#but like also the subtext is very much There™

[grimalkinmessor]

Sweets with afofa ♡

We did horror last time, so let's do something a little fluffier this time :3 (It's more hurt/comfort but what can you do with these two really)

AFOFA/???/Sweets

———

Yoichi crouches on the stairs of a decrepit apartment building, hiding half behind the railing as he waits to hear a familiar set of footsteps. He's a little sore from holding his position so long, but there's truly no other way.

He hears a door open somewhere below, and he holds his breath on instinct.

Footsteps, quick and heavy, begin tramping up the stairs towards him. The ones he's been waiting for. Yoichi goes deathly still. He waits ever so patiently until the footsteps are just around the corner—

"BOO!" Yoichi shouts, launching himself out from around the corner in a flurry of white sheets. He finds himself caught around the middle fairly quickly, hefted off the ground and twisted upside down in a quick, inhuman movement.

Yoichi yelps, his sheet falling off and his shirt draping into his face. He looks up at his brother with a pout, hair swaying just a few centimeters off the ground. Takashi smirks down at him. "Nice try."

"You're no fun," Yoichi complains, squirming in Takashi's grasp. Takashi is nineteen now, and he's already unfairly tall—hanging upside down so far off the ground is making Yoichi dizzy. "Put me down!" He flails.

"What are you all dressed up for?" Takashi prods, ignoring Yoichi's request and spinning him in a circle just to make him squeal. "Aren't you getting a little too old for ghost stories?"

"You're never too old for ghost stories," Yoichi proclaims, wiggling harder. "Besides, it's Halloween! I know you didn't forget; it's your favorite holiday."

"I don't have a favorite holiday," Takashi sniffs.

Yoichi gives him a deadpan look, which really isn't as effective as it would be right side up. "Uh huh. Just like you don't have a favorite color."

Takashi's ears turn pink, but he scoffs. He heaves Yoichi up and around, practically flipping him over his arm to set him gently on his feet. Dizzy, Yoichi stumbles and falls onto his butt with a soft 'oof!'. Takashi drops the fallen sheet back over Yoichi's head, deliberately setting the eyeholes backward so Yoichi sputters, blinded. "Espèce de jolie et déraisonnable chose... What exactly was your plan, hm? Scare your one and only brother down the stairs so you can become the sole heir to the Shigaraki fortune?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who gives off Count Olaf vibes," Yoichi retorts, pulling the sheet around so he can stick his tongue out of one of the eyeholes. "I still can't believe you laughed when their Aunt got eaten by leeches."

"It was funny!" Takashi insists indignantly.

Pulling off the sheet, Yoichi shakes his hair out of his eyes and smiles. "Besides, you're too late. My plan has already been enacted!"

Takashi raises an eyebrow at him, watching curiously as Yoichi scrambles to his feet and darts back around the corner of the stairs to retrieve his prize. This building is old and grimey, barely up to maintenance code, but their apartment is the sole one on the top floor, so they have it all to themselves. It's their first real, legally obtained home.

Grinning to himself, Yoichi pokes his head back around the corner and demands, "Okay, close your eyes."

Takashi closes them—

"And no using a metapower to peek!"

He groans, shoving his hands in his coat pockets and scrunching up his nose. Yoichi giggles.

Sidling up in front of his brother, Yoichi peers at him, just to be sure, before stealing one of his hands from his jacket and pushing a plastic handle into it. "Okay, now look."

Takashi opens his eyes, immediately zeroing in on the orange bucket in his hand. His brow knits, and he yanks the bucket close to his face, audibly jostling the candy inside. Eyes snapping up to meet Yoichi's, Takashi demands, "Where did you get this?"

"I went trick-or-treating!" Yoichi bounces on his heels a little, enthused. "I know you've never taken me because it's too dangerous but you always bring home candy for me on Halloween, and I wanted to give you some for once. I tried to get a lot of chocolate because I know you like ch—"

A hand clamps down over his mouth, an arm cinched tight around his waist as his brother hauls him up and practically teleports them into their apartment, slamming the door shut and pressing Yoichi against it. Furious crimson eyes glare down at him, and Yoichi is bewildered, his gut churning with sudden unease. This is...not the reaction he was hoping for.

"I've told you not to go outside without me!" Takashi hisses, his forehead pressed to Yoichi's as he holds Yoichi's thin wrists tightly, like he might try to run. "You know how dangerous it is out there with the political situation the way it is—what if someone saw you? What if they had called the police and I had to come home to an empty house because you got sent to one of the damn camps!?"

"No one saw me!" Yoichi protests, pushing back against the instinctive urge to make himself smaller. Takashi isn't usually one to swear; he's been breaking the habit for the past few years. It's only when he's really angry that it bleeds back into his vocabulary. "I was really careful, and I used a full body costume so no one could see my hair or eyes! I'm not stupid—"

"I beg to differ when you pull stupid shit like this," Takashi snaps back.

Indignant, eyes tearing up, Yoichi rears back and shouts, "I can't do anything! Everything I do is useless and stupid to you! I try to do something nice for you, to give you the same thing you've given me just once, and you can't even—I can't...I can't even..."

Takashi blinks.

Yoichi turns his head away, sniffling. He hates how easily he cries, how any sort of negative emotion has his eyes watering and his throat closing up. It's awful, and just one more thing that makes him difficult to deal with. Takashi says he gets it from their mother.

Yanking his wrists out of Takashi's grip, Yoichi buries his face in his hands, frustrated. "You give me...everything, Takashi. You've always given me everything I could ever need or-or want, but I can't do the same for you and I hate it. I hate that I can't do anything for you, I hate that I just sit here and struggle to even breathe by myself while you're off doing things that are actually important. I just wanted to show you that I can do things! That I can give you things too, because I love you and I don't want you to think that I don't because then you'll just get sick of me one day—"

"Hé, hé—ne pleure pas, trésor," Takashi blurts, dropping to his knees on the floor so he can hold Yoichi's arms again, pulling them away from his face. Brow furrowed, Takashi gently brushes away Yoichi's tears with his thumbs. "Where's all this coming from? Yoichi, you know I could never get sick of you. Hey—look at me."

Yoichi doesn't want to. His surprise has been ruined and now he's made a fool of himself. Takashi doesn't give him much choice, however, because he cups Yoichi's jaw and turns his face to meet his eyes. Takashi searches his face intently, looking a cross between bewildered and amused. He pets his thumb down Yoichi's pulse before drawing him into a hug. "I'll never get sick of you. And I'll never, ever leave you—I promise you that."

"But I'm—" Yoichi starts, a thousand ways to finish that sentence flashing through his mind. Sick. Frail. A burden. Useless. Deadweight.

"My one and only little brother," Takashi interrupts, carding his hand through Yoichi's hair. "My family. Mon coeur. And I don't need anything else from you other than for you to be here; alive, where I can hold you."

Yoichi buries his face in Takashi's shoulder, hands fisting in his brother's thrifted black trench coat. He smells like dying embers and ozone and the most caustic types of sugar. Yoichi closes his eyes but doesn't say anything, unable to quite make himself believe it.

Sighing, Takashi shifts back and plops down on the floor, taking Yoichi with him. Then he hauls the plastic candy bucket between them, the poor orange pumpkin trapped, squished, between their arms.

Rifling through Yoichi's haul, Takashi fishes out a king sized Hershey bar and tears off the top of the wrapper with his teeth. Then, when half the bar is bare, Takashi waves it temptingly in front of Yoichi's sullen face. "Share it with me?"

Yoichi can't help the wobbly smile that tugs at his lips then, rolling his eyes. After a moment, he nods. Takashi snaps the bar in half and hands a piece to Yoichi, still half wrapped around him on the floor. They eat their chocolate together, before dividing the rest up between them as they always do.

It's nice. It's sweet.

"But really, Yoichi. If you do something dumb like that again, I'm going to start locking you in a dog crate before I head to work in the mornings."

....That's...about what he expected.

[mcgrillzdumpinc]

I'll likely make a more in depth post once I've read through all the translated light novels but

Hello Apothecary Diaries fans I am in volume 8 and would like to reassure you about the choking scene from volume 5

Spoilers under the cut!

Okay so there's a scene at the end of volume 5 (the manga is not there yet) that many have interpreted as sexual assault. For the sake of those sensitive to such topics, I'm going to give a light on spoilers version of the scene and then an in depth analysis. Personally, I do not view the scene as sexual assault, but it is very forceful and carries A LOT of very sad subtext. You'll understand what I'm getting at in the more depth part.

So, the general gist of the choking scene.

MaoMao and Jinshi are in the garden to escape a banquet. They talk for a bit about a very scary incident that occurred that day (thankfully nobody was killed) and share casual conversation. Then Jinshi brings up that they're at this banquet to find him a wife. I won't spoil the specifics, but fyi MaoMao has been wearing an accessory this whole time that loudly announces (to everyone except herself, of course) that She's The Favorite™. Despite how obvious Jinshi has been with his intentions, including holding her hand and combing his other fingers through her hair while mentioning the whole wife thing, MaoMao evades him while thinking "I'm not capable of love". So, she tries to dodge him by offering up another woman. This is what causes Jinshi to snap and choke her, as well as hold one of her arms behind her back to stop her from fighting back.

He doesn't kill her. As far as damage to her throat, the text doesn't indicate any. He then leans his weight on her. MaoMao then remembers how she was taught sex techniques against her will be the Verdigris House women & decides to use those techniques against Jinshi. She then promptly leaves and Jinshi feels like the most pathetic man in world.

The two don't interact beyond official matters until towards the end of volume 6. Jinshi brings more rare medicine in lieu of an apology. The two talk around the wife situation again and MaoMao gets tickled. It isn't until volume 7 that they have an actual conversation breakthrough.

That's my light on spoilers version of the events. Now I'll give a more in depth version, that's honestly a good chunk of my own meta-analysis around the events of volume 5.

Honestly, volume 5 is full of really interesting scenes regarding Jinshi and MaoMao. This is the first volume after Jinshi has been forced back into Imperial Brother status, yet the first thing I noticed that actually changed between JinMao is how MaoMao takes initiative with him now. As soon as she learns an insect plague might be on the horizon, she dives into unprompted research and delivers her findings to Jinshi. She's no longer working at the palace or for Jinshi, but she still takes on the extra burden. She also takes initiative to get Jinshi some extra sleep (though she misinterprets his desire to not sleep alone). And later in the novel, when they're in the paper makers' village, MaoMao acts so cute when reapplying Jinshi's burn scar makeup. I'll let screenshots talk for me.

