#i can't even think of an american author to compare her to

[reallifepotato]

i started reading the smoke thieves today and i went back at some point to look at the map in the beginning of the book and i noticed that it’s signed? by the author?? helloo???

[talkingparrotkee]

After seeing disagreeable claims critiquing the end of Wakanda Forever float around for the nth time, I felt like organizing my qualms and putting them neatly into another blog. These are just my musings.

"Shuri should've killed Namor! Sparing him was wrong!" I apologize for my harsh phrasing, but this is a horrible and brainless take, especially when it's from begrudged shippers or anti-Wakanda Forever recasters 😭. Whenever I see it, I can't help but wonder if anyone who says this or agrees genuinely likes and (especially) understands Namor and/or Shuri's actual characters. And no, I do not mean the surface aesthetic of or attraction to them.

If you knew and understood what kind of character Shuri (at least in the MCU) is, you would know why she spared Namor's life after nearly taking it. If you understood the important messages carefully baked into the film, you'd understand the writing choice of Shuri sparing Namor and Namor not being the "incorrigible villain who deserves death."

Asking the silly question of why she didn't kill him in the form of critique, or worse, saying she should have or somehow should give him hell after the fact (fortunately, a regressive immaturity neither character has), is a clear show of media illiteracy. It neglects both characters and at least one pillar theme of Wakanda Forever. If Shuri killed Namor, Talokan and Wakanda would unnaturally be eating away at each other for eternity, allowing the surface colonist nations to swoop in as the destabilization process was done for them. The true villains and enemies that put them in that situation where they collided with one another would gain access to their vibranium and technology. Game over.

Shuri Was Never In Her "Villain Era"

The simple answer, Shuri is not Wanda Maximoff 😊. Goodnight. (Author's note because someone was troubled by this tongue and cheek remark: I don't hate Wanda at all. I meant what I wrote: Shuri is not Wanda, just Wakandan. People want her to be Wanda and have a Wanda arc when she is not and will not. 🫡)

Even at the lowest of her low, Shuri is no villain. Shuri was just a young woman trying to find what kind of leader she was in the midst of grief, inner turmoil, and human anger. I don't know why some fans say she had a "villain era" or want her to canonically have a "villain era," but ok. That is not Shuri, nor would it have filled the hole in Shuri's heart, as said by Nakia. It was not just because it endangered Wakanda and would spearhead them in an eternal war either. Although, that is reason enough for Shuri not to kill Namor.

Who Princess Shuri Truly Is

Princess Shuri is a natural healer, teacher, and creator. Shuri loves, designs, creates, innovates, builds, and protects. Shuri has people who would die for her and trusts her to make the right choice in the end, faithfully standing beside her even when they recognize that the trajectory she currently set them on wasn't a good one. Why do you think this is? Because they know and trust Shuri. They know her brain is as big as her heart.

Shuri is not inherently destructive. That was the uncharacteristic result of her gripe with death (thinking it meant gone) and destructive handling of her grief. Ryan Coogler even pointed out how Shuri's state was unhealthy and dangerous. Shuri and Namor were both grieving and asking themselves painful questions.

That is why Killmonger is who appears to her. Killmonger is a violent, radical character (made that way by neglect, grief, loss, militaristic molding, and the suffering African Americans face) who almost carelessly sent Wakanda spiraling into mayhem. He became the people he hated, in the wise words of T'Challa, and was an unworthy king, in the wise words of Shuri. If such a man is comparing himself to Shuri and is who her subconscious elicited on the Ancestral Plane (which Shuri seems to be taking to her grave now, refusing to tell Nakia), maybe she's not doing alright? Just a thought!

This is also why Ramonda took her out by the river. It's why M'Baku said what he said at Ramonda's funeral. It is so she can mourn properly. So she could heal properly. Something she wasn't doing since the day T'Challa died.

Killing Namor would've destroyed her, not just her people. It wouldn't have sated her despite in her rightful anger, feeling it would. It would've just sent her past a point of no return.

"Show him who you are." Ramonda told her this after she struggled on her own with killing Namor. Why do you think Shuri hesitated even without Ramonda's influence (which was just her presence and reminding Shuri who she already was) yet? It didn't feel "right" to Shuri as their moment together (watching the Talokan sunrise), how Namor paralleled her, and how their people were alike flew through her mind's eye. Shuri hesitated, not because she was "soft" or "nonsensical mushy writing." Shuri saw what they were and what this was. She thought beyond herself. As Editor Michael P. Shawver said, Namor's line of, "only the most broken people can become great leaders" is what they focused on. It is what Shuri finally realizes at the bitter end. They relate. The narrative, characters, and actors all recognize this; I don't see how some audience members do not.

She and Namor were perpetuating the destructive cycle of grief and vengeance while setting that example for their people, but she was strong enough to pull herself up and break that chain. Then she offered her his hand for the sake of not only themselves, but their people. She saw firsthand the beauty of Talokan. Like Namor admired Wakanda in the beginning, she admired Talokan. She remembered her visit to Talokan in the mix of her nation's beauty.

"Vengance has consumed us. We cannot let it consume our people."

Not "my" people. Not "your" people. Our people.

Shuri realized many simple yet, at the same time, humanly complicated truths of how they had connectivity and were broken, trying to be the best leaders they could be. Neither of them was the villain but are what they were due to the bitter hand life dealt them and the situations they faced.

The Real Theme of Black Panther's Wakanda Forever

This movie also had clear themes of:

A) how POC/indigenous infighting sucks and is counterproductive

B) connectivity of black and brown, from culture to shared wounds

C) the scars of colonialization

Shuri killing Namor would defeat the carefully woven narrative and betray all these well-built things. I know some of you guys don't like to hear this, but Namor is not of the archetype of Killmonger, nor is he the real "villain," so he was handled accordingly.

“We talked to so many experts and really made relationships with them, because there was a lot to go through,” says Beachler. “There are a lot of parallels between Africans and Latin Americans as far as the colonization of their communities and cities, the enslavement of their people, the lies that were told about their culture, the misinterpretation of their words, and the ways they were made out to look demonized in order to elevate a European country.”

Shuri Getting Her Lick Back

"Shuri should've beaten Namor until-" or "She let him off the hook unpunished!" If you paid attention to the movie, you'd see she literally beat him within an inch of his life? She definitely did get her lick back just as Namor got his. Wanting her to get "more" licks after the fact is regressive.

Shuri:

isolated and trapped Namor to weaken and drain his energy

ferally clawed both of his wings, taking out his ability to fly

made him bleed and bruised him up

roasted him in a firey explosion, effectively charring him and rendering him temporarily paralyzed

Shuri didn't play patty cake with him; she made an immortal bleed and fear death. She had him gasping for air on his back at the mercy of her spear tip. She made him yield and call off the troops. She made an ally out of him on her terms who exalted her strength and is currently bandaged up, flightless, and awaiting to aid her (rather than striking first, waging war as originally wanted). It's more than enough and was the best course of action. What do you mean? What are you talking about?

