#in such a way that it's actually narratively consequential this time!

[handsomeamoeba]

WRONG.

Try again.

Actually let's get into this. As someone who loves a great many fantasy RPGs including BG3, Skyrim, and Dragon Age, let me explain what BG3 gets that Skyrim misses, in my opinion.

And this is the big one: the characters in BG3 feel like real fucking people. They have backstories, demonstrable feelings about the events and the other characters, they react to the things you do and they develop as people as you further your relationships. Even minor NPCs often feel fleshed out with distinct personalities and opinions. Hell, going out of my way to cast Speak to Animals is usually rewarded with at least one charming remark. I have never given even a little bit of a shit about 99% of Bethesda NPCs. I usually choose to travel without a companion rather than with unless I need a pack mule to carry my stuff, because their primary function seems to be to get in my way, set off traps, or attract aggro. I can't remember most characters' names unless I'm actively playing. I'm more likely to casually murder people in Skyrim than I am in BG3 or DA because Bethesda hasn't really made any of their NPCs feel like real people, and consequentially I feel no guilt. By comparison I tried to do an evil run of DA:O and gave up the instant I had to kill Wynne (the grandmotherly spirit healer) when she refused to let me go through with my plans, because I hated doing it. Lydia will watch me gut an innocent man and do NOTHING because she has no life, existence, or personality outside of me, the player. This extends to romances, obviously. While optional in all the games, most people will pursue a romance path in BG3 or DA for the additional character arcs it brings to the characters, the emotional nuances they unlock. In Skyrim romance is a box you tick of tasks to complete. In fact, once you marry them, most marriage candidates personalities change *completely* because all spouses have the same few stock dialog lines. That is, if they had a personality to begin with (again, see Lydia). You know how everyone wants to romance unromanceable characters in Bethesda games? Like Brynjolf in Skyrim, or Nick Valentine in FO4? It's because Bethesda actually bothered to give them stories and opinions.

Honestly, this extends to the player character themselves. To a certain extent every player character is a blank slate, but in BG3 and DA it at least feels possible to develop a feeling about who that character is and what they would or would not say or do. I've tried to do that with the Dragonborn and rarely feel strong feelings about them or have strong opinions about what kind of person they are. The only one I've made who I have much of an idea about is my wood elf Parafina, who is Chaotic Evil. Which again is an option I only pick because no one in Skyrim feels real.

The stakes also feel more real in BG3, more personal. Obviously there's the central quest involving the tadpoles, but more than that, it is about a credible threat to your world and the people and communities in it and the people you love. There are tons of reasons to invest yourself emotionally in the narrative. I have never, ever completed the main storyline in Skyrim nor picked a side in Skyrim's civil war. Why would it? Basically nothing happens if I choose not to. Furthermore, if you're not playing as a Nord (which I usually don't), why would you care about Skyrim as a place? You are a faceless, voiceless (pun intended) outsider who gets microaggressed at every turn being asked to choose between two different flavors of fascist. Also dragons are back but like... listen, I don't care? They get pretty easy to pick off at a certain point, it's like swatting flies, they're just a nuisance on the way to my daily errands. And isn't that such a common story? Don't you know so many people who don't really bother with the main storylines of Skyrim? Yeah it's one of the bestselling games of all time but I feel like the fact that most people don't really care about its narrative should be a sign of failure. We all know it's mostly maintained its popularity due to the modding community.

Ultimately both games have rich worlds which reward exploration with little secrets and environmental storytelling. But BG3 feels more "meaningful" because they give me reasons to care about what happens. The writers worked hard to give the game emotional resonance. So I come to the two games for different experiences. I go to BG3 to engage with an interesting story. I go to Skyrim for the quick serotonin hit of completing tasks and hoarding items.

[comradekatara]

Re: Zuko sexism and fandom: I think that a LOT of people are just genuinely unwilling to actually view Zuko's bad behaviour as actually consequential. He gets "forgiven" by the Gaang and he has a big dramatic duel and then he rules the Fire Nation so it's fine actually. If it wasn't fine he wouldn't have been forgiven, like Jet! They use the lens of end-of-series Zuko, influenced by how the Gaang forgives him, to then retroactively handwave away his earlier behaviour and view it as if end of series Zuko is just misguidedly doing those things, rather than it being an actual expression of what he believes in and his morality at that point in time. Part of it is an abundance of sympathy and projection because he's the most explicit (and arguably only explicit, because other child abuse victims are never injured or attempted-murdered that we know of, and that's the bar for many viewers. Neither are any other than Zuko positioned piteously or as victims of Serious Injustice.) child abuse victim in the show and we see so MUCH of his internal struggle. For like a whole book. There's also a consistent trend of viewing the Fire Nation as Yes, Actually, being better than the other societies, they just shouldn't have tried to spread it via war, so yes Zuko is ✨indoctrinated✨ but in a feminist galaxy brained way not a bad fascist way. So the colonialism would've been fine if people had just agreed with how great the Fire Nation is! Pretty much the entirety of Zuko's bad behaviour is handwaved away as "he's a good guy who had a bad life! We forgive him for all of it, he's trying!" And to a lot of viewers, it's also "he's also hot and I've had a crush on him since I was like 14!". He's genuinely a huge asshole to pretty much everyone around him like, almost 24/7, for the majority of the show. And he has his reasons but he's still caused a lot of harm, and that we see? he's basically only revised his views on violent colonialism, making his Anger other people's problem, and some parts of racism. He only ever addresses what he's done to the Gaang and Uncle to. Does he buy Song another ostrich horse? Does he give Kyoshi reparations? Did he ever find out if that farming family with the kid Lee were harmed for harbouring a FIRE NATION PRINCE? What did he do to apologise to the Southern Water Tribe? Whatever he did to apologise to and thank Mai, if anything, I can guarantee it wasn't enough. That's just his personal stuff, never mind his policy choices as the New Fiery Dictator. It's so boring and frustrating how much people gloss over his jagged edges, because without those edges his narrative and how he fits into the world and story just collapses completely.

you’re so right about all of this. I think his final scene with mai is especially emblematic of how his resolution is framed as “and they all lived happily ever after” even though I remember perfectly well how he treated that poor girl so I’m just yelling at her to run away the whole scene. although I will say that stealing song’s ostrich horse was probably his most justifiable crime just bc if I was a disfigured burn victim and someone tried to touch my face without asking I’d also consider committing petty theft against them. ngl. he still does owe her a new ostrich horse though. and of course framing his ascension as some grand victory is thematically/telelogically appropriate, but I highly doubt he would be like. good at firelording. but that’s for another post. ppl really like smoothing out his edges and treating him as if he’s beyond reproach when everyone only finds him so compelling in the first place because his flaws are so obvious, so they assume he’s more “complex” than the other characters (and also more relatable, but that’s for another post too). it’s actually kind of funny if you think about it. “he’s the best because he’s so noticeably flawed and therefore so complex but also I love him so he doesn’t have any flaws actually and is probably a feminist socialist who loves eating pussy and listening to women.” and this is also lowkey how ppl talk about sokka too but at least sokka does actually do those things, zuko doesn’t even pretend to😭 anyway. i keep saying today that you guys couldn’t handle revolutionary girl utena, but you guys REALLY couldn’t handle revolutionary girl utena…

[fury-brand]

I think ultimately my disappointment with Bloodborne comes from expecting there to be more to it than there was. It's a very thoughtfully designed game, but it's hard to feel that the narrative amounts to more than a puzzle box.

Digging around on the internet hasn't really led me to any analysis that puts the component parts of Bloodborne's story together in a way that feels cohesive, and most aren't even interested in doing that so much as they are assembling the puzzle of what actually happens in the story. If anybody out there has an interesting read/watch, definitely send it my way, but my search has yet to yield anything compelling.

I'm still chewing on it and coming up with my own meaning, but what I find isn't always very satisfying. I think the core of the whole story probably began with something like "pregnancy itself is kind of an eldritch horror," and like yeah, no doubt, that shit's terrifying... But at the same time they don't really do a lot with that. The perspective on pregnancy and childbirth is all very external and I don't feel like the game has anything particularly interesting or insightful to say about motherhood; in fact I think it has a tendency to treat mothers as synonymous with the eldritch and unknowable beasts that can't meaningfully share their perspectives.

It kind of makes me roll my eyes a bit. The ambitions, the diverse perspectives on the situation that create the consequential camps of the games - these all come from men, and academic ones. Pregnancy is such a pivotal concept for this game but myriad perspectives on it are not represented or reflected - the writing is much more comfortable sticking to the eldritch horror side of the metaphor and creating characters with perspectives on that, and it comes off to me as a little cowardly. Lady Maria's role in the story plays into this dynamic. Of the characters whose actions we feel the consequences of, Maria's the only woman, and stands out as being the only one who managed compassion. It's an interesting role but a very gendered one.

As for the other narrative elements, there's a common thread of mania, obsession, frenzy, xenophobia, overindulgence, that will all lead to an inevitably terrible end but there's not really a lot to that either. I guess you could say it's an inversion of the usual cosmic horror tropes - the madness isn't the horrific outcome, rather it's the inception of the horror - but like. They're not saying an awful lot with that, in the same way it doesn't feel like they're saying a lot with the rest of it.

