into an ominous void, lol. He didnt expect to actually be using it, and if the actually completed red chain puts enough stress on its weilder to make them cry blood then this thing must be even more risky to use! so its a really huge holy shit moment of tiny gramps actually doing something intimidating! and his boss fight could actually be using heatran and actually having heatran get to goddamn appear in this sidequest. it was soooo underwhelming to have to return thru the dungeon a second time to actually see heatran, this time without any story stuff to break up the long walk...

also this entire thing could be a great climax to his character arc and sort of a moment of “okay THIS was actually his motivation all along!” Cos I always felt like Charon’s real motive was low self confidence? Like he’s always on about money but he seems to focus more on SUCCESS instead. Fame and success. “Ha ha i am the greatest scientist and i want people actually aknowledge me” is a thing he repeatedly brings up and also that other characters directly demonstrate in how they act towards him. It just feels like he thinks he can buy that with money if he’s failed his whole life in earning it. And the old “acts egotistical because he actually hates himself” character archetype would work really well as a sympathetic interpretation of his character. It would be like how he’s ‘subconciously friendly’. The thing he actually does (being boastful) is because of a different reason (not believing his own lies and being super insecure about his self worth), but he keeps it so well hidden that not even he realises that its really what he feels. Similar to how he acts grumpy because of a different reason, because he actually DOES want friends and he’s just guarding his emotions under a million walls cos he’s scared of being hurt again. And scared of how he knows he’s a weak willed person who might betray his friends again for his desperation for money. Which is really a desperation to feel valid as a human being, which is really just ‘i want friends’ again under another coat of paint. So depressingly he caused his own problems because of the same character trait that was once a positive in his life! I think he works well when interpreted from that angle, he’s like a dark subversion of a pokemon professor or of your classic ash ketchum figure. Like “the power of friendship” is what turned him evil, and also turned him into a guy who acted awful to his friends. And it could add to this thematic thing if “loving pokemon” was also referenced throughout his plot in a negative sense?

That’s actually one other good thing about the manga, they removed his greedy grumpyness (bad) but replaced it with the same motive as the villain of the 2nd movie (weird flex but okay). Aka “a guy who collects legendary pokemon just as trophies and has forgotten how to treat them like genuine friends”. Even if that wouldnt be his main character concept in this hypothetical rewritten game, it could still be a secondary trait that’s used to suppliment the main emotional arc. Like instead of just saying “money money money” you could flesh out more scenes of him actually talking about HOW he’s gonna get the money and what he’s gonna use it for. Via collecting all the rare pokemon, and to collect more rare pokemon. Which will somehow (in his twisted cynical perception of how the world works) make him a person of value and get people to respect him. It could also tie together pretty much every scene he already has! Cos his backstory is finding this pokemon friend... who was a rare unknown species. And maybe as a kid he decided to become a scientist initially just out of excitement to learn more about his new friend and show them to the world! But then the realities of the difficulties in being respected as a scientist gradually wore him down and he became more cynical, more obsessed with recognition, more believing that the only way to get it was by being an asshole and he’d just get taken advantage of if he kept being soft. And he started to forget why he really wanted that fame in the first place, and instead it just became an obsession, a vain hope that he’d hate himself less if he accomplished his life’s dream. When really from the player’s perspective its obvious that even if he succeeded he’d still be depressed when he realized how he’d lost everything in the process. And it’d be a more realistic sort of way he could have turned from a good kid to an asshole gramps. There wasnt any single day he suddenly made the decision to change, it was just a gradual wearing down of his morals over the years. he became more obsessed and more cynical that normal moral ways of doing things would never get him what he wanted. he started making small sacrifices to his personal sense of morality, and eventually reached the point where he’d completely abandoned it all without even noticing the gradual change. And somewhere along the way he forgot that he started this because of his pokemon friend, and discarded it as “not good enough” in favor of this vain quest to acquire a million other rarer pokemon and just friggin put them on a shelf to boast about them and feel less empty inside. And then also his redemption was a gradual change too? After he reached that point of completely betraying his own sense of goodness, he gradually got sadder and more tired with living this way. By the time you see him ingame he’s not remotely happy with being evil and he’s just a poor dude who’s deluded that being evil is the only way to escape the sadness rather than the cause of it. And thats why his whole ‘oops im accidentally subconciously befriending my coworkers and also the enemy’ thing kinda set him on the road to eventual redemption, cos its the first bit of small upliftingness he’s had in ages. sorta recharges his Ability To Care and he starts realizing what he’s doing and feeling regret. But yeah throughout the main game he never actually acts on his doubts and just repeatedly misses the chance to get redeemed and makes you Kinda Frustrated, similar to zuko or peridot’s redemptive arc? And ultimately reuniting him with his old best friend and showing him that its not too late to fix what he broke = the actual catalyst for his changes to fully stick and he completely switches to the good side.

BUT ANYWAY thats why he needs a boss fight first!

Something like 50-70 years worth of self hate and frustration from devoting himself to a super incorrect way of defeating that self hate, and sacrificing EVERYTHING for the sake of it, and being disrespected the entire time, and being terrified that you’re getting old and running out of time, and almost dying to some guy’s weird void plan, and losing the only thing you had left aka the team galactic job and a few maybe sorta kinda friends you had, and now being disrespected AGAIN by those same people you thought were friends (but never actually admitted it to them) and then also bitchslapped by a frog?? Also this place is real fuckin sweaty?? Yeah stark mountain is a great climactic point for his entire frustrations to boil over and be a bigger eruption than the actual volcano!

Thus we have Grand Dad Gets Serious And Has An Actually Interesting Boss Fight!

but also grand dad is being emotionally open and whoops accidentally might be tearing down those walls he built up around his big ol soft as fuck heart

like the battle would possibly be more ‘you talk him down into giving up, realizing he was wrong, quitting being evil, and going home to his friend that he misses so much. and finally realizing that thats actually the only way he could ever really defeat the self hate that drove him this far in the first place. also he’s not worthless and his friends always believed he was the awesome dude he always wanted to be’. Yknow, rather than actually defeating him and all. I mean you still do that but i think it’d be a case like with the giratina fight where even if you lose or run away you get the same result, just slightly altered text? Just as long as you come here with rotom in your party your victory was already a foregone conclusion. you just get a really cool boss fight as your reward, yknow? cos seriously I WAS WAITING THE WHOLE GAME FOR THAT DAMN BOSS FIGHT!!!

obligatory link again to the cool song i think is a great summary of all of my headcanons for this man’s character arc and would also be badass backing music for a hypothetical boss fight:

context: it makes more sense if you imagine it as his own internal thoughts of all the stuff he’s been running away from accepting in his own feelings. and/or what he THINKS that the player and rotom would be saying to him, so he’s shocked into speechlessness by the fact that they actually do think he deserves a second chance and has the potential to be good.

actually that could be a really good ending to the fight!!!

like when you get through to him and convince him to stand down, he cowers in fear thinking he’s gonna get the karmic payback for everything he’s ever done. and he tries to run away from reuniting with rotom. half of him is scared that his friend hates him and the other half is.. well..

i think it would be thematically appropriate to end it with a hug

just an image of this lil toy robot pokemon hugging this scared old man, and he’s just so empty and doesnt know what to say. its the last thing he ever expected. and then his shock turns into pain and sadness, as he was really the most scared that his friend actually would forgive him. that everything he ever did really was all for nothing, and he should have done this years ago and saved all that lost time. he’s so scared because he thinks he doesnt deserve forgiveness and he doesnt know what to do now its happening. so he just lets out all those tears he’s never cried over all these years, and the scene ends with him desperately hugging his best friend and never wanting to let go ever again

