#ignoring the fact that they’re fundamentally WEIRD and that’s what makes them GREAT

[sonic-adventure-3]

literally one of my favourite things about the sonic series is that all of the characters are overflowing with personality and immediately noticeable deeply warped worldviews. like a character with truly baseline “common sense” does not exist. not a single character that can play the straight man in every situation. and i love that! cause it makes for such memorable and recognizable characters in personality alone, and then you heap on masterful and iconic character design on top of that!!

[ofmermaidstories]

Hii Merms, thank you so much for the kind response 💌🩷

It's been days and I honestly did not get the chance to read the official chapter yet. Which I believe I should do before responding even, because the issue with the leaks was the mistranslations here and there. And because so much of it was also open-ended many fans came up with stuff out of nowhere and pushed it into the ending and called it canon. So it was a mess.

It's weird to me, it felt like Horikoshi forced himself into an ending that would satisfy everyone else and not him, which ultimately resulted in him messing up a bit. Because he put such great great effort and thought into sympathising with the villains and what they story means for how hero society operates. And he kept on showing how flawed the society is until ch.429, the before last.

In the end, like u said, traditional hero rankings are still a thing. Some people have changed yes, like the old lady who ignored Tenko but reached out her hand to another version of him, that could have been like him. But the last chapter also shows that the majority, or at least a huge part of society, is still sticking to the old ways of thinking. (Like the guy mocking Dai for his quirk, how being a hero is somehow more of a thingfor "elte people").

And while Uravity began a project for quirk counselling that's now fundamental for society and Tentacole fought against racism. It seems everyone else continues on to be normal pros. And there is no shame in that, but idk, the fact you all took part in wars that occurred because of how society and hero society operates but continue to do the same thing your predecessors did is asking for another League of villains, another group of children and young who would be pushed to that. But maybe I'm jumping to conclusions since we barely got to see any of what the new pros (like Mirio) are doing.

Also goodness, the mistranslation that class A did not see Izuku after graduation and people so QUICKLY believed it and spread it around. I saw alot of post both on twitter and tiktok shaming class A for it.

My dear "we don't fact-check leaks even though it's a very common occurrence that mistranslations happen" people, are we really talking about the same class A? The same class A, that collectively as a class, decided to join Izuku back in his vigilante arc to help him? They were willing to go out and be vigilantes with him. But then Nezu assured them they can bring him back instead so he could rest and be protected all the same.

THAT SAME CLASS A? Who knew what OFA means and all it's connections, the way he was quirkless and got it. and the only thing they(Oijiro) asked was how does it feel like? They never made him feel weirded out about it. (It might not seem like a big deal, but when you look at the public reaction to it, like "isn't that AFO's ability tho" or "he's like a Nomu" u would see).

So also yeah, I'm so so happy about the fact they all contributed funds to his suit. But prior to that he was a teacher for what, 5 to 6 years? While I do think being a teacher suits him. Keeping him in the dark about getting a chance to be a hero again JUST as he seemed to accept he can be a hero by teaching and inspiring younger generations seemed a bit off to me. But then again, I wanted him to be able to grow and continue to be a hero so I guess I can't complain much about it.

Overall I'm actually happy and sad it ended, this show was with me for 6 years. And it's my most cherished so I don't want to say goodbye (we still have a movie and the anime, so exciting). Even if that small disappointment is still lingering.

Hii Liliii. 🌷 How are you feeling about it now that we’ve had a little bit more distance? Have you read the official chapter yet? I dunno if it makes that much of a difference, but it did for me LOL. I don’t read the scanlations (they’re UGLY 😡) but I do think that like, seeing the dialogue in action verses hearing a brief summary from a rushed translator does matter. And that was the case for me!! Whenever the fandom took the leaks and then like, ran wild with them, it always… idk! I won’t say it ruined things, really, but it definitely made things less fun, and for me personally it had a lot to do with how quickly the discussion goes from, “oh, the leaks are suggesting (thing happens)” to, “omg, this is cold hard fact and now 50k people agree”. For example: the other day I saw a post here, made in the wake of the leaks, that said something like, “oh i can’t believe kacchan singlehandedly funded deku’s suit” and like??? no the fuck he did not!!!! LOL. I guess it’s just a lethal combo of like, overzealous fans taking what they want from the leaks without taking the time to tell themselves hold up and wait, and then making it everyone else’s problem too. 💀 Overwhelmed by the siren song of instant gratification.

Having re-read the last couple of chapters, tho, I don’t think Hori wrote himself into a corner! There’s definitely a disconnect, though, between us as an audience, and Hori as the author—like we’re kinda on different wavelengths? Because he’s shown what kind of writer he is (with the way he’s answered questions in like, interviews and stuff, he kinda actually reminds me of that Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. “The most interesting writing is that which does not quite satisfy the reader. Try and leave a little thinking for him; that will be better for both […] A little guessing does him no harm, so I would assist him with no connections.” emphasis mine). For better or for worse, Horikoshi just does not care/think to dwell in the big moments/emotional beats he creates, and I think that throws most of us as readers off, LOL. Like… we want to be more in Deku’s head, we maybe wanna see more of the kids in their final years at UA, or starting out as Pros, or like, linger with Deku a bit more in a school day. But Hori doesn’t wanna give us that. And I think that’s where everyone is getting their wires crossed—we want one thing (or several lmao) and Hori… wants and does another, LOL.

(The middle part of that Emerson quote above says, “The trouble with most writers is, they spread too thin. The reader is as quick as they; has got there before, and is ready and waiting […] If you can see how the harness fits, he can. But make sure that you see it.” And to me that’s the problem, we as readers have jumped ahead of Hori and have landed at a place we expect him to arrive, and instead he zigs in the complete opposite direction LMAOOOO. whether or not it works issss. Up for debate lmaooo. Are we seeing where the harness would fit, where he’s seeing a collar? Some food for thought maybe.)

One opinion I’ve seen in the wake of these last few chapters is that Hori often gets his messaging confuddled; I’m not sure if I agree or not. I think it’s another case of harness vs. collar lmao, like maybe we as readers are taking away different conclusions to what he’s intended (he’s sticking to his message; we just don’t like how he’s telling it LMAO). But it is stark, when you lay it out. Anyone can be a hero—as long as they have pro hero friends funding an Iron Man suit for them lmaooo (anyone can be a hero, but they need a community of people willing to hold out a hand for them to get there). Society is fundamentally selfish and overlooks uncomfortable things, and that breeds resentment and hate (society is capable of change, it’s just a slow crawl to get there, and that maybe we can’t help everyone—but the point is that we should help the people right in front of us).

I guess the biggest example, though, is indeed the League; I’ve seen soooo many heartbroken people point out that Hori spent all that effort—an entire POV arc!—on showcasing the villains, and getting us to sympathise with them, and what-was-the-point-of-it-if-he-was-just-going-to-kill-most-of-them-off? But they were always doomed. Doomed by the narrative, doomed by their society. It’s what makes them a tragedy. The tragedy of their tragedy is that Hori’s preferences with his storytelling (or his weakspots, depending) doesn’t really stop to give people the catharsis of like, a big goodbye. 🥺

(This is off-topic, but every time time I see that phrase—doomed by the [whatever]—it makes me think of a quote from one of my favourite books, Picnic at Hanging Rock:

“Edith echoed, ‘Doomed? What’s that mean, Irma?’

‘Doomed to die, of course! Like the boy who “stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled, tra… la la…” I forget the rest of it.’”)

Hori’s ending really wants to leave us/let us believe that like, our Heroes have solved the biggest problems their predecessors faced, and now they’re like, a glorified search and rescue—but I think the fun of the ending is that it does leave room for new villains, new League-type deals, to pop up. 😈 People are good and bad. There’s always going to be someone who wants to lock a kid in a basement, lmao, the point is that someone will be there to help them out of it. And maybe it’s baby steps at the moment, but the takeaway I got from the story was less about fixing everything forever, and more like, putting systems in place so that you and others—heroes and civvies alike—can catch what you can, when you can. 🥺 Deku might miss League 2.0, but maybe Kota or Stitches at the end there won’t. Our Heroes have turned the tide. They’ve reminded people at large to do their best. 🥹 They’re actively teaching them to do their best.

Which is why it drives me bonkers when the fandom likes to like…. discount Class-A’s bond!!! At it’s worse though—throughout that awful gap where all we had were the leaks—I just had to keep telling myself that the, “Izuku was abandoned by his friends!” stuff was a product of this fandom being an average age of like, twelve. 💀 LOL. But also it’s just—idk! A result of shipping culture, maybe. The inability to understand that people can and do have meaningful relationships outside of people they have sex with. 💀 That it’s possible for a whole class of kids who went through a war together to care for each other and still be busy with saving the world, outside of school. 💀💀

I’m happy and sad it ended, too. 🥺 A lot of complaints I’ve seen are valid—and have made me realise that the thing that threw me, personally, was how passive an ending it is (like how things just happen to Izuku, aka him being given the suit as a surprise and not being apart of it). I’d like to reread the series, back to back, and see how it flows! Maybe when the anime comes along and fills in some of those gaps where Hori couldn’t/didn’t want to, it’ll feel more… apt. 🥹 And I hope that by the time the anime ends, Lili, you feel a little more fulfilled by it. 🥺🌷

[neuronary]

okay so it's like. a solid five months post-russians and dustin just will not shut the fuck up about how steve and robin would make such a great couple, dude.

which. like. steve gets it, because he guesses that, yes, from dustin's perspective it is kind of weird that they're not a thing. and a solid 50% of hawkins high thinks they're dating at this point anyway. (robin says he can't blame his lack of game on that but robin is also full of shit.) but the thing is is that whenever dustin brings this up it's, like, a mild annoyance for steve at best, right? kind of bullshit that his kid brother the kid he babysits is trying to give him dating advice so he can win over his lesbian best friend, but not such a big deal. the problem is that eventually he gives up on steve and starts saying that shit to robin. and it gets to her. steve doesn't totally get why, exactly, but he can imagine that it must suck when people keep reminding you that they expect you to be fundamentally different to the way that you are. (maybe he doesn't exactly have to imagine, given his parents', y'know. everything.) it doesn’t really matter why, anyway, because it really, really bothers her and that bothers steve because she gets enough shit from hawkins-at-large for dressing a little weird and being a little hyper sometimes as it is. but no matter what he does or says dustin will not shut the fuck up about it. and it all comes to a head when he’s wheedling, again, like he thinks he can get them together by annoying them into it, and robin has had a shitty enough day already because ms. forst won't get off her dick about her math scores and her mom won’t get off her dick about her clothes and steve knows for a fact that she got barely three hours of sleep last night. so when she slumps lower into her seat, she looks so completely miserable that steve just snaps and yells because i'm gay!

you could hear a fucking pin drop, during the split second where all three of them are trying to process what exactly the fuck steve just said. then dustin starts yelling and steve and robin both start panicking and steve has to pull over because he's pretty sure he's gonna hit a tree otherwise because why the fuck did he say that. and henderson is talking a mile a minute asking questions like how did you give me such good advice about girls and how long did you know and what about nancy and steve can feel his chest getting tight as he whiteknuckles the steering wheel and robin makes an aborted gesture of some kind and dustin, for the first time in two years, stops talking. steve sort of feels like he's going to be sick as he grits out an it's complicated as a sort of catch-all answer to dustin’s numerous questions. and then a pair of arms wrap around the seat and his chest and he can feel dustin's hair tickling against his shoulder and steve is man enough to admit that his eyes aren't dry when the kid goes you're still my friend. you know that, right, steve?

and steve’s stupid broken brain chooses that exact moment to give him a spasm and his head knocks into dustin’s as his neck jerks and his arm flies out and nearly hits robin in the face. (nice reflexes, buckley.) and that sets them all off laughing so hard that the whole accidental-fake-coming-out thing gets ignored for another ten minutes. until robin grabs dustin’s wrist before he climbs out of the car and says, urgently, you know you can’t tell anyone about steve, right? and henderson says yeah and robin says no i mean anyone, midget. you can’t breathe a word, okay? and steve is wide-eyed as she holds dustin in place and says, intense like he’s only ever seen her once before, not any of your little friends, and especially not wheeler. junior or especially especially senior, got it? and steve just barely bites back the same question as dustin: why especially not nancy?

so robin brings up some points about steve’s ex-girlfriend that explain why robin has resisted steve’s attempts to get them to make friends: 

nancy wheeler is steve’s ex-girlfriend. 

nancy wheeler’s parents voted, very enthusiastically, for ronald reagan. 

nancy wheeler owns multiple guns.

she’d never do the thing that robin is implying, steve knows that. he says that, but pretty weakly, because the truth is however certain he can be that nancy wouldn’t shoot him, he can’t say she would be... okay. with him. with robin, he has to correct himself inside his head. he’s not gay, he’s just covering for robin. he’s being a good friend.

[kallypsowrites]

How do people justify Leigh writing the crows and the Nikolai duology? I say the duology because it came after tgt which people write that off as because it was early work/writing. How can you reconcile that she wrote something so praised and went on to write nikolais story? You can’t say she doesn’t understand what she is doing. You can certainly hate the direction she takes things but it’s weird to me how people lay down their lives for soc and in the same breath say she doesn’t know how story works. I guess what I’m trying to ask is what did she do that is so right with soc that she didn’t elsewhere? If she doesn’t understand story, something fundamental, wouldn’t all her works carry these messes? (I hope this doesn’t come off accusatory I’m just fascinated by these discussions and in particular how I never see any criticism of soc in fact it’s universally praised as peak excellence while tgt + nikolais story gets shredded)

I'm actually trying to answer asks so here we go.

This is a great question anon! What DOES make the six of Crows duology so much better than Leigh's other work in the Grishaverse? How could she go from the Crows duology (a tightly written, interesting, character driven fantasy) to the Nikolai duology (which, while I haven't read it, seems like a mess when it comes to character, world building and plot).

I think Six of Crows succeeds precisely because its a very contained story. Bigger does not always equal better. Sometimes bigger means giving yourself too many toys to play with and it can be overwhelming. Smaller means that you can take more time to reaaallly dig into the material you have.

There are three things that Six of Crows does right that the other books don't:

1. A magic system with limits. The Grishaverse is playing with a lot of world building powers. Six of Crows, on the other hand, doesn't. Only a couple of it's characters are Grisha and even then, only Nina was trained as a Grisha. This means most of our characters can't pull a magic deus ex machina out of nowhere and they aren't OP. The only thing that DOES make them OP is Jurda Parem, which has its own problem of being highly addictive and does a number on Nina. There are some problems with the world if you have read the other Grishaverse books (like human amplifiers suddenly being super common), but over all she keeps the magic system simple and doesn't have it cheapen the plot.

2. Character driven. The characters are at the heart of Six of Crows. The heist is important, yes, but its all about the characters and their relationships. The plot is small stuff compared to the Grishaverse. There we're dealing with war and world bending conflicts. Not a bunch of crazy kids trying to make money and survive. And that means we can focus more on individual arcs and such. Also, because of this:

3. Moral ambiguity. Because there's more room for character arcs, we also have more room for moral ambiguity. Characters are allowed to be selfish. They're allowed to do bad things. And the books aren't trying to convey some MORAL lesson. No one is coming out of the closet with a broom to shame us from liking Kaz because the text frames him as one of the protagonists (even if he's not heroic). The grisha trilogy, on the other hand, gets very stuck in the archetypal roles it assigns the characters. Alina is the hero. Aleksander is the villain. Characters' moralities are decided by whether or not they side with the "good guys" or "bad guys". There is no such dichotomy in Six of Crows. There are neutral people, bad people and worse people.

