#and how it may or may not relate to that random throwaway line from an unnamed side character about laios being

[wizardnaturalist]

idk why but I really love that falin and laios's hair is a sort of ash blonde? I just think it's nice on them and isnt a colour commonly seen on the generally oversaturated anime colour palatte

[tarisilmarwen]

I posted 3,878 times in 2022

345 posts created (9%)

3,533 posts reblogged (91%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gffa

@saint-ambrosef

@ilummoss

@jedi-order-apologist

@starbirdrising

I tagged 3,868 of my posts in 2022

#star wars - 2,082 posts

#star wars rebels - 1,118 posts

#spoilers - 613 posts

#gifs - 488 posts

#kenobi - 318 posts

#jedi fallen order - 307 posts

#disney - 255 posts

#rl stuff - 246 posts

#gamer girl ramblings - 234 posts

#big hero 6 - 222 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#begging internet discourses to please learn the difference between corporatism consumerism capitalism and plain old government interference

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I just had a random thought: As long as a force-sensitive person's body is still present in the galaxy, their "presence" will remain with it until it is fully decomposed. This is why jedi burn their dead, so that their friends can live on in the force instead of decaying alongside their physical bodies. The Empire preserved Luminara's corpse because they knew that other jedi would sense her presence clinging to her body, therefore come to rescue her because they would think she was still alive.

That makes... a horrible amount of sense ghghghkgdhs.

1,088 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

#4

It’s just a throwaway line and yet it punched me in the chest.

Taxation of the Outer Rim.

That Bail mentions it here, some twenty-two in-universe years after the crawltext of The Phantom Menace mentioned it was a thing, means the reason Naboo was blockaded, the reason the Neimoidian Trade Federation decided to ally with Sidious and set off the chain of events that would lead the Clone Wars, the motive behind the inciting incident for the whole of the Star Wars saga...

STILL ISN’T FIXED.

Because Palpatine was never actually interested in fixing the problems with the Republic, just exploiting and exacerbating them in order to gain power for himself.

And boy if that isn’t Relevant™ and also heartbreaking.

1,199 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

#3

Another thing I’m loving is the re-emphasis on the fact that the Dark Side, for most people, is misery and pain.

Wallowing in your own and then turning it outwards and inflicting it on others.  Because if I’m not happy you sure as hell aren’t allowed to be happy!  The need to drag down someone else in the Light, twist them, corrupt them, make them as miserable and angry as you are because at least then you’re not alone, except you ARE alone because the Dark Side poisons every positive relationship you could ever have and makes you incapable of relating to people in a normal fashion, makes you obsessed, makes you cling to, makes you attached to the idea of this person and how they can make you feel.  Makes you selfish to the point where you don’t even care and you’ve lost your empathy.

It’s a downward spiral of abuse and a cycle of revenge and loathing yourself and desperately searching for any kind of self-worth to define yourself by and scrabbling after more and more power because if you just have a little bit more, it might make things all better.

The Dark Side is empty misery and it will not satisfy.

1,303 notes - Posted June 15, 2022

#2

Right, so, to illustrate my point as succinctly as I can...

This is attachment:

Ezra leaning hard into the Dark Side, grasping for just a shred more power, more control, in order to prevent anything bad from ever possibly happening to his friends again, out of the guilt and self-blame he feels, and want to spare himself from.

See the full post

1,637 notes - Posted February 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I can’t get over the continued thematic follow-through of this idea that Jedi aren’t truly Jedi unless they’re standing up in defense of the innocent and helpless, they have to be active in the galaxy, they have to spread kindness and compassion wherever they go, it’s an uncontrollable urge, it’s an itch, “They cannot help it.“

And also the idea that it’s FORCE ITSELF that is whispering to them, calling them back, calling them home, telling them to take up their swords again, reach out in faith and find that the Light never left you, it’s still inside you and it needs you because the galaxy is so so dark and bleak and hopeless and there’s so much evil everywhere and the galaxy needs them to stand up and step out of the shadows and into the light so that they can reignite people’s hope.

It’s the pauses of awe and wonder in even the most miserable and selfish of underworld denizens because that’s a Jedi, the Jedi are back, the Jedi are here, everything will be okay now.

It’s F knighting herself, cutting her own padawan braid and proudly declaring she is a Jedi to save a frightened exploited village bride.

It’s Kanan igniting his saber for the first time in years to protect his future padawan and a clutch of Wookie slaves and the rattled composure in the Imperials when they realize, “Holy shit that’s a Jedi.“

It’s Cal and Cere deciding they were done hiding, done running from the Empire, they were going to fight back, and Saw gleefully pointing to them to inspire his band of Rebels.

It’s Obi-Wan unburying his lightsaber even after being so hopeless and broken and full of guilt and self-blame because people still need him, he’s the only one they can trust.

The whole Dark Times as a sloooooowly turning eucatastrophe, tiny lights of hope struggling to hold back the darkness long enough.  Holding out.  Buying time until the twin suns can rise.  Until Luke and Leia and the destruction of the Death Star and the death of the Emperor and the glorious return of light to the galaxy.

I love it.

5,005 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[dreamctz]

parallel lines: running in run on

I have to applaud how layered and nuanced run on is, not only in terms of character development, but also in terms of cinematography. and one of the most salient examples is how the reoccurring theme of running is used to symbolize the progression and collision of the lives of our two leads.

in the first few minutes of episode 1, mi-joo and seen-gyeom’s activities are shown side by side, two seemingly unrelated lives running in parallel, while they’re also shown literally running, ultimately ending up at the same film festival. this sequence emphasizes how similar, yet different they are: seon-gyeom neatly ties up his white sneakers while mi-joo frantically slips into her worn converse; seon-gyeom leisurely jogs in his neighborhood while mi-joo sprints down the street, clearly pressed for time; seon-gyeom stops to pet a dog while mi-joo is angrily barked at by another; seon-gyeom gets his make-up done by a stylist while mi-joo does her own in the back of a taxi.

they’re going through the same motions of daily life, but the subtle class- and personality-based differences highlight the distance between the two, as if they’re two parallel lines, similar but never crossing (until later). this opening montage is a brilliant introduction the drama, offering a glimpse into seon-gyeom and mi-joo’s characters and orienting the story within the symbolism of physically running to reflect metaphorically running through the course of life.

after their paths finally cross, running is used again to illustrate how they’ve intersected each other’s lives, specifically in the two scenes where mi-joo runs past seon-gyeom to catch the thief in the park and where seon-gyeom runs past mi-joo accidentally when he’s late for their meeting. in the former scene in episode 1, seon-gyeom is preoccupied with his phone call with dan-ah, discussing their upcoming meeting to which he is heading. mi-joo sprints past him and cuts his conversation short, ultimately causing him to miss his meeting.

the latter scene in episode 2 mirrors the former, even down to the camera angles. mi-joo is strolling down the street with her earphones in (ty @strawberry1212​ for pointing this out and discussing this with me), engrossed in the music and observing the foliage and people in the vicinity. she’s simply going about her life, comfortable in her own solitary existence as she takes in the pleasant scenery around her—until seon-gyeom interrupts her thoughts as he literally runs into her life.  

in both scenes, one person runs past the other, furthering the idea that they’re two parallel lines—two separate lives—on two different courses. they’re initially out of sync, set on their own respective paths and absorbed in their own lives, until the other enters the picture and gives them a reason to turn around. the central tension in their relationship seems to stem from this lack of synchronization. mi-joo and seon-gyeom struggle to understand one another throughout the drama, given different living habits and incongruities in expressing their feelings. their class differences also come into play when seon-gyeom’s father disparages mi-joo and repeatedly denounces seon-gyeom and mi-joo’s relationship.

regardless of this dissonance, their meeting drastically alters and entangles their trajectories: seon-gyeom establishes mi-joo’s new “finish line,” signified by knocking the thief down to halt her chase, while mi-joo, as seon-gyeom describes over drinks later, has become his new literal and metaphorical finish line as he rushes to meet her. throughout the drama, they strive to comprehend one another and build their relationship, as different as their lives and perspectives may be, which is illustrated by the scene in episode 7 where seon-gyeom matches his stride with mi-joo’s. he attempts to literally synchronize with her steps, just as he tries to become attuned to her thoughts and way of life. in this way, running motifs are masterfully incorporated into many of the scenes to mirror the coming together of these parallel lives in motion.

there’s a plethora of other mentions of running (there’s an interesting fixation on shoes throughout, but I’ll save that for a different post). I can’t forget the most obvious one: the title itself, which encapsulates the central message of “running on,” striving toward your goals, pushing forward in the face of adversity, and simply going through life.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about the synopsis of the drama and it’s focus on seon-gyeom’s running profession. it came off as gimmicky in a way, as if the writers were trying to pair quirkiest and most random combination of jobs for the main leads in true kdrama fashion. national running athlete + translator? perfect. but the writers have excelled in seamlessly and consistently weaving the theme of running into the storyline. it feels so cohesive and intentional that I can’t imagine seon-gyeom being anything other than a (former) running athlete or the drama being centered around anything other than running. it has become an indispensable part of the narrative, not just a throwaway idea to initially bring the two leads together, never to be referenced again. and it’s the part of the narrative that’s likely to resonate with the viewers the most because it represents universal themes of moving forward and progressing through life, experiences we can relate to even if we can’t relate to the characters’ unique circumstances.

[lesbian-in-leather]

Here's a couple more for the writing ask game! : 12, 25, 32

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

Okay FIRST OF ALL I think it's rude that I can't wish for more wishes, we all know I love loopholes. SECOND OF ALL this was really fun to think about, so here we go:

I'd wish for the ability to perfectly retain any and all information about my WIPs until I've written it down, at which point it can be stored with regular memories. How often have you had a great idea just as you're falling asleep, or in the shower, or just busy and don't have time to write it down, but by the time you actually can, it's left your head? Not a problem anymore

I'd wish that I can always think of the word I need. Not only does it stop annoying mid-flow thesaurus checks or ages of combing the internet because I know what I mean but I can't find it - but there are other applications too! Creating a fantasy language? No need for a translation document, I can just type out whatever shit I need and it'll be right. Get wrecked genie, two for the price of one and I didn't cheat so my WIPs are safe

And finally, I'd wish that I have the motivation to write whenever I have the time, so that all of my writing sessions will actually be productive (maybe I'd link this motivation to like. A specific word or something? Idk, I don't trust this genie not to mess with me here)

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

Okay so I know what I said in the last post, and I do over-plan, but also I try to include a lot of the random details because I much prefer reading and writing character driven stories, so like, the little details are usually relevant to something. Having said that, sometimes it's just a very short throwaway kinda relevance, or it's an extension of an actual plot point that doesn't come out until later. Although I do know some random stuff like, one OC constantly fidgets with her necklace without realising, and another one always wears a hoodie and messes with the zip because she likes the sound it makes. Sorry I feel like this wasn't as interesting as it could have been lmao

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc. that you return to time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

Okay I physically cannot pick just one, but know that there are also so many more that I could have said here (including but not limited to: all of the works I mentioned in the last post that I am deliberately not allowing myself to repeat). Because I've picked so many examples and you asked a former English student for analysis, I'm going to put them all under the cut and honestly I had so much fun thinking about this and writing out the analysis that I don't even mind if no one reads it lmao

Mentions of death and suicide (in relation to the fictional characters in the texts I'm talking about)

Poems

This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. [...] Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

Technically I first heard this (or, the last stanza of it, at any rate) quoted in The End by Lemony Snicket, but I also studied the full poem when I did my A-Levels, and honestly the whole thing is absolutely incredible. It's such a beautiful poem, and I do think about the entire thing all the time (I have it memorised) but specifically the first two lines and the final stanza have always been my favourite. Something about the acknowledgment of how you can still be fucked up by your parents even if they didn't mean it really, really got to me (I wonder why haha), and the final stanza has such a bleak outlook on everything but... it also really resonated with me, especially at the time I first read the full poem. And even though I don't think like that anymore, and I now have a much more neutral or even positive outlook on humanity and human nature, this poem still holds such a crucial place in my heart, and I do think about it all the time

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Another one I have memorised - what initially started as GCSE work really stuck with me lmao. Again, the full poem gets me just as much, but this passage specifically... oh my god. As someone who has a genuine Issue in my head about being remembered after I’m gone, this poem really got to me. The fact that Ozymandias spent so much time and effort into ensuring he was remembered, and he got his wish... on a technicality. The idea that I can't control how I'm remembered, only what I do, and if I spend too long focusing on my legacy, then that's all that people will know about me... yeah, this poem got me fucked up

Novel

The End, Chapter Thirteen, by Lemony Snicket

“You're the one who made us orphans in the first place,” he [Klaus] said, uttering out loud for the first time a secret all three Baudelaires had kept in their hearts for almost as long as they could remember. Olaf closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing in pain, and then stared slowly at each of the three children in turn. “Is that what you think?” he said finally. “We know it,” Sunny said. “You don't know anything,” Count Olaf said. “You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal.” He poured one last gulp of cordial into his poisoned mouth before throwing the seashell into the sand. “You're just like your parents,” he said, and from the shore the children heard Kit Snicket moan. “You have to help Kit,” Violet said. “The baby is arriving.” “Kit?” Count Olaf asked, and in one swift gesture he grabbed an apple from the stockpot and took a savage bite. He chewed, wincing in pain, and the Baudelaires listened as his wheezing settled and the poisonous fungus was diluted by their parents' invention. He took another bite, and another, and then, with a horrible groan, the villain rose to his feet, and the children saw that his chest was soaked with blood. “You're hurt,” Klaus said. “I've been hurt before,”

