#i reacted in a perfectly rational and reasonable way to a work of fiction that has no concrete bearing on my life or how it's lived

[sachete]

hey @neil-gaiman i'm not mad i just wanna talk

[furiousgoldfish]

When you're continually berated and punished for something, even something harmless or normal, it's going to feel like a 'wrong' thing to do, or to be. If your appearance is constantly insulted, it's going to feel like you 'look wrong', if your curiosity is being shut down and attacked, you'll start to perceive your own positive traits as bad, annoying and wrong.

Abusers especially love to punish any 'standing up to them', or 'questioning their intentions', and 'getting rightfully angry at them'. Or, god forbid 'attempt at creating boundaries'. Those will get shut down and punished very fast, and you will instead be 'corrected', and 'told how to think and how to act instead'. So you'll be told that the correct thing to do is to stay silent, not voice your thoughts, not talk back, repress and stuff down your anger and sense of justice indefinitely, don't believe you have any right to deny abusers anything they might want of you. And you always, always have to assume their intentions are what's best for you, for everybody, or at least, each and every of their actions has good reasons behind them.

I was trained to think like this as a child, and thought it was in fact, wrong to ever make a negative assumption about anyone's behaviour; this in fact will make them act bad! I thought the only correct way to behave was to defend and try to rationalize and understand any kind of disgusting behaviour. To the point where even when looking at the fictional characters, or people who had nothing to do with me, I would always attempt to see what had happened to those people and understand their motivationss for doing evil. I even mistakenly thought that this was some depth of character and a way to see nuance and good in everybody, I thought it was a positive trait of mine that I tried to understand everybody. It would later prove to be a vulnerability, since I  never extended the same grace to myself, and nor did anyone else.

Understanding why people do what they do makes sense if you're talking about friends, people who understand you back. It makes sense if you're trying to extend compassion for victims, trying to understand how they felt during what was done to them, and why they reacted in the way they did. It makes sense if you're trying to understand how the world works, and if you want to attempt to make changes. It even makes sense if you look at why abusers do what they do – but in that case, you can't look at their perspective for the answers. What they do is explained perfectly in what it accomplishes.

If constant berating, humiliating and shaming their victims accomplishes to ruin the victim's self esteem, being too scared to stand up to the abuser, struggling to socialize and ending up alone, isolated and more vulnerable to the abuse – then that's exactly what it accomplishes. If abuser's violence, threats, blackmail and manipulation hold the victim hostage, make the victim scared to run, scared to fight back, scared to disobey, scared to put the end to the abuse – thats what it accomplishes. If abusers control of victim's finances, appearance, social life, behaviour, activities and work gains the abuser the ability to control this person's life, and extract as much labour, catering, emotional care, and lack of a fight at violations and pain, that's exactly what it accomplishes!

A person's past doesn't come with instructions to hold someone hostage and hurt them indefinitely, no history will accidentally cause this. It cannot be explained by past experiences, because no past experiences get resolved by controlling another person to one's pleasure and benefit. Nobody is predisposed by their past to engage in intimate violation of another person's well being and integrity, hold it secret, and stop this person from defending themselves or running away. This is learned, calculated, purposeful, intentional and self-aware behaviour (or they wouldn't hide it, would they?).

Why they do what they do lies in what they get out of it. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. You don't need their history to explain it, because the reasoning is very simple: they want to, they can, and they think they can get away with it. Difficult and painful past can cause a person to isolate themselves, to fear others, to struggle with emotions, trust, panic, triggers, to avoid situations where another thing like that could happen, to struggle with eating, to not be sure how to properly form bonds and connections, how to socialize, how to get close to people, or how to get separated when things get bad. But it doesn't cause a person to blatantly lie, fake, untruthfully promise and manipulate another to believe they're being loved, only to lure them into a hostage situation where they're not allowed to be a person anymore, not allowed to even voice what's happening to them. Nobody does this accidentally or because they 'don't know any better'. They do it with calculation because their intention is to exploit and harm for benefits. And that's not something to defend, in fact once you understand it, you know there is no possible defense in the world.

And to circle back to the beginning of this post, they shut down your curiosity because curiosity results in new knowledge, and any new information you get is a threat to them; curiosity is a powerful and desirable trait to have! Nothing was ever wrong with your appearance, they just prefer if you don't go outside and feel too ashamed of yourself to ever examine whatever is wrong with them; it's to keep you in shame and self doubt so you wouldn't notice how unworthy the abuser is of you. You standing up to others and fighting for what's right is not only a positive trait; it demands courage, integrity and personal strength to do that. And being suspicious when it comes to someone's intentions can save you mountains of trouble and abuse. You have every right to doubt what people are saying, every reason to notice if things are a little too convenient, little too unbelievable. It shows a clear mind and unclouded judgment - which, I can't judge you if you don't have, because I don't have it either.

People with good motivations don't need their actions defended, because the motivations are reflected in their acts, not their words. Anyone who needs you to defend them when they do evil, likely does not deserve it. Anyone who would have a problem with your appearance, curiosity, courage, strength, reasoning and distrust, could only have it because they don't like how you can see trough them, and fight them on their abuse. All of these traits should earn you respect and dignity.

[tsarisfanfiction]

I spun the wheel! Trapped + Beach = John :)

From Across The Ocean

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: John, Scott

And this should be the last one from the original batch that came through, at least.  Sorry it’s taken a whole week to answer... uni is hectic and my muses rebelled by being unco-operative.

I’m eyeing this prompt and I’m thinking this might get a little into panic attack territory, rather than anything physically whumpy, so small warning there.

Spin the wheel of whump and give me a character!

This was a bad idea.  This was a terrible idea and John had no idea why he’d ever agreed to it.  Had he even agreed to it, or was it one of those times where no-one had bothered to ask him and he’d just been dragged along anyway?  It had been a few years since the last time that had happened, his family learning their lesson about forcing him out of his comfort zone the hard way, and he found it hard to believe that they’d make that mistake again.

Then again, his family weren’t here.  His family were back home, probably fast asleep because of the time difference, leaving him with a group of college peers who had decided for some reason that the best thing to do was a day trip to the beach.  He’d been dragged, entirely reluctantly, to join them with promises that it was a quiet beach and no, there wouldn’t be many people.

Clearly, they thought it was a little white lie and that he’d get over it.  His course mates were still strangers, acquaintances at best, and hadn’t yet understood that his reclusive nature was entirely by choice.  He wasn’t shy, he just didn’t like people.

And he hated crowds.

The beach was a hive of activity, teeming with humans in a living, breathing, pulse of people.  He’d frozen up, unable to take another foot forwards, to join that monster, and his stupid, ignorant course mates had just laughed and dragged him through the sand until he was stuck right in the heart of it all.

