#and while I don't hate the escapist aspect

[purplecowbell]

Time Travel and Wish Fulfillment

I distinctly remember a moment from one of my creative writing classes. One of my classmates wrote a story in which after someone died, they woke up again as a baby and got to relive their life. They fixed all mistakes they remembered making, used the wisdom they had from an entire life lived, and made everything perfect. I remember looking at it for a long time before I wrote the only comment, “So what?” I don’t blame them for writing that piece, it’s wish fulfillment, and I get that. But it wasn’t really a story. I’m worried that too many people look at their relationship to the past in a similar way instead of accepting how they’ve changed.

There are many time travel stories, especially in pop sci-fi, where the time travel is just wish fulfillment, no consequences or weighty questions. Let me be clear; I don’t think the trend is stories in which the protagonist travels back to the 1800s and deals with the problems of the era; that’s fine and dandy. The problem I’m talking about is in what I like to call “internal time travel,” time travel that takes place within one’s own timeline instead of going outside of it. An old man goes back in time to stop his childhood friend from dying, or a middle-aged office worker wakes up in their teenage body in the 80s. These scenarios can speak directly to the individual human experience of grief, of regret, and of hindsight. But take the more pop fantasy depictions of time travel: It’s About Time, 13 Going on 30, and 17 Again. None of these time travel stories care about paradoxes, identity in relation to the past, or any higher level of conflict. They’re just pure wish fulfillment. Again, it’s fine for those stories to be very light and breezy, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it feels impossible to get popular stories that aren’t that. There are lots of serious stories (or should I say stories trying to be serious) that try to use time travel to raise the stakes by offering either the destruction of the past or unraveling of time itself as the price of failure. But these stakes end up never mattering, both in media where the writers don’t care and in media where they’re supposed to.

A Recent History of Time Travel

First let’s look at the stories that don’t focus on time travel specifically, those that just use it because it happens to be convenient to the story it’s trying to tell (most common among serialized works and franchises). Let’s start with the most “popular,” or at least commercially successful, Harry Potter. JK Rowling’s franchise made her an estimated billion in revenue over the years. In the third story The Prisoner of Azkaban, one of the main characters is given an artifact that allows her to time travel. The reason given for why she has one is frivolous (so she can attend more classes with conflicting schedules) and the reason for its removal is because the author didn’t want to have to deal with that as a potential plot hole anymore. However, the time travel capability is given a caveat: time travel can’t actually change the timeline. This prevents the possibility of paradoxes and gives some stakes to problems since they can’t be reversed with time travel. When a beloved animal character is executed, the main characters run away grieving its death, since they couldn’t go back in time to fix it, and try to focus on how to solve the main plot. How do they solve the main plot? They go back in time and save the beloved animal which helps solve the main plot. “But wait,” says the one blessed individual who hasn’t read Harry Potter, “didn’t you say that they can’t change the timeline?” Well you’re right, and it turns out they didn’t. Because actually what happened with the execution was the main characters freed it after their past selves turned their backs. There, problem solved; the magical time travel still can’t have paradoxes and the timeline is preserved. However, a question must be asked: what’s the difference between changing the timeline and going to the past and ensuring what you wanted to happen, did? Dramatically speaking I would say no difference at all.

And now for the more recent commercial success story that used time travel just because: Avengers: Endgame. The culmination of an entire franchise and marketing department behind it cemented this movie into the second place of “Top Movie Grosses” of all time. After the “surprising” end of the last movie (where over half the universe dies because the Russo brothers wanted a comic book villain that has a crush on Death to instead be a competent and sympathetic ecofascist), the premise of Endgame is about undoing all that. The movie isn’t about rebuilding from the rubble or actually dealing with grief of over half the cast and world dying: it’s about how to not deal with it using time travel. The movie opens on the rebuilding of society and how people are coping with the immense loss. This is a grounded emotional beat and could be a great story of catharsis for people feeling similarly. And then time travel is introduced and everyone abandons reconciling with their past to fix it. One of the scientists originally dismisses time travel because if they went back in time to fix the problem, then they would have no reason in the present to go back in time in the first place. All of them are only going back to the past for resources they don’t have anymore to undo the tragedy in the present. Cool, the time travel isn’t magic and has rules. Except no, that’s not the case. There are two characters who died, who the audience knows died outside of the thing they’re undoing. Loki is killed trying to save his brother, and Gamora is killed in a very bad attempt to try to evoke sympathy for previously mentioned ecofacist. One of them (Loki) gets to teleport out of captivity in the past and the other (Gamora) is brought forward to the future. The writers do get something right here in that when Gamora is brought to the future, she doesn’t love the man who she had a relationship with and leaves him. If it weren’t for everything else in the movie, one could argue it was making the point that the man had to accept Gamora’s death and not project their relationship on to another person. In the end, the only people who stay dead in Endgame are those who die in that movie: a woman who sacrifices herself and is forgotten five minutes later and a man who everyone and their mother go to the funeral for (huh, I wonder if that unintentionally says something else as well). But the worst thing, the worst thing that this movie does, is mock those who are actually affected by grief. 