[bleachbleachbleach]

Verisimilitude (long thoughts about writing)

Sometimes I get mailed random books to consider for course adoption. The first one I looked at the other day was so incredibly bad I could not make it past page 12--"oh my god I hate books" bad; "trees were wasted on this!!" bad. And then there's this one. I've made it to page 30-something and I could have told you 20 pages ago that Oliver Twist it would remain, but I am still reading it to read it, and maybe keep it to recommend extracurricularly. (The protagonist Alva is a weeb for American culture, whatever the word is for that, which I think could make for interesting study!) But that's all context to say,

AH YES THE INTERNET RABBIT HOLE OF NARUTO FAN FICTION, HENTAILORD. WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE.

SO...

BLEACH MENTION WHEN????

Based on the style of her screen name, the Naruto porn, and her listening to My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park, this girl is definitely living her teenage life in the mid-00s, in ways that are searingly obvious. Which feels like it should be a massive success in terms of using verisimilitude to pinpoint a particular time and place and, by extension, person. But I don't think it does?

In thinking about why this doesn't work for me as a reader:

1. As a general rule, I tend not to enjoy "fandom" subculture references like this in fiction, because they have never felt true to my experience of fandom, or even my experience of others' experiences of fandom. The specificity is there but not the verisimilitude. Whether this is because of an inability to articulate the breath of life that animates fandom spaces, or a feeling of needing to at least kind of translate it for the uninitiated general audience, I don't know. Not that Alva's narrative goes far enough to merit this discussion; she's just reading Naruto porn for one sentence, but it just doesn't land right for me. (Sidebar, this is probably also why I don't enjoy acafandom or fandom essays that aspire to acafandom; there's usually this attempted, manufactured critical/"objective" distance from the text that often feels performative, or at least the wrong [or less interesting] tool for the job. And even where 'in-group' positionality is addressed, the translation required to make these things legible to the out-group is just--well, not what I want in life, I guess!)

2. I am a great believer in drawing greatly from what you know and feel and all those random thoughts and behaviors and emotions and tics that make life interesting, and giving them to fiction. In fanfic especially, I am a great believer in seeing the author's hands in a text, making the story (and the original canon) unmistakably theirs. But I kind of always want them to be hands that are in the act of giving. By which I mean, I think there's a difference between all these things existing in a story and having been given to a character or a world or a story, and integrated genuinely into them.

Like, all I can think about while reading this book is how the author definitely lived through the mid-00s in a particular and very familiar way. Rather than create a richly immersive world, the details jump out of the page and leave the story behind. They don't feel like they belong to Alva (or perhaps Alva does not feel like a character with the depth to hold them and make them hers). They belong do the author, and to me, and to history, but Alva falls out of the equation. And if this is going to work, I feel like Alva can't fall out of the equation.

3. I was talking to a friend about something similar a few months ago. She was complaining about a historical fiction book she was reading with a book club she leads at the library she works at--how it was clearly very well-researched, but dry as hell. The information was not animated by the story itself. And I compared it to a fanfic I'd (not) read, where the author was very proud of all the research they'd done and how accurate-to-life its setting was. (To be clear, I'm not subtweeting Bleach fandom. Completely different fandom! Also this fanfic was published like 16 years ago.) The fic did bring in lots of specific details about trees and highways and city names--things I knew well, too, because it was set where my sister lives--but rather than be as exciting and, again, rich, as I feel like that familiarity could have been, it all felt dead. Because all these things were described specifically, but not true to how the narrating characters would describe them, or mentally catalogue them, or experience them.

And you might think, well, how would we possibly know how a character thinks about highways? It's not like he's explained this in canon. And I'd say, well, you definitely can. There are probably a lot of different ways a character could plausibly think about highways, depending on the specific shade and flavor of your characterization of them, all equally believable; but it's got to be part of the equation. There are a lot of ways to be right, and you know it when it's wrong. The wrong-est way it can be is for the way they think about highways to not factor into the way those dang highways are being described by them, in their POV.

4. I think about this both as a reader and as a writer--certainly more often as a writer, because I find that level of imagining a character's headspace the VERY best part of the process, and also because I am often concerned I am not doing it, or at least not well, lol. I'm positive I've done all the things I've just talked about not enjoying.

These concerns exist at the level of characterization work in general, but also at that level of, is the wizard behind the green curtain? Are his hands giving? Because while I do write fanfic because "it is fun" and because "this idea interests me," I am also usually writing it to work through deeply personal emotions/experiences. Which again, perhaps selfishly, I support that. But from a craft perspective I don't want it to feel, transparently, like "oh lol this author is going through it."

Moreover, from a relational perspective, I don't want that to be the relationship between me as author and the characters. Because one thing I am ALWAYS writing fanfic to do is to indulge my feelings about how much I am in complete, rapturous love with the characters and worlds in question. I don't want to just place things upon them, like a film or shroud; I want them to be given, integrated, arriving in the text wholly in their bodies and in their minds and entirely theirs. And I mean this for both the emotional arcs and conflicts and the random tics and details. I want them to have been given, and to belong, and to feel completely and inextricably theirs.

So, those are my thoughts about mid-00s Naruto porn!!!

I'd love to hear others' perspectives, as readers or writers or both. Have you had similar reactions, or quite different? Why do you write, and what do you want? What's your template for how you think about characterization, or your writerly relationship to canon/characters?

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Your meta about Twilight have me convinced that, written by anyone else, it's not a romance-- it's a horror story.

So now I'm wondering, if instead of being by Stephanie Meyer, Twilight was written by someone like Stephen King? In a horror book with the same core plot and the same blurb on the back, what's the scene everyone remembers- the equivalent to the scenes everyone remembers in The Shining, IT, or Carrie? (Or whatever horror author and work you're more familiar with, you get the idea)

There's just so many good horror scenes, and I really want your take, but like as I write this ask I just want to appreciate the ending a bit:

After she almost dies, after the venom is sucked out, smash cut to Bella the surviving heroine. The horror is over, safe back in Forks. Except the reader gets this sinking feeling. We slowly realize, no, she didn't avoid the bad ending. She's not running from it. She's choosing it, unaware of what it's actually going to cost her and how little she's getting in return. Even as a human, Bella has become the monster that will kill her in the end... setting us up perfectly for new moon where actually she kind of is the villain.

I guess I'm asking what one scene from spooky!Twilight would stick in your memory years laters, and how is it written differently to emphasize the horror?

(And if you're having fun with this, what scene for the other books)

Interesting question.

Of course, you nearly inspired an entirely too long rant between the differences of Stephen King's novel The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation, but no one wants to sit through that.

With that though, I think we have to take a few steps back.

Stephen King Wouldn't Write Twilight

First, he's done a vampire novel, Salem's Lot, which has a similar enough premise that he probably wouldn't do a Twilight style version.

Salem's Lot is also set in a very small, insular, American town. The events take place only within the town and most of the townsfolk never cotton on to what's happening. There are a select few knowledgeable insiders who then get dealt with.

It's much more Dracula in its inspiration than Twilight, in that we have a very similar subplot to the Lucy subplot where the town slowly starts being victimized by the vampires, no one believes the protagonist except a select few who then disappear from the story, and we slowly get the reveal of the demonic monstrosity that are the vampires.

But it's similar in that it's King's "Give me a modern, small, town with vampires".

But it's more than that.

