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aaronpaceluvbot · 1 year

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bboom bboom bboom (aaron x reader)

summary: there’s a talent show being held to raise money for the band! what are aaron and the drumline doing? DANCING! TO BBOOMBBOOM BY MOMOLAND! But they only have 8 people… so they recruit you! (drama comes after.)

before you read: not proofread, interpret reader and aaron’s relationship how you want to because it’s never explicitly said what they are , this fic can take place in the same universe as the others or not (specifically because reader is a member of colorguard and said to be a former member of the dance team). also drum and drummer are like mostly Silent during this fic. i feel like aaron is lowkey/highkey ooc in this. but i love him anyways.

wc: 3k. (3029 to be exact).

—

When Garth said that fundraising ideas were needed, some freshman came up with the brilliant idea of a talent show. However, there was one big problem. pretty much everyone in the band had a talent they were thinking of - playing their instrument. While that would work, it would be extremely boring to sit through basically what would be a paid band concert and no one would be willing to go. However, you came up with the perfect idea - banning instruments from the talent show! You approached Garth after the meeting with it. He immediately approved! But not everyone was too happy about it. But it was already approved so that sucks for them! Though, some other dilemmas were brought to attention.

—

A few days after the announcement was made, you were chased down by a certain bass drum player. He came to you with an upset expression on his face. “Doug?? What’s wrong?” you asked, as he took a few deep breaths.

“The drumline wants to do something for the talent show together but we don’t know what to do! So Aaron told me to go find you and get you to help us!” he said, clearly concerned. You nod.

“So where’s the rest of the drumline?” You ask as you follow Doug out of the music hall and into the long and winding gym hall.

“In the dance room!” You make a face that you hope he didn’t catch.

“Why? Are you guys dancing or something?”

“I’m not sure!” You let out a tiny sigh as the two of you finally make it up to the dance room. You open the door and are faced by the drumline sitting in a circle in deep conversation. A certain boy’s eyes meet yours. “I brought her!” Doug says triumphantly, pumping his fist.

Aaron nods, clearly pleased. “Good job Doug!” He gestures for you to sit next to him in the circle.

“So what’d you need me for? Doug said you guys needed help coming up with something for the talent show?” You ask, looking around the circle. All the other members looked confused.

“I thought we already came up with something,” Tanner says, looking around to make sure he was right. Everyone else agrees in some way or another.

“Yeah I thought we were going with my idea and I thought that was why we needed y/n in the first place,” Sophie says, gesturing towards you.

“What’d you need me for?” You ask, now confused as everyone looked at you expectantly.

“We’ve decided that for the talent show we want to do a dance number. Sophie decided on this 9 people dance to a song called “Bboom Bboom” by a group called Momoland because apparently there aren’t a lot of easy 8 people dances out there,” Aaron says, watching your expression. “We thought you’d be able to help because you’re on guard so then you’d be good at dancing.”

“Also because you used to be on the dance team,” Sophie mutters out, which was only heard by you and Doug somehow. You wondered how she knew that because it wasn’t something that many people in the band knew about you.

“YOU USED TO BE ON THE DANCE TEAM?” Doug asks, clearly shocked. You nod at his comment.

“I was on it for around 2 years and then I quit. It just wasn’t my thing anymore, but either way I’m not sure if you’d want my help in the first place-”

“We want all the help we can get! Right?” Aaron says, looking around and giving everyone a scary look. Everyone else nods and agrees.

“Fine then, but don’t get mad at me for how I help you guys,” you say, shrugging.

“You heard them. I’m giving full reign to y/n during this,” Aaron says as you get up from the seated position on the floor. You nod and form a bright smile on your face.

“Luckily for you guys, I know pretty much all of Bboom Bboom and I’m gonna assume Sophie does as well?” You ask, surveying the room. Sophie nods enthusiastically. “You’ll be helping me teach it!” A dark look flashes across her face, but you choose to ignore it in favor of starting a quick warm up. You connect your phone to the speakers in the dance room and start playing something upbeat. “We’ll be warming up now! So get up and spread out!” You call out, waiting for them to follow your instructions. Surprisingly, they all do and you start warm ups. Soon after, you hear drum? drummer? begin to complain about having to stretch. You turn around to face them and see them struggling with a good old lunge.

“Do we have to?” One of them whines. Sometimes you wondered how Aaron dealt with them.

“It feels weird!” The other complains. You sigh, and think of a way to reprimand them, but then you have a great idea. You’re going to take a page out of Aaron’s book for this one.

“You guys can sit out stretches if you want. In fact, any of you can if you really want to. But if you pull, tear or hurt something, that’s your problem, not mine. So choose wisely between feeling a little uncomfortable and having a torn muscle,” you say, giving both of them a dirty look. They both gulp and get the message.

Once you finished up warm ups, you began to get started with teaching them the choreography. You weren’t expecting perfection at all, mainly because this just wasn’t their thing. Clearly none of them had ever stepped in a dance studio, except for probably Sophie. You still wanted to know about how she knew about your history on the dance team. After a mostly-productive practice, you call it a day and end it. You tell them when you would meet to practice for the talent show. After all, no one wants to make a fool of themself in front of their peers. However, while everyone was leaving, you asked Sophie to stay behind. She looked like a deer in headlights.

“Did I do something wrong?” She asks, clearly nervous.

“No! Not at all. I was just curious about something. You said that you knew that I was on the dance team and that I quit. I was just wondering how you knew since I don’t really talk about it and I don’t remember you being on the dance team either,” you explain. She nods.

“I tried out last year because my sister’s on the team and we’ve always danced together, but after I heard about some horror stories from the girls there, I tried my best to mess up my audition and just do marching band instead. I always did like band better than dance if I’m being honest,” she says. “Can I go now, or?” You nod, and she quickly exits. Were you that intimidating? Probably not considering that she’s been on the receiving end of Aaron’s pranks. You’ve always found it odd how he never did prank you, but then again he didn’t really prank anyone outside of drumline.

A voice calls you out of your deep thought. Speak of the devil. “What’s taking you so long? I’ve been waiting here for 5 minutes already!” He says. You could almost imagine him rolling his eyes and his expression immediately darkening.

“I’m just grabbing my stuff!” You say, rushing out now. You meet Aaron by the door of the dance room and see him scrolling through his phone.

“You ready?” He asks, pocketing his phone and grabbing his car keys.

“Mhm! I just had to get my stuff and ask Sophie something!” You say enthusiastically as you follow him into the parking lot. He raises his eyebrows and makes a face.

“Oh? What’d you have to ask her? Was she causing trouble? I could prank her for you-”

“It’s nothing! I was just curious about how she knew about my whole dance team thing. I think like 3 people in the band know. Well obviously more now, but you know?” You say. Aaron nods as you continue rambling. He knew the story and he was there for most of it when it happened. The two of you reach his car and you get it in on the passenger side. He always kept his car tidy which was to be expected, but was still nice. “How’d I do?” You ask as he pulls out of his parking spot. Since it was after dismissal time, the parking lot was basically empty except for the people staying for extracurriculars.

“Hm?” He asks, keeping his eyes on the road.

“I mean like, how’d I do with the whole dance thing today?”

“You were fine. I expected you to be a lot worse,” he says with his classic deadpan expression. You sigh. Were you really that out of practice? He notices your sigh and he laughs. “I’m just messing with you! You did great.”

“Are you sure? I feel like I was too mean,” you say, fidgeting with your hands and looking out the window.

“Nah. You could’ve been worse. I thought you were the right amount of strict,” he says, finally giving you a look. It was a genuine one this time.

“Was the dance too hard? It’s pretty easy, but we could always make it easier since some of you guys were struggling a little bit or Sophie and I could teach it slower since I know we both went pretty fast since we both already knew it-”

“It was fine, all it needs is some practice. Plus a little mess up or two isn’t the end of the world. It’ll be funny since the talent show isn’t too serious. I just think you need to relax a little bit,” he says, taking a hand off the wheel and placing it on top of yours. “Don’t stress yourself out about things you can’t control.” You nod at his words. The rest of the drive consisted of silence and Aaron’s playlist.

The two of you finally arrive at his house to work on a project that you two had been putting off because of marching band and other commitments. It was a simple research project that had to be presented in front of the class. It wasn’t too difficult, but something was distracting you. Maybe it was all the things that happened today, maybe it was the fact that you finally set foot in the dance room after practically being banished from it or maybe it was the fact that the boy next to you was only giving you silence. Either way, something was getting to you. You brush it off in favor of focusing on the project. It could be dealt with another day if it was truly that important.

—

Another day, another talent show rehearsal. Slowly but surely, there was less and less time until the talent show so that meant some logistics had to be discussed. First off was the age old question of what would everyone wear during the performance. However, this caused some dissent within the group. “I refuse to wear green!” Drum or Drummer complained. The other one agreed. Aaron was clearly not having it and let out a deep sigh.

“Just wear it. You’ll only have it on for 5 minutes max,” Aaron says, expression darkening. Drum and/or Drummer decided to shut up. They both nod and agree.

“Great! So now that’s settled, let’s do a run through! However, I will not be dancing in it and will just be watching you guys!” You say, sitting by the mirror in the dance room. Most of the drumline got nervous since you were who they’d watch for the choreography, but you were mostly just curious about their progress. “Sophie, get down here too! I think you should see your hard work as well!” She nods and takes the spot next to you. The boys get into their starting positions as you grab your phone and start the music. It goes off without a hitch! While there were some slip ups here and there, it was actually kind of good! You both applaud and go to join them! You’re definitely ready for the talent show. Afterwards, you and Aaron walk to his car in silence. He gives you a look as the two of you get in.

“What’s up?” You ask, confused.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he says, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot.

“Are you sure? You were giving me a look and everything,” you say. He clearly wasn’t listening to you since he turned his music up louder. “Seriously, is everything fine?” He shakes his head. You’ve never seen him like this before. It was almost as if he was upset? Panicky? Nervous?

“I heard a rumor involving you going around, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.” You give him a look to urge him to keep going.

“Who’d you hear it from? What’d they say?” You ask, eyebrows knit together as you tried to think. You didn’t really have many enemies. Sure a few people disliked you, but not enough to spread a rumor like that.

“I don’t know who started it, but Sophie told me about it the other day. So please just take my word and ignore people, even if they are saying things.” You nod as he continues driving.

–

That incident was odd to say the least. This may have been what you were distracted by the other day. Aaron would walk you to class and keep you out of sight from the prying eyes and the hushed whispers coming from everyone else. You were sick and tired of whatever was going on. You couldn’t even find out what people were saying. On the way home with Aaron the night before the talent show, you snapped. “What exactly is going on?” You ask him. He doesn’t reply. “With me and the whole rumor thing. What is it? What are they saying?” You question him.

“Nothing that isn’t going to make your worrying even worse. You’re already stressed about the talent show, focus on that. I can tell you about the rumors when we’re done,” was all he said. You sigh. Well obviously you want to know even more now.

–

It was finally the night of the talent show, and after successfully performing, Aaron pulled you aside. “What’s up?” You asked, clearly confused. You finally finished performing and you did it well. He lets out a sigh at your question and holds your face in his hands. The two of you stay that way in the wings, as you hear the distant sounds of Poptart and Alex’s magic act.

“You know that whole rumor thing? And how I wouldn’t tell you what it was and I kept you from finding out about it?” You nod. He continues, “Sophie heard from her sister that a couple girls from the dance team wanted to sabotage you before the talent show. Something about how if you wanted to dance that badly, you should’ve stayed on the team or something.” You let out a snort that eventually turned into a stream of laughter. Aaron was clearly confused. “Are you not worried that they’ll do something to you or-”

You wiped away a tear from laughter as you tried to respond. “No I’m not! To put it lightly, I think they’re just bitter about a bunch of people quitting so they’re making empty threats to cope with it,” you say, clasping your hands with his. “I’m going to be fine. We’re going to be fine,” you say, smiling.

“EW! YOU TWO NEED TO GET A ROOM!” Alex says as he and Poptart walk into the wings. You and Aaron give the kid a look. “This is why your pigeon pooped on you during your magic act,” Aaron says as Alex goes bright red.

“No it didn’t! It just left me a little gift!” Alex says, trying to defend himself. Poptart sighs as he leaves and lets the boy try to sputter out a response. He runs after him when he notices that he isn’t going to get out of this one. Once he’s gone, you and Aaron give each other a look and immediately begin laughing.

“Did his pigeon really poop on him?” You ask, tears in your eyes forming once more. He nods.

“I didn’t see it, but I definitely heard him go ‘Noooo! Why’d you poop on me! How am I gonna get this out of my hair!’” He says, mimicking the younger boy’s voice. You both laugh.

“Wanna get ice cream after this? It’ll be my treat since I made you worry so much about me,” you say with a smile on your face. He murmurs something that sounds a lot like a yes.

–

The two of you enter the ice cream shop with matching smiles on your faces as you both order. He gets coffee flavored ice cream and you get vanilla with a bunch of toppings. He lets out an amused chuckle at your excitement as you almost spill one of the many toppings on it. He wanted nothing more than to cherish this moment forever.

“Aaron?” Your voice breaks him out of his thoughts.

“Hm?” He hums, clearly enjoying his ice cream.

“Thank you.”

“For what exactly?” He smirks as you playfully roll your eyes at him.

“Just being you. And worrying about me even though you really didn’t have to,” you say sheepishly. You still felt kind of embarrassed that he’d be willing to do something like that for you, but you also felt grateful that you had someone like him. He nods and opens his mouth to speak, but quickly closes it. You tilt your head, bewildered.

“It’s nothing. I was just going to say the same thing you did,” he says, letting a smile light up his face. You didn’t really believe him and you both knew that he was keeping something to himself, but you both leave it at that. You enjoy the moment between the two of you while it lasts.

#aaron pace x reader #aaron pace #bandcamp boyfriend #bcb

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bllsbailey · 7 days

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Pure Gold: JD Vance Blasts Dem/Media Hypocrisy Over Rhetoric

Since Sunday's second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Democrats and the legacy media have been on overdrive in their efforts to blame Trump himself for the incident. One way or another, they must find a way to hang the threat of violence against Trump around his own neck, even if that means twisting logic into an unrecognizable pretzel and dispending with any effort at consistency.

Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), had his hands full Sunday (prior to the attempt), making the rounds on the Sunday shows and going toe-to-toe with the likes of Dana Bash and her partisan fervor.

Monday evening, Vance took to X and, in the way that only Vance could, eloquently and pointedly laid bare the hypocrisy and utter, well, as my colleague Ward Clark might describe it, bovine excrement emitting from Dems and the media in response to the second attempt in two months to assassinate a former (and possible future) president.

Yesterday, Donald J. Trump nearly lost his life. An armed gunman waited for him in the bushes. He brought a go-pro camera to record it. A secret service agent spotted the barrel of a gun through a fence and shot at the gunman. The gunman fled. He was caught. And now we slowly learn about him and his motive.

President Trump is my running mate, and my friend, but he is more importantly a father and grandfather to people who love him very much. I want him to have many more years with his family. (And selfishly, I'd like many more with my own.)

I admire the president for calling for peace and calm. The rhetoric is out of control. It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed a few years ago. It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice. But I want to say something about yesterday's news, and how it illuminates the difference between vigorous debate and violent rhetoric.

Here is what we know so far: Kamala Harris has said that "Democracy is on the line" in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed, and used the exact same phrase. He had a Kamala Harris bumper sticker on his truck. He was obsessed with Ukraine's "fight for Democracy" and absorbed many unhinged views about the Russia-Ukraine war. HIs name is Ryan Routh, and he donated 19 times to Democrat causes and zero to Republican ones.

How do you think the Democrats and their media allies would respond if a 19-time Republican donor tried to kill a Democratic official? It's a question that answers itself. For years, Kamala Harris's campaign surrogates have said things like "Trump has to be eliminated." And how have their media allies responded to the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in as many months?

NBC News called the attempted assassination a "golf club incident." The LA Times told us "Trump Targeted at Golf Club." The USA Today's top of the fold headline is "Hope in America," and they published a preposterous letter to the editor arguing that Trump "brings these assassination attempts on himself." CNN's Dana Bash--who just yesterday bizarrely accused me of inciting a bomb threat--said today that Harris campaign rhetoric didn't motivate Routh even though he echoed their rhetoric explicitly.

PBS's weekend show perfectly illustrates the double standard of Kamala Harris's media friends. After spending 30 seconds on the second assassination attempt on President Trump, they then focused on the real danger: me and President Trump, who are, according to them, personally responsible for bomb threats against Springfield. Of course, I repeatedly condemend those threats. And reports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not--as the media suggested--a deranged Trump fan.

The double standard is breathtaking. Donald Trump and I are, by their account, directly responsible for bomb threats from foreign countries. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what residents told us about the problems in their town. Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot.

This seems like a double standard. But at a deep level, it is entirely consistent.

Consider Springfield. Citizens are telling us that there are problems. These include the undeniable truths of higher car accidents, unaffordable housing, evictions of residents, overcrowded hospitals, overstressed schools, and rising rates of disease. They also include the infamous pet stories--which, again, multiple people have spoken about (either on video or to me or my staff).

Kamala Harris's first strategy was to ignore these people and their concerns. Yes, she had prevented the deportation of millions of illegal aliens, and some of them made their way to Springfield. But it was a small town with no voice. Some of the local leadership even loved the cheap labor. So the suffering of thousands of American citizens went ignored.

Their next move with these stories is censorship. In Springfield, a psychopath (or a foreign government) calls in a bomb threat, so they blame that on President Trump (and me). The threat of violence is disgraceful of course, yet the media seems to relish it. They cover a bomb threat, but not the rise in murders. They cover the threat, but not the HIV uptick. They cover the threat, not the schools overwhelmed with new kids who don't speak English. They cover the threat, not rising insurance rates or the car accidents that caused them. They cover the threat, not the failures of Kamala Harris's leadership.

The purpose is not to turn down the rhetoric. If anything, covering the bomb threats gives whoever makes them exactly what he wants: attention. The purpose is distraction and shame. How dare you talk about the problems of Haitian migration in Springfield? You're endangering people, simply by discussing the problems of Kamala Harris's policies. It's a form of moral blackmail, designed not to make anyone safe but to shut everyone up.