Thor, a buff heroic character in previous movies, is reduced to a fat, drunk, laughing stock that is an emotional wreck. He’s obviously really struggling with the grief of his homeworld dying and then three quarters of the survivors dying as well (one half when the ecofacist attacks, and another one half of those survivors when the ecofacist’s plan works and half the universe dies). The other main characters are annoyed and dismissive of his state, and they only go to him for his knowledge of where a plot-relevant magic item in the past is. When Thor becomes distraught due to finding his mother in the past, the only other character responds with “get over it man.” Now, some may argue that it’s accurate to that character’s personality, but there’s nothing to suggest that the other characters wouldn’t respond similarly. Every story beat and character rejects the fundamental idea of struggling with grief.

Overall, these serial stories use time travel as a way for characters to avoid having to grieve, and sometimes they make fun of those who grieve or struggle with it. It’s not just wish fulfillment, but hostile to the idea of a person actually coming to terms with something when there’s a theoretical way to fix it. But that may be a bit too hasty of a judgment when so far the only pieces analyzed are those in which time travel is not integral to the central theme. So how about we look at some popular stories in which time travel is part of the central theme?

The Consequences That Don’t Matter

Let’s start with a serialized story that focuses specifically on time travel and one’s relation to their own past. The Umbrella Academy is an appropriate one to start with. The protagonists and other characters fuck with the timeline all the time no matter how many times they bring up the Grandfather paradox. In the very first season, the time traveling expert Five is doing everything in his power to try and prevent the apocalypse. But if he only knew about the apocalypse because he time traveled to it, how would the timeline handle the apocalypse being prevented only because he went back in time to stop it? There doesn’t have to be an answer if time is truly changeable, but in the third season we find out it’s not. In the third it turns out that temporal paradoxes do matter (they even bring up the grandfather paradox!), and they almost ended the world because of it. And then at the end of everything, the timeline is basically restarted with the characters in a more idyllic version of their old lives. All the characters get everything they want. (Pay attention, that will come up later.) The closest thing we get to a character’s reckoning with their past through the actual time travel mechanics is in the second season where Five meets his past self. 

When Five meets his past self, the show introduces something called “paradox psychosis.” Five can’t be in the same room with his past self for too long or both of them will go mad with uncontrollable rage and paranoia. This doesn’t make sense from a pure temporal mechanics perspective, but it does make sense from a metaphorical one. Taken out of the context of literal time travel, what do you interpret from the idea of “a person becomes overcome with rage and directs uncontrollable hostility towards their past self?” What I personally take it as is a person who hates themself for what they’ve done and has become a person their past self would similarly hate. It’s not the most eloquently described (having it be a “psychosis” demonizes people with psychosis as those with uncontrolled rage), but it does in some way actually touch on and reckon with the relationship between a person and their own past. This type of metaphor and character dynamic is exactly the kind of thing that I love about internal time travel stories, so it’s really unfortunate that after the episode in which it’s introduced, it's never brought up again. But this may be the problem of serialized stories, ones where they go on without end, where they try to wring out audience engagement with cheap tricks and hooks. What about a complete story? Without serialization can pop sci-fi break away from perceiving the setting of the past as an opportunity to fix everything?