And then that’d be the big moment that was really the turning point for him, though of course that wouldnt be the end of his redemption and if there was any further postgame content you could show various scenes of him atoning throughout that. or just some images in the second credits scene after you beat the postgame stuff. i’d kinda like if there was some moment of him apologising to the rest of team galactic and joining them in their attempts to rebuild the team into something good. and maybe an extra postgame segment where this redeemified team goes on some bigger quest to try and rescue cyrus from the distortion world and heal his pain too. i think you could get a lot of good scenes out of a redeemed charon being along for the ride! like you’d obviously have cyrus being skeptical that this dude really has changed so much, and probably an extension of that earlier scene where he’s pissed off that the one guy he thought agreed with him about emotions being foolish is actually being the most emotional of everyone. but i think because of that they could also have scenes of relating together and actually starting to form a friendship in the end? like i can see charon feeling guilty for never trying to reach out to cyrus before, and also believing really strongly that cyrus can be redeemed cos like ‘yo i’m way worse than you and i was able to change, please believe that its a possibility for you too!’ Also cyrus likes machines so i think he’d be happy to meet rotom and become friends. And he has that whole grandpa related backstory so it might help a lot towards healing those scars and reuniting the two of them if he starts forming a friendship with a different gramps? THERES A LOT OF GOOD THEMATIC LINKS BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT TEAM GALACTIC MEMBERS THAT ARE NEVER EXPLORED IN THE ORIGINAL GAME

also in the original version of this plotline it was a fanfic/fangame idea of an alternate universe swap where dawn/lucas/other customizeable protagonist is a galactic grunt instead of the hero. so a lot of the details were different but in that version the protag was literally adopted by whichever galactic admin they picked as their main friendship route. entirely because of self indulgent ‘i wish these guys were my dad/sister/grandpa/whatever’ feels cos sinnoh helped me thru a tough time as a kid. soooo i cant really do that charon grandpa idea where he also renovates the Old Chateau into a ghost pokemon sanctuary and becomes like an actual good pokemon professor. (also rekindles his friendship with prof rowan and agatha from the kanto elite four cos thats just a random headcanon i have) BUT i could still do all that except the part where he adopts u cos canon dawn/lucas already has a mom lol. And i think it’d be more fitting of canonverse protag to adopt Cyrus? Like obv in the canonverse itd probably be the main boss of the team who gets the bigger redemption plot and is canonically the best friend EVEN THO for tumblr user tumblunni in particular it is All Grandpas All The Time. And i like the idea of Cyboy being a survivor of child abuse who tries to become a good dad just like his parents werent. But i also like the idea of dawn’s mom adopting him as her new big brother and him getting to experience a genuine loving family for the first time! I think itd work that way cos cyrus is meant to be 27 even tho he looks older, and i dont think dawn’s mom is that young and also i just see no chemistry between them as any sort of ship. (and headcanon cyrus as asexual anyway) But also the family does still keep in touch with all the other galactic friends!!!

hhhh i wrote So Many Word just about grandpa redemption holy shit i’ll probably die if i try and cover all the other teammates now

ok i will leave it here but just know i also have Deep Headcanons about all of them, even if charon gets the most. somedaayayyyay i will share with you more!!

[tarysande]

You mentioned previously issues Chloe definitely has regarding self-worth and being worthy of love. Would you be willing to expand on that?

In a heartbeat.

Some of this is inference, but I do think there’s some pretty significant support for everything in the show. I’m going to try and break it down into eras of Chloe’s life.

Chloe, her parents, and her childhood/youth: Chloe is an only child who was born to parents who had essentially given up on having children/believed they couldn’t have children. While this means she was doubtless loved, I think there’s also a strong likelihood that love came with a side of relief that bordered on desperation. From things she’s said to Lucifer, we also know Chloe would’ve liked to have siblings; this indicates she felt lonely, always wanting something she couldn’t have. 

We know Penelope is dramatic; there’s no reason to believe she was any less dramatic about her precious miracle child. John was definitely the stable one, but he worked a dangerous job–every family connected with law enforcement knows, on some level, the day may come when the parent doesn’t come home. So, Chloe grew up with a kind of low-grade fear in the background of family life. We also know Penelope was (because she still is) constantly either working or trying to get work as an actor. Chloe’s response to her mom “using” Trixie as a prop indicates that she still, even years later, has a lot of strong feelings about that side of things. To me, this indicates that Chloe being an actress wasn’t so much about what she wanted as what Penelope wanted–I think this is supported by the fact that her first movie is what can perhaps generously be termed a B-movie, and one where her breasts were bare no less. In other words, Chloe looked to be following in her mother’s footsteps.

So, I need to talk about acting and self-esteem for a second. Given what we know about Chloe as an adult, I don’t think she was thrilled about Hot Tub High School… but it was a means to an end. Do the crap movie so you can maybe get a better one and hope you don’t get typecast as the actress with the boobs (guys, there are a lot of reasons actors insist on nudity clauses in their contracts). Acting, especially in Hollywood, focuses a lot on looks. You cannot avoid it. So, doubtless there was a lot of pressure on young Chloe to look a certain way, be a certain size, be pretty, don’t be too clever, be likable, do what they say. Chloe was conditioned to think this way because of the world she was traversing from childhood.

And it was a mask. It was something she put on to please her mom. It was a way of receiving praise. And of course she wanted praise. She had few friends (another trait that has carried into adulthood), didn’t have a “normal” life. And Chloe is sensitive. We see over and over how sensitive she is, how she’s the first to touch someone’s shoulder when they’re in pain, how she can step into the shoes of someone to see things from their point of view to talk them out of shooting a gun, for example. I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine she was very lonely. 

But she had her dad. Kind dad, loving dad, stable dad.

And then she didn’t.

We know this loss is the catalyst for her leaving acting and joining the police force. She was only 19; in a lot of ways, she stepped off her mother’s path and immediately onto her father’s—I don’t know if Chloe has ever truly figured out Chloe’s path. I think she becomes a cop for good reasons, but there’s no doubt her father’s death—and wanting him to be proud of her the way she wanted her mother to be proud of her as she pursued acting–is a huge motivation. I suspect she put her nose down and studied and excelled and didn’t make any friends at the Academy because Chloe can be intensely single-minded.

Chloe and Dan: We know Dan is the first friendly face Chloe sees when she joins the Department. In a different story, of course that would mean theirs is a match made in Heaven (groan)… but this show tackles psychology more realistically than that. Chloe, still looking for praise and for guidance and for someone to be proud of her, throws herself willingly into Dan’s orbit. She takes all the years of loneliness and the disconnected life of an actor (acting is strange because for a few weeks or months you are intensely close with everyone around you and then you disperse and chances are most of those super-close relationships fizzle) and she devotes herself to the first man who shows interest and is kind to her. For a while, she follows Dan on his path: Dan becomes Detective, Chloe becomes Detective. But, as we see, Chloe isn’t a detective like Dan is. She isn’t about open-and-shut or following the rules if the rules are stupid and her gut is telling her something else. She follows her gut and luckily that often leads to evidence she can use. Still, she’s a woman in a man’s world; she says as much. Nothing is easy and, I suspect, she still feels lonely. She still feels like it’s Chloe against the world even though she’s just trying to help people. Which brings us to…

Chloe and Palmetto: Probably just as Chloe’s starting to feel like she belongs–she and Dan are married, so that’s an identity; she’s a mom, so that’s an identity; she’s a detective, so that’s an identity–Palmetto happens and she is suddenly *cough* kicked out of Heaven and left to a personal Hell. Everything (except Trixie–but of course she worries about Trixie and all these changes) starts to fall apart. People at the precinct range from dismissive to outright cruel. She doesn’t have a partner; no one wants to work with her (she’s lonely again, and also stung that people who previously claimed to like her immediately turned their backs when she didn’t fall in line even though she’s certain the line is based on a lie). Chloe may not be as dogmatic about not-lying as Lucifer is, but she still hates dishonesty.