What's the core plot of Twilight that we're keeping and the blurb on the back per the ask?

The core plot is that Bella moves to this small rural town, realizes there's something strange going on with her classmates, falls in love with Edward and loves him despite him being a distinct risk to her, is hunted by other vampires, and then the story ends after James has been destroyed.

The trouble with Twilight alone is that we have no resolution and no real consequences. Twilight really is just a book that sets the stage for the follow-on books, which works if you're writing YA romance novels, not so much if you want a horror novel.

Bella's fate is undecided as of the end of the novel, her parents are still ignorant as well as alive and well, nothing terrible has happened to any of the characters we've met so far including the NPCs, the Cullens so far seem to be everything they've claimed to be including Edward who for all his talk hasn't done anything.

Compare that to, say, the plot of Carrie. The important thing about Carrie is that we get the Prom. Everything leads up to Prom, we see everything build towards it and no something terrible is going to happen, and then it does.

You can't have Carrie, as a singular novel, end at the moment she opens the door to her surprise date so she can go to Prom.

Similarly, you can't have The Shining end only when they realize that maybe this hotel is filled with malevolent psychic energy, and it might do something.

It's not a horror story unless you see when things go very bad.

He'd probably also add in a lot more of the typical Stephen King tropes that I won't comment on because this isn't the post for "weird shit Stephen King puts in his books sometimes".

Okay, So What Would Stephen King Do?

Honestly, I imagine Charlie would become our main character.

Small town divorced cop estranged from his wife and daughter, whose daughter suddenly decides to live with him (whose new stepfather may or may not be abusive) and is a total mess he doesn't know how to relate to, has the background on the Cullens and yeah they're weird but they seem so nice, as well as the even more local guy in his best friend Billy who says, "dead isn't better, Charlie, don't bury your pets in the cemetery", and life gets progressively worse and weirder as his daughter begins dating what is slowly revealed to be an abusive inhuman creep.

Add on a little former alcoholism and Charlie Swan gets the Stephen King protagonist stamp of approval.

Bella's nice and all, but she's what's lost in the series and gives the impression that she has agency. Charlie is the one who is ignorant, who tries to stop it, and only realizes too late that he moved too slowly, ignored the wrong people, and made all the wrong choices.

And we'd get the entire four novels packed into one with it starting with Bella's arrival and ending with her having been turned and having a daughter niece.

You Didn't Answer the Question

Alright, alright, fine.

I'd say the moment Charlie meets Bella after she's been turned and realizes that this isn't his daughter anymore and that he has to pretend for the rest of his life that it still is.

Of course, this requires being from Charlie's point of view, but honestly, he's the better character for it.

Bella's over there in Breaking Dawn living her best life at this point.

In Twilight itself? The meadow. Midnight Sun is its own spectacle, but the meadow even from Bella's point of view is fucking bizarre and mildly terrifying. You have Edward purposefully, just for a moment, showing what he really is to terrify her, then backing off in terror that he might lose her.

That said, the trouble is Bella as our narrator. What happens is disturbing, but Bella's so teenage in love that she doesn't care or even notice it. She has set up circumstances so that Edward will be able to get away with her murder, let him know it, and watched him rage about how easy it would be for him to kill her now. And she's having a great time.

Basically, if you want this to be a real horror novel, it can't be from Bella's point of view. Otherwise, we have Twilight.

[emblemxeno]

I think the people who try to defend Edelgard don't even understand how the narrative portrays it. To HER view, the genocide was necessary because she view Rhea as a rat. You know rat ? we want to kill them and we have to in order to protect others, our home. Why am I making this analogy ? Because that's how an author portrayed the Shoah in the comic Mauss, with the nazi as cat and the jewish as mouse. That doesn't make Edelgard good look at all

Can't believe we have come to a point where we compare the suffering of people who have been really victim of those horrible stuff to a PEGI 12 year old game vulgarizing this for the sake of story telling without even trying, like what is wrong with those Edelstans ?

Combining these!

Yep. It's the overt attempt to project real world philosophy onto this fantasy game (not helped by the game's attempt at serious aesops, but still).

Like, if we're gonna go by method by making the Church of Seiros out to be religious fanaticist faction akin to the darker branches of the Catholic church, then by that logic the other side should be able to play the same game by drudging up the copious amounts of dialogue that with very intolerant, racist, xenophobic, and anti-semitic undertones.

I myself generally don't like doing that because as anon 2 says, it's a video game with dragons and shit, but far too many people try to utilize 3H as a mouthpiece for commentary on IRL issues and it's sooooo fucking annoying and also insanely disrespectful cuz it's obviously done with intent to solidify their own biases in the video game and nothing else. Cuz if you actually gave a shit about real world problems beyond social media points, you'd have the brain power to know that maybe you shouldn't bring up a video game as an axis of your message.

But some people are immature and deliberately lacking in social grace. If I were a better person, I'd walk away, but meh. When people pull reality into discussion about anime bullshit in an attempt to discredit my opinions or feelings about certain things, at this point in my life I'm not the type to take the high road; when people go that low, I go to hell. Not one ounce of respect from my African American ass from that point forward towards people like that, no siree.

[haleigh-sloth]

I’m going to keep it real with you comparing cause I’m black but comparing mirko to a real life cops don’t sit right with me especially because a lot of black fans both men and women call her a black woman because it fun headcanon one of hori assistant used to draw mirko wearing Megan the stallion clothes and fans have shown her adding real world standard onto mha is dumb already cause then everyone be in jail including villains and as an American you do know we don’t like the police right

Sorry for the delay. I had to sit on this for a bit, because I didn't want to answer this on my gut reaction.

So--I understand you HC her that way, but that doesn't change what she is within this story:

Literally in chapter 1, the stage is set to show you what these heroes are.

Heroes are law enforcement officials, and an extension of the police. They are...basically cops. And Mirko is a hero! Which means, well, exactly what it sounds like.

She is this story's version of a cop.

This headcanon you’re mentioning doesn't....change that. Or have any effect on that. Hori's assistant drawing her dressed like Megan Thee Stallion doesn't change what she is within the context of this story. I'm sorry but it just doesn't.

America's problems doesn't have anything to do with calling a fictional character, who is a cop within the story she is a part of, a cop.

You are right--applying irl standards and rules to the trajectory of the manga isn't gonna get you answers you want. But, making these comparisons to reality is not doing that. It's how people connect to media, even if said media isn't directed at the audience they are a part of.

I'm linking to two really good posts at the bottom, but I'm gonna just touch on a point in them in my own response.

I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume that the author can't draw these comparisons on his own accord within his story. If there are points within the manga that allude to government-paid law enforcement officials in positions of power, abusing their power, then...maybe, just maybe, that is the author's intention for you to see it that way. Sometimes, it's not even really subtle and it's straight up in the dialogue exactly what type of irl issues this manga is pointing at (Spinner being a good example of this). So yeah, don't apply irl rules to the manga. But don't just tell people they can't make irl comparisons.

And with that, he chose to make Mirko a part of a certain aspect of the story, and make her The Way That She Is. She upholds a canonically oppressive system within the story. She is what she is. I don't control that.

