#and in the remaining one the narrative toys with the idea that a girl might want to murder her just born brother

[thatscarletflycatcher]

I will bore you all writing about Doctor Finlay, but bear with me.

One of the most unrealistic aspects of the Doctor Finlay-Nurse Meitland mess is the idea that they got engaged right before or as the war begun, and then for some reason had not seen each other ever since. Brenda has never left Tannachbrae during that time; which would have been an easier fix, had she joined up as an army nurse herself and been sent to units far from John's. I guess it couldn't be because the maximum drama of her new American fiancé living in town couldn't possibly be cut off. The western front didn't reopen till 44'.

The only possible mitigation, then, would be for Finlay to have been on the desert front, and lo and behold, upon rewatching 1x02, he tells a kid he was in the desert, then Sicily, then Italy, and finally Germany. But even on this generous scenario of the writers it doesn't make sense. If Finlay had had 6 years of ininterrupted service without leave home, chances are he'd have priority to have leave home as soon as the war ended, specially because I don't think personnel was being roaded or flown directly from Italy to Germany for obvious reasons of logistic convenience. So he would have been home on leave after may 45, and so the plot as presented is absurd.

But then it is all doubly absurd because the most reasonable and likely course of action would be for him to hear about it through letters. A dear John letter, or even someone from town condoling with him by assuming that the public status of Brenda's new engagement meant that Finlay had been informed too. What is the audience supposed to assume about their correspondence? Was he writing her tender, loving letters and receiving no response? Was he receiving tepid, general letters from her and being unconsciously or deliberately dense?

It makes no sense. Compels me though.

[acequinz]

The reason both Buffa and Tycoon fail with their ideology

With Buffa, let's accept the narrative and see it like he wants there to be no more victims of the DGP so he wants to get rid of the Kamen Riders.

But instead of this making him attack the the DGP, he attacks the players. When they are not the core problem, results of the issue which is a game that puts people against each other to even death just to get a shiny prize.

It's not until much later, that he finds the correct route to take the shit down and by then he has already gotten his hands way too dirty with the bad things he did.

Was it his drive that made him so drastic? And resolve or desperation or whatever you wanna call it. He spends the majority of the show going after innocent people and hurting people who had nothing to do with Tohru's death.

And then Beroba enters the picture, who only urges him to go further and now he's definitely the major part of exactly what he wanted to end.

In the end we are left with what do you even want? What are you even trying to do? Save people? By killing them in the game? Because he did that, no you can't excuse it just because they brought back to life.

If we follow that, then him bringing Tohru back should have been resolution enough. Both Keiwa and Ace were still killed and it was to get Buffa's ideal world which wasn't it at all. And only made him more miserable. So despite all of that it was a failure.

And go make matters worse, he is the one who lands the killing blow on Sara(it was a mistake I know! But he won't treat it like that, the barely hanging by the thread Keiwa won't treat it like that either) and this is the final hit that grinds in the responsibility for his actions, he has irreversible blood on his hands and could he have failed harder?

Now we get to Tycoon

It's a classic corruption story for Tycoon. We start off with a guy who had a vague idea of wanting to do good. And it is vague as fuck!!!!! He just wants there to be world peace and wants to save people.

He while idealistic needs to get a reality check and this could have gone two ways-

Either he learns the right way or his ideals are broken and boxed to the other side of the world.

They went with later, which could also be done very well. We see him scramble to hold onto the ideal to still hold onto the thought of saving people until he's forced to face the realistic terror that- someone you save might be the reason of anothers death, when the girl he had just saved pushes someone else to their death to survive.

And then he too is killed.

When he does get revived, he is hesitant about joining back in but does so to save his sister.

But the biggest problem between this is that he still lacks the path to the ideals of dreams, whatever you want to call it.

And when you lack the conviction? You are that easy to manipulate and toy with, which Keiwa becomes a victim to.

He had 4 sources of information - Niram(he eavesdropped), Daichi( he pushed the information out and had a laugh about it), Kekera( the one who has been the nicest and kindest to him and promised to always support him! The filthy liar) and Ace (the one who fought alongside him and supported him through the starting few rounds of DGP but definitely lied and tricked Keiwa when he needed the benefit).

3 of them give him broken and half information tainted with malice and he falls for it, hook line and sinker.

Niram being the hook, daichi being the line and Kekera the sinker.

His lack of path from the start and half information along with the emotional turmoil end up being his breaking point which makes him lash out at anyone who isn't on his side. And with the final death of Sara, his last family member, i doubt the ideals will remain.

If the ideals shatter with this? Tycoon has also lost.

[ayylmaoasdfghjkl012023]

bro i wanna draw the most unhinged aether proto-protagonist possible. give that boy a grin. no light in his eyes. bro is constantly thinking the wrong way but doing the right things to advance the storyline, bro is self aware, bro does not care.

I know canonically he's like the warmer guy but damn just because a character's nice doesn't mean they can't be mean as hell. Wanna push that up to 10. Only things Aether really needs is getting clues to his sister and finding out how tf to get outta this stupid realm that sealed his shit off and wasting his time. Bro don't wanna bother with the narrative and masks up with smiles when necessary for money, information, and ease of way.

Would probably get a spark in his eye from watching the faceless hordes he's helped explode into fire and heavenly judgement then go and raze over the ruins again not because he's buddy buddy with the system administrators but because he knows he's playing easy mode in a game where he's been playing outside the screen. Just a schadenfreude thing after the sunken cost fallacy of seeing the world he's obligated to save be a real piece of shit.

but then also like lumine as like that kinda gap moe sorta protag that's come in the trails of her brother and is figuring out stuff on the second run of the simulation. She'd definitely give mercy reluctantly. Loves the feeling of getting over gods. Cold but actually the better of the two both combat-wise and personality-wise, but that doesn't make her that kinda naive kinda main character that just does whatever for whatever whoever says what. Energy saver.

Still like her brother would forget every face that came her way except for the useful ones, and try to get to know them to tell a good story once that's all they have left of their time travelling around. Girl exploring the ruins of past civilizations and thinking about the taste of her own dissolved home in the back of her throat, the riveting revulsion of total freedom as the last light in a sea of candles. The power that remains, sealed away by tyrants that can only smile when they meet the end of her blade.

Double agent Lumine going over voluntarily to the Abyss and allying with them from convenience, manipulating the logic of the world to her benefit. Tired but kind to non-human creatures that might make her run around for years to fix things others have broke but have the best foes to fight, because only with the things like Aranara and Melusines can she show her true self as that otherworldly alien no human can understand, not even the Vision wielders to a certain sense. Wanders the deep lore areas of the continent to absorb more about the conflicting logic of the world, the idea of samsaras something that she wants to toy with.

dawg I would draw the fuck outta that if I got good bro it would be so crazy trust trust trusstttttt now just gotta wait for the game plot to actually finish so I can like see how it actually is lmao

[forestlingincorporated]

I wanna talk about Janet Drake

I’m not against exaggeratedly evil versions of Tim’s parents, tbh. It’s fanfiction, if we can depict an Exaggeratedly Good version of Bruce (which we can, and I do, and I love) then we can depict the Drakes as Exaggeratedly Bad. As someone who personally identifies with Tim, and his brand of complicated parental abuse in particular, I find it cathartic to uncomplicate that abuse and rescue him from the Obviously Evil Bad People. 

That said, since much of comics lore is passed down word of mouth, the oral tradition surrounding Tim has developed this idea of Janet as The Worse Parent between her and Jack that was never really present in the comics. We see much LESS of Janet, and we have 20 years worth of comics depicting Jack as a neglectful hotheaded idiot who ultimate does love his son. More importantly, Jack isn’t very much LIKE Tim, so there is a habit to attribute Tim’s traits to his mother... and, as someone who really really identifies with Tim, Tim has... some negative traits. Tim can be a bitch sometimes. He’s fiercely intelligent and sweet and kind, with a strong sense of justice, but he can be cold and judgmental and unthinking - he fights those traits, but he does have them. 

And it is perfectly fine to depict Janet that way. I’ve enjoyed depictions of Cold Calculating Janet Drake, but it’s not the ONLY option, and I want to challenge fans to consider different avenues. Tim could pick up these traits from anywhere: a nanny, Mrs. Mc Ilvaine (”Mrs. Mac”), a teacher, tv, Sherlock Holmes novels, Bruce Wayne himself. Tim is capable of not being like EITHER parent. 

So, what do we KNOW about Janet? (I’ll also touch on Jack, but only in scenes he appears with Janet.) 

When Janet was first introduced she was depicted as a gentle but “modern” woman. This was written in 1989, told by a 13 year old Tim, so this theoretically was meant to take place in 1979. I’m not here to give a lecture on the history of sex discrimination in the united states, but much of the legislation protecting women in the workforce or surrounding women’s bodily autonomy would have been very very new in this initial depiction. 

Here, Janet is shown to be encouraging, emotional, maternal, and projects her own feelings onto Tim. Jack is shown to be slightly sexist, possibly discouraging, but not overbearing. And the artist is shown not to know how to draw children. 

To insert some speculation, I think it’s important to note all the Drakes witnessed a terrible murder/accident that day. I point this out, because this is the last time Jack and Janet are depicted this way. It’s possible they changed as a result of this event specifically. 

However, this is also a story being told by Tim. It’s also possible these events aren’t really “real” at all, and Tim is misremembering what his parents were like as a three-year-old, possibly projecting a more palatable version of his parents into the narrative. This is entirely up to personal interpretation. 

In fact, the Drakes are shown in Legend of the Dark Knight attending Haly’s Circus, and the artist knows what a toddler looks like and they’re depicted as already having a slightly strained relationship. Jack is clearly on the defensive, and Janet seems to be passive-aggressive, though she could just be attempting to explain the situation to her toddler honestly. The intended tone isn’t especially clear. 

I do want to point out, in this depiction, Tim isn’t being carried like he was in the previous one. He’s walking ahead of his parents, which isn’t a terrible horrible crime, but could be dangerous in a crowded place like the circus. Might be a subtle hint to his parents overall neglect. 

Back to A Lonely Place of Dying, in Tim’s memories of the night he discovered Robin and Dick Grayson were the same person at nine-years-old, his parents are home, and watching TV together while Tim played... trucks, idk, in the living room with them. (This is semi-interesting, because you could say “oh, Tim liked vehicle toys as a kid” or you could extrapolate that this is another subtle indication of Jack’s sexism, providing Tim with appropriately “boy toys.” Either interpretation is valid. If Tim was assigned female at birth, would they have been given “girl toys,” or allowed to play with whatever they wanted?) 

This is, to my knowledge, the only panel of the Drakes when Tim is between ages 3 and 13. They’re all together, which might indicate that the Drakes were home more often when Tim was 9, only later going on business trips when Tim was “old enough” but... 

This is Tim’s boarding school when he’s 13. While most boarding schools in the US are for grades 9-12, Tim is clearly not a freshman at age 13; look how much younger the other kids in this panel are. In the US, the youngest you can attend most boarding schools is 7. 

That means Tim could have begun going to boarding school anytime between 7 and 13. He most likely spent all of middle school in boarding school, at least. There are an almost infinite number of possible ways the Drakes handled having a business that required lots of international travel, an archeology hobby, AND a very young child. Janet staying home until Tim was 7, 11, 13, is equally possible as the Drakes having a nanny until 7, 11, 13. Tim just doesn’t talk about that period of his life very much.

(”What about Mrs. Mac?” - it is unclear when Mrs. Mac begins working for the Drakes. We only see her when Jack comes out of his coma. She could either be a long standing staff member, or a recent hire.) 

Note: I’ve seen it said that it’s canon that “According to Tim, when his parents were home, they made a point to try and include him in their activities, bringing him along to events that were normally adults only.” I have never seen this panel, or I don’t remember it, so I cannot confirm, but I also cannot debunk this because... comics. 

By the time Tim is 13, Jack and Janet are away on business trips a lot, with limited communication, and no firm return date. If I’m feeling generous, I’d say it was harder to communicate internationally in 1990 than it is today. If I’m not feeling generous, I’d say the Drakes are extremely wealthy, and international communication was easier than ever before in the 80s and 90s. They’re not even going home to see Tim in a week or two, they’re going home and calling Tim at boarding school in a week or two. 

Even Bruce thinks its weird, though he doesn’t say so to Tim’s face. It’s written almost as if Tim’s parents’ neglect was meant to be a plot point that just got forgotten about. 

Tim’s parents are fighting at this point (their poor assistant), but Janet still goes with Jack on these business trips. And she’s clearly involved in the business, somehow, but the comics never SAY what Janet’s JOB is. We’re told Jack is the exec, but Janet is ONLY ever referred to as Jack’s wife, though they’re later described as the “heads” of the company, plural. 

Just to be clear, this is Jack’s business. There’s a perception that Jack is a bad business man because he and Janet fight over company decisions, and Jack looses the business after Janet dies, but Jack looses the company YEARS after Janet dies, and maintains it for about a year after No Man’s Land at that. We’re not told how Jack looses the business, but he’s got to be doing something right. Janet isn’t necessarily the “real brains” of Drake Industries. 

And I’m not... gonna... touch the... exploitation and racism because... I’m not qualified to do that. But, here’s the panel. The Drakes sure seem exploitative and racist in their business decisions. Someone else can... analyze that with more nuance. 

Regardless how how long they’ve been fighting, when their lives are in danger, the Drakes fall back into a loving husband and wife. Their marriage may be falling apart, but they do care about each other. 

I want to show these panels because it shows that Tim and Jack do have things in common. They’re both level headed in a crisis and can be somewhat cold in their practicality. Janet meanwhile and silent. Jack is later willing rant and rave at their captors, but Janet remains silent. 

That is, until they’re alone, and she finally lets herself fall apart. 

God, Jack can be obnoxious. Janet just looks miserable and resigned. I actually think Tim takes after his parents in this respect in equal measure. Tim can have a temper, but he can also be fairly melancholy and defeatist. 

Jack keeps reminding Janet to be strong and in control, which could be period typical sexism? But Jack seems so practiced and ready with the words of encouragement, and with Tim’s history with depression, I wonder if Janet has an inclination towards it as well. 

As the end approaches, when Jack brings up Tim, Janet seems to have a lot of regret. She talks about “wasting” the good things, and I don’t think it’s too big of a stretch to assume she’s talking about time spent with her only child. 

From this point on, Janet is at times spoken of, but not seen. Like here, when Jack says Janet wouldn’t approve of him and Tim being so “far apart.” He says this after he tells him he takes back his threat to send him back to boarding school, which might imply Janet was against the idea of boarding school? Though she obviously lost that argument when she was alive. 

Jack will of course renege on this later, but that’s Jack Drake for you. 

Or here in Tim’s illness induced dream, where he gets everything he wants. Though, since this is a fantasy of Tim’s, where his father and girlfriend are both more accepting and understanding than they are in real life, I would take this depiction of Janet with a grain of salt. 

After loosing Drake Industries, Jack thinks about Janet (though, they call her Catherine/Cathy for some fucking reason) during his depressive episode. And... uh... 

Hallucinates a Valkyrie???? Is this symbolic of suicidal thoughts, or is she... real? Or is he seriously hallucinating? 

Anyway, we’re not here to discuss Jack’s mental state, the fact that he forgot Tim’s birthday, or that concerning “I was going to knock some sense into you but you’re still bigger than me” statement from Tim, we’re here to talk about Janet. And even though this entire arc is about Jack mourning his first wife, they don’t SAY anything about Janet herself at all. I mean, they don’t even get her name right, so I guess what was I expecting. 

Then there’s Origins and Omens, which also doesn’t say anything about Janet, except that Tim’s memory of her is faulty - Janet was poisoned, her assistant Jeremy’s throat was slit on television, but Tim seems to have conflated the death he did see with the death he didn’t. 

The only piece of canon to suggest that Janet might be cold, is Tim compares her to Thalia. And even then, he’s really just saying Janet was protective of him. It’s kind of a scary look to make at your kid, but Bruce does the same thing, so. 

I do want to say... it’s not 100% clear if Tim is even talking about Janet. He could be talking about Dana. Dana was observably protective of Tim, though I don’t think he’s ever called her mom. He PROBABLY means Janet. 

And finally we have Tim visiting his mother’s grave (in a duel Christian/Jewish cemetery, make of that what you will), where Tim says she was “a little religious.”

And that’s it! That is all we know about Janet Drake in New Earth. Hardly the Mom From Hell, but she isn’t perfect. I’d be interested in seeing some alternate depictions of her within the fandom. 

I’m still gonna eat up Terrible Parents From Hell like a starving puppy dog, though. Just some food for creative thought. 

[pndnj]

Cathartic- Yellow Metal Lyrics

Heres where I am with the lyrics, I referenced @25Goldenn on twitter for some of it that I couldn’t comprehend. 

*music*

0:23

Dark matter, like painted splatters, they fit better, the old saying, the way it goes, better the devil you do then you don’t know. I hit pedals and switch levers, my heart metal, I can't settle, im part trouble, they are not subtle. I fuck good so fuck cuddles, burst bubbles the thrist levels at new heights, i down doubles, and got baked til I felt high, my face puzzled, felt muddled, far strung and your floors woodent, the thought might but the fit wouldn’t. A fortnight

0:46 - 1:00

And I thought right, it’s all bark and no bite, I’m Tony Stark still embarking on a dream, took a bit of time to take darkness from the team. Seen what I saw. Heartless on the sleeve. Tried to burn my wings, so I put them in a piece on my chest , at peace no rest.

1:00-1:15

Flipped this on it’s head. Rip the script up now, flip it don’t pretend, slipping shit again, Fakers all around me, I’ve been living in pretense. Fake friends won’t make amends. There’s no need, these mean comments control the scenes. Attentionseekers, the spine is weakened

1:15-1:24

This family needs, what a family needs, and the planet bleeds, the damaged trees. It’s never leaving til we ascend so fuck the fence, and until they stop killing colour it’s fuck the feds.

1:22 - 1:44

You must be off it, I mean it, you know you ain’t never get with the judging and I used to dread growing my beard too long, never felt I belonged, but it's really long like a minute I ain’t looking to no mans for the limits, They’re feeling timid, I’m telling them who they mimic, why they don't look like a clinic …. Why they don't get no women, Still, we’re just fucking girls, Lost in the wrong world, Jurassic, now to this vermin

1:41-  1: 50

Kicking the game I’m serving, these losers are never learning, my fire is forever burning, adding it to my fuel, seems like I’m always focused on never becoming you, These locals that rob us feeling … was for a reason.