Alright I know I don't shut up about asoue but here me out, okay? Similarly to the last post (because even though I'm not letting myself repeat passages, I can still repeat themes) I read this when I was like seven or eight, and it was, once again, one of the first times grey-morality was introduced to me. But, where Witches Abroad taught me that sometimes heroes don't want to be heroes and that villains might not think they're villains, The End taught me that even if a villain knows and embraces the fact they're a villain... that doesn't mean they're evil. Now, as an adult, I actively reject the 'Good Vs Evil' dichotomy, but as a kid, basically everything you're exposed to has the heroes always be Morally Correct while the villains are Entirely Evil (hell, even most media aimed at adults struggles with the concept of villains being terrible people while still being allowed to have redeeming qualities). And then I read this passage. I mean, the whole entire scene still makes me fucking sob, but I come back to this passage in particular over and over and over again. Because Olaf was fucking dying. He's tired, and he's been stabbed, and poisoned, and he was going to let himself die right then and there. He doesn't even deny the accusation that he killed the Baudelaire parents - what would be the point, when we all know that villains lie? No one would ever believe him - but that question in response is heartbreaking. He looks at these children that he's tormented for months on end, and just asks them, simply, if that's what they think. Like he can't quite believe they'd think so little of him. As if, suddenly, he's realising how they see him, how they've always seen him. Realising that, to them, he really is just a cartoon villain. And that death would have been sad enough. That death would have still stuck in my head, and I would still probably be talking about it now, if he'd died on the very next line. But he doesn't. He hears Kit's name and launches himself at the antidote, and the kids and the reader finally realise that he's bleeding out but he doesn't care. All he cares about it Kit, saving Kit, helping Kit, and it's so jarring. He's spent thirteen books not caring about anyone but himself, leaving even his own henchpeople in the dust when it suits him, but suddenly he's not only helping someone else, but disregarding his own wellbeing to help someone that's shown to be directly opposed to him. He helps someone that we, as a first time reader, assume to be his enemy, and he's so panicked at the thought that she's in danger, and so soft when he helps her. He's still the same man he's always been - but we now know that that man isn't evil, and he never was. He's cruel, and greedy, and selfish, and he cares. He loves someone else enough to die for her. He's hurt, but it doesn't matter to him as long as Kit's safe. He's been hurt before

Fanfic

Now, most of the time with fanfic what sticks in my head is a particular scene, or theme, or even just the feeling evoked by the entire work. Having said that, there are some notable exceptions to this rule (and, again, I’m only choosing two and not letting myself repeat any of the works I talked about in the last post) so I would like to draw attention to:

This Ficlet by @beatricebidelaire

Ernest sits down next to him. “When she [Violet] frowns,” he says in a low voice. “It’s almost as if I'm looking at him.” [Bertrand] Frank doesn’t turn his head. “I thought he always smiled when he’s talking to you.” “You say that as if those are the only times I ever looked at him,” Ernest replies.

Oh,,, the love in that sentence. I can't stop thinking about it. The fact that we can tell it was reciprocated - Ernest looked at Bertrand even when he didn't notice, but whenever Bertrand looked at him he was smiling, and everyone else saw it. OH I feel so many things. This is love, you know? That's what I want, and I love how gentle this quote is. How softly it's presented. Like a fact and a confession all at once

And then there's this fic by @jeromesqualor

And then, all of a sudden, he [Jacques] feels like he’s been hit by a freight train. The laughter stops, and he feels nothing but a strange, pleasant warmth, all over. This is the moment where he realises that he doesn’t want her [Esmé] to ever leave. This is the moment where he realises he’s completely, inconceivably, very inconveniently, fucked. [...] When he’s [Jacques] no longer able to sit straight, when he slumps against the bricks and his head lolls forward to press his forehead into the bars, he distantly hears her sharp, broken intake of breath. “It’s alright, Jacques,” she [Esmé] whispers, cutting through the haze, choked with tears. “It’s alright.”

I found this (predictably) by combing through the Esmé tag, and though it was for a ship I'd never really considered before, it is absolutely one that now consumes my thoughts. These two passages specifically, though, for very different reasons. The first one is such a soft, genuine way to present love and it's beautiful. A freight train that leaves him feeling a pleasant warmth. The fact that he isn't even necessarily happy about it, but the feeling is there all the same. It wasn't a choice, but it isn't bad, either. It's just... I don't know, that's love. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, sudden and slow all at once. And then there's the second section - ohhhhhh man. Because it's so clear that she loves him back - you can see it. But she had to do it - she had to poison him. And she knew he would die and it would be her fault, and it would have been so easy to present her as someone who doesn't care, but that's not true. She did what she thought had to be done, but the second she sees the result she breaks down. It's so out of character, but in a perfectly in-character way - it's something that feels so real, so right, but also something no one would ever expect from Esmé, and I think about it literally all the time

Etc. Plays

I know that usually plays aren't read, but I studied both of these and I've (tragically) never gotten the chance to see either of them performed (though I have seen a film adaptation of Streetcar, but I still read it first) so I'm saying they count

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

BLANCHE [holding tight to the DOCTOR's arm]: Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Oh my god. Oh my god. This play, this whole entire play, is a masterpiece. But studying it in my class was much less fun than it should have been, because I was one of the only people in that room that liked Blanche, and I stand by that to this day. She is a beautifully written character. She's flawed, and selfish, and materialistic, and so, so fragile that she's already broken before the play has even begun. And it breaks my heart to see it. But this line. This line hurts. Because the Doctor she's clinging to so desperately is taking her away to an asylum. That's how her story ends. It's the last line she says before she leaves, and it's almost the end of the play. And after she's gone, almost everyone goes back to exactly how they were before she'd arrived, like she'd never even existed. And she's been hurt so many times - we learn about her past, and how she's been treated, and see how she's treated during the play. People - and especially men - are not kind to Blanche. And yet, after crying on the floor, being pinned to the ground while screaming and making "inhuman cries", she sees this man. This stranger. And, as an audience, we know what he's here to do. After this line they leave, arm-in-arm. And she's trusting him, she's relying on him to protect her. And he won't. We know he won't - but she doesn’t. She truly believes it. Over and over, she believes she'll be protected. Even after everything that she's seen, and done, and everything that's been done to her... Still, she depends on the kindness of strangers

Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen (translated by Michael Meyer)

TESMAN [runs to the doorway]: Hedda dear, please! Don't play dance music tonight! Think of Auntie Rena. And Eilert. HEDDA [puts her head through the curtains]: And Auntie Juju. And all the rest of them. From now on I'll be quiet. [She closes the curtains behind her]

This is another play I studied at A-Level (Drama, this time, instead of English), and while this isn't the last time Hedda talks, it is the last time we see her alive. And ever since I first read it, it's been bouncing around in my head. It's the understated way she disappears - and only a few lines later, she cuts herself off with a gunshot to her own head. It's the way everyone around her misunderstands her so thoroughly - her own husband thinks that mentioning the dead will get her on side, and no one thinks it odd that she brings up a woman she's repeatedly made it clear that she dislikes. As a reader or a member of the audience, you can see that she's realising there's no way out of her life - she can't divorce her husband, she might even be pregnant with his child. And she tells them that she’s going to end it - I'm sure, to her, she was making her intentions perfectly clear. "From now on I'll be quiet." It's so sad, and soft - especially when said by such an unpredictable character. And then her death is the culmination of everything she's been feeling throughout the play - the longing for beauty, because to her it is beautiful. And I think part of the reason it sticks with me so much is because I was the only one to see her that way in my class. Not everyone hated her (though a lot of them did), but no one else was sympathetic to her. I'm not saying she was a good person, but I did empathise, especially in a room of people all arguing that she deserved her fate

I apologise for the sheer amount I talked about all of those. And if you did read all of this rambling, thank you! I appreciate it, even if it might not have been particularly coherent

[kdramafeminist]

Performative Badassery & Women in Kdramas

When I said I wrote an essay, I meant essay. This is a long one! Grab a snack and venture below the read more. I’ll see you at the end!

----------

You know the feeling. The drama begins. Our female main lead walks onto screen. She’s a successful businesswoman, a hotshot detective, clever lawyer, smartass retail worker, etc, etc. She stares down a random man to prove she’s the powerful one here. Or kicks some ass. Or rattles off a bunch of demands to her workers. Or talks fast to show off her intelligence.

Then she meets the male lead. There’re fireworks. Slowly we find our female lead has a softer side. Good to know. 3-dimensional and complex characters are important. It’s nice to see women on-screen who are both capable and emotional. Kick ass and feminine. 

But slowly... something starts to go wrong. She seems to be crying more than showing literally any other kind of emotion. And is it just me or is she getting saved and manhandled and flustered quite a lot for a woman who we were told was so well put together? Sure, the circumstances are extreme. But they’re extreme for the male lead too and he seems to be managing just fine for some reason. Also, if both of them are ordinary people with no on-screen fighting experience, how come he’s so great at throwing fists out of nowhere and she’s busy keeping hidden or needing rescuing? Exactly how many times can one person just faint like that without anyone checking to see if she has a medical condition?

By the drama’s end our lead has gone through trials and tribulations. She’s fallen in love too, I’m happy for her. But... now that the story’s ending and she’s getting in one last chance to show us she’s a “badass”, why am I left feeling hollow? She’s showing us how tough she is but... we ALL spent this whole drama watching her have absolutely no agency or such a little amount that she might as well have been trying to put out a fire with a water-pistol. It’s almost like her previous badassery (in whatever form it may have been - I don’t mean badass only in terms of being able to throw a good punch) was just a façade. A way to hook in female viewers like me who want to see something more than a wilting wallflower or one-trick Cinderella. But the tiniest knock and the cardboard house collapses.

And no matter how many times we get throwaway lines about her being “the smartest/toughest/scariest/most capable one here” it doesn’t ring true compared to the actual character we’re watching.

Rom-coms, melos and sagueks especially (but many more genres besides), have a real problem when it comes to performative badassery in their female characters. The writers give us a female lead they claim is hyper competent, but the reality is totally different. Any plot that features romance, almost always features this. Honestly the way the start of the relationship in dramas actively MURDERS the female character’s agency could be its own essay so I won’t go deep, just know the two are 100% linked.

The “Faux Action Girl” Problem 

A Faux Action Girl happens when a writer wants the popularity that comes with having a cool action girl character, or they want the praise that comes with writing a lead that breaks gender norms, or they want to be lauded for writing a FL whose more capable & progressive than the female kdrama lead we’d imagine, but they don’t end up actually giving us her. Instead we get the fake or faux version. The reasons are usually a combination of:

Relying on outdated tropes. Wrist grabs, damsels in distress, a girl fainting so she misses some vital plot related moment to increase runtime etc...

Sexist worldviews. As a by-product of being Korean which is still a heavily sexist country because of the holdover of Confucianism mixed in with the Christianity westerners brought over that leads many writers to (often without even realising) inserting moments that inadvertently reduce their female leads because they think that’s what correct or natural for the female character based on their opinion of women in general. Even if it doesn’t actually fit the type of character they’ve set out to create.

Executive meddling. Producers who think their demographic wouldn’t be able to handle a real badass but also know their female viewers want more complexity and agency in their FLs these days and so give us the paper-version instead of the 3D model.

This character’s more “badass” traits are nearly always just an Informed Ability (the writers tell us via other characters what she can do but never actually show us on-screen these same things) or we only ever see her utilise them once/twice at the beginning and maybe if we’re lucky once at the end, but never again. 

It really hurts.

The “Badass Decay/Chickification” Problem

Sometimes she really is a legitimate action girl though. She’ll be a cop whose good at her job or an ordinary citizen whose well-versed in taekwondo. She has actual moments on-screen to prove herself. 

Well. She has moments in episodes 1 and 2. Then she almost always goes through Badass Decay/Chickification. Which means that writers (& producers) believe that if we don’t see her having a softer side, she’ll become unrealistic or unlikeable. 

They fix her. So she becomes more vulnerable. As the only girl on the team (usually), she becomes the one who ends up injured more often or needs rescuing most. Her life begins to revolve entirely around her romance and nothing else. (Meanwhile the male leads gets to have the romance and keep his side-quest - have you noticed that? If the FL is really lucky she gets to keep one side-quest too, maybe a dream job or solving some family mystery. Never more though.. only men get to be complicated here). Once she was competent... now it feels like she legitimately had a personality transplant. 

Is this even the same person we began with?

The “Worf Effect” Problem 

Worf Effect is when the danger/power level of a villain is shown to the audience by making him successfully attack/hurt/ruin the plans of someone that the audience knows is skilled. This isn’t a bad thing alone and writers use it all the time. We need to acknowledge the villain as a proper threat and this is a useful way to do it!

But in kdramas it’s something used almost always against the lead female character. The one we’ve seen is intelligent, or strong-willed or quick-witted. 

And because it’s always her, this character begins to look weak. If this writing trope is abused, her reputation as the "biggest, toughest" etc. begins to look like it never existed and we’re back to her having an informed ability. 

That this is something that happens to the female characters not only more often but almost exclusively is a sign of sexism. Plain and simple.

Competent, Real Badass Female Characters Aren’t Scary

 If you’re going to sell me a capable woman, give me her. 

Not someone who has one very unique, specialised skill but otherwise can do nothing else except for that one time when her one skill is useful. 

