#but I feel like I have to deconstruct this myth before I even start

[amphibious-thing]

Pop history loves compelling but simple stories but actual history is nuanced . Pink was a masculine colour until the Nazi’s used it as a symbol for homosexuality is a compelling story but it’s not really true. There are elements of truth in it. But it’s not as simple as that.

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group L Round 3: #L5 vs #L6

#L5: Underground boxer loves vampire doctor (BL)

#L6: Three girls and their (not) girly talk

Details and poll under the cut!

#L5: Mignon

[Note on video: Lots of blood. Slight NSFW at the end. Turn on CC for English subs.]

Summary:

After losing his parents at a young age, Mignon lives as a mechanic by day and a cage fighter by night at an illegal arena. Living a life of exploitation and violence, the only person who gives him any attention is Oh Young-One, the resident doctor at the arena.

Despite accidentally discovering Young-One’s true identity, Mignon continues to love him, and it’s this pure kind of love that lets Young-One slowly open his heart. But when the hellish reality surrounding Mignon starts threatening the stability of Young-One’s life, can these two ever find happiness?

Propaganda:

Mignon is an independently-made BL aeni (Korean anime). There are only 12 episodes, and each is around 5 minutes long, except for the last one which is at around 8 minutes. Watching everything is like watching a short film, and not just because of the length, but also because of its quality.

The story is really short, so much so that we don’t get to see how Mignon and Young-One develop feelings for each other (It’s easy to guess why though). We’re thrusted right into the turning point of their relationship, with episode 1 ending with a shocking revelation that immediately propels you into the rest of the story. And by “shocking,” I don’t mean it was unexpected. It’s shocking in a way that its execution ingeniously builds up the tension before exploding right in your face. 

The plot is nothing new in the yaoi genre, but Mignon makes up for this by delivering each aspect to perfection. The colors are purposeful, setting the tone of each scene while also telling us the significance of the place—loud, vibrant colors for the noisy arena, calm whites in the clinic where Mignon finds solace in Young-One, drab blues and greys in Young-One’s apartment where he’s lived alone for years, etc. Seriously, the backgrounds look like stand-alone paintings.

And oh, don’t get me started on the scene direction/arrangement. Every episode is impactful and unforgettable despite being very short. Episode 10, especially, is a cinematic masterpiece. Lastly, the music. There’s a lot of 80s synth-pop vibes that just work so well for it.

Mignon is really the kind of show you can call “art.” It’s a passion project by one person, and it took them three years to complete. You can just see how much thought is put into it. It’s not rushed at all, unlike a lot of weekly anime nowadays that would sacrifice the quality on unimportant scenes. And just for that, I think it’s worth checking out. 

Trigger Warnings: Blood, Physical Abuse, Gambling

NSFW Warning: Tongue kissing and some explicit sex scenes. The parts are pixelated, but it doesn’t really leave much to the imagination.

#L6: Please tell me! Galko-chan (Oshiete! Galko-chan)

Summary:

At first glance, Galko, Otako, and Ojou are three high school girls who seem like they wouldn’t have anything to do with each other. Galko is a social butterfly with a reputation for being a party animal, even though she is actually innocent and good-hearted despite her appearance. Otako is a plain-looking girl with a sarcastic personality and a rabid love of manga. And Ojou is a wealthy young lady with excellent social graces, though she can be a bit absent-minded at times. Despite their differences, the three are best friends, and together they love to talk about various myths and ask candid questions about the female body.

Propaganda:

Galko-chan is a short anime about 3 girl-friends, each representing a trope (the gyaru, the nerd and the lady) being friends despite their differences.

The episode generally kicks off with a taboo question—nothing’s really deep, but it works as a way to just deconstruct prejudices. Girls of all types and non types are welcome, it’s heartwarming.

Trigger Warnings: Gender Identity/Sexuality Discrimination. Galko is a gyaru, and it’s implied how she’s seen as a “slut”. But deconstructing these tropes are what the anime is all about.

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how it’s presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form, where you can submit revisions for taglines, propaganda, trigger warnings, and/or video.

[pumpkinbutt700]

Review: The Prirory of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

(Warning! This review is kind of long!)

The Priory of the Orange Tree was my first foray into adult fantasy ever. I finished this back in January, and I loved it. This was my first book of 2023. What a great start to my reading year! (Sadly I haven't had much book luck since.)

The sequel to Priory just came out in February. I'm going to borrow the audiobook from my library soon, but I am waiting for the paperback to be released to physically read it. I figured maybe I should finally make time to write about this first novel in the series in the meantime.

First of all, this cover is fucking gorgeous. The colors, the style, even the embossing all feel extremely lush and epic. The cover just totally sells the high fantasy of this story. I love gorgeous book covers. Nothing makes me happy the way looking at broken spines and colorful, rich covers on my bookshelf does.

Maybe I'm shallow, but I need good books to have good covers, and this one is one of the best I've seen since I started reading again. Books are art, and their packaging should reflect that!

More importantly, of course is just how much I loved the story in this book. We follow four characters from four different backgrounds and regions of a highly xenophobic and politically charged fantasy world. In this world, both dragons and wyrms exist. Dragons are a lot like what you find in classic Asian myths, and wyrms look like traditional European dragons.

One half of the world worships dragons but fears wyrms, and the other half despises and fears both and follows Queen Sabran for religious guidance. Thus the world has been become completely divided.

This means the four narrators in this story all come with their own prejudices and religious biases, which allows you to see the world from four wildly different perspectives. Our cast of storytellers consists of Ead, the secret mage sent to spy on Queen Sabran, Tane the dragonrider prodigy, Loth the nobleman sent on a suicide mission, and Niclays the old, gay, exiled alchemist.

The beginnings of chaos have befallen the world as wyrms slowly reawaken. Unease about a plague has completely isolated the South from the rest of the world. There are murmurings of the wyrms' leader, The Nameless One, rising from his 1,000 year slumber. Our narrators must stop this from happening, even if they don't all know it. Thus we are thrust into a winding tale of political intrigue, religious deconstruction, prophecy fulfillment, magic, and sapphic love that converges when they meet to seal away The Nameless One for good.

Much of the book is spent both getting to know our narrators and getting them all in the right place to get the larger plot tied up neatly. This is an epic fantasy, but there is a lot of character work that drives the plot forward. This was probably my favorite part of the book. Ead, Loth, Tane, and Niclays are fully realized characters with their own motivations. Each one gets their moment to shine, and by the end of their tale, they have all become different people than they were on page one. A lot of care is put into the character work here, and I really loved it.

This book is LONG! I liked it right away, but it took me about 150 pages before I had a solid grip on the world and could see the larger plot starting to come together. I can understand why readers might find this book slow or aimless, both criticisms I have seen. If you don't like the character work taking the lead over the epic fantasy dragon prophecy, you're probably going to have a hard time enjoying The Priory of the Orange Tree. This isn't something every reader is going to enjoy chewing on.

I'm surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did! But I just loved everything about this book. The world is rich and extremely well-thought out and diverse. Our cast of characters consists of lots of women, gays, and non-white people. Three of the four narrators are black or brown. Two are queer. Their ages range from 18ish to 50ish. Not to mention the side characters, which overwhelmingly consist of women in positions of power.

Oh, and how could I forget the sapphic romance between Ead and Sabran? It's a slowburn for sure, but so worth it.

This book is a gem. I fear it may have spoiled fantasy for me before I've even had a chance to get into the genre. I can't wait to take on the next book in the series. I can't wait to read more of Samantha Shannon's work either.

🍊 Loved every juicy bit of this one. Five stars! 🍊

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. A deconstruction (which its definition is to look at the smaller parts and whys of how something was created) of the HxP myth would be looking into how ancient values played into why Persephone & Demeter were left out of the decision making process, why Hades didn't properly court her, what went into Demeter being away from Olympus and why she stood up for her daughter instead of accepting it, etc, not making up everything to where it resembles no myth at all. That's lying, not deconstruction.

2. RS def seems like she read about tropes AFTER LO was published and seems to think “ah yes that’s what I’m doing too!” But that’s not how it works?? Like she also claimed LO was a “twist on the monster boyfriend” genre when it’s very clearly not?? She seems to think even mentioning something or having even a vague similarity to a common writing trope is in fact the trope and by virtue of her being the writer she’s “deconstructing” it when she’s?? Not using those tropes or deconstructing them?? Also she needs to stop claiming she’s deconstructing anything. When she actually plays with actual tropes (like the massive age gap with the man as the more powerful one to the woman who needs him) it’s entirely played straight, which is the exact opposite of deconstructing? Idk it seems like trying to come off as more clever of a writer than she is when it’s ok to admit she’s not? Like girl you’re using common fanfic tropes from 2014 please stop acting like you’re deeper than that. 

3. Rachel: MY character Persephone

Greece and it’s people, both ancient and modern: excuse me?

4. ngl i feel like Persephone/Kore was deliberately dumbed down from the start of the comic to play up the angle of her as a pure and innocent uwu bean. it removes depth from her character because in the earlier chapters she was naive but not completely ignorant. but then she's only 19. and then goddesses of eternal maidenhood. and then her not knowing basic phrasing of "sleeping to the top" despite knowing in chapter 1 that Zeus and his brothers are known because they sex a lot...they stole her brain cells

5. Also can we talk about how horrifying Hera's actions are from Demeter's point of view. Imagine your sibling setting up your child with their brother in law. A dude as old as you. Behind your back. Your college age daughter. Not once even thinking to check with you before creating and internship specifically to give them a chance to hook up. And we are supposed to find Demeter's outrage funny. Man I would murder my sibling.2-2

6. I just wish the people who insist there actually is this super special secret ~real~ version of the H/P myth actually backed it up, because as soon as you press them on it they immediately go silent and try and change the subject. Like surely if it's this well known and real, show us the proof! Hell, make Rachel show proof of it that's not just a tumblr post! I'll wait!

7. at best maybe you could argue the shades being "unpaid labor" is a commentary on unpaid internships but 1) even internships end, the shades are stuck with that forever, 2) they are done willingly, the shades are forced into it, but also 3) rachel does realize even then hades is still the bad guy in it, right? like idk how she thought he looks GOOD for it? yt women are so weird.

8. OSP also while defending Hades and Persephone as the only "functional" relationship and that the kidnapping was "just how marriage went" will insist Zeus, Apollo, and others are evil for having (actual) consenting relationships with women they carried off (as opposed to Hades, where the text always says he kidnaps her). Anyone acting like OSP or Rachel are good faith actors for actual mythology knowledge and not a vessel of their Tumblr rotted biases is ignoring what's right in front of them.

9. what i dont get is you get the stans defending it like "we need this because i also have a bad mom too!!" like ok one please go to therapy but also if you really need to feel "represented" in myth with a bad mom then the eros and psyche myth is right there, or any myth with hera, or clytemnestra is right there, and many more. they dont need to have rachel butcher one of the few positive mother-daughter myths feel "represented", esp when it's to prop up a man who was the bad party in the OG myth.

10. RS cant even explain persephone's ridiculous coloring without overstating how ~perfect~ she is. i would actually respect how nonsensical and immature this writing is if it werent for the fact RS much fancies herself the next Homer who is also the peak of feminist literature and is improving the mythology. yes, the gods are better and more beautiful than any mortal, but it's an even field when its just them. persephone being "perfect" doesnt make up for her lack of .. anything, really.

[oneisallallisone]

All I Know, All I Know Greedling x Reader fic Chapter 1

In a land ruled by alchemy, there are some who would call you a sorcerer. You intend to understand what this means. Along your journey you end up getting mixed up with two strange brothers, a military conspiracy, a potentially world-ending event, and the avarice of something more than human.

I wanted to see more Greedling x reader stories in the tag. This one’s going to be a SLOW burn, but we’ll get there. I have plans. 

Read on AO3

_______________________________________________________________________

All I Know, All I Know

Chapter 1: Koldun

There are ancient legends: tales that tell of a city disappearing within a single night, stones that hold the power of god, of immortality itself, just to name a few. Myths such as these have been passed down through generations by word of mouth, pen to paper, and are woven into the fabric of everything that fascinates humankind. 