1:52-2:02

I’m seeing my new beginnings, watch out this loser’s winning, and no water is too deep to swim in Like I’m about to see a killing, I’m all the way that and living, flawless and feeling lawless, the prison now to the gimmicks, my vision is set to something,

2:03-:2:20

I’m watching you bitches plummet, no matches here for my cunning, you rappers are feeling done in, switching your genre, running and Running your jaw, stunting, pulling at straws, something  I think you’re a poor effort, deaf and tone deaf and I ain’t treat you separate. Living, I’m in my element, riding it like a … never lose me to fentanyl, scared when I take a benadryl. Keeping it green in general

2:20- 2:46

Think that you remain irrelevant. Look at yourself with reverence, hoping to always elevate. Celibate of these thoughts, killing themselves with sedatives. In comparison to eminem, you’re feeling feminine. Impolitically correct, still dropping on my dick. And I never gave a fuck about what they say abt my shit, I’ve been moving things in my mind like it’s this mountain dew Memories have made me wonder if one day I’m after you. What’s the purpose that you do, is what you're hoping that they learn, i’d like to say i’m done but it’s getting up on my nerves

2:46 -2:55

I’m looking at my life, saying what do I deserve. It’s hard to say I know when I’m walking through the dirt. Talking while you’re nothing I can see for what it’s worth. I’m tired of feeling hurt and I’ve tried enough but nothing works.

2:55-3:40

I’m racking up excuses while I’m slacking off on work. Chit chatting is the usual, talking to this clerk, i beg you don’t include me. I might write it on my shirt so everytime they see me, the oldest know to swerve. SWERVE Life is potent, bits of fucked shit… till they took notice weren’t  no hocus pocus, it was hard work that got me heard so i put in the graph like google maps but the whole earth

… around my door mat, taking over like the drones, rolling dirt up in miles like the water, and exploding like Annas hematoma. Don't need to see a slammer to know that I don't want to go man

I’m a showman. I’m just focused on the drama… like i’ve got my own insurance, show myself the pain, like i boxed it in the frame, if we’re about to talk greatness im great, the way you have to say my name like beyonce

“Say my name”

4:00-4:46

Just a bum with a cigarette, sun coming up, all my thoughts on the internet. Feeling deep, I’m just bored with the silhouette single sec,  get fucked up for the thrill of it . killer streak playing Pacman. Like I came from the Philippines vanilla bean still a thing for the thrill of scene,

Theres a beam, UFO, Leave it well alone  I aint moving, stood still on the peloton, telephone and its always on the dial tone,  it's been a while since i’ve smiled at a milestone, seen a big pile in my mind stone, me against the world on my Jack Jones, Like I’m John Jones, With pictures in the condo, far from John Doe, in the ___, like I'm Johnny Bravo, got pravado, with a small dick sitting in golados, feeling far gone, cuz that last hit was the good shit, was that stay lit

4:48-5:02

You can never take my shit come and get me. On the top floor,  cloud 9, fading, never bailing, felt amazing, inhaling, til my lungs two guns blazing. Overcome all the stunts that I pulled. A suit of just skin and then wool

5:02- 5:17

This life doesn’t give you no armour, a lot of myself can harm ya. I swear on what’s good, that I’m here till they take me. I pray that I’m wrinkled, at least over 80, and start moving like a ruler, ?damaged? Like a computer going fast, bars from the jeweler, bring the songs to the beach in hopes of finding tuna

5:18-5:36

…

5:36- 6:16

Grab a bat, lose my rag. Couple things got me mad, a couple people got me wrong and now I’m changing up the swag. Coming in and stealing it, I might take the whole bag. Feeling undefeated, I’m a beast with a reason, and imma lead the whole pack. Fearless like I’m Caesar, I’m just waiting for a chance to fill it up with diesel, and all I've been achieving is clocking miles in its region, moving like a legion.

Promise that I made to myself an allegiance. Do you still believe I’m a fool for ever leaving, staring at the ceiling, can never put a cap on achieving. I’m just here for the rap, then I’m leaving.

I’ve had about enough of being my own enemy, it’s time I grew up,  a long way from 17. Always went against the grain, struggles in my life. Got some things to say when I stand up on a mike.

6:16-6:32

I ain’t dropping this for fame, I need this time, like therapy, it’s just to keep me sane. The truth is on my medicine, can’t put that on your plate.

Speeding into everything, bout time I fixed the brakes. Don’t say I can’t communicate , you know I conversate with you in several different ways. And I know you know it’s references, looking at your face.

6:33- 6:53

Can’t justify mistakes, like every man that made them, seems I ain't  the one to blame. Lying to myself, only had so much to gain, so now I’m switching up the plate, see if that affects the place, im at on most days

I ain’t going with the usual so they looking at me strange. Confused, I can feel it all,  I’m here to make a change. It’s cold at 3am outside, I’m walking with the dog, thanking god that you don’t talk at all, my mind is switching off

6:54-7:12

Driving down to find myself, cuz I’ve been getting lost, lived this selfless life and found I can give a toss. Lessons that I’ve learned I’ve tried teaching to myself. What I’ve learnt from certain people is that they’re better than myself.

So I surround myself with real ones, and you feel the plastic melt. Like burning toy soldiers that used to go up on the shelf. Recycle the ideas, conveying on the belt

7:14-7:29

.. circus, always hurting the way we felt? Embarrassed that we dreamt of bigger things and letting go of notions till we feel them in cement

Tired of only hoping, we feel broken men. Cuz the gravity is weight and has kept us to the ground, see the only people speaking with favors in their mouths

7:46-7:58

Got killer rhymes… no fillers, like godzilla, eating clouds cuz my smokes thicker, throat licker, my dope sicker, bringing people their hope like im the pope slicker,  i hope you’re getting the point cuz i walk quicker

I thought my city was shit bcs I want bigger like my zipper couldn’t zip up fed up with the…my love is fickle.. Residual age has a primitive face

I see demise for your limited ways, Left it to simmer, simmer away…a fake glimmer in the haze

8:09-8:11

Feeling trapped this industry is a cage

8:34-8:50

Nobody’s speaking the truth, I’m offended by the State. Look at the state of the news, I’ve decided the argument, reciting my views, while they’ve been sat in their chairs, I’m feeling pressure to choose.

Standing here as one man, how can I do half when you’re half the person I am. If it wasn’t in your life, you didn’t choose it. It’s the funny thing about music. It’s the pain and beauty of it.

8:52-9:11

Don’t give a fuck what my suit is, it looks good so I wear it, better than the shoot that People’s wearing, changing the whole narrative for these basics and scarcity

Been facing the racists from back when i were a kiddie .born up in in 93’. been living in Bradford City..kicked me out of the schools, they had a problem with me hitting the kids that would call me p*** still sitting in the classroom chilling, and i'm angry now that I’m older I see they treat us different

9:12-9:25

got me thinking I’m the problem cuz they never dealt with those issues.

20 years later I’m still in the same boat, tryna treat me like my grandpa, say I came up off the boat. Came to tell you what I stand for, man I think you’re shit, a joke. How can I be civil, when they got me by the throat

9:25-9:35

Pushing my feelings down, you ain’t got it like them

‘Boy your skin is so light’, ok motherfucker take my name up on a flight. Try to convince immigration that your bloodline’s half white.

9:35-9:45

I don’t know how that’s acceptable, when life is more susceptible to perception, be the death of them. I’ve been looking at the sky saying where’s that day of reckoning, you had your prophets right when they say that you would speak to them.

9:45-9:55

I need justice in this life and I trust that it’s my fight, cuz when I’m writing it feels right to have them focused on the facts again. Focused on the rap again, hoping for the change, gunna put this on the map again

9:55-10:16

Writing in all caps again, the pain, it goes through me so I write the letter. All the shit that could have brought me but made me better.

I’m at home with a pain in my soul , yeh rap… cuz you know I was too real to contest it, my time was invested. Now I look at the industry, I see it infested, looking like kids who would write on nesquik.

10:17-10:29

My name ain’t on the list unless they label it ethnic.

I ain’t never gave a fuck about these jokers and jesters. Ain’t no answers for these things, so just save us the questions, man allowed of violence, cuz my silence is deafening, your opinion stinks, somebody get him a breath mint.

10:30- 10:42

Start to understand why they think that I’m threatening, I move in certain ways, couldn’t slow me with ketamine Now they all wanna hear me, got a table at letterman. Direction changed, like I changed up the lettering. Don’t believe the age ,bcs I move like a veteran.

10:42 - 10:47

Raised on the benefit for whose benefit, they’ll never learn shit, man, if the shoe fits.

…no words coming out when you open your mouth

And to be honest, it’s insulting, offensive to my wounds that have been salting. Tryna ask me questions that they know I never answer. I’d rather sit online and reply to the fan art

11:00-11:06

Fuck a sports car, coming through when i rapped

tell you what I like, farm life and the tractor

11:06- 11:17

Fake life, 'sup online, suck a fat one. You don’t wanna buy into that, none of that son. Sitting in the garden 98’ in the Datsun,  seen some hot summers but I still remember that sun.

*music*

11:51- 12:34

I make millions off of my pain, cause I know a few millions still living that way

Dealing with the hurt, they should know cause they don’t deserve it, it hit deep cause i hit the nerve. Only way that the sheep learn if the street firm, in my ways I don’t wanna change, everything just stay the same

Who you tryna convince you understand, cant maintain, let the lights dim some,  get the Chow Mein, flex, get the tape, right up at night

Why these men be nice to my face, be nice,  i ain’t tryna be a gangsta ruins my vibe

Rather be low-key and on my phone. Never need the trophy or the show piece

Never show peace in a North Face fleece. Show kids this like i wrote my flip

Cause the sign might fit till the start i’m sick

12:37-13:05

Now you see where I come from, the world don’t. Only achievement in this life is the Jordans. Committing petty crimes out of boredom, we can’t afford them. So I stole it, need a rolex

Go make sense, get yourself a job, It’s a poor man’s game tryna sit and pray to god, he ain’t sorting out your problems, gotta sort them out yourself

Used to tell us fables, now I’m writing them myself, Cause we raw like animals we all just need some help

Cathartic, I’m an artist, trying to put my heart in

Felt double crossed like Leo in Departed

13:05- 13:27

For the knowledge i’m not charging see I got it all free

But my hunger kept me starving like i’m feening for the feed

I just Need a reason to see me bleeding for my creed. Trick you with the words like I keep em up my sleeve. Picking where I fit, I see me sitting with the queen

I ain’t doing it unless you’re used to saying please

Let me flow a bit, before I sting 'em with the bees, They tryna kill us with disease

(Music)

13:34- 14:12

Why does it feel like they had the same notebook and the same four looks

Like the rain won't touch on their face, so sus when they lie don’t trust not a minor

Please no fuss, I just move through the game like must

Something in the way i adjust till i stick, Free falling like the ship, free fall till i bust

Remember 21 brother gave no fucks. Trying to project when they give them looks

In the projects, in the objects us

In my own way, never gave me love, shoulda never started this, broken hearted kid

Dried up the feeling till I stole the lid

Don’t wanna relish in the fame but I can’t resist

14:46-14:58

I like the way we feel, I like the way, I like the way

Ain’t no mistake, i am a being

I ain’t tryna be a leader, been selling out since Jesus

All my rhymes are for the readers, between the lines, like Father time, I fuck Mother Nature

14:58-15:40

That’s what they get, the connotations. Tell 'em I lived a life, and then I lived a life of adjacent? like its…. and played it patient.

Alone on my own spaceship, always tryna find greatness, still defying lines, but I’m fighting in my prime.

Shining light like Kylo while imma kill it all the time. Aging like I’m wine

Asian in my face, but still my race you can’t define. Focused on defiance, imma fight it while it’s life.

Started something sick and on my mind is what’s next, just became a dad so now I’m taking all the cheques. Better know I’m staying and paying like it’s debt. Imma get it done, if it’s taking all my breath, sweat, and down I ain’t messing around til I’m the best

Speaking in full sentences, shoulda thought about a strategy before you went at the stratosphere about this… rings around Saturn, this ain’t a battle, I’m sat, I’m here

15:40-16:22

Catch me doing magic, hired and sounding tragic I think you could use practice and until that you get the blacklist and pull like a … actress? Fooling them like a catfish, schooling like a legend, happy to be the reference, fusing like iridescence, leaving them all guessing, leaking out of my brain like a pipe I aint fixing, shining like a star you can see it from a distance

Aint many of me around p*** I’m just different Certain stages to this level aint here because fame is to the devil fuck a label, imma do this from the ghetto, clean up like Im Dettol

I’m the man to put a bet on, sight smart like a weapon,  this is my kind of setting, i write the world I’m sat in, while these others live on hype, i see them fight in how they type, the fruit is ripe for the taking, i think i might

16:22-16:57

Let me take you away from here, Let me take you away from here, Let me take you away from here

16:58- 17:47

Eccentric things are mentioned like a kid stuck in detention tryna escape im just spitting what is written on the next page, spitting image of my dad in his young days

Born sinner when i’m livid i say fucks sake

Don’t worry i’m too cunning with no plumbing, the waterworks, i sung something that resonates, i thought it first like giving birth to the parrot perch

They see me do it and they know it works

Don’t know what’s worse: the way that you live your life or the way that you write a verse

You’ll be nervous, you don’t deserve it we’ll scratch the surface ill leave a crater, lift the dirt up to find the hurting

Can’t know for certain nothing is guaranteed, tryna be a better person than the world deserves to see cuz i see a lot of sharks still swimming in the sea

Cease and arrest what’s the reason.. And these the kinda kids we bringing up next

Distorted reality, all they needed was family, too hard to face, to see what the damage is

17:47

*i don’t wanna be, i don’t wanna be, a part of this, no, i don’t wanna be, i don’t wanna be, a part of this, *

18:04-18:38

Sometimes they ask the questions too deep to form a sentence, to disform, is this the norm, is this the sentence i feel defenseless i played the setlist, and all my sweat blood and tears, forgot to mention feeling lost, going off into different sections i feel like love wrecked it

If it’s not a drug why am i waiting for the next fix, affected, i cant believe that you left this

I guess I leave for the best wish, moving on like im fine for the lectures

We see it all from spectrums, cuz if we’re falling down we can fall down together

Staircase to heaven, mirror down the middle like 11, resentment on one side it won’t settle

18:38- 19:14

Mind fried but taking sense, they aint got a sense of themselves in the rich ends

Need to spell it out for them.. Made for them so witness

I know you feel afflicted but you always love it with me while im laughing at you, ya think you’re laughing with me

I try to (i love you) but im grown so they don’t fit me, my body thrown from the new to this old city so Im sick of sitting on my own, feeling so shitty, i’ve been on roads where its cold and the snow hitting

Its okay to be yourself, sit and talking to myself

I’ve been walking for the longest, just need a little rest, know i ain’t the strongest, I can feel it in my chest, talking about my feelings and of me, they get the best

19:14-19:59

They aint leaving, seeing breathing in my breath

Till death do us part is just seeded in my heart, like a work of art

Never winning,im just scared

Cant begin from the start, do i play a part in the rhythm of the night

I guess i’m onto something cuz the dark is feeling right

Every cloud got a lining, put my own miles  in, like moralis, figured that they’re jealous, that they could just never tell us to change because the weather never made me question whether or not i’m not that level

Got rid of all the bullshit sitting in my way, most of them are full of shit i see it every day

I do hearing the same things that i do, maybe that shits hitting like haiku

How much do you pay for them to hype you

Recycle your flaws but they aint like new, leaving and conceded and full of diesel like engines that need a cleaning, the ending will be revealing. Even though we ain’t raising the facts, now we been facing.

20:01-20:52

The cactus with spikes, needing spaces. Different faces, the same story. A full body like straight body direct to your system.

Could never tell 'em we missed’ em. Not even with the thoughts, we gift them. Cuz they just take advantage, guess we are caught in a system.

My soul pouring out details of borrowed time, had enough of a fill, this is for sorrow time. I’m seeing visions of Heaven, I seen the severed line, between the gospel they speak and when theyre telling lies.

Remember telling a friend of mine, you’d sent of mine, identified like a 3rd eye. Got a habit of knowing now where the dirt lies. So benign. I ain’t sober after 9, so I fuck their minds. Why you flipping out, see another

Try to rep it from the city, fuck a chiller crew, repping for the nittys, trying to keep us down, raised on the social, don’t want to let us out of the system. Me, I insist we assist them, me alone putting shifts til I lift them

20:53-21:12

I know it’s hard, that’s why I like it, I’m fit to fight it, I’m from the North, I’m backing Tyson, it’s been decided, don’t see no light. They needing guiding, just redefining, realizing, I’m realigning, in full finance, they stay silenced.

Can’t be louder, I’m juiced up with no powder. I fix shit like a slick spanner. Gone green like Bruce Banner. So free Gaza on my banner

21:12-21:51

The real McCoy, I ain’t nothing to toy with, signifying peace like a Japanese Koi Fish. How did this happen, we’re moving backwards in our timeline, killing us with cyanide, Right up for the freedom 'til we transform like Ironhide

This is bout my feelings, the way that I move affects the fate that I’m sealing. Can’t say nothing, with that something being on the page, kept inside the pen like the bars that have been kept caged. See I always had a plan, since I was young, we had nothing man

Now it’s been a few years since I ain’t seen the fam, on foreign lands. Bout to climb Everest in the avalanche. Right into the riddles as soon as you were born. Never asking the question cuz it’s the norm. See I’m in a questionin’ session

21:52-22:03

Like the manner got a method to teaching a lesson, listen to MF Doom, he taught me like Ra’s Al Ghul. Felt like living in Gotham, the people were rotten. Still we play cartoons so it’s never forgotten.