Or has built up her own empire, implying a certain level of smarts, business ability or networking skills, but then once she’s removed from it she becomes so utterly useless it begs the question how she built that empire in the first place. 

Or has a rep as the detective whose taken down the toughest guys off-screen, but whatever skills she used to do that seem to disappear the moment anything really challenging happens on-screen. 

I’m not saying she needs to win all the time. Of course she doesn’t, how boring is that? All I’m asking is that when she loses, it’s in keeping with the character I’m supposedly watching. A woman that can kick ass can still be outwitted. A clever woman can be physically beaten. A street-smart girl can be foiled by rules and regulations. A leader-type can be beat by someone whose more unconventional.

It’s not difficult to write someone like this. I know the writers can do it because every male lead is written this way. I’ve never once, whilst watching a badass male lead lose, get beaten and cry, thought “oh no, his badassery was fake all along!”

Because when he loses it makes sense. It’s in character. There’s a solid plot reason behind why it happens.

Meanwhile my ladies who are meant to be able to kick ass and take names somehow just got kidnapped out of nowhere?

Make it make sense!

Consistent Characterisation is Good Writing

I get wanting moments where one is injured and the other fusses over them. I love those moments! All I ask is more imagination taken to get us to that point. Make it in-character. If my taekwondo black belt is kidnapped, I want to see her really fight. I want the kidnapping to be shown as genuinely tough on the people trying to nab her. Imagine how much more satisfying it would be to see her fight off all these bad guys, yet still end up losing? How much more heart-breaking?

We’d be so much more invested in the mind games or politics the villain is playing if the female lead we’ve been told is good at that stuff is playing the game just as hard. When she loses it’ll hurt more.

Writers need to stop being afraid that her remaining capable in some way diminishes the masculinity, attractiveness, prowess or “hero” status of the male lead. Trust me. It doesn’t. Ever. 

It’s not a case of either/or. We don’t think less of the male lead because his partner is as capable as him in whatever way that may be. Instead, we think more of them both. Once a romance begins, the heightened worry both characters have for each other should only make both of them stronger in whatever area they’re skill lies in. Not just make the man a sudden defence wall and the woman a worrying mess. 

I’m sure everyone who reads this can immediately think of at least one drama with a FL who is a Performative Badass. I know I had about ten in mind as I wrote this. 

There are exceptions. Cases where the badass gets to stay a badass. Usually these cases happen in genres without romance because like I said above, those problems are linked. But I can think of a few romcoms/sageuks/melos where it happens too. 

But those are the minority.

Women in kdramas. Give them agency. Make their characterisation genuine, not just a bit-part for the sake of a cool trailer. Not just one moment someone can edit into a “badass multifemale” video edit - only for us to watch the drama from the clip and discover we’ve been sold a lie. 

How satisfied would we be?

Writers! Give us a story we enjoyed because of the excellent characterisation. A new female character we can add to our lists of faves. Women who proved themselves as consistently badass as their first scenes claimed. Women in kdramas who, no matter what problem they faced, don’t become echoes or paper-thin versions of who we were promised.

Actual, complex, layered, enjoyable, KICK-ASS AND BADASS female leads.

Wouldn’t that be a miracle.

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PS. This is an open notice that it’s OKAY to reblog with added commentary/thoughts/rambles of your own. I would *love* to see it if you have anything to add.

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(Disclaimer: This essay was written with a specific female character type in mind. I am not saying every FL needs to be a badass or hyper competent. Soft, shy, physically weak female characters exist and can be just as realistic and complex. There’s a few I can think of who I adore. Instead my essay is very specifically about characters who are *meant* to be badass from the start but then... don’t end up being. So, yeah, before anyone claims I’m some angry feminist who needs every FL to be some tough martial artist or something. Absolutely not! Diversity is amazing and interesting. All I ask is that when I am told I’ll be getting a badass in a drama I get her. Not have my heart broken by the fake wilting flower I find in her place. Ok. End disclaimer. ^^)

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Also I’m tagging a bunch of you because you reblogged my post saying you wanted this so here! TY for making it to the end ^^

@kdramaxoxo​ @islandsofchaos @storytellergirl @vernalagnia-blog @lostindramas @salaamdreamer​ @planb-is-in-effect​ 

[sshoujo-ais]

celtic grey sea salt and black pepper salt? (for Milftopus but I think that was understood based on your tags XD)

celtic grey sea salt - what's an unpopular headcanon you have about your f/o?

this is more like an anti-headcanon but liv and aunt may don't have history together (especially romantic history) and ppl are just reading too much into a throwaway funny line :) sorry shippers

black pepper salt - put your music on random, take one line from the first song with lyrics that comes up, and apply that lyric to your f/o. what is the lyric and how does it relate to your f/o?

ooh i like this one :3

and the winner is: miss missing you by fall out boy ^^ i like this song but i'm going to have to do some mental gymnastics here because it is a break up song

this is my favorite lyric from this song and normally it means something else, but in this case i'm going to say that we're both behind the (proverbial) trigger even though we'd take a bullet for each other. the first line could refer to having to be evil™ and fight the spidered man before it "gets better" - and we can focus on each other :3

[comradesummers]

top 5 moments of xander-provided levity

Wow, this is a really cool question. For as many issues that I have with Xander’s character, one of the main attributes of his that I really connect with (and a reason that I have such a love-hate relationship with him) is his desperation for levity in terrifying circumstances, if only to retain a level of calm and allow himself and others to feel at least somewhat grounded. I think that’s something we can all relate to in these apocalyptic times (like a lot of people on this website, I am currently in quarantine), so I really appreciate this ask. 

5. “Say hi for me.”

This one’s during Innocence, and Willow’s in the library having a phone call with a panicked Buffy who still hasn’t found Angel, leading to this conversation:

Willow: No. Don’t eve say that! Angel is not dead.

Xander: Say hi for me. 

It’s just so random and casual, and for some reason it never fails to make laugh. 

4. “Does the council reimburse for that kind of stuff?”

This is from Enemies, an episode that spends most of its runtime trying to trick the audience into believing that Angel’s turned bad again. In that context, the entire scene of Xander describing how he bribed Willy the Snitch is especially delightful. But I love this part in particular, because with this throwaway line, Xander is officially the only character who ever suggests the Council should maybe provide the Scoobies some funding, which might actually make him the most sensible one out of all of them (it also might be telling that he’s the only one to do so given his working class roots, but maybe I’m reading too much into it).

3. “Just think of me as …  as your …  You know, I’m searching for supportive things, and I’m comin’ up all bras.”We really don’t give season 5 credit for just how depressing it is. Like everyone talks about season 6, but season 6 only exists because season 5 was so traumatic for everyone that they pretty much had to address the aftermath.

So, anyway, Buffy’s just dropped out of college in order to take care of Dawn, and Xander’s offering her his support, which is adorable. He says to Buffy “Welcome to the real world” because out of all of the young characters, he’s the only one with any real, adult career experience (not including Anya because she basically got a job by pestering Giles until he offered her one, which is amazingly on brand, but generally not how it works for people who aren’t Anya). But he doesn’t say it in a mean or superior way. He says that and then immediately tells Buffy that he’ll be there for her no matter what she chooses. He’s offering to help because he knows he can be helpful and it’s really lovely. Plus, it shows some of his own character growth in the confidence he displays about his life and career choices, which is also great to see.

And the line about bras is especially cute because it actually makes Buffy, who is understandably pretty upset at the moment, crack up a little. And you can tell that he says it specifically because he wants to make her laugh, and it’s just really cute and I love it a lot.

2. “If you have to go to the bathroom, it’s to your left. If you don’t have to go to the bathroom, picture what you’re about to face. Better to go now.”This one’s from Chosen and it’s just such a dad thing to say. I love it. It’s also definitely Xander passing on wisdom he’s gained from past experiences which makes it even funnier.

1. Xander proposing to Anya in The Gift

It feels kind of awkward to include this one, much less give it the top spot, since we all know how that entire situation played out. Also, this may not even count, seeing as it’s Xander providing levity in more of a meta way, as opposed to him actively making a joke in order to lighten the mood. But I kind of have to go with this one because of how emotional it made me when I first watched it. Which is funny, because I am by no means a Xander/Anya shipper. Like I don’t hate that ship like a lot of people do, but before Hell’s Bells (an episode that made me so viscerally angry that I’ve never once been able to bring myself to rewatch it), I rarely gave them much thought as a couple. 

But I think this moment hit me so hard during The Gift because it’s an episode that really focuses on just how exhausted the Scoobies are. They’ve stopped so many apocalypses (still not sure if that’s the plural) and yet the world seems determined to end, and they don’t know if they can manage to keep their heads above water anymore.

So in that context, having Xander make that cute, funny proposal to Anya is already such a breath of fresh air. But more than that, Xander’s speech is pretty much the only genuine expression of hope in the entire episode. While he may have fucked it up in the end, I truly believe that he believes, in that moment, that the world won’t end, and that he will live a long and silly life, and that he will have a future with Anya. He believes that happiness is possible for them and he wants to pursue that, even under the circumstances. It just gets me that out of all them, he’s the one that manages to hold onto hope. It really makes me believe that he’s the heart of the Scoobies, and it’s also a message that I think we all need to hear every now and again.

[theshinsun]

1. as far as im concerned Kagami never left at the end of last game, that was an extended dream sequence... 2. i also totally agree with you that Kagami is prolly vers, if anything, and it was also MY PET PEEVE when people pinholed him into being a forever bottom at the peak of knb hype. 3. you keep teasing your long list of ships for Aomine PLEASE do him for the character thing lol. So far all your opinions are sending me into a realm of GOOD VALID VIBES

Omg thank you!! (I agree end of Last Game is not canon… or if it is he came right back the next year or smth I refuse to accept he just left forever. And I’m really glad to see the problem of Uke™ Kagami seems to be in decline these days… fewer people are writing for knb in general, but those that are seem to have an idea what a real gay relationship is or at least make him a fucking person and not a walking stereotype, and that’s encouraging to see). 

Also thanks so much for sending Aomine! …Strap in for this character essay tho I’ve been known to never shut up about this boy once you get me started.

How I feel about this character

I honestly… can’t even explain it anymore or even try to justify it but Aomine has had a bigger impact on me than, I think, any other character I’ve seen to date. I don’t even know what it is, I do relate to him (and project on him *cough*) but like, there are other characters out there that I have more in common with, and I like his whole arc and aesthetic but it’s nothing revolutionary, so… your guess is as good as mine. 

Whatever it is, I’ve been obsessed with this guy for over half a decade, and lately even as the KNB fandom falls into decline, my feelings are not they’re just getting stronger. His development over the course of the series is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever seen, (that one bit at the end of the Touou/Seirin game with “I want to practice” and his later conversation with Kuroko hit me in the fucking chest every time), and I love how even though he’s portrayed as cold, uncaring and rude, it’s still understood (at least by anyone with some nuance) that that’s not what he’s supposed to be like, and underneath the distant, kind of dickish front, he’s hurting a lot. I’ve talked about the degree to which he cares about people before too, but I still have to give a mention to the ferocious level of protectiveness this guy has for his friends. I could go on about him for ages, tbh, and maybe someday I will write a for-real structured essay to try to get it out there, but the bottom line is I love this character, I have for a long time, and likely will continue to do so long into the future.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Okay here we go… I ship this guy extremely liberally, even with people he’s never interacted with (hell you could mention any random character and I could probably see my way clear to shipping them with him somehow, I’ll still try to explain my logic if I can). Prepare yourself.

Kagami (of course, AoKaga is the OTP and definitely the one I’ve devoted the most time to, they’re just the best together I’ll never get tired of seeing them figure their shit out over and over)

Kuroko (I may be AoKaga on main, but I’m still such a sucker for the tragic romance between these two, and sometimes it just hits me over the head like a sledgehammer how much I love their relationship. I’ve also got a lot of feelings for AoKagaKuro, they’re such a perfect trio and I need to invest more of my time in the OT3)

Kise (I was a bit late to the game on AoKise, but I definitely see it now. I love their dynamic and how imperfect their relationship would probably be, the complexity of it. sign me up)

Momoi (I don’t see a lot of AoMomo love anymore, but I’ve still got a soft spot for it, childhood friends are my weakness okay)

Midorima (they’re so different but that’s what makes it interesting, and I love the idea of neither of them knowing how to show/tell the other their feelings and being awkward stubborn shits together)

Murasakibara (they almost never interact but I just think they’d have such a soft cuddly relationship and be really chill together… lazy Sunday mornings sleeping in and hanging all over each other that kinda thing)

Akashi (kinda same as Akashi/Kagami, I think the difference between polished upper-class Akashi and scrappy city boy Aomine would be hella interesting… though I’ve also got some angst ideas for them as a couple, after how things went down at Teiko… abandonment and whatnot)

Imayoshi (I got pulled into this ship HARD by Lysapadin’s A Firm Hand series and now it’s no longer a guilty pleasure ship and is actually something I’ll talk about in the open, just… the power dynamic fuck me up)

Sakurai (I fuckin love the idea of an anxious Sakurai crushing hard on Aomine and not knowing how to tell him but when he finally plucks up the courage and prepares himself for imminent death Aomine’s actually pretty chill about it… plus they’d be adorable together tbh)

Wakamastu (you know it’s gotta be enemies to lovers. not just bc I’m intrigued by the love/hate relationship itself but if you look past the attitude issues these two would actually probably have a lot in common. also I’m really interested in how their dynamic might change with Wakamatsu being captain and all)

Susa (idk but there’s one throwaway line in season 3 where Imayoshi says about Aomine “actually maybe he likes you” and that’s enough for me. bring me the rarest rarepair my body is ready)

Kasamatsu (it wasn’t supposed to be SERIOUS but they got me. That moment in the Touou/Kaijo game where Aomine helps him up and “you’ve really done it now, senpai” is legit, plus these two would be such a good-looking couple, honestly.)

