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wielderofmysteries · 3 years

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Rage Against the Mage-Ring: Vryn as a Plane of Revolution

Okay, FINALLY, here’s that post about Vryn I promised. I’ve wanted to share my analysis of Vryn’s worldbuilding for a long time. Sorry if the formatting is a bit weird on Tumblr since this was originally written to be a Twitter thread but it got too long. (Word Count: ~6400 including text citations)

Also I just want to say that this is just for fun and isn’t my entire definitive take on Vryn. But I worked on it for a long time and I hope I communicated my thoughts well and I hope people enjoy it!

Vryn is the birthplace of my favorite Planeswalker, Jace Beleren. For years, Jace’s amnesia prevented any exploration of Vryn. Now that Jace has his memories back, it’s expected he will return. I take a look at what we already know, and what kind of story could unfold.

At first, my interest in Vryn had only been because of its connection to Jace, but in my obsessive reading and re-reading of Jace’s origin story, “Absent Minds”, the observations I made about Vryn pulled me in deeper and deeper.

Many planes in Magic are inspired by real-world cultures and time periods. This isn’t immediately apparent for Vryn, and it’s never been officially said if Vryn has such influences. But despite the small amount of content, I believe I’ve been able to “reverse-engineer” it.

In this post, I will examine Vryn’s worldbuilding through its parallels to the past and present of life under capitalism in America, and why I think this interpretation of Vryn would enrich Jace Beleren as a fictional character.

It’s well known that Jace was created to represent the “average Magic Player”. When people think of this aspect of Jace, they often think of the worst of Jace’s reputation. But Jace is closer to the average person than many people realize, in a way that I feel is overlooked.

I was surprised by how relevant Jace’s backstory was to my experience as an American youth. To imagine myself in a world like Ravnica or Kaladesh is escapism, but Vryn is a reflection of the world I already live in. And for that, I find it a compelling setting.

Minus the literal magic, the circumstances of Jace’s childhood on Vryn were that of a poor kid born to working parents, whose neurodivergence caused him to be bullied and struggle in school, who left everything behind to get an education, and got screwed over by the powers that be.

Jace was born on a Mage-Ring called Silmot’s Crossing to Gav Beleren, a mana miner; and Ranna Beleren, a healer. The very first thing Jace’s origin story establishes is that his family was poor, and they faced struggles in their everyday lives because of it.

Jace paused at the foot of the last flight of stairs.

His family lived most of the way up the mage-ring the locals called Silmot’s Crossing, among the collection of apartments where the poorest mana miners on the ring made their home. He and his family had to pay to take the rickety lifts or trudge up twenty-three flights of stairs every time they returned home. Money was scarce, so Jace took the stairs.

Twenty-two flights of stairs behind him. One to go.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

On a massive vertical structure like a Mage-Ring, being so poor you can’t afford elevator transportation is like having no car and not being able to take the bus. Going up and down 23 flights of stairs is hard to do once, and even harder to do every day.

Jace and his parents, in a world of wizards and flying drakes and magical artifacts, were a family who walked to work and school every day because their top financial priority was simply to have food on the table and a roof over their heads. It’s realistic, mundane, and sad.

His family’s financial circumstances led not only to physical exhaustion, but also emotional and mental strain, particularly in the relationship between Jace and his father.

Sure enough, there was his father, sitting at the kitchen table, frowning. Gav Beleren, grubby and balding, regarded Jace with little more than weariness.

I wish he was normal.

His father’s thoughts traced a familiar path.

“I got a sending from school.”

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

As all parents do, Jace’s parents wanted a better life for him. They emphasized the importance of education as the key to social mobility. It’s so crucial to his backstory that it’s brought up almost every time his parents are mentioned, even in later stories like Ixalan.

The jumble of events grew more chaotic: a man gruffly asserting that scholars belong in the cities, not here, don’t be lazy boy

[…]

“My mother—” Jace’s voice stuttered slightly, and he paused for a breath. “My mother wanted me to move to the city to be a scholar.”

(The Flood)

This is probably one of the most universally relatable aspects of Jace’s upbringing. Rich or poor, your parents have probably told you that you should try hard in school, do well, get into college, and it will make your life better. But we know it’s easier said than done.

In “Absent Minds”, Jace’s father is angry at him for allegedly cheating on a math test. The questions were too advanced for his grade level, so correct answers could only mean he cheated. In truth, Jace learned the answers through telepathy, but he was unaware of his powers.

Jace’s father wished he was “normal” and worried that his bad reports could prevent him from getting a higher education. It comforted me to see that Jace had the exact same experience I did. Any conversation about school between me and my mom could’ve been Jace and his dad.

“Mind telling me what happened?”

Jace sat. He shrugged and stared at the table.

“You don’t want to be expelled, do you? Education is your ticket out of here, to a better life.”

A better life than mine. It always came back to that.

“I know,” said Jace.

You don’t act like it.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

I’d been put in classes for the “gifted” and “advanced” my entire life, but I was a terrible student. It didn’t make sense to the adults– how could such a smart kid get such bad grades? How could a kid who knew all the answers fail to do the easy parts right?

Born an extraordinarily talented mind-mage, Jace struggled academically due to not understanding his telepathy. I always felt that was similar to how I struggled with severe mental illness and didn’t know what was “wrong” with me until I was diagnosed with autism at age 11.

The parallel between Jace’s telepathy and my neurodivergence isn’t a coincidence. I had the opportunity to talk to the author of Jace’s origin story, Kelly Digges, and he told me that he’d based Jace’s story off of his own experience growing up with ADHD.

When I wrote Jace’s origin, I was drawing on my own experiences of being a “gifted” kid with ADHD–knowing things without being able to explain how I knew them, feeling like a freak, feeling isolated from both well-meaning family and other kids who seemed like space aliens to me. And some of Jace’s quirks, like disliking touch and not making eye contact, are not mine–they’re just things that felt right for him.

(Kelly Digges)

It’s worth noting that the kind of math Jace learns at school is the same kind of math the mana miners do. It seems to imply that his grade school education was preparing him for the kind of work his father did– the fate his father wanted him to escape.

If Jace had excelled in school, it likely would have made him a prime candidate to stay on the Mage-Ring and become an operator, not for him to become a scholar. Vryn wants to appear as an academic meritocracy, but truthfully, the system never really wanted him to leave.

Jace was intelligent, but his failure to comply and conform made him an anomaly in the eyes of the system. It reminded me of how disabled and neurodivergent people in real life are often seen as lesser because we can’t contribute to capitalism the way the system wants us to.

Jace’s strangeness also made him a victim of merciless bullying. Although his parents knew he was getting hurt, they were unable to seek help for their son and intervene on his behalf.

Mental illness, disability, and bullying make it incredibly difficult to do well in school even with support, and Jace had none. It’s understandable, then, that when Jace finally got the opportunity to leave home and get a better education, it would not be because of his grades.

His true nature as a telepath was discovered after an incident in which a bully tried to kill Jace for reading his mind. Another of his bullies was unintentionally put into a coma after Jace mind-controlled him to save himself.

This incident caught the attention of the sphinx Alhammarret, an arbiter negotiating peace between the two factions in Vryn’s civil war. Alhammarret made an offer to Jace’s family: by becoming his apprentice, Jace would get an education and have a better life.

“So if I’m casting spells, then…you’re here to make me stop?”

Alhammarret smiled. “No. I want to train you, so you do not have to.”

“Train me where?” Jace glanced back at his parents. “Here?”

“No,” said Alhammarret. “The chance to train a promising mind mage is rare, but not so rare that I can abandon my other duties. You would come with me, as my apprentice.”

“For how long?”

“Years.”

The suspicious looks, the whispers, the fear. He could leave it all behind—along with his parents’ love and support.

“Do they know what you’re proposing?” he asked.

“I’ve spoken with them about it, yes. They want what’s best for you. And in this case, what’s best is to get you out of this provincial backwater so you can grow to your true potential. Yours is a rare gift. Don’t squander it here.”

Jace looked back at his parents again. His mother nodded encouragement. His father at least must be relieved. Education is your ticket out of here.

Jace didn’t bother turning back to Alhammarret.

“I’m ready,” he said.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

Jace, like many poor youth in the real world, was given the opportunity to escape poverty not because he had outstanding academic performance, but because he had an outstanding ability that The Powers That Be sought to exploit.

I was born in 2000, and like Jace, war has been a constant in my life. When I wrote this, the US had been in the same war for so long that babies born after the war began are now adults old enough to enlist. It’s crazy. I wondered if Jace and his peers felt the same way.

Because of this especially American connection, I saw another parallel in Jace’s story. Alhammarret’s offer to Jace reminded me of the way things like college and insurance, which should be available to everyone, are used as incentives to get people to join the military.

Jace was a poor kid whose parents struggled to provide for him and they were worried about his future. They saw him going nowhere in life if he stayed home, so for Jace to leave seemed like the best option. But Jace didn’t realize it wasn’t worth it until it was too late.

Everything Jace hoped to gain would come at the cost of his freedom.

As an arbiter of the war, Jace believed that his work with Alhammarret would be to negotiate peace. In truth, Alhammarret was a war profiteer who saw Jace not as a student to teach, but as a tool to be used.

From ages 13 to 15, Jace trained under Alhammarret as a child spy, infiltrating military camps to gather information that Alhammarret could use during diplomatic meetings.

Jace eventually discovered that his intel missions hadn’t been for peace negotiations at all. He’d played both sides, sold secrets to the Ampryn and Trovian militaries on behalf of Alhammarret, who pocketed the money.

“Positive,” said the hooded figure. “Has our source ever misled you before?”

“No,” he said. “Nor the renegades, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” said the figure. “When your business is information, reputation is everything.”

“Of course,” he said.

The hooded man—boy, really, lanky and cocksure—knew much more than he was willing to tell…like the identity of this source. For the good of the Ampryn, he ought to seize the young man, torture the name of this source out of him, and….

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said the kid. “He doesn’t tell me much.” The boy’s eyes glinted beneath the hood.

“Fine,” he said. “Take your payment and go. And tell your source there’s more where that came from, any time he has intel.”

“I’ll tell him,” said the kid. He pocketed the money and turned, and the general caught a glimpse of his face….

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

Jace’s planeswalker spark ignited several times, but Alhammarret was always able to pull Jace back to Vryn and erase his memory so he could continue to exploit him.

He had been stripped of his autonomy and trapped, knowing any attempts to leave or expose Alhammarret’s wrongdoing would put his life in danger. Jace was only able to escape his fate when he killed Alhammarret and his spark ignited once more, sending him to Ravnica with his memories erased.

==========

The unfortunate circumstances of Jace’s childhood are so relevant to real life because the struggles of the working poor and the disparity between classes are not simply present in Jace’s past, but are inherent and essential features of Vryn’s worldbuilding.

Vryn’s core identity is built around a system in which laborers extract and transport a valuable natural resource for the use of the ruling class.

Vryn’s parallels to industrial America are rooted in the Mage-Ring Network. It acts as a system of artificial leylines, transporting mana from across the continent to the Core States for use by the mage elites. It’s no mistake that Mage-Rings are lands, not artifacts.

Vryn’s most salient feature is its network of mage-rings, enormous structures that channel mana from the outlying areas to the politically powerful Core States. The age and origin of the plane’s mage-rings are unknown, and many are in disrepair.

(The Worlds of Magic Origins)

Mage-Rings don’t do anything on their own. They are structures, but not machines. The transportation of mana is achieved through the work of mana miners (also called ring-mages) who use their magical skills to stabilize the mana stream.

Jace grew up as a “ringer,” one of the inhabitants of the mage-rings. Large numbers of ring-mages are required to manage incoming mana pulses, which can arrive at any hour of the day or night. Jace’s father was a ring-mage, and his mother was a healer whose skills were put to heavy use in the dangerous environment of the ring.

(The Worlds of Magic Origins)

The Ampryn League is Vryn’s apparent ruling faction, and usually control the Mage-Ring network. They are entirely dependent on the Ringers for mana, but they don’t give back nearly as much as the Ringers deserve.

The Ampryn League, also called the Ampryn Core or the Core States, is the ascendant faction on Vryn. Situated at the nexus of the mage-ring network, they have access to a continent’s worth of mana and bountiful mundane resources.

(The Worlds of Magic Origins)

In the Core States, elite mage-scholars use the mana for their magical academic research, none of which benefits the Ringers in any apparent way. On the Mage-Rings, Ringers live downtrodden lives and don’t get to use any of the precious mana they work 24/7 to process.

‘The Worlds of Magic Origins’ describes Vryn as “An embattled plane where rival factions fight for control of the enormous, mana-channeling mage rings.” While the Ampryn-Trovian war is Vryn’s largest violent conflict, the war itself is largely pointless.

The Trovian Separatists have been at war with the Ampryn League for decades, but they have no interest in the wellbeing of the Ringers, either. Although the Trovian Separatists are presented as a rebel faction, their goal is actually the same.

The Trovian Separatists are the rebel faction on Vryn. In theory, they fight for political independence from the Ampryn League. In practice, the fight largely revolves around who can seize control of contested strings of mage-rings.

(The Worlds of Magic Origins)

Both sides want to exploit the Ringers. While it’s still unknown why the Trovians split from the Ampryn League and the war started, the outcome of who ends up controlling the Mage-Ring Network will ultimately make no difference in the Ringers’ lives.

“The war is a generation old,” said Alhammarret. “The arbiters negotiate a peace every few years, when both sides are exhausted enough to want it. Then one side breaks the truce, and the war continues. We don’t even bother with permanent peace anymore—it’s simpler, and fairer, if both sides know from the outset when hostilities will resume.”

“Why not let one side win?” asked Jace.

“The Ampryn and the Trovians fight for control of the Core,” the sphinx said. “But only one of them holds it at any given time, and that side reaps the benefits of the mage-ring network. So why are the mage-rings unharmed? Why, when the Ampryn hold the Core, do the Trovians not destroy the mage-rings to deny the Ampryn their power source?”

Jace had never thought about that. “Because…Because they think they can take the Core, and they want the mage-rings intact for their own use when they do.”

“Precisely,” said Alhammarret. “And as long as each side thinks it can win, that balance holds, and the mage-rings stand. Cities are abandoned intact rather than leveled. Roads and bridges are given up, to be recaptured later. If that ever changes—if either side finds itself in existential danger—then it will destroy everything as it retreats, to deny it to the other. Civilization on Vryn might take centuries to recover—if it ever did.”

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

This aspect of Vryn especially resonated with my experience as an American youth. Having control of my life flip-flop between two factions who are opposed on the surface, but both want to maintain the status quo and use me for their own gain– is something I understand pretty well.

(Pic and quote: @lover-in-blue)

As for the Ringers, they’re too busy just trying to get by to care about the endless, pointless illusion of a war between two sides. This kind of political apathy is unfortunately widespread in real life. If neither side actually offers you a better life, why care?

Behind him, somewhere, were the enormous mana collection stations that channeled energy into the ring network. And out there, ahead of him, past the horizon, were the Core States, sitting in the middle of the ring network, gathering all the energy of an entire continent for use by the mage elite—unless the Separatists had hijacked the stream again. The ringers theoretically owed their allegiance to the Ampryn League, but they never knew who was working the receivers at any given time, and they didn’t really care. As long as the mana kept moving, nobody would bother them.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

So it doesn’t matter whether the Ampryn League or Trovian Separatists win the war. What matters is whether or not a better life is possible for the Ringers. Vryn’s true conflict isn’t its civil war, but a class war.

While the Ampryns and Trovians fight over who gets to exploit the civilian workforce, people like Alhammarret make sure the war keeps going so they continue to profit. It’s unlikely that either side could ever actually win the war and end it.

What would upset the endless stalemate would be for the Ringers, on whose labor both sides are dependent on for power, to rise up against them. The entire war is dependent on the Ampryn League and Trovian Separatists’ assumption that the Ringers will continue to comply.

But if the Ringers realize it’s they who truly control the Mage-Ring Network, the Ampryn League and Trovian Separatists will be brought to their knees. A concentrated effort by the Ringers to take back their lives would turn the entire system on its head.

==========

This is why I believe Vryn is the perfect plane for a labor rights era America-inspired Magic setting.

One of my favorite quotes from “The Flood” calls Vryn a “gritty frontier on the edge of civilization”, invoking the idealized historical depictions of North America– a land of pioneers and survivors, of industry and promise.

This place was Vraska’s kind of beautiful. A gritty frontier on the edge of civilization. She knew without a doubt that this was Jace’s home plane.

(The Flood)

And to the men in charge, the industry bosses, a land whose natural beauty and richness could be conquered and bled dry for every last penny.

I once heard Vryn called the “Rust Belt of the Multiverse”, and labor rights was always my favorite unit in American History class, so the usage of the term “mana miners” in Jace’s origin made me think of Appalachian coal mining communities of the early 20th century.

I got to interview my friend’s stepfather, a real coal miner from West Virginia. I asked him to tell me a bit about the history of coal mining in the area, and what those historic mining communities were like. I was immediately able to see the parallels.

“Back when they started mining –mainly for making coke out of the coal to burn to make steel up in Pennsylvania and Ohio– the people, they started mining using different methods, mainly pick-and-shovels. Lived in small towns where the companies paid them like–”

“Oh, like scrip?”

“Basically yeah, like chips– basic company store money. So they paid them, but their wages were horrible, so they didn’t make enough money to be able to ever save money to leave the area to start another job and try to find something different. It was just enough to provide housing and food.”

(Interview)

The companies that controlled coal mining towns trapped miners and their families by preventing saving and accumulation of wealth. In these towns, miners had places to live and shops to buy necessities, but were barely livable.

When the company owned the homes that miners and their families lived in, eviction was a constant threat. It was also common practice for mining companies to allow miners to buy from company stores using company scrip instead of paying their cash wages.

(Source: User “Cdhicks” on Wikimedia Commons, edited to fit Tumblr page. Link to CC license.)

Paying miners scrip that was only good in company stores meant miners couldn’t move out and start new lives, as their “money” was not good elsewhere.

Ironically, miners often ended up owing debts to the company, rather than the other way around, because they were forced to buy from the company store, where prices for goods were often much higher than normal.

The structure of Mage-Ring society parallels that of historic mining towns. Each Mage-Ring is not only a conduit for magical energy (the mine), but also a community; a self-contained town in which mana miners, their families, and people who support them live and work.

It’s unknown whether Ringers are paid the equivalent of real money or company scrip, but the extreme physical isolation and self-contained nature of the Mage-Rings mirrors the economic isolation of those coal mining towns.

Mage-Rings can be dozens of miles apart, with no settlements in between. And some, like those built on waterfalls, are literally impossible to leave. If one were to be evicted from their home on a Mage-Ring, they would have nowhere to go. You couldn’t choose not to work for them.

Ringers are limited to the resources within their Mage-Ring and don’t have access to outside alternatives. They, like miners and their families in real life, stayed in their towns because they were the only places they could live and be employed.

Keeping miners and their families trapped made it easier for mining companies to exploit and abuse miners. In company towns, housing and sanitation were often poor quality. In the mines, miners suffered unhealthy and dangerous work conditions.

Miners were in danger of falling objects, tunnel collapse, and illnesses due to inhaling toxic dust and fumes. Even the furnace ventilation systems that supplied miners with air risked igniting scaffolding and flammable gases, causing instant suffocation or even explosions.

Working deep underground has inherent dangers, but in an era without safety and health regulations, preventable injuries and deaths were common. Unsafe practices could lead to major disasters, resulting in the deaths of dozens or even hundreds of people at once.

Conditions for Ringers don’t seem quite so horrific (thankfully), but those who live and work on Mage-Rings face their own set of hazards. “The Worlds of Magic Origins” notes that Mage-Rings are a dangerous environment.

