#kinda tangentially but it does apply I think

[gravityoflight]

Hey! Can you share some interesting, weird or funny insights about being a psych major? 😊

Ah! I'm not very far in, yet, but in my Psychology of Discrimination and Bias class, I learned that a person who is actively trying to apply less stereotypical thinking will succeed.

There's a few steps to how stereotypes exist and are used in the brain.

First, there's the learning of them; this is what happens when you constantly see Black people portrayed as violent gang members in media, what happens when you see trans women portrayed variously as predators/pathetic/deceivers (Julia Serano's Whipping Girl expands very well on this trinity, and is a book I would generally recommend), what happens when autistic people are all Rain Man or Temple Grandin (to whom I bear no grudge! I think she's a delightful woman, and did well to manage her own autistic traits with no proper support from her family).

Then, there's the activation step- say you're a neurotypical out shopping for groceries, and you've been chatting with your cashier as they scan through your order. You mention your autistic child or friend, and the cashier (who hasn't seemed to have trouble with the small talk with which you've been engaging them, and has made occasional eye contact between weighing your produce) says "oh, I'm autistic!"

(ID: a greyscale image of Robert Downey Jr. in a fancy suit, indicating himself with a hand to his chest and a mildly surprised expression, accompanied by the text "I'm the cashier")

Instantly, whether or not you intend it, your brain looks up the information you have about autistic people, true or untrue- Rain Man, Temple Grandin, your child or your friend. This is called "stereotype activation".

Next, you apply this knowledge to the cashier- and it's true, they haven't made steady eye contact at any point, and their voice is a little monotonous (though clearly friendly). Their autistic traits are subtle, but you can understand how they might be! "You don't seem autistic," you tell them, and they suppress a sigh; this is something they've heard a lot. This is stereotype application, as well as acting on it (in a manner likely intended to be complimentary, but the stereotype application is clear nonetheless).

But let's say you're doing your best to learn about autism, or neurodivergence in general, so you stop, and instead of saying "you don't seem autistic", you put your preconceptions away and say something like "oh, thank you for telling me!" TL;DR: If a person is motivated to not apply the stereotypes they've learned, it might activate in the back of their mind (that shit's hard to unlearn), but it's in not applying it that progress is made.

This is a neat fact I learned in one of my psych classes, which fits in with what I had already hoped was true, and it makes me happy that it's scientifically proven. ^^

[destinysbounty]

Ok how do u explain Lloyds hair color. Bc I'm pretty sure blonde hair isn't a dominant gene, and both of Lloyds parents have brown hair. Did he bleach it??? How??? Where would he get those resources he's like 8 in S1 and also homeless. Actually on that note what color do u think the FSM's hair was. Because ONE of the siblings has a different one than him. I've always thought the FSM's hair was blonde, bc when it greys out it's so pale, and also because angst in the way of Garmadon being different from his family from the start, but like. How would Garm have gotten the brown hair. Do they have a mom or did the FSM perform mitosis???? AND ALSO Garmadon's hair whites out and doesn't grey out despite him being a brunette (and later having black hair but that's bc of the Venom Influence) so. What's up with that. Also why does Wu's hair go white so early we know he was born with blonde hair. And why doesn't it apply to Lloyd too. What's happening. Where am I.

Right off the bat, lets dispel a common genetics misconception. Yes, its true that when a dominant and recessive gene get paired up, the dominant gene will be presented. You're also correct that blonde is recessive and brown is dominant. However! Like all things in biology, its a bit more complicated than that.

To simplify a surprisingly complicated science to the best of my ability, think of it like this. Although you will typically present based on whatever is the most dominant genes you inherited, you are still a carrier of sorts for the recessive genes. So Garmadon has brown hair, but his father and brother are both blonde, which means he has the potential to be a carrier for the blonde gene.

Then there's Misako, who is also a brunette. We don't know what her parents looked like, but lets say one of them was blonde. Even if she presents as brunette, she could still carry the recessive blonde gene.

When both parents are carriers for the same recessive gene, there's generally gonna be a 1 in 4 chance of their child presenting recessive rather than dominant. So, if we assume one of Misako's ancestors was blonde, then Lloyd being blonde is entirely likely.

This is a depressingly oversimplified summary of the situation, but I'm too lazy to get into the nitty grittys. Feel free to look up 'punnett squares' if you wanna learn more!

You do present a fascinating question, though: where did Garmadon get his brown hair?

Scientifically, the only explanation I can think of would be if Wu and Garm had a birth-mother of some kind. But i personally don't like that explanation because it just makes canon way more complicated than it needs to be. Tangentially, I'm also an "FSM Asexually Reproduced" truther all the way. I refuse to consider the possibility of the FSM having procreated with another person. That man either laid an egg or did some kinda mitosis shenanigan and you absolutely cannot convince me otherwise.

Luckily, we have the luxury of considering nonscientific alternatives.

To understand a more magic- and lore-based approach to the question of the hair colors present int his family, let's first take a look at the family tree:

FSM - blonde (as far as we can guess, at least). Half-dragon, half-oni. Also has godly powers of Creation and Destruction.

Garmadon - brunette. Has inherited the powers of Destruction.

Wu - blonde. Has inherited powers of Creation.

Lloyd - blonde. Has inherited a power very similar to the FSM, in that it's Creation-adjacent (listen, if you have a better way to describe Green fucking Energy, then by all means correct me).

Do you see where I'm going with this? Within the context of the FSM and his bloodline, it would not be entirely unreasonable to assume that blonde hair is in some way affiliated with the draconic half of their bloodline, whereas brown hair is more so affiliated with the oni half of their bloodline. So an individual's hair color may not necessarily be determined solely by standard genetics like a normal human would, but rather by which part of their bloodline they take after more strongly.

In this interpretation, Lloyd being blonde can be seen as a visual shorthand to represent how he has taken more so after his uncle/grandfather in terms of powerset and moral alignment.

Personally, I think both of these explanations are equally valid. That being said, it should be noted that a lot of this discussion operates on the assumption that Ninjagian genetics work in any way similar to ours. For all we know, blonde could be the in-universe dominant trait and brown could be recessive. The possibilities are endless.

I mean, c'mon. It's a fantasy story where the world was created by spinning around really fast. Lloyd canonically has shapeshifting powers, for crying out loud. I feel like him being blonde is completely within the realm of possibility, even without the scientific explanation. I feel like holding this series to any standard of scientific fidelity is just downright silly.

Anyway, thanks for the ask! Hope those answers were to your liking <3

[rachelsshowerthoughts]

Not Aware AU exactly but kinda tangential. I always toyed with this idea of "Kagami was transferred into Adrien's class when she joined the school."

This could be in S2, or be because Tomoe saw Adrien was attending school and she's got those later season machinations & sends Kagami to make sure he's not snagged by a gold digger.