And you can't just tell people not to draw these comparisons. Yeah, I'm American. And I only mention that because you pointed that out, and pointed out that you are also American. I bring attention to that part of your comment because.....it's possible, and likely, for people outside of our country to draw these comparisons themselves. Different countries, histories, types of discrimination, different circumstances within their own issues of police brutality. They all exist, everywhere. Not just here. Which means…you don’t have to have an American perspective to make this comparison to this type of issue. So again, bringing an American rapper into this to try to bolster the point that Mirko is free from criticism or gets to escape these comparisons, that are put there intentionally by the author, is not helpful. It doesn't work.

Mirko is who she is.

She became an extension of the police because she enjoys fighting and kicking people's asses. She is in a position of power, and she likes to use it. She is who she is, and nothing is going to change that. I didn’t make her that way. I didn’t write the story! I didn’t put the metaphors, allusions, symbolisms, etc. whatever, in this manga. They are there for me, and everyone else, to look at and think about, and try to figure out what the author is portraying with these characters in his story. And she’s a part of the story.

There are two really good discussions on this topic and others related to it are here: (Post 1; Post 2).

[weebsinstash]

Since I was telling you guys about The Silent Alpha (listening to it on DreameFM), i figured I might share a little on the first book in the series, The Ivory Queen? I actually think both stories are quality and was mostly juat gossiping on all the juicy drama parts haha

The Ivory Queen is about a Mexican-American girl named Aurora Montenegro who's father Emiliano is killed by rogue wolves on her 13th birthday, and when her pack finds her with the body they immediately blame her. Since your 13th birthday is your first shift, they automatically assume she went feral and killed her father, and the entire pack, the Lluvia Blanca pack, spends the next 5 years absolutely torturing her, even by her mother and siblings. She's beaten up, kept in a basement, denied proper food, forced to work as a slave, and denied ever being able to shift which makes her incredibly weak on top of already being malnourished. This isnt even to touch on stuff like, "oh her brother Chava once locked her in a closet and used his illusion powers to make her see rogues like the ones who killed her father and left her like that for hours and then he dragged her out covered in her own piss and shit because she'd literally been losing control of her bladder and bowels in terror after being in there so long and he dragged her in front of other people and then everyone mocked her during this extremely traumatizing experience and after the fact some of them literally threw diapers at her, for MONTHS". Like. jesus fucking christ dude. Kill all of them maybe? Like Im starting to adore the idea of a Reader who was horrifically abused and just goes "fuck this high horse bullshit, hey new mate, you're a powerful wolf and you love me? Kill these bitches to prove it. Make them suffer"

When Aurora finally meets her mate, Alpha Olivier of River Moon Pack, he rejects her because he recognizes her and has heard all the awful rumors, but soon, he actually regrets his decision and vows that he wants to see who she really is and they team up to not only get her away from her abusive pack and family, solve the mystery of her father's death, but also discover an even deeper plot of a looming war, a prophecy, and the truth surrounding her heritage

The story is not only well written and well voice acted but also contains decent amounts of representation (like Olivier is French, and he has his pack cook traditional Mexican food for Aurora when she first arrives which literally makes her sob with gratitude because she hasn't had home cooked Mexican food since before her father died) and also naturally covers subjects like women's rights and things are written in a mature and realistic tone (like another conversation with a Luna named Kehlani opening up that she felt like her breasts were too low and far apart after giving birth, and it's like God that is such an actual realistic female struggle. a lot of these other authors just kind of, idk, some of these stories are like comparing potato chips to a full course meal kwim? Emotional journeys vs popcorn literature YA novels)

Oh. I will say though. One of the horrible things to happens to Aurora is that she is and had been sexually assaulted by another member of this pack and this does happen in written detail so, if that is triggering for you you may need to skip any interactions with that character (who's name i can't remember but you'll be able to tell because he's openly creepy and before the assault happens Aurora already let's the reader know, he's a guy who "does unspeakable things to me I can't talk about")

Like it is very dark. She gets knocked out and wakes up with her attacker already on top of her, already in the midst of it while she was blacked out, and interestingly, this is a story where the mate bond also transfers pain, so, Olivier experiences the pain of, well, being an assaulted woman, and that deepens his love, respect, and sympathy for Aurora and her strength to survive. But I also don't like that Aurora also had to lowkey provide comfort to Olivier for something that happened to her after the fact, like it isn't like forced upon her ,she wants to comfort him, but it's like... that happened to HER, idk, Olivier getting attention for the issue makes me feel kinda weird

Either way it's a cute story about finding love and acceptance when you feel like you have nowhere you belong and feel like everyone hates you and sees you as nothing. A nice read and a nice story, albeit a little long ^^;

[atheostic]

Things I love about being raised secular

Not needing to worry about my parents rejecting or harassing me if I decide to convert.

My mom always made it explicitly clear that she'd always love and support me regardless of whether I was an atheist, including being willing to go with little!me to worship services in whatever religion I wanted if I ever wanted to go so I could attend.

Always feeling secure in being able to ask my mom for unbiased material about any and all religions.

When I showed interest in learning about religions, my mom went out of her way to expose me to as many as feasibly possible.

We attended both Christian and Umbanda funerals

I had my Orixá de Cabeça divined by a Quimbanda priestess

We went to a Buddhist temple

We attended a Pagan summer solstice celebration

We participated in the South American equivalent of a powwow to learn more about our ancestors (I'm Nambikwara)

She bought me books on ancient religions from around the world

She bought me any books she could find on comparative religion for kids (I still have my first one!)

She made a point of finding books comparing what life is like for kids of different religions

The list goes on.

Being allowed to come to my own decisions regarding my theological beliefs without pressure or bias.

My mom only ever told me what her beliefs are when I explicitly asked her several years in. Her response was "I think that religions are how people explained the world around them before they understood how the world worked. But you don't have to believe what I do. If you think differently that's okay and I'll be happy to support you unconditionally because I love you. How about you? What do you think?"

Being able to have the fun parts of religious holidays without the boring serious bits.

From letting me play with the nativity scene* to switching out baby Jesus for ridiculous stuff (the most recent being baby Yoda in a blankie) to Easter being entirely about the Easter Bunny and chocolate eggs** (I didn't even know Easter had a religious background until I started learning about religions).

Being encouraged to have fun with religious rituals

When I got a puppy for Children's Day when I was 7 my mom had a contest at my 8th birthday party for who would be the puppy's godparents. We then had a full-on baptism for my dog, complete with wetting her forehead with a bit of diet coke.

Being allowed to question anything and everything, including my mom's house rules.

I was allowed, nay, encouraged, to question any authority figure's rules if they didn't make sense to me or I disagreed with them. My mom's mantra was "If I can't give you a good reason as to why you should do what I'm telling you to, you don't have to do it if you don't want to."

The result was that instead of being a wild child I was the most well-behaved out of all my friends at any age cohort because I understood my mom's reasoning and, whether I liked it or not, it made sense. And when it didn't, my mom would acknowledge it and go "Huh. I guess you don't have to do it after all."

Like, my idea of going wild was going to my friend's when her parents were away for the weekend, walking to IGA, buying an extra large bag of frozen smiley fries and eating the whole thing in one sitting.

