#honestly love when we start talking morality of discourse

[stick-ball]

"I'm so tired with the discourse" "why can't this fandom be normal" friendly reminder discourse and fuck-up starts when someone comes onto another person's post and starts throwing shit. Not when the post is made. I think that's an important addition to make to the current conversation, since multiple people are talking about the discourse, which, I guess we could stop calling discourse at this point bcs it's just dead dove purging. You know you should not eat the dead dove, you look inside anyway. That's on you, nobody else, so take your pitchfork and go home.

[balioc]

Thoughts on the Barbie Movie

Hoo boy. Here we go.

This is long. Spoilers abound.

I

The movie is not, in any normal sense, a Barbie movie (like this or this or this or whatever). It is not a story of Barbie doing the kinds of things that Barbie does in stories. It is an endlessly postmodern and self-referential movie about Barbie, which is to say, about the Barbie franchise and its role in culture. Which is, at least plausibly, an interesting thing for a movie to be.

You probably knew all that already. But it does give us a baseline of "this movie kind of had to be political and discourse-y, one way or another." Or even, to be more specific: "to some large extent this movie had to be about feminism, explicitly, if it was going to exist at all." How could you talk meaningfully about Barbie's role in culture without touching on that stuff?

II

The evaluative TLDR:

Barbie is very ambitious, and in many places very fun. It is also deeply confused, and fragmented, about what it's trying to say and do. Often it raises genuinely interested problems/scenarios and then totally fails to address them, or else addresses them in ways that are incoherent. The text knows that it's doing this, and on several occasions kind of apologizes for it; a couple of times it more or less looks into the camera and says "sorry, we're not going to deal with this properly;" but, well, that's not a substitute for dealing with things properly.

There is also a streak of genuine political nastiness running through the film, in a place where the story really cannot afford it. It...doesn't match up, tonally or thematically, with some of the surrounding material. I have no background at all in cinematic stratigraphy, but I would be fascinated to learn about Barbie's editorial history, because I have the vague sense that a more-cogent (and more-interesting) story got hacked apart and then Frankensteined together into something much cheaper and worse.

III

The opening sequence of the movie is wild. You've seen most of it -- or you can, if you haven't, and you want to -- because it is the film's first teaser trailer. Girls are playing listlessly with baby dolls; a giant Barbie appears like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and then the girls enter a frenzy of destruction, bashing their baby dolls' heads against the ground.

I don't know whether I would have found it as disturbing as I did, if I didn't actually have a baby of my own. But speaking from the standpoint of a parent...yeah, wow, it's more viscerally horrific than most actual horror I've seen recently. The narration says some stuff about Barbie providing a new and more rewarding set of imagination games to play, but the visuals by themselves tell a message loud and clear, which is: Barbie will turn your daughters into infanticidal maenads. It wouldn't need any editing at all to be part of a shock-you-silly Reefer-Madness-y moral panic film.

Which is really good! And really interesting! It starts us off on an undeniable thematic note: there is something primal and powerful and very dangerous about Barbie.

IV

The very best part of the movie is probably the part that comes right after the opening, when we explore the movie's depiction of "Barbieland" by going through Barbie's Typical Day, before we get into any of the notional plot or metaphysics. It's joyful and charming in a consistent way. The gags are (mostly) great. The movie is in love with its base premise, and that love is palpable.

This sequence makes one thing very clear:

Barbie treats Ken like absolute dogshit. She is a bad girlfriend.

And it's taken seriously. I mean, it's played for laughs, almost everything in this movie is played for laughs, but...it's not mean-spirited, not here. It's not, like, "ha ha, Ken, what a contemptible loser." He's Pierrot, asking for very basic forms of affection and attention and respect, and getting the door slammed in his face over and over. It's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

That colors everything that comes later.

The movie doesn't forget this, or fail to acknowledge it. At the end, after everything, Barbie does apologize to Ken for her treatment of him. It's a halfhearted and supremely unsatisfying kind of apology, especially in context, but...it's there, in so many words! I'm not making it up! This thematic foundation was laid down, not-very-subtly, right at the beginning!

V

This movie, which is at least trying to be ambitious, is juggling a million themes. Many of them are dumb at their core, and have no real promise; many of them lack any kind of narrative synergy with the others. But there are at least two which, I believe, (a) are genuinely worthwhile individually and (b) work well together in a story.

One is: What does it mean to be a symbol rather than a person? To exist, not for your own sake, but for the sake of influencing the dreams and culture of entities that you don't know and can't really understand?

The other is: What is the proper ordering of the relationship between Barbie and Ken?

I've seen a number of Takes in which people say, essentially: Couldn't this have ended with the Barbies and the Kens just being decent to each other and treating each other like humans? Couldn't there have been equality and mutual respect, instead of the weird uncomfortable girlboss-supremacist stuff that we got? And I sympathize with that impulse tremendously, but the honest answer has to be: No. We cannot have simple equality and esteem between Barbie and Ken, not in a movie like this. That would be a lie. Because this is a movie about Barbie-as-symbol, and when you're looking at Barbie through that lens, it is true and unavoidable that Ken is an appendage and an afterthought. You can have toys for boys; you can have dolls for boys (even if you call them "action figures" or whatever); for that matter, you can have dolls of boys for girls, so that girls can tell stories centering on male characters; but that's not what Ken is, and never has been. There are no Ken stories, and no one particularly wants them. Ken exists to be Barbie's boyfriend.

(One of the most painful moments of the movie comes during the resolution wrapup. Ken wails to Barbie that he has no identity outside her. She says, basically, "you have to find one, because I'm leaving you." And he...acts like he's had an epiphany, and does a little silly celebration. But his "insight" is just literally "I'm Ken," there's absolutely nothing there, and of course it's the most hollow and awful thing in the world because he really does have no identity outside her.)

VI

The movie's metaphysics are not even slightly consistent. The nature of Barbieland, and the ways that it affects and is affected by the real world, are completely different in every scene. In large part because the film can't ever pass up a gag, whether or not it's funny, no matter how much damage it does to the narrative and the theming overall.

The worst part is that the movie is not capable of saying anything remotely coherent about the real world, because its version of the "real world" is as weird and fake as its Barbieland. Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel character is more of an absurd cartoon than any of the Barbies or Kens. Mattel HQ is some kind of surreal labyrinth tower out of The Matrix. A random receptionist can handle herself like James Bond in a car chase, for reasons that are [handwaved in a gag].

VII

So. Yes. There is the sequence in the third act where Ken takes over Barbieland with the power of patriarchy. This is pretty much as bad as it can be. And I say this as someone who thinks that the movie probably did actually need a plot thread doing roughly that kind of thing.

Almost as bad as it can be. The wannabe-patriarch Kens are gleefully goofy in a way that you can't help but love, or at least, I couldn't help but love it. Which has something to do with the writing and something to do with the charisma of all the Ken actors. The main Ken, Ryan Gosling's Ken, really seems to believe that being a successful patriarch has a lot to do with riding majestic horses and wearing a giant fur coat without a shirt, and when he takes over Barbie's Dream House he names it Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House -- that kind of thing.

But. Apart from that, it's real unfortunate. The justification for Ken's ability to conquer Barbieland with patriarchy, instantly and effortlessly, is -- in almost so many words -- they had no defenses against it, it was like the American Indians encountering smallpox. I...don't think I need to spell out the problems with that.

Worse yet, the whole sequence is soaked in, uh, let's call it "2014-era upper-middle-class social-status-oriented feminism." The real bad behavior on the part of the Kens, the stuff they do when they're not being adorably weird, is: mansplaining their extensive opinions about cars and movies, and wanting to show off how helpful and knowledgeable they are to "damsels" who are having trouble using machines or computers. Apparently that's the real problem at hand, the causus belli of the gender wars. The way that you deprogram a patriarchy-brainwashed Barbie is by...ranting to her about the stereotypical social irritations of upper-middle-class women (e.g. "you have to keep yourself thin but not act like you care about being thin," "you have to be a confident leader but also be nurturing and supportive," etc.) [note that the Barbies of Barbieland have never encountered these irritations, at least not at the hands of men]. And the girlboss victory montage consists of having the Barbies put on deceptive manipulative bimbo acts to stroke the Kens' egos, which sure is one way to depict girlboss feminist victory.

But the most unforgivable thing of all is the depiction of the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies. They're lad-magazine caricatures, endlessly offering their Kens "brewski beers," dressing up as French maids, gazing on in cow-eyed adoration as their Kens mansplain stuff to them.

Barbie does, in fact, have a problematic history with the patriarchy. And it does not look like that.

VIII

@brazenautomaton:

Barbie isn’t someone who had to fight through the patriarchy to be seen as good enough to be an astronaut even though she’s a woman. Barbie’s a fucking astronaut because she’s fucking Barbie of course she’s good enough to be an astronaut.

That is...one aspect of the deep Barbie lore. It is the Barbie-nature that Mattel was trying to push, as far back as my own childhood; it's certainly the Barbie-nature that Mattel is trying to push in this movie. But there is another side to Barbie, even older and even more fundamental than Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie, and you can't make a postmodern movie-about-Barbie without addressing it.

This is Barbie the fashion doll. The Barbie who is an icon of ultra-consumerist teenage girlhood, whose life is defined by her fancy clothes and her fancy car. The Barbie whose most salient traits are her hourglass figure and her long blonde hair and her feet that are always posed to fit into high heels. The Barbie of "math class is tough!" The Barbie who is kinda vapid and shallow and, yes, boy-crazy.

How can you tell a story about Barbie wrestling with the culture of patriarchy, and not talk about that? How can you depict Barbie falling victim to the patriarchy and have it look nothing like that?

...the movie does bring up the specter of Vapid Consumerist Barbie, briefly. When Margot Robbie's Barbie first comes to the real world and meets with the sullen teenage daughter character, she has a litany of That Thing thrown in her face, and it makes her sad. But nothing is ever done with it, and it goes nowhere.

IX

And it could all have fit together so well. That's the hell of it.

You can imagine the version of the story in which Ken conquers Barbieland with patriarchy, because the Barbies are actually vulnerable to patriarchal narratives, because Vapid Consumerist Barbie is the chthonic serpent that gnaws at the foundations of Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie civilization. He successfully makes them all forget that they're senators and astronauts and veterinarians, and turns them into airheaded teenage fashionistas who think that math class is tough.

And this avails him, and the other Kens, nothing. Even within the "patriarchal" version of Barbieland, Ken is still an afterthought and an appendage. He still gets treated like dogshit, just in a different idiom.

Because the thing that has always been true of Barbie, though every age and every phase of her mythos, is: she is the main character of her own story.

This is what the movie was telling us all the way back in the horrific 2001-pastiche prologue, right? Even when Barbie was just a swimsuit model, the point was that she let girls tell stories about themselves (or idealized/aspirational versions of themselves), not about boys or babies. That is a truer, and more powerful, feminist message about the meaning of Barbie than any message the movie actually bothers conveying.

The gag scene practically writes itself: the brainwashed Barbies are sitting around in a giggly slumber-party huddle talking about how dreamy Ken is, and actual Ken cannot get a word in edgewise, he can't even get them to notice he's there, because even Vapid Consumerist Barbie is fundamentally centered in her own life. Her narrative is not about a boy, it's about the experience of being a girl (mostly engaging with other girls) who likes thinking and talking about boys. Which is very much beside the point, if you started out with the complaint that your girlfriend never paid any attention to you.

Patriarchy hurts men too, indeed.

X

The movie ends, as I've intimated, in a disappointing squidge of thematic confusion. Barbie announces that she never really loved Ken, and leaves him, because...well, because these days the smart-set target audience is allergic to romantic narratives that Produce the Couple, as far as I can tell. Then she goes to the real world and becomes a real girl, a move that means nothing and is nonsensical even by the standards of the Barbie metaphysics, because the storytellers don't know how to end her arc and Becoming a Real Girl is the sort of thing that feels like a meaningful conclusion.

The Kens...sigh...the Kens ask for equal rights in Barbieland, more or less, and get told, "nah, but we'll throw you some bones." And they're happy with this, more or less, because they're dumb and don't really care. The narrator says, approximately, "maybe someday they'll make as much progress as women have in the real world." Haw haw.

It's probably too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something substantive about responsibility and kindness in relationships. It's almost certainly too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something about the nature of love symbols and love narratives. But all the pieces really were there, laid out very conspicuously. The movie could have wrapped up with: Ken doesn't need to be more important than Barbie, he doesn't even need to be as important as Barbie, he just needs to be treated with human decency. And if little girls are going to play with Barbies, and fantasize about having cute guys hanging all over them -- maybe they should have functional models of romance and human connection in which to root their fantasies, and not terrible ones.

[palmettoshenanigans]

Usually I want to avoid discourse at all costs but like,,, if I don't say this once I'll explode

Riko is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I'm going to treat others this way" abused to abuser pipeline.

Andrew is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I refuse to treat others this way" abused to not abuser pipeline.

(And even those two above statements are dis-including nuance that I don't have time to dissect)

Every other character seems to lie somewhere on the spectrum of this idea. Neil lies closer to where Andrew lies. Grayson lies closer to where Riko lies. Etc etc. And their positions on that spectrum are not fixed points but rather dynamic positions based on their choices made every day of their lives. Choice and agency and yadda yadda

All this back and forth about whether or not acknowledging the truth that Riko was abused erases the truth that Riko was an abuser is just missing the fundamental truth that I honestly think is Andrew's whole main Principle Of Life:

Everyone, no matter how kind they seem, is capable of the greatest atrocities. It just depends on what might push them to that point and how much they resist the temptation when brought to it. And everyone, no matter how fucked up they seem, could fall or have fallen prey to the greatest atrocities of others. Because "the shit people did to me" and "the shit I do to others" is not a fucking linear graph with a one to one ratio in any fucking configuration. People get what they get and it's not about "deserving". And people do what they do and whether they're held accountable follows the same logic as above. The universe is apathetic about human morals and humans are biased and fallible and easily manipulated when we try to uphold and enforce our morals in its stead - and humans don't even universally agree on morals in the first place so it's a fucking mess from the start.