The Closest We Got to Narrative Weight

There is one non-serial story that I would argue is the most serious exploration of time travel: Life is Strange. (Yes it’s a video game that is separated into episodes but the video game medium is designed with the intention to be played as a singular story.) The core premise of the story is that after watching her best friend Chloe get shot, the protagonist, Max, unlocks the ability to go back in time. The ability allows her to back sometimes by seconds, sometimes by years if she has a photo of the time she wants to go back to. The plot starts off as a slice of life with social dilemmas and a little bit of mystery, and the occasional weird supernatural thing goes on that’s just as unexplained as the time travel powers. It feels like a coming of age story with the time travel powers being so limited and unexplained. There’s even a section in the game where one of Max’s friends is about to commit suicide, and Max has to prove that she knows and cares about this friend without being able to time travel. Max also confronts the dilemma of being able to change specific moments in her past that could give her what she wants in one facet but she loses something she likes in her original life. In one part of the game, Max changes the past so drastically that she’s now one of the popular kids, but Chloe is no longer her best friend. It feels like the time travel ability is a sort of mirror to the protagonist’s own anxiety and indecision, and perhaps the story will be about Max giving up the ability in favor of living in the moment. But then at the end of the story, after everything is perfect and a bad guy is stopped (with time travel), it’s revealed that a storm is coming to destroy the town because Max saved Chloe who was fated to die. All of the weird events like two moons in the sky and dozens of whales being beached inexplicitly, was due to this defiance of fate. Now Max has to decide on whether to let Chloe die and save the town or save Chloe and let the town be destroyed. It’s a dramatic decision, but it’s not communicated effectively on why this choice is being made. The game is telling Max to accept Chloe’s death or lose her connection to everyone else, which is one of the time travel metaphors I like: time travel is about holding onto the past too long and the answer is to let go. The problem is that her death is circumvented by the time travel method that (except for this one instance) has been the same method of time travel that she’s used to fix a bunch of other little, split second decisions. She has the ability to rewind, or jump to a moment a picture was taken, and so far it’s been established with wildly diverging timelines that drastic time travel with the pictures is much more drastic and consequential than the rewinding of a few seconds. Max uses the ability to rewind all the time to get answers or to help a person not get splattered with mud.  It’s not communicated clearly why Chloe’s death is fated, since seemingly nothing else is. The game is so close to making this point, but the vague, unexplained storm that threatens to destroy the town if Chloe doesn’t die, feels arbitrary and not actually connected. It feels like an outside force instead of actually natural fate.

What the game should’ve done is had Max deal with Chloe’s death for a long time, have her discover her time travel powers afterwards but too far in the future to rewind and save Chloe. This does push her to reach out to her friends, think about her relationship with Chloe, track down the serial killer, and use her time travel powers to stop him. However, at some point she does get access to the power to time travel using photos and cause drastic changes in the timeline which she uses to go back in time and save Chloe. When she returns to the present with Chloe alive, she’s at first elated, she gets to have the relationship she always wanted with her. However, she discovers because Chloe never gets killed she loses her connection with her other friends and the serial killer isn’t caught. She can’t prove any of the things she did in the previous timeline (perhaps she loses the rewind ability she relied on) and the serial killer can keep killing without being stopped. Then it would make sense for Max to make the choice to choose Chloe over everyone else, choose to hold onto the friend she actually grieved and misses, or let her go and accept her life, the positives and the negatives too. It wouldn’t be nearly as visually compelling, a girl pleading to let her die in the middle of a great storm set to destroy the town, but it would be more consistent and connected. Life is Strange comes the closest to time travel not being wish fulfillment and coming at a cost; it just can’t make the landing of why the cost is what it is. Or at least it can’t communicate that well. If Life is Strange is the closest we get to heavy time travel, what does it mean when it misses the mark? With a lack of a clear connection, making fate an unnatural force instead of an understanding of cause and effect, it’s because we haven’t confronted the flaws in our own thinking about the past. 

The Result

I think many writers, or at least the popular ones, write time travel still in the denial and bargaining stages in our own grief to change and our own regrets. We see this in how amateur writers engage with time travel do the same. You see it all the time in fanfiction for example. There are over 70 thousand works with the “time travel” tag in AO3, and of the top 20, only two aren’t of the “fix-it” or “time loop” type. There are so many stories where the time traveler just happens to wake up in their past body without rhyme or reason. Rarely do they at least acknowledge that there is a power imbalance in the relationship or that their relationship with the friends they had in the future is forever lost. The reason why they’re popular is because the stories that do accept the past that happened either don’t use time travel at all or when they do, are not what the time travel readers are looking for: wish fulfillment. Is it possible to write a time travel story where not everything is solved and it makes sense? Absolutely. 