Mibuchi (give me the pretty boys. I have no excuse for this except maybe their interactions in my own damn fic again)

Nebuya (sometimes shipping can be as simple as hey I want them to bang right. also they’re both humongous dorks under their respective rough exteriors and I love them)

Moriyama (they bond over liking girls at first and then they’re simultaneously like wait a minute… more Touou/Kaijo ships pls)

Nijimura (I have this idea of them reuniting late into/after high school and Aomine still calls him captain out of habit and Nijimura’s like relieved and impressed to see how he’s developed since the mess at Teiko)

Himuro (they Never interact but they’d be so Petty and Snarky sign me up)

Haizaki (twisted, but I’m interested it’d be so unhealthy and awful bring it)

Hanamiya (even more twisted tbh but there is that moment where Aomine confronts him… and I’m here for hate sex just as much as your typical romance)

Inoue (who, you ask? I know he’s such a side character and no one remembers him, but he’s a big reason for Aomine’s downfall at Teiko and they seemed to be buddies before that, I’d be interested in some kind of reconciliation between them, or a romance, ya know whatever works)

And then we get into crossover territory… MOST of these are not my fault they’re just things I’ve seen and adopted for myself

Kuroo Tetsurou (someone made a moodboard for them, and now I can’t stop thinking about them in a relationship, like damn… it’d be such a beautiful mess I wanna see more of it)

Oikawa Tooru (I’ve seen art, and also the light. These two damaged angsty prodigies, one sharp as a whip the other dumb as bricks, but both of them sassy and nerdy as hell. I could see myself getting addicted to this ship if I took the time to write it out, and I just might)

Yamazaki Sousuke (can’t lie, they look good together. I’ve seen more than one art piece of them interacting and I have a Mighty Need.)

Matsuoka Rin (angry lonely talented boys finding solace in each other’s company? you know that’s my shit. also shark teeth and cop AUs hells yeah.) 

Tanaka Ryuunosuke (I don’t know where the fuck this idea came from but I thought of Tanaka trying to pick a fight with “shitty boi” Aomine while in Tokyo and then losing his shit and here we are)

Terushima Yuuji (this one is purely physical… they pretty, I have no other reason, but also this absolute fuckboy, these two would be such a train wreck and I’m here for it tbh)

Yachi Hitoka (okay picture this Giant Terrifying basketball player trying to be less giant and terrifying to tiny shy Yachi and tell me you don’t just want to see that happen. I get Legosi/Haru vibes.)

I’ll spare you the rest of the ideas I’ve tossed around, because past this point it becomes pure crack (if it hasn’t already) but you get the idea. Throw a character my way and I can probably talk myself into it that’s the power this guy has over me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My non-romantic OTP for this character

K considering the List… it shouldn’t be surprising that I also consider this person a romantic candidate, but you know when it comes to non-romantic OTP it’s gotta be Momoi. Platonic or romantic, the way she’s stuck with him all those years and his obvious protectiveness and love for her and how (even though he claims to like big tits) he never even once starts to objectify her in any way, it’s so important to me. Momoi is Aomine’s redeeming factor when he’s at his worst, and she goes to bat for him even while he’s actively trying to shake her off and still tries to protect and help him when he refuses to accept it, even when it means they fight. (Also Kuroko saying “Aomine’s probably looking for you” after their argument puts to mind Aomine running through the rain calling Momoi’s name and that is just… pure). These two have the kind of unshakable long-standing friendship that’ll probably last them the rest of their lives, and no matter what context or form it takes, I can’t get enough of it. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

I’ve harped on enough about the fandom’s portrayal of Aomine as a one-note asshole who doesn’t care before, so let’s see if I can change gears a little bit here. 

I honestly don’t agree with… the persistent idea people seem to have of Aomine being a narcissist or obsessed with himself? Like yeah, he’s self-absorbed and egotistical, no question, this is not to say he hasn’t got those flaws and others besides… but that’s not the same as being like, physically attracted to yourself. Part of me suspects it was a “the only one who can fuck me is me” joke taken too far, so that now the idea of Aomine being in love with himself is just ingrained into the fanon culture, but if you look at the show itself, personally I don’t see it. If anything, I would think he’d have some self-loathing issues to work through (and that’s part of the reason he gave for skipping practice, he doesn’t want to be the way he is, and specifically says he doesn’t want to increase the difference between him and everyone else). But hey, that’s just my opinion. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I mean he says he and Kagami are postponing their match, after their brief one-on-one when he gives him the shoes, and then we never get to see it… Tbh just more street ball with this guy would be great, since it’s what his whole style is based around. Even if he’s just playing by himself… or hell, maybe since he thinks no one at the high school level can beat him, we could get a scene of him trying to go up against adults. Maybe he still beats them and his despair worsens after that, but then it’d have more meaning, and at least we’ll have seen that he’s tried and is not just giving up before he’s seen all of what he could be up against in the future. Plus, picturing Aomine going five-on-one like Haizaki did against grown-ups and still slaughtering them is something I’d pay money to see. 

[travllingbunny]

AoS rewatch: 1x07 The Hub

I’m late with this in relation to the fandom-wide rewatch timetable, but actual work takes precedence. I hope to be able to catch up soon.

This episode is the second one in a row that focuses on Fitz and SImmons and gives them more development. But unlike FZZT, which also had a really strong case-of-the-week, this one has a throwaway plot about agents going to Russia twice to...do...stuff...which is supposed to have something to do with South Ossetian separatists and anti-separatists.  I’m not a fan of TV shows randomly throwing in references to real world conflicts that it has no intention of treating seriously. If you need some random Eastern European stereotypes, better use made-up stereotypical Eastern European countries like Sokovia or Markovia and whatever. A fictional world like that of the MCU universe has a perfect excuse to do that.

This is also the episode where me first meet Victoria Hand,. Agent Sitwell also pops up, and we get to see “the Hub”, SHIELD  headquarters (one of them, apparently smaller than the Triskelion), in a secret location.

This episode begins in medias res - extremely so, with some guys interrogating Coulson, who’s doing the Black Widow from The Avengers thing, tied up to a chair, only in his case it’s in an underground prison in Siberia. In this case, the scary interrogator turns out to be SHIELD Agent Shaw. (A common name enough, I guess, or just one that the AoS writers like.) It would be fun to follow a story about Agent Shaw and what it was like to torture people brutally so you would maintain a cover, but AoS is not really a show that likes to go there, just like it never really went there with Bobbi Morse.

To sum up SHIELD’s international dealings: they have a close relationship with the US government, offices in China and Morocco, no office in Peru or Italy (see 1x13) but they cooperate with the police there; and no office or cooperation and a rather hostile relationship with Russia and Belarus and, in fact, go to missions unknown to the governments of these countries; Including breaking into government facilities. How many international laws are they breaking? To be fair, they’re also kidnapping US citizens on its soil, so they’re also breaking US laws.

Some weapon called “overkill device” is involved. (At least the show itself makes fun of it, pointing out its OTT name. “Something was lost in translation”.) 

Victoria Hand is somewhat of a legend. Coulson has never met her before, but he knows her by reputation. 

Skye is, of course, upset over the secrecy that surrounds the mission, now that a higher up is in charge. The others keep dismissing her concerns as silly - but she later turns out to be completely right. Fitz: “No need to start with one of your socialist rants”. *sigh* That’s not what “socialism” means, Fitz. I guess the SHIELD Academy  didn’t provide a lot in terms of general education in the field of humanities.

There’s mission that Ward and Fitz have to go to as a team, but it’s just an excuse to get the Odd Couple pairing of these two on a mission and do the classic bromance progression from arguing to starting to respect or like each other more. In retrospect, this is what makes this episode important, other than the introduction of Hand - it helps build a stronger bond between Fitz and Ward, which will make Ward’s betrayal much more painful and hit Fitz very hard. This is one of the reasons why those people who go “oh, you can just skip the early episodes” are bozos - without the buildup of Ward’s relationships with the other team members, and without those early lighthearted moments, what happens later in the season would never have the same emotional weight.

Meanwhile, Simmons and Skye have their “bad girl shenanigans” at the Hub, where Simmons is responsible for some of the show’s funniest moments (”You certainly have a gorgeous...head”, “I like men who are about my height but heavier than me”) and we get a great Skye “WTF?!” face:

I like using it as a meme. In fact, I’ve seen it used even before I started watching the show.

Simmons is a rule follower, but the moment she hears that Fitz may be in danger and could be tortured somewhere, she changes her mind and is break the rules.  Last episode we heard Fitz is afraid to go to the field, now that Simmons loves following the rules, but both of them are ready go outside their comfort zones to save the other.

There is noticeable new closeness between FitzSimmons after the events of 1x06, or maybe it is just because we have never seen them getting separated (yes, this is their first separation!) or Simmons worrying about Fitz.

I know that the Sandwich (TM) is something of a legend, but no matter how much the fandom has mourned it, Ward was right that it had to thrown away, or else we’d be mourning Fitz - dogs were, indeed, following them.

The nice version of Ward, which we see when he tells Fitz he has nothing to prove and that he knows he would have jumped out to save Simmons, will be contrasted with Ward’s darker side in the very next episode, when he bullies Fitz, targeting his weaknesses while under the influence of the staff. Both moments show that Ward was always noticing Fitz’ feelings for SImmons, maybe before Fitz himself fully admitted them to himself (which he’ll talk to Fitz about in 1x19).

Skye had a moment when she almost gave in to the selfish urge to use her brief access to confidential files to try to decipher the redacted file on herself, but then she gave priority to Ward’s and Firz’s safety and checked the mission file.

That blooper is right - Skye, May and Simmons  lined up in that scene really make you think of Charlie’s Angels.

While Hand is portrayed as a SHIELD hardliner with a stern and somewhat ruthless attitude, she finally reveals a nicer side, when our protagonists can’t even see her. She lets Coulson and his team go on their rescue mission and is smiling seeing that they are safe, pointing out her belief that they can carry it out “We needed our resources elsewhere. And it’s Coulson’s team, they don’t need one’. This feels different than her portrayal in upcoming episodes like 1x11 or 1x16. She also obviously wasn’t suspicious of Coulson at this point. Is it just because she still didn’t know about Hydra? Or it was Coulson blowing up the facility in 1x14 and  Ward shooting Nash after Deathlock lead them to him, that made her suspicious. Or maybe it was already the fact he let Mike be a part of the team in 1x10, which was one of her arguments against him.   

Does Sitwell know about Ward also being Hydra? He didn’t seem particularly happy that they were getting rescued, so maybe he doesn’t, and identifies of many Hydra double agents were shared only on need to know basis or within smaller units. After all, Cap’s “Hail Hydra” ruse in Endgame wouldn’t have worked otherwise. Garrett was mostly running his own thing while making sure what he’s doing also remains useful to Hydra through the creation of supersoldiers, while pursuing his goal of finding the way to ensure his survival, so he may have revealed Ward’s allegiance just to a select few or almost no one.

Coulson spends a lot of this episode telling Skye things like “Some secrets are meant to stay secret” but doesn’t actually mean it, as he enlists May to help in trying to find out info about Skye’s parentage; and tries to open his own file about his recovery in “Tahiti”, learning his Level 8 clearance isn’t enough.  I believe Fury is Level 10. I wonder who is Level 9? Hand also doesn’t seem to know the truth.

Hand notes that Coulson is a special favorite of Fury - “Not everyone gets sent to Tahiti” (cough). Which the season 1 ending will certainly prove.

Foreshadowing

Ward to Fitz: “How long can you hold your breath underwater?” (This line will never sound the same.)

Fitz: “You should know by now, Agent Ward, that looks can be deceiving.” (Oh Fitz, you have no idea.)

Fitz to Ward: “I am every bit the SHIELD agent you are”. (Oh, Fitz, you have no idea.)

Skye about Coulson: “He’s acting like a robot version of himself right now.” (..No comment.)

[uncloseted]

Effy’s Closet Watches Skins: 302 “Cook”

Hey everyone! I'm back with another recap. I've always found this episode to be a bit of nonsense and i've never loved Cook as much as the other characters, but I think it gives a lot of insight into who he is and what motivates him.  More under the cut!

- I’m still annoyed about the music change. I get why they had to do it but whoever chose the replacement music really didn't even try. I've said this before, but the original music isn't just music- it adds emotion, but it also adds commentary and lets us know what the characters are feeling. This is missing that. 

- Cook and the boys are wandering down the street. It's Cook's 17th birthday, and he's having a party. Freddie says he hopes some people will show up; JJ says he invited half the college. It's a throwaway line, but I think it's actually pretty important- Cook wants people to pay attention to him, to think he's funny, to witness his debauchery. He wants people to like him despite how hard he tries not to give a shit about anyone or anything. So he invited everyone to make sure some people would come. Cook almost gets into a fight with some posh kids and looks thrilled about it. They're at Uncle Keith's pub and I'm a bit offended that the bartender is named Christina. It seems like Uncle Keith might be the only adult male influence Cook has had in his life in a long time, which explains some of why he is the way that he is. He introduces Freddie and JJ. Cook has an earring, which I don't think I've noticed before now. Keith is telling stories about his wild days and I think Cook feels like he needs to live up to those stories. Cook claims that Uncle Keith is a legend and JJ asks who exactly Keith is a legend to. Cook, who's looked up to Uncle Keith for a long time, seems really offended by the idea that Uncle Keith isn't a legend to *everyone*. 