The odd shape and height of Mage-Rings means there’s a much higher risk of people falling from a Mage-Ring than from an ordinary building. Jace’s origin story states that most who do are caught, but those who don’t get rescued fall hundreds of feet to their deaths.

Towering above him was the hoop of the guide ring, easily forty feet across but miniscule in comparison to the ring itself. He walked carefully down the curved plating and sat near the edge on the windward side. Vertigo overtook him and he savored it, one feeling at least that he could be sure was his own. It happened, occasionally, that people fell, and usually somebody caught them. Usually.

[…]

Below him, the mana stream hummed. If he fell in, he didn’t know what would happen. The mana potential of hundreds of acres of territory, captured and channeled into a single beam…he’d probably be vaporized.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

Art shows great variance in the build quality of Mage-Rings. Some are better, but most show their age, seeming to be built from spare parts and trailer homes. It’s obvious they’re not well maintained– entire rings are colored with rust, and exposed scaffolding is common.

Some rings are missing large sections as a result of the ongoing war. Such damage would, at the very least, cause a great loss of homes and livelihood, if not a great loss of life.

They stopped at night, and Alhammarret arranged lodgings in the effectively neutral confines of a mage-ring. It was different than Jace’s home ring—bigger, and recently repaired. Neither side wanted to harm the rings, but collateral damage was inevitable.

(Jace’s Origin: Absent Minds)

Coal mining has always been dangerous, but annual coal mining deaths in the US have dropped drastically over the past 100 years, falling from a peak of 3,242 deaths in 1907 to just 12 in 2019. That’s a decline of roughly 476 deaths of every 100,000 workers to 14 of 100,000.

So what changed? In my interview, my friend’s stepfather talked about how coal miners in the late 1800s and early 1900s, supported by unions, fought for their rights in strikes and armed conflicts known as the Coal Wars.

“There was no limit on hours, there was no unions or anything, so that’s why the unions got started in the early 20s, 30s where they had the marches. That’s where the term "rednecks” came from, because they had red collars. Well they tried to start unionizing for better wages, better conditions, less hours. It has helped. I’m not for a union anymore, but y'know, originally that’s why the wages are the way they are today, and the conditions are better. “

"So things have gotten better, safety-wise and condition-wise?”

“Yeah a lot better. You try to keep in mind that the laws were written because of blood. Someone was killed because they did something.”

(Interview)

Labor organization was violently suppressed by mining companies, who hired private guard agencies and local police to break strikes and threaten or even murder labor organizers. Miners could be fired, evicted, and jailed for striking or being a union member.

One of the most notable conflicts was the Battle of Blair Mountain. (Check out this interactive history page by the National Park service.) In 1921, up to 10,000 West Virgina coal miners marched from Marmet to Mingo County, ending in a clash against Logan County’s anti-union sheriff and his civilian army.

The battle lasted for nine days, and ended when the union miners surrendered to the US army, who arrived to end the conflict. It was the largest insurrection in the US since the Civil war.

The government was resistant to supporting any industry’s labor movements in the early 1900s, but miners and other laborers continued to make their struggles known and fight for their rights for decades, eventually achieving the safety legislation and pay raises they needed.

It’s clear that wages and safety conditions for Ringers on Vryn at the time of Jace’s origin story were poor, and due to the perpetuity of the civil war on Vryn, it’s unlikely that things have improved much since, if at all.

Fortunately, fiction means we can always imagine better worlds and happy endings.

What I would like to see when Jace finally returns to Vryn is for him to help an uprising of workers to liberate the Mage-Rings. All throughout Jace’s childhood, his parents told him that they wanted a better life for him, but a better life is still possible for them, too.

I think Vryn being a US labor rights history-inspired setting creates a fitting conflict for Vryn’s story and worldbuilding, and would be good for Jace as a character. (Also, I think it’s the perfect opportunity for Vraska, queen of the downtrodden, to tag along.)

==========

Why do I think this kind of story would be good for Jace as a character? Jace has finally remembered his past, but he hasn’t confronted it yet.

Despite his good intentions, Jace unfortunately neglected his duties as the Living Guildpact during his time with the Gatewatch. When he decided to step up, it was already too late. He never got the chance to do right by his second home plane, Ravnica.

Returning to Vryn gives Jace another chance. What I find especially interesting about the idea of Jace assisting an uprising of the lower class on Vryn is the contrast it would have to the life he lived on Ravnica as an adult.

In Agents of Artifice, Jace got rich as a teen by extorting the wealthy. He later joined the Infinite Consortium, a lucrative interplanar crime syndicate controlled by the planeswalker Tezzeret. Throughout the book, the main characters’ classism is a recurring topic.

“… know it’s a good amount of gold,” Kallist was saying as they left the flat behind them the following afternoon. “I just don’t think we should rely on it.”

Jace shrugged. “Maybe not,” he said, only somewhat paying attention. “But,” he added, looking meaningfully at the streets and buildings around them, “what we have should go an awfully long way.”

“Emphasis,” Kallist said, glaring at the squat, unimpressive buildings and thinking back to his luxurious quarters in the complex, “on the awfully.”

They moved through the crowds, struggling to fit into a community where they clearly did not. The volume was jarring, but no worse than Dravhoc’s marketplace; Jace easily tuned it out. But he found the middle-class styles garish and the drab garb of the poorer folk depressing. It wasn’t that he particularly felt superior to them (he told himself); it was just that he didn’t belong.

(Agents of Artifice)

Jace still retains his incredible wealth, long after the events of Agents of Artifice. He’s become so disconnected from his roots because he’s been away from Vryn for almost half of his life now. I think Jace’s return to Vryn should have him re-evaluating his own classism.

I asked my friend’s stepfather if he felt like coal miners are respected, and it’s clear from his response that negative stereotypes about people from coal mining communities and others like them have persisted.

“Do you feel like miners/mining are respected?”

“I think it depends on where you’re at. Like around this area, yeah I think so. Because peoples’ [family members] are either in the mines, around the mines, do something not necessarily in the mines but they support the mines. They say for every one miner there’s seven other people that work in an alternate job that supports them.

I had the girls one time in D.C. we were talking to these people on the rail system out there sightseeing, nice as could be to us and then suddenly they said, 'What do you do for a living?’ And they were kinda– they stop talking to you, going 'Oh, you’re one of those people.’ So as soon as they find out, they just cold shoulder you. I mean they literally just turned around and walked away from us, and wouldn’t speak to us after that.”

(Interview)

Honestly, as a kid from a California suburb, I can’t speak for people from the Rust Belt. But I am sick and tired of wealthier people dismissing people from places like the Rust Belt as just hicks and hillbillies, or some other.

The lower classes get shut out– they’re seen as lazy because they don’t work the same jobs the elites do. They’re seen as stupid because they don’t have the same education the elites do. But they’re just as smart and hard-working, often more.

Jace’s father studied to become a mana miner, and his mother was constantly studying as a healer, sharing her love of learning with Jace, and they were both worked to the bone. They were skilled and intelligent people, but their knowledge was undervalued in their society

I think it’s significant for a Planeswalker characterized by his deep love of learning and his desire to help others to have come from the Rust Belt of the Multiverse, especially when people from the real Rust Belt are often unfairly regarded as unintelligent.

Their experiences are valuable in the varied and diverse world we live in. We’ll always have more to learn from different people, from different places and backgrounds.

At the end of the interview, I asked my friend’s stepfather if he has anything to say about the future of young people in coal mining communities. I thought his response was interesting.

“Is there anything else you wanted to add on the record that we didn’t cover?”

“Go to college.”

“Go to college? You think it’s important for people to try to get out and do something else that isn’t coal mining?”

“I mean, yeah. I was told when I first started in the mines that it was a dying industry. Y'know, it has dropped a lot. You have a lot less miners. A lot of guys have been laid off over the years. So yeah, I don’t encourage my kids to go into the mines. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. We got a lot of young kids that work here. And you always tell them, 'Go to college, go to college.’ And going to college ain’t for everyone. Working in the mines isn’t for everyone. But, y'know, it is a job that, at the end of the day you go home and you’re tired, you’re hurt and you get banged around. I’ve had my thumb cut off, I’ve had my ribs broken twice, I’ve been electrocuted. That’s what it comes down to– every law was written in blood.”

(Interview)

Access to higher education and new career paths is important. They should be available to everyone. But there will always be the local jobs, the hard jobs, the essential jobs that people need to do. When the students have moved away, what happens to the people who stay behind?

In real life, it’s a known issue that young people from areas like the Rust Belt, who go to college and move to big cities, often don’t come back to their hometowns. So many people leave over time that their communities become stagnant and are eventually left to rot.

So I think it would also be significant for Jace, who became a scholar and moved to a big city like his parents wanted, to actually return to his hometown to help uplift the community. I would love to see Jace breaking that cycle in his story.

The nature of planeswalker sparks means many planeswalkers flee from a traumatic past they want to forget. Jace was one of those planeswalkers, so for Jace to see that his humble beginnings aren’t something to be ashamed of would be kind of refreshing.

I want Jace to share what he’s gained from his travels. I want him to see that his home plane is worth fighting for, worth keeping alive for the sake of the people who can’t leave. I want him to make sure that no kid or their family has to go through what he did on Vryn.

While I chose the early 20th century US as the basis for Vryn as a Magic setting, the conflict is still very relevant to the world of today. These days, people of all ages and backgrounds are still struggling to get by.

A story that reflects the struggles people had and are still having in the real world should show that we need to have hope for our communities. We need to support each other and make our voices heard. We need to stand together to fight for our dignity and our right to live decent lives.

Jace believes that people are the choices they make. He believes things can always change for the better if people choose to do good. That people are not bound to their pasts, but are responsible for their own futures. I can’t wait to see what kind of future he’ll create from a childhood that smells like wet concrete, has patched-up walls, and a tin roof that rattles when it rains.

#mtg #magic the gathering #jace beleren #magic origins #vryn #magic story #literature #analysis

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maybe-homestuck-now-or-something · 3 years

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I really wanna talk about homestuck in relation to this post but like, idk if I wanna add to it because it might be a total derailment of the topic but homestuck is such a weird apocalypse narrative.

like... the way it handles it is so odd because earth itself is not very well characterized before the characters leave it. the characters themselves are massively well characterized, and that takes up the bulk of the narrative, but like... we never even hear them talk about school? or much of anything more than their shared interests and what's immediately happening to them. and in a way, that is kind of authentic. because when kids get together to hang out, the last thing they ever wanna talk about is dry, boring stuff about their mundane lives. they'll mostly just yell memes at each other, talk about anime, play video games... it's possible to simultaneously know nothing about your friends, but feel closer to them than ever, because you're mostly around for the parts of their life that they want to experience when they're having the most fun. you see them as they are when they have the most agency to choose that. and that might be totally divorced from the reality of how their day-to-day life unfolds.

in this way, homestuck presents these characters as people who have shed that mundane portion of their lives. they are now left with only the part that they typically share with their friends. and in reality, if a SBURB type apocalypse were to literally happen to you, it'd be traumatic as hell. but this is the place where homestuck chooses to ask you to suspend your disbelief. let's just believe that John didn't have any other friends or family to think about when the world ended. let's pretend they left zero people of any interest whatsoever behind. all they are shaking off is the society that they were obligated to participate in so mundanely. they no longer have to make any compromises with anyone... they get to fully center themselves.

okay, so that's obviously not entirely true... playing SBURB is a cooperative experience, and being friends with someone doesn't always mean that your relationship is easy. but homestuck allows the narrative to become self centered. it's about one individual and the tiny sphere of influence they have, among solely the people they've developed meaningful bonds with. it allows them to become a case study.

so when the world ends, the world is not necessarily what matters. what matters is the identities of a few specific individuals who we spend a lot of time cultivating our own connections with as a reader.

and that all becomes incredibly interesting when you consider classes and aspects.

basically, in terms of the post linked above, classes and aspects are the harry potter houses, the factions, the "what bender are you" or MBTI type... they're not the only way you could categorize the characters, but they're the most universally applicable to all of the characters that are important in the narrative. and what's interesting is just like... what classes are for, and how complicated it actually is to know what aspects are, or what they mean.

starting with classes, these are basically a series of archetypes that are specialized so that everyone has a role to play that makes them uniquely valuable to a collective. if we're considering this in terms of DnD, you can think of what classes might make for a balanced party, and how having a balanced party makes it satisfying to play the game. no one player could handle everything on their own, and at the same time, everyone feels needed. nobody is useless.

this already seems fundamentally different from some of the means of categorization that I listed above. a lot of these systems are meant to divvy up the characters into societally recognized in-groups and out-groups... people who can be identified as allies or enemies. even if the groups are ascribed certain archetypal skills, the goal is rarely so explicitly for the archetypes to work together, or cover each other's weaknesses. Avatar is probably what comes the closest to this idea, with its underlying endeavor to find harmony between the elements, but homestuck uses classes both as a way to communicate unique specialization, and as a way to unify the characters by their need for support.

and that's a little weird isn't it? these characters just shed all of their obligations to a broader society, and we're taking that as a freeing event... right? but there is a difference between society and community, and while homestuck might use the destruction of society as a catalyst for adventure, it uses the formation of community as the driving force behind the story's progression. the characters are all motivated to work together and help each other... and that doesn't always mean that it works. even within a community, one person's drive to center themselves and their own personal growth can trample others who were trying to do the same thing. perhaps not everyone in the community consents to being cooperative. perhaps the difference in archetype could drive someone to become competitive instead. and these are all value-neutral observations... no archetype is specifically acknowledged as being evil, even when they have friction with one another.

basically... this is character writing. and I find it funny that these broad categories that kids like to identify themselves with are seen as ways of flattening characterization into broad strokes like "the brave one" or "the sneaky one" or what have you, because in the case of classes, the characterization becomes deeper. and I think that's because the categories are used well... the characters all have specific relationships with the stereotypes they're ascribed by others, and the archetypes they're told they must fulfill. the classes don't define them, but they do give them something to contend with. can they fulfill their role? can they live up to their purpose? is there a place in the story for someone with an archetype like theirs? do they want to be this?

aspects get even trickier, and for this I might just link to a video I really love that covers a lot of the thoughts I've been having. it's kind of front loaded with a lot of technical talk about computer science and philosophy, and tbh I love that homestuck does actually link up those concepts with so much of it's presentation, but the main bit that intrigues me is the way the video talks about aspects as irreducible components of thought. like the periodic table of elements, but for ideas.

this drastically elevates the importance of each character's assigned category, and makes it function so much better as a tool for characterization. because, like, the aspects are actually really abstract. when someone says their aspect is "wind" or "light" you could take that 100% literally if you wanted to... but by the time you've read enough of homestuck to connect those to John and Rose, you probably understand that it's not that simple. and other concepts, such as astrology, have taught you that this is the sort of system that you're supposed to interpret, right? what is a capricorn if not a loose collection of traits that give you a certain vibe? that's what we're working with when it comes to aspects. otherwise, how would you know what void, or doom, or mind are? tbh it's actually pretty genius that astrology was worked into the comic as an aesthetic element, just so we'd all be mentally primed to do this kind of categorical interpretation... hell, even the actual signs themselves constitute a framework with which you could analyze the characters, like, how does Nepeta display typical leo traits, or how is Vriska a stereotypical scorpio... it all still works, even as you understand that each individual is more complex than the traits which support that interpretation.

in this way, the aspects are never really explained exhaustively verbatim, and are almost solely defined by the traits you've observed from individual characters, who act as representatives for what these categories actually are. or at least how they function in this instance, which is what's relevant. it's not just superpowers, and it's not just archetypes... it's both at the same time, and you come at them from a character-first perspective when you're trying to figure out what they mean. the characters inform your knowledge of the categories, and the categories act as a framework for analyzing the characters. and I love how homestuck tricks you into assuming that it has a lot of little rigid categories for the characters to slot into, and how quickly it becomes apparent that everything is way more abstract than it first appears. and yet, it all still means something. and it's really interesting to, say, compare two different time players to try to piece together what is typical for that archetype, while also accounting for their class, and trying to understand how that changes the roles they play and the ways they behave. and then you have the trolls' caste system on top of that, and the astrology angle I mentioned earlier, and there are honestly so many overlapping ways to think about it all, and I think that's the point.

#homestuck #classpect #my rant

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grimmradiance · 3 years

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Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

#hollow knight #hk #the pure vessel #the pale king #the radiance #my meta #the higher being speaks #i hate fact-checking my abuse infodumps because the ableism against personality disorders is EVERYWHERE #but here this monster of an essay is #anyways the hollow knight as a character sniped my trauma on sight #so i may be a tiny bit biased here But Also I'm Right #abuse //#child abuse //#emotional abuse //#i legit do not know what tags to throw on this #also the overarching title is a reference to the song of the same name from just shapes and beats because. yeah

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Do you ever feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill defending characters against the same whole-hearted misinformation that keeps getting repeated again & again as if it's canon? I tried 4 times in a chat thread where people kept insisting that Dick Grayson and even the Teen Titans were jerks to Jason Todd when he was Robin. I don't know how you do it. No matter what you say, it just keeps going. No canon is ever enough. Why are some fans so set on the idea that everyone ostracized Jason?

Ooof yeah, that’s a whole barrel of annoying. The big gripe for me, in both my major fandoms, is that so much of the misinformation comes paired with this contradictory insistence on how much people don’t give a fuck about canon.....even while willfully trying to reinvent canon to say what they want it to say, in order to back up their version of events or take on various characters!

Its like, if you don’t give a fuck about canon, THEN DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT CANON. Don’t TELL me you don’t give a fuck about canon, and then GO OFF on how canon does all these things that canon most definitely does not do, thereby casting MUCH MUCH doubt upon your claims of not giving a fuck about canon, and suggesting that in fact, you do give quite a bit of fucks about canon, actually.

Y’know?

fahsklfhalfhkafl

But honestly, I’m not the person to give advice on this front because oof, I make bad choices here. LOLOLOL, no but for real, I can’t really tell you how to just deal with this because I’m like, I do not have mastery of that skillset myself. I have however long since exhausted myself of any illusions about CHANGING the minds of people who are particularly insistent upon things that never happened informing their particular view of characters, because like.....the reality is, people who come into fandoms emotionally invested in views of characters that they derived from other fics or fanons, like......it doesn’t matter that those things aren’t canon, what matters is their emotional investment in this particular fandom is entirely bound up in those particular views no matter WHERE they originated from, and so most of them aren’t changing their minds any time soon because they don’t WANT another viewpoint, their original one is the reason they’re here and invested in the first place.

BUT at the same time, everybody wants to feel validated in their viewpoints, so the more that viewpoint is challenged by people being like uh no, here’s a thing that says you’re wrong, look, its here, its clear, the facts say shhhhhh the marketing campaign for all the Hateorade you’ve drunk about this character is based entirely on The Sky Is Green If We Say It Is logic.....the more people are like, determined to prove they’re right, even if their own personal conviction ORIGINALLY was not dependent on canon whatsoever and it only retroactively started mattering to them not as a source point for how they view characters but like, rather, a data point for Here’s How I Can Still Win This Argument.

And here’s where being in a comics fandom gets really fucking annoying:

Because there are so damn many comics.

And like, a lot of people in comics fandoms don’t even read the comics, and say so - and I mean, this is fine? If you’re here for the characters you don’t need to be here for the comics, so if you don’t actually like comics, like don’t read the comics, just read fic. Its whatever. BUT the bigger issue in my experience is like.....people arguing about comics canon even when they haven’t read the comics, like....often project onto everyone they’re arguing with, like, their own stance on comics.

What I mean by that is a lot of the people arguing about comics canon even when they proudly haven’t read a comic in their life because there are so many where would they even start and also, eww, I’m not doing all that.....like....there’s this presumption evident in a lot of arguments that the same holds true for everyone else in comics fandoms.....that none of the rest of us have read all those comics either, because how could anyone? There’s so many of them!