I honestly am amazed the series were written by the same woman. I think she grew since the first trilogy for sure. But then how did she go back and write the Nikolai duology if she improved so much? Simple. Because instead of telling her own story with the Nikolai duology, she set out to try to "fix" the problems with the original. Only she was fixing the wrong problems and retconning material from the book rather than just moving on. The Nikolai Duology is weighed down by the problems of the original trilogy while Six of Crows is allowed to be its own thing.

That said, Six of Crows has problems. Leigh cheats on POV a lot. In order to mislead the audience she'll hold back info that the POV character would FOR SURE know because she needs to get her twist. She's also sometimes a little too explicit about what the characters are feeling. As if she is afraid of us interpreting it "wrong" so she has to spell it out extremely clearly.

But these are the types of problems I can ignore well enough. Six of Crows is kind of a diamond in the rough for me. But it all warrants discussion.

[motherwasapapafucker]

You've obviously spoke about the Ghost as a Superman figure within the larger context of Doctor Who but do you think the opposite is possible? A Doctor-like figure within a larger superhero setting?

There's been a couple of attempts, never quite as....jarring as the Ghost but that’s pretty much down to mad scientists and time travel being far more commonplace in superhero settings than overtly super-heroic figures are in Who. To the point the handful of times Who has played with that (Conundrum, Starfall, The Return of Doctor Mysterio) all draw at least some of their story out of the jarring presence of a superhero figure within the narrative. There’s a really nice sequence in Conundrum where the Doctor “explains” the presence of the superpowered figures in a way that reads like he’s as much kidding himself because he would like to think it’s possible as genuinely trying to explain how these people have gained their abilities. Which really feels like a deliberate building on “I wish...I wish I believed in wishing wells” given how Conundrum plays out. There’s obviously the conflation of Captain Britain’s Merlin and Who’s Merlin a couple of times, but that’s really overstated even if only in terms of Britain’s Merlin functionally different beast to the point any doctor connection is largely a minor detail as any attempt at creating a Doctor-like figure. I think then, when it comes to your Doctor-like figure the big thing that would distinguish them from other standard mad scientists and science heroes is the face changing, and basically none of your overtly doctor-influenced characters actually do anything with? Your big one in a standard setting is Professor Gamble in Power Man and Iron Fist #79, who really stands out in terms of being the only doctor-lite comic figure overtly building on Classic Who rather than Cultural Juggernaut David Tennant Doctor Who. Some overlap with Dr. Mysterio’s use of the Ghost in the conflation of the real and fictional but in very different directions; Gamble writing a fictitious account of his own life, dreadlox a fictitious account of the Incinerators. Gamble’s personal Dalek-stand in born of rogue temporal cleaning devices that have decided destroying space and time is the only way to clean everything. Where the overlap falls apart is the fact that Power Man and Iron Fist is arguably a far more flexible book at that point in its history than Who is by the point of Doctor Mysterio. So #79 is less of an out of genre moment so much as just more weird shit happening to Danny and Luke. As far as I know Gamble has popped up here and there since then, and is one of a fairly sizable amount of Who references across Marvel/Marvel UK (Yeah yeah we all know about Death’s Head, W.H.O. and aw that pish) The other big, very very direct and direct to Cultural Juggernaut David Teannant Doctor Who is...weirdly…Qubit in Irredeemable. Which is barely relevant to this question because it’s really not a standard superhero setting beyond the superficial, but bares some comment given it’s arguably the most prominent of recent takes and really hard to ignore how much he’s just David Tennant with a James from Twin Peaks forehead and LEGION hair. Also worth commenting on how fucking strange his entire role in the arse end of Irredeeamble is given the final 20 or so issues largely devolve into “The Tenth Doctor fights Evil Superman.” Given how little that aspect is remarked upon, and how incongruous it is with the broader attempt at presenting an Evil Superman story that gradually pairs back to show that the character’s never really been evil superman because for him to have that “turn” you basically have to have it be the tip of an iceberg that sketches back decades and ultimate reveals the character was never really Superman in any way beyond the iconographic. So the fact that happens while he’s fighting David Tennant is really strange, though I do like so much of that spilling out of the Plutonian forcing Quibit into one of those big, painful NuWho moral decisions, but I really struggle to care about Irredeemable beyond thinking Incorruptible was generally the stronger book towards the end. You’ve also got things like the Allred/Slott Silver Surfer that overtly drew influence from contemporary

Doctor Who, but it’s building on an already distinctive character so it can never really function as a direct one for one. I know, vaguely, that Ben 10 had a Doctor Who figure. But having never watched the show I’m not sure how he appears within the show and tbh I don’t care enough to look into it. I suppose the thing is that Doctor-lite easily slides into a superhero setting without losing too much and without drawing too much attention to the homage while someone like the Ghost is, by basic nature, designed to be at least somewhat strange within the larger normality of the show’s present day. The closest point of comparison I can think of is something like Silver Sentry in TMNT; There’s really nothing in TMNT or Doctor WHo that precludes the existence of “proper” superheroes, nether show is exactly the height of realism but the sudden introduction of basically superman presents a fundamental shift in their respective idiosyncrasies. I imagine people would be tempted to draw a comparison between the Milligan Shade the Changing Man revamp under Vertigo and Who, and given it’s MIlligan I’m sure there was some influence their even if only in terms of an English-coded otherworldly figure who undergoes startling changes across the run, but tbh it’s basically a passing resemblance and kinda overlooks the fact that Shade kinda hilariously preempts a lot of where Who as a franchise goes during the 90s and 2000s. It’s presentation of Shade’s changes as far-more psychologically damaging than classic who’s regeneration compared to some overlap with how NuWho treats the event particularly, but also in terms of the EDAs there’s a fairly notable arc where Shade gives up his heart to cope with a torrent of emotional loss and devastated worlds. Make of that what you will. I still haven’t answered the fucking question have I, right since you’ve asked me you’re going to get my shite, because here’s how I’d do it. There’s only one way really, one word Metalek Because the fucking rule don’t they? Morrison’s first, best Dalek-homage. The Xenoformers from Galaxy X, sentient construction vehicles serving masters that no longer exist. Terraforming the Galaxy one world at a time. Bow before Metalek. So yeah, those guys exist and they’re fucking great. I have...more thoughts than I’d like to admit about the “Metalek Empire” that’s really just self-indulgent pish. But that’s DC comics. So they exist, and they present what’s probably the best approach to a Doctor-alike in a superhero setting. In the same way the Ghost might as well be Superman in a setting where he isn’t the soul focus, you’re Doctor Who figure might as well just be Doctor Who in a setting where, building on the fact the key elements aren’t that notable, they really don’t stand out that much, so what then? Well he’s the mad scientist, but a good mad scientist. Counterpart to all the lunatics and madmen with their metal monsters, who is he? Who’s the grant morrison character fighting the dreaded metalek menace when they aren’t intruding on Superman’s narrative? Who spent decades trapped on earth, leading a reformed STAR Labs into a strange, wonderful new world? It’s Leo Quantum isn’t it. Basically, Leo’s one of those characters like Lan-Shin in Smashes the Klan or John Henry Irons who click perfectly into place with the larger idea of Superman’s social network. And given I’m an egotist, I’m going to do what I like with him building out of that admittedly bullshit old idea he’s future lex back to repent. If the Ghost is a version of Superman who’s world exists in the shadow of the Doctor, Leo would be a version of the Doctor that exists in the Shadow of Superman. He’s not literally Lex, he’s your Kristin Wells/Legion/DC One Million figure, possibly a future Luthor, possibly the first child of the Luthor/Kent families coming together in the far off 42nd century. A temporal adventurer who’s early experiments caused all his potential futures to crash down on top of him, transforming him into a hypertime singularity. His technicolor dreamcoat crafted from fifth world

wondertech, regulating his body to ensure each hypertime strand gets its time in sun while keeping the darker fringes in line….most of the time. Or at least, that’s what I’d do, feel free to discard this as mental bastard bullshit.

[iamanartichoke]

[please blacklist spoiler tags: #loki tv series spoilers, #loki series spoilers, #loki spoilers]

Yes, I did just watch episode 2 at 5:30 in the morning.

No, I am not sorry. Not at the moment, although when I inevitably crash later this afternoon, I will be.

Just some very, very quick - and scattered and messy - thoughts: That is a straight up lie; they’re definitely scattered and messy but not very quick at all.

Under the cut for spoilers and length.

I’m going to start with Loki’s characterization. My honest opinion is that Loki’s overall characterization feels like a fic characterization. He definitely is not Avengers Loki, like, at all. I don't know if Tom just, like, forgot how to play that Loki or ...?? That, or Loki was so much more mind-controlled than we realized and getting hulk-smashed just completely reset him back to zero but also fucked him up a little bit and affected his personality, kind of like how some people completely develop weird new personality quirks after a traumatic brain injury.

… yeah, I think that’s where I’m gonna land for now. TV series!Loki feels like a more-or-less canon version of Loki, but if that Loki got hit in the head really hard and now he’s just a little bit fucked up but overall no worse for the wear. Which - it may be that it’s so early in the morning, but that’s actually really fucking funny to me, lmao. God, I kill me. It’s not funny.

No, but, that’s pretty much how I feel. He’s ooc but he’s also ic, and the reason I’m not particularly bothered by the inconsistency, for lack of a better word, is because that’s what pretty much every fic Loki already feels like to me? (Including my own, so I’m not, like, saying that in a derogatory way.) Which is why I say Loki feels like a fic!Loki and to try to explain it better - there is always, for me, a little suspension of disbelief that I employ when I read fic. The reason for that is because the context, the plot, and the dynamics of the fic are usually pretty different than what we ever get in canon, so it becomes a matter of taking film!Loki and, like, bending him a bit in order to fit him into the perimeters of the fic.

The result ends up being that I don’t see the exact Avengers!Loki or TDW!Loki, and thus by definition the portrayal is ooc, but the version that I do see feels like a genuine extension of the canon version, possessing enough of Loki’s overall traits and characteristics that he feels authentic, albeit a bit pretzeled for the new context.

I honestly think that’s something that’s unavoidable, just due to the fact that in fic - and now, in this series - there are a lot more variables at play than there are in the films, wherein Loki is not just a supporting character but also the villain/antagonist and is therefore very limited in what he does/what the narrative allows him to do. When those limitations are taken away, what are we going to see? Probably a lot of different things, and yeah, a lot of them are going to feel a little ooc. And, like in fic, even if the characterization mostly lands, there are definitely bits and pieces (some fics more than others lean this way) where the author didn’t stick the landing or got carried away or otherwise probably forgot for a while that they were writing Loki, not their own OC.

That’s the point where it strays into cringe territory for me (and where the ‘heh, he’s Loki but with a brain injury’ aspect comes in), but while I had to consciously decide to just ignore those moments, overall the tone in this episode felt a bit more balanced between the new, the old, and the cringe, and less whiplash-y from the beginning of the episode to the end.

… I have no idea if that makes sense, but what I’m basically saying is that while I am enjoying this version of Loki, I do recognize all of the ways he’s ooc but, unlike how I feel about Ragnarok!Loki, the ooc-ness feels genuine and unavoidable rather than just a fundamental and careless misunderstanding of the character altogether. In other words, I feel like any ooc-ness here is happening despite the writers taking care to do their best, and isn’t just a result of Loki being lazily written by a person or persons who just doesn’t want to bother with him at all.

Again, I don’t know if that makes sense, but fuck it, there we are and I’m moving on.

I liked all of the little details, including again, things that felt straight out of fic, like Loki asking Mobius why he has the jetski magazine. (Also, if any of my thorki friends read this, was I the only one who noticed that when we see Loki reading the magazine, it just happens to be open to a page with a picture featuring a jet skier who looks like Thor? l.m.a.o.)

Loki interrupting things to explain the difference between illusions vs the other power (I can’t remember which one, off hand, and if I stop writing to go look it up I will lose my train of thought and not finish this) was great, but his overall input and contributions to the missions inspired very mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I loved that the narrative, via Loki, is reminding us of all these things that he’s capable of that the films generally left out or brushed aside or ignored - but, every time he spoke, he was met with eye rolls and sighs and just a general feeling of “someone please shut this guy up” and I didn’t like the narrative treating him that way.

But also, it’s understandable bc none of the people on his team are actually on his team. None of them want him there (story of Loki’s fucking life), none of them trust him, and none of them are particularly interested in hearing what he has to say. So it’s like, I understand why they reacted the way they did, and I don’t think their reactions are meant to support an overall narrative undermining of Loki’s skills and input - but, the tone is hard to read for me bc I am very defensive and protective of Loki. I can’t quite determine the line between the TVA agents being unreliable narrators (ie, they’re annoyed by Loki bc of who he is to them, but that doesn’t mean the audience is supposed to feel the same) and the TVA agents validating that Loki is just being a nuisance (and, thus, the audience is supposed to feel the same).

That is, I know how I am consuming the narrative (that they’re unreliable narrators), but I’m not sure if that’s how tptb are intending for me to consume the narrative - and I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s worth mentioning.

In general, I really liked, again, Loki existing in his own space and watching the way he carried himself. I especially found it interesting that his hands were almost always in his pockets - for one thing it's a stance I tend to imagine him taking often in fic, but also it’s kind of a weird choice bc pockets don’t seem to be a thing in Asgardian clothing. It makes me feel like Loki is the kind of person who never knows what to do with his hands but is always conscious of them, as is common among anxious and self-conscious people, and I just find that relatable on a weird level.

I am really kinda torn on Mobius in this episode; when not interrogating Loki, he’s much less antagonistic toward Loki and therefore I’m more inclined to take-him-or-leave-him but I’ll go ahead and take him I guess. Yet at the same time, bc he’s not interrogating Loki he’s also not trying to put on a show for Loki and when you take that away, he really doesn’t seem to like Loki at all. It supports that Mobius only wants what Loki can do for him and doesn’t actually particularly care about him as a person, which is fine and more or less what I figured, but it contributes to me not really being able to decide how I feel about him in general. Idk, though, I kinda like their dynamic? Like I want them to end up friends?

Regardless, Tom and Owen have amazing chemistry and it’s really funny to me bc (not to be a jerk) I honestly didn’t know Owen Wilson could act. Like, I’ve never seen him in a role where he wasn’t just playing Owen Wilson. So for him to not only be playing Mobius so well but also having such chemistry and a sense of holding-his-own against Tom Hiddleston is like, color me surprised but pleasantly so.

I like B-15 a lot, even though she obviously hates Loki, so idk why I like her but I do. I like Renslayer less, but meh. (Side note - when I was in undergrad in Syracuse, I took the Amtrak from Syracuse to Boston and back more than a few times, for reasons that aren’t relevant, and that route always had a layover at Albany-Rensselaer and every single time I see Renslayer’s name, I want to call her Rensselaer instead.) Shout out to the guest appearance by Casey, sorry Loki stole your juice lmfao.