Like man. She's so cute. And I wonder, if these two didn't have to deal with social standing and imperial drama, would we get way more of them just being cute and companionable? If MaoMao wasn't an unwitting member of the Who Wants To Be An Imperial Princess race, would her feelings for Jinshi have grown without so much pushing and urgency on his end?

But I digress. I think a lot of volume 5, especially once they reach their travel destination, is MaoMao trying her best to keep her blinders on even though she is in the thick of imperial drama. She's especially desperate with regards to the blazingly obvious fact that a certain someone of very high status is in love with her. I think the end of chapter 6 does a very good job of driving home one of the major reasons why MaoMao is reluctant to trust Jinshi's feelings.

To add fuel onto this unfortunate fire is that MaoMao, as an unmarried courtesan's daughter, was attacked as an infant by her mother, sought after by fucking Lakan of all people, ignored while crying as a baby, and forcibly taught sex (to the point of tears!). She also had to cover for Luomen's own eccentricities, specifically ensuring they had enough money to feed themselves. MaoMao, to put it shortly, has been taught not to believe she can attain anything beyond her very simple life of being a lowly apothecary.

And then here's Jinshi who, as a prince, has been forced to grow up fast & have all his favorite things taken away from him. I think MaoMao is the first time he ever wanted a person. He is, for lack of a better word, obsessed with her. I think a lot of his pushiness & tendency to be clingy with her is him desperately trying to make sure he doesn't lose her. If he makes her his wife, then, well, she can't leave.

And I think the choking scene is him finally at his breaking point. At this point, he has lavished her with gifts, been very forward sexually with her twice, and given her a new hairpin that is essentially this story's version of a promise ring. It's MaoMao's repression/reluctance vs. Jinshi's desperation and so far she's winning.

But then she pushes him past his breaking point and he takes physical action against her. MaoMao responds by performing an unspecified sexual act on him.

So why don't I personally take this scene as sexual assault?

Mainly because I think the people actually guilty of sexual assault her are the Verdigris House women who forced MaoMao to learn sex.

As far as I understand it, whether MaoMao can actually say no to Jinshi is left up to interpretation. If we're talking on social status terms, she can't say no. But if you look at Jinshi's overall treatment of her, both before and after this scene, I very much think MaoMao can say no and instead chooses to defuse the situation.

Because what isn't for interpretation, however, is MaoMao's abysmal impression of what love and sex can actually be for her. So she defuses a situation by using sex, something she herself doesn't like, and doesn't allow Jinshi to reciprocate, which leaves him feeling terrible, too.

I want to be clear. I do think Jinshi is in the wrong for physically attacking MaoMao. But the sexual portion of the scene, at least to me, falls squarely on the shoulders of MaoMao's fucked up backstory.

Anyway, I think I've typed for long enough. I am using the official translations of the light novel for this analysis, so if any fans have access to alternate translations or WN only knowledge that throw my analysis in the trash bin, please let me know (fyi puedo leer el español).

[akajustmerry]

Hey can u tell me wat race were the thg characters in the books? Was Katniss gale peeta finnick etc not white?

so this is kind of difficult to answer because in the world of the novels, The Dark Times™ whatever they really were clearly were so destructive to the fabric of society that the USA ceased to be what we know it as.

The process not only changed the land itself and how it was governed, but the language used to do that (states become districts, America becomes Panem, etc.). The fascistic government of the Capitol, when you read the books, clearly controls language as much as any other resource. Both Katniss and Snow (the only 2 pov characters in the novels) refer to words that have been forbidden and forgotten. Throughout the books you also come across words that are clearly mutated versions of known words "morphling" is one, which is the word used for what we call morphine.

I say all that to say that the people in the world of these novels, while they still obviously use English, they don't have the same concepts we do now because they've been eroded along with the language itself.

One of the crucial steps to control and oppress a population is deprive them of the ability to conceptualise and communicate that oppression. This is even happening right now wihh right wing governments around the world attempting to outlaw education and content on sexuality, indigenous histories, etc.

I say all this to say that the characters we read the POVs from in the thg novels do not and probably cannot define race in the way that we do now because doing so has been lost and repressed.

BUT!!!! that's not to say that racism does not exist, even though the language to define race is absent. Katniss is described as dark olive skinned, with dark eyes and dark hair. so is gale. I can't direct quote it, but Katniss talks in the early chapters of book 1 about how she is treated differently to her mum and sister who are fair and blonde. specifically, it says people do not warm to her as quickly like they do her sister and mum. Katniss also comments that the Capitol stylists make a mockery of her thick body hair. It's also worth noting she's among the poorest of district 12, living in the Seam. Not for nothing but Katniss also talks about how her father was also dark skinned and knew a lot about native plants.

These things on their own probably wouldn't necessarily point to Katniss being a person of colour, but together they paint a pretty clear picture of someone who experiences racism both systemically and personally even if she can't conceptualise it as that. Due to the fact Katniss' knowledge of plants and animals and carving weapons was passed down to her from her father, many people headcanon her as Indigenous, same for Gale.

As for Finnick? Jury's out. When I read catching fire well before the films came out I thought Finnick was maybe not white because he was described as very tanned and golden and in my experience white people just don't tan that way.

But Suzzanne Collins had very clear subtextual racial commentary in the books. Especially in the demographics of the districts. District 11 is predominantly Black (Katniss describes every D11 person as having typically Black features) and they're the agriculture district, described as the one that does the most physical labour. It's also the first district in the novel main story to do an uprising. And if you think a little bit about that and what Suzzanne Collins was saying with that particular subtext it's a very obvious racial commentary on the legacy of slavery and antiblackness.

Peeta was definitely white. Not only is he described that way physically. But his family is one of the wealthiest in D12 which means they had intergenerational wealth of some kind which it's clear Katniss and Gale did not.

Suzanne Collins is white and I think she did what the best white authors do when writing about race which is to acknowledge it and be realistic without overstepping or pretending to know. I'll forever hate the movies for eliminating that subtext.

[shorthaltsjester]

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

[platinumgigi]

you know, in light of the Great James Somerton Callout Double Feature™ recently, it made me think back to when i used to watch James' videos. i wasn't an avid fan and never watched his streams or anything so i couldn't have any inkling of the plagiarism on my own, but this all now reminded me of one instance where he made a point of something in one of his videos that was so blatantly wrong, it made me wonder "wait...did you even watch the thing you're talking about?"

and that was with his video on the Owl House, because i believe there was a bit near-ish to the end where he's talking about the open queer representation in TOH, and at the time the video came out the show itself hadn't concluded yet, but he mentioned alongside the not only very canon Lumity as representation the show had to offer, he also mentioned...that the show was hinting at there being a potential romantic relation between Hunter and Gus????

and that had grabbed my attention and made me confused, because...no?? did we watch the same show??? cause if you've watched the Owl House not only would you know that Hunter was 16 and Gus was 12, which is really stretching it in terms of acceptable age gaps, but also...their relationship was not like that, and didn't have any sort of romantic subtext to try and grasp at. the way they hung out and interacted was much more of a "dudes being bros" way (silly headbump handshake, comforting each other in their insecurities and what people saw them as "weak" for), and i'm pretty sure even at the time the episode came out where Gus and Hunter officially became friends, Hunter was already showing signs of crushing on Willow???

so, in retrospect, it now occurs to me that the reason James mentioned that was not because he had simply misinterpreted Gus and Hunter's interactions and the shows intentions for them in the future, but it was deliberately James grasping at straws to shoehorn in some kind of MLM representation into the show where there wasn't any. and while, yeah, in an openly queer show, still not seeing yourself represented kinda sucks, but James Somerton is clearly a person who doesn't value anything in the LGBTQ+ community other than the G. he thinks being a gay man (especially a cis white gay man) is the only real way of being queer, or at least the most "oppressed" type of queer, probably because news media only ever gave significant attention to the deaths of cis white gay men during the AIDS crisis, and that is pretty much James' only point of reference in "historical events that happened to queer people" because god knows he didn't care enough to research and write on his own, let alone research and write about queer history involving queer people who weren't cis white gay men like him.

and it's especially shitty that he that he tries to force this idea of Hunter and Gus having romantic subtext right after he talks about Luz and Amity's relationship. i'm personally not the biggest fan of Lumity within the story of the Owl House, but the representation is really great, especially for something in a disney cartoon. so him trying to then detract all the sapphic representation that Lumity provided and even built the show upon with an MLM relationship that not only is weird in context but also never even happened?? the AUDACITY.

and what gets me even more is that, by the end of the show, while Hunter does end up in a relationship with Willow, it's not a straight relationship. it was confirmed by the show's creator Dana Terrace after it concluded that Hunter is bisexual and Willow is pansexual, and while yeah, real shame that there wasn't any actual expression of those facts during the show's runtime, it's still nice to know that they're queer, and thus their relationship is queer. it's also great to have a canon bi/pan couple when there's STILL an immense infighting problem between bi and pan people thinking that one of the sexualities is trying to erase the other due to their similar (but not same) definitions. so having them not only coexist but also be in love is great!

but you just know, you just KNOW, that even if James' video was made after the show's official conclusion, he would probably either:

A: ignore Hunter and Willow's relationship and try to play on plausible deniability that they're just friends since they never had any great romantic gestures like Lumity's confession and many kisses

or

B: make a shitty argument out of it that the Owl House "could have gone leaps and bounds further with their representation, but Disney was so homophobic that Hunter couldn't possibly get to also be gay, so he had to end up with a woman :("

and while i think both are probably just as possible as each other, my money would be on option B, because god damn it this man can't praise a piece of queer media if it doesn't somewhat center around or involve gay men, and leave it to James Somerton to try and project himself onto the white teenage boy and think that if he were gay, that'd somehow make the story better.

this man actively hates women, especially queer women whom he loves to pretend are actually straight women, and if he had the chance would still do everything he can to try and make a queer relationship between a man and a woman into some woeful narrative of "what could have been" if they just made the man gay.

god, from this singular moment alone where i had a very questionable opinion of James, the knowledge i have now completely recontextualizes everything. this guy is a plagiarist, a misogynist, but most of all, an internalized homophobe who replaces the word "gay" in the content he steals from with "LGBTQ+" and "queer" because he actually *would* just like to use the word gay, but if he did it would make it more obvious that he's plagiarizing, so he instead makes "queer" and "LGBTQ+" be synonymous with gay to make it look like he's actually being inclusive.

and i don't really remember much about his video about Korra, i don't know if i even watched it, so the only frame of reference that i have is what Hbomberguy said about it in his video, and i frankly do not want to go and give James anymore views he has not earned and will never deserve, but i think he did a similar thing in trying to grasp at straws with a potential queer relationship between Mako and some guy who i don't remember (i really didn't watch much of Korra sorry) but that also kind of was not the case of their relationship at all either, from what i've heard. at most it was just people shipping them, especially since the footage James Somerton used in his video was from a fucking ship AMV and not even from any of the high resolution episodes. so again it seems like there's an instance of James trying to shove in an MLM relationship that doesn't exist in a show whose lead representation is a WLW couple.

again i could be wrong, and correct me if i am, but unless there's a convenient re-upload of that entire video on another channel or even another video website, i'm not going to give James' channel any more attention than it unrightfully has.

fuck this guy.