Springfield is the most recent, but hardly the most egregious example. There was the Hunter Biden laptop story, censored by BigTech. And who can forget that anyone who didn't support Kamala Harris's Ukraine policy was drenched in the blood of Ukrainian children. That last one appears to have had some effect on Routh--the most recent would-be assassin. The message is always the same: don't you dare express an opinion on the public affairs of your nation. The message is: shut up.

This is the difference between debate--even aggressive debate--and censorship. It is one thing to attack Kamala Harris for "destroying the country" and quite another to say that President Trump should be "eliminated." It is one thing to criticize overheated rhetoric, and another to say that a former president has invited an assassination on himself. It is one thing to say that Donald J. Trump's arguments about the election of 2020 are wrong; it is another thing to attempt to remove him from the ballot over it.

It is one thing to say that pets are not, in fact being eaten, and another thing to say that anyone who disagrees is trying to murder people. Dissent, even vigorous dissent, is a great tradition of the United States. Censorship is not.

For the next 7 weeks of this campaign, I will vigorously defend your right to speak your mind. I believe you have every right to criticize me and Donald J. Trump, even if you say terrible or untrue things about us. But when I ask you to "tone down the rhetoric" it's not about being nice--our citizens have every right to be mean, even if I don't like it--or empty platitudes.

Instead, I'm asking all of us to reject censorship. Reject the idea that you can control what other people think and say. Embrace persuasion of your fellow citizens over silencing them--either through the powers of Big Tech or through moral blackmail.

I think this will make our public debate much better. But there's something else. Reject censorship and you reject political violence. Embrace censorship, and you will inevitably embrace violence on its behalf.

The reason is simple. The logic of censorship leads directly to one place, for there is only one way to permanently silence a human being: put a bullet in his brain.

Vance nails it. "The logic of censorship leads directly to one place" — and that's a dark, awful place. The Dems and their media parrots are so very fond of saying, "Democracy is on the ballot" in the upcoming election. I disagree. Freedom is.

Bring on October 1 and the vice presidential debate.

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mybluudyvalentine · 2 years

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first post is me spin dumping lol...

ok so. heres my silly two cents im putting on the table abt sarah lynn and bojack and how bojack "ruined her life."

saur, i personally dont think HE HIMSELF ruined it, but he likely was a piece of it. i say this because sarah lynn looked at bojack like a father figure, not just because he played her "tv dad" but because he was what she saw as a strong male role model. her father was never mentioned, so its assumed hes out of the picture. she has her stepfather but it was heavily implied that he abused her throughout her childhood, and her mother micromanaged her career and her identity, so sarah lynn had a really hard time developing a sense of self. bojack was a person that appeared very often throughout her life, even staying with him for a little while. in the first episode that she says with him, boajck does (indirectly) say that he is sort of playing out his childhood how he wanted it to be and also fixing sarah lynn's childhood. sarah lynn nor bojack had a good childhood, so they were kind of like feeding into each other in a way? i wouldnt say they brung out the worst in each other but one was definitely not great for the other. bojack saw himself in sarah lynn, which was why he stuck around her so much; its really obvious that bojack struggles with relationships, platonic and romantic. he struggles with himself and it reflects outward with self sabotage etc etc. even in her childhood she looked to be genuine friends with bojack, trying to hang out with him whenever she could, on set or off set; but she was always denied (obviously, she was like 7 and he was 30ish maybe. weird age gap).

not just during her childhood, but following into adulthood she sought out that fatherly figure from bojack, if not looking for a father, she was seeking guidance from a familiar person, someone she'd trusted and looked up to for years. and she wasn't wrong for seeking mentorship. but her and bojack were both struggling, not just with addiction but many other problems. they both had no sense of self, both struggling with their identity and internal conflicts. bojack wasnt prepared or equipped to save sarah lynn, he could hardly save himself.

i do think for a fact that bojack took advantage of sarah lynn. even if unintentional, he did it. even though they were both high and drunk bojack still shouldve took initiative and told her no. she came to him for guidance. pretty sure it was even explicitly stated that she needed a responsible adult to say no to her, and thats what he didnt do. i think its because (as i stated earlier) bojack comes from an abusive home where he was neglected and constantly told no. he was berated and essentially bullied for his entire childhood, and he was trying to do the total opposite for sarah lynn. he wanted her to feel what he wanted when he was a child, free. he literally never said no, even when sarah lynn's friends drill through a wall and painting to make a sex closet (or whatever) he still didnt say no. not just in that example but he never does. he wanted to parent her with a freedom approach to fulfill his childhood as well as hers. he was broken, trying to fix her and save himself.

about her overdose/death, i dont htink he was the exact cause of it but he was responsible in a way. in the beginning of the episode where sarah lynn overdoses, its revealed that she's 9 months sober, but then bojack invited her on a bender. i think he was partially responsible for this but not exactly. sarah lynn was prone to gettting sober to get a better high when she relapsed. during the bender, sarah lynn expresses multiple problems and struggles that she's been battling internally. whenever theses concerns are brought to bojacks attention instead of directly addressing them he distracts her. he never really discusses her problems or how she feel, nor does he confront her about her addiction and other obvious problems she's been having, causing her to further bury her issues under her substance abuse (tbc)

#bojack horseman #bjhm #sarah lynn

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cuddles-and-kisses · 3 years

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So The Cat's Out Of The Bag,,,

Another fanfic for Agapito (an OC that belongs to @yandereaffections) The story starts under the cut. Hope you enjoy!

Word count: 1,908 Trigger Warnings: Subtle yandereness, I can't think of any others

It’s 11 pm. I’ve been avoiding schoolwork all day and I’m in no rush to fix it. I've been writing fanfiction, of sorts, for the past 3 hours. On the bright side, the first draft is done! My back hurts from sitting so long while my butt hurts because I’ve sat on a wooden stool this long. I need to take a break but what to do? Oh, what to do? My weekly planner is wide open on a bookstand to my right. I could be productive, or I could keep avoiding them... So the planner is closed now. I’ve reorganized pens in a pen cup for the seventh time. Is there a limit to how many times a person can adjust a desk lamp before going insane? There has to be something else to do but what? As if on cue, my phone lights up with a text from my Baby. We’ve been official for 6 months so our dates are a lot more casual nowadays.

“Angel, I want attention. Unlock the back door” I’m aware it doesn’t seem like it but this is how he asks to come over. He won’t come over until I respond giving the green light. “Bold of you to assume I’m home and not partying at a random frat house” We both know I’m not doing jack at 11 pm on a Friday. Nonetheless, it’s fun to pretend I have a flourishing social life. “That’s cute. Back door please” Alright, now to get up and- ow, fuck, ouchie, ok, hold on. *POP* There we go!

I should probably pick my room up real quick. I made my bed earlier today so that’s not a problem. The svallerup rug from Ikea collects dirt a lot faster than I expected. Although would he really notice? It’s not bright in here. My dresser by the door looks fine. The futon is in couch mode, so there’s not much left I don’t have to clean up for him. In reality, I’m not cleaning for him, I just like having a clean room. The last thing I do is turn on the fairy lights above my head then light a vanilla candle. I know he’s coming over to cuddle or really do anything involving him getting affection. I might as well make my bedroom reflect that, right?

I half-jog upstairs to unlock our back door. Why the back door? It’s not because I love Jesus. Let me explain. The living room floor creaks way too loud. Also, my parent’s bedroom is right next to that door. The side door alerts our dogs to start pitching a fit. How can they hear it from the opposite side of our house? I may never be able to understand. Moonlight drifts halfway across the backroom. Sparse nightlights cover the remaining needed light. I flick on the backdoor lights followed by opening a few blinds to let more light in. Their orange glow overpowers the moonlight near the backdoor.

For whatever reason, the moon is far brighter tonight. Or my pupils are hella dilated because I’m thinking about my Baby. Either way, moonlight dusts over parts of the backroom and kitchen ahead of me. One last light to turn on. An LED light above our kitchen sink smashes through most surrounding darkness, making it almost impossible to see into the living room. White cabinets outline our kitchen. None of the cabinets match each other in this house. It’s as if this house was built in parts instead of planned out from the start. The counter is occupied with things you’d expect; a bread box, knife set, fruit basket, coffee pot, and an air fryer. Yet, there's evidence real people live here. Crumbs from a snack, mail by the fruit basket, half-empty coffee pot, as well as children’s toys forgotten all about

Everyone else is snuggled up in warm beds, sleeping. I can pick out each person’s snoring pattern when they poke through tonight’s ambiance. There are moments where quiet feels like serenity, others where it feels like emptiness. I can’t decide which one I’m feeling because I realize I’m about to have a visitor. A cup of coffee sounds like the perfect way to waste a few minutes while waiting for my lover.

Coffee cup out of the overhead cabinet. A coffee spoon from beside the coffee pot. Fake sugar off the shelves. Room temperature coffee in the pot from this morning. French vanilla coffee creamer out of the fridge. And just like that, a proper cup of coffee is served. Light reflects off the glossy coating painted over our pale coffee cups. Mom considers it a priority to have everything match or look cohesive. Appearing put together is a source of pride for her. A cup is a cup however matching cups make her happy. My ears perk up at hearing his tires pulling into the driveway. My coffee creamer swirls in the cup as he walks up the driveway. The coffee spoon clings against the inside of my coffee cup simultaneously with the creak of our back gate. All that’s left is to wash off this week’s coffee spoon then put it back. I have only a few more seconds until my Love is with me again. I’m a sappy and hopeful romantic for him, get off my back. He’s learned how to silently open the back door and if I didn’t have good peripheral vision, I would’ve yelped.

Intimate hands snake around my hips as a tender kiss is pressed against my neck. I can feel the tender smile tugging at his lips after the kiss, he had a really good day? His body is pressed against mine as he murmurs “Honey, I’m home~” behind my ear; earning a soft chuckle from me. I turn to face him, wrap my arms around his neck, and greet him with a deep kiss. This time on the lips. “Welcome home, my Love.” He’s so close to me, I can smell the cigarette he had on his way over here. The absence of alcohol or weed stench affirms he didn’t have a bad day at work. I can’t wait until these interactions become a daily occurrence. This man is breathtaking under normal circumstances; but, under the glimmer of moonlight,,, I can’t form a single thought while looking at him. The raw admiration and love this man holds in his eyes? Who could stand a chance against him? Not me. Wrong choice.

His hands linger along the sides of my hips. I hold his arms in an attempt to keep him close to me, just a little longer. “I brought you a few things. I’ll go set them on your desk.” He knows gifts aren’t my thing in spite of that he claims I deserve the entire universe. I breathed out, “Ok, I’ll be down in a minute,” then started moving to get my coffee cup, as well as a few snacks to bring downstairs. He starts heading downstairs content with how flustered I am. WAIT A FLUFFING MINUTE THE FANFICTION IS ABOUT HIM!! I whisper yell ‘Baby’ until his head pops back around the corner. I threaten him to not touch or look at my laptop. It was a pathetic attempt considering what he does for a living. In my defense, I tried. I forgot he’s in essence an overgrown teenager who will do the exact opposite of what he’s told. Wanna know what he does? Grin. I’m so fucked.

Agapito dashes downstairs and leaves me in unadulterated fear. I’m frozen in place, trying to come to terms with my fate as his footsteps fade. It’s not smut or anything, just a simple night and morning routine imagining that we lived together. This is going to be so embarrassing. Please spare me this treacherous fate and undying embarrassment. Deep breaths, just take deep breaths. Get your coffee then snacks then, simply, accept what’s just happened.

With arms full of snacks, I shut my bedroom door as gingerly as I can. Setting the cup on the dresser right by the door to make this a little easier. He’s standing at my computer, reading through the last page. Oh hey, he brought me Rolo’s as well as 3 Musketeers. Nice! Oh wait, he’s done reading. His shoulders aren’t tense; his breathing hasn’t changed; all the same, he’s just standing there. “Why did you write this out instead of doing it?” That’s a good question tbh. My Baby’s voice sounds hurt, despite that, he’s trying to hide it. Ok, he needs a hug. Now to throw the snack on the bed. He needs a rib-crushing hug and you bet your butt I’ll be the one to deliver. I tug at his elbow so he’ll face me then pull him into me. His shoulders are right under my chin when we’re facing each other. I bury my face in his neck while my arms hug him as tight as I can. Except why is he upset about this?

His love for me is nothing to scoff at. He loves me the same way he wanted to be loved when he was younger. We’ve figured out he’s catching up from his pre-teen years and onward. So about 13 years without a stable romantic relationship. When he was trying to court me I had to call him out all the time for manipulation. I know he’s terrified I’ll think he’s not good enough. He has episodes of frantic attempts to meet all of my needs, even if it’s not asked for or needed. What is going through his head? Does he feel like he’s not good enough? That he’s not loving me enough so I have to turn to a fictional version of him? Does he think he’s not good enough for me to do this stuff with him? None of those are true, obviously. I explicitly stated that in the story he just read. It doesn’t mean he won’t get stuck inside his head. I need to tell him the truth. Even if I wanted to lie, I couldn’t, he’s a finely-tuned human lie detector. One more deep breath. Squeeze him a little tighter. Look him in his eyes and come clean.

“The reason I didn’t just act these out is because, I didn’t know how to ask for it.” His expression shifts from confused hurt to understanding. I start rambling, “I want to have these experiences with you. I’d give anything to have that life with you but we've only been dating for 6 months and I just, wasn’t sure, how to phrase it.” I’m choking on my own pulse from emotions. I realize I was shifting my weight left to right when he pulls me in for another hug and kisses my forehead. We stand there in each other’s embrace for a few moments before he suggests I come to his house tomorrow night. We both know what he’s suggesting. I can’t help but adamantly agree. Excitement zips through my body thinking about tomorrow night. A smile pulls at my lips as I ask, “Do you mind if I wear this shirt tomorrow night?”

Tonight is about Netflix, snacks, and rediscovering the curves and contours of each other’s bodies. Though, not before I mess up his hair while calling him a butthead. It’s evident his insecurities are still tugging at him. Funny enough, his insecurities forgot they’re fighting against me for his attention.

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cappymightwrite · 3 years

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What are your thoughts on Ned Stark ?

Hi!

I have conflicted feelings on Ned. Probably just below Stannis, he's the Westerosi man most in need of therapy, in my opinion. Actually, that's an interesting comparison — Ned and Stannis, which I know has been commented on before. They're alike in many ways, in terms of reserve etc., which makes the fact that Robert saw Ned as his true brother all the more painful to Stannis (though of course this is never explicitly stated). But anyway, back to Ned.

There's certain things I struggle with in regards to Ned, even though I understand the reasoning behind his actions, or rather, inaction. So, it makes thinking back on him in a wholly positive and fond light somewhat difficult, as I suppose it must be for Sansa in a way, as well as for Jon, once his parentage is revealed. I don't wholly dislike him though, I actually value him a lot, I just take issue with:

Him never apparently trusting Catelyn enough to be honest about Jon's parentage (+ the way he avoids telling Jon, to some extent)

No matter how loving they were... there is this unresolved (and now forever unresolved) barrier at the heart of their relationship, an unequal exchange of trust, which was within Ned's power to lift, to make fully mutual. But he didn't. Now, he had his reasons, self-sacrificing and seemingly honourable as they may appear, and certainly the narrative required this secret to be kept. But even so, in terms of how I regard his character? It rubs me the wrong way because he never gave her the opportunity to sympathise and fully understand him, he cut himself off from that. And yeah, maybe it might not have improved Jon's situation all that much, but he never gave Cat the opportunity to think of him differently, in a way that wasn't dictated by the social mores of their world:

It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.

That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again.

Whoever Jon's mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away. It was the one thing she could never forgive him. She had come to love her husband with all her heart, but she had never found it in her to love Jon. She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned's sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse. – AGOT, Catelyn II

"It was the one thing she could never forgive him" — yeah, me too honey! Ok, sure, we don't know for sure if Cat might have "overlooked" Jon's uneasy place in their household "for Ned's sake", if she knew he was actually her nephew — the world would still believe him to be Ned's, so to outward appearances the awkwardness is still there. And yeah, we don't know if she could have "found it in her to love Jon", but the truth certainly would have made it far more likely! But Ned decided that it had to be this way, that only he could participate in carrying this secret. So, I hurt for Cat AND Jon really.

I get why he doesn't tell Jon the truth. I understand his warped logic, how the trauma of his past informs this sort of self-punishing mentality of I must keep this honourable promise made of love till the day I die even though to the outside world it will appear as a stain upon that very honour... and to punish myself further for failing Lyanna I will never unburden myself to anyone, this is my cross to bear alone. I understand that, it's very manpain-y. But the problem is... it doesn't just punish Ned, it punishes Cat and Jon, and his other children too! Because they are by no means blind to this elephant in the room of their parent's marriage, and it's hard to rationalise:

He looked at her uncomfortably. "My aunt Allyria says Lady Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal—"

"That's not so. He loved my lady mother." – ASOS, Arya VIII

Your father loved your mother, but he also had a child with another woman, whose identity he would never talk about. Your father loved your mother, but his dedication to this secret ultimately trumped being fully honest and open with her. It's hard not to feel that Ned's present came second to making up for the "sins" of his past. This is why he desperately needed therapy, lol, because (to take a line from my Byronic Hero meta) Ned's "traumatic past informs his present life," and to the detriment of that present life and those present relationships as well. But hey, that's the tragedy.

Also, I think his whole I'll tell you the truth when I next see you to Jon is really sketchy, because when exactly might that be, Ned? An avoidance tactic if I ever saw one. But really, I don't think he'd be emotionally equipped to have that conversation anyway... he might have said he'd tell him someday, but deep down, I'm sure he hoped he may never have to. And then he conveniently dies, taking the secret with him (or so we think)!

Allowing the death of Lady

Bran's wolf had saved the boy's life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa's, and for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done? – AGOT, Eddard IV

"And for what?" Yes, quite. I don't really have much to say on this... I think this passage speaks for itself. There's probably some other things I could talk about, but those are my main two gripes.