What Can We Do?

We see time travel that is not pure wish fulfillment all the time outside of “internal time travel.” There are so many stories where characters go back in time to fix historical events and realize that the world is worse off, where they go back and make the past what it was to both accept it and the present. Why can’t we have the same narrative weight to consequences as in “internal time travel?” For example, the most popular historical example of this A Christmas Carol does this perfectly. Scrooge is confronted with his own past and future, and instead of having an opportunity to change his past he uses his new perspective as a motivator to change his present. In Star Trek: The Next Generation there’s an episode where the god-like alien Q gives the captain Picard the opportunity to “fix” all the mistakes he regrets in his life, but Picard is forced to realize that those mistakes were true to himself and made him the man he is. After realizing this he decides to commit to those mistakes and return to the unaltered present with his regret settled. Artemis Fowl is a science-fantasy young adult series where in one of the books The Time Paradox the titular protagonist had to confront his past self and his own flaws before he started his character development. These characters weren’t trying to fix the past, they’re trying to learn from it, or overcome it, to make the present better. 

I understand the appeal of people having conscious control over their sense of self, of using hindsight to its fullest advantage, and of living a phase of your life that you only just mastered when it ended. But it’s just escapism, it’s an illusion of control and mastery of fate. And I think what we as writers and an audience need to reckon with is that even if we were able to go back in time to change the past, we wouldn’t be able to change ourselves. We have to accept that there are some things that are out of our control, no matter what magic or science we know. If we examine our own past, immerse ourselves in it, or even literally travel it, I think we should take the lessons learned and apply them every present day, instead of trying to stay there. I think you’ll find it much healthier and more real than the alternative.

[olderthannetfic]

Something that frustrates me about the Harry Potter conversation is a lot of people missing the point behind the motivation to boycott it. They seem weirdly focused on the content of HP when it's actually... not that bad? It's not perfect, in fact a lot of aspects are pretty fucking problematic and worthy of discussion, but not uniquely so by the standards of the fantasy genre. Yes, I know the goblins are clearly drawing on anti-semitic tropes. Yes, the house elf situation is fucked. Yes, lots of not-like-other-girls-style misogyny. Yes, Cho Chang was a fucking disaster of racism. I KNOW THIS ALREADY! I'm not an idiot and Harry Potter fans were talking about this for far longer than JKR has been a TERF. But I'm also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age and the Witcher and a shitton of isekai anime and tons of other fantasy medias which are so much worse. Harry Potter is only moderately problematic by the standards of most popular fantasy media, especially for the mainstream standards of the time period it was written. Worthy of criticism, but not dropping it entirely. And actually reading HP and looking back at JKR's behaviour at the time, much of it seems largely unintentional, just that JKR drew on a lot of fantasy tropes that she didn't properly examine as well as her own unexamined biases and she had some flawed understandings of progressivism that were fair for its day but don't fly now, but doesn't seem malicious. The actual authorial intent at least seems to be pretty progressive at least, even if the execution wasn't the best. And sure, it's not a masterwork but there's a reason it connected to so many people, even if a lot of it was luck and timing. We don't have to ignore that and doing so feels dishonest.

I'm just so annoyed when people try to shit on the contents because they're missing the point and confuse the actual problem in a way that weakens their argument. I don't give Harry Potter money anymore because JKR crossed some lines for me in real life, totally separate from Harry Potter as a piece of media, and I don't want to fund her bullshit because she is so influential it is hurting people. The content of her books is utterly irrelevant to this decision. She could have penned a goddamn magnum opus and it wouldn't have mattered. So I'm sick of people bringing up books that are "better" or ragging on the contents of Harry Potter because none of that is the point and never was the point and it comes across as just taking advantage of a shitty situations to dunk on a popular thing or those who enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a mediocre fantasy series. But it hit the right emotional escapist buttons in a lot of kids even if it had the moral nuance and depth of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anti-drug PSA. Having to drop it sucked for a lot of people because it can't be replaced and yelling about how bad the writing was doesn't change that because it never was about quality. JKR's TERF transformation was in many ways a betrayal of JKR's intended audience considering how the text preached acceptance and love and starred an abused, unwanted child getting to go to magic school where he's special. Pretending Harry Potter should be dropped because its content has issues obscures the actual problem of a raging transphobic having money and influence and that not everything created by bad people is poor quality so boycotts might require giving up access to things you actually like or are valuable and that's not always an easy decision to make.