[zahri-melitor]

Reading Digger Harkness as an Aussie: why he’s specifically written to wind me up, the undercurrents of many of his appearances, and why he’s voting No in the Voice referendum.

(Okay if you know ANYTHING about Digger and about the Voice you already knew that, but making this current-relevant!)

George “Digger” Harkness is Captain Boomerang. He’s traditionally written by DC to be specifically, deliberately annoying and disliked. Due to this he’s simultaneously quite cleverly written while also being the laziest character stereotype imaginable.

One of the things that drives me up the wall every time I read him in a book is that due to a clash of a few things in his character design, the subtext he’s evolved over time is remarkably complex, but also geared to make me despise him. Also I can’t tell how much of it is deliberate on the writer’s part.

The first thing you need to understand is that Harkness is very specifically putting on a level of Australianness for his audience (the usually American characters around him). The fascinating thing in this is that, unusually for this trope, his writers are often aware he’s doing this. The common term for this is ‘ocker’. You can notice this in the language he uses: it’s specifically peppered with ‘Australian’ words and phrases.

Now this is a pretty common thing for writers to do to demonstrate a character is Australian. It sounds like someone trying to write Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin. However, to my ear (and years of putting up with this), the way it’s done for Digger is…off. It’s not the standard terrible way it’s used in American media, but it’s equally not written naturally for how an Australian who natively speaks ocker/broad would use it. Digger’s playing it up, and he’s playing it up badly. (the closest comparison I can make than an Australian might understand is he sounds more like Russell Coight than Steve Irwin, with all that implies) He wants people to think he’s an Australian stereotype.

Heck, let’s break down his name for a demonstration of this.

Captain Boomerang: this is a very, very, loaded name. Digger’s specifically racist, and he’s racist in a very White Australia Policy sort of way. The writers are aware he’s racist. He uses a boomerang as a symbol as he’s Australian (surface level) but they’re also specifically drawn as white a lot of the time, both in his costume and in the weapons themselves. They’re not plain wood or decorated with traditional art. They’re white. He has a history of making boomerangs and promoting them in Australia for sale, as a white guy, which is uhhhh Not Great. He’s assumed a traditional piece of Australian Aboriginal weaponry and culture as his own, and he’s painted it white. He’s asserting that it’s his culture now and has stripped it of its traditional meaning. (Also his boomerangs often don’t come back, and have sharpened edges and are used wrongly). He doesn’t like Black People ™ but also uses a weapon specifically associated with an oppressed minority in his place of origin. The white supremacy attitude is very much coded in.

“Digger” as a nickname: oh the way this clashes and interacts with the fact he uses ‘Captain’ as a title! Digger as a term is a general nickname for Australian Army soldiers. It comes from the Gallipoli landings and the trenches of World War I. By using it as his nickname, Harkness is evoking a whole HOST of imagery and specifically nationalist cultural imagery surrounding Gallipoli as a ‘birthplace’ of Australian identity, something that’s been weaponised particularly by the Australian political right for the past 30 years as a national symbol. In the stories that a country tells itself about who they are, Harkness is evoking a very major one and also one that can read as quite toxic if not done carefully. (if you need a quick entry to the way the nickname makes me wince, look up ‘Cronulla Riots’. That’s the sort of person his name is evoking for me) The other problem on top of this – this is a soldier’s nickname. Harkness has never been in the Australian military (as far as I can tell). Combined with the fact he uses the title of ‘Captain’, he’s suggesting he’s got a military background that he 100% does not have. He’s a giant hypocrite. Now being part of the military in Australia reads differently to being part of the military in the USA, in how society sees it, but this is still not on. It’s not a natural nickname for an Australian to have, in his circumstances. It doesn’t even make sense as a traditional ironic nickname given by his friends. Which means he picked it himself. And for that style of nickname…choosing your own? That’s considered to be poor form and trying way too hard. (And nicknames are culturally important! For the personality Harkness is trying to present to his audience, he SHOULD have a nickname like this. My father’s is ‘Bones’, for instance. But choosing your own, and choosing one that implies traits that are not yours to display? Really really bad form)

Basically in summary, Harkness is very much coded in a lot of ways to essentially be the Australian equivalent of someone who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With that sort of view of his home country.

What is fascinating is that when Harkness interacts with other Australian characters, they do not like him, so the writers are aware that he’s been written to be this level of objectionable.

Now, some of this coding in his character has just accumulated over 60+ years as stereotypes have evolved and things have become ever more socially unacceptable. But the interesting thing here is that the writers ACKNOWLEDGE that unacceptable behaviour from Harkness.

I hate him so much. And I also want to fix his dialogue, which suffers from being written by Americans, to include a bunch more extremely country ocker sayings. He NEEDS to be saying things like “stone the flaming crows” and “fair shake of the sauce bottle” and “flat out like a lizard drinking” and “I didn’t come here to fuck spiders”. Because he’s putting it on. And these are the sort of things he’d lean in to to convey that level of “oh I’m not from around here, I am quoting Crocodile Dundee at you but you didn’t even realise” that he’s written to have.

[terezipyropescrocs]

saw the barbie movie and am finally free to be a Hater on main without being accused of criticizing something without having watched it- anyway here is a non-exhaustive list of my Thoughts

this movie could have been nothing but fun dance numbers :(

i will say.........i like the costumes and barbieland set design. comparatively the way the real world is shot is so drab and visually uninteresting imo which. i don't feel is great given how much time we spend in it and that barbie ends up living there

the fact that barbies are supposedly affected by the people playing with them but they all act like..... That. just how shallow do they think kids imaginations are? why is there only one "weird" barbie???

admittedly i've never been to LA so maybe i'm completely off-base here but am i expected to believe that ken is automatically respected and admired (but not ogled! with no undertones of violence!) just for existing while my man is constantly dressed like he walked straight from a pride parade

on that note there was a lot of queer subtext/references but it was all very... wink wink nudge nudge in a way that honestly felt a little, idk, uncomfortable to me? but nothing overtly inclusive or even that subversive really

like with the construction workers scene i honestly can't tell if this was meant to be a trans positive moment or just a joke about them being dolls but if so it's like. you have these sexist catcallers but they support trans identities...? literally just as incoherent as everything else going on in this movie

why is barbie simply allowed to walk right into a school cafeteria

gloria and her daughter's relationship and the conflict between them was... very ill defined aside from the apparently all consuming and ever present suffocation of Womanhood™ like wtf is with sasha's line about hating women being the one thing everyone agrees on???? it's the kind of pseudo-pithy cynicism-laced quote that i would expect from a bitter 50s housewife or aging hollywood star, not a teenage girl who, idk, overuses buzzwords?

actually come to think of it pretty much all the female relationships in this movie are very surface-level and hinge almost exclusively on their shared gender identity and not much else!

the fact that all of the barbies were brainwashed to the point where they couldn't even remember their own achievements from ken mansplaining the patriarchy to them.......... and the fact that this is """explained""" with a fucked up and insensitive smallpox joke......... i am mad enough to spit tacks actually

pretty much the only thing i could think of during gloria's big feminist speech and subsequent appeals to the brainwashed barbies is that nothing she's saying actually applies to any of the dolls' experiences "You have to be their mommies but not remind them of their mommy." they don't have parents gloria

the use of push by matchbox twenty in the context of the movie sure is a Choice, seeing as the singer based it off a relationship where he was being emotionally abused by his girlfriend but had the lyrics widely misinterpreted as misogynistic.... anyway.

the way that all of the kens (and even allan) resort to violence and all of the barbies defeat them using manipulation and ~feminine wiles~.. thanks i hate it

i did like how the kens seemed to overcome their differences through singing and holding hands. also fellas is it toxic masculinity to want your girlfriend To see the man behind the tan / And fight for me?

confused by ken's "kenough" revelation from talking to barbie because he.... literally just sang all of that? I’m just Ken / And I’m enough / And I’m great at doing stuff / So, hey, check me out / Yeah, I’m just Ken is that all supposed to be just bravado? it's the same message but he needed barbie to articulate it to him for it to sink in. hm.

feel like barbie's motives for wanting to live in the real world could have been explored better because tbh... the pitch wasn't great!

like her arc is genuinely: experience insecurity for the first time ever because someone else was projecting it onto her > get over said insecurity (that till this point she had never struggled with) because that same person made a speech > gynecologist

not that gloria, the woc who all of barbie's issues represent and originated from gets any kind of satisfying resolution of her own other than pitching "everyday barbie"

the fact that barbie gaining an expanded range of emotions, many of which are negative, indicates that she is no longer a barbie and has to live in the real world to be fufilled- even though all of the insecurities barbie gained from entering a world that doesn't value her and not having a specific career, ken already HAD. men are automatically more human by default ig!!!

people saying that whole point of the ending is that barbieland is a mirror to the real world and the kens will only gain equality when women do as if it's not explicitly stated that the kens have LESS power and influence then women under the patriarchy... but that's fine because the barbies are nicer then men in the real world and kens have to earn their rights because we don't want to reward bad behavior and they need to prove their competence first /s

saw some other butches mention this but the fact that sasha dresses increasingly feminine to represent her character growth and overcoming internalized misogyny is an unfortunate trope

there was absolutely nothing that made me go "oh!!!" as a fan of the animated barbie movies + life in the dreamhouse, or someone who has the most basic understanding of barbie lore (they have one version of midge, skipper, and allan, but no chelsea, teresa, nikki, RAQUELLE, etc.?)