It’s heavily implied that her relationship with Dan starts breaking down around this point. We know it’s likely because Dan is being torn apart by the lies he’s telling her, but Chloe doesn’t have any idea; with her intuitiveness, she picks up that something is wrong, but she blames herself. Chloe doesn’t have a circle of friends; she doesn’t have people to lean on; her dad left (not by choice), her mom fell apart (leaving her to be the grown-up way too young) and is often gone. Eventually, Chloe and Dan separate and we know Chloe sees this as necessary but also a failure; she takes things personally and doesn’t have a support network or family or history of shrugging things off. She is sensitive and perceived failure, perceived rejection, hurt her deeply. She puts on a brave face because she’s Chloe Decker and she is strong and independent and tough (she has to be) but inside? Inside, she’s thinking “Of course, he left. They always leave. There’s something wrong with me.” (Which is corroborated by her reaction when Pierce leaves her so abruptly: more on that later.)

Chloe and Lucifer:

So, Lucifer enters Chloe’s life. He’s… totally insane, in her opinion. But he gets results. More than that, he wants to work with her. She doesn’t trust all the attention he lavishes on her (she’s doubtless thinking “Ugh, he only wants one thing.”). This is important. After everything she’s been through, Chloe doesn’t open up easily and she doesn’t trust easily. Even though he’s weird and has his stupid metaphors and thinks he’s the Devil, Lucifer appears to like her more than anyone else has in ages.

Here’s what’s even more important: he looks to her for guidance. He trusts her as an expert worthy of listening to. He doesn’t always understand why she wants things done certain ways but he values her opinions. At this point? I don’t think Chloe has felt her opinions were valid for a very, very long time. If ever. I love Dan now, but in the flashback ep, we see how dismissive and Dan-knows-best he is; that was unhealthy for her. Bad conditioning. Because at the heart of it, Lucifer’s bad childhood conditioning may be more dramatic and obvious, but Chloe is actually hurting and broken just as much. 

Suddenly, she’s not as lonely. She’s got Lucifer around to bounce ideas off of and sit on stakeouts with. Yeah, he comes with a side of sexual innuendo and some mind-boggling bad decisions but she starts tentatively feeling like she’s part of a partnership. And, time and time again, Lucifer sticks up for her, tells her how great she is, makes her feel important and valued. She’s sensitive and she’s intuitive and even if she rolls her eyes, she knows he’s not lying to her. She just doesn’t know how to process everything; no one treats her the way Lucifer treats her. No one listens to her the way Lucifer does. Lucifer doesn’t brush her aside. He’s aggravating and annoying and funny and clever and from the moment she sees the scars on his back she wants to protect him from whatever hurt him so badly. 

So, yes, of course she lets herself be vulnerable. It’s been so long and she’s so scared and… and we know what happens. Chloe runs smack into Lucifer’s problems without really understanding what they are. The (sometimes massive) stumbles in their relationship come from not clearly communicating, which is the slow death (or stillbirth) of any relationship.

Chloe and Lucifer and Heartbreak:

This is the hard part. This is where the writers did not pull their punches even though so many others would have. The audience gets a more intimate peek inside Lucifer’s head because we see him so often with Linda. But here’s the thing: When Lucifer left Chloe without a word, his actions destroyed all the progress she’d made since meeting him. Suddenly, she’s unlovable again, she was left again, she was replaced instantly, she very literally was kicked out of a personal Heaven into an unrelenting Hell-loop where every time she turns around there’s Lucifer but he’s different he’s not the Lucifer who told her she was special. We, the audience, know Lucifer’s reasoning but Chloe does not. From Chloe’s point of view, Lucifer is hot and cold constantly and she never knows which he’ll be. He cares but not the way she wants. He cares but won’t let himself say he cares. He cares but pretends he doesn’t. He is a goddamned mess, and she cares about him but it is so unhealthy for her. Even though Lucifer claims he doesn’t ever want to hurt her or lie to her, in a lot of ways his treatment of her borders on emotionally abusive. He just doesn’t know it and she thinks, because of her poor self-esteem, she deserves it. I think it is vitally important to understand that from the end of 2x13 and throughout the entirety of season 3, Chloe is dealing with heartbreak. But she’s Chloe Decker. She can’t just quit. She can’t cry all day and stop going to work. She has to help people. 

Chloe and Pierce:

Obviously, Chloe never really loved Pierce. She’s been in love with Lucifer the whole time even though I’m sure no one wishes she could get over him more than she does. But let’s talk about Pierce: Chloe starts out with a bit of a crush. He’s handsome, sure, but again, here’s the most important part: when he tells her she’s his best detective, when he tells her she can’t have the union rep job because it’s for washouts, when he compliments her solve rates, he’s pouring his praise and pride into the dry well. Chloe doesn’t trust Lucifer’s praise anymore, since he hurt her. But Pierce’s praise substitutes and it’s the praise she craves; the pride he claims to feel for her and her work and her specialness.

Pierce still messes with her self-esteem though. She asks him out, and he rebuffs her (she’s unlovable, there’s something wrong with her). When he asks her out (sort of), she dives in headfirst because she is so desperate to feel loved, to feel connected to someone again. And Pierce feeds her every morsel of ideal romance he can manipulate. He tells her he’s all in. In every way, he gives her what she thinks she wants: stability, normalcy, not Lucifer. 

Everything about the Pierce breakup is about Lucifer breaking up with her, leaving, and coming back different and, apparently, no longer interested in her. Just like Lucifer’s rage at Pierce in the aftermath (”How could you hurt her?”) is 98% displaced rage at himself because in that moment Lucifer realizes what he did to Chloe and how much he hurt her. She speaks the heart of her issues herself: “I’m just trying not to take it personally, because it’s not like it’s the first time this has happened. So, I just wonder if it’s something I’m doing.” Of course she thinks it’s something she’s doing; again, some part of her thinks it’s what she deserves, somehow. (Which makes her tearful confrontation with Lucifer later in the episode all the more heartbreaking.)

The whirlwind part of the romance–supported by her revelations in 3x22–is that, as Lucifer’s off playing Chloe to solve a case, she’s playing Lucifer to “be happy.” From her perspective, Lucifer takes what he wants, he’s spontaneous, he doesn’t feel guilt or shame, he’s never lonely or alone, life’s always a party and he’s always the star; he’s happier than she is. He’s everything she’s not (in her opinion): charming, lovable, attractive, someone people want to be with. He does the choosing and leaving. The irony, of course, is that in “playing Lucifer” she ends up alone in a party bus, drunk and sad and lonely and regretting her life choices. Which is, as Amenadiel points out so eloquently early in the season, the hard nugget of truth at the heart of all Lucifer’s outrageous behavior. And, I think Chloe starts to realize this, which is why the scene in 3x23 can happen and be meaningful.

Now, Chloe’s not stupid. She’s still hurting and still bleeding but I think Lucifer’s mania about “going back to normal” in 3x23 is eye-opening for her, too. It’s too desperate, and damn if she doesn’t know desperate. Her whole “relationship” with Pierce was her ping-ponging from desperate fix to desperate fix, trying to feel happy and not alone again. It was doomed to fail for more reasons than Pierce being, you know, a villain and a murderer. 