I think I had this impression for a while and I kept looking for something which would supercede it but it kind of just is what it is and I'll have to accept it.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I keep thinking about all the levels of despicable in DeuxMoi’s posts and her doubling down on her obvious lies, and I think one thing that really bothers me specifically about the miscarriage speculation she posted is that it’s yet another instance of women’s bodies being commodified and policed, especially in the current political climate in the US.

DM has no right to post speculation of that kind about anyone on her channels; pregnancy is not a storyline, it’s a medical condition with potential lifelong physical, psychological, emotional and financial consequences. To “reveal” something like this (again whether it is true or not) is no less invasive than claiming a person has cancer or any other issue. But particularly in this time in history, where reproductive freedoms in the US are being gutted, where people are seeing their access to reproductive care restricted if not denied, where some states are heading into Handmaid’s Tale-levels of monitoring specifically of women’s bodies, fuelling this kind of speculation online about anyone is playing into the dehumanization of women in the public sphere.

To try to profit off that, to drive that kind of speculation at the celebrity scale, only fuels the even more consequential culture of monitoring on people everywhere. (And DM is absolutely profiting off it.)

I know it’s a fine line, but to me the difference between fans interpreting the lyrics of a song differs in that fans do not have a platform to present anything as fact to millions of followers. Interpreting artistic works and applying them to your own lived experience happens across all forms of art. But the line crosses when you get to, “this definitely means this event happened on this day and affected the person in this way,” if they haven’t explicitly said so and given permission to say so. (So, it’d be the difference between, “To me, this song feels like it’s speaking about [the aftermath of a loss/trauma]” and, “this song is about this person experiencing this trauma on this date and I’m going to also make up an entire narrative about the life of a very real person.”)

Do fans of celebrities take it too far? Absolutely. But quite frankly, no fan has two million followers on Instagram and claims things as fact and is given legitimacy by other media (e.g. being invited to speak on other talk shows, hosting podcasts, publishing books and developing TV shows etc.). DM hiding behind “I never said this happened, someone just sent this to me and I posted it” is vile, because her platform alone ensures that a portion of her followers will take it as presumed fact, whether or not it is, and this is for anything she posts. And again, because she is accepted by all these other outlets, it lends her legitimacy regardless of her actual actions. Moreover, by digging her heels into the sand about something as ridiculous as the secret marriage ceremony, claiming she wouldn’t lie about this, it also implies she wouldn’t lie about anything else she’s posted. Which reinforces the cycle of people speculating not just on Taylor, but any celebrity, and their bodies.

This is a microcosm of an issue at large. By watching, monitoring, assigning experiences on the bodies of celebrities like Taylor, it’s giving permission to do that about anyone. And not only is that wrong and incredibly invasive, it’s increasingly dangerous in some parts of the world, including the US. Privileged (white) people will always have access to the care they need, but that care is being incrementally threatened in the rest of the country, and by perpetuating the idea that it’s entertainment to monitor women’s bodies, it dehumanizes them and turns them into content and it raises the stakes for people everywhere when it comes to their reproductive choices and freedoms.

I’m not purporting that this is necessarily what made Taylor’s team snap this week, but I do think it speaks to a larger issue that is harder to ignore for consumers of pop culture and as people living in a society in which these are tangible threats. I know this is a bit of a rambling mess, but it’s just really stuck with me over the last few days. I’d hope that this shot across the bow by Tree starts a larger conversation about the harm outlets like DM cause.

[torturedpoetemotions]

No but the key thing about Allan is he's a foil for Ken. Ken is very much the Nice Guy of the film, whereas Allan is ACTUALLY a nice guy.

See, Ken does all these things to impress Barbie, he spends a lot of time trying to seem supportive of Barbie, and he hangs his entire identity on the idea of loving Barbie. And because of that, he thinks Barbie is SUPPOSED to love him back. But everything he does "for" Barbie isn't really for her, and it shows from the beginning. He has a clear ulterior motive that's all about getting what he wants. He doesn't actually care about her desires, needs, happiness, or well-being. Everything he does comes with a clear weight of expectation behind it, which Barbie appears to feel and to find uncomfortable.

He chafes at her clearly expressing what she does and doesn't want, because that doesn't align with his goals. He constantly pushes for more time and closeness than she's comfortable with, despite her clear irritation and attempts to create more space between them. And when she continues to not give him what he wants, he eventually lashes out and intentionally causes her pain and distress, which he sees as justified recompense for his pain. It doesn't matter to him that his pain is largely his own doing, and that she never actually did anything to intentionally hurt him. The very fact of her failure to capitulate to what he feels entitled to from her is enough justification for him to lash out at her, in fact he explicitly frames it as revenge for wrongs she's done to him (and IMO the one true weak point of the film is that she validates this position later).

And lest we are tempted to see his actions through the rose-colored glasses bequeathed to us by decades of romance films, the film makes explicitly clear how much the niceness was always false by the way Ken treats Barbie when she finally returns his affections. He drops any pretense of caring about her or what she wants or likes and is entirely self-absorbed in his interactions with her, preferring a dynamic in which she exists to be an ornament in his periphery, smiling adoringly as he sings the creepiest rendition of "Push" by Matchbox Twenty imaginable (that song IS ruined for me forever now, thanks for asking).

Allan, on the other hand, is comfortable and welcome with the Barbies because there is no expectation behind his presence except that he just enjoys spending time with them. He takes up space among them naturally, participates in their fun, and there is no ulterior motive behind it. He isn't competing with the Kens or trying to get a specific kind of attention from the Barbies. He's just their friend, and enjoys their company, and he's nice because he's NICE. When he does have a specific desire or need, he explicitly states it (as when he helps them get back to Barbieland by fighting the construction workers). But even then, he works with them because his goals and desires are aligned, not because he's looking for something else from them that he's not openly stating but still feels entitled to.

And it's CRUCIAL that Allan and Ken are in no way rivals for Barbie's attention or affection. Because they don't have to be to illustrate this difference, and in fact it removes any muddying of the waters. In most films, what qualities define a Nice Guy vs. a nice guy tends to be less consequential than who the heroine chooses at the end of the day. In fact in a lot of cases, neither guy is very nice by any definition of the word. Not only that, but in that narrative setup the heroine's eventual "choice" between two less-than-stellar options is such a foregone conclusion that it undercuts any attempt at displaying women's agency in romantic and sexual relationships. But I digress.

In reality, what defines a Nice Guy versus a guy who's genuinely nice isn't who the girl in question "chooses" at the end of the day. What defines a Nice Guy vs. a nice guy is whether the niceness is genuine, or a means to an end. By removing any notion of romantic rivalry from the equation, Barbie highlights how it's the two characters' behavior that makes one of them so clearly a positive presence within the film while the other is an antagonist.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

well. that was an episode of something alright.

no but truly whatever is happening is so fucking disappointing wrt the emotional journey and catharsis for these characters, and honestly i feel condescended to as an audience member and as a football fan. you can't just slap an isolated didactic speech over a heart tugging score and call it story telling, you can't take an 11th hour 180 turn while ignoring the characters for 10 episodes and call it character development, and you can't take a story of mass working-class fan protests against club owner greed and give it to a rich white lady as her slay girlboss story without it being actually gross.

sorry but this was 63 minutes...of what exactly?? just going through the story lines in some kind of vague order of least to most consequential for sam, keeley, roy, rebecca, and nate and this gets long so under the cut it goes:

sam - what was this supposed to even be? ok so you bring back edwin akufo for the superleague story (which by the way, changing this to the akufo league instead of the story's inspiration the european super league - which was proposed by white european billionaires - is some level of racism i can't even...) to do what? get some laughs in by retreading the grudge? putting sam through the ringer again for...??? what was the end result here? like i'm genuinely asking bc i don't understand what i'm supposed to get from his being all smiley and putting the nigerian national team photo in his locker? he's happy because jamie gave him a shout out and that's good enough for him? what the fuck is this even supposed to mean?

keeley - what was the purpose of any of this genuinely. the amount of time we spent with kjpr and i have no idea what keeley does, if she's good at her job, how she's built her relationships with her silent co-workers. when she was at richmond we got to see her in action and her stories brought out not only her own character but other characters we cared about. keeley has been utterly passive this season - her biggest moment of agency was hiring shandy and that was exploded and scrubbed from the narrative. everything else from jack to the leak to being defunded just happened to her and she cried about it. and now rebecca's swooping in to refund her again and genuinely what is even happening here? the conflict for her character that was set up last year was that she was experiencing success in a completely new way and she was scared she wasn't going to live up to it and the conflict between the work she felt she needed to do to live up to expectations and how that would affect other relationships in her life, especially that with roy. how was that addressed? at all? we've seen her nebulously stressed, we've been told she's working a lot without being allowed to experience what she's doing, we've seen her try and emulate both ted and rebecca without success, and what? what else? a couple of looks between her and roy? her getting picked up and put down by a vc funder both financially and personally? what kind of synthesis has she reached here???