"stereotypical barbie" Her Name Is Barbara Millicent Roberts

[noxinamillionyears]

Saw some gripes™  about Laudna and Imogen “hiding” their kiss from the BH, and I have some Thoughts. 

They were just reunited. Their whole lives have been pedal-to-the-metal for the past several months, and everyone in BH is reeling. The whole group was split and is just coming together, and they may not know how everyone else is dealing with things right now. Ashton is unpredictable, Fearne is quiet, Orym is hanging on by a thread, Chetney was just attacked in broad daylight, and FCG just said goodbye to their boyfriend. It feels very much like a “read the room” situation. 

Imogen seems to be pretty content with just having it out there. I don’t see her pushing anything at all now that Laudna knows how she feels and will most likely let Laudna set the pace. She let out the one thing she’s been repressing for who knows how long, and now that Laudna’s in the loop, Imogen is good. She doesn’t have to do anything but let Laudna figure out how she wants to move forward. 

The ball feels like it’s Laudna’s court, tbh. Maybe she’s still processing. Maybe she likes having this sort-of secret between them for now. Maybe she’s just waiting until she can talk to Imogen so they can decide what to tell the group together. My money is personally on the last one. But what it does not feel like is that either is ashamed of the other or that either of them regret being closer to one another. 

Laudna reads as being extremely surprised, processing, and a bit unsure of whether she’s good enough for Imogen to me. Which is why, I think, her immediate response to Imogen kissing her was “I’m a bad person” and why, when Imogen assured her that she’s not, Laudna kissed her again. Because Imogen really believes she’s a good person and worthy of love, and Laudna couldn’t help but kiss her again. I hope they have time to have a discussion in Zephrah about how to move forward together, now that they’re on the same page. 

Also, I just want Imogen to be able to finally be able to show her feelings unchecked and for them to be able to be soft with each other without the subtext. 

[mickeys-malarkey]

How I classify:

Headcanon: there's little to no reason for me to think this – at best I'm going off Vibes™ – but it sparks joy for me to think it, so I choose to think it.

Theory: I think this because I think it's the most logical interpretation of the subtext, even if I 10K% despise it.

Headcanon/theory line straddler: I have this gut feeling that's just. So intense that on the one hand I feel like maybe I'm just imagining things, but on the other hand I just can't shake the idea. It just makes so much sense. Is this intuition? Pareidolia? What's happening to m—?

Probably the most perfect example of this difference for me is: Bendy's identity.

Used to have a theory that he was alive the whole time, maybe from the very first time Henry drew him. Love the idea, my bestie & I are still writing a fanfic around it. But it's only a headcanon to me, now.

For those who don't know, my current theory is:

Joey, Wilson, Mr. Gray/Grey, etc. never were and still aren't the real villains, it always was and still is Nathan Sr. (now better known as the Memory of Joey), who not only has been puppeteering them but has also been slowly editing history to put all the blame for his own crimes onto them, as well. He's tryna use Wilson & Audrey as weapons to destroy Ink Demon/Bendy/Real Joey or, failing that, keep him trapped in the time loop and at odds with his real friends forevermore, all without getting his own hands dirty nor besmirching his own reputation… If he can get rid of/silence them, too, that's a bonus!

Ink Demon can talk now because Real Joey's soul was tethered to the soulless Ink Bendy by a failed ritual and he was unable to go to the afterlife when he died, and he's symbolic of Joey's toxic-because-of-trauma side that Nate Sr. abused and manipulated him into thinking = Helpful/Powerful/Desirable/etc. The Keepers stole Bendy's voice, specifically, to symbolize how Nate Sr. silences & villainizes his victims, because he's symbolic of Joey's good side that Nate Sr. abused and manipulated him into thinking = Helpless/Weak/Undesirable/etc. Bendy tiptoes away during fights with the Lost Ones instead of trying to “help” as Ink Demon because he knows he's lucky if he can control himself in that form and he doesn't wanna hurt his baby girl.

Audrey's “devilish” default Banish power was inherited from Daddy Joey-Bendy and is symbolic of the maladaptive coping mechanisms she inherited from Joey through generational trauma (and a bit of the weirdness of her soul being made from a piece of his and a piece of Daddy Not-Actually-Fake Henry's). Her merging with Ink Demon to stop herself from bleeding out and then choosing to reset the time loop once she sees herself hurt someone who reminds of her dad is symbolic of her processing her memories of Joey/grief over his death, coming to terms with the fact she inherited his toxic traits, and deciding to follow in Joey's footsteps by continuing trying to break the cycle of trauma/abuse and “do better next time.”

You're allowed to like as many different interpretations of a story as you want and also believe that the actual story means something entirely different.

[thiefbird]

❤️🧡💛 -for any age of sail fandom you feel like answering for✌🏻 ☺️

Greetings from @aye-aye-captain

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

I mean, if you ask the Aubreyad fandom at large(I am in a facebook group about it because I like looking at photos and paintings of ships), probably my near-complete conviction that POB wrote them with homoerotic subtext on purpose. But we're on tumblr, the homoerotic subtext website, so I really don't know! I guess not unpopular as in people dislike it, but just that there's very little discussion or fic about it, but. Diana Villiers is having an affair with Clarissa Oakes. I am fully convinced of this - it might be an entirely non-sexual affair, Guinevere and Lancelot style(which would be a fascinating thing to write, actually [makes notes]).

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

I totally and completely honestly cannot think of one. These fandoms so far has been very good at being Correct According To Birb™.

💛: What is a popular ship you just can't get behind, and why?

Gonna go with Hornblower here. I came into the fandom fully planning on shipping Archie and 'Ratio whole-heartedly, but I just can't quite get into a lot of it. I do fully read Archie as being in a conflicted sort of half-love with Hornblower, but I do not think Hornblower reciprocates - or if he does, he does not have any clue about it until well after Archie's death. I will go down with Hotspur Husbands and Pelhorn however. I guess also Granby/Little. I just don't know enough about Little in canon to care about him much lmao he's just Some Guy. To me. I do fully believe Granby has at least once said either "Will" or "Laurence" while they're having sex tho. Sorry, Little.

[jtl07]

jt (finally) watches warrior nun - s1 e3 (pt 2)

First off, thanks to everyone who's been following along, especially reblogs - it's nice to know I'm not talking (too) crazy lol

Now onto the hug™ and the hallway scene! The more I look into these scenes, the more I love them and the more intrigued I am with the characters (especially Beatrice, of course).

For the hug™ scene, the thing that stood out to me was this idea of instincts in the body, and how sometimes our consciousness gets in the way. There's an interesting parallel between Ava stuck in the wall and the embrace: Ava gets stuck in the wall when her consciousness catches up with her, Bea pauses in the embrace when her consciousness catches up with her. Both were running (Ava literally) on instinct until those moments hit.

What I didn't know going into this episode - again because I've only seen clips and fanvids prior to this - was how Ava was Beatrice's singular focus in this scene. From the moment we see Beatrice and Vincent enter, she's locked onto Ava:

She glances once at Mother Superion but it's very quick; she sees nothing but Ava. Then as soon they have some semblance of privacy, she reaches out to Ava - and actually initiates contact. Additionally, it looks like she was ready for the embrace - when Ava turns towards her, her left arm comes up to receive her:

These actions all make me think that Beatrice was running on instinct here. Curious as to what made her brain catch up (or rather, her subconscious conditioning of shame et al to catch up) - maybe it was how completely trusting Ava was? How it wasn't just a lean but a full embrace? Or maybe it was that her touch was reciprocated in general? Huh maybe that's it - for someone who's been taught to hate herself, to have someone who not only accepts but trusts so completely, that definitely would have been a brain-glitching experience.

Also, can we talk about how Ava just completely trusts Beatrice here? Just moments before this, Mother Superion was rebuking Ava about her lack of trust. And yet here in this moment of pain and vulnerability, she allows herself to break down, not just in front of Beatrice but in her arms. I just - that's mindblowing to me.

This also reinforces to me the importance of the cafeteria scene - I don't think this would have been possible without it. This moment builds on top of that foundation (and then the hallway scene cements it or whatever the term is - why did I choose this analogy lol) and the fact that it's non-verbal is deeply meaningful as well, for both of them as they've not experienced a lot of gentleness.

SO MANY FEELSSSSS

Okay finally made it to the hallway scene - though side note: Does anyone else wonder how they separated from that embrace? Like, did Ava run, embarrassed? Did Bea try to comfort her? Maybe it was the former because Bea is the one who comes looking for her, and gosh how tentative she was in approaching, giving space literally and physically. And then when Ava speaks, immediately freezing, one foot on that step.

But what I really love here is how Bea's response is belief, trust. "Okay," she says, then goes into a sort of investigative mode, which is both a sign of "hey I'm on your side" and also Beatrice legitimately wanting to know, to help. As in, she doesn't ask, "what makes you think that" or try to convince Ava to think differently. "I believe you" is the subtext throughout this whole scene, and it feels like this whole scene is Beatrice trying so hard to make Ava believe that - this time in words.

And what's one of the ways she tries to get Ava to believe that she believes her? Through humor. Bea knows that Ava uses humor as a way to cope, but hasn't actually witnessed much of Ava's jokes. The only instance was, again, that scene in the cafeteria. (I wonder though if Lilith talked about Ava’s irreverence. In the cafeteria scene, you can see that there's conversation taking place all around Beatrice but she's not actually part in any of it - but I'm willing to bet she's someone who is listening to everything)

The thing with humor though, is that it's risky. Especially with someone new. From what we've seen of her so far, Beatrice doesn't seem like someone who takes risks unnecessarily (I say "seem" because my thoughts on that started to change in the next episode, which I'll talk about in the next post), so my thought here is that she's letting herself run on instinct here. And really, it's an extension again of the cafeteria scene. Yes, she started out cold there but when Ava got down on herself and says “I’m not her, you know,” Bea's immediate reaction was to reassure. The same here: She reassures with Ava with that initial "okay," again with her quiet, "perhaps the medical report was wrong" - and then that gentle, "don't let her get to you." She then follows that up with not only the sharing of Cruella DeJesus but also "I may have started it."

It's the last admission that really gets me. She didn't have to share that, and yet she did - as a moment of levity, of solidarity, and dare I say, pride. And I feel like it also is binds them with another connection: being able to find some bit of joy in a shitty situation, and through something not exactly appropriate. We see here a sort of hint of Beatrice's ability to be mean, to be angry, which I feel like the next episodes start to tap into more.