And honestly, sometimes those people who don't grasp this idea are like Jeremy "But they're your parents, they're supposed to love you" Knox. That's a sentiment of morality, not an observation of how reality actually plays out. I see the best you are capable of and I see the worst you are capable of but I expect nothing because I don't have perfect foresight, I don't have perfect information, nor can I read minds.

Riko was a victim of abuse. Riko was a perpetrator of abuse. These two truths exist in harmony and cannot be separated. Whatever you feel or think about him after that is your fucking business and exists as separate from those two truths because it is born from you and not from Riko or any truths regarding him.

"Hurt people hurt people" is TRUE and "You'll never know the violence it took to be this gentle" is TRUE but not all truths manifest in all people but that doesn't make them less true!!! It just makes humans the canvas of infinite possibilities each born from the same finite palette of colors!

But at that point we're talking about nuance and discourse doesn't like nuance and also these characters aren't real people in the first place so imma shut up now I guess

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/10/2023

by dry volume, this post is 80% talking about gallery walls. tl;dr : do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, mat your art to give it visual room to breathe.

listening

had a playlist of the james bond theme songs on while i was deep cleaning my kitchen and the line "YOU GOT TO GIVE THE OTHER FELLA HELL!!! " from SPECIFICALLY the guns 'n roses cover of live and let die (even though the playlist had the correct mccartney version) has been THOROUGHLY stuck in my brain for forty eight hours.

-

reading

academic transphobia to follow:

an anti-reading section, for once. Retraction Watch (site that tracks academic paper retractions and major academic beef like when someone is stripped of tenure for fraud, formerly my beloved) published an op-ed by an anthropologist TERF who is Big Mad she got called out by her professional association for trying to submit a conference talk that amounted to hate speech against her trans colleagues in the name of the stupid fucking largely disproven sexing skeletons thing. the comments have devolved into the professor sock puppeting anyone who goes "hey RW why did you platform this?"

would be very interested to hear from RW about how a retracted conference talk has the same impact on the scientific community as a retracted paper, but we'll fucking see. i think RW provides an important service to the scientific community (they are the most indepth and thorough tracker of retractions, more so than the actual publishers) but this is a fucking weird move

-

watching

rewatched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, dir. Zemeckis) for fic research. GOD this movie is fucking good. it performs a minor animation miracle every thirty seconds.

-

playing

nothing to report

-

making

by popular demand (four people), some thoughts about gallery walls. some discourse on the method, if you will. i went with a gallery wall bc i like the look and i had an extremely large blank wall to fill bc this apartment is slightly too big for me. the string lights remind me very much of my dorm rooms but cool lamps have been few and far between down here.

how to get art (and why/caveats)

i honestly don't have a ton of direct collecting advice here other than "have you tried going to a lot of thrift stores". i cheat bc both my parents were architects who collected art, everyone in my family dabbles in fine art, and my sister has her bachelors in art history. so i am awash in paper, constantly. i grew up with a set of flatfiles and a closet full of spare frames. i recognize most people do not grow up like this.

with that caveat out of the way, how do i actually get my art? usually one piece at a time over a very long period of time. there's a postcard on my gallery wall i got in 2009. this is a game you will be playing for the rest of your life as you discover things you like and your tastes evolve.

it is VITAL that you love every piece on your walls. no filler ikea canvases unless you actually like them. the instant you start thinking "oh i need a landscape to look Grownup" you have to strangle that thought in the cradle. there are no rules, especially in art. put whatever the fuck you want up on your walls with no regard for the public's taste.

i feel like "i should buy and put up more art" is something that often falls into a vague Grownup Improvement Goal (like budgeting) bc it is an Grownup Improvement Goal and not bc they actually want to buy and put up more art. fortunately for everyone, you do not have to buy or put up Morally or Socially Improving art that will impress some vague category of grownups, bc we don't fucking live in victorian times.

most importantly you do not need to spend much (or in some cases any) money to put things on your walls. getting the effect you want (fancy washi tape, matching frames) may take some money, but using the printer at work and stealing some scotch tape is free.

how to get art (actual advice this time)

i feel a little silly typing this all out but i really like reading other chewsdayposters' processes, and it is really helpful for me a lot of the time to have someone say: actually there is this complete other way of doing something you have never considered bc u did not grow up with it

i ask you: do you have a stack of sentimental papers somewhere in your home? congrats you have some frameable items. a thing does not need to be Fine Art to be in a frame to go on the wall and make you happy. tape up a birthday card. put a quilt up on your wall. pushpin a label from a jar of pickled herring bc it reminds you of your grandma. frame a beloved tshirt. this is a martha stewart ass statement but things that are not traditional paper art on your walls will add variety and whimsy to your home.

other places for art that are not thrift/estate/yard sales:

i do believe that making your own art, including a $3 paint-by-numbers kit, will fix something in your brain. it's very similar to how i personally have to go stand with my feet in a body of water twice a year or THE SLUDGE smothers my brain

your favorite weird indie bands are almost certainly selling posters on bandcamp even if they're not currently on tour

i like the artists' co-op justseeds for art that deals with "social, environmental, and political engagement" like my beloved "fuck space tourism" poster

start a "good lines" or equivalent "art i like" tag on here and buy prints when u have the money. even if artists here don't have a shop open or don't have the specific piece u want as a print, ask if u can throw them an appropriate amount of money on venmo or something and get it printed locally or online. ive had good luck with vistaprint and they have rolling sales

do you like a piece of art in the public domain, like something from a museum? print it out. put it in a frame. no it's not as nice as a professional print but it's free if you do it at work and now it's on your wall

fuck around on wikimedia commons and the internet archive. i particularly love pulp magazine covers and little illustrative insets for out of date astronomy books

non- and semi-consumable supplies

if u put $25 into supplies u can use for many many other projects (i assume you probably have some of the following list), you can make any frame nice and save approximately a gajillion dollars.

good utility knife and extra blades

hammer

tape measure

level (comes with most command hook packs, you can also use your phone)

stepstool, sturdy chair, or patient tall person

assorted nails (you can buy a little tackle box with assorted nails from most big box stores)

little squeezy tube of DryDex spackle ($5) and putty knife or honestly old credit card to fill in nail holes when you move out

OR command strips and hooks

matboard that is white on one side and black on the other (~$8 at big box craft stores). you can use this to cut your own mats and/or replace a kind of weird back on an otherwise good frame

most printer paper these days is acid free. steal some from your workplace.

assorted small brushes

little thing of acrylic paint in whatever color you want your frames to be (~$1.50 ea). you can also spray paint your frames for a different finish but i don't have the space or patience in this apartment

sandpaper or sacrificial emery board

i would further recommend a little set of letter size desktop drawers/mini flatfiles like this to keep all the small stuff you want to frame in one place. i have sentimental art i don't want to frame in one drawer and things i do want to frame in the other. this has been very good for my brain bc it's all safely and flatly contained out of sight, and it's easy to flick through a stack of things i already love when i need one more small thing or one warmer thing to fill a gap

frames

the good news for us is that frames and art are a fucking bitch to move and people frequently give them away. your local discount and thrift stores are going to be fucking awash in small frames 8.5"x11" and under for under $3 each. when you are thrifting or estate saling or yard saling or generally gallivanting about on a weekend, pay little attention to any art actually in a frame. is the frame in okay shape? can you repaint it without too much trouble? will it clean up all right? does it have the glass? can you insert the glass from a different frame into the one you actually want without any thrift store employees noticing?

for weird sizes above 8.5x11 and outside poster size that cannot be easily found at thrift stores, the big box craft stores here in america have roughly quarterly frame sales and frequent coupons. do NOT get your shit professionally framed at michaels bc they upcharge by about 3x compared to other local framers (both on the east coast and here in tx).

i went through two periods of seriously buying frames (last year of high school and the year i moved into the original lair, when/where i thought i was going to stay for a few years) and ive swapped in out and between those dozen or so total. once you have built up a little stock of frames that fit the general sizes of art you tend to collect, ur pretty good for a while. the only new "frame" i bought for my gallery wall was a little floating shelf.

mats

the absolute biggest fucking thing u can do to make your art look nicer is mat that bitch, which gives it room to breathe. if your art does not have a built in border or a lot of white space (see 9, 12, and 13 in the gallery wall below, as well as 8 which has a ton of negative space with the car door), you need a frame bigger than your art. you can google the suggested proportions yourself or decide with your heart.

i am a big fan of a very slapdash floating mat, which means cutting a piece of printer paper to size or flipping around the paper that tells you what size the frame is and slapping your art right on top of that, sometimes with a lick of gluestick to keep it in place. generally a floating mat means a sort of 3D matting technique but we don't have time for that. do not do this printer paper technique long-term with a particularly beloved or expensive piece of art.

u can also buy pre-cut mats at Michaels or Joann’s for not too too many dollars, or cut your own with the acid-free matboard ($10 for a poster board sized piece) and a new utility knife blade and a steady hand. or, if you're lucky, it comes with the frame.

gallery wall specific advice

there aren't any rules. actual galleries and museums tend to put the center of a piece or group of pieces at 57" from the floor. you may want to fuck around with that depending on your own height, the space you have, and the pieces you own.

a gallery wall does not need to be 24 pieces like this one. it can be any number.

this is the first one i have done mostly by myself and it is the most color-restricted one i have ever put up. it is also the one with the most successful repeating motif (circles). usually i grab the art i want most to go together and send pics to my art historian sister who will then arrange it for me and say shit like “do you have another small blue thing for the top left” or “do you have two pieces that are warmer and larger” or "different frame for the middle left"

look at a lot of other gallery walls. personally i like the ones that have non-framed and non-square things in them. ideally mine would have photographs and taxidermy in it for maximum weirdness. but u cannot go wrong with a grid, or all horizontal pieces, or all vertical pieces. for a full wall puzzle piece like this, u do not generally want an american southwest four corners meeting situation. stagger it. lay everything out on the floor and move it around eighteen times (this is the worst part). the gallery wall as a whole does not have to be perfectly aligned to the ceiling or the back of your couch or what have you. it can be sort of an organic blob shape along the top and bottom edges.

my wall

this soothing blue and green wall with wood tone pops has pieces from almost half my life. it skews later in college/recent acquisitions, as i sharpened my taste for limited-number prints and had a car to go to thrift stores with, but that’s just how this specific wall came together

the list below should tell you what each piece is, how much i paid for it (and the cost of the frame if applicable), and when i got it. this wall has most of the Nice Art in my collection that is signed/numbered/in some way slightly fancier bc it is the wall i stare at when on my couch.

embroidered Scorpio constellation hoop, birthday gift from my sister (free, came with hoop, i used some makerspace felt and batting to properly back and finish it much later so free with my tuition), nov 2016

numbered and signed print of an italianate cityscape, $5 and came with the frame and mat from an estate sale, i put a new back on it with scrap matboard so the back of the print wasn't just naked, fall 2021

signed print of a new england landscape, came with the frame and the mat but is stained right over the signature :( $2.50 from salvation army, one of the last things i bought in spring 2023 before i moved

signed original multimedia on board collage by my sister from her like second ever gallery show, $69 in winter 2022 for the art, the frame was from a free pile i gave a new acid free back with scrap matboard. that was such a good free pile i got a huge pile of frames from that

magazine page (idk which one either) i saved in high school (i graduated in 2013) or very early college, frame was from a free pile by the side of the road in summer 2021 and repainted with some white acrylic paint. it is float matted with printer paper. maybe a dollar for the paint? i definitely did not buy the magazine

this is an out of print poster by one of my favorite living artists (Josh McPhee) so i emailed him and asked if i could get it printed myself if i threw him $25 and he said yes. i think it cost $22 to get it printed professionally, the frame is basics by studio decor ($20 for a 2-pack) (i spent so much money and time on this one bc i wanted a very specific look for a very specific space in my kitchen in the old apartment), feb 22

signed numbered woodcut by Roger Peet ($20 in august 2020), another studiobasics frame that was i think $8 in summer 2022. float matted with acid free matboard and not printer paper.

gigantic fuckoff unsigned unlabeled poster i bought bc she reminds me of the Barnes & Noble murals, $10 at goodwill (came with the frame, half off) sep 2023

star chart from the US Naval Observatory that was on a free shelf at Amherst College when i was taking a class there in fall 2018, another studiobasics frame (idk when i bought this one) so under $10. float mount on acid free printer paper.

plaster frog mirror from an estate sale in spring 2021, i do not remember how much i paid for it but it was not more than $5

oh goddamnit this is a new block so of course it restarted the numbering. fatal off by a power of ten error, very typical for astronomy. poster from a show i went to in college spring 2015, do not remember when i bought this sub-$10 studiobasics frame either, float mount on acid free printer paper.

signed poster from my roommate-at-the-time’s cousin’s band in fall 2014 (i can’t actually find the receipt but i did find an email from her cousin letting me know he shipped me and my roommate’s orders together lol) let’s say $20, another sub-$10 studiobasics frame of mysterious provenance.

moon map out of an old science book in high school, let’s be generous and say $10 for both the book and the frame (another studiobasics)

numbered but unsigned new year’s print from a local-ish print shop in massachusetts, $12 at savers with the frame, fall 2022

cover of a very fragile vintage paperback copy of raymond c/handler’s The Long G/oodbye i acquired in high school (could not have been more than a dollar or two), with a frame and mat that came in an ikea multipack my dad bought me in high school bc i had a set of l/ackadaisy miniposters i wanted to hang, looks like the closest modern equivalent is the EDSBRUCK, a single will run you about $12 today

postcard inherited from my grandpa’s collection of loose paraphernalia in 2010 (free but at what cost etc), frame is a studiobasics that come in a pack of 6 for $20 (less if you have a coupon) so let’s round down a smidge and say $3. don’t remember when i bought this frame either, it is matted with real matboard bc the postcard and the back of the frame are so thin

“my heart is a fish” cross stitch (a reference to the imperial radch trilogy of books) i made this and did not date it but i know i blogged about it on here at some point between 2014-2018, i remember having to buy five colors of thread but owned the hoop already, again back and finished it properly much later with maskerspace batting and felt, let’s say $5 not counting my time

postcard from @believerindaydreams last winter in another studiobasics frame and float mounted with acid free matboard.

tiny moon mirror from salvation army in early spring 2015, under $5

CD mirror from Vapor95 ($125? preorder in fall 2021), came with velcro command strips which was very nice of them

a $300 original multimedia collage (the first one my sister ever made, when she was in middle school) i bought in spring 2021 from her first show, sitting on a $5 acrylic shelf from five below i bought last month

22-24 are national geographic maps, 50c each at an estate sale last month, had to buy $7 worth of binder clips and pushpins to put them up bc i don’t fucking know what box they’re in and didn’t have time to rip the whole closet of boxes im ignoring apart

a slightly longer tl;dr: do not buy or hang up things you do not like in a vague attempt to make your house look more grownup ONLY put up things you love, thrift and repaint your frames if possible but you can get very cheap studiobasics ones if you want them all to match, acid-free mat your art for preservation and to give it room to breathe, keep a little drawer or box of stuff you love and might want to frame

[burningvelvet]

on cancel culture, tumblr, lit crit shit, paranoid reading, and some observations on blogging about byron & the shelleys —

every day someone comments on one of my posts about old dead writers with the most insufferable and reactionary takes disguised under a veil of liberalism. go read eve sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading & reparative reading, and learn how to enjoy things!!! why are you trying to cancel people who died 200 years ago? stop!!!