- Enter the girls. Cook says, "Look, man. Look at that. Quality totty. That's top shelf shit" about Effy to Freddie and then "hey baby" to Effy and puts his arm around her. Effy looks very uncomfortable. At this point in time, Cook really views Effy as being a hot girl more than anything else. Freddie looks upset by this. Then Cook declares that his party will be legendary, which it clearly is not. There's also an interesting throwaway interaction with this guy who wanders into the pub. Cook says the guy burnt his house, and the guy apologizes. Cook's life is clearly very hectic if his house is being burned down by some random dude, and yet he doesn't feel like that's enough. His party needs to be wild, crazy, legendary.

- Effy and Freddie share a really nice "Cook is crazy" look, and for the first time in this episode she seems happy that she came. They sing "For he's a jolly good fellow" and Effy looks very unamused and bored with how tame this whole situation is. "He's already had half a bottle of vodka" says JJ. "Really? How crazy" deadpans Effy. She looks about ready to leave, except Freddie is there so we all know she won't. The gang does tequila shots, and Cook howls. JJ joins in, excited to be included, and Freddie begrudgingly follows along. Effy gives him this cute little understanding smile. I just noticed that the headband she's wearing has star studs on it. Freddie says that Effy will like JJ's magic trick, and what I love about this is that he's right. Effy is all "what? He does magic?" And then she's totally amused by JJ's magic trick. It's one of the first times we see her smile like that in the series, which doesn't mean anything right now, but it's interesting in the context of her mum saying that she likes magic. I think part of the reason JJ likes her so much is that she really, unapologetically likes his magic tricks. She spends so much time being unimpressed about pretty much everything else that I think her liking his magic makes JJ feel special. She seems uncomfortable with Cook drinking the goldfish- the other girls definitely are. 

- Pandora pukes, and Cook is excited- that means they're having a good time. Freddie and Effy share another glance, and then Naomi enters. She looks vulnerable, like she's not quite sure what she's doing there.  For Naomi, this is being brave. The guy who harasses her and the girl who tells lies about her in one room... all because she wants to see Emily. Katie makes a lesbian joke, and Emily hisses, "Shh... I've told you to fucking... Just leave it, ok?" Clearly they've had this conversation about Naomi before, and it gives us a hint that maybe Emily has been standing up to Katie more in private. Cook tells Naomi that the cure for gayness is his cock. I think he likes the challenge of a girl who won't sleep with him. He's really set on impressing Naomi pretty consistently in the early episodes of this series. Effy is not having Cook's views on lesbians, but meanwhile Katie finds it hilarious, I guess because someone is finally on her side about it. Emily comes to the rescue by producing a cake. I like this because she's saving Naomi from this awkward situation, but without actually having to defend Naomi or tell her how she feels. Very series 3 Emily of her. Also, how cute that Emily made Cook a cake? Cook eats the whole thing and Effy smirks. Everyone else looks disgusted. 

(Also, can I take this time to ask people why on earth they color edit gifs of Skins like this?  The entire show is already color edited by professional color editors.  It’s a big part of its look.  Why make everything orange?!) - Katie is fed up with the situation. She asks where the conversation, the dancing, the men are. Cook is offended and tries to insist that they're men, but the rest of the gang finally says what they mean- this party is shit. Cook stands outside, waiting for a sign from God about how to improve his party. This is really, really important to him, and nobody else seems to care, so he has to make it happen himself. Then an opportunity presents itself- Freddie's sister is at an engagement party. Cook seems pleased at the idea of seeing Karen (he mentions that he's always touching with her and flirting with her, to which Freddie responds that that's why she doesn't like him), and I've always thought they should have delved into that relationship more. They have a really interesting dynamic- both Cook and Karen are characters who will do whatever it takes to be noticed and to be loved. One thing I really love about this episode is the pressure that everyone is feeling to have a crazy night and a good time. I feel like that's such a relatable part of being a teenager that doesn't often get depicted- you feel like you're supposed to be going out all the time, having the craziest moments of your life, but sometimes there's just nowhere to go and nothing to do. This episode captures that restlessness really well.

- They get to the engagement party and are turned away by the bouncer. Freddie talks Cook down from fighting the bouncer, which it seems from his expression like he has to do a lot. Karen and her friend come out, Cook offers them drugs, and finally they get let into the party. It's clearly not exactly their scene, but Cook isn't deterred. He meets Johnny White, a gangster, who threatens him, but he doesn't seem to care all that much. Pandora has decided she loves drugs, I guess because she's on a quest to get everyone to like her and everyone else is doing drugs. Pandora eats all the drugs, which provides a big problem for Cook. Effy, who is used to Pandora, thinks the situation is hilarious. Everyone else, not so much. Kayleigh tells Cook to get her more drugs. The rest of the gang is dancing. Effy's maroon dress has a black diagonal stripe on it, which I guess I always thought was part of her jacket but isn't.

- Cook talks to Freddie and JJ about how he needs the drugs so that he can get with Kayleigh. Freddie says, "I thought you liked Effy", to which Cook replies, "Yeah, she's a peach. But I already tapped that. Top-dollar shag. She's my last resort. Sure thing, I reckon." Freddie didn't know that Cook and Effy had sex, and now he's upset. "But...JJ likes her", he says. Meaning, "I love her. Why would you do this to me?" I think it's the first time he realizes how Cook will never put Freddie before himself, and that he's a way better friend to Cook than Cook is to him. Effy and Freddie steal another glance; she seems to be trying to inviting him over to dance with her with some flirty eye contact, but he's still processing what he just learned.

- Now we cut to Naomi and Emily in their first real conversation of the series. As a sidenote, both of their outfits are utterly ridiculous and perfect for them. I like how the pink in Naomi's top matches Emily's cardigan. Emily asks Naomi not to leave, and Naomi asks her why not, maybe hoping, just a little bit, that Emily will say "because I want you to stay". Here's Emily, being brave, going out on a limb for Naomi. She may not seem like it on the surface, but I think Emily is actually one of the bravest characters in the show.  She knows that if she pushes Naomi too far, Naomi will run away from her, and so she's subtle, gentle, leaving room for Naomi to feel how she feels. Emily starts to say exactly what Naomi wants to hear, "I don't know....because...." and then thinks better of it and backs off.  She knows that even though it's exactly what Naomi wants to hear, Naomi isn't ready to hear it. Naomi asks her why Katie thinks she's gay, and Emily apologizes. Naomi leaves.

- Johnny White gives a speech, and clearly this marriage is political; he's merging two gangs so that they won't fight anymore. Freddie looks upset, in general I think but also because of all the people there, he believes in love, and I think he feels like Kayleigh shouldn't be getting married for politics. Pandora faints and Effy tries to wake her up. Cook gets more drugs from Keith and gives them to Kayleigh. He has this argument with Kayleigh where he tries to convince her to have sex with him, which is gross but also I think shows his desperation. Cook is not someone who knows how to let go, even if he doesn't really care about the endgame. She says that if he impresses her, she'll have sex with him, and so Cook hatches a plan. He does the rest of his drugs (interestingly, he eats them in the same way Pandora does) and then does a whole song and dance number, angering Johnny in the process. Freddie sees danger coming, but not before Cook gets hit over the head with a bottle. Cook continues to poke at Johnny, getting himself deeper and deeper into trouble, and it's at this point that I wonder how prevalent gang activity actually is in Bristol. Every series these kids get into some sort of altercation with a gang. Is that normal for the UK? Anyway, Freddie sweeps in and saves the day, promising that they'll leave, and Johnny tosses Cook off of a balcony, starting a gang war in the process. 

- Cook seems relatively unharmed from this fall, and begins to laugh. He's definitely gotten the legendary night he wanted, and to him that's all that matters. The gang runs away, hooligans that they are, before their situation can get worse. Effy concedes that it was a cool party and has this cute moment in the background where she and Pandora are playing. Freddie says that Cook is "fucking unbelievable", still with a mixture of admiration and disgust, which I think is common for their relationship. Still smiling, Freddie says, "you're always fucking trying to get laid", and it's interesting, because it's friendly but sharp. Cook isn't sensing the escalating situation with Freddie, and just says that he tries and succeeds before turning to the girls to see if any of them want to fuck. All of them evade him, including Effy. She pauses, thinks about it, looks at Freddie (who seems very nervous about what she's going to say), and then turns Cook down, saying that she has to take Pandora home. She looks like she might be wearing some sort of feather in her hair?

- Cook, undeterred, says that he wants to go somewhere with women. Freddie says he's tired, and Cook initially thinks he means sleepy, but Freddie says no- he's tired of Cook. I think Cook propositioning Effy right in front of him is the final straw for Freddie; clearly Cook doesn't care about his feelings, and if Cook doesn't care about Freddie's feelings, Freddie's not going to go with him and protect him from himself anymore. Cook responds with anger, a "fuck you, then" and tries to get JJ to come with him. JJ, I guess not wanting to rock the boat further, only hesitates for a second before he goes along. 

- The rest of this episode is mostly filler nonsense so that Skins can earn its "edgy and provocative" stripes. It feels like a rehash of the events of episode 101, except now Skins has a reputation to uphold. Cook and JJ go to a strip club/brothel situation. Cook says JJ is going to lose his virginity; JJ stands up to him (a bit) and says he's not sure he wants to. I think Cook thinks he's doing JJ a favor, and by getting JJ laid, he'll make sure JJ stays on his side if this fight with Freddie is real. JJ is totally out of his element and clearly uncomfortable. Cook can't afford what he wants, and I think he's surprised that this is not a situation where he can bargain, no matter how good or sexy he thinks he is. JJ just wants a kiss; he's never kissed a girl and doesn't know how.  He realizes that Johnny White is in the other room and goes to get revenge, but not before he sees JJ kissing Megan and calls it "gay shit".  JJ apologizes to him, as if he's wronged Cook in some way.  Cook takes pictures of Johnny in a... compromizing position... and takes Johnny's necklaces.  Like Cook was doing before, Johnny provokes him- he won't let go even when he knows it's in his best interest.  Johnny makes some comments about Cook's mum, and Cook physically fights him.  JJ tries to pull him away and accidentally gets caught in the crossfire, with Cook almost hitting him.  Cook looks disturbed by the fact that he got so angry that he almost hit JJ, and JJ runs away.  Johnny threatens to kill Cook, and Cook, for the first time all episode, seems to realize that his actions have consequences.  

He walks across a park alone at dawn.  He doesn't have anywhere to go, so he goes to see Freddie, the only person who's always been there for him.  Freddie comes out of his house and into the shed, looking like a bit of a grandpa in his dressing gown.  Cook is drinking and Freddie calls him on it, but he's not willing to push the issue.  I think he's hoping Cook has come to offer some form of apology.  But Cook asks, "so what are we doing today then?" And Freddie knows that that's not why he's here.  Freddie says he almost got them killed, and Cook finally offers up an apology of sorts.  Freddie says that it's a first; even Cook's half apology seems to be more than Cook has ever said before.  But Freddie's not having it- Cook says he wouldn't have done the stupid things he did if Freddie was there, and Freddie reiterates that he's not going to take care of Cook anymore, that he's tired of being a bystander to Cook's death wish.  Cook pulls the Three Musketeers card and says he loves Freddie to bits, and Freddie relents.  He knows that he's all that Cook has, and I don't think he's ready to let go of that.  He asks just one thing, that Cook "stops all this crazy shit".  But even that's too much for Cook.  His response is only "shut it, you pussy".  And so he goes right back to his old ways, walking down the street and singing loudly, just like he did before.  Only this time, he's all alone.  In this episode we see how far Freddie has been pushed, how much he just wants Cook to be okay.  How much he thinks that somehow, he'll be able to get through to Cook and save him from himself.  And it's so clear from the ending of that episode that that's not where Cook is,that's not what's going to happen.  He wants to keep things exactly as they are, with Freddie looking out for him so nothing truly bad happens, where there are no consequences for his actions because Freddie will shield him from them.  This conversation marks Freddie's final straw- he's trying again, one more time, hoping he got through to Cook.  Forgiving him for everything with Effy, for creating messes he always has to clean up... offering one final olive branch. 

Bonus: Effy and Freddie sharing glances in this episode:

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

on blake and running away

this post will be just me rambling about some tension i’ve noticed in the show for the longest time, yeah? i'm not trying to like, take people’s favorite characters away from them or whatever, but it’s me trying to come to terms with the fact that “running away” seems to be a very common theme for WBY... and for BY, it’s handled a bit oddly.

adam is mentioned as a matter of course, but i don’t really look at him the way you are used to--i don’t talk about the race stuff at all. i exclusively look at his abuse to Blake here; let it not be said that i’m so hung up on the race stuff that i ignore this part of his character. but if talk about abuse triggers you, you may not want to read this--it doesn’t really talk about personal experience at all and it’s not graphic, but this is a deeply personal Topic so i will warn you right now.

since this is long (no, really, it’s long as hell because it takes some explaining, and it’s more me trying to wrap my head around this than coming to a conclusion), i’ll stick it under a readmore:

Hello there!

Now, let’s all get on the same page, shall we? We all know that Adam’s a slimy creep in the show, right? And that most of his words to Blake should be taken in the context of what he intends to do and comes forth from his character?

