#and it's just that some of you clearly never learned how to differentiate between fiction and reality nor between an author and their writi

[werewolfashton]

xx

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Phoenix Mountain Kiss and Consent/Boundaries in MDZS

The following opinion, expressed in the recent mdzs controversial opinion thread on twitter, is actually one I’ve meant to address for a while:

Even if most of fans loves the 'stolen kiss scene' in the Phoenix Mountain in the novel, that was a sexual harassment.

People in the fandom, especially those who were introduced first to the novel through cql, have a tendency to criticize the Phoenix Mountain kiss scene, saying it was non-consensual. My problem is not that they are wrong. The kiss is (or starts as, at the very least) non-consensual. My problem with this criticism is that people point this out as if it were a mistake. As if mxtx had meant to write a romantic kiss and had instead fumbled it all up and made it not consensual by virtue of not being woke, not being a good enough writer, or being too influenced by bl tropes. And that readers are too unsuspecting or not educated enough to realize the wrong mxtx committed. 

Here’s my hot take: The kiss is non-consensual because it was written to be non-consensual. mxtx is not trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The reason why we, as readers, can infer that, is because the non-consensual aspects of the kiss are important to the events of the plot, some of themes explored in the book, lwj and wwx’s relationship after wwx’s return, and lwj’s character arc. mxtx uses this moment and its aftermaths, amongst others, to make a point about consent and communication in relationships--one of the central themes of the novel. Shocking, I know. Arguing that consent and communication are a main theme in mdsz: now that's a controversial opinion.

Now, I won’t argue mxtx always manages to develop this theme with utmost finesse. You can critique and disagree with her treatment of the theme throughout the novel (taking into consideration, as well, how it’s not just explored through lwj and wwx’s relationship). That being said, isolating events in the novel like the Phoenix kiss scene to mark them as Good or Bad without considering the context in which they happen and are explored within the novel is just bad literary analysis :/. 

Let’s first consider this simple statement: the non-consensual aspect of the kiss is not accidental--mxtx knew it was non-consensual when she wrote it, and she wasn’t trying to hide that fact. 

By the time we reach the Phoenix Mountain competition, lwj has accepted his feelings for wwx, and that these feelings will not be returned. After all, in the xuanwu cave, wwx took great pains to ‘reassure’ him that he is super-straight-and-totally-would-never-flirt-with-him. Yet, wwx continues to ‘flirt’ with him--tossing a flower at him just before the competition--which we can gather is a source of, um, great torment for him. 

We are not privy to lwj’s thought process leading to the stolen kiss. What we know for certain, however, is how he reacts to and perceives his own actions after the fact.  Through wwx’s unreliable narration, we can still understand that lwj immediately regrets his actions and feels uncontrollable anger towards himself and his lack of self-restraint. While wwx has more complicated and contradictory feelings bout the kiss, lwj clearly sees his actions as wrong and disrespectful. He is scared of what he has been capable of doing unto another person--pushing wwx away the moment he sees him after the kiss. 

The person spun around. It was Lan Wangji after all. However, right now, his eyes were bloodshot, his expression almost frightening. Wei Wuxian was startled, “Wow, so scary.”

Lan Wangji’s voice was harsh, “Go!”

Wei Wuxian, “I just came here and you want me to go. Do you really hate me that much?”

Lan Wangji, “Stay away from me!” [chapter 69]

As readers, we are told that the Phoenix Mountain kiss, nor its implications, is not something to consider lightly. The fact that lwj’s reaction after the kiss is written in, and that it is so intense for someone usually so reserved, or the fact that we learn that more than a decade later he is still ashamed of himself and describe himself as having done something wrong (or, very wrong 很不对 ), all prove that the non-consensual aspect of the kiss is not an accident and is not downplayed as something to expect from someone in love with another person. 

蓝忘机闷声道：“我，那时，自知不对。很不对。” [chapter 111]

I can already hear some people ask: even if it was not an accident, why chose to include a non-consensual kiss between the two romantic leads? if not because it is a bl trope/weird kink, why did mxtx chose to put this in her novel? what do we gain by including dubious consent or non-consensual interactions in our fiction?

The long-short answer is: because the act of crossing boundaries is a very productive story-telling device for any piece of media focusing on any type of interpersonal relationships. Crossing boundaries--willfully or unintentionally--is a source of conflict, internal and/or relational, which can drive the plot forward, shape character development and relationships, as well as be useful for certain thematic discussions. 

Current discourses regarding consent in English-speaking, mostly-western spheres of the web tend to be very polarized, painting people who cross boundaries as bad. The solution presented (i.e. how to not be a bad person) tends to be an invitation for everyone, within any relationship, to constantly negotiate consent verbally and honestly: to constantly disclose boundaries, to constantly ask for permission, etc. While I do not dismiss the value of these suggestions, it is an ideal representative of certain socio-temporally specific cultural expectations of what communication is, how communication should happen, and how relationships should be like, etc.. Human relationships are messy, people are flawed and hurt each other, and we have complex internal lives (for instance, someone might not realize their wants or limits until they are faced with them). Instead of having media show us only a specific type of idealized relationships where boundaries are never crossed, ever, they allow us to explore the implications of boundaries within interpersonal relationships. Or, sometimes, media and fiction just aim to represent or are influenced by this very real part of human relationships, and use it as a way to create conflict within the narrative and relationships (sometimes in a interesting manner, sometimes in a very gross manner).

In mdsz, the Phoenix mountain non-consensual kiss is a two-fold source of conflict:  internal (lwj) and relational. While wwx remains unaware until he and lwj are together of the identity of the person who kissed him, the implications of the kiss ends up shaping their relationship both before and after wwx’s rebirth. 

A source of (unknown) conflict between lwj and wwx after he is summoned back from the dead is the fact that lwj believes wwx is aware of his feelings. But this conflict is further compounded by the fact that lwj has once forced his feelings unto wwx, and is utterly afraid that he would dare to ever do it again. That is why, every time wwx initiates physical contact, or flirts very deliberately with lwj, lwj never goes further than what wwx has initiated. Sometimes, he even de-escalates their proximity or level of intimacy (usually by asking wwx to “ 别乱动”  or, famously during Drunk#2, by literally knocking himself out) --out of fear that he, again, would lack self-control and do something wrong to the man he loved.  He never presumes he has the permission to push their relationship further than what wwx is offering. Without that added source of conflict, would it have been reasonable to expect lwj and wwx to have realized their mutual feelings earlier, even with the issue of lwj not being aware wwx does not know of his feelings?

“In the beginning, the reason for behaving in such a manner was to let Lan Wangji be disgusted with him and kick him out of the Cloud Recesses, and they would never have to meet again, going their separate ways. Lan Wangji couldn’t possibly tell what his real intentions were. Yet, [..] even when faced with Wei Wuxian’s various actions, tricks, and pranks, Lan Wangji never once lost his temper, reciprocating with restraint and courtesy.” [chapter 99]

That is all true, of course, until Drunk 3. Here again, the ghost of the stolen kiss plays a part in accentuating the conflict. Without it, would lwj have jumped to conclusions as quickly? And, plot-wise, the shared perception of wwx and lwj that they have taken advantage of the other is a source of conflict that does multiple things--it gives wwx an incentive to go look at the temple at night to distract himself from his guilt and sadness, instead of going the next day with lwj (at which point jgy would have had perhaps already left) and it keeps wwx in the dark about lwj’s feelings until lxc reveals to him the events of the past he has forgotten. Here again, issues of consent are clearly taken into consideration as a source of conflict, shaping both characters’ motivations and the events of the plot.

Finally, the theme of consent/boundaries is an important aspect of lwj’s internal struggle, particularly in relation to his father’s choices. The kiss is part of his journey. 

It is not coincidental that the Lan motto is “Be Honorable”/”Self-restraint,” and that lwj is presented as the model Lan disciple. This element is part of the context that gives narrative and thematic meaning to the non-consensual kiss. When lwj forces a kiss on a blindfolded wwx, lwj goes against the values he holds dear and the teachings that were imparted unto him--prime internal conflict. 

But what is also interesting, to me in any case, is how consent is the thing that ultimately differentiates lwj’s choices from his father’s. 

How willing was Lan-furen to be saved by Qingheng-jun? to be taken to live in seclusion in the Cloud Recesses? to be married to him? to have children with him? The novel never tells us clearly. However, the novel gives us an idea of how lqr, lxc and lwj perceive their parents’ relationship. For lwj, we are given an insight into his perception indirectly during the following conversation between him and lxc.

[Lan Xichen] spoke, “Wangji, is there something on your mind? Why have you been so tense?”

Of course, in most people’s eyes, the ‘tenseness’ probably looked no different than Lan Wangji’s other expressions.

Lan Wangji’s brows sunk low as he shook his head. A few moments later, he replied in a low voice, “Brother, I want to take someone back to the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Xichen was surprised. “Take someone back to the Cloud Recesses?”

Lan Wangji nodded, his expression pensive. After a pause, he continued, “Take them back… and hide them somewhere.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes immediately widened.

[…]

“Hide them somewhere?”

Lan Wangji frowned softly. “But they are not willing.” [chapter 72]

Indirectly, we come to understand that lwj draws parallels with his father situation: they both want to protect someone by taking them to the Cloud Recesses, but these persons are unwilling. The unsaid question here is, would I choose to do as our father did? 

The non-consensual kiss is part of lwj’s journey, through which he comes to understand that, despite his strict upbringing and disciplined lifestyle that was supposed to keep him from becoming like his father, he is capable of being his father (or at least who he thinks his father is). He learns that he can understand what sort of passionate feelings could bring someone to do something that goes against not only the wishes of his clan members, but the very wishes of the person they love, for the sake of keeping them safe or for the sake of having them by their sides. And at the end of that internal journey, lwj chooses not be like his father--to put wwx’s decisions and wants and needs first. After buyetian, lwj offers his protection and confesses his feelings--and wwx rejects him. lwj respects wwx’s choice, while still going against his clan to protect him. He brings wwx back to Mass Grave Hill knowing full well that wwx would not survive long the wrath of the four great sects seeking revenge against him, and goes home to receive his punishment.

Overall, what I tried to say in many many words, is that the Phoenix Mountain kiss is not non-consensual by accident. It is not because mxtx is an awful person or is not educated enough, or because she thinks dubious consent is romantic. The fact that it is non-consensual is addressed within the narrative, fuels internal and external conflicts, and is as well woven into the plot structure and the themes of the novel. The kiss is not an outlier element, added to titillate a readership--it exists as an integral part of the novel.

I’m not saying it’s not okay to decide that you do not want to engage with any content that includes non-consensual interactions or dubious consent because that triggers or irks you regardless of the way it is handled. It is totally valid to not personally enjoy or have criticisms about choices mxtx made in exploring these themes, in presenting the internal and relational conflicts around consent/boundaries, or even in the way she decided to write the scenes that figure dubious consent. However, it is not really helpful to divorce an event from its context within a piece of media in order to brand it as either Problematic or Unproblematic, Good or Bad.

Note: Much more could be said about the theme of consent/boundaries in mdzs; this is not exhaustive in the least. 

Note2: Much more could be said, in relation to the question and theme of consent, about: the cultural limitations of Westerners to engage fully with a text written for a chinese audience; the limits of fan translators to fully understand  the nuances and themes of a novel and to communicate them in a different language; about the place dubious consent and non-consensual interactions has had in the romance/erotica genre for a long time, and no, not only because Misogyny or Homophobia. 

[deathing]

    HEADCANON   :   DISSOCIATION  &  STATE OF MIND .

WARNING FOR :   mentions of mental health, childhood abuse and trauma.

            in short,  tomura’s state of mind and over all mental health / mentality is very damaged and unstable.      he doesn’t quite fit into any one classification and rather seems to have an amalgamation of dissociative disorders with aspects from each of the three major disorders ( dissociative identity disorder,  dissociative amnesia and depersonalization-derealization disorder. )  

              first of all,   dissociation is a coping mechanism that is used to disconnect from stressful or traumatic situations, or to separate traumatic memories from general awareness. by dissociating painful memories from everyday thought processes, a person can maintain a level of functioning, as though the trauma had not occurred.  this all stems from his experiences of abuse as a child from his father and the subsequent deaths of his family when his quirk manifested.  dissociation is actually quite a normal trauma response,  it’s a way to disconnect from external situations when you cannot physically get away from them.  it does,  however,  become an issue when this is someone’s only coping mechanism and shigaraki has been doing this almost continually for over fifteen years.  not to mention, the act of wearing the hands of his family served to effectively re - traumatize him or at least substantially raise his stress levels to keep the dissociation going.

1   :   IDENTITY .

              tomura separates his identity from tenko,  effectively to the point where they are two different entities to him. this is a little similar to dissociative identity disorder  ( previously known as multiple personality disorder ),  but that’s really where the similarities stop.  he doesn’t alternate between himself  ( as tomura ) and ‘tenko’    —   rather just separates them in his mind.  it’s stressful and confusing for him to be reminded that he is both of them,  that they are one and the same person,  because he seeks to distance himself from his trauma and so that he is able to continue to function.

              tomura seeks to have a lot of control over many aspects of his life,  becoming stressed and dysregulated when things don’t go the way he’s planned.  it’s to compensate for the lack of control he experienced as tenko and,  unfortunately,  it’s just as he’s said,  that violence breeds more violence.  violence was perpetrated onto tenko and therefore tomura enacts that violence on others in turn.    (  in keeping within the context that he was coached and manipulated by all for one to be violent and destructive,  not that the abuse itself made him this way.  )

               additionally,  i think it’s worth noting that tomura has never really been allowed to form his own identity.  tenko wanted to be a hero and he was continuously denied this by his father.  he was then taken in by all for one,  given tomura as an identity and then manipulated into how to think and feel,  without really haven ever been given much of a choice.  society as a whole rejected tenko when he needed it,  it continues to do so as tomura,  and so he seeks to destroy what continues to deny him.

