#and some of which entirely sidestepped that by refusing the cycle entirely

[reticent-fate]

Coping with divinekin related feelings by making a spreadsheet and trying to think about a tarot deck based on exomemories again 🙏

//inhales deeply//

-Nova

[notarealwelder]

Recent babble on notebooking/pomodoroing

Reloading context is paramount

I cannot reliably remember fiddly details of a nontrivial task (e.g. a refactoring the size of "move 30loc into a different module, harmonize imports and dependencies") I've been doing only yesterday, much less 3 days ago on Friday

Two concepts of having an idea what to do

There are tasks in which the brain can generate an immediately takeable action it thinks will be useful, and tasks where it cannot. There are also tasks in which I have a plan/decomposition that makes it clearer how the task can be achieved, and tasks where I have none such. Both of these can be glossed as "I have an idea what to do / no idea what to do", but they're quite distinct mental states, and have different recommendations!

From no plan and no immediate action I can get into the state where "sketch a plan" is an immediate action. This gets me into "yes plan" state, from where "attempt to execute points of the plan" is either an immediate action, or a nontrivial task, to which I can apply decomposition

(this doesn't always work, because I might not have enough understanding of the domain to plan coherently: too much confusion about the domain and I can't even write steps; slightly less confusion and I can write steps, but won't have enough confidence in them to motivate myself to execute them)

Given no plan and an immediate action, it's tempting to simply take it; this is often a good idea! but also this way less structurelessness, lack of higher-level direction, moderately probably eventual disappointment from not getting Actually Useful results. in any case, pomodoro-ish structure with ≈enforced periods of reflection and re-planning does help with that; see some more on it below

Writing the very same thing multiple times is useful

dunno if it's my personal memory that's sievelike, but it refuses to hold a 5-point plan for the whole 25m it will take to execute its first 2 points; it will be displaced by execution details in the best case and by outside context distractions in the worst case.

that's an argument for writing things down once, but not more than that, right? no! reading the plan written half an hour ago, or even copy-pasting parts of it, is profoundly different from writing it down again, in entirely new words. (new copy of the plan also sidesteps the problem of searching for it in the big note & laborously filtering already-done fragments; I do not want to hold many pointers to different parts of my note, nor spend time re-reading it to locate what I need.)

Saying out loud what I intend to do to someone is very useful

when I get into it, it's a very cheap method to force myself to ≈put my plans into very-short-term memory; to give them intention; to force some explicit computation of these plans; to make a record of these computed plans that can be consulted in the next minutes to answer the constant "ok what now" question quite well

(sidethought: getting attached to doing the whole plan on time was a very bad idea for me in particular; estimating things sufficiently pessimistically is lunacy (and has additional problems w/ diminishing enthusiasm for doing them), dropping sidethoughts to get the planned thing on time is hard. much better to be ok with not getting everything planned done, and yet enjoying the benefits of planning.)

(sidethought 2: not uncommonly a plan calls for further planning somewhere in between; several iterations of plan-act cycle are....fine? I think at some point I might have had aversion to "always planning & never getting things done", but I sure do not have one now; getting a clearer view on smaller details is progress towards having them done after all)

Pomodoro-style enforced """breaks""" are good for several reasons

1st, they provide designated time slices for taking a brief higher-level look on the whole process; see below for why that's good

2nd, they provide a safety rope that can pull me out of rabbit holes I sometimes fall into

(I also recall that pomodoro technique is used to ≈alleviate frustration with ongoing tasks? but can't attest to it personally as of recent month; perhaps I'm working on insufficiently frustrating tasks.)

Summaries are useful

They refresh the context in mind, which, as above, is good

A good opportunity to get implicit or explicit mental rewards for Getting Things Done

it's not hard to lose track of the goal during the action, especially if there was no explicit plan, an idea for immediate action, and the domain was confusing. summary-time is perfectly suitable for doing a little meta: what are we trying to achieve again; did that thing we just did help; where should we go from here

[theatticoneighth]

Watching The Queen’s Gambit; on the Remarkable Unexceptionality of Beth Harmon

‘With some people, chess is a pastime. With others, it is a compulsion, even an addiction. And every now and then, a person comes along for whom it is a birthright. Now and then, a small boy appears and dazzles us with his precocity, at what may be the world’s most difficult game. But what if that boy were a girl? A young, unsmiling girl, with brown eyes, red hair, and a dark blue dress? Into the male-dominated world of the nation’s top chess tournaments, strolls a teenage girl with bright, intense eyes, from Fairfield High School in Lexington, Kentucky. She is quiet, well-mannered, and out for blood.’

The preceding epigraph opens a fictional profile of Beth Harmon featured in the third episode of The Queen’s Gambit (2020), and is written and published after the protagonist — a teenage, rookie chess player, no less — beats a series of ranked pros to win her first of many tournaments. In the same deft manner as it depicts the character’s ascent to her global chess stardom, the piece also sets up the series’s narrative: this is evidence of a great talent, it tells us, a grandmaster in the making. As with most other stories about prodigies, this new entry into a timeworn genre is framed unexceptionally by its subject’s exceptionality.

Yet as far as tales regaled about young chess wunderkinds go, Beth Harmon’s stands out in more ways than one. That she is a girl in a male-dominated world has clearly not gone unremarked by both her diegetic and nondiegetic audiences. That her life has thus far — and despite her circumstances — been relatively uneventful, however, is what makes this show so remarkable. After all, much of our culture has undeniably primed us to expect the consequential from those whom we raise upon the pedestal of genius. As Harmon’s interviewer suggests in her conversation with Harmon for the latter’s profile, “Creativity and psychosis often go hand in hand. Or, for that matter, genius and madness.” So quickly do we attribute extraordinary accomplishments to similarly irregular origins that we presume an inexplicability of our geniuses: their idiosyncrasies are warranted, their bad behaviours are excused, and deep into their biographies we dig to excavate the enigmatic anomalies behind their gifts. Through our myths of exceptionality, we make the slightest aberrations into metonyms for brilliance.

Nonetheless, for all her sullenness, non-conformity, and her plethora of addictions, Beth Harmon seems an uncommonly normal girl. No doubt this may be a contentious view, as evinced perhaps by the chorus of viewers and reviewers alike who have already begun to brand the character a Mary Sue. Writing on the series for the LA Review of Books, for instance, Aaron Bady construes The Queen’s Gambit as “the tragedy of Bobby Fischer [made] into a feminist fantasy, a superhero story.” In the same vein, Jane Hu also laments in her astute critique of the Cold War-era drama its flagrant and saccharine wish-fulfillment tendencies. “The show gets to have it both ways,” she observes, “a beautiful heroine who leans into the edge of near self-destruction, but never entirely, because of all the male friends she makes along the way.” Sexual difference is here reconstituted as the unbridgeable chasm that divides the US from the Soviet Union, whereas the mutual friendliness shared between Harmon and her male chess opponents becomes a utopic revision of history. Should one follow Hu’s evaluation of the series as a period drama, then the retroactive ascription of a recognisably socialist collaborative ethos to Harmon and her compatriots is a contrived one indeed. 

Accordingly, both Hu and Bady conclude that the series grants us depthless emotional satisfaction at the costly expense of realism: its all-too-easy resolutions swiftly sidestep any nascent hint of overwhelming tension; its resulting calm betrays our desire for reprieve. Underlying these arguments is the fundamental assumption that the unembellished truth should also be an inconvenient one, but why must we always demand difficulty from those we deem noteworthy? Summing up the show’s conspicuous penchant for conflict-avoidance, Bady writes that: 

over and over again, the show strongly suggests — through a variety of genre and narrative cues — that something bad is about to happen. And then … it just doesn’t. An orphan is sent to a gothic orphanage and the staff … are benign. She meets a creepy, taciturn old man in the basement … and he teaches her chess and loans her money. She is adopted by a dysfunctional family and the mother … takes care of her. She goes to a chess tournament and midway through a crucial game she gets her first period and … another girl helps her, who she rebuffs, and she is fine anyway. She wins games, defeating older male players, and … they respect and welcome her, selflessly helping her. The foster father comes back and …she has the money to buy him off. She gets entangled in cold war politics and … decides not to be.

In short, everything that could go wrong … simply does not go wrong.

Time and again predicaments arise in Harmon’s narrative, but at each point, she is helped fortuitously by the people around her. In turn, the character is allowed to move through the series with the restrained unflappability of a sleepwalker, as if unaffected by the drama of her life.  Of course, this is not to say that she fails to encounter any obstacle on her way to celebrity and success — for neither her childhood trauma nor her substance-laden adolescence are exactly rosy portraits of idyll — but only that such challenges seem so easily ironed out by that they hardly register as true adversity. In other words, the show takes us repeatedly to the brink of what could become a life-altering crisis but refuses to indulge our taste for the spectacle that follows. Skipping over the Aristotelian climax, it shields us from the height of suspense, and without much struggle or effort on the viewers’ part, hands us our payoff. Consequently lacking the epochal weight of plot, little feels deserved in Harmon’s story.