Forgetting of course, that many of us come into these fandoms from entirely different trajectories. If you come into a comics fandom because of fanfics, or a cartoon adaptation, or the movies.....upon your first day in fandom, when you look at all the comics canon that’s out there, you’re like holy shit that’s a lot, nobody could ever read all that, I’m certainly not going to read all that, I’m going back to fics.

BUT for those of us who came into these fandoms from the direction of reading the comics......our perspective was entirely different, because it was never some singular monolithic VASTNESS of unread comics that nobody could ever tackle because where would we even begin. For those of us who were reading comics for years or most of our lives......its been a handful of issues a month, month after month, year after year, rather than all in one sitting.

So the point of conflict becomes the presumption from a lot of fans who AREN’T here because of the comics, that comic book canon is this untapped cornucopia of potential validation, Schrodinger’s Canon, it can be basically whatever they want it to be, because who’s to say it ISN’T? If they can’t read all of that, nobody can read all of that, so when you think about it, its entirely plausible that the thing they insist happened in canon actually DID happen in canon, SOMEWHERE in all of that.....because just because they don’t know where it is and can’t point to it as explicitly existing, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist either. Who’s to say, really?

Well. Umm. People who in fact actually HAVE read all or most of the RELEVANT comics. Like yeah nobody’s read every comic ever I bet, lolol, but for lifelong DC readers, canon ISN’T this vast uncharted territory that can potentially contain everything.....its actually quite charted, and there are people who absolutely do know what it does and does not contain.

And this I think is at the heart of the insistence on particular points of argument, like Jason was always perpetually mistreated and Dick and the Titans hated him on sight and that’s why the Knights of the Order of Protection for the Smol Jason Bean hate Dick, because he was a giant jerkface to a little kid who never did anything to him ever. Like it doesn’t matter how much we point out that no, this did not in fact happen and is untrue, COMPLETELY, like.....people who came into fandom because of fics about Jason in which the entire perspective upon his character is uniformly, with virtually no exception, that he was scapegoated by Dick from Day One and he and Dick will always be eternally at odds because of the remnants of what a jerk and failure of a brother Dick was to him at first.......like, I feel like there’s this conviction lying underneath all those arguments, no matter how much canon they’re presented with, that there still exists out there SOMEWHERE, some untapped treasure trove of panels proving what a buttface Dick was to his first little brother, validating everything they’ve ever believed and thought ever, because look all those depictions of Dick being a giant assbutt to Jason in fics had to come from SOMEWHERE after all, didn’t they?

Well, yeah. They did come from somewhere. They came from the writers who wrote those fics that way because they either just hated Dick’s character or they were working through their own sibling angst and projected certain dynamics onto the characters or someone told them this is what things were like in the comics and they didn’t know any different or just didn’t care or a hundred million other possible reasons for why they wrote them that way with none of those reasons being Cuz Canon Said So.....and then those particular depictions caught on and multiplied fruitfully like the offspring of rabbits doing it sans contraceptives.

Because its not like “perpetual black sheep of the family so unfairly hated, so misunderstood, especially by the family’s favored son, the golden boy” is a fan favorite trope on its own, regardless of whether or not the characters said trope is applied to actually FIT that trope.

So in the end, the painful irony was not only did canon have nothing to do with that trend, canon COULD do nothing about that trend, because the reasons people turned to it, despite how often canon gets brought into it....really had nothing to do with canon.

So tbh, my personal stance these days is the best defense to fic-borne and originating views of the characters and their dynamics is NOT canon, its....more fic. Fic that presents a counter-narrative to the ones that are so often the first thing people see when they enter fandom, and thus become engrained as Truth. So that there’s at least more variety out there, because where there’s variety, there’s varied points of view, and the more people internalize THAT, that there are variations to be found in how these characters relate to each other and their shared histories......the more people have to make a CHOICE about what variations they most want to adhere to, from among the OPTIONS they’re presented with, instead of just doubling down on the first thing that clicks for them, no opposition in sight.

And if these counter “Dick’s just the worst like what an uber asshole gonna give a five star rating for Sucking At Life to that guy” fics happen to be inspired largely by canon rather than fanon like....oh no, how strange and unknowable, that’s not the Process, we’re doing it wrong but hey whatever.

But does that mean its not still frustrating as hell to see people just parroting the Dick and the Titans were mean to Jason truism as fact, especially when you know damn well its not? Hell no. That’s annoying as fuck. But don’t worry so much about trying to change peoples’ minds, I say, and instead just find people who ARE open to canon or familiar with it, and just have a good rant. Its fun!

Here, I’ll start:

UGH AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT THIS WHOLE “DICK WAS SUCH A JERK TO JASON AND THE TITANS ALL FOLLOWED HIS LEAD” CRAPOLA SUMMER SALES EVENT:

Where would that even have happened???

Like what really chuffs my chopped onions here is when people are so suuuuuuuure that the gatekeepers of comic book fandom are keeping the real juicy anti-Dick panels hidden every time they ask “Hey Siri show me proof Dick’s a jerkmonster to Jason”....because like...they’re just SO SURE these panels are out there and its like lololol but where would they even come from?

Because everybody overlooks that in proper Dickens fashion, pre-Flashpoint Jason was a Tale of Two Jasons, the pre-Crisis adorable child of sunshine and whee, and the post-Crisis I have smoker’s lung at age twelve Jason......and these two Jasons can and do and are MEANT to co-exist within the same body! They’re the same Jason, in hindsight!

See, post-Crisis Jason only existed for like, less than TWO YEARS real world time, before A Death in the Family! People have this assumption that because of how rock-solid the post-Crisis origin for him is and how solidly that’s informed his characterization and stories moving forward, like.....there was this HUGE foundation for it back in the day that was built upon.....but no! We’re talking like, less than twenty four issues IN TOTAL. Post-Crisis Jason was a drop in the bucket compared to pre-Crisis Jason.

So why then, is post-Crisis Jason so much more firmly cemented in peoples’ minds than pre-Crisis Jason even though pre-Crisis Jason had way more material written about him?

Because for once in DC’s existence, they were SMART about a retcon. They didn’t TRY to pit post-Crisis Jason versus pre-Crisis Jason and make people pick between them. Post-Crisis Jason wasn’t an attempt at overwriting pre-Crisis Jason and making it so he never existed. Instead, what they did with their limited amount of time writing post-Crisis Jason was overwrite only two stories specifically: his actual pre-Crisis origin, and how he and Dick first met....and then they let everything else from pre-Crisis stay! It just got folded IN BETWEEN Jason’s new post-Crisis origin and everything that came after that, thanks to some handy non-linear storytelling and flashbacks.

So rather than Jason having two entirely separate storylines and directions, they still kept him at just one....and his post-Crisis origin and A Death in the Family became BOOKENDS surrounding not just the twenty issues in between those two stories......but ALSO surrounding ALL the pre-Crisis issues featuring Jason.....including the times he interacted with Dick and the Titans.

And that’s why there’s no untapped treasure trove of potentially vilifying issues showcasing Dick being such a can of Jerkola to Jason.......

Because post-Crisis only amounted to a grand total of like twenty something issues.....in which Jason interacted with Dick once and only once....the issue which ends with Dick giving Jason his blessing as Robin, his costume, and his phone number to call him if he ever has any problems with Bruce.

But simultaneously, because all those pre-Crisis issues still existed, were still relevant, were still in continuity (as evidenced by Jason himself when he came back as the Red Hood and fought Tim at Titans Tower, referencing how he was briefly a Titan himself.......aka those issues in which he teamed up with the Titans, which ONLY happened before his new origin)....we similarly know that it wasn’t like Dick and Jason never had any contact after their first post-Crisis encounter....we just never saw Jason use that phone number on the page AFTER that issue (because again, there was no time before he was killed off in the comics TO engineer another on the page meet-up, like both characters were busy in unrelated stories in the course of the mere year between that issue and ADITF). BUT by the power of retcon, we do know that Jason still must have used it at some point, or else Dick reached out to him again at some later point off the page......because Dick and Jason’s easy familiarity with each other pre-Crisis STILL EXISTED AS WELL. They had a sibling relationship post-Crisis because they had a sibling relationship pre-Crisis...AND IT WAS THE SAME RELATIONSHIP.

And this is Part Two of why no untapped treasure trove of Jerk Dick and Poor Jason panels exists......because other than that one post-Crisis issue, all their other interactions hail from the pre-Crisis era....where Dick adored Jason and so did the rest of the Titans.

Jason wasn’t resentful of the Titans or scared of them or nursing grudges, he thought getting to hang out with his big brother’s friends WAS THE COOLEST FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD and you could practically see him bouncing on the page the times it happened. He glowed when Dick would ruffle his hair playfully or compliment him, and the Titans’ collective energy towards Jason was very much OH OUR FRIEND’S BABY BRO IS THE MOST ADORABLE SMALL CHILD EVER AND WE WILL PROTECT HIM WITH OUR LIVES.

Like people WILLFULLY misconstrue this one issue where Jason teamed up with the Original Titans other than Dick for a mission against Cheshire, and claim like “oh see, this is the proof that the Titans were mean to Jason because of Dick, they kept giving him shit for not being Dick and hated him for replacing Dick....” which omg noooooooooooo, that is so odiously NOT what happened in that issue. First off, NOBODY blamed Jason for replacing Dick back then, because at the time those issues were written, he DIDN’T....this was when Dick had given Robin to Jason himself, when choosing to move on as Nightwing. And even RETROACTIVELY looking at this issue in light of the retcon where Dick was fired as Robin, this STILL changes nothing about Dick and Jason’s dynamic at this particular time or how the rest of the Titans would have viewed Jason as of this issue.....because that’s where the post-Crisis issue specifically writing Dick and Jason’s new introduction to each other on the page matters so much. As now the ultimate takeaway is even while not making Jason Robin himself, this issue STILL showed Dick giving Jason his blessing.....thus maintaining and stabilizing every pre-Crisis interaction between Jason and the Titans and ensuring that this whole “they resented him on Dick’s behalf” scenario wouldn’t throw any retroactive curveballs into how they were with Jason...because now there still was no need for anything on Dick’s behalf, as far as Jason was concerned, because Dick had given his A-Ok.

So that just flat out never happened, not originally, pre-Crisis, and not even in hindsight after the post-Crisis retcons were factored in, because the HOW of the post-Crisis retcons specifically factored in an avoidance of this potential tangle.

And in fact, what DID happen in the arc where Jason teamed up with the Titans without Dick, to go up against Cheshire.......is that Donna, who was in charge of the team at the time, kept trying to defer to Jason-as-Robin, because subconsciously she was insecure about her leadership at the time and having a Robin at her side was making her think of when Dick had been in that role, and simultaneously been their leader, and thus she was trying to lean into the familiar comforts of being able to turn to a Robin for direction.

And Jason CALLED HER OUT ON THIS. Politely. And cutely. No for real it was adorable. But like, he did it with poise and self-confidence and deliberation, and SHE HEARD HIM. She snapped out of it. Jason laid out exactly what she was doing and why and Donna was like oh shit, you’re right, I HAVE been doing that. And Jason was like, and that’s not fair to me. And Donna was like no, you’re absolutely right, that isn’t fair to you, I’m sorry. And Jason’s like, I can’t be the leader here, I don’t have the experience that Dick does. But you do, and you can be the leader. And Donna was like. You’re three for three kiddo, damn you’re good at this.

AND THEN THEY WENT AND KICKED BAD GUY ASS TOGETHER AND EVERYTHING WAS HUNKY-DORY BECAUSE THE POINT OF THAT ENTIRE PLOT WAS NOT “EVERYONE IS MEAN TO POOR JASON BECAUSE DICK MADE A CONSPIRACY OF MEANNESS” IT WAS “JASON’S A KICK-ASS LITTLE GO-GETTER WHO KNOWS HIS STRENGTHS AND HIS STRENGTH IS TELLING PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE BEING DUMB AND THEY NEED TO STOP THAT.”

Okay, one caveat here. I must confess, its killing me....there is ONE Titan who was a jerk to Jason.

But uh....that Titan was Hank Hall aka Hawk. And he’s a jerk to everybody. Its kinda his superpower.

And he most certainly didn’t do it on Dick’s behalf, as Hank hates Dick and Dick hates Hank asfhilfhalfhalf. Seriously, they’re basically the hateship that ppl keep trying to make Dick and Jason into, only without the incest makes it spicy or whatever element, but like, if you’re not hung up on that and can ship people without them being related, oh no, oh woe, oh say it ain’t so, like, DickHank is the unsung hateship of dreaaaaaaaaaaams. They’re like:

Hank: As it is a day ending in y, I feel now is the perfect time to let you know, without prompting, that I hate your guts because people like you. And I hate people and everything they like, on account of people are the worst.

Dick: Well, you’re people, and you’re the worst, so that tracks.

Hank: So we’re agreed. I hate you. You hate me.....

Dick: Our hate is so in harmony.

Donna: What is even happening here and do I want to know.

Roy: In reverse order, no, probably not, and I’m not sure, but I THINK they’re getting hate married, and exchanging vows to hate each other in sickness and in health, forever and ever.

Wally: *skidding around corner* I CALL BEST MAN.

Donna: Its not a real wedding Wally.

Roy: Idk they seem pretty serious about it. Which means the best man position should be valid here, which means it should be me, because suck it West, only way you’ll ever be Dick’s best man is over my dead body.

Wally: Get ready to throw down then, Robin Hood, and just call me the Sheriff of Notachanceinhell, that best man position is MINE.

Garth: Whoa, hold up, I have an agreement IN WRITING from when we were THIRTEEN for Dick and I to be each other’s best men at our weddings, so I’m gonna need you both to stand down, I LITERALLY CALLED DIBS. Look. ITS IN WRITING.

Donna: Oh for fuck’s sake, you collective pluralization of buffoons, STOP TREATING THIS AS A REAL THING. ITS NOT A REAL THING.

Dick, eyes dead-locked on Hank: Oh this is real Donna. This is happening.

Hank, stepping forward, eyes equally locked: I have never been more serious about anything in my life.

Lilith: Sure, you’ve only both saved the world but hey why should that matter. This is definitely the real shit.

Hank: Please. I only did that to prove I could do it better than Dick could. I hate the world.

Dick: Aww, and did you cry yourself to sleep when that flopped?

Hank: Wouldn’t know. It didn’t happen.

Donna: I swear by every god on Mt. Olympus, the first one of you to say I know you are but what am I is getting flung into orbit.

Anyway. I might have gotten distracted somewhere in there. What was your question again and did I answer it? I think I did....fahlkfhaklfhalhfa.

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bidotorg · 3 years

Link

Musician, Scientist, and Activist. Meet Carlos Castaño.

My name is Carlos Castaño. I was born on April 16th, 1987 in Béjar, a small town near Salamanca (Spain). However, I’ve been living in Madrid for the last 12 years where I work as a Ph.D. scientist researching molecular biology. I love movies, books, nature, and music. I actually play the keyboard and sing in a rock band called Me Quito el Cráneo!

Turns out, I am also bisexual. This took me a lot of time to figure out and the bisexual group of COGAM (an LGBT association from Madrid) was very relevant in this process. Having a safe place where bi people could just be themselves showed me what bisexuality really was and allowed me to embrace my identity and live my life to its fullest. I started my bi activism in this group, which I am currently coordinating with other bi activists.

In time, I joined the bisexual area of FELGTB (Spanish LGBT Federation), which is one of Spain’s main LGBT organisations made of LGBT groups from all over Spain. Here, I was part of the group of bi activists coordinating FELGTB Bisexual Visibility Year in 2016, which increased bi visibility in Spain. This was the first time I came out as bisexual publicly (in national papers or TV news). It was very, very scary, but also, very rewarding in the end. At the moment I am part of the FELGTB main board, a team made of nine LGBT activists from different areas of Spain working to improve the life of LGBT people from Spain and the rest of the world.

How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?

I’ve been out for four years and a half.

The hardest person to tell was probably my mother, even though she and my father had raised me in an open-minded environment. At first, she did not understand what being bisexual was and she accepted me nonetheless. This acceptance increased when, bit by bit, I explained to her about bisexuality, bi-erasure, and so on. This made me so happy.

Who is your bi icon?

My bi icons are the Spanish bi activists that worked before me. They paved the way so my activism and my life would be much easier than it was for them. And of course, the bi activists that are currently working all over Spain to fight biphobia and increase bi visibility.

What is your greatest extravagance or indulgence?

I've got plenty of those but I would say that my greatest extravagance is that sometimes, when I am alone with my husband, we speak to each other using some sort of a made-up cat language (just using “meows”) and, oddly enough, we understand each other! It’s super weird!

As for my indulgence, I use to eat food that I like as a reward for the work that I do, so on Saturdays, after a looong week, I often eat a large dish of pasta with cheese and Lea & Perrins sauce using my mum’s recipe.

What do you like most about yourself?

I can multitask! I am a scientific researcher, a musician, a writer, and an activist. I think that’s cool… and a bit exhausting.

What was your last post on social media?

Two tweets saying how much I loved the movie Ralph Breaks the Internet and how I probably enjoyed it more than the kids that were watching it.

Where would you most like to live?

I love Madrid. I got everything I need in this city… although sometimes I miss the countryside where I grew up… but I can get to my hometown by car in less than three hours and enjoy nature.

Would you like to be famous? If so, for what?

My only ambition is to sleep eight hours a day, which I rarely do, even on weekends! I think being famous would demand less sleeping for me, so no thanks!

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you were 18?

That studying a lot, getting a degree, a master and even a Ph.D. would not necessarily get me a good job. I would tell myself “stay away from science, lad!!!”.

What are you the most grateful for today?

My family, my friends, and my husband.

If you could change any one thing about the way you were raised, what would it be?

I wouldn’t change that much. I was lucky enough that my parents always told me that I would be loved no matter who I loved. Of course, they never taught me that bisexuality was a thing, but then, they didn’t know!

If you could wake up tomorrow with one new quality or skill, what would you choose?

I would love to have the ability to sleep whenever I wanted, for the exact time that I wanted. That would be awesome.

What’s your fandom?

I love way too many fictional stories or characters that I find inspiring and have contributed to my view of the world. For example, I love Doctor Who because of the witty anti-violence and feminist stories, or the Final Fantasy videogame series as they have some of my favourite stories and characters, especially Yuna from Final Fantasy X.

What trophy or prize do you most covet?

I don’t recall winning any trophies in my life, to be honest! Does a Ph.D. fellowship count as some kind of prize? If so, this definitely the prize I most covet!

What is something you remember fondly that someone who is now a baby will not grow up with or understand from personal experience?

Jokes from Monkey Island or The Simpsons that some younger people than me don’t understand. How can they communicate without using jokes from The Simpsons!?

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Courage, probably.

What stereotype about bi people annoys you the most in your own life?

I just hate the stereotype that says that bi men are actually gay men in denial, or that bi women are just straight women “playing." It is oftentimes used as a joke in a very harmful way because it shames people’s internalized biphobia or/and homophobia. When you think about it, it’s incredibly cruel.

Your house is on fire and all people and animals are already out and safe. You get a chance to run back in safely and save a single possession. What would it be?

Nah, I think that I would enjoy the company of the people and animals that are out and safe! It’s not like I don’t care for my possessions but, my favourite music I can find on Spotify, my favourite books are in my ebook (and could be retrieved if my device broke), most of the video games I own I have already finished so I wouldn’t need to buy them again. After moving a lot from house to house I’ve learned not to accumulate much, or I will suffer the consequences when I have to leave one house and move to the next. And it’s not like I (or most people my age) can afford a house in Madrid so…

Who’s your favorite bi character?

Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood.

Given the choice of anyone in the world, living or from history, with whom would you want to sit down and have dinner?