roy - which brings us to roy. we get the 'i'm talking about my football career but actually i'm talking about my relationship with keeley' in the chelsea episode which was great because it set up a conflict for roy this season - the idea that he cuts and runs to put distance between himself and moments of vulnerability to avoid possible failure and as a result never truly engages and enjoys experiences or people in the moment. great brilliant amazing love it -- what the fuck happened. i feel like you can vaguely connect something about how his training jamie is teaching jamie not to do what he did - to actually give his emotional all to his development as a footballer instead of detaching when things were at there most frustrating with zava there. that where roy used his anger and gruffness as a mask, jamie was using his cockiness but both to the same end of detaching from a situation they felt was out of their control. but i feel like i'm carrying a lot of water with all that, and while yes there have been moments of roy being more open this season, he's for a lot of it been relegated to weird comic relief if you can even call it that? (sorry but the rope monologue and the dick string training are both fucked up and weird and went on for way too long). he pulled a ted at the press conference (and told someone else's miscarriage story hmm)? he and keeley have been kept apart for the entirety of this season so like....i don't know? what was this? a fake holiday to wedge in a scene with his sister, phoebe and jamie? an epiphany that he was a mess? that he caused damage? and he writes a letter and now everything's good roykeeley back on track? the fact that they were kept apart for the majority of the season just feels like.......was any of this actually sorted through? did we experience either of these characters interact in any way where they challenged each other in this journey? that lead up to this reconciliation? this culmination feels so unearned.

rebecca - and speaking of unearned, the entire set-up for her arc of getting the fuck over rupert and finding joy in the team without it being about someone else was there. from her rashness in swooping zava from under rupert's nose, to her yelling at ted about winning, the 'him-you-mean-them' conversation, her maniacal behaviour at half-time during the west ham game. but where was the move out of this? she met a guy on a boat? she..........what??? how have we seen her grow out of this moment? what have we seen besides this deus ex machina of....what? remembering a story about rupert's childhood and bing bang boom - oh he was just a child once too? and the end, job's a good'un? fast forwarding through the total football catharsis short-shrifted rebecca, too. if the football is the expository tool to reveal things about our characters, the idea that a strategy that puts a singular thing at the focus to the detriment of everything else is bad for football and it's bad for people is a great narrative device. but...just as we're being told and not shown that it's working on the field, we're getting the same treatment off. rebecca is realising that the community both in and around the club is more fulfilling than a psychic's quote unquote predictions and using the club as a tool for narrow-focused spite -- ok show that??? show her reactions to the fans attending training. show other small moments where she enjoys the game? puts the club above embarrassing rupert at all costs? that moment with higgins talking about possibly firing ted bc of the winless streak could have been a glimpse of that but it was thrown away instead (but to be honest, how much of that is a retreading of her journey in s1?). so what do we get instead - girlbossery with, i'm sorry, a really fucking beyond heavy-handed moment with seeing her young self in the mirror? that does what? tells us that she's able to stand firm in a room full of men? did we...not know that? that she realises she's in it bc she loves the game? does she?? again, by not seeing the moments of total football triumph, we missed out on the opportunity to show her falling in love with the sport and becoming a true fan, not just an owner. if that's even what i'm supposed to be getting from this!!?? not to mention that her big moment of realising passion for the beautiful game was more important than her spite was directly ripped from the headlines but completely twisted. as i mentioned before, in april 2021 a bunch of white european billionaire club owners did indeed try to form a european super league out of a closed group of 12 of the richest european clubs, but clear cash grab wasn't stopped by a rich white lady having a moment of #selflove and altruistic benevolence, it was stopped by a mass protest of working-class fans pointing out the clear capitalist greed of the move:

nate - and god if all of this isn't just a slap in the face to nate's character arc. again, the set up of the first two seasons was clear and great! nate's struggle with self-worth especially rooted in his inability to live up to his father's expectations; his being bullied and undervalued and then clinging to someone who was giving him the affirmations he was craving, his projecting those unresolved issues onto ted who both couldn't live up to those expectations, and who made his own mistakes as he struggled through his own personal turmoil and mental health issues. the way all of those unresolved issues and referred anger came to a head for the both of them in nate's exposing ted's panic attacks to try and hurt him the way he felt hurt. and then falling into the arms of someone who was ready to exploit nate's talent and insecurity for his own gains. it's so good! it's so fucking good that it's bananas that we barely get to see any of his reconcilation play out! we get the beginning with rupert's emotional manipulation on display...and then what? nate is sidelined for the majority of the season! he's absent in some episodes altogether! HE QUITS HIS JOB OFF SCREEN AND WE GET NONE OF HIS INNER THOUGHTS AS TO WHY EXACTLY AND WE'RE LEFT TO DO THE WORK OF FILLING IN THE BLANKS??? we get that tell-not-show moment with his family with his dad's map, but like then there's no significant interaction between nate and his father until this episode? we get most of nate's personal development through his relationship with jade instead of diving into his relationship with his parents and teasing that out to build up to the emotional cathartic moment in this episode? there's so much untapped complexity in nate's arc! that tension with his parents, how the pressures both his father as an immigrant and himself as first gen are amplified by the pressures of rigid masculinity. how his father felt the need to stifle that creative sweetness in himself to make sure nate succeeded and had the best opportunity because of the combined pressures of race, class, masculinity, and feeling out of his depths when faced with his son's brilliance. nate's conflict between expressing his own softness and creativity v his feelings of the expectations of masculinity and success. so much of that could have been drawn out instead of sidelined and then infodumped and concluded in a few minutes of one episode! look! nate plays the violin aren't you feeling emotions? so many minutes of nate laying in bed and so few of the exploration of his and his father's dynamic that was set up to be the hingepoint of his frustration, insecurity and anger that manifested in his ruptured relationship with ted and richmond! and it's back to the total football -- that jade is part of his development isn't a bad thing! showing nate as becoming fulfilled both familially and romantically is actually good, esp for a character of colour! the idea that a healthy life is a full life with many different elements of one's community playing in tandem and concert to build towards a fulfillment and joy! but like...ok??? do so that???? and not all in one moment with All The Right Words At The Same Time???? what the fuck man this feels so fucking surface level and i just with the sheer amount of minutes given to episodes this season, what the fuck were they spent on if not this???

i'm sorry, but epiphany moments like the four (four!!!) in this episode work in romcom movies because we have 90 minutes with the characters. we accept certain shorthand for character growth because we understand the constraints of the narrative framework. it's bananas and fucking lazy to think that's OK for a serial format, especially one that's ballooned in time over the past season! what the fuck have those minutes been used for except for apparently spinning the fucking wheels on all of these development arcs until the last saccharine moment? aren't you crying with emotions, hmmmm?????

none of this feels earned and i feel genuinely gross at being thrown a few Emotionally Coded scenes and being expected to have my little heartstrings pulled enough that the squandered and self-indulgent mess of this season - that threw all of this character development into the trash - doesn't matter. we've spent years with these characters, the first two seasons carefully set up deep conflicts that should have been given careful and deep resolutions.

instead this episode gives us a naked ass and insists that it's clothed in glorious tie dye.

it's a naked fucking ass. and whatever patchwork loincloth the last two episodes whip up, it can't make up for the wasted potential, laziness and self-indulgent disaster of jason sudeikis's showrunning.

[crappy-homestuck-confessions]

MY hot take about Vriska that no one asked for is that she's just disappointing. Like she gets So Much Time And Focus and she does So Many Things that are crucial to the plot and the progression of various characters, but it is so disproportionate in comparison to every other troll and even some of the human kids. Therefore the time spent on her had better be justified. You better make us enjoy our time while she's onscreen. Either we're interested in how fucked up she is, we yell raucously about how much we hate her, or we cradle her in our arms like a poor little meow meow, and Vriska Serket inspires None Of This in me.

She gets just enough development and we are given just enough opportunities to sympathize with her that we understand her and we get what her fucking deal is, but the shit she does and says is way too awful for me to ever like her, so it becomes this Net 0 Emotional Investment because I don't enjoy hating her either because she's not some glorious cackling center of villainy and hubris that I wish to see fall, that's Caliborn. I LOVED Caliborn everytime he was on page, he's a phenomenal villain I want to squeeze him until his stupid glass doll eyes pop. I want to write an AU where he and Callie are a silly little cherry limeade duo who somehow fucking Actually Made Things Work fully in spite of their fated animosity. He's AWFUL and I love watching Hussie smack talk him to his face through an arbitrarily frustrating computer modem radio tower thing.

Vriska is an intentionally bad protagonist because That's The Irony; she's a light player and she's shaped her entire personality around being the coolest and the best and the center of everything, but in doing so she's made herself an awful friend and a bad person who's Very Un-Protagonist-Like. But she's a bad *antagonist* because she's never actually framed as An Antagonist, she is simply antagonistic by a cruel stroke of bad luck that her life was set out to be lived on Alternia where she must blah blah blah EVERYONE is on alternia bitch, Get Over Yourself you are SO pretentious and not even in a fun way!!! In an annoyingly realistic way!!!!!

She's written as a real person in contrast to all these cartoonish personalities literally everyone else on the cast has. Everyone but Vriska in Homestuck is SO much more entertaining than her because she's written to be a normal girl in a fucked up situation while John is written to be a riff on The 90's Everykid who's encountering some truly absurd bullshit for the first time in his life. It's no secret Vriska's Hussie's favorite, and because of that, she gets so much focus and fleshing out and narrative weight that she Does Not Need.

Vriska would be better if there was less of her just Point Blank, because then we'd have a lot of potent moments where we see how monumentally messed up this kid who's constantly trying to keep all the randomness and peril in her life under her control is. Vriska being this awful person who everyone agrees is awful but who they keep around 'cause she's not awful ALL of the time and some of the group has unfortunately formed a deep attachment to her meanwhile she's constantly doing her 'All according to keikakku' shit would be WAY less disappointing as a central character. Also give other people who Aren't Her some of her consequential shit, the distribution is WAY too disproportionate.