The moments from the trailer that were very cringe were less so in context (though still kinda cringe, tbh). I think we’ve seen most of the content from the trailers in the first two episodes now, though, which means going forward, it’s going to be like 95% previously unseen material (aside from the brief apocalyptic shots and so forth).

One thing I fucking loved was how Loki, reading about Ragnarok, was visibly affected and even teared up a bit, and you could tell he was in his feels about it, but then later when Mobius expresses sympathy, Loki is just like, “Uh huh, very sad, but anyway.” It was a subtle (well maybe not that subtle) but effective way to remind us that what Loki presents to other people is more often than not a mask and he keeps his true feelings close to the chest. It makes last week’s breakdown have even more of an impact, I think, bc clearly Loki was at the end of his rope to allow himself to show that much raw emotion and vulnerability, but also - for me - there’s a niggling little doubt there that wasn’t there before, in that there was probably more performance in it than I thought.

By which I mean, I think his reaction to the film of his life when he was alone was genuine but, while I previously thought his admission to Mobius later was also genuine, I now think was probably half genuine and half performative. I know others already figured that out, but I’m a little slow and, also, I don’t mind changing my opinion and interpretation from week to week.

Along the same lines, I wasn’t exactly surprised to see that Loki is “undercover” in the TVA, but it was nice to see it acknowledged fairly quickly. Not sure I buy that Loki wants to overthrow and rule the TVA - it’s still a little too “Loki only wants a throne” for me, but again, just because that’s what he told the variant doesn’t mean that’s actually what he’s after.

And, finally, I like the variant, I love Loki’s reaction to seeing her, and while I realize that the show has acknowledged Loki’s gender fluidity and we’re meant to assume that Lady Loki (I guess? Not sure if we’re going with that or not here) is Loki, I saw a theory somewhere about how this is actually not Loki-Loki, but - I wanna say her name Sophie but that’s the actress, again I can’t go look it up bc I will lose my train of thought - but it’s a character who is similar to Amora and who was created by Loki and models herself as Loki but she’s actually someone else.

Ugh I can’t remember the details of the theory, but I am kinda going with it bc I don’t think that Loki would look so - not surprised but just kind of “oh, well, I wasn’t expecting that” if he were seeing the female version of himself. Like, he doesn’t seem to recognize her the way I assume he would recognize himself, male or female. Not only does that make me feel like she’s actually someone else, but also not recognizing her as the female version of himself doesn’t necessarily mean Loki doesn’t recognize her at all. He may very well recognize her as this other Amora-similar character and, if so, I really want to see how that character fits with MCU Loki (as I think she’s a comic book character but, again, I’d have to go back and find that theory).

Edit: I found a version of it here.

Overall score, B-. Mostly solid, but needs moar Loki breakdowns and tears. (That's just me, don't fucking judge me.) Also, I really hate that we have to wait a week between episodes. I wish they were following Netflix’s method of dropping the entire season at once but, then again, if they did that, I’m not sure any of us would survive.

I gotta get ready for work and I deleted and rewrote so much of this and it still seems nonsensical to me, lmfao fml. Anyway feel free to interact/send me asks/whatever, it’s going to be a long fucking day with all of this on my mind. I’ll be working my way through my dash as best as I can.

Oh, also! Loki is so fucking pretty in this episode! The TVA suit is ugly, but he makes it work, and his hair's combed nicely and he looks like he finally got an opportunity to sleep and shower and eat something and, yknow, it's working for him.

[itsclydebitches]

Voyager. Now that’s a kettle of fish. Obviously watch/enjoy whatever you wish, but I do recommend also checking out SFDebris’ reviews of the episodes (he’s the rwde of Voyager). He is a lot smarter and more eloquent than me.

Putting these two asks together since my thoughts on both are all jumbled! 

Now, I want to emphasize that I’ve only watched the first 16 episodes (Season One + Season 2 premiere), so idk if Voyager is going to go seriously downhill later on, but right now I do really like it. And not in a, “Lol yeah compared to the other crap on it’s good, I guess” way, but in a completely honest, “It has its flaws, but is overall a solid, compelling show with lovable characters” way. Out of curiosity I watched SFDebris’ review of “Phage,” though I’m afraid I didn’t agree with it. The only part were I was like, “Yeah okay” was pointing out that they had the Doctor using a keypad when he supposedly wasn’t solid, but that’s precisely the sort of continuity error that, in an otherwise strong show, I’m willing to shrug off. For all the major points, it sounds like SFDebris is concerned primarily with the show he wants Voyager to be, rather than the show Voyager actually is. Which I know sounds familiar--I’ve heard that criticism leveled at my own work: “You just want RWBY to be a totally different show”--but the difference is that Voyager is a part of an established franchise, following three other TV shows, an animated series, and a collection of films. It’s not an original show (like RWBY) that can take itself in any direction the story may need/claim to want (again, RWBY). It has a brand and those established characteristics seem to be bumping up against SFDebris’ critiques: 

Hating Neelix as a character - You’re supposed to hate him. Or at least find him frustrating (I don’t personally hate him) because that’s what all the characters are grappling with too. From Tuvok forced to have an awkward conversation while Neelix is in the bath to Janeway dealing with him taking over her dining room, Neelix’s conflict revolves around how others learn to accept him. Star Trek as a franchise is about “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Voyager begins with the problem of how the trained Federation officers are supposed to work with the more violent Maquis. Difference doesn’t just create “Wow, you’re so amazing!” reactions, it also includes frustration, disagreement, and outright hostility. Creating an outsider character with a kind heart but incredibly overbearing personality is a great way to test the other characters’ convictions. Do they actually care about all life in the universe? Or do they only care about life when they personally find it palatable? Having Neelix around is a great reminder for them--and the viewer--that just because someone annoys you at times doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy of love, respect, and companionship. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer: he keeps the crew fed even if his cooking is horrible, he provides information about this area of space even if he sometimes gets it wrong, we roll our eyes at the “Morale Officer” stuff, but Neelix does provide much needed perspective for characters like Tuvok. If Neelix made fewer mistakes, stopped bugging the crew, became a “cooler” character for the audience to root for rather than be frustrated by... a lot of the point of his character would be lost. 

Frustration about discoveries not carrying over to the next episode - AKA, the crew finds inanely powerful, alien tech and then (presumably) never uses it again. This would indeed be a big problem in a serialized story (like RWBY) but Voyager maintains much of Star Trek’s original, episodic nature. Though we have continuity in the form of them inching towards home and evolving as characters, the world still resets to a certain point at the end of each episode. This is what allows Star Trek to explore so many different questions and have so many different adventures. If you demand that serialized continuity--this character needs to have an arc to deal with this traumatic experience, the crew has to follow the thread they just discovered, our Doctor needs to do something with the new tech they just found--then you lose the variety that Star Trek is known for. Instead of a new story each week (or, occasionally, across two weeks) you’ve got a single story spanning months. Neither form is better or worse than the other, it’s absolutely a preference, but there’s a very specific, structural, intentional reason why the characters “forget” about the things they’ve discovered and, at times, experienced. Unlike Ozpin forgetting that he has a nuke in his cane for seven volumes, or Ruby forgetting to use her eyes at crucial points, Star Trek deliberately sets things aside to ensure there’s room for new ideas and questions next episode. 

Janeway doesn’t kill the Vidiians to get Neelix his lungs back - No Starfleet captain would. At least, not during this period of Star Trek. Sisko has development in that regard (making morally gray choices), but that’s built into the heart of the show from the start: he’s on a station, not a starship, that is jointly run by the Federation and the Bajorans, and built by the Cardassians. The rules of the Federation always had a tenuous hold there and Sisko as a character always pushed the boundary of the Federations expectations (Q: “Picard never hit me!”) Janeway, in contrast, is 100% a Federation captain and, more importantly, has explicitly told her crew that they will be operating as a Federation vessel, despite being so far from home. That’s the conflict between the officers and the Maquis. That’s why Tuvok accepts the alien tech in “Prime Factors,” recognizing that Janeway can’t. That’s why Seska is a compelling antagonist, pressuring the crew to abandon their ideals for survival. The series (or at least that first season) revolves around questions about identity and whether they’re willing to give that identity up now that they’re out from under the Federation’s thumb. Overwhelmingly, they choose not to... which would make murdering the Vidiian a complete 180 for her character. We’re not necessarily supposed to agree with Janeway’s choice, we’re supposed to acknowledge that murdering another sentient being is not some simple choice to make, especially when you’re a leader devoted to a certain set of ideals. We’re supposed to recognize the challenges here (many of which SFDebris doesn’t acknowledge) like how you’re supposed to keep a prisoner for the next 75 years when you’re already struggling to feed and take care of the crew you have, or the fact that they claim to take organs from dead bodies and this was a rare time when they couldn’t. (It’s only in “Faces” that we learn this is complete BS and they actively kidnap people to work as slaves and then be harvested.) The frustration that Janeway doesn’t act here stems from wanting her to be a character who is, fundamentally, not a Star Trek captain. 

Granted, I only watched one review, but that’s what the whole thing felt like: wanting a series that’s not Star Trek. Something without a token, challenging character, without hand-wavy science, that’s more serialized, and doesn’t adhere to a “do no harm” code. (I just started “Initiations” and Chakotay asks a vessel to stand down three times, while actively being attacked, before finally retaliating and then he tries to reestablish communications and then he warns them about their engine and then he beams them aboard his shuttle. That’s what Star Trek (usually) is: that idealized love of life, even when that life is actively hostile). And like, that’s obviously fine! As you say, Flawartist, “watch/enjoy whatever you wish,” but just based on this one review I wonder if SFDebris just wants something other than Star Trek. 

I think one of the reasons why I feel passionately about this (beyond my love of context and recognizing when shows are actively trying to accomplish something specific) is that I went through this with DS9. For years I heard about how horrible the show was. It’s trash. It’s a mess. It’s not TNG, so don’t even bother. Or, if you do, be prepared for disappointment. There was this whole, strong rhetoric about how silly it all is--Star Trek is, by default, silly, so supposedly only the Shakespeare loving, archeology obsessed captain is sophisticated enough to save it--and then... I found nothing of the sort. I mean yeah, obviously Star Trek is silly as hell (that’s part of its charm), but DS9 was also a complex, nuanced look into everything from personal agency to the threat of genocide. There’s so much wonderful storytelling there... little of which made it into my cultural understanding of DS9. And now I’m seeing the same thing with Voyager. When I did some quick googling I was bombarded by articles saying how bad it is and now I have an ask comparing it to a show I don’t think has even a quarter of the heart the Star Trek franchise does. Which is is not AT ALL meant as a knock against you, anon. I’m just fascinated by this cultural summary of Star Trek: TOS is ridiculous but fun if you’re willing to ignore large swaths of it, TNG is a masterpiece and that’s that, DS9 is bad, Voyager is bad, and to be frank I haven’t heard much of anything about Enterprise. It’s weird! Because I watch these shows and I’m like, “Holy shit there’s so much good storytelling here.” Is it perfect? Not on your life, but it’s trying in a way that I can really appreciate. It’s Star Trek and Star Trek (at least at the time) meant something pretty specific. Criticisms about divisive characters or idealized forgiveness feel like walking out of a Fast and Furious film and going, “There was too much driving and silly combat. Why didn’t they just fix the situation in this easy way?” Because then we wouldn’t have a film about lots of driving and silly combat! If you make all the characters palatable, make Janeway harder, extend the impact of all the discoveries, remove the ridiculous science that doesn’t make any sense... then you don’t have Star Trek anymore. 

[michals]

So this is one thing I feel very strongly about and I am going to go into it even if no one wants me to. So there’s this trope in media where something dramatic happens and everyone is expected to feel the same way and if one of the characters feels it Wrong then by the end of the show/movie they have to have this big revelation where they come around to the Right way of feeling.

For instance, think of any indie movie where a parent or family member dies and everyone gathers together. There’s always one person, one sibling or whatever, who’s all business. They’re stoic and serious and figuring out funeral costs and what happens with the will and blah blah blah. And they’re always framed as though they’re doing something wrong, they aren’t really ‘dealing with it’. By the end of the movie they’ve learned from the other, more emotional, characters that they need to let go, they need to cry and scream…ya know, whatever everyone thinks they SHOULD be doing. But that’s crap because not everyone reacts the same way to things.

TUA is great because the basic stories for these children are the same but they’re all allowed to be different people and react appropriately for their characters. They all had the same childhood fundamentally (down to the fact that they lived in a very secluded environment with the same 9 people at all times), the same basic origin story, all raised by the same very overpowering man, but none of them are actually so similar there’s one ‘acceptable’ way for them to process any of this.

Like I love the differences between the siblings in how they approach Reginald’s parenting. Diego knows that they had a shit childhood and he’s angry. He’s actively hostile about it and eventually (esp in season 2) outwardly points this out to his siblings and in his own weird way uses this to connect with them and sort of tries to make them understand it too (which is especially interesting when he talks to Luther who he was raised to compete with). Klaus also knows they had a garbage upbringing but he’s internalized it all; in a lot of ways he’s very self centered when it comes to dealing with this. Diego actively brings this stuff up, Klaus just kind of accepts it to himself and doesn’t use it to reach out to the others. He likes his siblings, he does seem to want to get along with them, but he doesn’t do it by addressing all the ways Reginald personally fucked them up, instead focusing on their own individual fuck ups (esp his).

Allison seems to actively ignore her childhood. It made her who she is but she doesn’t feel the need to address it. She also knows it was shit but she’s done everything she can to be her own person. I can’t remember any specific moments where she addresses how Reginald shaped her or any of the others. Vanya on the other hand has let Reginald infect so much of her thinking she used it against her siblings. She was absolutely treated badly and ignored and isolated but she still took out a lot of her anger on her brothers and sister and doesn’t understand that they wouldn’t have done it without the guiding hand of their father. They were kids and under the complete control of Reginald’s machinations but he still managed to convince her that her siblings had chosen, of their own free will, to treat her a certain way. She’s just realizing now that maybe they all actually deserve to be heard.

Five was only with Reginald til he was 13 and then spent 40 some years alone and after that he was under the boot of The Commission. Five is too forgiving of Reginald, everything has a rosy, nostalgic haze to it for him. Reginald sucked, sure, but was it worse than 40+ years of solitude eating cockroaches? And it’s been made clear on the show that Five is a lot like Reginald, in a way that might just be baked into him and not just because of how he was raised. On the other hand we don’t really see how Ben feels about Reginald, only that he doesn’t like when Klaus compares him to him. Ben’s been dead for how many years and his focus is much more narrow. He feels a lot for his siblings which matters much more than how he feels about Reginald.

Now Luther (oh, Luther) has a very specific relationship with their dad. He forgives Reginald for pretty much everything because he wants to believe that it was all worth it. That all their trauma actually amounted to something, that it was for the greater good. Which is interesting cause it’s not actually a self centered view of things, it actually takes into account his siblings’ experiences. He wants to believe Reginald meant the best for ALL of them, which plays into his whole thing about needing to be the leader, which is a whole other can of worms. Luther needs to think that Reginald was good and had the best intentions, otherwise all the pain was for nothing.

So yeah, that’s the long way of saying the show does a pretty good job of looking at these people as individuals despite their whole ‘team’ aspect, because people DON’T FEEL THE SAME ALL THE TIME. People are unique, even if they have similar histories, and there’s no one way they approach anything, much less big emotional events. I hate watching media that thinks there’s only one Right way to deal with things. This show has seven main characters and they all have different voices and emotions and point of views on the same things and I love to see it.    