What Next?

Sorry to break it to you, but neither Chloe nor Lucifer is actually in an emotional or psychological place to be blissfully happy right now (even aside from the revelations of the finale). Chloe has to keep figuring out what she wants without reference to the men in her life. Lucifer has to genuinely understand what he did wrong and how badly he hurt her because otherwise they won’t be able to return to the place of love and trust and mutual pride they were about to dive into in 2x13 (which still would’ve ultimately faced the issue that he hadn’t convinced her who he really was; that knowledge is NECESSARY for their relationship. The problem wasn’t that Dad was manipulating her, it’s that Lucifer, by omission, was).

Chloe knows Lucifer has the capacity for so much good, so much love, so much tenderness and kindness and gentleness. She sees to the heart of him in ways he can’t even see himself. That said, Lucifer needs to see Chloe less as a miracle on a pedestal and more as a woman with wounds and imperfections and agency; he absolutely needs to get over thinking of her as someone to be “protected”; she can take care of herself and as long as he’s more worried about protecting her than being her friend and partner and lover, they can’t be in a healthy relationship. They both of them need to get past idealized notions and start dealing with the real guts of good relationships: trust, trust, communication, and trust. Even when it hurts. Even when it’s ugly. Chloe is not something that can “fix” Lucifer any more than Lucifer can “fix” Chloe. They are catalysts for each other but the change has to happen from within. (Linda’s like “Right?? I keep saying that!!”)

Do I think they can get there? Hell yes, I do. Do I think it’s a three-episode arc? Ohhhhh nooooo. Even if they go the “We’re in a relationship” route there are massive hurdles to jump and numerous lessons to learn. It’s definitely a season. It’s going to be fascinating and is yet another reason someone needs to save lucifer ASAP. 

In sum, everyone needs to spend more time on Linda’s great couch and Linda needs to get paid more.

[ifreakinglovewritingsomuch]

Changlix AU / Break The Silence (Part Five)

Pairings: Seo Changbin x Lee Felix, Bang Chan x Kim Woojin, Lee Minho x Han Jisung, Kim Seungmin x Hwang Hyunjin, ft. Yang Jeongin Plot: Chan finally sees no other chance to rebel against the system, even though he knows that he can get into trouble once again, losing the person he loves a second time. But he has to risk it! Felix ha no clue what the strange package in front of his house is meant to be, but when he follows the clues it leads him to a conspiracy he never wanted to be part of. (SiFi!Au, Futuristic!AU) Warnings: Angst maybe, but nothing really bad, I guess… Words: 1532 Part One/Two/Three/Four…

A/N: Slowly we’re getting somewhere. It’s so fun to write this series. Hope you all like it too. Enjoy the fifth part! <3

Chan can’t keep the smile off his face. Each of them is back, no one has refused to come. They will be able to work as a nine-member group. The young man waits until they are all seated and quiet before he starts to talk telling them what he has planned for their first mission.

There is a big event that night and many people will watch it, from middle-class families to really high ones. The event will also be broadcasted and many people will watch it on TV, so through it, it's easy to reach as many people as possible with their message.

"And what message?" Hyunjin asks not really convinced by the plan.

"That's your part of the mission, figure something out that will make people think and question things." Chan tries to stay calm, even though the younger just rolls his eyes. At least Hyunjin isn't complaining working on what they should put out there with the others.

Felix is nervous. Will this work? What will people think? He is standing behind Changbin who is sitting in front of the displays. Like Felix has promised himself not to talk a single word with the older the whole time. He just ignores Changbin.

Woojin, Seungmin and Jisung are the ones that were chosen to speak at the event so Changbin can connect with the monitors there. The company that hosts the party has really bad security systems for their technology, so it's easy for the hacker to manipulate the screens, without anyone catching them. As long as they can get the chips there, he can connect with the monitors.

Chan is currently talking to Woojin, over a headset, getting information at how the mission is going.

"Seungmin and Jisung were able to connect, do you have a signal?" He asks Changbin. The younger nods.

"Woojin will also be finished, just wait a second."

Felix sees how Minho is relieved to hear that his friend is already safe and soon on his way back. When Jisung had volunteered to go with them, Minho had obviously been against it. Felix isn’t sure but from what he has noticed, they are probably a couple. Of course, they wouldn't really show that in public. It's a crime. But he kinda wants to tell the two boys that at least here they can be themselves because no one here minds. Just because the system says it's wrong doesn't mean they are right. Why should love be wrong anyway?

"Woojin is finished too. Can you start now?"

"Of course," Changbin says with a smug smile and Felix only manages to roll his eyes. But to be honest the older is really talented. With some quick movements, he is able to shut the security system down.

"I can take the monitors over now. Are they already on their way?" Changbin hesitates, looking at Chan for approval.

"Yeah, they are. Go on."

Changbin reaches for the display, but suddenly Felix stops them.

"Wait!"

All eyes are on him.

"We should add something to the message."

Jeongin groans in annoyance.

"We already went over it for so many times."

"I know. I think we should just add...a signature."

"A signature?" Changbin asks, but Felix decides to just ignore him.

"That's a good idea! So people know that someone is behind this and also future missions."

Felix nods at Chan's words.

"What name did you have in mind?" Chan asks the younger directly.

Felix hesitates before answering.

"What about...Stary...Kids...?"

Changbin chuckles at that idea and it takes all of the younger’s strength to not slap that smirk from his face. It’s a good name! Can’t that guy leave Felix alone?

“Good. I like it. Add it.” The last part is meant for Changbin and Felix smile, happy that he got the approval form their boss. He turns to the hacker, who looks at him with a raised eyebrow but then just adds their name, without complaining.

They were all waiting for something to happen and Changbin to continue his mission when the older boy suddenly furrowed his brows.

"What is it?" Hyunjin acted disinterested until now, taking his chair to move closer.

"One of the chips isn't connected. I can't get a strong signal anymore." Changbbin tells the other, typing worried on the display.

Chan curses under his breath before talking in his headset.

"Woojin? Have you already left?"

He hums, getting an answer from the older, but Felix can't hear what he says.

"Okay then get back, one of the chips disconnected. Wait I'll ask." Chan lowers the mic, turning his attention to the hacker.

"Which chip did disconnect?"

After Changbin checks the display, he turns to answer.

"I think it's Seungmin's."

Chan nods before giving the information through to Woojin.

"What a surprise the rich prig messed up." Hyunjin snorts, seemingly amused over the other's failure.

"It's probably not his fault, one of the guests could have bumped against the equipment," Changbin says, checking the display again for a connection.

"There it is!" He smiles. "Tell Woojin he should leave, so I can start to stream our message."

"Yeah give him a minute"

The younger nods, all of their eyes on the screen.

"Then let's finish our first mission."

With that the young hacker presses the next button, taking over the screens at the event.

No one says a single word, all eyes are fixed on the screen, not that anyone besides Changbin and Chan even gets what all those stuff means.

"Did it work?" Jeongin breaks the silence.

"Positive," Changbin says. "I'll turn on the news. If they are quick we're already mentioned."

Felix can't keep the smile away when he already sees the reporter in a shocked state.

>Just a minute ago some radical hackers took over the screens at the annual event, celebrating the closure of the borders, to spread a message full of hatred against our beloved system. The police still has to make a statement, but from leaked information, the message was streamed and many people saw it before the live stream could be stopped and the monitors disconnected. It's still not sure who exactly is behind it, but the message was signed with "Stray Kids". This again shows that we're not strict enough with our younger generations. Hopefully, this will help the system to open more education homes, to show our youth that opinions like this are wrong. We will keep you updated.<

After the reporter had ended Changbin closed the news turning to the others.