There is no name for the legend that you are, however. 

Alchemy is the science of understanding, reconstructing, and deconstructing matter. Alkahestry is the art of reading the Dragon’s Pulse, of sensing the flow of energy within yourself and the world around you, and then manipulating it. Both rely on a give and a take. A desire, an exchange, and a result. But you, with your will and your breath and the force that plays at your fingertips, are something else entirely. 

No, there is no name in Amestris for you. But there is an ancient Drachman word for what you might be. A word so old and feared that it is uttered in barely a whisper. “Koldun,” they call you. “Sorcerer.” It is the only word that seems to fit what you are, and the way it is spoken is just as cold as the air that bites your ears and the tip of your nose. Drachman winters are harsh. The resentment of Drachman people who don’t understand your nature is harsher.

But enough about the cold. Now you found yourself in the warmer weather of the south, regretting the bearskin cloak you have draped around your shoulders. It might not be fit for a sunny day in Central City, but its weight provides a calming sense of familiarity. A small piece of home that was actually yours to keep. 

The journey to Amestris hadn’t been hard, but it had been long. The mountain pass was no longer safe to use, as both Drachman and Amestrian soldiers were posted nearby at all hours of the day. The peace was holding out, for now, although it seemed like things could take a turn for the worse at any moment. So instead of taking the mountain pass, you traveled the road through the forest with a group of merchants who were on their way to Aerugo. They needed to pass through Amestris first. You’d parted ways with them in Central, and they wished you luck despite not knowing the full details of your mission.

How could you have told them, though? They would have left you for dead with nothing but the snow as a blanket for your final rest had you told them what you were. Koldun. The word still didn’t feel right in your mind, but it was the only lead you had to cling to.

So there you were, walking through the streets of Central in your too-hot bearskin cloak and worn leather boots, trying to find the greatest wellspring of information the West had to offer in order to gain some insight into the nature of your existence.

Only when you got to the First Branch of the National Central Library, you found a pile of rubble instead.

“What?” you gasped, barely audible. “No, no!”

You ran up what was left of the charred stairs and into the wreckage. 

All around you were mountains of debris and ash. Wooden shelves reduced to nothing, charred husks of books no longer readable and scattered about. You stumbled around every turn, through every crumbling passage that looked once like it might have been a hallway, searching the skeleton of each room for anything that might look like a single page intact, but there was nothing. It was a ruin. You sank to your knees. 

“Dammit!”

An involuntary surge of your power shook the room with your cry—violet waves that knocked loose a few pieces of stone that had not yet fallen. You buried your head in your hands and willed yourself not to sob. There had to be another place to find answers about your abilities. There had to be. You couldn’t have come all this way for nothing. 

You were muttering this softly to yourself when another voice interrupted you. 

“Um, hello?” 

You turned sharply to an unexpected sight. A boy with blonde hair and a long red jacket, and…a massive armored fellow? The voice from before, coming from the blonde boy, spoke again. “Are you alright?” 

You quickly rubbed your dampening eyes. “Yes. Yes, I’m just fine.” 

“We heard a crash,” the armored fellow said in a voice that sounded far more childish than you expected. “Are you sure you’re not injured?”

“Yeah, yeah I was just…throwing some things around. I’m fine. Just frustrated.” 

“Did you happen to see who did this?” the blonde boy asked.

You shook your head. “No.” 

He narrowed his eyes a little then. “How do we know you didn’t do this?” 

“What?” you hissed. “Look, when I got here the place was already a wreck. I didn’t see who or what did this. I swear.” 

For a moment it looked as if the boy was going to continue interrogating you, but then his eyes softened. He dropped his shoulders. “Alright, Al.” He turned to the suit of armor. “I guess we’re going to have to figure something else out.” 

There was a clanking as the suit of armor, Al, hung his head. “I guess so.” 

“Wait,” you said just as the boys were turning to leave. “Do you know if there’s anywhere else in the city that would store knowledge similar to what was in this branch?” 

The blonde boy crossed his arms. “What kind of information are you looking for?” 

You hesitated for a moment. How were you supposed to explain your predicament to these strangers? “Well…I’m looking for any sort of historical records or myths of people with beyond-human abilities.” 

“So you mean like alchemists?”

“Honestly, not quite,” you said hesitantly. “But that wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”  

The blonde boy huffed. “Well believe me, when it comes to people with ‘beyond-human abilities,’ alchemists are the only thing you’re going to find. Alchemy isn’t anything supernatural, but it’s the closest thing humans will ever have to augmented abilities.” 

“You sound very sure of yourself.” 

“Yup. Anything else is just made up.” 

The corners of your mouth twitched. Was it pride? Was it spite? The only thing you knew is that you wanted to wipe this guy’s smug smirk right off his face, and you could already feel the power surging to your fingertips. 

You hadn’t even called upon it. It knew you. 

Raising your hand, you allowed your energy to manifest at your fingertips. Small flickers of purple danced across your skin as you curled and flexed your fingers. It was like passing a coin between your knuckles. 

The blonde boy’s mouth flew open, first in shock, then as if he was going to say something, and then settled into shock again. The armored fellow next to him startled. 

“Brother…” the metallic voice rang. 

“How…how are you doing that?” the blonde asked you. 

“They didn’t perform a transmutation or anything!” the armored boy said, partially to his brother but mostly to himself, it seemed.  

“I’ve never seen alchemy like that,” the blonde started, “Not even Teacher’s is like that. Seriously, how are you doing that?” 

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” you responded.

“What?” 

You pointed at the suit of armor. “What’s his story? I haven’t been in this country for long, but I know that citizens casually going around in full armor isn’t the standard.” 

The metal boy shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, I, well…uh…” 

A resolute look fell onto the blonde boy’s face. He placed a hand on the armored torso of his companion. “Al, it’s okay. We can think of this as just another equivalent exchange, information for information. And besides,” he lowered his voice, “Whatever their power is, it’s not something we’ve seen before. We’d be idiots not to learn more about it. Maybe they can help us.” 

You raised an eyebrow, but neither of the boys saw it. 

The armored fellow raised his head to catch your gaze again. “Please just don’t freak out.” He brought his hands up to his helmet and pulled. There was nothing underneath. 

At first you thought that the boy inside the armor must have been too short to stand within it. But then you took a few steps closer and realized there was no boy in the armor at all.

“Oh,” you said. “Well that’s not something you see every day.” 

“And neither are you,” the blonde said. “We told you ours, now you tell us yours.” 

You frowned. “Unfortunately there’s not much to tell. It’s why I came here, actually. I’m trying to learn more about the nature of my abilities, because they are definitely not…what you call alchemy.” 

“Well, where do you come from?” he asked. “Maybe it has a different name in your country?” 

You shook your head. “Alchemy exists in my country. It is something that is taught. I, however, was not taught any of this.” You lowered your gaze to the floor, preparing to say the words that you had only said to so few. “I am from Drachma. The only word they have for me is Koldun. It translates to sorcerer.” 

[maxwell-grant]

OK, I know this will probably be painful, and I may be a bad mutual for asking but...would you be willing to identify what, in your opinion are the bottom five worst Shadow adaptations, and give a detailed breakdown of why they were so lousy?

Oh christ, okay. I don't think you're gonna get as much of a detailed breakdown for these compared to some of the others, because I take more issue with adaptations that do have good qualities but also big or deep problems to talk about.

For example, I can't include Garth Ennis's Shadow in this list because the comic has a lot of strong points to it, despite a deeply, deeply detestable take on The Shadow's character, where as the rest of the Dynamite run doesn't reach neither the lows or highs of his run. Likewise, Andy Helfer's run has a couple or a couple dozen moments every issue that make me want to tear something to shreds in frustration, but it's also at many points a really good comic with great art and some occasionally very inspired writing. Really, I'd just be repeating myself talking about what I hate in those.

But, fine, let's list some of the others.

I think I'm just gonna have to get the elephant in the room out of the way here, and address that I won't be including Si Spurrier's 2017 Dynamite mini in this list, and I think at least some of you might be angry it's not Number 1 by default. I'm doing this because I intend to one day really revisit it, think about it and it's reception and what it was trying to do, and talk about it on it's own, now that it's been 5 years and everyone has moved on and we can maybe talk about it without kneejerk hatred driving everyone nuts (your mileage may vary on how warranted it was).

I'm also not going to be talking about James Patterson's new novel, because I haven't read it. It seems to be considered a forgettable potboiler by mainstream critics and a resounding failure by everyone who likes the character whether they've read the book or not, and frankly I don't have it in me to learn what the fuzz was about anytime soon, I got my hands way too full as is.

And I won't be including the Batman x Shadow crossovers here, because again, they do have a lot of virtues that put them far ahead of some of the really worst Shadow media, and I've talked enough about how badly I think they mangled The Shadow, which is really the big problem I have with them (well, that and Tim Sale blatantly copying a Michael Kaluta cover, that was really shitty). I don't really hate them anymore, I just get tired and frustrated thinking about parts of them, I said my piece as is. Really, my frustration over this comic is what inspired me to start writing about The Shadow here, so I guess in a way I do owe it at least that much.

5: Archie Comics's Shadow

I think some of you might be wondering why this isn't ranked higher, but to be honest, I don't actually harbor any hatred towards this. I mean, I have to include it, but I find it kinda silly that some people even today actually care about the existence of this comic enough to hate it.

For fans back then? Oh yeah, obviously, but this dropped to such instantaneous backlash that it never really got to live past 6 issues. Really, everything wrong about it can be understood immediately from the covers, and I've actually read the comic in it's entirety to see if there was anything worth taking. I found only a couple of things of note but, no, this really is just a painfully mediocre superhero comic that happens to have a couple of Shadow names in it. If anything, it gets too much credit.

The actual contents of what it is are never going to justify it's reputation, but the existence of it and the disproportionate response to it is the funniest and most enduring legacy it could ever ask for. This whole comic is The Shadow's version of Spongebob's embarassing Christmas photo.

4: David Liss's The Shadow Now

This is another "The Shadow as an immortal in modern times" comic and I think you may have noticed the pattern with those by now. I may revisit this eventually and I do have some moments from it saved for reference, but overall: It sucks, and it doesn't even suck in a way that lets me talk much about it, it's a diet version of Chaykin's Shadow. If Archie's Shadow is a generic mediocre superhero comic wearing The Shadow's name, this is a generic crime story playing beats from movie. The Shadow is an asshole and not even a grandiose or sinister one, he just feels like a sleazy douche in a costume. The art is a 50/50 coin toss between appropriately moody and "Google images with a filter on them", I don't remember anything about the plot other than Khan had a bomb again and he had a daughter, and there were new versions of the agents and the Harry stand-in turned evil and Lamont shacked up with Margo's descendant which, uh, no. I don't really hate this but I really have nothing nice to say about this comic other than Colton Worley's art is nice sometimes. I can't really muster anything else to say here.

3: Invisible Avenger

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

ZZZZZZZZZZ...

...uuh, wha-

Yeah, I remember nothing about this one other than it's painfully boring and nothing about it, nothing at all, works in the slightest and I drift off to sleep even now trying to give this a rewatch. To be honest pretty much every other Shadow serial not starred by Victor Jory sucks and I don't really have anything to say about them, this one is just the worst of the lot. I dearly wish there was a good Shadow tv series but, if it was going to be like this pilot? Good riddance.

2: Harlan Ellison's The New York Review of Bird

This isn't really a Shadow story as much as it's a Harlan Ellison story that happens to feature The Shadow, but man am I glad that Ellison's "Dragon Shadows" was canned, because holy shit what a goddamn nightmare Harlan Ellison writing The Shadow for real could have been, going purely by the one time he ever touched the character. New York Review of Bird is a purely farcical parody story that wears real, real thin even before "Uncle Kent" shows up, and we get to see in it what is by far the most detestable and irredeemable take on The Shadow ever put on print, and not even in a critique or deconstructive way or anything that could be remotely worth discussing.