(In the former case its just in S2, while in the latter it starts after Princess Fragrance.)

This was fine and fun at first, but Kagami is more willing to start shit with Chloe & much less patient with Adrien's continued softness.

Plus, Adrien can't really explain why he's fond of Chloe cos its a mixture between he can't imagine his life without her (Sibling coded) & stuff like, "She was there for me when mom disappeared & got me into school".

This leads to her at some point losing her patience and dragging both off to a classroom and basically saying "Either she needs to improve or you need to drop her, because this cannot go on."

You'd expect it to be a two on one but Adrien's efforts to play peacemaker lead to Kagami arguing with him as well.

Then when one of Chloe's major blows lands hard against Adrien, "Our parents harm more people every day than I do in a year and you still love them, hypocrites!"

It does nothing to Kagami, because she doesn't love her mother, she respects her, obeys her and fears her wrath but she doesn't love her even a little and she assumed Adrien was the same.

He is not the same & is in fact kind of defensive of his father at such a blatant rejection of one's own family and how uncomfortable it makes him.

It basically descends from there, cos I love slow burns but sometimes its just like, "Hmm what if they all started screaming their issues that they do not realize are issues at the top of their lungs?"

None of these kids know therapy talk so their languages on it is already going to be shit even before we remember literally not a one of them has much in the way of healthy communication or good social skills outside of formal events so:

So you have Chloe defending stuff like destroying Roses' letter because "That's how Mama handles it when I give her bad gifts, she's telling me to do better and one day I'll get it right!" As well as "Why would Papa want to see me when he doesn't need me for something? He's not a lunatic control freak like your parents."

Then you have Adrien defending stuff like, "I know my dads cold and has impossible standards and barely lets me do anything I want but he is protective and just wants what's best for me!" & "My mom was always kind to me, she was perfect even if she never let me go out or have a birthday either!"

& Kagami defending Tomoe with, "It doesn't matter how I feel about Adrien, or my instructions, I act as I do because it is for the good of my family. My emotions, my life don't matter at all before that duty!"

So its just three incredibly fucked up abused kids steadily airing each others and their own families laundry list of abusive traits and experiences under the pretext of saying "No my family is normal & OK yours is the bad one" and "How dare you call 'that' bad, when your parent does this!"

(Also Chloe may think Gabriel killed Emilie or otherwise would rather have Adrien sealed in amber forever than as an actual living boy,)

With this continuing until it either gets physical or they basically collapse.

Meanwhile the class is just watching in mounting horror and disgust and discomfort. (Nino is likely especially pissed) Like even with Chloe it may not justify her behavior but it puts so much of it in a new deeply messed up context where it kind of makes sense she doesn't even know how to be nice.

To quote a friend of mine:

The rich kids have taken knives to each other. They've cut open their festering wounds. The rot is exposed, scrubbed raw. While they lie angry, bleeding, crying, and dying [inside], they have the opportunity to look upon themselves once more and apply new dressings.

I can see it, but unless Gabriel is ACTUALLY out of the country, all three get Akumatized. My thoughts are a weird mix Grimm Brothers Fairytales - Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel, etc. Not in specific, but like. More fairytale tropes?

Adrien is the "Cinderella"-style. Rapunzel, Snow White-style, "One Day My Prince Will Come"-style. The type of character that has to sacrifice and sacrifice, and will eventually be rewarded. If he does one more photo shoot, one more public appearance, *scrubs one more floor*, his father will finally love him. He'll finally have the happy ending he wants. He just has to stick it out - cause his dad DOES love him, right? (As a possession, if at all.)

Chloé is more of the "Trials"-style. Complete this mission-style. Knit twelve sweaters from nettles, and your brothers will become human again. Find the right goose, and get set free. Defeat the evil witch, and the spell is broken. If Chloé tries hard enough, does and says the right things, her parents will love her, show her affection. She'll finally be worth something. (All of it performative and shallow, until they raise the bar to another impossible height. Always keeping her dependant on them.)

Kagami, weirdly, I see as more endurance, or contract style - like a flipped version of Adrien. She isn’t really trying to "change" her situation the way Chloé or Adrien are, (for value of "trying to change it", ie, playing along with their parents games because that’s all they know to do) she's accepted this is the way it is, and is simply trying to endure it. Go through the motions. Hold up your end of the bargain. Work within the bonds of your deal, to do as little harm as you can, while still fulfilling your end. One day, you'll be out. You'll be free. (As if her mother will ever set her free.)

[internetgiraffekid1673]

Musings on How I Experience Love

A.K.A. I learned about a queer identity, and it made me have thoughts about my own identity that are only tangentially related, and I didn't want to derail existing posts.

TL;DR at the bottom.

Introduction

Ya'll. I just learned about a thing called aplatonicism. Aplatonic. Does not experience platonic attraction. And it got me thinking.

To be clear, while I am super happy for and very supportive of all the aplatonics out there, I am not aplatonic. I have a number of friends and I feel all my feelings about my friends very strongly. Probably more strongly than most of them tbh.

Buuuuut, learning that this was a thing made me start poking at how I experience ALL my types of connection with people.

So, consider this post an exploration of my queerness and my relationships in general. If anyone has labels they'd like to introduce, please come forth. I find comfort in labels, and they're kinda fun.

BTW, this is all coming from someone who identifies as aroace and/or asexual arospec.

Familial Love:

If I had to list the most important and valued relationships in my life, all the top spots would go to family members. This is reflected in my day-to-day behavior.

My friends will have to wait hours or days before I can build up the emotional fortitude to text them back, and I find myself dreading receiving texts from them. With my family, I will initiate conversation, text them for no reason, open my phone in the hopes of having recieved texts from them, and feel immense relief when I see the text is from them and not a friend.

I can receive calls from my family without immediately panicking and spend literal hours on the phone with them, where I can barely stomach a few minutes from friends (I have phone anxiety).

I will cancel in person meetings with friends IN EXCHANGE for in person meetings or phone calls with family if I am having a bad day.

I trust my family with information I don't trust my friends with.

When I am home and I have the option to, I will spend more hours of the day being around my family than being by myself, despite being introverted. The same consideration does not apply to friends.

My family is allowed to upset me in ways that my friends are not. I still adore my family and easily forgive them after they push certain boundaries and triggers, but I won't even keep talking to a friend who does that.

Large gatherings of people I know well and consider friends are intimidating and draining. Large gatherings of people I have accepted as family, even if we haven't spoken in years and I don't know them too well, are exciting and relaxing.

All of these things combined make me inclined to conclude that I experience familial love much more strongly than platonic love. I progress from "like" to "love" much easier with family than with friends, I feel more strongly about my family than I do about any of my friends, I will choose family over friendship every time. I've developed a couple of friends over the years that I've become exceptionally close to, and I literally refer to them as "my second family" or "like my siblings."