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

More therapy thoughts part 1/?

Behavior Theory Frameworks/Conditioning and What the fuck does Master Chief talk about in therapy?

Ramblings below - like a lot, like I spent too much time writing this and you should not read this

Behavioral Theory could work well as a framework with rehabilitating Spartan IIs if the case worker focused on Operant Conditioning Theory and Cognitive Social Learning Theory, which I talked about in this ask because I think I’m funny and this blog is an archive of me applying human behavior theories to video games.

Spartans have always been taught the mission comes first! Always! The 2s are indoctrinated from age 6-14 and then have that reinforced the rest of their lives. From the beginning they are taught to push themselves to the limits, earn their food by winning, form bonds with teammates but be ready to sacrifice them for the mission. The whole lives wasted vs spent conversation between John and Mendez after the augmentation surgery!

What the UNSC/ONI wants comes before their lives, the lives of other soldiers, civilians, AI etc. This constant conditioning of expectations and rewards has created the norms cemented in their minds. This becomes standard operating procedure.

Spartans are also an entirely separated social group, other people have made really great posts on how they are Othered and have their own way of communicating with body language. ODSTs hate Spartans, marines see them as cyborgs or saviors, and while they’re allies, Spartans are not seen or treated as human, by literally everyone. They are a means to an end, with the original goal being to maintain the UNSC’s position of power and crush the insurrectionists in the outer colonies, but uh oh Aliens!

Maybe the 2s aren’t as expendable as the 3s but the mindset and reinforcement of “mission first, people second” being repeated their entire lives is going to stick. So is the constant mistreatment and abuse from their fellow soldiers and handlers. 

Addressing the cognitive distortions that come from their upbringing while also balancing the fact that Spartans are so fundamentally different from the way they developed to survive would be so much work, especially considering how much information on them is given to their therapist.  The main distortion I would apply is minimization, making large problems small and not properly dealing with them, and specifically for John, personification, accepting blame for negative events without sufficient evidence. 

Like these are grown ass super soldiers who can kill you in less than a second and calculate the amount of gravity in a room on the fly but then also can flounder when trying to comfort civilians or make small talk because their experiences and values are so alien to adults who had more developmentally “normal” lives. 

Literally applying therapy to Spartans would be like, what was done to you was wrong, the ends do not justify the means, you were children and the adults in your life failed to protect you. You are a human person who is fallible and did the best you could with what you had. And the Spartan would say, “sounds fake but okay, can I pass my psych eval and go back to war now please?”

Jumping back to Behavior Theory

Different approaches to therapy under the Behavior Theory umbrella help modify negative behaviors with treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy that teach individuals adaptive coping like emotional regulation, distress tolerance, cognitive distortions, and interpersonal communication. And that’s just one framework under the umbrella of human behavior theories.

Social work therapy is different from psych as it approaches individuals with heavily researched, evidence-based theories and frameworks in a holistic viewing of person-in-environment, instead of a strong focus on internal psychology. 

Social work looks at all the interacting systems, environment, history, and internal and external factors affecting an individual. One of the most useful frameworks is the Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Frameworks (BPSS) when helping a client. It helps with identifying all the intersecting factors, both risk and protective, that shapes a client’s lived experiences. The most important thing to remember is that the individual is an expert in their own life, they know their experiences best.

The hardest part is applying this to Spartans because they Are So Fucked, their lived experiences, their environments and systems and institutions interacting with them, and the amount of their personal information that is probably so classified.

BPSS is a tool to help social workers assess individuals and their situations by collecting info that is related to the presenting issues and current and past circumstances. Info like medical history, hospitalizations, substance abuse, mental illness, personal relationships, family history and background, culture and norms, education, legal history, spirituality and participation etc. is all under this framework. 

For Spartan 2s most of this info is lost or classified and helping someone who has repressed every negative emotion they've had for the sake of the mission would be so much to unpack but that’s also why you’re reading the mad ramblings over an over caffeinated nerd on the internet.

Life Course Theory which looks at developmental milestones and the individual’s experiences versus the socially expected markers, how do you apply that to children who were taken and have lived such different lives? 

While early adolescence is when “normal” development of thoughts of self and identity take place alongside the physical changes of puberty, Spartans were being turned into emotionless calculating weapons. Sorry John, no forming a sense of identity and peer bonds for you, go kill that Watts guy who betrayed us and joined the insurrectionists. 

And now that I’ve gone this insane and opened 2 whole textbooks up, let’s get to Master Chief thoughts. If you’ve read this far thank you, I swear I’m normal, 2020 has just been a weird year. 

Why the fuck did I think I could write a therapy fic on a guy with 20 minutes of actual dialogue across almost 2 decades of games?

I make fun of him and call him a himbo, but he’s smart, he knows he’s being used and there is resentment there that’s been building for years. 

There’s also decades of trauma and combat experience, physical, and emotional abuse, the lack of a support network,  lack of an identity, the biological factors and aftermath of the augmentations and injuries he’s received, a whole lot of grief and self-inflicted guilt. 

The loss of a third of his peer group with the augmentation surgery, Sam’s death, the loss of Reach (the only place he’s considered home), Keyes, the Pillar of Autumn crew, Miranda Keyes, Johnson, Cortana. He cares about the marines who fight with him!!!

He just stands there and takes it and rarely snaps, and even then it’s just small cracks on the surface with fissures running deep. The few details I will pull from Halo 5 are Blue Team’s reactions to John pushing himself so hard from the beginning of the game, and the literal crack in his armor from the fight with Locke. Like dude.  

John’s a leader and will get the mission done but he tugs on the leash. He’s earned enough of a reputation and uses it to get his way.

Halo 2’s “Permission to leave the station” with Mr. “I’m going to hand deliver a bomb to the fusion reactor of a covenant supercarrier and hope my friends catch me”. 

Halo 4 is when we see him say no to a superior officer and then 5 is him going AWOL. Palmer literally points out that no one is going to stop him.

Halo 5 kills me for many reasons but John bringing up Halsey and what she did to him and also pointing out that he knows Halo 5 Cortana is trying to manipulate him with psychological tactics hurts. 

He knows what’s been done to him!

I cannot remember which book it was but John isn’t used to working alone. He literally takes fire because he was expecting someone to have his back! 

He’s lost without Cortana! She was in his brain! Y’all! I played Halo Combat Evolved on the original xbox when I was like 8 and I knew these two were meant to be together. From the moment they met they had great chemistry and relied on each other! Cortana literally goes after people who have it out for John! John wants her approval and shows off for her in one of the books. 

I’ve already written too much here but like all of the games have John showing off for Cortana, making dry jokes, jumping out of things he shouldn’t. 

The whole point of this rambling is to try and get my thoughts about how to approach John’s character under control.

And that’s the thing. He’s lost control. He’s lost people, he’s losing his position and being phased out as an aging spartan, a relic. John’s used to following orders and making some decisions on the battlefield but it was always short term.

He has no identity beyond being a weapon. Complete the mission, clear the LZ, get put in cryo. Rinse, repeat. 

The timeline of the games are what I'm most familiar with but with the comics and books too it’s one long run from Halo 2 to Halo 4. Cairo station to the Dreadnought to the crash landing to Forward Unto Dawn to Requiem to “The Didact is Dead but not really but we’ll deal with him off-screen”.

I know Hood apparently gave John R&R orders before Halo 5 that he ignored and kept running himself into the ground. This is a man who has to keep moving and keep being useful. 

I imagine him giving in and seeking help as a last resort to fix any problems he has with performing his duties rather than helping himself be healthier. 

Any professional he sees is going to have to approach him like they’re approaching a self sacrificing feral cat, with lunch meat and quiet. This man needs to have his support network closer, set up long term goals, and do some serious, and most likely incredibly painful, self reflection on where he’s come from and where he wants to go. Get him out of that tin can and into therapy. I don’t have a nice neat ending because this was a ramble and also therapy is not neat and tidy. Thanks for reading my words about mr halo

[isuzuapologist]

Rank the Fruits Basket ships?

thanks for the ask! i don’t know if you meant canon ships or the ones i wanted so here’s a mix! (ranking things is so hard i did the best i could lol)

kyoru - this is obviously my first pick. they are soulmates, they love eachother so unconditionally and are so ready to PROTECT. their parallels are crazy and the way they fall in love so slowly is my favorite thing. there are so many elements that make them extraordinary and such an incredible love story, but if we take the “fantasy” elements out of it they’re also just two teenagers! that’s one of my favorite things about them-- the way they flirt and are so playful with eachother, how awkward and messy they are sometimes expressing affection but how earnest they are to do so!

tohrin - listen. i’m obsessed. i think about them all the time. i think about writing them all the time. there are so many parallels between them and also between their partners in canon. i like to say they’re two sides of the same coin because i believe their inner worlds are much, much similar than their exterior lead to think. i love the way they’re a TEAM and so brave and so smart and so ready to protect people??? the size of their hearts????? unmatched. so ready to give love even if isuzu shies away from it (much like tohru being unable to ask for help). i strongly believe they are best friends in canon and the way isuzu is so protective of tohru and even suggests she should leave kyo so she can still live close to her?????????? phew. girlfriends of the year. soft and goth. tsundere and deredere. light and dark. need i go on? they’re the perfect match.

yuchi - I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. GOD. i think my favorite thing about them is how relatable and “conventional” they are in a way? what we see from them in the series is a completely normal high school relationship, because yuki doesn’t seem to reveal the curse to her before it’s broken (if we are to assume). they’re really really similar: it’s so obvious to me that yuki helps her sort out her feelings and put everything in place because he’s already started that journey. but also machi helps him go through with it and start seeing himself as someone able to care, someone people can lean on, someone who can love, etc. they help eachother see how valuable they are, to themselves and other people.

hana x uo x tohru - ENDGAME POLY!!!!!!!!! listen if you didn’t get major sapphic throuple vibes in the entirety of hana’s backstory.... i don’t know what to tell you. i’d watch a whole series of them just going through high school together and discovering the dynamics of their relationship. i wouldn’t even mind if the sohmas weren’t around. give me best friends give me sapphics give me polyamori. god the possibilites... the potential. and they’re also a little bit in love already.

yukeru - LOVE THEM!!!!! they’re a great great great duo. they both bring growth to the other and are a fundamental step in their personal journeys. also i adore the way they rub off on eachother and how kakeru is able to bring out the inner asshole in yuki. they have amazing scenes. in my head they’ve definitely (AT LEAST) banged in canon. idc.

ritsu x mitsuru - a lesbian couple and a trans woman??????? i CANNOT express how much i love them and how starved i am for more content. the new scenes included in the anime gave me life. they’re just two shy, fumbling women who downright admire eachother. i think they’re so so so cute.

hatsuzu - i really like them But. i do think there are some unhealthy traits about their relationship (even if by the end of the series isuzu states that she wants to better herself and their relationship-- which is super interesting and something i’d like to see more in media!) i think they have a lot of potential and i would have loved to see them working through their “issues”. (she depends too heavily on him and i really wasn’t a fan of their first kiss ((the whole “you don’t want me?” thing when haru knows just how scared and self conscious isuzu is... eh :/ )) anyway goth bisexual power couple step on me with your punk boots!

mayutori - i don’t have any problems with them even if i think it would have been interesting for them to develop some other kind of relationship that wasn’t romantic. also weird to me the way hana connects to both of them so idk. but i do think they are compatible and make a really cool duo.

ayame x mine - i mean i like the fact that we know ayame gets pegged.

there’s also hiro x kisa but they’re children so i don’t really "ship” them. & then akigure and uo x kureno.... hm. even if i do like and enjoy some aspects of both relationships i simply can’t ignore their age gaps,, and other things. (i won’t even consider kyoko and katsuya because that’s disgusting)

[cadence-talle]

Teach The Torches To Burn Bright

Pairing: Fitz Vacker/Dex Dizznee

Wordcount: 2,212

Summary: “You’re a coward.”

“Correct,” Fitz responded. His sister fixed him with a determined look.

“You’re a coward, but you’re also my brother and I want you to be happy.” She leaned forward, sucking the dregs of her milkshake with a loud slurp. “So we’re gonna get you a date with that boy. Come hell or high water.”

(Or, a theater AU, feat fake understudies, many milkshakes, and fundamentally misunderstanding Romeo & Juliet.) 

Other notes: for @molly-sencen! I’m sorry this took so long and I love you so much, Molly. 

Taglist: @everyonehasthoughts, @clearlykeefitz, @loverofallthingssmart, @a-lonely-tatertot, @enbies-and-felonies, @molly-sencen, @lemontarto, @appalyneinstitute1, @ruewen-and-rising, @silver-snow, @linhamon-roll, @hyperlollypop, @never-ever-too-many-fandoms, @keeper-of-the-lost-queers, @impostertamsong, @vibing-in-the-void, @yeetersofthelostcities, @mistythegirlfluxmess, @diamond-dreamerr, @we-have-no-bananas-today

“Look, I’m just saying, Romeo and Juliet is overrated.”

“Romeo and Juliet is one of the greatest plays of all time. Just because you hated your eighth-grade English teacher doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

“They’re absolute idiots. Who falls in love in a single night? How do you do that? Who pretends they’re dead without making sure the other person knows it’s all fake? Death is a stupid solution.”

“Okay, I don’t understand them either, but-”

“Not to mention it’s literally a love story between a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old in which they meet, fall in ‘love’, and then get married in the span of three days. Tell me that sounds like a healthy relationship.”

Fitz sighs, pushing open the auditorium doors as he glares at his sister. “It’s not supposed to be a healthy relationship. It’s supposed to show the folly of falling in love too fast and how there needs to be a delicate balance between love and hate.”

Biana arches an eyebrow at him. “Did you really just use the word folly unironically? In the twenty-first century?”

Fitz picks up his pace, walking faster down towards the stage. “Shut up.”

“No, no! Tell me more about the follies in Shakespeare’s writings!” Biana calls behind him, smirk evident in her voice. Giving a small groan- she’s never letting him live this one down- Fitz turns to move up the stairs on either side of the stage and runs straight into someone. 

“Oh, sorry,” he says, stumbling back. “I didn’t see you-”

It’s Dex Dizznee. Of course it’s Dex Dizznee. Fitz should have known he’d be in the theater today; he’s been halfway stalking the guy for a month. 

(“Just ask him out already,” Biana had said, chewing on her milkshake straw. “You’re, like, the most popular person in school.”

“I can’t do that!” Fitz protested. Biana frowned. 

“What’s stopping you?”

Fitz laid his head on the cold metal of the ice cream shop table. “He’s too pretty,” he said mournfully. Biana rolled her eyes and kicked him. 

“You’re a coward.”

“Correct,” Fitz responded. His sister fixed him with a determined look. 

“You’re a coward, but you’re also my brother and I want you to be happy.” She leaned forward, sucking the dregs of her milkshake with a loud slurp. “So we’re gonna get you a date with that boy. Come hell or high water.”) 

Now that he thinks about it, Biana probably orchestrated this. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

“Sorry,” Fitz says again. Dex grins, waving a hand in the air. 