"Wow, they made a whole news report only for us." A proud smile plays on his lips.

"That guy is an asshole. Radical hackers?"

"But we definitely left an impression."

"They won't forget the name Stray Kids anytime soon." Chan winks at Felix with a wide smile.

Felix knows it was getting late but he wants to stay. They are all back and kind of celebrating their first mission.

He is clinking glasses with all of them, expect Changbin. Felix is still mad at the older.

"Even though you nearly messed up everything...Cheers!" Hyunjin smiles, seeing Seungmin's mad expression.

"I didn't mess up."

"Whatever you say."

Hyunjin just shrugs, making the other even angrier. Something about teasing him was fun, but even Hyunjin knows when he should just leave it for once.

"We will leave now, or we aren't at the education home before the curfew," Minho announces saying goodbye before leaving with Jisung.

Again Felix can’t stop the thought of what a cute couple they are. He kinda wants something like that too. Just someone that loves him and he loves back.

But for now, he has more important things to do.

With everyone leaving Felix decides to also, go home. He told his parents he has a school project but still he can’t be too late, or they will just ask questions.

Walking home Felix is able to pick up some parts of a conversation a couple of friends have.

"I can relate to that so much."

"Yeah, the system is just fucked up. Finally, someone has the balls to step up to them."

"True. But it's really risky."

"What do you mean?"

"My mum told me there was a revolt about five years ago, they could have really changed something many people were agreeing...but..." Felix heard about that too, he was too young at that time to understand it and now no one wants to talk about it.

"What? Say it!"

"They were all killed...there were just around our age, barely adults and the police just murdered them to shut the rebellion down. They used it as a warning for everyone that is against the system."

"One more reason to stop those fuckers. They are brainwashing us."

"Exactly I'm up for a change!."

Felix isn’t able to hear more because they take another turn, leaving him alone. Was that what Hyunjin talked about? Had Chan something to do with the revolt five years ago?

Whatever, Felix is sure that he still doesn't know the whole truth, but maybe he doesn’t want to know all of it. He is not really keen on being on the news next, as a warning sign for others.

[amethysttribble]

Spider-Man Homecoming: Peter’s age and why I think that impacts the film greatly

Peter Parker is fifteen in this movie. He’s a sophomore in high school. And it shows. This isn’t like when an thirty year old or a person in their late twenties plays a high-schooler and its obvious, Tom Holland (though not 15) looks young. He sounds young. And Holland acts the age he is supposed to portray perfectly. Peter is fifteen. And to many people who will see this movie that doesn’t feel young, I know, but I’m barely 20 and already it feels terribly young to me. Not in a condescending way, I hope, but I look at him and see how much growing he has to do. Peter even says in the film he’s not even worried about college yet. He’s not even a junior. Peter is really young. And I think that’s important.

In a lot of superhero properties they try and downplay the severity of the child hero thing, for obvious reasons, what worked in the 50s and 60s comics doesn’t work as well now. And some of that is here. Tony Stark never tells Peter to stop until things go too far for him, when most real world adults in this age would end his heroing instantly, and taking Peter to Berlin was kinda… yeah bad on Tony’s part, even though he believed that Cap and his team would never really hurt anyone of them. In some aspects we are supposed to use our suspension of disbelief and wave away some of our concerns about Peter Parker’s age. 

And in some ways, no, the movie addresses this. Or at least acknowledges it. And I think that helps and elevates the film. 

Making the audience aware of Peter’s youth increases the tension tenfold. 

Many people have talked about how they have superhero movie fatigue. And I get it, to some extent, specifically in Marvel. Age of Ultron-post I have felt just a little disconnected. And I think it has to do with stakes. The villains are typically STRONG, the plots are WORLD ENDING, and the heroes are INVINCIBLE. And that’s how the first movies were, but now we’ve seen it so many times that I don’t believe anyone can hurt the Avengers. I’ve seen the avengers go through buildings, concrete, and portals. I’ve seen them get smashed to bits and stand back up, I’ve seen them at their lowest and know they will always be okay. Until someone actually dies (which a morbid part hopes will happen in Infinity War) the stakes are no longer there. To me, it seems like they will always get back up.

But Spiderman is different. He’s fifteen. And though I logically know he’s super strong and more invulnerable than normal humans, he is fifteen. He shouldn’t be out there!- my mind screams. But I know he has to be, for himself. They explained his motivations so well in Civil War I have to root for him now. I understand how Tony go sucked in to his enthusiasm and goodness because I am. So I don’t want him to stop. But every time some threw Peter down, or into a wall I gasped. I threw my hand over my mouth like a little old lady and went “oh no”. I was an emotional wreck in the theatre, constantly whispering and reacting and emoting. I promise that’s not normal for me.

Without spoilers, there is one scene where Peter hits his lowest. He is suit-less (that was in the trailers) and he’s beaten up and trapped. And he fights. Captain America, Iron Man, even Hawkeye and Black Widow, I know can get out of there. They are seasoned, strong, greater than I can ever be. But Peter is a highs school kid trying to balance after school activities and taking spanish and going to the dance and I was that kid. I remember being vulnerable in that way, if not physically but emotionally. And Peter fights through it, even when I wasn’t sure he could. Every time he got hurt I thought ‘is Iron Man going to show up?’ I wanted Tony to show up to help this poor child, even if I knew from a screenwriting standpoint Peter had to save himself. But because, emotionally, I wan’t sure Peter could do it alone it made everything so much more rewarding when he could. 

Throughout this movie, when Peter messes up I understand, he has so much learning to do. When he losses I understand, he isn’t as experienced as the bad guy. When he gets mopey, sad, or indignant, I understand because he’s a teenager of course he’s angsty. I am willing to to forgive and empathize with Peter instantly for things I would not be so lenient with adults about. Though I adored Civil War, I rolled my eyes at almost everyone in that movie at least once. There was a better, more adult way to confront this. But Peter is not expected to behave adult-like or maturely, at least not from me. He’s just trying to help and he can make mistakes along the way. 

Peter’s youth and inexperience and vulnerability reinvested me in a world where logically I know he can never lose. But because the adults in this movie acknowledged that this was a kid, because the movie took time to experience school and what Peter should be doing instead of running around in tights, because Holland showed that beneath that innate goodness and strength, Peter’s still immature, I felt for this kid. This young kid trying his best touched a point of empathy with me these movies about Gods hadn’t touched in a while. And I think that’s beautiful. And I think it’s important.

[villes-noires]

It’s Only Temporary (Part One)

“It’s only going to be temporary” is a phrase that I have heard repeatedly during the past several years. Particularly from young adults looking upon their present circumstances. While youth has conventionally been considered as a process of transition, as something temporary anyway, this process is prolonged for many in an anticipation of gainful employment, marriage and family or a sense of stability, an anticipation that may never end. Much has been made for a long time about the seeming intensifying temporariness of everyday life, and the way this word has been affixed as temporary contracts and labor, temporary friendships with or without benefits, even temporary autonomous zones. In an extensively urbanized era replete with the valorization of mobility and circulation and the ways in which any apparent stability seems tenuous because of the ways in which social and geographic positions are networked across an ever-expanding range of relations, what could not be temporary?

I want to briefly reflect on the way in which such temporariness inhabits the urban, may be the urban’s sole inhabitant, as the temporary itself seems to constantly unsettle what it means to inhabit, and how the cities and suburbs and peripheries and all kinds of strange urban formations should not be viewed as places to inhabit. Rather, they are rather what Karen Barad might call an electronic body all the way down, a condensation of dispersed and multiple beings and times, where future and past are diffracted into each moment—a body set lose as a trans*-mattering, constantly wandering through what might be or have been, regenerating itself through strange alliances. As such urban residents are always on the way to themselves already somewhere else.