In his study of eschatological fictions, The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode would associate such a predilection for catastrophes with our abiding fear of disorder. Seeing as time, as he argues, is “purely successive [and] disorganised,” we can only reach to the fictive concords of plot to make sense of our experiences. Endings in particular serve as the teleological objective towards which humanity projects our existence, so we hold paradigms of apocalypse closely to ourselves to restore significance to our lives. It probably comes as no surprise then that in a year of chaos and relentless disaster — not to mention the present era of extreme precariousness, doomscrolling, and the 24/7 news cycle, all of which have irrevocably attuned us to the dreadful expectation of “the worst thing to come” — we find ourselves eyeing Harmon’s good fortune with such scepticism. Surely, we imagine, something has to have happened to the character for her in order to justify her immense consequence. But just as children are adopted each day into loving families and chess tournaments play out regularly without much strife, so too can Harmon maintain low-grade dysfunctional relationships with her typically flawed family and friends. 

In any case, although “it seems to be a condition attaching to the exercise of thinking about the future that one should assume one's own time to stand in extraordinary relation to it,” not all orphans have to face Dickensian fates and not all geniuses have to be so tortured (Kermode). The fact remains that the vagaries of our existence are beyond perfect reason, and any attempt at thinking otherwise, while vital, may be naive. Contrary to most critics’ contentions, it is hence not The Queen’s Gambit’s subversions of form but its continued reach towards the same that holds up for viewers such a comforting promise of coherence. The show comes closest to disappointing us as a result when it eschews melodrama for the straightforward. Surprised by the ease and randomness of Harmon’s life, it is not difficult for one to wonder, four or five episodes into the show, what it is all for; one could even begin to empathise with Hu’s description of the series as mere “fodder for beauty.” 

Watching over the series now with Bady’s recap of it in mind, however, I am reminded oddly not of the prestige and historical dramas to which the series is frequently compared, but the low-stakes, slice-of-life cartoons that had peppered my childhood. Defined by the prosaicness of its settings, the genre punctuates the life’s mundanity with brief moments of marvel to accentuate the curious in the ordinary. In these shows, kindergarteners fix the troubles of adults with their hilarious playground antics, while time-traveling robot cats and toddler scientists alike are confronted with the woes of chores. Likewise, we find in The Queen’s Gambit a comparable glimpse of the quotidian framed by its protagonist’s quirks. Certainly, little about the Netflix series’ visual and narrative features would identify it as a slice-of-life serial, but there remains some merit, I believe, in watching it as such. For, if there is anything to be gained from plots wherein nothing is introduced that cannot be resolved in an episode or ten, it is not just what Bady calls the “drowsy comfort” of satisfaction — of knowing that things will be alright, or at the very least, that they will not be terrible. Rather, it is the sense that we are not yet so estranged from ourselves, and that both life and familiarity persists even in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Perhaps some might find such a tendency towards the normal questionable, yet when all the world is on fire and everyone clambers for acclaim, it is ultimately the ongoingness of everyday life for which one yearns. As Harmon’s childhood friend, Jolene, tells her when she is once again about to fall off the wagon, “You’ve been the best at what you do for so long, you don’t even know what it’s like for the rest of us.” For so long, and especially over the past year, we have catastrophized the myriad crises in which we’re living that we often overlook the minor details and habits that nonetheless sustain us. To inhabit the congruence of both the remarkable and its opposite in the singular figure of Beth Harmon is therefore to be reminded of the possibility of being outstanding without being exceptional — that is, to not make an exception of oneself despite one’s situation — and to let oneself be drawn back, however placid or insignificant it may be, into the unassuming hum of dailiness. It is in this way of living that one lives on, minute by minute, day by day, against the looming fear and anxiety that seek to suspend our plodding regular existence. It is also in this way that I will soon be turning the page on the last few months in anticipation of what is to come. 

Born and raised in the perpetually summery tropics — that is, Singapore — Rachel Tay wishes she could say her life was just like a still from Call Me By Your Name: tanned boys, peaches, and all. Unfortunately, the only resemblance that her life bears to the film comes in the form of books, albeit ones read in the comfort of air-conditioned cafés, and not the pool, for the heat is sweltering and the humidity unbearable. A fervent turtleneck-wearer and an unrepentant hot coffee-addict, she is thus the ideal self-parodying Literature student, and the complete anti-thesis to tropical life.

[gascon-en-exil]

So I've heard the parley scene in AM is really bad. Can you explain what's wrong with it?

This sounds like a good time to use that handy event gallery feature to transcribe the conversation so we can talk about it. I haven’t done a full line-by-line reading of anything in a very long time.

Incidentally, Hubert is also present in this scene although he has no lines, which is highly unusual for the way this game handles who appears in story cutscenes. I just thought that was worth remarking on.

Dimitri: Professor. Do you think Edelgard will show up?

Byleth: “She will.” or “I doubt it.” Choice leads to...

???: “Well, well. It’s been a long time, Professor. And hello to you too, DImitri.” or “Sorry to disappoint you, Professor.”

This is Byleth’s only line in the scene, and I love how it reinforces that Edelgard is hung up on them even in the route where Byleth matters least. She acknowledges Dimitri, the leader of the army with whom she’s holding a parley, second - and not at all if you doubt her and she gets pouty about it. Also, imagine a Byleth-less AM where it would Dedue at Dimitri’s side instead, and how much better that would have been.

Dimitri: Edelgard. I did not think you would actually accept my request.

Edelgard: Call it a whim. Well then? What did want to talk about?

Call it an OOC whim, because she never so much as suggests any such thing on the other routes even when she’s losing.

Dimitri: I will get straight to the point. Why did you start this war? There had to a way change things in your territory without the need for so many senseless casualties.

Edelgard: It may be hard to believe, but this is the way that leads to the fewest casualties in the end. Don’t you see?

Dimitri: How could I? Countless people have already lost their lives in this conflict.

Edelgard: The longer we took to revolt, the more victims this crooked world would have claimed. I weighed the victims of war against the victims of the world as it is now, and I chose the former. I believe that I have chosen the best path, the only path.

Dimitri: Even after seeing the faces of those who have suffered the ravages of war, you would still force them to throw their lives away for the future? You are obsessively devoted to this war and deaf to the screams of its victims. You cannot change the cycle of the strong dominating the weak with a method like that.

Edelgard: You’re wrong. That very cycle is exactly what I have devoted my life and my power to destroying. If after all of this you believe the weak will still be weak, that is only because they are too used to relying on others instead of on themselves.

This reinforces three concepts central to Edelgard’s character: the ends justify the means, dependence on others makes you weak, and it’s acceptable for her to make life-or-death decisions for an entire continent because she has the power and (allegedly) the understanding to do so.

Dimitri: Yes. Perhaps someone as strong as you are can claim something like that. But you cannot force that belief onto others. People aren’t as strong as you think they are. There are those who cannot live without their faith...and those who cannot go on once they have lost their reason for living. Your path will not be able to save them. It is the path of the strong, and so, it could only benefit the strong.

Dimitri remarks that Edelgard is operating from a place of extreme privilege as emperor, but he also means strength in a different context which he’ll expound upon later. I’ve seen people cherry pick the line about people who can’t live without faith as evidence that Dimitri thinks religion is necessary, but that’s ignoring what he says below.

Edelgard: Heh, so you consider me strong, do you? 

Of course, because Edelgard makes a big point of never showing her emotions to anyone but Byleth and projecting an image of strength in place of them. This is markedly in contrast to Dimitri who allows himself to be publicly vulnerable in ugly and unsettling ways. It’s inverted gender coding twice over.

Edelgard: Even if one clings to their faith, the goddess will never answer them. Countless souls will be lost that way. Living without purpose. And I can be counted as those who have died that way as well. But that’s why I must change this world, on behalf of the silent and weak!

So now she claims to speak for the weak. This implies some interesting things about why Edelgard is an atheist (or as much as one can be in a world where your deity is living inside your teacher), although it falls a bit flat when one considers Dimitri’s Goddess Tower event where he essentially admits to being a deist himself. They’re actually about on the same page there, but this conversation doesn’t indicate it.

Dimitri: And do you intend to become a goddess yourself? Will you steal the power to take action from the broken-hearted masses you claim to defend? The ones who can truly change the way of the world are not the rulers, but the people. Pushing your own sense of justice and your own ideals onto even one other person is nothing more than self-righteousness.

Edelgard: Maybe it is self-righteousness, but it doesn’t matter. Someone has to take action and put a stop to this world’s endless, blood-stained history!

Proto-democracy alert, and I don’t mean from Edelgard. I’m a bit shocked that Edelgard is willing to admit that she’s being self-righteous, but she immediately pivots back into her usual spiel and refusal to compromise her beliefs even the slightest.

Dimitri: Do you not believe in the power of the people to join together and rise up? Humans are weak creatures. But they are also creatures who help each other, support each other, and together, find the right path. I have learned that humans are capable of all that from the professor...and from everyone in my life.