22:03-22:15

Chilling at the top but we came from the bottom. Writing and jottin for them life by, spotting the difference

*Dreams, was growing out of me, sun promising that tomorrow it will rise, time playing games with my mind, I swear it will pass us by

Train goes on the tracks, smoke, I’m tired to hide my thoughts, so blinded in flames, Don’t know where we’re going, I have no way of knowing, only see what’s in my head

Can’t we wait a minute, so we can savour this, It’s on my brain again, these days, It on my brain again these days”

23:10-23:46

They’re hating on Palestine ways, The oh no Palace playing Prince on the Steinway, Sending out mind waves, stop them like crimewaves, Freedom fighter, Yellow Metal is my name

Like vipers, I see the sly ones, the snake that’s called Biden, none of them abiding what they might put in writing

We should be used to it by now, say whatever for the vote and then just choose another route, say they’d never kill another unless that brother’s skin is brown

I’m just telling you the facts, if you can’t take it, the truth naked, to bare bones and my thoughts lately, spitting politics.. Done ain’t it, Shit just gets me vexed, and now I’m sitting that I think of it

23:45-23:59

Feeling on the brink of it, whatever it is, Figure out some shit at least it feels that way

talk about my feelings and I don’t feel so strange, finding solace, that’s a promise, in Metropolis but being honest, can’t write a sonnet, without some pain

24:00-24:40

Can’t fade away, away so we can savour this, been on my brain again these days

Can't find a way to be so you can savour this, been on my brain these days

Singing the song for another, singing a song for another

[k7l4d4]

A Miraculous Manifesto: A list of my thoughts on Miraculous Ladybug

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and germs of all ages! Everybody clap your hands! Today, I am going to talk about a show that I very much enjoy, but also drives me up a wall: Miraculous Ladybug!

If you don’t know the show, feel free to ignore this, this is mostly to get my head together and my thoughts posted down. It’s basically just a collection of my opinions on topics within the Miraculous Fandom and show.

First off, and it’s a doozy, Chloe Bourgeois. For those not in the know, Chloe is one of the singularly most bitter, mean, and utterly selfish characters ever invented. But, she isn’t a one-note hate sink. Chloe’s mother, who is an even BIGGER bitch than Chloe herself is, abandoned her to focus on the fame and adulation her career in the fashion industry afforded her, never remembering her Birthday and often not even bothering to remember her NAME. Ouch! Chloe’s father, Andre, while not without his faults, being a formerly corrupt, and still kind of shady, politician and all, but he deeply loves his daughter. Unfortunately, Andre is by all accounts and absentee parent, relegating Chloe’s rearing to Nannies, Butlers, and the like, and burying her in presents and gifts to avoid actually parenting and teaching Chloe. All in all, a bad combination.

By all accounts, Chloe was originally a very sweet and kind hearted girl, reaching out and befriending the lonely son of the Agreste family, Adrien. However, her loneliness, her dad’s spoiling behavior, and her pining for her mother combined to turn Chloe into a monster. Chloe, as she currently is, has a massively egotistical and selfish demeanor, and has no real friends, lashing out in the cruelest and most spiteful ways for the pettiest of reasons, or just for laughs. The closest thing she has to a friend is the socially awkward and unwaveringly loyal Sabrina, who often serves as her lackey, and is regarded as such as even her family’s staff don’t believe she has friends. Again, Ouch.

When given the chance to be a superhero as Queen Bee, a role which even Marinette, Ladybug herself, thought might help her change, we saw more signs that there is more to Chloe than just a dumb bully. Despite what people might think, Chloe actually is capable of feeling remorse for her actions, and her deepest desire underneath all the hate and bile is too be useful. To not just be another burden.

Unfortunately, show creator Thomas Astruc sank that idea. Turns out, Chloe is apparently utterly incapable of change and will always remain a self-centered monster. Now, I do NOT condone the fandom that was rooting for Chloe’s behavior against Tommy-boy, as all they did was give him vindication by acting like a pack of rabid jackals going in for the kill. On his official Wiki page for Miraculous, Thomas gives what appears to be a poetic and thoughtful detailing as to his decision and why he is right for it. Honestly? It rings hollow. For all his fancy words and attempts to illustrate Chloe as solely being a toxic, hateful individual without redemptive qualities, his reasoning, as well as his apparent intent from the start to have Chloe becoming a SuperHero to be a fake-out, comes across as crass and tacky.

Thomas perpetually portrays Chloe as being a bitter and spiteful shrew, with any kind deed she does having a duplicitous motive, that she is utterly incapable of showing genuine kindness and remorse as she is, and that is the way she always will be, but the thing is? When you give a character a sympathetic backstory and motive for how and why the way they are, you should expect people to sympathize and relate to that character, as well as acknowledge the you are opening them up to the possibility to change for the better. These are all things Thomas denies ruthlessly. In his narrative, Chloe can never be good, and all her pain has only served to ruin her, nothing more.

One of his arguments to justify this? Supervillains don’t sell toys. To explain, while a tragic backstory might make kids and folks sympathize for a villain, they still won’t consider them good or support them. That is true, of course. But the biggest flaw in his logic? Supervillains are just as capable of changing, becoming better than what they are, just like EVERYONE is. Villains can become heroes, it’s true! Not without trials and tribulation, of course, but they can be more than the label society gives them. Thomas has refused to even entertain the possibility that Chloe can ever be more than what he dictates she can be. In his narrative, people who have done bad things can never attempt to redeem themselves.

Chloe’s a baddy. Case closed. Thomas has repeatedly pointed to moments in the show that “illustrate” that Chloe is beyond redemption, that she can never grow beyond her faults, but the things is? He’s the creator, one of them, and a writer for the show. He has the POWER to CHANGE that narrative, to have things happen that force Chloe to grow and become a decent, if he can’t bring himself to make her good, and make amends, even if others don’t accept it.

Thomas likes to draw comparisons to abusive relationships when it comes to Chloe, but when you look at the show? It doesn’t actually hold water. The only people she has any kind of relationship with that isn’t straight up antagonism are Adrien, Sabrina, Audrey, and Andre. While it could be argued that Chloe is abusive towards Sabrina, and the dynamic they have is NOT healthy, I wouldn’t call it abusive. Chloe in no way forces Sabrina to do all that Sabrina does for her, even if she is barking orders, and Sabrina is cognizant of the fact that they do not have a standard friendship, enough so that even Chloe’s family’s employees don’t actually view Sabrina as actually being Chloe’s friend. Chloe might be harsh with Sabrina when they are on the outs, but she is never shown forcing Sabrina into anything, and Sabrina is often the only person besides Adrien or herself that Chloe shows compassion towards, particularly as Sabrina is one of the few people completely aware of Chloe’s childish and geeky side and accepts it utterly; at the worst interpretation, Sabrina is Chloe’s ENABLER, not her victim.

For Audrey and Andre’s relationship with Chloe, it is definitely toxic, but, if anything, Chloe is the one being abused! Audrey frequently belittles and ridicules Chloe, forgets her name, HER OWN DAUGHTER’S NAME, abandoned her when she was too little to truly take care of herself or have proper knowledge of right from wrong, and generally treats her like a particularly incompetent employee, when all Chloe wants from Audrey is her affection, her approval, and her love. Andre isn’t really bad with Chloe, but he’s neglected to be a parent to her, showering her with gifts to avoid having to actually be there for her when she needed him for all those years, which probably didn’t do any favors for how maladjusted she is. 

Adrien frequently makes excuses for Chloe, apologizing on her behalf, and only occasionally standing up to her when she acts up. But Chloe isn’t abusing him, emotionally or mentally, as Adrien could be considered Chloe’s sole true friend; whenever Adrien scolds or gets upset with Chloe, Chloe backs down and off, and on the few times Adrien has threatened to stop being friends with her, Chloe has nearly broken. The only real thing keeping Adrien in Chloe’s life is the fact that she was his first friend, and he is her only friend aside from Sabrina. Chloe has no leverage to be abusing Adrien, or anything to use to keep them in each other’s lives; Adrien is friends with her by choice. Nothing else.

The worst part of it all? Chloe never got a chance. Thomas denied Chloe the possibility of growth, and will most likely keep denying it to her. So, I say we mourn. We mourn the loss of what will never come to pass, because one guy with a TV Show said so.

[boycottyashahime]

Hello! Anti-Sessrin person here. You said if this couple becomes canon it will ruin Sesshomaru's character development. I would love it If you could elaborate on that because you're always so eloquent and smart. It's ok if you don't feel like it, though. Have a nice day!

I've actually been looking for an excuse to sit down and write out a cohesive post on my thoughts about this. Contrary to what the shippers want to believe, my interpretation of Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship doesn't have anything to do with my moral objections to child grooming. I happen to think there's plenty of evidence for a filial interpretation in the text.

First, I'd like to preface my little essay here by saying I'm going off the manga alone. I haven't seen the anime in a long time, because I dropped it when I got a little tired of trying to reconcile the inconsistencies between the two mediums. So, if you read this and have an impulse to say, "hey, what about that thing in episode such-and-such...", keep in mind that I probably just don't remember what you're thinking of.

So, let's go back, alllll the way back, to Sesshoumaru's first appearance. Here's a guy who tears off a dude's head for no other reason than to get the attention of his subordinates to demand a boat. Here's a guy who's spent a long time looking just about EVERYWHERE for his father's remains, not to pay respects, but to plunder them. Here's a guy who feels ENTITLED to rob his dad's grave for treasure he deserves simply for being his father's son.

Sesshoumaru begins his journey as a selfish, spoiled, entitled brat. He doesn't fit the usual profile of a kid throwing a tantrum on the street because he wants the expensive toy sitting in the window; he's very posh and very reserved, but fundamentally, his motivation comes down to the simple fact that he wants Tessaiga. It doesn't even really have anything to do with respect and admiration of his father, otherwise he wouldn't have been so eager to rifle through dear old dad's bones to get at a sword when he had another heirloom right there at his hip. Only Tessaiga was representative of the sheer destructive force he wanted to wield, so he ignored the fact that his dad didn't seem to want him to have it.

This is important, because at first, Sesshoumaru doesn't seem to think of his father in terms of the guy's intentions or the steps he takes for the sake of his sons. Like most rich spoiled kids, Sesshoumaru views the Inu no Taishou in terms of his prestige and how that priviledge can be appropriated for selfish ends. Sesshoumaru wants Tessaiga not because he needs it, but because it's a birthright, and reinforces his legitimacy. When it's clear that Tessaiga seals Inuyasha's youkai blood, keeps him from going berserk, Sesshoumaru loses interest in Tessaiga - it's just a crutch for Inuyasha, and there's no prestige in taking it from him or using it for himself.

Sesshoumaru doesn't start to REALLY consider his father's intentions for the swords until later in the manga, when it comes out that Tenseiga was originally part of Tessaiga, and Inuyasha was meant to get the Meidou Zangetsuha attack eventually as well. It's at this point that Sesshoumaru starts to question if daddy actually HATED him, to give him a rather neat power disguised in a lame shell, but only to develop it so Inuyasha can have it instead, even after Inuyasha already got Tessaiga in the first place. It kind of looks to Sesshoumaru that Inuyasha gets all the powerful cool shit their father left behind, and that there might have been some favoritism coming down HARD on Inuyasha's side.

Above, you can see Sesshoumaru has two interlinked but distinct issues that are addressed throughout the story - his lack of compassion and empathy, and how tied his identity is to his father's favor and prestige. These two are somewhat separated in the narrative; there's a kind of pause in Sesshoumaru's development while a bulk of the middle of the story deals more with other characters and their development, but there is a little bit of a thematic connection between the two halves.

We'll start with the development of Sesshoumaru's compassion since, well, that's where the story begins working on his character. Right before Rin shows up, Toutousai let's Inuyasha's group in on the sword Sesshoumaru carries around and what it does, indicating that Tenseiga requires a compassionate heart to function. A bit ham-handed, but RT isn't very subtle most of the time, so we'll allow it. This sets up the next few scenes in which Sesshoumaru is unable to move and must play captive audience to a little girl doing the literal opposite of what he's used to. Sesshoumaru's habit is to show up and kill things, with no thought to the years of history, relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc that he's snuffing out. But while he's reclined injured in the woods, Rin demonstrates actual LIFE and the preservation of it, that part Sesshoumaru never gets to see. It's made all the starker by how BAD Rin is at caring for herself, let alone the strange monster she found in the woods. She does exactly nothing to help Sesshoumaru, despite how hard she tries, and is even injured by others in her attempts. She is the very picture of vulnerability, the opposite of the strong and capable Sesshoumaru.

This is a stark contrast, because anything less wouldn't be enough to create the necessary awareness of Rin's struggles that Sesshoumaru needs in order to use Tenseiga on here. And I know I've said this before, but I really cannot stress enough how obvious I think the symbolism is when Sesshoumaru uses Tenseiga for the first time; a phallic object gives life to a child, and the object's owner looks after that life throughout the rest of the story. He's not very good at looking after it, and it's clear that he's not sure about taking responsibility for Rin at first, because she pleaded for him to come back for her when he and Jaken left her behind to requisition a sword from Gaijinbou. To me, it's reminiscent of a teenager who knocked someone up, and ended up having to learn to give a crap about the result.

But, even if you don't accept that symbolism as particularly significant, Rin being a child, and human, and weak, unable to survive on her own, are important characteristics to how Sesshoumaru's compassion develops. Sesshoumaru is one of the strongest characters in the series, and he rarely has to worry about his own safety. And since he's in the habit of just murdering everyone he comes across if they're in his way, he's never had to worry about the safety of anyone else, either. When Rin comes into the picture, though, Sesshoumaru is faced with the uncomfortable reality of vulnerability in general. Through her earnest and incompetent attempts to foster survival in a world that can and does crush her, she's opened his eyes to how the disadvantaged, those without a powerful youkai lineage to rely on, have to struggle.

Rin herself has nothing to offer Sesshoumaru within this context of supreme vulnerability. She's not a friend, because she can't offer mutual support or use a skill to their benefit as a team. She's not a lover, because, well, she's a child and sexual/romantic attraction are conditions that wouldn't allow Sesshoumaru to extend his compassion beyond just her. As a mostly helpless kid, Rin has to rely upon Sesshoumaru and his power to survive, and Sesshoumaru employs his strength to keep her alive, getting nothing but a sweet smile out of it all. She gets all the benefits, he has all the obligations. This is PURE compassion - using one's advantages to another's benefit because you care about them, and not because you derive something from it as well.

This is why making Rin into Sesshoumaru's lover is a REALLY thoughtless take. It puts conditions on the compassion and muddies the message.

Moving onto Sesshoumaru's continued character development in the latter part of the story, the sword drama starts back up with slow, when Toutousai shows up and offers to reforge Tenseiga into a weapon. Sesshoumaru discovers that because he got angry enough to break his primary weapon in defense of Kagura's honor, he's triggered the next evolution of Tenseiga into something that can murder. Which is what he wanted at the beginning, yay! I want to point out here that Toutousai says Tenseiga noticed a change in Sesshoumaru's heart - anger for the first time for the sake of another. This implies that what Jaken said about Sesshoumaru getting tangled up in the fight against Naraku because Naraku kidnapping and using Rin to manipulate Sesshoumaru hurt Sesshoumaru's pride is actually accurate; he just really hated the thought of Naraku trying to use him, even if it was a failed attempt.

After going through HELL to develop the Meidou into a full circle (literally), Sesshoumaru then learns that the Meidou belongs to Tessaiga and Inuyasha, and that it's supposed to be handed over. Now, part of Sesshoumaru's angst over this idea, I think, is not just "did daddy love Inuyasha more?", but also the assumption that Inuyasha would have to KILL him in order to retake the Meidou Zangetsuha into Tessaiga. Thinking that your father meant for your little brother to kill you at some point to take your stuff is a pretty disturbing thought, to be entirely fair to him. This is why, when Sesshoumaru jumps into the meidou to take back control of the Naraku-possessed Tenseiga and breaks it deliberately, he spends the rest of the time in there moodily resigned to disappear. He genuinely believes that his father meant for him to die at this point, and even after they get out of there, he seems genuinely depressed.

This is Sesshoumaru's lowest point as a character. He's lost something he thought his father had meant for him, at his father's own wish, and he can't help but question why his dad would give him something just to take it away and give it to Inuyasha. It looks for all the world like favoritism, and since the Inu no Taishou is dead, there's no asking him what the hell the meaning of all this is.

This is all leading to one of the most infuriatingly ridiculous scenes I have ever seen in a manga - when Magatsuhi has crushed Sesshoumaru and everyone thinks he's been killed/absorbed, Magatsuhi is blown apart and rendered unable to reform by the shiny new sword clutched in Sesshoumaru's newly regrown arm. I could talk your ear off about how having Sesshoumaru stop being an amputee is erasure of consequences for his actions, or how being given back an arm is kind of a slap in the face for actual amputees, and where the mother f*ck did that sword come from anyway, but that's not what this essay is about, so I'll just keep all that to myself. The point of this is articulated by Toutousai when he says that Sesshoumaru had to let go of Tessaiga and his father's heirloom to stand on his own as a daiyoukai.

We've already gone over how Sesshoumaru is one of the most powerful characters in the series, who rarely has to worry about his well-being. He's just really strong without having to try. Sesshoumaru had already learned that he didn't need Tessaiga ages ago - he knew this when he learned that Inuyasha needed Tessaiga to keep from tearing himself apart eventually. But when he thought he had been passed down something from his father that was truly meant to be his, only to put all this work into it so that Inuyasha could have it, that embittered him again. It's not that he wanted the sword necessarily, but the thoughts and consideration of his father, who seemed to be putting everything he had into Inuyasha.

But his previous experiences protecting and considering someone (in some cases, multiple someones) weaker than him should have tipped him off. During the very battle in which he got his new arm and sword, he was actively helping those around him avoid Magatsuhi and keeping them close because he had a plan and the strength to carry it out. He was willing to take the extra step to protect Inuyasha and friends before trying to take care of Magatsuhi though, and that was the point. He put everyone else's needs ahead of his own, even Inuyasha's, and he did it without even thinking.

Toutousai just articulated what Sesshoumaru should have already intuitively known by that point. He never needed his father's heirlooms, the swords, his dad's power. They were unnecessary for him from the start. Inuyasha needed a leg up, because his own BODY could kill him after a while. But Sesshoumaru always had the capability of being great on his own. He just needed to finally separate his ego from who his father was and become his own person; stand on his own as a great youkai. While I don't agree with the execution, I can get behind the big lesson - don't rely on your daddy's wealth and influence to prop you up, and do the work to build a personality and identity of your own.