9/10 times they've never read the writer in question, they just hear that these writers were problematic and without using their own critical thinking skills, and having done zero research, they readily condemn them. no real appreciation for literature, no real appreciation for history or culture. and if they do have these, or if they have done research, it's entirely biased, already marked with judgement (aka exemplary paranoid reading).

i think it's very interesting that percy shelley and lord byron were getting cancelled in their own time period left and right, and now they still face cancellation attempts for some of the same reasons, only now more often at the hands of self-described progressives who feel they do so for the "right reasons."

a major problem in discourse (both in and outside of academia) is that most people do not understand the difference between "criticism" in the academic sense (which is synonymous with "discussion," "analysis," "engagement") and "criticism" in the colloquial sense (synonymous with "condemnation" or "harsh judgement" or even sometimes "attacking").

so when we start talking about literary criticism, some misinformed people automatically seek to cancel every dead writer, burn every book, and disregard all of history, even the progressive bits, because they simply don't care, and think that they are being "critical" and that this is a good thing, when they are using the wrong definition of the term to begin with. if i taught a class on literature the first thing i would do is make the distinction between these two definitions.

a lot of people approach dead writers or old writing in bad faith (paranoid reading). they automatically denounce The Olds for being problematic, and then proceed to believe they are morally superior for their own lack of depth.

percy shelley is one of the most progressive and forward-thinking figures of his generation and it's honestly a miracle that we still have access to some of his works which were literally burned in his own lifetime, but that his friends and most importantly his best friend, his wife mary shelley, carefully preserved during his life and long after his death even in the face of social ruin and censure, because they recognized his immense merit and they desperately loved him and his work. this is a beautiful thing!!!

this isn't the narrative a lot of people prefer, though. a lot of people would have mary shelley, instead of being the publisher and defender of his works as she was, be forced into the role which she herself openly derided, of being percy's unwilling bride, victim, who merely tolerated him, who was herself either repressed or oppressed by him. nor is nuance allowed in this narrative.

this narrative is based on a reactionary stance disguised as progressive. that all women writers are mere victims to the men around them. nevermind the fact that mary shelley's husband was one of her biggest encouragers (as well as her trusted proofreader and editor; and all this also goes for her father godwin, but to a lesser extent, as one could more easily make the argument that godwin did emotionally neglect mary).

paint all male writers as abusive control freaks, and all female writers associated with them as their weak-willed puppets, all based on their biological sex and a surface-level analysis of their biographies. these people are arguably just as bad as the sexist pseudo-scholars who have claimed that percy actually penned the entirety of frankenstein and used mary as his puppeteered pseudonym. as if mary never sought agency of her own and never possessed a modicum of it!

for a fair analysis on percy and mary's connection, i highly recommend Anna Mercer's "The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" and her interview by Mathelinda Nabugodi for a TLDR version.

i find it interesting that my posts about percy shelley's personal life are not only much more popular than my similar posts about byron (probably due to percy's surname; the mary/frankenstein connection) -- but also that i see way more criticism against percy than against byron.

i think this is partly due to their portrayals in the ahistorical 2018 mary shelley biopic film (see: graham henderson's blog posts on this topic) wherein byron was somehow portrayed as less of an asshole than shelley (which i never would have thought possible had i not seen it). & maybe it has to do with interest in & misconceptions about mary in general. but this is surprising because in many regards, percy really is much more likeable and progressive than byron.

i once had a person hating on byron and trying to argue with me entirely under a post about percy shelley which had nothing to do with byron. whenever i try to critically engage with this sort of backlash on my posts, it is utterly pointless. none of them are interested in or respectful of the opinions of others, nor are they receptive to facts or nuance or engaging with any material in any mature or serious way.

it's especially difficult that they mostly comment on my more popular joking posts/memes, bc that sets up a false pretense for me or my blog to be taken unseriously, when i do take academic figures & topics seriously. my blog is a place for me to unwind and joke about literature, yes, but it's not like i'm just mindlessly joking about writers i've never studied. a lot of people assume that i'm genuinely ridiculing writers when i playfully make fun of them, so they take it as an invitation to do the same, when that's not my case at all.

— back to the percy/byron comparison: in the history of my blog posts, i've seen probably 30+ percy haters and maybe 5 byron haters. as i said, this is honestly bewildering. there are way more justifiable reasons for hating byron than there are for hating shelley.

if we're speaking solely in terms of political, creative, & ideological stances between the two, (and there are hundreds of books/essays comparing their lives/works/philosophies,) i agree and disagree with both of them on various topics. they're both extremely complex writers/thinkers/figures and very different people, despite having been friends.

but if i'm comparing them biographically speaking, if i had to let one of them babysit my children, i would choose percy 10/10 times. if i had to live with one of them, i would choose percy most of the time, although either of them would be tough as a roommate for different reasons.

but overall, percy was a bit more decent biographically speaking, though that doesn't make him a superior writer (percy himself wrote numerous times that he felt byron was creatively superior to him, but morally inferior). and i think most people who've researched the two would agree that percy is the more moral poet by most standards.

for these and many other reasons, it seems apparent to me that the majority of people who hate percy are often parroting the rhetoric of others & not actually thinking for themselves -- which mary endlessly wrote that she despised, as she devoted so much of her time and energy to defending her husband's moral character from critics, so it's especially disappointing that most of the anti-percy sentiment comes from mary shelley fans, who don't even realize how much effort she put into publishing his work and transcribing it as his pre- and posthumous amanuensis.

[bananasfosterparent]

I'll be honest chief, not a fan of how a lot of astarion's fans who preach on the spawn ending give them the right to feel ownership of the character and story. "I give you permission to ascend Astarion, but only if you admit it's toxic!"

God I loved the spawn ending genuinely because it was wholesome and healthy version of how his romance can turn out, but the fact that people are being smug about it, write essays on it, at how everything relates to their personal trauma and that it must be the only way to solve it is nuts.

It's a video game guys, chile.

THANK YOU Anon! <3

The people offended are those who think that he has a "canon" ending and that it's the spawn ending. And like, from their POV, I understand why they're offended. But while that's the morally good and healthy option, it is no more canon for his narrative than the asc ending. On top of that, it's like they look at us and hear "power courses through you--authority!" in their heads lmao

I understand people being uneasy about his amoral evil ending. It IS dark after all. On top of that, the spawn ending is often tied to someone's personal experiences/memories or something else for them. That's fair. But have they ever considered that the asc ending is the same way for us? Doesn't ever seem like it.

If someone can't see it the way we do.... that's okay! They don't have to see things like Asc fans do. That'd be boring for all of us anyway.

But they can at least respect the fact that we see it differently and it's not bad for us to do so. We have nothing to be ashamed of or sorry for. We have nothing to admit. With the nuances of his story, we see the same information and interpret it differently. That's what you're SUPPOSED to do with this type of game.

You know that phrase, "Don't yuck someone else's yum"? Honestly I don't even care. In fact, PLAESE yuck my yums. Variety is the spice of life and we need different people who like different things. So go ahead! Yuck our yum.

The ISSUE starts when you want me to yuck my own yum.

Cause like you said... behind all this discourse and abuse cycle talk.. it's just an RPG video game. It's a tool. It's not real life.

[rollercoasterwords]

about those prank thoughts... well i’d love to hear them sooo if you needed an excuse to write another essay here it is

kissing u on the mouth anon ok here we go here's the prank rant (warning it got super long):

ok so this is limited in scope because as i've said before, i've only been in this fandom for like ~1.5 years, so idk anything about how the prank was talked about/handled before this. BUT. what i personally have seen. is essentially:

atyd gets super popular via tiktok -> it becomes sort of "canon" (at least, amongst newer marauders fans) that The Prank was like...this really devastating event that tore apart the marauders friend group, because that's how it was characterized in atyd--despite the fact that in the actual canon, it honestly doesn't seem like as big of a deal -> since it becomes the New Canon that The Prank was Such A Horrible Thing, suddenly people begin talking (mostly on tiktok) about how awful and unforgivable it was for sirius to do something like that. this devolves into this big discussion of people saying either

it's completely out of character for sirius to do The Prank and he never "really" would have done it; we should just ignore that part of canon

The Prank is so unforgivable that it makes sirius a completely irredeemable character

The Prank is so awful that anyone writing it in a canon compliant fic should be showing every single marauder turning against sirius and everyone hating him/telling him what he did was so awful and wrong, and it should take a really long time and a lot of apologizing/changed behavior before remus ever forgives sirius

and this then got extended into debates about james' characterization; I saw sooooo many people talking about "james would NEVER just forgive sirius for something like that" "james would side with remus" etc etc etc

and the end result of all these conversations was that i saw tons and tons of people saying that the way The Prank was written in atyd was Bad. not just--oh, i didn't like it, though there was plenty of that too, but people acting as though the way it was written was a moral failing, as though mkb had failed to convey how Horrible and Awful of a thing the prank was, and in doing so she had allowed people to Sympathize with sirius's character, when he should have been Punished. suddenly everyone was climbing on their high horses about The Prank, talking about how unrealistic or out of character or "problematic" it was to write it the way it was done in atyd--which was ironic to me, because from where i was sitting, it seemed like it was atyd that had solidified this fanon idea that The Prank was Such A Bad Thing in the first place (again, at least amongst fans brought in by tiktok).

SO. my problem with this. setting aside the conversation of whether The Prank was actually That Bad in the first place (because i think it can be written as a more or less serious event, depending on how you interpret canon--but personally, i tend to interpret it as something Very Bad, so let's start with that premise) and operating under the assumption that it was, in fact, a really horrible thing that put not only snape + james in danger but also remus, since he could have been exposed as a werewolf--the thing that drives me up the fucking WALL about The Prank discourse is that it is, to me, just one example of this obsession with Morality and Punishment when it comes to "literary critique" (using that term loosely, because i'd argue that a lot of what these people are doing actually isn't literary critique) in the marauders fandom (post-tiktokifcation, at least).

like. specifically, it's this idea that something like The Prank would make sirius, as a character, irredeemable, and that it would be unrealistic for his friends to forgive him. that, to me, is just....such a strange interpretation!!! because if you are friends--close friends, childhood friends--with someone for long enough, they will hurt you. you will hurt each other. it is an inevitable part of being human that getting close to each other and staying close to each other often means hurting each other. and the closer you are with someone, the more they can hurt you. i have a childhood friend who is essentially like family to me, and i was cruel to her when i was fourteen. i was dealing with a lot of shit, and i was young, and i was mean. and we've both been cruel to each other in the nearly two decades we've known each other, and we've had explosive fights, but we have always found our way back to each other and forgiven each other, because that's the kind of friendship we have. i have another childhood friend who hurt me so deeply when we grew older that despite having my literal handwriting tattooed on her arm, we haven't spoken in five years, and will probably never speak again. that kind of hurt is a risk you take when you let people in.

so to me, the idea that a teenage boy raised in an abusive environment who has just run away a few months earlier, who is dealing with all that shit as well as the regular shit of just being a fucking teenager, would thoughtlessly and deeply hurt his friend--that isn't out of character! in fact, i think it's entirely in character, and i think it's a crucial part of sirius's relationship with remus and the other marauders. because the fact that remus is able to forgive sirius says something important about their relationship. what exactly it says will vary, to a certain extent, depending on the details of how you write the prank and characterize the characters, but overall--it's important because it's showing that their relationship is strong enough and close enough and important enough to both of them that they are able to move past this deeply hurtful event. and that, to me, is a WAY more interesting and impactful relationship to read about than a relationship where two people are always good and never hurt each other.

and regarding james--personally, i love the characterization that james forgives sirius "too quickly" or "too easily" after the prank, because i think it's an opportunity to explore one of his most important character flaws, which is that he cannot imagine that his friends would ever purposefully do something bad/harmful. like--this loyalty and belief in his friends is literally what gets him killed. what amazing foreshadowing to show that even when his best friend does something blatantly wrong, james still thinks--well, he didn't mean it. his intentions weren't bad. and obviously he's sorry--and he's a still a good person, because he's my friend, and my friends are good people. like THAT is how you write a character flaw!

and speaking of character flaws--this is also one of the best opportunities, if you're following canon, to really explore some of sirius's character flaws! and again, it's gonna change depending on how you're writing certain details, but in some way shape or form this is a very important mistake for sirius to make in order for his character to grow--obviously, something has to change afterwards, because otherwise how could remus forgive him? but what has to change? how does it have to change? good characters aren't meant to be static!!

it's just. !!!! The Prank is truly, genuinely, one of the BEST opportunities from canon that you can use you really explore these characters and their flaws and their relationships with one another. so it is genuinely BAFFLING to me to see sooooo many people condemn it and act like it's this atrocious thing, because i feel like it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what literature is meant to do. like--i've talked about this before on my blog, and i'll keep saying it til the cows come home, but fictional characters do not exist as moral blueprints. good literature should engage your critical thought, and "character does Bad Thing -> character is Bad" is not critical thought!!! like!! fiction isn't telling you how to live, it's asking you to think about the human condition--and part of the human condition is that people make mistakes, and they hurt each other, and they have to figure out how to keep living in the wake of that hurt!! The Prank is this plot point where you can bring up really tough questions, like--how does closeness with others leave us vulnerable to them? is that vulnerability worth the closeness? what role does intent play in measuring harm? what can we forgive? what can we not forgive?

i get that sometimes with fanfiction you just want fluffy happy brain-off fun, but you can find that if that's what you want, y'know? like--it's just so so strange and honestly concerning for me to see people act as though something like The Prank shouldn't be written just because it means giving characters flaws and exploring them.

in conclusion, The Prank is one of my favorite parts of canon, and i truly think it is so worthwhile to explore when writing and thinking about these characters, especially sirius. also--it is important to understand, both within and outside of literature, that having flaws and causing harm does not automatically make a person irredeemable. if we are going to live with each other we need to learn how to respond to people fucking up in ways that are not just: You Are Bad And Must Be Punished.