Then they’d left him, dumped him on bag duty on the assumption that he was just being antisocial and therefore could guard their bags while they all threw themselves into the sea - teeming with almost as many bodies as the sand of the beach itself - and all John could feel was the pressure of so many people.

Packed in like sardines, people kept touching him, a hand on his shoulder as they skipped over the bags piled around him in a scrambled defensive barrier that completely failed at its designated task, tripping over his feet even though he was hugging his knees tightly to his body, trying to make himself small enough that no-one would notice him, no-one would touch him.

It didn’t help.  It didn’t stop the noise, didn’t stop the people brushing past him, didn’t stop the claustrophobia or the choked-up feeling in his throat.  Breathing was hard, too hard, and he should unfurl himself, but that meant making a larger surface area for people to interact with, and just the thought of that tightened his airways more.

He couldn’t get out.  He didn’t care about the bags, would happily abandon them in a heartbeat if it meant escaping, no matter how his course mates would react, but getting out meant clambering over warm bodies, meant doing to other people what was being done to him, meant more physical contact, and the mere idea of it was enough to have tears running down his cheeks, air harder and harder to draw in.

He was trapped.  No way out, no escape, and he curled up tighter, praying for the hell to miraculously disappear.

His phone dug into his thigh, poking through the thin shorts he’d been prodded into wearing for the trip, and it was stupid, but John was long past rational thought as he fumbled it from his pocket, almost dropping it into the sand when trembling fingers failed to grip it properly, and instinctively mashed the first number on speed dial.

Almost immediately, he went to end the call, a spike of rationality hitting again.  A phone call wasn’t going to help, and the time difference meant he’d still be asleep anyway and-

“John?”

The call connected before he could cut it, his big brother’s voice distorted by the speakers and still drowsy with sleep, and his trembling fingers froze just short of the end call symbol.

“John, are you okay?”

Scott’s first instinct was concern, even though he was clearly still waking up, but perhaps that should be because he was still waking up.  John knew the timezones, did the math instinctively, and never called them before dawn.

Back in Kansas, dawn was still a little way off.

“John?”

Concern was rapidly shifting to worry, and it was that familiar tone, the big brother sensing something was wrong and immediately hunting for ways to set things right, that had him whimpering his brother’s name.

Scotty.  He hadn’t called him that in years.  Not like this, a plea and a prayer.

“I’m here, John,” Scott promised, even though he was just a voice in his ear, not one of the warm bodies pressing against him - the only warm body John ever willingly suffered on a regular basis, because the rest of the world was one thing, but his big brother was a barrier of safety.  “Can you talk to me?”

The sleep had vanished from his voice, big brother wide awake at the prospect of a little brother in distress.  John hadn’t been that little brother in years.

Since the last time he’d called for Scotty in that little whimpered plea and prayer.

He tried, searched for words, attempted to vocalise them, but he couldn’t grasp them, couldn’t get his breathing to stop hitching long enough for his lips to form them.

“Okay, okay.”  Scott cut through his attempts, calm and steady in a whirlwind world that wouldn’t stay still.  “Okay, John, you need to breathe.  Can you take a breath for me?  As deep as you can.”

He tried, clinging to his brother’s voice, but his throat hitched again and it turned into the gasp of a drowning man.  Scott stayed steady in his ear, reassuring him, coaxing him to try again, counting him until there was air reaching his lungs again and wrapping him in the security of a big brother.

There was no demand what was wrong.  No insistence that he talk to him, even though John knew Scott had to be panicking and running through scenario after scenario in his head, trying to work out what had sparked the whole mess.  Just reassurance, a steady voice in his ear keeping him grounded and helping him breathe.

“Sorry.”  It slipped out, an apology for worrying his brother, for waking him up, for forcing him to help him from the other side of the Atlantic.

“Don’t apologise.”  Scott’s reply was quick, automatic, and predictable.  “I’m always here if you need me, John.  Always.”  The last word was more than a promise, it was an insistence, a full binding oath.  “Where are you?”

The warm bodies were still there, but Scott’s voice was like a forcefield, keeping the full force of them from hitting him.  Keeping him safe.

He told him, even though there was nothing Scott could do about it.  His big brother couldn’t work miracles, no matter how hard he tried, but a small part of John clung to the childish hope that maybe, just maybe, Scott would appear in front of him and guide him out of there.

Of course, that didn’t happen.  Scott was in Kansas, teleportation still only existed in fiction, and John was on a beach in England.

What did happen, a while later but John was still on the phone, still talking to Scott about anything and everything and trying desperately to forget where he was, was a flash of blond and designer sunglasses covering bright blue eyes.

“John, darling,” Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward said, delicately picking her way past the warm bodies towards him, her own forcefield of upper class and a scowling bodyguard parting them like the old story of Moses and the Red Sea.  “You look rather lost.”

A perfectly manicured hand hovered in front of him, not quite touching but an invitation, and John accepted it.

The bags were forgotten, a lesson for course mates to learn, as she led him out through the crowds and into a familiar pink car.

His phone was still pressed to his ear, the call still connected even though Scott had stopped talking when John had stopped responding, and John didn’t know how he’d done it, but, “Scott?”

“Yes, John?”

“Thank you.”

“Any time, little brother.”

There was only one way Penelope could have known to come looking for him.

[constablewrites]

Anatomy of a Scene: The Shining’s Hedge Animals

Many storytelling techniques and tropes transcend medium. But when it comes to horror, visual media like movies and video games has tools at its disposal that fiction just doesn’t. Unsettling images in the background and creepy music can be extremely effective at provoking a visceral reaction of fear. How can one replicate that feeling with only words?

I’ve read a fair amount of horror in my day, especially in my Stephen King phase that is apparently standard-issue for preteen girls. And among all the weird and creepy stuff, there’s only one scene that’s ever genuinely terrified me. The funny thing is, whenever I say that to people, without any further explanation I usually get a single response:

“Oh, you mean the topiaries in The Shining.”

It’s an element that’s not in the Kubrick film (which has only superficial resemblances to the book). They appear a couple of times, but their first appearance is particularly worth examining. While Wendy and Danny make one last trip into town, Jack goes out to trim the hedge animals near the playground. He trims one, then heads over to explore the playground, lingering there for reasons he can’t explain. When he finally returns his attention to them, they’ve moved. The animals are perfectly still while he’s watching them, but the ones he can’t see keep advancing on him, boxing him in. Finally he just covers his eyes, and when he opens them, everything has returned to the way it was.

So what makes this scene stand out? 