This is a pretty basic observation... the things that characters say can be safely assumed to have a purpose in some way. Like Adam saying “my dear” or “wow we finally have alone time!” or whatever crap isn’t meant to be taken at face value as romantic, right? In fact, because Adam is (supposed to be) charismatic and an emotional abuser, you should generally assume there is some ulterior motive to what he says. (If this isn’t obvious to you, see Blake telling Yang that Adam only has power because of his manipulation in the Brunswick Arc.)

Which kind of strikes me as weird because... this isn’t really in line with how the writer’s depend on Adam’s dialogue sometimes? At certain points you’re supposed to take his framing as basically true--think of when he yells “what does she even see in you?” which ... is supposed to be taken by the audience as “see, even Adam sees their relationship, in case you haven’t gotten it yet!” rather than the kind of meaningless unhinged statement an abusive, jealous controlling asshole would make,

And like, if it were limited to rare instances like this, I wouldn’t really care about it that much, I would just take the unnatural dialogue as the audience clue-ins they’re meant to be and take Adam’s talkativeness in the final fight as RT being excited that Garrett Hunter can finally do the bare minimum of voice acting. But the reason it bugs me is because Adam was previously used to outright tell us Blake’s supposed character flaw of running away and we were just... supposed to take it at face value?

So, Adam constantly taunts Yang during their volume 6 fight, reminding her of Beacon to no end. And if you know Adam’s character, you’d know that this is meant to be intimidating shit-talking to Yang and to get her to attack him. It’s not even really subtle. “You’re a coward! Just like [Blake]” etc etc etc

(The fact that it doesn’t really work at all in this fight and he fucking keeps taunting her even when it clearly doesn’t work is the reason why Adam is annoying as hell during that fight. I’m salty that I was forced to be put through his voice acting, yes, I’m allowed to be petty.)

Remember this line of dialogue from him, because it’ll be important later: “You’re a coward! Just like her!” He frames her running away as a flaw pretty consistently, and this actually lines up with her character arc:

So flashback to the earlier volumes, right? Blake’s self-identified flaw is that she “always runs away” in volume 2. In that infamous volume 3 fight, Adam says, in response to Blake’s “I’m not running!”: “You will.” And that’s what happens, and it’s supposed to fuel most of the Yang-Blake drama in subsequent volumes. 

Volume 4 has Blake outright say that the reason she ran away was because she wants her friends to hate her so they can be safe, and Sun basically tells her, “you don’t have to be alone, your friends are here.”

In volume 5, Yang reinforces that this is supposed to be a trait of Blake, and it’s also framed negatively: “she ran!” Now Weiss contextualizes this in their talk by basically saying that Blake is lonely and she ran away because she wanted to protect them, and Yang repeats the whole notion of “she doesn’t have to run! We were here for her.” In that very same volume, Blake  “now he can see what it feels like to run away” when she successfully out-organizes Adam. The parallel between Blake now having Support and Backup and Therefore She Doesn’t Need to Run Away Anymore, while Adam Lost His Influence and Therefore Must Run Away.

In the V6 ending  song “Nevermore,” Blake’s first singing part implies that her running away is a character flaw that she got over by killing Adam:

Will I be afraid (Adrienne) Nor will I run away (Casey) It's behind me (Adrienne + Casey) Freedom is finally here (Casey)

So it’s clear that the story the show wants you to take away from this is that Blake always runs away because she views herself as a burden to her friends and won’t let them help her, and she needs to open up more and be more confident in her value as a person and push people away. Her arc is about that in volume 5, where she defeats people via the Power of Friendship. She spells out her character arc to Sun in volume 5, chapter 5:

“I’m going to try and help [Ilia] the way you helped me. You showed me that sometimes you need to be there for a friend even when they don’t want you to be. I was drowning in guilt and fear, and I tried to push you away, but you didn’t give up on me. And I can’t give up on Ilia; it’s about time I saved my friends for once.”

Blake’s character arc post-season 3 revolves around being comfortable with relying on support and supporting others, and that helpfully stops her from running away and lets her face her big problems. 

This would all be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that running away actually isn’t the bad thing that the show tries to frame it to be, if you were to judge by what actually happened in the events of the show and the actions of other characters, and this is where my big beef with Blake’s arc comes from. I’m going to argue that running away wasn’t actually a character flaw Blake had at all, and the show treating it as such is it basically siding with Adam on this particular issue.

Blake has run away 3 times in the show’s runtime thus far.

1. The first time was in the Black Trailer

2. The second time is in volume 1 when she inadvertently reveals herself as an ex-White Fang member to Weiss

3. The last time is during the epilogue to volume three when she absconds to Menagerie

All three instances were actually valid and ended up being good for Blake. (1) is her escaping an abusive relationship. (2) leads to her finding Sun and opening up to a fellow faunus for once. (3) is Blake running away back to a support system she already had--her parents, who are pretty loving and accepting of her. The fact that she ran away might be the best thing Blake did--yeah, it wasn’t perfect, Yang was hurt--but objectively, Blake reconnected with the people who love her unconditionally and she was also there to save her parents from being murdered by Adam.

To pile on to these instances, Blake’s personality is actually rather confrontational. She constantly gets in arguments with Weiss in volume 1, and in volume 2, her character arc is basically her freaking out because they weren’t doing enough about Torchwick. 

But but but--! I hear the objection to this statement--Blake in volume 2 herself said that she always runs away from her problems! Checkmate atheists!

Well, dear reader, it’s not. Self-perception isn’t necessarily always true, especially if you’ve been emotionally abused before, as Blake has been. In volume 2, Blake sees herself as a coward who runs away all the time even though this is directly contradicted by her personality and actions.

Now, who in her past might benefit from framing “running away” as a bad thing? That leaving him to “run away” to other people means she’s a coward?

If you bothered to remember the quote I told you to remember earlier, it’s Adam! Adam stands everything to gain by telling Blake that running away is Bad; stay with me, Blake, don’t run and abandon me like your parents did. This would be the most striking and lasting example of emotional abuse, directly related to Blake’s self-perception and tying into a lot of the things she does in the show.

Would be. But the show sort sides with Adam here--running away is Bad. Adam is, according to the explicit messages of RWBY, what the show wants you to believe, right in saying that Blake always runs away. 

But she doesn’t. Hell, she doesn’t even run away from him when the going gets tough, and Adam himself doesn’t even believe that Blake is a coward. Remember the first time she him saw in in volume 3? They were really far apart and Blake could have just ran, but Adam stabbed a random civvie knowing that Blake would rush in to protect him. And like clockwork, Blake indeed did attack Adam to try to prevent harm.

(And yes, Adam used the exact same trick to lure Yang into attacking him, except instead of stabbing a nondescript extra, he stabbed Blake. Connections!)

This kind of stuff partially why I’ve always been uncomfortable with the abuse backstory, because much like the racism stuff that I have a problem with, the show just... ignores the big elephant in the room. Blake already had this self-image discrepancy going on in the first 3 volumes, but it never properly gets addressed again. Like with the violent-but-not-extremist White Fang and Sienna, it gets a throwaway line to explain its absence: “Yeah, look, Adam called Yang a coward! We’ll just vaguely nod at this!” But Blake’s arc proper? There’s nothing about coming to terms with her running away or using it as a concrete in-story example of her untangling Adam’s abuse--that might actually get people uncomfortable, you see--so it slowly gets morphed into the safer and easier plotline of “see, you just need to let yourself rely on people!”

And it’s weird that it got dropped so easily because “running away” is pretty much a... not a theme, but a thing three of the four main girls have going on. Yang has abandonment issues because her mother up and ran away--in fact, the language of how Running Away is Bad and Cowardly is brought up in the talk-ju-jitsu scene with Raven. 

This is probably the easiest connection in the world to make--Raven and Blake both ran away, but as far as Yang is concerned, it’s okay with Blake because... “she came back,” which... uh??? uhhhh???? It uncritically accepts that Running Away is a Bad Thing--it’s the coming back part (which wasn’t even an intentional thing on Blake’s end; she didn’t even know RWBY would be there) that “redeems” Blake’s sin--see Yang’s “you came back!” and Weiss’s “she will [come back.]”

Which... is actually kind of weird in light of how Running Away vis-a-vis Blake is handled (ie, she gets the notion that it’s a bad thing from Adam--but certainly she shouldn’t go back to him). The show didn’t need to do everything in its power to frame Running Away as a bad thing; it could acknowledge that while it may hurt somebody, running away is sometimes the best thing you can do, and this could actually tie into Yang’s abandonment issues, because if there was a character that also needed untangling with the concept of Running Away, it was her. 

But it seems like Blake and Yang won’t really talk about any of this in the future, because we can’t have conflict because of people’s differing experiences with running away, apparently. Blake’s act at the end of volume 3 did hurt Yang and potentially... swept under the rug, because Blake Came Back, Guys! We can put a ring on it now. Because getting over abuse is always straightforward, you will never make mistakes trying to heal yourself, and there are never hard decisions to make! 

I never see people talk about this, so maybe it’s worth a mention. But Weiss is also technically guilty of Running Away--from an abusive household, in this case, much like her sister. And here, much like with Blake, it’s a good thing. But with Weiss, the narrative actually admits that leaving was the right thing to do for herself and her character arc is actually about that. So it’s exceedingly strange for me that Blake doing the exact thing Weiss does is a “flaw” she had to get over, instead of something that could be looked at and digested.

Blake’s experience with abuse is an element that never seemed to really resonate with me personally, because what I saw on screen and what was implied didn’t add up perfectly. I like the message of “support systems matter” of Blakes volume 4-5 arc in concept, but it never felt exactly right, because what Blake actually resolved and what was visibly her problem never felt 1:1 to me. 

[lucispietate]

Dear Hurt/Comfort Exchange writer

Hello, fellow writer! First of all, I really want to thank you in advance for taking up the challenge to make something for me, I appreciate it so much. I really enjoy being surprised (especially with pairings where Canon leaves a lot to the imagination and everyone has their own headcanon) so you're absolutely free to write anything you wish and mostly take this letter as suggestions if you need inspiration.

I don't have much to say for likes, I have some fandom specific ones but overall I'm fine with anything. I tend to love heavy introspection, conflicted relationships and angst with an happy ending/bittersweet tone, but I'm really fine with anything. I also want to point out that you're free to combine my tags/prompts however you wish and that while I didn't bother to include "both hurt" for any of these ships, it's absolutely always allowed. As for dislikes: - any kind of dub con and on page rape unless otherwise specified. I can accept harassment and such, but not too graphic - AUs, especially fluffy modern AUs and supernatural ones (Canon divergence within the original universe is fine and encouraged) My only real exception is Romeo and Juliet where I do enjoy modern AUs as long as they still keep the violence/hate/gang war element of the play - sex described in any detail. I'm not bothered by it and I don't mind allusions, jokes or fade to black, but the scenes itself hold no interest for me - cheating (jealousy is fine and so is crushing on more than one person at once with all the guilt it entails, as long as it leads to poly, healthy or not, or stays a frustrated wish) - unrequited love that doesn't get resolved either by the two getting together or the pining person finding their true love - eating disorders or tbh even dwelling on appearance related insecurity is a no no

GOTHAM

I want to preface I'm a DC newbie, so I can't really appreciate crossovers or influence from other media and I wouldn't want futurefic, especially not involving BatCat, I just want to see them as kids For BatCat I would prefer something set between season 1 and the first few episodes of season 3, before they start their weird on/off relationship. The one exception would be the killing for the first time prompt, in relation to what Bruce does in the beginning of season 4, and that horrible plot line with Selina's mom since it's such an ansgt/hurt comfort goldmine . I think canon offers a lot of possibilities with them already, they do a lot of rescuing each other and I'd like anything that is cute and sweet. Something from their time living on the street together would be adorable too.

For Selina/Bridgit I would be happy with anything: a cute moment of them living on the streets as kids, Selina helping Bridgit to work through Dr Strange's conditioning, or something angstier while Bridgit still thinks she's a goddess and Selina her servant and Selina trying to show how much affection as she can while in that framework and things that blur the lines between comfort and act of service/worshipping like washing, taking of care of poor little Bridgit's burns etc.

For Oswald/Ed... Wow, there's so much potential. Any moment from their first meeting, a What If where Oswald regrets his deeds and decides to thaw Ed himself and then nurse him back to health, the two of them adopting Martin... Anything really, I haven't read much on these two

GAME OF THRONES

What I want with Yara/Dany is mostly something to give me joy after that godawful ending. So I would love something set post ending, with Dany being exiled/imprisoned, in a terrible mental state and only Yara who's still loyal/taking care of her. Though also Yara coming to terms with her last brother's death would be something wonderful

SIX OF CROWS

No particular ideas here. Any moment pre—book with them getting hurt in missions, Inej's first kill, the tattoo removal, or something like what happened in the prisoner cart, with Kaz having a serious breakdown and Inej being the only one to notice and try to comfort him, knowing most of her instinctive reactions would make everything worse because of his issues

INHERITANCE CYCLE

Murtagh and Nasuada are my childhood otp and I would honestly squeal to get anything at all about them would make me giggly. I like the idea of an AU where Murtagh is rescued early with baby Thorn in a tow before Galbatorix can completely break them with the torture, or something more emotional/psychological post saga, where they must help each other heal from their Shared Trauma and mental issues they both seem to have in the last few chapters. If and only IF you feel like it, this is the one fandom where I am ok with sexual abuse as a past event as I used to occasionally write Galbatorix as having had a relationship with Morzan in their former days and viewing Murtagh as a replacement in more than one sense.