JKR was a probably decent person with fairly liberal politics when she wrote Harry Potter. The books, while imperfect, are not more horrible or full of problems a dozen other popular fantasy properties. JKR become a TERF later in life and while she may have had ingrained transphobia prior to this when she wrote Harry Potter, that is not the same as the virulent hate-movement she's part of now and we should recognize how easy it is for people to get drawn into hate-movements. Any argument to boycott should be about how she's using her money and influence to affect real life laws and attitudes unless you want to try and get people to also drop half the fantasy genre.

--

[suleikashideaway]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you @failed221b-chill for tagging me!! I'm still such a little baby newbie fic writer but I'm eager for the chance to reflect and grow more.

How many works do you have on AO3? 2. Hoping to increase that soon!

What's your total AO3 word count? 2,285. Amazingly low compared to my huge chunkin longfic sitting tucked away, unpublished.

What fandoms do you write for? Mainly Final Fantasy VIII, but I've dabbled in Stardew Valley.

What are your top five fics by kudos? Top five, lol. Wellll one of my Laguna one-shots has 5 kudos! I'm pretty happy with that considering there are like 5 FFVIII fans out there!

Much more under the cut!

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Absolutely! I want to talk about my fics all day!! That is, I have only received thoughtful, positive comments from lovely people so it's been easy so far.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? As of right now, They Are My Family is the angstiest ending I've ever written, though you might consider it a somewhat optimistic ending. In its very short word count, this fic deals with Laguna's immense loss and how he channels his grief into helping other people. I dearly enjoy writing angst, though, just usually with a happy ending.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Grip on My Heart, my other posted Laguna one-shot, is a happy ending (though if you know FFVIII then you can probably see the angst between the lines). However, if I ever post my Stardew Valley longfic it's got a very sweet ending. I wrote that as a total escapist happy ending fantasy tale lol. And hey, I would even argue that my FFVIII longfic may actually have the happiest ending of all, simply because the angst that it took to get there makes it all the sweeter.

Do you get hate on your fic? Not yet, though I anticipate that I am not everyone's cup of tea, and I think I am okay with that. I would hope that people who comment would have the ability to be respectful about our disagreements. Alas, I know it doesn't always work that way.

Do you write smut? Indeed, I do! Nothing posted yet, and nothing too explicit. But yep! I've got little spicy bits peppered through all of my wips. It took me a while to be okay with writing sexy stuff but I wanted to explore that aspect of relationships. I don't think I could ever write straight porn, though.

Do you write crossovers? I have not considered a crossover, but there's still time! I'm not opposed to it, just haven't had any inspiration.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? I don't think so! That would be sad.

Have you ever had a fic translated? No but holy cow what an honor to one day be that important!

Have you ever co-written a fic? No, I've thought about the logistics of this and I'm not sure how much I'd like it, though I may be convinced otherwise one day. And like my bestie and beta @failed221b-chill pointed out, before finding each other the two of us practically wrote the same fic but with different characters and a different plot. Pretty incredible to see the themes I have been obsessing over told in a new way!!

What's your all-time favourite ship? Oh, how can I ever get enough of Squall and Rinoa? dreamy sigh

What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Ooh good question. I'm starting to doubt the validity of my unpublished Stardew Valley longfic. I think it has great potential, and I may go back and rewrite the entire thing, but it's just got a lot that needs work. I am pretty determined to finish my FFVIII longfic so that gets priority!

What's your writing strengths? Ahh, talking about my writing strengths is not one of my writing strengths. After reflecting on this for a hot minute, I think I can appreciate my growing ability to write in a way that is easy to understand. With practice and the help from @failed221b-chill I've gotten so much better at flow. I also have little moments of intrigue, imagery, and maybe a little bit of symbolism that I'm proud of. In general, I think my biggest strength is that I am learning quickly how to make all aspects of my writing better!