I hate that Dimitri singles out Byleth here and not, you know, any of the numerous other people who’ve been at his side supporting and loving him for much longer and with more than just irrelevant dialogue options and vacant smiles. Nevertheless, Dimitri understands the value of community on account of his experiences and his own development. That’s some solid, thematically cohesive writing there. See what the other leaders miss out on by never changing during their stories...and no, having the hots for the self-insert does not constitute changing.

Edelgard: I doubt a highborn person like yourself could know how the poor feel or what motivates them. This is nonsense. Though, I’m finally starting to understand how you feel. But that makes it even clearer to me that we can never fully understand each other.

Dimitri: I feel the same. I finally understand...what you believe is right.

An obnoxious moment of the pot calling the kettle black that also ignores that Dimitri spent most of the timeskip homeless, spending time in the slums of Fòdlan, being hailed as a (frightening) hero of the common people. Dimitri doesn’t argue the point though; he sees that Edelgard is set in her (demonstrably incorrect) beliefs and that further discussion is useless. Do note who shuts down the conversation first though, after sidestepping Dimitri’s point about the value of supporting each other.

Edelgard: Good-bye, DImitri.

Dimitri: Wait, Edelgard. There is something I must give you.  This is for you. Use it to cut a path to the future you wish for. And I will rise up to meet you there...El.

Edelgard: ...

I left this bit in for the transition as well as to undercut the irony of what Edelgard ultimately does with this dagger. The future she wishes for is to stand on her own - even if it means killing an old friend and dying herself.

After this the scene cuts to a flashback of Dimitri giving Edelgard the dagger before she left the Kingdom, followed by Edelgard admitting that she had forgotten that memory and the two of them reflecting on it briefly before parting. I’ve cut this part as it’s not relevant to the parley.

Now that I’ve written it all out I have to say that the scripting of this scene is not inherently terrible. It works if you assume that Edelgard is metaphorically sticking her fingers in her ears through the whole thing and spouting her rehearsed, blatantly flawed rhetoric about human nature and assumptions about Dimitri’s character that prove that she doesn’t know him very well at all and doesn’t care to. I’ve read that several lines are markedly different in Japanese, although not necessarily better? Either way this is a scene of two people talking past each other repeatedly that accomplishes nothing except to set the stage for the final cutscene, underscoring that AM was never really about politics so much as people at its narrative center.

[timeagainreviews]

My Series 10 Rewatch: The Husbands of River Song

One of the beautiful aspects of starting this blog has been the opportunity to revisit old episodes. The title of this blog "Time and Time Again," isn’t just a reference both to Twin Peaks and Doctor Who, but also a raison d'être. The hope is that repeat viewings will bring forth new insights. Things I loathed previously may seem charming in hindsight. Things I initially adored may begin to show cracks in their facade. Some records take a few listens until we discover their greatness. Sometimes art requires consideration.

I mention this because our first review for the series 10 retrospective is for "The Husbands of River Song," an episode of which I detested. It's important to give this context as my opinion of it has indeed mellowed over time. I will endeavour to highlight this shift in perspective as memory permits. Before the other day, I hadn't watched this episode since it first aired on Christmas of 2015. What then can nearly half a decade add to the experience?

It should be noted that I have never been a big fan of Doctor Who Christmas specials. It would be quicker to count the reasons I like them, or in this case, the reason. That being, it's more Doctor Who. Other than that, I find the whole Christmas theme to be hokey. Growing up, I was a Halloween kid. I really don't like Christmas all that much, so an entire episode themed around it is not my idea of a good time. Even worse is when the villains themselves have Christmassy gimmicks like Santa robots or evil snowmen. I suppose in some ways, it's in the Christmas spirit for the Doctor to die and regenerate on Christmas, as they so often do. The concept of birth and renewal are a big part of the holiday. But if I was known to die a lot on Christmas, I might use my time machine to skip it every year.

Landing his TARDIS on Christmas Day, in the year 5343 is Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. The planet, Mendorax Dellora, is one of Steven Moffat's usual Christmas village planets, stuck somewhere in a vortex of quaint sentiment. The Doctor appears to have about as much Christmas spirit as I do. Having just lost Clara both in spirit and memory, he's reverted to the Doctor's most worrisome state- hermitic and bitter. Not even the TARDIS' holographically generated reindeer antlers can bring out the holiday cheer. It's a visit from Nardole, a nebbish sort of man, that brings the Doctor out of his slump. Mistaking him for a surgeon, he leads the Doctor to what appears to be a crash-landed saucer. The obscene redness of its exterior against the plain backdrop gave me the strangest pangs of the circus tent from "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." Just throwing that out there.

From the outset, Peter Capaldi is at his most charming. I've never actually covered a Twelfth Doctor story before now, so I would like to mention how much I adore his performance as the Doctor. I know he gets a lot of flack from certain fans (see: dipshit morons with no class), but I think he's brilliant. Right away his banter with Nardole is apparent. It's easy to see why someone may have watched Capaldi and Matt Lucas interacting and thought "There's something here." Lucas' history in comedy gives him great timing as the foil to the Twelfth Doctor's eccentricity.

However, it won't be Nardole filling the role of co-star for long. As the Doctor enters the ship of King Hydroflax, he is greeted by the familiar face of River Song. As I have mentioned previously, I have issues with the way River's story plays out, but by this point in the show, I had grown to love her. Which is why this episode pains me so much. The problems inherent in having the Doctor and River's relationship play out like two ships in the night are at their worst in this episode, but I'll get to that in due time.

The King Hydroflax, played with great relish by Greg Davies is a mere head atop a giant robot body, painted in the same garish red as the flying saucer. River, acting very unlike herself, is practically prostrating herself in front of the vain king. Furthermore, she doesn't seem to recognise the Doctor's new face at all. Even more disturbing to the Doctor is the fact that River appears to be married to the king tyrant, talking about him as some sort of cherished lover. After analysing his new patient, the Doctor discovers a foreign body lodged into Hydroflax's skull. All the while, the king's loyal subjects watch a live feed of the operation, booing the Doctor when he refuses to placate the ego of their leader. It's an idea that has become painfully more believable in the years since airing.

The Doctor and River go into another room of the ship where River explains that the foreign body is, in fact, the most valuable diamond in the universe known as the Halassi Androvar. Somewhat to the Doctor's relief, he discovers that River's love for the king has been a ruse to recover the diamond for the Halassi people, from whom it was stolen. Much like the Doctor has turned into a bitter hermit, loneliness has brought out River's more sadistic nature as she takes to the idea of killing Hyrdroflax for the diamond in stride. Less enthusiastic of the idea than even the Doctor is the emperor himself, who has somehow managed to eavesdrop on two Time Lords while walking around in a massive robotic body. This kind of logic will continue throughout the night.

The king is much displeased with learning that his new wife is some renegade archaeologist with a sonic trowel. Taunting the pair, he removes his head from his robot body, leading River to improvise. Holding his head hostage at trowelpoint, River improvises and takes the entire head in a duffel bag. River's other husband, a beautiful but submissive man named Ramone, teleports her and the Doctor to safety with the head in tow. Meanwhile, Hyrdoflax's body sets about taking on a new head in the form of poor Nardole. It’s worth noting that River wiping Ramone’s mind of any knowledge that they were married is a bit creepy. There are implications involved that kind of gross me out.

The Doctor, having just met Ramone, is taken aback after having met yet another of River's husbands. Beginning to feel like a bit of an afterthought the Doctor takes small potshots at River's sense of loyalty, while also fishing for clues that he may or may not have ever meant something to her. For all this episode does to highlight the Doctor and River's secret feelings for one another, it does a piss poor job of actually staying true to River's character in one key manner. Throughout a majority of the episode, River fails repeatedly to recognise the Doctor for who he is.

Moffat tries somewhat to cover his tracks by making it look as though River only knows of twelve previous regenerations, including the War Doctor. In what looks like one of the cheapest props of the episode, she even has a little fold-out wallet with all of the Doctors' pictures. Knowing that the Eleventh Doctor was the end of his regeneration cycle, she never even considers the idea that the Doctor may have lived on. Even though toward the end of the episode, she remarks that the Doctor always finds a way to cheat fate, she wholeheartedly buys into the idea that the Doctor would just never regenerate beyond the Eleventh Doctor. In a single episode, not even River's own logic believes River's own logic.

Learning that River sometimes shows up to places he's been long enough to take the TARDIS for a joyride, the Doctor is given a chance to act as a bit of a spectator in his own life. There is a definite bit of glee to be found in the Twelfth Doctor's over the top reaction to his own TARDIS. Finally being able to say "It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor savours the moment to great comical effect. Ramone parts ways to he and River's pre-established rendezvous point. However, he is cut short by the giant robot body holding a gun to Nardole's head. Poor Nardole, he's having such a rough go of things. First, he brings the wrong surgeon, then he loses his body, and now he's being held hostage by his new body. The robot’s only demand is that Ramone send a message to River.