First, you have to consider where the scene fits structurally. The first half of the book is a slow burn. Danny’s premonitions provide an undercurrent of dread as all three Torrances desperately try to reaffirm their family bonds. Jack in particular clings hard to his conception of himself as a good person, even as his self-control starts to slip and old bad habits crop back up. The attack of the topiaries serves as the last warning for them to turn back before tragedy becomes inevitable, a warning which goes unheeded. Immediately after that scene, the snow begins to fall, and the next chapter sees Danny meet the dead woman in room 217 and the family’s trust in each other start to crumble. So the topiary scene is the culmination of a long build-up of the knowledge that this is all going to end very, very badly.

The idea of a threat that only moves when you can’t see it is a very primal one, tied to the way ambush predators hunt. It’s a fear that plays particularly into the paranoia of the novel, the idea that you just know something is going on but are denied the concrete proof of visible motion. Further, it gives you just enough agency to feel really helpless: you could hold the monsters at bay, if only you were able to watch them all at once. 

Jack’s reaction is a big part of the effect of the scene. Up until now, he’s been rationalizing the strangeness (the wasps, Danny’s powers, his drunken tics returning despite the lack of liquor). But in the face of this, he doesn’t try to explain it away, doesn’t do anything but react with pure, childlike terror, down to the decision to simply cover his eyes and hope that the threat passes. It’s a reaction much more similar to how Danny’s been treating his visions, tying him closer to the boy’s certainty that the Overlook is a dangerous place.

From a technique standpoint, the scene echoes the book as a whole in that it really takes its time. Jack starts trimming the animals, then impulsively stops and goes into the playground. He keeps telling himself he should get back to the task, and keeps doing other unsatisfying things instead, delaying for no particular reason. Even when he hears the noise behind him, it takes a full page of him looking around and grappling with his inexplicable physical fear reaction before he finally puts it together. If the animals had simply come to life and attacked, it would be freaky but wouldn’t give Jack (and the reader) the time to get good and worked up over it. The slow realization that this is really happening and there’s nothing you can do about it is what puts the scene over the top.

Ultimately, it’s fairly easy to startle or disturb or freak out an audience. The Shining in general, and the topiaries in particular, show that if you want to truly terrify them, you want to stretch that anticipation until it snaps.

[sosthemortalcoil]

I just wanted to express my surprise over how popular Micheal is as a RO. I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone who thinks that he can do whatever he likes with Gabriel and things concerning Gabriel (hiding from us our AROF status, demanding constant connection on battlefield, trying to kill a kid that Gabriel took under their protection and that just the things showed in the demo) is so easly accepted, from my perspective this is the very definition of toxic relationship

First of all, I just want to say that’s perfectly fine! Honestly, I’d be a little worried if everyone liked Michael (especially since he was not designed to be an RO, for more or less these very reasons). Thank you for submitting your opinion.

However, I’d like to perhaps offer some insight into why others may enjoy him (again, not trying to say there’s anything wrong with disliking him–please do continue to dislike him and have different opinions!) Spoilery information below, so read at your own risk if at all interested.

1. First and foremost, this is a work of fiction. It’s a game, a bit of a fantasy, if you will. We do things and act in ways in game that we often would not in real-life–I certainly don’t go around smiting demons, for instance :D The distinction is an important one. In real life, someone who constantly yelled at me, seemed incapable of having a rational or civil conversation, and generally behaved like a thorn in my side I would avoid as much as possible. I certainly wouldn’t want a relationship with them. However, in a game like this, where I know in advance that the character has a different side and can change? That’s a different story. I wouldn’t trust anyone in real-life like this, but this is fiction. Two very different things. I also don’t smoke a pack a day and drink my liver away, but I have a soft-spot for playing characters with some serious vices too–trying to instill the same moral values I have in reality to my works of fiction wouldn’t translate well most of the time.

2. Hiding AROF status never sits well with Gabriel, even if they aren’t surprised about it. They are, rightfully, irritated that such information would be concealed from them. However, Michael is not alone in not telling Gabriel about AROF. For instance, Israfel knew and never told you. So, holding that against Michael and Michael alone isn’t necessarily fair.

3. Constant connection is almost a given with nestmates. Now, they might all be grown and archangels, but it can feel like missing a limb when you can’t sense one of them. Combine that with communication is necessary to keeping everyone safe, and Michael’s own worry about Gabriel’s safety, and it’s not entirely unreasonable for him to react the way he does. It’s technically a breach of protocol not to respond when being contacted, which is why both Michael and Israfel send a seraph to check on Gabriel.

4. Daniel is not a child to Michael. Whether or not you tried to kill Daniel or protect him, Michael had no way of knowing that you were given an order to protect the boy, and when he first realizes what the boy is, he’s under the assumption that you don’t know. General policy of heavy is to kill satanspawn on sight–he can’t imagine that you would have orders to protect the child. Does he ignore you when you tell him that Daniel is under your protection? Absolutely. But he can’t imagine that you would willingly and knowingly protect a creature of sin (as he understands the boy to be). He can’t wrap his head around the idea that God would give such an order, and defaults to his knee-jerk reaction. Is he in the wrong? 100%. But a character who is always right and perfect is boring. He also sees Daniel as a threat to Gabriel’s position–protecting a satanspawn with an AROF stamp seems like the perfect recipe for Falling–and that’s where his mind tends to stay.

5. I don’t know how much of Michael’s situation you know, as what we know in the game is not much. But there is a force instructing Michael what to do if he wants to keep Gabriel safe. He’s not allowed to tell Gabriel about certain things, which makes him irrational and irritated as he hates lying or concealing things from Gabriel. He’s supposed to do certain things ‘to keep Gabriel safe and prevent them from risking their position’ and when he fails at doing those thing, he’s hit with fear, worry, and terror–which we see expressed as more yelling. Not a great response, but there is a bit of a provocation for it. (Whether it’s justified or not I’ll leave to you–there’s not right or wrong answer)

6. Michael can change. If he can clear his chest of the guilt weighing it down and confide everything to Gabriel, we can see a healthier, almost naively sweet Michael. All Michael has ever wanted is Gabriel to be happy (albeit it, he wants them to be happy with him.) He can’t stand Gabriel seeming to become corrupt, true, and he will fight a dark!Gabriel if not manipulated because he views them as someone different from the nestmate he once knew. But whatever happens, Michael will always love Gabriel. Combine with the awkwardness he tends to favor in romantic situation, some people are excited for his romance. Is he for everyone? No. Is he going to be the smoothest romance? Again, no. But can I see why some people are anticipating the romance? Yes. Do I see why some people think he should be kept far away? Heck yes. Disagreeing over characters is great.

7. I think ‘easily’ accepted may be a bit of an issue. You could have tried to kill Daniel too, for one, which means you don’t have a whole lot of ground to stand on when chiding Michael for doing the same. And there will be discussions about what Michael has done wrong prior to any relationship. It’s not just kiss and make-up. It’s “Here’s where you really screwed up. Do you understand what you did wrong and can you promise to do better?” Two, you’ve been together for longer than humans have recorded history. Getting on each other’s nerves is a side-effect of coexisting for that long. Even Israfel needs his space from you sometimes.