2   :   MEMORIES .

             perhaps the most obvious is that tomura was unable to actually recall his childhood memories and therefore experienced dissociative amnesia.  or rather,  until his ‘awakening’,  he saw flashes of his childhood but could never see the whole picture,  describing it as like a broken record.  he also muses on that he had ‘no memories’ but that he could ‘remember the emotions.’  most interestingly is that in this particular panel when tomura is recalling a flash of a memory,  tenko is a black silhouette.  at this point,  he was continuing to separate himself from tenko,  at least on a subconscious level,  with the actual memory of his place in the family continuing to be distorted.  after his ‘awakening’,  the memories have clearly been pieced back together but i think he continues to quietly push them to the back of his mind.  again,  the trauma is readily available to him now so it’s more of a conscious decision to not think about it.

              another small point,  but given he dissociates so often or just generally gets lost in his thoughts,  and not necessarily for extended periods of time,  tomura experiences blank spots in his memory in day to day life.  not particularly in relation to information   —–   more so if you just ‘zone out’ while doing something mundane and lose concentration or awareness of the outside world.

3 . 1   :   PERCEPTION   /   DETACHMENT FROM REALITY .

             tomura’s perception of reality can be quite warped and can occasionally question whether something in real or not  ( including himself. ) it’s usually because he feels very detached or disconnected from the real world,  as he’s been isolated for a large portion of his life.  one of his main coping mechanisms has clearly been video games   —–   leading him to make references to gaming and game terminology in relation to real world situations.  this continues to allow him to be somewhat detached from the situation but can also sometimes struggle with differentiating between fiction and reality.  this doesn’t actually occur that often,  the derealization is more likely to be a sense of him feeling as though his surroundings are foggy / unclear / distanced or that time is moving slower.

              this generally gets worse in collaboration with his chronic sleep issues  / insomnia.  the longer he’s gone without proper rest or sleep,  the more likely it is that his perception will become more and more warped.  to the point where he can experience visual and auditory hallucinations.  in the villain / meta liberation army arc,  he comments in this panel that ‘it always gets like that when i get sleepy; i see things moving that shouldn’t be moving,  i hear sounds that shouldn’t be heard.’

3 . 2   :   DETACHMENT FROM EMOTIONS .

               tomura is also incredibly detached and disconnected from his emotions  (  to a certain extent,  this one is quite complicated.  )    obviously he experiences anger,  rage,  resentment.  he experiences a lot of negatively associated emotions daily,  but generally lives in a state of hollowness or numbness.  it’s like that big empty feeling in your chest or that anything remotely positive has a wet blanket over the top of it.  you’re not fully able to feel it.  that’s what it’s like for him.  however,  this detachment also means he will struggle to develop substantial connections and relationships with others,  or it takes him a long time to learn to trust others.  any close relationship he has had in the past or currently is ( or has been ) largely dysfunctional and this is unlikely to change   —   given the other dysfunctional people he surrounds himself with,  and his own experiences.

              his emotional range is quite restricted and his emotional reaction won’t always necessarily fit the circumstance.  for example,  violence and destruction elicit some kind of manic joy from him when this shouldn’t be the case.  to be even more confusing,  he is both emotionless and too emotional.  he can’t control or regulate his emotions the same way a ‘normal’ person can.  he can go from one to the other in a split second and then back again;  he can be manic,  impulsive and unpredictable.

               the ‘itch’ that tomura experiences is also psychosomatic.  that is,  it is created or caused by his own mental or emotional state,  usually stress.  it was previously linked moreso to his traumatic memories and experiences and seems to have been mostly alleviated after his ‘awakening.’  however,  it can still occur when triggered by substantial emotional stress or when he’s struggling to regulate himself.  scratching at it to relieve the itch is a self - soothing mechanism to help him calm down,  however the pain associated with it also assists in grounding him.

[ionizedyeast]

Statement of Nelson Briar (pt. 2)

Title: 0181105 - Graduation Gift Part: 2/3

“Secondary statement of Nelson Briar, Head of Folklore and Legend Research of the Magnus Institute. A followup containing when he was first exposed to the Spiral.”

“Oh Jon, much better that time. See, now I’m not as inclined to only talk about how lovesick I was and still am. Now we can really start to get to the meaty bits, can’t we? Sorry, I sound a little overly excited this time, don’t I? I can’t really say it’s unexpected. The part about Michael and him leaving clues for me was only the tip of the iceberg. That story was really very simple. My romantic partner was consumed by the Spiral in Sannikov Land, and I started to lose my mind a little trying to find out what happened to him, only to land myself in the midst of the labyrinth as well! 

But you see, now that you’ve added the bit about me being touched by the Spiral, you’ve given me the opportunity to go further back. To long before I met Michael. To long before I even began work for the Magnus Institute. Hell, even before the Usher Foundation. We get to go all the way back to my high school graduation when my grandmother gave me a book.

You know, I know Greek very well now. I spoke a little with my mother growing up. But I was never quite fluent in it. I know it rather well now. Part of my studies in university required me to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and a few other languages in order to appreciate what I was reading on a deeper level. So, when I started learning Greek properly, I should have noticed that Noris Andras was not the correct way to say the phrase ‘early man’ in Greek. That book should have been called something closer to Prooros Anthropos. But I only knew a bit of conversational Greek from my mother and my yiayia back when I received the book. Now, mind you -- my yiayia did not buy me Noris Andras, my fathers mother did. Old Scotch woman. Wouldn’t know the Greek language from a Greek salad. 

My entire family knew I was going to start my undergraduate degree in classical literature. I had always been a fan of myths and legends and ancient stories. I had always been ambitious as a kid -- still am -- I almost chose Icarus as my name when I transitioned but well. My name’s very personal to me. I have my reasons for it. Icarus Briar just doesn’t have the right kind of ring to it. Anyways, fact of the matter. My grandmother on my fathers side wanted to send me off with a very special gift. Apparently she and my parents had been regularly scouting used bookshops and antique stores and old library sales to see if they could find me any especially rare books on the classics. It had been a tradition in my family since I was a child that I would always get a new book of classics to read. I’d always eagerly show my parents where myths would differentiate between publications and where names were spelled differently. Comparing and contrasting these differences was always a delight for me. It thrilled me. So when I opened my grandmothers wrapping on my graduation day and found what I can now say was an exceptionally beautiful book amidst the paper, I was over the moon. It was bound in leather that had been intricately detailed and tanned and bore in Greek letters the words Noris Andras. I knew individually what each word meant but I knew it to be grammatically incorrect. My mother and I briefly conversed over how it must have been a poor translation in Greek, sharing a laugh at my grandmothers expense, of course she had no idea. But it was truly a gorgeous book. It was old. I could smell the age of the pages, all brushed around the edges with gold leaf for a particularly lovely sheen. But its condition was stunning. We supposed there must have been a dialectical reason for the grammatical faux pas of the title, but either way, I was in love with this book. It felt like it belonged in my lap. If you asked anyone else in my family about the day I received that book, they would say it was just me, my parents and my grandmother sitting in our living room, eating appetizers as we waited for my cousins, aunts and uncles to arrive for my graduation party. But I’m the only one that will tell you that there were five of us in that room.

My brother was there too. My twin, but he had graduated early and had finished his first year at MIT. He was so proud of me, but anyone could tell you -- if they remembered this correctly -- that shortly after I opened Noris Andras and held the book upon my lap, my parents and grandmother were immediately fussing over my brother. My brother. . .the real Nelson Briar.

Nelson, the-the real Nelson, that is -- he was the star of the family. He was brilliant. Highly intelligent. Charming. Well liked by just about everyone. And he was my best friend. We both had lived a life of constantly lifting one another up, supporting each other and doing our best to be in each other’s court through all our struggles. But even through it all, my entire family always found his achievements far more impressive. He was going into engineering. He had graduated early. He had a 4.0 at the end of his first year. Nelson was perfect. 

Now, I suppose you’re wondering, ‘So why did you choose his name when you transitioned. Isn’t that confusing.’ Well, it would be if there were still two of us. But I’m getting there, hold your horses Jon.  As you no doubt have concluded by now -- Noris Andras was a Leitner. My grandmother found it in an antique bookstore covered in dust and filth and she’d brought it to a book restoration center to get it repaired. So that’s why it was so nicely maintained when I received it.  After the graduation party was over, Nelson and I went up to our roof. Our bedroom at home had a stairwell that led to the roof and we’d often go up there in the summer together. While he was away at school I often went up there to smoke and think when I’d had especially long days. I had brought Noris Andras up with me because I was truly fascinated by it, and Nelson seems really interested as well. So he and I ended up flipping through it while we were on the roof, just fascinated by the content. The entire book was clearly written in Greek, but neither of us seemed to have much of a challenge reading it. Perhaps it was all very easy for us because of our occasional conversations with our mother, but Nelson told me, he had never seen my eyes light up while reading like I did while skimming that book.

It was filled with stories and legends I had never ever read before. Legends that I swore must have been lost to time. Or cultures that only had one written document in their entire community. I was astounded. There was nothing in those pages that even hinted at being a retelling of another story. They were all completely new to me.

Nelson left me to my reading and turned in for the night. Morning came and I was still on the roof. I had read almost the entire thing. And I felt like I knew secrets that no one else in the world knew. I felt like a god that morning. There were deities and demigods I had never heard the names of. Heroes with names that could be broken down into Forsaken Daydream in terms of its translation. Tales of growing women from tufts of their hair, who would grow and grow and become titans. I had a book in my possession with myths that were as old as civilization. And I was the sole keeper of these stories. 

I did some research, naturally. Tried searching the names of characters but nothing came up online. What I had was purely original and I was thrilled. And I needed to know if more of these stories existed. I searched Noris Andras online both in English and Greek and only found sources trying to correct my grammar. Nothing like this book existed and my pagan heart told me I had been blessed by Athena herself and she was bestowing knowledge on me that was too important for anyone else. Of course, Nelson thought I was out of my mind. He told me to call him when a story existed about a gorgon made of pillows would prey upon those who denied travelers blankets when staying anywhere as a guest. Or something to that extent. I told him I still had a small portion of the book left to read and I’d get back to him. Now, I don’t think it will come to any shock to you, of course, when I tell you the very next story in Noris Andras was just that. I stopped reading for a spell after seeing that. And I thought there was absolutely no way this would be the case. So I thought incredibly hard about another concept. Just something I conceived for shits and giggles. A transgender young man who could create his own myths and legends simply by willing them into existence. It was ego stroking but if my brother could pitch an idea to this book and for it to be on the very next page. Surely, I could do the same?

But the unfortunate part was. I was at the very end of the book. There was only about six or seven pages left, and I assumed it was an appendix covering terminology in the book. But as I would soon check. A story appeared on those final pages. It bore the name I had been using at the time -- Nigel -- and told a story of a young man who could weave stories in and out of reality. How he could simply will it and wish it and bring the stories he so desired into our world. And the story read like what my very heart had always wanted. A power to make fiction real. To make the mythology I had loved so very dear real.

And as I got to the bottom of the page, I saw the only English in the entire book. It was a small contract. It simply said: “Do you accept?” I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But as I had flipped to that page, I gave myself a paper cut. My blood dripped on the page and like invisible ink -- it vanished.

Any normal person would tell you this is abnormal. Blood doesn’t just vanish. But part of me just accepted that this was normal. And so I closed the book. My gut told me to simply close the book and leave it on my bed. And my gut also told me to make a wish. I made it simple. I wished for my shoes to be untied. I looked down. And the laces lay loose on either side of my foot. I could brush that off. Maybe they had always been untied. I made another wish. I wished for my bedroom door to open. And it did just that. Very well, my house had always been a little drafty. So I went a step further. I wished for Noris Andras to be back in my hands. And it was. 

I don’t think I need to explain that I had discovered I had a new power thanks to this antique book. But it wasn’t something I could just tell anyone about or just indulge in. I didn’t know if it was something on a limited use factor. But I did know what it did was very, very real. And I suppose, I didn’t realize how dangerous it was until I used it for the wrong reason. As I mentioned before. I used to use the name Nigel. It was my preferred name back then and truthfully, I’m glad it’s not anymore. My dead name did not begin with an N and my parents were still calling me by my dead name at the time. I’d not yet come out to them, but I had come out to Nelson. Nelson was beyond supportive. Often would do whatever he could to help me feel comfortable in my own skin. Used my preferred name and pronouns in any situation he could without outting me to our parents.

I’m still not sure why I turned Noris Andras against him. I don’t even think I did it on purpose. But you know, they do tell you to be careful what you wish for. He didn’t out me to our parents. A friend of ours did. On accident. I don’t hold it against him. He thought I’d come out to our parents. Our parents were not exactly the most accepting. Sat on the couch listening to them tell me about how they weren’t going to cover my college expenses anymore. How I was going to work instead and pay for my own education if I wanted to go so badly. Whole slew of hurtful things. Nelson tried to diffuse the situation. He did his best. Until I just said aloud. “If you can’t stand me so much, then how about I just wish me and Nelson were one and the same.” I asked if they would prefer if they only had ever had one son. The perfect, wonderful, flawless Nelson. And just like that. It was my graduation party again. I was sitting on the couch. Noris Andras was in my lap. My mother kissed my forehead and told me “We’re so proud of you, Nelson. You’re going to do so wonderfully in college.”

Nelson was gone. Or rather. Nelson and I became the same person. Somehow. I looked down at Noris Andras. I opened it to the last page, and beneath the words “Do you accept?” was a name, written in the dark brown of dried blood -- Nelson Briar.

I was still trans, mind you. When the party ended, I went to my room -- it had always only been my room. One bed. One dresser. One desk. I stood in front of the mirror in just my underwear. I was in my binder. I examined myself. I didn’t look like Nelson. I still looked like me. But I was more mannish. I was on hormones. My wish, whatever that wish was. Gave me all the love and support my family had given Nelson -- but at the expense of his existence, as it were. I lived my life ever since then as Nelson. That’s who I am now. Kind of funny, isn’t it? The Distortion became Michael just as Nelson became me. Very juxtaposed. 

I should add, in all my years of research, I never found another copy of Noris Andras. Nor did I ever find the other myths mentioned. I can only assume the people in these stories were also affected by the book as well. Maybe none of these stories are even from Greek mythology. Maybe they’re from another world altogether.