* Nativity scenes for Latinos aren't necessarily connected to religion. They are to Latinos what wreaths are to Anglo-Saxons.

** Brazilians don't get dinky little painted hardboiled eggs, we get massive chocolate eggs.

[masschase]

idk if you’ve answered any of these before, so sorry if you have, but 9. 12. and 16. for the boss ask meme

- snail-eggs :)

Boss ask meme

Thank you for asking. I really wanted to do some more asks for inspiration but didn't take into account that my brain is all over the place at the moment so I hope my answers are adequate 😅

9. What family does your Boss have or if they have a lot, what family are particularly important to them?

Blood family... yikes is all I can say. I have written about her parents elsewhere (i will find and rb the post soon) but the only person who is particularly important as in she still misses/is upset about once the earth blows up is her older sister Phoebe, who was more or less responsible for raising her when her mom went off the rails. They lost touch after Phoebe left home and Casey regrets that deeply. Matt made the time text/voicemail thing primarily because of seeing her go through this.

She has an uncle on her dad's side who taught her to shoot and fight, and cousins she doesn't know. She realises her mom might have kept that side of the family away from her.

Anything else I say in this regard is massive spoilers for written but unposted!

Of course she finds familial connections elsewhere, her friend Mori's mom is more like a mom to her than her own parents, Johnny is very much like a brother to her and Julius was a poorly chosen father figure.

She sees Kinzie as a sister, and that actually mirrors her experience with her blood sister: they have a 4 year gap, the oldest has a lot of responsibility on them but can be a little silly and comes across as quite carefree, the youngest comes across as more intelligent, more socially awkward, more highly strung but overall they are not under the same amount of pressure. Might make a longer post on this at some point. I noticed when they meet they even have some physical resemblance since Casey had red hair and wore a purple hoodie near-permanently.

12. One or more ways your Boss is different to you.

I seem to recall I put a few for reasons she's the same, so... I'm going to do a few for ways she's different, especially because I find that more interesting!

She's a woman, she's American, she's anti-love whereas I'm a hopeless romantic.

More interestingly, once she gets over her teenage awkwardness she's quite friendly and sociable but doesn't much like the side of fame that comes with her wealth and power whereas I'm shy and socially anxious but secret(ish)ly an attention whore! I like public speaking, performing etc. but can't make friends for shit!

Pretty much her entire family/backstory is considerably different. And she likes Jane Austen and other period romance type authors! I've just never been interested in that kind of thing. Had to do some serious research there!

I'd consider myself a "grown up but not grown out of it" goth so I'm pretty lazy with it now, whereas Casey was always interested in that aesthetic but only really has a chance to get into it later in life. I'm a decent cook and I'm not completely hopeless with tech, though I do have my moments! But I can't brag too much because put me in any sort of gang battle and clearly I'd be dead within 5 seconds.

16. Is there anything from the games you've drastically avoided or downplayed in your headcanon?

Ooh so as many people will know, I tend to swing towards using the canon so I needed some time to think about this one and I'm still struggling!

I'm going to go with the obvious: she's a cis woman (though I often wish I'd made her trans because narratively that makes so much sense!). Although percieved as a boy, her voice was never any of the SR1 voices and I doubt she could be made effectively on SR1's character creator, even though the events of the game are canon to her. This is my attempt on SR2 but when you compare to her SR4 self it doesn't really look like the same person:

Sorry, any excuse to use that adorable shot of her in the hoodie 😊

There are some lines by 'her' voice about being in college and being in a co-ed curling team, and she definitely didn't make it to college, but I can see her doing some form of online study during some of the downtime/gaps between big in-game events.

She is a SR4 Boss at heart and because of where her story starts, I feel like her SR1-3 history is pretty downplayed in my fanfic, in a 'we already know this so I'm not going to talk about it too much' kind of way. But I'm sure over time I will get into it more on here. I might even write some oneshots, I'd like to get one about the familial bond she felt with the original Saints because it's really very sweet.

Thank you for asking!

[8aji]

Do you any books recommendation??⁉️

OKAY SO !! i gotta start by saying that i havent read many books and thats one of the reasons i didnt respond to this ask aside from me taking a break i was a lil embarrassed ngl BUT my response is finally here and i hope you enjoy my rant/rec list !!

all quiet on the western front - erich maria remarque

when i tell you this book destroyed the view i had of life and then built it back again...im not exaggerating. its so beautifully written, and the characterization is wonderful. the narration felt very personal to me, like the story was a little secret between me and paul (the main character), and i don't think it was bc it was written in 1st person pov. ofc im sure it influenced my perception of the story, but the language that was used and constant contradictions and the way paul would go on long, eloquently put together, tangents about his thoughts and emotions and opinions to then disregard everything he said with a sudden wave of doubt and hopelessness — i think it made him very human. i felt very connected to his character, and i do think it was bc i had grown fond of the version i saw of him in the 2022 film (which has nothing on the book, can't even compare em really), the already preexisting feeling was only amplified by the narration and the intricate sentences AND AND i saw my own writing be reflected on the book — for instance, i noticed there were very long long sentences, which is something i rlly like doing. all in all, it showcases the ww1 soldier experience very crudely, in a very beautifully sad way; you can feel remarque's pain and anger in every sentence — his opinion about the war and its futility are very clear, and it honestly makes the book a 100 times better. though i do think my opinion is VERY biased when it comes to this book so please do take it with a grain or a spoonful really of salt

everything i never told you - celeste ng

i read this book a while ago, but even so it remains as one of my top 3 i dont read a lot bear with me TT the book has a very catchy opening line, which instantly had me hooked — it narrates the story of a mixed-race, chinese-american family in the 70s and how they navigate the disappearance of their daughter. i think the book does an amazing job at juggling multiple povs without neglecting any character. it develops each individual storyline very well and the way it delves into the internal conflicts and psyche of each character is just 10/10

little fires everywhere - celeste ng

i gotta be honest, this book didnt "hook" me as much as the other two did, but i still think it was very good and definitely worth a read. i think celeste ng has the tendency to start her books very actively? what i mean with this is that she opens up the story with a very shocking fact or occurrence (?) and then ties everything back to the beginning — almost as if she started writing the story backwards. i think that's really cool, bc even though we as the reader know the "climatic" event, we dont exactly know what happened and are left at the edge of our seats wondering what exactly went down for this to happen, ya know?

the metamorphosis - franz kafka

now, this is also me being biased bc i have the biggest and greatest, most softest spot for kafka and this book. in short, and i mean in very short, the story's about a man who suddenly turns into a bug — the beauty of simplicity in summaries. i read it when i was 16 in literature class and i was absolutely smitten with the story the main character...i really wanted to fix him, kay?? at the time i wasn't at my bestest in terms of mental stability, so im sure that influenced my love and understanding for the book, but analysing it in class and delving into the context behind the book and the author, and interpreting it from my own pov just sigh it was so good.

like water for chocolate - laura esquivel

FUCK i can't express how fun this book is. its a romance book, and also a perfect example of magical realism. AND IT DOES IT THROUGH FOOD !! tita (the main character) has a very deep bond with cooking, and because of this, the food she makes is a direct reflection of the emotional state she was in while she did so — cook the food that is. and, if im not mistaken bc i also read this book when i was 16, each chapter starts with the recipe that tita will prepare — i loved that detailed so much because i love cooking as well, tho i prefer baking. and though it is technically a tragic-romance novel, it is very lighthearted (and i mean this in the bestest way possible) and very funny imo. i would recommend it to anyone in the blink of an eye.