[kylermalloy]

im so curious of ur attack of titan presentation. 👁️

In reference to this post

Omg Yuki—the way I genuinely considered sitting down and making a PowerPoint presentation 😂

I won’t. I could—but I won’t.

There’s a ton of cute presentations on this website about “why you should watch this show uwu it’s so good and the characters are adorable and it’s got a great message you’re gonna love it!” and, well…that’s not Attack on Titan for me.

Aot is…a curiosity to me. I do really like a lot of the characters, the animation and music are gorgeous, and the story is sufficiently intriguing. And yes, ultimately, it does have a message I can get behind (War Is Bad. Stick to the classics.) but it wasn’t a show that grabbed me instantly. I had to simmer in it for a while—and I do mean a while.

I suppose mostly what I want to talk about is the Disk Horse, which I kind of hate to do because tumblr is allergic to nuance—but. I also like to talk. So here I go.

(This is going under a cut because I CANNOT shut up. Also, I’m going to get into some dumb fandom drama nonsense and I would like to hide that in order to maintain my dignity.)

I actually first became aware of aot BECAUSE of the discourse. I had more posts on my dash claiming that it was a Bad Show and Don’t Watch It than posts that…actually told me anything about it.

Eventually as I started easing into exploring anime, I decided to check it out. Out of morbid curiosity, mostly. I wanted to know what was so bad about it.

For the first three seasons, I was a little clueless. An annoying protagonist with questionable morals? Main characters attached to some sort of military organization? The protagonist being the Exceptional One, the savior because of his unique abilities? …guys, these are all standard shonen tropes, and I’d only watched like…five animes at that point (I’ve now watched, like, ten. My immersion rate is s l o w.)

Then I reached the end of season 3, and I wen “ohhh.” Not because everyone who’d been insisting it was Bad were right, but because I could actually, finally see what they were talking about.

I hear the word “allegory” get thrown around a lot when it comes to aot, and…honestly, I don’t think that’s the right word. An allegory is a direct, deliberate parallel with either a real life event, or another story. Aot is not an allegory of anything. Now, does it use some real life elements as worldbuilding and narrative devices in its own story? Yes, and sometimes to a “yikes” effect.

But this is a fantasy story that takes place in a fantasy world about races of people that don’t exist. The parallels can be drawn, but it’s not an intentional allegory.

Think of the difference between Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis was very clear both in his writing and when talking about his work that it was a Christianity allegory. Aslan represents Jesus—created the world, died for its sins, all knowing, all powerful, does not always intervene, eventually edged out by a false god at the end of the world, etc. etc.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings took a lot of inspiration from his experiences in World War I. Read anything about LOTR, or watch any of the movies’ supplemental material, and that’s one of the first things you’ll hear. BUT—did old John Roald Roald intend it to be a one-to-one allegory? No.

The orcs are not the Germans. Humans and elves aren’t the English and French. This is not a fantasy retelling of real-world events—it uses elements of real-world warfare to enhance its own narrative. The faces in the Dead Marshes. Frodo’s life-altering trauma. The hobbits’ return to an unchanged safe haven, only to find they have changed irrevocably. Sam’s/Faramir’s introspection on the “evil” of the men they fight.

Aot does the latter, not the former. And while using imagery we associate with Jewish persecution and the holocaust…isn’t a choice I would have made when writing a story, it wasn’t a deliberately anti-Semitic choice.

We can talk all day long about how it’s not a wise choice, and how the implications can have ramifications—but this wasn’t something the mangaka did out of long-held prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious. I mean, do you really walk away thinking we’re supposed to HATE the Eldians? (If so, get better reading comprehension.)

I guess that’s what my Attack on Titan presentation should really be—teaching people how to read and therefore understand the themes and story correctly. Either that, or I could just make a ship chart and explain why Armin deserves to bang every single character, and in what order he should do so.

[itsclydebitches]

I honestly disappointed with yang character in Rwby IQ. I love the sisters moment but outside that she just there. I can't really name any other trait she has in this show. I wish they add one of her scenes from the original at the least. Sorry if I didn't explain well.

Now that you two have pointed it out, yeah, I agree about Yang. Tbf I think the entire cast is made up of fairly generic, anime-ish personalities (at least at the start). Making Yang into the big sis, on its own, isn't any worse than Ruby being the optimistic hero, Weiss the tsundere, Blake the mysterious loner, etc. They're all pretty one-note in the first few Volumes, coasting by on tiny hints and the fandom's desire to talk those up. But canonically? They're all generic. That's partly why Volume 3 had such an impact, given that RWBY suddenly took these characters with their simple action/adventure problems and straightforward personalities and chucked them into a horrific, morally complex war. No one ever expected the bubbly Yang to lose an arm; for the talented Pyrrha to perish, etc. Volume 3 works in large part because everything, including the characters, were so simple at the start and capable of providing that contrast. So if Ice Queendom was its own thing I don't think anyone would bat an eye at Yang's characterization, especially just three episodes in... but obviously it isn't its own thing, so yeah, that criticism stands.

Honestly, it didn't register until these asks, but I think that's partly what I was feeling while noting that we haven't gotten a sense of Yang's fighting style yet, or even know that she has a semblance. Those two things are pretty interconnected to her fiery spirit, what with her introduction literally being to attack a whole club and her superpower (the fandom discourse of this aside) being a "temper tantrum" wherein she has to learn (kinda) how to separate her semblance use from her knee-jerk emotions. More taking strategic hits to turn the tide of a battle, Yang, less losing your temper and flying into a rage, hoping that anger is enough to carry you through to a victory. Which, you know, the second half of RWBY says it's not. Regardless though, that's a core part of Yang's character which isn't really showing up in IQ yet. Maybe a little when she calls Weiss out on being racist, but that feels more tied to the horror of Weiss' actions - anyone would/should be furious - rather than something unique to Yang.

I do feel a little conflicted though, simply because I think RWBY has failed so spectacularly when it comes to Yang and IQ, though only three episodes in and clearly emphasizing the big sis/mother angle, is doing that well. As with so much in RWBY, I like the concept of Yang more than the reality of what we ended up with. After several seasons of watching her fly off the handle for seemingly no reason (without, notably, the story working through that and/or acknowledging it as a symptom of trauma), acting as the biggest hypocrite of the group, straight up refusing to be held accountable for all the shit that's gone down, and now, as of the end of Volume 8, severely regressing in regards to what she supposedly learned with Tai... it's kind of nice to have a Yang who's just a simple, nice big sis? As said, I'm conflicted. Because I wholeheartedly agree that, thus far, we've lost some of that original Yang spark, but having seen what that spark turned into post-Volume 3, I can't say I'm completely disappointed to be heading in a different direction. This Yang might not be as complex as RWBY's, but given that RWBY well and truly dropped the ball there (imo, as always), I'll take a simple Yang whose time on screen I actually enjoy over the Yang of Volumes 5-8.

[ladyalienist]

Radical Fatphobia

I just gotta love how in all the "hot topics" radfems got (surrogacy, sex industry, TRA/queer nonsense, abortion ban, you name it, we got it) the discourse about beauty standards seem to revolve around shaving and make-up.

Don't get me wrong, those are important issues, both for us and the enviroinment. But... aren't we kinda sleeping on the other big thing about beauty standards for women? Which is... being thin?

I mean. Many of you will speak about eating disorders and starving one's self in order to reach the unattainable body standard we have or about how body standards change every decade or so causing women to never feel good in their bodies, but I'm afraid that so many of you are totally... not understanding just how much "being thin=being morally good" is ingrained in your brain.

Like, when I started peeking into feminist (liberal ones) circles back into 2014-2015 sometimes I would stumble upon the occasional fat-positive thing. "It's ok to have a belly!", "Fat and fabulous!", and I'm pretty sure liberals are still sometimes giving these little pills of comfort to us fatties. In radical feminism... this topic seems to just not exist. Not being discussed. Nada de nada, just the occasional "oh so many young girls are starving themselves to look like literal skeletons :(", and that's true but what about those girls who do not look like skeletons?

I'll be brutally blunt: I think that many of you do not give a fuck.

I've seen positivity posts being derailed into talking about visceral fat and lectures about how we're gonna die soon. I've seen every possible critique to HAES approach, from very grounded to very stupid.

Trust me: FAT WOMEN KNOW THIS. We know we're gonna die soon, we know visceral fat is killing us, we know every fucking stat in the box, because THE WHOLE WORLD IS EAGER TO TELL US, the whole world wants us to be miserable every time, and guess what? That's mostly because of capitalism. The very same capitalism radfem ideology tries to fight, you know.

The science behind weight and nutrition is not as black and white as so many of you want to believe it is. Dieting is a multi-billion dollars industry that relies on its own inefficiency - this means: DIETS. DO NOT. WORK. In 95% of cases. The only thing that gives a hope for consistent weight loss is surgery, with all the associated risks, and even then... it's not GRANTED. We do not know how to make fat people thin, and it is NOT OUR FAULT. We do not know how to properly "cure" obesity - hell we struggle even to define it, because BMI is a shitty way to do so.

"Fat people should keep in mind that they will die young" yeah and you know what makes our lives even shorter? The constant, unavoidable knowledge that being fat means people will be disgusted by us. The guilt we feel for enjoying a fucking plate of pasta. The stress of being targeted and harassed since age five, of being put on diets soon after, of being the bottom of every joke, of having fewer chances not only at a fullfilling love life (I could write another long rant about what relationships are like as a fat woman) but also at a satisfying career in every field and good social circles, of having things (clothes, cars, public transport) not designed for us. Stress fucking destroys every system in human body but somehow it's just visceral fat's fault, and thus fat people do not deserve any positivity in their life, they do not deserve to think "my body can be ok the way it is even if I have a tummy", no, they must feel miserable all the fucking time even in self-called radical feminist spaces. No fucking fat person, let alone woman, wants to be fat: if we had a safe, functioning way to become thin we would do it. But God forbid we ever, ever stop hating our bodies, no matter how much in every other instance it's clear that it leads us nowhere.

Honestly fuck you and your faux concern for health. I never see you this eager to tell smokers that they will die young, I never see you talking about how legal drugs can and will cause health problems, or about the toxicity of sugary food in general. It's always about visceral fat.

If you are not fat yourself I don't care how much you seriously think you're in the right for saying that fat is a risk for health under any little fat positivity post, fuck you. The person behind the post most likely perfectly knows and you've just made their day a little more miserable with no reason other than... you still thinking you're morally superior.

And just so you know, even if your BMI is 18 and you only eat salads and spend all of your spare time at the gym... you will, eventually, die. Just like us fatties.

[localcactushugger]

Is anyone else amazed that Hawks was only "undercover" with the Leauge for 6 months at the most.

Not only that, one and a half of those 6 months were spent just trying to gain enough trust to infiltrate.

I know it seems like much longer since Hawks made his Manga debut 2 years ago. But he had such a short amount of time on this mission. Hawks was introduced in the manga with his role being the "double agent". We literally have not seen Hawks outside of his "spy" role. Even when he is interacting with other characters outside of the Leauge, his "mission" is still happening in the background.

It seems Hawks made contact with Dabi right before the Hero Billboard chart, this is when he starts trying to infiltrate. His interaction with Dabi in the warehouse begins immediately after Endeavors fight with High-End:

During this time, Dabi is testing out a High-End Nomu for doctor Ujiko. Which means by the time Endeavor fights High-End, the My Villain Academia arc is already happening. Hawks is assumed to be one of the "members" Dabi is trying to recruit:

The Leauge has already made contact with doctor Ujiko, and the Doctor sends Dabi to test his High-End Nomu out on Endeavor (even though Dabi didn't know it would be Endeavor) while the rest of the Leauge battle Machia. At the time, Dabi still doesn't trust Hawks at all and he keeps the hero at arms length. While Dabi and Hawks are sharing ominous phone calls, the Leauge is hauling ass and it take's Shigiraki a month and a half to finally beat Machia. (The MLA is "defeated" too):

After a month and a half of phone calls (while the Leauge gets their asses handed to them by Machia in the background) Hawks is finally allowed into the Leauge when the battle of Dekia City is finally over. Dabi let's him in because Hawks "kills" Best Jeanist.