Oh, and before you ask. No, I don’t have Noris Andras anymore. If I did, MIchael would still be here. I would have wished him back ages ago. I caught him holding the book when we were sort-of-living-together. He asked me where I got the book and I told him it was something of a keepsake, but he wanted to borrow it. Naturally, I let him, thinking he was going to leave it in the apartment, but well, I have reason to believe he brought it to Gertrude and she disposed of it. If not it’s buried somewhere in the Institute. Either way. . .I don’t think I want it back. It’s not like it ever did me any favorites.

I believe that’s all I have time for, Jon -- I have a meeting to attend. Sort of. I think Peter’s still trying to tempt me back into the Lonely along with your boyfriend, but I’m going to have to tell him to sod off. I’ll be seeing you. I’m sure you’d love to hear the rest.”

[llzehs]

Be aware of jon-heel-moxley, a hate blog in the name of being a Dean fan

Since I got mostly psychos blocked on tumblr, I myself missed this. A follower brought my attention to it and usually I ignore pathetic creeps with no real life who spent all their time obsessing over others on internet (and with not more than 7 or 8 followers in total LOL) but I’m particularly addressing this cuz ever since I made an anon tumblr account to use on my phone (where no one is blocked), I have been seeing this one nutcase constantly polluting Dean tags with their never ending negativity, whining and bitching and I’m always like, ‘no fucking wonder Dean hates some of his fans.’

Surprise! That’s the same nutcase who’s screenshots are these from. 😂😂😂 I also realized this is the person who was sending me all that anon hate. And warning for you Ambrollins shippers/writers, if you are getting anon hate, this might be the creep sending you that.

Anyways, I was tempted to drag this nutcase for being such a whiner and always posting screenshots and name dropping blogs and writers and shippers behind their backs despite the fact that they themselves have a whole damn blog dedicated to being a creepily obsessive shipper. But I never did so, cuz I try my best to avoid getting into any kind of drama that doesn’t involve me directly. 

jon-heel-moxley, you are a goddamn psycho who is obsessed with negativity and think you are some kind of a moral compass or police around here. When you are nothing but a pathetic miserable loser who needs to find a real life and stop being such an obsessive creep spreading hate all the time bout everything and nothing. You bitch and whine and moan bout people who don’t even acknowledge your existence. Instead of blocking content that isn’t your cup of tea you sit on your computer and spend your whole day obsessing over shit that shouldn’t affect your life so much. And if it does, you honestly need to ask yourself what is your mental state. I honestly feel sad at how royally pathetic one person can be. How this is all your online life exist of. You can easily focus on being a Dean fan and celebrating him, but all you do is bitch bout other fans and shippers. The only thing that can help the kinds of you is to GO GET A LIFE.

People like you give Dean fans a bad name. I dunno why someone need to be so obsessed with a celebrity to a point where they act like everyone need their permission to be fan of that certain person. And the saddest thing is the most annoying and unlikable people are usually the ones acting like this lmao. Hell I’m sure if Dean ever encounters you in real life, you’ll make him so uncomfortable he’ll run a mile from you. At least shippers respect someone’s personal boundaries, and can differentiate between character and the real person. Acting like a brat over opinions and fake ships and stuff that is clearly fiction doesn’t make you look like a cool fan, it makes you look like a creepy nutjob.

Your only problem was I raised some legit points bout the toxicity of Deanee stans who continue to disrespect Dean’s basic wish of privacy (which you felt personally since you are one of those creepy obsessive stans that I hate so much), and that you religiously hate Ambrollins and everyone who ships it. Even if they are careful shippers like me who acknowledge and avoid the toxic aspects of this ship. I was able to get a following here cuz of my well based opinions, and when idiots like you realize you can’t counter them (since you don’t have any brains), you do the shittest shit a person can do. But at least in your case, your reputation speaks for you. 

Renee is a performer, who I was a fan of. I have a right to criticize her like you all criticize every public figure. Like Renee herself criticizes others on her podcast. But creepy Deanee shippers who live so far up Renee’s ass just cuz she’s married to their fav wrestler, what can one expect from you anyways? You have no life of your own and hence think everyone should be a blind brainless idiot like you. You cannot comprehend simple things like some people are just not likable and 2 people are not linked with each other about everything just cuz they are married or dating. You are the same invasive idiot who claimed on Dean’s behalf how he loves Renee so much and would never leave her like you know him in real life and how his marriage works on daily basis and what’s in store of his and Renee’s future 😂 Dean, your fav wrestler, the most private person on earth, yeah go on claim quotes on his behalf and it doesn’t make you look like a psycho. (Mind you, I’m not saying Dean doesn’t love her and would ever leave her, that’s his wife who he married for a reason. I’m only saying if antis are psychos, so are creepy shippers like these who claim things like they are a part of these celebrities real lives and know bout future and what Dean’s feeling and wanting when Dean himself is extremely private and rarely expresses anything bout his personal life.)

People have been calling Seth a slut puppy and princess for years, but no one bats an eye. Dare anyone call Dean something in the shipping content when its clearly the trend around here, jump on them cuz your loser asses cannot use the brains you were given and all you can do in your life is throw bitchfits like the bitches that you are.

People have been writing bout Dean’s injury and death experience left and right, and it was also used to gain sympathy and tension on-screen, but yeah, come at my fics and writing. That makes you look really legit 😂 My fics probably make you cry thousand tears a day cuz its a ship you hate. You are the kind who’ll be kissing ass of a writer doing the same thing if they were doing it with your OTP, Thank goodness you attacked someone like me who’s fully confident and aware of psychos like you and can see right through your bullshit. 

Fiction, ships, everything fake, and that’s what pisses you off all the time? Really shows your skull is pretty empty. You know what’s whack whack whack? Your utter blind stupidity. You know who needs to stop and fuck off? Your psychotic ass. Learn to mind your own damn business or shut the fuck up. Like your pathetic loser ass is allowed to pollute Dean tags and tumblr with your constant whining and childish bullshit, every shipper and fan is allowed to spent their time on tumblr however they want. If you were even decent enough, I would actually sit back and think bout upsetting someone with my content. But your blog content is good enough reason to roll on the floor, drag your ass and go back to being what I am, and that’s a blog people actually enjoy. A blog that’s not filled with hatred and constant negativity.

Seriously, some of ya all need to take a look at your life and ask yourself what are you doing with your lives if bitching bout others is your daily main activity. You are one sad depressing human. I pity you.

Oh, and by the way, slutbrose rules 😎 I’m gonna go write down another Ambrollins fic using Dean’s injury as an angst plot 😎 Seth’s also Dean’s Daddy 😎 Renee is unfit for the commentary job 😎 I’ll continue to embarrass your pathetic loser bitter asses cuz your tears and obsession is hilarious to me 😎

🖕🏻 

[gaslightgatekeepgodot]

A (sizeable) rant/essay concerning my experiences in the Tumblr JJBA fandom.

None of you asked to hear this, but I’m getting pretty pissed off at some people in particular (I will not name names, though I may heavily implicate some people) and it’s finally started to kinda spill over. So I’m letting it spill; take it or leave it.

I’m... Fairly irate at the moment, and writing out my feelings does tend to help me calm down in situations like this, so if I was going to put this anywhere the best place for it is probably on the public internet. Again, take it or leave it: this is the internet, you don’t have to interact with me if this concerns you or your ideals. Just click that handy little block button on my profile and you never have to see little Nat mouthing off again.

If you want me to summarise (I know not everyone wants/is able to read a fluffed-up pillar of text) or explain my reasoning behind anything I’ve said below the cut, feel free to direct message me here or on Discord @nati bati yi#1462. Once I get this off my chest I’ll be more than willing to chat to people about it. <3

(Before I say anything else, this is not intended to be a callout in any way, shape or form. I don’t mention the specific names of anybody, and the actions I do mention here will only point to specific people if you know them too. Anyone on the outside should have zero idea of who anyone I bring up is; I do not want anyone to get harassed over this, and I very much do not want to start drama - that’s what inspired me to go off and write this hunk of garbage in the first place. I’m just... Sick to death of the fandom as a whole.)

Anyway. Here we go.

From what I’ve been able to tell, being in this fandom for just under a year now, there are two main halves to it: the gay-hating, stale-meme-parroting dudebro side, who seem to mostly congregate around YouTube and Reddit, and... Whatever the side based on Tumblr (and probably now Twitter) is. I don’t spend a lot of time on Reddit, so naturally I’ve been more exposed to the Tumblr side of the fandom, and after experiencing the ideals some people here want to force on other people I’ve come to the conclusion I’d almost rather be immersed in the bigoted dudebro side. And I say this as an ace-spec/gay trans man.

I’ll start with the blocklist.

I think most of us on Tumblr came to the conclusion that the blocklist was utter bullshit, but I did see a few people in a Discord server I have since left (I will expand on this later) defending the reasoning behind some ships being on there, citing the fact they had been abused in a relationship with a similar age gap. I can definitely see why that would bother a person, and I do not want to erase the fact that people have been and will be abused in similar relationships, but you can’t project your singular experience onto every fictional, non-canon character relationship and every person who ships it. For one, not every relationship is going to turn out the same just because it meets this one criteria of “the age gap is too big”, and, also, you don’t have to write fiction to totally reflect reality. You are in full creative control. Maybe if the characters were real people they wouldn’t click, but if you’re drawing a picture or writing a fanfic you don’t have to go along with that. You can write them so that they’re good to each other, while still keeping it in character. Araki has said that Jotaro and Kakyoin’s personalities don’t work together very well, and that they wouldn’t have become friends or even spoken to each other if Jotaro wasn’t a Stand user... But Jotaro/Kakyoin just happens to be the most-written about JJBA ship on AO3. Me? I love Jotakak. It’s about the only thing I do ship. And I’ve read some quite frankly amazing fanfiction where the two boys are paired and they work together, and it’s still very much in character. Of course, I’m very much against loli/shota content or content depicting characters who don’t look very old- if someone drew Koichi in a sexual situation I would be pissed as all hell, but I don’t have to engage with that content any further. I can just filter out the tag/block the OP and move on. You don’t need to make a fuss and tell/imply to people that they are paedophilic for enjoying well-written content where a 17-year-old is in a healthy relationship with a 22-year-old, platonic or otherwise.

My second point brings in some of the things I’ve learned while studying media this past year. My main point here: not everyone in an audience is the same. There is a reason differential decoding and the uses and gratifications theory exist. The uses and gratifications theory states, at its most basic, that the audience of a media text is active, not passive; i.e. they are not just absorbing every piece of data thrown at them by the text they are consuming, and they are consuming different media to satisfy a need- for JJBA, that need could be entertainment, escapism, identifying with a character similar to yourself or to give you something to talk about with your friends. Differential decoding arises when someone consuming a piece of the media does not entirely go along with the creator’s preferred reading of it- an example might be how a sizeable amount of people enjoy villainous or “disgusting” characters such as Dio, Cioccolata, Stroheim or Melone, when they were clearly written in canon to be abhorrent, unlikable people for varying reasons. I can also say that, because the audience is active, and consume media based on their personal needs, that somebody writing fanfic of a ship you don’t like isn’t going to make incest or paedophilia more socially acceptable. I don’t consume that content, because I don’t feel the need to. Sure, real paedos might, but they’re a minority. Just because a couple hundred people or so read a fanfic on the free web where a grown adult does the dirty with a little kid, doesn’t mean to say everyone in the world will suddenly start thinking it’s ok. Mention it to any sane person in real life and they will not like that idea any more than you do.

And my third point is more a personal thing than anything else, but there is a community I used to be part of (and was part of almost from the beginning) where I didn’t feel welcome because of people causing drama over things like what I mentioned above. I started multiple discourses entirely by accident by saying I didn’t understand why everyone though X ship was horribly problematic and worth getting mad at people over. I still don’t feel like anyone deserves to be harassed over characters and ships they enjoy, but that doesn’t mean to say I support all of it. Along with generally feeling ignored by a lot of the moderators of that server, as well as their friends, I was just sick to death of how they seemed to single out some certain people to say, “hey, don’t do this” when other people seemed exempt. I was verbally warned for posting innuendos in a general chat (but it’s not like I could anywhere else on the server, because I’m not 18 yet), but at least once every day I would see two people flirting in-character in whatever channel they happened to meet in, and it never seemed to be in a roleplay channel- I couldn’t see into NSFW to check if they did it there too, but the fact it would leak out into gen concerned me. They would throw innuendo after innuendo at each other, and they never seemed to stop, or be told to stop. Yes, I could have messaged the moderators to say it made me uncomfy, but one of them was a moderator themselves, so I felt a little out my element doing so. 

Another thing that bothered me is when I tried to join an offshoot of that server for kin, and the admin - I assume - of said offshoot server messaged me (with some other conversation concerning it in between) that, despite the fact I only wanted in to help me figure out what it meant to me, I wasn’t allowed in because somebody was uncomfy with doubles. I completely understand that, but I had spoken to the only person it could have been (I wasn’t given a name, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out who it was) multiple times about that character and how similar we were- hell, we had even roleplayed together as doubles of that character and no problems were ever expressed to me. If anything it seemed like we left off in a spot we could have carried on from later. It might not have been intended that way, but being told I wasn’t allowed in there made me feel excluded from the community nonetheless, especially because I’d had a few people tell me the night before that they wanted more people in there and that I’d be totally welcome. I was also told, before any of this happened, that the same person blocked a friend of mine in another server for going on a small rant about how they didn’t like the way Josuke acted in the episode where he plays dice with Rohan and ends up burning his house down, because they kin Josuke..? At least, that’s what was relayed to me.

But, hey ho, it’s all behind me now. I won’t lie; I don’t really plan on ever going back. I don’t want to engage anymore, because it makes me uncomfortable and anxious thinking about it, so I most likely will unfollow most (if not all) of the blogs pertaining to that community tonight. I do have a few people still there who I miss speaking to, but I’ve DM’d all of them on Discord at least once since I’ve left and talked to them about either how I miss them or something entirely unrelated to the server. I’d like to talk more with them, but DMs are always awkward for me to begin with... I have a feeling they might not want to talk after reading this, and I think I’m ready to accept that? Might be difficult not being able to scream about fanfic as much, but I won’t impose on anyone if my presence makes them uncomfy. I don’t want to be that guy.