That being said... what I value about Ned are his words of wisdom

The thing about Ned, for me, is that despite the unmaliciously meant pain he inflicts on his loved ones (which I do understand the reasoning behind, the trauma that informs it etc)... he's still ultimately a figure of hope to me, a notably flawed, but no less significant, ideal within the narrative too. And I think you need that — we need the memory of Ned as readers, and so do the Starklings. So, I love him more for what he represents, rather than his parenting and lacklustre husbanding skills. I value the fundamental truths he emphasises through his words, and the legacy of those words, embodied within his children.

For example:

"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa… Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you… and I need both of you, gods help me." – AGOT, Arya II

Honestly, people can "squabble" about which Stark sibling is more important, more this, more that, till the cows come home. But that's what it is... "squabbles", and it misses the mark completely about why the Starks are the heart of the series. They are the Starks, plural. They may be different from one another, but they are "pack", and come winter, (TWOW, to be exact), once reunited they will "protect one another, keep each other warm, share [their] strengths", because those are the values Ned taught them.

These are the things to remember, despite all the hellishness. This is why Ned's death wasn't in vain, it wasn't an edgy twist, or the first whiff of grimdark... because his legacy didn't end with him, it lives on, it is felt throughout the series, right up until the most recent book:

"Be that as it may. My father sat where I sit now when Lord Eddard came to Sisterton. Our maester urged us to send Stark's head to Aerys, to prove our loyalty. It would have meant a rich reward. The Mad King was open-handed with them as pleased him. By then we knew that Jon Arryn had taken Gulltown, though. Robert was the first man to gain the wall, and slew Marq Grafton with his own hand. 'This Baratheon is fearless,' I said. 'He fights the way a king should fight.' Our maester chuckled at me and told us that Prince Rhaegar was certain to defeat this rebel. That was when Stark said, 'In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads, it's true… but what if we prevail?' My father sent him on his way with his head still on his shoulders. 'If you lose,' he told Lord Eddard, 'you were never here.'" – ADWD, Davos I

I love this line so much, and I love that it comes from Ned, that just as we are gearing up to head into the darkest parts of the series (because Winds is apparently going to be very dark)... we have this light, this hope, this "what if we prevail?" And it's connected to this repeated refrain about the certainty of winter — "in this world only winter is certain" vs. "winter is coming" — which is closely tied to Ned as a character. So, yes, "winter is coming", but don't be decieved into thinking that that spells disaster, that no warmth can be found, for there is always darkness before the dawn, just as there is always a winter before the spring... and in the winter the wolves shall "keep each other warm", they will "prevail."

In conclusion

Whatever his flaws and mistakes, and there are several, at the end of the day... I will love Ned for giving us hope, for reminding the readers, and characters, of what is really important — to take strength from your loved ones, to give them strength in return, and to not give into despair, no matter how harshly the snows might fall and white winds blow. Yes, it's not certain whether they'll live, but likewise, it's not certain whether they'll die either... and that's where you find the hope, the light against the grim dark.

So, for me, he's a character who makes my heart sink, but then he makes it swell again. That's the duality, and it's a choice which you put most stock in... I'll choose the hope he inspires every time ;)

#ned stark #eddard stark #cappy's thoughts #starklings #anti grimdark all the way babeyyyy

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justmenoworries · 4 years

Text

Not Up For Interpretation - An Essay On Nonbinary - Erasure

(Trigger Warning: Misgendering, Transphobia, Nonbinary-phobia)

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know this was a long time coming. I’ve made several posts about my frustrations concerning this topic and how much it hurt me just how socially accepted erasing an entire identity still is. While representation marches on and things have become better for nonbinary people as a whole, we still battle with a lot of prejudice - both intentional and unintentional.

In this essay, I want to discuss just how our identities are being erased almost daily, why that is harmful and hurtful and what we all can do to change that.

Chapters:

What does Non-binary mean?

Nonbinary- representation in media

So what’s the problem?

How do we fix it?

1. What Does Non-binary Mean?

Non-binary is actually an umbrella term. It includes pretty much every gender-identity that’s neither one or the other so to speak, for example, agender.

Agender means feeling detachment from the gender spectrum in general. If you’re agender, you most likely feel a distance to the concept of gender as a whole, that it doesn’t define you as a person.

There are many identities that classify under non-binary: There’s gender-fluid (you feel you have a gender, but it’s not one gender specifically and can change), demi-gender (identifying as a gender partially, but not completely) and many others.

Sometimes, multiple non-binary identities can mix and match.

Most non-binary people use they/them pronouns, but like with so many things, it varies.

Some nonbinary-people (like me) go by two pairs of pronouns. I go by both she/her and they/them, because it’s what feels most comfortable at the moment. But who knows, maybe in the future I’ll switch to they/them exclusively or expand to he/him.

There is no one defining non-binary experience. Nb-people are just as varied and different as binary people, who go by one specific gender.

There are non-binary people who choose to go solely by she/her or he/him and that’s okay too. It doesn’t make them any more or less non-binary and their identity is still valid.

If your head’s buzzing a bit by now: That’s okay. It’s a complicated topic and no one expects you to understand all of it in one chapter of one essay.

Just know this: If a person identifies as non-binary, you should respect their decision and use the pronouns they go with.

It’s extremely hurtful to refer to someone who already told you that they use they/them pronouns with she/her or he/him, or use they/them to refer to a person who uses she/her.

Think about it like using a trans-person’s deadname: It’s rude, it’s harmful and it shows complete disrespect for the person.

Non-binary people have existed for a very long time. The concept isn’t new. The idea that there are only two genders, with every other identity being an aberration to the norm, is largely a western idea, spread through colonialism.

The Native American people use “Two-Spirit” to describe someone who identifies neither as a man nor a woman. The term itself is relatively new, but the concept of a third gender is deeply rooted in many Native American cultures.

(Author’s Note: If you are not Native American, please do not use it. That’s cultural appropriation.)

In India, the existence of a third gender has always been acknowledged and there are many terms specifically for people who don’t identify with the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

If you’re interested in learning more about non-binary history and non-binary identities around the world, I’d recommend visiting these websites:

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/History_of_nonbinary_gender

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender-variant_identities_worldwide

https://thetempest.co/2020/02/01/history/the-history-of-nonbinary-genders-is-longer-than-you-think/

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/gender-variance-around-the-world

Also, maybe consider giving this book a try:

Nonbinary Gender Identities: History, Culture, Resources by Charlie Mcnabb

2. Non-binary Representation In Media

The representation of non-binary people in mainstream media hasn’t been... great, to put it mildly.

Representation, as we all know, is important.

Not only does it give minorities a chance to see themselves in media and feel heard and acknowledged. It also normalizes them.

For example, seeing a black Disney-princess was a huge deal for many black little girls, because they could finally say there was someone there who looked like them. They could see that being white wasn’t a necessity to be a Disney princess.

Seeing a canonically LGBT+ character in a children’s show teaches kids that love is love, no matter what gender you’re attracted to. At the same time, older LGBT+ viewers will see themselves validated and heard in a movie that features on-screen LGBT+ heroes.

There’s been some huge steps in the right direction in the last few years representation-wise.

Not only do we have more LGBT+ protagonists and characters in general, we’ve also begun to question and call out harmful or bigoted portrayals of the community in media, such as “Bury Your Gays” or the “Depraved Homosexual”.

With that being said: Let’s take a look at how Non-binary representation holds up in comparison, shall we?

This is Double Trouble, from the children’s show “She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power”.

They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns. They’re also a slimy, duplicitous lizard-person who can change their shape at will.

Um, yeah.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Did I mention they’re also the only non-binary character in the entire show? And that they’re working with a genocidal dictator in most of the episodes they’re in?

Yikes.

Let’s look at another example.

These three (in order of appearance) are Stevonnie, Smoky Quartz and Shep. Three characters appearing in the kid’s show “Steven Universe” and it’s epilogue series “Steven Universe: Future”.

All of them identify as non-binary and use they/them as pronouns.

Stevonnie and Smoky Quartz are the result of a boy and a girl being fused together through weird alien magic.

Shep is a regular human, but they only appeared in one episode. In an epilogue series that only hardcore fans actually watched.

Well, I mean...

One out of three isn’t that bad, right?

Maybe we should pick an example from a series for older viewers.

Say hello to Doppelganger, a non-binary superhuman who goes by they/them, from the Amazon-series “The Boys”.

They’re working for a corrupt superhero-agency and use their power of shape-shifting to trick people who pose a threat to said agency into having sex with them. And then blackmail those people with footage of said sex.

....

Do I even need to say it?

If you’ve paid attention during the listing of these examples, you might have noticed a theme.

Namely that characters canonically identifying as non-binary are either

supernatural in some way, shape or form,

barely have a presence in the piece of media they’re in,

both.

Blink-and-you-miss-it-manner of representation aside, the majority of these characters fall squarely under what we call “Othering”.

“Othering” describes the practice of portraying minorities as supernatural creatures or otherwise inhuman. Or to say it bluntly: As “The Other”.

“Othering” is a pretty heinous method. Not only does it portray minorities as inherently abnormal and “different in a bad way”. It also goes directly against what representation is actually for: Normalizing.

As a general rule of thumb: If your piece of media has humans in it, but the only representation of non-white, non-straight people are explicitly inhuman... yeah, that’s bad.

So is there absolutely no positive representation for us out there?

Not quite.

As rare as human non-binary characters in media are to find, they do exist.

Here we have Bloodhound! A non-binary human hunter who uses they/them pronouns, from the game “Apex Legends”.

It’s been confirmed by the devs and the voice actress that they’re non-binary.

Nice!

These are Frisk (bottom) and Chara (top) from the game “Undertale”. While their exact gender identity hasn’t been disclosed, they both canonically use they/them pronouns, so it’s somewhere on the non-binary spectrum.

Two human children who act as the protagonist (Frisk) and antagonist (Chara), depending on how you play the game. (Interpretations vary on the antagonist/protagonist-thing, to say the least.)

Cool!

......

And, yep, that’s it.

As my little demonstration here showed, non-binary representation in media is rare. Good non-binary representation is even rarer.

Which is why those small examples of genuinely good representation are so important to the Non-binary community!

It’s hard enough to have to prove you exist. It’s even harder to prove your existence is not abnormal or unnatural.

If you’d like to further educate yourself on representation, it’s impact on society and why it matters, perhaps take a second to read through these articles:

https://www.criticalhit.net/opinion/representation-media-matters/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/why-on-screen-representation-matters-according-to-these-teens

https://jperkel.github.io/sciwridiversity2020/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/05/22/why-is-equal-representation-in-media-important/?sh=25f2ccc92a84

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-representation-the-media-matters

3. So What’s The Problem?

The problem, as is the case with so many things in the world, is prejudice.

Actually, that’s not true.

There’s not a problem, there are multiple problems. And their names are prejudice, ignorance and bigotry.

Remember how I said human non-binary representation is rare?

Yeah, very often media-fans don’t help.

Let’s take for example, the aforementioned Frisk and Chara from “Undertale”.

Despite the game explicitly using they/them to refer to both characters multiple times, the majority of players somehow got it into their heads that Frisk’s and Chara’s gender was “up for interpretation”.

There is a huge amount of fan art straight-up misgendering both characters and portraying them as binary and using only he/him or she/her pronouns.

The most egregious examples are two massively popular fan-animated web shows: “Glitchtale”, by Camila Cuevas and “Underverse” by Jael Peñaloza.

Both series are very beloved by the Undertale-fanbase and even outside of it. Meaning for many people, those two shows might be their first introduction to “Undertale” and it’s two non-binary human characters.

Take a wild guess what both Camila and Jael did with Frisk and Chara.

Underverse, X-Tale IV:

(Transcript: “Frisk lied to me in the worst possible way... I... I will never forgive him.”)

Underverse, X-Tale V:

(Transcript: “I-It’s Chara... and it’s a BOY.”)

Glitchtale, My Promise:

(Transcript: (Referring to Frisk) “I’m not scared of an angry boy anymore.”)

Glitchtale, Game Over Part 1:

(Transcript: (Referring to Chara) “It’s ok little boy.”)

This... this isn’t okay.

Not only do both of these pieces of fan-art misgender two non-binary characters, the creators knew beforehand that Frisk and Chara use they/them-pronouns, but made the conscious choice to ignore that.

To be fair, in a video discussing “Underverse”, Jael said that only X-Tale Frisk and Chara, the characters you see in the Underverse-examples above, are male, while the characters Frisk and Chara from the main game remained non-binary and used they/them (time-stamp 10:34).

Still, that doesn’t erase the fact that Jael made up alternate versions of two non-binary characters specifically to turn them male. Or that, while addressing the issue, Jael was incredibly dismissive and even mocked the people who felt hurt by her turning two non-binary characters male. Jael also went on to make a fairly non-binary-phobic joke in the video, in which she equated gender identities beyond male and female to identifying as an object.

Jael (translated): “I don’t care if people say the original Frisk and Chara are male, female, helicopters, chairs, dogs or cats, buildings, clouds...”

That’s actually a very common joke among transphobes, if not to say the transphobe-joke:

“Oh, you identify as X? Well then I identify as an attack helicopter!”

If you’re trans, chances are you’ve heard this one, or a variation of it, a million times before.

I certainly have.

I didn’t laugh then and I’m not laughing now.

(Author’s note: I might be angry at both of them for what they did, but I do not, under any circumstances, support the harassment of creators. If you’re thinking about sending either Jael or Camila hate-mail - don’t. It won’t help.)

Jael’s reaction is sadly common in the Undertale fandom. Anyone speaking up against Chara’s and Frisk’s identity being erased is immediately bludgeoned with the “up for interpretation”-argument, despite that not once being the case in the game.

And even with people who do it right and portray Frisk and Chara as they/them, you’ll have dozens of commenters swarming the work with sentences among the lines of “Oh but I think Frisk is a boy/girl! And Chara is a girl/boy!”

By the way, this kind of thing only happens to Frisk and Chara.

Every other character in “Undertale” is referred to and portrayed with their proper pronouns of she/her or he/him.

But not the characters who go by they/them.

Their gender is “up for interpretation”.

Because obviously, their identity couldn’t possibly be canonically non-binary.

Sadly, Frisk and Chara are not alone in this.

Remember Bloodhound?

And how I said they’d been confirmed as non-binary and using they/them pronouns by both the creators and the voice actress?

It seems for many players, that too translated to “up for interpretation”.

(Transcript: “does it matter what they call him? He, her, it, they toaster oven, it doesn’t matter”)

(Transcript: “I’m like 90 % sure Bloodhound is a dude because he could just sound like a girl and by their age that I’m assuming looks around 10-12 because I’ve known many males who have sounded like a female when they were younger”)

(Transcript: “I don’t care it will always be a He. F*ck that non-binary bullsh*t.”)

(Transcript: “Bloodhound is clearly female.”)

(Transcript: “I’m not calling a video game character they/them”)

(Transcript: “exactly. The face was never fully shown neither was the gender so I’d say it means that the player is Bloodhound. So it’s your gender and you refer to “him” as yourself. It’s like a self insertion in my eyes.”)

So, let me get this straight:

If a character, even a player character, uses she/her or he/him, you can accept it, no questions asked.

But when a character uses they/them, suddenly their identity and gender are “up for interpretation”?

This attitude is also widely prevalent in real life.

Many languages only include pronouns for men and women, with no third option available. Non-binary people are often forced to make up their own terms, because their language doesn’t provide one.

Non-binary people often don’t fit within other people’s ideas of gender, so they get excluded altogether. Worse, non-binary people are often the victims of misgendering, denial of their identity or even straight-up violence when coming out.

People will often tell us that we look like a certain gender, so we should only use one set of gendered pronouns. Never mind that that’s not what we want. Never mind that that’s not who we are.

Non-binary people are also largely omitted from legal documentation and studies. We cannot identify as non-binary at our workplace, because using they/them pronouns is considered “unprofessional”. We don’t have our own bathrooms like men and women do. Our gender is seen as less valid than male and female, so even that basic thing is denied to us. I’ve had to use the women’s restroom my entire life, because if I go into a male restroom, I’ll be yelled at or made fun off or simply get told I took the wrong door. It’s extremely uncomfortable for me and I wish I didn’t have to do it.

And since non-binary people aren’t seen as “real transgender-people”, we often don’t receive the medical care we need. This often renders us unable to feel good within our bodies, because the treatment and help we get is wildly inadequate.

It’s especially horrible for intersex people (people who are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit solely into the male/female category) who are often forced to change their bodies to fit within the male/female gender binary.

And you better believe each of those problems is increased ten-fold for non-binary people of color.

We are ignored and dismissed as “confused”, because of who we are.

Representation is a way for Non-binary people to show the world they exist, that they’re here and that they too have stories to tell.

But how can we, when every character that represents us is either othered, barely there or gets taken away from us?

We are not “up for interpretation”.

Neither are the characters in media who share our identity.

And it’s time to stop pretending we ever were.

For more information about Non-Binary Erasure and how harmful it is, you can check out these articles:

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/common-non-binary-erasure/

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/nonbinary-people-racism/

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Nonbinary_erasure

https://traj.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/traj.422/

https://medium.com/an-injustice/everyday-acts-of-non-binary-erasure-49ee970654fb

https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/the-invisible-labor-of-liberating-non-binary-identities-in-higher-education-3f75315870ec

https://musingsofanacademicasexual.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/dear-sirmadam-a-commentary-on-non-binary-erasure/

4. How Do We Fix It?

Well, first things first: Stop acting like we don’t exist.

And kindly stop other people from doing it too.

We are a part of the LGBT+ community and we deserve to be acknowledged, no matter what our pronouns are.

Address non-binary people with the right pronouns. Don’t argue with them about their identity, don’t comment on how much you think they look like a boy or a girl. Just accept them and be respectful.

If a non-binary person tells you they have two sets of pronouns, for example he/him and they/them, don’t just use one set of pronouns. That can come off as disingenuous. Alternate between the pronouns, don’t leave one or the other out. It’ll probably be hard at first, but if you keep it up, you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.

If you’re witnessing someone harass a non-binary person over their identity, step in and help them.

And please, don’t partake in non-binary erasure in media fandoms.

Don’t misgender non-binary characters, don’t “speculate” on what you think their gender might be. You already know their gender and it’s non-binary. It costs exactly 0 $ to be a decent human being and accept that.

Support Non-Binary people by educating yourself about them and helping to normalize and integrate their identity.