Also can I say just how young Beatrice seems here? Not just the giving of a mean nickname, but the way she smiles and leans in - like a little kid who's too eager to tell you a secret.

And then we get the reward of Ava laughing despite herself - but not only that, we get Ava who feels safe enough to be vulnerable, to ask, "Do you believe me?" And gosh, again this is just after Mother Superion was admonishing Ava about trust, here we have Ava trusting Beatrice again, trusting her enough to ask that question. I've always thought this was a lovely scene but it's incredibly gentle in context with everything else.

Can we also take a moment to appreciate how entranced Beatrice is by Ava's small smile? I found myself smiling alongside Beatrice while also being entranced by her at the same time:

(First: Ava's "thank you," Second: Bea noticing her expression, Third: Bea's "what?")

The thing with Beatrice here, she didn't have to go into any of her past with Ava. She could've dropped it. In fact, she takes a breath and holds it for a brief moment before talking about her parents (2:04 here) - it's different from the breath she takes before talking about how she took her vows young (1:55 here). There's a definite moment of hesitance, as if she started to speak then was going to take it back, then continues on. Again very small but a very nice touch, brilliantly acted by KTY.

The next moment that I love is the "I guess it kind of stuck" line - for me, this reminds me of the "I had a feeling she’d be a handful" line in ep 2. In that write up, I noted that line because of her making light of a shitty situation while also subtly kinda putting her own self down. She does the exact same thing here. And in her own way, she's also being vulnerable - and Ava, observant, smart Ava, notices. And yknow, I think it's because they have that similar joking coping mechanism that Ava knew to look closely, to be ... not "suspicious" because there's no danger, but rather to care, because she knows that kind of humor is there to hide pain.

(Ooh, maybe that's also part of why Bea chided her in the cafeteria scene? Because she recognized it in her own self?? Man, everything just goes back to that cafeteria scene)

I'll close this rambling post with a note about the small smiles Beatrice has - I mentioned it in the part 1 write up but KTY seems to have this habit of giving this little small pursed lips sort of smile when Ava seems to lose faith in herself. We saw it in the cafeteria when Ava says "It just isn't me," then in the hallway when she says "no one believes me anyway." Oh and actually, she does one before Ava speaks too (very hard to capture but it's there):

A part of me thinks that last one was just a tick, not a conscious choice on KTY's part, but it's interesting to note nonetheless - something of sympathy, of wanting to reassure.

Oh I lied I have one more thing - Bea's last line of "There's always more." I've always loved it because of the inherent truth in it and how it sounds like not just an admission but also a promise - a promise that she'll explain it eventually, if Ava gives her time. But what's added an extra layer is again the context of this scene with the cafeteria scene. Bea says in the cafeteria, "We all have a past, Ava; secrets that are ours alone." This line, "There's always more," is both an extension of it and yet a prophetic contradiction: Bea will eventually share her secret with Ava, and she won't be alone.

Alright this is a good enough place to stop - lots to think about for the next couple episodes, plus an attempt to "rewrite" 5 and 6, similar to my rewrite ponderings for episode 3. Let me know what you think if you'd like, otherwise, stay tuned for more rambling lol

[trashlie]

Love your thoughts on ep 231 ohmygod you (and poisonheart) summed everything up perfectly! What I would like to add for your consideration is that it feels like Nol indirectly projects his own fears about his situation with Shin-ae when he talks about Dieter. And it doesn't take away from his empathy for Dieter or his guilt, it's another layer for us readers to pick up on. "Those feelings take forever to vanish" and "it doesn't help that you spend time with him" and "all [stringing him along and being wishy-washy] does is prolong the pain" -- Nol fears this might happen to him if Shin-ae keeps insisting there's nothing between them, or if she rejects him and wants to stay "just friends". And it's obvious that he is absolutely not willing to go through that, not on top of everything else he's already dealing with. Dieter might be okay with being "just friends", that's his choice, but Nol knows he cannot take that same route. He doesn't have the willpower to swallow all his feelings and pretend like he's fine with being "just friends", especially when all the signs that she has similar feelings for him are there. That would be unbearable. I believe that is where, maybe just subconsciously, part of his frustration and this urgency, but also his resolution and "all in"-mindset come from. His options are just really limited.

Also. It needs to be said that Nol pushing Shin-ae to find the answer on her own instead of giving it to her was probably the best thing he could do. He gave her a lot to think about and evaluate when he implied that their shared moment was romantic and that Dieter also thinks that, and pointed out that it's him who she has a special connection with and not Dieter, that "because we're friends" doesn't explain her actions and behavior (and feelings) anymore. And then he topped it all off with the "convince me" and The Look™ (which I believe was a calculated move) that made her blush and avert her eyes for the 274th time in the past couple of hours, to really drive home that whatever this is, it doesn't fit the term "platonic" anymore. What is it then, to her? That's something she has to realize herself. It's not for him to tell her, to explain it to her. It's actually crazy that by rejecting her "we're friends" answer and kicking her out, he essentially said "come back when you've figured out that you're in love with me" LIKE. SCREAMS. People are saying he should've just told her how he feels, but... Time and place. What good would that even do when she's mad at him and still so stuck on the friendship thing? She's in no way prepared to hear a confession from him. It'd overwhelm and confuse her. And what kind of response would she even give in the state she's in, realistically? That'd be so messy and YELLS some people simply cannot appreciate the TENSION THE ANGST THE SUBTEXT ALL THE THINGS UNSPOKEN IN THE AIR BETWEEN THEM like come on we can have lil a miscommunication as a treat, especially when it fits the narrative… Y'all are gonna get your fluffy moments soon enough, let us enjoy the PAIN so that the payoff is much sweeter. GAH.

YELLS some people simply cannot appreciate the TENSION THE ANGST THE SUBTEXT ALL THE THINGS UNSPOKEN IN THE AIR BETWEEN THEM like come on we can have lil a miscommunication as a treat

YOU GET IT ANON YOU GET IT YOU ABSOLUTELY GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am screaming from the roof I am hanging off the gutters screaming YOU FUCKING GET IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

Like, on some level I understand why people want to rush to a certain point want to jump to confirmations but to me IT'S NOT READY WE'RE NOT READY. I am into PINING I am into YEARNING I need a man to become VERY PATHETIC about the girl he likes I need him to writhe in agony over what he wants I need conflict I need the embarrassing realization about a character's feelings i need them blushing in the dark all alone with their stomach twisting up their heart rustling with all the butterflies trying to break out of their rib cage. I need them meeting and averting gazes and feeling so on display and so vulnerable and RAW i need them EMBARRASSED that they have feelings GROSS EWW HOW DID THIS HAPPEN i need subconcious dreams i need toes curling i need the want the want the WANT holding back bUT BARELY HOLDING BACK

I need tension SO GOOD SO DELECTABLE i'm bouncing off the walls and ceilings like a todder who just ate their way through all the sugar in the house. i need LOADED moments that make me throw down my phone i need the subtext!!!!!!!! I need to inject it in my veins and shriek like a banshee WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE WANT TO SKIP THIS PART WHY ARE THEY TRYING TO JUST JUMP TO THE NEXT PART THIS IS THE GOOD STUFF THIS IS! WHAT! ROMANCES ARE MADE OF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's the things that lead up to it, it's the build up, it's the WANTING to crush them together the DYING FOR IT TO HAPPEN.

but anyway

lemme pretend to be normal about this for a bit

I think what's soooooo good about the subtext is YES all those things unsaid. That as much as Nol is speaking on Dieter's behalf - he speaks on his own. It's not that Shinae needs to figure out her feelings for Dieter's sake but for his own, too, because RIGHT because she is too important to him now THIS is too important it means too much and he WANTS IT TOO MUCH to be wishy wash to be half-assed to be either or not. And that's what is SO GOOD to me. He IS scared. He needs her to come to the realization, to face the truth and embrace it because he needs it to be true. He needs to know what he suspects is true.

scales the walls i'm sorry i lied i CAN'T BE NORMAL ABOUT THIS I CANNOT BE NORMAL ABOUT THEM ANYMORE

He doesn't have the willpower to swallow all his feelings and pretend like he's fine with being "just friends", especially when all the signs that she has similar feelings for him are there. That would be unbearable.

Nol has spent so much of his time trying to close himself off, to isolate himself and to just seal himself away and then here's Shinae, mirroring him, chasing him down and trying to pull him out of every hole he tries to hide himself in. She is beating down his doors she is telling him at every opportunity that she loves him that he is important that she can't throw this all away.

And we've established before: Nol can't resist her. At all!!!!! He tries and he fails at every time. He tries to block her away but he still leaves her these openings. Like, he blocked her number but he STILL LOOKED AT HIS SPAM knowing what kind of message would be in there.

He tells himself he doesn't want it doesn't deserve it but he DOES. He LIKES that she cares. He LIKES that she sees him. He tried to make himself not care, but he wants it. He WAS disappointed when Shinae left after the dance - because he pushed her away again, because her hurt her again. He's so afraid of losing her at this point (I'm sure that's part of why he couldn't look at her at the time - not just that he was crying and doesn't want to be seen like that, but he must be scared, afraid that after he leaves this will all disappear she'll change her feelings it won't mean anything anymore) and when he pulled off the blindfold she was gone.

It's like.... kind of like Shinae says - they've been through so much together. But because he's aware of those feelings now - because he knows what she means to him, he CAN'T go back. Going back to just friends? After she's pushed for him after she's fought for him after she's boxed down his walls?

How can he go back to it? HOW?

Shinae made him open up, too. He has revealed so much more to her than I think he's revealed to others. Alyssa probably knows more about his life than Soushi and Dieter, but I think he's revealed more to Shinae. She made him care and how can go back to being "just friends".

Usually I hate that argument but in his case, I get it. Shinae is so important to him, means so much (HE LITERALLY IS ALIVE BECAUSE OF HER AT THIS POINT) and to go back to just.... not feeling this? To being just friends? We've watched him reach out to her SO MANY TIMES and deny himself. And now that he has? Now that he's reached out now that he has felt these things? It would be so unbearable!

What is it then, to her? That's something she has to realize herself. It's not for him to tell her, to explain it to her. It's actually crazy that by rejecting her "we're friends" answer and kicking her out, he essentially said "come back when you've figured out that you're in love with me" LIKE. SCREAMS.