I’ll say it again: now that I’ve got this off my chest and subsequently calmed down a lot, I’m more than willing to talk about any of it. Just shoot me a message on Discord and I’ll reply when I’m able and feeling up to talking about it again. For now I’m probably just going to go back to pissing about on Flight Rising or play Smash or something

[sol1056]

another round of asks

These are all related to plotting and story structure in some way, so I’ve put them together. 

expanding story vs failing to deliver on the promise

how does one story deliver and another fail

is plot-driven = bad vs character-driven = good 

mishandling clone storyline premise

clarifying the rules of a premise

1 expanding story vs failing to deliver on the promise

What’s the difference between a story where it starts off small in scope, but then branches out waaaaay beyond from where it started and something that didn’t deliver on its promise? 

A story that branches into every possible permutation and then some? Epic fantasy does it, and so do multi-book series, especially in the roman-fleuve style. If we’re talking a series of books and each tops 150K+, the story must dig into every ramification of its premise or else it’s gonna run out of things to say and just repeat itself. 

If a story’s premise (which is much like the teaser you read on the back of a book, or the movie’s description on Netflix) mentions time travel and the actual use in the story treats time travel like, well, taking a plane ride? Probably not digging as far into that part of its premise. If you finish a story dissatisfied because the story seemed to take a lot of things for granted that you’d wanted to find out more about, it’s probably failing short on delivering.   

2 how does one story deliver and another fail

How could something like Homestuck not feel like it’s breaking the promise of its premise, despite taking zany, imaginative, meta turns, but voltron feels like... well. We’ve been sorta... let down at times?

Homestuck had clear potential from the get-go, because its premise is just so damn open-ended. It also often has to do with the rules -- the more bizarre or esoteric they are, the more likely you’re going to expect the characters to bang up against one or more. 

That’s the most common way to explore things. Like, “you can’t time-travel to a time you already occupy or Bad Things Happen.” You’re immediately curious to see if the story will do exactly that, and thus explore the consequences and implications. 

That’s one way VLD pulled itself back from asking some interesting questions. The paladins are bonded, so what happens if one dies? Apparently... not much. You just find a replacement. What if one leaves? Again... not much. Would a lion ever ditch their paladin? Sure, but another lion will take the paladin instead, then. 

Rules should have consequences. Forcing characters to experiences those consequences is one of the most fun places to play in a story. That’s when you get to really dig down into the implications of the story’s world and rules. At least in my opinion, fwiw.

3 is plot-driven = bad vs character-driven = good

And are plot-driven stories a bad thing in general, and something to be avoided? Or is it more that VLD came from the angle that it was going to be character-driven then shifted into plot-driven?

Certain genres are more plot-driven than others, just as certain genres are more character-driven. Mysteries, thrillers, disaster movies, and classic chosen-one epic genres can tend to be strongly plot-driven. However, that means you need a really fascinating plot, because the characters can end up a little passive -- they’re basically chasing after a bad guy, a tornado, a bunch of magical coupons. Stories with a lot of character development/change -- coming-of-age, romance, domestic dramas, novels of manners, literary fiction, etc -- tend to be more character-focused.  

VLD is sitting in the space opera tradition, so it’s a mix of character-driven and dramatic moves from the Big Bad that also propel the plot (ie Zarkon chasing the team everywhere). The character-driven aspect fell away in S4, and dropped right off in S5, and S6 is almost as uneven. The clue for me was when the EPs said they were squeezed for time so they picked what would fit. 

The VLD staff may have mapped out a character-driven story, but when you edit down to just ‘the things that happen,’ the result is a plot-driven story. You have to keep in the beats that show characters making decisions against understood goals, or you’re just reciting a string of events. 

I’m not inclined to say the writers hit a bad streak. I have a feeling S3-S6 was more a result of an inexperienced voice at the helm making some ill-chosen calls about how to cut the story down to something that’d fit in the time allotted. The only way to learn that is the hard way, by doing. And that means sometimes doing it badly.  

4 mishandled clone storyline & premise

I spent the evening combing through and reading as many of your analyses and meta (and the ones you reblogged) regarding season 6 and I am so glad to know that I'm not the only person feeling like the clone storyline was mishandled.

Ahaha, you’re not alone. I included your ask here because a clone storyline is absolutely one where the premise must be explored. It’s rife with so many major ethical and philosophical questions. Juicy questions like: what does it mean to be human, what impact is nature vs nurture, how do we understand ourselves as an individual, what are the implications if you cannot differentiate, etc. 

The ethical and moral aspect, though, means if you skip delving into the premise, you risk creating a hollow -- or worse, amoral -- story line. On top of that, it’s also one that’s been damn well done to death, and that means it’s really too easy to end up with a horribly cliched story line. 

It’s certainly not a plot line I’d ever recommend if you’re just going to throw it into the story and leave it there. If a story’s going to tackle something done so many times, the story has to find a new angle, and then respect its premise enough to really tear it apart and make it an organic part of the story.   

5 clarifying the rules of a premise

I think we coulda benefited from having the originally planned 2-parter The Legend Begins (bc Coran said "Voltron destroyed Daibazaal to close the rift", implying that there was a lion swap happening there too) for some better clarification that a person can change enough to fit a different lion entirely.

Oh, absolutely. Or that single line from the pilot, when Allura tells her father -- when only three people are on the bridge! -- that they can still form Voltron. Clearly there were other loopholes or aspects the story never saw fit to actually explain, and it’s possible with those, the lion swap might’ve made more sense. Or at least been less bothersome for a lot of the audience. 

Had the backstory realized the work it really needed to do -- raise questions for the current storyline -- it would’ve done more than a passing statement. A backstory is nothing more than filler if it doesn’t change something in the story, prompt a realization or decision on the part of a character, now. 

That particular episode needed something that made the paladins react with an, “omg this changes everything” kind of moment. Had Coran explained -- or one of the listeners called him on it -- then we might’ve gotten more insight, enough to change the characters’ perspectives of how the lions worked, and their role to play as the lions’ partners. 

Instead we were handed a conclusion -- “so Lotor wants X” -- despite the fact that a) Lotor never even appears in the backstory, and therefore b) there’s no way to conclude anything about Lotor from knowing what his parents did. It was another missed opportunity, but I think this is simply another case of the situation in #4: cuts for the sake of time, rather than for the sake of the story.  

[ivyjjk-blog]

Taekook Tension Part 2~

This is the second part of my response, for those who have not yet read the first part please do so before readig this. (https://ivyjjk.tumblr.com/post/172278083355/taekook-tension-a-response-part-1)

So moving on, after using jhope's video shoot to conclude there was 'obvious' tension between taekook, you proceed to examine run episode 35 to further solidify your narrative. "Taehyung randomly plays with Jungkook’s hair, it causes a large portion of the TaeKook shippers to call it a moment and confirm their ship as real". Why wouldn't they? Have you ever been in the jikook tags? Them merely standing together invokes a celebratory toast from their shippers and there's nothing wrong with that. Shipping is completely fine when done within it's limits, there's nothing wrong with taekookers taking that moment to support their ship. I've already outlined that going by what ship accounts and ship videos say is not the correct route, to come to an unbiased conclusion you have to investigate the whole video as well as taking the situation into accordance without flimsy affects and romantic songs in the background. Those are simply used by shippers for entertainment which again is fine as long as they learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

Ofcourse not everyone has that mindset but it's not "millions" of people taking that as "proof". There will always be some who take things too far on BOTH sides and since taekook is a bigger ship, it's more apparent. Shipping culture has existed for decades even as early as 1990s and the whole star wars rage with teenagers, you can't just group taekookers together saying they're being misguided by such moments because I can confidently say just because someone see their ship interacting and claim "boyfriends" does not mean they actually think they're boyfriends. It's simply a way for them to express their love for the closeness those 2 individuals share. Will there be some people who take it too far? ofcourse there will be but that has been the case in approximately every single ship, it's not something to highlight because it's a minority, there's nothing anyone can do about that since it will always exist, all we can do is try to educate as many people as possible about reality vs fiction. Also isn't it a bit arrogant and condescending to think there's no way taekook could be real thus their moments are midleasding? Doesn't this contradict what you're saying about how shippers shouldn't be misguided by moments on screen and start thinking their ship is real since that is exactly what you're doing with jikook? Sure jikookers like to claim everything "makes sense" for jikook, it's "consistent" but that's what some taekookers also think so who's to say you're right and they're wrong?

We can continue debating all we want but at the end of the day you don't know any more than any other shipper and vice versa so lets stop with this arrogant behaviour. Then you latch back onto your point about how you're only saying this since taekookers “contacted you” and think they're being “misled" since there's "no way" such jikook moments would happen if taekook was real. I still stick by my point of you simply lying about taekookers coming to you because you have failed to show any proof and by briefly examining your social media platforms as well as asking around, I’ve come to the conclusion it's a lie. Sure some taekookers feel unsatisfied and might feel confused by some jikook moments (all explainable to me) but that's the case for both sides. Go on any YouTube ship video, any instagram account, twitter thread etc. I have seen plenty of jikook shippers type comments like "my jikook heart is hurting", "why would jungkook look at tae like that" etc. That does not mean we have the right to demand a specific ship stops interacting because it does not correlate with your narrative that's simply idiotic. "TaeKook shippers have complained about Taehyung and Jungkook being separated" as have jikook shippers. These type of shippers will always exist, on both sides, all I have to say to them is go outside, breathe in some fresh air then actually analyse their relationship from beginning to end to form a coherent conclusion rather than jumping on isolated events (like you pretty much have).

You go on to analyse how bighit have been separating taekook ( quick note it's so amusing to me how when taekookers came up with this theory they were laughed at but as soon as it was in favour for jikook, jikookers jumped on it and took it as the ultimate truth). "There are many times when Taehyung is interrupted from doing an action that would be inappropriate if Jungkook wasn’t single" like when? I'm sorry but you can't just throw around statements without any backing. No, run episode 35 is not proof and I'll get to that but when has tae ever been stopped from initiating skinship with jungkook? Sure it's cut sometimes just like jikook is, jungkook might pull away sometimes (very rare) just like with jimin because it's basic human nature, sometimes when someone is touched suddenly their CNS triggers a reflex response such as flinching from a sudden sensation. Ultimately those isolated events prove nothing since we have significantly more moments when jungkook warmly leans into tae's touches and even initiates them.

For your analysis on episode 35, I'm not even going to bother with a long essay like I did for the jhope video because that's how ridiculous your claim is. I would  post screenshots but that is not possible right now so I'll indicate the time frames. At 27:24 before tae goes towards jungkook, the member’s reactions are exactly the same as to when you claim they get pissed off at tae in the 2nd to 4th picture after he ruffled jk’s hair since you claim they're worried shippers might "misread it". First of all if they were worried about that they simply would cut it out of the episode. Also watching the whole video you can clearly see the member's expressions were not caused solely due to what taehyung was doing. There were many nuances contributing to the progression of their facial articulation such as savouring the food, listening to each other talking, commentary about the task, slight disagreements about the food taste etc.  Of course innocent fans fall into these traps since they don't bother fact-checking and that creates a horde of misunderstandings

Moving onto to 27:38, I’m sorry but jungkook wouldn’t look so content, he even smiles before he averts his attention back to the person speaking. What kind of boyfriend is he to enjoy such intimate affections from his "friend" knowing how shippers will take it whilst his boyfriend is in the same room? exactly it makes no sense because that's not how things are. Also if what you claim was the case then bighit would most definitely cut that scene out. further more if you actually watch that part, jimin doesn't even once turn to look at them directly other than when he's casually taking in his surroundings, clearly showing through his body language he isn't the least bit affected. 

"It is disrespectful to the stylist that did Jungkook’s hair", no it just goes on to show the level of intimacy and comfort between tae and jungkook for taehyung to do that without even having the need to ask permission and jungkook going pliant under his touches. 

"RM realizes the tension, and walks across the room and he successfully stops it. In the free video, RM appears there and the editor made note of him moving and he said, “It takes some time for a man to mature” again wrong information and manipulation of the situation. RM says that after the moment with taekook takes place, he does nothing to dissuade the supposed tension you speak off, this brings me back to my original point which is that if jikook were actually a thing it would be highly disrespectful of tae to do that and for you to indicate he's so childish and uncaring is frankly disgusting and straight up untrue. 

"They opted to not only leave the moment in, but show where clearly the three are not on the same page". You honestly without any bias think bighit is aiming to show the fans that there's something wrong between maknaeline? I'm actually astonished at your naivety to think a company such as bighit who keeps everything under wraps and dissuades minor rumours as quick as possible would risk the image of their brand for... what exactly? To show how a specific relationship is real and fans should not be shipping the other one? What kind of idealistic world are you living in? Quick note but shipping is actually beneficial to them. No the bond between bts is not fan service but it's not a secret that bighit benefits from it. However if it was causing problems between members then they would approach specific members to not do things that could be suggestive, they would never try to show "tension". That would be extremely hazardous to their careers. The fact that taekook continues to have suggestive moments (backhugs, head scruffs, intimately touching each other's necks, "you're mine", "oh you're sexy", " we act out romantic scenes", "tae putting his head under jungkook's head" etc. strongly implies there's nothing romantic between jikook because those moments simply would not happen, it doesn’t make sense if they were a thing. Jikook moments on the other hand pertain nothing suggestive, they're rather playful, teasing and have familiar skinship much like jinkook in that aspect. I've always considered jimin to be someone jungkook looks up to due to how much effort and work he puts in to achieve his goals and aspires to imitate him on stage. I frankly see nothing that could suggest something romantic but ofcourse everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

To conclude you  can't use stop frames to prove a point, you have to take the situation into consideration and all the nuances that could've led to certain expressions and for that you have to watch the whole video and analyse the person's expression throughout the episode. I haven't acknowledged some of the statements you made in this section simply because they're so silly, I don't even feel the need to analyse it, anyone with some modicum of sense can work it out themselves. Also your analogy at the beginning about a,b,c was good but what on earth makes u so confident it's true? I could also use solitary events and make my own inaccurate conclusions based on another analogy but would that make it true? not at all. remember kids correlation is not causation.

So basically your whole post on ‘taekook tension’ was based on a taekook shipper supposedly "feeling" tension between them and then using two isolated events to prove your point? Doesn't seem very reliable if you ask me. They're on a break, there has been a lack of interaction between all ships which has put some shippers on edge  (i'm still not buying taekookers coming to you tho) but it's simply so idiotic to use subjective viewpoints of shippers and claim to construct an objective situation and that too based on only 2 events which you also wrongly analysed.