I don't hold any particular affection for Harlan Ellison and his writing (despite liking some of it) and I've come to notice the major red flag that is finding someone who looks up to Harlan Ellison in any capacity as a person, and this story in particular really feels like Ellison aggressively trying to channel his jackass tendencies through every line, just him being nasty because he built a personal brand on being nasty. The only reason this isn't Number One is because it's a very short story that saw zero influence or reputation, and thus it only exists as a brief mention in The Shadow wiki, and a brief mention is all it really calls for.

1: Howard Chaykin's Blood & Judgment

I'm guessing most of you already knew this one was in the top spot before I started writing.

I would actually rather not write a big piece on Blood & Judgment, because I think (or at least I hope) it's influence on The Shadow has waned a lot over the years and I would prefer to draw it the least amount of attention possible, but if I HAVE to talk about this, I guess I'd rather just vomit this out of my circuits now instead of giving it it's own post.

I would prefer to use a less unpleasant image on my blog, but if I'm going to talk about this comic, there's no image to better convey it than this drawing of macho asshole Cranston holding a sexualized mannequin at gunpoint. By leaps and bounds, Blood & Judgment is the most misogynistic Shadow story I've ever read. It's ironic that Chaykin justified the rampant misogyny he gave The Shadow with the idea that this is just a man from the 30s would act like, when he admits in the same breath that he never even touched the stories, and he wrote a story more sexist and demeaning to it's female characters than anything, literally anything, written in the Shadow pulps. It's almost impressive even.

I'll paste some segments from Randy Raynaldo's review

In Flagg, he intended to present his own point of view on American society while keeping his work tongue in cheek and acessible. But this vision dimmed, and Flagg had become a vehicle by which Chaykin could play out fetishes and portray gratuitous and stylish violence.

In The Shadow, stripped of the political and social veneer which was supposed to make Flagg unique, Chaykin's sensibilities and excesses become disturbingly apparent. For all of his liberal posturing, Chaykin's work demonstrates zero difference from the same kind of mentality exploited and made popular by similarly violent popular culture icons like Dirty Harry and Death Wish.

More than half a dozen individuals are indiscriminately and violently murdered in the first issue. Although the victims are characters who played major roles in the myth of The Shadow, we feel little sympathy for them, even for those of us who knew these characters at the outset. Who dies is unimportant, it's how they die that is the fascination.

Chaykin uses sexual decadence as a means by which to establish villains, and undercuts this device by making the protagonists as promiscuous as the villains. For all of Chaykin's seemingly liberal leanings, he demonstrates very little sensitivity in his portrayal of women.

Because everything works on rules of three, this comic also follows the pattern with other works mentioned here, as this isn't Howard Chaykin writing The Shadow: it's The Shadow reimagined as a Howard Chaykin character. He looks and acts exactly like Reuben Flagg and the typical macho protagonist of Chaykin's other works, he's a cynical sleaze with an entirely new origin who half-assedly dons a garb to machine gun people, and I already wrote a separate piece on why the machineguns are kind of emblematic of everything wrong with this take.

I understand that Chaykin has, or used to have, a big following of sorts, and I've tried to wrap my head around this for years, but I genuinely still don't get why Shadow fans stomach this comic unless they happen to be Chaykin fans first and foremost, I really don't. Everything, fucking everything Shadow fans hate about modern depictions of the character can be traced right back to this. The parts that stuck and changed the character for the worse, like him being defined as an immortal, bloodthirsty warmonger who got all his skills and powers from a magic city in Tibet, or Lamont Cranston being a coward who fears and hates the Shadow, or his agents being expendable slaves, stuff that has been ingrained into the mythos through this and the Alec Baldwin movie and other comics, to the point that people now think of it as the norm, that it's the baseline of what The Shadow is, and I hate it, I genuinely fucking hate it,

I hate it so much that it's a big part of the reason why I created this blog and why I want so badly to get to write The Shadow, because I plainly couldn't stand not having ways to tell people that this is all wrong, that this is actively shooting down the character's odds for success, and that they are missing out on something really great, because the well has been tainted with garbage that won't go away and everytime I read the words Shambala in a Shadow comic, even an otherwise good or great one, I get just a wee bit cross.

The only semi-redeeming aspects I can think of for this comic is one or two cool moments, like when The Shadow hijacks a concert using his Devil's Whisper or when he tames dogs with a stare. Just breadcrumbs of "not garbage" amidst an ocean of anything but. I hate that talking about why I hate this comic in-length can almost feel like I'm still enticing people to check it out of curiosity, but if you wanna do that, fine, just know this: The worst part of Blood & Judgment, even if you don't care at all about what it did to The Shadow, is that it's boring.

It is a deeply boring comic. If you like Howard Chaykin to begin with, you'll probably like this okay (although even Chaykin fans told me that this is his weakest work and that even he seems to agree). If you don't, I plain don't see what you could get out of this.

The comic itself is just nothing. It's the comic book equivalent of a pre-schooler trying to get a reaction by swearing. It has nothing whatsoever other than half-assed attempts at shock value. The plot isn't there, the ideas are stale, the dialogue is needlessly oblique and comprised entirely of unfinished sentences, interrupted conversations and one-liners without build-up. The characters are all unlikable and uninteresting stooges with no personality, or joyless cartoons. There's no heart or emotion or logic, and it isn't even funny enough to succeed as just an outrageous exercise in 80s excess. There's nothing in here.

I get "why" it was popular enough at the time, a rising star creator penning a modern revival of an old character based on controversy that pissed off the old fans, it's an old story that still gets repeated today. But manufactured controversy is not a replacement for storytelling and it rarely ever exists to benefit the people who actually want to enjoy the stories, it only benefits those for the crude benefit of those who want to sell you something out of the controversy.

I guess they got their money's worth back then.

------------------------------------------------

Phew, okay, I did it, I finally vomited out a piece on Blood & Judgment and some others, allright, let's put this piece of negativity behind us now.

[docholligay]

I’ve been experiencing frustration with this show. and that is A-O-KAY. Not everything we experience has to be a clean and crisp level of enjoyment every moment that we experience it. I’m fine. I don’t need anyone to rush to the show’s defense. 

But as I was telling Jetty, the problem I’m having with the show is that it keeps putting forth these interesting ideas but has yet to really give me any evidence that it plans to or even can deliver on them. By this point in Utena (percentage of the show wise, not episode number wise) I had not idea if it could land the plane buy I felt fairly certain there was landing gear in place. It had something to say and it was going to ATTEMPT to complete its thought. ANd I don’t necessarily feel that way with Princess Tutu. And I can be wrong! Nothing would delight me more! But stuff keeps getting tossed at me without me seeing a lot of what I would consider results and I’m starting to get frustrated. Or maybe I’m in a mood, I dunno. 

And also also: I wonder if I’m not low-key punishing this show for coming after Utena, and being recommended by people who loved Utena, and so I was expecting something more similar, not even consciously, but without noticing it. If I expected more from it than it could ever deliver. But also, I’m only like, a little uder half way through it, so it has plenty of time to get its shit together. 

ANYWAY, all this to say that I was TAKEN by the opening framing here in the beginning of the episode--I always really like these little  stories that come before the show itself-- and I love this idea that we just might be working with, that love is not the ideal, necessarily, but love can also trap you, and make you a slave. This actually kind of goes back to the whole La Sylphide thing in the last episode--the ide that love is invariably about possession, but also that Princess Tutu might want to bind herself to the prince, her slave, without really knowing that what it is, is her own binding. That everything they all do is in the name of love, but it’s just a curse by another name. 

But I don’t know if I trust the show enough to be DOING that?  The entire deconstruction of the prince myth and the idea of love as a prize is a pretty big deal, and I just don’t know if I think it’ll ever do that.  

Please note I have never seen this and am watching spoiler-free! Please don’t confirm, deny, or explain anything, even if it’s historical or cultural! Thank you!

[feminist-propaganda]

Single Mothers Will Probably Cry During Every Episode Of Queen’s Gambit - Episode 6

“Men are gonna come along and wanna teach you things” predicts Alice at the beginning of Episode 6. “Doesn’t make them any smarter” she continues. “In most ways, they’re not. But it makes them feel bigger. They can show you how things are done. You just let them blow by and you go on ahead and do what the hell you feel like”.

 Little Beth listens carefully. 

“It takes a strong woman to stay by herself in a world where people will settle for anything just to say they have something.”

As she finishes her sentence, the camera zooms out and we see her finishing the embroidery of Beth’s name onto the dress. Beth smiles, and her mother says “There we are”. She’s almost finished her project.

Episode 6 : Learn From Straight White Men

To survive under capitalism, it is necessary to learn from those who created it, ie Straight White men. Many feminists might want to avoid capitalism all together, and avoid the mentorship of White men, which they don’t find useful. But Beth’s mother understands that to truly extract oneself from the oppresive system she is in, Beth first needs to navigate that system. 

In the first part of the episode, we see Beth ride with Benny to New York. He seems good for her. He doesn’t let her drink. He improves her chess. He introduces her to his friends. 

A bunch of people don’t know this, but New York’s original name was New Amsterdam and it was founded by the Dutch. 

The city, like Mexico, is symbolically chosen in the mini-series, as it is the epicenter of modern day capitalistic activities.

The Netherlands was a poor nation swamp up until the 1600s, when the Dutch figured out that they could trade goods, ensure the boats that transported the goods they traded and then eventually created the stock market. To this day, Amsterdam remains the international capital of financial technology. Every year, hundreds of higly skills migrants from countries like India, Turkey, China or Greece come to Amsterdam to develop faster robots to trade at higher rates for trust funds and billionaires.

Trading changed the Netherlands forever. It launched what some history books still call the “Golden age” which is now being deconstructed as a racist era, where the Dutch played a key role in organizing the trans-atlantic slave trade. 

Even though modern day Dutch society likes to downplay the role the Netherlands played in the slave trade, it is proven that the Netherlands became immensely rich thanks to the slave trade. They were experts in importing the coffee and sugar that was grown by the slaves and trading it inside of Europe.

New York, is the projection of the Dutch dream in the West. It is the home of Wall Street, where we find the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as well as the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), which is the same as the stock exchange only this time we let the robots to the high frequency automatic trading for us (yup).

In 1904-1905, right when Einstein was discovering the photoelectric effect in Germany, a man called Max Weber coined the phrase “the protestant work ethic”.

According to the theory of the “The protestant work ethic”, it is believed that there is something in protestant culture that encourages protestant communities to work very hard. As a result, a great deal of “ excess” is produced, and these goods can then be traded. According to this theory, the inventors of capitalism were just very hard working people, who accidentally made too much of something, and started selling it in a very organized way (the stock market). Then they became rich.

Martin Luther King disagrees:

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad.”

As the car pulls up in Benny’s street, and looking at these ever so simple Brownstone houses, I am reminded of the myths that protestants like to perpetuate about themselves. “We work so hard!” “We’re such simple people” “We eat stew” “My grandfather used to raise pigs”.

The never ending lies that protestants propagate about their work ethic serves an important purpose in White Supremacy. It tries to convince us that the wealth isn’t unequally distributed. That the privileges that the ruling class have are deserved, rather than stolen.

Benny is the ambassador of these White Men. He lives ever so simply. He offers Beth a mattress to sleep on the floor. He lives in a basement. There is no decoration on the walls. There are only the prizes he’s won at his competitions and tournaments, and some magazine covers. Again, the underlying subtext here is that Benny works hard, lives frugally, and deserves all of the awards he’s won.

Instead of resenting Benny, Beth accepts to learn from him, just like her mother told her to. She looks around his house, but doesn’t say a word, doesn’t judge. She’s here for a purpose, she’s here to take everything that he has in his head, and bring it with her to Paris to win against the Soviets.

She seems dissociated from the situation most of the time. The only time we see her getting a bit excited is when she meets the French model. Again, it’s the high fashion that seems to attract her, as if it’s a sign, an indication of something grander and more appropriate, something that she needs to follow. 

An adjournement in Chess, which is also the name of the episode, is when a player secretely puts his move into a sealed enveloppe after 5/6 hours of game. The players resume their play the following day. 