Which is ANOTHER reason why making Rin into a lover would be a thoughtless take. It would walk back Sesshoumaru's final lesson about being his own person apart from his father.

So, there you go. A comprehensive post regarding my take on Sesshoumaru's character development. I could add in a bit about Sesshoumaru coming to understand his father's consideration and the lengths he went to for the sake of protecting Inuyasha by having to give similar consideration to Rin, but I think this post is long enough, and that one statement on that aspect pretty much sums it up. Let me know if you would like me to elaborate on any of this, or if you would like to argue any of the points, I'm up for it. Might take me a minute to respond, mind you, but hopefully it won't take as long as it did to draft this behemoth.

Take care.

[fmdtaeyong]

like a rockstar : taeyong marketing breakdown

a headcanon & playlist on how titan’s taeyong is marketed as a product and brand.

headcanon

word count: 491 words, not counting the tvtropes quote.

a successful celebrity can’t exist without marketing. some celebrities are all marketing. ash, for one, wouldn’t be where he is today without bc entertainment’s well-oiled marketing machine painting him in a desirable light and smoothing out his rough edges into something shiny.

the image the name taeyong provokes now isn’t quite the one it would have provoked a few years ago. the role of maknae burdened ash’s image for years. a sense of brightness is expected of any idol, but the youngest of a group is expected to show it, even in a group like titan that has never been about bright concepts. whether that means being babied by the older members or having a certain underlying innocence to him.

when he went solo was when his image gravitated further away from being dictated by his place within a group. as he earned recognition for his own name (or rather, his own stage name) and got attention from a new crowd, he was able to pave a path that painted with the brush of an artist, a little less bound by preconceived notions about his role in titan. when the scandals stamped to his name went from fumbling over formalities and dating a well-loved actress to controversies less easily painted as endearing that came at the same time he began to present himself differently visually, bc had to bank on the leeway of an artist tinge to his image saving him.

ash has never been marketed as an ideal boyfriend. titan has that covered in the group already and an outed relationship before he’d begun to make a name for himself individually prevented that from being a rational path. some fans still fall into the trap of babying him, but overall, taeyong is now known as the more serious and reserved type. satisfactory fanservice is a non-starter, so they make their own fantasies out of his mystery and “edginess” and a brooding stage persona. bc has done damage control where they’ve had to and let his music and fan projections paint the rest.

out of all of the classic boy band member tropes, ash would solidly be considered a purveyor of the bad boy / rebel trope within titan and out of it for that matter. to quote tvtropes:

“the one with a rougher edge to him. he's the one wearing the black shirt and jeans or leather jacket in those videos where they're not all wearing matching clothes. if he's really edgy, he may also have a tattoo. put in to cater to those girls who want bad boys.”

 bc read the first two paragraphs of the tv tropes page for all girls want bad boys and said ‘yeah, this should work’. the bad boy / rebel angle tends to get played up within fandom a lot more than among more casual listeners to his music, who get a heavier dose of the ~artist~ part of his image since that’s meant to appeal to them more anyway.

ash has very purposefully been trying to lean more into the artist aspect of his image lately because he isn’t a fan of being painted as some kind of bad boy fantasy when he doesn’t consider that an accurate representation of him at all.

playlist

this playlist gives a semi-chronological cataloging of the image associated with taeyong since around 2016/2017. some parts of his image have remained consistent, while others have changed either by purposeful marketing, unavoidable consequences of media discussion around him, or simply altered fan narratives for him. some parts of this are less about how he’s marketed and more about very one-dimensional fan narratives crafted around him, but overall it gives an idea of the feeling associated with him as a product and brand. (some of these songs were used in image playlists on ash’s previous blog, but i made sure at least seven of these are new. i wanted to include ones i’d used before as well for a comprehensive look on his new blog since some aspects of his image have changed.)

this honestly also doubles as a list of the songs you’d find the most results for if you looked up taeyong fan edits.

i. death of a bachelor | i’m cutting my mind off, feels like my heart is going to burst / alone at a table for two, and i just wanna be served / and when you think of me, am i the best you've ever had?

ii. daydreamer | a jaw dropper / looks good when he walks / is the subject of their talk / he would be hard to chase / but good to catch / and he could change the world / with his hands behind his back, oh

iii. wildest dreams | he's so tall and handsome as hell / he's so bad, but he does it so well / i can see the end as it begins

iv. style | cause you got that james dean daydream look in your eye / and i got that red lip classic thing that you like / and when we go crashing down, we come back every time / cause we never go out of style, we never go out of style / you got that long hair, slicked back, white t-shirt / and i got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt

v. crazy beautiful | and he picks you up / and he sets you down / and that's the way / he thinks and he walks and he plays around downtown / but the truth is, he's still got a scar / as plain as others / to get his way to a scarlet heart

vi. ready for it...? | knew he was a killer first time that I saw him / wondered how many girls he had loved and left haunted / [...] / some boys are tryin' too hard, he don't try at all though / younger than my exes, but he act like such a man, so

vii. radio | now my life is sweet like cinnamon / like a fuckin' dream i'm livin' in / baby, love me 'cause i'm playing on the radio / how do you like me now?

viii. like i would | he, won't touch you like i do / he, won't love you like i would / he don't know your body / he don't do you right / he won't love you like i would / love you like i would, like i would

ix. i wanna be yours | secrets i have held in my heart / are harder to hide than i thought / maybe i just wanna be yours / i wanna be yours

x. strange love | they think i'm insane, they think my lover is strange / but i don't have to fucking tell them anything, anything / and i'm gonna write it all down, and i'm gonna sing it on stage / but i don't have to fucking tell you anything, anything

xi. my oh my | yeah, a little bit older, a black leather jacket / a bad reputation, insatiable habits / he was onto me, one look and i couldn't breathe, yeah / i said, if he kissed me, i might let it happen

xii. bad reputation | i don't give a damn 'bout my reputation / never been afraid of any deviation / and i don't really care if you think i'm strange / i ain't gonna change

xiii. starboy | i'm tryna put you in the worst mood, ah / p1 cleaner than your church shoes, ah / milli point two just to hurt you, ah / all red lamb' just to tease you, ah / none of these toys on lease too, ah / made your whole year in a week too, yah / main bitch out of your league too, ah / side bitch out of your league too, ah / [...] / look what you’ve done / i’m a motherfuckin' starboy

xiv. into it | i'm just fucking lucky i was born with it / a hundred million people couldn't deal with this

xv. like a rockstar | put me in designer then put me in the dirt / keep my legacy alive like a rockstar / lifestyle, on the edge, can be unforgiving / see i worship the dead, they worship the living, yeah

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/7/2020

I missed THE GOLDEN GLOVE at Fantastic Fest last year. It was one of my only regrets of the whole experience, but it was basically mandatory since the available screenings were opposite the much-hyped PARASITE. As annoying as that sounds, it was actually a major compliment, since what could possibly serve as a consolation prize for the most hotly anticipated movie of the year? Needless to say, I heard great things, but I could never have imagined what it was actually like. I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Between 1970 and 1975, an exceptionally depraved serial killer named Fritz Honka murdered at least four prostitutes in Hamburg's red light district. Today, we tend to think of the archetypal serial killer in terms of ironic contradictions: The public is attracted by Ted Bundy's dashing looks and suave manner, and John Wayne Gayce's dual careers as politician and party clown. Lacking anything so remarkable, we associate psychopathy with Norman Bates' boy-next-door charm, and repeat "It's always the quiet ones" with a smirk whenever a new Jeffrey Dahmer or Dennis Nilsen is exposed to the public. The popular conception of a bloodthirsty maniac is not the fairytale monster of yore, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, whose hygienic appearance and lifestyle belie his twisted desires. In our post-everything world, the ironic surprise has become the rule. In this light, THE GOLDEN GLOVE represents a refreshing return to naked truth.

To say that writer-director Fatih Akin's version of the Fritz Honka story is shocking, repulsive, and utterly degenerated would be a gross understatement. We first meet the killer frantically trying to dispose of a corpse in his filthy flat, wallpapered with porno pinups, strewn with broken toys, and virtually projecting smell lines off of the screen. One's sense of embodiment is oppressive, even claustrophobic, as the petite Honka tries and fails to collapse the full dead weight of a human corpse into a garbage bag, before giving up and dismembering it, with nearly equal difficulty. The scene is appalling, utterly debased, and yet nothing is as shocking as the killer's visage. When he finally turns to look into the camera, it's hard to believe he's even human: the rolling glass eye, the smashed and inflated nose, the tombstone teeth and cratered skin, are almost too extreme to bear. Actually, suffering from a touch of facial blindness, I had to stare intently at Honka's face for nearly half the movie before I could fully convince myself that I was, in fact, looking at an elaborate prosthetic operation used to transform 23 year old boy band candidate Jonas Dassler into the disfigured 35 year old serial murderer.

Though West Germany remained on a steady economic upturn beginning in the 1950s and throughout the 1970s, you wouldn't know it from THE GOLDEN GLOVE. If Honka's outsides match his insides, they are further matched by his stomping grounds in the Reeperbahn, a dirty, violent, booze-soaked repository for the dregs of humanity. Though its denizens may come from different walks of life, one thing is certain: Whoever winds up there, belongs there. Honka was the child of a communist and grew up in a concentration camp, yet he swills vodka side by side with an ex-SS officer, among other societal rejects, in a crumbling dive called The Golden Glove. The scene is an excellent source of hopeless prostitutes at the end of their career, who are Honka's prime victims, as he is too frightful-looking to ensnare an attractive young girl. These pitiful women all display a peculiarly hypnotic willingness to go along with Honka, no matter how sadistic he becomes; this seems to have less to do with money, which rarely comes up, and more to do with their shared awareness that for them, and for Honka too, it's been all over, for a long time.

Not to reduce someone’s performance to their physical appearance, but ???

To call Dassler's portrayal of Honka "sympathetic" would be a bridge too far, but it is undeniably compelling. He supports the startling impact of his facial prostheses with a performance of rare intensity, a full-body transformation into a person in so much pain that a normal life will never become an option. His physical vocabulary reminded me of the stage version of The Elephant Man, in which the lead actor wears no makeup, but conveys John Merrick's deformities using his body alone. Although there is an abundance of makeup in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, Dassler's silhouette and agonized movements would be recognizable from a mile away. In spite of his near-constant screaming rage, the actor manages to craft a rich and convincing persona. During a chapter in which Honka experiments with sobriety, we find a stunning image of him hunched in the corner of his ordinarily chaotic flat, now deathly still, his eyes gazing at nothing as cigarette smoke seeps from his pores, having no idea what to do with himself when he isn't in a rolling alcoholic rampage. The moment is brief but haunting in its contrast to the rest of the film, having everything to do with Dassler's quietly vibrating anxiety.

Performances are roundly excellent here, not that least of which are from Honka's victims. The cast of middle-aged actresses looking their most disastrous is hugely responsible for the film's impact. These are the kinds of performances people call "brave", which is a euphemism for making audiences uncomfortable with an uncompromising presentation of one's own self, unvarnished by any masturbatory solicitation. Among these women is Margarete Tiesel, herself no stranger to difficult cinema: She was the star of 2012's PARADISE: LOVE, a harrowing drama about a woman who copes with her midlife crisis by pursuing sex tourism in Kenya. Her brilliant, instinctive performance as one of Honka's only survivors--though she nearly meets a fate worse than death--makes her the leading lady of a movie that was never meant to have one.

So, what does all this unpleasantness add up to, you might be asking? It's hard to say. THE GOLDEN GLOVE is a film of enormous power, but it can be difficult to explain what the point of it is, in a world where most people feel that the purpose of art is to produce some form of pleasure. This is the challenge faced by difficult movies throughout history, like THE GOLDEN GLOVE's obvious ancestors, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, MANIAC and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Describing unremitting cruelty with relentless realism is not considered a worthy endeavor by many, even if there is real artistry in your execution; some people will even mistake you for advocating and enjoying violence and despair, as we live in a world where huge amount of movie and TV production is devoted to aspirational subjects. (The fact that people won't turn away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, no matter how monotonous and condescending they become, should tell you something) How do you justify to such people, that you want to make or see work that portrays ugliness and evil with as much commitment as other movies seek to portray love, beauty, and family values? Why isn't it enough to say that these things exist, and their existence alone makes them worth contemplation?

A rare, perhaps exclusive “beautiful image” in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, from Fritz Honka’s absurd fantasies.

You may detect that I have attempted to have this frustrating conversation with many people, strangers, enemies, and friends I love and respect. I find that for some, it is simply too hard to divorce themselves from the pleasure principle. I don't say this to demean them; some hold the philosophy that art be reserved for beauty, and others have a more literary feeling that it's ok to show characters in grim circumstances, as long as the ultimate goal is to uplift the human spirit. Even I draw the line somewhere; I appreciate the punk rebellion of Troma movies as a cultural force, but I do not enjoy watching them, because I dislike what I perceive as contempt for the audience and the aestheticization of laziness--making something shitty more or less on purpose. A step or three up from that, you land in Todd Solondz territory, where you find materially gorgeous movies whose explicit statement is that our collective reverence for a quality called "humanity" is based on nothing. I like some of those movies, and sometimes I even like them when I don't like them, because I'm entranced by Solondz's technical proficiency...and maybe, deep down, I'm not completely convinced about "humanity", either. However, I don't fight very hard in arguments about him; I understand the objections. Still, I've been surprised by peers who I think of as bright and tasteful, who absolutely hated movies I thought were unassailable, like OLDBOY and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. In both cases, the ultimate objection was that they accuse humans of being pretentious and self-deceptive, aspiring to heroism or bemoaning their victimhood while wallowing in their own cowardice and perversity. Ok, I get it...but, not really. Why isn't it ever wholly acceptable to discuss, honestly, what we do not like about ourselves?

The beguiling thing about THE GOLDEN GLOVE is that, although it is instantly horrifying, is it also an impeccable production. The director can't help showing you crime scene photos during the ending credits, and I can't really blame him, when his crew worked so hard to bring us a vision of Fritz Honka's world that approaches virtual reality. But it isn't just slavishly realistic; it is vivid, immersive, an experience of total sensory overload. Not a square inch of this movie has been left to chance, and the product of all this graceful control is totally spellbinding. I started to think to myself that, when you've achieved this level of artifice, what really differentiates a movie like THE GOLDEN GLOVE from something like THE RED SHOES? I mean, aside from their obvious narrative differences. Both films plunge the viewer into a world that is complete beyond imagination, crafted with a rigor and sincerity that is rarely paralleled. And, I will dare to say, both films penetrate to the depths of the human soul. What Fatih Akin finds there is not the same as what Powell and Pressburger found, of course, but I don't think that makes it any less real. Akin's film is adapted from a novel by Heinz Strunk, and apparently, some critics have accused Akin of leaving behind the depth and nuance of the book, to focus instead on all that is gruesome about it. This may be true, on some level; I wouldn't know. For now, I can only insist that on watching THE GOLDEN GLOVE, for all its grotesquerie, I still got the message.

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Something I noticed about powers and inheritance, at least as seen in canon...a boy born to a Fairy or Witch mother and a Hero father is usually a Hero, while a girl is usually a fairy or a witch (like her mother). Meanwhile, a Fairy/Wizard or Witch/Wizard pairing will have their children be either a fairy, a witch, and/or a wizard. There are technically male fairies (in Magical Adventure) but they didn't go into detail about it. Can girls be anything other than a witch or fairy? (Part 1)

Is wizard an option for girls? Conversely, can boys be fairies or witches? How does Wizard culture work in your AU? (Part 2)

I've spoken a few times about the gender thing re:witch|wizard|fairy|hero division, so I'll just quote myself real quick:

Gender is nothing more than a statistical average when it comes to the divide between (Witches and Fairies) and Wizards. Wizards are more likely to be male, Witches and Fairies are more likely to be female, but there’s always a (very) small percentage of female Wizards and male Fairies and Witches.

Despite appearance, the division of Fairies&Witches and Wizards is not a gender based one.

Though female Heroes are more commonly seen, male Fairies&Witches, as well as female Wizards do still occur.

^ This is actually why I try to use gender neutral pronouns when talking about fairies and witches in general terms.

Also because I headcanon a percentage of trans men and women as well as non-binary individuals exist within the various Fairy|Witch|Wizard|Hero classes, in addition to the 'statistically unlikely' cis-gendered individuals mentioned above, because Winx Club in the early days had a feel of gender non-conformity. I will never be convinced Palladium wasn't a gay trans man.

I'm never sure if that aspect of the ratio is something I should bring up, because it's not something I had plans to bring to the foreground, or even really look out outside of that one blink and miss it mention in the Alt Con that Palladium is trans, so it always feels like if I did bring it up, it would come across as cheap lip-service done for 'wokeness' brownie points.

I think the inheritance thing might be a little but about 'following in my parent's footsteps'...

[Warning, major tangent below, I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore:]

But let's talk canon and get a bit meta for a few minutes:

Within canon there is a 'lens of focus', if you will. Writers may know this as 'third person limited POV', where we the audience are focused on a certain character, or several characters as is the case of Winx Club, and though we get to see more of the goings on of the universe than they do, we're limited to the parts which are relevant to the main characters and their story.

With Winx Club, it's a story about girls who are fairies. In their story, fairies are the top of the food chain of awesomeness, and the narrative is set up to support a “girl power” theme.

Boys are love interests, male love interests in fantasy series are typically knights in shining armour, in the Winx Universe, that translates to Heroes.

The primary villains are often a warped reflection of the main characters, thus, the Trix are young ladies who happen to be powerful witches.

This is the foundation of the Winx Club Universe as we know it, as we are shown it.

Further, because the show is half about the show and half about selling toys, it tends to ingrain certain idea into itself. (This is where (I feel) the 'degradation of quality' in the later seasons comes from, the doubling down of the focus on the 'target audience' and pushing characters further and neater into their divisions and labels.)

The idea that this (gender bias) is normal and perpetuates the whole of their Universe is enforced, but I don't believe it's 100% the case.

It can't be.

Our own world has shown that diversity and exceptions to the rules happen, only a very controlled artificial system would experience otherwise, and only if it doesn't grow.

Our view of the Winx Universe is limited by what the characters see and do and know, so we're forced to make assumptions on what is and isn't a regular occurrence, but we're also limited by censorship.