In fact, here’s a list of petitions, organizations and articles who will help you do just that:

https://www.change.org/p/collegeboard-let-students-use-their-preferred-name-on-collegeboard-9abad81a-0fdf-435c-8fca-fe24a5df6cc7?source_location=topic_page

6 Ways to Support Your Non-Binary Child

7 Non-Negotiables for Supporting Trans & Non-Binary Students in Your Classroom

If Your Partner Just Came Out As Non-Binary, Here’s How To Support Them

How to Support Your Non-Binary Employees, Colleagues and Friends

Ko-fi page for the Nonbinary Wiki

The Sylvia Rivera Project, an organization who aims to give low-income and non-white transgender, intersex and non-binary people a voice

The Anti Violence Project “empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education, and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy."

The Trans Lifeline, a hotline for transgender people by transgender people

Tl:DR: Non-Binary representation is important. Non-Binary people still suffer from society at large not acknowledging our existence and forcing us to conform. Don’t be part of that problem by taking away what little representation we have. Educate yourself and do better instead. We deserve to be seen and heard.

#non-binary #agender #demigender #gender identity #essay #erasure #lgbt representation #misgendering #undertale #she ra spop #apex bloodhound #doppelganger #steven universe

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slipping-through-my-fingertips · 3 years

Text

Guess I Misunderstood

Part 2 of Not the One series.

Summary: Kurt's trying a find a way to end things with Adam and Blaine Anderson is one of the reasons why.

Notes: Open for more prompts in this 'verse but I only intended it to be 2 parts of a two-sided story. I hope you enjoy.

Read Part 1 here

AO3

The first time Kurt saw Blaine Anderson, he was spying on the bulletin boards. He, like every other Apple, was worried about how many freshmen they could pull this semester. With a majority of the current Adam’s Apples being seniors, they needed to fill those spots with freshmen. Better to round them up this year so they’ll already have a year of acapella under their belts.

He's just standing there reading all the flyers. Kurt’s trying to look busy with his phone to not draw attention. But he can’t help but access this man.

Firstly, Kurt doesn't recognize him so he assumes this is a freshman, exactly the demographic their flyers are trying to bring in. The second thing that makes this man stand out among the others Kurt’s observed thus far is how nicely dressed he is. It is the first day of school so one would think a little effort would be put in but some boys their age won’t even put on a stain-free shirt to come to school. Luckily, most NYADA students care about their appearances, this freshman is no exception.

He’s wearing tightly fitted, dark green, capri pants and a crisp, white, collared polo.

Then his hand is reaching up to the green flyer Kurt designed.

He takes it.

YES!

Kurt tries to collect himself when he walks over to the boards. Don’t scare him away is his new mantra.

“The Apples?” He asks.

The freshman was shy at first probably because he didn’t expect to be approached. Before he answers Kurt, he does manage to meet his eyes.

Well, Kurt thought, if he sings as well as he looks the Apples could make Nationals.

In the past, Kurt would’ve berated himself for checking out guys while being in a relationship but he’s becoming less sure about Adam lately. His boyfriend is becoming a bit pushy about things like this. But Kurt isn’t about to stop doing it. If Adam really trusted him, he could see all of this was harmless.

The guy was gorgeous, no one should really blame Kurt for staring. His bowtie added a dash of adorableness, which would only draw Kurt in closer if he was single. Which he is decidedly not.

“I love to sing.”

Kurt could certainly relate. That’s how he got involved with glee clubs in the first place. Hell, that’s what got him to New York.

“Me too,” he said, “I’ll see you at auditions, break a leg.”

Only while he was walking away did Kurt curse himself for not catching the man’s name.

Before he knew it, they reached the point in the school year—day two—where Rachel was would start harassing him about “getting his name out there” and listing off all the auditions she had lined up. The only way Kurt could hear another word of this was over coffee so he dragged Rachel there before his class. This meant she had exactly 35 minutes to talk at him about it until he inevitably came home for the night and had to share the loft with her. Halfway through the conversation, he notices a finely dressed young man in line.

He’s not ashamed to admit the man’s best asset drew his attention. Though it wasn’t a difficult feat considering Power-Hungry Rachel was his other option.

Thankfully, her time was running out, “Rach, I’ll see you at home, I have Tibideaux.”

With one last look at the man, Kurt rushes off to class.

When Adam’s Apples auditions are up and running, Kurt is fuming. His boyfriend thought the perfect time to discuss their future as a couple was directly before they had to sit on their asses for 3 hours listening to a bunch of freshmen sing their hearts out.

Of course, they fought over it. Kurt was pissed about the timing, Adam thought he was being careless about their future plans because he refused to talk about it.

“I’m refusing to do it publicly when we have obligations!” Kurt had told him.

He had stormed into the empty auditorium at that point, casting aside Adam’s idea to move away after graduation for the moment, and sat in the third row. Unable to take a hint, Adam sat beside him.

Kurt was barely able to pay attention to the singers until Blaine. Once again, the man was pleasantly dressed. This time in bright yellow capris and a lovely yellow and blue bowtie. Kurt wondered if he had an affinity for them.

Adam coughed next to him, Kurt reverted his eyes. For the rest of the song, he was trying not to stare because Adam didn’t need another reason to blame Kurt for their relationship problems. When Blaine was finished, they clapped, Adam leaned in, “I’m sorry, you’re right.” In reply, Kurt kissed his cheek.

Knowing a simple kiss could smooth things over for now. They obviously had a lot to discuss.

As school picked up, Kurt mostly forgot about his little soft spot for Blaine until he was pulling a tipsy Adam off of the Lion’s Den dance floor Saturday night.

They knew their potential new recruits would be at Callbacks, Kurt wanted none of that. If they were going to celebrate the first week of classes as a couple, he wasn’t about to be interrupted by a drunk NYADA student begging to know how their glee audition went. So he was here and apparently so was Blaine.

He almost turned right around wanting to ignore the man. This is the exact situation he was trying to avoid. But Adam pulled him forward, slurring “bar’s this way.”

Kurt tried to catch his eye from across the bar but instead watched as Blaine slung his drink back and paid his tab. By the time Adam was finished ordering, Blaine was gone.

The fourth time Kurt thought he’d see Blaine never came.

Kurt had posted the Adam’s Apples list of new recruits himself. Blaine Anderson was at the top. Alphabetically speaking. Yet, he never showed up to their first rehearsal. Everyone else had come. It was difficult to listen to Adam’s introductory speech when he kept waiting for Blaine to walk through the auditorium doors.

He never did. Did Tuesdays at 7 not work for his schedule?

They sat in a circle on stage playing ice breakers, learning each other’s names and special interests in regards to their studies at NYADA.

When rehearsal ends, Adam tapped his shoulder, “you seem distracted, what’s up?”

Kurt remembers what Drunk Adam told him on Saturday and lies, “nothing, I’m fine. Just something Rachel said.”

“Well,” Adam helped him up, “don’t worry too much about her. Before you know it, you and I will be taking on the West End.”

He smiles until Adam turns away.

When Adam had first said they should move, Kurt thought he meant out of the heart of the city. Which was something he could understand. If Kurt’s dreams of starting a family someday were to be met, he saw the appeal of a move. It never crossed his mind that Adam meant to move across the ocean.

When they first started talking, Kurt loved the allure of an older man. Being a freshman at the time, Kurt had been desperate to fit in in ways he never could at McKinley. So when Adam took him under his wing, showed him the ropes of NYADA and New York, it was only a matter of time before Kurt had a crush on him. Initially, Adam was too busy for a relationship, he had told Kurt as much so Kurt keep the crush to himself...and Rachel.

When NYADA’s spring formal rolled around, Kurt was already planning on going with his roommate. Rachel had been trying him to match in a terrible shade of pink. It didn’t go well with either of their complexions. The text came in mid-argument about their outfits.

Adam: wanna go to formal?

Kurt dropped his phone. Luckily, he was sitting on the couch and it fell onto the cushion. Rachel, of course, knew something was wrong because Kurt paused in the middle of yelling at her about the tackiness of matching when they could complement each other instead.

“What’s up?” she asked, leaning in to glance at his phone, “it’s not your dad, right?”

“No, no, no,” Kurt assured her, tilting his screen so she could read the message.

“OH!” she squealed, jumping up. “Tell him yes!”

“He probably isn’t asking me, just wants to know if I’ll be there.”

Rachel rolled her eyes, “don’t stupid, Kurt.”

Ignoring her, Kurt texted back and slumped down.

Kurt: Rachel and I are going to go together, yes

Instantly, another text came in.

Adam: Would Rachel be upset if I took you instead?

Rachel was biting her lip excitedly. Practically dancing as she sat on the couch next to him.

Kurt: I think she’d be delighted. As would I.

The two of them did some jumping up and down together before Kurt settled back onto the couch, holding his phone to his chest.

“Guess that means I can wear pink if I want to,” Rachel said before disappearing into her bedroom.

But that was then. It had been a long time since Kurt felt butterflies in his stomach when he thought about Adam. He never thought they’d completely disappear but these last few months he felt stagnant. When he expressed these concerns to his boyfriend, Adam’s solution was, once again, to move across the pond.

Like that would solve their issues.

That wasn’t what Kurt had meant by stagnant but Adam kept going on and on about how New York may be the city that never sleeps but he couldn’t wait to get back to the excitement of London.

Kurt could never see himself moving so far away from his dad or his friends. New York had become his home these last three years. Maybe Adam always dreamed of going back to the UK but he had never told Kurt that explicitly until the start of this semester. Dating for 2 years and it never came up.

By the time they were having their fifth fight about this, Kurt knew they were going to have to break up. It was just a matter of when.

The actual fourth time Kurt saw Blaine Anderson was two weeks before Thanksgiving break.

He was sitting in a corner of the library. Sheets of music spread across his lap. Titling his head so a single black curl dangled in his face. Blaine keeps blowing the curl away to no avail. It took everything in Kurt to not laugh.

Adorable.

Kurt wasn’t really here to study. He finished up his assignments for the weekend. There was a major test next week for one of Rachel’s classes. She was in a study group and forgot her yellow notebook so Kurt offered to bring it to her.

Wasn’t it just his luck that Blaine Anderson was here? Right in his line of sight. The universe must be having fun with him tonight. He was about to go home to an empty apartment and write a breakup speech for Adam.

Kurt had plans to talk with his day over Thanksgiving break—Burt insisted on planning for his flight. He just needed someone, not Rachel, to tell him it was the right choice. For so long, Adam, being his first boyfriend, made Kurt feel like he owed it to Adam to continue this. Kurt had just reached the end of his rope.

He did end up talking to his dad about everything other than the impending breakup. In fact, Kurt couldn’t seem to get Blaine’s name out of his mouth.

“We had this really talented singer come in for auditions, dad,” Kurt said. “Blaine Anderson, he’s a freshman.”

“Oh yeah?”

This was the second time Kurt had brought this up.

“He’s going to do big things someday.”

By the fourth time, Blaine’s name was mentioned, which was a lot of times for a man Kurt had only spoken to once, Burt had something to say about it.

“You gonna ask him out, bud, or just keep talking to me?”

Kurt paused, blushed, and stumbled out a “no.”

“No what? You won’t ask him or he won’t go out with you.”

“Dad,” Kurt said, “both of those imply, I do ask him out.”

“Well, you should.” Burt shrugged. “You clearly like him.”

His dad did always know how to read him. This wasn’t the time to remind Burt of his boyfriend. Of whom, Burt was indifferent. Dating for years and Adam couldn’t seem to break down Burt’s overprotective walls.

Now that Kurt was alone in their apartment thinking of those conversations. All of them. Every single time he had asked Burt about Adam or called his dad after a ridiculous fight. How many of those conversations contain happy stories?

Kurt and Adam had loads of good times but none that he ever shared with his dad, no memories that become inside jokes, nothing like that.

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, Rachel was in class, Adam’s professor had let them out earlier, and Kurt had an empty apartment.

Kurt: let’s get coffee

Adam: Be there in ten

When Kurt came back, he was a single man in New York once again.

The fifth time, Kurt saw Blaine Anderson was on purpose. He meant to run into him in the NYADA auditorium. Kurt had asked around and found out Blaine had joined a different glee club. Amy said they rehearsed on Wednesdays and Blaine was always there a half-hour earlier to warm-up alone.

Sure enough, Blaine was center stage pacing in a circle doing one of Rachel’s favorite scales. Kurt is creeping in from one of the back entrances. Slowly, he makes his way up to the stage unsure if he wants Blaine to notice him or not.

Eventually, he reaches a moment when he has to say something. About fifteen feet from the stage, Kurt speaks up, “you’re very talented, you know?”

Blaine looks down at him, a quick smile, and blushes, “thanks.”

“We were sad to not see you at rehearsals but The Singsations benefit greatly.”

“Yeah, I felt bad about it…” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “but it just wasn’t going to work.”

“Well,” Kurt replied, “acapella isn’t for everyone.”

“Funny enough, it wasn’t the acapella part.”

At that, Kurt’s not sure what to say. He wants to ask what the problem was then.

“Sorry, did you just come here to ask why I didn’t join the Apples?” Blaine asked.

“Um no, Amy said you warm up here before rehearsals.” Which was Kurt’s way of stalling. “I…”

This is exactly why Kurt hadn’t had a boyfriend before Adam: he was too nervous to make the first move.

Blaine is sitting on the edge of the stage now so they’re almost level. Kurt could just push his legs apart, stand between them, and kiss him. That’s all he wants to do.

“I’ve seen you around campus a lot.” Four times.

“Me too,” Blaine said, which has Kurt smirking slightly. So he did notice him too. Then Blaine continues and knocks that smirk right off his face, “how’s your boyfriend?”

Well, Kurt should’ve expected that blow. His and Adam’s relationship was pretty well-known. In just two weeks since the breakup, Kurt’s surprised more people aren’t gossiping about it.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

“We broke up.”

“Oh,” Blaine replied, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Are you?” Kurt asked, “because I’m not sorry at all. I should’ve done it sooner. We weren’t meant to be together as long as we were.”

“You broke up with him?” Blaine asked, confused. “But you seemed so in love.”

“A year ago, I would’ve agreed with you but one too many problems later it was never going to work,” Kurt told him, “but that’s not why I’m here either.”

“So, why are you here? I was pretty sure you didn’t know I existed.”

“I definitely do,” Kurt said, “and now it’s my turn to ask if you’re single.”

Blaine blushed again, “Not sure that’s what I meant earlier.”

“It’s what I meant.”

“I’m not seeing anyone right now, I’ve been pining after this upperclassman who was with someone.”

“Oh yeah?” Kurt asked.

“Yeah.”

Kurt took a step closer and placed his palms on Blaine’s knees.

“Well, I think he likes you too.”

Then, he pushes his legs open with no resistance from Blaine. It isn’t Kurt who leans in first though.

#klaine fanfiction #klaine fanfic #klaine #my fics #not the one

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faelapis · 4 years

Text

picturejasper20 replied to your post:

I feel i kind of share part of the blame here since i have written tons of posts about this (have people noticed this strategic thing just now?). I don't where this Steven "never cares about others" comes from. The whole problem with him in future was how obsessive selflessness was becoming really toxic for him and how he let his relationships be defined by helping other people.

i don’t think you’re at fault here! i think the strategic angle IS important. it’s something i used to emphasize a lot when people framed the conflict as “shattering the diamonds would fix everything, steven is just too much of a coward to do it”, which... woof. i had so many problems with that sentiment.

like. let’s talk about a huge point of the shattering pink diamond story - why it doesn’t fix everything. it was a last-ditch attempt, and it scared homeworld gems away, but it was still a band-aid. it didn’t change gem society. cutting off the snake’s head doesn’t break thousands of years of homeworld indoctrination upon pink’s followers.

as you would expect, the exact opposite happens: rose underestimated how much of a BELOVED and REVERED figure pink was. jasper, the diamonds, etc - they mourned her. they hated the CGs more and each came to earth explicitly because of that hatred. and so, surprise! homeworld got angrier! they hate the crystal gems more now!

it’s also frustrating how it goes with this “Great Man History” thinking where the whole of society accepts a new way of thinking as soon as you kill their leaders and replace them.

again - all the diamonds are worshipped and adored. if you kill them, you are an enemy in the eyes of the general population. some will admire you, sure, but that’s not really dismantling their mindset, it’s just a new form of “might makes right.”

i also take issue with how like... “oh, sure, the underclass of this society has been indoctrinated, but the diamonds and uppercrusts? nah,” when in reality, eeeeeveryone believes in their role.

the diamonds believe they’re doing the right thing. they’re not generic, power-hungry villains. killing them without trying to help them is essentially the moral determinist’s argument: “sorry, we know your mindset was formed over millennia and that every gem has an innate need for purpose, including you, buuuut despite the forces shaping you being bigger than yourself, we’re gonna act like the people in the lower classes are the only ones capable of change.”

and that is, genuinely, how a lot of people see it. even though homeworld has never been exposed to another way of thinking, sorry, you were Innately Corrupted by the accident of your status at birth. sucks to be you, now die.

but morality aside, i also have to ask... how.

just... how would you kill them. would white bend down politely and stop piloting others’ bodies as soon as bismuth approached her with the breaking point? because from white’s perspective, stopping bismuth is extremely easy lmao. literally just take over her body and poof, white has the breaking point now.

so even putting morality aside... strategy matters. SU is very much a world where “we will win because we’re GOOD and we have FRIENDSHIP” is not how it works in a fight. the relative strengths of each group is significant and changes your strategy fundamentally. homeworld is stronger than them.

the crystal gems are a small outpost of rebels, who are up against pretty much their entire species, including their gods. many homeworld gems like the system, the ones who don’t are usually the ones with the least social power within it, and the least physical might to match.

so... yeah. this idea that the crystal gems would even have the chance to shatter a diamond is... very romanticized. it’s a shounen trope that doens’t respect the rules of the world in question, which are far more politically realistic.

i’ve said before that blue zircon’s theories are told through a homeworldian lens, and they are (for instance, stereotyping pearls, minimizing their agency and assuming love for diamonds)... but one thing she’s right about is that it’s extremely hard to shatter a diamond from “the outside.” in enemy territory, they often come with an entourage. they’re extremely powerful. white can control any gem. so like... good luck.

strategically, steven does the smart thing - and bismuth gives the Audience At Home (tm) a solid rundown of what he’s trying to do: “let me put this in earth terms for you: you're about to enter the "lions' den". luckily, you're a "lion" too! you gotta roar at them in their language; you're the one that has to do it.”

essentially, steven has to find a way to use his privilege in order to dismantle it. this includes talking to indoctrinated and priviliged relatives so they can understand that the hierarchy isn’t actually justified. imagine that.

btw, because the diamonds are BOTH a “resource” and the uppermost class... destroying those resources would mean you could never heal the corrupted gems. so... you got revenge for no reason and saved no one. hurray.

so we’re sacrificing this beautiful scene, and almost every CG (who were corrupted or shattered), for the sake of vengeance. good job keeping your moral purity by not engaging with the enemy at all, 10/10 solution to the material problems of this world /j.