Towards the middle of the episode we find Beth right where we met her: in Paris. She plays her matches and makes it to the final with Borgov. Unfortunately, on the day before the final, she meets the French model from Benny’s, drinks and is so hangovered the next day she makes a fool of herself. Not even the two tranquilizers she takes before coming down from her hotel room can help her.

Losing to Borgov in Paris destroys Beth. She goes back to Kentucky and drinks her life away. By the end of the episode she looks sick. 

She’s probably discouraged because she’s gotten to the end of her mother’s advice for this episode. She followed the White Man, and all of his advice. She met him in the capital of capitalism, learned everything that was in his head. She even met his friends. She copied his cool. She became him. When she meets the french model in the hotel, they are themselves being the men they seek. They smoke, they drink pastis, they casually talk about fucking.

It’s also worth noting that by losing to Borgov, Beth isn’t failing Benny. He never won against Borgov either. Her presence at these tournaments is already the best that he’s ever achieved for himself. This is also why Benny’s teachings alone won’t get her past Paris, beyond the iron curtain, to Moscow and beyond. He’s never been where she needs to go, where her mother wants her to be. How can he take her there?

A single mother will tell her children to learn from the White Man, but she isn’t telling them to be the White Man. The White Man is probably the reason why she’s single in the first place, why she’s alone. The single mother tells her children to learn the White Man’s way to survive in his world first and then to unbuild it.

Single mothers are often poor, so they understand capitalism very well.  They understand that often times money does buy happiness. It gives you security. Strength even. And joy. Beth can’t extract herself from Kentucky, the deep south, segregation and the feminine mystique if she doesn’t have cash.

After she comes back from Paris, Beth finds Mr Wheatley is looking for her. He needs money and wants the house back. She buys his share from him and calls him pathetic. it’s another sign that she’s outgrown the men she used to learn from.

Now there is nothing else but the void, the emptiness beyond her, and she doesn’t know where else to go. It can be overwhelming and Beth copes with alcohol. Who could judge her?

[army-of-mai-lovers]

@katarahairloopies thank you so much for the tag!! talking about my writing to procrastinate writing is one of my favorite hobbies <3

prompt-share your: 

first fic: the actual first fic I ever wrote was a pjo self insert fic I wrote in a binder when I was eleven and shredded six months later, in which the whole love triangle plot between Leo, Frank, and Hazel was resolved in three pages because even then I hated love triangles, my self-insert proudly declared that they were “too smart to date” (this was the excuse I was using at the time to escape the fact that I was a lesbian), and the completely un-child friendly myth of Philomena and Procne featured heavily because it was the coolest thing in the Mythology Book For Adults That Little Arthur Should Have Never Got Their Grimy Little Hands On, among other things. the first fic I ever posted was a 1D self-insert fic that I regret deeply. 

favorite fic: ughhhh this is so hard I think it’s a tie between let him fly, victory lap, and like ripples, like love. let him fly was really important to me to write because the way the kataang family was portrayed in lok felt like a horrible twisted funhouse mirror version of my own family, and I knew that a lot of other mixed folks were upset by that portrayal, so I wanted to do something that showed Tenzin growing up with both Water Tribe and Air Nomad influences. honestly that’s the fic I’m proudest of, because I got feedback from a lot of other mixed folks saying that they felt seen by what I wrote, which is really all I’ve ever wanted. victory lap I love because I love writing and reading character study fics of characters who don’t get to do much on their own in the show, and I just love the concept of deconstructing the perfect badass Suki whomst we all stan and making her an actual human being. And like ripples, like love just makes me feel good, honestly. Writing it puts me in a good mood, and none of my other profoundly depressing wips do that quite as well. 

EDIT: ok I think the original intent of this question was favorite fic that someone else wrote fjsdkfjsdjfklsjf my bad. for me it’s between Hooked by @listless-brainrot, Balance My Heart in the Palm of Your Hand by the lovely sukis_fans on ao3, where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor on ao3, and paint it red, they’ll cover it up anyway by snowandfire on ao3. Hooked I love because it’s the original Jetru fic and because it’s one of the most nuanced characterizations of both Jet and Haru that I’ve seen in any fic ever, also List’s descriptions are phenomenal, also BRUH THE FRAMING DEVICE ok listen framing devices are so easy to mess up and List just made his perfect the rest of us can all go home I guess. Balance My Heart is to this day my favorite mailee fic, I’m obsessed with it it’s so sweet and so well thought out. The author pays so much attention to Mai and Ty Lee as characters and also!!! Mai and Sokka friendship!!! we stan!!!! where the stars do not take sides is honestly a fandom classic (or should be, anyway). Y’all know I love a good major canon divergence and this is honestly one of the most well thought out ones I’ve ever seen. Also the characterization of Azula and of Azula and Zuko’s bond is INCREDIBLE. god-tier content honestly. paint it red is also something that should be a fandom classic and really readjusted my opinions of Jet as a character with its well thought out characterization. I love the concept of past jetko when it’s not “Jet was a total asshole and Zuko was perfect in every way” and paint it red ABSOLUTELY delivers on this it is so wonderful. A common thread with all of these is that they prioritize characterization over “ship dynamics” and they make sure that all of their characterizations are nuanced and three dimensional, and I love them for that. 

most recent fic: love will always find you, the second installment in the donnaverse (in which the girls of Avatar inexplicably love Donna Summer and start a band together), which is about Yue and Suki going on their first date. There’s lots to love about this fic for me: it’s yueki (my favorite atla wlw ship), there’s a philosophical discussion of a Donna Summer song as they drive through LA, Suki backstory, background mailee, just good vibes all around. 

fic with the most notes: like ripples, like love by far, but my most popular fics on ao3 are the greatest of them all (in which Toph and Bumi I duel and become besties) and keep the world at bay (Avatar Sokka) 

a line or two from a wip: what I’m currently working on for atla femslash week-

She’d never needed anyone before, and she didn’t want to need anyone ever again. It was torture, picturing Yue’s face without being able to see her for real. 

Just one night. Only one night. 

How do you know? 

The moon always comes back. 

Suki felt the tears roll down her cheeks, the dry sobs wracking her body as she hid her face in her chest. I don’t know. I don’t know.

favorite character to write for (and why): Mako 100%. I vibe so hard with the tired older sibling with several undiagnosed mental illnesses energy he gives off. 

character(s) you find hard to write: I hate to say it but Katara. I love her to pieces but I have no clue where to start with her characterization wise, which is why if she’s in a fic she’s usually not the pov character and she’s sidelined more than I would like her to be. 

tagging: @listless-brainrot @the-hot-zone @miannmian @scrtminlikesdrawing and anyone who wants to!

[beacon-sanctuary]

Beacon Sanctuary Character trailer: Orion

'The void, a sea of black with only stars to lead the way, mere points of a chain long left in disarray. Figures of myths and legends forgotten to decay, may you please let this spider return the link of a brighter day'

High in the air sounds a crow, squawking and belting as it flies over head, it's feathered form blotting against the snowy surface like ink on a paper. Dead tress coil around a clearing in a spiral, all grasping to the clouds while its leafless limbs fall short and stop dead, covered in a blanket of snow as a crunch can be heard in the distance. A boy, seemingly no older than a teenager strolls through the winding trees, face deep in a book, muttering the words off the page. His black boots and cane strike to the earth while his crystalized breath cascades across the weathered tome ; flowing from his black, blue-star studded face. His piercing sapphire orbs lazily comb over the words, only stopping dead in his tracks as the sound of footsteps approach him. Reverberating across the trees, his pointed ears hear an orchestra of growls gets carried in the snow filled wind.

Crunch, crunch, chrunch

"Huff, well ain't that just my luck, right when I'm at a good part y'all show up~" to his groan he was met with low snarls and growls as from the cover of falling snow, there stalked a pack of shadows, twitching and snapping their bodies in a sickening and bone cracking contortion as their mangled forms glared and bore their yellow fangs. Approaching the boy with every step they took, hiking back on their hands as the magi gave them one sentence before they dove. Snapping shut his book, a wry smirk danced across his night skied face as his eyes crackled to life

"Alrighty then lil' pups, how 'bout i send ya back to the kennel!"

At this decree the shadows have a piercing howl, pouncing all at once to the boy. Who in turn slammed the tip of his cane to the earth, kicking up snow as the blast frim his magic shot him into the air, leaving the pack to only gnaw if snow left in his place.

Taking in a deep breath, the Magi closed his eyes as flashes of images appeared in his mind. An overwhelming void, swallowing everything in its path, a web of silver string cutting through the sea of black, and finally splitting to a memory. A storm hanging in the sky, scarlet pools across the ground, and ultimately the words of a child screaming "orion!" as a familiar chill washes over his body with hushed whispers slithering in his mind.

Snapping his eyes open, Orion rakes his hand across the shaft of his cane as blue magic blazes across the obsidian staff flattening to a slanted razors edge. And ultimately in a flash of blue, twinkling like a star in the sky, the magi disappeared. And in an instant down below, one of the wolves now found their head severed. Flopping in the aor is a stifled whine from the blade being all that played it off. Black and blue energy erased its body to nothing while a cacophony of snarls sound at the lost of its kin. Bolting towards the magi, the wolv's inky jaws snarled and foamed with fury, starving to consume this torch with all their might, but as they charge instead of showing worry or even fear. All that's shown in the torch's night sky face is a smug grin and light laugh.

"Y'all are makin' this easy for me~" he sang, only to spin in the air, hoping above their charge, as just like first there he goes decapitating the wolf with barely any effort. Digging his boots to the ground to halt his descent, he swung a hand to his back, and coiled his weapon before piercing the third wolf through its mouth. The shock running through the blade being non-existent. As if the blade cut through the shadow like a hot blade through butter. Though before the other wolves could attempt to make a move at him once again, he flung the deconstructing body of their fellow shadow at their feet, barely slowing one who darted out the way, and slamming directly into one who was sprinting at him face first. Tumbling the second into a heap.

Focusing on the one not slowed down, hoisting the blade out before him, Orion began to rake his blade in a circle, sparks of magic burnt in the air, as the words of the book filled his mind while he envisioned himself standing on a silver string surrounded by a start darkness.

"As the mirror reflects the soul, so to will it show the enemy its folly, meet yourself in the void forevermore, inanis reflectunt!(1.) Instantly as Orion said the penultimate words the spell sparked to life, in moments the circle filled with a black expanse dotted with rows of zigzagging stars. But as the shadow rammed into it, a constellation mirroring its exact movement rammed into the wolf, sinking it's fangs into the shadow before exploding into a ball of magic, leaving nothing, not even the snow or the shadow's yelps behind in its wake where the wolf once stood. Leaving a circle of dead grass on the ground.

Sighing as the disk dissipated, Orion's arm tremored from thd pain in his shoulder. seething with himself as a rustle was made in the snow.

'crap, that hurts, I need to be careful with that spell, the impact still hits!'

"Oh right, I got you rabbies havin' self left, well just for you, I'll make this short and sweet~" squinting his eyes, Orion looked dead in the soulless eyes of the shadow before him, he saw the pain that made it, the fear, fear of hunger, pain amd dying alone. Shaking his head, his sapphire eyes re hardened, 'Whoever you spawned from, I hope they finally have what craved, let's put you to rest lil' pup'

Crunch, crunch

And with one last charge from the wolf, the magi gave his final spell

"Sever the light in my path, leave nothing behind in my arc, sing with my blade, Tenebris, Sever!" With one swing of his blade, an arc of black-blue crescent of void energy cut through the sky in a lone whistle. Moving through the sky warping anyone's perception of its arc cleanly sliced the shadow in two, before the nature of the void consumed it to nothing.

Standing up, and cracking his back, Orion groaned snd swung his blade to his leg, returning it to a cane as he once more returned to his book, finishing the book he began.