(did not expect this to go on as long as it has whoops)

.

[astermacguffin]

Amara's and Death's conflicting accounts of the history of the cosmos is very interesting to me because neither of them seem to be lying.

Death's account is reminiscent of the biblical, Genesis narrative: In the beginning, there was Darkness, and then there was Light. Death paints Amara as an older, more powerful entity than Chuck/God. (And to be fair, we do have some evidence for this. Even in her very weakened and worn-down state, Amara singlehandedly beats Chuck 1v1 in S11.)

Amara's account paints her and Chuck more as equals, simultaneously "born" and eternally linked, Darkness and Light, with one always needing the other to retain the balance of the cosmos. (And again, we have evidential support for this account as well. The world started falling into ruin when Chuck was dying in S11. The bomb plan both in S11 and S15 also required both Chuck and Amara to be simultaneously killed: they either need to both exist or both be gone.)

While Amara sounds like the greater authority here (since it's her and Chuck's own "birth" we're talking about here), it's hard to just ignore Death's account altogether.

Amara actually accuses Death of lying to the Winchesters because his account contradicts hers, but this prompts the question: Why would he do that? What could he possibly accomplish by lying about that? Similarly, Amara has no reason to lie aboth her own origins: nothing consequential happens to the plot if Dean believes hers over Death's account.

My takeaway here is that none of them are lying and that they both genuinely believe the story they're telling. This means that either (1) one of them is wrong, (2) both of them are wrong, (3) both of them are right, or (4) the answer is metaphysically (and not just epistemologically) undetermined.

I'm discarding option 2 right away because that would entail that Chuck's the older one, which has no evidential support unlike the rest.

Before we continue, I would like to reexamine one important scene. In his first on-screen appearance, Death explains to Dean that neither he nor God could remember which one of them came first, "Chicken and egg" and all of that. We can interpret this two ways: (A) even cosmic entities have fallible memory, or (B) the "chicken and egg" remark speaks not of the fallibility of their memories, but the epistemological (and perhaps even metaphysical) impossibility of either Death or God being able to determine who came into existence first.

If we go with (A), this gives us support for option (1): it's likely that either Death or Amara just misremembered things since even their memory is fallible.

If we go with (B), however, this gives us just enough ambiguity to work with and consider the weird options, (3) and (4). For example, perhaps relativistic time works weird with cosmic entities and so for Amara, she experienced her "birth" simultaneously with Chuck, but to an outside observer like Death, Amara came "first", whatever that means in the abstract, cosmic scale. There's also the possibility that this is epistemologically and metaphysically impossible to answer so. Yeah.

(I don't know how to end this post, I was just having fun with trying to analyze Death's and Amara's conflicting accounts.)

[irregularcollapse]

Hi! I’m not great with questions but what theme is you’re favourite/what’s been your favourite part of Even In Another Time that has it?

Hello thank you so much for this question!! The themes... goodness, the themes...

In the framing of Laurent's character journey, and the love between Laurent and Damen, I'm focusing a lot on the concept of fate or destiny: that their love is the stuff of myth, they are destined to be together, the forces of the universe are actually bringing them together. This manifests in a lot of ways through various plot moments and symbols, but my favourite by far is the weather: even aside from the rain on their wedding day, the weather is a portent for various moments in their journey together. Keep an eye out for the wind!

However, the elements of fate/destiny intersect with another important theme: storytelling. You've seen this so far in Laurent trying to remember what he knows about the story as it has been told in the modern day, in his initial insistence that he isn't a "character" and has no influence -- then in his realisation that he does have influence, although to his mind at that point it is as an "editor" and not a participant. As has been hinted so far, the history and consequential myth are highly mutable; every time the story is told or re-told, it is a new interpretation, through a new lens. Different interpretations endure in the collective memory.

In exploration of this, I was thinking about how most people will know what is meant by the phrases "Trojan horse" or "Achilles' heel" but won't necessarily know the details of The Iliad, or have read the original text. I was thinking about how the name "Frankenstein" has come to be associated with the creature and not the scientist; how people reading Dracula Daily have been really surprised/shocked by certain events in the plot despite thinking they know the story of Dracula; how recently a quote from a The Song of Achilles fic has been circulating on tiktok and instagram as though it is a quote from the actual book; how "Let them eat cake" was perhaps something that was never actually said by Marie Antoinette. And also, this. So many translations, so many different interpretations, so many subtle shifts in meaning and feeling and intention - all drawn from the same original words.

Essentially, we are all engaged in a continuous (and often unintentional) re-interpretation and re-writing of stories and histories.

This ties in fairly explicitly with the theme of fate/destiny as well. The idea of things being fated and fixed suggests that Laurent has little material impact on what happens; everything is being controlled by forces that are beyond him. However, Laurent's character arc is about him coming into his own agency and power, believing in himself and his own strength, and ultimately choosing himself. If his agency is so important to the narrative, how does that reconcile with everything being controlled by the universe/the gods?

Well, you'll just have to keep reading! I'm just going to leave you with a bit from Chapter XIV:

[9w1ft]

hi! i was wondering if you had any idea about the age-old rumors that katy perry and taylor swift were supposed to share a kiss in the yntcd music video?

hi! i don’t really think anybody has new insider information about if it was actually going to happen outside of the rumors that were floating around at the time, but i will give you a historical rundown from a fandom perspective.

basically a rumor was floated during lover era that katy would have a cameo in the YNTCD music video and that taylor and katy would kiss in the video.

***i have memories of it being a substantiated rumor but i forget why that is. if i remember correctly i think there was a ‘leaked’ music video storyboard with a sketch of them kissing? but i can’t locate the originating picture or tweet… can someone who remembers or who has researched it explain a little more about this?**

to give some context, this incident was coming after rep era where katy had her people send taylor’s people a physical olive branch to be delivered on the first night of her tour, as a symbolic “peace” offering to taylor, after several years of them having a ‘feud’ spanning 1989 era and early rep era ‘over stealing backup dancers’ which is what the public ascribes to the song Bad Blood (incidentally this ‘feud’ coincides with the ‘feud’ taylor had with karlie in 2017, where karlie and katy were spotted out getting sushi together with others (‘sushigate’)— so the idea that katy sent a token of peace to taylor at the beginning of rep tour transitioned nicely into karlie also going to rep tour, and the construction of a slow burning reconciliation narrative), as well, there had been more social media reconciliation in june 2019 when katy posted a plate of cookies (that taylor sent her) and captioned it “peace at last”

so back to where we started, this katy kiss rumor made it to twitter and tumblr and fans both swiftie and gaylor alike started expressing various concerns, basically that ~because taylor is an ally and not actually gay~ or ~if she doesn’t plan on coming out but does this~ that this kind of action would be harmful, especially in the context of her very very rainbowy lover era rollout.

and as we all know taylor rarely addresses fan concerns but she actually did post about it, while concerns over the rumor spread:

this was followed up with a lot of media coverage

as you can imagine, a bunch of people took this to mean she was saying ~no homo~ but i think most of us on here were quick to point out that she was wording it in a way to position herself on the gay side of the grammar.

here’s something i posted about it awhile after it happened, part of which i’ll paste below:

i think there can be debate over whether taylor actually intended to have this scene, or if just floating a rumor was a way of testing the waters, etc, and i remember at the time a lot of people joked with meme pics of tree on the phone saying she was frantically calling the editing bay to cut the clip 😆 but i’m not of the opinion that this ended up being so consequential. although the masters heist coming on the heels of taylor having kissed a woman in her artwork certainly would’ve been something

[earl-of-221b]

Hi! I love your writing, so i wanted to ask you for writing advice, if its okay with you. I regularly see writers say stuff like "the story just went there" "the character took over" or things in that vein which basically mean that they let the story flow. I have never felt that. My story doesnt flow, it goes specifically where i want it to go. My characters feel what i feel, they say what i would say. Which is to say that i'm having trouble separating me and the character, but in a bad way. How should i go about fixing this issue?

Hi, hope this reply doesn't come too late! I can share my thoughts on this below, but you have your own writing style, and you know what you want best from your work!

'Going with the flow'

I understand both instances when writing. I frequently feel "the story just went there" or that even "the character took over" and write what comes flowing. This happened to me in most of my earlier pieces of writing, but less often now that I - at least compared to before - have a better grasp on the kinds of stories I want to tell, including what themes, subtext, and dialogue I want to show. I think that letting the story flow was easier for me when writing things where I didn't have a clear goal in mind, or a set ending, and that's why things are able to meander. What's really happening is that we're making it up very fast as we go, according to what we think characters will say or do.

'Directing the story'

While letting the story just flow is a great exercise and it's good to write anything to progress a story, I think I see much more value in the other way. My ongoing fics right now (Noblesse and Ruroni Kenshin) are all products of extensive planning. This is because I had a clear narrative in mind I wanted to tell, even a pace to the story where major reveals need to be unveiled before going onto the next part. My more recent chapters have a beginning, middle and end (Strangers), or try to balance multiple povs with equal weight (12 Knight). Some may find this writing style too prescriptive, but it's that prescriptiveness that lets me direct exactly where I want to go and what I want to say. Each chapter must progress either the plot (things are Happening) or character (characters must change or learn something new). Or both! Every scene break must have a point, convey something useful to the reader.