ROMEO AND JULIET This is somewhat complex. First of all I want to say I made somewhat of a mistake in nominations phase by nominating some d ships as All media types while others nominated some as Shakespeare, but I'm absolutely ok with fic based on Shakespeare or any production of Presgurvic's musical. Exceptions are the 2010 revival and ensuing tour and Takarazuka productions. Also while I said I am okay with AUs here, I'd prefer they not be based on the 1996 movie in aesthetic/characterization, though the stakes/situation of the feud is a good example of what I imagine for modern au. Now going specifically about each of my prompts:

For the Romeo/Juliet ones I mostly want emotional hurt/comfort, either set during their wedding night or in a AU where they manage to leave together. It always bothered me that it's assumed they just went straight to fucking on their wedding night: I love the idea that they, well, somewhat fought over the Tybalt issue, snuggled, comforted each other for their losses and imminent separation and Romeo's obviously very traumatizing murder experience, maybe got to know each other a bit more and shared about their insecurities, their clearly a lot to unpack family baggage... There's lot of potential here. I am very attached to the play, so I do like to believe in them being soulmates/true love rather than a random fling, silly as that is, so I'd like the tone of the whole thing to be according, and I am pretty attached to the canon ages too (almost 14 as per canon for Juliet and please not too much older Romeo) so ofc the no sexual stuff beyond the vaguest throwaway mention rule holds especially true here.

Regarding the Montague boys anything tied to the pretty self explanatory prompts is perfectly fine, either set in the present or as a cute childhood flashback. I would definitely appreciate some kind of AU where they all live but are badly hurt or mentally scarred in the course of the events Now, for the various combinations of Benvolio/Mercutio/Tybalt... again, plenty of self explanatory tags. I think these three characters and which tags would best fit which of them are very dependent on personal headcanons and I don't want to limit that at all, especially for individual relationships as opposed to the ot3. I'm definitely very interested in exploring the dynamics of their love triangle and possible polyamory and the obvious hurtful effects it has, (I generally see Mercutio as the center with Benvolio and Tybalt somewhat disliking each other at the beginning, though that can absolutely change, later! ) jealousy, feeling of inferiority by each of the boys, guilt, abandonment issues, the like. My first instinct is to imagine Bencutio as together and Tycutio as bitter exes who may or may not go for another round at any moment, but the reverse or any other combination of Drama is fine too. I also love scenarios, for either individual ships or ot3, that explore the effect of the feud on their lives: someone having to be nursed back to health after a duel gone too far, someone being traumatized by their first serious act of violence, the unrealistic expectations/responsibility/toxic masculinity Tybalt and Benvolio are loaded by their families and so on. An AU where Mercutio survives the duel but is very badly hurt and Tybalt is guilt stricken by his own deed and starts to realize his feelings for him as he helps take care of him would be lovely.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTORS

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold by three separate types of people. Tcl is the scripting language of Unix, and so its size is proportionate to its complexity, and a funnel for peers. By this point everyone knows you should release fast and iterate. Programming languages are for. They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. But I think there's more going on than this. If you run out of money, you could say either was the cause. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time writing code and have someone else handle the messy business of extracting money from it. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.1 Every designer's ears perk up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one?

I decided to ask the founders of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, will destroy you if you choose them. It's due to the shape of the problem here is social. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of customer acquisition. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this startup seems the most successful companies. A good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. The second way to compete with focus is to see what you're making.

But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that source code will look unthreatening. In DC the message seems to be the new way of delivering applications. White. I'm going to risk making one. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that from the rush of work that's always involved in releasing anything, no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more you stay pointed in the same business. PR coup was a two-part one. It's conversational resourcefulness. We're more confident. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world.2 Treating indentation as significant would eliminate this common source of bugs as well as making programs shorter. Once you take several million dollars of my money, the investors get a great deal of control.

The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. It works.3 It could mean an operating system, or a framework built on top of a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was the scripting language of a popular system.4 Blogger got down to one person, and they have a board majority, they're literally your bosses.5 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to fix upon a specific number.6 But as long as you seem to be advancing rapidly, most investors will leave you alone.7 What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for others even to hear about it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.8 If it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time, but didn't.9

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it was: I think the main reason we take the trouble to develop high-level languages is to get leverage, so that we can say and more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of declarations. Trying to make masterpieces in this medium must have seemed to Durer's contemporaries that way that, say, making masterpieces in comics might seem to the average person today. I kept searching for the Cambridge of New York, I was very excited at first. Which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late 1950s. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem with Lisp, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some of the least excited about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be prepared to see the better idea when it arrives. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. The Detroit News.10

Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day job, is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who do make it. But the clearest message is that you should be smarter. But hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly.11 You won't get to, unless you fail. Running a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, and a funnel for peers. It's since grown to around 22,000.12 You may save him from referring to variables in another package, but you need time to get any message through to people that it didn't have to be more readable than a line of Lisp. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it. I'm just stupid, or have worked on some limited subset of applications. This is supposed to be a lot simpler. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand.13

With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big factor in deals. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common problem: choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of unloading them before they tank. A programming language does need a good implementation, of course. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life. With a startup, I had bought the hype of the startup world, startup founders get no respect. A real hacker's language will always have a slightly raffish character.14 The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. But there is a trick you could use the two ideas interchangeably. Their reporters do go out and get users, though. A throwaway program is brevity. I do that the main purpose of a language is readability, not succinctness.15 You can't build things users like without understanding them.

At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own and b something that can be considered a complete application and ship it. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something; by then, whoever's asking him may be fairly annoyed, but at the same time the veteran's skepticism. There are several local maxima.16 Defense contractors? When, if ever, is a watered-down Lisp with infix syntax and no macros. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

Notes

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of a long time in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. Even Samuel Johnson seems to be a good idea to make money.

A related problem that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your own mind. That should probably question anything you believed as a cause as it might take an angel investment from a company's culture.

If you don't think they'll be able to formalize a small company that could be made. There was no more unlikely than it was putting local grocery stores out of business you should be.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a time machine, how can anything regressive be good employees either.

If big companies to acquire the startups, the light bulb, the initial investors' point of a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, but I think what they campaign for. When governments decide how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if we think your idea is that parties shouldn't be that the Internet was as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have this second self keep a journal. While the audience already has to be more at home at the start, e.

Some will say that it also worked for spam. The closest we got to the Internet worm of its identity. Icio.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that a startup in the US, it would do it is genuine. Com in order to attract workers.

But the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, except in the back of your last round of funding rounds are at some of these limits could be ignored. Comments at the mafia end of the latter without also slowing the former, and also really good at generating your own time in the computer world, write a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the attempt to discover the most promising opportunities, it is very vulnerable to gaming, because there's no center to walk to.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the first year or two make the kind that has become part of a large chunk of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in one where life was tougher, the television, the more subtle ways in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. For these companies unless your last funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

Mozilla is open-source browser. They may not be led by a big factor in high school kids arrive at college with a truly feudal economy, at least should make what they claim was the recipe: someone guessed that there are before the name implies, you don't, but that we didn't do. They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but they hate hypertension. Living on instant ramen, which are a hundred years ago.

I don't think you should probably question anything you believed as a rule, if you're measuring usage you need, you don't have one. Don't be fooled. So managers are constrained too; instead of admitting frankly that it's a seller's market. This is one subtle danger you have a group of people who are both genuinely formidable, and would probably also encourage companies to say how justified this worry is.

One of the biggest winners, which is where product companies go to grad school, because you can work out. It's conceivable that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

So where do we draw the line?

In 1995, but he got there by another path. If you treat your classes as a company if the potential magnitude of the 2003 season was 2. An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Confucius claimed proudly that he had more fun in this essay, I can imagine what it would have started there.

I'm satisfied if I could pick them, and they succeeded. Consulting is where your existing investors help you even working on Viaweb. If they were taken back in July 1997 was 1. But the change is a scarce resource.

[clonerightsagenda]

Here are my collected thoughts, so far, about the ASOUE television series as a whole. I'll preface this by saying that I really enjoyed it and it was one of the best book to screen adaptations I've seen. It was fun, visually appealing, pretty darn faithful to the original material, full of Easter eggs for fans, and skillful at adopting supplemental material to flesh out the story. Some more organized thoughts below:

Unreality

Every time I started a new season of the show, I had to get re-accustomed to the rapid fire, almost stilted way the characters deliver their lines. However, I think that's intentional, along with the way that the outfits look more like costumes and the settings look more like sets than the real world. It gives the whole show the feel of a historical reenactment on TV, like we're watching a simulation of what Lemony could uncover with his research. Once I got used to it, I liked it, along with the overall surreal atmosphere.

Olaf

At first I found it odd that both the movie and TV series make Olaf far more of a humorous character than he is in the books, but book!Olaf is legitimately scary. Watching a sinister grown man terrorize three children for 25 episodes might become too distressing to function well as entertainment. Allowing us to laugh at him occasionally breaks the tension, even if it does fundamentally change his characterization.

The desperate for approval angle in the third season was also new (as far as I can remember, I haven't read the books for a year or so) but I can see where you could extrapolate it from his general theatrical behavior. As I mentioned in my commentary about previous seasons, the TV show is more of an ensemble cast rather than focusing solely on the Bauedelaires' story, so it makes sense to give Olaf some sort of arc as well if we're going to keep cutting back to him. It further undercuts his menace, but they'd already done that. It allows the show to push harder on the parallel between him and the Baudelaires as he complains that every parental figure in his life died or let him down. We may or may not pity him, but we can begin to understand and respect the children even more for not turning out like him. That also helps set up the strange, unfamiliar situation where all his confidence and power is stripped away in The End, since the tv version slimmed that down.

VFD

This is probably the change I found most frustrating, but to be fair, it wasn't a change at all from the books. ASOUE!Lemony is pretty nostalgic about VFD. Most of the more straightforward clues that neither the firefighters or firelighters were really great are present in the unauthorized autobiography. It might have been tricky to work the whole 'We stole children and brainwashed them into donating their fortunes to finance our organization for years until half of us decided burning down their houses and stealing the money right then was way more satisfying' without distracting from the Baudelaires' story. I get that. I'm not entirely sure how I would've done it. (I will probably let you know once I think of an idea.) Anyway, we still get the chef's salad speech and hints about moral grayness (the fire fighters created the mycelium, Olaf's accusations, grooming children to be secret agents and dragging kids into dangerous missions with no preparation, etc.) but framing the opera incident as an accident stole the series' best example that allegedly noble people can do wicked things just as wicked people can do noble things. It dropped a lot of the inner conflict from the last book as the children tried to grapple with their parents’ legacy. Their parents’ past research ends up saving their lives, but their past actions were part of what triggered this long series of unfortunate events. That ends up robbing the series of a lot of its complexity, especially since it spins the schism as a much simpler issue.

The Ending

I wasn't sure how they would pull off giving the show a more uplifting ending after having the narrator announce multiple times that it was going to be unhappy, but honestly I think having Lemony not know how things turned out past TPP until the last minute was a brilliant way to handle that. It gave us some much needed closure not only for the Baudelaires (we don't know much, but we know they're alright) but for minor characters (ymmv but I enjoyed the more sympathetic henchpeople and am glad they're ok) and for our long-suffering narrator himself. I loved the meta gag of seeing Lemony writing the first book and then quoting it with Beatrice; I'm always a sucker for that kind of thing.  As a kid, it was valuable for me to read a series that suggested adults aren't always right, things aren't always simple, and happy endings don't always happen, but right now, I want to think that they can. (Plus, some stuff in the Beatrice Letters and a few throwaway lines in ASOUE imply the Baudealaires survived anyway, so it's not a total divergence from canon.)

The Randomness and Unfairness of the World

Snicket warns readers the ending will not be happy or satisfying, and the books certainly fulfill that promise. You don't really know what happens, and there's a possibility some of the main characters drown or were eaten by a sea monster. The show obviously does not do this. I already mentioned that I preferred this based on our rather distressing modern times, which could also be described as an incomplete history of injustice, but what about theme? A big theme in the books is uncertainty and randomness. The Baudelaires are dropped in the middle of something they don't understand and are shunted from place to place, victims of adults' complicated machinations or genuine incompetence. There's a lot they don't know and will never find out, and the reader is left in their shoes - stuck only knowing what the children learned or Lemony was able to uncover. We're shown over and over again that the world is not fair. It does not always makes sense. It is not interested in tying up loose ends for you. I think that's a valuable message for kids to see, dark as it is. It's realistic, and we're supposed to share the Baudelaires' distress and confusion.

The show does not stick with this theme. Consistently, it reveals things that were only hinted at in the books. Viewers get to stay a step ahead of the Baudelaires. As I mentioned in commentary on previous seasons, I think that ends up working because the TV show spends a lot of time expanding the universe, although it does rob the impact of scenes like the children realizing the underground passage from 667 Dark Avenue goes to their house. We're no longer as lost in the world as they are.

I think both have their place, honestly. The books allow us to relate very closely to the protagonists, while the show creates a more satisfying holistic experience. Since many of the viewers have read the books, it's almost like we're gifted with the benefit of hindsight.

Does giving us answers ruin the theme of the book entirely? YMMV, I think. It does mean we lose something, I think. However, Handler didn't leave all the gaps in his narrative to torture us. He doesn't hand us the answers, but he provides plenty of clues in the series and its supplementary material. By piecing together that apocrypha, you may not be able to answer every question, but you can take a good stab at it. So I don't think Handler wants you to be a frustrated reader as much as a critical and active one. That's hard to do in a television show, so they had to lay more out there. They're different: different formats, different themes, different reader/viewer experiences. Imo, both are effective at what they try to do.