(Art credit goes to @vv-meloyelo-vv Please give them a follow they make great art!)

~~~

Footnotes

Inanis reflectunt: This is Latin for Void Reflect, the spell is basically this, a caster draws or summons an area where they want to reflect an opponent's attack. In the case of the void variant (which is this) the spell. Makes a constellation of the attacker and after their attack strikes the disk reflects that person's attack by double against the attacker. Though the caster should be wary when using it, it will make you feel the full physical impact or strain of matching an opponent's attack. So if it exceeds your physical limit you will wind up having a lotta damage dealt on yourself. Pretty much for fighting something back you take the physical toll for however much power would be required to do so.

Tenebris Sever: This spell is actually pretty simple, you collect the magic into your blade and flatten it into a wicked thin edge, and then you launch the attack out with a simple swing. And with this being a void variation means that it will consume and erode what it touches, unless whatever the spell hits has enough strength to withstand the affect. (The spell translates into darkness sever)

Author's Note:

Heya, hope y'all enjoy this trailer, I had fun writing it and i hope y'all enjoyed reading it as well. If you have any advice or opinions feel free to comment or send me an ask. And if you really enjoyed it, feel free to reblog it or share it with your friends! With that i hope you all have a good day!

Oh yeah if you just found this post and are curious of who Orion is, here's a link

Orion bio

[genericsuperherothirstblog]

longfic and series, MCU, mostly Stucky

If I don’t list a ship, assume Stucky.  I don’t repeat warnings that are in the tags for the fic, and even for fics where I do list warnings, I may miss something, so read with care.  Feel free to send a message or an ask if you think I should add something.

ABO Dynamics

Scents and Sensibility: The Working Assassin's Guide to Supersoldier Seduction by galwednesday, silentwalrus, skellerbvvt

The authors call this a clownfish AU because the sociobiology is closer to clownfish than to wolves.  Steve and Bucky have more or less the same backgrounds except that they didn’t grow up knowing eachother.  Bucky has some issues with being a functioning human but nonetheless this is a sweet and very re-readable story.

Alternate Canon/Canon Divergent

Some of these weren’t alternate canon or canon divergent at the time when they were written but so it goes.

Gweilo Gongfu by przed

Bucky is Chinese.  Steve is still a scrappy little artist.  Pre-canon.

the quiet Americans

Starts out as a Winter Soldier-POV fic of the decades Steve spent in the ice, then asks a question: What if Bucky Barnes had mostly left the building, and all that was left was the liberated Winter Soldier?  How would things fall out between Steve and what was left of his best friend?  Great use of canon characters and OCs in supporting roles.

Not Easily Conquered

Steve didn’t sink and sleep through the rest of the 20th century; he swam to shore, and lived through it all.  The second work uses the g---- slur,  albeit not in an intentionally slurring context. I would say “not in a slurring context” but I’m not Romani so I feel like I don’t get to decide.  Also the third work ends with a scene where the Romani character does palmistry.

Four Minute Window by Speranza and others

Bucky and Steve get a happy retirement.

i’ve been living in bed by everybodylies

Bucky is still the Winter Soldier, but he works for SHIELD.  Captain America is a ghost.  And a protester.

Except it Abide in the Vine by spitandvinegar

Comic book multiverse craziness.  You’ve gotta be logged in to read this one.

The Silent Answer by dirtybinary

Captain America: a myth and its deconstruction.  Probably my favorite combination of the Cap story with real historical events.

Fun Crack

Some of these are shortfics and non-series.

i heard love is blind by girl0nfire

Bucky keeps bringing home guys who look like Steve; Steve keeps bringing home guys who look like Bucky.  Sam is their hapless housemate who finally snaps.

barnacle boy by silentwalrus

Bucky is a selkie.

In Search of a Darkfic

Okay, so there’s a part of me that’s looking for a longfic that treats the premise of Steve and Bucky with maximum seriousness and ends tragically.  Haven’t found it yet.  But here are some things that I have found.

rate of recidivism by alcibiades

The first chapter kind of scratches the above-mentioned itch.

tell me i’m your national anthem by lanyon

Bucky as Cap, Steve as the Winter Soldier.  Not a longfic but again, kind of scratches the itch.

People and Things by quigonejinn

Not exactly the sort of darkfic I am looking for but definitely dark. So many warnings.  The Finish Line by the same author is not as warning-heavy but goes along the same lines.  Dark Bucky basically.  And the title of All things are well is a lie.  Bloody ending, makes me shiver when I think about it.  Steve makes a mistake, and Bucky ... well.

The frontiers are my prison by lanyon

Steve, Natasha, and Bucky, through the years.  AU where the Russians find Steve in the ice.

Period-Typical Queerness

Queer culture has changed since the 40s.  These often involve the use of outdated slang, some of which are now slurs.

Pure as the driven slush by Odsbodikins

Drag balls, queer bars, pre-canon.

Known Associates by thingswithwings

Period-typical queerness, plus Steve’s journey of self-discovery of modern queerness.  Samsteve, Steve/Rhodey.  Maybe you’re stronger than me, but I read this, loved this, and will never be able to eradicate the phrase “little Brooklyn fairy” from my brain.

Demobilization by 743ish

Bucky spent the war vowing to himself that he’d come clean to Steve about his feelings if he got home.  This plan hits a snag as soon as he’s off the ship and back home.

Political AU

our golden age by augustbird

Technically this is a royalty AU—Bucky is a royal disaster, Steve is his loyal best friend.  But there are enough politics that I’m listing it here.

Ballet AU

Tendu by kristophine

Sadfic

There will be tears.

Nightcall by thegrimshapeofyoursmile

BDSM AU

Additional Information by notlucy

My personal favorite is Mergers & Acquisitions, with its heavy dose of Peggy/Natasha.

bene castigat by Nonymos

Rocket scientist Bucky has always been kinky but never found anyone to explore it with.  So his friend Natasha refers him to pro-dom Steve.

Small Business 101 by pushdragon

Bucky is an ex-con.  Steve wants to help.  It escalates from there.  Probably the most nuanced look I’ve seen at the pro-dom lifestyle in a fic.

Endgame Fix-it

a flame in two cupped hands

Contains a Natasha POV story and a Tony POV story.  Various mostly-background ships.

The Monkey’s Paw

A series with one part so far.  Explores Steve’s time with Peggy, and the damage to the timeline caused thereby. 

One Clouds Feels Lonely

The completed part one of an abandoned series.  I like Endgame fix-it stories that uh, show Steve messing up.  This one is a little dark, involves a long separation between Steve and everyone else, and also Bucky teaching the Young Avengers.

WIP

As a rule I don’t do WIPs; I wait for stories to be finished before I start them.  But every once in a while I make an exception.

Reconstruction by rageprufrock

Rule 63.  Stephanie Barnes is a nurse; Bucky is her husband.  Has made me cry at least once and it isn’t even finished.

[smokeybrand]

Welcome Back

I am a card carrying geek. I was that nerd in grade school, reading comics, watching anime, and larping with his friends during recess. I’ve always loved things like books and film, mostly because my ma had a penchant for the sci-fi and we would share in her hobbies. I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who since i was a wee lil’ Smokey and had a particular fondness for Max Headroom’s shenanigans. My chosen proclivities lend themselves to alternate universes, divergent timeless, and the interdenominational doppelganger or two. What i am trying to convey, here, is that i am not stranger to the revisit of a franchise. For me, rebooting an established work or expanding a loved lore is not a transgression. I am a fan of narrative. If you can tell a unique story, it really doesn’t even have to be that good, but something creativity and compelling, i am totally on board. This isn't as difficult a feat as you'd think considering how well Hollywood can adapt international films. The Ring and The Departed are effectively remakes of their original Asian fare and those films are spectacular. Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is the best example of this i can give. His deconstruction of the Batman mythos was one of the best cinematic and storytelling experiences I ever had. If you can take an established narrative, an established universe, and inject your own flavor into it, i am down for that, too. The Kelvin Star Trek timeline immediately comes to mind. Again, comic book guy, specifically a Spider-Man shill.

While i have years worth of alternate Spider-Men in the books to pull from, i think the most concise example i can give for a layman is to think Into the Spider-Verse, only with thousands more Spider-Men and Spider-Women. That’s the world I'm broaching this subject from, where there are decades worth of stories and reboots and remakes and reimagings, basically revisits, of a character that i absolutely love. Some are great like the Ultimate Spider-Man or the world of Renew Your Vows, and some are not so great, like that version Abrams’ kid came up with. That whole story was the worst. We have actually seen a little bit of this narrative reincarnation in the Spider-Man film franchise, itself, both good and bad. If we take the very first Spider-Man films, those campy, Raimi classics, as a starting point, then we had a terrible reboot in the Amazing franchise and a rather brilliant reimagining in the MCU outings. I really like the MCU retool. Tom Holland is THE onscreen Peter Parker and you can fight me about it all day.

Jurassic World and The Force Awakens are an interesting situation in the whole Revisit discourse. Both of these films are effectively reboots of the entire franchise and a whole ass remake of their initial entries. Beat for beat, theme for theme, these two films are basically the same as Jurassic Park and Episode IV, just less than they are in every conceivable fashion. Now, on paper, i should hate this but i don’t. There is a reason both of the imitations made billions for their respective franchise and that is simply nostalgia. We. as a culture, were starved for a Jurassic sequel and new Star War. When we got these movies in earnest, no one cared they were rehashes of the films that made them so important to the cultural zeitgeist. It was like seeing A New Hope and that initial outing to Isla Nublar for the first time, for a second time, but with much better effects. It had been decades since either of these movies had a proper release so we all just accepted that these were refresher courses in the lore. It was with the sequels that these things sh*t the bed so hard.

Fallen Kingdom and The Last Jedi skewed so far from what these franchises were, from the rules that had been established in the preceding films, including the first in their new trilogies, that they were offensive. Legitimately offensive. Jurassic World and The Force Awakens, as flawed as they were, left their worlds in respectable places. The narratives that could be built from those starting point were incredible. That potential was palpable. Lucas, himself, said that the stories should rhyme and you see that in his six films. Familiar yet different. Nostalgic yet original. Respectful yet original. None of that was recognized in the follow-ups and that is why these two franchises are on life support. It’s sad because there was potential there. Characters introduced were compelling and narrative threads left unties, could have become something great. Instead, expectations were subverted and the world completely sh*t on in an effort to be edgy, to distance itself from the established lore. That sh*t is whack. It’s not about being a fan of the franchise or a zealous istaphobe or whatever else the Twatter mob wants to accuse people of being. It’s about bad story telling. it’s abut a complete betrayal of a decades old franchise. It’s a bout being disingenuous with the property for personal gain.

I said at the beginning of this essay that i love a revisit. That’s why i went to see these sh*tty films. I also made very clear that i love storytelling. Fallen Kingdom and The Last Jedi lack in that fundamental aspect, that’s why they suck. They’ve done irreparable damage to the entire franchise and canon of these worlds that were so meticulously crafted by proper visionaries. Michael Crichton is rolling in his grave at what became of his Dinosaur Westworld and Lucas effectively bogarded his way into running Lucasfilm again after they sh*t on his legacy and that’s the thing; Legacy. These two franchises are part of American culture. They’re as revered as Apple Pie and Institutional Racism here. They’re not cash grabs or vehicles to push your politics. They’re modern fairy tales, myths, and should be respected as such. The thing is, though, i don’t believe there are actual creatives out there that have the vision to create like Crichton or Lucas anymore. Or, at least, Creatives that are willing to work within the constraints of this ridiculous studio system.

Modern film studios are disgustingly risk averse. That is a problem with anything making entertainment media nowadays but it’s most egregious in Hollywood. Films like Star Wars and Alien were made in a time when budgets didn’t swell to hundreds of millions of dollars so directors had to do what he could, with what they had, and that level of imagination birthed classics. It’s rare that creators get a blank check to deliver their vision nowadays, and even rarer that what they get to make if they receive that loot, is actually good. Zack Snyder and the train wreck that is Sucker Punch demonstrates my point perfectly. the new Lucases and Camerons are rare but there are a handful of directors who carry that torch. Denis Villeneuve is an incredible visual storyteller. He has a distinct vision for the grand and manages to craft proper worlds. Blade Runner 2049 is one of the best films i have ever seen in my life but it didn’t make money because people have been conditioned to ignore great storytelling for great effects. That sh*t is why people can say to me, with a straight face, that they think Batman v. Superman is better than The Dark Knight rises. That sh*t is stupid, shut the f*ck up. Deni was given the reigns to the Dune reboot and i think this might be the film that breaks him through to the mainstream.