#steven universe #gif /#su theory #the diamonds #homeworld #the crystal gems

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nadohunter · 3 years

Text

Alright, you want to go this ham on this insane kind of reaching? Alright, lets go, since anons love being this bold and thinking they're doing something.

I'm incredibly confused where this is coming from, you are doing some MAJOR jumping and putting words in my mouth.

In my most recent post which I'm assuming this is what its about, I'm wondering if your reading comprehension is literally in the toilet??? I only said shipping adults x minors is bad? Because I expressed that since I was LITERALLY 13 fucking years old in this goddamned fandom i've been harassed by people, often grown ass adults for DARING to say I didn't like it??? That to me it felt morally wrong? Because I voiced my reasoning for leaving kuroshitsuji as a fandom because its been damaging to my health so I'm making the PERSONAL CHOICE TO STEP AWAY FROM IT.

Also in all of my posts where I've ever talked about any of my opinions on this stuff I've always said weather you think someone is doing something bad or not explicitly to NOT bug them or send them messages? Especially not ones that threaten them because I LITERALLY SAID, I HAVE BEEN TOLD TO KMS FROM THIS DAMN FANDOM BECAUSE I DARED SAY I'M NOT COMFORTABLE WITH SOMETHING? Because I know people who have been hurt by it??? And I've said many many many fucking times that if someone IS dangerous it is STILL in your best interests not to harass them because you do not want to put yourself in the path of someone dangerous?

And what the fuck is this line about me saying 'yaoi is fetishization' is terf rehtoric? I'm guessing your talking about a post where I gently disagreed with someone... not shipping a m|m ship "because they're both tops". What the fuck are you on? Me saying 'it seems degrading to boil down gay relationships to this' is me being a terf now?

This is so much reaching. Do I agree with everything anti-proships do? No, I feel like me defending sebawill because someone called it 'inherently abusive' should say that much. However seriously defending p*dophillia because you like getting your rocks off to that, to people who have been traumatized due to it using a dumbass anology that Hitler drank water??? No fucking shit we don't stop drinking water because water is a normal thing we drink to survive?? What do you fucking drink p*dophillia to survive??? If you think you need to consume p*dophillic content to survive I think that's a you problem. Believe it or not people are capable of complex thought? I can make the personal choice to block people who make certain types of content. I am well within my right to do so. I am allowed to say "I don't like this" and frankly the amount of people, CHILDREN that have been hurt by this bullshit, is too many.

Your immediate response to someone coming forward saying they've been groomed by this bullshit should be compassion, not LET PEOPLE SHIP WHAT THEY WANNNTTT. Your immediate reaction should always be fucking compassion. But its not, and then you wonder why people think this kind of B.S. is so morally reprehensible. Normalizing p*dophillia is bad. Telling children, they should be okay with it because its 'not real'. is bad. Fantasizing... about p*dophillia should be a sign that you need to go get help, because that is not healthy, even if you never act on it with a real person.

If you want to invoke... fucking Hitler I guess, no, you know what this is like? This is like telling a jewish person they should be okay with someone drawing fetish art of fucking n*zis. That they should be okay with writing a fic that downplays and romanticizes the h*locost.

Sorry I care more about real people than fucking fiction I guess?

If pr*shippers supposedly 'just want to be left alone' then fucking leave other people alone too? I'm literally changing my focus because this fandom and pr*shipper types have not: left me the fuck alone, despite ignoring them when they bombared me with messages calling me a bitch, calling my art ugly, threatening to 'expose' me for being a horrible person? But you have the gall to get up on your high horse and talk to me like that when clearly you haven't properly read a goddamned thing i've ever said and are just dead set on defending what again I can only assume to be p*dophillia because that's what I was saying in the context of being honest about the harassment I got from adults as a minor for just saying i was uncomfortable with it.

And honestly??? Thank you anon. You proved my fucking point. You just proved why I am so sick and done with this fandom and have made the personal choice to move on. I made a post explaining to a someone why I have made the personal choice to leave and no longer post anything outside of the comic for it. You know what I haven't done? What you just fucking did. If your so high and mighty, you know what you could have done "Ugh, I don't agree with her, I won't interact!" You know... unlike the giant hypocrite and whoever else has been leaving a ton of lovely messages for me over the past few months.

I have not left any nasty or even accusatory messages in anyone's inbox because unlike what you seem to want to accuse me of? I chose to say my piece and remove myself from the situation, because after two fucking months of this exact kind of bullshit that I chose to ignore rather than go send people shitty messages, I'm done. I'm moving on.

#massive tw #tw #tw mention of suicide baiting #tw pedophillia mention #this will be my final word on it #tw holocaust mention #tw nazi mention #tw hitler mention #long post

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tominostuff · 4 years

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Oshii Mamoru x Anno Hideaki Char’s Counterattack Fan Club Book

Published: January 1993

Just the first 3 pages as a teaser lol

Influence

Anno: As a creator, I like CCA because you can hear Mr. Tomino’s very genuine voice in it. But Mr. Oshii, you tend to dislike doing that. You try to sugarcoat your true intentions and hide it deep within. So, it’s unexpected that someone like you enjoyed CCA.

Oshii: Well, isn’t it just that? As you said, Mr. Tomino’s raw voice is all out in the open.

Anno: Yes. It’s very direct. I think sensitive people may even harbor hatred for it.

Oshii: (Kazunori) Itou-kun apparently stopped watching 5 minutes in. When he heard the first “heavenly punishment” line, he couldn’t follow along anymore and stopped (laughs). Since he used to be at Sunrise, he probably sees more.

So [whether or not you like the movie] is probably decided by what kind of reaction you’d have to hearing lines like 修正 “correction” or 粛清 “purge” or 天誅 “heavenly punishment.” Since there’s bound to be many people who have a dislike towards words like that. Especially older people react towards “purge” and “correction.” For the pre-war faction, “correction” meant military lynching and for people after the 70s, “correction” means demonstrator/political radicals or controlled lynching. There’s also the Red Army (JRA) issue as well.

If it were a movie, they may have not been bothered by it but since it’s an animation. There is a gap between the raw human intentions and the drawn world. And that actually makes a bigger impact. So for people who dislike seeing undiluted emotions show up on screen, they just can’t do it.

Anno: I wasn’t bothered by it.

Oshii: I think you and I were making things during the awkward off season of animation. People like Miya-san (Miyazaki Hayao) who were swept along by Toei and made animations for kids versus people who were pursuing movies and ended up in an anime studio...our generation of people is the in-between, so we understand both sides. We are caught between both the part that’s making shows for kids and the part that wants to make movies that we are personally satisfied with. So, depending on where you place the center of balance, you end up making a completely different thing.

On one hand, I felt that this movie could only be accepted by people like that. The older folk just thought it was bad. People in the anime industry especially. And for younger folk, they don’t know how to process an undiluted political world like that one. Despite all of this, the theaters were pretty full. And that’s probably due to the influence of Gundam.

It was around the same time as Patlabor. Even though Mr. Tomino did whatever he wanted in Gundam, and I worked on Patlabor with the same Shochiku, when the high ups at Shochiku came to the press release for the previous Patlabor installment, they just said “I didn’t understand anything” and left. “Nothing made sense.” They were grumbling, “but robot anime originally was like this” as they went home. Which I think was thanks to Gundam (laughs).

Even so, I was impressed that a script like CCA was greenlit. How could they release something like that. Probably because they weren’t watching it very seriously. Everyone is so enchanted by the surface-level space war aspect that there’s very few people who accurately grasp Mr. Tomino’s intentions.

Anno: I didn’t understand it the first time I watched it.

Oshii: The idea itself is not anything exceptional. It doesn’t come up to the surface but… to exaggerate, this is about present day, but as a phenomenon, in Japan maybe after the 70s? Among the political ideas that collapsed in the 60s was a type of retaliation ideology….. There’s a bit of nihilism in it, but basically there existed a political thought that placed its basis on the idea that “humans are no good.” However, that never made its way into the mainstream and much less in a world like animation, the center of popular culture, the fact that it showed up so suddenly was a surprise. It was almost pure literature.

To want to retaliate against humanity or to want to correct humanity… truth be told, I also had similar thoughts. For example, the upcoming Patlabor has a bit of that in it. There’s a desire to seek revenge against a kind of deceptive inquisitiveness of this generation. However, I’m hesitant about being too direct about it (laughs)... more like I personally, am not a fan of being so direct…. And to go so far as to start saying the intellectuals that, the masses this. That part of the dialogue was probably an exact reflection of Mr. Tomino’s beliefs. As a method of expression, I would never do something like declaring my true beliefs during the movie.

Just, the one thing I don’t get is why he suddenly did something like that. I actually haven’t watched the Gundam series too seriously so when I saw that, it seemed out of the blue. Perhaps he had laid the foundations for it earlier but I actually haven’t watched anything since Zeta Gundam. Watched the first Gundam and then suddenly CCA. So I don’t know what happened in this gap but it probably wasn’t anything sudden, it was probably always present.

Anno: Yes. I think he spit out everything he had accumulated, or more like, he put an end to things.

Ideologies

Oshii: When you’re working on anime, you’re required to be different from an ordinary movie director. Even though it may look like we’re doing whatever we please, there are some things that we just can’t do. In a live action, even if it’s a bit explicit it may not be a huge problem… but with anime, there’s the first psychological barrier of the people who have to draw it. And when you think about it, the first person who did those things was Mr. Tomino. Like the child who fires in front of his mother. Or the boy or girl, I forget, that got their head blown off along with their helmet.

When I saw Ideon, I believe it was when I was working on The Wonderful Adventures of Nils at Pierrot, it gave me such a shock. And it became the topic of discussion among directors at the studio. We wondered if it was okay to make something like that. My mentor, Mr. Tori (Hisayuki Toriumi), was someone who would do rather sadistic things. Like, Gatchaman was horrible. People would get hung with chains and beaten with a whip or Joe the Condor would get his face stepped on and messed up. He’s done pretty controversial things over the years. However, he never was as raw. After all, we had passed the era where such direct expression is allowed.

There were a few taboos that were said to exist in anime, the destruction of bodies being one of them, but the bigger one that existed was probably, “politics.” To express your own political beliefs in the anime you were creating. I don’t mean things like post-war democracy or Tezuka Osamu’s humanism, etc, but radical revolutionary ideas, betrayed ressentiment (concept of resentment or hostility related to 19th century thinkers like Friedrich Neitzche), feelings of grudge, etc. have no place in anime. No one explicitly says it but as you spend time at the studio, you naturally begin to realize that’s the limit. If you want to do it, you have to change its shape. So like in Urusei Yatsura or Patlabor, I had to disguise it as a type of metaphor or a running joke. So even if you’re allowed to have a miniature battle for authority in a school setting… well, originally, even that was going too far, I was told many things by different people… it wasn’t like anyone said anything openly but no one thought to do it in the first place. The reason why is because everyone thought animation was the wrong place to be testing such ideas, who’s going to want to watch something like that.

Back when Toei made Future War 198x, circulation boards went around and the Toei Animation Company labor union went on strike and all that, but inside, there were a lot of debates happening. Especially among directors wondering how they should take it all. Regardless of the fact that the age of the average anime watcher was increasing due to the anime boom, where exactly do we place the limit? Is it okay for us to try things that an ordinary live action director might do? For the generation of directors above us, these questions existed in a more tangible form. Whenever there was destruction of bodies or kiss scenes, like Mr. Tori did once in Gatchaman, every time something like that would happen on screen, production companies would file complaints or the TV stations would complain, and there would be this back and forth. Even so, there were people who wanted to depict these things. But in other words, that was it. The complaints were only on the artistic level. What that person did in CCA is leagues beyond that.

The philosophies or policies or themes, those things aren’t in there because the movie needs it, no, the ideology is first and foremost (laughs). It’s probably forgiven because it’s underneath the umbrella of Gundam but even so, I was surprised that they could go that far.

And, I was surprised a second time when there was no reaction to it. I spoke about this with Anno over the phone but, there’s no talk about it, good or bad. Why is there no reaction to such a radical outburst? There were probably a few entries to some anime magazines, I’ve seen a few of them myself, but in the end they were just the usual debates about war in Gundam.

In that way, it was as I expected. By “as expected” I mean, even if one speaks of such ideals in animation, who is going to see it, and how? This is a problem that I’m always facing myself because the stories that I want to create aren’t reaching the audience that I desire. And that’s probably because it’s anime. If it were live action, you could just leave it alone and a bunch of critics would come along and say what they want. Even if it’s just some boring police drama, they’d dig up all this nonsense to write. Conversely, [CCA] didn’t receive attention because it was anime. Because it was anime, the ideas presented in it were overlooked. To Mr. Tomino, that was probably extremely regrettable. Because I am always experiencing similar things. The anime isn’t reaching the people who are supposed to see it. That is what I felt from it.

Anno: Anime as a method of expression is very infantile. Especially facial expressions, angry faces have raised eyebrows, crying faces have tears in their eyes, blurry pupils means they are crying; if a foreigner saw this, I don’t think they’d understand. Japanese people are trained to understand to some extent so they know “oh they’re crying right now.”

However, whether the character is crying because they are happy or because they are sad, cannot be understood through just the art, without dialogue and the whole package. So, whether hands go flying or blood is shed, at the end of day, they’re all cell humans. Even if they speak, it's just 3 frames of mouths going open and close. I think the sincere attitude of trying to go so far through such childish means of expression and in the even more remote region of robot anime is amazing. I don’t think there were any directors like this until now.

Oshii: Yeah, there weren’t. I didn’t think he would take it that far. Although, I had sensed that vibe from Gundam itself. The structure of war depicted in it probably made that kind of thing possible. I don’t know how much he had pre-planned while he was creating the initial settings for the show but… it’s probably something similar to Patlabor where you start realizing “oh this is possible too” as you go. But, I kind of understand why it came out of a robot anime. With gag anime or home drama, school stories, these things would definitely be caught in a check at some stage. It’s probably due to the very combative world of robot anime, which depicts war, that kind of thing was passed (laughs).

Anno: That’s right. It was probably only possible because it had its beginnings as “just an ad for robot toys.”

Resignation

Oshii: Back when Urusei just finished airing, I met Mr. Yasuhiko at a magazine interview. It was right when the manga, Todonotsumari, was serializing in Animage. The first thing that person said was, “Animators like the ones depicted in [that manga] don’t exist. The anime studio environment that you are creating there is the furthest from an anime studio in reality. It’s what doesn’t exist the most. Why do you do this?” That’s when I sensed a bit of the resignation or frustration that generation of uncles hold towards animation. To put it bluntly, it's a type of inferiority complex.

I, too, was told that when I entered Tatsunoko. “In the end it’s just an ad for toys. So don’t put too much effort into it. If you don’t keep it at a minimum, you’ll only feel disappointed at the end. If you become too serious about making a masterpiece or making a film, you won’t make it in this industry.” I got a lot of that. Whether they were sakuga directors, animators, producers, bosses. From different people, in different ways, I was told many things. To summarize, that’s pretty much what they’d tell me. “The anime job is not a place for that.”

I’m generalizing but the generation above us started from a place of resignation. Like the background artist who couldn’t feed themselves off of oil paintings or the animator who couldn’t become a mangaka, it’s not nice to say but the industry was full of people who drifted into it. It was that kind of world. But there were good sides to it being that kind of world. No one would comment on what other people were doing.

Like, I was told at the beginning, “Don’t criticize other people’s work.” And not only did this apply to people in my own studio but I also wasn’t allowed to say this and that about what Toei was doing. From the start I was still in the mindset of a film bro so I’d complain “what is that?” but I was told off not only by older directors but also by directors my own age. Was it Mashimo Koichi? (laughs). “It’s easy to spot as many faults as you’d like in other people’s work. So there’s an infinite number of criticisms you can make. The only thing that matters is what you yourself creates.” To that I said, “I don’t think so. I have the ability to state why boring things are boring with logic to back it up so I should be allowed to. If we don’t say these things out loud, nothing will change. In exchange, I don’t care how badly my work gets criticized.” That’s a very normal thing. Bar fights are constant in the movie industry. “Why doesn’t it work in the same way in the anime industry?” is how I felt.

So, until I met Miya-san I was always frustrated. Meeting Miya-san was the first time…. cause that person is the same way. He says whatever he wants about other people’s work…just as I thought, this kind of person does exist. Even as we argue, even as we lovingly tear each other’s work apart, we are still together. I think that’s a very important skill as a director and even beyond that, I was perplexed as to why this wasn’t allowed in the anime industry.

The one thought I always held within all of this was that, before the sponsors or stations or whatever, the anime industry carved out territory for itself and didn’t try to leave it. So when the industry was forced to the forefront with the anime boom, the previously anonymous animators and directors suddenly found themselves in the limelight. And with that, all of the inferiority complexes came flooding out in a warped way.

For example, Mr. Yasuhiko’s Crusher Joe is unnecessarily cruel. Like small animals getting turned into meat clumps with a machine gun. Or patricide or siblings killing each other. Everything that had been suppressed until now came flooding out in a very warped way. Endlessly mass producing worthless children’s media that's neither good or bad would turn one’s literary consciousness inwards. So when you’re finally able to put work out there under your own name, all of that came out. Basically what I’m saying is that the balance is off. How far can you take things, from where should you start dialing back; everyone has their own parameters based on their unique method of expression. But they let everything out, completely ignoring these parameters.