Or to take Jenny Robison’s project of comparative maneuvers, where urban territories are forged through things shifting sideways, laterally, without subsumption or overarching frame, without settling somewhere. For, “to settle” has always been excessively burdened by the imperial practices of the “settler” and his fascination, obsession in marking a story with a definitive beginning and end, a story from which to measure the worthiness of all others, their rights of use and potentials of self-making. Much of the urban today, however, wards off narration. Storytelling may continue unbated but what is told is less a story than a profusion of disconnected details.

Of course the obdurate abounds—all of those markets, shops and cafes that have barely made a few daily sales for decades; all the residential and commercial buildings that always have seemed to show signs of immanent collapse, all of those who have never extricated themselves from the same dead end job. Much is made about the relentless and accelerated transformation of cities and urban life, but from Mexico City to Mumbai large swathes of the city have barely been altered.

Yet regardless of empirical evidence the modality through which we tend to look a things seems to attribute a temporary condition to them, the sense that in a fundamental way they are already gone, past; that there is nothing about them that seems adequately prepared to survive through what is just about to arrive; that in the search for more intense experiences and exposures to the world that the ability to sense what is in front of us or where we are as somehow important or adequate quickly fades into a generalized restlessness. Even the notion of the “temporary” would seem to undermine its own meaning—for we recognize something as temporary in contrast to that which endures, sustains, continues. But for many in Indonesia’s black far east there is little recognition of continuity or of a destination to arrive to. In recent weeks I have been taking long ferry rides with youth as they make their way back and forth from Kupang—the main city of the East—in search of work on palm plantations in Kalimantan and Malaysia, gold and coal mines in Papua, the pearl beds of Alor, the oil fields of Aru, commercial ships from Makassar, agricultural processing and construction in Ende or Maumere, or low end jobs in Surabaya.

Most have not retained any positions in advance, and if they manage to secure some kind of temporary arrangement, do not stay at it for very long, for the working conditions are oppressive, the supply of potential labor voluminous, and the work itself it often pitched to fluctuating markets of demand. They rarely talk about where they come from or where they would settle if they had a chance. In this region of promiscous mixture the long nights on the ferry are punctuated by racial and religious anxiety, of the ways in which skin tone indicates a shifting barometer of proximity to increasingly precarious economic opportunity on the one hand and a tenuous rootedness to tradition on the other.

In a region where barter, piracy, mercantilism, and capital exchange on steroids all intermix more or less, race is a marker of who and what is made available for what. As few on these boats claim any capacity to manage their fates, nights of sugary coffee banter center on who is really Indonesian or not as if any had the faintest idea of what such a national designation referred to in the first place. At one moment they will vociferously complain about the enduring capacity of the Bugis to capture commercial markets, dominate the trade in every small thing, at the next moment everyone will claim to be Bugis themselves knowing about a deal that is about to go down, an opportunity that could make everyone rich for a few days.

Everyone sizes themselves against each other, men and women alike, although this is primarily a male world, with the women consigned to adjudicate disputes that threaten to get out of hand or who are the only ones carrying real things to trade. Yet most are also able to temporarily break through comparisons inflected by racial anxiety to offer everyone something, where they seem to hold nothing back in terms of places to stay, names of contacts, tricks to get by. To listen to their accounts is to enter a fray, a sudden whirlwind like those that often plague the boats traversing these seas, and the subsequent rash of cancellations and rescheduling. 

For what is told is usually disjointed, an account begins in one place but without warning the scene switches seamlessly to another, plantations become brothels become churches become rigs, and so forth, and it is hard to keep track anything coherent. No wonder, would be the quick conclusion, that these youth are not getting anywhere because they don’t seem to know where they are at any moment or what they are getting themselves into. They barely seem to touch shore and are at sea once again, which is the literal situation for many.  Like their forebearers they are most familiar with “slash and burn”, as they are not investing in long terms relationships but in maximizing this particular moment of contact. As such, it is hard to tell where these youth are actually coming from. Just as they continuously talk about something “out there” that will change their lives, when you ask where they come from, they point out across the sea and say, from “out there.’

Of course they all come from somewhere. Many are the offspring of long disappeared migrants, of reworked households from which they have been sometimes excluded, sometimes made unwilling centers of. They were sometimes the ones on whom extended family hopes were placed, ones designated not to work the fields, or those for whom fields were already overcrowded or fallow. Some were designated as those who could best “do without”—a parcel of land, a spouse, a normal future, so that meager savings could be applied to those seen as more vulnerable. Their strength was thus immediately converted to a deficiency in larger labor markets, in which they had only temporary footing—a little bit of driving, delivering, constructing, repairing, servicing.

Kupang, the largest metropolitan area of this East is full of young people with such temporary positions, waiting around, waiting to leave, then leaving. They deploy themselves as disposable income for tenuous and increasingly tense affiliations “back home” and beyond that are only partly familial, and entail complex relations of indebtedness among blood relatives, clans, local sponsors and authority figures—these the intricacies of communities hovering with uncertainty between the long-honed practices of bartering economies and the not yet fully instantiated economies of cash.

As retail and wholesale corporations increasingly dominate agricultural production locations and cycles all the way down, as large investors from Jakarta and beyond swallow up large tracts of land on and offshore in formerly remote locales, as the plantation system returns to consolidate individual landholdings, as already dry climates face further reductions in wet seasons, and as larger amounts of small scale agricultural production is left to older women, the stage is set for a preponderance of youth riding fast and loose on the motorbikes poverty no longer make unaffordable. For if your not riding the seas, your riding what passes for roads, sometimes with purpose, but most often without one.

In cities where the jobs of delivery are dependent on managing the mechanics of circulation, getting around is an intricate series of constant calculations always deliberated algorithmically in the imaginations of drivers that are buying time for their customers or making the sheer act of consumption possible. Algorithmically in the sense of various combinations of variables, impressions, hearsays, and shared messages that are reweighted in relation to each other, then applied to the question, “what should I do, how should I proceed?”

For, in many cities this kind of driving is done by marked bodies—those otherwise marginalized by virtue of racial or locational background, legal status, such as refugees and migrants, all of whose precarity cheapen the costs involved. Still this is the closest to stable employment many of these mostly young men will ever get. Itineraries thus are always subject to interruption—all trips between here and there are fraught with increased risks for specific bodies, where the specifics of their histories and aspirations are irrelevant to the fates to which they could be disposed.

Knowing that people have to move around, have to show themselves beyond the relative confines of safety in recessed neighborhoods, entire apparatuses function on the inflated prices of both survival and death that target such a showing. Extortion rackets, arbitrary detentions and executions, illegal detainment, shakedowns not only become purviews for criminal elements but integral aspects of official policing and municipal fundraising. So there is always a biomass available for being picked up, put over there, made to do whatever, and easily disposed of—creating an atmosphere in the midst of the urban poor where planning might simply be only useful as a recreational activity.

Instead of investing in the development of people’s lives as productive citizens, availed of a place from which to narrate a history of progression, of improved well-being, populations are “let go”, subject to what Ruthie Gilmore calls organized abandonment, their life-times freed up from definitive anchorage or accreted value, and made expendable, as currency to be spent, which in aggregate constitute a form of securitization, a constant stream of income available for expenditure, a wide open terrain of manipulations on what bodies can be used for, how they can be shifted around, all of which can be parried into claims of investment worthiness issued by elites and their nation-states.