River, as always, is quite at home in the TARDIS, even taking a moment to raid the liquor cabinet of which not even the Doctor was aware. However, her flawless piloting of the TARDIS is thrown out of whack by unforeseen circumstances. Even after the Doctor deduces that the TARDIS won't fly while it senses the King's head and body are both inside and outside the TARDIS, River still doesn't grasp the fact that he is the Doctor. I would also like mention that while I found the TARDIS' failsafe to be a rather creative invention, it did immediately make me wonder about the Cyberhead Handles' body. What constitutes a body the TARDIS recognises? Could the Face of Boe fly in the TARDIS? Could Dorium Maldovar? Oh well, it doesn't really matter.

A knock on the TARDIS door from Ramone, now part of the robot, quickly reunites the head and body. However, for the third time in this episode, any action is immediately sidestepped by yet another person taking a disembodied head hostage. This time it's the Doctor threatening to throw Hydroflax's head down the garbage chute. Every chance this episode gets, it bravely avoids the perils of forming some sort of plot. The stakes have never been lower. The Doctor and River take the TARDIS to a restaurant aboard the starship Harmony and Redemption. Everyone onboard is some sort of war criminal or seedy individual, including the Maître d', a bug faced man named Flemming. After taking a seat in the restaurant, River reveals that she never planned on returning the diamond to the people of Halassi. Instead, she plans on selling it to the highest bidder.

The Doctor uses this moment to probe River for further information. River reads silently from her TARDIS diary. She reveals to the Doctor that the person who gave her the diary was the type of man who would know just how long a diary she would need. It's at this moment that the Doctor begins to see traces that River is very much still in love with him and that she may be a little lost without him. I would say this scene was touching if it weren't for the fact that it was undercut by River's inability to recognise the man sitting directly in front of her. It's so out of character for River to be this myopic. By this point in my initial watch through, I was so annoyed by this betrayal of her character that it took me out of the story completely. The second time around was only a little less irritating due to the fact that at least now I expected it.

River's buyer turns out to be Scratch, a very Moffatty body horror bad guy, in the vein of characters like Colony Sarff or the Headless Monks. After accepting River's price, Scratch opens his head like a coin purse and pulls out a little orb that connects to any bank in the universe. By this point, I've grown accustomed to Moffat's over the top exploits like this. It's feasible to imagine that Scratch's cruel master may have torn his head open to store money. It's like in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," when Humma Kavula removes a servant's nose to reveal a control pad that opens a series of draws tucked into his chest. However, it gets a bit far fetched when it is revealed that many other diners in the restaurant are the same species as Scratch and they all have the same scar across their faces. Is this some evolutionary trait? Are they a species so greedy that they evolved a place to squirrel away their money? Do they keep other stuff like car keys or bags of space weed? Not every bad guy needs to be a toy, Moffat!

The reason the patrons suddenly turn on the Doctor and River is that they discover the diamond is lodged within the head of their great leader. This brings up even more questions about their heads. Why doesn't Hydroflax’s head have the same scar? Are they the same species? How did this asshole even get so much power in the first place? There seems to be neither anything likable nor competent about him... oh right. Once again, the events of the years since have made this episode more believable. Dinner is even further interrupted by the King's body barging in, demanding its proper head. Only now it deems King Hydroflax's head unsuitable. Having been detached from his body for too long, the King's head is now dying. The body disintegrates the King's head, leaving behind the diamond. Flemming uses this opportunity to alert the patrons of the restaurant to the fact that River knows the perfect person to become the next head of state, so to speak. Of course, it's the Doctor.

Why Flemming knows River knows a Time Lord, but doesn't know she herself is a Time Lord is anyone's guess. Or maybe he knows and is just throwing shade by implying that the Doctor is a better Time Lord. It's at this moment that Alex Kingston is given one of her finest moments as River Song in the form of an emotional monologue. After arguing that the Doctor wouldn't be there with her because he doesn't care, it finally dons on her that the Doctor has been standing next to her the entire time. Despite the fact that Moffat sacrificed River's intelligence for the sake of a big reveal, the moment still resonates. Capaldi's warm gaze meeting River's expression of shock followed by his soft utterance of "Hello sweetie," is genuinely touching. No cynical sensationalism can undo the beautiful performances given by Capaldi and Kingston, who bring more gravity to the scene than the script.

For all of the hand-wavey tripe this episode heaps upon us, the way in which the Doctor and River escape this sticky situation is actually rather brilliant. In any other show, the appearance of a sudden freak meteor collision with the ship would seem convenient. But River is an archaeologist and a time traveller. She picked her meeting location perfectly- a starship about to be destroyed by meteors. Her line of "I'm an archaeologist from the future, I dug you up," is easily one of the best River Song lines ever written for Doctor Who. If this is truly her final episode, that's one hell of a line to go out on.

In another convenient moment, the diamond lands in River's dress as they're making their escape. I guess she planned that too. The Doctor uses Scratch's money orb to short circuit the robot body with its firewall. River and the Doctor run to the TARDIS while the ship crashes into the planet Darillium, knocking River unconscious. While River is out, the Doctor uses the opportunity to do a bit of time travelling. First, the Doctor gives the diamond to one of the crash's first responders, telling him to build a restaurant in front of the singing towers of Darillium. Then he jumps forward to a time when the restaurant has been built to make reservations. Then he jumps forward to the day of the reservation. River wakes up to find herself wandering into a beautiful restaurant on Christmas Day. Even Ramone and Nardole have survived due to some trickery on the Doctor’s behalf. Nardole is having a bit of “alone time,” which River remarks must be difficult as a head. That one goes up there with Ursula becoming a blowjob dispensing pavement stone at the end of “Love and Monsters.” The Doctor is waiting for River in a First Doctor style bow tie and coat. He treats her to a romantic meal and the gift of her own sonic screwdriver, the same sonic screwdriver she has when we met her in "Silence in the Library."

There's a nice little cap on the entire River storyline here that feels a bit more final than the one between her and the Eleventh Doctor. Perhaps it's the fact that it's the last time Moffat wrote her character, or perhaps it's because even River seems to know something is up. Having heard the legends of her own romance with the Doctor, River knows that her last night was spent with the Doctor on the planet Darillium. This is a bit of retconning that you often find in Doctor Who. River doesn't really know in her first appearance that she's headed toward her own demise, yet here she's all too aware of it. It's compounded by the fact that the Doctor reveals that a night on Darillium lasts 24 years. It's meant to be a sweet line that implies they got to spend a lot of time coupling together for 24 years, but it's really just 24 years for River to know, for certain, that she's going to her inevitable doom.

Retcons like these don't necessarily ruin the show. Storytellers shouldn't be forced to sacrifice the current narrative all for the sake of creating tidy bookends. Should Big Finish not put Peri and the Fifth Doctor in more adventures for fear that it may dilute the Doctor's sacrificing his own life for a woman he barely knows? Does him knowing her better make his sacrifice any less admirable? How about the many times River meets the Doctor in his previous forms even though the Tenth Doctor clearly had never met her in his life? I'm not going to answer these questions because they should be open-ended. It is a thing to consider in Doctor Who. If time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, then maybe the storylines are allowed to be as malleable.

As I've demonstrated above, our own experiences with the stories can be malleable. I watched this episode with my boyfriend because I wanted to gauge his initial reaction. A lot of his reactions mirrored my own. We both found ourselves enjoying it as a light romp afforded by the air of a Christmas episode, while also deriding it for its lack of plot. Like myself, he too felt that the big reveal was detrimental to River's intelligence and went on past the point of acceptability. It's one of the oddest things about Steven Moffat as a writer, no matter how clever his ideas actually may be, he doesn't ever seem to know when his audience has caught on. Perhaps it's the suits at the BBC underestimating the audience. Or perhaps this is because he spent a lot of his life as a Doctor Who nerd, oftentimes feeling out of place when talking about Doctor Who to casuals. But the modern Doctor Who audience has been raised on science fiction and intricate narratives. No hand-holding necessary.

Regardless of how attuned he perceives his audience to be, River's realisation seems more slavishly timed to the climax of the story than anything else. One can't help but wonder if Moffat hadn't been so insistent on making this moment the crux of the episode, we may have actually gotten a more serviceable plot. Instead of heads held hostage and hand waving, we could have gotten a stronger villain. Scratch could have represented more than just some guy with a coin purse head. There are lots of fantastical elements on display, but none of them is ever given any gravity. Moffat's fixation on character relationships is so single-minded that it comes not only at the sake of plot, but character as well. It's unfortunate that despite Alex Kingston's greatest efforts, River's goodbye is undercut by one writer's need to be clever.

[themostrandomfandom]

Hey! Love the blog! I’m new to the fandom and I’ve fallen completely in love with Brittany! I was wondering how you think Brittany and Santana’s emotional intimacy changed throughout the show? And especially while Santana struggles with her sexuality

Hey, @darthmanius​!

Welcome to the fandom! I’m glad you like my blog. Sorry if it’s taken me a while to get back to you—I haven’t been online in a while.

In regards to your questions, I think one of the primary ways that Brittana’s emotional intimacy changes over the course of the show is in terms of how they communicate about their feelings.

More under the cut.

_______

In Brittanaland, “With feelings, it’s better” has long been a watchcry, but also potentially a misleading one if taken literally, because, honestly, with Brittana, the feelings have never been lacking.