But there's a problem. By the time Hawks is let in, The Leagues numbers have drastically increased. They have an army at their side, multiple High-End nomu, and are now called the MLA:

Hawks blames himself, saying that he was "too late". That so many civilians would be alive now if he had been faster. He couldn't round up the Leauge when they were a small group, and now they have an army. A powerful one:

He's in too deep now. And you can see the stress on his face. I bet he never expected to be part of an army. He was simply tasked to round up the Leauge members while they were a small group, but the MLA was completely unexpected. Still, he decides to improvise and do the best he can with the shitty cards he's been dealt. It's not like he has another option at this point.

So he slips a coded message to Endeavor ASAP. Basically saying "yo, in four months shits about to go down. Ttyl I'll keep you posted lol". He can't tell the guy in person now, because to make things harder, he has camera's on his wings. (and even though he's being watched by camera's, he also gets followed by guards at the mansion):

After Hawks relays the massge, he stroles around the mansion with his bodyguard and heads towards the cafeteria. With a little eavesdropping (courtesy of his feathers) he also finds out that the Leauges plan is to "Destroy Everything" in four months:

After he relays the massage to Endeavor, he listens to the Leauges plans of destruction as his thoughts run a thousand M.P.H.

Because now "capture the Leauge" has turned into "Holy shit I now only have 4 months to take down a full fledged terrorist organization/army from the inside-out by myself while I'm being monitored 24/7 with absolutely no privacy & also a full time job as a hero + a public image to maintain. And I can only contact my fellow pro's about this mission through code because if the villains find out I'm a double agent I could be killed and Japan could be destroyed. Also some heros have even joined the MLA so who on my own side can I trust? Only a select specific few for now I guess."

If you thought things couldn't get worse your wrong.

Because around 2 months before the raid Hawks' heart (that wants to be free & has a genuine desire to help people) takes shit a bit too far when it makes him get attached to a certain powerful villain.

Hawks quckily finds out that Twice is easily the second most powerful villain in the Leauge after Shigiraki. He's an S ranked villain and he'll kick your ass with the power of friendship anyday. He's a great guy, but him and the Leauge are still planning on doing horrible things within the next 2 months. Twice is going along with it because he wants to stick by his friends, which y'know, is a cool motive. But considering that fact that the people Hawks is trying to protect ALSO have friends, and family's, this makes shit difficult and sends Hawks on some major guilt trips. (I would show all the panels of Hawks sadly smiling as Twice calls him a "good guy", but alas- Tumblr has informed me that I've reached my 10 image per post limit)

And tbh who wouldn't feel bad about suddenly getting attached to such a golden retriever of a man and then realizing you'll have to double-cross him at some point! I'm not surprised Hawks would feel this way, especially considering the fact that he never wanted to take on this mission in the first place.

Hawks is very much a people person, and he HATES lying even when he has no other option. This is a man who got "shivers up his spine" when he had to put on a serious face while handing Endeavor a book with coded messages inside. He literally felt icky and thought "this is low even for me" just because he had to use a deadly expression so that Endeavor would get the gist.

And when the Commission made their "proposal" about this mission, Hawks' first reaction was to call them out on their B.S. for asking him to put civilian lives at risk. He even admitted that he was feeling bad about sending Tokoyami away while talking to Deku, Shoto, and Bakugo. Hawks felt guilty about not being able to spend more time with his student, but considering that things with the MLA were starting to get riskier, and that Hawks literally handed Endeavor a book with a coded message inside about an uprising 2 seconds later, I can see why he wouldn't want to risk Tokoyami being around him. The fact that the camera's on Hawks' wings caught his interactions with Endeavor & the students also makes the creep‐factor worse. The MLA saw everything AND talked about it in a meeting later. Continuing to train with Tokoyami would put him at risk.

I love the complexity of Hawks' character, he's incredibly intelligent, logical, and intuitive. But at the same time throughout this entire mission his heart is constantly battling with his mind. Even when he knows he has to grit his teeth and do something shifty, his heart never fails to put up a fight with his logistics. Honestly it's been a pattern for a while that Hawks' sympathy always "Trips him up" in some way, so idk why I didn't see it coming around to bite him in the ass later.

(Tbh it's hard for me to see Hawks as a this super "Morally Gray" person that the fandom likes to paint him as because of a mission that he only spent 6 months on. I personally, kinda see Hawks as a "good person" who works for a "morally gray" agency. But that's a whole different meta)

Basically, Hawks getting attached to Twice wasn't a surprise. But considering how powerful Twice was, along with his role in the League's destructive plans (He was a lieutenant in one of the MLA's "Units") the discourse going on in Hawks' mind makes sense. By this point Hawks has already figured out all of the MLA's "Units" along with the three "bosses" that support the lieutenants of those "Units". It's noted that those "bosses" are extremely powerful and can match the strength of the heros as well. It took Hawks an entire month just to figure out all of the "Units" members. (I would show the panels explaining all of this but I'm at my photo limit)

All of these members were tasked to follow their lieutenants and bosses, and the plan was to attack all of Japans major cities at the same time. Once the cities were destroyed and chaos had set in, Redestro and feel good inc. Would distribute support items to the remaining citizens in the name of "self-defense". It would create a country full of discourse and destruction where Redestro and Feel good inc. Would rule from the shadows. But Shigiraki would be the main leader. He would become "king" and sit upon a "throne of rubble". (At least this was the MLA's plan, Shigiraki himself just kinda wants to destroy everything. But I suppose this would make things easier for him to do that.)

needless to say, the stakes have been upped excessively. But it took Hawks an entire month to gather this info.

This post is honestly just me marveling at what an M.V.P Hawks is

My guy literally only had 4 months to take down an entire terrorist organization for the inside-out. AND he was being monitored during that entire time. He figured out the MLA's intentions within the first month of being there. And it took him another full month to go into detail and figure out all the members, bosses, and lieutenants, for each of their "Units". Hawks even went as far as to immerse himself in the MLA's ideology, and he had in-depth discussions with the MLA's members. HELL HE EVEN FAKED HIS CO-WORKERS DEATH JUST TO GET IN.

AND HE PRETTY MUCH IMPROVISED ALL OF THIS SHIT!!! The original plan was to capture the Leauge when they were a small group! But by the time Hawks managed to infiltrate, The Leauge already had an army! They were a full-blown organization! And Hawks just kinda rolled with it??? He just kinda bullshitted his way through??

Like, "okay I'm now apart of an army I guess. The Leauge is now an entire organization and they're planning on destroying Japan in March. Let's see how this goes. I'll just have to make this work"???

LIKE HOW THE FUCK IS HE NOT DEAD! WHAT A FUCKING MADLAD

[mustardyellowsunshine]

Kay I’m very curious about your opinion on this but I hadn’t read the manga in like quite some time and I’m rereading it, and many in the fandom talk about how kikyo actually wasn’t bad or people just misunderstand her, but now that I’m rereading she tried on multiple occasions to kill Kagome or leave her for dead. I guess I just don’t understand if kikyo is so good why she tried to kill kagome or leave her to die with no real reason other than what seems like petty ones

'Nony, your timing is honestly amazing. I had literally just finished reading the chapter with Kikyo's final death scene, and I was sitting in my thoughts and feelings about her character, and then this popped into my inbox. Synchronicity! Freaky.

Anyway, I've been an on-again, off-again active participant in the InuYasha fandom since 2002 (20 years?!! oh crikey, existential crisis incoming). In that time I've seen the Opinion Pendulum™ swing from absolutely villainizing Kikyo's character to the other extreme of dismissing people who are insufficiently effusive about how much they love Kikyo (the sentiment being, "if you say or imply anything even mildly critical of Kikyo's character then you're a Kikyo hater and it's not a good look, you should really grow up").

Which is to say, the Kikyo discourse has always been annoying. In my opinion, there hasn't been nearly enough nuance brought into discussions about Kikyo's character, or enough honest recognition that she simply is morally ambiguous for a good chunk of the series (and that it's indeed okay to find a fictional character's moral ambiguity off-putting, but we gotta whisper that part apparently).

I mean, I'll be honest off the bat: I've always been pretty apathetic to Kikyo's character. I don't hate her, I don't love her: she's there, and I could take her or leave her. 🤷🏼‍♀️ That said, I've never read her as evil. If pressed, I'd summarize her character this way: she's morally gray until she isn't.

Kikyo certainly starts off as an antagonist (there are few other ways to read a character who tries on several occasions to kill the two main protagonists), so you're not wrong to see her character in that light, especially if you're still in the early series. But as the series progresses, Kikyo slowly becomes more of a gray character, still motivated by self-interest and bitterness over her (unquestionably tragic and shitty) lot in life, but less antagonistic to Kagome and InuYasha. (She actually tries to stay out of their way for a good chunk of the middle series, which bothers InuYasha at some points, but anyway.) She then disappears "off screen" for arcs upon arcs at a time, and when she does pop back in, we often see her helping out random villagers or other side characters; by this point, her motivations are noticeably less self-driven (less resentful, less angry), and her focus is largely on defeating Naraku. By the end of the series, Kikyo has become an ally to our main protagonists, in that she's trying her best to take out their mutual enemy. Regardless of one's opinion on her methods of defeating Naraku, her intention is clearly to take him out with as little collateral damage as possible (e.g., her efforts to spare Koga and Kohaku while still trying to collect their Shikon shards). Now, I personally do think her methods are morally suspect, but what's interesting is that by the end of the series, so does she—Kikyo has second thoughts about her plan to defeat Naraku precisely because it could hurt others. It's a far cry from the Kikyo we see immediately after her resurrection.

And that disparity between intention and results? That's another reason Kikyo feels morally gray. Her ultimate intentions may be "good," but her methods often aren't. And that sort of disparity is both realistic (I think most people have experience with good intentions that went astray, y'know?) and interesting. It gives layers and colors to a character.

I've always thought Kikyo's modus operandi throughout most of the series represented her biggest character flaw: she thinks the ends justify the means. She isn't actively malicious, but she's not afraid to cause harm (specifically to Kagome, and to a lesser degree InuYasha) if it'll get her closer to her goals. Again, that changes at the end of the series when she starts to doubt her plans, but for the majority of the series I think "the ends justify the means" accurately describes her motivations and behaviors.

I.e., Kikyo is morally gray until she isn't.

When it comes down to it, her character development isn't much different from other antagonists in the series, like Sesshomaru, Kagura, Koga, etc. I actually think Kikyo and Sesshomaru's respective character arcs are remarkably similar, in that their progression is essentially: obvious antagonist -> extremely morally gray -> slightly less morally gray -> unlikely ally.

(I also happen to be pretty apathetic to Sesshomaru as a character — I'm sensing a pattern here.)

Anyway, I personally think people who want to classify Kikyo as "evil" have it wrong, and people who want to classify Kikyo as "good but misunderstood" have it wrong too. She's more ambiguous and complex than that. She's selfish. She's tragic. She's a victim who suffers something unimaginable. She herself victimizes innocent people (mostly Kagome). She can't really be pigeonholed.

And I also think it's perfectly fine to dislike her. 🤷🏼‍♀️ She is a fictional character, her feelings will not be hurt if you just don't like her. Her antagonism in the early series makes it hard for a lot of people to like her. If her character leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and her changed behavior in the middle/end of the series feels unearned/poorly developed, then just keep disliking her. Who cares? You can feel however you want to about a fictional character.

My personal feelings about Kikyo are much the same as my feelings for side characters like Sesshomaru: she's there, she's more interesting in the beginning of the series than she is in the middle/the end, I think her character wasn't developed especially well, her presence in the story was dragged out too long and it felt like Rumiko Takahashi didn't really know what to do with her....

And I also try to keep in mind that InuYasha was a weekly, monster-of-the-week shounen series, that Rumiko Takahashi wasn't necessarily concerned with long-term narrative or character development, and then I try to modify my expectations accordingly.

[lovebecomeshim]

hello! your zutara posting today has finally motivated me to ask this question because I came to atla very late(last year, to be specific) and I Love It Very Much but am 1000% out of the loop as far as why what remains of fandom (at least that I've seen among my friends) is so very strongly zutara. I'm not opposed to it per se I just don't really know what has driven it to apparently be such a popular ship? can you help me understand and maybe convert me a little bit?

Hey!! Your ICON! :D I can try but I’m not sure how coherent I’ll be; however I AM sure someone a lot more competent will be willing to add to this. Either way, I’m glad you asked because my plan was to drag down as many people as possible with me.

*smacks the hood of zutara* this baby can fit so much mutual love and support!

This got so long, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to put it under a cut on mobile and it already got deleted once so I’m scared to mess with it lol. Moving on.

I’m gonna start this with a disclaimer that im on mobile so formatting is tricky and I’m also really new to atla in that I only completed my first watch through in like 2019??? So some of my info is all just based on what I’ve picked up from Discourse 👀 so anyway the sparknotes version: zutara was wildly popular from the beginning. To the point where the atla crew internally disagreed on which ship should be endgame. (Ex. Bryke [showrunners] asked the writers to rewrite The Southern Raiders to make Zuko seem less ideal for Katara than Aang [which failed, depending on who you ask]; the animation team purposefully created a visual parrallel between Oma and Shu in the Cave of Two Lovers and Zuko and Katara in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se in the Crossroads of Destiny; etc.)

The ship was popular enough that Bryke actually chose to display zk fanart at a con for the sole purpose of mocking the fans, but that’s neither here nor there. The entire episode Ember Island Players, while a love letter to/parody of the whole show, was an opportunity to address zutara’s viability as a canon pairing (while, again, mocking zutaras for romanticizing that catacombs scene). Point is! It’s always been popular but with it not being endgame, there’s got to be something that’s given it staying power.

And that’s honestly got to do with three things: their dynamic, thematic cohesion, and potential.

(You know what... you know what, it’s four things. The fourth is they’re so aesthetically pleasing together and individually. Like, they’re just good looking people [specifically when they’re grown but they’re also cute kids] and that absolutely doesn’t hurt) (but it’s not the Point, it’s just nice to point out sometimes)

The dynamic is hard to get into without also looking at the canon pairings, but I think I can do that without unnecessary bashing. It’s just that part of the magic of zutara is really highlighted by what they give to each other that their other relationships don’t.