I believe that we often have these fantasies of meeting some celebrity or person from history that we admire. However, I have the theory that these role models are idealized, so it is highly likely that we would be disappointed when finally meeting them. Therefore, I’d rather have dinner with someone I have already met and admire. My answer is definitely my late grandfather and grandmother.

What is the best thing about being bi?

Being bi is like being a double agent. You know that what most people think about dating men or women is wrong. For example, straight men that complain about how difficult is to communicate with the women they date don’t know that this also happens when men date men. Having dated men that see and treat you as an object helped me to understand painfully well everything that my female friends were complaining about all the time. It gives you a great gender perspective and an out-of-the-binary view of the world that I find very rewarding. Of course, being bi does not necessarily make me a better person but I feel that all that I have learned from my bisexuality may help make the world a better place.

*If you are interested in being featured as part of bi.org What Bi Looks Like series, please fill out the form here.

#bi #bisexual #bisexuality #bi pride #bi visibility #what bi looks like #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer

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seizethecarpe · 3 years

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Between Bookends || Dave and Rio

Timing: Currentish, during versipellis plot. Summary: Dave knows he isn’t well, and he turns to the only scribe he knows for help. Whether that’s a good idea or not... well. They’ll find out. Content warnings: Body horror mention

Dave trembled, his muscles exhausted to the point of no return. He could barely steer the boat cohesively, except for the hunger eating at his stomach despite the pound and pounds of seal meat he’d already eaten. As he got closer and closer to the shore, the monstrous sickness became even louder, knowing its prey was nearby. He’d almost slaughtered Adam, had come close to killing several other too. Maybe he’d even drowned a couple, even if he hadn’t eaten them. Guilt tried to gnaw at him, but how could it even begin to compete with the hunger inside him? The boat shuddered to a stop, a small distance from where he’d dock it. Maybe just a small enough distance to give Rio the chance to run, or fight, or whatever the kid needed to. Dave took a last deep breath through his mouth, so that the last thing he smelled was the sea. If he didn’t talk, he wouldn’t have to breathe. He raised his hand to Rio in recognition. “You said you could help,” Dave signed. “How can you help?”

Orion didn’t know what to do with his hands. His eyesight made Dave’s boat coming into view that much more awkward. How close was close enough to start waving? How awkward would it be for him to stand completely still while Dave came closer and closer to land? In context of exactly what Dave was going through, none of this seemed relevant or important. But as Rio’s mind raced with all the possibilities of what could be wrong and how Dave could end up hurt, these annoying little social cues that Rio couldn’t get a grasp of seemed to be the only way to distract himself from completely freaking out. As an annoying compromise, Rio swayed his arms a bit by his side until Dave motioned first. Then Rio started waving and moving to close the distance between the two. Dave’s question didn’t exactly ease Rio’s concerns. Promising help was something that Rio always did. This time he actually needed to follow through on the offer. Easier said than done when he still wasn’t absolutely positive he was right. “Right. Yeah. I have some ideas. Um- I just want to be sure about what you saw.” Rio signed as he spoke, moving closer to the boat to try to help him with anything he needed.

“Stay back. I don’t rightly know if I have a handle on this.” Dave signed aggressively, taking a couple steps back in his boat. He’d seen Rio against the cockatrices, in tears over the thought of having to kill an aggro chicken. No matter what tricks Rio had up his sleeve, he wouldn’t do what would need doing if… well, just if. The hunger was an ambush predator, overwhelming him before because he hadn’t known it was there. That was the only way he could swallow the guilt of how close he’d come already to eating people. Now it could no longer sneak up on him, Dave liked to believe for a moment he would have control, but as Rio got closer, even without smelling the air, Dave’s mouth was beginning to salivate. “Biggest wolf I’ve ever seen in the woods. Not around a full moon, skin dangling from its back like it was wearing war trophies of something. Barely got away in time.” Dave raised his arm, showing the bandage and the angry red that had seeped through and had dried on the outside.

Crossing his arms in protest, Orion froze in place and kept the distance from Dave that was demanded. He didn’t like the idea of it though. Dave was clearly going through a lot right now, and what he needed was someone that could do whatever it took to help him out. Dave had given an overview of what was wrong and how dangerous he was becoming. Rio had to determine the line of separation between helping Dave and trying to keep himself safe. For as smart as he was told that he was growing up, it was just about the only thing that his parents would compliment him on, he hadn’t mastered the art of self preservation. “Jesus” Rio mumbled to himself, not wasting the time in signing it before moving on, “Right. Okay. Well, I have a theory. I think.” It wasn’t perfect and it certainly wasn’t something he had ever come across before, but the pieces of Dave’s story seemed to be fitting together. “I have a place we can go. Nobody but me will be there. But on our way, explain what you’re feeling. Like uh- you mentioned about a hunger for…” Unable to finish the sentence himself, he dropped his hands and left it open ended for Dave to elaborate.

“I’ll take the hint of an idea over anything swirling through my head at the moment.” Better than wondering what had broken in him, if this was the work of the Valkyrie messing with his head or a sickness Dave wouldn’t shake, or something to do with how rare Leopard Seal Selkies were, that there was something inherently wrong with him. Wild leopard seals ate the young of other seal species… maybe that was what he was relegated to, why he’d been so hungry for Ollie. Reaching out to Rio had been… desperation. Better than continuing to ignore it after nearly killing several. “People,” Dave signed, disgust curling his lips, ashamed of the admission. “I’ve almost killed… too many people, in the last few days. One of them a selkie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

It was definitely as horrifying as it sounded, and Orion could understand why Dave was so set on keeping distance from him. He wondered how strong the craving was, or how hard it had to be to hold himself back anytime he was around someone. “I think I know what’s wrong. Maybe.” He couldn’t exactly be sure, not with all of the other craziness that happened around town. At any given time there could probably be three or more explanations to some gory murder or unexplained phenomenon. In this case, all the stars seemed to align. “I have a place that we can go. I’ll have you look through a book with me and if I’m right, it should help us figure out what to do next. Follow me okay?” Rio signed and then waved him along. The trip to the Scribrary wouldn’t take too long, but both would have to be on edge the entire time, wary of what might happen if Dave’s self control wavered. Rio had strength on his side, but he didn’t have experience. Or guts. “And it’s safe there.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Dave signed back, his hands jerking in agitation. He looked at Rio with wide, agonised eyes, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain his fears here. That even for a young man with very little meat on him at all, Rio looked delicious as a snack. It was only his breathhold that made just looking at the kid bearable. Dave didn’t want to point out that on that boat, he’d almost made a different call, not to a small scribeling with a fear of violence, but a hunter with a certified skill at murder. He wasn’t sure he’d made the right call. “I need to know you’ll keep yourself safe.” Because Dave had seen that too, in the woods with those cockatrices - that Rio had more strength in his than his baggy sweatshirts showed. Whether the will was there was a whole nother matter. “I don’t know how much grip I’ve got on this whole situation.”

“I’m optimistic” Orion ignored Dave’s question. He didn’t want to think about what could happen if Rio was wrong. The unknown would just induce panic that Rio couldn’t exactly afford right now. He was already panicking enough internally, a full blown panic attack would do nothing but hinder his ability to help Dave. He definitely didn’t want to think about how dangerous it was to willingly go alone to an abandoned building with a man who just admitted to craving human flesh. “I know how to get in and out of this place way better than you do. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just let you get lost in there.” Rio laughed nervously, unsure if that was actually a joke or not. They both knew that he wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to fighting or defending himself. Rio’s strength advantage probably wouldn’t go very far against Dave.

Orion didn’t talk much as they trudged through the woods. He was too busy forming a plan of escape in his head in case it became necessary. Dave kept his distance from Rio, which Rio knew was more in his interest than Dave’s. All Rio hoped was that he could give him some sort of hope that this wasn’t going to last forever. “Here we are” Rio mentioned nonchalantly, motioning towards the empty expanse of forest that sat in front of them. Now was hardly the time to be impressed by the Scribe’s magic, but he could never quite get over how the Scribe building would slowly come into view as if a mist was rising above it. All it took was a simple spell that Rio’s uncle had taught him so long ago. A trick built into an unassuming tree that allowed access only to those that were granted access. Within a minute, the whole building was sitting a hundred yards away, “So uh- welcome to the Scribrary. I’ll lead you back to the library. I have some books we should look at.”

“That ain’t good enough,” Dave snapped, but his options were limited. Clearly, he didn’t have the fucking werewithal to hold himself captive. He was already thinking about hunting down Ollie again. The crunch of her windpipe if he bit through her throat, the sweet flavour of the blubber of her skin if he caught her in the water. He’d only had harbour seals so far, a ring seal would be a delicious treat. With a start, Dave realised he was staring at Rio, blood-stained drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, every muscle in his body straining. If they’d both been on land, that small lapse in concentration could have been fatal. He put his hand on the engine, tempted to steer away. But what were his choices? Giving in, or calling a hunter.

Dave was damned if he was about to sign his own death warrant.

One final deep breath, and he steered the boat against the dock, and stepped on the dock, gesturing for Rio to lead. They walked quickly through the forest, Dave tapping every tree with a stick so that even when Rio wasn’t looking, he’d know where Dave was. If the tapping stopped… well. For as long as he could hold his breath, the monstrous hunger - unsatiated by how stuffed his stomach was - still craved more. He couldn’t help but stare at Rio, fantasising about how easy it would be to tear his head from his body, how the poor sweet child would probably let him rather than be violent. Dave wasn’t convinced there was much meat on him to eat, but it would be satisfying all the same. And once he’d had one…. Dave was sure it would be easier to eat the others. By the time the scribe headquarters faded into view, Dave could barely even manage to be impressed, only focused on Rio and fighting the temptation to eat Rio. “Hurry,” he signed sharply. He’d feel better if there was a locked door between them.

Orion wasn’t sure what to do about Dave’s apprehension. For better or worse, Rio was a lot less concerned about being attacked and eaten by Dave than Dave seemed to be about doing it to Rio. Sure, that was probably because Rio had a serious trust issue. Or rather, a trusting too much issue. He wanted to believe that Dave had the self control to stop himself from doing it. But the fact was that Rio had no idea what Dave was feeling right now. As a small measure of extra precaution, Rio reached into his bag and pulled out the knife that Athena had given him. It was silver, more specifically targeted for werewolves. But it would do fine against a Selkie if he really needed it to. Not that he had any interest or plans to actually use it. “I’ll make sure to stay on guard. Promise.” Rio waved the blade as a show before slipping it into his front pocket. Easily available.

Leading their way into the Scribrary, Dave was giving Orion the impression that things were becoming urgent. Rio didn’t like exploring the idea that Dave might actually take a bite out of him, but he still obliged, picking up the pace through the hallways of the Scribe building. “Stay here.” Rio signed when he got to the sleeping area. It was full of old bunks, most of them seemingly untouched for decades. In the back corner of the room was a pile filled with bags of clothes books. They laid next to the only bed with new sheets and comforters. Leftovers from the days that Rio spent most of his days and nights here. Before Winston and Ricky. “I’ll be back.” Rio jogged off as fast as he could to find the book he was looking for. It was his only theory for what was happening to Dave. It was still on one of the tables where Rio had left it and he swiped it off before jogging back. He hovered in the doorway of the sleeping area, keeping his distance from Dave. More for Dave’s purposes than Rio’s own. “Versipellis” Rio signed letter by letter, unsure how to sign it any other way. “My mom-” Rio paused, hands freezing midair before he backed up and started the sentence over again, “I learned about them a tiny bit as a kid, but I have never seen one before. Or even heard of one showing up. They look like werewolves, but they’re different. Their bite makes someone crave uh… cannibalism?” To put it simply. “How long ago were you bitten?”

Dave looked around the sleeping area, his brows creasing in concern at the sight of the used bed in the back corner, free of the layers of dust that coated everything else. Dave didn’t have to breath to know who had been sleeping there. He looked at Rio with a flicker of concern between all the barefaced hunger. Which was when he was left alone, inhaling shakily and trying not to let the taste of young scribe overwhelm his sentences. He grabbed the post of one of the bunks so tightly it felt like the skin over his knuckles might split. He wiped at the saliva dripping down his chin. When Rio came back, he spelled back the name of the creature, but muddled up the letters. It was so hard to focus on that when he could imagine feeling Rio’s rapid heartbeat under his throat. Rio would let him, wouldn’t even mind. He paused, for a moment not sure of the answer. Maybe the answer would bring Rio closer in, to eat even more easily? Dave rolled up his sleeve, showing the angry red bite on his arm. “6 days ago,” He signed back. “I can’t become a werewolf. This shouldn’t affect me.”

Orion didn’t like the way that Dave looked. He couldn’t describe the look either. In pain? Starving? Desperate? All of them seemed to fit in part, but none of them felt right. None of this felt right at all. This was the same man who was ready to get torn apart by the cockatrice to make sure Rio was alright. He shouldn’t have to worry about trying to eat anybody. Without knowing much about the man at all, Rio knew he was a good person. “They’re not werewolves.” Rio explained, leaning against the doorframe. He had the book open, but he didn’t need it. He had read the pages a hundred times. Memorized them line for line before even telling Dave he had an idea. He just couldn’t be sure. But he was pretty positive now. “You’re not safe from it just because you’re not human. I don’t even think-” Rio stopped himself. He almost told Dave that he wasn’t sure that he was even safe from the bite. But Rio hadn’t exactly had that conversation with Dave yet. About his hunter heritage. Right now probably wasn’t the best time, all things considered. “If you give in, you’ll turn into one of them.” Rio finished, “But there is some good news? You’re almost done. You only have to stop for like 9-10 days according to the scribe who wrote about them in this book.”

“Not werewolves?” Dave signed back skeptically, “I saw him change. Tear right through his human skin and be a wolf. How the hell is that not a werewolf-” He crossed his arms more tightly in front of his chest, watching Rio signing, trying to take in the words little by little. He’d turn into one? Bullshit, Dave thought, and began to sign the same. That didn’t happen to selkies. They were resistant, stronger than most humans when it came to whatever magic took one from a human to a werewolf. He already had a second skin, and how they hell would that even work? He shivered when it occurred to him that it wouldn’t. Whatever that thing was, it would not fit into his pelt. He would lose the pelt along with… everything else. His mind, his control. He’d lose the pelt. Dave shuddered, like ice water had been poured down his spine, his demeanor shrinking in on himself. Almost done, the scribe said, but when he said just how long… Under the sudden despair of his situation, Dave’s self control collapsed. To endure half the time again that he'd suffered with resisting his hunger… wasn’t worth it. Not when there was such young tender flesh in front of him. Dave looked up at Rio, opened his mouth to expose his jagged seal teeth, and sprinted at the man.

It happened quickly. One moment Dave’s facial expression looked like he thought Orion was crazy. Clearly he wasn’t convinced that he could change into such a creature. Rio supposed he understood the disbelief. The idea of changing into a werewolf wasn’t the same for a selkie as it was for a human. As far as Rio was aware, Dave was just as immune to the bite as Rio himself was. But just as Rio was trying to explain, this wasn’t a werewolf. It was another shapeshifter. One far rarer than an everyday werewolf. Rio didn’t think his own hunter genetics would protect him from this bite. But Rio didn’t get much time to think about it. Seconds later, Dave’s posture had completely shifted and suddenly he launched himself towards Rio. The only thing saving his life- and by extension, Dave’s- were the hunter reflexes. His arm shot out instinctively, launching the book he had been holding at the man’s face and then ducking falling backwards to avoid the man’s teeth. If he had been attacked, he might be able to heal. But if Dave got a bite out of him, it could all be over. Maybe. Rio still wasn’t exactly sure if a selkie feasting on a human would count as cannibalism enough to finish the curse. He wasn’t even sure it was a curse. More like some horrible disease. Either way, Rio wasn’t interested in trying it out today. The Scribe journals would have to go unanswered. Rio rolled off his back and out of the doorway, grabbing onto it and slamming it shut as a barricade between himself and Dave. “Okay, didn’t love that!” Rio yelled at Dave, trying to keep an ounce of calmness in his voice despite wanting to scream his head off. But that would only make Dave feel worse about what he had done once he was back to normal. For now, Rio needed to find a way to make sure he stayed isolated for a few more days. “Maybe you should just stay in there for awhile? It’s cozier than it looks!” He wasn’t even sure if Dave could hear him. Without the sign language and visual confirmation, Rio wasn’t sure anything he was saying was getting through to him.

Jaw wide, intent on sinking his canines into Orion’s pale flesh, Dave barely had a thought long enough to parse the wide swing of the book before the hardback surface slammed into Dave’s face, knocking him off balance. Stunning sense into his for a split second, rubbing his face as he looked up at Rio. He inhaled sharply, and like sharks in chummed water, the split second of control was lost once more as he rushed after the boy. “No!”

Dave tried to force his way through the door as Rio slammed it in his face. The hinges of the door rattled but held firm as Dave slammed his body into it. “Let me out!” He barked. “Orion, let me out now!” He backed up, teeth bared, rolling his bloodied sleeves up, and barrelled into the door again, ramming his uninjured shoulder into the wooden structure, over and over, leaving more and more bloody smears on the door each time. “I’ll kill you!” He bellowed, spit flying through the air, slamming his fist on the door. “Orion- kid. C’mon. You don’t need to do this. I need to eat. I’m so hungry it’ll tear me apart. Orion.” His rage drained out of him, forehead dropping to rest against the wood. “Shit.”

Then, much to his chagrin, Dave admitted, “Maybe that’s a good call, scribeling.”

There was something deeply disturbing about the way that Dave shifted back and forth. One second, Orion was wincing against the assault on the door from the other side. Rio had to keep him from getting out, but the constant pounding and screaming made him want to do nothing more than cower in a corner. The next moment everything would go quiet. Suddenly Dave would be pleading to leave as if he hadn’t just been threatening the hunter’s life seconds before. Rio’s hands were shaking, an after effect of the fear he felt. Not for himself, necessarily. But for Dave. He wondered how much of the real Dave was beneath the surface. Was he able to see everything that he was doing and saying? Or was he completely taken over by this curse or disease or whatever it was? Would he even remember this in a few days, when all this was over? How did Rio even think he could feasibly keep the man completely locked up for multiple days if he was acting like this?

He pulled himself into a fetal position, back still resting against the door. He didn’t know what to say to Dave. Nothing felt right, not in this situation. He couldn’t even know for sure how much of the man was actually there. For all he knew, Dave’s last statement of resignation was just a ploy to get Rio to drop his guard. “My book isn’t damaged is it?” Without any other ideas, Rio settled on a pointless question, quickly following up with “Oh uh- and your face too. How’s your face? Sorry about that?”

Dave stood, walking over to the bed where he’d dumped his phone, before returning to sit against the door, knees folded in front of him. He used the phone to text his reply. “Easier to talk like this. Less breathing.” It was an terrible way to say that he was one tiny moment away from tearing through the door with his naked teeth if he needed to. “Book’s fine. Might want to leave it in here. Keep that door firm and locked between us.”

Truth be told, Dave could barely process the pain. Not from the battery by book, nor the gash across his nose and cheeks - he was aware of it now, a sharb throb worsened by the assault by book, but it didn’t get through the haze of hunger. Not enough to do anything about it. “My face has had worse.” Like’ Rio’s would, if he got through the door. Dave punched the floor, grimacing at the thought. Now he recognised them, they were persistent, a constant whispering in his ears, to eat until the bones were clean. Dave started at the texts on his phone, and allowed himself one, singular moment of weakness.

“I don’t know if I can hold on for another 3 days.”