Just want to finish with saying please don’t feel that I’m trying to say the only right way to see Michael is as a poor boy in need of some love. There is no right and wrong way. I’ve mentioned before you can end up killing him, and growing apart and wanting nothing to do with him is a perfectly healthy and legitimate response. But I can see both sides, and exploring different sides is part of the joy of a story like this.

[rowandriftwood]

I finally made myself reply to the email my dad sent me. I’m putting the text of his email and my reply under a cut, because it’s long and sort of personal, but if anyone is interested or wants to talk about it, feel free. Warning for homophobia.

[Rowan],

It was good to hear that someone was interested in publishing some of your writings.  I'll be honest here though...After reading the bio on your publisher I am having a difficult time relating it to the kind of writing I thought you did.  I had always thought that the fan fiction (I think that is what you call it) you wrote had to do with stories about young people.

The publisher, according to what I read about her, is heavily into some pretty dark stuff...sexually speaking. I am having a difficult time here believing you could be writing the stuff that she is known for in the publishing world. More to the point, I never thought you could would be writing something in that genre.  

I know that you lived through some pretty dark stuff when you were with [ex] and maybe even before that.  I have always thought that you had moved past that part of your life.  Now, I am not so sure.  Having never read any of your writing what I am saying may be way off base. I truly hope so.  If you would like me to read some of your writing, send it to me. You are such a talented writer that you can succeed in almost any kind of writing arena you might choose. If I am way off base here please tell me.  

I know you are passionately into the LGBT cause.  I am not sure why.  It is one thing to personally believe in something so deeply that you think it is the only cause out there worth fighting for.  However, it is an entirely another thing to write material that is directed at young people with the intent of convincing them that thinking the way you do is what is best for them. If your work is meant for adult audiences, then fine.  But, if you are writing for 12-19 year olds you are assuming that you know what is best for them, not knowing who they are.  As a parent, finding my child reading stuff that this publisher publishes would make me frightened and angry.  Further, it would have a negative affect on all of my family relationships...wife and children because the hurt I would feel.

I have read that some counselors, child psychologists, and yes even teachers think that we need to let children make the decisions regarding their sexual identity.  I strongly disagree.  Let me give you an example.  Lets say that a boy an girl in middle school firmly love each other, want to get married, and have a child.  If one of these was your child would you encourage him/her to follow their heart, get married and have a child while they are in middle school.  I hope not.

By the same token would you encourage the relationship, if these kids felt the same strong affection for someone of their own gender?  To me there is no difference.  We as adults simply should not try to encourage intimate relationships in young people no matter whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, etc.  

If you are doing this in your writing, I think you are doing a very strong disservice to the young people who follow you.  Additionally, you are doing a disservice to their parents because you are putting ideas out there that they don't agree with or want their children to be exposed to. You have no right to try and move them toward a lifestyle that their parents do not want for them.  It is not your calling to be this person. You can rationalize it by saying well the parents can keep the material away from them.  That is not logical.  How many times when you were growing up did you read stuff that you knew your mom and I would not approve of.  Today it is even harder for parents to protect, yes protect, their children from bad things because you and I both know that it is nigh on to impossible to control the stuff that kids can expose themselves to on the internet.

I'll end here with a question I would like you to answer.  If [6yo niece] wanted to read what you write and [sister] did not want her to, what would you say to [niece].  More importantly if [niece] was your child and I was writing about how young boys or young girls (or even adults) were having intimate relationships (heterosexual or homosexual) when they were away from home (scout camps, adventure camps, etc.) would you want to sit down and read my book to her or with her.  Something to think about.

dad

Dear Dad,

It's hard getting emails like this from you, and it's even harder knowing how to respond. I know there are a lot of things we do not see eye-to-eye on, and I fear we never will, but I don't want our relationship to be hurtful and contentious. It feels bad, always being on the defensive with you and Mom.

My first impulse was to go through your email, point by point, and write a 5000 words dissertation, with bibliography, refuting the things you've said. My second impulse was to delete it and not respond at all, because of the way it made me feel. I'm pretty sure neither of those is the right answer. I'm not sure there is a right answer. All I can do is tell you how I feel, what I know, and hope you will understand.

You've made it very clear on many occasions that you think all forms of queerness are bad and wrong and harmful, that queer people should resist or hide their feelings, and try to change and conform to heterosexual, cisgender societal norms. But being queer or trans is no worse than being left-handed, which was also not long ago seen as bad and wrong, and people tried to break children of it, sometimes violently. It is simply a natural, biological variation. It harms no one.

This kind of judgement hurts a lot, coming from my parents. I am who I am. I can't change it, and I wouldn't if I could. There is nothing wrong with me. I am happy in myself. I feel like I've learned a lot about myself in the last few years -- about the negative patterns I was perpetuating in my life and relationships, and about how to be a better, wiser, happier person going forward. I think this is a good thing. I think I am, in general, a good person. I try to be.

Queer people are no more dangerous to children than heterosexual people are. We are not more abusive. We do not make worse parents. We are not trying to "recruit" kids or convince them to be anything other than who they are, no more than a heterosexual person calling a baby boy a "ladies man", or saying that a little girl has a "boyfriend" in preschool, or showing kids a Disney Princes movie that ends with a wedding and "happily ever after", is trying to recruit children to heterosexuality. What we are trying to do is tell children that they are OK, they are loved, no matter what, and we are letting little straight kids know that their friends who are different still deserve kindness and respect.

Your example about middle schoolers getting married is absurd and insulting. Of course I do not believe that anyone under the age of 18 should get married for any reason, and I would tell any child to wait until they have reached adulthood before following through with such an important decision. Children cannot enter into legally binding contracts, for good reason. I would also strongly discourage anyone who has not reached physical maturity from having children. Pregnancy and childbirth are very dangerous and hard on the body, besides which a certain level of maturity is required to care for infants and children, and few middle schoolers possess this. Crushes and dating, on the other hand, are perfectly fine, age-appropriate behaviour for teenagers, regardless of gender or sexuality.

Queer people have always existed, in every culture on Earth. Even cultures that are overwhelmingly disapproving, and even violent towards them. Just look at what is happening in Chechnya right now. No one "recruited" those people. They didn't choose to be different. You can't prevent people from being queer by hiding all information about queerness from them, by making queer people culturally invisible, by never allowing queer stories to be told. All you do when you try to do that is make queer kids feel alone and broken, drive up queer suicide rates, and perpetuate violence against queer people in general.