"What if you told C to stop and it kept happening?" if you know tae you'll know he would never do that to his close friends especially as some one who jungkook claims "helped me come of my shell" and "made me free" simply not realistic. "Replace AB with JiKook and C being Taehyung" and on what basis? where's the proof? where's the consistency and the timeline? "once a member is no longer single, any ships regarding that members are fake no matter how real it might seem" that's true no doubt but again where's the proof jikook is real? or taekook for that matter. We can analyse as much as we want but at the end of the day we don't know any more than other fans. Sure we can delve in and use interpretation skills to come to a conclusion but if you've ever take any English literature classes then you know how much interpretation a single extract can have which might all seem accurate but at the end of the day it's up to the person and how they perceive things. My problem here is how carelessly you have painted taehyung as a child who does not know any better.

Any jikook shippers reading this simply ask yourselves, if jikook was real and taehyung knew, would he seriously do the things he does with jungkook knowing what response it would elicit from his fans? be honest. Not to mention all the times jugkook backhugs him, pulls him in, agrees to live with him in the future, plays romantic skits with him, what kind of a boyfriend would do that with another man? From what I know jungkook is not an inconsiderate asshole so please drop this reasoning. I've noticed so many jikookers saying jungkook doesn't initiate anything with taehyung to placate themselves but boy are they wrong, Infact I would go as far as to claim jungkook is more attentive and initiative towards taheyung than any other member (I will explain this in a separate taekook post).

As you can tell this was a hastily written analysis that I haven't proof read since I'm so busy (I keep saying SIGH) but I hope my point comes across. The last and most important part in my opinion will be uploaded soon, whenever I get the time.  

[tiny-princess-catherine]

a tiny princess’ big list of favorite games

It’s been about three years since I sat down and considered my top 10 favorite games, and I was curious to see how my tastes had changed. I love making lists, and this was really  fun! I ended up writing a whole fuckload of words about them so I’ll put them beneath a read more; feel free to read over them if you like!

Doom II is, for my money, the greatest videogame ever made. No other game has captured the purity of gameplay and design that was managed back in 1994; it’s nearly perfect in every way. Monster and weapon design encourage you to be moving constantly, never hiding behind cover but weaving between attacks. Every monster is threatening in its own way -- the deadliest enemy is the shotgun guy, one of the earliest and weakest you’ll see. Every weapon has its use in various situations (except the pistol, unfortunately). The level design was, by and large, better than the previous game, but even if you don’t like those levels, the game is infinitely moddable and tens of thousands of maps have been released over the last twenty-four years. I’ve sunk thousands and thousands of hours into the game and it absolutely never gets old. Doom II is perfection.

Chrono Trigger is a game that needs no introduction or explanation; anyone who has played JRPGs has assuredly played Chrono Trigger, and it’s much-lauded for very good reason. The characters are varied and interesting, the battle mechanics utilizing combos and positioning are compelling and encourage you to swap around characters in your party to find out what all the double and triple techs are. The plot is a masterful swerve from ‘extremely standard’ to ‘what the fuck is happening’, the prime antagonists extremely memorable (Magus, Queen Zeal, and Lavos are all much more complex than they seem at first glance, and the game fleshes them all out phenomenally), and the soundtrack puts pretty much every other one to shame. The game goes from comedy to pathos with ease, and it’s exactly long enough to finish right when it’s about to wear out its welcome. It’s a real, real good game, y’all.

Nearly the pinnacle of JRPGs, Suikoden II possesses, in my experience, by far the single most compelling story in a video game, and I think it’s largely in part because it keeps itself relatively simple. A story of war, of friends and family torn apart, allegiances shifting and loss and friendship; it never reaches further than it should nor ruins immersion for even a moment. It has some of the worst, saddest, most heartwrenching bad ends I’ve ever seen, and it was those that lingered in my mind far more than the ‘good ends’. The gameplay is fluid and a solid refinement of turn-based RPGs of the era, the spritework is beyond compare for each and every one of its 108 recruitable characters and the background art is perfect. The only real flaws it has is a bit of filler -- did we really need the Neclord subplot in Tinto? -- but it’s so minor as to not detract at all from the overall package.

I was six years old when Myst came out in 1993: my grandfather bought a new computer and Myst was a brand-new pack-in with the CD-ROM drive. From the moment I loaded it up, I was utterly blown away with the most gorgeously rendered, fully realized world I had ever seen in a videogame; keep in mind I was playing shit like SMB3 at the time, so Myst was a whole new world. It showed me that games could be so much more than what the NES could produce, it could be true worlds for me to explore. It helped me to learn how to read, hours spent in the library poring over the books there; it taught me my adoration for exploring empty, lonely places, and ultimately it was Myst that inspired me to legally change my name. Few games have had such a powerful impact on me, and it’s for that reason that I've forever loved the game (and the series that followed!) I cried and cried in simple joy when I learned about the recent kickstarter to rerelease all of the games; few things have managed to worm their way into my heart the way this humble little game did.

A much more recent addition, but no less important to me: Persona 5 was the first game in the series (including all of SMT) that I ever played, and the degree to which the fictionalized Tokyo is a world fully realized utterly blew me away. For dozens of hours, I lived with characters I came to love, I forged bonds and fought for justice, I agonized over which romantic overtures to accept (I went with Futaba my first time). The calendar and social link system is phenomenally cool to me, the battle system is fluid and intuitive, the Palaces had fun design (mostly; some exceptions exist). So deeply was I ensconced in that world that I ended up writing two hundred thousand words (so far) of fanfiction about it, as a result of one of the game’s few major flaws: for a game that seemed so willing to have the protagonist be such a blank slate and a cipher for the player, it saddened me immensely to be forced into one gender. Between that and a few other examples of somewhat socially regressive design (the gay panic scene, the treatment of Ann in some ways) I can’t say the game is perfect, but it’s awfully close to that for me.

I caught sight of the gigantic Earthbound box in a Blockbuster when I was a kid, and my curiosity demanded I rent it and see why it needed such a massive box - the answer, of course, was that it came with its own incredible strategy guide. Earthbound was my very first JRPG and welcomed me into a new kind of game I had never imagined. Fighting with numbers instead of jumping on an enemy's head! Equipment! Stats! A long, involved story that guided me through hugely diverse locations! Humor! Earthbound is a game that doesn't entirely hold up these days, gameplay-wise; there's way too much combat and there's not a lot to it, but its tone and writing remain absolutely top-notch, not to mention its soundtrack. Based on pure quality alone, Earthbound wouldn't be in my top 10, but its impact on my life is nearly more than any other game.

Guild Wars was a game before its time. It was perceived by many as a cheaper alternative to WoW, which had come out six months prior, but the comparisons between the games were never really fair. Guild Wars wasn't an MMO and didn't pretend to be one; it was a much cozier affair with many fewer people involved, the combat areas were all instanced to your party alone, and it had a massive emphasis on solo play with its NPC party member system. The story wasn't anything to write home about, the combat was effectively the same hotbar-based combat as WoW, and the level design was okay at best. All of that said, the character customization was incredible, forcing you to select only eight skills at any given time, so that along with the rest of your party, it was more like building a deck in a card game than standard class-based party composition. Its crossclassing was deep and helped to even further differentiate players from another, its mission system was memorable and fun, but what mostly makes Guild Wars stand out for me was the PvP content. Normally, PvP is something I have no love for, but the 8v8 guild battles were incredibly exciting, fast-paced, and frenetic like nothing else I've seen before or since. I fell in love with it right away and met a community of friends that lasted me for years, and ended up having another enormous impact on my life. I've spent four thousand hours in the game, enough to do literally every scrap of content offered, and still I go back every now and then to play through a mission; its systems just work so, so well. And this isn't even getting into a lot of the stuff that made it unique, like its super-customizable NPC party members, its incredible enemy AI, or the sheer uniqueness of the Mesmer class; there is a lot about the game that I just adore.

The RPG in which you don't have to kill anyone! Everyone knows about Undertale, so I'm sure I don't have to say too much about it. It took normal JRPG tropes and turned them on their head, its sense of humor and overall writing are absolutely outstanding, its characters memorable and varied, and the bullet hell gameplay a fun take on RPG combat. It marries its mechanics and plot more tightly than any other game I've ever played, its soundtrack is incredible, and its emotional moments took me all over the place; just thinking about the hug at the end of the game just makes me tear up. Past all the memes that spawned from it, Undertale is just an extremely solid game that more than lives up to the hype. Please play Undertale.

FFXIV, unlike Guild Wars, is a game that almost seems *after* its time. It came out in a post-WoW world where many MMOs had already played their hand and died, its combat isn't incredibly different from WoW and doesn't seem to have much to set it apart, especially considering it dares to ask a subscription. And yet, it has flourished to become one of the only subscription-based games remaining and has turned an incredible profit for its developers. This is all, I believe, because the game is a giant, well-crafted love letter to the whole series. Enemies, locations, plot mechanics are all deftly drawn from prior games and woven into a tapestry that clearly shows a great deal of love and affection for the previous entries. The story is phenomenal - not just for an MMO, but for games in general. The character animations, armor appearances, and glamour system make it one of the best dress up games available, and it helps that the combat is fun, the bosses true spectacle, and the developers remain wholly committed to the game, constantly releasing content every few months. It keeps a special place in my heart, again, for the people that I surrounded myself with while playing and the extremely fond memories I have of all of the things we did together ingame. FFXIV is incredible and more than just another MMO.

The last spot on my list was hotly contested, but I ended up having little choice but to give it to this bizarre, unknown little rhythm game. Thumper is incredibly unlike any other rhythm game you've ever played, however; even after I beat it I couldn't remember a single song, because it wasn't really about the music, which consisted primarily of pounding drums, howling screeches, and relentless, rising dread. The developers refer to it as 'rhythm violence', and that's an extremely apropos genre; the game is dark, heavy, and endlessly captivating. There's really no describing it, but it's an experience unlike any other. It's apparently available on VR, but I couldn't imagine playing it there - I'd have a heart attack.

[allthebest20]

Kindred

by Octavia Butler (1979)

This was easily one of the best books I’ve read in a while.  I finished it in only a few days.  It’s a 9/10, maybe even a 10/10.

The writing style feels almost made-for-the-screen, as it is pretty dialogue heavy, but also very plot driven.  (Note: there is no movie, but there is a graphic novel). There is not a lot of descriptive paragraphs, but the writing is still very vivid and detailed, giving just enough information at just the right times for your brain to see the scene clearly, but not be distracted from the plot.  Sometimes the dialogue felt a little bit unnatural, but only because the events of the book (fantastical time-travel) are quite unnatural.

The publisher, on the back cover, claims this book is Science Fiction / African American literature, but I think I might disagree.  I mean, it’s definitely A. A. lit, but I’m not sure it’s science fiction? There is no time machine or other works of science involved.  Instead, what connects Dana to the past is her own history, her own spiritual connection to her ancestors, specifically her great-grandmother and grandfather, Alice and Rufus.  I think that makes this book fantasy and historical fiction.  Obviously, Butler did a lot of research to make the book’s setting in Antebellum Maryland historically accurate, and in some ways, it reminded me of The Land by Mildred Taylor.  I loved that book when I first read it in 7th grade, before we read it in class, and I think it had a big impact on the way that I think about race.  That book was so sad, so vivid, so real, and it introduced me to the feeling of being stuck in a system stacked against you.  Similarly, Kindred helps one understand how slavery could never have ended with just one proclamation or even one lost war.  The ideals of slavery were so forced on both white, black, and mixed people that extricating oneself from it was nearly impossible, especially for white folks.  It was never an individual problem, it was always societal.  Even Rufus, who had all the ingredients to be a “good white man,” couldn’t even do the bare minimum for Dana or Alice, woman he claimed he loved. 

At the same time, Rufus could have made a positive difference in the lives of the people he owned, and I think it says a lot about the white psyche, even today, that we so often say we want to do good things, but ultimately feel as though we cannot be expected to act outside our own best interest.  I feel that for myself sometimes: like it is so ingrained that we must do what’s best for ourselves, and that we should expect everyone else to do the same, and somehow that will equal out to having things be best for all.  Sure, in an ideal world that MIGHT be true (I’m not sure what an ideal world would even look like), but unfortunately, there’s almost always a power dynamic or some other unevenness.  Rufus was de-facto put in charge of all these people, even though he never asked for that, never qualified for that, and I think that must be one of the excuses he uses to justify his actions.

The book explores the difference between White Sadness and Black Sadness. Here, the black sadness is everywhere: Sarah losing her children, but keeping one and living for that girl; all the other people who lose family members forever to causal slave sales and the fear that they could be punished in that way at anytime; the way the field hands dislike Alice, Dana, and Sarah for their proximity to whiteness; the patrollers and the precarious position of even the free Black people; the hopelessness of trying to run away; the constant threat of rape and then the dispensability that comes when the white man is no longer interested; the violent punishment and the over-working; the total lack of control over one’s circumstances, one’s job, one’s religion and education, one’s family, even one’s own morals; and the idea that no one can enact revenge on the slave owners without hurting everyone else.  |I mean, I could go on, the book is steeped in sadness for the characters and anger for the readers at the apparent helplessness of these strong, smart people.  Dana says it best when she talks about how she does not have the endurance, the strength, that the enslaved people do, because I feel the same way.  I do not have the will to live like some of these people do.  I’d rather be dead than enslaved, but Butler shows how the enslaved people both do and do not feel that way.  It brought up so much anger in me when Dana kept saving Rufus, and he kept treating her like shit.  Made me want to kill that little fucker myself.  But, at the same time, she simply cannot do that until her grandmother is born. This is very similar to the position Alice or Sarah is in: “I would kill that fucking devil, but that would tear apart my family and the family of everyone I know, and definitely come back on my kids.”  What a genius way to portray this.