Orion jumped as his phone buzzed against him. He dug it out of his pocket and checked. A text from Dave. He hated this. Really, really hated this. He had no idea that this was actually going to work, just going based off of what one scribe wrote in a journal sometime greater than forty years ago. Rio bit his lip and held his breath at the man’s text. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Right. Book can stay. Maybe you can read it? Might be some helpful stuff. The information on the Versipellis is like sixty three pages in.” He sent the text and put the face of the phone against his leg. He didn’t want to see any replies for a moment. He just needed a second to collect himself.

The pounding on the door shook him from that moment. Just a single jostle, probably Dave releasing anger instead of trying to break out. Rio sighed and readjusted, resting against the edge of the door frame and stuffing his body in to rest his foot against the other side. He didn’t like the vibration of his phone. He didn’t want to see what Dave had to say. He had no idea how to make this better, and just barely had an idea to fix it at all. “I don’t know that we have any other choice.” Rio finally texted back, resting the side of his head against the door. “I don’t want to keep you locked in there.” That much was true. It went against everything he believed in. If there were any other options, Rio would jump on them immediately.“But I don’t know what else to do.”

Dave nodded, looking over at the book, but he knew in this state he was as likely to eat the pages as he was to read them, nevermind understand them. Hell, he was more likely to use the book to bribe the kid in here to eat him. The thought sent a shiver down Dave’s spine, of horror and anticipation. Hunger gnawed at his self control like a blunt knife at a fraying rope. “Got it.” He texted back, before locking his phone and curling his hands into fists. Dave had survived the maws of a mermaid, hunters bullets, spell caster magic, the chilling grip of an aipaloovik. This monster lived inside, but he could survive. He needed to, for the justice he’d promised his family so long ago. There was stuff on this earth he still needed to do. He clung to the last scraps of his sense of self ferociously.

Dave grimaced at the texts he got back from Rio. “Neither.” If it gets bad. Worse. You should call a hunter. Dave typed it out, and stared at the black letters on his screen, his fingers hovering over the send button. There was a long pause. He deleted the message without sending it, and stared at his phone. Eventually he settled on, “Just… keep yourself safe, kid.”

A lot needed to be done. Orion would need to figure out how to get food to Dave in the meantime. The scribe’s journal made no reference to the diet while waiting out the curse. Would he be able to eat regular food? Or would his body reject it? He would have to eat something eventually. Even if it had to be raw meat, at least it would be something. But he knew Dave wasn’t a pushover when it came to strength. Leaving him unattended wasn’t the best idea either. Dave could find a way out if he was desperate enough. Without Rio there to try to stop him, who knew where Dave could end up? Or who he could end up eating.

Dave’s texts hurt Rio. They sounded so… defeated. Hopeless, even. He couldn’t imagine the amount of stress or pain that he must be in. Rio would never understand the sort of craving that others had to go through. He hated that, wanting to understand something but knowing he never could. All he could do was try his best to do what he thought was right, “I’m going to keep both of us safe.”

#para #chatzy #rio #wickedswriting #v plot

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muthaz-rapapa · 3 years

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HealPre Final Review: Not terrible but not entirely laudable either...

*sigh* Where do I start?

Well, one thing I’m pretty sure of is that COVID definitely affected production somehow. By that, I don’t just mean the show needing to go on hiatus, resulting in a shorter run compared to previous seasons. I’m also talking about any possible changes that might’ve been made to the original narrative, if there was one.

Much like how Suite’s story had to be altered in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, I believe Heal underwent a similar treatment in response to the pandemic becoming more widespread as 2020 went on.

Especially since it dealt with health and nature, HealPre is probably the season that has come the closest in relevancy to real life events.

Frankly, that can be quite scary because this virus was and is still a fucking nightmare on a massive global scale. From that view, I can understand why the writers/producers would be concerned of the anime hitting too near home. At least for their main demographic’s (children) sake, maybe they were compelled to shift to something lighter and less edgier so that the kids could find some comfort and enjoyment in the midst of the world’s current crisis.

So I can’t fault Toei for that, if that’s really the case. Going through a pandemic is terrifying, infuriating and exhausting and UGH. We could use something that can help ease our worries or momentarily distract us even a little bit.

Though would it have killed them to dedicate one episode to the importance of wearing a mask or washing hands? (-_- ;;)

HOWEVER! Seeing as I am not a fragile child, I’ve still got several (oho~) criticisms to air out before I put this season behind me. This review isn’t particularly scathing but...there is a lot of discontent so you’ve been forewarned.

But first, let’s tediously review what structure means in Precure.

We all know that there are certain things that will forever (?) remain fixed in the series formula.

The plot is always going to be “magical girls fight evil doers threatening to ruin the world”.

There are plot points to indicate story progression but in reality, are put there to correspond with toy releases which are usually marked by these five: introductions, first power up, midseason Cure, second power up, and build-up to the climax + finale.

There is usually a specific message (a theme) to be told with every season and motifs (narrative tools) to aid in getting that across. For HealPre, the theme is “living is fighting” and its motifs are “health” and “nature”.

I left out “animals” b/c 1) it didn’t hold as much significance as the other two did, 2) animals are part of nature anyway and 3) let’s be real, it’s just a synonym for “mascots” which we already get every year. :P

Right. I’m probably forgetting something but for the most part, these are immovable pillars of Precure.

Story, on the other hand, has more variables you can work with.

Story is how you tell the plot, how you convey the message.

Precure, as a tv series, is unarguably carried by its main stars, the Cures. So it only makes sense that a huge percentage of a season’s success owes itself to how much of an impact its characters had on the audience as well as how effective their individual story arcs were as sub-plots tying back to the bigger picture (the message/theme).

Ideally, these arcs would shine the brightest in the filler episodes, where the plot (“good guys vs. bad guys”) is less of a focus so there is more space for personal development and growth.

Also, not all character arcs have to be directly related to the plot but they ought to be written well in order to support the overarching message (the theme).

Now, has HealPre done that? Has each girl’s story demonstrated a good example of what “living is fighting” means?

...nnnnnnyyeeee... look, even I can’t give a straightforward answer on that because while technically they did, by virtue of Nodoka’s observance in ep 44 recounting it as such, there’s also actually not enough to make it feel substantial from a viewer’s standpoint.

At least, that’s what I thought while watching HealPre.

With the exception of Nodoka’s, there was a lot of saying but not much doing to convincingly back the other girls’ arcs up. The fillers themselves were very weak, loosely composed in relation to the motifs and, if I may be so blunt, downright boring that if Nodoka didn’t phrase those episodes as things that counted towards the theme, I probably would put up more of a fight on disagreeing. so shoot me, I’m soft for her :P

And I know that sounds confusing right now but I will elaborate as I continue.

Before that though, to be utterly fair, some seasons keep their respective themes shrouded in vagueness until they’re given a more concrete form in words around the finale. So it’s not like we can do much except make educated guesses on what they really are. Most of the time, we’re just measuring everything against our perception of a standard in the fog. Or maybe that’s just me?

Nevertheless, you can just tell, y’know? By simply watching and observing the whole show, you can tell if the characterization, the development, and the outcome (essentially the content given) really live up to what the season claims is endgame.

So let’s go through that first then. The characters, starting with our lead Cure...

Nodoka being the only Cure in her team to have an arc deserving of the praise “exceptional” should come as a surprise to no one.

She was the most solid in terms of direction on how her story was going to proceed. Out of all the girls, her journey had the greatest connection to the subject “health”, repeatedly delved into it every time the spotlight was on her and fulfilled everything it seemed to promise from her debut in episode 1.

Her struggles on the road to recovery from a long-term illness and the strength she’s drawn from that traumatizing experience as well as her time as Precure did more than establish her as the strongest character in HealPre.

She has also rose to become one of the most memorable Pink Cures in the entire franchise (personally, I rank her in the top 5).

And it’s not hard to see why she’s earned such high regard in a lot of fans’ hearts.

The writers clearly worked a lot on her character composition to the point where she can pretty much embody the theme of “living is fighting” all on her own.

She came into HealPre fresh out of the hospital and full of earnest desire to make the most of her newfound freedom but she also wasn’t without knowledge on what hardship is. From there, she only got stronger, even when she was stumbling and trying to figure things out along the way. She grew more fortified in her beliefs on what it means to be truly live a healthy life.

She bravely defied the ones who attempted to take advantage of her and twist her cause against her. And she learned that taking care of herself is equally as important as wanting others to be safe from harm.

It was never about winning or coming out on top. It was about protecting a fundamental yet precious truth. That one thing any decent human being should never have to concede: the right to live well.

Honestly, Nodoka is absolutely inspiring all around, as a fictional character, a heroine and a normal everyday person.

Everything about her arc went satisfyingly right like it was meant to and the best thing is, we don’t need to question it because we saw how it all happened with our very own eyes.

I sincerely wished I could say the same for the others but sadly, they were just too flawed.

And Pegitan can throw flippers with me all day if he wants but as undeniable as the above statements are about Chiyu, her arc failed to leap over the increasingly mounting disappointment I had with every episode that’s been assigned solely to her.

Two of which weren’t even about Chiyu. One centered on Pegitan’s admiration for his partner and the other focused on her brother, Touji. Which, while nice to give to supporting/secondary characters, is a fat waste of valuable screentime and not what I’m here for.

It also didn’t help that the conflict of her arc (the indecision over choosing between two dreams) started really late in the game and was resolved so quickly within two episodes. There was no time for me to get invested into it, there was no powerful sense of conviction like how Go!Pri or Hugtto handled theirs and really, it just felt like Chiyu was only following what the script dictated for her rather than genuinely awakening to her own competitive passion towards track and field.

It was almost like it didn’t matter. Almost as if the writers procrastinated in thinking up something worthwhile to further her development...but then settled on grabbing an old idea off the shelf without refining it to suit Chiyu when they ran out of time.

This happened similarly with Minami in Go!Pri and Elena in StarPre, both of whom left me angry at how their arcs were executed. Yet theirs don’t compare to how pissed off I am about Chiyu’s. Because while Minami’s took a while to arrive, it wasn’t done poorly and linked back to Go!Pri’s theme well enough. And while Elena’s was over crammed last minute, at least it was unique to her character and had lots of potential ways to play out if they actually started it earlier on in StarPre.

Chiyu’s arc is like a discount version of the former with hardly any of the intriguing qualities of the latter. Sure, she had two early episodes that laid out the two most important aspects of her life (her family inn and her dedication to her sport) but after that, they weren’t brought up again until we were only weeks away from the ending. Y’know, just to fill up episode slots and meet the minimal requirement of saying they did give Chiyu some issue to resolve.

It was not engaging at all.

Furthermore, the fact that her arc had very little to no relation with either “health” or “nature” hurt my appreciation of her character somewhat. I just...don’t think her kind of story really matches with the central topics of HealPre?

...but maybe I’m being bitter about this all wrong and that’s screwing up my rational thinking on this matter.

Because Chiyu’s arc is valid under the logic of the overall theme, I would never say it isn’t. And again, character arcs don’t have to be close to the plot nor is it necessary to employ the “suffering builds character” method to make them interesting.

Chiyu always does her best every day. That’s sufficient argument on why her story does fit within the frame of HealPre’s premise.

Guess I’ll just have to wrangle my resistance into acceptance somehow.

...still, her arc could’ve been done so much better than what we were given. Chiyu at least deserved that much.

Next, Hinata.

Since the beginning, I knew she was gonna be runner-up to Nodoka for having the (for lack of better term atm) “best” arc because it was heavily implied that she has ADHD and therefore, immediately checked off the “health” trait. She was even more obvious about it than Nozomi was.

Difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, impulsiveness. Hinata didn’t just display all those signs, she also showed how hard it was for her to deal with the downsides to them on a regular basis.

She kept apologizing and put herself down excessively for inconveniencing her friends even though they never blamed her for her condition. Got them annoyed a few times, yes, but didn’t stop them from staying friends with her and definitely didn’t make them hate her either.

Everybody was understanding of Hinata...except Hinata because she always took her failures to heart and considered quitting several times to avoid the crushing dejection of making mistakes over and over again.

She got better, though, and no one could have summed it up more heartwarmingly than Nyatoran with the encouraging words he gave her at the conclusion of her arc.

But it still feels like there’s a huge chunk of development missing between the start and finish. Or rather, it seemed like all of it occurred offscreen and we were only informed later that it did in fact, happen.

To recap, iirc, Hinata had around 5 episodes that focused on her (ep 9, 13, 23, 35 and 40). Ep 18 doesn’t count because that was a Nyatoran-centric filler more than anything.

Ep 9 and 13 did their jobs of introducing and highlighting the details of Hinata’s troubles while also suggesting she will eventually learn to overcome her insecurities. The ones after, though? They pushed those issues to the backseat.

In Ep 23, she had to share the (uneven) spotlight with Asumi. Hinata’s improvements were briefly mentioned but the majority of the ep went to teaching Asumi what “cute” meant and how to get along with puppies. I mean, I get that Asumi recently joined the group and bonding with her was mandatory by tradition. But since each Cure only gets a limited number of eps to herself, it would’ve been more beneficial for Hinata if she didn’t have to split screentime with someone else’s growth schedule.

Ep 35 is slightly better but not by a whole lot. Sure, Natasha was able to reconcile with Elizabeth which was very sweet and heck, it was the goal for that episode. But again, nothing was really done or addressed about Hinata’s main conflict. She tossed it back with the rest of her homework to deal with later. ahaha, a TroPre hint

Then ep 40 came to formally close the curtains on her story and apparently, Hinata screwed up lots of times since...whenever but she picked herself up every time after and kept on trying. Awesome. So WHY didn’t we get to see that?

I’m not asking for the impossible here. I’m not asking for Hinata to be cured or anything miraculous like that. There is treatment available for ADHD but it is not curable.

Also, forcing Hinata to find a way to get better at studying, the thing she struggles with the most, is not the solution either because that would only make her more stressed and anxious over her own disorder.

What I want is to see how she moved from wailing “I can’t do it! I don’t wanna! I’m so scared of failing so why bother?!” to determinedly declaring “So what if I failed 1 or 100 times? So what if I fail another 1000 times? What matters is that I don’t let that stop me!”

That confidence is not something that can be built up overnight. It’s gradual and it takes numerous tries to reach from where Hinata was to where Hinata is now.

Telling me she grew emotionally stronger can only allow me to believe so much. I need to actually witness the changes as well.

If it weren’t for that, Hinata’s arc would have been a lot more impressive. Shame.

Finally............... Asumi.

Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi... *sighs & drums fingers*

...she has no arc, ok? Seriously, what story is there to speak of, much less write a hefty analysis on?

A spirit born for the sake of Latte who just went along with the Precure ride because Latte didn’t want to abandon her duty. She made friends with those who aren’t Latte, extended her knowledge and understanding and gained valuable human experience during her stay on Earth. But ultimately, she will always define her entire existence around a puppy.

Nothing is more important than this puppy.

...... to be honest, Asumi not having a storyline isn’t what bothers me. It’s her lack of depth that does.

Hell, even the giant burger she ate had more depth than she did!

Oh, Asumi does have a personality alright. She’s consistently and unfailingly polite, utterly devoted to her raison d’être and in crucial moments, gives pearls of wisdom when the girls are in a pinch. She’s good.

But if that’s all she is, then she’s also painfully dull.

She has nothing to contribute to the discussion of health or nature, despite being created through an element of the Earth so you’d think she’d have an opinion of her own. At least worry about the planet that gave life to her as much as she frets over Latte all the time. But nope.

She shares the exact same face as Teatine’s past Precure partner so you’d think we’d explore that connection to see if it would influence or affect her in any way. But nope.

90% of the time, her role was just being Latte’s constant, fawning satellite.

Not only did that irritate the hell out of me but it just reinforced my stance that this type of character is one of the worst you can ever insert into any narrative.

Because if someone keeps reiterating how much they’re obsessed with this one thing and seldom talks about anything else without bringing their obsession into it... then what’s so special about them on their own?

You’ve practically surrendered the different qualities you could have had for worship of something else. That’s not a fair trade-in.

Asumi’s character is so packed with Latte-related stuff that there’s not much space left for anything that can be considered uniquely Asumi.

I mean, maybe it’s because I can never see myself or any normal person comfortable with living like that.

Living for the sake of being together with the one you love? Okay. But living with your whole universe revolving around that one thing? Making most if not all decisions based on this one thing?

No. That’s absolutely crazy, alright? Nobody with a healthy amount of awareness and self-worth would live like that.

And you can counter that Asumi’s just born like that. That she can’t help her origins because Teatine’s wish to protect her daughter is essentially what brought Asumi into existence so of course, her biggest concern would be Latte. At least, she wasn’t forced into it, right? As long as Asumi chose of her own will to follow Latte, it should be fine, right?

You can even use the fact that Asumi isn’t human. That she’s a spirit and we shouldn’t apply our human standards too strictly to her.

Yea, but those are feeble defenses in the face of her being a good main character, a good main heroine.

There are many ways to make a decent MC. The way Asumi was written proves she certainly does not possess traits that can classify her as true protagonist material. A protagonist has to be more than one amplified feature, which Asumi is not.

For the record, I don’t hate Asumi (she’s not interesting enough to generate a feeling that intense). I'm just severely let down because even if I don’t end up loving the midseason Cure for whatever reason, I can usually count on them to bring something intriguing to the table to dissect and analyze. At least I should find something to care about them.

Didn’t happen with her. :(

Oh god, I’ve been working on this post for days now and I’ve got a headache and with the baton pass happening in less than a few hours as I type this, I just really need to get it done and over with so please forgive me for speeding up through the rest, I’ll try to keep it as coherent as possible. NYARGH! (@_@ ;;)

Mascots.

Would you be surprised to hear that I’m not surprised that they were actually written very well?

Like I said early on, I suspected the return of fairy partnerships were going to improve the mascots’ significance in the story and, well, I was right.

This time, they didn’t just fill in the usual expectations of relaying exposition, serving as the Cures’ transformation devices and looking cute for the merchandise. The Healing Animals had to make progress on their own training to become doctors as well.

And they did through their relationships with their human partners.

It was a refreshing take on the mascot aspect of the series because the friendships felt really symbiotic. When the trainees arrived on Earth, they relied on the girls to help them perform their jobs as well as provide them with shelter, food, the occasional peptalk about their trainee status, etc.

Then as the story continued and they got to know each other better, the mascots were able to return the favor by giving support when the Cures needed it. Rabirin when Nodoka was frightened and confused about how to deal with Daruizen, Pegitan when Chiyu was having trouble choosing between two dreams and Nyatoran who made sure to always lift Hinata’s spirits up when she got upset at herself.

In short, they achieved their objectives of learning what it means to be good doctors by being there for their friends! How wonderful! :D

My memory for Latte is hazy, unfortunately, since she’s coddled by everyone all the time (can’t blame them, she’s friggin’ adorable! <3) but I’ll never forget how she stood firm on the battlefield to see things through, to fight for the Earth like she promised her mother. She started out so babie but showed us all there was enormous bravery behind her cute face and ugh, we should all be very proud of her! <3

The only major issues I had about the mascots were these:

1) Too many irrelevant fillers went to them. They only needed a maximum of two for their entire mascot group.

2) Latte kept getting sick even after she acquired a Precure partner of her own. I was hoping it wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did before Asumi arrived or that she would build up a stronger immunity but noooo, they insisted on torturing the poor pupper! T_T

Villains + Finale Battle

Not a lot needs to be said for the first part. We’ve had mediocre antagonists before. HealPre’s just happened to be extra annoying as they were despicable.

Which is worse because jerks you can just leave in the trash but assholes won’t stop harassing you unless you pummel them into their graves, set fire to their corpses and leave no trace of them behind! >:(

Y’all know who I’m talking about. Opinions on him continue to vary depending on who you talk to and if they’re avid fans of his face or not but whatever. The son of a bitch served his purpose and is dead now. That’s all that matters to me.

Anyway, the King was flat like his two lesser generals. He was neither intimidating nor distinguished enough in the brand of evil to really make us think of him as a serious threat and because of that, it ended up making the boss fight look like any run of the mill boss fight.