This is. . .interesting to me, and was sparked by learning about aplatonics. I discovered aplatonicism when I stumbled across a couple aplatonic tumblr blogs, and all the ones I happened upon specified that they were "loveless," indivudiuals whi didn't experience familial love either. But, they still introduced the concept of thinking about platonic love and familial love as separate.

I'm wondering if anyone has words to describe feeling familial love really extra strongly, even if you also experience platonic attraction and are decidely not aplatonic? Oh, also, I have social anxiety, but it isn't really triggered by family members, where it is easily and frequently triggered by friends. I have been overstimulated to the point of tears at large family gatherings before, but it was only with people I literally had no memories of and did not mentally consider family.

Also, I'm not really sure how my brain classifies "family." It certainly isn't "people I've lived with," since there are at least 3 of those that don't count, and most of my extended family does. It obviously isn't "people I'm biologically related to," because of in-laws and legal guardian situations that I do count, but it also isn't "people I am/was legally related to," because a lot of legal extended family that I've never met or just don't talk to don't count in my brain, including people that I technically have a closer legal relationship with than people who count as family. It's some combination of a bunch of factors, and I can't even name most of them.

Basically, familial love is much higher and much stronger in my emotional hierarchy than any other type of love, including platonic friendship, and I find that noteworthy.

Platonic Love:

So, as mentioned in the introductory section, I think I feel my feelings about platonic love/attraction more strongly than the people on the other side of those relationships.

However, I don't think this actually has much to do with my attraction level. I think it's a symptom of allonormativity. Almost all my friends are allorose, and I think this influences the way they view friendships in general. Friendships are generally considered a less valuable, less intense, less committed kind of relationship by an allonormative society. They're like an in-between step between strangers and a romantic/sexual relationship, and people don't really consider that they can both give and take just as much as those other types of connection.

Any friendship involves an obligation. A social contract of things you do for each other. An unspoken agreement that you'll care about and put effort towards each other. They take just as much work and care to maintain as any sort of romantic/sexual relationship will. For people who experience platonic attraction, they also provide connection, safety, emotional fulfillment, enjoyment, happiness, and all the other things that are also affiliated with romantic/sexual relationships.

As an aroace person, friendships and familial connections fully provide all my emotional needs. I don't need or want a "higher" relationship. And when I look at the people in my life who are or were involved in a romantic relationship, some of them continued to put more effort towards and recieve more fulfillment from their friendships than from their romance.

So, I place a lot of importance on my platonic love and affection for my friends, especially those that edge towards that "second family" territory. For those not in that zone, though, I think they would generally consider friendships nice, but far more casual and less important and all-consuming as romantic love. Even if we do experience the same levels of attraction towards and affection for each other, they place less importance on it because they have other emotional needs that are not being met and that society values more.

These thoughts also developed from reading about aplatonics, by the way, and their frustrations with the fact that because friendship is undervalued, people don't extend the same care towards forming and maintaining friendships as they do towards romantic and sexual relationships. People don't ask if they can be your friends as adults, and they don't really do platonic DTRs to determine how much you can reasonably expect from each other. That means an aplatonic who has no interest in being friends with people will suddenly be shoved in this box that comes with all these expectations and they DID NOT sign up for it.

I also have experienced strong queer platonic attraction towards at least one person, and I would use the aromantic term "squish" to define how I feel about this person. If I didn't know that this person is allorose and actively seeking a romantic partnership with someone, I would want to platonically date this person, and we have already acknowledged that our relationship is fully platonic but exceptionally close, and we like it that way.

Romantic Love

In my intro, you may have noticed that I identify as aromantic AND/OR arospec. This is mostly because I am relatively new to identifying myself as aromantic, and I don't have a whole lot of experience with thinking about how I feel about romance through this lens. I only discovered aromanticism was a thing like a year and a half ago, and I have only been exploring the label and identifying with it for a few months.

Before learning about aromanticism, I would hear about romance and crushes and think, "Huh, I've never felt that way. Oh well, I'm sure I will eventually." Now that I know this isn't necessarily true, I have some mixed up feelings.

I have never felt romantic attraction towards anybody. The question comes in my DESIRE for that attraction/relationship. I feel like I could happily live my entire life without a romantic relationship. But, I also wouldn't be upset if I developed romantic attraction for a close friend and entered a romantic relationship with them. That idea isn't bad for me, and I find myself enjoying the thought, even if I don't wish for it and have no desire to seek one out.

However, a lot of the things people consider part of a romantic relationship are things I would do with a QPR. I know I'm not feeling whatever it is they're feeling, and I know I wouldn't behave in the same way, but I can't exactly verbalize those behavioral differences. Just some examples:

Going on dates: I would 100% platonically date someone and actually already do. I also do familial dates. Both these things involve planning a specific time to go do stuff with a specific individual just to be with them because we both like being around each other and we want to spend time together and do things that make the other person happy. If it is a person I have established a touchy-feely relationship with, it will also involve all of the touchy things we do together. With my parents, this is up to and including pecks on the lips and holding hands. With my squish, this regularly goes up to cuddling and laying right next to or partially on top of each other.

Touching each other, even when not on dates. I am a very touchy-feely person. Touch is my love language, but how much I am comfortable touching a person depends.

My parents kiss me, but in the same way you kiss a baby or a puppy. This includes on the lips sometimes. That would feel weird with anyone else, but it feels nice, normal, and affectionate with them.

He never has, but I wouldn't be uncomfortable with my brother kissing my hair or my forehead, which is something my extended family does pretty frequently (aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc.). I don't think I would feel uncomfortable if my squish or my second family friends kissed my hair or forehead, but I'd feel pretty weird if any of my other friends did it.

I don't mind holding hands with my family, my second family, or my squish either, even if that isn't my preferred form of contact (I like something a bit more solid).

I hug everyone who is okay with it. Anybody who likes hugs and has made this known to me gets hugs from me. The same can be applied to cuddling, hair petting, etc.

While I don't tickle other people, I am very ticklish and enjoy getting tickled by people I am physically affectionate with. Anyone who gets forehead kiss privileges gets tickle privileges.

I was in scouts and speech and debate and consider sleeping in the same bed a non-intimate activity. It would feel weird if they're significantly younger or older than me and not family, but as long as we're similar in age, I'll share a bed with a total stranger. We'll probably even end out cuddling in our sleep since I'm a little heat leech when I'm sleeping.

Dancing: I'll happily do anything from formal waltz to intimate tango with family, second family, or squish. I will feel only sort of weird about doing it with friends, acquaintances, and strangers at events that are made for that kind of thing. The more formal the dance, the closer to sort of weird we get. Intimate latin tango? Kinda weird, but not awful if nobody MAKES it weird. Old timey jig? Honestly, it's pretty normal.

Buying Gifts: I don't really buy gifts for other people unless it's their birthday or Christmas, but my friends get handmade presents all the time.