Neferti Tadiar talks about the entrapment of populations having been convinced that becoming properly human is something worth pursuing, and willing to pay for. Residents have long been coaxed into jettisoning mixtures of jocularity, trickery, fast talking, inexplicable generosity, deft maneuvers, festivity and dissimulation in favor of a belief that propriety was attainable through considering one’s lifetime as a property to be cultivated, a value to be maximized. Never mind when teachers rarely showed up in classrooms, that the army milked every effort at entrepreneurial spirit, or that savings groups ended up paying exorbitant interest rates.

The urban poor are no longer reserve labor but indications of the capacity of states to move bodies around, keep them in line, kill them when necessary, and thus prove their creditworthiness on the international market. The refusal to invest in social reproduction, leaving the poor to fend for themselves now under conditions when fending becomes improbable conveys the willigness of nations to do what is necessary to guarantee the safety of foreign investment, to detach itself from its own coherence in favor of the machinic resonances of continuous incomes streams dutifully laundered. Life for many is what Neferti Tadiar refers to as “remaindered life”, that which remains after the pursuit of a normative humanity has been exhausted. As she points out, alternative ways of becoming human consist of tangential, fugitive, and insurrectionary creative social capacities that despite being continuously diminished, impeded, and made illegible by dominant ways of being human, are exercised and invented by those slipping beyond the bounds of valued humanity in their very effort of living, in their making of forms of viable life.

To mobilize even remote opportunities requires intricate forms of brokerage, lives subjected to intricate insurance policies that calculate the risks and attempt to circumvent them. Even for those riding the waves in Indonesia’s East attempting to escape all kinds of tedious obligations, they often end up owing far into the future, lives already mortgaged, forced to work backwards to pay off what they already owe. Here indebtedness seems far from temporary, that lives are rather locked into a set disposition from which there is no escape, except perhaps the literal taking on of more debt to escape that already accrued.

Under such circumstances what kind of story is worth telling? For these youth on boats, heading back and forth, they have little to carry with them but scenes of provocation, the way they push and pull at each other’s maneuvers. The ship may move ever so slowly, but in these long nights, they don’t sit still, they wander up and down every nook and cranny, they preach from tables, they sing local versions of Thai songs they have seen in videos, they demand each other’s attention, they hatch plots and schemes to take things weakly guarded, they talk about cousins and uncles who can do this and that. It is a thick web of complicities that can dissipate at any moment. Everything remains temporary.

[dweemeister]

They Live by Night (1948)

Based on Edward Anderson’s 1937 novel Thieves Like Us (about two doomed lovers touched by crime), Nicholas Ray’s film noir They Live by Night had a longer gestation period than usual for a typical movie. Soon after his novel’s publication, Anderson, most likely due to his naïveté, sold the movie rights for a trifling sum of $500 to independent writer-director Roland Brown (1938′s Angels with Dirty Faces, 1952′s Kansas City Confidential), who in turn could not find any studio to back the project. Brown would sell the rights to RKO for $10,000 in 1941 (~$166,485 in 2017′s USD), where none of RKO’s contracted screenwriters could write a satisfactory screenplay for Thieves Like Us. Several years passed until producer-actor John Houseman assigned Nicholas Ray (1950′s In a Lonely Place, 1955′s Rebel Without a Cause) to direct. Houseman believed Ray would be well-suited for the role, given Ray’s experience in the American South (where the story is set) making documentary films for the United States Department of Agriculture – this experience, as I believe, didn’t matter too much by film’s end. After years of inactivity, an adaptation of Anderson’s book – retitled to They Live by Night – was underway.

They Live by Night begins with three escaped inmates fleeing police in a stolen car. Chicamaw “One-Eye” Mobley (Howard Da Silva) and Henry “T-Dub” Mansfield (Jay C. Flippen) are infamous bank robbers. The younger, meeker kid they’ve brought with them, Arthur “Bowie” Bowers (Farley Granger), was handed a life sentence for a murder he says he didn’t commit. The three have just robbed a handful of banks, and this police pursuit has resulted in Bowie driving faster than he should – injuring him in the process. The wounded Bowie is taken to the home/gas station of one of Chicamaw’s relatives, where the younger man meets Catherine “Keechie” Mobley (Cathy O’Donnell). Bowie and Keechie are noticeably attracted to each other, and this results in a love affair where heartbreak is all but guaranteed – it’s just a matter of when and how.

Compared to the Anderson novel, the adapted screenplay by Schnee and Ray deemphasizes the American South as a character of its own. Instead, the writing focuses on the relationship between our two central characters – their life inexperience, their designs for how their futures might look like away from Chicamaw and T-Dub. The opening shot of They Live by Night makes this approach front and center. There, we see Bowie and Keechie making out in that way movie actors could as the Hays Code (a censorship guideline that was enforced by the MPAA before being replaced by the present-day MPAA ratings system for American theatrical releases in 1968) was in effect, and the following text superimposed on screen: “This boy... and this girl... were never properly introduced to the world we live in... to tell their story...” It’s a polarizing opening today, one that those who have seen plenty of classic movie trailers would not be bothered by but everyone else might find peculiar. Those who have seen Rebel Without a Cause and other Ray works will notice a common thread running through Ray’s films: of disillusioned, disconnected individuals (in the most prominent cases, youth) undergoing existential crises that will not be resolved by the film’s conclusion.

Aside from the accents heard, the place names mentioned, and the Depression photography-influenced cinematography, Ray and Schnee do their film a disservice by not possibly tapping into the details of their setting. Though this proposal might have endangered the film’s attempted universal appeals, by better articulating on-screen – whether through the production design or writing – hints of Southern Gothic fiction or just being more attentive to locational details, They Live by Night might have displayed more regional fidelity for the sake of realism.

The idealistic Bowie is tempered by the measured calmness of Keechie. As Keechie, O’Donnell’s first appearance as the character is unglamorized, as if she walked onto the set for that scene without makeup. It is a part-androgynous look rarely seen in Hollywood, but it assists the audience by allowing them to realize the growth of the character as she is taken from the backwoods into a life she could have scarcely realized. She does not play Keechie as if she is there to be the virtuous conscience of Bowie, nor can she be classified as a femme fatale. Keechie is unversed in the ways of the world outside her father’s wayside gas station. In her travels and time with Bowie, she will gain experience far faster than most young adults ever will. O’Donnell, born in Selma, Alabama, also had experiences living in the American South, and inhabits her character so naturally that one almost takes it for granted. Having attended drama school in New York City where diction classes repressed her Southern accent, she was disallowed by RKO to revert to that Alabaman twang for fear that audiences might not understand her (again, preventing locational specificity).

For Farley Granger, also starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope that year, a touch of effeminate acting counters the cynicism espoused by T-Dub and Chicamaw. It is that which separates They Live by Night from the most famous outlaw-couple-on-the-run movie, Bonnie and Clyde (1967). For They Live by Night is primarily a love story, and Granger’s tenderness towards O’Donnell – the two actors, on loan from Samuel Goldwyn to RKO, were close friends in real life – deviates from something like Bonnie and Clyde and almost all of film noir. The performances by Jay C. Flippen and Howard Da Silva - as T-Dub and Chicamaw, respectively – provide the requisite menace, though the latter provides a more effective performance than the former.