When I saw this, I was full of complicated feelings. “Why do you guys have to have such a complex towards making animation?” I hated it so much because the generation below me doesn’t really have these taboos or warped perceptions.

Anno: They really don’t.

Crime of Conscience

Oshii: On the other hand, there are many things that you can do in anime that wouldn’t be allowed in Japanese movies. Ideas that would be stamped into the rejection pile for a Japanese movie can be expressed to a certain degree in anime….is what people discovered. One way to put it is, if you take “the way anime is viewed” in a societal sense and work within those means, then anything is possible…..or at least I felt (laughs). It’s only useful up to a certain point of course. Using a tactic of pushing and retreating to mix things up while creating a proper product on the other end was how I was doing my job. At the time. Even now I feel I work in a similar way but it’s different. We become wary and don’t do it like that. We’d try to cheat things by having it take place in an alternate universe. Or if you’re trying to depict a rebellion, don’t draw it from the rebel side but from the police side instead (laughs).

Even today, although it takes a different form, the idea that animation is for kids still persists. Showing nude bodies, and not cute things like shower scenes or skirt flipping, but in the context of lovers or affairs, passionate love or a world where politics are spoken about so clearly, is going to be rejected. But if you add “somewhere out in outer space,” sometimes it slips past the radar and gets greenlit.

However, I think Mr. Tomino knew what he was doing.

Anno: I think so too.

Oshii: When I saw it, I thought “he did this on purpose.” There’s probably parts that I understand because I am also a creator. It was well balanced. There was none of the off-balanceness of Mr. Yasuhiko. Of course, what lies underneath is the same. At the foundation is this inner warped hatred towards animation movies. On the other hand, he understands that he’s just an anime person and can't express things well when he’s separate from anime. That kind of thing, however, was pretty well controlled when it came to Char’s Counterattack. Therefore, there is no doubt that it was a crime of conscience.

However, even if it was on purpose, I still think the film was too blunt. I thought it would be better to disguise it a little more, dress it up a little more, camouflage it, and wear a covering, something.

Anno: On the contrary, I thought that’s what made it so masculine or cool.

Oshii: It’s dangerous. Danger is not about being socially sanctioned, criticized, or denounced, but rather straightforward words suggesting revolution, intellectuals this and that, and correcting or imposing sanctions on humankind… if you are not careful about it, the intentions may be flipped on you. In other words, you run the risk of becoming a gag. Political language is rather delicate, isn’t it? If you do it too much, like those violent student protesters who often appear in TV dramas, it becomes a comedy act that’s so ugly you can’t even call it a parody. That’s why, in Urusei Yatsura, Megane, the plot device guy, was doing everything exaggeratedly as a running joke. That's because I thought that if I didn't do it that way, it wouldn't pass, and I, personally, wanted to see it. There was a part of me that felt detached. And that was funny in itself. The fact remains that even to me, that era, while there were some painful parts, I also felt that it was humorous. Some parts are nostalgic, and some parts make me feel even disgusted. I found some salvation in letting everything out through a plot device character like Megane. That kind of thing, if you do it seriously, it's just painful.

In short, political language is pretty delicate…. Going back to the phrase “heavenly punishment.” I’m positive that there’s people who laughed at that phrase. Because we’re talking “heavenly punishment” in a space environment. What he’s doing is describing the “February 26 Incident” verbatim but the world he’s created is a future battlefield in outer space. There’s an immense gap. The younger generation may not care about it, though. I've always felt that kind of thing from Sunrise. There is something off about them. It seems that there are people who strangely want to enumerate dead languages.

My scariest thought is that there’s probably people who laughed at CCA. That they found it comical. The fact these imperial loyalist type characters are living out the “one person one kill” kind of world in outer space. I avoided writing these kinds of stories for this exact reason. ‘Cause at some point, someone is going to laugh. Like the drama, “Hyokin Tribe” from back in the day. You write the drama very seriously and in the end, it all flips on its head. It’s the generation where (serious) things are seen in a cynical manner. I am conscious of the enemy waiting, ready to turn everything into laughs. Especially when it comes to anime, anything is possible so you take it very seriously until the very end where it’s all comedy. The moment that becomes obvious, everything you’ve accumulated becomes invalid. So I prefer it the other way around, to create the mood, “this is a lie, it’s all jokes,” and then reveal that it was actually my true intention all along. I feel that it’s more effective to build up the jokes and then bring it into the real world at the end. In short, you can’t be seen through this way. If you ask me, the modern movie goer is rather twisted. A naive audience doesn’t exist. Within that, however, many anime viewers are among the exceptionally naive. They get impressed right away. As if they’re prepared to be impressed. Compared to the average viewer, anime watchers are easy to deceive, to the point where I go, “why are you so naive?” They easily go along with your tricks. They are waiting, ready to go along with anything you offer them. It’s the same mentality as the people who come to anime events and go, “since I’m already here, I am prepared to get my money’s worth by laughing at everything, even the parts that aren’t funny, and have a good time with everyone.” From a customer’s point of view, it’s such a naive mindset….maybe even going past naive into sly territory. Speaking broadly about movies in general, half-baked drama, half-baked crying or overly sentimental things doesn’t work on audiences nowadays. Rather, they are looking for ways to laugh at it.

Ever since that TV drama, "Stewardess Monogatari", I've been endlessly wary of such things. The goal is to make people laugh, not be laughed at. The movie is useless unless we (the creators) hold on to the hegemony.

Oshii: So when I saw CCA, I thought, there are definitely people out there who got together to drink and laugh out loud while watching this movie. And those who didn’t, said they couldn’t bear to watch it and stopped watching. Since they immediately develop a dislike for it. And the people who watched it seriously are hardcore robot fans, or Gundam fans…… they probably watched it very passionately (laughs). When you remove all of that, the message is clear. It’s completely anachronistic….. well, rather than anachronistic, I think what he’s doing is to a certain extent effective. It’s similar to what I was doing last year (Patlabor 2?).....he's speaking very sincerely, but depending on what kind of world and audiences see this movie, it will become a very unfortunate movie.

Anno: I think that movie is so one-sided though. I can’t imagine he had the audience in mind while he was making it.

Oshii: Well there was a sense of agitation, “there’s no way you’ll understand!”

Anno: I get that sense from the fighting spirit of the film.

Oshii: Because humans are somewhat beyond saving, even if you look at history, we haven’t done anything good. Probably even in the next century, whether humans go out into space, humans will repeat the same stupidity, getting everything and everyone involved and ruining it. That’s why he said, if God isn’t going to do it, I will.

Tsuge (Patlabor) and Char were thinking the same thing, basically wanting to impose punishment. It’s the story of a terrorist who, even if they don’t manage to impose that punishment, can reveal the naked truth just for a moment. It's the world that Miya-san hates most (laughs).

Miyazaki Hayao

Anno: But there’s probably a part of Miya-san that actually wants to write that kind of story.

Oshii: Somewhere yes. Take Nausicaa for example, within that world called “Nausicaa” there are characters with that sort of “scent.” Even that person (Miyazaki) has his own variations of this. It’s just that he has internalized that making it a reality would be a bad thing.

Anno: But his true feelings are Lepka (Future Boy Conan) or somewhere around there.

Oshii: Yes his real thoughts are somewhere different. That’s because that person is very strategic about what he puts out into the world and how. And it’s not necessary for the work to align with his truth.

Anno: Speaking of revealing one’s truth, I had expectations for Porco Rosso but what part of that was true, damn it (laughs).

Oshii: His truth was in there. But not of observations on humanity or the world, his truths about his personal life was the only thing in it. Especially surrounding troubles with women (laughs). And of course, only people who know him personally would understand such a thing. In that sense, it goes far beyond the craftiness of Patlabor; Porco Rosso is way more sly. He let everything out in that film and even left excuses for himself.

When you take off the pig mask, Miya-san is underneath. If he truly wanted to create a world that’s so unheard of and positive like that, why did the pig need to wear a trenchcoat and smoke? They just need to be going oink oink. It would’ve been a much more fun anime that way. If he wanted to make an anime that’ll make the kids happy, then there’s no need to make it so hard boiled, they should’ve just been oinking….cause pigs don’t need to speak. The pig goes oink oink, and is for some reason is good at piloting a plane. Then it would’ve been so much fun. But it’s not like that. And the reason it's not is because he wanted to show his truth….more like, he wanted to dispel his own sorrows through making this film. The audiences had it okay but his staff who had to go along with this are so pitiful. That’s the true pig curse. I bet they couldn’t stand it. Because they’re Miya-san’s excuse.

#cca doujin #hideaki anno #mamoru oshii #finish someday #translations #interview

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rotationalsymmetry · 3 years

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Thinking about the twitter "villain of the week" phenomenon and call outs that turn into dogpiles. Imagine you're with your family or some other large group for a holiday dinner. Everyone's eaten and you're back in the kitchen washing dishes, with someone else drying. Suddenly, the person drying the dishes notices you missed a spot on one of the plates. Now, people who aren't assholes (and even quite a lot of assholes for that matter) will just be "oh, you missed a spot" and hand it back to you to clean up. Because missing a spot when you're washing dishes is normal and no big deal. So you say "oops" or something and fix it and all's good. But maybe it doesn't go like that. Maybe they go "tsk, (your name) is being so irresponsible, they can't even do something as simple as washing a plate" and then suddenly your entire family show up with a list of everything you've ever done wrong since age 5. That would be utter bullshit, right? That would be emphatically not accountability, right? That would be your family deciding to make your life miserable just so they could feel superior or whatever, right? (That would be abuse, or at least something very close to abuse, since y'know it's important to name things what they are.) (I mean...a lot of people do the "let's talk about 20 different things you've done wrong at one go" thing without it being abuse per se...but it sure as fuck isn't functional.) (And no, the degree of the offense doesn't really affect things. If you, say, abandoned your terminally ill spouse to run off with the affair partner you'd been cheating on them with for the entirety of your marriage, that would be really bad, and it still wouldn't make sense for your family to all get together to tell you what a terrible person you are while bringing up things you did ages ago and so on. The focus should always be on making it better, not on painting the offender as a shitty person. No matter how big the offense. Figuring out who's going to take care of the ill spouse, not determining the exact level of assholery of the abandoning spouse and whether everyone should have known from one thing they said 15 years ago, right? There can be consequences, like not inviting especially nasty people to future events, without engagement.)

So, at one point I joined this one group on Facebook, when I was relatively new to social media. I mean, I'd been on FB for ages, but I'd just been following what my friends posted, I hadn't joined any groups specifically to engage with people that I didn't already know over shared interests. (A very different FB experience.) This group was nominally about being bisexual, but an awful lot of the posts (several a week) involved someone innocuously equating genitals to gender, or some other language thing that ignores the existence of trans people. (This was before I ID'd as nonbinary, but on a personal level that sort of thing still doesn't bug me. I recognize it bugs other people, and it is reasonable for people who do care about this to want other people to alter the language they use.) I'm not talking blatantly hostile stuff like calling trans women men. I'm talking the things that people who grew up being told there's boys and girls and you can tell which is which by looking at them, just do because they haven't yet adjusted their worldview yet. Intent isn't the same as impact, but there is a difference between an innocent mistake and outright hostility. And there'd be literally dozens of people making the exact same callout. And because there were so many responses, everybody in the group would see the post, because that's how FB's algorithm works. And then this would happen again the next day and a couple days after that. And I (being new to this sort of thing) was just like, wtf? Wouldn't it make more sense to set things up so that the mods have to approve posts so they can quietly shut those down and privately tell the posters what rewrites they have to make? Or at least shut down those posts as soon as a mod catches them, or make one callout and shut down replies so it doesn't turn into this snowball that you can't miss? If the problem is this is hurtful to trans people, why intensify that hurt by making sure every trans person in the group ends up seeing the post?

I eventually left.

I imagine people had good intentions, or at least thought they did. That "educating people" this way was the important thing. But thing is, mostly it teaches people that that behavior is OK, that behavior that recall I've already explicitly described as verbal abuse or at least as something very close to verbal abuse, and that's a terrible lesson. This is not how decent human beings interact with other human beings. In similar groups I've also seen one person make a brief call out and the called out person say "oh, I didn't realize, I'll (edit the post, or whatever)" and that's it, and that's entirely different, you know? A single low-key call out, not the entire group piling on. Which is why I don't really like the term "call out culture", because sometimes people have cultures around making call-outs that are actually healthy and reasonable and not abusive, that are much healthier than the cultural default of "if you bring it up, you're the one making trouble," and it really should be normalized for people to do small low-key "hey, you missed a spot" checks without it turning into "I don't have a racist bone in my body". If the person doing the dishes goes "I am a perfect dish-washer and therefore that plate is clean, and how dare you say I don't know how to wash dishes right", that's also a problem. But I do think we should have a way to distinguish between normalizing saying "you missed a spot" about social justice language, and normalizing everybody within a mile radius jumping on and amplifying the message and bringing the person's past behavior into it and also literally telling the person who missed a spot that they're a terrible person.

Especially since, y'know, follow the money? Social media companies financially benefit from those pile-ons. They encourage them. It's in their business model. It's "engagement." If you're cynical about corporations in general or social media companies in particular (and if you're on tumblr, you probably are)...then part of that should be recognizing when social media companies are manipulating people into being more assholeish than they would be on their own. Even when, especially when, it's done in the name of social justice.

#cheating mention #terminal illness mention #villain of the week #call out culture #that thing #still don't like the term call out culture though #long post #discourse #verbal abuse tw #emotional abuse tw #transphobia tw #racism tw #political #social justice

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mollymauk-teafleak · 4 years

Text

whose brow is laid in thorn (chapter three)

Chapters: 1, 2, 3

Huge thanks to my lovely friends who beta this for me @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian!

Please consider reblogging and leaving a comment on Ao3!

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Molly realises the true responsibilities of being a prince to a realm with a doubtful king...

Alternate: come and get your homoerotic sword fighting, fellow gays

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Mollymauk wondered if people speculated about why he spent so much time down in the practice yards, why the early hours of the morning often found him in the armory or out in the moonlit space at the very centre of the castle courtyard, scimitars whirling like shards of starlight in his hands. Probably they assumed he was down here fucking a succession of stable boys and chambermaids, or else this was where he met his personal smugglers who provided him with various powders and pills and injectables.

He wondered if his father ever proudly spoke of how martial his son was, if he ever boasted of his prowess with weaponry. If he ever took comfort in the fact that, despite it all, at least his heir knew how to kill.

Mollymauk didn’t know what he hoped for. He’d long ago given up on trying to understand what the king wanted from him or whether he cared.

The truth was, training just gave him some comfort. It was repetitive, rhythmic and required all of his attention, even thud of his heavy heartbeat. It was simple. When he was swinging at the wicker targets or spearing sacks of flour shaped vaguely like people or deflecting bolts of low level magic that would give him a faint electric shock if they found his flesh, he wasn’t thinking about how he hadn’t been allowed outside of the castle walls more than a year now. He wasn’t thinking about the poorly concealed fury in his father’s eyes when someone had spoken against him in the last council meeting, the frequency with which the occupants of those other seats rotated out, certain formerly important members that he hadn’t heard from since they’d shown their dissent towards some of the latest policies, the angry letters that came from neighbouring kingdoms.

And he wasn’t thinking about how before too long, it would all be his. And he had no idea what he would do then.

He was no fool, despite his carefully sewn costume. He knew the king was keeping him on a short leash these past few years to groom him for the throne he’d occupy one day, so he could learn to inspire the same fear, the same flinches from a gaze alone, the same ruthlessness. He’d had his years of freedom, of slipping past his guards at night to go to the lower echelons of the city and tip in gold at the taverns. He’d been allowed his friends and their little adventures. He’d been allowed to be himself.

And look at the trouble it had caused.

Mollymauk closed his eyes to it all and slid his scimitars out of their sheaths. The yard around him was silent, these earliest hours just past midnight were the only times when the castle and its hundreds of residents made no noise at all. Just after when the night guard took their leave but before the bakers rose to start up the ovens and begin the morning’s bread. He could be completely alone here.

Beau usually said she would kill him for messing with her grounds, asking him if he was a godsdammned Expositor trained monk of the Cobalt Soul explicitly hired by the king to serve as the master at arms or if he was a pampered parrot of a prince whose grip was always off so he scuffed up her training swords and couldn’t work a staff to save his life. But they both knew about these little night time visits he made when he couldn’t sleep or when the day had just been too much for him and not a word was said. Sometimes he caught her putting the dummies back into place after he’d forgotten exactly how she liked them aligned or rebrushing the sand in the training circle after he’d not done it to her exact specifications. A look would pass between them when she saw him watching, a momentary pause, but then they’d go right back to good naturedly insulting each other as only two friends could and not another word would be said.

Mollymauk was grateful for that. Not that he’d ever tell her.

He’d stripped down to just a loose shirt, bound by the leather guards on his forearms and his tight leggings, hair pushed back off his face with a band. The night air rose chills on his purple skin, prickling as it filled his lungs, waking up something inside him.

His first cut was so sharp it could be heard as it pierced the air. Mollymauk revelled in the stretch of his muscles as he held his sword out in a low lunge, holding as still as he could for a few pulsing heartbeats before sweeping into a whirling storm of attacks at nothing. High cuts, low arcs, turns that brought one leg flush with his nose, seconds where the swords changed hands, moments where one hand was splayed on the sand below him and supporting his whole body, snapshot instants rushing by like lightning. It was a dance and by gods, did he miss dancing.

The swords dance fit his heartbeat so well, when one sword stopped dead with a metallic ring, it was as if his heart had frozen in his ribcage. His eyes snapped open.

And found his nose inches from Caleb’s, his eyes bright and a small smile playing on his face. And his fingers tight around the grip of the short dagger whose guard had caught the point of his scimitar.

“I told you years ago that these curved swords of yours are too easy to turn,” he said in that soft, unassuming way of his.

Molly huffed out a laugh, shoulders relaxing though not enough to break the block between the two blades, “So I move so fast no one has a chance to turn them. Problem solved.”

Caleb’s mouth quirked and one eyebrow lifted as he eyed their crossed blades, “No one?”

“Well...we can’t all be Volstruker.”