GOD I KNOW I KNOW I KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW SCREAMS AND SCURRIES UP THE WALL AGAIN

I LOVE that he's leaving it to her. I fully think Shinae has been, partly, influenced by Dieter's feelings for her. Would she have started to feel anything for him if she didn't know he already likes her? Would she have seen anything in the way he looks at her if she didn't know it already? And I FULLY think Nol confessing at this time would have made things worse - it would confuse her! And I think it would probably make her avoid him. I don't think she'd be able to handle it if he confessed because she doesn't even know her own feelings, let alone how to handle his. And BECAUSE his feelings are intricately tied to hers in relation to what Dieter oversaw it would absolutely influence her own feelings.

She's got to be able to come to this realization herself because, frankly, she's been confessing to him ALL fucking night long. She keeps telling him how important he is to her, what he means to her! But she doesn't understand WHY he's important to her. She doesn't understand WHY she's putting all her energy into hanging on to him, into tethering him to her. And as much it's not fair to Dieter, it's also not fair to Nol, either, for those confused feelings to go on all tangled up. But likewise, Nol IS telling her how he feels, too - just, you know. Subtextually.

Comparing their relationship to Dieter's to illuminate just how different they, how much more intense theirs is compared to what she has with Dieter. That fucking LINE the "not even as friends" ;______; It's about the way she elevates Nol above him, the way she will drop everything for him. He knows it! Dieter can see it! But she can't see it for what it is yet and he needs her to. He keeps showing her what he feels by telling her what Dieter saw. That it wasn't just platonic - not from him. She's so insistent it didn't mean anything that it's not romantic even though HE WAS LOOKING AT HER LIKE THAT. HE WAS COMMANDING HER TAKE OFF HER SHOES LIKE THAT. She was getting SO WORKED UP about that moment!!!!!! THIS MAN ASKED HER TO DANCE IN THE MOST INTENSE FUCKING WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND SHE IS CONVINCED IT'S SO PLATONIC JUST

JUST FUCKING

/SCREAMS/!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thinking about it from Dieter's POV is really NUTS, too, because he sees the things Shinae doesn't know how to identify. Even before the whole dancing thing (the idea of DIETER seeing the Shinae that Nol didn't, seeing how happy she was, how much fun she was having), thinking about like.... it really starts when Shinae gives him her gift, right? She gets SO EMBARRASSED - SO SHY about him seeing it and she thinks it's so simple and that it can't compare bUT IT DOES. It's a call back to their early days, the whole "you don't suck that much" akjakfkafkjafjkafkjfkjfa THE WAY WE DON'T SEE HIS EYES WE JUST SEE HIM LOOK OVER AT HER SO SHY TRYING NOT TO TAKE NOTICE and then suddenly he's just. OVERCOME. He's reaching out he's touching her hair!!!!!!!!!!! She isn't even pulling away!!!!!!!! He's leaning in they're so close they're just IN EACH OTHER'S SPACE and imagine it from his POV, how he's seeing it, that chemistry that just EXISTS between them, that intimacy and tenderness that's just LOADED and how he can probably feel it so heavy in the pit of his stomach because could he ever be so bold? No, never. Could he reach out and touch her like that? Encroach on her space? Sit so close to her? The flirting with the finger dancing and their giggles and the ease they're just SO EFFORTLESS and he doesn't have that and he knows it and he's known all along but now he has to ACCEPT it now he has to face the reality that everything he worried about everything he feared is true that there's no room for him in between them there and LJFAKKFKAFLAFKJAF

IT'S SO INSANE that she's just like BUT IT WAS JUST FRIENDS

There's nothing "friends" about that babes and Nol knows it and Dieter knows it and we know it but SHE needs to come to the conclusion. She needs to wake up and realize that oh my god that's why it all matters that's what it all means that's why she's fighting so hard that's why he's so important. And then being able to see all the things he said to her between the lines, what it meant for Dieter to oversee that I just

ROARS JUST SCREAMS FROM THE ROOFTOP

I'm SO glad Nol hasn't confessed! It would be SO messy! It would make things so much worse it would hurt so much for EVERYONE. She's gotta sort out her feelings! Nol is really good at reading her, and he knows how to push her in the right direction. It's not the right time. I think maybe people who want him to confess don't see it that way - that it would be so overwhelming and probably scare her off. i mean, even coming to the realization on her own will probably give her a scare, but it's different when she realizes that oh, I'M in love with him AS WELL as oh god HE'S IN LOVE WITH ME? compared to him confessing and leaving her feeling even more confused

like don't get me wrong there's a part of me that likes to imagine him just BREAKING and bursting out that "BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, OKAY! IT DIDN'T MEAN NOTHING TO ME" but I do prefer the canon. That's just good for a nice moment of imagined dramatics, you know?

But also. YEAH. We just. We need to RIDE OUT SOME NICE YEARNING AND FEELINGS AND ANGST FIRST. I'm pretty sure it won't last. Quimchee doesn't like drawing these things out and Shinae's confused feelings are a clear subversion of "girl does not realize she's in love" so I am confident the truth is going to hit her, but until then I want to enjoy the writhing and the ache!!!! Because that's what makes it SO MUCH BETTER when they can finally admit it!!!!!!! Where's the fun in jumping right to it? I want to SAVOR this so that when they can admit it, when they can say the words, when they can face the reality, it feels SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!!! There's so much RELIEF!!!!!!!

I'm fully certain we'll see that before Nol goes to jail - the whole of this confrontation would mean NOTHING if he leaves while things are unresolved. The entirety of this whole ovearching arc of his return would be undone and leave us right back where we were, with no resolution, no one knowing where they stand. So like. Come on guys, it's coming just sit back and enjoy this ride a bit. When you think about it we haven't even been in this stage long! Like WE've been watching them fall in love this whole time, we've been watching them find a home in each other, we've been watching their souls come together intertwine and connect and imprint but THEY haven't sat with this long at all. Nol ONLY JUST REALIZED he has feelings.

HE HASN'T PINED YET AND I NEED HIM TO PINE I NEED HIM TO BE A LIL PATHETIC ABOUT HER I NEED HIM TO WRING HER HEADBAND AROUND IN HIS HANDS A LIL MORE AND SQUIRM WITH ALL THESE THOUGHTS THAT HE KEEPS TRYING TO FIGHT OUT OF HIS BRAIN THAT WON'T GO AWAY

I need Shinae to have an awakening dream about all the subtext all the things unsaid all the subconscious feelings she isn't aware of creeping in and if involves them kissing then WHO AM I TO SAY NO?

I cannot be normal anymore I'm sorry but I AM going to be unhinged and scream about them AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[creativenicocorner]

Concept Rough Draft or something

This was initially going to be a continuation to the Serirei fic Cold Green Tea and Colder Feet but I ended up falling out of it...or perhaps the better phrasing is, thinking of a different direction for a continuation. 

Yet at the same time I think this is pretty wholesome and goofy, and although I won’t continue or expand on it (who knows maybe I’ll reuse this in a future fic) I don’t want it to gather dust either. 

I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you have fun reading it (if you choose to lol)  

So here you go internet, today I offer a super duper rough draft concept of a fic continuation that I realized I kind of want to take in a different direction™, tomorrow who knows

Reigen interacting with the kiddos is always fun, I can’t stress how much of a rough draft this is though, welcome to my chaotic mind

Changing yourself and your life is all good and dandy, but it was getting into actually doing the work when things started to get dicey. 

[yada yada Reigen and Serizawa is brought up by Teru while hanging out and watching a movie in Reigen’s apartment. Shou is also there! ]

“It’s a little more nuanced than that Teruki-kun.”

“Which is code for,” Teru made an impression of a chicken clucking away.

“Oh! The maturity level is skyrocketing!” Reigen huffed, with feigned bite, “How old are you again? You sure you’re old enough to be watching this?” To further his point Reigen thumbed to the television where someone’s arm was being cut off, and a cartoonish amount of water with red dye passing as blood was exploding with the very obvious intensity of someone playing with a garden hose. 

Teruki, with a deep somber expression, flicked popcorn at Reigen’s cheek.

“Alright, I draw the line at wasting food,” Reigen chastised, though not unkindly. He plucked the thrown away kernel, blew on it, and plopped it in his mouth.

“So what exactly makes it so, quote un quote, nuanced.” 

“I’ll break it down like a fraction for you. Imagine the person you have a crush on,” Reigen knew very well whom Teruki had a crush on, but spared the lad from further teasing, “you imagining him?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Y-yeah! Get on with it!” went Teru under Reigen’s knowing leer. 

Alright perhaps a small healthy dose of teasing.

Reigen lifted his hands placatingly, “alright, now imagining having to work for them.” Here Reigen made a sweeping gesture as if that explained everything for itself. “Things get tricky when, well, when there isn’t equal footing.”

Teruki watched Reigen for a bit, and nodded with a hum. “I suppose I get it.”

Reigen flourished a mock bow, “thank you. And Speaking! of the unmentioned Kageyama’s-!”

“Reigen!!”

“What are you doing here Shou? I thought your would be out and about with Little Brother-chan. Doing…things, like, like,” he floundered, unable to end on anything witty, Reigen ended lamely with, “the arcade, or something.”

Shou lifted his head from resting against his knuckles, finally turning his head so he wasn’t just looking at both Reigen and Teruki from the corner of his eye. Blue eyes piercing as ever.

“Not that you’re not welcome over,” Reigen added hastily, “In fact, it’s always a pleasure.”

Shou stared on. Reigen gulped. Then when the silence drew out for too long Shou gave Reigen’s arm a playful punch and grinned. “Just wanted to drop in. See what the fuss is about.”

“About, Death Pig: the Return of the Frankenoink?”

Shou made a vague affirmative sound. 

“Well I hope it lives up to the mystique.”

“Mm, something like that.” 

[something something subtext is Shou wants to vibe check Reigen cause Shou cares a lot about Serizawa. 

After much persisting…eventually lead to…] 

“Anyways, I don’t get what the hang up is. Didn’t he like, kiss you or something?”

“Okay, one!” here Reigen flourished before monitoring a finger, “it was a chaste little peck on the head, hardly anything to make grandma swoon about,” he flourished and administered a second finger, “two! I can’t reiterate this enough, but it is none of any kids business - in fact I don’t know why we’re still talking about it, you guys have better more interesting things to worry about. Like, grades,” this was meat by a chorus of groans, “and, uh. Arcades?”