First off, it’s classic enemies to (would be) lovers. The absolute truest form of it. It’s not too different from how CS started out: a rogue antagonist with a job to do—but no personal vendetta against the future love interest—who is deeply and emotionally invested in his personal storyline (revenge/redemption) with little regard for how it effects other people after his entire life and genuine good nature are marred by suffering, and a fierce warrior girl with a strong moral compass and her own personal investment in stopping him (protect her family and save the world doing it). Obviously frustration and animosity grew between them by the nature of them being on opposing sides, but that just lends itself to the sweetness of their later reconciliation.

The thing is that while they’re wildly different on the surface (he’s a hot-headed prince of a fascist regime who is trying to capture the Avatar to please his father; she’s a nurturing daughter of the chief who is trying to protect and train the Avatar in order to topple his father’s throne) they find out that they have so much more in common both in their experiences and their personalities.

(What follows is an excessive use of the word “both” and I’m sorry about that)(I can edit it. I can do that. That IS an option............)

They both have an innate sense of justice that they are determined to see done (zuko, at the war meeting, sticking up for the Earth Kingdom kid when the guards torment his family, choosing not to steal from the pregnant couple despite his circumstances, abiding by his word to leave the SWT should Aang come willingly, etc.; katara, literally.... at any point). They both have pretty one-track minds at accomplishing certain goals once they’ve put their mind to it, regardless of a lack of support in that endeavor (it goes without saying I guess, but zuko’s entire hunt; katara’s determination to get the earth benders to fight back, her determination to absolutely destroy Pakku until he agrees to teach her, etc.). They both lost their mothers at young ages. Their worlds are war-torn and traumatizing to them both, if in different ways, but that ultimately forces them to grow up too quickly to be wholly independent individuals. They both have issues with their fathers (for WILDLY different reasons, but). They both hold extreme prejudices that they need to learn to overcome (which ties into thematic cohesion)(bit like Lizzie and Darcy in that way but magnified by a million). They’re both extremely emotional and empathetic—which can and often does result in loud outbursts. Katara’s a bit better adjusted and can temper her anger for longer than S1 Zuko can, but they both feel that anger deeply and have no compunctions expressing it (Katara is, usually, more justified, particularly in S1. Again, S1 Zuko is severely maladjusted but at the point when they could’ve feasibly become a couple, he’s so much better off with the way he carries himself). They both struggle with feelings of inferiority in their bending abilities when confronted with prodigal benders like Aang and Azula, but have the work ethic required to double down and become two of the most powerful benders in the three remaining nations. This is a little more minor but it is a parrallel that appeals to some shippers that they both have these alter egos in the Painted Lady (notably fire nation coded) and the Blue Spirit (water tribe coded) that are pretty different from who they are day-to-day and are useful in accomplishing a purpose that they as themselves cannot.

(I’m.... I just realized that this could potentially get very long. Should I have made a slide show with bullet points??????)

Anyway, similar. I know there’s more but there’s literally so much to love about zutara that I’ll drive myself a little crazy trying to compile all the ways they’re similar. (Just gonna say that at this exact moment I went back to add more similarities.... so okay then)

Once they’ve reconciled, we see how all of these things only lend themselves to a deeper intimacy together than they share with literally anyone else. There’s a steady partnership that positions them as the mom/dad of the gaang, while also providing the support necessary to allow the other to not have to carry so much responsibility. A lot of zutaras will point out how zuko is actually depicted doing the more domestic chores that are normally relegated to Katara once he joins the gaang, since the others in the group are two 12-year-olds and sokka. The one that sticks out the most is how he makes tea for the group and then serves them, while Katara is able to just relax with her friends around the fire. Fanon expands upon this a lot to Zuko helping with the laundry or the cooking or whatever else needs doing since he, as a once-refugee, is used to doing his own domestic tasks. Before Zuko joined, Katara was the one mothering everyone, sewing for them, cooking for them, etc. She’s always tending to the needs of the group, and that includes emotionally. She does the emotional labor for the gaang 99% of the time, but when she’s the one falling apart, she’s usually doing it alone and without the comfort that she normally provides for others. Until Zuko. And that’s before they’re even friends.

Which is WHY people romanticize the catacombs of Ba Sing Se so much. Katara is verbally attacking Zuko out of her own righteous anger but also her own prejudice when Zuko, surprisingly, chooses to be vulnerable with her. He’s been on a journey that’s opened his eyes a bit, but he’s never actively chosen to expose the rawest parts of his past to anyone. But for some reason he chooses to do that with Katara of all people. While she’s yelling at him. He sees her humanity, and for once can look past his prejudice and empathize with her. And this time, when she breaks down, she gets to be comforted. Katara normally talks about her mother when she’s trying to explain to someone else that she sees and understands they’re pain, as a form of comfort to them. Here, Zuko uses the exact same tactic. He sees her and he understands. And for zuko? He’s not being shut down. He’s allowed to articulate his pain regarding his mother without being ignored and made to internalize it, and he’s allowed to process how he feels about his scar out loud without being told that he deserved it. And then he lets her touch his scar, something we’ve seen him actively avoid before. He’s completely open to her and she’s completely open to him and all it took was one five minute conversation. She was about to use the little bit of Spirit water that she had, that she was saving for something Important, to heal the scar that still daily causes him pain just because they had, somehow, connected.

Plus there’s the whole parallel to the star-crossed lovers forbidden from one another, a war divides their people—

And then zuko messes up, he regresses, he gets what he wants and he HATES it. And the sense of justice he had as a child has been restored to him against his will and he can’t think of anything he wants to do more than the Right Thing, so he joins team avatar. Before he does that though, we get to see his relationship with Mai, which is where comparison really comes in. And what we see is Zuko, fresh off of his encounter with Katara in the catacombs, trying to be emotionally honest with Mai... and getting shut down and dismissed. Which is just how Mai is and it’s fine, but not for Zuko. Still, he keeps trying, and he keeps getting ignored or scoffed at or yelled at. Which is really a larger symbol for how he doesn’t fit in his old life anymore, but again that’s about thematic cohesion. He tries to articulate his anxieties about returning home, he tries to make romantic gestures, he tries to explain how morally conflicted he’s feeling—and Mai diverts to some kind of physical affection to shut him up and a parting comment that is pretty much always, in essence, “I don’t wanna talk about this.” So they don’t. On the other hand, once zuko and Katara are friends, we see him again emotionally distraught and caught up in his anxieties about facing Iroh, and it’s Katara who comes to him and listens to him and comforts and encourages him.

Similarly, we have Aang clamming up and getting uncomfortable whenever Katara shows any negative emotion, usually resulting in him making excuses or running away. Or, in the case of the Southern Raiders, lecturing her on how she needs to just let go of her anger about her mother’s murder. People have talked this episode to death and usually better than I ever could, so imma... keep it brief. There’s a serious disconnect between Aang and Katara in his ability to empathize with Katara and her needs that has her tamping down her vulnerability and amping up her anger. He tells her that he was able to forgive his people’s genocide and appa’s kidnapping (petnapping? Theft??), which is blatantly not true but also not an entirely equal parrallel to Katara’s situation, and continues making these little remarks throughout the episode. But it’s Zuko that Katara opens up to. It’s with him that she’s able to talk about the most traumatic day of her life, and it’s with him that she’s able to get the closure she needs, cementing their bond as friends and partners. This disagreement between Aang and Katara is then... never resolved. They just never bring it up and hear what the other is saying.

There’s a fic called The Portraits of Ember Island that has a line that so completely sums up the heart of the matter for why people love their dynamic. For context, zuko has woken up early to help Katara with the cooking and they spend the whole time just letting one another talk, and zuko stops to ask why she always just lets him talk. And so she stops to ask why he’s always helping, and it goes as follows:

There’s just... so much mutual support! Trust! Intimacy!! And it just continues like that from the Southern Raiders on, listening to each other, advising each other, watching each other’s backs! And then! Literally saving each other’s lives!! I will never be over the last Agni kai. Not ever. Zuko may have been willing to jump in front of lightning for anyone, but he actually did it for Katara. And in a show, that’s the thing that really matters. It’s a fulfilled trope usually exclusively applied to romantic pairings, and it ended up applying to Zuko and Katara. And then she ran out into the middle of a fight with tunnel vision just to get to him.

Also!! Also Zuko pushing Katara out of the way of the falling rocks at the Western Air Temple!! And Katara catching him as he fell from the war balloon that he fought Azula on!! Before they’re even getting along, they’re the ones reaching for each other. They come to this place of equal ground, as partners, who watch each other’s backs, call each other out but still listen attentively and understand, and provide the support that the other has been sorely lacking up until they knew each other (whether that be from lack of effort or lack of understanding from others, or an unwillingness to accept it for themselves).

Then, trailing along under the surface of this, we see the themes of the show totally embodied by Zuko and Katara as individuals and in their relationship to one another. There’s a YouTuber, sneezyreviews, who has a, like, 2-hour explanation on why she not only loves zutara but also believes that their endgame would’ve actually elevated the writing of atla to new levels particularly because of thematic cohesion and resolved character arcs. It’s the zutara dissertation I never knew I needed, and it’s funny and eloquent and effective, so I’m just going to sum up her section on thematic cohesion to the best of my abilities and then link it for whenever you have the time. And I HIGHLY recommend it, especially if you want a full understanding of what makes zutara so great and gives it such longevity.

Guru pathik has a line that goes something like this: separation is an illusion; things that seem different are just two parts of the same whole. Iroh also tells Zuko something similar: balance and strength are achieved when the different nations come together and influence one another and celebrate what makes them each unique. And this lesson is a massive central arc that both Zuko and Katara go through, moving past a black-and-white, good guys-vs-bad guys, us-vs-them mentality and into a greyer, more nuanced view of the world. Zuko sees the fire nation from an entirely new perspective and while he still loves and hopes for his nations future, he surrenders his blind loyalty to them in exchange for an unflinching loyalty to peace and love. Katara too had to come to terms with the fact that cruel people exist in the earth kingdom and water tribes, while some fire nation citizens are just regular, kind people who also need and deserve to have someone speak on their behalf. And this is honed in directly on how they view each other. They grow in their individual journeys to be open to the humanity in the other and then, once they’ve found that, they’re able to grow more in compassion for others in a beautiful feedback loop. And this is all matched in the symbolism repeatedly and intentionally associated with them in canon: sun and moon, fire and water, yin and yang, Oma and Shu who found love despite their warring nations. Their individual arcs are completed in each other and complement the themes of atla beautifully.

The canon pairs... just don’t. Which, again, is fine. But the very things that give atla longevity and popularity are anchored in zutara. Kat@ang doesn’t accomplish this. They’re... nice. Sweet. Especially when you erase a good portion of their interactions in S3. It could’ve been just a sweet love story. (Personally, the dynamic between toph and aang accomplish the same thing that zutara does, with complementary personalities that fulfill the theme of opposites blending in harmony) M@iko, on the other hand, is less sweet but I think wasn’t even supposed to last. Zuko’s relationship with Mai seems to represent his relationship with his old life as a whole. He can’t be emotionally vulnerable, he’s goaded into abusing his privileges, his agency and opinions aren’t respected. They just don’t have common ground with which to discuss anything that matters, so they don’t. As far as themes, the relationship doesn’t fit with atla. It’s zuko returning to and sticking with what is (on the surface) like him, what’s expected. Fire nation with fire nation. Fluid water bender with the flexible air bender. Like with like, separated from what is different and challenging and complementary.

And all of these things combined of course lead to the potential for the ship. I don’t know how familiar you are with the post-atla canon but... well, miss “I will never turn my back on people who need me”, miss “I don’t want to heal! I want to fight!” ends up living quietly in the SWT as a designated healer who turns a blind eye to the water tribe civil war happening right outside her front door. Which can be fine! People change! Some people just wanna stay inside. I just wanna stay inside! But the potential future for zutara is so much more satisfying, with Katara becoming the most unconventional Fire Lady the uppity old cads who are stuck on the old ways have ever seen. Fanon has her serving as a voice for the other nations within a kingdom at the point of its biggest political upheaval, as a confidante to Zuko who can actually help him while he’s trying to figure out how to move forward and make reparations. They have the opportunity, together, to accomplish what they both have set on their hearts to fight for: positive change that lends itself to harmony and balance. And the steambabies! A popular headcanon is that their firstborn daughter, the crown princess, is actually a waterbender, which causes such an uproar among the people who are adamantly clinging to the old ways. It’s just a future full of potential to be forces for good together, full of trust, intimacy, joy. The exact era of peace and love and balance that zuko announces that he intends to ring in with the start of his reign as Fire Lord is, again, magnified by the very personal zutara relationship. And we love to see it.

tl;dr zutara isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t vibe with it. Some are nostalgic. Some love the canon they grew up with. Some have been disappointed for years. Some just see themselves in other characters and want their happiness instead. Whatever the reason, that’s fine. But for me, I love the way these two, from the moment they give each other a fair chance, are able to lower their walls and prejudices to see the other for the kindred spirits they are. They see each other’s humanity, and their response is to pour out love and support and compassion. I love that they’re a power couple in battle. I love the symbolism and, honestly, soulmatism that colors their every interaction. I love that they embody the whole storyline of atla in their relationship and how it develops, which is notably why their seasonal arcs always culminate in each finale with how they relate to one another. I love that zuko adopting a waterbending move is what actually saves his life and then katara’s. I love the chemistry! And I love the future they could’ve had, instead of the ones they were given.

So, in conclusion: I just think they’re neat and I hope you do too, at least a little bit. Even if it’s just respectfully from a disinterested distance cause you do you. And now here is the video I mentioned. I’m sorry this post got so long and then I gave you an even longer homework assignment, but I can’t recommend it enough. She says it all better than I can.