[staycrazydocrimes]

Literally just saw a tiktok about this person relating to Chrissy and also later make a comment about how they'd trade Chrissy's character for Argyle at any point (as a side note, not just flying in at the top just going like "i hate Argyle", which would have also been ok bc you know, free speech and all) and SOME GENIUS decided to bring race into it.

The person legit captioned the video saying that they were attached to her since the beginning and it's logical that some people would be, she deals with problems many face, like EDs, pressure from family, pressure for maintaining the image and so on.

Argyle on the other hand has been pretty much useless. Ok, it was his car that was used to escape and his wish to leave the sign made Mike realize where the message was but other than that his only personality trait has been that he's the funny stoner bro.

That was just comparing the characters on the baseline, no race included. Some people did complain that the author of the og post hadn't seen the second volume, but let's be real, no one has, so thinking that he might get better is a future probability and when compared to present reality it is not that important, at least in my humble opinion. Most of the comments were more about how he is the only native American representation (and pthers who were correcting them that he was Mexican but agreeing) and by that logic the original posts author was racist by preferring the white girl.

Is diversity important? Yes. But do we want diversity that just exists for just being diverse? Is it fair to say that a bland (at least as far as we have seen this far) character deserves to be there more than a character with actual plot going on just because a show hadn't figured out how to include poc before and just threw one in? Is it fair to be mad at a person for not finding a comic relief character (who some might say isn't even that funny) to be more important than a character with relatable problems and issues instead of directing that anger to the people who created a situation where the only Mexican character of the show is there for easy one liners (also kind of a bad stereotype, you have one Latino character and you make him a stoner?)?

I'm not saying that Argyle should disappear or something, Chrissy is dead and he is still a very alive character. What I'm trying to bring up with this post is some people's need to bring race into conversations that it does not belong to and not into places it should be. I am also not saying that anyone should be walking around hating on the Duffer brothers for that, I just find it funny how many people go on and attack a random person on tiktok who shares their opinion but can't use their voices in actually important places. When it comes to real fights against racism and just hate against minorities most of the people who find pleasure in anonymously attacking others on the internet won't even bat an eye.

Really what the heck.

Just for future reference as I am not the biggest Argyle fan, I dislike him (at this point, he might change and I might change my opinion of him) because as a character he reminds me too much of some of the dude bros I went to high school with (literally if they were a spice they'd be flour), not because we are of different shades of skin.

[shuttershocky]

okay I saw your post about Amiya not really seeing Kal'tsit as a mom (which wounds me but tracks as how the game presents it), so here's a question, you think that can change? Kal'tsit is all too aware of how Amiya feels about her, and seems dignified enough to leave it alone, but how do you think those two can get closer?

I think it won't change. If anything, Kal'tsit and Amiya will continue to treat each other as mentor and student and will have their relationship grow in that specific direction, even if Kal'tsit feels parental affection for Amiya. I don't see their relationship growing more familial any time soon.

It's not clean, it's not entirely happy, but if there's anything Arknights likes to do it's revel in messy, conflicting, and complicated feelings and ideas.

Forgive me, i'm about to go very off-topic.

Doctor and Kal'tsit's relationship for example is so fascinating because it's /not/ a simple tsundere thing, but instead Kal'tsit feels genuine hate for the Doctor to the point of wishing to kill them and yet her morals won't let her kill someone who isn't the same person she despises, and indeed has to protect them with her life because of a promise she made to Theresa. She admits in Chapter 8 that she sees the one who killed Theresa whenever she looks at them, and yet there's another person wearing their face helmet who's genuinely doing a good job and is a good person, and that her harsh treatment of them is because she can't help her feelings in spite of her best efforts. It's ugly and raw and rather tragic, but it also makes her little hints of respect and even admiration for the Doctor feel even sweeter.

Even some of their plots end up this way, which is when I find Arknights' writing as its most fascinating. Dossoles Holiday for example, posed hard questions about Bolivar's cultural identity after its colonial history. Now I'm not Chilean, but I'm also from a country who was colonized by the Spanish for hundreds of years (the Philippines), then later passed into the colonial rule of the United States and Japan. The Spanish burnt our records, destroyed our history so they could say we had no history before them (fortunately oral tradition was strong among many tribes), and left us with the same weird feelings that have us grasping for any semblance of cultural identity that we could say is ours.

When Candela Sanchez and Pancho Salas challenged each other over what Bolivar's identity was after Iberian (not-Spain), Columbian (not-America), and Lethianan (not-Germany? Austria?) rule, I felt that. I know exactly the sort of people Pancho recruits to his cause: the people looking for a "real", ideal Bolivar free of foreign influence, in desperate need of the fantasy where they were never colonized. I see that all the time in people a little too obsessed with Filipiniana, who put monsters in everything to show how the thing celebrates pinoy culture because we all really, really want something to call our own. Not Spanish, not American, but Filipino.

Pancho wanted to destroy Dossoles because it was the very opposite of his ideal True Bolivar—corrupt and powerful on the backs of Bolivarians, a haven for the very foreigners that colonized and still seek to colonize Bolivar, and headed by someone clearly educated by the colonial masters (Candela even repeats the Spanish colonial teachings by saying "Bolivar had no history before Iberia").

And yet, despite all that, Candela's retort was painfully true. Yes, her Dossoles is everything Pancho says it is, but it is also real, unlike the ideal Bolivar that Pancho is chasing. It is a real city, led by a Bolivarian when the rest of Bolivar is still being divided up by the three factions, and powerful enough that the three factions have to respect her authority and territory. It is a city of Bolivar actually ruled by a Bolivarian, with its own laws that the colonizers must adhere to and is otherwise a haven compared to the rest of Bolivar due to its wealth and power. It isn't Pancho's True Bolivar, but it's real, while all Pancho has are a set of ideals; ideals he's already breaking by accepting backing from a Lethianan donor who is almost certainly planning to use his revolution for their own ends.

In the end, Candela wins, and while she's willing to forgive everyone involved because she's completely insane, she has to keep up appearances for the sake of political capital and jail Pancho. Her crime-ridden Bolivar that she built by learning the colonizer's ways and turning it against them to carve out her own place for Bolivarians to call home is still better than a lofty fantasy.

It's such an ugly and sad end, one that really hit me hard and made me think about my own country's struggles post colonization. But if it completely ended there, I don't think it would have been anything but depressing.

Instead, Dossoles Holiday ended with Ch'en bringing Ernesto and Rafaela back with her to Rhodes Island. Yes, their father is in jail, their family has been publicly disgraced, and they've been exiled from their home in Dossoles, but even still, they weren't wrong for wanting a better future. They weren't wrong for believing in their father's dream, even as Pancho himself saw that dream begin to partake in hypocrisy. As it currently stands, the Salas family has been defeated and can do nothing about Bolivar's political situation, but Ch'en can bring them to a place that also believes in fighting for a better future, one with the resources, staff, and knowledge to make it far more real than a set of ideals.