The kids in question shrugged. 

Teru leaned forward, “But like…a kiss is a kiss is a kiss, right? Like??” Teru gesticulated with his hands, “It’s still a kiss!”

“There are many cultures where kissing on the cheek is a greeting. Lets not get carried away.”

Shou snorted, “do we live in any those places, old man?!” 

“Hey!” Though the fire behind being called old didn’t have its usual gusto. Because something was slowly clicking into place in Reigen’s mind. He blinked at Shou, “I, well, no…not at all…”

They stared at him.

He stared back.

They kept staring at him, waiting for the gears to click into place.

He stared back.

They kept on staring, while a deep sense of pity for Serizawa grew ever more profound. 

He stared back.

Shou was the first to break the silence, “don’t you think a kiss like that might, I don’t know, I’m just ‘a brat’ here, but, in accordance to, oh, just about all tropes in the history of whatever, like, mean something??”

Teru quickly joined, with a more knowing look, “was it really nothing to write to grandma about? Or even in a diary?”

“I..” started Reigen, the teens leaned forward, fascinated. “You really think he, might, possibly, like,” Reigen slowly pointed a finger at himself, “me?” A blush brighter than the kilowatts of the sun started to bloom over Reigen’s cheeks. 

Shou and Teruki threw all available pillows in arms reach at Reigen, the stupidest smart adult they had ever encountered. 

No amount of pillows could wipe the contorted yet dork-ish look off of Reigen’s face as his brain skyrocketed through multiple thoughts. 

“He has terrible taste in men,” was the first thought that tumbled past Reigen’s mouth before he could stop himself. As a pillow bounced off his ear, Reigen added, “and I really shouldn’t be having this sort of revelations in front of kids.”

This earned him a whole new volley of pillows.  

[evilwickedme]

Just saw again the claim that people are only disinterested in timber and Bernard Dowd because he's a civilian and like. I have complex feelings about Bernard and none of them are against civilian characters. Some of my favorite characters are civilians, actually. Yes, I know how that sounds, but it's true. Emjay from Spider Gwen is at the center of a fic I'm writing right now, for God's sake, but also MJ from main continuity comics (before OMD...), or og Gwen Stacy, or Lois Lane, and I've said multiple times that my favorite Deadpool character isn't actually Wade himself but his daughter, Ellie Camacho. And several of these civilian character are even canonical love interests, just like Bernard! Yeah, some of the dislike for Bernard comes from timkon shippers who haven't accepted that DC is never going to give us what we want (not that we should just pretend the subtext isn't there, just, like, bffr rn). But also. Bernard is, for the most part, written as super boring. Especially in TD:R, which is the majority of his existence while being Tim's boyfriend. He's just a non-character, there to be supportive. He started getting a tiny bit of depth in the latest issue, but may I remind you, Bernard's been boring for two years at this point. Like... I want timber to be interesting, because I'm invested in the little bit of bisexual representation we get being good, actually. But it's like gay relationships can't have any drama or depth to them. Like Petermj is one of the most iconic relationships of all time, and they didn't have smooth sailing! MJ is a character with her own needs and wants and she wasn't always the supportive girlfriend™ and that - the supportive boyfriend™ - seems to be the only thing Bernard gets written as, even in the giving-him-depth issue. I'm just saying that. Like. People being critical of timber can sometimes be overly harsh. But that doesn't mean that all criticism of Bernard Dowd is invalid, because it very much is not. And if we don't criticize the mediocre shit we're given, we're never going to get better writing.

[shihalyfie]

Hi! recently I read your post about differences you had spotted in the japanese fandom and you mentioned how some people said that tamers wasn't female audience friendly. I don't know if you know why?

(Also I love your blog btw)

Thank you so much! I hope I didn't give the wrong idea (I can't find the specific post but I'm hoping I didn't word it wrong) but it was just one comment I saw that made me think about it a lot; I don't think this is necessarily an opinion beyond just that person, it's just that when I saw it it really stuck out to me and made me really spend time pondering why someone would think that way.

To be more specific, the situation was that an Adventure fan who'd gotten back into it and 02 because of Kizuna brought up Tamers and said they were interested in it, and the commenter said that it was a good series (they were still recommending it, they weren't trying to dissuade!) but warned that it was "more obviously oriented towards a male audience" than the Adventure series (the exact word was 一層男向け).

So I think some specific context about this incident also helps to explain further; it's rather significant that it was said to be potentially less female audience friendly than Adventure-branded works, which were used as a comparison point because the explanation was originally for someone who had never seen anything else besides that. In this case, I think it's less so that Tamers is that female audience-unfriendly as much as the Adventure series is actually considered to be surprisingly female audience friendly for a shounen series of its kind; of course, it still is ultimately made and marketed more for young boys, but it ended up infamously getting a much larger female audience than you'd have expected. The girls having their feelings fleshed out in detail and not constantly having a red arrow on them as The Girls™ of the Group (I think you know what I mean by this) -- something really not very common in shounen anime from 1999-2001 (even now it's not that common) -- made them very relatable to the female audience. And on top of that, you had things like Yamato or Ken infamously being a lot of girls' first love.

And then, well, let's put it this way: it is generally understood that most adult anime fans who made gay fan comics and fanart at the time were female, and so naturally Taichi/Yamato and Takeru/Daisuke got very popular among this crowd. Note the reason why it's Takeru/Daisuke in particular: Ken didn't join the group as an ally or even have a particularly deep interaction with Daisuke (other than episode 8) until halfway into the series, but by that time there were already people enthusiastically churning out gay fanwork with Daisuke and Takeru before anything significant in the series had happened because they were ready for them to be the next Taichi and Yamato. (Obviously, you know how the series actually went, but hindsight is 20/20.) So you had doujinshi artists making and selling gay comics at events, and magazines like Animage and Animedia (generally considered to have a high female reader population) were flooded with subtext-filled gay fanart submissions.

Even now, you can see the subtle acknowledgment that they know Adventure has a ton of adult female fans, given tri. stuff being in the female audience-oriented magazine Otomedia, as well as the tri. stage play even existing at all. (Anime tie-in stage plays are very associated with female audiences, and in fact the actors for the Digimon one even pointed out they had an unusually gender-neutral audience compared to what they were used to.)

So when you look at Tamers in comparison, it's not that it's necessarily giving a cold middle finger to its female audience as much as it's clearly got a lot fewer of the above factors and is more concerned about appealing to the main target of boys, hence the description "more obviously oriented towards a male audience". For instance, fundamentally speaking, Ruki was made to be a "strong" character because they wanted her to appeal to boys (presumably to include ones that wouldn't like "girly-girls"). Now, the good thing is that Ruki ended up becoming important representation for girls who also felt similarly out of place with being pigeonholed as "girls", and I'm not saying Adventure and 02 couldn't have also used some of that too, but keep in mind that the entire development of Ruki's state of mind in this respect has been credited to female writer Yoshimura Genki. I think it's very possible that, in the hands of a different writer, Ruki could have easily fallen into the trap of what I call the "Strong Female Character" Fallacy, which is when you make a female character who's good at violently beating things up but is portrayed more like an object to be cool and hot for the boys than she is a human being because they don't actually bother to pay any respect to her own feelings. (Unfortunately very common with male-oriented works.)

I'm getting off-track here, but my point is that while Adventure and 02 were fundamentally made for boys first, they did have a lot of elements that easily appealed to the female audience and seem to have been outright conscious of the female periphery demographic, perhaps unusually so for shounen anime at the time, whereas Tamers was much less conscious of that and focused more on elements that boys would like, such as plotlines about strength and less on more sentimental things (and there probably really could be something to be said about that kind of attitude's relationship with toxic masculinity, but I don't think we're ready for that conversation, nor do I think the final product went so far in that direction it has nothing sentimental going for it at all or anything).

That said, I can't emphasize enough that this was ultimately one fan's opinion on the Internet, and the reason I ended up resonating with it a bit is that I did at least notice that Adventure and 02 do seem to have a much higher ratio of female fans than Tamers does and thought it would be worth considering why (in fact, even Frontier has come off to me as having a larger ratio of female fans than I've noticed with Tamers). While this might be a bit provocative of a thing to say, I also do get the impression that most of my bad experiences with a certain type of Tamers fan that gets super condescending about its superiority over every other series also does seem to have a suspicious amount of overlap with a certain kind of toxic dudebro fan. However, and I'll put this in bold because it's important, I do not personally believe Tamers being more oriented towards a male audience inherently makes it unfriendly to a female audience. There are a lot of female Tamers fans, including people who are likely reading this post, and ones who found deep connection and meaning with many of the elements in Tamers, and in fact it's a fallacy to conclude that a girl or boy would necessarily like or dislike something (that would be exactly the kind of sentiment that Ruki was trying so hard to work against, after all). Digimon is a shounen series, but at the time Adventure through Frontier originally aired, they aired on the same day as magical girl anime Ojamajo Doremi, so there were a lot of girls (and boys!) who would watch both. Female audience-oriented, male audience-oriented, that's all subjective, and in fact it probably only really matters when it comes to toy sales and capitalism, but that ship's sailed a long time ago. And meanwhile, here I am, as a female fan who likes Tamers myself, so it certainly hasn't turned me off!

[soup-of-the-daisies]

Really loved your headcanon about why Harry didn’t name any of his children after Remus. I’d never thought of it that way before! In that post, you said you have thoughts on why Harry decided to name his child after Dumbledore and Snape, and you’ve piqued my interest! Any possibility of you sharing that headcanon?

Hello anon!!! I’m glad you enjoyed the post (this one, for anyone interested. There's quite a few good additions in the notices as well)! I’ve got so many opinions and it’s really nice to see that people agree with them!

About the headcanon on Albus Severus: I was actually writing a draft for the HC as to why Harry and Ginny named kiddo no. 2 after Dumbles and Snape, so you’ve come in at a good time! It’s gotten long (2k kind of long), so I’ve divided it into parts within the post and added a ‘read more’. There's also a TL;DR at the very bottom. Feel free to add to it or disagree with me, if you want! It's only my headcanon :)

To start           

When I was eleven years old I finished my first proper read-through of the Harry Potter series. At the time, I obviously didn’t have a very good understanding of things like nuance and subtext and trauma and—well, you know what I mean. And I found it a cute name, actually. Obviously not as cute as ‘James Sirius’ or ‘Lily Luna’, as I’ve always been a Marauders fan (massive crush on Sirius starting the moment Mass Murderer is mentioned in PoA, anyone?), but still cute—until it wasn’t, which is when I started to find it a tad absurd. 