Dune is a reboot. It looks like a revisit to the old David Lynch flick but with Deni’s penchant for the epic. This movie feels like what Jurassic World and The Force Awakens wanted to do; A respectful acknowledgment of what came before but an original take going forward. Dune is one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written and Deni is one of the most profound visionaries in the game right now.  I have no doubt the new film is going to be fantastic. This combination is a match made in heaven, similar to Alex Garland with Annihilation or, more accurately i think, Luca Guadagnino and Suspiria. Those two films are f*cking incredible and they adapt the source material in a very, specific, manner. Annihilation is a reimagining of the book and carries its own themes and tones while the new Suspiria is a complete reinterpretation of what came before, that i believe eclipses the original. Dune looks excellent but i don’t know that it will be well received. Deni has his work cut out for him because the world of revisits is riddle with the corpses of films that couldn’t care the weight of what came before or what could have been. Still, i don’t want Hollywood to stop. As unoriginal as remaking things is, i adore a fresh set of eyes on familiar fare. There are infinite ways to tell the same story and that’s the fun of revisiting an old tale.

[gloriousmonsters]

seen on twitter: someone stating ‘if you don’t hold to certain genre expectations than readers will probably feel cheated and hate the book’ and after starting out with examples of two massively formula-based genres, although even those were pretty limiting statements (mystery needs, apparently, not only the mystery solved, but a red herring is required; romance needs the ‘misunderstanding, breakup, and big reconciliation) she goes on to say that Hunger Games ‘shows its scaffolding’ and is easy to dissect, so she’ll use it as an example! 

confusion continues under the cut

by stating 

a) we’re shown from book 1 that Katniss will not act unless provoked to do so, and is hyperfocused on her sister and, as a further second, her home 

b) but the fact that the book is a dystopia apparently tells us ‘we’ll get a ruling class, oppression, and an eventual struggle against the system!’ so the ‘anticipated surprise’ is ‘a clever, triumphant girl who did not want to get involved... making decisions and change’ 

c) and by that fantastic journey of expectation, ‘book 3 was a letdown’ and ‘felt like a cheat’ because... there was ‘a lot of getting knocked out’ and ‘dead sister’ and ‘romance’ instead of COOL KATNISS DOES COOL THINGS 

to which all of that I just have to say 

a) didn’t... didn’t Hunger Games kinda start the YA dystopia as a genre? isn’t this a bit like pointing at Tolkien and saying, because of so-called-Tolkien-esque-but-not-really fiction, ‘it’s a letdown because Frodo doesn’t kill Sauron with a magic sword! that’s the rules of the genre!’

b) i mean if you’re talking about dystopia as a wider genre, Brave New World sure don’t have a plucky gal shooting things 

c) I can’t help but feel that from what I recall, anyone who looks at Katniss’ character and expects her deeply traumatized, depressed ass to act like a Clever Triumphant Brave Girl who Punches The Oppressors is missing the point 

d) Hey, did you know that an author’s personal style is also a promise and an expectation? Did you by chance know that Suzanne Collins wrote a whole MG series before this doing approx. nothing but deconstructing the Chosen One myth? And focusing on the horrors of war? and making it clear that one plucky person can’t take down systematic horrors? 

e) even if you didn’t, how could you miss that the Hunger Games aggressively focuses on (a) how horrible war is and (b) how Katniss is being forced into roles she doesn’t want to play, continually from moment the story starts? Readers might want a happy ending where she punches the bad guys and lives in a little cottage with her sister, but they sure as fuck aren’t led to expect that, and they aren’t owed it by some nebulous ‘promise of genre’

f) I’m not sure exactly what’s being referred to, but I literally don’t trust anyone who complains about the ‘romance’ in HG anymore 

p.s: everyone in the replies so far is acting awed and saying this woman should write a craft book. I’m still confused. 

[ellynneversweet]

Ok, so I’ve finished Normal People and I have ... thoughts. Mostly about whether it succeeds or fails as a text, and what the relative metrics are by which success should be judged (it’s succeeded in getting me to think about it, for sure). This got long and a bit ranty, and does discuss the mental illness aspects of the book, so I’ve put it below the cut. Spoilers etc.

I haven’t watched the show or read any of Sally Rooney’s other books (book?) or reviews yet, because I wanted to get down what I took away from the book by itself, rather than what other people thought about it. I did see the headline of like, one review that seemed to think it was all about capitalism, which struck me as a significant stretch as a primary theme, but hey. My take was that it was primarily concerned with (many and various) degrees of mental illness and unwellness experienced by various characters, the causes and effects thereof, etc etc, and it’s really because of that that I don’t know whether or not I actually liked the book.

Ultimately I think my ambivalence comes comes down to how the narration is structured, and the way Rooney doesn’t at any point step in explicitly prompt the audience in one direction or another.

So what took me a hot minute to realise was that the book’s written in a very close third person narration, alternating between Connell and Marianne’s perspectives.The thing is, however, that this close third person isn’t immediately obvious, because Rooney subverts the whole ‘show don’t tell’ advice. There’s a lot of phrasing given as ‘she felt good’ ‘he felt anxious’ ‘then they had sex’ etc.  The most personal aspects of the plot are constantly elided with this flat, clinical, definitive language that sounds almost like a witness statement in a criminal case. That’s especially the case with Marianne, who disassociates a lot, and slightly less so with Connell, who’s anxious, but the flat description is pretty present throughout. There are moments when the narrative dips into describing sensation, but that seems to occur only with regards to things that are irrelevant and impersonal, like drinking a glass of (insert carbonated beverage here), or feeling the breeze from an air conditioner. The book is all about this very intimate, arguably co-dependant and unhealthy relationship between these two intermittently sexually involved characters, so the aforementioned flatness struck me as an odd choice initially.

However. There’s two things that this does. The first, and IMO more significant, is that is creates an illusion of the narrative voice as omniscient and impartial, rather than biased and unreliable as it actually is. The seeming authority of the definitive statements in the narrative is emphasised by the stock filler phrases that the each of the dual protagonists uses in direct dialogue, and which inevitably mean the opposite of what’s actually said — in the case of Marianne we get ‘okay’ (I disagree but I want this conversation to end) and ‘I don’t know’ (i believe this to be profoundly true but it makes me unhappy), and in the case of Connell we get ‘obviously’ (I’m not sure at all, what do you think?). So the upshot of this is that especially in the earlier parts of the novel the audience is led into thinking the description of a particular plot point is what objectively happened, rather than the biased viewpoint of one of two people who keep talking past each other (I’m thinking particularly of the part in which Connell moves home because he can’t make rent, and each of them was waiting for the other to propose his moving into her flat instead).

So it is really interesting on that level of language structure. I do feel that the section headings (‘two weeks later,’ ‘six months later,’ ‘five minutes later’) were a bit of a red herring — especially towards the climax of the book, when things became violent, I was frankly expecting it to take a schlocky turn towards one or both of the main characters being maimed or killed in a domestic violence and/or drunk driving accident, à la Jodi Piccoult.

It didn’t, which was a relief, but I didn’t subsequently find the ending satisfying, and I think that’s because the way that it ended — a breakup that’s not really a breakup, just a breather — felt like something that had occurred at least three or four times already in the text. It’s always tricky to write a satisfying ending when all the main characters are alive and young and (presumably) going to continue their lives. Why stop the narrative here, rather than there? I think for that sort of ending to work, a story does need to feel like it’s shifting into a different stage of the characters’ lives, one that can be inferred, however dimly, but is distinct enough from the part described in the text to form a natural break. This didn’t feel like a break from what had gone before. It felt like a groove in an emotional cycle that had already been repeated, that had been shown as being repeated, that gave every sign of being repeated again and again, forever and ever amen.

This leads into the part where I talk about what I didn’t like, fyi, and fair warning, mostly what I didn’t like was the characterisation of Marianne. Sorry if she’s your fave.

So Marianne gets the last word of the narrative, in which she thinks about how ‘they’ve [Marianne and Connell] been so good for each other’. And i would argue two things, which is that 1) unreliable narrator or not, this being the last part of the text gives weight to this being read as a true statement 2) this is, uh, pretty clearly not the case. Marianne’s still fundamentally the same, teetering on the edge of self-destruction, and Connell is still anxious (and being made more so by Marianne’s reaction to his small successes).

Now, neither character is perfect. They’re also not bad people -- but they are struggling people who use maladaptive coping strategies and don’t ever really appear to move past those.

At first glance, on a scale of quantifying unhappiness, Marianne gets the raw end of the stick. She’s a character who’s sympathetic and pitiable, because she starts out as the smart, bullied kid who turns out to have an abusive home life and who is brutally dumped by her first boyfriend. So far, so sad. Connell, by contrast, is much less upfront about the things that cause him trouble (although they’re very much there) and has the initial upper hand. Connell also comes off as much more self-aware than Marianne — the part where he’s lying on the floor in a post-shower depression slump reminds me of that piece that goes around tumblr occasionally, about lying on the floor sobbing about the state of the world, and simultaneously noticing that the last time you painted, you didn’t do a good job with the brushwork in the corner you’re looking at, and thinking about how you should re-do it once you finish crying.

But the thing I can’t get my head around with Marianne is how Rooney feels about her, and it boils down to this: what level of awareness and intentionality is Rooney operating at when writing about Marianne’s mental health arc? Does Rooney agree with Marianne’s self-assessment of herself as ‘better’ and ‘normal’ (ie still acting in more or less the same way as she did throughout the text, but no longer a subject of gossip) at the end of the book, or does she not?

As I mentioned, I haven’t seen the adaptation, but I’ve seen a gif or two, and what struck me as I was reading was that the way that Marianne is described as looking (and styled in the show) is reminiscent of the pop-culture caricature of Sylvia Plath — increasingly thin, indie-fashionista, bangs, statement lipstick, weird but precociously brilliant, magnetic, male muse and male victim, mentally ill in a way that is complex but always sexy and sexualised (of course she developed a cute, posh eating disorder that involved eating half an expensive sugary pastry and a sugarless black coffee every day. Of course she did).

Basically, what I want to know is, is Marianne someone Rooney wrote based on that image of Plath, or is Marianne someone cosplaying as that image of Plath, whom Rooney is consciously deconstructing?

See, I think writing Marianne as someone (possibly unintentionally) cosplaying Plath is interesting. The myth of the hot, damaged girl is pretty pervasive (Harley Quinn, the suicide girls, etc etc) and writing Marianne as a character who has legitimate issues that she has trouble facing, who then instead focuses her self-awareness into this trope of ‘acceptably damaged’ has potential. I feel like there’s an opportunity there to examine the line between struggling with a mental illness vs self-consciously performing that struggle in a way that’s socially acceptable, which is a topic that suits the period when the novel’s set.

Unfortunately though, I think Rooney is probably buying into that myth rather than  examining it, because the fact that no-one, in a book that starts in 2011 ever sits Marianne down and goes, ‘yes, I get that people have told you you’re mentally unwell as a tactic to bully you, and that was shitty, but you pretty clearly have a raging case of ptsd which is NOT YOUR FAULT, please accept some help’ — that is frankly hard to believe. Not Connell who seeks out therapy and takes some dubiously successful medication? Not Joanna, who is by all accounts well adjusted and who makes a point of caring in a friendship where she’s doing a lot the heavy lifting? Not Lorraine, parent of the decade? Not some random teacher or professor, looking out for an obviously promising student?  Really, no one?

Marianne is supposedly brilliant and a tireless researcher, but she apparently never becomes aware of the possibility that there might be ways to process her past experiences in a way that would allow her some measure of peace. Never wants it, even in the worst of times. Never ceases to wallow in her own unhappiness. And it’s relevant, I think, that in the period of the novel where Marianne is (kind of) happy, when she’s making a success of things at uni, the focus of the book is on how she’s making Connell jealous by dating an abusive man. The closes she comes to self-awareness is recognising her proclivity to seek out unhealthy relationships and decide to lean into that, in what is consistently the least unhealthy romantic relationship she has. That feels like a cop-out.