What type of work are you trying to do?

Drabbles and oneshots - shorter works - lend themselves more easily to going with the flow. I find longer chaptered works do need some level of planning and forethought in order to be well-structured. What I mean to say is that both writing styles have their merits, and it's fine to favour one or the other. You may also find you adapt writing styles according to what you are writing - an introspective character piece in someone's head - or something thick with plot.

Examples

Time when going with the flow was helpful.

When I wrote ch 1 of Pair of Strangers (I have a feeling you're on the Noblesse side of things, but let me know!) I did not have clear ending in sight. So most of chapter 1 is actually 'go with the flow,' with only a vague plot (find the missing nobles) and character goals (Franken and Rai are able to understand each other). It was only until ch 3, once I had mapped out the rest of the story, that I could begin really driving the story. So going with the flow certainly helped start things off, towards directing a long story.

Time when directing the story improved on going with the flow

In ch 12, the final scene just came flowing out of me, but the key points are entirely different from the version that was posted. In fact, all the major choices in the final scene were changed. For example, both Franken and Elena are hit by the foreman. I changed this to ensure Franken shoves Elena, thus saving her from the foreman. This is more consequential because it tells us something about Franken - he chooses to save Elena, despite what happened in earlier chapters.

In the go-with-the-flow draft, Rai frees Franken and then commands him to leave Elena and save the child. Upon review, why would Franken even hesitate to save the child over Elena? And why should Rai make this decision? This occurs right after their 'argument,' where Franken's faith in Rai is at his lowest. So I changed the choice. The choice in the final version is between the Alderman -- and the child. Now Franken has a huge stake to go and kill the Alderman -- a choice he previously would have no issue making. Fix the root of the problem, do preventative action, instead of going for the short-term, sentimental choice.

But he reacts differently, he goes to save the victim. Moreover, it's Franken that makes this choice. He isn't commanded by Rai. Rai doesn't successfully command Franken in the final scene of ch 12. This is to show the consequences of their 'argument' the scene before. They're all split second decisions - Franken makes every single one to show how things have changed.

That he, at his heart, loves and cares for fellow humans. But Rai...has lost his trust.

All of this was much weaker when I just went with what first flowed out on the page. Now the chapter reinforces the main themes and demonstrates the characters new headspace.

Happy writing

"Which is to say that i'm having trouble separating me and the character."

I hope to lighten your mind on this one, because we are all writing from our own experiences, unique points of view, likes and dislikes. All the characters you write are ultimately voiced by you, the writer. It's the great illusion that writers do - to give life to these characters, as though they are speaking themselves. But don't worry so much if it sounds like you. Why should that be a flaw? It probably sounds like you because you are behind the Wizard of Oz contraption seeing all the bits and bobs behind the scenes. When we read other people's work, we are quite happy to suspend our own disbelief. You don't have any trouble separating you and the character, the character can only be because of you.

I hope this helps you enjoy your writing and not feel afraid to experiment and write bad stuff to get to the good stuff. Happy writing.

[jasonbehrs]

🍬 corollary 🍬

by airauralintensity (aka me, jasonbehrs!)

If you lose your food-obsessed fiance in a crowd, here’s how to find her in three tries or less.

fandom: incurable case of love, koi wa tsuzuku yo doko made mo characters: sakura nanase, tendo kairi ship: sakurendo genres: romance themes: introspective, character study, tendo focus, post-canon word count: 3.3k+ book: 2/2 rating: T

read it on ffnet, aff, wattpad, ao3, or below!

~~~

A/N (7.26.2023): "Another Sakura-Nanase-loves-food fanfic from airauralintensity? What gives?" Listen, there are so many plot points in the show that are driven by Nanase's love of food. More fan content needs to acknowledge that if she had to choose between a falling patient and a falling plate… well, she would still choose the patient, but she would hesitate.

If you happen to be reading this fresh off of finishing the show, I'm ignoring the timeline of Episode 10. This fic is set after she returns but before they're married, which isn't a very long time period according to canon.

This isn't a sequel to 'a delicious conspiracy of love' in the consequential narrative sense, but they're still heavily related, so I encourage you to read that one first. I named this fic 'corollary' not just because it suits the plot but because this fic builds off of themes from the first one.

~~~

Sometimes, Kairi still needs to offer Nanase a hand.

He doesn't just mean pulling her to the side so that she doesn't accidentally run into a tourist because she's too busy window shopping to pay attention to her surroundings (though that does happen with an alarming frequency), but he also means literally.

In the times when she is too conscious of him, she won't hold his hand herself.

Despite the many professional advantages her year of community nursing abroad has brought, one of the personal disadvantages was that it also sort of reset their relationship, at least where Nanase was concerned. She didn't break off their engagement or anything, but there is a certain composure present where there was none previously.

They kept in regular contact during their time apart, which did a lot to ease the longing and keep their relationship feeling like a relationship, but he supposes a year's worth of conversational intimacy doesn't immediately nor necessarily translate into physical intimacy, even one as simple as this.

She has never been shy around him—as her blatant overtures for his affection back when she really was just a rock in his way made abundantly clear—but they were the actions of a woman on a mission. All years considered, she has spent more time pining for him than actually having him, and the relationship habits they were building before she left didn't have time to truly settle in.

All this to say: when she returned, she still treated him like he wasn't completely and irrevocably hers.

Kairi has enjoyed reminding her (oh, has he enjoyed reminding her), but now he thinks he needs to work harder.

He will. Once he finds her.

The Sumida Park Farmers' Market isn't that new, but it's new to them. It started up while Nanase was gone, and Kairi didn't have a reason to visit until she came back. It's also in the half of the park that isn't on their side of the river, so neither of them were that familiar with its layout even without the influx of people and vehicles and vendors.

Unfortunately, these are not as good excuses as he wants them to be. He ends up losing her in any given crowd nine times out of ten. She's always bouncing back and forth, admiring the wares and sampling the goods and talking to anyone who makes eye contact with her like the extrovert she is—which wouldn't be such a problem if only she would hold his goddamn hand.

But like he intimated, this happens pretty often; and he wouldn't be the man he is today if he didn't learn from his mistakes the first time. When a quick 360 doesn't immediately reveal his favourite smile or the sound of excessive cooing over someone's baby, he doesn't panic. He just closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing.

More specifically, the scents he's breathing.

If you lose your food-obsessed fiance in a crowd, here's how to find her in three tries or less: identify the smell of cooking then follow your nose to the closest food stall. It hasn't steered him wrong to date.

Nanase is always so surprised to be found, mostly because she's always surprised that she's lost in the first place. "How did Sensei know how to find me?" she would ask. He never tells, though, instead affecting a burdened air and moving forward with their date, lest he accidentally sully the sanctity of his trick.

The scent of friend dough catches Kairi's attention first. He follows the lead to a baby castella stall. There is no sign of his fiance, but he does buy a basket for her and dusts it with powdered sugar.

Repeating the process brings to his attention a smell that reminds him of the sea on a hot summer day. The takoyaki stall he comes upon also has no Nanase, but he buys a half-dozen anyway and prepares it the way she likes: topped liberally with pickled ginger and accompanied by a dollop of mayonnaise on the side.

Finally, he smells fried vegetables with an undercurrent of something sweet. It takes him to a crepe stall, and he's finally run out of hands and composure. Nanase is still nowhere to be seen.

He stands in the middle of the path and forces the flow of people to go around him as he furiously thinks of what to do now. This strategy has never failed him before. Besides, what good are two handfuls of warm food when there isn't a fiance with a never-ending appetite around to eat them?

Kairi spins in a circle, looking for a place to sit and set down his prandial burdens but mostly hoping that Nanase would still appear and validate his methodology. He needs to be right about this.

It was his job to be right about things like this.

.

An enthusiastic "Tendo-sensei!" was the first thing Kairi heard when he answered the phone.

Nanase picked a good time to call. He had already eaten breakfast, and it's easier to talk when he isn't concentrating on not overcooking his food.

They realised pretty early on that her night shift ended just in time for his day shift to begin. This sweet spot when she's getting ready for bed and he's getting ready to go became the obvious choice for any video calls. They couldn't call every day; but when they could, it happened around now.

He chuckled as he set the phone on a stand he bought for this specific purpose. "You can start calling me Kairi, you know. Isn't it weird to call your fiance by his last name and an honourific? I'm not even your attending physician anymore."

"You still call me Sakura sometimes!" By the echo, he could tell she was in her bathroom too, and something about being in a similar place at the same time made the distance feel smaller.

"But I call you Nanase the other times."

"Awww." The pitying sound made him glance over from the mirror to see a cute little pout on his fiance's face. "I miss the sound of my name."

He leaned in closer so she could see his incredulity. "What do they call you over there if not by your name?"

"No, no! They do call me Nanase. It's just, with the accent, it sounds more like… Nan-ase? I don't know. I feel bad saying this because it's not like I get all their names right all the time either, but…"

"Nanase."

"Hm?"

He turned away from the camera to reach for a towel with the added benefit of hiding his smile. He didn't say her name to get her attention, but he could pivot. Flexibility was a strength of his. "Not too tired from the night shift?"