Flirting. While I'd feel really put off by a stranger flirting with me, my friends and I jokingly flirt all the time. In high school, I had a friend who would greet me every day with variations of "Hey sugar lips, nice eybrows." While I have only engaged in this behavior with my straight female friends (I'm a woman), I wouldn't feel uncomfortable if my female-attracted friends of any variety did this too. It would be really, really weird if anyone did it seriously, though.

Sharing drinks/food. I already do this platonically all the time. The only reason I don't share straws with friends is because we're all the age where none of us can guarantee we don't have mono unless we've been recently tested. I do share straws with my family if none of us are currently sick.

Marriage. I would marry my QPP and/or best friend. I know I would like to raise kids if I am ever emotionally capable, and I want to do it with a partner. I would love to live with someone I'm platonically attracted to until the end of time and would appreciate the benefits of legal civil union. That opening sequence in Up called "Married Life?" Apart from the actual making out and implied sex, I would do literally all of that in a platonic relationship. I don't think I NEED it to be happy, but it certainly feels like something I WANT (as opposed to an actual romantic relationship).

So basically, I have no desire for a romantic relationship, but I am not repulsed by the idea, and a lot of the trappings of a romantic relationship are actually something I'm interested in platonically. People with labels come forth!

I also am not freaked out by other people in romances. I have no issues with my friends being lovey dovey with their partners around me, although unless they're really REALLY obvious about it, I won't be able to tell their dating without verbal confirmation. I dislike most romance plots and subplots in fiction, but I can also think of a lot that I enjoy (almost all of which lack sexual elements as well).

Sexual Love

I am very VERY ace. I have absolutely no desire or interest in sex. I have never had a desire. I can't picture myself EVER having a desire. I am disgusted by the thought of myself ever having sex by any definition of the word, including just kissing in a mildly erotic manner. I feel uncomfortable seeing people lingering kisses in front of me, including fictional people, and I skip anything in books that could be remotely classified as sexual. Multiply any squick by like a thousand if it's non-consensual.

I am, however, fine with the idea that other people have consensual sex with each other, as long as I'm not given details. My roommate could look me dead in the eyes and tell me every fictional character she desperately wants to bone, and that she and her boyfriend boned in our room last night, and I would be absolutely fine. The minute she starts describing details, I'm like, "No thanks." Fade to black fiction scenes are great. Implied/referenced sex is fine, even implied/referenced rape in works of fiction as long as it's treated with the necessary gravity (obviously, it's never okay that real people go through that).

I should also add that when spoken about in a purely biological context with clinical language, you can give me as many details as you want, and that I also find my irl horny friends funny during their horny episodes.

But yeah, no sex for me ever, thanks.

TL;DR

I read about aplatonicism, and it got me thinking about all the different types of attraction and love and how I, as an arospec asexual with social anxiety, experience them.

I experience intense and powerful familial love that is far more important to me than any other relationship can hope to get.

I experience platonic attraction, including queerplatonic attraction, but feel that the people on the other end of those relationships don't value them as much or feel they take as much effort as I do because of allonormativity.

I don't experience romantic attraction, but am perfectly fine with the idea of a romantic relationship, even if I don't actively seek it out. I also have a lot of confusion about if a romantic relationship would even look different than a platonic one for me, since a lot of things people DO in romantic relationships are things I do platonically, up to and including kissing and marriage.

I don't experience sexual attraction, don't want to, and am generally grossed out by sex. I'm fine if other people do it, I just don't need details and I don't ever want to think about having any kind of sex myself.

Anyone who has labels to offer is welcome!

[horse-head-farms]

clethubs pls

ohhhh clethubs… objectively amazing ship. etho/bdubs is a classic and is very good on its own, with it working great for both comedy and angst. I remember enjoying cleo/bdubs in third life. cleo/etho is insane and I am sure people can analyse it better than I can but DAMN why are they like that. they’re all just so weird about each other. it is also incredibly t4t4t and bi4bi4bi. and I always love a ship that’s tumultuously simultaneously married and dating and divorced and just friends

but it doesn’t particularly compel me? its nice but not a favourite. a huge factor is probably that I’ve only watched about half of limlife and none of secret LOL (I know they’re good! I will watch them! I just haven’t had the motivation to). and obviously I’m familiar with their weird hermitcraft interactions, but I imagine it isn’t as brainrot-inducing as whatever they were doing in those series. I also like cleo/jevin, and since it has little to no content, I’m more inclined to make art for that instead of clethubs

another thing, which I feel kinda bad mentioning because the vast majority of clethubs shippers don’t do this but I do want to bring it up since the point of this game is ship opinions, is some posts really make me go “cleo would not fucking say that”. sometimes it’s just a general mischaracterisation thing but other times it’s straight up writing cleo as a cishet woman (baffling but I’ve seen it a few times). even if not explicitly a cishet woman they can sometimes just be written as quite heteronormative (wrong word but I can’t think of a better way to put it) and not, y’know, the she/they king of hermitcraft who’s - in their own words I believe! - a vomit-inducing queer. and then there’s also the issue of cleo being sidelined and used solely to prop up etho and bdubs’ relationship in some fics. as said, its only a minority that does this, but it does particularly annoy me as someone who adores cleo

also tangentially related but genuine question to clethubs shippers: how do you guys handle the whole limlife family thing? does it only apply to limlife and they’re unrelated in other series? was it a weird roleplay their characters were doing? do you guys just try not to think about it? do you just embrace it?? ever since I saw those episodes I was like. huh. I wonder how people are taking that

[just-let-me-see-accounts]

???

I spent ages agonising over how I would navigate my medical health before I became 18 (at which point I could schedule my own appointments. Like, I know that I could still do that as a minor with my parent(s) per.issuon but I thought there would still be restrictions, especially concerning money) but my mum is just gonna give me my medical card tomorrow after I briefly mentioned goodrx (which is only tangentially related??) and told me that everything would be free? What??

Like, I can just schedule anything. I could follow up on that proposed blood test to figure out the extent/cause of my anemia. I could go to the dentist. I could get regular check ups (insane. In the past 8-9 years I've only had two check ups).

I recently had an eye exam and am gonna receive two free glasses (plus a third cheap one my mum + grandpa bought for me), but like. I could get an eye exam regularly? Which is pretty damn good since I kinda fucked up with my left eye and when I was looking through that machine it was definitely blurrier in my left than in my right. Plus, obviously my eyes got worse over these past three years, so it'd be great to stay on top of any further changes.

This shit applies to mental health stuff as well. She specifically mentioned that, which I think is her signaling that she does not want to bein charge of keeping up with that. Damn. I could schedule my own appointments and shit. Wow.