[script-a-world]

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Worldbuilding Discussion

Just in time for Christmas, mods Miri and Werew have written up some thoughts about the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas and the worldbuilding within. We hope you enjoy!

The world in Nightmare Before Christmas is an interesting one from  a world building perspective. (And one that goes along with several questions we’ve received over the last year.) Here you have a world, the human world, and you also have these separate, town sized holiday worlds. Each of these holiday worlds is completely different. Different climates, vegetation, animals, people. Each world is accommodating to the populace that lives within it. 

Halloween Town is just what its residents need. There is an appropriate level of darkness, pools are the right toxic contents that they aren’t toxic to the locals. Ceilings are high enough to pass beneath. An outsider in Halloween Town is going to have trouble finding the things they need to survive. When Jack falls into Christmas Town, he reacts with amazement at how different everything is. He wonders at why things are what they are. He searches for monsters under the bed and is surprised to find none. He makes a lot of comparisons to how things are different. That is often how we relate to new things. When Jack tries to explain Christmas Town to the people of Halloween Town, they have trouble imagining anything but what they know. They try to rationalize the objects with what they would expect. A box they understand. The look of it is unfamiliar, but surely what is inside is what they would expect to find in a box. Jack decides to approach Christmas from scientific means, taking it apart to try to reconcile it with what he knows of the world. He learns as much as he can but still can’t understand the meaning of it all. Eventually he decides that he doesn’t have to understand it to believe in it. He takes what he has learned and tries to apply it in his terms. The results are not recognized or welcomed by the residents of the human world on Christmas Eve. It is. It what they have been cultured to expect and they react with both fear and violence. In the end Jack realizes that Christmas is not where he naturally belongs, and really, it isn’t where he wants to be. He’s had his look at the other side and chosen his path.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a yearly staple in my household, both for the movie itself and the incredible stop motion work. Not to mention the sing along aspect of it. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, and worth another if you already have.

Happy holidays, and may one of your gifts in the coming year be the answer to all your world building dilemmas.

Mod Miri

Let me start out by saying that I LOVE this movie. It was a staple of my childhood, and it’s an all-around awesome movie. Honestly, even when looking with an intentionally critical eye, I didn’t see much that I thought should be improved. I hope you enjoy this analysis!

The Nightmare Before Christmas is set in a very fantastical world, and one that isn’t really like anything else in mainstream media. This originality is great, but with unique worlds there comes the problem of trying to convey the basics to the audience without getting in the way of the story. Because TNBC is a musical, it allows for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and a certain amount of exposition by song. It uses the opening number in a particularly effective and believable way to introduce the world, by starting off on halloween and showing us the celebration that the residents put on; this introduces all of the characters (at least to our sight), explains the basic premise of the world, and shows off a lot of the settings and themes.

The introduction of the world by the first song allows the story to get right underway immediately afterwards, with the audience happily on board. Because the setting is introduced so quickly, the movie doesn’t have to waste dialogue time explaining the world, and this allows Jack’s motivations to be introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. This isn’t really worldbuilding, but I think it’s related and I also think that it’s a great and effective way to get the audience hooked right away. Wow, this world is so cool! What, the ruler of it is unhappy with his unchanging life? It’s an immediate, relatable look into his character and drives the rest of the story.

One thing that really sells Halloween Town as being very different from the real world is the culture. This is shown in small, subtle things, especially the idioms and phrases that the people use in ordinary conversation. A few examples that I enjoy:

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know!” -said in a delighted tone rather than a reproachful one.

“Like a vulture in the sky”

“This fog's as thick as, as... Jelly brains!”

There is also an obvious, recurring cultural tendency to see a lot of somewhat negative things associated with Halloween--death, fright, dark themes, and even violence--as positive. This makes it obvious that the world is very different and that the scary themes of Halloween are commonplace and positive to them. It’s a little bit tricky to pull this off in normal conversation without making the audience feel like you’re beating them over the head with it. It’s also tricky to make sure that no idiomatic or cultural phrases that don’t apply end up in your world! Sometimes the things that we think and say are so ingrained that we don’t even register that they might not make sense in a different context.

There are only a few things that I found to be critical of. Most of them aren’t very plot-relevant, and are honestly unimportant to the story. Still, there are a good handful of odd, unexplained things that don’t make logical sense.

The population of Halloween Town doesn’t seem to be very large, yet they have two rulers--Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King (also referred to as the King of Halloween) and the Mayor. These two do not seem to conflict, and the Mayor definitely defers to Jack. In such a small community, it doesn’t really make sense to have two different ruling parties, one elected and one not.

For that matter, the Mayor IS an elected official--or at least he says he is. Yet not once, even as a throwaway line, is anything about an election or voting mentioned. His character is presented as being The Mayor, as though that is the majority of his identity. He��s not just a random citizen who happens to have been elected; he Is The Mayor. That’s his entire being.

Halloween Town seems to be in some kind of limbo as far as its relation to other worlds goes. They seem to be at least aware of the real world, but don’t appear to interact with it; their Halloween celebration takes place in their town and they never talk about traveling outside of it until Jack does. They also clearly have never heard of or seen the other holiday worlds, which Jack stumbles upon completely by accident. Yet, when he sets off to do his own version of Christmas, he doesn’t seem to have any question in his mind about how to get to the real world, or how to get back. While this isn’t really that important, I kind of wish it had been explained.

One last thing that struck me as a little odd is how different Sally is culturally, as compared to the others. She seems to be more aware of the world as an outsider might see it, and she doesn’t use as many Halloween-ish phrases. Her sense of beauty is unique in her world, yet there is no indication that she has ever been outside of it.

Though I discuss these things as problems, I honestly do not think that it’s a bad thing that they went unexplained. The movie’s runtime is fairly short, and the pacing is excellent. Sometimes the world and the explanation of it needs to fall by the wayside in order to tell the story in the best way possible, and that’s fine. The only time when world problems bother me is when they are inconsistent AND directly influence plot events, but all of the idiosyncrasies I noticed in this movie were in the background.

All in all, I think that The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastic example of a unique, fantasy world that is presented in a fun and effective way.

Thanks for reading!

Mod Werew

[elizabethrobertajones]

“The Most Meta Finale”  Or, on trying to disown old canon since season 11.

To be honest, I was going to spend today re-watching some season 6 episodes to see if I could come up with a much more modest plausible theory about the reason there was so much AU and time travel nonsense especially in the latter half of the season, was because of a theme of shattering canon, quite deliberately. In a way of staking a claim but also washing hands of messing up the stuff that came before. And instead I ended up giving myself a migraine seeing canon since season 5 as something that's been repeatedly disowned and carefully distanced from over and over.

In 5x22 Chuck ends the story with his definitive THE END on the whole mess. Of course it's a bit ridiculous because season 6 was already long foretold and the story was going to have to continue. But Chuck sits there representing the author, in a very unsubtle way, with his finished drink, finished manuscript, and all cleaned up, washing his hands of the Chuck the Prophet persona and going on to chill out and enjoy the ~finished story~

6x15, though, represents in the most meta ridiculous ways the trouble the show felt, or lampooned itself being stuck with, having to continue on into season 6, with the theme in 6x15 and then seriously in 6x20, being what to do when the original story was over, and how to continue on. In The French Mistake "Bob Singer" dismisses the entire idea of season 6 out loud, rolling his eyes at the fact they're continuing to make the story. At the end of the episode he is killed off, and "Kripke" is taken out with much dramatic fanfare (and the same music as 6x18's cowboy confrontation, which amuses me no end and is another weird link between the episodes about travels in time and space, testing the bounds of the universe they're written in, and breaking them.) Of course killing "Kripke" off is the very unsubtle message about the death of the author, a metatextual image that goes with God leaving the story and sending it off into the wild. Kripke (the real one) wrote 6x22 as his final episode, before leaving it all in others' hands since then. On pretty much every level of the story it's handed off to writer after writer.

I think it's interesting that the "original story" is captured within the show as the Winchester Gospels (and my tag for that has plenty of amusing exploration of the ways this makes canon fascinatingly more complex) - but also that it makes SUCH a clear divide between the Original Story aka the subject of the Gospels, and what comes after. Charlie giggles in delight at discovering that the seemingly random hunters she meets later in their story have been the subject of the books and have such a meta backstory, and in 8x20 their lives are turned into a low key conflict between the real and the novelised in the way Charlie interacts with them. 

In 10x05 they see their lives from the outside, Marie's canon which echoes their lives up to the point the Original Story ends, and we get another line which is one of my favourites in that episode, dismissing everything that comes after 5x22 as terrible fan fiction. Not that Calliope thinks she did much better...

I've written somewhere else about the meta episodes or characters such as Metatron showing the writers' anxiety about taking on the story, and it often comes with this deep horror of the weight on them to continue the story, the meta story within the story also making this shove on them that shackles them to this narrative of the Original Story. I also should have really included Metatron being waved off into the Empty or wherever in between Chuck's disappearances but I ran out of gif space up there... 

Rewatching 11x20 recently I was deeply struck by how alike Metatron and Chuck are even down to their little curly haired vessels, though of course with wonderfully acted different bearings to make their personalities and place in the story clear. 

Metatron has his own huge part to play in representing the story and the deep, deep anxiety they had about following on from it. In 9x18 Metatron burns a copy of Tall Tales while trying to stand above the old canon, and Chuck takes him to task for it in 11x20, and Metatron folds and admits he's a terrible copy-cat writer, the anxieties you can see all over his appearances in Carver era while trying to wrangle the story in his favour. And in the end Chuck leaves his desk with a manuscript on it again just like in 5x22, though this time going to what he thinks may be his end:

These moments of trying to end or box off old canon with Death of the Author moments are incredibly numerous. We have Chuck leaving in 5x22, "Kripke" dying in 6x15, the entire plot of 10x05 being about Calliope coming to consume the author, and the meta nonsense there, and then Metatron's death, Chuck slated to die but saved by network panic about what you can and can't show on screen... 

This shot of Chuck was a zoom out in comparison to the zoom in on dead "Kripke", but feels very similar, especially with Amara having raged at him about the story, after in 11x20 Chuck refused to allow it to be her story. Of course the resolution allows the suppressed, forgotten, fridged feminine side of the story to be released, and Mary is brought back. And after Chuck and Amara - now joint authors of the story with her action to bring Mary back creating the narrative of season 12 and flipping the influence from the douchey male creator to the women whose stories were never told, we've had ANOTHER absconding of the authors of the story, once again leaving the story in a sort of 5x death of the author situation, and once again like season 6, which season 12 mirrored in many ways, scrambling to understand their ends of the story.

I think the destruction of old canon seems almost like a necessary sort of household chore on the story - a chance to try and reclaim it, to put it into the hands of new author figures within the story, and an attempt for those left behind after showrunners and enormous creative influences like Edlund (who set Metatron up to go, threw him at the story, and left) or Robbie (who set Chuck up, threw him at the story, and left) have gone. Once Carver left somewhere before the end of season 11, we entered the rather strange world of the first time since season 2 not having part of the "Carver Edlund" duo the show's own God was named after on the writing team, and Dabb, who had been with the show almost as long as Carver and written more episodes than any other writer by like, the end of season 10, so will probably hold that title forever now, was left to remove the characters related to all this from the show, to start fresh.

And it seemed like everyone was having a stab at telling the story - the BMoL in particular twice referenced 9x18 and Metatron in a bid to wrangle control of the story with face on talking to the camera asking for stories or typing them - although lampshaded that the story really wasn’t going their way.

I find it really fascinating then to look back to season 6 and these other examples of trying to disown and distance the story from the old canon, to try and strike out and say the story now belongs to someone else, that these old parts of it are no longer our parts of it, though they influence us and we draw from them. If season 6 was using these AUs and time travel stories (The French Mistake, My Heart Will Go On and Frontierland) to explore the shattering of the world (before 6x21 and 6x21 explored smashing open Purgatory and bringing in new monsters and new plotlines to change the game for season 7), then season 12 referencing the most meta of all these examples when bringing in its own AU seems to me to be very deeply relevant.

The premise of the AU is one that in a way wipes the slate clean - removing the Winchesters, their entire influence, trashing every single word in those gospels, so the story can never happen that way, in a way is the freshest start so far. If season 13 focuses on characters like Michael or Bobby's experience of this AU and give us another history, an explanation of where it all went different, which all seems fairly likely at this point that we should learn more and understand the motivations and lives lead in the Winchesters' absence, then I think this really will live up to the threat that this was the most meta finale yet. A throwaway reference to the French Mistake doesn't SEEM to make it all that meta on the surface. But in the immediate context of the episode, the AU's description, of being turned on Mary's deal not being made, was used to absolve her and lift up Sam and Dean in the context of their own world - that they'd made the right choices, that they had authored their own world far better than it would have been without them.

I am very curious to see what Dabb does with his clean slate, after he used season 12 to try and tie up as many loose ends as humanly possible, and churn up references to almost every part of old canon into the story to give it another hearing, another perspective, another chance to be told. I think season 12 was very much the tidying away season and an AU with potentially completely different rules, and definitely an entirely other history and sets of characters, is an interesting way to re-make the show in... something's image. I suppose these thoughts are for revisiting in the aftermath of the end of the season and whatever that ends up bringing...