Something inside Mollymauk thrilled, against his better judgement. Times like this he could convince himself the last ten years hadn’t happened at all and the Caleb by his side now was the Caleb he’d fallen in love with.

“Perhaps...though you really need to tell me if you’re ever planning on leaving your chambers in the dead of night, your highness. I don’t mind admitting you scared me half to death.”

Molly’s smile curdled with guilt, “Ah. I’m sorry. It’s...it’s been a while since I needed to think about things like that.”

“No harm done,” Caleb allowed, “This time...though as long as I’m here, would you prefer to train with a partner?”

Molly’s laugh rang out across the empty yard and bounced off the stone towers that surrounded them, as he finally broke the embrace of their blades and stepped back, “So you can beat the tar out of me like you did when we were kids?”

Caleb replied with simple courtesy, “Oh, I’m sure his highness’ skills have improved at least somewhat. And if not, well, it is as you say. We cannot all be Volstruker.”

“You’re on. Simple straight blades, if you would be so kind.”

Caleb quickly fetched two from the armoury, their edges filed down so they could serve as training swords. Molly couldn’t help but note Caleb was dressed similarly to himself, a simple sleeping shirt thrown over the trousers from his black uniform, cut close so as not to hamper his moves in combat. He also couldn’t help but note his sleep-tousled hair, not tied away from his hard features, the gentler set of his face than any daylight hour saw, the almost see through cotton of his simple shirt…

Molly slapped himself mentally, turning away as soon as his blade was in his hand. You aren’t being fair to him he snapped, control your damn self.

Best to start soon, so he could chalk his raised pulse and flushed cheeks to something else. He turned as Caleb finished tying back his hair and settled into an easy starting stance, mirror to the one Molly quickly established. Their blades tapped once, as if two old friends in greeting, before Caleb lunged forward with a sudden advance. Molly had to move swiftly to block it with a hurried, sloppy front guard.

He looked at Caleb, scandalised, “Weren’t you asleep not ten minutes ago?”

The ghost of his old friend smiled at him and broke the guard cleanly, beginning a rapid exchange of slash and parry that Molly visibly struggled to counter. It had always been this way between the two of them, Caleb’s Volstruker training more than a match for Molly’s own, even after he’d gotten a Cobalt Soul monk as his instructor. In a way, he’d always secretly appreciated each time Caleb knocked him into the dust.

It was just one of the many ways Molly could know Caleb had seen him as a friend rather than a prince.

For a while it was just the clang of their blades against each other, the scuff of their feet in the sand and their own rapid breathing. Or rather, Molly’s rapid breathing. Caleb was like something robotic, never seeming to tire or miss a single move or break a sweat. Molly, in comparison, could feel a blush raising on his chest and see his breath fogging between them.

In fact, the only time Molly saw any change in his expression was when an empty fade of Caleb’s brought their swords kissing sharply in front of their faces, their noses inches from each other. He thought he saw something in Caleb’s eyes then but it could well have been a flicker of moonlight, a second’s beat before they stepped apart and Caleb lunged again.

Molly was flagging badly after another minute of combat, shoulders heaving and brow furrowing as he moved from guard position to guard position, not even able to try and land a hit on Caleb. Before too long his arm would fail and Caleb would have him.

There would have been something comforting about that. Something familiar.

He was a little regretful when the time finally came to shift the position of his feet ever so slightly, to centre himself almost imperceptibly differently. At Caleb’s next slash, he doubled over, hissing through his teeth, pivoting away from Caleb and cradling his sword arm.

“Ach,” he heard Caleb groan, “Molly, I’m sor-”

He didn’t even get a chance to finish. Because in the time it took to form those syllables, the sword changed from one of Molly’s hands to the other and he struck cobra fast. One foot smartly hooked Caleb’s from underneath him, Molly’s perfectly undamaged sword arm pushing his chest so he went down heavily onto the sand. Before he even registered what had happened, his prince’s sword point was at his throat.

Molly grinned down at him, framed in moonlight, “Yield?”

“Yield,” Caleb didn’t even hesitate. If Molly were in the mood to really indulge himself, he’d have said it was awe making his voice so breathless, “I don’t...what happened?”

“We’re not children anymore, Caleb,” he replied, not hiding the tinge of sadness in his voice, “And I am not Volstruker. I tricked you.”

He was relieved to see the smile break on Caleb’s face and how readily he took the offered hand that replaced the swordpoint.

“No. No, you most certainly are not Volstruker, your highness.”

Once he was upright, Caleb looked at him earnestly, barely even noting the sand in his hair, “Can you teach me how to do that? How to feign it so effortlessly, how you shifted your weight like that…”

Molly chuckled, “Wasn’t part of your training, hm?”

“No,” Caleb frowned a little, though at some thought in his head rather than at his prince, “No, the Volstruker… they wouldn’t ever have thought of it. Showing any kind of weakness, ever even seeing it could be an advantage...it is not their way.”

Their way, Molly bit his lip. Not our way.

He wasn’t being fair, he knew that. But how was any of this fair?

“I can teach you,” he nodded quickly, “Of course I can teach you.”

“You teaching me something...” Caleb smiled, “It would make rather a nice change, wouldn’t it?”

It would be about damn time, Molly thought tiredly.

Neither of them noticed they hadn’t yet unclasped their hands.

Things seemed to have gotten a little easier for Caleb over the last months, at least in some areas. Molly was at least relieved to see that he was willing to spend time with their friends.

It had been awkward at first, when he’d been avoiding them entirely outside of when the constant tether between him and the prince forced it on him, when no one seemed quite sure how to act around this new version of him. Quick hellos whenever Jester came in for one of their regular chats, hellos that fast turned tearful. Sad glances from Beau whenever he accompanied Molly to training, ones that quickly turned to anger on her face. Yasha staring at his back with an unreadable expression.

There had been one quite terrible instance when Veth had come in to change Molly’s bed linen one morning and come face to face with Caleb coming out of his own chambers to greet the prince as he finished dressing. Veth had frozen in place, her eyes wide and so heartbreakingly sad as she faced the young man she’d considered a second son. Caleb had opened his mouth, searching for something, anything, to say but Veth had turned and fled before he could. He’d gone very quiet for the rest of the day, Mollymauk noticed.

But Molly couldn’t avoid his friends forever, not when they’d been the only thing that had gotten him through the last ten years. He missed the evenings where they’d lounge in one of the many royal sitting rooms with their feet up on furniture older than they were, making jokes and laughing, and somehow everything would seem alright. He missed how easy everything had been.

And, as it turned out, sometimes things could be made easy. Because after a few times standing in the corner like a ghost, Caleb was pulled back in slowly and steadily, like a man coming in from the bitter cold to a roaring fire. No one was quite sure how it happened, when he started to smile at Fjord’s stories of the sea again or let Veth sit in his lap like she used to or when Yasha began to shave his beard for him again. There was no grand moment when they all whirled around to see him sitting there in the same spot he’d always occupied, the one that no one had dared move into after he was taken away. It happened gradually, the way small streams ford deep canyons. The way raindrops can bring down a prison wall.

The way hope could bloom in the pit of your stomach no matter how hard you tried.

It was one of those long, golden evenings where all of their schedules somehow managed to align and they all found themselves in the room they usually took over. The fire roared, thanks to Caleb, and the wine was flowing for those who cared to partake, the whole air smelled of freshly smoking wood and velvet and warmth. One of those nights where Molly could look around and feel truly, deeply fortunate, the way all the riches and status and power never made him feel.

“...I’m only saying, if a princess can’t eat lemon cakes at midnight, then what is the point of being a princess?” Jester was saying huffily, her head resting in Beau’s lap, “I’d even go down and make them!”

“If you did, we could kiss the kitchen goodbye,” Molly flicked his tail at her nose, she was well in target from where he sat on the carpet, leaning back against one of the settees to be close to the fire, “Most of the western castle too, probably.”

“Stone doesn’t melt, idiot!” she shot back at him, swiping at his tail like a kitten. Yasha, who had her feet in her lap, somewhere within the skirts of her voluminous dress, snorted.

“Dragonfire can melt stone,” Fjord interjected, sipping his wine, “Saw the ruins of Port Udall once. All the buildings were slumped over like old candles, even the stone ones. The rest of it was bone and old ash and nothing growing. They said an ancient red dragon did it.”

“There! If an ancient red dragon can do it, Jessie can definitely do it,” Molly said firmly, before yelping as his sister caught his tail again in retaliation.

“Thank the gods nothing like that has ever come here,” Veth shuddered, glancing up nervously as if dragons might descend at any moment, “Think of the damage it would do to the lower levels…”

“It would be hard for them to look worse than they already do.”

Of course it was Caleb who’d spoken, his voice was softer and quieter than everyone else’s. And now it was especially faded and sad, enough that the light, jovial tone shrivelled as if it had fallen in the fire, while all eyes went to him.

“What’s that mean?” Beau frowned.

Caleb seemed to shrink a little, as he always did when he was bearing the weight of more than one person’s attention. He cleared his throat awkwardly, “Um...well I saw it as I rode through the city. Have...have any of you been down there recently? To the slums?”

“Slums?” Molly repeated, something gripping his stomach in a tight grip.

“That’s what Master Trent called them,” Caleb blinked, looking around them all, “And..well, the description was accurate.”

“There have been more beggars around the docks recently,” Fjord admitted, looking like a man having a difficult realisation. It was mirrored around the group.

Except on Mollymauk’s face. Mollymauk only felt simmering fury.

“And in the marketplace,” Caduceus echoed, “Everyone I’ve seen, I’ve given food to and I’ve treated some deficiencies I’ve seen but...there’s new faces all the time it seems.”

“Tell me, Caleb,” Molly managed to get out through his gritted teeth.

“Well…” he seemed hesitant, probably seeing what was building in the red eyes staring at him, “There’s shacks thrown up all around the inside of the city walls, some on the outside too when they can’t find the space. There was filth running through the streets, there’s no gutters down there so people must be getting sick. Everyone looked...well, desperate. There were, um...there were children. I don’t think they had anyone to look after them. They seemed hungry. Master Ikithon said a lot of them were coming in from the country, the harvest was so poor that many of them lost their farms when they couldn’t pay their taxes.”

Molly’s voice came out with the dangerous regularity of someone about to explode, “And you’re telling me, Caleb, that I knew none of this. I’m the fucking heir to this entire kingdom and I had no idea my people were starving less than a godsdamned mile from where I’m sitting right this fucking second?”

His voice grew to a roar at the end and a crack ran up the glass goblet he was holding. The wine became vinegar on his tongue. No one knew what to say, there was only the crackling of the fire. Or perhaps that was the fury sparking in his chest.

“There has not been a single word of this at any council session I’ve sat on in the last year, no petitions in court. No word of any kind of help, no plan for what to do. Just more and more shit about the fucking taxes that are apparently starving those people. Is that what you’re telling me, Caleb?”

“Yes,” Caleb’s blue eyes were steady and sad, none of the wariness he saw in his friends.

“Then what the fuck is my father doing about this?” he demanded, barely recognising that he was looking down on them all, that he’d stood up at some point and hardly noticed, “Where the hell is he when his people actually need him? I’m just supposed to inherit a kingdom full of starving people who think the man on all their coins has abandoned them? Is this what being a fucking king is?”

Finally the glass shattered in his grip, filling the stunned silence with an icy crunch and a quick hiss of pain he assumed only he could hear as the shards bit into his hand. The anger burned away quickly, leaving a cold, empty vacuum in its wake that shame and hopelessness rushed to fill. Trembling, he pressed his one good hand over his eyes.

“I’m sorry…” he croaked, “I’m not mad at you all, I just…I shouldn’t have lost my temper…”

He knew his sister had stood and taken his hand by the sweet, almost sugary, vanilla smell of her magic, warm as it ran into his cuts and closed them.

“This isn’t the only thing he’s been keeping from us, is it?” she asked sadly.

Molly opened his eyes, wishing there was anything he could say to take the hurt from her voice. She played the innocent, for her and their family’s benefit, but those wide, purple eyes saw more than anyone would expect. He just wished there were better things to look at.

She’d always wanted to believe the best of their father, the way she wanted to believe in everyone, even after his relationship with their mother had started to fray and he’d caused such damage to Mollymauk. But it wasn’t just him who’d started to see the way the crown had poisoned the man they both used to look up to.

“Well…” she sighed, when her brother’s silence answered her, “This doesn’t have to be the way things are. This isn’t the kind of king you have to be.”

Molly inhaled and exhaled slowly, the ghost of the cuts prickling as he flexed his hand to better hold Jester’s, “He isn’t going to like it.”

The shame at the fear in his own voice roiled inside him. How much had been sliding past because he’d been too scared to see it, how many people had been hurt because he couldn’t stand up to the king?

All of a sudden, the distance between him and his friends shrank, he felt them close about him. He felt hands on his shoulders, on his back, on his arms, eyes on him that didn’t judge or scorn. If this room was the only place where he didn’t have to think about everything that worried him, all the imperfections in his life, then this was where he could be brave.

This was where he could decide what his duty really was.

Mollymauk drew himself up and nodded, “And he can go ahead and not like it. He wants me close, he wants me as his heir then he can deal with the decisions I make. What the hell is he going to do, throw me in the dungeons?”

“You’d break out in five minutes tops,” Beau smiled wryly.

“And we’d come get you in ten,” Fjord nodded firmly.

Molly’s laugh was thin but it was there and he felt better for hearing it, “Well then...I’m going to need some gold. Not from the treasury, my own. We’ll need to bring in food from along the coast, I’ll send a request right now. But until then, we’ll take from the kitchens. We have more than enough, there’s damn well going to be some to spare for our own people. Beau, Yasha, go and commandeer us some wagons.”

“Right now, my prince?” Yasha’s flickering smile showed she knew the answer.

“Of course right now,” Molly nodded, “We’ve let far too much time go by already. Anyone has a problem, tell them they can take it up with their crown prince.”

“And their princess,” Jester interjected, beaming.

Molly grinned back at her proudly, “Are you all with me?”

The resounding, affirmative reply was all Molly needed to carry this the rest of the way with a smile on his face.

He handed out jobs and dispersed them, feeling an unfamiliar but welcome sense of pride in what they were doing, in each of his friends and, if he was honest, in himself. It was then he noticed Caleb, still where he’d been sat for the entire evening, not having moved a muscle though his eyes said everything his friends had if in a different way.

“I’ve been a bit of a fool, haven’t I, Caleb?” he sighed once they were alone, feeling the edges of that pit still inside him, still with some room for guilt and shame.

Caleb rose, crossed the space between them and grasped his hand, steadying him enough that the bad feelings retreated.

“I think you’ve been scared for a long time, Mollymauk,” he spoke softly, eyes gentle and reflecting the movement of the fire, the same one that turned his hair into burnished copper, “But now you’re becoming the king I always knew you were going to be.”

“Always?” Molly found himself having to swallow hard, feeling every inch of Caleb’s skin that pressed against his own.

“Of course. From the moment I met you, I knew you would be a king I’ll be proud to stand beside.”

This high up on the battlements, the wind found its way under Molly’s hood even as tightly as it was pulled down to cover his distinctive purple hair. He felt a churning dizziness in his stomach as he peered over the edge and saw the ground so far below him.

“Ready?”

Beside him, Caleb blended almost perfectly into the evening shadows thanks to his uniform and his bound up hair. Molly might not even have known he was there, if his hand wasn’t on his arm to steady his prince.

Molly flashed him a grimace from under his hood, “Feels a hell of a lot longer than a year since I did this.”

Caleb’s chuckle found him even with the wind whipping around them, “But are you ready?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, feeling the truth of it on his tongue, “I’m ready.”

He went first, partly to prove to his friend that he wasn’t quite as terrified as he appeared, partly to get it over with. One step out into the dizzying expanse of the thin air, the forty or so feet between him and a messy death. The second’s worth of terror as everything dropped and the world began to accelerate around him. And the inhalation, the relief so sharp it was like a mouthful of alcohol as his hand caught the edge of the stone crenellation he’d just leapt from and he held fast.

Molly couldn’t help it, he laughed wildly, stretching out as far as he dared into the nothingness with only the hand keeping him anchored and the flat of his boots on the pebbled wall. The wind snagged his cloak and tried to rip it away but he let it try. He felt like he could have taken flight at that moment.

“Quiet!” Caleb whispered, as he dropped down too with much more grace, “Someone will hear us.”

Though as the wind lifted back his cowl, Molly could see he was smiling.

The rest of the way down the wall was easy, there were pebbles and divots put into the old stone for easy handholds. In fact, it had been specifically designed so, in just this one part of the immense outer wall, with the goal of giving the royal family a secret, easy way out if they became besieged. Molly suspected that he wasn’t the only one to use it for this exact purpose, sneaking out of the palace past his curfew to go drinking with his friends.

Once they hit the ground, they disappeared into the small grove of trees that grew around the castle as an extra line of defence and a pleasant garden for autumn walks and summer picnics. As soon as they were underneath the leaves, black in the thickening twilight, they were invisible to any guards atop the wall who might think to glance down. Molly’s heart stayed in his throat as he ran after Caleb, having to steer by the faintest flickers of his cloak hem in the almost solid blackness before him. Twigs snapped under his heels, the air was cold enough to make his throat ache and his lungs burn but the grin never slipped from his face.

He couldn’t help it, he threw back his head and laughed wildly again, the sound bouncing off the trunks and sounding like the call of half a hundred demented birds.

It just felt so good to breathe again.

The meeting point hadn’t changed from when they were foolish kids doing exactly this. It was the same clearing on the outer edge of the copse, on the far side so they were still hidden from the city. Molly and Caleb weren’t the first ones there, Caduceus and Fjord were already waiting for them, greeting them with the correct response to their own whistled tune, the same they’d always used so they would know it was friends approaching. The girls came after, Beau and Jester already giggling and hanging off each other, Yasha smiling as she carried Veth on her shoulders.

Molly saw something similar to his own excited energy mirrored in his friends. Everyone seemed to feel acutely just how long it had been since they allowed themselves something like this, something that felt like a victory.

When they were children, it would have sufficed just to stay in their little clearing, chase each other around and build forts and knock each other into the little stream. But they certainly weren’t kids any more and they knew of a different way to spend this evening.