Maybe I can buy medication? Obviously I'd have to talk to a psychiatrist to be prescribed anything, but my mum said she doesn't pay *anything* for prescribed medication. I promised myself not to rock the boat too much until I'm 18, though, since last time when I broached the possibility of me being ND and did that surface level test (used to determine if an in depth test is needed), she took me out of therapy (which I will be back in soon thank god! My intake is on the 3rd of October!).

And my mum has expressed that she doesn't want me on medication (she said it isn't safe for a minor. I wonder if her opinion would change once I become an adult. It must eventually, right? She takes medication herself.) so I'm afraid she might. Take away my access to medical stuff.

But like, if she gives me my card, can she even do anything? If she takes it, would I be able to order a new one or smth? She said that she could order a new one if I lose it. Am I entitled to it? I'll have to look into it more.

The possibility of this massive opportunity suddenly being taken away is why I didn't even consider further pursuing ND evaluation or getting a gender therapist. But like, if she can't do anything, I'll definitely do it. I guess that's a "maybe" thing.

Yooo I could get birth control and stop these blasted periods! Neat.

Even better yet, my siblings can get their cards as well and schedule their own stuff. I requested one of my siblings cards as well and she's willing to give me it. I can't make the appointment myself, as I am a minor (which means I can schedule appointments for them when I'm an adult yayyy), but I can help her make an appointment herself. She really needs to see the dentist.

Man. There's just. So many possibilities. I'm definitely gonna look at "common medical screenings/appointments" or whatever to see what I can get looked at for. Now that I have all this medical power I won't allow myself to deal with something I shouldn't have to!!

[ladylynse]

Here me out, what if Danny meets Sam and Dean while they are fighting ghosts and Danny just pales and says "that's not a ghost" because he can sense it's presence but his body doesn't respond to it as one

So no ghost sense going off but it appears to be a ghost, for all intents and purposes? Definitely scary for Danny and no walk in the park for Sam and Dean, but with a few curses, the Winchesters would adjust. Assuming they’re at a point where they trust Danny or, at the very least, at a point where they have reason to be cautious enough to consider that what he says might be true and act accordingly.

The Winchesters are used to taking down monsters, and they’re prepared for the fact that they might walk into something and have guessed wrong about what it is. Danny? Danny’s going to have to see exactly how ghost-like this whatever-it-is is, mostly by still trying to fight and seeing what works, possibly without trying to explicitly hurt whatever-it-is, in case he thinks it might just be unfairly blamed, but that would depend on how obvious the fact that it’s probably already killed is. If Danny thinks he has reason to pull his punches, he will. (Dean’s not the shoot first/ask questions later sort all the time, but if Sam’s down, all bets are off.)

And then, of course, you get into all the things it might be. Danny doesn’t really have experience with anything not through the lens of ghost, not even magic. Demons? He just assumed those weren’t real or that they were just, y’know, ghosts, called by a different name. I mean. The Fright Knight can be pretty scary, right? Make you live your nightmares? That’s probably demon-like, to someone who hasn’t met a demon. And Nocturn’s powers are kinda sorta like a djinn’s. So, Danny would relate as much as he could to it, and he might very well be wrong--possibly terribly wrong--because of that. 

This could apply to ghosts, too, really. Sidney Poindexter is no Bloody Mary, but they’re both tied to mirrors. Danny does have some relevant crossover experience. But he’d look at stories of witches and think of Freakshow. A hydra is just begging to bring up bad memories of the Box Ghost. Vlad might not be an actual vampire but he’s rocking the stereotypical look and geez, Wulf is not a werewolf, why would you ever think he’d try to eat someone’s heart? Also. Ew. Gross. Amorpho does not shift like that. Please never bring it up again. Danny does not need that visual. But for that same reason--Danny having tangentially relevant experience--he can be tricked.

Because if this isn’t a ghost, not even Desiree using her magic, it’s going to be harder for Danny to find and target the source in a fight, especially if the source appears to be innocent. Or if the source is innocent and has ‘accidentally’ come into some sort of powerful magic and is consequently wreaking havoc. Because for Sam and Dean, dealing with the problem usually means killing it. Not always. Not as often as it used to. But way more often than Danny would initially be comfortable with, before he knew what he was dealing with, what they were dealing with. 

Or, if you mean the sort of thing where it is a ghost that the Winchesters are fighting, and Danny’s the one who’s not a ghost, then it would be the universe twisting itself around again in Danny’s head, because he still wouldn’t know what he actually is, if those are ghosts and he’s not. After all, if the Winchesters have run into a variety of ghosts that all follow the same basic rules--like being dispersed by salt, for example? That doesn’t happen to Danny, maybe because of his human half, but he’s pretty sure there’s enough salt packed into all the meat the Lunch Lady uses when turning into a meat monster that the ghosts he fights on the regular aren’t affected that way, either. So if they aren’t just a ‘different kind of ghost’? If his parents are wrong and they aren’t ghosts at all? Danny knows perfectly well some of them (like Desiree or Ember or Poindexter) lived and died and then became that, but if that isn’t a ghost, what are they? What is he? What else can souls become, besides ghosts or demons? Danny definitely doesn’t know the answer to that.

[pikablob]

☕️Simon Laurent?

I absolutely don’t think Simon is innocent, or that what happened to him was Grace’s fault; he is a genuinely awful person. But I also think he gets too much hate from some people; it’s not an excuse but he is 100% a victim of the train itself (he’s basically a case study for why it’s completely and utterly incapable of helping anyone on balance) - he’s a traumatised kid who got trapped in a spiral and I do feel sorry for him despite everything. So, overall I’m conflicted, and I’ve been getting more attached to Simon as time goes on.

This is slightly tangential, but it does kinda define how I see Simon and how I treat him in my writing: I really don’t like how Lindsey Katai described his death. Like, “sometimes real life doesn’t have a happy ending” does not apply here - his death is shown to be entirely his fault, it’s karmic, and this is a show with a strong message about the consequences of how you treat others that literally prints character development on people’s arms. I’m not denying his death is a tragic one, rather than a triumph, but the narrative conveyed is absolutely that he deserved it, no matter what Lindsey says the intent was. (I think this plays into how IMO the train blanket does not work as a metaphor for IRL recovery and the whole time fiasco but that’s another salt mine for another day).

I have ended up getting very attached to AUs where he doesn’t fall completely; he did have the potential to be good, I think, especially if he hadn’t been repeatedly traumatised, and I love the idea of what he might have become instead. His nice moments are really endearing to me, and in another timeline I would’ve loved to see him turn out better.