Like, I’m not suggesting that every story that features mental illness as a theme needs to show recovery. That’s, unfortunately, not always the case. Some people never get better. Some people can’t bring themselves to believe in the possibility of getting better. It’s not even the case that recovery is a straight line, when it happens. I know that. I’ve seen people I care about it struggle with a whole range of problems, I’ve struggled myself. But this felt like 13 Reasons Why for adults, like depression-porn, and I just...am a bit angry, I think, that I can’t tell if that was the intention, it that wasn’t the intention but was the outcome, or if that’s just my take and I’ve misread the thing entirely.

Obviously people can write whatever they want in fiction, but I do think that when you’re dealing with a topic that has impacted a lot of people, that’s been poorly handed in fiction in the past, you do have a responsibility to treat it sensitive and thoughtfully, and not glamorise something that is ultimately destructive under the guise of ‘this is interesting and cool, and a good way to treat yourself and others, actually.’ And I don’t know if that’s the case here.

[plagueamon]

Code Geass MBTI Challenge Turn 10: Diethard Ried - ENTP

Turn 10 marks the first time a type is repeated in Code Geass. The first of quite a few in fact, as our list contains almost twice as many characters as there are MBTI types (not to say that every type will be represented by the same number of people). What this means, however, is that I now have the opportunity to show you just how varying people can be even when they are typed as the same. This mainly depends on such things as ho well developed/healthy the person in question is as well as factors that have subjective importance to their personality and upbringing. Diethard Ried is a very good example of this principle, specifically in contrast to our previous ENTP representative - Milly Ashford. Before I start explaining this character’s functions, please keep in mind, that this post will contain heavy Code Geass spoilers, so consider yourself warned. With that out of the way, let us analyse why Diethard Ried is an ENTP.

Dominant Extroverted Intuition/Ne

Appropriately to his dominant function being extroverted and perceiving, Diethard himself sees his single purpose in life as that of an observer, being motivated by a strong desire to personally witness the most amazing and historically impactful events he can get to. For this very reason he joined Lelouch and later Schneizel, both of whom allowed him to be a part of plans that severely changed the world. On the surface Diethard’s obsession with being where the action’s at may appear as dominant Se, however there are some key differences to consider here. Unlike for a Se-dom, his excitement comes not from the experiences themselves, but rather from how the people he follows actually accomplish things that seem nearly impossible to him. For a person with a dominant intuitive function nothing seems quite as interesting as basically seeing literal fantasies and thought experiments being put into reality. This is why Diethard doesn’t mind getting involved in the wars he wants to record: when what you care the most about is creating a great story, objectivity truly may be a myth for some.

The extroverted component of Diethard’s dominant function can be seen in how the plans he wants to see carried out have no personal significance to him. There is no benefit to be gained for him, no need to reflect on the his or Lelouch’s reason for doing what they’re doing, hell, he doesn’t even come up with the plans and does whatever work he is assigned, no matter how amoral. The sole impressiveness of Lelouch’s and Schneizel’s plans are enough to keep him motivated. Notably, Diethard’s admiration for both of his leaders comes from what they can do, not just how smart they are. Clovis was smart too and  very skilled at manipulating Japan’s population to maintain a status quo. What he was not is a genius who had both the will and ability to change the world into something never before seen, and that is why Diethard was bored serving under him.

Because Ne is a function based on associative thinking and connections, Ne-doms more often rely on their thinking skills rather than their knowledge of any particular subject, and recognising Diethard’s intellect, Lelouch made him a high ranking officer, despite him being a Britannian who is generally disliked by the rest of the Black Knights. Lelouch was later proven right in his assessment of the journalist, as Diethard has shown a gret ability to think for himself when unable to turn to his leader for guidance. As a result he is one of the few Black Knights to avoid imprisonment at the start of R2 and eventually ends up betraying his master, making Lelouch’s path to victory that much more difficult.

Auxiliary Introverted Thinking/Ti

Diethard’s Ti is expressed in several ways. For one, it makes him a skilled journalist, who is not only good at his job, but also has a deep enough understanding of his skills to be able to use them for his new position as an intelligence officer. Even more interesting is the fact that journalism was basically the only thing Diethard was passionate about before he joined the Black Knights, so it is only fitting that he adapted some of the job’s principles as a kind of personal philosophy: all is well that makes for a good story, consequences be damned. The reason for why Diethard’s Ti is not dominant, however, is that his passion for journalism is not his core motivation throughout the series, but a way for him to support his Ne ambitions. In fact, he has no second thoughts about abandoning some essential journalistic standards when he views them as an obstacle, his belief that objectivity is a myth is a perfect example of that. This also shows that Diethard’s views regarding journalism are affected by Britannian society, which also doesn’t shy away from fabricating stories in media. Knowing that, we can conclude that this is an example of Diethard’s Fe affecting his Ti judgements, which also shows that his Fe is tertiary and his Ti - auxiliary.

 Much like with Milly, Diethard’s Ti gives him an experimental side, and this is seen in how he likes to challenge the beliefs of fellow Black Knights and question the validity of their views. Ti’s situational/subjective logic is a double-edged sword when it comes to these arguments: Diethard notably tends to debate against morally driven characters, specifically Tohdoh and Ohgi (it’s no coincidence that an ENTP and an ISFJ have so much trouble cooperating), showing the ability to deconstruct their arguments by selecting relevant facts. However, this also shows a level of bias, as we can see when the team loses Zero and needs to decide what to do. While Diethard makes some reasonable arguments in favour of looking for Zero, he ignores the dozens of lives at stake, because they don’t matter to him personally. He knows that without Zero he would have no interest in helping the Black Knights, so he skews the argument to make himself appear more right than he actually is.

Tertiary Extroverted Feeling/Fe

Diethard is a classic example of how ENTPs (specifically in fiction) tend to handle tertiary Fe. While he has a good understanding of social rules and obligations and and the ability to often use them to his advantage, he lacks any kind of personal investment in such things and usually sees them as a means to an end. We can see evidence of this at the start of the series, when Diethard was still working for Clovis: his ability to manipulate media in a way that made Area 11 appear like peaceful utopia and pacified its citizens gave him a high position and a considerable amount of influence in Britannian society, yet he found himself bored and ditched his privileges as soon as he found something more interesting to do. This is even communicated in his character design: despite spending a lot of time in the company of the highest members of Britannian society, Diethard prefers an attire that can be describe as plain at practical at best - fully committing to his social circle is something he considers a waste of his time.

Tertiary Fe happens to be the first major point of difference between Diethard and Milly Ashford. Milly is a healthier ENTP, who, while independent, was still influenced by her upbringing and social environment enough to develop a healthy level of compassion, morality and genuine investment in the lives of her friends - it’s what helps her listen to them and eventually see her own flaws. And then there is Diethard. While we don’t know anything about his life prior to the events of R1, he certainly also seems to be a product of his society, but in a completely different way. In a political system that promotes amoral and manipulative methods, Diethard too has absorbed these values when it comes to achieving his goals, even if he has no interest in the system itself. This makes him only use his Fe to satisfy the urges of his dominant Ne (loop) instead of using it to learn from others or make meaningful connections with them. In this sense, Diethard can be considered a foil to Milly, having many similarities, but some crucial differences from one another..

Inferior Introverted Sensing/Si

As the embodiment of any person’s main flaws and weaknesses, the inferior function is often used to give characters an arc, something they would need to overcome. Both Diethard and Milly possess the same inferior function and hence their inherent flaws are similar, but only Milly learns to be a better person in the end.

Ne is a function that is concerned with theoretical connections between facts. It is therefore directly opposed to Si - a function that focuses on the facts themselves and how they are relevant to the function’s user. For characters with inferior Si, such as Diethard, this means that they focus too much on the external and end up lacking substance or a clear identity as people. This isn’t immediately obvious for Diethard, because he is neither aware, nor cares much about his flaws, but it becomes much more apparent as time goes on. Note that throughout the whole series Diethard has not made any meaningful connections with anyone or anything; he is so obsessed with what he wants to see Lelouch do that he is not even remotely concerned with making others trust him or developing any attachment to even his work, making him the amoral cynic that we all know. And while Milly’s more healthy use of her functions allowed her to find herself and lead a much happier life, Diethard only realised what he was lacking in his final moments.

While he did everything to satisfy his Ne desires and was effective in his service, he failed to earn anyone’s trust or respect as a human being, so when it came to his death, even Lelouch did not see it as worth his effort to show Diethard a last act of kindness.

However, please keep in mind that this is only my opinion on the matter and I will welcome any criticisms or alternative opinions to discuss them. If this article was interesting for you, stay prepared for next time, when I shall discuss the MBTI type of Jeremiah Gottwald.

[welcometophu]

Into the Split: Havenhill 3

Twinned Book 3: Into the Split

Havenhill 3

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It’s easier to walk out of the building than it was when they came in. There are still people and animals scattered everywhere, but Nikolai ignores them all, and he doesn’t have that sensation of constant attention bearing on his back. They follow the path back to the central stairs and down, walking slowly. He stays linked with Seth, unwilling to give up that one small connection to the familiar. Nikolai shortens his stride to match Seth’s, which works until they reach the stairs, and Nikolai is a full step below Seth before he realizes that Seth still stands at the top.

“What?” Nikolai asks, turning back.

Like this, they are eye to eye, with Seth just a bit taller. It makes it easy for Seth to put his arms over Nikolai’s shoulders, lean in as he slowly smiles. “Stop worrying,” Seth murmurs, his breath a warm wash over Nikolai’s skin. “This place is safe. I can feel it. I’ve never felt as secure in any other place in my life. Even before. There are… I don’t know if there are wards here, or how they have it set. But it feels safe here. They mean us no harm.”

“I didn’t think they did. I just—” This is his Seth again, the one who was positive in the face of adversity. Nikolai’s rock in a stream, someone to cling to when the current threatens to pull him away. “It’s hard to just stop worrying,” Nikolai admits. “We’ve been going for so long. It’s hard to just… let go.”

“It is for everyone,” a voice calls up from below.

Amaranth stands on the landing below them, her hair pulled back into a bushy ponytail at the nape of her neck. She’s already bundled up, a scarf wrapped around her throat, and a heavy wool poncho over a sweater, gloves covering her hands. “Come on down. I’ve got cold weather gear for you, since it sounded like we were heading outside. Seems to be the thing to do after getting here. Everyone wants to know what the place is like, and just how far out is safe.”

They follow her down the stairs, taking the borrowed coats, mittens, and hats to gird themselves against the chill. Nikolai hates how the temperatures change so abruptly and starkly this time of year. For all he knows, it could be warm again tomorrow; that’s the nature of the early days of spring.

“Ethan said something about taking over a town,” Seth says as they step outside.

“He’s not wrong,” Amaranth says. She beckons and they follow her down the steps, into what looks like an old gravel driveway that is no longer maintained. There’s a hitching rail with a horse to one side, and the van and cars, along with two trucks off to the other side. “We’ve got transport, and we’re spread out. This commune used to be one small part of town, just outside the main part of town. Small town, the kind that had a downtown and a bunch of little stores, and maybe a few big box stores on the way in between it and the last bigger town. There’s a school in the center, for all ages up through high school. Neighborhoods all around, and a big town square.”

She starts walking, and it’s easier to follow than to ask where they’re going. Nikolai’s just relieved they aren’t getting into another car, or trying to get on the horse. “How do you take over a town?”

“Magic.” She sets a strong pace, but they’re used to walking and they can keep up. “Val arrived not long after the Split, and she set up wards around the town. Made it so people who weren’t Talented wanted to leave, and so people who were Talented were drawn in. We grew quickly in those early days, but the beacon attracted the Shadows, too, so we had to do away with it. Pity, since it did help, and people get lost coming here now. We’ve become a lost city, and we have to rely on word of mouth to get information out.”