The Show itself has a “target audience”, regardless of who's actually enjoying it, and there are guidelines in various countries on what is and is not appropriate for various audiences.

The assumed target audience is very young girls, you can see the way the studio really doubled down on that in later seasons, the Winx became more feminine and uniform, the villains became more cartoonish (as in dumber and foolish as often seen in children's Saturday morning cartoons), even the art style of season 8 gives the Winx a younger and more girlish appearance.

All of this goes back into the reinforcement of gender based divisions, this gender means this label.

Boys are heroes, or maybe once in a blue moon a wizard, good girls are fairies and bad girls are witches.

There are exceptions, Diaspro is a 'bad girl' and she's a fairy, they tried to give Icy (a witch and known bad girl) a tragic backstory redemption in season 8, which is concerning for entirely different reasons. (Also I believe Selena, unlike Mirta, remained a witch despite 'being good now'?)

The point is: The show sets up certain alignments, If you are A+B then you must be C.

But That's just what we see at around the edges of the story the Winx Club are experiencing, and we see a lot to enforce that idea, but lack evidence of is not proof of a negative.

If that last part made no sense: “I don't believe in ghosts because there's no real evidence they exist,” despite the lack of evidence other people do believe in ghosts, no matter how much 'null' evidence someone gathers, they can never prove that ghosts absolutely 100% Do Not exist because they are a non-observable phenomenon, there lack of appearance does not prove their lack of existence. Conversely: “I think that hay bale is on fire” can be proven or disproven by the lack of fire, because 'on fire' and 'not on fire' are both observable state which chance the existence of whether or not there is fire.

“There are only female fairies and witches, and only male heroes and wizards”.

No, we've only seen the divisions and ratios in this manner, but what we've observed is a very limited view of the Universe in which the Winx live, and Does Not take into account how limited their view makes even the background of their story that we do see, or the fact that gender or more than whether or not you have certain body parts.

A Very Large portion of that Universe is Unobserved therefore we cannot offer Observed Evidence of any kind.

And Further:

FanFiction

We control the multiverse now.

[christabelq]

REVIEW OF...

DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT: THE GREAT SHORT FICTION OF TANITH LEE

I’ve never read a Tanith Lee book that I didn’t like and this was no exception. It’s a retrospective of her first ten years as a writer and contains twenty-three short stories. They all fall under the heading of fantasy, horror or science fiction, yet no two are alike, and even when the subject is familiar (e.g. vampires), she manages to come up with a completely fresh take on it. The prose is wonderful as well – highly descriptive, but with an almost musical quality. There really isn’t anyone else who writes like her. I have to confess, as a would-be writer myself, she leaves me a little in awe.

Some of the stories in the book are based in the past, some in the present and some in the future, but they all have a timeless feel to them. They are filled with evocative images that remain with you long after you have finished reading and characters who are both memorable and well-rounded. When I think about them now, it almost feels like I didn’t read them, but they were actually dreams… voyages into an infinitely inventive imagination. It would be too ambitious to try and cover them all in this review, so I’m just going to focus on a few favorites. BITE-ME-NOT / FLEUR DE FUR This is a story that often appears in anthologies and is a great introduction to Lee’s work, because it includes many of her hallmarks – an original premise, a timeless fairy-tale quality, striking imagery, beautiful use of language, etc. It is about winged vampires who hunt the skies like birds of prey. These vampires have an angelic beauty and sing hauntingly as they fly, but are driven by instinct alone and have little capacity for thought. They live in a remote land and have laid siege to a castle, desperate to feed on the blood of the inhabitants. The castle is securely locked up at night, but this only makes them more determined to get inside, and one night, their prince manages it. Unfortunately for him he is wounded in a fight with a menagerie lion and captured. Meanwhile, the Duke who owns the castle has come across a servant who bears a striking resemblance to his dead daughter. He believes his daughter has somehow returned to him and adopts her as his own. Then she encounters the prince of the vampires and falls in love with him, but this is Tanith Lee, so don’t expect a conventional happy ever after love story. This really is a great story which stays with you long after you have finished it. The characterization is good and it has some nice twists. The themes include love, family, secrets, beauty and power. Definitely a highlight of the collection. A DAY IN THE SKIN I’ve picked this story out, because it is the first science fiction one and has a very different tone to BITE-ME-NOT. It is set on a planet occupied by colonists from Earth. A terrible accident has killed off most of the inhabitants, but the technology exists to keep their souls in storage and an arrangement has been in put in place that allows them to take turns inhabiting the few surviving bodies. The actual owners of the bodies are displaced and have to take turns along with everyone else, and the story is narrated by one of them as he is placed into the body of a woman for a day and meets one of his friends in the body of man. It’s a fascinating concept and Lee handles it well. She does a good job of getting into the head of the main character and does some nice world-building. The themes here include friendship, freedom, technology and survival. I didn’t like the story as much as BITE-ME-NOT, but it definitely shows the author’s versatility. A LYNX WITH LIONS This story, which I think may have been original to the anthology, is a second adventure of the character Cyrion, who appears earlier in CYRION IN WAX and in other stories not included in the collection. This time, Cyrion has gone to the aid of the leader of a tribe of nomads who used to be his mentor. The leader tells him he believes his son is planning to murder him, but as Cyrion quickly discovers, there is more to the situation than meets the eye. It is a tale of magic and demons with an Arabian Nights feel to it which I really enjoyed and which suits Lee’s writing style very well. Lee skillfully brings the world of the nomads to life and really keeps you on the edge of your seat with the twists and turns. Otherness is a key theme here, along with power, loyalty, truth and religion. MAGRITTE’S SECRET AGENT This is one of the few stories in the book with a contemporary setting. It is told in the first person and is about an art student who becomes infatuated with a man in a wheelchair after his mom brings him into the shop where she is working to collect an order. The order isn’t ready, so she offers to deliver it to their house, so she can see the man again. She finds out he is unable to care for himself, but can’t get him out of her head and comes up with another excuse to visit him. His mom then tells her a strange story about his conception, which gives her the idea that he might like to see the ocean. His mom is resistant to the idea, but she takes him anyway. I won’t tell you what happens next, as I don’t want to spoil the ending. The story is named after a real Magritte painting, which is used a framing device and ties in nicely with the surrealist narrative. The writing is wonderful as always and the characters felt very real. Things I especially enjoyed were the way the narrator’s growing obsession with the man in the wheelchair is dealt with and the way the fantastical slowly encroaches on reality. MEDRA This is another science fiction story, but the fairy tale quality that Lee is so good at is much more in evidence than in A Day in the Skin. It takes place in a partly ruined city on a planet that has been abandoned by everyone except the title character, who lives on the 89th floor of a luxurious hotel. The hotel is entirely automated and Medra never leaves it, spending most of her time projecting her consciousness out across space. Then one day, she is visited by an adventurer, who is searching for a powerful war machine. The two fall in love and make plans to leave together, only to find that Medra cannot go. It’s a bitter sweet story about love and duty, which really makes you feel for the main character who has everything she needs to survive, but is consigned to a life of perpetual loneliness. The idea of her living alone at the top of a hotel very much put me in mind of Rapunzel, though unlike Rapunzel, Medra is not rescued from her fate by the hero. The story has a dreamlike narrative which immediately pulls you in, but only gradually yields its secrets. The world building is excellent too. There is just the right amount of detail and images like the abandoned city, the skeletal birds and the hotel with its wedding cake architecture and climbing lizards are among the most memorable in the whole book. All in all it’s a story I would highly recommend. NUNC DIMITTIS I wanted to talk about this one because it’s another vampire story, yet completely different from BITE-ME-NOT. It’s about the human servant of an ancient vampire who finds he is close to death and sets out to find someone to replace him. He goes to a café for a drink and as he leaves a young man attempts to rob him. The man is just the kind of person he is looking for – handsome and strong – so he overpowers him and takes him to meet his mistress. The changing of the guard then begins. The aristocratic vampire in this story is very much in the traditional vein and is even called Darejan Draculas in a tip of the hat to the famous count. It is beautifully written (as usual) and although you anticipate the ending, it keeps you guessing about how it is going to get there. Some of the ideas are reminiscent of the novel LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (and its two movie adaptations), though I have no idea if this is just coincidence or if Lee’s story was an influence. Personally I don’t think this story is as good as BITE-ME-NOT, but I do feel it shows how good Lee was at finding different ways to explore a theme. SOUTHERN LIGHTS If I had to choose a favorite story in the collection, this is probably the one I would go with (after a lot of deliberation). It takes place in a quasi-historical land and is about a woman called Jaisel, who rather than becoming a wife and/or mother as society expects, has chosen a life as a wandering warrior. She likes the freedom, but it is a lonely existence and she often has to put up with being jeered and spat at. One evening, as she is travelling through some mountains in winter, she decides to seek shelter in a convenient town. The gates have been locked for the night, but she is able to bribe her way inside. As she wanders the streets looking for an inn, she meets a girl who has come to collect water from a well. She fills the girl’s buckets for her and carries them back to her house, hoping she might be able to stay with her for the night. The girl invites her in to meet her father, a blind alchemist who specializes in making clockwork devices, and they agree to let Jaisel stay with them. Then as the girl shows Jaisal to her room, she propositions her. Jaisal thinks the girl has mistaken her for a man and tells her she isn’t, but the girl says, “What does it matter? Love is love?” Jaisel is attracted to her, but suspects (rightly) that things are not quite as they seem. There are lots of things I love about this story – the atmosphere, the air of mystery, the pacing, the clockwork toys and automatons. It’s the characters and their interaction that really caught my attention, though. Jaisal was my favorite, as I love to see strong female characters defying the constraints of a patriarchy, but the alchemist was great too – quirky and a little sinister. I was kind of disappointed that the attraction between Jaisal and the girl didn’t lead anywhere, but can understand why that wouldn’t have worked in the context of the story and felt it was very nicely handled. The themes here include otherness, loneliness, love, family and the concept of life. It’s a story I will certainly remember and heartily recommend. WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES I’ve mentioned a few times how a lot of the stories in this collection have a fairy tale quality to them; this one actually reimagines a fairy tale, namely CINDERELLA. The Cinderella character (who refers to herself as Ashrella) is the daughter of a witch who is attempting to use magic to take revenge on the ruling Duke for murdering her family in his rise to power. Ashrella aids her mother in this and when her mother commits suicide to evade punishment for witchcraft, continues the work in her place. Ashrella’s father remarries and it is the introduction of the stepmother and her two daughters which first alerts us to the CINDERELLA connection. When she reaches the age of seventeen, Ashrella succeeds in killing the Duke and his son replaces him. The famous ball takes place in honor of the prince’s birthday as in CINDERELLA, but the outcome is somewhat different. It’s an intriguing story which subverts the traditional tropes of the fairy tale. Gone is the goody two-shoes heroine who needs to be rescued from a downtrodden existence by a fairy godmother and ends up being swept off her feet the handsome prince, replaced by a powerful woman of action who is seen to be in control of her own destiny and achieves everything she sets out to. This is not to say that she is entirely likeable, however; she very much loses our sympathies when she punishes the virtuous prince for the sins of his father. All the characters in this story are morally complex, rather than being either good or bad, and no one lives happily ever after. If you like reinterpretations of fairy tales then this really is essential reading. WOLFLAND This story really put me in mind of Angela Carter’s collection, THE BLOODY CHAMBER. It is about a girl called Lisel who receives a summons to visit her fabulously rich grandmother. Lisel hasn’t been in her grandmother’s presence since the day of her birth and doesn’t want to go, but agrees because she hopes to inherit her grandmother’s wealth. She puts on a hooded cloak of scarlet velvet (in true Red Riding Hood style) and sets out for her grandmother’s chateau with some of her father’s servants. They are intercepted on the road by two of her grandmother’s servants, who insist that she dismiss her father’s servants and travel the rest of the way with them. Wolves run alongside their carriage as they go, but they make it safely to the chateau. Understandably the encounter with the wolves makes Lisel uneasy and her uneasiness grows as she starts to spend time with her grandmother, who is not only eccentric, but as it turns out, is hiding a dark secret. I won’t tell you what this secret is, though I may have given it away with the references to Angela Carter and Red Riding Hood. Instead let me tell you what I like about the story. The imagery is great as always (the wintery landscape, the isolated chateau) and the characters are memorable, especially the grandmother and her beautiful dwarf servant. Again, it reads like a fairy tale, but like WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES very much subverts the genre. The grandmother is a strong woman who has managed to find a way to escape an abusive marriage and we very much get the sense that Lisel is cut from the same cloth. Spoiler alert – they do not get eaten by the wolves and no rescuing huntsmen is required. If you’re a fan of THE BLOODY CHAMBER like me, then you are definitely going to enjoy this story. *** That’s all the stories I’m going to talk about, though to be honest I find it hard to stop, as there were things I enjoyed about all of them. What’s great about this book is you don’t have to read it all in one go, but can just dip in and out of it. That wasn’t what I did, mind you – once I’d started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. My only real criticism is I don’t think the book is very well-structured, which is obviously the editor’s fault, as opposed to Tanith Lee’s. The stories are simply set out in alphabetical order, which seems a bit random. It also means BECAUSE OUR SKINS ARE FINER is placed at the beginning, when I personally feel it isn’t one of the strongest stories and doesn’t do a very good job of drawing you in. Perhaps it would have been better for the stories to have been chronological, so we could follow Lee’s development as a writer, or for there to have been some kind of thematic grouping. It certainly didn’t spoil my enjoyment of it – it just seems like it could have been better thought out. Anyway I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that my final conclusion is this is a book I would definitely recommend.

[oliverpdaniel]

Let’s talk about casual homophobia.

I wanted to share a transcript of a TikTok video by a minor celebrity (I won't do them the honour of identifying them, but suffice it to say that this individual thrives mostly on controversy and poor publicity), to demonstrate what day-to-day homophobic language looks like. Many of these questions have been asked to me, or tell of real things that I've experienced, due to a generally callous view of queer folks. The quoted parts are the actual video, the unquoted responses mine.

Note in advance that some of these questions are clearly oriented towards gay men, but I am responding from the perspective of a bisexual man. Anyway...

"Okay, these are my questions for the gays – sorry, I was on Straight TikTok for a minute; what?"

Or, as you might like to call it, TikTok. For those unfamiliar, "Gay TikTok" is a small subset of the TikTok community that makes videos primarily revolving around in-jokes and shared experiences of the queer community. Thus, "Straight TikTok" is only extant in contrast, a joking reference to certain, overwhelmingly heteronormative parts of the TikTok community. While I'm not a big fan of the idea of 'ownership' or deciding who's allowed to say what, this (obnoxiously straight, in every sense of the word 'obnoxious') celebrity is trying somewhat unceremoniously to insert themselves into a narrative not their own here. Not off to a great start.

(1) "Would you care if your partner was bisexual?"

Whelp, this is one I can't really answer, can I? But, this still does lean into the old "gold-star" ideology of homosexuality, which makes it off-putting from the jump. For those unfamiliar, a "gold star" gay/lesbian is one who has never had sex with the opposite gender. This is a completely silly distinction, that fails to take into account personal circumstances, as well as – y'know – the fluid nature of human sexuality. TL;DR, even if you're exclusively into one gender, you shouldn't care about your partner's sexual orientation (other than, y'know, making sure it includes your gender) because, leaving aside the absolutely rad underworld of polyamory, they're only going to be into you while they're with you.

(2) "Have you ever been with someone of the opposite gender?"

Ah, more gold-starring! A great way to start. "You're trans? What's your deadname?"

(3) "Do you take offence when a girl calls you her Gay Best Friend?"

The Gay Best Friend is an expendable, non-threatening fount of femininity in masculine form, someone to go clothes-shopping with and who will give you sassy advice on boys. God forbid, however, that the Gay Best Friend try to be vulnerable with you about the difficulties of LGBTQIA+ life; they're only there for sashaying and making out with at parties, right? The Gay Best Friend is an incredibly harmful notion to men on both sides of the sexuality spectrum. Gay (and ESPECIALLY bi/pan/poly) men already know to fear the label, because of the dismissive treatment and expectation of performative homosexuality that comes along with it. Straight men should fight against it, too, because it's a symptom of the present hegemony of heterosexual relationships, which revolves around sexual transactionalism and a healthy dose of gender-role-fuelled intimidation[1]. (If you've never heard any of those words, you're probably the target audience here.)

(4) "Be honest – how many times has a straight person tried to hook you up with a gay person based solely on the fact that they're gay and no other compatibility requirements?" (with a devilish smile, into full blown "oh guuuuuurl" laughter)

This is a real thing that happens to people, myself included, all too frequently. It tells us that when you look at me, you don't think "Oliver", you think "Gay", and next time you meet another gay guy, that's the word ringing through your head. It's not funny. It's hurtful. If you're going to recommend a partner to me, make sure you actually have faith in a connection forming. As someone who ended up in an abusive relationship as a result of overzealous matchmaking, it's not something to be taken lightly; relationships, especially gay relationships and all the societal friction they inevitably entail, are not here for your endearment.

(5) "Are you down to hook up with someone who's 'just curious'?"

MORE gold-starring! God, could you imagine the uproar if a lesbian approached a straight person and said that they "missed dick" and/or wanted to experiment!? Oh, wait, that's already common in straight porn to the point of cliché. Gag; and not the good kind of gag.

(6) "Do you proudly wear the rainbow flag, or are you kinda against it because it kinda segregates?"

...what? When I first found this video, it was being duetted (TikTok's side-by-side video response) by a queer person, and at this point they took the opportunity to say, "I don't like you." I echo the sentiment.

(7) "Are you a 'yaaaaaas kweeeeen' gay or are you, like, 'fuck that shit what the fuck?'"

WE ARE NOT HERE TO PERFORM QUEERNESS FOR YOU. Leaving aside the sociolinguistic aspects of queer language and its intersection with (read: theft from) African-American Vernacular English, if people want to act flamboyantly gay, THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If people want to act "normal" (read: heteronormatively!!!), that's NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS. Queer people are fucking people, they act differently in different scenarios, and it's not for you to fetishize or to find "too much sometimes". When you accept a queer person into your life, you're accepting every facet of them into your life, for them to live and love unapologetically – not just the parts you find entertaining.

(8) "This might be a dealbreaker for me: do you like musical theatre?"