Listen, I really, really like the thought behind naming your children after people who’ve been significant in your or the other parent’s life. It’s part of the reason why I like ‘James Sirius’ and ‘Lily Luna’ so much: both kids are named after parental figures (and in LL’s case, also a good friend) and it’s really sweet that both Harry and Ginny (because you bet your arse Ginny was fully present in that decision-making process) decided to honour Lily, James, Sirius, and Luna that way. I myself am named after both my grandmothers and now that they’ve both passed, it’s a nice connection to them.

But the name ‘Albus Severus’ – and this is purely my interpretation, mind – has very different vibes compared to ‘James Sirius’ and ‘Lily Luna’. Albus is named after two professors; when I read the Epilogue™ for the first time, the name simply felt out of place in the family. Teachers, no matter how much you like them, ought to be distant supporters—especially compared to parents and friends. Additionally, the last scene with Dumbledore (in spirit) is him being… kind of frustrating; the last scene with Snape is him admitting posthumously that he protected Harry only out of obligation and guilt. Neither Dumbledore nor Snape died for Harry specifically, like James, Lily, and Sirius did: Dumbledore and Snape died so Harry could and would as well.

Some context

Albus Severus Potter is born eight years after the Battle of Hogwarts, when Harry is 25/26 and Ginny is 24/25. That means that, less than a decade before AS was born, Harry learnt from both Snape and Dumbledore that he had to die to get rid of the guy who tried to kill him for years—that he was raised and subtly manipulated into ‘voluntarily’ becoming a martyr ever since he was orphaned—

(I’m putting 'voluntarily' in quotation marks because Harry kind of had no other choice: either he runs and Voldemort is basically immortal for another century or so, or he sacrifices himself—and Harry is righteous and selfless and honestly rather suicidal so he’ll obviously choose the latter option. Harry couldn’t make any other choices, not with his saving-people-thing and his guilt complex the size of the African Continent)

—which… okay. Reading it now, as an adult who now is able to see fully that Harry was seventeen (a child!!) when he allowed himself to be killed, the entire thing pisses me off.

Dumbledore subtly talked Harry into becoming a martyr, because what’s one innocent life lost in the grand scheme of things? Harry needed to die in order to defeat Voldemort, so that hundreds, if not thousands, of others could be saved from that fate. I still tear up sometimes at the image that emerges after Snape’s memories have been viewed, when Harry’s lying on the floor in the Headmaster’s office and finally knows that there was never an expectation he’d come out of the war alive.

Dumbledore isn’t the kind, empathetic, caring grandfather of the story—he’s the general on the other side of the chessboard, looking at bigger things and forcefully ignoring that Harry’s worth extends beyond his prophesied fate. And Harry knows it, at that point the DH: even if Dumbledore did care for him, it wasn’t enough to try and find another way.

Then about Snape. Though he isn’t wholly complicit in the ‘Harry shall need and be willing to die’-plot (as shown by his anger at finding out about it, because like, same, Sev… sort of), he was the one who inadvertently set the prophecy into motion. Sure, Voldemort needed to take action for it to come true, but Snape’s the one who told him: he didn’t care that that a family would be eradicated until he realised it involved Lily, at which point he panicked and begged for her safety (but not the safety of James and Harry). Cue disgusted Dumbledore (same, Al) but an agreement, as long as Snape becomes a spy. Both Harry and the reader figure out that Snape antagonised Harry mainly because Harry looks nearly identical to James and Snape had difficulty seeing Harry as his own person—and when he realised Harry’s situation at home was much more similar to his own than to James’, he didn’t back down.

In the books, Snape is an adult man who irrationally despised a child, knows it’s irrational, and does very little to change it. He wouldn’t have cared if Harry and James died, as long as Lily didn’t; it’s only his desperation for Lily to live that initially causes him to join the Order, and later it’s his grief and guilt about her death that makes him protect Harry.

Getting into the nitty-gritty

Putting all that I’ve said above together makes the decision to name Harry and Ginny’s second kid after both Dumbledore and Snape seem completely illogical—especially because it’s information Harry’s been made aware of. They’ve done surprisingly little for Harry’s personal well-being as characters who are claimed to have done ‘everything to protect Harry’—not only physical, like the infamous ducking for frying pans at the Dursleys’, but also mental, as in Harry doesn’t truly believe that he deserves to live. I’d argue that McGonagall, who has also done very little for Harry, cared more about that.

Dumbledore kept Harry alive to die at the right moment, by Voldemort’s hand and curse; Snape protected Harry because he felt obliged to after becoming accidentally complicit in murder, developing a guilt-complex, and then following Dumbledore’s orders. Somehow, Harey, Ginny, and JKR decided that naming the second born after these two men was a good idea. 

Potential outside reasoning

Despite me finding the theory that Harry and Ginny decided on ‘Albus Severus’ to lure an outraged Sirius out of the Veil absolutely hilarious, I don’t believe JKR would’ve even considered that as an option. No, purely from a classic literary analysis standpoint, it is far more likely JKR just wished to highlight that Dumbledore and Snape actually were Incredibly Great Men who Harry hero-worships slightly and admires greatly—despite Dumbles’ fall from grace and because of Snape’s redemption (He Loved Lily So Much You Guys). 

Now, I shan’t share my entire opinion on how I think Snape’s redemption has been executed (it isn’t up to Zuko-standard, I assure you), but I will say that I don’t consider it ‘enough’ for Harry in particular. I like Snape as an explicitly morally-grey character, and I personally think that his redemption did a decent job at establishing him as one of the good guys instead of the meanie double spy/humanoid bat hybrid who enjoys snogging Voldie’s snakey toes.  

Snape being on the ‘good’ side shouldn’t mean that Harry has to like him or even fully respect him. However, naming his kid after Snape implies that Harry has forgiven Snape for making Hogwarts a little bit more miserable than it should’ve been, for selling him and his parents out, for getting Lupin fired, for encouraging the continued manhunt of Sirius, for the absolutely absurd occlumency training during an already terrible time, for actively participating in the incredibly fucked up situation of “Harry witnessing the poisoned and exhausted Headmaster he just saved from a horde of magical water zombies get murdered and thrown of one of the highest towers of the castle, whilst he’s frozen and can’t do anything”… yeah. 

Similarly, Dumbledore and his manipulations and machinations have to be such a fucking blow as soon as Harry’s out of that fight-or-flight adrenaline boost. Someone Harry trusted and could’ve seen as family used him as a pawn in his game against Voldemort, and though Harry does continue to have some kind of respect for Dumbledore’s genius, the nineteen year skip towards the epilogue makes it so that we don’t see the resulting anger and devastation that Harry must’ve experienced as soon as he had a one (1) decent night of sleep. From my perspective (as someone with a Literature degree), naming the second child after Dumbledore and Snape is nothing more than an attempt by JKR at making a point: there’s good and bad in everyone including wizard-Jesus and wizard-Judas, Slytherin isn’t as horrible as I made out to be dear money-makers I swear, and forgiveness is key.

Obviously this shoddy job means that a whole bunch of people ignore the epilogue (and the absolute disaster that is Cursed Child) with a vehemence, which is a shame from a Potterverse standpoint. Comfy DADA Professor Harry (I refuse to acknowledge his Head Auror position; that’s CC info, anyway) who is also a Fun Dad is one of my favourite tropes. 

Potential in-universe logic

We continue on to Harry-and-Ginny logic—or I, at least, take a shot at it. 

To get one of the bigger criticisms out of the way first – it being the names of all three children – I’ll state that I genuinely believe Ginny had an active role in choosing what to name the children she’s carrying. Harry, for all his faults, isn’t a selfish person; Ginny, for the faults she has as a slightly underdeveloped female character, is quite an understanding one. It makes sense to me that she agreed with naming their children after James, Sirius, and Lily: the only family member Ginny lost was Fred, and George will obviously have first dibs on that name. Harry, however, has no biological family left, and his parents and godfather were ripped from him far too soon. I daresay that Ginny suggested the names, actually, because Ginny is like that and because I don’t see a future where Harry demanded to name the children after his parents. Ginny wouldn’t allow Harry to bulldoze over her like that. 

But Albus Severus: the conundrum. The reasons I’ll propose are that the Wizarding World is unbelievably terrible about mental health, and that both Harry and Ginny are rather traumatised. 

Say what you will about Dumbledore (and I will say loads), but his was the hand Harry metaphorically held as he walked to his death. His assurance was what kept Harry going, for better or for worse. Harry owes Dumbledore his survival. And say what you will about Snape, but he gave his life to go against Voldemort and help Harry succeed; despite the suspicions, despite the hatred and distrust from nearly everybody around him, Snape didn’t stray from that path as far as we know. 

They’re actually two of the few adults of authority who Harry was able to trust to do the right thing in the end: rare, considering Harry’s tendency to side-eye every authority automatically because they disappoint him so much. Harry is someone with zero self-esteem, someone who has difficulty accepting gifts, someone who stares at every crumb of kindness he’s offered in amazement. This is an effect of the upbringing forced upon him, to be sure, but in a world without therapy, experienced by a boy/man who usually suppresses every emotion he feels, because he thinks he doesn’t deserve to or simply shouldn’t feel them? They’re very, very admirable. 

I think that Harry in canon refuses to acknowledge what was done to him. He doesn’t want to know nor even consider that he was no more than a pawn, because what use does he have then, as a person? And Ginny—it’s likely she, too, likes to live in ignorance, because she’s got her own demons to fight. As long as Harry’s happy, she is, too: all she believes is that Dumbledore and Snape kept Harry alive. 

Harry and Ginny name their firstborn after Harry’s two dads, who died for him. They name their third after Harry’s mum, who died for him, and their mutual friend, who was willing to die for them both. 

They name their second born after the men who died for Harry to finish the job he was groomed to do. I’m sure they like to pretend that that last bit was only a happy little coincidence. 

TL;DR: Harry and Ginny named Albus Severus ‘Albus Severus’ because JKR wanted to ensure that people knew that Dumbledore and Snape were Really Good Guys and that Harry thought so; and, in-universe, because the Wizarding World has no therapy and Harry doesn’t want to acknowledge how fucked up his life was with Dumbledore’s help—only that Voldemort was at fault.