[palukoo]

tww teacher au for the ask game!

combining this with another ask from anon: tww academia au!! bc i was gonna make this college anyways bc most of them are too pretentious to work at a high school even if they are passionate about education

jed was the chair of the economics department for a really long time (including when some of the staff went to whatever made up school i'm having them be a part of) and would be like. kind of a polarizing figure on ratemyprofessors. his classes are generally engaging and you learn a lot, but the lecture is on externalities and he's been talking about national parks for the last twenty minutes. he also tends to run late, and his class isn't easy, but he has tons of office hours and writes great recommendations. he would generally teach like a freshman/intro course for fun (maybe intro to macro?) and then one or two advanced classes. for like, some structure, these days he's probably the president of the college/uni, but maybe he just. let's himself teach a random class every semester anyways, because he misses it. (if he occasionally hijacks the american studies or theology department, who is gonna stop him? usually its like. history of the global economy or something tho)

leo is probably like the provost or dean or whatever in charge of faculty or something. if he teaches, which he probably has at some point but idk if he still does, it's probably some foreign affairs class. like international security or something.

abbey is probably the chair of their pre-med program or like the director of their (science) research programs. there's probably someone calling it nepotism at some point, until everyone points out she's had this job since before jed was president, so. checkmate. she'll rotate between a few different classes, probably like. an anatomy at some point, but for some reason i really like the concept of her doing some molec cell or biochem (def more on the cellular side of things as opposed to ecology, and also less genetics, so. but maybe more public health). a lot of students are kind of afraid of her but tons of people apply to work in her lab, and she really loves her lab students so much.

cj could do like. media/publicity for the school, like that's a job she could easily have, but i kinda want them all to actually. teach, so she probably teaches some form of media studies/communication studies/journalism. students love her, because she's funny and smart and energetic in class, and compassionate about extensions and whatever. she takes her job super seriously, and wants to give everyone the best chance she can. she'll like, practice in her lecture hall ahead of time.

toby i can't decide on. you would think some form of writing or communications class, but i want to give him like. a bunch of classes cross listed as like sociology and political science and philosophy and american studies. like he'll teach like political ethics, or classes about civil rights, or literature about specific political movements. he assigns like no tests and all papers and grades them like. harshly, but the students who really come in and try, he loves and will work with. realistically he should probably be chair of a department but idk which one.

josh teaches a bunch of political classes and his students all make fun of him, thank you. like he'll teach classes on legislative processes, and he's like not a bad professor and clearly knows what he's talking about, but he also comes in with coffee stains and messy hair and his chair breaks weekly and he and his projector are in the middle of an ongoing war that they all know he isn't winning. he (like cj) really wants his students to like him, and they mostly do. his lectures can also get a little tangenty, but that's okay. he should also probably head a department, i guess political science, but rip to all those other profs.

donna ta-ed for josh at some point when he was still really new at it, and was probably going to do political science but also maybe english, who knows, in grad school, but ended up spending a summer working in the admissions office and actually really loved it, so she did admissions for a while until she got too depressed rejecting students, and now she does some form of academic counselling and everyone loves her, and she absolutely will fight professors on behalf of students

sam also does some niche cross listed humanities classes, like he'll do literature & law, or american lit and culture. he does a ton of pre law advising also!

amy! amy is probably chair of the gender/sexuality/women's studies department bc i say so. she mostly teaches more gov focused classes, though, like women and the law, or women in leadership, or sexuality in america. she's also kind of harsh on grading, but she's super good at helping students make connections for their careers and shit.

joey teaches polling/stats and political polling classes thank you.

half of them are known for writing those papers that are clearly part of a huge academic disagreement where they're just criticizing other people's papers. usually at different schools, but not always. interdepartmental/humanities prof gatherings are fun!

[guardiankarenterrier]

Thinking about writing nonbinary Adrien. Any advice?

firstly, sorry this took me so long to answer, rl is kicking my ass

secondly, im really flattered to be asked!

the  immediate disclaimer: this isnt gonna apply across the board. everyone  in the world is having their own unique experience, and we cant know  them all (tho we can for sure really want to know most).  

but  i guess thats also where my advice starts- being nonbinary is different  for everyone.  some of us have dysphoria, some dont, some experience  social dysphoria or even vocal dysphoria and dont have body dysphoria, some have different combinations- i personally have  never felt all that attached to my body in the first place (its more  like its a car and the part thats ‘me’ is the engine), but i am also  very much not a visual person.  that would fit for adrien i think, since canonically he doesnt place much emphasis on looks, and understandably so.

gonna put the rest under a cut cuz it got kinda long

but i know  every time i hear a relative refer to me as girly or feminine or insist  that i wouldnt understand something because its ‘for men,’ i die a  little bit inside.  admittedly i do get a feeling of validation when i am referred  to as masculine and thats not always true when youre nonbinary.  in a  place where masculine and feminine are expressed to you as stubbornly opposed, tho, being referred to as your ‘opposite’ can be affirming.  i can see this happening for adrien, too. 

nonbinary people do not have to look androgynous.  whether or not you look androgynous does not affect whether or not you are nonbinary, and there are too many people who conflate the two.  nonbinary people can look however they like.

its  important to respect pronouns, but everyone also uses them  differently.  while i prefer they/them, and that seems increasingly to  be the norm, some people continue to use he/his or she/her or to switch  between them.  some people use neopronouns.  some people experiment  until they find out which ‘feels’ right.  if you have adrien, or any  character, still figuring out their pronouns, though, you should make  that clear so that it doesnt appear youre disrespecting pronouns  instead.  (i personally am just realising i would kinda like to see more stories where people dont yet know their pronouns). 

my main advice is to talk to as many nonbinary  people as you can (which you obviously have a handle on already!),  search out the nonbinary positive blogs here on tumblr- theyre full of  information- and figure out just how your version of adrien expresses  themself, or if, like a lot of us- like most of us, probably- theyre  still figuring that out.

and also, unless this is a story specifically about them coming out, to themself or to others, dont make it the focus. make it a part of the story. an important part, but not necessarily the most important part.

but at the same time, we dont have  enough coming out/figuring yourself out as nonbinary stories yet. this  isnt really at the same place as the ‘dont make gay characters all about  being gay.’ i cant say dont make it a definitive trait, because for a  lot of us it is.  but we dont have those stories yet, anyway; we  still need them. we can make nonbinary characters about being  nonbinary.  we could use those stories, still.

i dont have a list of  good resources, unfortunately, because i dont curate my resources that  well.  i look things back up on duckduckgo when i need a refresher (i am  not always good at avoiding google but i try to). i search the tags on  tumblr, because there really are a lot of good resources on here.  the nonbinary tag on my own blog is probably A Mess but it does exist. 

lastly, i am in the us and my experiences are coloured by that, as well as having immediate family that did not really enforce (or, uh, really explain, come to think of it) the concept of gender at all when my brothers and i were kids.  (we played lost boys a lot, we did not consider gender when picking what character we'd be for games- hullo i was donatello, also virgil (other people watched mighty max right), there was a vicious fight over the green ranger because Green Is My Colour You Dick, grandpa called us huey dewey and louie, brothers did not realise my cousins 'no girls allowed' fort applied to me, etc.  i have also gotten away with picking whatever damn side i want for girls vs. boys shit my entire life, for whatever reason.  it took me a while to figure out that this is probably not the norm).

sorry that this got kinda weird and tangential, i have been havin a very weird time recently

obviously, this is all gonna be pretty personal and subjective, so others are welcome to chime in!