Yes. But even if I didn't – if I liked drinking beer and watching Nascar (sorry dad), but wish I had a boyfriend to do that with, guess what? That's my own fucking business. And, again, if your idea of a "dealbreaker" when engaging with a gay person is whether or not they like musical theatre – probably one of the most tired stereotypes about gay folks – and not, I dunno, if they're fun to be around and respect your boundaries and opinions, then maybe you're not looking for a gay friend for the right reason.

(9) "Be honest – do you still go through the Chick-Fil-A drivethrough and get that spicy chicken sandwich or those nuggies?" (big, face-scrunching smile.)

This is the one that REALLY got me. This displays just how tone-deaf this person is and how deeply they've objectified the concept of homosexuality for themselves. Chick-Fil-A is a massively homophobic organization from the top down, and they donate millions to organizations that want to bring into question my very right to exist, morally and legally.

As a straight person not affected by these issues, it's easy to say "well, I know I /shouldn't/ go to Chick-Fil-A because of the 'gay stuff', but oh IT'S SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD!". It's easy to momentarily forget one's morality because hey, it's not like you're directly hurting anyone, right? But, as a queer person who has to walk by the brand-new Chick-Fil-A at Yonge and Bloor every day on my walk to class, seeing the lines wrapping around the block lets me take direct measure of who, and how many, are willing to forget about me for just long enough to enjoy a fucking chicken sandwich. Go literally anywhere else. Eating at Chick-Fil-A is a choice, and it's a choice that informs me that you care less about my right to live than your own personal enjoyment.

(10) "Do you get upset when they have straight actors portray gay characters?"

This is a whole other debate, so I'm not going to get into the actual subject matter of this question. But hey – maybe, in an industry literally overrun with queer people, maybe we can stop converting a significant and pernicious problem in entertainment into a cutesy debate topic? Something really tells me that this person isn't going to start whipping out the intersectional feminist literature to explain their argument here. In all likelihood, it'll sound more along the lines of "but Eddie Redmayne looked so GOOD in that dress!"

(11) "And what's the GAYEST thing about you?'

Nope. Shut up and choke. I hate you.

Never tell me for a second that homophobia is "over" in Canada/the West/wherever. Never tell me that it's a distant issue, remaining only in far-off religious backwaters. This is what it can look like. Fetishization; dismissal; turning struggles for human dignity into pseudo-intellectual debates.

I'm not here to be your Gay Best Friend.

I'm not here to date your new gay acquaintance.

I'm not here to repeatedly explain to you my need to have rights.

I'm here for the same reasons you are.

I want to live and love, not to be treated like a toy.

Footnotes

[1] Okay, I'm obviously not saying that all straight relationships are built around sexual transactionalism and intimidation, nor am I saying that non-comphet relationships are not. But, in my experience as a reformed Gay Best Friend who has had to provide counsel to cishet friends over some INFURIATINGLY stupid relationship/courting issues, I would argue that a full ninety percent of them could be resolved if the experiencer simply viewed their partner/interlocutor/'tyng' as another human being, rather than being from the mysterious species that is The Opposite Gender.

[levelstory]

Music Reflection I, The Cringe is Real

The other day, my mother made a comment to me that there really is no sense that can bring back memories quite like your sense of smell. I agreed with her, but commented that sound and music may be tied for that ranking. Smell certainly brings me back to certain moments of my life, in ways I can't always explain to myself. But music brings back memories in a different kind of way. Songs are attached to specific thoughts and actions, to who I was at the time of listening. 

I thought it could be fun to revisit some of these songs from the past and talk about my feelings toward them, then and now. I imagine this will be a series of blogs so you can always look forward to more...

No Strings Attached by NSYNC

One of the most loaded questions you could ask a nine year old girl in the '90s was: do you prefer the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC? I was a hardcore Backstreet Boys listener. I owned all of their albums (except Millenium which was a damn shame) and listened to them rigorously, practicing for dance recitals next to "Quit Playing Games with My Heart" and making up dance moves to "As Long as You Love Me" and "Get Down." When my brother received the Chapter One album for his birthday, our home videos show my face sink into a pit of jealousy that he got the album instead of me. We even had Backstreet Boy action figures from Burger King which I am sure can be found somewhere in our basement to this very day, as well as a poster that had a button that when pressed would play a clip from "Don't Want You Back." 

I had an intense loyalty toward them, for reasons that are very unclear to me as I never outright disliked NSYNC's music. I heard them enough at the skating rink and at birthday parties. For some reason, all I can remember is disliking their look compared to BSB. Both groups were distinct in this regard, and I very much clung to the group I had spent most of my elementary career listening to on repeat.

One of the cool toys in the late '90s, early 2000s was called HitClips, little cartridges that would play 30 second clips of songs from popular artists like Britney Spears, Hanson, and of course BSB and NSYNC. I remember a girl in my fifth grade class bringing her hit clips in and being nice enough to let me borrow them and bring them home. Of course some of them were NSYNC and I remember replaying "Bye Bye Bye" and "It's Gonna Be Me" over and over, aching to listen to the full tracks. Shortly after returning them, I imagine I got my mom to take me to Target (which was my go to music store at the time) and used my allowance money to purchase the NSYNC album, No Strings Attached.

There are so many memories I attach to listening to this album. I had just gotten my very first desk for my bedroom and I remember my boom box sitting at the back of the desk where I would pop in CD's and cassette tapes. This was also around the time my room was painted from plain white to a soft pink. One of my best friends at the time also owned this album. Her father owned a camper that sat in their driveway, and we would sit inside with her stereo and listen to music while we pretended to be camping far away from our suburban reality.

"No Strings Attached," the titular song in which the album was named, was not always a favorite of mine. At first it was the well known tracks that held my interest before I gave the rest of the album a chance. Songs like "Space Cowboy," "Digital Get Down," and "That's When I'll Stop Loving You" were tracks I came to love later, along with "No Strings Attached." The song is one that so easily gets stuck in my head (along with "Just Got Paid"). Once I hear it, I can't unhear it for some hours and I find myself humming it throughout the day. More than anything, this track in particular seems to be the most nostalgic. Whereas songs like "Bye Bye Bye" and "This I Promise You" I have returned to regularly throughout my life, "No Strings Attached" is one that I love all the more because it isn't one I necessarily return to all that often, and in that way it feels rare and distant, and therefore nostalgic.

Listening to this track with the modern ear does not do it any favors. Sure it sounds good, if not a bit chaotic like much of this album, but the lyrics lean toward the "nice guy" narrative which I am so over in 2019. I appreciate it from a distant, but can't say it has aged particularly well. NSYNC sing to this supposed lady that they want to have a relationship with her, with no preconceived expectations, or no strings attached, unlike the guy she is currently with who doesn't pay her any attention or return her calls. It all feels very '90s...and if I am being honest, returning to the '90s is one of the main reasons I return to these tracks. While I can't give it too much credit, I won't deny that it is a banger to listen to and enjoy. No Strings Attached remains one of my favorite albums from the ‘90s.

Why Not? by Hilary Duff

As a teen, I never really got on the Hilary Duff / Lizzie McGuire train. For reasons that are way too dense and difficult to unpack here, I really disliked the live action Disney "sitcoms" as a kid. Many of my friends watched and enjoyed them, while I hated them. So when the Lizzie McGuire movie came out to theaters, it was the last thing I wanted to see. Yet I did end up seeing it...at least, I feel like I saw it in theaters. I don't remember who convinced me to see it or why I gave in to my dislike, but I did see it. I also remember being at a friends house and she wanted to watch the DVD while I adamantly didn't and it caused a bit of a rift between us for a few hours. We got over it of course, and to go into all of that would be another tangent so I shall move ahead.

My friend who loved the show bought the movie soundtrack and we listened to it constantly. I remember sleeping over her house and making up dances, jumping on the bed, and running around like crazy kids with a ton of energy tend to do. "Why Not?" was my favorite song from the Lizzie McGuire soundtrack. I remember I loved Hilary Duff's voice, and was convinced that my own voice was almost identical to hers. I have a distinct memory of sitting at my bedroom window and singing her music to myself, carefully measuring my voice and making sure I sang just like she would.

This song was heavily marketed upon the release of the Lizzie McGuire movie. The music video was on TV all the time. In many ways it fit very well with the film's core themes - why not take chances? Why not do the thing you are most afraid of? If you don't take the chance, you may never have the opportunity to do so again. The lyrics are a mixed bag. One line that I never grow tired of is, "you always dress in yellow, when you want to dress in gold, instead of listening to your heart, you do just what you're told." It is certainly not a lyric that contains much depth and I assure you it isn't the message of the lyrics that have always captured me, but rather how they bounce and flow and how effortlessly Duff approaches them. It is a portion of the song that I always enjoy. 

The bridge, like most pop songs, is tragically boring. I enjoy Duff's humming (is that the word for what she does immediately after the bridge? What would you even call that?) but then the lyrics move toward the point where the song writers must have been on a time crunch saying, "You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA, if you don't believe there's a way." This lyric caught me off guard recently because I never really thought about it before but I just find it funny that the song talks about going to heaven, something that contains so much religious meaning and cultural significance, and then immediately puts going to LA on the same scale. Like, you'll never escape eternal damnation if you don't take chances, but you might also not make it to LA where you could become famous...yes, those are equally important. Sure I knew the song was generic, but my god it just drops into the absurd and pitiful by the bridge. 

Despite this, I still really enjoy the song. It isn't perfect but it speaks to a particular time of my life and I enjoy the memories associated with it. 

I'm With You by Avril Lavigne

Avril Lavigne's album "Let Go" was a big deal when it came out. It has a distinct place in my memory, coming out the year I moved into a new house, went to a new school, and started entering my teenage years. This was a time when burning CD's was still considered legal and so I never actually owned the album. My cousins burned the album on a CD for me, and I made a cover in Microsoft Word compiled of the album name made in Word Art and pixelated images of Lavigne scattered about. At the time, I thought my album cover looked really cool. 

"Let Go" was released around the same time Lizzie McGuire was on the rise, but unlike Hilary Duff and the Disney Channel, Lavigne made us 12 year olds feel like we were listening to adult music. Listening to this album felt hardcore at the time. It was low key grunge music, with themes and ideas far more sanitized than we knew.

I can remember a friend I made at my new school and going to her house where we listened to Avril Lavigne, rocking out to "Sk8ter Boi" and playing air guitar along with "Complicated." But "I'm With You" took on a much darker tone than either of these songs, and used a word that was off limits, "damn." There is a home video we have, which I believed I tried to tape over and remove from existence in case of blackmail, where I filmed myself singing the song and every time Lavigne belts, "It's a damn cold night!", I would fall silent at the "damn" and not say anything at all, for fear of being heard by my parents.

I can't say Lavigne's album has aged all too well. It isn't horrible but it is also nowhere near as good as we believed. Full of angst and "edgy" guitar, it definitely remains a product of its time. What is strange is that Lavigne's album is not one I have felt the need to return to much as I have grown older. The strongest memory with the album is listening to it in the car on my portable CD player on the way to North Carolina in the summer. Apart from that, my memory usually paints in broad strokes and just remembers the album being super popular when I was a sixth grader. All of the girls my age loved it, as did I, and my friends performed "Sk8ter Boi" at a lip sync competition. 

"I'm With You" stands out for its slow pace when compared to all of the other tracks. "Losing Grip" is sharp and industrial sounding, "Complicated" is the soft rock track that fits perfectly on the radio, "Sk8ter Boi" is the song to rock out to, and "My World," my personal favorite as a kid, is a fun guitar jam. But "I'm With You" isn't fun. It really showcases Lavigne's vocal range as well as her vulnerability as a songwriter. It builds up slowly and concludes with a strong crescendo of instrumentation. Okay, that might be overstating things just a tad. But there is something about this song that always gets me and I know that is the nostalgia talking. 

Lucky by Britney Spears

I have something to admit...I never owned a Britney Spears album. How can I call myself a real '90s kid if I didn't own a Britney Spears album? It is embarrassing. There were plenty of her songs I loved, but I guess I got by with her song "Sometimes" being on the compilation record, Now 3, which I listened to quite frequently. 

When "Lucky" was released, I really loved it. It was one of those songs that I loved so desperately that I am surprised I never got around to asking my parents for the album it was on. Luckily, a friend of mine owned said album and brought it over for my 10th birthday party. I imagine we listened to the album a lot that night, but all I can really remember is me dancing to "Lucky" on my screen porch while my friends watched, giggling. In fact, we have video evidence of this and it doesn't embarrass me...well, it embarrasses me a little. The video is somewhat cringy in that I am not a good dancer, but I make up for it with silliness for sure. 

"Lucky" tells the story of a celebrity who isn't happy. It comes off as very Marilynne Monroe; you expect this person to have it all but actually they don't and it makes them very sad. It isn't a very complicated song (though I guess none of the songs I am writing about are complicated). The storytelling is straightforward and easy to grasp. 

It is expected for listeners to wonder if the song is autobiographical and if Britney really was unhappy in her current predicament. Hindsight certainly reveals that this was most likely the case in some regard. Seeing where she is now and where her career has gone doesn't bode well for this song which makes me much more sympathetic toward her as a human being. If this was the case, listening to the track makes you sad. Still, if you can look past the blatant message, it is a track that remains catchy though I don't find I love it as much as an adult. The song just doesn't sound as catchy anymore, and it only makes me feel sad for Spears. 

All for Love by Stevie Brock

This track is easily the most obscure of the bunch. Stevie Brock never acquired the same celebrity as the other artists on this list. However, he did enjoy a few good years of teenie bopper fame and air time on Radio Disney. He was one of the many Aaron Carter wannabes that arrived on the music scene. This isn't to say he didn't have talent. His still immature voice was catchy enough and he was clearly a great performer. But like many child artists, his record was generic and…well, bad. Very bad. 

One huge trend of the '90s and early 2000s was this weird thing where young boys on the verge of becoming teens would sing songs about getting the girl and dating and complex romantic topics that made little sense to a teenager. The result is that the songs are super hetero-normative and a bit creepy. I am sitting in the car, reliving my childhood memories by listening to this song, and I can't help but think, "is it weird that I, a 29 year old woman, am listening to a 13 year old, whose voice still hasn't matured, sing about his 'romantic troubles' with a girl in his class who clearly doesn't want to date him but he wants it so it is okay that he keeps pursuing her?". Yes, it is a little weird. 

What is really weird to me is that I remember this song as if it came out way before it actually did. The album didn't properly release until summer of 2003 and I seem to recall listening the year previous. This could be because when I bought the album I was 12 going on 13 and thus I associate it more with being 12 than a 13 year old middle-schooler. But it would make sense. After all, the whole reason I even heard of Stevie Brock was because when on vacation in 2003 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, my family ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and on the big screen where they played music videos, Brock's cover of "All for Love" came on the screen. I've always been the type of person who loves music so when I hear a song I enjoy, I have to write it down so that I can listen to it when I would get home. These days we have apps that allow us to listen to songs and tell us what they are called. But back then when music wasn't as readily available and I was a child who didn't really have enough money to buy things at the ready, this act was more of a scavenger hunt than anything else. Would I be able to find this guy's album when I got home? What if it wasn't at Target? What would I do then? 

Fortunately, Brock captured a strong, if not temporary, following and his album was on store shelves. "All for Love" is a fine song, mostly due to it being a cover from another band. As already addressed, the lyrics feel very odd coming from someone so young. He addresses the girl he is singing to as "sugar" which just makes me skin curl. It is creepy that the music industry breeds young boys to sing about these things so early. This was easily my favorite song from the album. My strongest memories of the song, besides first hearing it at the Hard Rock Cafe, are listening to it and the entire album at my friends house. We had a fun tradition of bringing her boombox outside and dancing around the front lawn. I remember her birthday party and us tween girls dancing through the summer air, our bare feet wet from the moist grass. I'm sure the neighbors had fun watching us act like total maniacs. 

Revisiting these songs was fun, but I know there are more I want to talk about in the future! Stay tuned! What are some songs you listened to as a kid that make you feel super nostalgic today? Let me know in the comments!

[writingwordsanddrawingpictures]

More Questions Than Answers - Featuring Kat

Since I completed @cawolters Girls, Girls, Girls tag prompt on Friday for Kat (a character from MQTA), I thought it might be a good idea to re-post an excerpt from that story for you all - especially as it was last year when I first posted this and before a lot of you started following me!

This is a random scene which is currently planned to be a flashback (yeah, I know, but sometimes we need them) from late on in the book. Strangely for me, there’s not a huge amount of dialogue in this one, but it is much more of a narrative / action sequence although it is currently unfinished (and very much draft 0 / 1 stage).

The extract is under the cut. Trigger warnings for: violence, blood, death, swearing, cultists.

Tagging: @themerrywriter, @bexminx, @bookishdiplodocus, @therska, @adie-dee, @theimportanceofbeingbookish, @roselinproductions, @farrradays, @kira-desomma, @aeschknight, @pens-swords-stuff, @fukusigma, @alixismad

As always, if you want on or off (no offense will be taken) the list for this WIP, let me know.

Contrary to what many people thought, Kat had always felt that waiting was the easiest part. It was only when action was called for that carefully considered plans tended to fall apart and quickly turn into crap. She lay motionless in a large branch of a tree, observing the comings and goings around her. There’d been a lot of activity in the couple of hours since she’d set herself up in her current roost, and none of it looked good. There was definitely something large planned for tonight, and while it vindicated her source, it disturbed her greatly given the group that she was now dealing with. On the surface they seemed to be another bunch of disaffected, slightly odd eccentrics but there was something else about them now that Kat couldn’t put her finger on, and that worried her. A lot. She slowly let out a breath while she scanned over her field of vision, limited by the mass of branches and new growth that was also serving to keep her out of sight - well, that and the fact she was dressed completely in black against a pitch black night. She stopped her panning across the vista below her and held her breath. ‘Shit’ she thought as she caught sight of what she’d been dreading - not just handguns, but some SMGs and the odd assault rifle and shotgun. And here she was with just a pistol (unsilenced, sadly) and an extendible baton… Okay, she had a few little surprises planned as well, but she had the definite feeling that the time for waiting was rapidly disappearing and the time for things to go to shit were rushing at her. The problem with the robes that cultists (let’s call them what they are, shall we?) tend to be drawn to is that they can cover a multitude of concealed weapons… The advantage of them is that they can also get in the way if you’re not used to fighting in them - very much a double-edged sword.