The real issue? Acknowledging feelings for what they are. Communicating straightforwardly about how one feels. Not obfuscating or sidestepping. Just being honest. 

This issue lies at the heart of Brittana’s journey from emotional distance to peak emotional intimacy. As the girls learn how to disclose to each other about how they feel—and essentially to “call a spade a spade” when it comes to what their relationship means—they’re able to move from confusion, heartache, and unnecessary angst to connection, certainty, and emotional openness like never before. This evolution as a couple tracks closely with Santana learning to embrace her sexual identity and with Brittany learning to advocate for herself and stand up for what matters to her.   

We see this process start early on, when Brittana presents something of an “emotional intimacy paradox,” insofar as the girls are simultaneously both incredibly emotionally intimate in some ways and incredibly emotionally closed off from each other in others.

On the one hand, they are best friends of the closest kind:

They confide in each other.

See, for example, in 2x12, when, after maintaining her “bitch” front in the face of everyone else, Santana finally breaks down in the hallway with only Brittany present, revealing the depths of her upset.

They are attentive to each other’s feelings.

See, for example, in 2x02, when Santana sticks up for Brittany when she catches flack for not wanting to perform Britney Spears like the rest of the glee club.

They support each other’s successes.

See, for example, in 2x09, when they are excited about each other’s respective dancing and singing solos at Sectionals.

They make use of an extensive lexicon of intimate touches through which they communicate with each other (e.g., pinky-linking, back rubs, playing with each other’s hair, sweet lady kisses, etc.).

See all of S1, while they’re sitting on the back row.

They understand each other’s quirks, tics, and personality traits like no one else does.

See, for example, in 2x19, Brittany’s defense of Santana during the Blurt Locker scene.

We don’t get to witness a lot of their “alone time” together play out on screen, but anyone with eyes can tell that they are extremely close to each other—more so than they are with anyone else on the show. They talk to each other more than they do other characters. They act differently toward each other than toward other company. They demonstrate all sorts of care for each other in myriad different ways. Both of them are more “themselves” in each other’s presence than they are otherwise. 

Of course, on the other hand, they also have a giant emotional wedge between them which impedes their emotional intimacy—namely, Santana’s unwillingness to acknowledge the true nature of their relationship and/or their respective sexual orientations (or to allow Brittany to do so).

For all intents and purposes, Brittana are in a romantic relationship with each other throughout the entire history of the show, and yet in the early seasons, Santana refuses to either acknowledge or to permit Brittany to acknowledge said relationship as romantic. She’s so terrified of anyone knowing the truth about her sexuality that she tries in every possible way to bury it. 

Even though she and Brittany are sleeping together, hanging out all the time, and doing quintessentially coupley things, they aren’t (according to her) girlfriends; they are “best friends.” 

Even though they have a passionate, regular sexual relationship—that is even seemingly monogamous between episodes 1x16 and 2x06—what they’re doing isn’t (according to her) serious; it’s just a recreational time-kill in the absence of boys. 

Per Santana, sex isn’t dating, and cuddling in the choir room isn’t a big deal. What she feels for Brittany is only best friendly affection, not passionate love. She rationalizes and downplays and represses EVERYTHING, insisting that Brittany do so, as well, freaking out and retreating any time Brittany even gets close to suggesting that their relationship is at all romantic.

—and because Brittany fears that if she freaks Santana out, she’ll lose her, she goes along with Santana’s charades, as ridiculous and unconvicing as they sometimes are. If Santana says that sex isn’t dating, then sex isn’t dating. If Santana says that they have to get with boys, then they have to get with boys. Brittany, at this point, is a passive entity. Her m.o. is to go along to get along and not do anything that would possibly cause Santana to spook.

She keeps her mouth shut, even though she knows in her heart that what Santana’s selling her is bullshit.

In Santana repressing and in Brittany humoring her, Brittana experience complications with their emotional intimacy, including (among other issues):

While they are both skilled readers of each other’s cues, they often can’t discuss what they see going on with each other. They have to pretend that they don’t know why the other girl is upset or conflicted or angry or sad or confused—or at least they have to tiptoe around the subject very carefully, being cautious not to mention their feelings for each other or sexual orientations in the process. 

For example, in episode 2x12, Brittany knows very well that Santana’s upset about Valentine’s Day has a lot to do with her gay panicking and fear that she is going to be alone for the rest of her life. However, because of Santana’s moratorium on talking about feelings and the topic of their sexual orientations, Brittany can’t very well say to Santana, “Don’t worry. You won’t end up alone! One day, you’ll be with a girl you love—and I hope that that girl is me.” Instead, she can only look on with concern while Santana flails, offering physical comfort but no address to the underlying problem.

Santana’s repeated verbal devaluation of her and Brittany’s relationship  conflicts with the physical cues she sends Brittany, which causes Brittany a kind of emotional whiplash. On the one hand, what Santana says can be downight cruel (“I’m not making out with you because I’m in love with you and want to sing about making lady babies. I’m only here because Puck’s been in the slammer for about 12 hours now, and I’m like a lizard. I need something warm beneath me or I can’t digest my food”), but, on the other hand, what she does, from the back rubs to the kisses to the lovemaking, is so sweet and attentive. Between the two extremes, Brittany doesn’t know where she stands or to what extent she is allowed to make known her own feelings.

Hence Brittany’s occasional “flubs,” where she wears her heart on her sleeve and tells Santana how she feels, believing, based on Santana’s recent behavior, that her expressions of affection will be reciprocated, only to have Santana suddenly shoot her down (e.g., in 2x04).    

The girls perpetuate a dizzying cycle in which every time Santana allows hereself to be emotionally vulnerable with Brittany—in some way revealing how much she needs, wants, and loves her—she then panics and emotionally retreats, attempting to date boys (and encouraging Brittany to do the same) in order to reassert their “heterosexuality.” This behavior causes both girls heartache and confusion, as every step forward they might take—for instance, their long period of monogamy between episodes 1x16 and 2x06—is then immediately wiped out by the proverbial two steps back—for instance, Santana roping them into a double-date with Puck and Artie, which eventually segues into her (once again) sleeping with Puck and Brittany (for the first time) sleeping with Artie.

In this sense, the girls are also very emotionally closed-off from each other, insofar as they can’t acknowledge their feelings for each other in any other way than on a physical level. They don’t talk about their romantic relationship in terms of it being a romantic relationship. They don’t talk about what the sex means, even though sex for them is incredibly meaningful. They deliberately mischaracterize their interactions as “platonically friendly” and attempt to hide the fact that they are each other’s primary partners, even though such is clearly the case.

The walls Santana builds up as a self-protective measure create emotional dissonance between them, which eventually results in Brittany deciding to take her at her word—i.e., that they’re not dating, despite all evidences to the contrary—and pursue a relationship with someone else instead, namely Artie Abrams.

From her relationship with Artie, Brittany learns the importance of being at liberty to discuss one’s feelings with one’s partner (“But when Artie and I are together we talk about stuff like feelings”). She also experiences the joys of having a formalized relationship. Artie, despite not fully understanding Brittany and oftentimes underestimating her intelligence, is generally an attentive and positive partner. Brittany’s time with him tends to be happy.

However, for as much as she flourishes in her relationship with Artie, she also finds herself unwilling to completely break off her relationship with Santana, with whom she is still deeply in love. Unlike Artie, Santana does fully understand her, and the feelings between them run so deep and so strong. 

This unwillingness on her part to forsake her relationship with Santana eventually leads to cheating between her and Santana while she’s still dating Artie, and the cheating eventually leads to the implosion of the Bartie relationship.

In the meantime, Santana’s experience with suddenly being Brittany’s “side dish” as opposed to her primary partner proves to Santana something that for years she has attempted to deny: that she is deeply in love with Brittany, craves intimacy with her, and can’t stand to be without her.

So cue first the Hurt Locker scene and then the Back Six of S2, where Santana finally allows herself to name her love for Brittany aloud and to acknowledge to Brittany that she wants them to be together, and, shortly afterward, Brittany suddenly becomes “available” again.

From there, Brittana’s is not an all-at-once transformation, where the girls go from being emotionally impeded to emotionally intimate in every way, but rather a step here and a step there over the course of the Back Six, with Santana learning (with much help from Brittany) to “embrace all the awesomeness” that she is and accept her own sexuality, becoming increasingly emotionally transparent in the process, and with Brittany learning to assert herself and be her own person, refusing to swallow her own feelings to preserve Santana’s ego. 

At the same time that Santana is gathering the courage to put on her  “LEBANESE” shirt and wear it proudly (see 2x18), Brittany is gathering the courage to stand up to the next person who calls her an idiot (see 2x19) and to tell Santana that she deserves to be treated well in their relationship and have her feelings acknowledged (see 2x18). It is a period of individual growth for both girls, and that individual growth paves the way for them to come into themselves as a couple. 

They suffer a few setbacks along the way—such as when Santana stands Brittany up on Fondue for Two (see episode 2x19)—but, gradually, by the end of S2, they reach a place where they can be honest with each other about what their actions toward each other mean and how they feel about each other and their relationship (see the Heart Locker scene in episode 2x22).