I know, they tried so hard with all that shiny animation but it just didn’t have that glorious sense of vindication that previous seasons (or ep 42) gave and I blame it all on this Rumiko Takahashi reject.

Also, this strategy was pretty useless?

They built it up like Earth was gonna sacrifice herself and die or something (she wouldn’t and even if she came close, deus ex machina would’ve kicked in to prevent that and COVID-induced caution too I guess).

But there were no signs of pain (well, that’s a relief) after absorbing Shindoi-ne and they really pissed King Byogen off more than they did any damage with the absorbed byo-gen power.

...so yea, this tactic was just to kill some time and budget, nothing more. Meh.

By the way, did Asumi eject Shindoi-ne’s pathogen out of her body yet or did they just leave it in there to bounce around until it eventually dissolves on its own?

Because that’s eww. I mean, it’s obviously not gonna hurt Asumi they can both relate on hyperfocusing their affection for someone so maybe the compatibility helps :P but still, ewwwww.

Fillers + Underused Motifs

In hindsight, perhaps HealPre didn’t exactly promise the content we I wanted about “health” and “nature” if their objective was to teach that any manner of “fighting” can count towards “living”.

......but fuck you Toei, you’re still cowards! >:/

Fillers will be fillers but it’s always better to try and make some of them as meaningful as possible. And they wasted the opportunity to inform an impressionable audience (during a very crucial period of our time, I must add) on a lot of things related to the HealPre’s motifs. Especially about the environment which for some ridiculous reason, they chose not to touch on for the main stretch of the overall story.

Proper hygiene, good diet plan and sleeping habits, regular exercise (already done by the girls a few times but could use another example), meditation, counseling/therapy (especially for mental health!), etc.

Real life pollution, climate change/global warming (IMPORTANT!!), deforestation, preservation vs conservation, endangered species, recycling, volunteering to clean up your community, etc.

These just came off the top of my head but yes, there’s more and no, I’m not saying that the writers need to cover all of them in extreme detail or replace the slice-of-life episodes.

But they should be able to mesh both serious and light-hearted together in harmony somehow. Like those fillers where the mascots saw people cleaning up littering at the park or that interaction with that arborist who taught them about wild animals and trees when the group went to visit a lake.

For health, maybe let the girls visit patients with chronic illness in the hospital or have them converse with a medical professional on some matter. Particularly if it’s got something to do with mental illness because stigma in Japan on those who are afflicted with such conditions is still prevalent and has caused a number of sad and shocking tragedies that could have otherwise been avoided if people didn’t have such outdated, judgmental mindsets.

That last part might be too dark for a children’s anime but there’s a lot more out there that is doable.

Do that without reducing it into a footnote, Toei. It is so necessary for your target audience to be aware of these issues at the age they are now. You have an almost 20-year old franchise to serve as a very effective platform. Make better use of it if you truly care about the message you’re conveying through your show!

Also, what the fuck.

The last episode was a mess. Why are you only mentioning this now when the season is already over?

This should’ve been brought up months ago!

All the things we could’ve seen the Cures done to protect the Earth without magic.

The excuse of “I didn’t know humans were so horrible!” is a shit one because everybody knows humans are deplorable trash when it comes to abusing the Earth. All the more reason why you have to persistently drill it into people’s heads that they should not be like those who don’t care or choose not to care.

One crack episode isn’t going to cut that.

God, I so want to unsee this ep just so I don’t have to end HealPre on a more sour note than it already was. *big aggrieved sigh*

Lastly (and this really is the end of my long ranting, I promise), the missing undisclosed lore.

There are few Precure seasons without a past lore of its own in the recent years. Is it a wonder, though?

Lore is mysterious and fascinating. If it involves a past Precure, even more so.

Sometimes fans might just hang onto a show because they’re curious about what happened before the main story. We’d never get the full tale of those adventures but at least, it’s fun to imagine the “prequel”.

Also, past Precure are just badass. Fact.

Strangely enough, we didn’t get that for Heal. All we know is that she was called “Fuu” and was very close to Teatine.

Hmm. Probably one of those changes caused by COVID interference cuz I can’t imagine the writers choosing not to tell her past in the original draft.

With all that finally off my chest, I’m ready to part ways with you girls until the next All Stars (Nodoka, I’m gonna miss you so much! T_T)

HealPre wasn’t the worst and it was nowhere near the best that it had the potential to be. But it’s passable. At least for those who loved it even with its flaws, I’m genuinely glad it was good for you.

For those who are thinking about picking it up (although why you would read this spoilery post before watching, I have no idea), if you’re looking for a standard magical girl anime to enjoy casually, then this is a safe pick. If you really want to invest your attention and heart into it, though? Then perhaps it would be in your interest to ask someone who saw it already to help you filter out the episodes that are worth watching. You don’t need to worry about the rest, they’re inconsequential. :P

Ok then! Thanks for reading as always, brave souls who have reached this point.

Stay healthy and safe out there and I’ll see you at the beach next week! Tropic underwater paradise here we coooooommmmmeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! xDDD

#i rage quit two drafts and an outline before i got anywhere with this #now if you'll excuse me i gotta catch up on my workout and play pokemon and eat pho later #and catch up on the ccs manga #livin' the healthy life oh yea~#healin' good precure #cure grace #cure fontaine #cure sparkle #cure earth #hanadera nodoka #sawaizumi chiyu #hiramitsu hinata #fuurin asumi #rabirin #pegitan #nyatoran #latte

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fuzzbuns · 3 years

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Can we get your ramblings on comphet Nyaa-chan?

idk why I keep getting anons who wanna open up the Pandora's box that is my mind but like I would literally LOVE to talk about comphet nyaa so I will!!!!

(under a read more tho cuz this is gonna be long once again)

Before I start I just wanna say: I’m a lesbian and I'm gonna be talking about from my own personal perspective/ experience so obviously there is gonna be some bias and projection going on (Also I’m assuming everyone who is reading this knows what comphet means/is but if not comphet stands for compulsory heterosexuality). I don’t think Oso staff was literally making an episode to comment on comphet (I refuse to give Oso staff more credit than they deserve) so this is probably all accidental but I'm obsessed with reading the episode this way because I think it just fits so well and also totonyaa.

So let’s start with when Nyaa notices Oso. When we first see Nyaa interacting with Oso she honestly seems pretty guarded. She is glad that he saved her baby but she quickly pulls her kid away from him and gives him an awkward nod as if she is saying “ok thanks but now you can go”. However, the second her baby seems to show an interest in Oso (reaching out for him because his big brother charm is just so strong...) Nyaa’s reaction shifts. She keeps and eye on Oso while they are at the park and when he leaves she laughs to herself.

This is the first aspect of comphet I want to dive into. From personal experience, I found that a lot of the “crushes” I developed on men usually stemmed from the thought “omg he is so funny lol”. To this day, the only fictional men I end up interested in are ones that make me laugh. Nyaa seems to be doing something really similar here. When she and Totoko are talking about Osomatsu she says:

In the beginning the only real opinion she can form about Osomatsu is that he is funny. When Totoko presses her for more Nyaa isn’t able to offer up much other than “you know”. She is interested in him because he is funny and she wants to get to know him more because he is funny. It’s really easy to mistake these feelings of thinking someone’s funny as endearment and attraction even when it isn’t that deep. You can tell it’s not that deep because Nyaa can’t explain to Totoko what about him is so great. And lets be real... its not like Osomatsu is a super hot guy and Nyaa is just being superficial...... she’s not infatuated with him because of looks.... Whatever it is that is attracting her to him has to be his personality but she doesn’t know much about him outside of him being good with kids and funny. She just runs into him now and then and is interested in knowing more.

Totoko goes on to tell Nyaa that he has issues to which Nyaa pretty much responses to with “epic. I like him,”. We end up seeing Nyaa do this a lot. Totoko and the others will point out undesirable things about Osomatsu to which, in response to, Nyaa will just re-affirm that she likes him. We will get into this more later when its more relevant but liking unattainable men is textbook comphet. Also the way she says “I like him” kinda sounds unsure. Like as much as she is trying to convince Totoko, she is also trying to talk herself into it. It’s ok if Osomatsu has issues because she has already decided that he was going to be the guy she likes.

Totoko goes on warning Nyaa and we see on Nyaas face that she is getting annoyed. If you wanna go full totonyaa here then you could argue its because Nyaa is wondering why Totoko won’t just say “date me instead” but like.......... i would never argue that lol..... me??? no..... haha.........................................unle-

So Nyaa is getting annoyed and starts bickering with Totoko like they usually do and from here on I would argue Nyaa is purposely trying to piss Totoko off. She says she was “just sort of interested in him” and goes on to say you dont know what kind of person they will be unless you date them (not true at all queen). Totoko tells her that’s stupid and this REALLY upsets Nyaa. It almost feels like Nyaa was trying to make an excuse for why she should date Osomatsu even if she wasn’t totally into the idea. Comphet makes you think that maybe if you try hard enough, even if you don’t feel anything now, eventually you’ll have to feel something romantic for a guy. Totoko shooting this idea down is essentially ruining that excuse for Nyaa. So she angrily says:

Which......... if I were... like a totonyaa....... enthusiast... I could say like.... This is Nyaa basically doing the classic “why do you care about who I date” thing...... that would be crazy tho haha.............................unles-

I also think Nyaa saying “choose” is interesting (tho I'm aware I'm going off translations and she might not actually be wording it like that) because with comphet you literally are choosing who you fall in love with.

Totoko responds:

And its clear that Nyaa is escalating her attraction to Osomatsu out of no where. In this scene alone we have gone from “he is funny” to “I like him” to “I was just sort of interested” to “love” even tho nothing has happened to change her feelings. She is escalating because Totoko keeps shooting her down and in order to reaffirm her feelings she has to make them more intense. She is also pissing off Totoko in the process. We see it again when she goes:

I’ve been joking about it but like... totonyaa goggles on... she is clearly doing this to annoy Totoko and get her attention. The way this line is delivered makes it so clear that she is not actually interested in getting Osomatsus number. She wants Totoko’s attention. The next frame is literally her smirking at her phone as Totoko starts panicking. Nyaa likes having Totoko’s attention and the best way to get it is to bicker with her. She is choosing a guy Totoko clearly does not like (I mean I think Totoko and Osomatsu are pals but like she knows he’s a P.O.S) and continues to egg her on about it to keep having Totoko telling her to not date him. Another key aspect of Comphet is trying to constantly get the attention of other girls. Plus, speaking from personal experience, talking about a “crush” you have on a boy with the girl you are actually interested in and having them tell you no feels nice and when I was little and the ceo of comphet I would do it constantly.

So Totoko gets the brothers involved and Nyaa seems uncomfortable and less into the conversation (probably cuz its no longer just between her and Totoko but that's just me). Her tone is less confrontational and more just confused. It’s almost as if she feels the point of the conversation isn’t there anymore. None of these opinions matter to her. What she said to Choro was harsh but she had a point. She doesn’t know these people!! She wanted to talk with Totoko about this. However, she doesn’t seem to keep that same attitude with Osomatsu? Like what makes Osomatsu any different from Choro?

She ends up asking everyone to leave and saying:

Once again she is using the word “chose”. She is stating she loves him despite not knowing anything about him besides his crimes against humanity (Which she agrees to that being vile so????). It really feels like she is just being stubborn. She said she likes him so stop confronting her about it because the more holes you poke in her story the more she has to try and convince herself that she genuinely likes him despite her knowing deep down that she doesn’t.

So fast forward to the night they all get together. That part about her liking a man that is unattainable is showcased here in full force.

She loves the idea that he does not give a shit about her. The idea that he isn’t interested just makes her like him more. I can not overstate how textbook comphet this is. When the guy you picked to like turns out to not be interested in you; that is the best scenario a closeted lesbian could imagine. You get to keep “pinning” over a guy and playing the part of a straight girl without the pressure of acting on it. He isn’t interested so you are never put into a situation where you have to prove that you are. All the things he does that show that he isn’t even considering her (like not fixing his bed head and literally going after Totoko instead) are things she loves. The more disinterested he seems, the more perfect he is. This reaches its peak when Oso literally doesn’t even remember her and she says:

The idea of Osomatsu not even being bothered to remember the moment they met literally has her rolling on the ground lol.

Osomatsu jokingly askes Nyaa if she is interested in him. She gets really quiet. Obviously this could be read as embarrassment and its probably what was intended. However, continuing with the comphet theme it could also be her realizing that she has to make a choice. She’s interacting with Osomatsu now and he’s (jokingly) flirting with her. She can’t keep acting like he is unattainable at this point so she prepares herself. He jokingly asks her out and she says yes without hesitation, confirming that she would like to date him and even adding a “please”. Because... this is what she wants right? She has been arguing for this the whole time and she was finally given the chance. Why should she say no? This is the beginning of the end.

We see Totoko and Oso having a drink (and she looks so pretty in this scene I fall to the ground and die). Totoko leaves and her body languages looks so emotionally exhausted. If I were a totonyaa enjoyer I would say “she told Osomatsu that she loves Nyaa but wants to see her happy”............... oso staff DIDN’T PUT ANY DIALOUGE IN SO ITS MY CITY NOW-

We see nyaa excited for her date and picking out clothes because!!! this is what she wanted!!!!! she fell in love and got a date! everything is going perfect!

Then she wakes up.

She is startled. Whatever she realized in her dream it was a lot to unpack. mayhaps... a dream about toto-

She sits up and you can tell from her body language that she is really reevaluating. Her feelings vanished over night. She can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. Even though everything is going right and she should be excited and happy, she isn’t. Something is wrong. It’s like the second it hit her that she actually has to go on the date and that Osomatsu is showing interest, she loses any interest in him that she had. She liked the idea of going on a date but the second it starts looming in and becoming a reality she can’t do it.

When Nyaa apologizes and turns Osomatsu down you can tell she is embarrassed.

She runs away, unable to face him, knowing that its her fault. See, if she woke up and was like “oh shit he IS a P.O.S” I don't think she would be so apologetic. But she is. She is apologizing for leading him on and knows that she can’t keep up the façade anymore. She knows she caused him a lot of trouble feels miserable.

So to sum it up: Nyaa was in love with the idea of having a guy to pine over. She liked that Osomatsu was an unattainable guy and that being interested in him annoyed Totoko and made her pay attention to her. But the second things got real and she actually had to go out with him, she couldn’t follow through. This can all be explained by comphet and I would even argue its like one of the only explanations for the ending that makes sense but I might just be bias.

also I think Totoko and Nyaa should just make out...... Happy Valentines day!

#fuzzy rambles #totonyaa thoughts on valentines day.... yes i am lesbo....#I hope this ramble is coherent I tend to go all over the place and tried to stay on topic but like i couldnt help it in some places #I just think if I handed nyaa the lesbian masterdoc she would be like.........................oh.#idc what oso staff throws at me.... lesbian nyaa is real.............i know this.... in my heart...

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astyle-alex · 3 years

Text

Common Sense Meets the Autism Spectrum:

| a Parental Aide for ALL |

Last month was Autism Awareness Month, and in honor of that I've whipped up a little Parental Aide to help all grown-ups understand neuro-divergence a tiny bit better. I meant to post it here during the last week of April, but I forgot because of the craziness with Finals... But since Autism and neurodivergence doesn’t just magically go away at the end of April, here’s a little skim of it now:

I've recently been chatting with a new consultation client / parent whose child has been recently diagnosed with Autism, and it got me thinking about the unfortunate nonsense surrounding the entire societal black hole of neuro-atypical / neuro-divergent presentations, especially in 'unusual' cases.

The first thing that needs to be said is IT'S A SPECTRUM, and it's honestly a comprehensive population spectrum, which means that EVERYONE IS ON IT.

Yes, say it with me: Everyone is on the Autism Spectrum.

From being perfectly, generically neuro-typical humans to rage-murder psychopaths to non-verbal, high-physical autistic kids to sociopathic con-artists. It's a SPECTRUM.

Accepting that is the first part of understanding it. And it's sometimes helpful to know in order for parents still in diagnosis shock to have something that reconnects them to their child. If you've recently received a diagnosis and you've dissociated at all, or know someone who is in that situation, knowing that the parents and the child involved are both still on the same spectrum, can help.

(It's a sense of cohesion and sameness that parents dream up for offspring, and can be problematic if over-done, which is why parents sometimes force their hobbies / goals onto children or react poorly to LGBTQ+ explorations / self-discoveries, both of which are fodder for plenty of other posts).

Once the spectrum is accepted, we can move on to understanding it better, and to diagnosing attributes of it that are affecting our lives. Knowing these attributes can help us navigate them, even in a capacity where the effect of them is not so severe that we call it a neurodivergence.

There's a stigma with mental illness, and autism is a trigger word regarding that, but it shouldn't be. We don't (as much, any more, at least) shame people who don't have clinical anxiety, but still exhibit crowd skittishness or phone distress or choice paralysis. And, honestly, mild autism frequently presents as anxiety, in our current popular understanding, as it's often limited to one or two aspects of life that provoke dramatic aversion responses where as actual, general anxiety is usually a more evenly distributed with lower-key hesitance / avoidance. Mild autism also presents as ADD / ADHD (and in my opinion the ADD / ADHD diagnosis tools are essentially boiling things down to 'not a psychopath but probably autistic, but not like the autism in in the popular imagination').

We accommodate the small symptoms of both autism and anxiety, adjust what we can and power through what we can't.

That adjustment is a lot easier when we know the triggers for the distress.

Now, the scaling systems I'm about to share are not professional, not part of the DSM, and not a tool of formal diagnosis. Consult a licensed professional before taking any big steps, but take a look at these scaling systems to help start a conversation (even if it's only with yourself). I might have another post on adjustment strategies, because these don't really address the links between presents-as-anxiety and autism, but for now, we're just gonna look at how to start asking questions and how to wrap your brain around the biggest bit of the autism concept.

Again, none of this is a diagnosis or a practical guide on how to cope, but it is helpful to be generally informed enough to start recognizing issues / asking questions about what else might be affected by a given place on a scale.

So, Autism is a spectrum, right?

Well, technically, it's multiple spectrums.

There are several sub-spectrums that layer over each other.

The crux of it, the most basic version specific to autism, is this:

Understands Emotion -- vs -- Does NOT Understand Emotion.

Now there are varied layers of that, such as 'displayed' emotion (like in facial expressions), or 'tonal' emotion (like voice tones), or even 'conceptual' emotion (as in the basic cause / nature of emotionality).

Plenty of kids understand Tonal Emotion (hearing and recognizing the difference between Mum is angry and Mum is happy), but not Conceptual (this is called being young, and usually gets grown out of as kids actually experience {and label} more emotions, the process starts at age 3 or 4, but honestly continues for most of life). Or kids may be able to hear tonal changes and interpret them accurately, but they don't read faces well (this is either a significant indicator of some sort of disconnect or, can indicate that the facial expressions they have seen shift do not shift in a way that is consistent with tonal changes {like if a parent is angry and tries to hide it with a smile}.). Some kids can track the changes in tone and expression but can connect them to a concept (such as 'fear' which doesn't develop as a concept to children until about age 5~7, even in horror-story situations, like children in warzones, only get a really nuanced concept fear a year or two earlier).

The second BIG scale to assess things on is intro- or outro-spective, and it's a 2-for1:

- misunderstand -- VS -- understands OWN emotions

-- vs --

- misunderstand -- VS -- understands OTHERS' emotions

AND misunderstands or understands the CAUSES of emotions in self / others, and why those causes and interpretations may be different for various individuals (which requires understanding the concept of there even being varied individuals, a process that ).