Kat released the rest of the breath slowly and noiselessly, and resumed her surveillance with a renewed focus. After another half an hour or so, the mood seemed to switch - lights came on in the clearing ahead of her, drowning out the (oh-so-traditional) flaming torches, and a large number of the cultists who’d been patrolling the woods moved inwards toward the clearing. This was both good and bad - good in that when she came to make her move, she’d stand a better chance of getting there unnoticed; bad because when she got there, she thought all hell would break loose. Possibly literally. She took another look around the clearing and saw her main target - clearly identifiable in the showy robes and carrying … yes, one of the stolen books in his hands. It was an ugly looking thing, and very likely bound in human skin - always de-rigour for true tomes of any standing. She took a minute to make her mental inventory of where her baton, pistol and spare clips were, along with her other toys, and slid the sight she’d been using back into her belt (wishing that she had the rifle that went with it).

Kat glanced around her, saw that the remaining guards were further out in the woods, and slid herself gracefully and silently back down the tree using barely noticeable hand and foot holds. Once back on the ground, she slid the baton out of her belt and readied it in her right hand. “Repeat after me: We are not at home to Mr Fuckup.” she whispered to herself, a familiar mantra in these situations. She slid through the gloom, her feet managing to pick their way through the odd fallen branch and other woodland detritus almost of their own accord. She stopped behind the trunk of a tree as she heard the sound of footsteps approaching her. She held her breath and waited until the footsteps were directly on the other side of the tree, readying herself to keep the tree between her and the guard. Unexpectedly the footsteps stopped, followed by a brief grunting and the sound of layers of clothing brushing past each other. Silence followed for a moment, then the sound of a stream of fluid hitting the tree and the undergrowth below it. 'You have got to be kidding me.’ Kat thought, keeping her breathing as shallow as possible. The stream started to subside, then stopped for a second, and started up again back at full force. 'Why do I have to get the one with the horse’s bladder?’ Kat fumed silently, waiting for the flow to stop, studiously ignoring the occasional spray that flew past the side of the tree. Kat’s head span round and she peered into the gloom behind her. A second later there was the sound of a distant crunch in that direction. Another guard was heading this way… She weighed up her options quickly and span round the tree trunk, flipping the baton out as she went. The guard never knew what hit him - one second he was (still) in mid flow, the next something connected with the back of his head in a blur and he went down like a puppet whose strings had been cut, smacking his forehead on the trunk on the way down. She swore to herself, and hoped it would be written off as clumsiness as she slid back into the darkness. 'We are not at home to Mr Fuckup. We are not at home to Mr Fuckup.’ Kat’s mantra ran through her head as she slipped silently from shadow to shadow, closing in on the clearing and the potential home of Mr Fuckup.

Kat’s progress had slowed to a crawl, as she could hear more voices than she was comfortable with in the clearing ahead - plus the fact that the cultists had rigged up some electric lights in the clearing, rather than using the traditional flaming torches. In some ways, it was nice to see them starting to embrace a few modern touches, but in others their use of lights and firearms was positively annoying. She was taking stock of her position and definitely not liking the odds. A wide open clearing was one thing, but having a crowd of potentially gun-toting cultists was something else. She’d known coming into this that they were more well organised than most, hence why she’d recced the area well ahead and had set up some insurance policies in case Mr Fuckup and his extended family came to stay after all. She let out her breath slowly, camped out underneath a couple of bushes and waited for her opportunity to move to a good vantage point. She’d spotted a likely looking tree on her way to these bushes - she remembered that it overlooked the clearing perfectly and was luckily not being illuminated by the pesky lights. She could also decamp from it in a hurry, which made it her best option - other than trying the old 'disguise’ ploy, which was really like hanging out a sign for the Fuckups to come stay.

The flow of bodies into the clearing stopped, and Kat scanned where the guards where. It looked like she should be able to make it to and up into her tree in between their rounds, provided there were no surprises. She saw the guard nearest her walk away and counted the seconds away mentally. Reaching 15, she slid from under the bushes and across to a fallen trunk, pausing for a count of 4, then dashed over to the tree barely making any noise. As she reached the tree, instead of stopping she leapt up and grabbed hold of a sturdy branch about two feet above her head, swinging herself up onto it in one fluid motion. Quickly glancing around and now counting down from 20, she shimmied up the trunk and onto the large branch that she’d spied on her recce - big enough to hold her, with a slight depression in the middle of it as if two branches had grown together years ago, and enough foliage to keep her away from all but the most curious observer. '4.. 3.. 2.. 1..’ her mental countdown ended just as the guard returned on his path, directly under her new hiding place. She granted herself a quick flicker of a grin, then her face went back to pure concentration as she slid her scope back out and settled in to see what was in store with tonight’s show. 'Please be amateurs, please be amateurs’ Kat thought to herself, scanning the scene in the clearing. 'Ah fuck.’ Tonight was not to be as simple as Kat had been hoping. The clearing looked far too organised for these guys to be complete amateurs. There was a makeshift altar set up in the middle, and atop it was a knife on a silk cushion that caused a chill to run down Kat’s spine. It looked ancient, and it looked like it had seen an awful lot, but the edges of it gleamed as if they could split daylight. 'Obsidian? How?’ Kat thought to herself, but that was just the start. On another cushion was an old book that could have been leather bound - at least she hoped it was - and she swore as she couldn’t see anything on it to determine the title of it from. Either in front or behind the makeshift altar there was an area roughly 7 feet in diameter that was completely empty, even the undergrowth had been removed from it leaving just bare earth. Worrying enough, but there was also a ring of something stark white delineating it that gave it just that extra edge of worry - particularly as it was a bloody perfect circle. 'This just gets better and better’ Kat thought, frowning. Glancing back at the altar, Kat caught sight of something that was currently covered with a piece of silk. She couldn’t make out exactly what it could be, but it looked to have the top of a sphere. 'Curiouser and curiouser…’ Her frown briefly morphed into a quizzical look, then back to the frown. Satisfied that she had the lay of the land by the altar, she scanned over the rest of the clearing and could see a wide circle of guards around the edge of the clearing, all evenly spaced and with conspicuous bulges under their robes. At least they were in good positions to benefit from her planned surprises. Off to one side she could see a group of five cultists surrounding what looked, based on the fancier robes, like the MC for the evening. He seemed to be carrying something, but between the foliage in front of her and the group around him, she couldn’t make out what it was other than it looked heavy.

Kat lowered the scope from her right eye and risked a quick glance at her watch - if they went with tradition, then she had another 15 minutes before the show began. She closed her eyes briefly and offered a silent prayer to keep Mr you-know-who and family at bay, opened her eyes again then lifted the scope back up and settled in to see what was going to unfold.

15 minutes later… The witching hour.

'It’s usually nice to see traditions maintained, but just for once I’d like to see some originality.’ Kat thought to herself as the focus shifted to the MC, as he walked across the clearing towards the altar, still surrounded by his inner circle of five. As he reached the altar and the five separated to take up positions behind him, with the empty circle in front of the altar, she now saw all too clearly what he was carrying. 'Good evening Mr Fuckup, so nice you could make it.’ she thought to herself, trying to resist the urge to bolt from the tree and get as far away from this damned place as possible. It was an ancient tome, clearly bound in what was almost definitely human skin, and she’d seen enough of the title to realise that it could only mean the night was going to hell and very likely in the literal sense. It was widely rumoured to contain a large number of incantations for a variety of summonings, but some were for the type of creatures that viewed humans as playthings at best, and mere annoyances to be swatted aside at worst. How this group had managed to get their hands on it was anyone’s guess, but it was highly likely to be the result of one of the thefts of antiquities and occult-related items that had taken place over the last few months. Kat consciously tried to relax her muscles back from their current state of high tensile steel, but couldn’t stop herself repeating the same word over and over again in her mind 'fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck’. She forced herself to breathe almost normally, and was able to form a coherent thought - if she managed to get out of this alive (doubtful at the moment), she’d make her informant about tonight wish he’d never been born, and to pray for a quick death. Her focus returned to the altar, and she saw that the mystery object had now been revealed - a crystal ball on a mahogany stand. She blinked and adjusted the focus of the scope to get a closer look, ignoring the litany that had started. It was obviously old, and had a strange pearlescence about it that kept shifting like clouds in the sky… It looked familiar from somewhere. 'You’ve got to be kidding me!’ she thought, finally recognising it. She was sure it was Aleister Crowley’s, and that never boded well, especially not with the rest of the paraphernalia on show tonight. Mr you-know-who had brought the whole family for an outing tonight, and she’d seriously underestimated the resources of this group - hopefully not fatally.

The litany continued, with the MC referring to the book that had been on the altar to start with, then placing the skin-bound book on the altar and opening it with an audible crack that caused Kat’s shallow breath to catch in her throat. The silence that followed the crack was palpable, with seemingly the whole forest bowed into silent anticipation of what was to come. The MC glanced down the page he’d opened the book at and picked up the knife, which now seemed to be leaving afterimages behind itself as it moved through the air. A chill started to fall over the clearing, and Kat could see a few of the cultists placing their hands into their robes for warmth, along with a few small clouds of breath starting to form close to the altar. The knife was drawn through the air in several complex symbols, which remained briefly illuminated in the air when the knife was returned to the MC’s side, and after each one the temperature seemed to drop another couple of degrees. 'This isn’t funny now… I have a very, very bad feeling about this.’ Kat thought, her left hand reaching behind her to check that the butt of her CZ-75 was still in its holster.

Six symbols were drawn in the air in total, then when the sixth had been drawn and faded, all six re-appeared and glowed brightly for a second before fading out. This was like nothing that Kat had ever seen before, and it looked like it was new to a lot of the cultists as well given the conflicted looks of fear and anticipation on their faces. The knife was then swept in an 'X’ in the air, which flared brightly and left an afterimage on Kat’s retinas. He returned the knife to its cushion, at which point Kat could see that the crystal ball had cleared and was showing some form of image that she couldn’t quite make out, but there was fire in there somewhere, and something … writhing? Maybe it was best that she couldn’t make it out properly, but she did catch sight of something that made her tense - a couple of brief afterimages of the same symbols she’d seen scribed in the air with the knife here, followed by the 'X’ which seemed to remain in the scene in the ball… “Fuck” Kat whispered aloud, then quickly checked if she’d been heard - and it seemed she’d been lucky this time.

The crystal ball started to glow slightly, with the … images … still present within it. This looked to be the cue for the MC to start reading aloud from the ancient text in a language that had obviously not been designed for human vocal chords. Kat instinctively slid her CZ-75 from its holster and held it in her left hand, getting ready to make her move, the weight of it giving her a brief reassurance. The MC’s backing choir now started to join in, chanting in what sounded to be the same bizarre language, the harmony of voices making the hairs on the back of Kat’s neck rise. The glow of the crystal ball became brighter, and Kat could make out that the 'X’ in the image was growing in size. She flicked her gaze instinctively to the bare circle, and was sure she could see something like a heat-haze in there, completely at odds with the clouds of breath that were issuing from all of the cultists bar the MC and his groupies. The chanting seemed to build and build, growing in intensity and volume, and creating an almost primal sense of fear to build within Kat. She could see that a number of the cultists / guards were suffering from the same thing, some much worse than others. Kat started a mental countdown from 10, sensing that something was about to happen, and shifted her weight around readying herself to dive from the tree onto (hopefully) the guard about to pass beneath her. 9 … 8 … 7… The chanting continued to build and build, sounding more and more alien, and definitely emanating from more than just six people even though they were the only ones whose lips were moving. 6 … 5 … 4 … Kat slid her baton out from under her jacket into her right hand, keeping it collapsed for the moment. 3 … 2… 1 … Go! She dove feet first from the tree, flashing down about 20 feet and connecting perfectly with the guard, her right foot impacting heavily into his back, causing him to hit the ground in a heap with his spine snapping from the force, killing him instantly. As she slid over his collapsing body, she rolled forwards and sprang up into a kneeling position on her right knee, scanning the immediate area for any signs that she’d been heard, her right hand holding the still collapsed baton and supporting her left hand with her pistol at the ready. After a second she looked over towards the clearing and noticed that the chanting had stopped - it was now deathly silent throughout the wood, which was intensely worrying.

'So nice you could bring your family along this evening. Always a pleasure to see all the Fuckups in one place.’ Kat thought to herself, still fighting the urge to start running in the opposite direction to the one she knew she’d have to go in. After another quick scan of the immediate area, Kat shifted into a crouch and began to slowly make her way towards the still silent clearing just ahead of her. She kept expecting to be spotted or heard even though she was well camouflaged and was moving as silently as humanly possible. She also expected all hell to break loose any second, or some form of explosion, or … something! She knew the book by reputation only, and that was enough for her - there were many rumours about it, and not a one of them were good. It had dropped off the face of the Earth for a very long time, obviously into the hands of private collectors, or of a group that knew enough about it to not use it on a whim. If it had been researched, there would be some trail of insanity behind it, as no-one who delved too deeply into this area managed to retain their full mental faculties for long.

She made it to the edge of the clearing, secreting herself behind a bush with a clear view of the front of the altar and a clear shot at the MC. Kat fought to keep her breathing under control and hoped that her usual detached serenity would descend at the point she intervened. The eerie silence had lasted now for a full 5 minutes, with no sign of movement from the MC and his backing choir, and was causing Kat more and more unease particularly with the shifting scenes in the crystal ball. The glowing 'X’ was still there and looked to have grown larger again.

“Well?” One of the guards close to Kat broke the silence. “Is that it?” No sooner had he made his comment than the obsidian knife was embedded in his forehead and Kat felt a faint splash of cast-off blood from the impact. No-one appeared to have moved to throw the knife, and the impatient guard was twitching but still somehow managing to remain upright. Off to her left, Kat heard the sound of a woman retching into the undergrowth and noticed that the guard seemed to be somehow … shrinking? He was growing steadily thinner and thinner, and whether it was her mind playing tricks on her or not she wasn’t certain, but she could have sworn she could hear a faint sucking noise. He … withered to the point where he couldn’t have been more than skin stretched tight over his skeleton, then collapsed into a heap with the knife somehow releasing itself before he hit the ground face-first.

Kat felt an itching at the back of her brain, a feeling she was all-too aware usually meant that things were about to reach the point of no return (as if they hadn’t already!) and she needed to act quickly. The MC drew himself up to his full height and threw his head back … to have it thrown further backwards by the impact of two rounds from Kat’s CZ-75, blood spattering some of his backing choir and also being cast forwards over the altar to … hang in the air? “Oh fuck!” Kat growled, knowing that this time she may have been too late. Things seemed to drop into slow motion for Kat, as she caught out of the corner of her eye the glowing “X” encompassing the entire crystal ball. The cultists didn’t quite know how to react, some wondering if this was also part of the ritual, others who might have been more trained starting to scan the area to see where the shots came from, but the backing singers seemed completely unphased by the whole thing, as if … “And I fell for it, you bastards!” Kat shouted, breaking from her cover and triggering her ‘surprises’ at the same time.

Night started to turn to day with a sound akin to a rolling thunderclap shortly behind, still in slow-motion, with a ring of rigged flash-bangs exploding in sequence around the clearing. Kat was launching into a sprint towards the backing singers, squeezing her finger on the trigger as she saw the air starting to shimmer in front of her, then taking on an almost liquid quality. Another step further on, her finger closed the trigger and set off the first shot, which lazily flew towards the mirage? Heat haze? Disturbance in the air that lay between Kat and the backing singers. Next step, and another bullet left the barrel almost dead behind the first, which was now almost at the … disturbance that was getting even more liquid-like. Third step, and Kat could see one or two of the guards around the edge starting to recover their composure and reaching for weapons. The backing singers were still very much where they’d been all along, but she could swear that she could see one of them grinning at her. The first bullet was now at the disturbance and … disappeared? ‘Crap’ Kat’s next footfall started to steer her away from the disturbance that had now somehow swallowed both of her rounds, and was now getting more and more liquid-like. Fifth step … as Kat’s foot hit the ground, there was a sound that Kat felt all the way to the depths of her soul and that chilled her more than anything ever had before. It sounded … felt like someone had just torn reality itself apart at the seams. She could see some of the cultists turning to flee into the forest, one or two bending double to retch, others just stock still and ashen-faced. This definitely wasn’t something that they’d been prepared for – except maybe the backing singers. Kat saw the disturbance in the air stretch, as if someone (something?) was pushing at it from inside, then break and an arm of sorts appeared in the air. It looked as if it was made of liquid, with the same shimmering quality that the air had before, although this also looked like it was flowing from the break in the air (reality?) “Motherfucker” Kat swore, willing her feet away from whatever it was that was coming through, as there was no way that it could be anything that was good. It certainly wasn’t going to start singing campfire songs – more likely to roast everyone here alive over one. The rest of the body started to emerge from the … rift? It looked vaguely humanoid, although there were definite signs that it wasn’t going to be human – back-to front knees, clawed hands, and … tattered wings on its back? As her next foot hit the ground, Kat knew that her best escape route was behind the altar, so she’d have to go past this … damned thing. She brought her pistol to bear on it and squoze the trigger until the slide locked back. Every shot was true – head, heart, chest – and although it seemed to feel the impacts, nothing phased it. Kat was now alongside it and picking up speed, when she felt a burning impact on her right shoulder. Its right hand was on her shoulder, gripped her and pulled. She growled as she felt her arm slip out of its socket, and searing pain follow with something digging into her shoulder, but her momentum was just about enough to pull her free of its grasp, albeit spinning her directly towards the altar.

<End>

As always, thoughts and comments are welcomed, just keep them constructive if they’re negative.

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Candy, chapters 1-5

This is gonna get long.

The Candy route is, in effect, the route where John refuses to go back to finish off Lord English, but remains on Earth C. Instead, the story begins by picking up another long neglected thread: Gamzee. Then it continues to various other places.

Contains: a rough recap of Gamzee’s story, a longwinded attempt to be evenhanded and not callous about the Gamzee Discourse, because it’s relevant again... and then I read the next three chapters, which visit some of the other characters, setting up the board for the new story (because let’s be real, this is a whole new story of its own at this point!)

a quick recap

It’s been three years since the comic ended so I’m gonna recap what I remember about Gamzee’s story. He was sent on a murderous rampage in the ‘murderstuck’ arc - there’s some debate if he was acting according to his own will, or that of Lord English’s agents, there, but either way he killed a large number of the ‘beta trolls’. He was ultimately stopped by Karkat, who deployed the ‘shoosh pap’ of establishing moirallegiance. During the three year meteor voyage, he entered into some kind of very harmful kismesis relationship with Terezi, but got very little screen time. And uh... then I get confused.