[darlington-v]

I know different interpretations of a work are generally enriching and cool... but c!dream villan interpretations is like how to tell me you only watch Tommy without saying you only watch tommy.... which would be fine but its not a great place to be making statements about the whole nature of the dsmp lol

Wild speculation, but sometimes I wonder if like, because the dsmp didn't really start as a narrative, and a lot of fans don't nessecarily enter it expecting a narrative, but then there is one and the fandom is really discourse heavy and everyone is sort of excpeted to have an opinion while maybe not expecting to form one from the begining or not having a ton of experience with narrative in a way that would "expect" them to have an opinion or not take things at face value??, I don't know if I explained that well at all... and I don't really even think thats right nessecarily... but like wow sometimes some of the takes about power and government and villany...

Honestly, it makes sense!!!

I think something interesting is like.... looking at how animatics have shaped the like tone and culture of the fandom essentially. Like, an interesting fact that I didn't really fully grasp until SUPER recently is like...

c!Wilbur out the gate admits he is manipulating c!Tommy. Like his first youtube video on the Dream SMP he admits his goal is to manipulate c!Tommy and people like c!Tommy into helping him achieve a potion ("drug") empire to monopolize on potions because there were a lot of people on the server who like to min-max, which is to put all of your effort into this one specific skill essentially. so like... i know minecraft doesnt have a skill tree but if it did, it would be putting all your points into that one specific branch of a skill tree. So he wanted to exploit the labor of all the TommyInnits to.... maintain a Potion Empire.

THIS IS A LONG POST BC I GOT CARRIED AWAY SO BUCKLE UP

And I don't think a lot of the fandom who joined later on knows this. I certainly didn't until like a week or so ago? Like... I knew c!Wilbur had been manipulative from the start because I'm a mod of (shameless self promo incoming) @dsmpanalysis and we have a lot of different POVs in that mod team and discord and we talk about it really frequently. I joined the fandom as someone who was really big on L'manburg ESPECIALLY crimeboys, and have turned into.... *gestures vaguely to my blog*

And ngl I owe a lot of it to @1-michibiki-1 in terms of c!Dream "Apologism" but all of the mods there have expanded my thoughts and views on the storylines of this narrative.

My application consisted of like largely essays about like... how I think Dream was the villain but he was meant to be the villain because you don't get any insight into his character WHICH.... IS A FAIR ASSUMPTION AT FIRST GLANCE. People are easily villainized when you cannot get a glimpse into their thought process. It's easy to dwindle someone down into this flat character and starting out I knew Dream didn't stream the SMP on purpose.

And I personally came to the conclusion of "Oh! So Dream is supposed to be the villain." However as the story continued and I learned more about what Dream went through I began to realize that... it's more than likely a form of a red herring. My opinions on this were immediately solidified when I watched Ranboo's 2 MIL stream because both Ranboo AND Dream agree on enjoying red herrings.

There have been MANY times were Dream has said that c!Dream is a complex character and he's not a wholly evil guy and there have been times where the narrative has honestly just proved that.

Anyways, what's important though was that... I learned most of this from other people who were more focused on c!Dream rather than myself. Eventually I shifted from c!Tommy to c!Ranboo and c!Techno after c!Tommy betrayed c!Techno and I began to realize.... everything I learned before hopping in wasn't exactly what it seemed.

Part of this is because I'm older, I heavily identify with c!Techno's sense of loyalty and philosophies on government, but I especially identify with the anguish c!Techno voiced in... a lot of lore but especially the lore around Doomsday.

I'm not 16 anymore. I don't always feel wronged by adults, or older people in my case, whenever they absolutely have done something wrong by me, but I do feel wronged by my close friends. I also felt like c!Tommy's sense of loyalty didn't line up with mine after what felt like him constantly flip-flopping and refusing to understand c!Techno's morals on government didn't line up with his.

In short, it was easier to identify with Tommy in these animatics versus in the actual stream content because c!Tommy is played by a 16 year old. I'm not a teenager and my line of thinking doesn't entirely line up with people that age anymore. It's harder to place myself in the same shoes of someone's OC who is played closer to their actual age, because I'm not that age.

Regardless, I was still on the c!Dream is a villain train. I wasn't ever like... c!Dream is repulsive I hate him, but I was like omg hot villain lad go brrr.

Even when the first like... mellohi, panic room, Ranboo lore stream popped up I thought "Oh! c!Ranboo corruption arc?"

And I was excited because I really wanted this shy, nervous character to turn into villain buddies with his good pal c!Dream. I'm a total sucker for villains and corruption arcs and all that good shit.

SO I STARTED GETTING REALLY INTERESTED IN ENDERSMILE. I'VE BEEN ON ENDERSMILE SQUAD OUT THE GATE. NOT THE SAME WAY I AM NOW, BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED THEM TO TEAM UP.

So... upon not really keeping up with c!Dream and being relatively??? indifferent? I don't think I started arguments on c!Dream back then, but I might have. But I remember like... starting to participate more whenever c!Dream came up and looking more into Dream's character BUT ESPECIALLY TALKING WITH OUR SERVER'S C!DREAM SPECIALIST MICHI ABOUT DREAM A LOT MORE.

And because Michi has been a watcher since day one and was a DTeam fan rather than a SBI fan, she was able to provide me with more information on how the server worked pre-Tommy but especially pre-Wilbur.

Now, you could definitely argue well Michi probably has clear bias but it made sense to me when I looked back on how the storyline had been constructed and was going along, and everyone in the server talks a lot about our own biases and how we want people to maybe not lean so hard on them. Michi would also provide like anecdotes on what had happened and I'm sure links were probably provided at one point but the point was I felt like Michi had no reason to lie or manipulate how the story was told and if she did, eventually someone would have pointed it out because... Group of like... right now it's around 20 or more analysts but I don't remember how many at the time there were. POINT BEING, WE'VE ALL GOT POINTS TO PROVE AND IN MY EXPERIENCE NOT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN SHY TO PROVE THEM.

So if anyone ever had any differing opinions they would be talked about and we literally had and still have discussions.

REGARDLESS.... I DIDN'T FACT CHECK IN DEPTH BECAUSE I THOUGHT PEER REVIEW WAS ENOUGH WHEN YOU HAVE LIKE HOURS UPON HOURS OF STREAMS TO WATCH.

Anyways. Eventually I started paying closer attention and looking more into c!Dream lore but only recently have I started to triple check before speaking about c!Wilbur lore because I know everyone has biases and while I did trust everyone's thoughts and analysis in the discord, whenever I make essays I typically like it to be largely air tight and if theres a mistake, I want it to be because I forgot not because I just trusted what was said. Plus, I wanted to get down to the specifics of how Wilbur had always started with manipulation on the mind.

SO I WATCHED HIS FIRST VIDEO ON THE DREAM SMP.

AND WHAT I WAS NOT BY ANY MEANS EXPECTING WAS WILBUR TO SAY WORD FOR WORD, VERBATIM,

"SO WHY DON'T I START AN INDUSTRY WHERE I USE THE TOMMYINNITS OF THE WORLD TO WORK FOR ME, TO CREATE THINGS THAT THE MIN-MAXERS OF THE WORLD WILL WANT."

Like... this is in no way an attempt to like hardcore villainize c!Wilbur like everyone does Dream, it's just more so to like REALLY outline how far off a lot of fandom interpretation of c!Wilbur is....

Because of SBI focused animatics.

Now, when I joined I watched A LOT of animatics that really highlighted like... Wilbur being this self-loathing JD-esque, "I destroyed it because I had to because the world was against me because no one loved us, Tommy" type of character. At least... that's what it came across as.

And it definitely highlighted the fact that Tommy was a victim, which he is. He is undoubtedly a victim and no not even any dream apologist can change my mind otherwise. Tommy, despite being an instigator sometimes, didn't deserve the abuse he received.

But these animatics never shown the fact that c!Wilbur started L'manburg as a shady ploy to exploit people like c!Tommy and vilify c!Dream so he could have power.

And that was easy because Dream and Tommy had wars before. They had spars and pranks and here's the plan to take back my disks and here's the plan to out smart the thieving little child etc etc.

And all of the animatics I watched never mentioned this. Neither did the recaps though. The recaps gave the events flat out, there didn't sound like there was bias, and honestly I don't really know if there was rather than like... a lack of nuance. And it's hard to provide a recap with that much nuance in a short period of time for a youtube video, to be perfectly fair.

However, this creates a perfect formula for entirely rewriting the history of a server. c!Wilbur quite literally fucking succeeded TO A META LEVEL. He slandered and ran smear campaigns against Dream and like he even does that with Sapnap in the beginning. But what's crazy is that it transferred over into the meta! Most of this fandom understands Wilbur as a victim of mental illness, and yeah maybe? He definitely wasn't mentally well by the end of pogtopia, but he never started out with honorable intentions. L'manburg was never a victim, only its citizens. The TommyInnits of the world.

I just think it's like... such an interesting case study. Because this is like... an opinion like shared by at least half of the fandom, but the vilifying of c!Dream is shared by MOST of the fandom I would argue. Which is like even more crazy for me because that was c!Wilbur's goal!!!

LIKE I GO INSANE WHEN I THINK OF THIS BECAUSE HIS REACH IS JUST TOO POWERFUL. HE'S NOT EVEN ENTIRELY REAL, JUST A MANIPULATIVE PERSONA OF SOME BRITISH GUY.

And I mean... maybe people who have watched Wilbur's video on the SMP still maintain this idea that Wilbur wasn't always the bad guy, but honestly... I wouldn't be surprised if their introduction was still an animatic. Like bias is hard to check and I'm not going to lie I could have sworn I watched both Wilbur's AND Tommy's video on the SMP in the beginning and yet I STILL was a ride or die for tragic yet on some level still honorable Wilbur and a resilient Tommy.

Like... upon watching Wilbur's first video... possibly again I was surprised because I thought I did watch it like right before I even started watching the streams and yet I was still so invested in c!Wilbur as this tortured anti-hero.

It took 6 months of... not being in an echo chamber, full of multiple different people of different ages, different stream POVS, and people who joined the fandom at different points in time.

IDK IF THIS WAS EVEN ENTIRELY RELEVANT IT JUST FELT TANGENTIALLY RELEVANT AND THIS WAS SOMETHING I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR A HOT MINUTE AFTER LIKE WATCHING WILBUR'S FIRST VIDEO AGAIN.

TLDR;

SBI CENTRIC ANIMATICS HAD A LASTING AFFECT ON THIS FANDOM AS IT'S HARD TO GO BACK AND ACTUALLY CHECK THE NARRATIVE FOR SOLID FACTS FOR YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION BASED ON THE FACT THAT THIS NARRATIVE SPANS OVER HUNDREDS OF HOURS WORTH OF TWITCH STREAMS.

[forbiddenship]

just a disclaimer to my fellow portwell shippers, this post has basically just turned into a rant about you know what. it’s just something i needed to get off my chest. not my usual content and a little heavy in negativity so please please please keep scrolling if you don’t want to see that. trust me, there are some days when reading a post like this is the last thing i need.

whew okay. i will say this once, and i’ll say it loud and clear. i don’t wanna hear any more r*nas complaining about what we discuss over here. first of all, the portwell fandom likes to use tumblr to communicate our thoughts and post our analyses because y’all have turned hsmtmts twitter into no man’s land. ever wonder why that app - particularly stan twitter - has such a reputation for being toxic? it’s because things like ship wars get out of control to the point where sometimes people stop wanting to even associate with the fandom. because, as unfortunate as it is, the rina fandom phenomenon isn’t one that occurs in isolation. many fandoms have that one subsection of the fandom that tries their damndest to make the experience unbearable for everyone else. portwell shippers have seen it, we’ve accepted it, and we honestly don’t give a fuck anymore. we just stay in our lanes - be that on instagram, tumblr, tiktok, wherever.

not to mention that portwell shippers are - generally speaking - very polite and respectful in the way that they address the other ship. and notice another thing: when we talk about our theories and give our takes on the storylines, we do just that. we stick to what’s happening on the show. we don’t make posts slandering the ship, and definitely not its shippers.

meanwhile, a quick glance through the ‘portwell’ search on twitter will tell you that rina shippers do not extend the same courtesy to us. not only do you “refuse to keep our names out of your mouths,” as you all love to put it, but you literally take content from another platform and transport it over to twitter so you can start discourse about it. because the portwell shippers aren’t willing to engage with you on twitter. and why is that, again? oh, right. because you shit on anyone who disagrees with the great rina dogma. because you say things like an 18 year old boy deserves to go to jail, or an actor deserves to lose his job for supporting a fictional ship. because you started acting like the moral police just because you couldn’t stand that your ship was losing traction - which is a very generous way to put it. you’re not the moral police, by the way. and even if you wanted to be, putting out statements like “everyone in xyz fandom is nasty and sick in the head” is not a good way to go about that. it says a lot more about you guys as people than it does about us or our ship.

as for the whole “portwells mention rina unprovoked” thing - talking shit about portwell is literally the only thing that has kept the rina fandom alive on twitter. i’m pretty active on twitter, and whenever i type ‘portwell’ or even ‘ej’ and ‘gina’ into the search bar, the same things come up every time. there is a small but very vocal part of the fandom over there that literally does nothing with their accounts but talk about a ship they don’t like. this is a just a tiny, tiny slice of representation of what goes down on twitter.

so don’t come at us for talking about rina within the context of the show’s storylines when you haven’t been able to shut up about portwell since june. god, the hypocrisy is insane.

[wickedpact]

A ranking of all the TTT stories in order of how much I liked them.

(Oh god this is so long)

1 My Mother's Axe

BABY ANDYYYYYYYYYYYY. Honestly this one had the trifecta of developing a character's motivations, developing a character's backstory, & developing their personality. The story starting out with Andy teaching Nile to use the axe was so charming and fun, and you could feel that chemistry they had in Opening Fire, the way they teased and bickered with each other so naturally. I loved the wedge between them on the subject of the axe, how Nile was perhaps a little too young to understand Andy's feelings about whether or not its the 'same' axe. I also love how the axe is obviously the symbol of the franchise and hugely important, but you never get a sense of exactly how important it is to Andy until you read the story.