There’s a lot to be said about what’s wrong with Rufus, but I think one of his driving motives is his sadness.  This is why Dana is called to him in the first place, I think, because he is sad and reckless.  He does not feel loved by his father, who arguably had never been shown love by his own white parents. He was probably raised by black woman who he was simultaneously taught to disrespect.  That’s probably also why he has no respect for Rufus’ mother, and why, in turn, Rufus also has no respect for her.  She probably also did very little of the work to raise Rufus, even if she tries to be there for him.  Her own psyche is so damaged by the messages of slavery and misogyny that her weak brain cannot possibly understand her place in the world or how to feel about it. It’s funny that after her husband dies, Margret is able to be friendlier, more open, and even less racist. Rufus’ only friends seem to be black people, who are probably a bit weary and cautious around him, because their little “friend’s” father can decide to beat or sell them or their families at any time.  So Rufus never learns true friendship, true love.  He doesn’t understand and cannot work on the different parts of himself because he does not have the vocabulary or the experiences to differentiate selfishness, empathy, and justice.  This makes him sad, lonely, and angry.  He should have listened to Dana, but there is no space in his head to understand a smart Black woman.  I don’t mean to sound like I’m excusing him in anyway, he’s the devil, but Butler made him a very dimensional character in a way that makes me reflect on my own whiteness and how I experience whiteness in the world.  Still, it is mind boggling how Rufus again and again has a chance to make the right choice, or a better choice, and chooses something else.  It is clear that he has no sense of morality or objectiveness, only his perception, his desires.  His father, on the other hand, is painted to be a much more close-minded, violent, and cold man, but he still has intacted, yet warped, sense of morality, at least towards other white people. At least, Dana and Rufus seem to believe this, but there is very little evidence of it in the book.

Being white is all about mixed and purposefully misleading messages.  My favorite is how we are taught to fear black men, even though most violence enacted on white woman is from white men.  However, the fear of blackness keeps us from suspecting the white pedophiles, abusers, and rapists in our midst.

It would not be a proper remembering of this novel if I didn’t at least briefly mention Kevin, the white husband.  In 2020, we are no longer marrying dudes that doubt our intuition, who makes us unpack all the boxes, who hold their career success over us so that they can hopefully cajole us into doing their secretary work.  Like the fact he didn’t even consider coming back with her again, even though she was in much more danger their then he would be.  All around, I found him unimpressive.

Alice was also interesting.  It was almost as if Dana felt more kinship with Rufus than with Alice, which makes sense given her circumstance -- that she was called to the past by Rufus’ potential deaths.  Still, sometimes I forget that Alice is Dana’s great-grandmother, because she doesn’t seem to connect with her as inimitably.  At the same time, Dana knows that she is doing Alice a disservice, knows that there are things worse than death, and still, plays a role in creating Alice’s hell to save Dana’s family’s own existence.  Perhaps that is why she cannot be as close to Alice, just like some of the people who work in the fields hate Sarah and Dana.  Perhaps it is a way to illustrate the contentious relationships between black people in that era created by the white people or more specifically, created by the white people’s power and privilege.  I read some on the internet about black unity and black community, and it seems like some of these trends still play out today.  I read on sishi.rose’s instagram today about how when she spoke out about racism in her workplace, black people where some of the most skeptical.  Even today, there is issues in the black community regarding proximity to whiteness on both sides (ie both “your too close to whiteness” and also “I want to be close to whiteness”).  I can’t really speak much more about that, but I haven’t read many narratives about the negative aspects of intra-slave relationships.  It was also interesting to hear about how they created justice within their enslaved communities.  Obviously, the want justice between themselves and the whites, but because that was unobtainable, it felt so... vindicating? empowering? surprising? in the plot when they got to do that in their own community.  A few of them beat up the woman who tattles on Dana when she runs away -- that woman, too, displays more morality in her pinky finger than Rufus has in his entire body when she refrains from telling on her attackers.  Is she scared of being attacked again or being ostracized for her actions? Or does she know that telling on them could lead to their deaths or their movement away from the plantation -- is morality innate or enforced by our surroundings?  Either way.  When that man gets sold and his family blames it on Dana, I think it is Alice who later sets them straight.

All in all, it is a riveting story, that makes a lot of points about race relations in America not only 200 years ago, but today.

[anotherwhorewatch]

Marco Polo

This is a first for this ‘rewatch’: not only is it the first reconstructed story I’m watching (I’m going for the black-and-white Loose Cannon recon, if anyone cares), but it’s also the first story I’ve never watched before in full. I’ve previously only seen the half-hour version on the Edge of Destruction DVD – and this is a seven-parter, so that version had to cut one or two things out.

Having given us seven weeks of hard science fiction and a two-act character play, we’ve circled back round to Doctor Who’s educational remit for a purely historical tale based around the real-life figure of Marco Polo. We do learn a bit about Polo, his relationships and his journey, but mostly he’s there as a friendly antagonist for the TARDIS crew to play against. Mark Eden does a sterling job as the charismatic Polo, who is charming enough that you can almost accept how readily the regulars accept their situation for much of the story.

Polo is widely regarded as one of Doctor Who’s great lost epics, and in some ways it’s easy to see why; in terrestrial terms the story covers a vast distance, and we’re periodically reminded of the amount of ground being traversed with the help of Indiana Jones-style maps and excerpts from Polo’s diaries. The existing photos suggest that this was a lavish production, with sets and costumes befitting the delay in this serial’s production. The BBC has always been good at producing period dramas, and this serial plays to those strengths.

The flip side of this is that not an awful lot actually happens in the story, and by the midpoint it starts to feel quite formulaic - arrive somewhere, have the TARDIS crew bicker with Marco and fail to get their key back, show Tegana looking a bit shifty and move to the next location. And it’s another anticlimax of an ending, as Marco eventually just shrugs and gives the Doctor his key back.

But what Marco Polo lacks in plot, it makes up for in character. The regulars may not have much to do in the story, but we get to spend a lot of time with them, and Susan in particular benefits as she befriends young servant Ping Cho - after the running with scissors incident in the last story, it’s a welcome change to see her just being a teenager for a while. Marco Polo may not quite live up to its reputation, but it’s a solid tale whose absence from the archives is a great shame.

Memorable Moments:

Ian and Barbara’s joy at being back on Earth at the start of the story is a nice moment after some pretty unrelenting misery for the unwitting travellers. The script spends just enough time touching on this arc before launching the pair into inquisitive adventure mode.

The Doctor’s absence from all but a single scene of episode two sticks out like a sore thumb, with the explanation that the old man is simply in his room having a sulk for the whole episode struggling to ring true. Certainly if any Doctor is going to have a sulk it’s Hartnell, but for him not to emerge during the raging sandstorm - especially when they learn his granddaughter is caught up in it - just feels wrong.

Speaking of the sandstorm, it’s a pretty horrible experience - both for the characters, in an already oppressive episode, and for the viewer; I have no idea what a sandstorm sounds like, but here the Radiophonic Workshop somehow manage to tap into the sound of hell.

The scenes between Tegana and Marco, particularly in episode two, are among the story’s most engaging; two charismatic antagonists trading double-edged barbs under the guise of civility, with a lot more being said between the two than it first appears.

Ping-Cho’s story in Part Three may bring proceedings to a grinding halt (Almost as much as when she decides to stop and look at some pretty fishies in Part Five), but it does inspire the first - and presumably the only - mention of hashish in Doctor Who. Purely medicinal, I’m sure.

A scene that doesn’t get served well by the reconstruction is the end of Part 3, in which Susan enters the cave which she’s been told contains hundreds of stone masks - and screams because she sees a stone mask. The recon contains a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of human eyes behind the mask - but I blinked, I missed it, and the whole thing seemed pretty ridiculous until the start of the next episode, in which we’re reliably informed that the mask moved. Yeah, if you say so.

Either the sixties were a different time or the Doctor Who production team were massive racists, because Part Four introduces us to several ‘comedy characters’ with names like Ling Tau and Wang Lo - all played by Caucasian men in yellowface. It might be one of the few times that Doctor Who has actually made me want to hide behind the sofa.

On the plus side, Ian Chesterton pretending to be drunk is probably one of the greatest moments from Doctor Who’s history that are missing from the archives. If only we could see him staggering around while listening to him slur his words, I think the world would be a better place.

Something I’m glad we don’t have to see is William Hartnell exaggerating his aches and pains in Kublai Khan’s court - just listening to him over-egging it is bad enough. But I really like that they gave the Doctor a friend to bond over being past it with; it makes me wish Marco’s caravan had one fewer stop along the way and arrived at Khan’s palace much sooner.

And lastly, having spent two whole episodes building it up, Ping Cho’s arranged marriage subplot is waved away with a comment that her intended has died off screen. Granted, it was one of the less important storylines that needed wrapping up, but you have to wonder why they bothered to introduce it at all if they were going to throw it away in such an offhand manner.

Lingering Questions:

I’m sure many of us have been guilty of letting people take advantage of our good nature at some point in our lives, but it’s hard not to wonder about Marco Polo here. He extends the hand of friendship to the Doctor and friends, and in return they spend seven episodes bickering with him and then plotting and scheming behind his back. They’re also a considerable drain on Polo’s already stretched resources, and yet Marco remains kind to them throughout, through some sort of misplaced code of ethics. Why, particularly after the Doctor calls him a ‘poor, pathetic, stupid savage’, doesn’t Marco just leave these idiots in the desert to rot?

This question might be a bit of a cheat, given that we now know plenty of things about the TARDIS that neither the viewers nor writers were aware of back in 1964, but exactly how had the TARDIS, whose dimensions are practically infinite, run out of water? Had the Doctor drained the swimming pool? Had Ian gone in and swiped the last of the orange juice from the cricket pavilion? Were the TARDIS gardens experiencing a particularly dry winter?

One that seems less forgiveable is the notion of condensation gathering in the TARDIS because of the temperature differential. Though we’ve not seen it put to the test in any extreme way, the interior and exterior dimensions of the ship are clearly separate; it’s a central conceit of the series. You can heat the exterior up as much as you like, but the interior shouldn’t be affected - certainly not by such a piffling difference. Doctor Who should have ended with the Doctor and friends dying a slow and painful death in the desert, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

The biggest question of all, though; after Marco explicitly tells Ian that he would happily give them the TARDIS key back if they could prove that they were from another place and time, why in the name of all that is holy does Ian not immediately show him the inside of the TARDIS? Job done, we can spend an extra week on Marinus instead. Actually, when I put it like that...

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Last Night: City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Niall Alexander

The Divine Cities series comes full circle in City of Miracles, a positively action-packed fantasy about getting your own back. But revenge is not just what the hardy anti-hero at its heart is after: revenge is also what its both figuratively and literally tortured villain is interested in.

This child of the night, who shall not be named because to identify him is to invite his wickedness in, is not a divinity like the other antagonists of Robert Jackson Bennett’s incomparable narrative—at least, not quite. He’s really just an angsty adolescent; a “selfish kid who thinks his misfortunes are bigger than everyone else’s” and has decided to take his frustrations out on everyone around him.

Unfortunately for everyone around him, this angsty adolescent just so happens to be the spawn of a few fallen gods. To wit, he has a domain—the dark—and some of his mother and father’s magic. City of Miracles begins with him flexing his miraculous muscles: by outfitting an assassin to slaughter the former Prime Minister—and the first of this spectacular saga’s protagonists—Ashara Komayd.

When news of Shara’s shocking death reaches a remote logging range beyond Bulikov, every man around the campfire is taken aback, but only one among them takes it personally. He is City of Miracles‘ new central perspective, and whilst he hasn’t played this role before, he’s a figure folks who’ve followed this fiction will be intimately familiar with; a fan-favourite character, in fact, who has flitted around its fringes but never before been at its fore. That’s right, readers: the focus of Bennett’s barnstorming finale is finally on Shara’s right-hand man, the Dreyling she saved who has saved her so often since. Good to see you again, Sigrud!

Following the death of his daughter in City of Blades, not to mention the mindless massacre that followed, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson has been in exile, none too patiently awaiting the day when Shara can at last bring him back into action. But with his dearest friend so dramatically departed, what does he have left to live for? Nothing, initially, but a need to make her murderer pay.

He does so summarily, racking up a rather improbable body count in the process. As a member of the supporting cast who crosses his fiery path puts it: “You’ve lost none of your subtlety, Sigrud.”

But whilst raining hell on everyone who had a hand or even a hair in Shara’s assassination, our daring Dreyling learns about a scheme that gives him a reason to keep on keeping on. In short, “someone is targeting Shara’s adopted daughter” Tatyana, and having failed to save his last loved one, the least he can do, he reasons, is ensure that this small part of her legacy lives on.

To do what needs doing, he has to go to Ghaladesh. “Ghaladesh, the capital of Saypur, the richest, most well-protected city in the world. The place with perhaps the most security in the civilised nations—and thus the place that he, a fugitive from Saypur’s justice, is most likely to be caught, imprisoned, tortured, and possibly—or probably—executed.”

Sigrud does wonder “if he has it in him to do this. It’s been years since he worked as an operative,” after all. “Perhaps this is foolish. Perhaps he’s an old dog insisting he can still perform old tricks.” But this old dog is on the cusp of discovering something about himself that stands to recast his tragic past; something that allows the author to develop his series’ most stalwart character into more than the man of action he has frequently been.

It’s a bit of an easy out, if I’m honest, but it serves to present Sigrud at his most solicitous, his most human, here at the end of Bennett’s series. He’s clearly a hero, and he-who-we-agreed-not-to-name is every inch the villain. The hellish things that latter has been put through are stirring to start, but what sympathy we might have felt for him is roundly rebuffed by the sheer unreason of his self-serving, world-ending rebellion. That said, these teenage tendendies don’t stop City of Miracles‘ big bad from being deeply creepy:

“The past is the past. It’s fixed, unchangeable, unattainable. But our enemy… he’s elastic. Veryexpansive, so to speak. His domain represents something primitive, something primal. The long night, the first night. The fear you feel when you’re all alone in your house, and all the rooms feel so dark? That’s him. That’s him leaking into your frail little bit of civilisation, that first, dangerous night mankind spent out under the skies.”

City of Miracles develops The Divine Cities’ secondary world as well. Much as Mark Charan Newton did in his underrated Legends of the Red Sun series, Bennett has steered each addition to his trilogy towards an unexplored shore, and it’s to his credit that he attempts to differentiate Ghaladesh from the various environs we’ve been to previously:

Bulikov was a schizophrenic, crumbling mess. Voortyashtan was hardly more than a savage outpost, and Ahanashtan was built specifically to serve the shipping channel, creating a half-industrial, half-urbane hybrid of a city.