This progress continues into S3, when they officially start dating and take the first steps toward negotiating their emotional intimacy in public. Here, we see Brittany being wonderfully mindful of Santana’s comfort levels in terms of their coming out process as a couple (see episode 3x04) and Santana opening herself to Brittany in ways she never has before.

Santana becomes willing to cop to her feelings for Brittany not only when they are alone together but also before others, even in Brittany’s absence, and even to hostile audiences, like Principal Figgins or her abuela.

Unfortunately, Brittana—and especially Brittany—don’t get a lot of dialogue as the season progresses, but it’s still easy enough to see that they’re closer than they’ve ever been before. 

Hence why it so strains credulity when the Glee writers make it so that, somehow, Santana has no idea that Brittany’s not going to graduate, though that’s a rant for another day.

Of course, if we were charting Brittana’s emotional intimacy on a line chart, the “up curve” they’d experienced between S1 and S3 would take a sudden downturn come S4, when their breakup—precipitated by distance—suddenly reintroduces uncertainty into their dynamic, the likes of which they haven’t experienced since before Santana could bring herself to say the words “I love you.” 

Again, as before, the problem isn’t in the feelings. 

It’s in the inability to express them.

As discussed here, Santana and Brittany are still very much—truly, madly, deeply—in love when they break up, but because the entire object of said breakup (as Santana conceives of it) is to permit them both the freedom to pursue other happinesses while they can’t for the moment be together, they have to try to move on from each other, which means giving up the trappings of their former formal relationship. If they’re going to do the “find your bliss elsewhere” thing, then they have to do it right, and that means that they can’t function like a couple. There have got to be some boundaries.

The difficulty comes in deciding where those boundaries lie and then somehow enforcing them.

Throughout their entire “broken up” period between S4 and early S5, neither one of them is certain how to interact with the other now that they’re uncoupled. They still crave each other’s company (see, for example, 4x06 and 4x13), but they’re not sure how much they can do or say or even where to draw the line when it comes to physical touch. How much disclosure is too much? At what point are they crossing a line? 

Santana, in particular, is so afraid of getting her wires crossed that she finds it difficult to maintain regular contact with Brittany, especially once Brittany starts dating Sam.

Remember: Even in the primordial days of S1, when the girls were still pretending that they were “just” best friends, there was always a romantic element to their relationship. They’ve never known how to maintain a strictly platonic dynamic. 

This uncertainty creates some notable awkwardness during S4. Though at various points, the girls vow to each other that they’ll always be best friends and remain close, even when they’re dating other people (see, for example, in 4x06 and 4x13), their communication—at least as far as we’re shown it in canon—appears both sporadic and far less open than it once was. They’re careful around each other in a way they haven’t been since S2.

It takes Brittany’s misery at MIT and Santana’s misery in New York to reopen their channels of communication (see episodes 5x12 and 5x13). Because their concern for each other’s well-being is always paramount even when they’re not officially “together,” when each one learns how unhappy the other one is in her current living situation, they each attempt to counsel and support each other, despite their previous awkwardness, and those attempts eventually lead to them talking about their relationship. 

Brittany bravely admits that she wants her and Santana to be together again, and her act of emotional disclosure causes Santana to realize that she wants the same thing, too. 

They talk about first their fears and then their hopes in getting back together. They make plans. They tie up loose ends. 

From there, their emotional intimacy only increases and deepens.

The Brittana we see in S6, fresh off of their months-long vacation to Lesbos and concert tour as Mercedes’s background singers, have seemingly only grown closer in the time they’ve spent together since S5. 

They are extremely communicative, talking together about their feelings both negative and positive. They also help each other problem-solve and build each other up in times of stress and duress. They’re incredibly attentive to each other’s wants and needs and united in the front they present to the world.

And most importantly?

Their words and deeds align exactly. 

They tell each other how much they love each other with handholding, nose-nuzzling, kisses, hugs, and lovemaking, but they also say it in words—with “I will love you until infinity,” “I choose you over everyone,” and “I do”—and mean every one through and through, from the very depths of their hearts. 

There’s no more discrepancy between what’s actually going on with them and what they say is going on with them. 

They’re on the same page, 100%.

Brittany has metamorphosed from the yes-woman who went along just to get along. She no longer allows anyone to step on her, and she doesn’t sacrifice her own emotional truth to placate other people. She expresses her feelings clearly and is active in making decisions regarding her and Santana’s relationship. Gone is the girl who looked on, brokenhearted, while everyone told her who she was and how she should feel. Now she knows how to advocate for herself, for Santana, and for their love even—and even especially—when the stakes are high (see, for example, her speech to Santana’s grandmother in 6x06).

Santana, too, has undergone a remarkable, seasons-long change. No longer is she the girl who is too afraid to admit, even just to herself, that she’s in love with her best friend. Now she’s the woman who almost can’t help but tell the whole world how much she loves her wife at every opportunity, and she’s willing to prioritize her relationship with Brittany, even when doing so isn’t easy or without personal cost to her. While she once imposed ridiculous rules on herself and Brittany to try to keep their love a secret, now she breaks all the rules so that they can be together. She allows herself to be vulnerable and to show her innate sweetness. She allows herself to be honest about what she feels. 

—and, ultimately, that growth and honesty for both girls allows Brittana to enjoy a high degree of emotional intimacy during their engagement and marriage.

Their scenes together in episode 6x06 are some of the most emotionally intimate in the whole show—and I’m not just talking about them standing side by side to take on Alma at the end of the episode, but about Santana confronting Brittany in the hallway and about their ensuing conversation about Santana’s boundaries and how they’ll work together from now on to achieve common goals. That communication is so healthy and expressive. It’s so adult and straightforward. It’s something they never would have been able to do early on. It really shows their growth.

Looking forward, one can only imagine that as married women, they continue to learn each other better and to make use of their well-honed communication skills. Their “I love yous” undoubtedly continue to be frequent, their acknowledgment of who they are and how they feel absolutely their norm.

In any case, I’m rambling now, but TL;DR? Brittana’s biggest obstacle regarding emotional intimacy is the issue of being able to acknowledge their feelings for what they are. Once they learn to do that—together—they cohere in a remarkable way, emerging as the most cohesive, communicative, emotionally intimate couple on the show.

“With acknowledging feelings, it’s better.”

Thanks for the question!  

[claretswritings]

Guardian.

Cherished protection and outside forces.

AO3 Google Docs

Ronin and his brother were outside. They were training by themselves, not a care to the world. Wu needed to do something, having headed inside. Neither of them knew what it was about, the only clues being some political nonsense. It wasn’t something they thought to bother with, the processes and words being confusing jumbles.

They use the time to relax, fooling around the various contraptions. Ronin had climbed onto one of them, standing proudly with a shit-eating grin. He wasn’t balanced precariously but still, Morro had on him a look of worry. Ronin sat down on the contraption and laughed out loud.

In the moment, he was joyful. Nothing there to stop him from doing what he wanted and nothing there to stop him as he fulfilled himself. Admittedly, it wasn’t much. But with how hard it was to avoid the things thrown at him, he had to take what he could get.

Ronin stays on top of the contraption, and he turns to the sky. It’s a cloudy day and the wind has been ruffling him. Despite everything that happens, he smiles to himself. He has an anchor and the restless spirit to defend himself. It didn’t matter if the world went against him. It didn’t matter if he had to fight.

Morro gives him a cursory glance, his worries and fears still visible. Their master hasn’t came out in a while, longer then what they usually expected of him. It felt unusual but they didn’t question for what they thought was a gift. Time was a sacred essence almost. Hard to find, and hard to catch.

“Ronin?” Morro eventually calls out. “When are you going to come down?” Ronin turns to him, shrugging. His brother sighs from underneath him. He’d managed to stop the machine and was now sitting in it, by the main structural pillar and between the many walls used to throw them off.

They sit there again in silence before Ronin gets an idea. He motions his hands upward creating a beast. The beast almost looks normal if it weren’t for it’s shimmering fur. It's a rather large bear, big enough to hold and hide them both. Ronin jumps from the machine and lands laughing into the arms of the bear.

Morro looks up and smiles, it hasn’t been the only time he’s seen his creations. They were always more vibrant then the real things, spiky and sharp but soft at the same time. The bear’s eyes shine iridescently in the sunlight, cycling square formations that made up the pupils.

His brother gets up and hugs the creature, which only snorted in response. The bear sits down roughly, a loud thumping noise as they plopped downward. Ronin giggles, his love for the creature and his brother pulling his soul up in a happy embrace. Morro still holds on from his side, and his smile turns into a grin.

They stay like that for a while, laughing and smiling in the silence. Every now and then the bear would still snort, large puffs of air getting into Ronin’s face. It’s warm being surrounded by the bear, no matter how fake or real it was. He felt comfortable with it. Comfortable to be himself, and comfortable to live. At least for a while. For that time.

Morro eventually moves from his spot to sit with Ronin. The bear proceeds to hold them both in a semi hug with their large furry paws. It’s big enough to almost cover their entire bodies and Ronin’s laughter ends up muffled.