I love the entire Ship of Theseus theme, and how it feels so natural that for Andy she has to get attached to the idea of things rather than the things themselves because she'll always outlive the things themselves-- the axe is symbolically her mom's axe, even if physically it isn't. And I love how she clearly clings to that concept so tightly. "This is the labrys she held in her hands...." IT GETS ME.

And the fact that this sense of BELONGING, of FAMILY, of CULTURE is so important to Andy that she clings to it (figuratively and literally) with both hands. And of course it's important to her, she spent so long alone that the woman doesn't even remember her birth name. That axe (or the idea of that axe) is all she has left of her mother and that family/culture she was born into.

PLUS on that note I love how Andy doesn't remember if her mom was her actual biological mother, but it doesn't matter to her. This woman was her mother in all the ways that counted. And how her mom BETRAYED AND KILLED Andy but Andy loved her so much that she avenged her and carried her axe for thousands of years. THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!!!!

I also loved how the story transcends the timeline of the whole franchise and seeing Andy through the years. Loved seeing her with the varying squads and with varying axes. Also baby Andy was so cute. It was cool seeing her so young. like holy fuck. Andromache The Scythian, Immortal Warrior (but smol). Love that.

Also I think this one is one of the few ttt stories that doesn't suffer from length problems.

tldr: goddammit greg you've done it again.

2 Zanzibar and Other Harbors

Zanzibar my beloved. I've said before, but it's downright comedic how little regard there was for Joe and Nicky's character designs in this story. The same person who does the colors for the regular comic did the colors for this one too, and you can tell, every panel of this story was Beautiful.

Ik there was A Lot of criticism of this one (lmao @ how the fandom had no idea what was to come) but I thought a lot of The Discourse was a bit dramatic. I did think Nicky came off as a little oblivious to Joe's feelings in this story, but I've said before, I honestly think that was a 'tone not translating' thing. It felt like Nicky was nagging Joe for [checks notes] saving innocent people, but Joe was so amused by Nicky's complaints I really do think it was supposed to come off as teasing.

Plus I know the 'Joe running off into danger and Nicky reluctantly following' dynamic wasn't popular (I'm a pretty meh on it meself) but I did love how Joe's impulsiveness (if you want to call it that) was interpreted as heroism and not hot-hotheadedness. All of the examples Nicky and Joe talked about included Joe explicitly saving people. (and it also took A Lot for the nazi to actually provoke Joe).

I also feel like their characterization here was closest to the movie canon-- the bit where they hear the woman scream and Joe goes running in to save her while Nicky swoops in on Joe's heels to comfort her while Joe and the nazi were fighting reminds me of the train car scene. Joe had suggested First that they go find Nile because she needed to be protected, and Nicky later added that Nile probably also needed emotional support. Similar reactions.

But it was So Good, the themes of queer community and the enduring nature of queer culture are Not themes you see in media that often and it was such a delight how it was done. Also it's one of the few more modern TTT stories that has a completely valid excuse for taking place when it did. Chef's kiss.

3 Passchendaele

I love the Duality between seeing baby Andy and then seeing Mama Andy in the very next issue. This story doesn't have a ton of meat to it, but the entire concept of Andy adopting a war orphan straight off the battlefield PLUCKS MY TENDER LITTLE HEARTSTRINGS, and I think it's especially poignant for comic!Andy. I think most people wouldn't think twice about movie!Andy doing something like that but comic Andy is so hardened and almost cruel sometimes, and seeing that even for her the world hasn't beaten all of the compassion from her yet is SO!!!!!!! this woman contains MULTITUDES okay, she's violent and angry and tired and Done but she's also so kind and compassionate and THE STRENGTH OF HER!!!!! Also the idea of her and Yitzhak co-raising a kid together is so damn cute. It was #mysterious pre-Yitzhak-story but now it's cute. holy fuck. It's cute.

& the headbonk panel of her and Zeus lives in my heart. anyways.

4 Many Happy Returns

I Know people weren't thrilled about Booker being in this one, but I've developed a pet-peeve about that: this story was *not* booker-centric. Booker only exists in this story to the extent required to explain the importance of the gesture Nile makes towards him. If there was a story about Booker making some grand gesture of kindness to Nile no one would be saying it was Nile-centric. bc it wouldn't be! Booker exists in this story to explore Nile's kindness, its not about him. I saw that a couple times and it bothered me. anyways.

AAAAAAAAAA I loved this one, the art was beautiful, I loved how Andy Nile and Booker were drawn (like their comic selves but.. more looking like actual people). I loved Andy and Nile's Bants, how Andy wanted to jump right in and Do Violence but Nile was basically telling her to hold her horses.

I feel like I'm just repeating the post I made on this story a few days ago, but I LOVED how Nile's plan revolves not around violence or Cool Mercenary Skills but on Nile's own life skills (as she canonly did a lot of minimum wage job-hopping before the marines in comics canon). Her plan used her skills, not the skills of an immortal warrior, and HER SKILLS were in fact more useful for the situation! lov to see Nile's resourcefulness and planning skills.

AND HOW NILE WAS PROBABLY WATCHING BOOKER??? it's so Much bc 1.) nile knew booker A SINGLE DAY and yet he made such an impression on her emotionally that she had to keep an eye on him and 2.) she said in the movie she wanted Booker to get off free with an apology. Yes she's a member of the team but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to follow orders like a good little soldier. I also love how she convinced Andy to go along with it. her HEART, her KINDNESS, her THOUGHTFULNESS, UGH.

5 The Bear

Honestly I have like no negative things to say about this one other than a.) character design issues which is less about the story itself and is more of a 'tog comic in general' criticism and b.) too short, but it was supposed to be a tease, so.

But I loved Yitzhak, I wasn't expecting to really like him at all but like I said in my other post, he tickled me. I love characters who are Kind™, especially if they have little reason to be so given their backgrounds. Chef's kiss. Lov him.

6 Bonsai Shokunin

I know this one was a little controversial bc of the outsider POV but whenever I see people upset about that they never point out that the Outsider Guy (the samurai) existed as a reflection on Noriko. His ideas are explained in the text to develop hers. The whole story follows how she gave mercy to a scared young man and in response he murdered Noriko, repeatedly! Who gave him the right to inflict such pain and suffering on the world? In his opinion, the lack of response from the gods was his permission. And for Noriko-- over and over again she dies and suffers because she gave mercy, which lines up with her ideas in FM about how it's their fate to rule mortals and if they don't align with that plan/fate/whatever then they suffer. It shows some background to those ideas and how they developed in her mind outside of Ocean Madness™. Additionally, his idea of 'the Gods have done nothing to strike me down so it's fine if I do these things' kind of explains how Noriko may justify her own morally corrupt actions-- she's died so many times and it's never stuck. Maybe if she did die any of those times, or while she was in the water, maybe that would've been a sign she was doing something right, or at least doing something normal. But she hasn't died. Fate isn't done with Noriko yet. And maybe there's a reason for that. In her mind, it's just not a very pleasant reason, is all.

There were things I was kind of meh about tho. I did kind of wish we saw something of Noriko and the team, or smth explaining the way she was before her dip in the pool-- personality, likes dislikes, etc. but it wasn't bad or anything. It was super vague tho, I had to read it a few times before I got what it was going for. Liked the art. Liked the bonsai metaphor. And of course I Respect the decision to use the 1300s (1200s? I don't remember off the top of my head) rather than using the last 200 years.

7 Strong Medicine

Honestly looking back, this one made me kind of sad because both this one and Bonsai Shokunin explored character's ideas on Fate and The Divine and how that intersects with immortality and I totally thought that theme would be continued, especially with Love Letters. But Then It Wasn't™.

Admittedly.... I had to re-read this one to remember most of it. I liked Booker's ideas on God, 'The conductor of the symphony just may not be very good at his trade' but the plot itself was kind of forgettable. Some fuckin cowboys try to kill a doctor (their second) because he couldn't save their sickly brother. Book tries to stop them, gets killed, and then comes back and kills them all before they get the doctor. Alright. I liked the artstyle because the characters were ugly in a similar way that leandro's are, but way more bearable.

I love the Irony of Booker concluding that there is no such thing as fate or destiny and nothing has meaning, AS HE UNKNOWINGLY SAVES MERRICK'S GRANDFATHER FROM BEING KILLED. Booker getting fucked over by life/god/destiny yet again. It also kind of explains about where the fuck hell Merrick's interest in immortal mercenaries even came from.

I originally had this one a lot higher and then I thought about it and moved it down like two spots.

8 Never Gets Old

I liked seeing Booker interact with his kid. And we got a name for the kid! Philippe was a little bitch though, he was a little obnoxious. I liked how Booker was so thrilled to experience a restaurant with his kid (and since we know he was there before, it can be assumed he went with all of his kids and yet he was so charmed each time). It fits with his line to Nicky in the moon landing story about how you don't appreciate beautiful things 'unless you have someone to share them with'. It was charming to see Booker interact with his kid, and to see him so happy. Also lmao @ Booker's big fat Ye Olde Crush on Andy.

However at the same time it was like.. of all the things to write about,,, I guess? Booker's Night Out...... alright. Especially since Book had so many stories.

I don't know, it was alright. The old man killing him really came out of nowhere, (but the 'Salut, asshole!' panel was funny tho).

9 How To Make a Ghost Town

I've hit a point where talking about these stories has gotten less fun. I liked this one but I felt like Achilles getting lynched was not really necessary for a story that was already tragic (a story that already involved Achilles doing a lot of suffering at the hand of bigots). When we first got the blurb for this story I thought it would be about Andy returning to the squad and making friends with Booker after losing Achilles and them butting heads on the idea of family and when to cut off ties. So a little bit of my underwhelmedness about this one might be just my expectations being different.

Honestly I was pretty interested in Andy and Achilles' relationship and I would've liked to see more of them-- like, what was their dynamic like? What did they love about each other?

But anyways Andy leaving and Achilles getting killed anyways feels so pointlessly tragic (which I suppose is the point..... I don't like tragedies) she left to save him and yet people killed him anyway. Meh.

I did love the bits about Andy wanting to have a domestic life (Andy and her multitudes again) and the little detail about how she buried her axe near the road but he buried his guns under his bed-- he was an escaped slave, he never had the luxury of assuredness like Andy did. It was a sad story.

10 Lacus Solitudinis

'You put this one above love letters crim??? how could you???' easy, lmao.

There was stuff in this one I liked. But to talk about stuff I didn't like: (I'll keep it brief, I know ragging on this story has been done time and time again)

UH, setting aside the 6 year cold shoulder between Joe and Nicky, I thought their chosen method of conflict resolution was... bad at best. Nicky's inability to talk about his feelings was also annoying, especially since the entire point of this story is a fight Joe and Nicky had, and yet we don't get both sides to the story, which is...... important? That fact is especially annoying bc in the absence of Nicky explaining his side of the story, it's absolutely a possible (and admittedly probably unintentional) interpretation of the text that we do get that Joe routinely resolves conflict between him and Nicky by simply cutting Nicky out of his life entirely until Nicky just. caves? Even if it takes years?

WHICH i could get into that interpretation and how fucked up i find it. but im not going to. out of restraint.

I don't know, I think there are a lot of interesting ways to go about this conflict but 'Nicky wants to kill a guy and Joe refuses to acknowledge his existence until he stops because he thinks Nicky is too much of a Good Boy to get his hands dirty like that' ('I wont watch as the world turns his (...) compassion into something ugly'. ) wasn't.. how I would've done it. (I mean you know Joe doesn't give a shit about what Nicky is doing in a moral way, because Joe doesn't even care or mention that Booker is killing those cops too. Joe only cares because he doesn't like the idea of Nicky changing in a way he finds undesirable.)

admittedly I've said before, I do like the emphasis Joe's reaction puts on Nicky's kindness. Joe has a complete inability to cope with Nicky simply Not Being Kind. It speaks to the steadiness of Nicky's compassion all those years. but still that fact doesn't make it the conflict feel worth it

hm. I said I would be brief and I wasn't.

oh well. basically I thought there was interesting conflict potential there but it wasn't done the way I would've liked, and the way it was done leaves a lot of disturbing (and again probably unintended) interpretations to lie.

What I did like? Andy and Joe having that pessimist/optimist dynamic. Joe nerding out about science. Andy not being impressed by The Achievements Of Man. I loved Booker needling at Nicky about his outdated slang and also trying to give him Older Brother advice practically in the same breath. I loved Booker giving The Worst relationship advice ever and Nicky being like 'I Will Not Do That, Ever, Thanks.' the family vibes were so good. The Joenicky vibes left a lot to be desired tho.

11 Love Letters

I talked about my problems with Nicky in this story (and Lacus Solitudinis). I don't know, the story isn't bad but I do hold a little bit of a grudge towards it because its very existence begs the existence of a solo Joe story and we didn't get one. If we never got this story, then we could happily count Lacus Solitudinis and Zanzibar as The Joenicky Stories™ and move on with our lives. sigh.

I remember when we first got the blurb for this story I was really curious about why Nicky specifically + the setting, and the answer kind of feels like 'the author had an idea for a story like this and saw ttt as a good enough place to utilize that idea'. Plus I was really underwhelmed by the Romantic Sentiment in the letter. If you look at it line-by-line, the majority of the letter is actually Nicky talking about how lonely and disturbed he is, rather than actual,, yknow,,, Romantic Sentiment. I mean, compare the van speech and this letter and this letter is just kind of meh in comparison. I liked nicky calling joe wise! and I liked the brief sun/moon metaphor! and otherwise it was eh. It didn't even have cute squad banter, which is why Lacus Solitudinis is above this one.

12 An Old Soul

Nun orgy. Nun orgy?????? Nun orgy.......

The whole story felt like a setup to have a nun orgy. Why did Booker have abs? Why did they do that to Andy's nose? ?????? the art was good at least.

nun orgy.