“How do you ward anything this big?” Seth asks, and Amaranth stops so quickly he has to rock back on his heels to avoid running into her.

She grins. “I’d worry about why you’re asking, but Alia thinks you smell just fine. In case you’re worried, you’re also not our first bonded pair; we won’t throw anyone out for being a Dreamwalker.”

“That’s good, since Nikita is as well,” Nikolai says. He gets the feeling that hiding anything here in Havenhill is a bad idea. “Heather is her Empath.”

Amaranth makes a small noise, a gesture as if to say go on.

Nikolai’s gaze drops. “We don’t actually know them that well.”

“We got that impression from Mattie, actually, so don’t worry. It’s fine. Alia will deal with anyone who works against the community.” Amaranth pats Seth’s shoulder. “We’re all good. Just—you might not want to sound like you’re trying to deconstruct our safety perimeter next time.”

They’re going down the long drive, both sides lined by thick trees that Nikolai noticed on the way in. They make it partway down before Amaranth veers off onto a side road Nikolai hadn’t spotted. She stops as soon as they’re away from the road. “If you keep going this way, you reach the groves. The outer grove was beyond the main road; you probably didn’t even notice it. Definitely a car or horse ride away, or a good run for the Clan. The first grove is closest to here, a line of lemon trees around the original Clan property.”

“Lemons won’t grow in the northeast,” Nikolai protests.

Amaranth holds her hands up, wiggles her fingers. “That’s one of the reasons they keep me around. Val actually brought me in during the early days, when we could still travel fairly easily. I brought the trees with me, seedlings from Florida. But plants are my innate ability. I can grow anything, anywhere, keep it safe from the frost. We planted these as soon as we knew Shadows were the problem.”

“Did it stop them?” Nikolai remembers myths about lemons and Shadows, but for him, protection has always been about having Seth by his side.

“It helped us create a border,” she says. “There are several groves, several different iterations of the border as we pushed out. And we’d like to keep growing, create our own little forgotten nation here. When I first got here, there were about three hundred Clan, and Val brought in a half a commune of fifty Mages, along with the few Talented folk from town who’d chosen to stay. Later the rest of Val’s Mages came, and many of my old community as well. Since then people have drifted in, and we keep pushing our borders out. It takes a lot of work to maintain this community. We have our own natural power, our own electrical grid. We have mechanics and engineers, and we’ve done everything we can to switch to biofuel, which isn’t perfect but it keeps us running. We’re self-sufficient,” Amaranth says. “And you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. We keep growing, and that’s okay. We welcome any and all Talents with open arms, as long as they mean no harm.”

Her gaze drifts away, and Nikolai can guess what she’s thinking about. “I haven’t known her long, but Mattie didn’t try to attack us,” he says. “And we’ve been attacked by a lot of Shadows over the years.” He can’t imagine how many times the Shadows must have come to Havenhill since the Split. “There are so many of you in one place. And you use your Talents? How do you keep the Shadows away?”

“They’re part of the shield,” Amaranth admits with a smirk. “They attack the borders all the time, which makes humans less likely to try to get here. It helps keep us hidden. And yes, we use our Talents. The Shadows can’t get past the borders, and a special allowance has been made for your friend.”

Nikolai doesn’t correct the description of Mattie as a friend.

“So. Let’s keep walking until we get to the first grove, then we can walk some of the boundary so you can see how far you can go without worrying about getting outside the main wards,” Amaranth says. She sets a slower pace now, more leisurely than rushing to get somewhere. “If you want to travel into town, you’ll need to get someone to take you, either in a car or carriage. It can be walked, but you don’t want to spend that much time in the lesser parts of the wards. But we have social gatherings there, as well as at the house. You’ll want to get to know people if you’re staying. Make some friends.”

“Give us time,” Seth says, glancing at Nikolai.

Nikolai’s still reeling from the invasion of seven people from another world, teleporting into their lives. Then the abrupt arrival in Havenhill, and right now he’s struggling to deal with so many people. Especially after being completely on their own for the last few years.

“We can introduce you to other newer arrivals, people who may have been through something similar,” Amaranth offers, tone gentling. “If you want to talk about it. I’ve been here since I was a teenager, yes. My license was new, and my family let me go on this long road trip by myself, and I was scared as hell on the way.”

“Are they here now?” Nikolai doesn’t think she’s done talking, but that’s the important question. The one he’s not sure if she understands. They arrived in a crowd; he doesn’t think she fully gets that it’s just Seth and him, in reality. That they’ve been alone.

“My family?” Amaranth asks. When Nikolai nods, she continues, “Yes, actually. My parents live in a house in town. My grandfather passed away on the trip here, and my grandmother lives with my parents. I’m an only child, but I have cousins here.”

Seth makes a small noise, and Nikolai leans closer to him. This is one of those decision moments, where they have to decide if they can fully trust her. If they’re staying, it’ll all come out eventually, so he might as well try saying it now. “We don’t,” Nikolai says, his voice carefully flat. “Have family. Not anymore. We’ve been on our own for two years. Seth lost his parents a few years after the Split. We fled with my parents and my brothers, and we’d made a place for ourselves for a while, then—hunters found us. My parents and brothers were gone, after that, and we had to make our way here alone.” Nikolai shudders. “We’re it, now. So you’re talking about meeting people and making friends, and I’m not sure we’re really ready to start developing new relationships. I mean, yes, I know we can’t be reclusive. You want us to be part of this community, and we have to do our part. We will do our part. But right now, we’ve been alone for two years until that group dropped out of some weird world rift into our lives. And a day later, we’re here. It’s an adjustment.”

Seth’s hand on his back is soothing, drawing slow circles, calm stroked into Nikolai’s skin.

“You ready to talk about your family?” Amaranth asks. She lets the question hang there, doesn’t dig at it while they keep walking. It gives Nikolai time to think, to feel through the idea in his mind.

Seth’s fingers curl into the fabric at the base of Nikolai’s back, sliding up under his jacket. Nikolai breathes through the memories, heat and smoke and flame still vivid in his mind. “Everyone here has one of these stories,” he says, because he knows it has to be true.

“Some worse than others,” Amaranth agrees. “But this one is still yours, and it will always be a part of your history. It’s a burden you can share, if you want. But no one will make you.”

Nikolai carefully unwinds from how Seth holds him. He strips his mitten off and shoves it into a pocket, then tangles his fingers with Seth’s, skin to skin. The touch eases him, makes it easier to center his mind, stay focused in the here and now. “I’m willing to share,” he says quietly.

“I’m willing, too, if you do the talking,” Seth says. Nikolai squeezes his hand in assent.

“We grew up south of here, in northern New Jersey,” Nikolai says. He looks at the trees, holds onto Seth as his anchor. Anything other than looking at Amaranth while he speaks. “I had two older brothers—Mikhail and Josef. I’m much younger—they were ten and eight when I was born, and I get the feeling they weren’t very excited to have a brand new baby brother at that point. Then my Talent Emerged, and they realized I was a Dreamwalker in the middle of a family of Weather Witches. My family made arrangements, and we were lucky; I found Seth quickly and we all just knew that we were going to bond. Our Talents intertwined, and that worked. We were best friends instantly. His family moved up to Jersey, lived down the street, and childhood was awesome the way things were back then. Before the Split.”

He glances sideways. Seth’s jaw is set tight, adding definition to his round features. Nikolai decides that skimming is their best option.

“The Split happened, and things weren’t bad where we lived,” he says quietly. “No one knew we were Talented. No one really started getting panicky about it right away. We watched as things got worse, as the little aggressions and hate crimes started. Then the Shadows descended on New York City. That was bad, and it was close, so humanity really took notice. So many people died. Most of the Talented in the city were snuffed out so quickly, and a lot of humans died as well. The humans pushed the remaining Talented people out, forced them to leave and closed the borders of the city. It was the start of the sanctions—the precursor to the first city wall going up—and we knew we had to find someplace safe. We couldn’t just stay where we were and pretend that everything was fine, not with me being a Dreamwalker. So we quietly packed up—both our families—and got ready to move. Mikhail was pissed off. He and Josef were in school at the time, and they thought they’d be safe because no one knew they were Weather Witches. Mom and Dad made them come home. Said it wasn’t safe for them to be out among the humans. They were right. Josef was jumped in his dorm, and he ran; Mikhail had to find him and they met up with us on the road. And by that time—we’d run into Shadows. Seth’s parents were dead.”

Nikolai bulls through, not giving Seth time to dwell on the memory. Nikolai doesn’t want to remember any of the details, either. He’s glossing, avoiding the specifics, even though he remembers. Like the way that it was the first time he and Seth had combined their Talents. They were only ten years old, and they saved Nikolai’s parents and themselves. They were just too late to save Seth’s family.

“So the thing is—and maybe you already know this—or maybe not, since you were here and not out in the world—when the humans pushed Talented people out of the city, all the humans who were already out there started flooding into the city,” Nikolai says. “It’s before they put up the actual walls. The borders to keep us out. People just switched places at first. But that meant a lot of places around the city were… well, they weren’t emptying out, not exactly. But we could find an abandoned place to move into. Start over, and pretend to be human. Which didn’t really work as well as we’d hoped, because people kept leaving. They tried to convince us to come with them, but we didn’t want to risk it. Didn’t want to risk being caught. But it got harder to live outside the cities once they closed up. There weren’t any resources, and people started wondering why we stayed out and risked our lives among the Talents and the Shadows. I figure that’s how someone decided we were dangerous. So they set fire to our house a couple of years ago, and Seth and I ran.”

Nikolai grips Seth’s hand tightly, focused on that single point anchoring them together. He looks ahead as they walk, trying to memorize this path so they can walk it again. “We’d heard about Havenhill. There was this family that stayed with us once while were still trying to set down roots—I don’t know if they made it here or not. I don’t think they did.” Nikolai remembers what he’d heard when the fire was set, the conversation and the implications about what had happened to Erica and her family. “The fire wasn’t long after they left us. But while they were with us, they told Dad about Havenhill, and they helped him work out a path. It shouldn’t have taken us this long, but we haven’t exactly taken a direct route. And sometimes we stop, when we find a safe place that we can stay for a little while. Stopped,” he says, realizing that it’s in the past. That they aren’t traveling any more.

“You’ve found a safe place here,” Amaranth says quietly. They’ve curved back to the main road—or another road that’s just as large, Nikolai can’t be sure. When she gestures, he can see the way the trees open up into a field, and a grove of low fruit trees. “This is the first grove,” she says. “Stay inside that line of trees and you’ll be safe. The wards are hung on those trees, and these are the most solid of all the lines of wards.”

Seth slips his hand free from Nikolai and goes to one of the trees, reaching up to touch the branches. The leaves are curled as if to somehow avoid the chill in the air, and Nikolai can’t think how they survive here. “It’s too cold,” he says.

Amaranth wiggles her fingers. “It’s magic. Seriously. We use some weather witchery, and my natural Talent for plants, and we keep them going. We also have lemons and lemonade year round, which is wonderful. I’ve got a few other citrus trees mixed in, so we have oranges and grapefruit as well, but the lemons form the primary border. Citrus is the one exception to the eating according to the season rule of thumb, aside from what we can grow in the greenhouse.”

Seth still touches the tree, running his fingers along the branch. “Amazing,” he whispers.

“I’m just going to—” Amaranth gestures off to one side, and Nikolai waves her away.

He wraps his arms around Seth from behind, chin on his shoulder. “You look like you can’t believe it,” Nikolai murmurs.

“Lemon trees in the northeast. A literal border made of lemons to keep us safe from Shadows,” Seth says. “It seems too good to be true, and I keep thinking you’re going to tell me we’re Dreaming. That this isn’t just sleep, we’ve fallen into some kind of hallucination. Maybe we’ve frozen to death and are drifting off into a brilliant Dream.”

“It’s hard to believe we’re really safe.” Nikolai exhales slowly, closes his eyes and tries to let his guard down. Tries to just smell the faint scent of lemon in the air, and enjoy the crisp breeze that isn’t overpoweringly cold right now. “Everything’s seemed off-kilter since those people showed up.”

“But they got us here,” Seth points out, and Nikolai has to allow that that’s true.

“They got us here,” he agrees.

Nikolai nudges Seth until he stands beneath the lemon tree, the branches surrounding them with the biting scent. “We’re safe,” Nikolai says, and Seth pushes up, meeting him for a kiss.

They’re finally safe.

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