[akari-hope]

So you’re obviously right, poc aren’t a monolith, no marginalized group is, people aren’t. And that’s where things get disconcerting, especially when it comes to very contested topics, bc ppl are obviously going to have vastly different opinions that swing from one end of the spectrum to another. (I feel dumb for basically just saying that different people have different opinions, but anyway!) So how do you know who to listen about these serious topics if both sides within the same group have

2/2 equally valid yet conflicting views? And if you listen to the people who are already inclined to agree w/ you, is that the right thing, or is it lazy, because you’re not working to understand other perspectives? And if you entertain views that are totally opposed to yours but within the same group (i.e. a black queer leftist being civil to a black homophobic republican despite said person’s homophobia), are you ignoring your conscience to keep the peace?

these are all great questions, and good examples of why we always have to be taking into account where our opinions come from. and i don't mean "well i agree with this person so i can't trust them" or "i disagree with this person so i should throw their opinion out." a lot of it is reconciling what is (as close as we can get to) objective and what is subjective, as well as a sense of scope. you can kinda go through a process with it that way.

if you know something to be Objectively True (i.e. there is historical basis for it, a large majority of people concur, etc.), it's easier to use as a baseline for subjective ideas. when something is subjective, you can ask two things: does this relate to anything i know to be objectively true, and how many people share this opinion. this is what's meant by "listen to poc". it's not "take everything they say as objective truth" - that can fall into some messy territory. it's "hear what they are saying, and then figure out how to apply the things you're hearing to yourself." the best thing to do is use the information you're given, objective and subjective both, and then use your best judgment.

ultimately, when a situation is split, it's going to come down to what makes the most sense with the given circumstances. and that's where critical thinking skills are necessary. even if you do your absolute best to listen to every opinion, in the end you will have to decide which ones are worth your time and which aren't. the idea that you have to hold every single person's opinion with the same weight just isn't practical. like the example you gave - if you have two different people telling you different things, but you don't trust an opinion coming from a homophobe, you straight up don't have to. but ideally you're using some degree of logic in your choice to not. (this is really only tangentially relevant, but if you want some more understanding on that concept, you can read up on karl popper's idea of the paradox of tolerance)

tldr: it's up to you to listen to different sources, decide how valid each source is, and then use your best judgment going forward.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

What are ur fave non MC ships in the game? I know u ship Talbott x Badeea Jae x Chiara Merula x Tulip and I think u might still ship Penny x Skye but are there any others?

Thank you for asking! 

My first and foremost ship for this game, my OTP, is Tulula. I love the story of Tulip and Merula and I wish the game hadn’t abandoned it. They have so much history and intrigue, their dynamic is awesome. It’s clear that they had an effect on each other. The Frog Choir quest proved it - they’re both three-dimensional and interesting characters, and even when their relationship is referenced tangentially, it makes the story that much better. I sincerely hope we haven’t heard the last of these two. People also like to ship Tulip with Tonks, and that’s completely valid. I just like this pairing better.

Talbott and Badeea is one of those ships that I can’t quite explain, but it just feels like it would work well. Talbott is a character who is fun to ship because of his solitary nature. Since we do see with his relationship to MC that he can warm up when he feel more comfortable, but only if the person is special. I feel like Talbott and Badeea would keep up with each other, that he would understand her creativity in ways other people wouldn’t. That she would coax him out of his shell. The recent chapters prove this. 

Jae and Chiara are the cutest babies that ever looked cute. This ship, despite being obviously supported by the game’s background, recently suffered the blow of the characters being added to the available love interests. But I’ll never complain about more additions to the romance-able characters. I’ve also been more of an MC/Chiara fan as of late, but I can still imagine Jae and Chiara being adorable together, and Jae helping her get the ingredients for Wolfsbane potion. 

Penny and Skye are a trainwreck on fire at the bottom of the sea. It’s sad, but true. Still, they had potential, and in another timeline maybe they could have worked out. I maintain that there’s an interesting story to be told here with Penny getting to know the real Skye and having her hero worship shattered, prompting Skye to grow. Because the adoration from Penny that she took for granted is suddenly gone, and Skye misses it. Ah all, just brainstorming. 

Barnaby and Liz is another cute ship. Not much to say about it, but I feel like Liz respects him in a way that not everyone does, and we know Barnaby probably likes her a lot more than most people. Liz is a lot to take, but she wouldn’t be for him. And she’s flat out said that she’s not really interested in dating, but if she was...she’d probably pursue something with Barnaby. That’s pretty much canon confirmation right there. That is an admission from Liz that, “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” 

Andre and Murphy, or “Snitchpin” as I like to call it, is basically the new Parkwood. Only it’s less toxic and the two characters actually interact and like each other. Seriously, this ship doesn’t need to have extreme focus, although I’d love it if they did, it can just be a sweet thing in the background. Andre is a character who I personally tend to think of as not the easiest to get along with. And we know Murphy’s quirks quite well. But they sync together well and form a great duo. 

Rowan and Bill. Rowan. And. Bill. Sorry, but you can’t convince me that this wasn’t at least partially canon. Rowan was very clearly head over heels. There’s no way Bill didn’t see Rowan dressed up at the Celestial Ball and think, “Damn.” Like, Emily Tyler could see it! “Bill would rather talk to Rowan Khanna than to me?” Of course he would! This is like, Harry/Ginny but even better. I know it’s doomed by canon (For...multiple reasons.) But don’t tell me this wasn’t the sweetest high school romance ever. 

This doesn’t really apply anymore, again, for obvious reasons - but despite my ambivalence about Diego...I kinda liked him as Rowan’s end-game. They were so different but in ways that I think would clash well. Of course, such hopes are dashed, but maybe Diego could date Ismelda or something. That’s another character he’s in stark contrast to, but I feel like he’d get along with. 

[albatris]

Sorry in advance for the potentially dumb question, but: do you suffer from psychosis/schizophrenia? I’ve seen you reblog a lot of posts about it, of course, but i was curious. Also, if its not too personal, if you do, how much does it impact your writing/the weirdness glitchiness factor?

Not a dumb question at all, you’re all good!

So this is kinda…….. not something I’ve spoken about in a great amount of detail or specifics on this blog? And talking about it directly is actually kinda weird! I wasn’t expecting this to feel weird, but it totally does! So please excuse how long this answer took me hahahahaha

So I mean YEAH psychosis is a thing that I possess, this is a thing that resides inside my brain and occasionally outside of it………. I’m not schizophrenic, I’m more in the schizotypal realm of things, which is like….. I mean, that’s a label that best encompasses my experiences and so far it’s the only label that’s been vaguely and tentatively applied to me that’s ever really made me go “oh hey yeah that would actually explain a whole fucking lot” but like. Bits of it are still kinda wonky. Mental health is wonky, I think, generally speaking…………….