This is the line between "I like it, so others DO" vs "I like it, so others MIGHT", that is difficult for young children. Having a distinct sense of a separate self is actually a complicated psychology process, and it takes over a year for most infants to even recognize that they have a reflection. If understanding the self/others division stays extremely difficult passed age 7-ish, we maybe should look more closely. But at the same time, it's rarely before that 5~7 range when kids begin to understand that shopping for a birthday present for a friend involves thinking about what the friend would like, and not what the kid themselves like.

And there's still gonna be moments of grown-up fan-rage at why don't people ship my ship?, but all we might wanna do is limit time on Reddit or Tumblr when in anxiety mode.

The final BIG spectrum used in understanding these autism specific neuro-disconnects is one that revolves around concern for the disconnect:

Does not fully understand all aspects of Emotion and CARES that they don't.

-- vs --

Does not understand and does NOT CARE.

This disconnect leads to Performative Emotion, which means acting the part of emotional responses without a full understanding of all aspects of them. Sometimes this is good, as in exhibiting quiet displeasure even though I think this warrants screaming because, I don't wholly understand what I or others feel, but I do understand the appropriate / expected response. It can also be very bad, as in someone who understands the emotional response to pretend to have when a pet dies and is aware that doing so can cover that the pet was killed intentionally by said someone.

The last relevant spectrum isn't one that most people find critical, but I think it's important to delineate this one from the caring aspect. The previous note is specifically about caring in regards to the subjects understanding of emotion--and exclusively their understanding of emotion.

It is not a measure of concern for other respects of life, that spectrum is:

Sympathy -- vs -- Empathy

Now, defining terms is important here.

- Sympathy = care for how others feel

- Empathy = understanding / comprehension of how others feel

Someone who self-refers as an 'Empath' is actually expressing a high sympathy response, as in, I understand your pain so well, I feel it myself. What they mean to say, is that they understand the feeling and its causes well, and they care so much that they cause themselves to experience it.

This is also the line between Sociopaths and Psychopaths, as most people know it. The truth is a lot more nuanced, but basically, a Sociopath often lacks Sympathy, but has Empathy, where a Psychopath most often lacks both.

A Sociopath understands that they have a disconnect, cares that they do, and hides it by performing the emotive responses they are aware are appropriate (for the most part, occasionally making some exceptions due to exhaustion with the performance, or a lack of genuine care allowing for selective exploitation--making them great sales people / CEO's / business people / lawyers / writers / con-artists / Sherlockian private detectives etc).

A Psychopath either doesn't understand they have a disconnect, doesn't care that they do, or both. They rarely perform emotions and therefore often draw people in who feel trapped and in need of counter culture. They make great cult leaders, but not much else (occasionally business people, but some of them are cult leaders by a pseudonym). They truly CANNOT conform, and that can be seductive / freeing to others, but they also cannot conceive of anyone who decides to follow them ever changing their mind or not experiencing exactly the same emotions / emotive responses to stimuli as they do.

BOTH are considered extreme presentations of their respective trait.

People with both very high and very low sympathy get exhausted around others.

Because experience other's emotions or pretending to care about others' emotions is HARD. It's work and it's exhausting on both ends.

People with both very high and very low empathy get anxious in not being around others for prolonged periods.

High-Em usually worries over current states (ie, what if something happened to them or what if they hate me now), whereas Low-Em usually worries over reunions (did I forget something someone else would've remembered, birthday, holiday, or that I was gonna bring you something we discussed).

And, as always, Presentations vary. HUGELY.

But sometimes, being told you're looking at an abstract a picture of a dog, helps you spot the dog in the ink squiggles.

'Normal' isn't a fixed point, it's a range within every single subject presenting mild deviations that come together to form an average in a single person, and are then averaged again across populations.

Such data can always be understood better. And better understandings allow better accommodations to be made.

Therefore, a given person's place on any part of any one of these spectrums needs to be assessed and reassessed constantly.

Also, if you're interested in learning more / supporting Autism Advocacy, check out a few more resources, but for the love of god DO NOT give money to Autism Speaks. Take a looks at THIS and do some research of your own! ^_^

Again, this is just a vague baseline, and it doesn't address symptoms like Face Blindness (in ability to recognize people by faces) or stimming (self-stimulation or emotive overwhelm release) or even environmental sensitivity (extreme dislike / like of certain noises, colors, light levels / sources, tactile sensations). Even so, it might be informative enough to start getting a conversation started and it'll be helpful for me to refer back to this one while making other Spectrum related posts.

^_~

For more on what I’m getting up to (and for more timely updates), check me out on Patreon!

#autism #autistic spectrum #neurodivergencies #spectrum #adhd #adhd problems #adhd culture

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skippyv20 · 4 years

Text

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻😊😊PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON😊😊🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON …… never look a gift bandwagon in the mouth…… everyone is crawling out the woodwork ……… “I’m covert 19 , fly me” ……… M&H on the March??? ………… over 40,000………… flight attendant/ ……… the dodgy R…………… mandatory masks ………… The Amazon too ??? ………… online celebrity … “ There here Philip “ …………” one has to distance darlings “ …… “ yes there lovely shoes” ……… “ look Philip, live tic-toc “………” it’s wonderful wonderful “ ………… “amazing, he’s shot up “ ………” shall we have a little refreshments?”

Sorry..I was sure I posted this….❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

*Entertainment purposes

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻😊😊THANK YOU MM ANON😊😊🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

June 6/2020

RIDDLE FROM JUNE 5/2020

RIDDLE #38

SO SORRY I WAS NOT AROUND YESTERDAY I HAVE BEEN SO EXHAUSTED, SO HERE IT IS.

… never look a gift bandwagon in the mouth

EVERY POSSIBLE COMPANY, AGENCY, WHATEVER YOU WANTTO CALL IT, HAS HOPPED ONTO THE BLM, BANDWAGON. ONLY WORD USED TO , IN OLDEN DAYS WHEN SALESMEN WENT TOWN TO TOWN THEY WOULD HAVE MUSIC TO ANNOUNCE THEIR ARRIVAL IN TOWN. NOW, IT IS SIMPLY A CURRENT HOT BUTTON ISSUE MANY JOIN IN SINCERE BELIEF BUT OFTEN OTHERS AND CORPORATIONS DO IT, SIMPLY TO GET PR AND HOPEFULLY GOOD PR. MAKE THEM LOOK ALL HIP, SHINY AND MODERN.

WELL MADAM BIDED HER TIME, OH YOU CLEVER THING RACHEL. YOU WAITED UNTIL PEOPLE WERE ASKING WHY SHE WAS SILENT AND AFTER MOST BIG CELEBS HAD SPOKEN OUT. THEN BAM! OUT COMES HER VIDEO. I COULD NOT STOMACHE WATCHING ITS ENTIRETY. I WILL NOT GO ON ABOUT IT BUT SUFFICE TO SAY, MORE 🗑GARBAGE.AND LIES.

everyone is crawling out the woodwork ………

THIS SAYING MEANS A HUGE PUBLIC ISSUES AND EVERYONE WANTS THEIR FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME BACK. PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT RELEVANT OR ONCE WERE, ARE LIKE ROACHES CRAWLING OUT IN THE DARK TO ADD THEIR UNASKED FOR OR UNNEEDED OPINION. THIS HAPPENS EVERYTIME THERE IS A BIG PUBLIC ISSUE.

“I’m covert 19 , fly me” ……… flight attendant/

COVERT19, NOT COVID-19. SOMEONE IS FLYING AN AIRLINE WITH SYMPTOMS BUT NOT TRUTHFUL ABOUT. IS THIS PUBLIC? I KNOW WHEN THINGS FURST STARTED MANY PEOPLE LIED ABOUT WHERE THEY HAD BEEN, HOW THEY WERE FEELING.MANY PEOPLE BUCKED THE FOURTEEN DAYS QUARANTINE. I HEARD OF A WEDDING , FROM ONE OF MY FRIENDS. THEY HAD 250 THERE IN THEIR FARMYARD. I GUESS SOMEONE CALLED LAW ENFORCEMENT.EVERY ONE OF THOSE 250 PEOPLE RECEIVED A $1,000.00 FINE. QUART MILLION DOLLAR WEDDING. I WONDER IF IT WAS WORTH IT. AS WELL. KIDS YOU KNOW I USE THAT WORD COVERT ALOT DESCRIBING HARRYS MISSION AS OVERT COVERT.

QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH BRINGS THIS, NOT SURE IF ITS RELEVANT , BUT , INSAW THE CLUE FLIGHT ATTENDANT/FURTHER DOWN SO I SHALL COMBINE. PLUS ITS A MARVELLOUS FEEL GOOD STORY. THE CEO OF AA, AMERICAN AIRLINES,IS FLYING COMPETITOR AIRLINE SOUTHWEST, WHICH IS GREAT BY THE WAY, IN MY PAST EXPERIENCE. ANYHOW HE WAS READING A BOOK WHICH CAUGHT THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS ATTENTION, CALLED WHITE FRAGILITY. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT IS BLACK.CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THE CURRENT APPROPRIATE WORD TO USE, IS IT BLACK OR AFRICAN AMERICAN. MANY POC ARE FROM PLACES OTHER THAN AFRICA. MY FAMILY MEMBERS SOME ARE FROM ST. LUCIA. ANYHOW PLEASE LET ME KNOW. ANYHOW THIS EVENT WAS MADE PUBLIC AND TURNED INTO A REALLY BEAUTIFUL MOMENT AND CONVERSATION ABOUT THE ISSUES PEOPLE ARE MARCHING ABOUT.

M&H on the March??? …………

ALL THESE VARIOUS SCHEDULED MARCHES ARE TO CONTINUE WHICH MEANS UNSCHEDULED ONES WILL AS WELL. ARE MADAM AND FAIRY GOING TO MARCH? SERIOUSLY, RACHEL, THIS WOULD REQUIRE ACTUAL WALKING AND POSSIBLY THE UNCLEAN GENERAL PUBLIC. BRUSHING UP AGAINST YOUR NON ROYAL BODY. MAYBE THEY WILL SPONSOR OR TAKE PART IN A VIRTUAL WALK WITH USING ARCHIES SAFETY AND HEALTH AS AN EXCUSE. DONT WANT HIM GETTING COVID NOR FAIRRY, SINCE HE IS IN LINE IF SUCCESSION TO A HOLLYWOOD ACTORS WITH GINGER HAIR CROWN.🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

over 40,000…………

IS THIS THE NUMBER OF THE CROWN THAT PROTESTED IN LONDON HYDE PARK?

the dodgy R……………

BIG HEADLINE ON THURSDAYS DM , LATE IN THE DATE WAS THE DIFFERENCE IN R RATE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE U.K. IT IS ABOVE 1 IN THE NORTH WEST AND SOUTH WEST. ONE WONDERS WHAT IT WILL BE AFTER ALL THESE MARCHES. WILL IT INCREASE, DECREASE OR WHO KNOWS? HOW RELIABLE IS THIS IS ANYWAYS. SEEMS THINGS CHANGE ALL THE TIME, DONE TO EARLY OR TOO LATE AND IN WAYS NOT MAKING SENSE.

mandatory masks …………

THIS HAS BEEN BANDIED ABOUT. VARIOUS PLACES ARE REQUIRING MANDATORY MASKS TO BE WORN OR YOU CANNOT SHOP OR USE THAT FACILITY. SOME ARE ADDING TEMP CHECKS AND HAND SANITIZER TOO. MASKS MANDTORY FOR ALL IN HOSPITALS IN THE U.K. AFTER TO CREST HAS PASSED. WHY START THIS NOW?

The Amazon too ??? …………

IS THIS THE ACTUAL AMAZON, OR AMAZON WHERE WE ALL SHOP. I THINK SINCE MM ANON USED THE QUALIFIER THE, SHE IS REFERRING TO THE JUNGLE RAINFOREST. WITH THE CEASING OF SO MUCH INDUSTRY DURING LOCKDOWN, THERE HAVE BEEN AMAZING DARE INSAY MIRACULOUS EFFECTS ON THE WORKD ENVIRONMENT. IT IS NOT ALL WINE AND ROSES THERE. AMONGST INDIGENOUS BRAZILIANS COVID INFECTION RATES ARE SOARING, WHIKE THE PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN IS BRINGING ABOUT MASSIVE INCREASES IN DEFORESTATION. TRULY IS AN ECONOMIC BOOM AND A LOOMING MASSIVE DEATH TOLL. THERE CERTAINLY IS NOT MUCH IN THE NEWS ABOUT THIS THAT I HAVE SEEN, CBC OR BBC WORLD.

ABOUT AMAZON THE COMPANY, THERE HAS BEEN A WHISTLEBLOWER IN ONTARIO WHO HAS BLOW THE LID ON UNSAFE WORKING CONDITION DURING COVID. STATING WORKERS WERE NIT NOTIFIED OF OTHER CO WORKERS HAVING COVID , PUTTING THEM AND THEUR FAMILIES AT RISK .

AUTHOR ALESX BERENSON HAS WRITTEN A BOOKLET FOR KINDKE READERS ABOUT THOUGHTS ON THE HANDLING IF COVID-19. AMAZON REMOVED IT FROM PUBLISHING. NEVER ONE TO NOT WADE IN ON ANY ISSUE EVER, ELON MUSK, YES THE ONE AND THE SAME, ROCKET BILLIONAIRE, CALLED OUT BEZOS ON THIS WHO SAID ITVWA REMOVED IN ERROR, OH OKAY THEN. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE RIGHT ALONG FOLKS. MUSK IS NOT MOVING ON,IN FACT IS CALLING FOR THE BREAKUP OF AMAZON. JEFF BEZOS. HAS BEEN ATTACKED NUMEROUS TIMES AND EMPLOYEES OVER THE YEARS HAVE AT THE PERIL OF LOSING THEIR JOB, SPOKEN OUT ABOUT THE WORKING CONDITIONS. I BELIEVE THEY ARE ABOUT TO LEASE THEIR COVID EXTRA PAY SOON TOO, UNLESS IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. ANYONE GOING TO STOP SHOPPING AT AMAZON? THOUGHTS? HOW DIFFERENTREALKY ARE OTHER PLACES WE SHOP? WE HAVE NO CLUE CREALLY.

online celebrity …

MADAM HAD DONE SOME PRETTY MAJOR STUFF TO HER FACE, OR RATHER HAS HAD DONE. I LOVED THAT COMMENT ABOUT THE HORSES TAIL PONYTAIL🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂. INWISH I COULD RECALL WHICH ANON SAID IT SO I COULD GIVE YOU CREDIT. WHEN ONE IS POPULAR ON YOUTUBE, HAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF FOLLOWERS AND VIEWS, I DONT KNOW IF THOSE NUMBERS ARE ARBITRARY, BASED ON COUNTRY OR BASED ON VIEWS. HOWEVER THEY ARE CALLED INFLUENCERS. NOWHERE THIS MORE EVIDENT THAN IN THE COSMETICS WORLD. THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY HAS COMPLETELY CHANGED. THEY COLLAB ON MAKEUP WITH INFLUENCERS. SO MANY INDIE BRANDS ARE BREAKING INTO THE WORLD HUGE MONEY MAKERS. A LOT OF THESE INFLUENCERS HAVE GONE ON TO HAVE THEIR OWN COLLECTIONS AKA JEFFREY STARR, JAMES CHARLES ETC ETC. SO IS MADAM FANCYING HERSELF THAT NOW. SPOUTING HER RABID WOKE WORD SALAD ONKINE FOR $$$$$. I COUKD TOTALLY SEE HER DOING THIS. KIDS SHE IS NEVER NOT GOING TO BE IN THE MEDIA,MBRACE YOURSELVES!

“ There here Philip “ …………” one has to distance darlings “ …… “ yes there lovely shoes” ……… “ look Philip, live tic-toc “………” it’s wonderful wonderful “ ………… “amazing, he’s shot up “ ………” shall we have a little refreshments?”

BACK TO WC, THE CAMBRIDGES HAVR ARRIVED IN FULL FOR E. CATHERINE REMINDING THE CHILDREN ABOUT PHYSICAL DISTANCING. IT IS SO HARD IS IT NOT? AT SNY SGE!! HUG DEPRIVED AM l!!. CATHERINE IS WEARING HER NEW RED SHOES AND, NO WAY IN CANADIAN SIZES IS SHE A SIZE TWELVE, MORE LIKE 2LONG. BUT NONETHELESS SHE HAS ON HER NEW OUTFIT SHE WAS CHOOSING IN THE RIDDLE FROM THE OTHER DAY. I WONDER IF THE GOT TALKING ABOUT UHNTS’S CORONATION RUBIED SLIPPERS? OF COURSE, THEY MUST HAVE, THEY ARE WOME!!🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂.

HMTQ ENCOURAGING HIMSELF TO WATCH THE REA LIFE TIK TOK PERFORMANCES. HIMSELF COMMENTING ON GEORGE OR LOUIS ON HOW MJCH HEVHAS GROWN, LIKELY LOUIS BECAUSE BABIES GROW SO TERRIBLY MUCH. AND ITS BEEN SOMETIME SINCE THEY HAVE BEEN TOGETHER IRL, IN REAL LIFE. AGAIN REFRESHMENTS ON THE WAY.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿

Sorry..I was sure I posted this….❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

*Entertainment purposes

Thank you PG😊💜💜💜💜💜

#Ask Skippy #submission

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dalegoldberg · 3 years

Text

Will movie theaters be relevant in a post-pandemic world? It's now up to you.

On Monday, the beloved Arclight and Pacific Theaters announced they’re closing for good. ArcLight Cinemas is arguably Hollywood's most cherished theater and Pacific has been a mainstay in Los Angeles since 1946. The announcement of their closing shocked many as another casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the company announcement, they said "This was not the outcome anyone wanted, but despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward." One can understand how a movie theater might go under in the middle of a pandemic but I did find it interesting that they felt there was truly no way forward.

One might've expected some members of the Hollywood elite to come clamoring forward with a bucket of cash to at least front the company long enough to sustain it through the pandemic so that it could reopen when the time was right.

Back in 2014, Kodak faced a similarly dire situation (for different reasons, obviously) and was ready to close its doors. That was until J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow and other filmmakers banded together to save the floundering company. Their shared love of film compelled them to save the dying medium and, thanks to those filmmakers and their studio backers, the company is still alive today.

But that hasn’t happened with these theaters. I'm not saying that can't happen, of course. The announcement just came this week so time will tell. I will say, however, it sounds like the company may have already exhausted their options (in light of the no "viable way forward" statement).

The death of ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theaters may not just signify another casualty of the pandemic but may actually be a sign of the times. Even prior to the pandemic many were wondering, amongst cord cutting and increasing interest in streaming content, how much longer would movie theaters stay relevant?

The pandemic has shifted the world in general, of course, and one of those big changes coming post-pandemic may be a world where movie theaters have a drastically different business model. Perhaps, one that makes them unrecognizable to us as we know them today.

Does that seem like too bold a claim? Perhaps. Let's just look at the state of the business now.

The state of the business pre-Covid

Prior to the pandemic, movie studios were beholden to the theaters to release their movies in theaters for a certain period of time. So if Warner Brothers wanted to release "Godzilla vs Kong" in theaters, they would have had to wait 90 days before releasing the film on Blu-Ray or to a streaming platform. There was a bit of flexibility on this when it came to digital rentals but otherwise 90 days was the standard. Now, movie studios did have the option of by-passing the theatrical exhibition altogether if they wanted and just going straight to people's homes. Why didn't they?

One reason might've been the Paramount Consent Decrees. The Consent Decrees date back to 1948 when the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios had to separate their distribution operations from their exhibition operations. Essentially, studios were barred from owning movie theaters as it was seen as a monopolistic practice and not fair to consumers. At the time, the only way you could see a movie was in a theater. Gradually, over time, of course, that changed and technology enabled us to watch movies at home. We got VHS, then DVD's, then Blu-Rays, then iTunes Movies, then Netflix and so on. But the theaters remained as a mainstay. Why?