What's your writing weaknesses? I feel like I can't end a scene to save my life, but maybe I'm the only one who sees that in my writing! I also struggle with knowing when to dramatize a scene and when to leave it to exposition. For a while I thought that was just the problem with writing a longfic that spans over several years, but I found the same issue in writing one-shots. On a related note, I think I fall in the under-writer category. My rough drafts are usually about 1/4 of the size of the final product. I guess on reflection that's more of a strength: I can flesh things out appropriately during editing! Oh that's a nice discovery :)

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I'm not opposed to it, but I don't see it happening in anything I plan on writing! I'm simply not familiar enough with any other langues (RIP, my almost-fluency in French).

First fandom you wrote for? Probably either FFVIII or Harry Potter. I can't remember which came first! I know for a brief time I was all about that James and Lily ship lol

Favourite fic you've ever written? Definitely my FFVIII longfic wip. As far as published works go, They Are My Family is really something I'm proud to have put out in the world.

I'm officially tagging anyone who would like to participate! Enjoy!

[httyd-grimmelsgirl]

The reason people hate Httyd 3...

...is bc the flight suit scene in part 2 showed us what we want while part 3 made us face a very harsh reality.

Imo Httyd 2 was meant to set up Httyd 3 in more ways than making Hiccup Chief, also the idea of embracing change through loss and adulthood forced upon Hiccup. Httyd 2 still did an okay job of illustration how lose and consequences of one's actions are inevitable. But it was above all else the adventure we all want, it swept us off our feet and all that magic destructs us from stuff like death, moral ambiguity, etcetera. Imo, it tends to distract from the pain or have very contrived solutions, or shortsighted philosophies, and I guess these aspects made it fun, lighthearted, and simple enough that everyone including me, loved it to bits.

And while Httyd 3 was also very escapist, it completed that plot thread of taking the path forward and making selfless choices (in a sloppy yet compelling way).

I like it more than part 2 just bc it reassured me that I don't have to be depressed over what was and celebrate what is. Httyd revealed to me that love doesn't only exist in childhood, and that adulthood depending on your view can be just as if not more fulfilling. I can make it fulfilling by embracing the friends I have, enjoying the life I ended up in, fulfilling a purpose that helps my community, and maybe finding love.

Growing up and leaving behind childhood is surprisingly a lot less painless than it seems at first (you just need a positive mindset).

This video is one of the best takes on this trilogy as a whole, imo. Epic👌

PS: I forgot that Avatar did this even better, but it's unfair to mention it here. I'll link my favorite vid about it here. Skip forward to the part about the characters to see what I mean.

[hawthornewhisperer]

okay! i'm SUPER curious on your thoughts about the more controversial aspects of yen's fertility and the ableism. i've seen so many people who HATE yen talk about it, so obviously i don't trust their judgement. but i know you love her, so i feel like your take will be genuine. that is if you feel comfortable sharing!

Sure thing! But I want to include a disclaimer first: the ableism storyline in particular is not something I have personal experience with, so while I will do my best to express my own personal issues with the way it was handled, my thoughts are in no way a replacement for the thoughts of actual people with disabilities, whose voices should be considered with far, far more weight than mine.

Another disclaimer: I’ve only ever seen the show, so I have no idea what is show-only and what is also drawing from the books. (It’s my understanding her backstory was majorly beefed up for the show, but that’s the full extent of my knowledge.)

(this got long so it’s below the cut. TW for infertility and ableism).

We’ll start with Yen’s infertility plotline.  Early on, she sacrifices her uterus as part of her transformation, although now that I’m thinking about it I’m a little unclear about what she got in exchange-- was it “beauty” or “the ability to not age” or “more magical power”? It doesn’t really matter, though, because basically we had a woman giving up her ability to be a mother (via pregnancy and childbirth) in exchange for power, which is unfortunately a very old, very misogynistic trope. It plays into the idea that women can either be mothers *or* they can be powerful, and also that powerful women are somehow unfit to be mothers. None of that is good, quite frankly, but I will say the fact that Geralt is *also* infertile (and the reason he gives for it on the dragon hunt) does help mitigate that a little bit. It also implies that pregnancy and childbirth is the *only* way to become a mother, although it seems the show is aiming to undercut that so I’ll reserve judgment on that front for now.