Film noir fans and otherwise might be startled how little explicit violence there is in a motion picture involving three escaped prison inmates. One bank robbery shows Bowie in the car; another is only talked about afterwards. Ray wished to avoid glorifying the crime appearing in his film, as he was already being hounded by RKO executives and censors over the content of his film during production. Though this creates confusion for first-time viewers and pacing problems due to the narrative ellipses, these decision cast thematic shadows on our two young lovers: that the ramifications of violence, whether an individual committed that act or was tangential to it, know not the passage of time or location. They Live by Night resolutely sticks to the youthful perspectives of Bowie and Keechie, presenting the viewpoints of Chicamaw and T-Dub and other characters – especially Helen Craig’s Mattie, who becomes instrumental in the closing third – as interfering with the peace and intimacy that Bowie and Keechie wish to have with each other. Where O’Donnell’s acting is assured enough to convince me of her character’s heartache when Bowie is tempted back to Chicamaw’s requests for “one more” heist, Granger does just not seem outwardly tortured enough to make Bowie’s dilemma as believable as Ray and Schnee want it to be.

Cinematographer George E. Diskant and Ray’s camerawork is economical, sharply focused. They Live by Night possesses more close-up shots than the typical 1940s Hollywood movie – especially in scenes where Granger and O’Donnell’s figures are close together. Combined with selective soft lighting, their romance is juxtaposed with the bitter realities outside their car or their room. Even the most experienced movie lovers who have consumed hundreds or thousands of older movies will chuckle at obviously fake driving scenes. But in a few scenes in They Live by Night, Diskant places his cameras in passenger seats, back seats, or just outside the car in an actual location shot, without too many cuts. The effect – later perfected in 1950′s Gun Crazy – is that a bank robbery feels like it was shot in real-time, or that some particular scene might not have been confined to some studio’s backlot or soundstage. The film’s opening helicopter shot came decades before the camera-stabilizing technology (gyro cameras, drones) of today, and well before aerial camera angles would be even sporadic features in Hollywood productions.

They Live by Night’s North American theatrical release would be delayed due to Howard Hughes’ takeover of RKO in 1948 (the film was slated to release in 1947, but would not appear outside of corporate screening rooms and into public movie theaters until November 1949). Despite effusive reception from its London premier and European releases in the summer and autumn of 1948, Hughes had no idea how to advertise such an anomalous film to American audiences. This distribution purgatory, however, did not negatively impact the careers of Ray and Granger (O’Donnell had already established a solid career following her appearance in 1946′s The Best Years of Our Lives). They Live by Night convinced RKO and Columbia Pictures that Ray was a young talent to watch. For Granger, They Live by Night caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who asked Granger to star in Rope later in 1949.

For author Edward Anderson who had just noticed his novel had just been adapted to a movie, he wrote a letter to Howard Hughes, asking for financial compensation surpassing the $500 provided to him so many years ago. Hughes never responded, and Anderson would live the rest of his life editing a small-town newspaper in Cuero, Texas. In the end, there would be little justice for the man who inspired one of the crispest, controlled, and confident directorial debuts in Studio System Hollywood.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[allbeendonebefore]

part 2 quebec timeline

[part 1] [full timeline]

1950s

After the war, Quebec enjoyed the same prosperity and flood of goods and services that other parts of Canada did. However, Quebec was still trailing behind the rest of the country in some areas, and the tension between “modernizing” and “assimilating” was starting to become more palpable. In the meantime, the federal government was taking (unconstitutional) steps towards a welfare state and was needling the provinces about creating a national pension plan- Quebec’s draft of his own plan was the best received of the propositions. Canada had not given up wartime responsibilities for tax collecting in order to fund this, and quite a few provinces were salty about it- Quebec comparing the federal government to “a thief who stole your watch and returned the chain as a gift”. After Ontario gave in, Quebec was left alone... still contributing money, but receiving none of the benefits. The federal government also transgressed again into cultural territory with the Massey Commission to the irritation of a growing sense of Quebec nationalism. The Quebec government became increasingly anti-union during this decade as well. During this decade, Toronto finally surpassed Montreal as the economic capital of Canada, a trend which had been continuing for decades and would progress further.

 1960s

The decade of the Quiet Revolution, a period of rapid social change. The Church’s power declined to the point that what was once the most religious province in Canada became the least. Secularization meant the decline of the Church’s role in education, health, and welfare, but also the decline in importance of Catholicism in French Canadian identity, and therefore the rise of the French language to replace it. The sharp division between anglophone businessmen and francophone labour became even more visible and intense, and contributed to increasing frustration and pressure to put more francophones in positions of management. This was also a period of global interaction- at the same time Quebec was asserting itself amongst other francophone nations, France itself included, throngs of immigrants settled and changed the fabric of the province. To the frustration of nationalists, many immigrants assimilated to the anglophone culture, which continued to dominate nationally. (Originally I was debating about showing Jean with a maîtres chez nous sign, but the phrase has become increasingly charged with anti-immigrant anti-religious minority sentiments... so I decided to leave it alone!)

1970s

I have a tendency to draw characters going through bad times as physically lowered somehow in these timelines, and this was a violent and frightening couple of decades in the history of Quebec and Quebec nationalism. The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) created a series of bomb threats and kidnappings of political figures in order to pressure both the provincial and federal governments towards separation. The RCMP regarded the group as “misguided youths” and did not take very serious steps against them at first; as a result some innocent people were killed, several thousand homes were searched by the army and the RCMP, and hundreds of people with no connection to the loose organization were arrested and questioned. It was one of the few times the War Measures Act was invoked in peacetime- an imposition that infuriated Quebec but was immensely popular in other parts of the country, where Prime Minister Trudeau was seen as “putting Quebec in its place”. At the end of the decade, the Parti Québécois, the first separatist government of the province, was elected on a platform of governance rather than explicit independence. 

1995

After an attempt at putting together a referendum to negotiate a possible separatism with the federal government and fifteen years of failed negotiations with the rest of the country, it was time for a simple, straightforward referendum: leave Canada? yes or no. The federal government again did not pay much attention until the day of the referendum was drawing closer and closer and the result looked to be more and more likely “oui” for separation. With some (illegal!) interference from the federal government including a huge rally against separation in Montreal, the vote was an astonishingly close 50.4% vote ‘Non’ to 49.5% ‘Oui’; a slight difference the Clarity Act of 2000 made sure would never be a deciding margin for separation again. After this referendum, interest in Quebec separatism has dwindled. 

Today

I’ll come clean with you, I’m a filthy anglo 90s kid from another province that also likes to hoot and holler about independence and separation (though on a smaller scale and with a lot more cowboy-boot-and-truck-based campaigns). I grew up surrounded by the opinion that “Quebec should just separate already and put us out of our misery” with a slight aftertaste of “oh and maybe we should let the others bite the dust and leave as well, or at least hoard all our resources for ourselves”. But nowadays with separation less fresh in everyone’s minds, I think there’s a calmer atmosphere and with advancements in travel and communication I’ve discovered that Quebec isn’t really some weird dour and prickly alternate universe after all... even if they made the unfortunate mistake of banning Red Lobster... It’s a stereotype that needs to be understood more than it needs to be maintained, and I really hope that’s a sentiment any future representations of the IAMP/PC carry with them. I think there remains a HUGE disconnect between Quebec and the rest of Canada, and a LOT of misunderstandings that need to be corrected... but I’m learning more every day. 

I’m pleased to wrap up TWO YEARS worth of investigation into regional history with one of the places I and presumably many others have always considered so geographically and socially distant, and though I’m by no means an expert in any area of history (kicks my M.A. thesis under my desk) I think this little side-project of mine was overwhelmingly useful in my on-again-off-again relationship with my crazy country, my political perspective as an adult, and the small remaining flicker of patriotism and belief in the future left in my heart. Thank you so much for staying with me, and I’ll try to get that full timeline done soon.