But Ghaladesh is different. Ghaladesh, unlike all the other cities [Sigrud has] ever seen, is intentional.

You can see it when you walk from block to block. From the graceful wooden posts that so many houses sit on to the drains in the street to the curves of the elevated train, you can see how this was not just done well but done just—so. Ghaladesh, he sees, is a city of engineers, a city of thinkers, a city of people who do not act rashly.

But City of Miracles is, above all else, an ending, and Bennett is evidently determined to make it one to remember, so at the same time as spinning a yarn that satisfactorily caps the saga’s overarching narrative, he had a lot of loose ends to address, and any number of character arcs to conclude. All this he handles marvellously, such that The Divine Cities doesn’t just feel finished after its last act, it feels complete. Alas, the pattern Bennett had established in terms of his settings falls victim to this last book’s busyness. We end up spending so little time in Ghaladesh, and almost none simply soaking it in, that it, in the end, is faint and forgettable where its predecessors were deftly drawn and memorable.

That’s not the end of the world, though, because the momentum that this book accumulates over its course, like a wrecking ball raised higher and higher above the wall it’s to demolish, allows City of Miracles to circle back to where Bennett’s series began—and in the company of some of the same souls who were there in those days—in time for “one big push” towards an ending as tremendous as it is affecting.

That “all things must end” doesn’t make it any easier to bid goodbye to those things, but the fact that this sequence—this breathtaking last battle between gods and monsters with mortals such as us stuck in the middle of it—strikes the same balance between the mundane and the majestic that has been a strength of this series from the first… that’s as fitting a farewell to The Divine Cities as any I can imagine.

Later, when I get home, I’ll write something up about this complete series. It’s one of the best I have ever read, seriously. Highly recommended.

[somethingsomethingdragonage]

asks part 2

anon: I wonder if the fans of other DA characters get this much shit about their "problematic faves". I wonder if the fenris fans are called "ableism apologists" (because fenris is ableist), or aveline fans called "slut shaming apologists" (because aveline is a slut shamer).. or you know, in general being called MURDER apologists since every single one of these characters is a killer one way or another. and pls ppl, dont tell me anders doesn't have regrets or didn't do what he had to do out of fear. 

especially since I didn’t even post any discussion prior to the first message I got? it was just a “fun” post about bioware/Anders and I tagged it with “Anders was right” which is indeed a tag I use. like if I started any kind of argument and discussion I can understand why people would comment on that but because of a pretty normal post? idk. and yes, we should all incorporate a club and we will be called the murder apologists because clearly everyone who is playing games where ppl get killed and not despise every single character for it (including their own character) is a murder apologist.

anon: I'm sorry you're getting so much anon hate.  I hope things start getting better and people learn to separate games from current events a bit more. That being said it's nice to find another Anders fan! :3

well I’m not very optimistic that it’s going to happen because I always knew there where a lot of jerks in the DA fandom and I kinda managed to keep them off my dash for most part. since I’m mostly a DA fandom blog I kinda expect getting some crap from time to time but since my blog title and my present icon should give a pretty clear picture about my views it’s not a lot. and yes, I still think people who are unable to differentiate between fiction and reality shouldn’t play these games. or at least keep clear of discussions. yes you can identify with stuff in games, be it a conflict, a character but whatever. but don’t give other people a hard time for doing that as well because they are real and not game characters. well look at me ranting haha I’m also always happy to meet other fans of my fav mage and I hope you have a great day :)

audacityinblack: Some people seem to forget that Anders did not have *any* basic rights, let alone the right to speak freely or protest. A Divine in the past almost called an exalted march on her own damn Chantry because the mages went on strike. Mages have absolutely no right to protest. And, mage or not, they absolutely can and will hunt you down and kill you if you dissent against them too loudly. Heresy is a punishable offense in Thedas. Torture and execution are normalized parts of the justice system.

This is a system where peaceful protest never works. Only those with privilege and power are allowed to resolve their conflicts without bloodshed or surrendering their basic civil rights. The Daughters of Song were pacifists, they refused to fight. The Chantry fucking slaughtered them all. It's also hard to feel much for the poor innocent humans when the Chantry has been massacring elves and mages for centuries.

The Chantry ain't your kind peaceful neighborhood church. It's effectively a totalitarian theocratic power. I'm of the mind that people who can't see that have never experienced or educated themselves about religious oppression. Really, millennials have their own privilege in that we have a fuck ton more freedom to protest without putting ourselves in danger. Those rights would never have existed if there weren't people willing to fight and die and risk fucking everything.

Yes, Dragon Age is fiction. "You can't separate reality from fiction" is a common argument thrown at and by both sides. However, for a lot of us, this stuff is very much a part of our reality. We've *seen* reality, and often from a lot of angles the writers did not see. The writers' biases are on full display especially in the way that the "other" groups in the game tend to be written as misguided or wrong, while the establishment knows best and anyone who shows otherwise is an "exception."  

For a lot of us, the shit we see in game is terribly reminiscent of things that we have seen in real life, or even lived through. "Mages are dangerous" isn't much of an excuse, because there are ways to discover magic long before it becomes a problem. The Chantry is also the only authorized source of information on magic in a world where most people are not literate unless they've learned to read from guess who? Once again, the Chantry.

@audacityinblack: I can agree 100% with that. I’m not very good at making my point in arguments, especially if it’s not my native language. but you can do it perfectly. I mean the chantry is obviously based on the catholic church and nobody can argue that they did some pretty bad things and they happend in real life. that doesn’t mean the chantry is real or has the same impact as actual events but you can still make a connection. (and we also shouldn’t forget that the woman writing Anders in DA 2 didn’t like him at all so sometimes the points he’s trying to make might not come across as well as they should and they do try to make him an actual villain) I’m guessing some people are just too lazy to try to see different sides in games and they do the same thing in real life. let’s not forget, that Cullen is well loved by most people and he did pretty horrible things as well. he ordered me to kill every mage even if there was a chance they hadn’t done anything. and don’t try to argue “well but had to suffer you have to understand” yeah fuck you, Anders had to suffer most of his life and he didn’t choose it. none of the mages gets a choice. templars fucking do. I still like Cullen and try to understand his side of view and can see that he has changed since then but if you make me choose I will always be on Anders’ and the mages side. also I don’t even want to think about how horrible the punishment of turning mages into tranquil is. it is fucking murder or actually worse and they try to sell it as “kindness” and because the chantry is such a large institution no one really questions the stuff they do.  

[aion-rsa]

Inception Ending: Why the Spinner Stopped

https://ift.tt/2C8SHTX

Ten years on and folks still debate what exactly happened during the final moments of Inception. As director Christopher Nolan’s seventh film, the movie and its closing seconds are arguably what made him a household name. Of course he’d already helmed the global phenomenon that was The Dark Knight, but with Inception, Nolan presented an original and flawlessly executed vision that walked the line between pulpy summer thrills and superb science fiction brain teasers. And nothing was more teasing—or to some infuriating—than an ending that had people falling out of their seats over the brief wobble of a spinning top.

The moment in question is the literal last image of the film: a tractricoid top spinning on a kitchen table that belongs to Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCapiro). At least we think it is Cobb’s table. In truth, he hasn’t seen it in years because he fled the country after his wife and mother of his children, Mal (Marion Cotillard), killed herself due to the confusion he caused her. It’s an insidious revelation late in the movie when we learn that just by allowing this top to ceaselessly spin in her subconscious, he convinced Mal that her life, in all its forms, was a dreamy lie. Now Cobb uses the same cursed object as his own “totem,” a singular possession that allows the owner to tell the difference between a dream and reality.

Yet at the end of the film, after achieving what he’s wanted all these years—to return home—he doesn’t bother to wait at that table to see if his totem stops spinning, thereby confirming he’s awake and living his life instead of being trapped in a hideous delusion in some dark corner of his mind. Frankly, Cobb cannot distinguish the difference anymore and doesn’t care to. He’s home. And the top is still spinning. If. Only. Just. It might begin to falter, but Inception cuts to black before we can know for sure.

The intentional ambiguity of this ending launched a thousand think pieces and to this day incites argument among film critics, cinephiles, and just strangers quarantining on Twitter. There are those who’ll insist he’s awake, others that say he’s asleep, and more that suspect he and Mal never even awoke from limbo all those years ago. The filmmakers behind the film also don’t appear to be on the same page.

Two years ago, Michael Caine, who played Mal’s father in the film, admitted he didn’t understand the script but was assured if he’s on screen, then it must take place in reality. “I said to [Nolan], ‘I don’t understand where the dream is,’” Caine told Film 4’s Summer Screen. “He said, ‘Well, when you’re in the scene it’s reality.’ So get that – if I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream!” That would be a simple way of concluding Cobb really did awaken alongside businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) from their subconscious limbo experiences—a tall feat when it would’ve seemed like they lived decades and lifetimes in an abyss—and Cobb really got to see his children again. But then by Caine’s own logic, almost all the scenes in the movie could be a dream, as he’s barely in the film.

Indeed, the actual star of the film is not so confident about how events played out. Only earlier this year, DiCaprio told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast that he doesn’t know what happened at the end of the picture. “Sometimes you’re just focused on your character, man,” DiCaprio told his fellow actor. “I actually do get involved, but when it came to Chris Nolan and his mind, and how that would piece together, everyone was trying to constantly piece the puzzle together.” He finally added that the ending “depends on the eye of the beholder, I guess.”

Even Nolan himself is his typically laconic self about one of his film’s enduring mysteries.

“The way the end of the film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb – he was off with his kids,” Nolan explained to The Guardian in 2015. “He was in his own subjective reality. He didn’t really care any more, and that makes a statement: perhaps all levels of reality are valid?”

While that’s a lovely dodge—and the significance of Inception’s ending extends beyond the binary choice of “dream versus awake”—we’d argue there is nevertheless a clear cut answer about what kind of happy ending Cobb got: It’s the one where he made his actual children happy too.

To be clear, DiCaprio’s Cobb is awake at the end of the movie and reunited with his real children, not false projections that could never realize these young souls in all their perfections and all their imperfections. They’re the real deal. And we know this not because Michael Caine is there to greet Cobb at LAX, but because of how Cobb has differentiated his reality from his dreams.

Despite what some abstract thinkers suggest, Inception is not entirely “just a dream.” This is proven every time Cobb is able to use his spinning top totem correctly. While it originally belonged to Mal, in her dream it spun for eternity. After Cobb appropriated it as his own following her unintentional suicide, we see it work the way it is intended when Cobb spends a lonely morning in a Tokyo hotel room during the movie’s early moments, and again after he and Ariadne (Ellen Page) get a frightful visit from the specter of Mal in one of Cobb’s dreams. Each time, the spinner stops spinning.

While the final image of the film delightfully (or frustratingly) cuts off before we see the spinner stop, it’s already heavily wobbling, which is something it’d never done before. And more telling than any hope Cobb places on the totem is the line he draws for himself when he’s awake. Obviously in his mind, he’s still married to Mal, a beloved wife who never leaves his side, even when it’s to the detriment of high stakes corporate espionage. Consider the moment when she interrupts Cobb’s James Bond impersonation during the film’s opening sequence to tell Saito he’s dreaming. It’s frustrating in the moment for Cobb, but his subconscious self is always attached to her, as implied by the fact in that very sequence he’s still wearing his wedding ring.

In fact, in every sequence of the film where Cobb is clearly established to be dreaming, he’s wearing the wedding ring. It’s there when he first lures Ariadne into the appeal of designing mazes in dreams, and it’s on his left hand when he’s going into a dream within a dream within another dream during the film’s amusingly convoluted third act. Even after he breaks up with Mal’s shade for good at the end of the movie, saying “you’re the best I could do, but I’m sorry you’re not enough,” he is still wearing that blasted ring. It’s on his hands when he meets Old Man Saito presumably years later in their shared limbo (at least years as far as their minds are concerned). She’ll always be with him.

But even if he can’t let go of his lost wife, in the real world he accepts she’s gone. That’s why he never once is wearing his wedding band in sequences clearly intended to be set in reality. It’s not there the first time we see Michael Caine in his Parisian classroom, nor is it there when Caine’s Miles introduces Cobb to Ariadne. Similarly, it’s not there at the end of the movie when he awakens on a jet bound for Los Angeles.

Some might consider this an oversight on Nolan’s part, given the sequence of him waking up was likely filmed the same day they showed Cobb and the others going to sleep. But as uncharitable as this is to a filmmaking maestro, it also would ignore how Nolan intentionally shows Cobbs pass through U.S. Customs while handing the border officer his papers with his left hand. No wedding ring is in sight. Ergo, when Cobb got home, his children were as awakened from a dreary nightmare as him.

While art really is in the eye of the beholder, and you can interpret Inception however you wish, based on the rules established by the film, we can say definitively that Cobb is intended to make it home and not be distracted by a lie. And yet, to settle for this as the main takeaway of the ending is to remain at the surface of Nolan’s dream.

After all, Nolan also said this in 2015: “I feel that, over time, we started to view reality as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense… I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with, they are subsets of reality.”

Inception does indeed make the argument that one reality is not necessarily more valid than the other. While Cobb as the hero of a Hollywood blockbuster says he will not settle for an abstraction, there are characters who do. Cobb sees more than several spending their lives essentially hooked up to the dream-internet when he recruits Dileep Rao’s Yusuf earlier in the movie. They’re there dreaming their lives away, preferring to spend 18 hours a day—potentially eons in dream time—living in a seeming fantasy. But Cobb and the audience alike are challenged to ask who are we to judge them?

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Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar: A Secular End Times Myth

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In a world where storytellers like Nolan create just one of an infinite variety of abstractions and “subsets of reality” to get lost in, be it as film or television, video games, social media, literature, comic books, or more, is it really so horrible to find a form of truth in a lie? Nolan would probably argue not since Inception is every bit the manifesto for its self-reflective storyteller as The Prestige is.