Then, somewhere around the incident with the djinn, she decides she wants her uterus back. I was super thrown when Jaskier said she was painting an *amphora* on her abdomen, as to me that was pretty clearly a uterus/fallopian tubes/ovaries-- which does admittedly look like a double handled amphora-- and even after having watched the episode twice I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be mistaken or if I am. I went into the show having heard there was a bit of a yikesy infertility plotline, so that definitely colored my impressions. But now that I think about it, I don’t know if her uterus/lack thereof is actually discussed in that episode? She is more interested in the general concept of *power* and is clearly searching for a new meaning for her life, but I’d definitely buy that her desire for a baby isn’t fully articulated until they go on the dragon hunt.

A lot of the critiques I’ve seen of her storyline revolve around the fact that her change of heart comes out of nowhere, and honestly, it sort of does. We have no hint in the first four episodes that Yennefer has particularly strong feelings about children, childbearing, or motherhood. (Full disclosure: I had to fast forward through almost all the scenes with the baby in episode 4 because children in peril, especially babies, is something I just Cannot Handle in my escapist media. Quite possible I missed something there). So in episode six when Yennefer is suddenly desperate for a cure for her infertility, it strikes a lot of people as another echo of an old misogynistic trope: that women who decided not to have children will *always* regret it, and moreover, they must be punished for their choices.

And honestly? I can definitely see why people read it that way and are upset, because our culture tends to be very reductive and paternalistic about women’s choices around their fertility. I have *lots* of cisgender female friends who have never, ever wanted kids and have been told over and over again that they’ll “change their minds” or will one day regret their choice when it’s too late. And that’s super, super shitty, and I get being annoyed when a show seems to play into that exact narrative.

Now, *for me* (a woman who fairly recently gave birth to a daughter, who definitely wanted a child), what saved the entire storyline was the post-coital conversation where Yen admits she just wants to be important to someone. Yennefer is intensely lonely, and she’s never truly belonged to anything resembling a family. I can buy that after several decades alone, she’s sick of it. And I can also buy that she’d think a baby would be a perfect solution, as babies *do* love you unconditionally and goddamn it’s the best thing in the world (to me), and Yennefer has always struggled with people not thinking she’s enough. I see how attractive that solution (trust me, babies think their parents are the *entire world*) would be to a lonely, loner woman, and I like that it gives her a space to acknowledge her feelings have changed over time. Her journey is about finding a *family* and I read her infertility plotline as a first step to Yennefer eventually finding a family in a way she never expected, and so for me, it ultimately worked. But I also get why it didn’t work for others!

Okay, now the ableism storyline, which is a lot trickier for me to parse. Basically, she undergoes an incredibly painful physical transformation to be more conventionally beautiful, which implies there was something wrong with her before or that there’s something innately *lesser* about having a physical disability.  It’s presented as essentially par for the course for all mages to go through an “attaining physical perfection” process (Sabrina’s boobs get bigger, right? I’m not imagining that?) but Yennefer wasn’t just making her tits bigger.  And when it comes to people with disabilities, this is basically saying “your life would be more worthwhile and you would be more desirable if you were able-bodied,” which is a profoundly ableist way of thinking.  It also draws on the “magical cure for disabilities” trope, which I know a *lot* of people with disabilities have spent a lot of time deconstructing exactly how and why that’s painful for them. But for me, it’s enough to know that trope is painful for others, and therefore it’s best to be avoided. (I do think we still need to make space for people with disabilities to invert/twist/deconstruct/use this trope in their own art, but that’s a whole different conversation.)

And honestly? I think the biggest problem is I doubt anyone thought too hard about it. They were going for a big, showstopping transformation moment like Yennefer had at that ball, and they worked backwards from there to engineer a way for that reveal to have as much impact as possible. (From what I’ve heard, there’s some vague references to her having some sort of physical disability in the books but most of it is the show’s invention).  They didn’t want it to be just “she has a scar on her face that’s gone” or “her nailbeds no longer suck,” they wanted her transformation to be splashy and astonishing, and were only thinking about it from an ableist perspective that having a physical disability would be the worst thing possible.  And that sucks!  It’s hurtful to people with disabilities, and I genuinely wish the show had thought through it more.  