“Not a problem,” he responds. “I was probably in the way, actually. We’re trying to get these new speakers set up,” he gestures to the huge speaker at his feet, tangled in a pile of electrical wires, “and it’s… harder than it looks.”

“I’ll bet.” Fitz nods, pretending he knows anything about technology or what it takes to install a speaker. “Well, we’ll get out of your way. I’m just here to grab an extra script-”

“Actually,” Biana says, appearing next to him. “I think now would be a great time for you to try on that tunic I restitched last week. We need to make sure it fits.” She smiles at him. Fitz glares back. 

“Sure,” he says through gritted teeth, moving up the stage stairs. Dex smiles, touching Fitz’s shoulder lightly as he passes. 

“See you later.”

“Uh.” Fitz says. “Yeah, you too, Deck.”

He staggers backstage and falls face-first onto a prop couch. Biana makes a noise of agreement. 

“Deck?” Fitz says, his voice muffled by the couch cushions. “Deck?”

“I’m sure he didn’t notice,” Biana pats his head. “You do need to try on the tunic, though. We have like ten more costumes to get through and the show’s in a week and a half.”

“That sounds like bad planning on your part,” Fitz observes, taking the offered shirt and pulling it on. “How does it look?”

Biana considers him, head tilted to one side. She smiles. “You’re going to be the best-dressed Romeo on this side of Eternalia. Sophie’ll love it.”

“Sophie is gay,” Fitz points out, “and has a girlfriend. You should know that- you got them together in the first place.”

“Mmm,” Biana agrees, “The great Sopherella Caper. Those were the days.”

“’Those days’ were last month.”

Biana waves a hand in the air. “Irrelevant. Okay, take the tunic off and I’ll make the final adjustments.”

“Great. See you at home?” Fitz scoops his bag up off of the floor as Biana nods, heading out towards the theater doors again. Dex holds up a hand in a little half-wave. 

“Have a good day, Ditz.” he calls. 

Suddenly, Fitz thinks he understands Romeo and Juliet’s ‘poison’ idea a little bit better. 

-/-

“You know, I think this is good, actually.” Biana says the next day. The five of them- Fitz, Biana, Linh, Tam and Keefe- are crammed into a booth at the ice cream shop, sipping milkshakes. (It’s far too early in the day for ice cream, but Fitz isn’t going to argue. The mint chocolate chip ones here are to die for.) 

“Explain,” Fitz responds. He doesn’t see how any of this- the fiasco with Dex, being brought to the ice cream shop in what he’s pretty sure is some sort of intervention, the fact that his milkshake has notably less mint in it than usual- is good. Biana shrugs. 

“Well, from what you said, it sounds more like he was teasing you than actually being mean. And teasing is good. It’s very close to flirting.”

“And if he was flirting with you,” Linh adds, “then that’s great!”

“And if he wasn’t?” Fitz asks, because he’s pessimistic like that. Tam raises an eyebrow, setting his milkshake on the table with a thunk. 

“Then you’ve completely embarrassed yourself and you can never talk to him again,” he deadpans. Fitz nods slowly. 

“I’m sure that won’t happen, though,” Linh says hurriedly, shooting her twin an annoyed look. Tam gives her an angelic smile. 

“Seriously, dude,” Keefe says, turning to Fitz. “You’re the only one here who’s still single. I wanna go couple’s bowling!”

Fitz holds up two fingers, ticking them off as he speaks. “One, ‘couple’s bowling’? Not a thing. Two, aren’t you single?”

Keefe stares at him. “What?”

“You do realize we’ve been dating for four months now,” Tam says. Fitz blinks. 

“I… did not realize that, no.”

“Wait, really?” Biana interjects, giving Fitz a puzzled look. “You were there when Keefe did his promposal.” 

“I thought it was a joke! Who orders goats for an actual promposal?”

Keefe frowns, looking vaguely insulted. “I do. Anyone who wants to do a promposal right orders goats.”

“Forget about the goats,” Linh interrupts, “forget about Keefe and Tam. We’re here to help you.”

All four heads turn towards him in eerie unison. Fitz swallows and Biana smiles sharply, pulling out her planner and flipping to May 13th. 

“Okay. We don’t know when Dex will be in the theater- he keeps really weird hours. What we do know, though, is that he’ll be here next Friday. Opening night.”

“So after the show, we shove Fitz in the soundbooth until he asks Dex out,” Keefe says, nodding. Linh shakes her head. 

“Let’s call that a Plan B. Fitz would actually murder us.”

“True.”

“You guys do realize I’m sitting here, right?” Fitz asks. They ignore him, instead gathering around Biana and her schedule. Silently, Fitz slips from the booth and moves towards the shop door.

This show is going to be a disaster. 

-/-

The theater is packed, people whispering and chatting in the dim light. Fitz should be backstage, getting the last parts of his costume on, but instead he’s in the near-empty hall alongside the auditorium. 

He always does this before a show- takes a moment to catch his breath, lean against the cold blue tile of the wall. A moment of peace before the craziness that is a Foxfire High theater production. 

Or, relative peace. There’s a banging coming from somewhere behind him- one of the doors that line the hallway. Fitz is pretty sure the one the noise is emitting from is a janitor’s closet.

He approaches the door, wary of whatever’s inside. Once, a junior found a raccoon in her locker. Fitz really doesn’t want a repeat of that. 

Instead of a raccoon, though, Sophie falls out when he opens the door. Fitz stares as she stumbles, almost falling, before getting her balance. 

“Why were you locked in the janitor’s closet?” Fitz asks. Sophie rolls her eyes as they head towards the backstage entrance. She’s in costume already, thank goodness. 

“Ask Keefe and Linh,” she grunts. “They’re the ones who stuck me in there.”

Fitz steps through the door, almost running into Dex for the second time in as many weeks. The taller boy has a confused expression on his face.

“Do you know why Biana was just trying to convince me I was the Juliet understudy?” He inquires. “I told her I can’t act, but she didn’t appear to want to listen.” 

Fitz sighs, aware of the flush creeping up his cheeks. “I might have some idea,” he admits. “I’ll talk to you after the show?”

“Sure. I need to get to the sound booth anyway.” Dex gives him a thumbs up and moves away. “See you, Fitz.”

He knows my name. 

Sophie has a dangerous smirk on her face when Fitz turns back in her direction, and he immediately glares at her. 

“Don’t.”

“I’m not doing anything,” She hums. “Just… I’m glad you’re happy, ‘kay?”

Fitz smiles at her. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Sophie punches his arm lightly. “Now come on, Romeo. We’ve got a show to steal.” 

-/-

The curtain has just closed, and everyone is screaming. 

To be fair, the show did go well- no one messed up their lines, and the kiss scene (which was, in rehearsal, simply nicknamed Awkward™) actually didn’t crash and burn. 

So Fitz supposes he can’t blame them for screaming, despite the damage it’s doing to his eardrums. (Someone is also playing Let It Go at an obscene volume. Fitz will never understand the theater kid obsession with Let It Go.) 

Biana and Linh come up behind him, hugging him from both sides as they shout. Fitz can’t quite hear them, but he hugs back. 

“I’m going to go talk to Dex,” he shouts, pointing towards the soundbooth. Biana and Linh give him matching grins and Linh yells something that might be go get it! and might be turn away and slam the door. Fitz can’t tell. 

He makes his way through the crowds and up the steps to the back of the theater, keeping his head down so no one will recognize him. The attention can be nice, but he doesn’t exactly fancy getting stuck signing autographs right now.

“Hey!” Dex says as Fitz moves into the sound booth, leaning against the door. They’re the only two still here; whoever was operating the lighting board must have gone home. Now is probably the perfect time to talk to him.

Fitz opens his mouth to say something- even he’s not sure what- when he hears an ominous clicking noise in the door behind him. He spins, trying the handle. Locked.

Sophie’s words echo in his head. Ask Keefe and Linh. They’re the ones who stuck me in there.

“Did someone… lock the door from the outside?” Dex asks, coming over and crouching down next to the lock. “That’s weird.”

Fitz sighs, shaking his head. “Not for my friends.”

“Your friends did this? Why?”

Studiously, Fitz stares at the floor. Then the ceiling. Then the soundboard. Anything but Dex, really.

“Do you remember,” he says slowly, “when I called you Deck?”

Dex raises an eyebrow. “Yep,” he answers, popping the ‘p’. “Not the worst thing I’ve been called, honestly.”

“I- I wasn’t trying to insult you,” Fitz manages. “I just- well. I got nervous.”

Dex wrinkles his nose. It’s kind of adorable. “Nervous? Why?”

Fitz shrugs one shoulder.

“I don’t know. You’re just… you’re pretty.”

“Pretty,” Dex echoes. Fitz nods, taking a deep breath. He’s in too deep to back out now.

“Yeah. And smart, and cool, and…” he trails off. “You’re amazing. And I was- I am- kind of in awe of you.”

“Oh.” Dex steps forward, reaching out. Blinking, Fitz takes his hand. “Well, what if I told you that the first time I saw you on stage, I almost fainted?”

Fitz’s throat goes dry. “You did?”

“Uh-huh. And whenever you were rehearsing and I was doing lighting, I couldn’t stop looking at you.” Dex smiles sheepishly, his cheeks tinged pink. “Because you were awesome, and beautiful, and I really, really liked you.”

“I- I like you too,” Fitz squeaks out. Dex grins, stepping a tiny bit closer. 

“Can I…”

“Yes.”

They stay there for a while, trading kisses back and forth, and something Biana had said a few weeks before floats into Fitz’s head. 

“Who falls in love in a single night? How do you do that?”

Like this, Fitz thinks. Like this.

He’s not in love, not yet, but Fitz still feels closer to Romeo and Juliet than he ever has before. 

(Hopefully without the death part, though. In that case, they really are idiots.)

[corpsentry]

LAUNCHING MERRILY DOWN THE PATH OF SIN AGAIN

ao3 mirror pairing: atsumu/hinata rating: teens featuring: post-timeskip, side bokuaka, black jackals dynamics, sakusa suffering, author’s weird oral fixation

Hell yeah. Miya Atsumu is in love.

“Shit. I think I cut my gum.”

They’re having dinner together for some reason. Bokuto probably roped them all into it to stave off his boredom, but he offered to pay, so Sakusa went along with it, and because Sakusa went along with it, Hinata went along with it, and because Hinata went along with it, Atsumu went along with it. He suspects Hinata would’ve said yes from the start, but Sakusa started lecturing them on the perils of Korean BBQ restaurants, so Bokuto staved him off too with the cash thing. Sakusa is a practical person. Sometimes.

Anyway, Hinata winces as he says shit I think I cut my gum. Then he smiles like he’s really happy about it and Bokuto’s eyes go all round like volleyballs and he slams his hands on the table. Sakusa tells him not to put his hands on the table. Bokuto ignores him.

“Are you okay?” Bokuto asks.

“Yeah,” Hinata says, making a weird face while he feels around in his mouth with his tongue.

Atsumu tries to think of something intelligent to say and draws a blank. “Let me see,” he says instead. He’s sitting next to Hinata because Sakusa doesn’t trust Bokuto to share a grill with him. Bokuto is sitting next to Sakusa because he can’t share a grill with him but he wants to either try to get to know him better or piss him off. If nothing else he’s definitely succeeded at the latter.

“Huh?” Sakusa stares at Atsumu like he thinks he’s stupid, which he probably is. “The fuck are you trying to see?”

“The, uh,” Atsumu begins, but Hinata opens his mouth for him for some reason and he forgets to finish his sentence.

“I can taste blood on the right side of my mouth,” he offers.

“Uh,” Atsumu says again.

Bokuto stands up and leans over the table because Bokuto is immortal and will not be wounded by the likes of a Korean BBQ grill. “Do you need a flashlight? My phone has a flashlight.”

“Who the fuck doesn’t have a flashlight on their phone,” Sakusa says, staring at Bokuto like he thinks he’s stupid.

“Me,” Hinata offers. Hinata is using an iPhone model from the Stone Age.

“Stop talking and let me look at your gums,” Atsumu says, looking at his teeth. He has made a discovery: Hinata has very nice teeth. This aligns nicely with the other nice things he has noticed about Hinata’s face, like his eyebrows and the softness of his mouth. Hell yeah. Atsumu is in love.

“You’ve been looking at his gums for over a minute, Atsumu. Have you found anything.” Sakusa.

“Yeah,” Atsumu confirms. “There’s a cut.”

“Shit, where?”

“There.”

“Can you show me?”

“Oh, no.” Sakusa pushes his chair away from the table. “Atsumu. Don’t do it.”

Atsumu is really fucking confused. “What am I supposed to not do?” He’s still thinking about Hinata’s face. You have to get really close to someone to look inside their mouth. Close enough to kiss them. Is this what intimacy looks like?

“Are you gonna put your fingers in his mouth?” Bokuto, in a moment of clairvoyance, has caught onto the source of Sakusa’s terror. He sounds proud of himself.

“Are you?” Hinata looks at him innocently.

Atsumu puts his fingers in his mouth.

    ::

    Sakusa Kiyoomi followed Inarizaki’s match against Karasuno in his second year of high school from a livestream on his phone because he wanted to minimize contact with the crowds in the gymnasium as much as possible. The match being an Inarizaki match, had attracted an especially large and diverse crowd of spectators. Nonetheless, they were united by the fact that they were all screaming. At first they were screaming because the Miya brothers were winning. Later they were screaming because the Miya brothers were losing. Then they finished losing, and Kiyoomi scoffed at them behind his mask while he wondered how Miya Atsumu was taking the fact that he had blown his first match at the Spring High.

Later he would recall the way Atsumu had looked at Karasuno’s orange-headed number ten. Kiyoomi, being the calm and logical person he is, would detect the complex twist of fascination and admiration that lay behind the twins’ duplicate of the freak quick. He might even begin to form a coherent thought about Atsumu’s motivation for executing such a shaky attack. This would involve a careful perusal of the few years of friendship between them and an evaluation of Atsumu’s taste in sports, men, and sportsmen. Then someone would cough in his direction from thirteen meters away, and he would get so mad at them he would forget all about it until he met the two of them again as teammates in the MSBY Black Jackals and Atsumu put his fingers in Hinata’s mouth.

    ::

    “Dude you have to tell me why you did that,” Bokuto says. He’s leaning on Atsumu’s shoulder because he’s drunk and it’s a Friday. Bokuto only drinks on Fridays. This is a fact of life. If he could have it his way he would apparently drink on several days but Akaashi the shounen manga editor vows to wipe out seven generations of his family if he does. Therefore he abstains.

Atsumu wishes he would abstain from leaning on his shoulder. “I do?” he wonders aloud. He is drunk as well. Luckily Bokuto is more drunk so Bokuto cannot admonish him. Atsumu holds all the power in this situation.

“Yeah dude you were blushing like crazy.” Drunk Bokuto doesn’t use punctuation. It does not register on his list of things that exist in the universe. One time Atsumu made a bad life decision and crashed at his apartment; that night he overheard Bokuto talking to Akaashi the shounen manga editor on the phone, sounding like a bullet train with a caffeine addiction. Every once in a while Bokuto would fall silent. Then he would make an abrupt sound like a deflating balloon, presumably interrupting whatever Akaashi was saying, and there would be no more silence to be had for the next thirteen minutes. Atsumu felt very sorry for himself all night. He also felt very sorry for Akaashi, but less so since he had chosen to saddle himself permanently with Bokuto unlike the rest of them.