Queerness is not inherently sexual. There is a tendency among heterosexual people to think of queer people purely in terms of what they do in the bedroom. But queer love is no different, worse, or less than heterosexual love. The day-to-day things that make up queer relationships are the same things that make up heterosexual ones. Queer people's sex lives are no one's business but their own, anymore than heterosexual people's sex lives are. A woman holding hands with her wife is no more shocking or R-rated than a woman holding hands with her husband.

The world is still a dangerous place for queer people, because of false negative ideas and stereotypes. We have to be careful all the time, about what we say to whom, and how open we are when we go to unfamiliar places, because we never know if someone is going to react violently to us. Even Seattle, which has a 13% queer-identifying population, is not safe. Every few months or so there's a story about a queer person being violently attacked here. Queerness is not harmful. Homophobia and transphobia are.

As far as my writing goes, I've written many different kinds of stories over the years, from drama to comedy to tragedy to horror to fuzzy, feel-good romances. I don't think my stories would interest you, and I'm not asking you to read them. For the record, many of them are G-rated, and I would have no problem with [niece] reading those. The sites I post on have a clearly posted rating system, making it easy to note which stories are appropriate for which ages. I have always been very clear about discouraging anyone under 18 from reading any story I have rated "Mature".

Writing makes me happy, and my stories make other people happy. I couldn't ask for more than that. I've lost count of how many times someone has written to tell me that something I wrote made them cry, because they had never seen someone like themselves in a story before, or that something I wrote made them think differently about something.

I'm glad someone wants to publish my work. The world needs more stories that humanize and normalize the lives of queer and trans people, their experiences, their friendships, and their romantic relationships, without sexualizing or fetishizing them. For the record (not that it matters), the story the agent contacted me about does not contain any sex. It is a romance novel about a budding relationship between a librarian and a homeless college student, set in contemporary Seattle. Stories are powerful. They are one of the best tools we have for opening people's hearts and minds, showing them the humanity of people different from themselves, generating compassion, and validating and normalizing the existence of people who aren't white or straight or able-bodied. If I can contribute to that in even a small way, I will know that I have left the world a better place than I have found it.

My stories teach the importance of communication. They teach how to set boundaries. They teach how to be a good and supportive friend. They teach mutual respect and self-respect. They teach consent. They teach safe sex. They teach how to recognize abuse and manipulation. They teach how to get help, if someone needs it. There's nothing dark about that. I'm proud to do it.

Love, [Rowan]

[lady-nevermore]

Therapy Session 6

7/24/2017

Walked to my Therapy Session today (my mom couldn’t accompany me today, I wouldn’t allow her too), she was in pain cause she had a back molar tooth removed/ an old forgotten wisdom tooth perhaps? I was a little nervous, but I did it by myself and made it on time, I think to be honest the moment I was waiting in the waiting room with the rest of the patients is what really made me feel tense/and nervous ( I don’t do well surrounded by people I don’t know, especially in confined spaces, like elevators, it makes me super aware how awkward and tense I’m feeling, ugh and small talk is the worst)! DX

Anyways, so I just found out that my therapist and her entire staff and people are moving location, and it’s not soo close by anymore, which means I gotta commute by bus, but at least there’s a nice park nearby with lots and lots of trees (which is comforting, I love nature and trees), right near where the bus will drop us (me and my mom, she’s insists on accompanying me for moral support, which I’m really really thankful/grateful for...I get anxious when I’m by myself, I’m more aware of said anxiousness if I don’t have a security person with me, like my mom for example) ; but yeah, anyways, so it’s a little bit annoying and makes me a bit uncomfortable considering it’s a whole new place now, but I’ll get used to it.

My therapist thinks it’s a good idea for me to start thinking seriously about retaking my permit test, so I can get my dmv permit, and finally try to move my life forward by taking classes and learning how to drive (she’s says it’s the only way for me to get out of this mental-place that  I feel soo damn stuck in, and she’s absolutely right); the time is perfect too considering I noticed that I’m in a good place mentally-speaking, at the moment (I’ve noticed that my depression lasted about one week and a half after my menstrual cycle/period hit and messed with my hormones, but afterwards the depression broke like a fever and finally passed, which was a relief), since she’s been helping me become more aware of my changes in my mood, what’s causing them, keeping track of them and helping deal with my negative emotions by advising me to write down what triggers or causes me to feel anxious, bouts of depression, etc, it helps to not only keep track how long they last but what caused them in the first place, also she’s helping me in order to help manage how I’m reacting to things via analyzing if my negative reactions, negative feelings, negative emotions aka the anxiety/depression are logical or rational behaviour, once I realize that it’s not, it helps to calm me down, and separates the entity of the depression and anxiety itself away from my state of being, some days are easier than most when it comes to doing this, but it does help start to calm me down somewhat, so that’s sorta helpful. .....My next period is coming up soon, I’m hoping there won’t be another damn repeat of depression 2.0, but yeah. >_>;

My therapist is also gonna start the process of helping me change my thought process aka helping me replace my negative thoughts into consistent positive ones, until they feel almost permanent (the whole fake it till you make it attitude); She’s given me some sheets of homework in order to help my start changing my thought process, via challenging my core beliefs/thoughts and seeing if things sound rational/logical, and replacing them with thoughts that are more positive or at the very least logical. ...This is gonna take some serious soul-searching....

^^^But I want to do this for several reasons, not just cause I wanna better myself, but because my old friend/mentor who passed away (codename: Obi-Wan) was stubbornly optimistic, and he was till the very end, till colon-cancer got the best of him.....still I want to integrate that aspect onto myself, and in a way I already started to, years back as a youngling and teenager, I was soooo damn jaded, pessimistic individual, and it wasn’t until a couple years recently that I’ve become a lot less so; I think doctor who and Obi-wan had a lot to do with this, they’ve both impacted me in more positive ways I didn’t think would ever occur (I’m more of open-minded, optimistic, have a growing sense of child-like wonder and awe, at art, nature, the world, etc), and tbh I think the reason I got soo damned hooked onto doctor who was cause the doctor reminded me soo damn heavily of my old friend, his charisma, his persona of always knowing everything, his wit, his curiosity of how things work, his child at heart wonder and sense of awe perspective, all of which he and doctor who both has only influenced into ingraining and drilling into my own personality....something I hold very dear to my heart, and am immensely proud of.....and just like him, it’s my dream to follow in his footsteps, and become a teacher myself one day, carrying on his legacy (Doctor Who said it best/perfectly: To Have a Duty of Care), no greater honor is higher than this, to me personally that is. 