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Like I said, I’m still grappling with the best way to handle those two storylines in fic (especially in non-canon set stories, which is probably going to be most of my stuff) and so if anyone has any guidance, I’m all ears.

[10thstellium]

which placement is 'darker' in synastry for you, mars in the 8th house or mars in the 12th house ? reading people's opinions about it, it's usually really short for the 8th house (all or nothing-hell or heaven kind of shit) and the 12th house is a rant about 'hoe, don't do it' lmao

‘ hoe, don’t do it ‘ bruhhhh

 Alright well, let me start off by saying both these houses are water houses. Whenever dealing with water, people just have to accept that emotions are going to run deep. It’s inevitable and it’s not bad, but definitely a shift for those who struggle with their emotions. Personally, I am someone who looks for growth always and accepted it’s not always sunshine and rainbows while it runs its course. 8th house synastry is good, it really is, I feel for 8th house & 10th house a lot because in general those houses/signs/planets get a really generalized and sometimes demonized rep. In terms of which mars is ‘darker’ ( god if you could hear me sigh rn lmao ) both have the ability to go south and become very consuming. Regardless of the synastry it really depends if one if not all parties involved are matured or not.There is passion and devotion in 8th. That being said it will almost force out the hidden parts of their partner ( romantic or not ) to acknowledge those parts of themselves and to be embraced by their partner. They need total transparency if they’re going to help you shed new skin. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be easy or even mutual. Someone may be divulging more than the other. Hypocrisy may occur. That also being said that synastry can lead to I don’t wanna use the word obsessiveness, it’s not fair and it’s honestly jacked up that overall that word gets thrown at them, so I go back to passion & devotion. It makes for strong loyalty but because it can come at such a strong degree it can possibly lead to issues in terms of feeling maybe a bit overwhelmed and consumed by each other — if we’re dealing with immatured placements. They like to feel close, emotionally, mentally, physically. Think about blending into one another. Sexual relations are a way of combining souls it’s extremely intimate for them and also a display of affection how they treat their partner and learn to study their body is how they show they care.

For 12th though, I’m also gonna refrain from this la-la land trope, but aspects of altered reality may come up. This will feed into an escapist mentality and it’s not always bad. At best maybe their partner ( romantic or not ) is exactly the break they need from the reality they live. It can be healthy just as it can be a little harmful. 12th synastry also has the power to be consuming just as 8th does. I see a lot of ‘ us against the world ‘ kind of mentality both mature or immature. It would help significantly if one or a majority of the parties involved have a very strong sense of self. Only to know when to separate themselves from the reflection and or “imitation” that may occur from 12th house. It’s absorbent and very necessary for growth as well. They’re giving back the tendencies/attitude/antics/etc to their partner to show them who they are and if they’re able to acknowledge  ‘ Hey I understand this better now, this is what I am/how you see me/how the world may see me thank you for showing me that ‘ they can become more introspective and make efforts to improve in whatever they were shown that they didn’t like. Conversely, they could have no problem with the way they are and may get caught in a house of mirrors and enjoy that their partner is now fitting their own mold. That’s why I say a strong sense of self would be beneficial in regards to that synastry. I guess now to answer your question which do I think is darker... hate to be that person and be like both have the ability to be/do so but... that’s who I’m gonna be. I know you’re probably looking for a straight answer. However, this is all very dependent on people’s maturity and other aspects. I also wanted to avoid sounding like a broken record because there are many posts about 8th & 12th house mars synastry. I’ll even reblog some right now. I will say both though, 12th house just happens to get less of a bad rep because it’s not associated with a ‘dark’ planet. At least 8th house mars are overt and it’s no secret that they’re passionate about their partner. That’s not what people will question if it’s a secret or not that they like them. It’s more of what haven’t they already shown that they’re afraid of displaying until they’ve convinced themselves that they can also undress their wounds in front of their partner. With 12th house mars it’s almost idealistic, there are many things the partner may not know, but not think to question due to the comforting escapist tendency that’s often wrapped up in tranquility. Both houses have a ‘ What You See and What You Don’t See ‘ trope to them.