“Dude.” Drunk Bokuto says dude a lot.

“No,” Atsumu says.

They have almost reached the train station. Atsumu can see it blinking in the distance with its glowing signs and other artificial shit and he is so fucking glad for it. He manhandles Bokuto into the station and props him up against a pillar once they reach the platform. Bokuto’s coat is slipping off his shoulders. Atsumu pulls it back up.

“Do you think he was weirded out?” he asks later on the train. The soju he chugged after sticking his fingers in Hinata’s mouth is wearing off and primal fear is starting to set in. Suddenly he finds himself deeply regretting everything he has done since Hinata joined the Black Jackals. Spending so much time practicing that quick attack with him was a mistake. Buying him chocolate as a joke for Valentine’s Day was a mistake. Walking back to the train station alone with him after spending too much time practicing that quick attack, watching the way Hinata had laughed at his dumb jokes as they moved through the neon blur of the city was a mistake. Now he's in love and Sakusa's going to make fun of him. Sakusa has alien-like sensors installed in the back of his head which allow him to notice everything important in life before Atsumu does. Ah, Atsumu’s drowning in regret. He’s going to die.

“Nope,” Bokuto says cheerfully. “Hinata’s a good guy.”

Atsumu broods. “Good guys can be weirded out too, y’know.”

“Nah. He likes you.”

“What are you, psychic?”

“Hell yeah I’m psychic.”

    ::

    Bokuto is not psychic. He’s just a fundamentally nice human being who gets an endorphin kick out of supporting every single person who comes within a hundred-meter-radius of him. Okay, Atsumu wants to say. Okay, so you want to support your teammates and your friends and shit. That’s great. But what if two of those teammates are At Odds with each other. What if you have to pick one.

Atsumu and Hinata are At Odds with each other. On the bright side, they’re both old enough to draw the line between work shit and personal shit so it doesn’t spill over into their professional lives. They are alarmingly civil during practice. The Black Jackals continue to get their ass handed to them by the Adlers. On the dark side, Hinata won’t so much as breathe in his direction off the court, which is pretty fucking miserable.

The best part is Atsumu doesn’t even realize he’s being ignored until Sakusa points it out to him. He’s spent the last week in denial and is actually growing kind of comfortable with this new lifestyle. He doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he has feelings for the guy who pissed him off in his second year of high school; he also doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he stuck his fingers in his mouth last Friday. Maybe Atsumu should just end his friendship with Hinata Shouyou. They can start over as business partners. Make a joint venture.

But of course, Sakusa points it out to him. “I know you think you’re being really fucking slick by ignoring Hinata all the time, but I must sadly inform you that he’s actually ignoring you as well,” he says, examining his nails absently. “Plus I think he’s trying harder at it.”

Sakusa smells like eighty-five different brands of shampoo. “I hate you,” Atsumu says.

“Your hatred means nothing to me,” Sakusa replies, unfazed.

    ::

    The first time he and Hinata played together in an official match, Atsumu remembers thinking that he was glad he let Osamu set up his onigiri shop and pushed ahead with volleyball alone after all.

He figures he’ll always be a little bitter about how his high school volleyball career ended. It’s like how he still hates the everloving shit out of spicy food but has developed a tolerance for it due to his teammates’ dietary preferences. The sensation will never be pleasant, but he gets through it. He drinks a shit ton of water. After their meal he treats himself to dessert from a nearby convenience store and makes someone else pay for it out of spite. Sometimes they agree. Other times he winds up paying for his souffle cheesecake himself. But fuck it, whatever, it’s sweet.

The first time he and Hinata played together in an official match they unleashed their new freak quick in front of Kageyama Tobio and like half of Japan’s previous high school volleyball circuit. At the moment in which the ball he set went up in the air and Hinata made contact with it, Atsumu had the distinct sensation that the rules of the world had been quietly rewritten. It was akin to having a fully-grown deer ram its antlers into your chest, shattering your ribcage instantly. He couldn't hear himself anymore. Just the crowd.

Take that, he said with his eyes after Hinata scored that first sweet, sweet point, smiling at Kageyama like a switchblade. Hinata’s ours now.

Upon closer examination, what Atsumu actually meant to say was: he’s mine.

    ::

    Why didn’t he say that, you ask? Because he’s a fucking idiot, of course. By this point Sakusa had already caught on to his feelings. If you had looked carefully at the background you would have noticed him squinting at Atsumu at various points throughout the match with three percent more intensity than usual. The rest of his attention was reserved for the ball, but he devoted three percent to Atsumu. This is Sakusa we’re talking about. Three percent is significant.

    ::

    There is a boring romantic subplot in one of the manga that Akaashi’s magazine serializes. Unfortunately it’s about a boy and a girl, so it was probably destined to be boring from the start. But the brilliant thing about it is both the girl and the boy realize they have feelings for each other in chapter thirty and then proceed to make zero progress in their relationship for the next two hundred chapters.

“Why don’t they just get together?” he asked Akaashi once. They were having hotpot in Bokuto’s apartment. Because it was Bokuto’s apartment they got Akaashi as a freebie. Akaashi had brought wagyu beef.

“The author doesn’t feel like it.” Akaashi’s glasses kept getting fogged up by the steam. He looked like a character from a detective movie.

“Oh. Is the author single?” asked Atsumu, who was single.

“Yes,” said Akaashi, who was not single.

“Are you hitting on my boyfriend?” Bokuto called from the bathroom. They ignored him.

“Aha,” Atsumu said triumphantly. “I knew it. The author clearly has no experience. It pisses me off that they keep hinting at their feelings without getting to the point.”

“That is fair.” Akaashi had decided to take off his glasses at risk of stabbing someone in the face with his chopsticks.

“Alternatively, you could remove the romantic subplot altogether. I doubt much would change.”

Alternatively he could chase Hinata down after practice on the way to the train station. It would be snowing, because snow is pretty and makes everything look soft and cinematic. Atsumu would call out Hinata’s name as he approached him from two hundred meters away. He would be out of breath because everyone’s constantly out of breath in romantic cinema. Hinata would telepathically know that Atsumu was here to confess his undying love for him and hide his blushing face in his scarf.

Alternatively, they could have dinner together at a stuffy candle-lit restaurant. Only this isn’t a manga, and Akaashi isn’t the editor, so Hinata is still practicing serves in the gym when Atsumu appears in the doorway, still reeling at the realization that he’s been ignored for a week.

Well then. He scrolls through Instagram to pass the time.

    ::

      When he’s done, Atsumu offers to help Hinata with clean-up. “Thank you,” says Hinata rather reluctantly, still not breathing in his direction.

“You know,” Atsumu says, feeling very tired. He’s too tired to beat around the bush. He has decided to eat the bush. “I can tell you’re ignoring me.”

Hinata creates distance under the guise of picking up loose balls. “Mm.”

“Why?”

Hinata squats down in front of a ball. Atsumu walks over and squats down beside him. The ceiling lights are fierce and bright above them, and Hinata’s face is tilted away from it. Atsumu can’t read his expression but he can see his ears, which are pink, and the side of his neck, which is pink as well. In this position, from this angle, Hinata’s musculature is even more stunning than usual; biceps, shoulders, back. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that they’re all adults now instead of petty high school kids with grudges as big as clenched fists. But if asked right now what the prototypical volleyball player should look like, Atsumu would point at Hinata and say: that guy.

“Sorry about sticking my fingers in your mouth,” he says quietly, folding his arms together over his knees and resting his chin on top. And then, in a flash of inspiration: “Also, I’m in love with you. I hope your cut healed properly?”

Hinata finally lifts his face up into the light, and Atsumu is reminded of watching the rising sun spill across the surface of the sea in a NatGeo documentary. For a second he looks absolutely lost. Then he knits his brow, stares hard at Atsumu like he’s trying to do calculus in his head or something.

“About the cut,” he says, hesitating. “Why don’t you find out for yourself.”

Atsumu chokes.

    ::

    It’s not like he hasn’t been in love before. In high school he had a crush on Kita Shinsuke that was so debilitatingly bad, he never even told Osamu about it. But Kita Shinsuke didn’t have a debilitating crush on him and he never went pro. They didn’t wind up as teammates again several years later when Atsumu finally figured out how to style his hair properly with gel. Kita vanished off the radar after high school with that unnerving smile of his. They haven’t seen each other since.

Anyway, Atsumu has a lot of complicated feelings for Hinata. At first he was pissed at him for teleporting off to Brazil for two years, and thinking that he could still brute force his way into a Division One team immediately upon his return. Then Hinata actually did that, and Atsumu spent several weeks sulking about their new teammate by refusing to so much as breathe in his direction. Eventually Sakusa sat him down in the empty locker room one morning and looked him straight in the eye from two meters away and said you want to set for him don’t you. After thinking about it for a while he realized that Sakusa was right. He wanted to set for Hinata Shouyou. Back in high school the feeling had arisen mainly out of spite and childish frustration. Now it was genuine.

So fine, maybe he likes Hinata a little more than he should.

They’re not high schoolers anymore. They’re old enough to know where to draw the lines between work shit and personal shit and risk-taking and stupidity. They’re supposed to know themselves better by this point. Like what’s your favorite alcoholic drink. What’s your taste in men and sports and sportsmen. Do you believe in miracles.

Do you believe in—?

“—This,” Hinata says. Atsumu realizes belatedly that he had missed the first part of his sentence but before he can try to figure it out Hinata fists a hand in his shirt and yanks him forward.

Oh no, Atsumu thinks. Hinata’s smiling. All crooked like a semicircle of sun. All pretty-like.

“Since that’s out of the way,” he says brilliantly, warm breath fanning out over Atsumu’s cheeks, moving closer still. “I hope you don’t mind if I just—”

Atsumu closes his eyes and lets Hinata pull him in. He’s old enough to know where this leads.

    ::

    They’re having dinner together again for some reason. Bokuto roped them all into it to stave off his boredom because Akaashi the shounen manga editor is in Hokkaido on a business trip, but he offered to pay, so Sakusa went along with it, and Sakusa went along with it, so Atsumu went along with it, and Atsumu went along with it, so Hinata went along with it. The truth is they almost always go along with Bokuto’s whims because Bokuto’s a fundamentally nice human being and Akaashi brings the fanciest ingredients to their hotpot parties. It doesn’t actually matter if Bokuto offers to pay. Someone will start the reluctant-yes-train and then the rest will join in and before they know it, they’re all ducking into the doorway of a restaurant together.

“So was anyone gonna tell me that two of my teammates are dating,” Bokuto says, waving his chopsticks around grandly while Sakusa attempts to shield his risotto from the onslaught of loose rice grains. “Or was I just supposed to find out from Omi-kun here?”

Hinata’s eyes go wide. Atsumu, who had been chewing on a fry, doubles over coughing.

“ATSUMU. ARE YOU OKAY.” Bokuto’s feet are on the table. Sakusa is seeing God.

“Shit.” Atsumu winces, feeling around in his mouth with his tongue. “I think I cut my gum.”

“Let me see.”

“Uh, Hinata, you don’t have to do that, actually—”

“Are you going to do that thing again?” God bless Bokuto and his endless store of curiosity towards all things chaotic and doomed in the world. God bless Sakusa who has ascended to the next dimension. God bless Atsumu's poor gums.

Hinata beams at Bokuto. “No,” he says slowly, bright as a bonfire. “I’m going to kiss him.”

God bless them all.

[raguna-blade]

So thinking bout persona, which as far as this blog is concerned is basically all I do, and I got to thinking.

So the Metaverse/Mementos, Shadow Time/Tartarus and The World in the Tv/Midnight Channel are all basically the same thing right? Not PRECISELY the same thing, but the overlap is immense and real. I'd be willing to bet that the various spinoff games Including Q and such would also count towards this in that they're kinda worlds in the sea of the Unconscious (and with at least Two Users of the Universe Arcana sleeping to keep the world secure right now, who knows what weird funky things are going on there.)

But they're generally the same thing, and part of the rules that are generally established have to deal with perception and one and all seem to exist as a rule in weird liminal spaces.

Forgive for innaccuracies it's been a while for P3 and P4, but with that out of the way.

Tartarus is a transformation of a school, and has strict limitations on how long it is active (not unlike a school really) and not only that is made up of discretely aesthetic but also very uniform locations. The Persona Users only have their one Extra Hour to make their way through (or at least in story that should be the case) and reach their final destination.

Tartarus is, without question, one of the most confusing nosense places because of course it extends up and up and up some 300 floors (apparently) which is weird, but what's perhaps weirder, at least in context of the Persona 3-5 Series of games is that there isn't really an effect upon the users precisely. Oh to be sure it effects people, it changes them into coffins which, considering the Tower's Purpose and all makes sense. The place is all about death and that great change, and the way that persona are summoned via Evoker I suppose would explain their not being coffins. There's an awareness of death there I suppose, and so an additional awareness of this special time given.

Ok. Cool.

The Midnight Channel though, it's a world more or less made up of the endless distorting fog, which alters shape to take the form of those who fall into it's greatest fears and concerns writ large and obnoxious, seemingly in an effort to have them confront themselves. At least, in theory, once the fog lifts, but formed in such a way that almost seems tailor made to have people freak the absolute hell out.

And of course, the place it exists/accessed is a television, turned off at midnight which, frankly is a pretty strange space if you're expecting anything to show up on it, or rather expecting NOTHING to show up on it right?

Everything blown up the way that it is, it makes sense that the world is endlessly foggy, not as stable as it initially appears, and all that, but as to the persona users themselves, they're...more or less just as they are. They're granted glasses by Teddie that allow them to see better, but they are otherwise not fundamentally changed.

Which...Leads us to Mementos. A Place that is explained as not only a direct connect to the sea of the unconscious, a rather different statement from the other major locales even if they too are a direct connection, but it also...changes the persona users.

The liminal space (and this is, I think admittedly, somewhat of a stretch) is more or less just any old random place, but you, distinctly, not a part of it. Well, that's the metaverse as a whole, but Mementos itself is a train station, which tracks as far as I understand the subject. It's a place of coming going, and just an endless sea of people who you really are just kind of one of.

But...Why does it change them so much? It's explained that the form that the phantom thieves take is their form of rebellion against the world. Very literally, the manifestation of their Rebellion (Of which Their Transformed Selves are paired with their Persona's with whom they made a contract).

Alright, that tracks, it's consistent to an extent, but this raises the question of why don't we see that in the other shadow worlds? Part of that, I've said before, is Because I think the Phantom Thieves are more or less playing at their Shadows as opposed to the other Persona Teams. The Shadows that We see in Persona 4 seem to be in line with what we're seeing in the Phantom Thieves, in that they are the version of their relevant person pushed to their extremes and distorted, pushed into a state of otherness for one reason or another.

Not all of them get fancy duds of course, and certainly that's at least as much because of the circumstances of their Shadow's formation (with them being dropped into the situation fully conscious as opposed to just kinda dropped int), as well as the nature and degree of their alienation. I expect that for those who didn't quite get the full transformation, they didn't quite feel that degree of alienation that you see in everyone else that develops a Full Dramatic Shadow.

Or perhaps another way to say it is, their personal view of themselves had yet to become distorted in any major way just yet.

Now the Investigation team get's to reintegrate into the world so their degree of isolation never get's to develop but it's worth pointing out that in the case of the Thieves that...doesn't actually happen.