I’ve told my therapist that I tend to relate to characters to the point where, a really good book or tv-show/anime has made me cry (example: doctor who, rwby, harry potter, yu yu hakusho, hunter x hunter, rurouni kenshin, etc); she told me that I posses a beautiful sense of empathy, that I’m able to connect through the art of an artist, and feel the emotions of others even though it’s fictional or not even happening to me, she says that she thinks it’s quite a beautiful trait to have, and that it’s evidence that I’m a caring, kind, and open-minded person, and even though hearing her say that made me sheepish as hell, it was nice hearing solid evidence that, I’m slowly starting to see myself becoming/growing into the person I’ve only ever dreamed I could be, someone my old mentor/friend would be proud of, someone that is still carrying on his memory despite it all, in her own little, yet special little way. And to be honest, it feels somewhat poetic....if only he was still alive to see me now (but I feel like he knew all along I’d reach this point, he always said I was caring, loving, and kind as well as someone he could totally see as a teacher one day, my therapist agrees....of course he knew, he always knew....always gave the impression that he knew everything). Poetic indeed. ^^

[cyallowitz]

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In Legends of Windemere, people are introduced to the gods and the only law that they are guided by.  This is called the Law of Influence and was created by Zaria along with a council of other gods.  It states that they cannot get involved in mortal affairs beyond visions, casual chats, and blessing their priesthoods with magic.  Crossing the lines that are fairly vague results in being sealed.  The length of containment depends on how badly you messed up.  For example, a god might be sealed for a month if they slightly redirected a stream to help a farmer.  Another might be sealed for a decade if they created several new species after drinking too much.  The extreme is causing a big even like a war, which can result in eternal sealing.  These punishments haven’t really been dealt out because the perpetrators can state their cases.

This brings up a question as to how powerful the gods and goddesses are.  Some have even asked me what the point of them are if they can’t do anything big.  I’ve been told that Windemere could operate perfectly without them if they aren’t allowed to get their hands dirty.  This isn’t true though.  The gods still watch over their spheres and each has a pocket dimension where those who worshiped them go after dying.  So, they act like caretakers for the world and spirits in this respect.  Priests wouldn’t have holy powers without the gods to bestow blessings, which is a subconscious action on their part.  It’s only when they cut a mortal off for an established reason that they are fully aware of this power.  Still, this is fairly minor in turns of influence since mortals are asking for the magic and use it as they see fit.

The main reason I added the Law of Influence is because I was seeing how people reacted to these powerful beings in other series.  Audiences always ask why something didn’t bring about an easy solution.  Gods are a big target for this.  I find it a strange argument because you’re basically asking why the story even happened.  Sometimes people who could solve a problem simply don’t care enough to take action or are unaware.  That doesn’t work with semi-omnipotent deities though.  This is why I made the Law of Influence because it explains why they don’t just wipe out threats like Baron Kernaghan and depend on mortal champions.  It negates that argument and brings the weight of success entirely on the protagonists.

Still, some people found this silly because such powerful figures imposed a massive restriction on themselves.  To understand the reason, one has to know the history, which is mentioned at times.  Not the specifics, which will come out later and even be a few future stories.  I’ve noted that there have been various disasters that have befallen Windemere and some of these threatened the gods.  One of these was self-inflicted because they had been messing with mortals as they saw fit.  This continued until a woman seduced the God of Innocence and used him to get her hands on the Staff of Solar the First God.  She used this artifact to cast several gods out of their homes, transform others into monsters, and enslave the rest.  It was only Zaria and her friends, one of which would become Baron Kernaghan, who saved the gods.  It was revealed that Windemere would unravel if they weren’t put back in place too.  She ascended to become the Goddess of Purity and created the Law of Influence to make sure mortals weren’t pushed to the point of attacking the gods again.

Does this make the gods less powerful?  No, but they are hampered in a way that they can’t flex their muscles all the time.  Gabriel the God of Destiny gets some flexibility since his job requires that he craft vague destinies for mortals.  He can bestow this flexibility on others, but there are limits.  He can’t kill whoever he wants, so he has to create agents that he can help to some extent.  The Law of Influence prevents him from saving them from danger too.  So, it gets a little convoluted at times, but that stems from the gods needing to have some interactions.  This is why they hold court instead of going right to sealing and many can rationalize their actions.  It comes off as them being powerless, but they can do a few things that help move the plot along.

The biggest challenge here might be preconceived notions of gods.  We expect them to be the most powerful beings in the world as well as having no care about what they do to mortals.  Mythology has taught us that gods and goddesses will always get involved in human affairs.  This works for that, but it makes a mess with modern fiction.  You can pose them as bad guys that need to be stopped, but everything else brings in that frustrating question I mentioned.  You need to hamper them in some fashion, especially if they are physical presences.  If they never appear then audiences can assume that they are more fictional beliefs of the world instead of actual entities.  Maybe I should have gone that route, but that would make things weird with the Baron being a former god and Dariana being the daughter of him and Zaria.  That would reveal that they are physically there somewhere.

I hope this helps clear up any questions about the Law of Influence and why the gods don’t get more involved.  I’m looking forward to those stories that touch on how they got to this point.  Hope I can get to them.

Gods of Windemere: Powerful or Powerless In Legends of Windemere, people are introduced to the gods and the only law that they are guided by. 

[preserving-ferretbrain]

My Mother, My Dog, and Clowns

by Dan H

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Dan is unimpressed by Ashes to Ashes~

Ashes to Ashes is the follow up series to the critically acclaimed Life on Mars. You would not believe how long I spent trying to come up with the best possible David Bowie quote for the title of this article.

Rejected titles may or may not have included: The Girl With the Mousy Hair, Take a Look at the Lawman, Hope You're Happy Too, Beating Up the Wrong Guy, Time Takes a Cigarette, Although He Wasn't There, Your Circuit's Dead There's Something Wrong, and I'm an Alligator. I finally went with the one I went with because the show does in fact feature a sinister clown, and the heroine is totally obsessed with her mum.

Anyway the original Life on Mars was about DI Sam Tyler, who is in a car crash and wakes up in 1973, where he falls in with period-appropriate Mancunian copper Gene Hunt. What follows is basically your classic buddy-cop-show. One's from the progressive, liberal nineties and solves crimes with procedure and cutting edge criminal science. The other is from the seventies and solves crimes with gut instinct and shouting. They, well, fight crime.

Life on Mars worked because it was basically a straightforward cop show with a decent gimmick. Two cops with different personalities, a crime every week, and a framing story about how the main character was “mad, in a coma, or back in time”. The second series didn't work quite as well as the first, as so often happens they got a bit of Jack Sparrow syndrome and decided that Gene Hunt was more interesting than Sam, which made things a bit problematic, but even then it was still a good watchable show.

Ashes to Ashes has several subtle differences from its parent show. Firstly it's set in 1981 rather than 1973. Secondly it's set in London rather than Manchester. Thirdly instead of the central conflict being between a hard-bitten working class copper and a highly trained policeman who was raised in a different time with a different set of values, it's between a hard bitten working class copper and ... a woman.