In the “game over” arc, he is mind controlled - I recall by Aranea - and used to bring about the deaths of most of the cast. This, of course, was retconned. Also I think I skipped over a bit.

And, in some capacity, he was present when Caliborn won the contest for dominance with Calliope. He assisted the young Caliborn’s villainous plan, and for his trouble got repeatedly shot to pieces, which he took silently.

And at some point he got locked in a fridge by the rest of the cast. We briefly see him get knocked about in there during ‘Collide’, and then he makes no further appearance.

Let’s go on the Homestuck wiki and see what I missed...

while under the sway of Lord English (murderstuck arc), he caused some of the kids to receive Lil Cal and a harlequin doll, which is what made their session ‘terminal’

he intervened in the alpha session, and was responsible for the prototypings of various dead trolls into combined forms

this:

The fridge remained on LOTAK until Lord Jack was decapitated which resulted in a black hole, somehow taking Gamzee, Crowbar's crowbar and Yaldabaoth to future Earth.

so i guess i missed that in all the chaos of Collide, but that explains how he ended up in Caliborn’s world.

also crucially, half of Gamzee is absorbed into Lil Cal along with Caliborn and Arquiussprite, which creates Lord English, the series villain.

so anyway...

The initial premise of this story is: John decides to remain in the C universe and enjoy his life instead of living in an undecisive fugue, rather than go out to fight Lord English and wrap up that side of the plot. Calliope makes a request of him: he should use his retcon powers to pull Gamzee out of the plot, someone ‘only he can save’.

The second chapter is basically a very sarcastic discourse post in Gamzee’s voice. Shortly after being rescued, Gamzee goes onto a long speech about how he’s prepared to redeem himself, and the ‘mitigating factors’ that make him worthy of redemption: (an ‘abusive childhood’ at the hands of his goat dad, and his socialisation). I’ll excerpt a bit to give you the general flavour, with the typing quirk removed for readability:

gamzee: i been all like. abused and stuff, homies.

gamzee: as a child, i got motherfuckin neglected on by a stern old fatherly goat.

gamzee: i was a disappointment on him, and can’t says i blame him for abandoning the shit out of his useless kid.

gamzee: i woulda motherfuckin done the same shit at me if i was a big cruel goat.

gamzee: so that explains like, pretty sure most of my crimes in a way that makes a motherfucker wanna take his forgiveness out for a fucking spin.

gamzee: there’s other reasons to consider, like...

gamzee: shit that makes this redemption arc fuckin tight like an uncracked elixir.

gamzee: like, hows my purple blood meant i got the culture pressures put on me to be a salty damn jester for life.

gamzee: what about that hand the messiahs dealt me, my bitches.

gamzee: a motherfucker’s gonna envy that like a wicked cod rash.

gamzee: so how can i full and truly fuckin get blamed on for, when it comes to a little bit of subjugglation i got culturally hornswoggled up to doing, and also tragically goat abused which needs to make you shed a tear for this motherfucker, lest you wanna be as atrocious as me.

This is reminiscent of V’s episodes in Friendsim, insofar as - we’re clearly not intended to buy it, but it’s directly mocking lines of argument in the fandom, about whether it’s ok to be a fan of Gamzee (because fandom is all about casting moral judgement on finding that you relate to fictional characters’ narratives in the wrong way, justifying your own attachments to characters and works as progressive, etc...).

By putting these arguments in a very explicit and ridiculous form (having Gamzee speak on whether he personally deserves a ‘redemption arc’), and then having the narrator and also popular characters such as Terezi dismiss them, V’s stance is fairly clear - at least these particular readings of Gamzee are to be dismissed. Terezi comments:

JOHN: apparently we’re going to let him have a “redemption arc”?

TEREZI: H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4

JOHN: yeah, it’s...

JOHN: well, what is there to even say?

JOHN: it’s literally the dumbest fucking idea i’ve ever heard, but what can you do.

TEREZI: SHOV3 H1M B4CK 1N TH4T FR1DG3 4ND THROW 1T 1N TH3 OC34N, 1S WH4T

There’s two ways the story can go from here. One might be that this is the last we’re going to hear about Gamzee, it’s just a quick fuck you to one particular set of readings of Homestuck, and then on to whatever V considers more important. Another is that, a more subtle story is about to be told than the deliberately absurd framing here.

I should state my own stance, since it’s probably going to be relevant. I had a friend who cared a great deal about Gamzee, in part because he was essentially a chew toy in the latter part of the comic, who could be treated violently without consequence, which - as far as I understand their feelings - my friend found meaningful in relation to their own experiences of abuse.

I recall thinking there was some credence to ‘mind control’ interpretations, which posit that the difference between Gamzee’s chill affect early on and his ludicrously violent behaviour later was the control of Doc Scratch and other agents of Lord English; Gamzee in this reading is aware, and horrified (as hinted at by a brief window where Aranea’s mind control is released during the Game Over arc and he is ‘himself’ again, and cries and begs for mercy, before once again becoming extremely violent). Whether this is the case during the ‘fridge’ section is not clear. This goes some way to explaining why Gamzee is indestructible, and mutely devoted to assisting Caliborn when Caliborn treats him with nothing but violence.

In this reading, Gamzee is a tragic character to the point of absurdity. He is forced to witness another person committing horrific actions with his body, and then abandoned by those who’d care for him because they do not recognise the mind control. His only escape from one mind controller is another one.

However, that’s just a reading. For fans who identify strongly with Terezi, Gamzee is often interpreted as her abuser due to the effect his relationship is shown to have during the asteroid voyage (pre-Game Over). To these readers, people - such as my friend - who identify with Gamzee are engaging in apologetics for abuse.

Because this is so fraught, I am not going to make any claim that a particular reading of Gamzee is ‘unambiguously true’. I think a third interpretation is the ‘shitty writing’ one, that Hussie basically intended Gamzee as a joke character, not one with interiority. He’s a scary clown! Perhaps he didn’t realise how strongly this character, who from the start was presented as someone to laugh at, would resonate with the readers.

I hope that this discussion gives some sense of the different possible nuances of Gamzee, and I am hoping that this epilogue will not simply be a polemic for one particular reading.

now, chapter 3+

I read the first two chapters right after I heard about the upd8. From now on, this will be a true ‘liveread’, i.e. written alongside my first readthrough of the story.

At this point we switch viewpoint character to Dirk! This is a very short chapter: Dirk cancels ‘everything’ - all his ongoing plans - and does not explain why to Jane, or Jake. Whatever the reason is, it’s very bad news and has a short time limit.

Apparently John’s decision to say has had some kind of metaphysical effect, which causes Rose’s mysterious malady - and her various anxieties concerning ‘canon’ - to dissipate.

So she gets to spend some time with Kanaya. This is nice - we barely got to see Rose and Kanaya together as a couple in canon. It’s a sweet conversation... and makes me worry about what’s going to happen in the ‘Meat’ route.

There’s a little clarifying on Jade, Dave and Karkat’s relationship now...

JADE: i never thought id be thinking of you as my weird nerd friend by the time we were in our twenties

It’s a weird, intimate, and uncomfortably close to sexual thing to be doing in front of other people. Dave and Karkat share a vaguely mortified look. Jade sort of lives here, but she doesn’t that sort of live here.

The expression is so warm and blatant that it can’t help but draw Jade’s attention. She frowns and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, making some quick calculations in her head. They’re so obvious, she thinks, and yet here they are. Virginal losers who are performative about sitting exactly a foot apart whenever they’re in public. It’s so pathetic it makes her want to howl at the moon in sorrow. 

so i guess we’re going to have a jade working very hard on getting dave and karkat together type arc

well i guess we are but oof, jade what the hell... jade decides to like, go in with all the subtlety of a train, aggressively flirt with karkat, up to the point of like, putting her fingers in his mouth... which to him is just like, a straight up assault. but it’s them who are ‘hopeless’, not her...

dave very awkwardly changes the subject to talk about the possible Jane presidency. apparently, Jane is very xenophobic towards trolls (which didn’t seem immediately apparent from the comic but I might have forgotten tbh). Karkat speaks of ‘the potential genocide of my people’

DAVE: but i dont think shed go so far as to commit genocide

DAVE: thats really exaggerating her faults

DAVE: like wed have to get pretty far away from the people we were when we started all this for that to be a viable outcome

...phrasing it like that... makes me rather apprehensive!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #359

Top Ten Future Transformers Spin-Offs

So I finally went to see Bumblebee, the delightful, charming, and utterly loveable Transformers spin-off/prequel from Travis Knight. It’s a great little film, on a much smaller scale than the other films in the series, offering some beautifully retro Amblin vibes whilst telling a more compelling and characterful story full of warmth, heart, and genuinely good performances. And as a great big Transformers fan (is there no Transformers equivalent of Trekkie or Browncoat I can adopt?) I got a huge thrill from the recreation of war-torn Cybertron, straight from the iconography of the classic ‘80s cartoon series. I spent the first ten minutes just cooing and bubbling, going “Look! Wheeljack! And Arcee! And Ratchet! And Soundwave! And Shockwave! And Ravage!” and so on.

Anyway, I think the film is all kinds of great, and captures the spirit of the brand and the stories much better (in my opinion) than the Michael Bay ones do. But if one spin-off could succeed where the “mainline” films failed, could that trick be repeated? And this got me thinking: what other stories and characters are ripe for the big-screen treatment? Where else can Transformers go cinematically, without doing any kind of real follow-up to The Last Knight?

Here, then, are ten suggestions. Rather than proposing any kind of reboot or reimagining of the property, I've tried to find stories that could exist within the loose canon of the movies (which, to be fair, is a fairly shifting proposition anyway, with several movies contradicting one another in large and small ways). So, inspired by my love of the original characters, and often by stories I’ve read in the meantime, and with the potentially large caveat that I’ve still not seen The Last Knight and therefore might actually be retreading story grooves already worn, here are ten suggestions for possible future Transformers spin-off movies.

Megatron: Dawn of the Decepticons: drawing heavily from both IDW’s Megatron: Origin and More Than Meets the Eye, this will be a biopic, essentially, of tyrannical baddie Big Megs. Although I know there’s a strong influence from The Fallen in Cinemegatron’s backstory, I don’t see how we can’t square this with the portrayal developed primarily by James Roberts. Megatron is a miner, struggling under a brutal regime on an off-world energon mine, who has the strength and smarts to lift himself and his co-workers out of bondage. But will he remain true to his principles or follow the advice of a mysterious old ‘bot (who turns out to be The Fallen)? Basically the tragic tale of a charismatic working-class leader breaking bad and becoming a monster. Could feature an Optimus Prime cameo – maybe as Orion Pax?

Last Stand of the Wreckers: a moderately-straight adaptation of the Nick Roche/James Roberts classic, one of the most beloved Transformers series of all time. Instead of Bumblebee’s delightful whimsy and Megatron’s tragic drama, this is a straight-up war movie. Obviously it’d have to be tweaked from the comic: no more Garrus-9 or Decepticon Purge. Perhaps tweak the last third to be a bit more like Rogue One or Seven Samurai; the Autobots decide to stay, and die, for a cause. I’d put some more mainstream ‘bots on the team, from the original cartoon and movie. Perhaps it could, like Bumblebee, even be set on Earth in the past, and end up being a story covered up by both the Autobots and Sector 7? That way you’d make it cheaper by having more humans and a little less CG. But the basic gist – an Autobot black ops squad is sent on a mission that goes very badly wrong and most if not all of them die whilst trying to work out what it means to be an Autobot in the midst of this war – should remain the same.

Windblade : whilst I don’t necessarily think the movieverse should adopt the “Thirteen Colonies” storyline from the comics – and I definitely don’t think they should adopt the “all the girls left” sausage-fest fudge that was required after Arcee was declared the “only” female Transformer, especially as Arcee herself and newcomer Shatter both feature in Bumblebee – I do  like the idea of Windblade as some kind of ambassador or diplomat, travelling the universe. Perhaps she left Cybertron before the war really escalated (with besties Chromia and Nautica too, natch) to pursue peace elsewhere? Part flashback to pre-war Cybertron, part  return-to-Earth narrative, it would be a great opportunity to focus on the often-sidelined female Transformers and  have a positive feminist message. I’d have them team up with a now-adult Charlie and her estranged daughter... Verity Carlo. The baddies should be combiners, to go with the “Combiner Hunters” toy set.

Beast Wars: at the risk of causing controversy, I wouldn’t make this a straight adaptation of the popular cartoon. Not unless they want to meddle in far-flung futures or alternate timelines (although, er, see below...). Rather, I’d introduce the concept of “Beast Modes” that mimic organic creatures perfectly (like the “pretender” Decepticon in Revenge of the Fallen that looks like a sexy human girl, because of course she does). So my pitch is this: a lonely Autobot scientist, on a research ship that has more-or-less escaped the war (let’s make him Perceptor, for kicks) has developed this “beast mode” technology that hides Transformers in organic shells. His ship is attacked by Decepticons, but he rockets his subjects into space where they follow Prime’s signal and eventually land on Earth, befriending a young boy (younger than Sam or Charlie; let’s say about 12). But Decepticon hunters (I’d go for Carnivac, Snarler and Catilla – who later has a change of heart – all of whom have inorganic beast modes) follow. So it would share similar tropes with Bumblebee and the first Transformers, but with three or four cute animals instead of robots. This would skew young, perhaps even younger than Bumblebee.

Rodimus Prime: I know Hot Rod is in The Last Knight, but from what I hear he isn’t really representative of the character of Hot Rod/Rodimus from across other aspects of Transformers fiction. Regardless, this film isn’t about him: it’s about Rodimus Prime. Set in the future, it tells a Next Generation-style story of a human/Autobot alliance. Very much a sci-fi space opera, it would feature Rodimus going on a quest to discover the roots of a mysterious force that is attacking human colonies, and its apart links to an ancient Transformer legend. But is he abandoning Earth at its darkest hour to go on a wild goose chase through space? Rodimus must battle his own self-doubt as a leader, as well as a growing number of humans and Transformers who question the alliance. It would have a similar tone to your average Star Wars movie.

Wreck-Gar: Transformers films often have funny moments, but you’d never call any of them a comedy. Wreck-Gar is a comedy, Deadpool-style (but without the filth). A severely-damaged Transformer who crashes to Earth no memory and manages to rebuild himself in a junkyard, Wreck-Gar is a crazy, pop-culture-spouting dervish who just trashes every room he’s in, even though he’s not malicious or a bad guy. Indeed, he is chased by a trio of Decepticons (Swindle, Brawl, and Vortex) who are cruel and unusual (and Swindle wants recompense for a deal gone wrong). An all-out wacky comedy is something not often attempted by big-budget action movies; I’d even go whole hog and get Ward and Miller on board to shepherd the humour to the screen.

Starscream: we’re always focusing on the good guys! Well, here you go: a story about a bot who’s born to be bad. Starscream would be set in the past (naturally, since he’s dead now) and follows Megatron’s least-reliable lieutenant as he heads to Earth to look for Megatron during the time when he was in stasis underneath the Hoover Dam. I can’t remember the chronology, but maybe this could even be set in the late 70s/early 80s, with Starscream  assuming a jet form more like his classic toy (and in that colour scheme, too). He’d be conniving, plotting, scheming, and essentially coming across like a giant metal version of Loki. Perhaps he’s playing a number of human “allies” off against one another, as well as some big Decepticons (Thunderwing? Tarn? Who haven’t we seen yet?) and even a troupe of Autobots he double-crosses. It could be darkly comic and incredible fun.

Hearts of Steel: Wild West Transformers! I mean, what’s not to love? Adapted from the IDW comic series (which was supposed to be out-of-continuity, but was so popular that writer John Barber retroactively incorporated it into the main Transformers timeline), this would need a bit of manipulation to change characters around (I don’t think Bumblebee should be in it, but given the often-contradictory nature of the movie timeline, I don’t see why we couldn’t bring back characters like Jazz, Ironhide, or maybe even Optimus himself). A rollicking steampunk adventure that hopefully would capture the freewheeling outback sci-fi tone of Back to the Future Part III, and hopefully not come across like another Wild Wild West.

Cybertron: I suppose this is a sort-of sequel to Megatron (see above). Set during the war, it’s a men-on-a-mission movie starring a young Optimus Prime (perhaps he could still be Orion Pax at this point). I don’t think we should worry too much about mythologies and intricacies of Transformer society the way James Roberts depicted it, but all the same they could do a lot worse than adapting his Shadowplay storyline, where Orion lead a team of misfit Autobots in an illegal heist to save the world. That kid of behind-enemy-lines vibe could give us a great Cybertronian war movie without wallowing in the grimdark explodey nature of Transformer combat. But especially if this was the movie where Orion earned his stripes and officially became Optimus, that might be nice. Like Megatron, of course, this would end up being an entirely CG affair.

Bumblebee 2: Energon Boogaloo? Look, the ending of the film – without wanting to give away spoilers – could be seen as neatly segueing into the 2007 Transformers film. One could imagine no additional adventurous meetings between Bumblebee and Charlie.  But on the other hand, let’s not rule it out. Perhaps Bumblebee has been on Earth, dicking around, since 1987, and during that time he got up to more mischief with his first best human friend. Some covert Decepticon invasion requires him to break cover, or he needs some kind of human contact to spy for him, and oh look he goes back to Charlie. I’d skip forward a little bit, to around ‘91 or ‘92, slap a bit of early grunge on the soundtrack. See what happens. Just bring back Travis Knight.

So there we are. My ideas for ten possible Transformers spin-off movies. I didn’t really intend for this to turn into ten pitches with little mini-synopses; it was really meant to just be a quick fun game of “stories or characters who’d make a cool movie” but then I thought about it too hard, as I tend to do where Transformers is concerned. Hey, look, some of these films could even tie together! Megatron and Cybertron especially, but you could scatter seeds of stories or references among the lot. Anyway. Wishful thinking. But hopefully a film like one of these will roll out before too long (see what I did there?).