"Not too tired to talk to Sensei~ Besides, I had coffee in the second half of my shift. I'll be good until after the call ends!"

He stopped what he was doing and looked back at her. "Since when did you start drinking coffee?" He worked alongside her for over four months and never even saw her drinking matcha.

"It's recent! It actually surprised my coworkers that I wasn't drinking any. Besides the long shifts, Berlin has a huge coffee culture. I wanted to fit in, so I started ordering some from the cafes that my coworkers recommended in town. I like it! I think. There's a lot of variety, at least. They even have matcha over here!"

Kairi let her elaborate on her journey of discovering coffee and tried not to overthink. Sakura Nanase, more energetic than a fully-charged battery and sweeter than Japan's finest wagashi, was not the sort of person he associated with coffee. It wasn't something he thought she'd enjoy.

It's not that he was against her drinking coffee. It's not about the coffee at all. It's the fact that there could be things about her that he couldn't predict. Considering he fell in love with her for her transparency, the discovery unnerved him.

Kairi was a man who prided himself on accurate deductions. From the moment he received a patient's echocardiogram, he could map out their entire recovery journey in his mind's eye. Of course, when the facts changed, he changed his mind; but anticipating and addressing viable changes in condition were the cornerstones of his entire career, and he was only capable of such astute assessments because he was an expert on cardiology. He didn't become one of the most successful heart surgeons in the country by wasting mental or temporal resources on understanding things that didn't matter to him. Heart health mattered to him.

Sakura Nanase also mattered to him.

He knew exactly how much rain it took to dissuade her from her outdoor plans. He knew the earliest she could wake up given her bedtime the night before. He could narrow down to the minute the point at which she needs a snack to boost her blood sugar.

Nanase wasn't predictable, necessarily, but humans were creatures of habit; and he observed and studied hers to the point of expertise.

If he wasn't an expert on the things he loved, what was he?

This was why he wasn't nearly as worried about her study abroad as she was. The distance was immaterial. Whether she was right next to him or on the opposite side of the world, he remained the foremost, citable, preeminent authority on all things Sakura Nanase.

"Does this mean I'll have to start sharing my coffee supply with you when you come back?"

"Maybe!" She giggled. "I like sharing things with you."

But mastery wasn't a checkpoint. It was a lifelong endeavour, and his chosen field of expertise had a similarly lifelong intention to keep growing, evolving, maturing. He reminded himself that this was actually exciting, and he was actually lucky. He got to witness those changes in real time; he got to remain the expert.

Especially in circumstances like these, he needed that assurance. Their time apart wouldn't matter because when she came back to him, she wouldn't be a stranger.

"I'm running a little behind, but do me a favour before I go?"

He directed his full attention to the phone, as he always did for the last few minutes of their calls. She shuffled closer so that her whole face took up his screen, and he refrained from mentioning that he took a screenshot of it. "You name it!"

"What's the name of your hospital, again? I forgot."

The sight of her fond eye roll did more to wake him up than his own cup of coffee did. "You didn't forget, Sensei. You just like to hear me butcher German."

He shrugged. "I forgot how much I like hearing you butcher German."

"Fine, fine. I'll say it so you won't be late." She cleared her throat. "Ge-ma-i-n-sha-fu-su-ka-n-ke-n-ha-u-su Ha-fu-hu-u."

"Oh, that's why it's so small? It's half of a real hospital?"

"One day, that joke will stop being funny," but the smile on her face said otherwise.

.

"Kairi! There you are, I've been looking all over for you."

He whirls around, barely keeping the food in their containers as he does. "What. No, you weren't. I was looking for you."

Nanase tilts her head. "Couldn't we have been looking for each other, then?"

He doesn't have an answer for that, still hung up on how his three-tries-or-less strategy failed him. "Where were you?" he asks instead.

"Oh! Here, have some." She opens her mouth, encourages him to mimic her, then plops something smooth and sweet onto his tongue. "Isn't it so good?"

Hard candy. She was buying hard candy. Hard candy does not emit an odour.

He doesn't know if he's annoyed that his strategy doesn't account for things like this or pleased that it still has merit under most but specific parameters.

"I saw a family back there holding a bag of something colourful," she continues, "so I asked them where they got it."

He follows her pointed finger to find that the hard candy vendor is literally right behind the castella stand, which is only a few stalls down from when he noticed he lost her.

He makes up his mind: he's definitely annoyed.

"Can I have some?" she asks about the food he forgot he is holding.

He offers both of his hands to her, looking down at the food both literally and figuratively. "They're for you," he grumbles.

Her eyes light up at the prospect of eating, and it says something that that alone isn't enough to lift his mood.

She points out a seating area with picnic tables a little ways away from where they're standing—which Kairi probably would have seen sooner if he were actually looking for those instead of blatantly focused on looking for Nanase instead—and he follows her lead. There appear to be no places for them to sit together, but a pointed glare at a pair of teenagers who are done eating rectifies that problem very quickly.

"Ah! I love pickled ginger with my takoyaki!" she effuses once they're seated side by side.

He waits until she takes her first bite—"It's the perfect temperature, too!"—before he brings up his concern: "Nanase, you need to hold my hand more often when we're in public."

"Really?"

"Yes…?" He meant to say that definitively, but the absolute delight and obvious relief on her face puzzle him. "That isn't a problem?"

"Not for me! I thought it would be for Sensei, though."

He ignores the reversion to an honourific. "What possibly gave you that idea?"

She does a quick, breezy shrug, more focused on preparing the next takoyaki ball for her consumption. "I didn't think you were happy to hold my hand when we're in public. You always looked burdened. I thought, 'Ah, he doesn't like it,' so I stopped," she explains casually, like she didn't just shatter his entire perception of their relationship in the ten seconds it took her to say that.

He, unfortunately, knows exactly what she's talking about; but the burden is fake!

Moreover: "That never stopped you before," he accuses. If there's one thing he understands about Sakura Nanase, it's that she chases after the things she wants without abandon or shame, even in the times when it would behoove her to exhibit more abandon or shame.

"Yeah, but I was pretty single-minded before, wasn't I?" she says plainly. This self-reflection is evidently not new to her. Where was he when she decided these things about herself? "I did and said so many things just because I wanted you to keep looking at me, even if it was in annoyance… which it usually was. You didn't like it even back then."

Sure, but that was back then.

"I was able to calm down in Germany, though," she reminisces. "Not getting to see you every day made me treasure the times I do have your attention, so it became easier to respect your boundaries."

"I don't have those!" he blurts out.

"Eh?"

He doesn't even know where to start. He was so misunderstood. He misunderstood so much. He's spiralling.

"I love it when you hold my hand. I love holding your hand. Hold my hand all the time."

"O-okay," she agrees with wide-eyes and an offered palm, thinking the directive started now.

He stares at her waiting hand, suddenly feeling like he doesn't deserve to hold it, but ultimately grasps it like a desperate man.

He is pretty desperate. He's spiralling, but her touch is a tether. "You're not a burden. You haven't been for a while, and I thought you knew that."

Her smile is brilliant. "Yeah, I worked hard to become an asset in the ward—"

"—With me, too," he interrupts. "It's an act; it always has been. I can't be straightforward about my affection; it feels weird. I'd rather be subtle about it,"— he gestures to the food—"but that only worked because I thought you knew to look past my pretense."

"I definitely thought it was real," she admits sheepishly. "Or at least coming from a real place. I just was willing to ignore it."

She didn't even know he was acting. He relied on the notion that she knew he was acting. Does he know anything about her, about this relationship?

"I thought you had become self-conscious," he confesses like a man who gambled everything he had and lost it all.

"I-I sort of did!" she gets out in a rush, a misinformed attempt to uplift her dour fiance. "I became conscious of how my past self behaved when I was pining after you and realised that I didn't need to do that anymore because I actually have you now," she ends optimistically.

He misunderstood so much. "What else don't I know about you?" he asks in all seriousness.

"Huh?" She chuckles in confusion. "What are you talking about? You know everything about me."

"Evidently not."

"Of course you do!" She holds up her half-finished takoyaki. "You remembered the mayonnaise!"

"Nanase, this is important!" he groans. "Just because I supplied mayonnaise for your takoyaki doesn't mean I know everything about you."

"And just because you misunderstood this one little thing about me doesn't mean you don't."

She doesn't get it. It's not just the hand-holding. It's the illusion of transparency, it's about inaccurate deductions, it's because she matters—

Nanase tugs his mouth open and puts in a baby castella. "Here."

For a split second, he considers spitting it out on principle before realising spitting it out would be disgusting. "I got those for you," he reproves once he's done chewing.

"And I'm letting you have some. I'm not the only one between the two of us who likes sweet bread, right?" she argues as she holds up another one to his mouth.

Kairi acquiesces on sharing the food, but he doesn't let her feed him. "See, you do have a limit on public displays of affection," she points out when he eats a castella of his own volition. "I just misjudged where that limit was."

He looks at her incredulously. "We're already holding hands," he retorts, covering the sight of his half-chewed food with one hand while the other waves their joined ones for emphasis. "Additional intimate interactions are superfluous."

"I would certainly appreciate 'additional interactions'."

"Appreciate what you have," he snarks on habit before remembering himself. He checks her reaction out of the corner of his eye. Will she start looking past his pretense?

Her exaggerated, coquettish blinks are answer enough. "So you won't hug me?"