Now I should probably put my hand up here and say that the problem with being a self-righteous pseudofeminist like me is that you have to be really careful about your reactions to things, because a lot of the time it can be hard to tell whether you're objecting to something because it's sexist, or whether you're objecting to it because you're being sexist, if you see what I mean.

Basically the problem I had with Ashes to Ashes was that where Sam Tyler came across as competent, professional, intelligent, compassionate and generally a lot like Nick Angel from Hot Fuzz, a twenty first century supercop, Alex Drake came across as histrionic, self-centred, and frequently just a bit rubbish. In the interests of self-awareness, I recognize that this might just be my own subconscious prejudices talking, it's possible that I read Alex as annoying and self-centred simply because she's played by a woman, rather than the writers having chosen to write her that way because she's a woman, if you see the distinction.

It's for this reason that the comparison between Sam and Alex is at its most interesting in the first episode, because both characters react almost exactly the same way, but for some reason Sam comes across as behaving perfectly rationally, while Alex comes across as hysterical.

I think part of the reason is simply that because Sam was there first, the audience didn't know quite what to expect, and so his disorientation mirrors our own. His attempts to make sense of his new situation match our efforts to make sense of the series, and his eventual acceptance of it allows us to settle down and enjoy the show.

By contrast, Alex has to contend not only with the audience's awareness of the situation but also her own. She is very specifically presented as being familiar with Sam's accounts of his experiences, which gives the whole series a distinctly fanficcy vibe which it never really overcomes (it doesn't, I think, help that several elements of the show – arbitrarily changing the location, spuriously getting a major character divorced so you can ship them, a fundamentally awful character who everybody seems to love for no good reason – are the sorts of things that would get you laughed off of fanfiction.net). More than this, though, while Sam's understanding of his predicament is left ambiguous, never really progressing beyond “mad, in a coma, or back in time” Alex Drake spends not only the first episode but the entire series fully convinced that the whole thing is a hallucination, which uncomfortably highlights the fact that what we are watching is just a work of fiction, based on another work of fiction, that the people in it aren't real and we have no particular reason to care about any of them.

By the end of the first episode Sam has basically settled into his 1970s reality, and proceeds to treat it as functionally real. This makes you invest in the show for two reasons, firstly because all the characters in it are treated like real people and secondly because the central mystery of whether Tyler really is back in time is preserved. This means that the show can settle down to being about fighting crime in 1970s Manchester, which is sort of what the whole thing was about. Drake's refusal to engage with the 1980s on their own terms makes it hard to care about anybody. You can't care about the supporting cast because you're constantly being told they're not real, and you can't care about Drake because she's so utterly selfish.

DI Drake also comes to the show with a crapton more baggage than DI Tyler. Tyler would occasionally flash back to an indistinct childhood image that he could only half remember, and couldn't understand. His father appears in two episodes, and Tyler's final confrontation with him is quite moving and understated, but for the most part DI Tyler and DCI Hunt just fought crime.

Drake, on the other hand, has awoken in 1981, a few short weeks before both her parents were killed by a car bomb. Pretty much the whole show is her angsting about the fact that both her parents were killed by a car bomb and trying to stop both her parents being killed by a car bomb. Those parts of the show that are not about both her parents being killed by a car bomb are about her angsting that her mother didn't love her enough (her mother who, by the way, she contrives to bring in to every single episode on a variety of flimsy, unprofessional excuses) or shipping her with Gene Hunt.

The actual crimes that the team solve are completely secondary. DI Drake doesn't care about them – she's convinced that the whole thing is a hallucination and that her first priority has to be herself and her parents being killed by a... you get the idea – and the rest of the team seems primarily interested in DI Drake (again, huge Mary-Sue flags go up over the way the rest of the team respond to Alex – Tyler was pretty much ostracised for the entire first series, whereas Drake instantly develops a relationship with Hunt which is better than the one his team have, despite their having worked with him for over a decade).

Drake's obsession with the meta-plot has a knock-on effect of harming the plots of the individual episodes. She's interested in herself, her parents, and her psychobabble. She's not particularly interested in, y'know, solving crimes.

Oh sure crimes get solved over the course of the series, usually by either dumb luck, handwavey “psychology” or simply by somebody else doing the legwork. Worse, she frequently interferes in investigations so that she can subvert them to some other end, like trying to stop the guns that would later lead to her shooting, or trying to bang up the guy that shoots her, or trying to stop her parents being killed by a car bomb. It all makes her profoundly unsympathetic and horrifically unlikeable.

All of this is made worse by the fact that she's a woman. Again, I freely admit that this might actually be me being sexist, rather than the show being sexist, but from where I sat watching it, it felt a lot like Drake's personality was effectively “female”.

This is most telling in her relationship with Gene Hunt. In the original Life on Mars Sam was the rational one (because he was educated, and came from the twenty-first century and relied a lot more on technology) and Gene was the intuitive one (he had a copper's gut instinct). But of course DI Drake is a woman, so she has to be the emotional intuitive one, which leads to completely ludicrous situations where Gene Hunt is yelling things like “we don't have any evidence” while the highly educated twenty first century police psychologist is making wild leaps of intuition on the flimsiest of evidence (my favourite being “no, I saw how certain you were when you said it was him”). She gets hysterical, she cries, she clings to men for comfort and affirmation, she's obsessed with her mother and trying to bone her surrogate father-figure. She's really, really awful.

There's probably good stuff in Ashes to Ashes - the actual plot with her parents is resolved relatively well, although the inevitable twist feels a little bit forced. Suffice to say that her parents' car was not blown up for any of the normal reasons that one would blow up a car, and was blown up in order to achieve an effect which the killer could have achieved better in a number of different ways. Part of me hopes that the next series will pick up, since now her mum and dad are dead she can hopefully get on with actually being a goddamned copper.

We won't find out for a while though, because we've just started watching Chuck, which was half the price of Ashes to Ashes and is actually really good.

Themes:

TV & Movies

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Minority Warrior

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Guy

at 13:18 on 2009-10-20Forget your mind, and you'll be free... ?

:)

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Niall

at 11:17 on 2009-10-21Huh. I liked Ashes to Ashes -- and Alex Drake -- precisely because she treats the world around her as an illusion. Far from reducing my empathy, it made it easier for me to empathise with her, since as far as I'm concerned her reaction is that of any sane person in possession of the information she had.

Nor do I really agree that she's more emo than Sam; in fact one strike against the first season in my mind is that the overarching plot is basically the same in both cases, to confront some mystery about the way their parents left them (abandoned in the case of Sam, dead in the case of Alex). And I'm pretty sure she cries less than Sam, too. (Not that there's anything wrong with crying, I just meant that Sam was plenty emo.)