“Well, I see you’re comfortable.” Morro says as he sees Ronin bundle himself farther and farther into the fur. “You’re going to burrow yourself in it.”

“So? It’s fun.” Ronin’s voice comes out still muffled. He gets up from underneath the paws. His clothes is rumpled and his hair a mess but he’s smiling, his grin is wider then what Morro was used to seeing and he himself was happy for that.

Ronin frowns. “But-” He turns to the door, and his worry spills out from inside him and onto the ground. He’s scared, he still is. It’s only natural for it to remain. He doesn’t say anything for a long time as he stayed watching the door. “I don’t want this to end.” His brother gives him a questioning look so he continues.

“Where everything is- Happy I guess. Where I don’t have to struggle to live. I don’t even know what I did for Master- Master Wu to be like that.” He tries not to whimper thinking about it, but it was hard just to say it out loud.

“You didn’t do anything to cause that.” Morro cuts in. “I know he keeps saying you’re at fault for existing but it’s not. You didn’t choose for this happen.”

Ronin nods but doesn’t say anything again. “I personally think your element is great. Being able to make something real but it’s not? You could tell stories with it! Not just doing so called evil.”

“I- I guess so..”

“Well, don’t just guess. I heard his rants. I know what he’s making you think. And it’s not you at all.” Ronin relaxes slightly but he still finds himself having little faith on his situation.

“How did you know about that?” Morro shrugs this time.

“Wu’s not exactly subtle.”

“And are you really sure that I won’t-..” Ronin trails off his mood changing to despair. Morro nods, firm in his conviction. He lays a hand on his shoulder that Ronin lets him do so, having their trust being a link between them.

“I’m more then sure that you won’t. It’s all a choice. Isn’t it?” Morro gives him a small smile. He waits for Ronin to respond and eventually he nods again.

The bear seemed to melt, but not vanish. Ronin doesn’t pay attention, lost to his thoughts. Even as Morro kept telling him, he didn’t know who was right. Wu’s words already so ingrained that he couldn’t do anything. And a voice that would whisper to him, about how he couldn’t keep running. About how he should give up and just go back to Stiix.

But it wasn’t home, not anymore. And neither was the Monastery, which was instead a prison. He was constantly restless, without a home and always forced to fight. He had no choice in how he lived, everything else choosing for him.

The door opens and Ronin nearly jumps, the bear disappearing in a show of sparks. Fur falls around them before vanishing away into the air. They see Wu and he has a look of contemplation. Ronin’s fear spikes up but he hides it, shielding himself.

For a moment, no one says anything. Wu only stands there still thinking. The silence that once was comforting changes into being tense. It felt biting, a strange coldness holding them all there. Then he leans against the doorframe, with a smile that spoke volumes of what was to come.

He speaks. “You haven’t stopped, have you?” Morro gets off the stony ground to glare and grind his teeth. Ronin sees sparks flies off him in his sea of anger.

“So what if we did? You don’t give us breaks at all!” Morro’s tone was demanding and angry, filled to the brim with the unspoken injustices Wu wrought them. He keeps going, his anger rising and rising. “I don’t get it. Why is it that I get more then Ronin. That he has to scramble just to get to my level!”

He takes a breath but Wu speaks, not letting him finish. “He doesn’t deserve it. Is it not simple enough for you?” Morro only narrowed his eyes in response.

“Ronin hasn’t done anything to deserve this. He’s being hurt for no reason-” And there, their master laughs. Airy but not quite smooth, they found it jagged and Ronin only shrinks backward. Ever constant fear and barely held together courage, he swallowed down bile and took a hold of his brother’s hand.

“No reason? You know little about him at all,” Morro chooses then to interrupt, refusing to hear anymore of the spiel.

“I don’t need to know.”

Master Wu laughed again, “He hides things, creates lies to trick you into caring. Doesn’t he?” A switch is flipped and suddenly, he couldn't hold onto his brother anymore. Ronin cries out, desperate to still hold onto him.

In a way, he didn’t look human. He was translucent, held together by nothing but wind. It was all there was. Spiralling air, spiralling desires, spiralling anger all formed into one. That was Morro and Morro was that. His brother glares harder at Wu with sharp glowing green eyes.

Ronin was almost reminded of Kichiro, but the only semblance were their eyes and nothing else. The fast growing winds were sudden and whips everyone’s hair. He almost couldn’t see through it yet somehow, he could tell something was different.

The first thing heard through the roaring windstorm was Wu’s voice.

“So I was wrong.” Morro responded by screaming in rage and lunging forward. He doesn’t have a weapon, so he only tries to punch Wu. But he gets sidestepped and misses, barrelling into the building. Morro gets off off the floor and keeps glaring with those shining green eyes.

Ronin doesn’t know what to do. Or what Morro has become. It’s different but nothing like anything he’s ever seen. Wu hadn’t reacted at all beyond his few words. They stay like that for a while, a deep tense silence there once again.

Ronin decides to walk to Morro, getting closer and closer until they were once again by each other’s sides. “Morro?”

“There’s nothing wrong, boy.” WU says over him, and he flinches but tries to hold himself together. “It’s only his unlocked potential. A telling sign of what he’s not.”

“He’s not- He’s not what?” Ronin asks once again holding onto his brother. The air somehow solidifying into Morro’s body. Wu doesn’t answer him, instead tearing his hands off Morro. Ronin gets shoved away and he falls hard on the flooring. He winces from the pain.

“Don’t touch him.” Morro finally says, still as the wind bellows around them. His anger is sharp and still there, fiery hot and surrounding him like wings on a seraph. “You don’t know the truth about him, you never did. Never bothered too!”

Morro took a deep breath and kept going. “If anything, you’ve lied to him. Telling him he’s safe and protected when he’s not. He just wants to live and you’re not giving him that.” Wu opens his mouth to speak but Morro glares again, not letting him a choice but to listen. “But you don’t care about what he wants, do you? Giving him punishment for something he had no control over.”

The wind fades over and Morro comes back to normal but even then, he kept talking. “I don’t understand, but I don’t think I want to either.” He shrugs in a show of nonchalance. “He’s not a liar, nor is he evil. You’re just a fool who thinks he’s right!”

He ends it with a sharp point towards Wu. Who doesn’t respond for a small moment, before chuckling a little. “Maybe not, but just as so he could be. Now about the green ninja.” Morro stops briefly but his stance remains stringent as ever.

“What about it?” He asks through gritted teeth. Master Wu waved his hand away in a dismissive gesture.

“Later, training is over and we have to talk. Alone.” Ronin looks to his brother and he’s grinding his teeth with an obvious show of anger. Except Morro nods then and they leave. Ten seconds later Ronin follows and waits outside the room they enter.

He couldn’t hear much outside the closed door, every word muffled. But he saw and felt the growing anger. There was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing that he knew that could help. He only had to trust Morro and hope that he would stay. Hope for his only anchor to be there and help him live.

[littleandroidwrites]

a lydia ball paragraph of the self

sometimes you ask your littlefamily to send you memes and then you ignore the memes they send you and you write about something irrelevant instead and that? is the least valid thing you can do. thank you

Lydia liked dating Zeke, because Zeke did whatever he wanted and sometimes whatever someone else wanted too, like the first night Lydia had met his band and someone had ended up suggesting they steal all of the stop signs on the block and he had said, I’m down.

They hadn’t ended up doing that. Their manager had come out of his room and briefly had the chance to open his mouth before they were all booing him.

It wasn’t the concept of causing mayhem in traffic that got Lydia going, not at all, but the idea of being adventurous? Lydia used to think that she was adventurous. But it turned out that “adventurous” to the type of person who’d ended up engaged to the guy she started dating in middle school was actually more like rotating one of five activities that were pre-existing in a very safe, very sheltered routine. Every once in a while she’d wake up early on a Sunday morning and say, let’s go feed the ducks in a way that made her feel very wistful and spontaneous. And Dmitri had always said yes and looked at her like she was very wistful and spontaneous.

The thing was though that he was a fucking theatre major and he ended their relationship in a letter after over a decade together, probably because she had never been adventurous a day in her life. Or because she didn’t know how to cook or because she didn’t have a real job or because she refused to clean the shower or the oven but never actually admitted it because she just always swept up and did the dishes first so that it seemed like it was Dmitri who wasn’t pulling his weight. It really could have been lots of things. None of which Lydia would have thought about before the letter, of course, but these sorts of events tended to make you reflect.

They also tended to mean that you couldn’t afford your exposed brick loft apartment anymore because you’re only a painter and your fiancé had been covering most of the costs for the last few years if you were being honest with yourself. 

Her parents had tried to insist she move back in. Lydia knew it wasn’t out of obligation – even though her parents were definitely good people who did good things entirely out of obligation – but because they adored her and loved her and missed her when she was away for more than three days. And it was very tempting to go from being babied by Dmitri back to being babied by her parents and continue this never-ending being babied cycle, but it was occurring to Lydia truly for the first time that at some point someone was going to drop the baby ball and she was just going to be a hopeless adult in her mid-twenties incapable of taking care of herself. 