I think Kal'tsit doing something to make Amiya love her like a parent is too clean and neat and fairytale-like for something so critical to Arknights. Such things are reserved for the more relaxed, humorous events like Gavial the Great Chief or Heart of Surging Flame. For something like the relationships between Doctor, Kal'tsit, and Amiya, they'll stick to something messy and complicated.

I like it that way. People are complicated, and how Arknights can capture that so well is a major part of why I believe it's so good.

[sunnytastic]

ok ok I know this long overdue (but in my defense, I am a college student currently drowning in midterms and definitely not writing this while procrastinating my anthropology essay) but here it finally is: my analysis of The Lost Hero

first, I think the decision to remove percy from the first book and instead introduce three new characters was extremely necessary. we already know and love percy but by including him the first book it would have caused us to pay less attention to the new central characters. heroes of olympus is not about percy. its about seven different characters who all have different motivations and responsibilities, of which percy is one of them. by starting with different characters, it is clear from the beginning that other characters will be just as important as percy in the this series. the new characters also allowed for a more seamless shift between first person and third person rotating narration. having percy go from first person to third person without any introduction would have been too jarring and would have probably alienated a lot readers. rick was also really smart for not including percy in the first book because it generated even more anticipation and excitement for the son of neptune.

secondly, jason gets too much hate. or at least for his character in the lost hero. while the amnesia plot line is recycled with percy in the next book, I think the lost hero does it more effectively with jason. for starters, we already know percy and his history, and yes, it is still very interesting to watch percy figure out life without his memories. but jason is entirely new character, and to introduce a new character while also not being to provide a character history is a much better use of the amnesia trope. it makes the readers more invested in the character because we are also trying to piece together his past along with him.

and I think it was a very ballsy move on rick's part because amnesia in a new character means the author really has to focus on showing vs telling jason's character traits because the readers have no context to explain why he is the way he is. and I think that rick really did pull it off because it is very clear from the beginning that jason is a natural leader who knows when and how to support those on his team. especially when compared to percy whose obliviousness often prevents him from noticing when others are upset. this not to say that percy is not a caring guy, I just think jason is more observant and this helps him lead effectively.

piper is always been a really appealing character for me. her powers are more subtle than the others and one of my favorite parts of heroes of olympus is watching her develop her abilities and grow more powerful. and the daughter of aphrodite turned rebellious tomboy who could care less about her looks definitely works for her character. and I really like that despite her attempts to hide her beauty, every character still acknowledges how attractive she is. (also, piper, please, ur too good for jason. you should be with me instead <3). I can't wait to read more of piper and im especially excited to see her interact more with annabeth.

ok now on to my baby leo valdez. I would do anything to be able to wrap him in large blanket and bake him some edibles (leo high would be hilarious and I would pay so much money to see that). and I adore how rick alludes to leo having a potty mouth. it fits his character perfectly and its shame we don't get to hear him say "god damn it" or "motherfucker" every other sentence but I'll settle for little lines that imply that he does. I mean, this is a kid's book.

leo also is a very important character to me because I can relate to him on many levels. as a hispanic american with severe adhd that causes me to talk too much and results in social mistakes that when corrected, I perceive as rejection (gotta love that rejection sensitivity dysphoria). this being said, while I definitely agree that leo has adhd, I cannot ignore how heavily he is autistically-coded. His sense of isolation goes beyond his perceived social rejections. He struggles with identifying how people feel and becomes uncomfortable when he is expected to comfort him. He also mentions several times that he prefers being alone with his projects to avoid and recharge from social situations. And while he is still a son of hephaestus, he seems to be more invested and finds more meaning his work than his siblings. One could even say that it is his special interest. His creations are also the only way he connects with his peers and often relates and describes them using terms associated with machines (like abed from community with tv shows). im disappointed that rick never touches on leo's autistic traits because I don't think you can write a book celebrating neurodivergence and then not make an effort to include autistic people (especially when they are already present and just ignored)

however, as much as I love leo, the lost hero is not his best book. it might even be his worst. compared to jason and piper (especially as this book follows the development of their relationship), leo just kinda takes a backseat and doesn't show as much of the personality that I've come to love. sure, he's fixes festus but then festus almost immediately gets destroyed. and then he really only supports jason and piper as they go along their own journeys. im very much looking forward to leo take a more important role in the rest of the series and become the glue that keeps the seven running. and im very interested in watching him evolve from goofy prankster to hero who understands that the future of humanity is in his hands. in both great prophecies, the fate of the battle rests in singular choice made by a singular hero (first, percy. second, leo) but in pjo, percy only carried that weight of this responsibility for a week before it resolved. on the other hand, leo finds out at the beginning of his journey and it strongly impacts the emotional development of his character.

I honestly can't say much about the plot of the lost hero. it follows the same script as previous percy jackson books though with the uniqueness of the new characters. the characterization is what really stands out in this book but again, piper and leo still are better characters in other books in the series. overall, not a bad book, definitely necessary and a decent introduction to the series.

anyways, this is way longer than I thought it was going to be and I very desperately need to go back to my anthropology essay (seriously, its due tonight). But I did say that I would be analyzing the heroes of olympus more closely and what kinda of person would I be if I didn't keep my word. I have no idea when I will be able to finish son of neptune or when I will be posting my analysis of it but stay tuned because it is definitely coming.

oh, and one more thing, thank you for all the notes and reblogs on my posts. it truly means a lot and im happy to find more percy jackson lovers

tldr: the lost hero is a good book, jason gets too much hate, piper is amazing, leo just needs a hug and some soup, and I need to write a goddamn essay

[river-witchery]

Riverbooks Reviews: “Rituals of the Dark Moon: 13 Lunar Rites for a Magical Path” by Gail Wood

Introduction (page ix-xiii)

Let's start with a positive or two. Gail Wood is a decent writer. She is easy to read and doesn't often meander into complicated lines of thought. I have found myself enjoying the process of reading this book regardless of Wood's sometimes questionable practices and suggestions.

Wood makes it abundantly clear that she is a Wiccan, and one can assume that the book is coming from a Wiccan perspective. She also describes what she believes Wiccans to be and believe ("...the native European earth religion which includes healing, study, magic, craft, and transformation... [pg. ix, paragraph 1]" & "Wiccans believe in the energy of the moon as she courses through the sky on her visible personal journey [pg. ix, paragraph 2]."). While I am not sure that every Wiccan would agree with these assertions, it is helpful in understanding her perspective.

The Introduction (13 paragraphs) serves to introduce Wood as a position of authority on Wicca and to explain why the reader should be interested in working with the Dark (capitalization hers). She also clarifies that this is a book about ritual. There will be 13 rituals in this book to coincide with the 13 cycles of the moon in a year, each lining up with a Zodiac sign (plus 1).

Wood comes from a Christian background, similar to many people picking up this book. She positions herself as a safe and understanding authority who has known struggle and constrictive beliefs. I can't help but feel like she is trying to attract people who want to dabble in the "darker" parts of magic while still playing it safe. Wood repeatedly mentions that she is revealing secrets and mysteries, hinting towards the idea that she has knowledge that the average Wiccan would not. Even the idea of a "Dark Moon" somehow separate from the "New Moon" is an edgy, mystical sounding idea, that surely lures in many dabbling and beginner witches.