There was something undeniably beautiful about the kingdom’s capital, Asarius. Not many visitors would think the same upon seeing the black stone nearly everything was wrought in, its winding street that curved around the hill the city sat on and then branched off in endless alleyways and bolt holes like arteries in a body, the shiny, volcanic cobblestones that lined the streets, the stink and din of hundreds of bodies pressed close together by the city walls. But Mollymauk had always found home here. He loved the paper lanterns that swung above their heads to light the streets, the ones he risked pulling his hood back just a little so he could properly see. He loved the babble of so many voices around him, the brushes of other people’s lives as they streamed alongside his own, never realising that it was their crown prince and his retinue passing them by. He loved the many different carts each selling something exciting and delicious or, well, at least exciting. He loved the different languages, the different kinds of people, all finding their own place in Asarius.

And one day, that place would be under his protection. Every face he passed as they walked down the main street towards the glow of red lanterns would be one of his subjects one day. One of his people.

After the last few weeks, the thought didn’t give him the same terror as it once did.

It had broken his heart to see the poverty festering like a disease in Asarius, the first night they’d taken wagons of food down to the poorest parts of the capital. Every city had its less well maintained streets, it’s darker, more shadowy parts, he knew this, but what he’d seen that night was outright neglect. Children with no families to go home to, curled in gutters like stray dogs. Women clutching babies to their chests in a futile attempt to give them some warmth their humble shelters couldn’t provide. An old bone being seen as a feast, hacking coughs audible from every corner, hungry, defeated eyes from the shadows.

It was neglect. It was cruelty. And it had blossomed under his ignorance.

He’d stepped right off the wagon on that first night, so quickly even Caleb hadn’t been able to catch his arm. He’d taken a loaf of bread from the carts of food stacked in the bed and gently approached the closest citizen, a tabaxi woman with a cub on her knee, sitting on the porch of a lopsided shack with only the city wall to keep it from tumbling over entirely. He’d gone to one knee in front of her, saw her expression turn to one of pure shock and fear as she’d realised exactly who it was.

And as he’d pressed the loaf into her hand, he’d apologised to her. And he’d sworn his family would never forget it’s people again.

It would not be a quick or easy fix. Molly couldn’t go with the wagons every time, as he’d wanted to at first, but he knew to push it only so far. Instead he kept the memories close to his chest, the people’s hands he’d shaken, the children whose hair he’d ruffled fondly and asked their name, the stories every elder had told him. He kept their pleas and their needs and their struggles, took them gladly on his own shoulders and made thousands of promises he intended to keep. Instead, he watched the wagons leave every week, laden with food and oil and fabric he’d purchased, and felt a little more like a prince.

Of course, his stomach had been a solid block of ice when the subject of the charity had been brought up in the council meeting, ever so gingerly, nervous eyes darting to the king to see how he would react to news of every mouth in the slums singing his son’s praises. They’d all known, naturally, that the alms weren’t officially sanctioned, that Mollymauk had acted without his father’s permission.

He’d been every bit as fearful to see what his father would say, he’d felt every second of that long, terrible pause tick by. But he had made himself sit back casually, one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, he’d made his eyes meet the king’s in a steady, even gaze. Only Caleb’s strong, sure presence at his side and the memories of the joy he’d brought had kept it all from crumbling.

“Well done,” the king had eventually replied, one hand coming up to stroke his goatee, “It would seem you’ve finally found a...pet project...that interests you, son. For the time being at least. Chancellor, make sure that in future the charity is paid for by the crown treasury. Just in case my son gets bored and his attention wanders. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Mollymauk?”

Molly’s shoulders tightened and he felt the same tension in Caleb beside him. He was an expert in speaking his father’s language and he missed not a single word of what lurked beneath his light, joking tone.

“Fine by me, father. You’ve got me there,” he shrugged in response, flicking his tail idly, “After all, it needs to be done. And...well, it really is a job for the king, isn’t it?”

I can speak it just as well as you, father, are you proud? And I won’t forget what you did. I’m sure you’ll return the favour.

Molly knew some kind of retribution would be coming. But he wouldn’t think about that tonight. Not when the red glow of the lanterns up above was cutting through the gathering night and there was music on the air and the smell of alcohol, a wide variety of perfumes and sparking fires.

They swept into one of the taverns they’d always gone to in their younger days, one where they knew they could count on some discrecion when they pulled their hoods back. As soon as he was under the lintel, Molly felt himself wrapped in warmth and loud, laughing voices and embraced the giddy relief inside him.

Gods, it was so, so good to breathe again.

He let the night run away from him, gladly. It was as if he’d never been away, finding warm, eager welcomes at the dice tables, at the bar, on the dancefloor. In every corner, people clasped his hand and thanked him for his generosity in helping Asarius find it’s pride again and said how good it was to see him back amongst them. Molly gambled freely, he bought drinks, he laughed and swapped stories with the other patrons, he flirted gamely with the servers. In flashes he saw Yasha dominating at arm wrestling competitions and winning almost as many as Jester, he saw Fjord reenacting a fight with some pirates for a captive audience, Cad was choking on some drink Veth had bought for him over at the bar, Beau was making a barmaid blush.

He took a moment to himself, leaning against a beam and taking it all in, enjoying the ache in his jaw from smiling so much. He knew it should feel like ten years ago but, somehow, it didn’t. It felt like here and now.

The only difference was he was happy. At this moment he was happy.

Caleb was sitting at a table by himself which, in fairness, was exactly where he would have been ten years ago. There was, however, a small mug of beer on the table in front of him that had a few sips taken out of it at least.

“You know, for all people hype this up,” he said as Molly approached, turning the tin mug in his hands, “I’d have expected it to taste better.”

Molly laughed, “Not seen you drinking before…”

“No,” Caleb admitted, a smile tugging on his lips, “It seemed like the night for trying something new.”

“Indeed. But how about something old?” Molly returned, suddenly shy and not hiding it on his face.

Caleb’s eyes flickered to his own, questioning. When he saw the hand Molly was extending to him, his expression shifted into something unreadable and he almost lost his nerve.

“Would you like to dance with me, Caleb?”

After a few moments, his old friend smiled and nodded, taking his hand, “Someone might need to protect you out there after all.”

“And there’s no one I’d want more,” Molly beamed.

The musicians were especially fine tonight, the kind of lively tavern music with laughing strings and skirling drums and bawdy lyrics everyone could join in with and slam their drinks on the table to. It was very different from the stiff backed balls that had been his only entertainment recently.

Caleb smiled nervously, “They only taught me how to waltz at the Soltryce Academy.”

“Oh, I seem to remember you not being all that bad,” Molly smiled, holding up his arm for Caleb to mirror as a bright country dance tune burst out from the corner where the musicians were pressed, “But even so, maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will try and assassinate me.”

So at least Caleb had a smile on his face as they began to dance, twirling through a loose knot of other couples like two leaves caught on an errant breeze. It was the kind of stomping, rhythmic, simple two step that left plenty of time for their gazes to linger and hands to brush across each other.

“Not all that different from swordplay, eh?” Molly teased, his voice low under the music.

“I’d rather have steel in my hand, I think,” Caleb smiled, though there was something brittle about it, like he was making his mouth do the movements while his eyes were elsewhere.

When they swapped places, Molly looked around with a moment’s anxiousness. Was he about to be assassinated on a dancefloor? But the place looked much the same as it had before, his friends still mixing and laughing and drinking, part of the warm tapestry of everything.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Molly put in gently, to try and distract him from whatever was causing his anxiety, letting something inside him open up, “Tonight has been...well, it’s been wonderful. It’s been the best night I’ve had in so long and...between this and you opening my eyes to what was going on in my own city, I feel like I’ve remembered who I am. And not just that, I’m becoming someone I actually want to be, ever since you’ve come home. You were right, whatever it looks like, my life is better with you.”

He’d said more than he’d meant to but the night was just so perfect and it had just been so long since he’d felt so free and so like himself, so far from everything he’d been feeling under his father’s thumb. It was like a deep hunger was finally being sated.

And when the dance brought Caleb and Molly back together and he saw the tears in his eyes, it all came crashing down.

“Fuck…” Molly cursed, stopping dead even as the music kept going and the world kept turning, “Oh fuck, Caleb I’m so sorry...that was too much, I shouldn’t just have rambled on like that.”

“No,” Caleb shook his head, a slight tremble in his hands, “Gods help me, it’s not that, it’s the opposite…”

“Caleb…” Molly breathed, the giddiness from before now a sickening emptiness. Suddenly the lights seemed too bright and the music too loud, the laughter around the room now aimed at him.

The rest of the world caught up with them in a sharp, sudden lurch. Cold wind poured through the door which had been thrown wide. Framed in now harsh red light was one of the royal messengers, their eyes wide and the set of their mouth grim.

“Word from the palace,” their voice sounded through the room like a death knell, “A curfew is in effect from this moment forth, all citizens of Asarius must return to their homes and clear the streets. The Jagenoths have invaded our northern shore.”

The pronouncement was greeted with silence and stares, the kind of silence that followed the sound of ice cracking underfoot. Molly was so aware of the eyes on him, the weight of their shock as they looked to their prince.

From across the bar, he saw his little sister mouth his name, the naked fear on her face.

He found he had no comfort to give them. He’d had the floor ripped out from under him, just the same as the rest of them. All he could think of was the way his father had smiled at him across the council table, the hardness in his eyes.

He wasn’t surprised when the words finally came from the messenger.

“The kingdom is officially at war.”

#widomauk #royal au #tw: brainwashing #mollymauk tealeaf #caleb widogast #cr fic #please reblog and comment!

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maaji-maji-majima · 4 years

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some kissing hcs for Majima?(if u can make it nsfw)

So I'm in a weird place with this. I don't want to leave you unanswered but I know you won't like the answer that I give. It has been a long time since I was active on tumblr and I'm not sure when along the timeline headcanon became synonymous with fanfiction. I appreciate fanfiction authors for their creativity, but I am not one myself. I use headcanon in the older definition of "this isn't in the source material, but it is true in my brain". They are either random things my half asleep mind thought of while walking home from work or a character analysis. At the same token your ask had crawled into my brainmeats and won't leave. So again, I apologize that this most definitely is not what you're looking for, but I hope someone out there finds this to be an interesting read.

Without further introduction, here is a character analysis of our favorite pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin in regards to relationships and why the he desperately needs therapy as brought to you by a different pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin who got therapy but probably needs more.

Trigger warnings: Abuse, self harm, mental disorders, poor coping strategies, unhealthy relationships, random tense changes, not fanfiction

Spoilers for the whole franchise, but very specifically for 0, K1, and 5.

Abuse does weird things to people's brains. In Yakuza 0 Majima has barely been out of the hole for a year. He might no longer be suffering the actual physical torture he had been subjected to the year prior, but he is still directly in the hands of his abusers and being watched every moment. He is still in a cage even if it doesn't look like one. He is depressed and likely suicidal, but doesn't follow through with those thoughts because he is determined to make sure Saejima has a home to come back to. He is willing to endure just about anything to allow Saejima a chance to exact that final moment of retribution because Saejima is the one who deserves it and Majima doesn't feel that there is any possibility for forgiveness. In all likelihood he hasn't sought out anyone for a hookup or paid company for an evening due to a combination of not feeling like he deserves anything that feels good and the fact that he's constantly being watched. The year in hole means he no longer really has a concept of privacy, but he's worried that getting close to someone, even for a few moments, could put them in danger if Sagawa or Shimano feels like holding something else over his head. It isn't worth accidentally dragging someone into his own personal hell. He no longer lives for the present, he is only living for that far-off future that he hopes isn't just a pipe dream.

Enter Makoto. At first she is a stand-in for Saejima's sister Yasuko, but it morphs rapidly from there. She is the light and kindness and hope that he hasn't seen in years and she's being dragged into his bullshit. He knows in his heart of hearts that she doesn't deserve what she is being forced into, so his mind snaps into the immediate and does everything he possibly can to save her. This is is the hill he wants to die on. Maybe, just maybe, he can end his miserable existence with a final act of good and he feels that Saejima might just be able to understand. But because he no longer has any relationships in his life that are not strictly professional or the abusers he cannot escape, he has little recollection of what a nuanced relationship or even friendship is any longer. Due to circumstance she is also the only person that he cannot keep at arm's length, no matter how desperately he tries. So he falls for her and falls hard. But in the end, after everything they go through he does the impossible. He lets her go. She has a life and a future, whereas he has neither of those. What would she do? Become his ane-san? Have some temporary happiness before she realizes she has a target on her back for the rest of her life? No. Majima believes she deserves so much more than that even though it hurts him deeply. What is one more hurt on top of everything else? He's gotten extremely good at burying his pain.

Getting to Tokyo flips a switch in Majima's brain. Like many people with mental trauma who don't have access to therapy he falls into excess as a way of self medicating. He fits virtually everything on the hedonism checklist. Drinking? Yeah. Violence? Hell yeah! Promiscuity? Yeah, but I ain't judging. Drugs? Probably, even though it isn't explicitly stated in game. Everything from his shift in personality to his wardrobe has become, intentionally or not, a defense mechanism. He has escaped from all of his abusers except for Shimano and he refuses to allow anyone to gain that kind of power over him again.

It is a double edged sword, however. His depression and PTSD are running unchecked. In all likelihood he hasn't fallen hard on vices as a way to reclaim ownership off his own body. Instead it seems more probable that he is dissociating. After everything he has been through he doesn't care what happens to his body in the long run because it isn't actually his anymore. Risky behavior, which is practically Majima's middle name, is also frequently used as a passive form of self harm because the end result is either temporarily feeling better thanks to endorphins and adrenaline or permanently feeling better after embracing death. He could achieve a similar feeling by taking up jogging and chasing a runners high, but that takes more time and energy than chugging a handle of whiskey or goading some chump into throwing hands. Sadly even now admitting to mental problems by seeking help is fairly stigmatized in Japan and it was only worse in the early 90s. Can't have a problem if no one tells you it's there, right?

Then he meets Mirei. She's intense but not wild like Majima. At that moment in time she is everything he needs. Head strong, domineering, and very, very determined. She knows exactly what buttons to press to wrap him right around her finger. And he lets her take the reigns, lets her run his life because he realizes he was doing a terrible job on his own. Better her than Shimano, right? Doing something wrong results in the cold shoulder instead of a vicious beating, and doing something right leads to more than simply the relief of avoiding a beating. He decides that making her happy is enough to make him happy. Until suddenly it isn't. He never wanted to be a father, but even the idea that he could have been was enough to cause a fundamental shift in his entire outlook on life. He could have had someone to live for, instead of just survive for. But he had no say in the matter and didn't know until the decision had been made for him. When Mirei told him she had an abortion he snapped. He hit her. The one and only time he raised his hands against her. Disgusted with himself, and wounded by her decision, he left. If he was capable of that, he knew couldn't be the person she had been trying to mold him into. He realized he was nothing but a weight around her neck dragging her down. And so that day signals the end of their short marriage. He spends the next several decades drowning in guilt for his actions while still resenting her for her choice.

That leaves us with Kiryu. Poor, oblivious Kiryu. Majima's fixation is multifaceted but in no small part due to the fact that Kiryu is one of the few people strong enough to hurt him, but is the only one that doesn't want to. And Majima just doesn't understand. After everything, he only deserves to hurt, right? Saejima, Yasuko, Makoto, Mirei. Everyone who gets too close to him ends up worse for it, so why won't Kiryu and his sense of honor seek justice on their behalf? So he does everything he possibly can to wind up Kiryu enough to Pay Attention Damnit, Fight Me. But Kiryu's response is always just flustered awkwardness because he doesn't want like fighting, it's just a part of his job, like wearing a suit or answering a phone. To Kiryu fighting isn't a thing done because it's enjoyable, it's done because it has to be. But he's still the only one who doesn't flinch when Majima brandishes a knife inches from his face.

And then Kiryu is arrested and in jail for ten years. And ten years is a long time to build someone up onto a pedestal. Like only wanting to talk about the best of a person after they've died. The same thing happened with Saejima. Build them in his mind to what he wants or needs them to be since they are not there to actively correct it. The decade is pretty miserable, going through the motions and trying to not make waves with the bigwigs while terrifying the minions into obedience. When he hears Kiryu is being released it is like waking up again. He all but waits at the taxi stand at the entrance of Kamurocho on the day of Kiryu's release, all but vibrating with excitement. It's a fight he has been waiting on for a decade, too bad it was little more than a disappointment.

So Majima decides to bring him back up to spec in that very Majima flavored way. Small fights, big fights, surprise fights. Kiryu is still reluctant because he doesn't have a reason beyond Majima's dreamed up training program he doesn't actually want to be a part of. Of course this only leads Majima to do everything possible to get under Kiryu's skin, including sharing his personal vulnerabilities while disguising them as jokes just to cause fights, but Kiryu just kind of rolls with it which leads to confusion and frustration on both sides. After a while Majima starts to get into Kiryu's hobbies, like pocket circuit, ostensibly as another form of picking a fight. And he discovers he actually enjoys a lot of it. And they are both too dense and emotionally stunted to realize they're basically dating at this point. At multiple points Majima takes potentially lethal blows meant for Kiryu and the excuse that he is the only one allowed to kill Kiryu is very, very thin. He just can't quite admit out loud that he doesn't want to see Kiryu truly hurt because that's weakness and he is Not Weak (tm).

Shimano's death and Kiryu's departure from the clan come as a whirlwind that destroys him all over again. He's left directionless. So he leaves the Tojo in an attempt to find his own way in the world, for the first time in over twenty years.

I think I need to call it here for now. I know I've left out Saejima and Daigo, among others, but I've been working on this for days and my progress has been eaten twice and I just don't have the energy to keep going right at this time. Maybe some day in the future I'll find the time and energy to write out the rest for all the other games.

tl;dr What Majima wants and what he needs are two different things. He wants to fightfuck, but he needs to be bear hugged into submission so that he can have that mental breakdown he's been carefully bottling up for over thirty years. He needs a good, ugly cry. And therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

#ask #character analysis #not fanfiction #yakuza games #yakuza headcanons #majima character analysis #rgg #rgg games #majima #majima goro #broken people doing broken things

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