Without fail, they're still outcasts one and all, if now outcasts that now cling together in friendship love and understanding of their circumstances.

But...

I don't know how to phrase this, but I suppose by the line of logic that I'm following here, the Phantom Thieves never quite Cohere as a group.

Like I recall hearing some folks talking about how the games seem to kinda abandon some of the character's personal plot points in rapid succession to focus on different issues, especially seen in their social links. Like the one that immediately pops to mind is Anne and Shiho and the hot nonsense that happens to them early on. Her social link instead of dealing with that at all beyond briefly touching on it as a thing that did happen, focuses instead on her modeling career, and a degree of taking that more seriously.

Which I agree is kinda bullshit. I'd love to know more about how Haru is dealing with the fallout of her dad beyond the lightish touch it gets, or more about Yusuke's relationship with his shitty dad, or more about Makoto's relationship with her sister and her parents and the like.

See, these things aren't NOT touched on, by no means. Haru's entire social link DOES deal with the fallout of her dad's death...In relation to the Company that she now holds a massive share of and not precisely related to her personally.

But they aren't really a thing that the Thieves, as a group, actually touch on. It's not a thing that get's directly dealt with constantly in the storyline as opposed to what goes down in Sees which is damnably intimate despite their initial desires. They do after all live together, and their job has just thoroughly run in and kicked them in the teeth on every front.

Hell, despite how uh...well badly(?) but definitely at least clumsily and obnoxiously (I am assuming, for a moment it's supposed to be awkward and kinda just...not great, for effect. It probably wasn't, but it's what we got, and at the very least I think it deserves an examination in that light.) The Issues that plague the Investigation squad one and all come up constantly. Kanji's issues with masculinity/homosexuality, Naoto's problems with gender/gender roles, Yukiko's princess status, Teddies Emptiness and attempts to fill that void, etc etc. It get's played with, rather directly, it get's shouted from the mountain tops, and for all that people very definitely fuck up and say some shit (Yosuke) this stuff comes up, and frequently I think.

But not with the Phantom Thieves. They're in fact, extremely guarded with each other, despite being on the same side and all that jazz.

Which leads me to Maruki, and the True End antics.

Cause see, Maruki also get's a Rebellion outift. It's not thief themed, no, it's more a kind of messiah. Or rather, A torch bearer. Whatever his means, his objective is and always was to lead people to being happier and better versions of themselves, although It's plainly obvious that he loses sight of doing that well with the method he chooses given how it's a thing that applies the same cure to every single person when that obviously wouldn't be a good idea.

Sumire says it herself, If not for him there's a good chance that she wouldn't have lasted long enough to make friends as is. And I don't think she's wrong considering how....well absolutely fucking done she was. That was not a healthy mental state that she was in BEFORE her sister died, and it wasn't much better after.

More importantly though, is what happens during that Third Semester. With the Third Persona's that everyone gained, every single one, WITHOUT FAIL, addresses the major concerns, the major events that they've all been staunchly ignoring and refusing to talk about. Ryuji's track desires, Haru's dad pain, Morgana's still burning desire to be human, all of it.

And he fixes it, and he makes, at least for a little bit, better. And in doing so, he absolutely changes the course of their lives, let's them see the way things COULD be, actually sit down and acknowledge one more part of themselves that they want to achieve, and in doing so unmasks, without fail, literally every single one of their persona's.

Well, I say unmask, but they also obviously have face coverings still going on or a degree of inorganic/ambiguous heads and faces, but the degree of difference is stark I think between that and their second persona's or their first.

Also, at least, if you actually bother to max out the social links, and just let someone actually IN, such as it is.

But back to Maruki, it's actually rather interesting that his Metaverse Outfit arguably makes him the HARDEST to identify of everyone. Yeah it's a big golden outfit with an obnoxiously huge helmet and cloak but...

The Helmet is far more interesting to look at than the person wearing it, and even looking at his face it's only really recognizable as him if you can get a clean side view. The Outfits is bright and Golden, but is otherwise unidentfiable if someone else were to be wearing it. The Cloak further makes it harder to see anything between being huge, fluttery, and covering basically anything of note body wise (and potentially facially since it again just flutters all over) In addition to his staff/torch it's...

If we're going through the Shadow Cosplay as looking at the person in questions distorted view of themselves, It's interesting that Maruki's distortion basically does everything in it's power to make him a non entity. Which, I suppose makes sense given his ultimately goal.

[linkspooky]

Hey could you do your top 5 Durarararararara characters?

Before I start I want to say that my faves are not trash, and I do not have trash taste. In fact my faves are incredibly sexy and I have amazing taste in people. I feel no shame at all for liking the characters that I like. Anyway, here’s my list of favorite Durarara!! characters that’s Izaya, Izaya, Izaya, Izaya’s best friend, and Izaya’s employee. You can’t shame me because I physically lack the ability to feel shame. I love my faves and I love my taste in characters. 

1. Orihara Izaya - What I love about Durarara! as a series is it doesn’t feel the need to moralize the characters. Every character present is flawed, some more than others, and instead of trying to sort them into good or bad people the series is way more interested in just exploring them as characters, their interactions with others, and all of their various flaws. It lets them be people first before anything else. 

Izaya is my favorite character not because I think he’s a cool mastermind who always is in control of things, and always sees through people, but rather because he’s nothing like that. Izaya is not the villain he desperately wants to be or for other people to see him as. Izaya at the center of his being is a very fragile and delicate person. He’s sensitive, and he knows that his sensitivity especially towards the feelings of others is going to break him badly if he ever tries to form any real relationships, so he just doesn’t. He loves humanity as a whole, because loving any one person would be too much for him. 

I like Izaya because he’s a kid playing games. He’s so desperately out of his league, but just clever enough that he tends to keep people hoodwinked. Underneath it all he’s just kind of a petty person, but the ways in which he is petty are so complex and fasicnating. The way I’ve always read the Izaya and Shizuo foiling is that Izaya has always been more sensitive and aware of other people’s feelings than Shizuo in a way that would actually hurt him, whereas Shizuo is pretty dense to people’s feelings over all. That’s why they want opposite things, Shizuo wants to be closer to people, and Izaya wants to run away from them. 

Izaya’s at his best when he’s convinced that he’s the one forcing everybody else to play his game, only for the world to smack him in the face and show him that he’s just another player in the game like everyone else. He’s incredibly small scale and petty, but because of that he feels more human than most villains. He’s not even that much of a villain in the end, just kind of annoying over all. 

2. Kuronuma Aoba - Izaya Ripoff #1. Some people can’t bring themselves to like Aoba because he’s not as good as Izaya, but that’s always read like the point to me. Thematically I think the entire second half of Durarara is supposed to read like a lesser and cheaper rehash of the first. (That kind of mirroring is something Ryohga Narita does in the structure of his stories a lot, it’s called Chiastic structure technically). Well anyway I love him, and my taste is awesome. 

Aoba’s response to Izaya is that he met Izaya once and noticing their similiarities decided to develop into Izaya’s opposite mainly out of spite for him. Izaya loves humans, and Aoba hates them, but for both of them they need to be at a certain distance from other people in order to function. They both fundamentally can’t get close to others, Izaya because he’s a little too smart for his own good, and Aoba because he’s a victim of trauma, but also an active one who needs to take absolute control of everything including his trauma. 

Aoba is interesting because he has this longing and desire to be human (we see the reverse in Kuon.) He will spend time with the Orihara Sisters specifically because as a way to remind himself he’s still human and capable of making connections with people. Aoba gets genuinely touched when Mikado shows him the most mundane concerns like bandaging his hand and offering to help with his summer homework, because Aoba’s never really been a part of the normal everyday life that Mikado just has naturally. He’s always been rebelling against someone, either his brother’s abuse, his parents who let that abuse happen, etc. etc. He’s only ever realy engaged with other people through his crafted fake persona that would smile during the daytime and be liked by his classmates and then go home to be beaten by his brother. Those moments of genuine feeling really get to Izaya, because unlike Izaya whose content to be fake and keep playing games Aoba is chasing after the real thing. 

3. Kotonami Kuon - Izaya ripoff number two! No regrets! I like Kuon and Aoba so much because writing wise they read as very interesting responses and remixes to Izaya for me. I like that kind of thing, foiling, mirroring and the like. 

Aoba wants to become genuine but he’s a little too good at controlling people, and a little too smart to fully surrender himself to the normal everyday life he wants so badly. Kuon’s the exact opposite, he desperately wants to  become a fake like Izaya, but he’s way too human, cares about his connections with other people too much to go all the way. Kuon wants to be Izaya but he sucks at being Izaya, which is ironically why he can have friends in the first place. 

There’s a special subtrope of bastard characters that I like called Wannabe Bastards. That is they’re kind of too incompetent to truly ever be the mastermind they see themselves as. Izaya is definitely already a bit of a wannabe, so that makes Kuon the Wannabe of a Wannabe. So what I like about Kuon is how genuinely weak he is, but also how motivated he is in spite of that weakness. 

He’s a character you get to watch continually fighting against his own weakness in the story. He’s such an underdog you almost want to root for him, even though he’s usually the cause of his own, and everyone else’s problems. He’s motivated by very strong and genuine sentiments that neither Aoba, nor Izaya have because they’re both kind of too delicate to feel strongly about anything. He’s also very self aware of how low and petty of a person he is. It’s interesting to watch him throw himself into his pretend-Izaya act already knowing he’s not good enough to be Izaya, and trying to make up for the difference in effort alone. 

4. Kishitani Shinra - Shinra Kishitani is a terrible heterosexual. He’s a character that would have been annoying in any other author’s hands, beucase Shinra kind of refuses to grow. He’s so codependent that the moment his roommate shows any small inclination that she might leave him, he’ll immediately resort to lying, cheating, and doing anything he can to control her.

What saves Shinra’s character is a lot of self-awareness on Shinra’s part, and also how frank the story is about his flaws. Shinra is genuinely detached from people in a way Izaya wishes he could be. He plays nice with people, and thinks it’s good to have friends, but really Shinra can just shut off his feelings and stop caring about another person or what happens to them the moment they become an inconvenience to what he wants. Even the person he loves the most he has a hard time seeing as a person separate from himself, with wants and needs that are separate from his. Shinra calls himself a villain in love and he might have better claim to the title of villain than Izaya. The only reason Shinra doesn’t go out of his way to hurt people is because he’s relatively benign, if they don’t interfere with him and Celty then he doesn’t have a reason to care about most people.

Shinra is excellent because his foiling and relationship with Izaya is one of the most compelling in the manga, due to how much they both call out each other’s flaws. They’re really the only people that they can genuinely feel attachment to like as people, but that’s also why they can’t stand to be around each other. They’re best friends but also at a distance, kind of more like pen pals. Shinra and Izaya both have big gaping holes in their hearts, and they both want to pour their love into something, Shinra just pours it all into one person, whereas Izaya loves all of humanity. 

5. Yagiri Namie- Once again I like Namie because she’s a parallel to Izaya, surprise, surprise. Ignoring the weird parts of her character (because Narita just has to be weird sometimes) I think there’s actually a lot of intersting ideas at play with Namie. She’s someone who claims to live for the sake of love, but she’s just kind of cold and cut off from absolutely everybody. 

Namie was smart enough to realize that her parents had no affection for her and her uncle was only in her life to use her, so she kind of just decided on her own to treat her brother as her only real family. Namie’s just kind of using Seiji the same way that Mika does. Obsessing over Seiji is just kind of an excuse to deny herself the pain of having to actually try to form connections with people. 

Namie loves Seiji but she really kind of doesn’t. The two of them don’t even have that great of a relationship, Namie steps over Seiji’s boundaries, and Seiji just kind of ignores her and only pays attention to her when he explicitly needs something from her. Seiji just uses Namie like the rest of her family, but Namie’s fine with that because she’s using Seiji to. Seiji is just kind of an excuse for Namie to deny herself love. Because love is something she’s never had and it’s something that would most certainly hurt her. Both Mika and Namie are choosing to obsess over someone who isn’t really capable of loving them back (and I mean in a familial way in Seiji’s case he’s just kind of annoyed by Namie).  And that’s the point. They don’t want to be loved. They don’t want to deal with other people’s feelings. It’s ultimately all about them.

Which is also the foiling to Izaya, both Izaya and Namie are incapable of loving because of the pain involved so they just seek out subsitutes to obsess over instead. They see themselves in each other, and because of that they’re constantly cutting at each other, and yet somehow cozy up to each other in this weird mutually trusting relationship. They’re both really cold people and they can get along because they’re used to freezing. 

[serialreblogger]

You want to talk more about the bigotry in Harry Potter? Go ahead! I've actually heard stuff like that before, but have yet to do much research on it personally and it's been a while since I read it, so I'm interested.

WELL

Before we begin I should start with a disclaimer: this analysis will be dedicated to examining as many bigoted aspects of Harry Potter’s writing as I can think of, so--while I personally am more or less comfortable balancing critical evaluation with enjoyment of a piece, and strongly advocate developing your own abilities to do the same--I know not everyone is comfortable reading/enjoying a story once they realize its flaws, and again, while I think it’s very important to acknowledge the flaws in culturally impactful stories like Harry Potter, I also know for some people the series is really really important for personal reasons and whatnot. 

So! If you’re one of those people, and you have trouble balancing critical engagement with enjoyment, please feel free to skip this analysis (at least for the time being). Self-care is important, and it’s okay to find your own balance between educating yourself and protecting yourself.

On another note, this is gonna be limited strictly to morally squicky things to do with Rowling’s writing and the narrative itself. Bad stuff characters do won’t be talked about unless it’s affirmed by the narrative (held up as morally justified), and plot holes, unrealistic social structures, etc. will not be addressed (it is, after all, a kid’s series, especially in the first few books. Quidditch doesn’t have to make sense). This is strictly about how Rowling’s personal biases and bigotry impacted the story and writing of Harry Potter.

Sketch Thing #1: Quirrell! I don’t see a lot of people talking about Quirrell and racism, but I feel like it’s a definite thing? Quirinus Quirrell is a white man who wears a turban, gifted to him by an “African prince” (what country? where? I couldn’t find a plausible specific when I was researching it for a fic. If there’s a country which has current/recent royalty that might benevolently interact with someone, and also a current/recent culture where turbans of the appropriate style are common, I couldn’t find it). Of course, it wasn’t actually given to him by an African prince in canon, but it’s still an unfortunate explanation.

More importantly, ALL the latent Islamophobia/xenophobia in the significance of the turban. Like, look at it.

“Man wears turban, smells like weird spices, turns out to be concealing an evil second face under the turban” really sounds like something A Bit Not Good, you know? If you wanted to stoke the flames of fear about foreignness, it would be hard to do it better than to tell children about a strange man who’s hiding something horrible underneath a turban.

Also, Quirrell’s stutter being faked to make you think he was trustworthy is a very ableist trope, and an unfortunately common one. “Disability isn’t actually real, just a trick to make you accommodate and trust them” is not a great message, and it’s delivered way too often by mass media. (Check out season 1 of the Flash for another popular example.)

Sketch Thing #2: The goblins. Much more commonly talked about, in my experience, which is good! The more awareness we have about the messages we’re getting from our popular media, the better, in my view. 