According to Wood, she has always been interested in the Dark, the macabre, horror, and Halloween. One thing she makes clear to the reader however is that the Dark is not a scary thing. It is healing and comforting, and she intends on leading the reader through it and helping them "see." She uses an analogy here, comparing walking her dogs in the dark and letting her senses adjust to the dark night to what she is going to teach in this book. It certainly seems reckless to walk dogs on a dark road without a flashlight at least, yet apparently "In the dark, it seems, it is best to go forward in the dark [pg. xiii, paragraph 12]." I don't think I have to say this, but don't be like Gail Wood folks, please practice basic road safety.

Wood never misses a chance to bring up Shamanism, comparing the exploration of the Dark to shamanic journeying into the underworld. I don't have much to say about that except that Wood's particular background makes me nervous that she is directly appropriating Indigenous Native American practices.

Overall, the Introduction is clearly made to hook readers, but it doesn't have much substance to it. Wood doesn't quite explain what the Dark Moon is, but she tries to make it clear why the reader should be interested and what it can do for them to go forward in the Dark. So far, I think that I can agree with her that there is merit in understanding the unknown and becoming comfortable with it, but that is where our beliefs diverge. Wood hasn't given me any new or interesting ideas to chew on yet, but I certainly hope she does as the book goes on.

Author Study

Introduction (You Are Here)

[him-e]

Do you think we'll get another canon enemies to lovers romance in popular and mainstream media? Most etl ships are non-canon and/or from media that doesn't reach the masses like SW. I honestly can't think of any etl ships that reached the level of Reylo in the past few years while being canon at the same time. I'm also curious how the discourse will change (or not) for any future etl ships.

Pre TROS, I hoped the popularity of Reylo would inspire other franchises to follow the same path for opportunistic reasons. The movie industry goes where the money is.

Now, I’m not so sure. Reylo remains pretty much the only feature of the ST that has been almost universally praised, but TROS was so bad that even the Reylo parts suffered from it, and the critical response was (understandably) lackluster compared to the deluge of enthusiastic reviews praising the chemistry and implicit eroticism of their TLJ (and even TFA) scenes.

Instead of setting a new, clear trend by showing everyone how you make an epic enemies to lovers romance for the ages, as I hoped, Disney/Lucasfilm treated Reylo with extreme indecisiveness and ambiguity. Not enough ambiguity to keep people debating and writing essays for decades on what’s the nature of the reylo dynamic (it’s clear it’s romantic), but enough ambiguity to make people wonder what was even the point of it, if all we got were a handful of rushed and showy duel scenes before a third act where, yes, they kiss, but he doesn’t get to speak a single word and she goes on with her merry life after being puzzled for half a second over his dead body vanishing. All this magnificent set up and it ended with a whimper. TROS was the third act of this romance, and when the third act is poor, it inevitably affects the perception of the thing as a whole.

I can see other franchises looking at this mess and deciding it’s not worth the fuss. That an enemies to lovers romance that is central to the plot is just too difficult to write (regardless of the reception and discourse surrounding it). Best case scenario is people---franchises, creators---taking the tangible audience frustration over the way Reylo was mishandled and turning it into a creative drive to create new stories. I certainly have more hope for indie creators going this way than I do for big western franchises. For the latter to truly embrace the enemies to lovers trope, they’d also have to a) embrace the female gaze (as opposed to opportunistic *feminist* narratives that are, ultimately, always a celebration of masculine power fantasies, just slightly tweaked to feature a character who *happens* to be female in place of the usual male hero) and b) DUMP THE AMERICAN MONOMYTH AND CALVINIST MORALITY. Doubtful this is gonna happen anytime soon in mainstream western fiction. 

There is a third way, though. It’s watching and giving our money to non-western (and specifically non-american) media. I’m sure that, for the next few years, that’s where we should look if we want to see some solid EtL. Non western fiction, independent (female) authors, possibly smaller yet potentially widely popular projects (Netflix shows, etc).

[exprimis]

Mark Steyn leads us on a Gish Gallop in the April/May 2021 issue of Imprimis. This rambling speech touches on many topics, some factually inaccurate, which the author seems bothered by theirr modern-day occurrence.

Things which I am amused that Mark Steyn does not mention:

The Internet, a marvelous mechanism whereby people can communicate to the public without having to go through the press's filter.

Social atomization and alienation of labor

Secularism

And then here's the things which I think he did get right, in which his future shock is valid:

Pandemic precautions - understandable; he wasn't alive in 1918, and even in 1918 we didn't understand disease spread.

"Transgender fanaticism" - to be fair to the author, public acknowledgement of trans people at the modern scale, and protection of their rights, is unprecedented.

Climate change, and the need to take action now to prevent harms a century from now

The long list of everything he says is unprecedented or unrecognizable will be mocked after the break:

Unequality before the law - his cited example is cops' names being released depending on whether or not the person they murdered was an acceptable target. He thinks this is new. I can't tell whether he thinks killer cops' names should or should not be released.

Accepting refugees at the border - He thinks that people who apply for asylum at the border are given an all-expenses-paid vacation until they get a court date. He doesn't acknowledge the "Remain in Mexico" policy. It's unclear whether he thinks asylum-seekers should spend more or less time waiting for a court date.

Elections which are no longer open or honest - Boss Tweed would laugh.

Conservative thinkers who are out of touch because they're still scaremongering about a "radical socialist agenda" instead of scaremongering about the real latest outrage - His latest outrage is pandemic visitation restrictions, but I'm sure that a similar fast-fashion restriction could be found for any other time in which the threat of socialism was also being discussed.

The Reader's 17yo daughter competing against someone with a biological advantage - dude must not have paid attention to his classmates in high school; there were plenty of cis girls in my school who were, quote, "[six foot two] with thighs like tugboats, a great touch of five o'clock shadow on her face, and the most muscular bosom you've ever seen", without the five o'clock shadow. Tallest person in our class was a girl. Thiccest thighs and calves was a girl.

France thinking that exported American culture and politics is a threat to their culture and politics.

Eastern European countries fearing American cultural exports.

Schools revising their curricula to teach kids about modern social issues.

The federal debt reaching new numbers - Note that he says we should not be talking about tax cuts when the deficit is this big.

America exporting its manufacturing to China, to China's economic benefit.

American allies distancing themselves from the US in response to the whims of major regional powers.

Politicians who are urgent about things that don't matter, and nonchalant about things that do matter.

The media talking about the topic of the day, rather than reminding people about all the things that are bad in the world on an ongoing basis.

"[T]he emergence of a true ruling class" defined by rootless cosmopolitanism

American politics divided by class - he raises this as a preferred framing of conflict compared to a race-based lens, but doesn't examine the ways in which class and race are correlated.

Refugees at the southern border being afforded certain privileges while they wait for asylum determinations.

Border patrol agents at different borders being concerned with different types of imports: humans on the southern border, Kinder Eggs on the northern border.

Language changing in response to standards of polite society. If he didn't see this before, he must so isolated from society that he has never encountered something as benign as linguistic drift.