So she’d gone room hunting. Surrounded by boxes sitting on her very new very millennial futon (which she’d told everyone was a millennial decision but was actually the outcome of trying to move the old bed base for ten whole minutes before crying because she couldn’t lift it by herself and Dmitri had picked it out anyway and she didn’t even have the number of a moving truck and how was she supposed to know how much that would cost did people haggle she’d probably pay more than the moving guy asked for just because she’d want him to like her even if he never saw her again was that pathological she hadn’t been to a counsellor in a couple months her parents would pay but there was nothing more narcissistic than paying someone to hear you talk about wanting to be liked but she didn’t want to put that on her friends you know in case they stopped liking her god was she a narcissist), she had very maturely sorted price lowest to highest. Her favourite result was one crafted in a missed connections style.

f4whatever i have a room. you need one you don’t like having loud parties late at night. i have lots of wine to share when i’m stressed i cook. you eat it and tell me it’s good you can be a liar as long as it’s the nice kind. 2 bed 1 bath. you will not mind that i have fifteen bottles of lotion i don’t use i will pretend to be your scorned girlfriend if you have someone over you don’t like i’m desperate and you must be too

So she lived with a girl called Eve now. Eve hadn’t mentioned in her ad that if Lydia didn’t leave her bed for three days she'd bring her pastries at the end of the day, but she did it anyway and that was the kind of discretionary effort Lydia imagined everyone would want in a roommate. Eve did mention once that her sister was a psychologist once though, which she had followed with so she legally has to listen to me complain. It reminded Lydia of when you’d go out with a friend who couldn’t afford to eat anything so you’d pretend to be full halfway through your fries and say something like it did not occur to me until this moment but these will go to waste if you do not eat them right now!

One afternoon when Eve had texted to say that she’d be home late (which was nice, having someone who made you privy to their schedule, that was maybe one of the things Lydia missed the most, when she’d pretend to be put upon at 8pm at a paint and sip and say to her friends oh I have to let Dmitri know I’ll be home late and she’d roll her eyes like she didn’t do it just to get the 8pm-9pm me misses 8pm-9pm you text back), Lydia had decided it might be nice to cook for Eve for a change. She’d started off with a pinterest search for good dinners easy but had quickly been overwhelmed by the sheer number also there were all these advertisements in between the dishes for active wear and exercise programmes which felt exploitative. So she’d decided to open up her grandma’s special recipes box. 

Lydia really could not stress how little interest she had in cooking. But the first time she’d ever seen this little tin box with cursive recipe cards organised in alphabetical order, she had wanted it. Her grandmother died when she was only three, so she didn’t actually have any memories or her or her cooking or cooking with her or even her wrinkly old face outside of photos she’d seen but she treated this box very much like it held sentimental value. There was something sentimental about its lack of sentimentality.  

Anyway at random she’d picked a casserole and spent way too much on ingredients and when she got halfway through the recipe she realised it took four hours in total which was really a lot of time for one dish but it was too late and she was hungry and she wanted to impress Eve. So after she put the dish in the oven she cleaned the kitchen, which she had made a mess of, and actually the casserole was ready five minutes after Eve walked through the door which was perfect. 

Except that it was not perfect because the casserole was bad. 

“Grandma would be so disappointed,” Lydia lamented, balancing a cucumber on her fork and inspecting it, forlorn. The whole thing tasted overwhelmingly of too-tangy tomato paste and had taken on the sad watery quality of the cucumber. She felt this must be a metaphor for something. Four hours of her life plus however many hours of preparation and anticipation just to be left with a disappointing show of two fruits that really should have been vegetables. 

“Or,” Eve had said, her phone pressed to her ear, “Maybe this is exactly what she used to make, and she just didn’t have taste buds. No shame in — Hi, can I please place an order?”

-

It had taken a little to get to like Eraserhead’s music. At the first gig she went to she was surprised to find they sounded like that, but she figured if she was dating the bassist of a band she should really like his band. So Lydia had started by listening to chaos-adjacent music that she did like, like Friday I’m In Love by The Cure, and then she’d listened to a little more of The Cure, and really from there it was just a modest sidestep to learn to like music from people like The Clash and after a few more hops and jumps you basically fell into Eraserhead’s music. When Zeke had asked her at the next gig what she’d thought, Lydia had said I like that it’s music you kind of have to work for? It’s like real art, and after a second Zeke had nodded like he agreed but privately Lydia kind of thought he didn’t agree. 

That was the thing that she enjoyed about a relationship that was just a little over twelve days old instead of a little over twelve years old, though. Nobody really expected her to dig deeper and ask Zeke if he was just agreeing with her because he didn’t agree and that was a harder conversation. Nobody really expected either of them to owe each other anything and so all she’d done was finish her drink and kiss him.

[israel-jewish-news]

Jones Victorious in Stunning Alabama Senate Upset

New Post has been published on http://hamodia.com/2017/12/12/jones-victorious-stunning-alabama-senate-upset/

Jones Victorious in Stunning Alabama Senate Upset

Democratic Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones acknowledges supporters at the election night party in Birmingham, Alabama, Tuesday. (Reuters/Marvin Gentry)

In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama’s special Senate election on Tuesday, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of allegations of misconduct.

It was the first Democratic Senate victory in a quarter-century in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump. The Republican loss was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation’s already divided GOP.

“We have shown not just around the state of Alabama, but we have shown the country the way — that we can be unified,” Jones declared as supporters in a Birmingham ballroom cheered, danced and cried tears of joy. He added, “This entire race has been about dignity and respect.”

From the White House, Trump graciously tweeted his congratulations to Jones “on a hard-fought victory” — but added pointedly that “the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!”

Jones takes over the seat previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The term expires in January of 2021.

The victory by Jones, a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham’s infamous 1963 church bombing, narrows the GOP advantage in the U.S. Senate to 51-49. That imperils already-uncertain Republican tax, budget and health proposals and injects tremendous energy into the Democratic Party’s early push to reclaim House and Senate majorities in 2018.

Still, many Washington Republicans viewed the defeat of Moore as perhaps the best outcome for the party nationally despite the short-term sting. The fiery Christian conservative’s positions have alienated women, racial minorities and Muslims — in addition to the multiple allegations of improper behavior.

“Tonight’s results are clear — the people of Alabama deemed Roy Moore unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate,” said Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who leads the national GOP’s Senate campaign arm and called on Moore to quit the race weeks ago.

A number of Republicans declined to support him, including Alabama’s long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby. But Trump lent his name and the national GOP’s resources to Moore’s campaign in recent days.

Had Moore won, the GOP would have been saddled with a colleague accused of improper behavior as Republicans nationwide struggle with Trump’s historically low popularity. Senate leaders had promised that Moore would have faced an immediate ethics investigation.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have expressed hopes of scheduling a vote on their tax legislation before Jones is sworn in, but lawmakers are still struggling to devise a compromise bill to bridge the divide between the House and Senate legislation that can win majority support in both chambers.

The Republican loss also gives Democrats a clearer path to a Senate majority in 2018 — albeit a narrow one — in an election cycle where Democrats are far more optimistic about seizing control of the House of Representatives.

Ultimately, Tuesday’s contest came down to which side better motivated its supporters to vote. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said turnout likely would not exceed 25 percent of registered voters.

Jones successfully fought to cobble together an unlikely coalition of African-Americans, liberal whites and moderate Republicans.

At his election night headquarters, stunned supporters erupted in celebration as news of his victory was announced. Many danced. Some cried.

“I honestly did not know that this was even an option. I didn’t think that we could elect a Democrat,” said 26-year-old campaign volunteer Jess Eddington, her eyes red from tears of joy. “I am so proud we did.”

On the ground in Alabama on Tuesday, voters made clear that the election was about opposing Moore as well as supporting Jones, who was largely unknown before the campaign.

Teresa Brown, a 53-year-old administrative assistant, said she preferred Jones, in part, because he would be better positioned to work across party lines.

Mary Multrie, 69, who works in a children’s hospital, said she never liked Moore. “He talks about G-d, but you don’t see G-d in his actions.”

Moore, who largely avoided public events in the final weeks of the race and spent far less money on advertising than his opponent, bet big — and lost — on the state’s traditional Republican leanings and the strength of his passionate evangelical Christian supporters.

He sidestepped questions about improper behavior as he arrived at his polling place on horseback.

Democrats were not supposed to have a chance in Alabama, one of the most Republican-leaning states in the nation. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton here by nearly 28 points just 13 months ago. Yet Moore had political baggage that repelled some moderate Republicans even before allegations of improper behavior surfaced.

Virtually the entire Republican establishment, Trump included, supported Moore’s primary opponent, Sen. Luther Strange in September. Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was one of the only early high-profile Moore backers.

Moore was once removed from his position as state Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument at the state court building. A second time, he was permanently suspended for urging state probate judges probate judges to defy federal court decisions on marriage.

  Said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Pere: “The people of Alabama sent a loud and clear message to Donald Trump and the Republican Party: You can’t call yourself the party of family values as long as you’re willing to accept vile men like Roy Moore as members.”