While that earlier magician-minded movie acts as an obvious full-length metaphor about cinema and storytelling being a kind of magic trick, Inception is similarly a parable for the role of filmmakers in sharing their dreams with an audience that wants to get lost in a subset of reality. Like Nolan, DiCapiro’s Cobb is a blond haired and exceedingly well-groomed director masterminding an illusion that will cause maximum catharsis on his mark: billionaire Robert Michael Fischer (Cillian Murphy), but also us. And like any good director, Cobb assembles the best crew he can find alongside his production designers (Ariadne), cinematographer and assistant directors (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur), and actors (Tom Hardy’s Eames). Saito is even on hand to be both the caring producer and shrewd studio moneyman breathing down Cobb’s neck.

Together they create a world that exists only in scenes and shots, largely empty warehouses and soundstages occupied by a bit of artifice, or a lone street corner in Paris redressed for a specific and fleeting purpose. But when these elements are combined by a gifted group of storytellers, they create a subset of reality. And audiences, like the susceptible Fischer, populate the gaps and holes in the fantasy with their own imagination. Hopefully, in the rare instance, the fantasy can even be so emotionally powerful that it shapes the subconscious of the person who experiences it, potentially implanting an idea that could change the very essence of who we are. It happens to a cathartically drained Fischer, and it’s likely happened to you too with one movie or another.

“We bring the subject into that dream and they fill it with their subconscious,” Cobb tells Ariadne. And if the dream is rich enough, and the subset believable enough to pass as reality, then our minds will do the rest—like obsessing over the falter of a spinning top 10 years after a film cut to black.

The post Inception Ending: Why the Spinner Stopped appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[samuelpboswell]

Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing

Let’s cut to the chase: If brands and marketers can’t build trust internally at their organizations, they’ll never be able to develop it outwardly in an authentic way. Plain and simple. When marketers broadcast trustworthiness as a virtue through content and messaging, while their company visibly deals with discord and misalignment in its own ranks, the sentiment rings about as hollow as a sinister-looking Disney villain telling the protagonist through a wicked grin that of course they can be trusted. (Except that today’s customers are more savvy and adept than those necessarily naive fictional film heroes.)

via GIPHY Employees need to trust their leaders, and vice versa. Various functions and departments must foster trust between one another. When a sturdy foundation of confidence, reliability, and belief is in place, this will naturally emanate externally. But the opposite is also true, and it’s something all brands should be thinking about as trust-building becomes a primary differentiator in the business world.

Building Trust Within Your Organization

When a genuine culture of trust is established inside your organization, the benefits are innumerable: It fosters better collaboration, encourages transparency, and enables problem-solving. Perhaps most crucially, it also greatly affects the way your organization is perceived.  Let’s explore this dynamic through a few different lenses.

Trust Between Marketing Leadership and the C-Suite

Per the latest numbers, the average CMO tenure checks in about 43 months — less than half that of a CEO. Lee Odden has described this as "a crisis in confidence amongst business leadership when it comes to marketing." At the same time, marketing's impact on business results is undeniable. [bctt tweet="Marketing done well with a clear why, measurement and purpose creates the kind of value that both customers and business leaders will trust, ensuring credibility and investment far into the future. @leeodden #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"] Clearly, there is widespread opportunity to strengthen relationships and solidify trust between marketing leadership and the C-suite. Openness, increased collaboration, and bottom-line proof are among the keys to achieving this. Lee shared insights and advice from a wide range of CMOs and marketing influencers on strengthening trust in marketing.  A few of my favorites: “The best way I’ve found to get people onboard with your way of thinking is to do some marketing of your marketing. In other words, treat every relationship as if they were a customer.” — Margaret Magnarelli  “Honesty. I know it sounds trite but trust is earned and earned through honesty. As marketers and storytellers we often 'spin' things to suit our needs. I think more honesty about the company you represent is the only way to succeed. People relate to flaws. It’s human.” — Julie Roehm  “In today’s world it’s all about the quality of A.I.R. you create; Authentic, Inspirational and Realistic marketing will win over your internal and external customers.” — Jeanniey Mullen 

Trust Within the Marketing Team

This is ground zero. Marketers are responsible for managing a brand’s outward image; when conflict and challenges plague the internal team, it’ll be tough to convey the notion of a unified front that’s all rowing in the same direction. When our Vice President of Client Accounts Alexis Hall blogged here recently about making the transition from marketing doer to marketing leader, she noted that cultivating trust on her team was top-of-mind. “Fostering a happy, well-functioning team is your top priority,” Alexis writes. “Not only can you not do your job without them, but it is one of the best indicators of success to your boss and your boss’s boss.” Among her recommendations are shifting the way we find personal value in our work (it’s not just about what you accomplish, but what you help others accomplish), clearing obstacles, and developing leadership qualities within those who show the potential to move up.  [bctt tweet="Fostering a happy, well-functioning team is your top priority. Not only can you not do your job without them, but it is one of the best indicators of success to your boss and your boss’s boss. @Alexis5484 #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"]

Trust Across Departments and Functions

Building trust within the marketing department can be challenging enough on its own. Even if these individuals work together regularly, use the same lingo, and generally understand the specific roles for each player, global organizations need to coordinate between different regions and business units. Corporate marketing often pushes generic messaging in uniform fashion, overlooking the need for localization and contextual nuance.  Apply this dynamic across departmental or functional divides, and matters can become all the more tricky. We all know about the infamous barriers between marketing and sales. But it’s also important to establish strong relationships between marketing and customer success, product development, human resources, and beyond.  The soundness of cross-functional relationships in your organization manifests in many ways: efficiency of production, consistency of external messaging, the way colleagues interact with one another while in meetings or on calls with clients, and so on.  How to improve the connectivity of siloed units? There are a few key opportunities:

Transparency: Make it easy for folks in one department to see what’s going on in another. 

Honesty/Candor: Encourage people to speak up if they’re bothered of confused by what’s going on elsewhere in the company.

Eliminate Isolation: Cross-functional meetings, or team outings that bring together individuals who don’t generally collaborate, can be really helpful.

Trust Between Employee and Employer

The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer hints at the existence of a new employer-employee contract: 

Employees are ready and willing to trust their employers, but the trust must be earned through more than “business as usual.” Employees’ expectation that prospective employers will join them in taking action on societal issues (67 percent) is nearly as high as their expectations of personal empowerment (74 percent) and job opportunity (80 percent). The rewards of meeting these expectations and building trust are great. Employees who have trust in their employer are far more likely to engage in beneficial actions on their behalf—they will advocate for the organization (a 39-point trust advantage), are more engaged (33 points), and remain far more loyal (38 points) and committed (31 points) than their more skeptical counterparts.

Those items in the second paragraph make clear the tangible benefits of emphasizing trust between employees and your company’s top leadership, and the first paragraph offers useful guidance on how to get there. In particular, executives can connect more meaningfully with their employees by rallying them around a higher purpose and taking a stand on things that matter to the team. 

Building Trust, Inside and Out

There’s a reason we cover the topic of trust in marketing so frequently, and from so many different angles, on this blog: It’s complex and multifaceted. One missing ingredient — especially at a fundamental level — can lead to dysfunctional operations, lower output quality, and attrition of employees and customers alike. When trust is built from the inside out, happy CEOs, marketing teams, and employees beget happy customers and engaged prospects. This is an area where marketing can and should take ownership and lead the charge. [bctt tweet="When trust is built from the inside out, happy CEOs, marketing teams, and employees beget happy customers and engaged prospects. - @NickNelsonMN #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"] Learn more about TopRank Marketing’s views on trust in marketing by checking out past entries in our Trust Factors series:

Trust Factors: Why Your Brand Should Take a Stand with Its Marketing Strategy

The B2B Marketing Funnel is Dead: Say Hello to the Trust Funnel

Trust Factors: The (In)Credible Impact of B2B Influencer Marketing

Trust Factors: How Best Answer Content Fuels Brand Credibility

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics

Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

Trust in Marketing is at Risk. These CMOs and Marketing Influencers Share How to Fix

The post Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2019/10/building-internal-trust-marketing/

[ralphlayton]

Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing

Let’s cut to the chase: If brands and marketers can’t build trust internally at their organizations, they’ll never be able to develop it outwardly in an authentic way. Plain and simple. When marketers broadcast trustworthiness as a virtue through content and messaging, while their company visibly deals with discord and misalignment in its own ranks, the sentiment rings about as hollow as a sinister-looking Disney villain telling the protagonist through a wicked grin that of course they can be trusted. (Except that today’s customers are more savvy and adept than those necessarily naive fictional film heroes.)

via GIPHY Employees need to trust their leaders, and vice versa. Various functions and departments must foster trust between one another. When a sturdy foundation of confidence, reliability, and belief is in place, this will naturally emanate externally. But the opposite is also true, and it’s something all brands should be thinking about as trust-building becomes a primary differentiator in the business world.

Building Trust Within Your Organization

When a genuine culture of trust is established inside your organization, the benefits are innumerable: It fosters better collaboration, encourages transparency, and enables problem-solving. Perhaps most crucially, it also greatly affects the way your organization is perceived.  Let’s explore this dynamic through a few different lenses.

Trust Between Marketing Leadership and the C-Suite

Per the latest numbers, the average CMO tenure checks in about 43 months — less than half that of a CEO. Lee Odden has described this as "a crisis in confidence amongst business leadership when it comes to marketing." At the same time, marketing's impact on business results is undeniable. [bctt tweet="Marketing done well with a clear why, measurement and purpose creates the kind of value that both customers and business leaders will trust, ensuring credibility and investment far into the future. @leeodden #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"] Clearly, there is widespread opportunity to strengthen relationships and solidify trust between marketing leadership and the C-suite. Openness, increased collaboration, and bottom-line proof are among the keys to achieving this. Lee shared insights and advice from a wide range of CMOs and marketing influencers on strengthening trust in marketing.  A few of my favorites: “The best way I’ve found to get people onboard with your way of thinking is to do some marketing of your marketing. In other words, treat every relationship as if they were a customer.” — Margaret Magnarelli  “Honesty. I know it sounds trite but trust is earned and earned through honesty. As marketers and storytellers we often 'spin' things to suit our needs. I think more honesty about the company you represent is the only way to succeed. People relate to flaws. It’s human.” — Julie Roehm  “In today’s world it’s all about the quality of A.I.R. you create; Authentic, Inspirational and Realistic marketing will win over your internal and external customers.” — Jeanniey Mullen 

Trust Within the Marketing Team

This is ground zero. Marketers are responsible for managing a brand’s outward image; when conflict and challenges plague the internal team, it’ll be tough to convey the notion of a unified front that’s all rowing in the same direction. When our Vice President of Client Accounts Alexis Hall blogged here recently about making the transition from marketing doer to marketing leader, she noted that cultivating trust on her team was top-of-mind. “Fostering a happy, well-functioning team is your top priority,” Alexis writes. “Not only can you not do your job without them, but it is one of the best indicators of success to your boss and your boss’s boss.” Among her recommendations are shifting the way we find personal value in our work (it’s not just about what you accomplish, but what you help others accomplish), clearing obstacles, and developing leadership qualities within those who show the potential to move up.  [bctt tweet="Fostering a happy, well-functioning team is your top priority. Not only can you not do your job without them, but it is one of the best indicators of success to your boss and your boss’s boss. @Alexis5484 #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"]

Trust Across Departments and Functions

Building trust within the marketing department can be challenging enough on its own. Even if these individuals work together regularly, use the same lingo, and generally understand the specific roles for each player, global organizations need to coordinate between different regions and business units. Corporate marketing often pushes generic messaging in uniform fashion, overlooking the need for localization and contextual nuance.  Apply this dynamic across departmental or functional divides, and matters can become all the more tricky. We all know about the infamous barriers between marketing and sales. But it’s also important to establish strong relationships between marketing and customer success, product development, human resources, and beyond.  The soundness of cross-functional relationships in your organization manifests in many ways: efficiency of production, consistency of external messaging, the way colleagues interact with one another while in meetings or on calls with clients, and so on.  How to improve the connectivity of siloed units? There are a few key opportunities:

Transparency: Make it easy for folks in one department to see what’s going on in another. 

Honesty/Candor: Encourage people to speak up if they’re bothered of confused by what’s going on elsewhere in the company.

Eliminate Isolation: Cross-functional meetings, or team outings that bring together individuals who don’t generally collaborate, can be really helpful.

Trust Between Employee and Employer

The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer hints at the existence of a new employer-employee contract: 

Employees are ready and willing to trust their employers, but the trust must be earned through more than “business as usual.” Employees’ expectation that prospective employers will join them in taking action on societal issues (67 percent) is nearly as high as their expectations of personal empowerment (74 percent) and job opportunity (80 percent). The rewards of meeting these expectations and building trust are great. Employees who have trust in their employer are far more likely to engage in beneficial actions on their behalf—they will advocate for the organization (a 39-point trust advantage), are more engaged (33 points), and remain far more loyal (38 points) and committed (31 points) than their more skeptical counterparts.

Those items in the second paragraph make clear the tangible benefits of emphasizing trust between employees and your company’s top leadership, and the first paragraph offers useful guidance on how to get there. In particular, executives can connect more meaningfully with their employees by rallying them around a higher purpose and taking a stand on things that matter to the team. 

Building Trust, Inside and Out

There’s a reason we cover the topic of trust in marketing so frequently, and from so many different angles, on this blog: It’s complex and multifaceted. One missing ingredient — especially at a fundamental level — can lead to dysfunctional operations, lower output quality, and attrition of employees and customers alike. When trust is built from the inside out, happy CEOs, marketing teams, and employees beget happy customers and engaged prospects. This is an area where marketing can and should take ownership and lead the charge. [bctt tweet="When trust is built from the inside out, happy CEOs, marketing teams, and employees beget happy customers and engaged prospects. - @NickNelsonMN #TrustInMarketing" username="toprank"] Learn more about TopRank Marketing’s views on trust in marketing by checking out past entries in our Trust Factors series:

Trust Factors: Why Your Brand Should Take a Stand with Its Marketing Strategy

The B2B Marketing Funnel is Dead: Say Hello to the Trust Funnel

Trust Factors: The (In)Credible Impact of B2B Influencer Marketing

Trust Factors: How Best Answer Content Fuels Brand Credibility

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics

Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

Trust in Marketing is at Risk. These CMOs and Marketing Influencers Share How to Fix

The post Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/