He maintains a beleaguered veneer through the relief. "Hugging and hand-holding are mutually exclusive activities. One must replace the other; therefore neither will surpass my quotient for ardent displays."

She immediately releases their grasped hands and sticks her arms out in a low invitation. "How about now?"

He knows—he knows—his heart is not physically swelling from overwhelming fondness. His syncopated heartbeat is not arrhythmia. He requires no medical attention… but the sight of his adorable fiance and her cheeky but earnest ploys for his affection wreaks just so much havoc on his constitution.

He can't smile, or blush, or do something else with his face to betray that affection, but he doesn't have to. That isn't what she's asking for.

He wraps her up in intentional, unhurried movements, and he's rewarded with the squeeze of her arms around him. It's as grounding and reassuring as it always has been.

"I can't say I fully understand what you're worried about," she murmurs right below his ear, "but I can say I'm just as in love with you now as I was six years ago. I can also say that I know you love me, too."

He does. He doesn't say it nearly as often or as easily as she does, but he loves her.

"So how about this," she continues. "I show you love the way I know how, and you show me love the way you know how, and we can make up for the difference with honesty." It is framed like a proposal, but she speaks like she already knows how he'll respond.

Maybe she does.

"I can agree to those terms," he says as a formality, and she hugs him tighter.

Maybe she is the foremost, citable, preeminent authority on all things Tendo Kairi.

~~~

A/N (7.26.2023): Believe it or not, this was only supposed to be around 500 words…

The location I picked for Nanase's community nursing study abroad program is Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe (Havelhöhe Community Hospital) in Germany, which is a small academic teaching hospital in a very suburban area of Berlin and actually practises community nursing. It's associated with Charité, one of Europe's biggest university hospitals and the primary hospital in Berlin, which makes it even more likely to actually host a study abroad nursing program. (It does not in real life, though. The Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe mostly trains doctors, not nurses.)

Kairi's joke about it being half of a hospital is because the first two syllables of the neighbourhood it's located in, Havelhöhe (hæ-fu-heu-eh), is pronounced like how the English word 'half' is pronounced in Japanese.

[biblioflyer]

What is Picard's narrative style?

Just sort of thinking aloud here, but I'm finding myself rather baffled by a particular sort of response to Jack Crusher that seems to be a reaction to a saccharine, uncritical adoration of him that I'm somehow completely unaware of. Maybe there's a huge area of the web that is fawning over Jack that I'm just not seeing because of the whims of the algorithm.

I have a feeling this reaction might be dependent on what framework people are looking at the show through and whether its the classic Trek framing of pulp drama and "protagonist centric morality" where Jack is somehow supposed to make us feel seen and be presumed to be correct in all things.

Which I think flies in the face of the sort of "prestige drama" framing of the streaming era where the protagonists are limited and fallible and while they may be motivated by high minded principles, adhering to those principles is not always easy: see also Crusher and Picard talking themselves into executing Vadic or Seven executing the gangster in season one, and the right course of action is not always obvious. I strongly believe that this is the more appropriate way to analyze Seasons One and Two of Picard, and I suspect Discovery becomes a richer series if one adopts this posture.

Speaking of which, this is all very reminiscent of criticism of Burnham oddly enough, which makes it extra odd and ironic because it also seems to be rooted in lingering anger over how the fandom has responded to Burnham and a perceived hypocrisy in the reception of Jack. Don't get me wrong, I got to like the guy even though I dislike both the secret lovechild trope and the messiah antichrist trope, but if I had thought I was supposed to assume he's objectively correct about everything and uber special, that would not have been the case.

If the assumption is that characters like Burnham and Jack are pulp action heroes then yes, the entire plot falls apart like a house of cards because they repeatedly do very poorly thought out things that turn out through happenstance to have been the right move after all for reasons no one could reasonably predict ahead of time. Additionally the plot winds up centering them as a key element in saving or condemning the Federation, the galaxy etc.

However! Greek tragedies involving Fate with a capital F also deal in self fulfilling prophecies and narratives that are going to fulfill themselves no matter how the characters try to resist. Some of the darkest stories humanity has ever told involved predestination paradoxes.

Which to me means that if we are to assume that modern Star Trek is more like The Expanse, Babylon 5, or even Deep Space Nine; absolutely no one should be assuming Jack is supposed to be an audience surrogate. He's just another mortal flailing his way through the story who didn't ask to be a chess piece in a Borg Xanatos gambit and, if anything, keeps trying to get people to stop dying in his stead.

People who are making these choices are very explicitly doing it not because Jack is uniquely deserving, but because he's not. The argument advanced time and again is that of solidarity. That actually the Vulcans are wrong and throwing people to the wolves because it would be more efficient from a consequentialist view is an error.

Now you don't have to buy that and I don't think Picard S3 actually did a great job of making this argument (major credit to Todd Stashwick for making what could easily have been yet another in a long line of Starfleet antagonists who have taken consequentialism too far and made him seem like the smartest guy in the room a lot of the time.)

But! If you think for instance that Turkey ought to be kicked out of NATO for its treatment of the Kurds with full recognition of the potential of earthquakes in the geopolitics of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East, or that the US is right to risk nuclear war to help Ukraine*: then there is an argument for sending a message to bad guys that there are people who will put skin in the game because its the right thing to do even if the risks are extreme. You could even make consequentialist arguments for following one's conscience that are rooted in solidarity and inspiring better behavior from others who may be inclined towards timidity.

*You are free to disagree with either of these propositions if that disagreement is rooted in reality and a legible ethical argument, I'm mainly using these as analogies rather than trying to sell the reader on them. The what, hows, whys, and other contingencies of geopolitics are fussy, the consequence vast, and I don't mean to flatten them.

Admittedly the debate over individualism vs consequentialism and Jack's narrative role is an argument that I think would have been strengthened if the series hadn't done an abrupt 180 on the recurring themes of the validity of people trying to solve problems on their own without having to be in Starfleet.

But there again, I get what was trying to be signaled by putting Jack, Raffi, and Seven on the bridge: Starfleet is turning the corner on excessive proceduralism. Which incidentally forgets that at several points in the narrative, the entire season might have been derailed if people had listened to Shaw, although I'm not unaware of the counter arguments about solidarity, humanity, and standing up to bullies....these just weren't arguments that were made well.

[emmettsmantiddies]

A Goodbye

it’s been literal years since i’ve posted on this account, but i have been thinking about and reflecting upon my time as a Twilight Content Creator™. i’m going to be talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly, so brace yourselves. everything is under the squiggly line.

i started this account to send twilight memes to my best friend and keep them all in one place. I started making silly little memes as a joke, and then kept making them for enjoyment. I was really isolated during COVID, as i have an autoimmune disease, and then i had a lot of major things happen in my real life that caused me to seek even more solace within the fandom and the connections i made online.

i wrote a fanfic, and to this day i’m proud of it. i don’t think i’ll ever make the sequels i planned on, but the door is always open. 

i met some amazing people, and was invited into a group. it was one of the first times i felt a sense of belonging and like i was integral to a group. maybe that’s self aggrandizing a bit, but hey, this is a goodbye post, so i should be allowed to, i think. 

it’s actually this group that i’ve been thinking about lately. i want to make it clear that my actions and reactions are on me, but that’s it. this will come into play later. this also isn’t about clearing my name or anything like that. i think i need to write this and send it for some closure to myself. 

as time went on, i slowly started changing, and not always for the better. i think my real life had a lot to do with it, but it also had to do with me. i was using the group as escapism, and rather than see the group as just that--a group, i treated it like ‘holly and ensemble’ which was incredibly wrong of me. i sincerely regret how self-centered i was at that time. i also look back at who i was and i’m not happy with her. i’ve changed (thankfully) and i truly believe i’m a better person. i took jokes too far, made poor comments, and caused real harm to people i cared about.

but as is common in groups, slowly it becomes more of a hivemind. this group was no exception--and this is not in any way me trying to escape culpability or shade anyone. we were all complicit. a lot of little incidents and grievances piled up without being addressed and boiled over after i made, admittedly, bad and ignorant takes and doubled down on them. by the end of my time there, it was no longer ‘let’s discuss this issue’ but ‘this issue has one answer and if you don’t agree you’re ‘<insert -ism of choice here>’.

once i caused that lid to open, the toothpaste was unconditionally and irrevocably out of the tube. what followed was a messy friendship break up. i take full responsibility for my actions, and have learned and grown in the 2+ years since then. i discussed this incident in therapy lately, and something my therapist told me was that “you are not responsible for other people’s feelings. you are not responsible for other people’s actions.” so while yes, i messed up in a major, major way, a lot of the stuff that went down after my attempts to apologize and do everything in my power to rectify the situation was not on me. that’s hard and honestly scary to admit. because when you have so many people telling you that “you are x, you did y, you caused z” you believe it. especially on the internet. 

i gained and then lost a lot of the people i considered friends on the internet. and while that may not seem consequential--as they’re internet friends, a lot of them came into (and subsequently left) my life at a turbulent time. i felt completely isolated after. now i’m sure people will say, ‘boohoo, you said ignorant stuff you deserve that’ but i have a hard time believing that when your friend makes terrible decisions, you just drop them. it’s a lot easier to do on the internet than in real life. it’s also a lot easier to make things fit your narrative. everyone has a narrative. the truth is somewhere in the middle. the fact of the matter is that i was not the only one making those jokes, i was not the only one going hard towards other people, but i was the one who took the fall for most of it (this does not include some of the comments i made, this is about some of the less major things i was called out for). again, i cannot be responsible for other people’s emotions or reactions. i don’t want this to come across as defensive, but after two years i can realize that i was done dirty. if you do not bring something to another person’s attention, they cannot do anything to fix it. period. if you don’t say something because you are too scared to upset someone--that is on you. by the same token, you are not responsible for how someone reacts when you bring something up. you are not responsible for the fallout when you set boundaries and those boundaries are broken.  