My problem with the first series -- aside from the inevitable romantic tension between Alex and Hunt, which has some nice moments but is mostly tedious -- is that it shied away from engaging with the nature of fantasy and dream in the way that I thought Life on Mars did so well. Much is made of her analytical mind, and ability to judge character -- both of which should be helpful attributes when trapped in a death-dream -- but the writers never really pushed hard enough, probably because they didn't wwant to abandon the crime-of-the-week, even though, as you point out, some of them end up being quite perfunctory.

But I gather this is somewhat rectified in the second season, so.

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Arthur B

at 13:59 on 2009-10-21Maybe this makes more sense if you've actually seen this, but if Alex really believes the whole thing is a dream or illusion, why does she care about the car bomb? The fact that it apparently takes up so much of her time would seem to suggest that she lends at least a little credence to the idea that she can save her parents, which isn't consistent with the idea that she's sceptical about the whole experience. Could it be that she's supposed to be a Thomas Covenant sort, making out that she believes it's all a dream but taking it seriously anyway?

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Guy

at 14:25 on 2009-10-21This will probably be even less helpful than my Bowie-quote above, but I didn't really like Life on Mars and so I haven't really attempted to watch Ashes to Ashes. It felt to me as though the premise of the first show was, "let's make a 70s cop show, but have some kind of gimmick that allows us to wink at the audience about how different the 70s and the present are." And... so it felt like a mixture of some very nice aesthetics with some very ordinary cop show cliches. I like the actor - John Simm? - who plays Sam, but I wasn't really able to believe in him or the world because it felt so pasted together... particularly with some very Captain Planet-esque single-episode-resolutions of complex social problems like football hooliganism and police corruption. I do think the aesthetics are well done, and I kept wanting to like it... without quite getting there. Sounds like I probably wouldn't get there with this series either.

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Dan H

at 16:58 on 2009-10-21@Guy

For what it's worth I liked the original Life on Mars for exactly the reasons you disliked it. I basically really like cop shows, and appreciated the fact that it was essentially a cop show with a cool gimmick. I thought its treatment of Complex Social Issues (tm) was actually okay, at least in the first season - it was a bit heavy handed but it felt like it had a real awareness of the time and place - somebody writing for it clearly really had lived in Manchester in the 1970s and was writing about their childhood as much as anything else.

@Niall

Firstly, what Arthur says: treating the whole thing as an illusion in Alex' mind actually makes no sense whatsoever. It's clear that when she's talking to her mother she really is talking to her mother, and when she finds out the real reason her parents died she clearly is finding out true information. This makes no sense if the whole thing is a delusion.

On a wider level, deciding it's all an illusion is absolutely *not* a sensible reaction to waking up and finding yourself in 1981. A rational response, in fact, would be to decide that *everything you remember* is a delusion - after all those memories exist entirely in your head - and that you really are just somebody who lives in the 1980s. Alternatively you could rationally decide that you have in fact traveled in time. The notion that the world around you is an illusion is actually completely ludicrous however you cut it.

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Niall

at 17:49 on 2009-10-21I didn't say it actually

is

a delusion. The only possible direction for S2 to go in, that I can see, in fact, is to suggest that it is somehow "more" than a delusion, that there is in some sense a "reality" linking Alex's world and Drake's; otherwise they're just going to continue retreading Life on Mars. But either way it doesn't preclude the existence of information that seems "new" to Alex within the 1980s world; it's either the product of her subconscious mind or something more, and either explanation works just fine.

As to the second point, I didn't say it was purely rational, in the strict sense of the phrase, I said it struck me as the response of a sane person in possession of the information she had: that is, an extensive, internally coherent set of memories vastly more extensive than even the most detailed fictional world or documented case of delusion. Particularly when 1980s-world is *not*, as she is experiencing it, internally coherent. Now, the basic premise of both LoM and AtA is that actually, either response is valid; but the scales always felt tilted towards delusion to me, to the point where I occasionally lost patience with Sam's vacillation. Alex's commitment to a particular stance was refreshing.

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Dan H

at 18:34 on 2009-10-21But the information she has is that she's awake and alive in a world which is, in fact, extensive and internally coherent. The fact that it is more detailed than any documented case of delusion is in fact strong evidence that she isn't delusional and that, therefore, treating everything as if it's an illusion isn't sane at all. It's stupid.

Further, as Arthur points out, she actually *doesn't* commit to the idea that everything's an illusion. If she did, she'd just fling herself off the nearest building.

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Andy G

at 02:52 on 2009-10-22Maybe it's like one of those dreams where you are convinced you're rational and in control, but when you wake up you realise you were working on fucked-up dream logic the whole time after all.

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http://colyngbourne.livejournal.com/

at 11:16 on 2009-10-22Thanks, Dan, for saying everything I had been thinking about Ashes to Ashes. I abandoned watching it after the first series. Mostly because of Alex's useless attitude to what was happening to her, but also the whole "let's dress in all the fashions and actually apply tons of over-done 1980's make-up" as if a C21st professional woman would think a) these were classy fashions to wear to work in a police station b) could bring herself to over-make-up herself with blue eyeshadow etc etc. The whole thing was crass and sexist, the UST and over-concentration on her relationship with Gene reducing the value of the drama overall.

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Dan H

at 22:18 on 2009-10-22The way they dressed Alex did strike me as a bit off, I was sort of willing to give it the benefit of the doubt as a genre parody. On the other hand her mother dressed entirely sensibly.

The more I think about it, and the more I look back at /Life on Mars/ the more I wonder if the problem with /Ashes to Ashes/ isn't a lack of a concrete setting. LoM is fairly clearly set in 1973 in Manchester. I might even go so far as to say that it's explicitly set in the childhood of whoever wrote it, although that might be entirely untrue and is certainly unfounded. Ashes to Ashes, by contrast, is just set in THE EIGHTIES.

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Sister Magpie

at 16:54 on 2009-10-23

The more I think about it, and the more I look back at /Life on Mars/ the more I wonder if the problem with /Ashes to Ashes/ isn't a lack of a concrete setting. LoM is fairly clearly set in 1973 in Manchester. I might even go so far as to say that it's explicitly set in the childhood of whoever wrote it, although that might be entirely untrue and is certainly unfounded. Ashes to Ashes, by contrast, is just set in THE EIGHTIES.

You could have something there. I remember one of the problems they had when they did the US remake was that they set it in LA and I seem to remember people just not getting a sense of place. At least when they moved it to NYC they got closer to the specific time/place.

Also just off the cuff, "70s cop show" is very different from "80s cop show." The first automatically gives me a sense of contrast. The 80s just seems like jokes about the 80s rather than a whole feel and attitude, if that makes sense. It's just one more level of something specific and concrete vs. just a general time in the past.