For those who haven’t encountered this bit of analysis before: the goblins in Harry Potter reek of antisemitic stereotypes. Large ears, small eyes, crooked noses, green/gray skin, lust for money, control of the banks, and a resentful desire to overthrow the Good British Government? Very reminiscent of wwii propaganda posters, and in general the hateful rhetoric directed towards Jewish people by other European groups from time immemorial. 

I’m also extremely uncomfortable with how goblin culture is handled by Rowling in general. Like, the goblins were a people that were capable of using magic, but prohibited by the British government from owning wands. That was never addressed. They also had a different culture around ownership, which is why Griphook claimed that the sword of Gryffindor belonged rightfully to the goblins--a gift isn’t passed down to descendants upon death, but instead reverts to the maker. This cultural miscommunication is glossed over, despite the fact that it sounds like Griphook’s voicing a very real, legitimate grievance.

To be honest, apart from the antisemitism, the way Goblin culture is treated by the narrative in Harry Potter is very uncomfortably reminiscent to me of how First Nations were treated by English settlers in North America, before the genocide really got started. The Goblins even have a history of “rebellions,” which both raises the question of why another species is ruling them to begin with, and more significantly, is eerily reminiscent of the Red River Rebellion in Canada (which, for the record, wasn’t actually a rebellion--it was Metis people fighting against the Canadian government when it tried to claim the land that legally, rightfully belonged to the Metis. But that’s another story)

In sum: I Don’t Like the implications of how Rowling treats the goblins.

Sketch Thing #3: Muggles. Ok because we’re all “muggles” (presumably) and because I’m white, talking about this might rapidly degenerate into thinly-veiled “reverse racism” discourse, so please y’all correct me if I stray into that kind of colossal stupidity. However, I am not comfortable with the way non-magical humans are treated by Rowling’s narrative.

The whole premise of Harry Potter is that Evil Wizards Want To Hurt The Muggles, right? Except that it’s not. Voldemort’s goal is to subjugate the inferior humans, rule over non-magical people as the rightful overlords, but that’s hardly mentioned by the narrative. Instead, it focuses on the (also egregious and uncomfortably metaphorical) “blood purism” of wizarding culture, and how wizards would be persecuted for their heritage.

But muggles, actual muggles, are arguably the ones who stand to lose the most to Voldemort, and they’re never notified of their danger. We, the muggles reading it, don’t even really register that we’re the collateral damage in this narrative. Because throughout the series, muggles are set up as laughingstocks. Even the kindest, most muggle-friendly wizards are more obsessed with non-magical people as a curiosity than actually able to relate to them as people. 

I dunno, friends, I’m just uncomfortable with the level of dehumanization that’s assigned to non-magical humans. (Like, there’s not even a non-offensive term for them in canon. There’s “muggle,” which is humorously indulgent at best and actively insulting at worst, and there’s “squib,” which is literally the word for a firework that fails to spark.) It’s not like “muggles” are actually a real people group that can be oppressed, and like I said this kind of analysis sounds a bit like the whining of “reverse racism” advocates where the powerful majority complains about being insulted, but... it kind of also reeks of ableism. People that are not able to do a certain cool, useful thing (use magic) are inherently inferior, funny at best and disposable at worst. They suffer and die every day from things that can easily be cured with magic, but magic-users don’t bother to help them, and even when they’re actively attacked the tragedy of hundreds dying is barely mourned by the narrative. 

It gives me bad vibes. I don’t Love It. It sounds uncomfortably like Rowling’s saying “people that are unable to access this common skill are inherently inferior,” and that really does sound like ableism to me. 

Either way, there’s something icky about consigning an entire group of people to the role of “funny clumsy stupid,” regardless of any real-world connections there may or may not be to that people group. Don’t teach children that a single genetic characteristic can impact someone’s personhood, or make them inherently less worthy of being taken seriously. Just, like... don’t do that.

Sketch Thing #4: The house elves. Everyone knows about the house elves, I think. The implications of “they’re slaves but they like it” and the only person who sees it as an issue having her campaign turned into a joke by the narrative (“S.P.E.W.”? Really? It might as well stand for “Stupidly Pleading for Expendable Workers”) are pretty clear.

Sketch Thing #5: Azkaban. Are we gonna talk about how wizarding prison involves literal psychological torture, to the point where prisoners (who are at least sometimes there wrongly, hence the plot of book 3) almost universally go “insane”? This is sort of touched on by the narrative--“dementors are bad and we shouldn’t be using them” was a strongly delivered message, but it was less “because torturing people, even bad people, is not a great policy” and more “because dementors are by their natures monstrous and impossible to fully control.” 

“This humanoid species is monstrous and impossible to control” is, once again, a very concerning message to deliver, and it doesn’t actually address the real issue of “prison torture is bad, actually.” Please, let’s not normalize the idea that prison is inherently horrific. Of course, prison as it exists in North America and Britain is, indeed, inherently horrific and often involves torture (solitary confinement, anyone?), but like--that’s a bad thing, y’all, it’s deeply dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust. Don’t normalize it.

Sketch Thing #6: Werewolves. Because Rowling explicitly stated that lycanthropy in her series is a metaphor for “blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS”. The linked article says it better than I could:

Rowling lumps HIV and AIDS in with other blood-borne illnesses, which ignores their uniquely devastating history. And Lupin’s story is by no stretch a thorough or helpful examination of the illness. Nor is its translation as an allegory easily understood, beyond the serious stigma that Rowling mentioned.

That Lupin is a danger to others could not more clearly support an attitude of justifiable fear toward him, one that is an abject disservice to those actually struggling with a disease that does not make them feral with rage.

This definitely ties into homophobia, given how deeply the queer community has been affected by HIV/AIDS. Saying a character with a condition that makes him an active threat to those around him is “a metaphor for AIDS” is deeply, deeply distressing, both for its implications about queer people and their safety for the general population, and for the way it specifically perpetuates the false belief that having HIV/AIDS makes a person dangerous.

Sketch Thing #7: Blood Ties. This isn’t, like, inherently sketch, but (especially for those of us with complicated relationships to our birth families) it can rub a lot of people the wrong way. Rowling talks a big talk about the folly of “blood purism,” but she also upholds the idea that blood and blood relations are magically significant. 

Personally, I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that Harry was left with an abusive family for his entire childhood, and it was justified because they were his “blood relatives.” I’ve had this argument with ultra-conservative family friends who genuinely believe it’s a parent’s right to abuse their child, and while I don’t think that’s what Rowling is saying, I do feel uncomfortable with the degree of importance she places on blood family. I’m uncomfortable with the narrative’s confirmation that it is acceptable (even necessary) to compromise on boundaries and allow the continuation of abuse because “it’s better for a child to be raised by their Real Family” than it is to risk them to the care of an unrelated parent.

Genetic relations aren’t half as important as Rowling tells us. For people with a bad birth family, this can be a damaging message to internalize, so I’ll reiterate: it’s a pretty thought, the love in blood, but it’s ultimately false. The family you build is more real, more powerful and more valid than any family you were assigned to by an accident of genes.

I can think of one or two more things, but they’re all a lot more debatable than what I have here--as it is, you might not agree with everything I’ve said. That’s cool! I’m certainly not trying to start a fight. We all have the right to read and interpret things for ourselves, and to disagree with each other. And again, I’m not trying to ruin Harry Potter. It’s honestly, as a series, not worse in terms of latent bigotry than most other books of its time, and better than many. It’s just more popular, with a much bigger impact and many more people analyzing it. I do think it’s important to critically evaluate the media that shapes one’s culture, and to acknowledge its shortcomings (and the ways it can be genuinely harmful to people, especially when it’s as culturally powerful as Harry Potter). But that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t enjoy it for what it was meant to be: a fun, creative, engaging story, with amazing characters, complex plots, heroism and inspiration for more than one generation of people. 

Enjoy Harry Potter. It is, in my opinion, a good series, worth reading and re-reading for enjoyment, even for nourishment. It’s also flawed. These things can both be true.

[nellied-reviews]

Succulent Rat-Killing Tar Re-listen

Hey! So, I’m new here, but I’ve recently been re-listening to the podcast Wolf 359, and I'm obsessed again, so I kinda wanted, in true Self-Indulgent fashion, to record my thoughts about it, see what stands out now I know how the series plays out. I don’t know if anyone will actually want to read this, but I enjoyed writing it, at least!

If any of you don’t know Wolf 359, but are still, for whatever reason, reading this, a) you should go listen! It’s a sci-fi podcast with some awesome characters, and a really great balance of creepiness, wackiness and actual plot. But also, b) I will be posting spoilers here, sorry. It’s been a while, so I think they’re pretty much fair game now? But just so you’re not caught out: here be spoilers.

With that cleared up, then:

Succulent Rat-Killing Tar

In which we meet the disaster that is Douglas Eiffel, Hilbert blows things up, and the Hephaestus receive a strange transmission from deep space.

In some ways, re-listening to this episode was an odd experience, because the characters don’t quite feel solid yet. It’s the same in a few early episodes - tonally, they’re just really different to a lot of what comes later - and I don't think that’s bad, per se, especially since there are things, on a re-listen, that connect this to later episodes. But this episode is particularly weird, I think, even for the early episodes. 

Gabriel Urbina actually talked about this in the writing notes he posted to his Tumblr, how he conceived of Wolf 359 as a one-man show, and  what we get here is basically the Doug Eiffel! Show, with what are essentially cameo appearances from the others. As a consequence of this, Minkowski, Hera and Hilbert don’t get much characterisation, and even things like their voices seem ... odd? Hera, especially, feels more like Space Siri than the snarky AI we know and love, while Minkowski... eh, I don’t know why I don't like her here, but I remember not liking her when I first listened to it either. I think she sounds kind of flat, like she's not quite a real person?

 It’s probably good, then, that Eiffel comes onto the scene fully formed and really freakin' funny. Zach Valenti is a funny man, and he kills it here, from the very first lines. I particularly love how much information he gets into his opening monologue. He takes what looks, superficially, like a lazily-written infodump - because seriously, who would start their log like that on day 448? Does Eiffel open every single log like this?! - and just runs with it. It's such a ludicrous thing to do, and the whole reason I buy that yes, Eiffel totally does just sit there every single night talking to himself, is Zach Valenti’s performance. It's so good, guys, seriously!

On a side-note, I am also endlessly amused at the way in which Eiffel’s utterly bonkers decision to narrate his boring chores like an exposition-heavy radio show gives the Dear Listeners ammo later on. Like, if Eiffel were not such a fundamentally ridiculous character, they would not have his voice to contact the crew. So much of the plot just hinges on Eiffel being a dumbass, and I can respect that.

Besides the fact that he’s this weird, lovable dumbass, we do also get some nice character moments for Eiffel. For one, it’s buried under a lot of funny stuff, but we get our first hints at him having an addictive personality - his love of cigarettes certainly hits differently when you know about his past with alcohol.

There are also, sticking to things I picked up the first time round, hints that Eiffel is perhaps more competent than he lets on? Certainly, he kicks into a different gear when the transmissions come through - the goofing around stops straight away, and he genuinely seems keen to make contact. I like that, I think.

That said, he blows his moment of competence by ignoring the signal and getting coffee. For such a pop culture-savvy guy, he sure falls hard into the "I’m sure it was nothing" trap here. Ugh, Eiffel. Come on. You’re better than this.

I’m not complaining, though, because it does give us time to listen to Alan Rodi's beautiful music. Words cannot convey how much I love it. I don’t know if it's just nostalgia from last time I listened to Wolf 359, but hearing the music again here nearly made me cry, genuinely. I especially love the acoustic piano. I think it'd be easy to go with a technological, electronic sound for a podcast set in space, so the choice to use a more traditional, old-fashioned instrument like a piano is a pleasant surprise, grounding the show in something older and more Earth-bound, and providing the same kind of connection to Earth history and culture that the old music does at the end. You've got electronic bleeping going on, sure, which adds a layer of space-y weirdness to it all. But it's still, underneath the noises, something lovely and comforting and nice. So congrats, Alan Rodi. You made a 30 second coffee break into something really beautiful.

Then we're back and Minkowski has Eiffel reading Pryce and Carter - another mainstay of the show being introduced right there - and then Hilbert's lab is on fire. This whole section is solidly funny, and I especially love the tone of the Pryce and Carter entries. From the muzak in the background, to the disturbing, sort-of-aphoristic style of the entries, which kind of feel like something from Welcome to Night Vale, to the fact that this book seems to have no structure and is just one giant, non-user-friendly list, everything about this is hilarious to me. I also noticed the reference to the idea that somebody might be in space for disciplinary reasons. Which totally won’t be relevant later. Nope. Definitely not.

Hilbert, although his voice is much less growly than I’m used to, feels closer to his later self, character-wise, than the others. He’s maybe a bit too dotty, but then again, literally everything he does during this season is a front anyway, so I'm willing to give that one a pass. Stuff blowing up is always fun, either way, and it also introduces another idea that will stick around: the idea that everything on the Hephaestus is either broken or is about to break. Mentions of a power outage last week, in particular, suggest that this ship is already... less than shipshape.

And the we get the episode's climax, the arrival of the alien message which turns out to be... an old transmission of The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin?

And look, I think this was what sold me on Wolf 359. Sure, it took a while to find it's feet. But this moment was what convinced me that hey, I'll hang around a bit longer. Because it’s such a smart choice. 

Already, by having an audio drama series whose main character is a communications officer, and whose plot centres round him using radios and making audio logs, you have the ingredients for an intensely self-reflective, metatextually interesting show. It makes us think about radio and broadcasting and how sounds are transmitted through space. 

But by using a real recording of The Entertainer, something from the very earliest age of radio, with its gramophone-y crackle, you’re widening the scope, linking us all the way back to the birth of recorded sound. And Eiffel's joy at it all, his glee at finding a connection back to Earth, is a reminder of the power recorded sound can have. Eiffel, listening to Scott Joplin, is transported somewhere new and intriguing. Meanwhile we, listening to some podcast about stars and toothpaste and spacefaring dumbasses, are also transported away from our lives and our world. It’s a lovely idea.

Of course, I could be reading too much into this. It could just be that the piece is out of copyright, and hits the right balance of strange vs. familiar.

Either way, it makes for an ending that’s beautiful, wholesome and surprisingly sweet. I’m charmed, particularly, by how earnest Eiffel seems when he’s talking about how the music makes him feel. After spending a whole episode goofing around, it’s a refreshing change of pace, and it made me smile the first time I listened to it. This time round, it feels a bit more bittersweet, I think. We know that Eiffel won't be going home for a good, long time, after all.

In any case, it's a solid end to an episode that, while it has its issues, still mostly holds up. A surprising amount of plot-relevant stuff is established. Eiffel, at least, is properly introduced. And I get weirdly emotional about radio shows. Nice job, Wolf 359.

 Miscellaneous thoughts:

Eiffel not understanding Hilbert when Zach Valenti voices them both is peak comedy and you can fight me on this

 Eiffel joking about everyone on the ship have “series trust issues”. You ain’t seen nothing yet, hun.

The noises they made for Eiffel slurping coffee are so gross and childish I love them

Ooh, when he’s mocking Minkowski, Eiffel pronounces her name right!

Eiffel calling Hera “sweetheart” ^-^

Hilbert passing the explosion off as a hairdryer omg