i’m actually physically shaking writing this. that is how much anxiety and fear i have developed when talking about what happened. i finally had the nerve to read through what people said about me in the tags. regardless of what anyone says, there are two sides to every story. one side may be blatantly right, but that does not negate the fact that there are two sides. the fact of the matter is people will believe the first side to come out because they feel the other party has something to hide. i am honestly terrified of what will happen when i do post this. this group knew everything about me, my name, address, etc. and even though i haven’t been involved with any of them for years, i still have that fear of retaliation. i don’t think they ever would, but i also never thought i’d be in a callout situation (we as a group had discussed on many occasions how we would never do that to each other). i don’t want to minimize the hurt and pain i caused others, but also looking at it from the grand scheme of things, i made some offhand, harmful jokes and statements, doubled down, but then learned from them. that is all you can ask of people. i will not pretend that i am the poster child for ‘what to do when called out’ because again--i was self-centered and unyielding at first. but if we as a whole do not allow people the space to grow, there’s no motivation to change and a fear of being wrong and avoiding tough conversations. that doesn’t mean anyone is entitled to forgiveness, but someone should not be held back from continuing to better themselves.

if i could go back, i would’ve handled the situation differently. i would’ve asked for more time before having a major conversation, as emotions were flying high and the result wasn’t nearly as productive as it could’ve been. decisions i made in the moment were held against me, but the same decisions were seen as justified in other people’s hands. 

i have so many good memories from that group, and i still think about them with fondness. i also have bad memories from my mistakes and mishandling of the situation. both can coexist. i want to thank the people of that group and of my broader ring of mutuals (both current and former) for the laughs, conversations, and friendship, however brief it was. to the chat: thank you so much for all of the support you gave me during the hardest time in my life, i am forever grateful for that. i genuinely do not believe that i would be where i am if not for all of you. as strange as it may be, thank you for the call out. i may not agree with the methods, but at the end of the day, it did open my eyes and give me the opportunity for some serious self reflection (not the kind that happens 3 days after a major incident) (that’s a dig at myself) and now i’m a better person because of it. i apologize for all of the pain i caused. i absolutely despise goodbyes, so i will simply wish you peace and happiness and healing in all of your endeavors. 

i wish everyone who ever followed me, interacted with me, or glanced at my silly little blog nothing but the best, and i hope that you have grace for those who make mistakes and poor decisions. i will be logging out after i post this, but i will not delete my blog. sometimes i like to reminisce and have a chuckle at the content i’ve made.

For anyone curious about Wilbur, he’s doing well and is still the best menace to society.

Much love,

Holly, formerly known as emmettmantiddies

[ryancrossfield]

overcome self-sabotage

Self-sabotage is a complex phenomenon that manifests when we consciously or unconsciously deny ourselves the opportunity to meet our innermost needs. Often, this occurs because we doubt our capacity to manage these needs effectively. This behavior is not just detrimental to our growth, but it is also an indication that our internal narrative is outdated, limiting, or simply incorrect.

The process of self-sabotage often stems from a negative association between achieving the goals we aspire to and the perceived person we must become to attain these goals. This is made more complex by the discomfort of unfamiliarity. Anything new, regardless of its potential benefits, will initially be uncomfortable until it becomes familiar. Unfortunately, this discomfort is often misconstrued as being "wrong," "bad," or "ominous," when it is merely a psychological adjustment phase.

Psychologist Gay Hendricks refers to this discomfort as hitting your "upper limit," the point at which you've reached your tolerance for happiness. Everyone has this threshold, a capacity for which they allow themselves to feel good. This concept aligns with what other psychologists refer to as a person's "baseline" - a set predisposition that they eventually revert to, even if certain events or circumstances temporarily shift it.

Interestingly, we tend to find comfort in the familiar, even if it does not serve our happiness or growth. Small shifts, compounded over time, can result in permanent baseline adjustments, but they often don't stick because we hit our upper limits. As soon as our circumstances extend beyond the amount of happiness we're accustomed to, we subconsciously find ways to bring ourselves back to a state we're comfortable with.

In some cases, these self-limiting beliefs arise from a need for self-preservation. Perhaps this is why we might prefer the known to the vulnerability of the unknown, why we might prefer apathy to excitement, or believe that suffering makes us more worthy. It might even explain why we think that for every good thing in life, there must also be an accompanying "bad."

To truly heal and move beyond self-sabotage, it's essential to alter these thought patterns. This change requires becoming acutely aware of negative and false beliefs and shifting to a mindset that serves us better. However, this change also demands honesty about our current state. We must love ourselves enough to refuse to settle for less than we deserve.

The greatest act of self-love is no longer accepting a life we are unhappy with. It requires confronting our problems directly, honestly, and straightforwardly. The first step to real change involves writing down everything you aren't happy with, clarifying every problem you face. Whether it's financial struggles, self-image issues, or anxiety, achieving clarity about what's wrong is the foundation for change. At this juncture, you have a choice: make peace or commit to changing. Lingering in indecision only prolongs the state of being stuck.

It's important to recognize that we don't reach a breaking point because of a single or a few negative events. We reach a breaking point when we finally accept that the problem isn't the world; it is how we interact with it. This realization is a beautiful reckoning to have, as Ayodeji Awosika explains, it involves finding the purest form of being fed up and making a commitment to change.

People are naturally guided by comfort. They gravitate towards what feels familiar and resist what doesn't, even if the unfamiliar could be objectively better for them. The majority of people do not actually change their lives until the discomfort of not changing becomes unbearable. This usually means they don't truly face the difficulty of altering their habits until they have no other choice.

One of the significant barriers to doing important internal work is the fear of the consequential life changes. If they confront their unhappiness, it might mean experiencing temporary discomfort, shame, or fear as they start over. Yet, this discomfort is an essential stepping stone towards profound healing and personal growth.

Remember, what you stand to lose in this process is merely what was constructed for a person you no longer are. Clinging to your old life is the ultimate act of self-sabotage, and releasing it is the first crucial step towards real change.

In summary, self-sabotage is a reflection of our internal struggles, outdated narratives, and fear of the unknown. However, with conscious effort, self-awareness, and the courage to change, it's possible to break free from this damaging cycle. The journey may be challenging, filled with moments of discomfort and fear, but the reward is a life that truly aligns with your desires, values, and a true sense of self-love.

[coraniaid]

Thinking about Xander's Lie again after rereading this essay. I definitely agree that the lack of narrative follow-up it gets is a problem with later seasons, not with Becoming itself.

It would have been nice to have it discussed at some point in Season 3, and there are actually several episodes where it's strange it doesn't come up. I can imagine it being central to (a radically different/better version of) Dead Man's Party for example, or perhaps being talked about in Amends (the latter episode already features Xander apologizing to Buffy for some of his earlier behaviour re:Angel, after all, and it would have only taken a couple of lines of dialogue to cover the Lie as well).

In any event, it should have been a lot more consequential than it was allowed to be. We see Buffy tell Giles and Willow that Willow's spell worked, but we never see her complain about the 'fact' that Willow didn't try to warn her it was coming. That should matter, shouldn't it? On a show that cared more about inter-season continuity, I think it would have mattered.

That said, I think the one callback to the Lie we do get in iater seasons -- in Season 7's Sefless -- is worse than 'insufficient', and I'd have been much happier if it wasn't included there at all.

Mainly because ... well, this is the entirety of the callback:

Buffy: I killed Angel […] I loved him […] and I put a sword through his heart. Because I had to. [...] Do you remember cheering me on? Both of you. Do you remember giving me Willow's message: 'kick his ass'?

Willow: I never said that--

... and that's it. The conversation moves on. We don't ever come back to this. The Lie is never exposed.

The problem I have with this is that, before Selfless, it's possible to just handwave the lack of discussion of the Lie away. Either Buffy didn't actually think about it that much (which is why she never brings it up again), or perhaps it was something that got resolved off-screen. But Sefless makes two things canon:

Buffy did remember it, and it's something she's been dwelling on for years;

Xander has never confessed to the Lie, and Buffy and Willow have never spoken about it before.

While this doesn't contradict anything we've seen on screen, it puts it into focus in a way I'm not sure works very well. Is it really credible that Buffy wouldn't have discussed something like this with her best friend, despite all the times they must have talked about Angel after he came back? Would Buffy really accept without question that Willow would simultaenously work to restore Angel's soul and encourage Buffy to just kill him and not stall for time? If we believe that, then what does that mean for their relationship? Nothing good, I think.

And the show does this for what? For a throwaway reference that none of the characters will ever talk about again. After all, at the end of this episode, Buffy still hasn't found out the truth about the Lie. So what's the point of this exchange? Just to say to the audience "hey, wow, wasn't it weird that we never brought this up before?" How is the episode Selfless improved by this?