I know many of my friends would argue it's because there's no better way to see a movie than in a theater. If you said that twenty years ago I would have agreed. But today, I'd say that's become largely subjective given the technology available at home. From a purely business oriented perspective, though, there's a host of little reasons theaters remained important such as films not being eligible for Oscar nominations without a theatrical release and, possibly, because studios worried that bypassing theaters would result in further regulations by the courts.

But mostly, it's because we, the audience, were accustomed to theaters. It gave a film legitimacy when it was presented in a theater. It used to be that if a movie went “straight to home video” it was considered cheap and probably low budget. Because of that, even though the studios were giving up 50% of their revenue to the theaters, their gross still was greater than what home distribution netted them in the initial release window.

Even after the invention of Blu-Rays and iTunes Movies, studios were still sending movies to theaters (1) because it was a huge source of revenue and (2) because it helped market the movie. The movie’s success at the box office gave us a reason to want that movie at home.

A shift in Public perceptions

There's a growing number of people that no longer think that way. If a movie goes to streaming now (the new home video), we no longer assume the movie is cheap or low budget. The content on streaming is just as good as the stuff we're seeing in theaters. There’s been a massive shift in our perception of what great “cinema” is. Yeah, you might still wanna' see some things in theaters but it doesn’t cheapen the movie for you if you don't.

And that’s a big problem for theaters. The leverage they’ve had over the studios up till now has been the Consent Decrees and our perception of what great cinema is. Significant, no doubt, but those two things have changed. In August of last year, the Paramount Consent Decrees were terminated with a two-year sunset period on certain aspects of the Decrees all but ensuring that studios could now vertically integrate if they wanted to. Or just bypass the theaters altogether - as some studios already have been experimenting with.

Even at the start of the pandemic, many movies were removed from theaters and sent straight to streaming with studios reporting that the revenue gained from VOD and online rentals rivaled the profit gained from theatrical distribution. As various studios like Paramount and Warner Brothers enter the streaming game alongside Disney (Disney Plus, Hulu) and Netflix, they too are experimenting. As you may have heard, Warner Bros. is releasing all their movies this year on their streaming platform HBOMax on the same day the films are released in theaters (a practice known as "day and date"). No doubt, the bean counters at Warner Bros. will be looking to see if this is a practice that should stay. It’d be fair to say that these experiments are not true representations of reality given the state of the world we’re testing this new distribution model with. But it is changing our perception of how important movie theaters are.

Studios are altering the deal

During the pandemic, theaters have been brought to their knees and have been forced to renegotiate certain terms with the studios including the release window between theatrical and home distribution. Most studios now have negotiated a home release date that comes just 17 days after the movie debuts in theaters - far shorter than the original 90 days.

This, of course, can be argued to just be a by-product of the pandemic. Theaters don't have leverage now but once the pandemic is over they will and they'll renegotiate. Right?

That really hinges on whether or not audiences still think a movie has more value if it was presented in a theater before they got to see it at home. Does it enhance the movie for me if it gets shown in a theater or am I just as interested (or maybe even more interested) in seeing it if it is sent straight to my home?

Other big changes are happening

There's other factors to consider as well. One might be the massive shift of homeowners into the suburbs and away from the city during the pandemic. Many employers are making it possible to work from home (a trend that will likely continue post-pandemic as the internet improves and more businesses see the benefits of a remote workforce) resulting in a mass exodus from cities to suburbs. Living in the suburbs means you don’t have the same pull of massive audiences in large gatherings the way you used to. We’re also investing more in our homes to make them enjoyable places to not only live but play as well. It’s a shift in our culture.

Another factor is that our perception of long form content has changed. Episodic television used to be where big movie stars went to end their careers after a career starring in movies. Now, it’s the reverse. A lot of stars are starting in television rather than finishing there because we (the audience) love binging on serialized content and when we’re not binging episodes we’re watching four hour movies (The Irishman, Zack Snyder's Justice League). Those experiences don’t work well in theaters where you’re stuck sitting in the same place and can’t hit the pause button.

Ultimately, the biggest factor might be what it usually comes down to - money. Before the pandemic audiences were already lamenting about the cost of movie tickets. A single afternoon of me taking my wife and kids to see the latest Disney movie in a theater could cost me $50 - $60 just for admission (not to mention the cost of food and drinks). But during the pandemic I was able to rent “Mulan” for $30 from comfort of my own home. Or, if I wanted, I could just wait three months and then see it as part of my regular Disney Plus subscription (which I was already paying for anyways so I could watch “The Mandalorian”).

As things open back up, many people are not necessarily swimming in money and, while I think the Covid relief packages have probably helped, a lot of people are still hurting and will be looking for any which way to save money. It seems unlikely that theaters will be able to lower their costs at this point given the need to recoup their losses from the pandemic and the probable need to make new investments in their facilities to stay competitive. They will need to get creative to show real value to audiences that might be reluctant to rush back in to theaters.

So what will happen to theaters post-pandemic?

For those of you worried I’m predicting doomsday for theaters - relax. I think theaters are probably here to stay regardless of what happens. They’re too much a part of what movies are to simply disappear. That said, they are a business and, currently, a failing one. What they look like post-pandemic doesn’t look great, from my perspective, unless the business model changes.

One possible scenario is that theaters become like playhouses or music festivals. In other words, they’ll still exist but in fewer quantities and will become more niche, featuring elevated experiences centered around tentpole movie properties which audiences are willing to pay a premium for (think “Top Gun: Maverick” or “Godzilla vs Kong”). I can see this form of adaptation working well in everyone’s favor.

Another possibility is that the studios buy out the movie theaters. The termination of the consent decrees has made that a real possibility. And then, once they’ve purchased them, build brand experiences centered around their properties. Something like miniature Disney Lands. They would most likely close a significant number of locations leaving only the flagships they felt would bring in a large audience and use them to promote the movies on their slate. A company like Disney with a large library of films could also use the theaters as a means of re-presenting old films from their library, borrowing a tactic from LucasFilm, and refresh old content to make it new again for theatrical. In essense, the net effect would be the same as in the first scenario: fewer theaters, more niche experiences.

I say this because it is somewhat unclear, to me at least, how the current model can persist if studios own theaters. Yes, they’d control theatrical distribution but they’d likely only be purchasing a theater to distribute their own movies. Would a company like Paramount, who’s only releasing seven movies this year, see the value of owning a theater chain? Even Disney’s slate only consists of 14 movies. To make the business viable (at least as it exists now), they would have to present movies from other studios. Would one studio trust that the studio in ownership of the theater was giving them a fair number of screens for presentation? It seems untenable under the current model.

What happens next is really up to you

The biggest change from the pandemic is that we as audiences have changed the way we look at movies. We’re ok with watching movies at home and, thus, the leverage theaters have to negotiate longer release windows between theatrical and home distribution has all but disappeared. The artificial pillars that made theaters a necessity are all but gone. And yes, the Oscars will likely still require that movies be released in theaters to be eligible for nomination but the standards of what a "theatrical release" means do not require as vast a distribution as you might think (see page 2, sub-section D of the General Entry rules). Plus, let's be honest - not all movies are meant to be Oscar contenders.

So really, the only thing to keep theaters relevant now is you - the audience. My prediction is that we’ll initially see some high demand for theaters as cities are re-opened and we try to return to our regular lives. But after we get back to a sense of normalcy (whatever that means in the future) we’ll see how much audiences really want to keep paying $20 per ticket to see a movie when they could just pay $30 once to rent it at home with the entire family or binge the new hot show on Netflix / Amazon / Apple TV/ Paramount Plus / Disney Plus / Hulu / Peacock / whatever else is out there.

At that point, the studios will do some math and if the profit they’re making from streaming outweighs the profit from the box office, theaters won’t have much of a leg to stand on. That is, unless audiences continue to demand theaters be a relevant part of the movie watching experience. Without considerable innovation on behalf of the theaters, though, I question how likely that is to happen.

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darlingfoe · 4 years

Note

"I hope it hurts when you think of me," for Victor and Eli

It's finally here, Grey! I don't promise it's the best quality, but it's definitely something! I took this prompt and ran with it; the line isn't dialogue, but a general theme and..well..the pain is literal... Hope you like it anyway!

!! spoiler warning for content relevant Vicious/Vengeful !!

Victor Vale was dying. He rises sluggishly to his feet, every part of his body groaning in protest. He pulls the mouth-guard from between his lips, slipping it into a case and snapping it shut with finality. A message alights the screen of his phone with a time. The time for how long he had been dead. When he pockets the device his fingers brush a crumpled piece of paper. He pulls it from his coat and begins the process of opening it back up.

Every word on the torn piece of newspaper had been blacked out with a sharpie. Every. Single. One. Except for those however, that instead of his usual numbing mantra of ‘FIX ME’ - spelled out ‘FIND HIM.’ Victor drops the paper, stepping on it as he leaves it behind. It wasn’t the first one he’d made. It wouldn’t be the last. He felt pain and fury both coursing beneath his veins and took a deep breath, turning that invisible dial down, down, down. Until he felt nothing.

It was Eli’s fault. It was Eli’s fault that the madness had started as a joke - at least to Victor in any case. It was nothing more than an experiment; Eli’s opportunity to play God and hope that he could provide actual, scientific proof for his thesis. His fault for interrupting Victor’s own attempts to obtain exactly what Eli had somehow, miraculously managed to do; his fault that he died, came back to life, and Angie didn’t. It was Eli’s fault he had wound up in prison, Eli’s fault that Sydney was the way she is now and that she blames herself for what’s wrong with Victor. The core source of every little thing that was violently WRONG, was linked to Eli Cardale or Eli Ever, Merit’s masked hero; his former roommate, classmate, and even friend - who believed his God had CHOSEN him and given him divinity. And every time Victor felt the rising buzz scratching at his nerves and throbbing in the back of his skull, it was Eli’s image that flashed before him. Victor had mastered the finer parts of the thing inside of him, could take away his own pain until he felt absolutely nothing, could even take it from others. But the pain and confliction he felt whenever he thought of Eli, whenever he saw his face in a photograph, that couldn’t be snuffed out. And Victor had learned to cling to it, to master that too, to use that pain as a power of its own.

FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM.

When Victor returned to their hotel, he promptly poured himself a drink. He shakes the small, cheap bottle at the notice of how his fairs were dwindling. He hadn’t heard her approach, but it was Sydney’s voice that broke the silence.

“...How long?,” she asks with a tremor in her voice. Victor sets the bottle aside. He abandons his drink and turns to meet her gaze. Victor bends just enough to hold it and ruffle her hair.

“What color do you want next?” She already had pink, blue, and even a pastel green wig stashed away. Sydney changed colors each day, sometimes twice a day. It was her way of separating herself from Serena - that much he knew. But it also seemed to give her a comfort that couldn’t be achieved; it was a change, a difference. Unlike most kids, Sydney Clarke didn’t grow. Not at an average rate, at least.

“You’re avoiding the question.” Sydney shoves his hand away, frowning at him. Victor lets her and rises to take up his drink again. “Is it getting worse?” But she didn’t need an answer; she knew it was. Victor’s own silence would be proof of that.

“Yes,” he replies. He downs his scotch in one go, the glass making a soft thud on the counter as he sets it down. “But I’ve got a lead, Syd. Don’t worry about it.”

Sydney watches him and Victor smiles back at her - a halfhearted thing. Sydney turns away from him, swiping a cookie from a plate nearby, mumbling something she thought he wouldn’t hear. I’m not a kid, I don’t know why you always have to lie. He clenches his jaw, wishing another drink were in his hand. But Victor only sheds his coat, abandoning it on one of the kitchen chairs. He could hear the quiet hum of voices from the television, and Mitch’s soft snores. He heard the click of Sydney’s door and the thump of Dol somewhere in the room with her.

Victor runs a hand through his hair and soundlessly moves to his own room. He kicks his shoes off and drops onto the small bed while exhaustion makes a home out of his bones. There’s a soft, barely noticeable hum in the back of his head - a flickering in his nerves. The episodes were getting too close together; he was running out of time.

FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM. FIND HIM.

His head hurt; his limbs ached; his heart slammed in the cage of his chest. If it wasn’t the sheer fact that Eli had made off free of all his crimes and painted Victor as a villain - a role he took up with pride despite having little say in it - if it weren’t for the sheer amount of betrayal and rage he felt in his blood, Victor could give it all up. Victor would be able to live with the fact that he was dying and let it happen. But he wanted to make Eli suffer; he wanted to see it, to see him. And that alone made his heart race, brought a restlessness to his limbs. But Victor closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest.

Soon, he promised, and let sleep and memories drag him down into the dark.

#vo writes things #fandom: villains #vicious spoilers #vengeful spoilers #victor vale #eli cardale #eli ever #sydney clarke

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ungiftedmusings · 4 years

Text

each in his own way, shatters

tw: referenced canon suicide, death

[vulnerable]

wave wished he could honestly say that he had never doubted pang, that he always trusted his friend’s intentions were the best even when his actions were suspect. in some ways, in the ways that really counted most of the time - namely, when mind control was involved - wave trusted pang completely. but the truth was, as wave’s feelings towards pang rushed past the line dividing platonic love and romance, that level of trust became harder to maintain. it was a different level of vulnerability, one which had served to cause wave nothing but pain in the past, and he didn’t know how to get over that.

but then, seeing pang like this… it didn’t matter. if a chunk of the trust that should have been there was missing, it was irrelevant when pang was sobbing on the floor like he’d had his heart shattered by a four-story fall.

[unarmed]

wave had known that something was wrong when pang didn’t answer the third time he’d tried calling. far too many voicemail tones later, and wave admitted to himself that things may be even worse than he’d previously thought.

he’d tried to steel himself, tried everything he could think of to prepare. he refrained from getting into a fistfight with punn. he took the worm of doubt that wriggled its way into his mind and pushed it aside to deal with another day. he harnessed his nervous energy to mentally plan a personalized pep talk, should that be what pang needed, and reminded himself of how well his group pep talk had gone just the other day. padded with confidence and care, wave figured he was ready to face whatever it was that had gone wrong.

no amount of preparation could have readied wave to hear pang’s heart-wrenching shouts. the way his blood ran cold the second he heard the pain and knew immediately who it belonged to was like nothing wave had experienced before. wave wasn’t normally one for running, but he found himself sprinting at full speed before he even knew it. pang’s voice faded out and wave kept running, because he knew the silence didn’t mean things were okay.

[broken]

wave had seen pang cry before. once, when he’d been let down by every single one of his friends and, as a result, had failed to accomplish the goal he’d spent a year working towards. again when he’d first realized that korn really had betrayed them all. wave had seen pang worn out, exhausted, confused, hurt. that was nothing, nothing at all, compared to this.

pang had always worn his heart on his sleeve and wave had always thought he was strong for doing so. it was that stubborn sort of kindness that came so naturally to pang, and sometimes wave thought he ought to replace stubborn with stupid. with his feelings so exposed, there was no way for pang protect himself from the elements, from the pain and the brutality of the world.

wave always wondered how pang had managed to keep his heart whole. there had always been chips in it, cracks, but pang always seemed to mend them without too much trouble.

wave wondered what would happen if it was too far damaged to repair. would it remain on display, or would pang relent, and finally hide it away?

now he could see it, a heart broken to pieces, and for a second, he froze, as if his gears had come to a halt. was his own heart still beating, or had that faltered, too?

[fear]

seeing pang suffering this way, wave was afraid. afraid to do the wrong thing, afraid to do the right thing, afraid that there is no right thing, but he knew he needed to try. his throat had gone dry and he forgot how to speak.

could words make a shattered heart break further?

he knelt next to pang, but his hands couldn’t find their way to comforting. they were shaking and he thought they might do more damage than good. wave had forgotten how to touch. hands hovering as if casting a spell, wave wished someone would just tell him what to do.

[fragile]

a word came back and wave croaked out pang’s name. pang just curled further into himself, so wave tried again, more loudly this time. “pang! what happened?”

“go away,” pang’s voice was thin, wavering, choked off by sobs that wouldn’t stop. “i don’t— i can’t—“ pang broke off with a shuttering, pained cry, and wave realized he was just barely managing to hold all the damaged pieces of himself together. in a seemingly careless fashion, wave very deliberately began playing with pang’s hair.

“you don’t have to,” wave said quietly. “you don’t have to explain, but i’m not going to leave you.”

at this, pang cried harder, but he latched on to wave’s free hand as soon as it was offered.

[guilt]

“it’s my fault,” pang whispered, long after wave assumed - hoped - he had fallen asleep. when he looked, pang’s eyes were red, and wide-open, staring as if wave wasn’t even there.

“what is?” wave kept his voice mellow, measured. pang opened his mouth, then closed it, and wave brushed a hand over his forehead. “pang, can you tell me?” there were tear streaks staining nearly ever centimeter of pang’s face, but he was no longer crying. his eyes looked empty, and wave wondered where pang’s heart went.

“i killed them,” pang said, his voice hollow. “time and korn, i— they’re gone. and it’s my fault.”

[voids, vacuums]

and suddenly the air rushed out of wave’s lungs all at once, leaving only a hollow and aching vacuum. fear rung in his ears, along with defiance and hurt, and he pushed what was less relevant for the moment aside, shaking his head.

“no. no, pang, listen, i don’t know what happened but you can’t blame yourself.”

pang stared at wave, blinking voids completely dry, and smiled as his grip on wave’s hand tightened. “you don’t know,” he said, aloof, almost condescending. “nothing - you know nothing.”

“but you can tell me—“

“get out.” wave’s back straightened of its own accord, as if coming to attention. “leave me alone. do not touch me again.”

wave stood up. it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had no choice. he felt his feet carry him out the door, and tears began streaming down his own face. because of what had happened. because he hadn’t been there to help. because he couldn’t help now. because of pang’s words. because, after a split second of raw hurt, he recognized them for what they were.

do not touch me again - the void where pang’s heart used to be made one last attempt at protecting his friend.

[anger]

and wave was angry. not because of pang. because his friends were gone, and because he was shaken, but not surprised. the realization had his stomach turning. they were in high school, they were kids, and he was so sick and tired of adults making their lives hell.

with everything they’d been through, with everything they were still going through, something like this was bound to happen. wave loved pang and his optimism but among the gifted, pang was in the minority of those who would be really, genuinely caught off guard by this.

so yes. wave was angry. but not at himself. not the way pang was angry. wave knew from experience the way self loathing functioned. reckless, thoughtless destruction.

[distance]

so, wave took the protection for what it was. he left pang alone. he’d had to keep his distance from pang before, after the memory wipe, and it wasn’t any easier the second time around, especially now that he was on his own. but he didn’t want to be like channon and mr. pom, didn’t want to sacrifice happiness for temporary closeness.

wave had always been able to take a step back and look at problems from a distance - it had served him well in the past, and sometimes poorly, but right now he needed logic. and really, what more was logic than looking at an issue from the outside in? he needed that space, that safety, that comes with a particularly guarded heart - a battered and bruised one that was good at little but protecting itself. at the cost of every sense of being human that he’d obtained in the past few years, wave took a few large steps away from this problem, until he was just at the edge of it. he was just close enough to be involved, but far enough away that he could go unnoticed. close enough to watch as his best friend attempted to regain some semblance of control by stealing it out of his own friends’ hands, but distanced enough to maintain control over himself.

the days were long and lonely, but having control was his only hope, having power - it was his last resort. he’d bought himself time, time to develop his power, his potential, and wave didn’t know if it would be enough. but he had to try.

AO3

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

Text

So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account.

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes. All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

#hilary for ts #history #notre dame #Le Discourse #anyway yes #i just felt like it needed to be said #nothing particularly original perhaps #and it has been said before #but still #long post

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