I was gonna talk a bit here about my specific experiences but, like, I really had no idea where to start with those and I don’t actually know how relevant it’d be to this question aside from being vaguely tangential in terms of psychosis………… so uhhhh I’m gonna jump ahead and talk WRITING which is WAY more in my comfort zone apparently

and oh my god this was so many words, I’m so sorry in advance, I have no idea if any of this is actually like………… super interesting? But I enjoyed the opportunity to talk about it so cheers for that! I think!

(and I’m sorry if you were expecting like………… a really short sharp sweet answer, I don’t really deal in shorts or sharps or sweets, I mostly deal in, uh………. rambling)

Rest of this post, under the cut, which I hope actually works on mobile, for the sake of your dashboards - 

So this message was an adventure for me into how the questions “How does it affect your writing?” and “How does it affect the glitchiness/horror factor?” are actually two entirely separate things. I mean, they’re two separate things because I’m assuming by “glitchiness factor” you’re thinking specifically of the stuff in my recent ATDAO posts about body horror and the unreality? In which case………… let me get to that in a moment

And since this post got super long, I’m going to start with my extremely short summed-up answer, and then elaborate on it………

In terms of how it affects my writing? In lots of direct ways!

In terms of how it affects the glitchiness and horror aspects? In some weird roundabout ways! It’s not where the horror stems from, but it’s where the response to the horror stems from and where a lot of my descriptive choices stem from! It’s not the horror, but it’s kind of the lens through which I explore the horror!

AND NOW HERE WE GO………… WORDS AHOY

So in terms of how it affects my writing, generally speaking

boring straightforward answer first:

It’s something that crops up in a super literal sense, just in that I’ve got a fair few characters who are psychotic to some degree or another, and it’s something that plays into how they relate to the world and their specific character voice and how they respond to the situations they find themselves in. 

somewhat irrelevant, it’s, uhhh….. something that I feel interacts with themes in a different sort of way, too. ‘Cause a lot of times there’s, like….. stories about people going on cool magical sci-fi quests, and there’s Stories About Psychotic People, and there’s not an awful lot of overlap between the two unless it’s in the context of “and the whole magical quest was a delusion all along!” which, ew

and for fucking REAL there is so much interesting ground to cover and opportunities for different perspectives and new avenues through which themes can be explored, like, in that overlap of stories. It’s something I wish I saw a lot more of in fiction! Which is another huge driving force in, like, why I write stuff the way I do

and now slightly more interesting:

Worldbuilding! It’s definitely something that plays into worldbuilding and like…. my love of creating stories that are kinda just……. “reality but a little bit to the left” if that makes sense? 

Whether this is something like Undertow, where there’s a degree of magic woven into the fabric of the universe, where things are connected by invisible threads, where I can give opinions to objects and feelings to the weather and the streetlights, where the earth itself has a voice? Or whether it’s something like ATDAO, where reality is coming undone at the seams and the fact that everything is just a little lopsided and haywire is a Mundane Part Of Everyday Life? That’s something I find super cathartic and quite lovely to play around in! I’ve always experienced the world as Just A Little Bit To The Left, and writing was one of the first avenues I found to kinda…. channel and explore and expand on that and put my feelings of strangeness into words?

It’s kinda, like, I like being able to share that kind of vision with others in some sort of way, and not necessarily in a frightening or horrible way, y’know? 

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TO SAY that anything I write is, like, 100% a direct mirror or my own life and how I see the world lmao. A lot of my writing takes experiences and feelings and little facets of how I experience the world and works them into something that’s often more literal and concrete, or it’ll start out as My Thing and as I’m writing, it sorta blooms into something totally different. But bits of it are in there, sure, although they change shape a lot! And it’s definitely in there with a lot of the general overarching feelings and concepts! Yeah!

One other thing that kinda leads onto my next topic is, uh…… that a lot of how I interpret events and meanings in the world around me can be kind of frightening and threatening, and that’s not reeeaaaally something I want to delve into too much in my writing from a worldbuilding perspective? So generally the parts of ATDAO’s “reality but a little to the left” that start to twist into horror and unreality are things I’ve constructed specifically to serve that purpose, more so than things I’ve pulled directly from my experiences.

AND NOW IN TERMS OF GLITCHY HORROR STUFF HELL YEAH

so again I’m assuming by “glitchiness factor” that’d be all the unreality and all the body horror stuff and weird horror? Which, fuck yeah! Despite my squeamishness when it comes to horror, this is one odd little corner of ATDAO that I’m extremely fond of hahahaha

And, like, initially when I considered this question I was like…. oh, this is not something that really has any of its roots in psychosis or my experiences of mental illness. And that’s…… kiiiiiind of true? My construction of the unreality and its contents is a lot of me just me sitting at my laptop going “Hahahaha that makes me physically nauseous! That’s the worst thing I’ve ever come up with!! I’m adding it in immediately!!”

But yeah, it definitely does factor in, though! Maybe not in as interesting a way as you’d hoped? 

So first off, my experiences are something that sorta plays into my word choice and the specific way I use language in those scenes. And I’m also gonna go ahead and say that dissociation and specifically derealisation are also things I draw from pretty heavily for those kinda……. more glitchy horror-ish parts? So for me, my experiences factor more into HOW I describe the content more so than any of the horrid glitchy gory content itself. 

‘cause it’s kinda, like, a specific kind of fear, I think, it’s a little bit off-beat and weirdly-worded and disjointed and it hits your senses all wrong, it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense but it’s still extremely real. There’s a lot of weird or unsettling bullshit that goes on in the unreality that there’s no convenient Real World Descriptive Equivalent for. Like, cityscapes made entirely of soundwaves, the aforementioned body horror stuff in earlier posts, places that are a complete and total lack of Anything where there’s not even space or colour or texture or light, senses getting all tangled up into each other, something being simultaneously bigger than the sun and smaller than an ant, voices unravelling like twine? LOTS OF WEIRD, BASICALLY

There’s no nice neat right way to describe that, and if there was, it probably wouldn’t pack the punch it needs to, yeah? But I love that kinda shit, I get to pull from a bunch of really weird sensory experiences and feelings I have no real way to articulate and I get to use language in creative ways to evoke the same feelings, the same experiences, the same sense of fear and wrongness? I get to draw from weird shit to describe a bunch of weird shit that makes NO fucking sense whatsoever and that can’t realistically be tied up with words

Point is, they’re experiences I draw from in order to Get Real Fuckin Weird With Words

and getting weird with words in this specific way is CATHARTIC as FUCK dude it’s so good, it’s one of my favourite things. This is, like, the dark edgy version of what I talked about earlier in regards to worldbuilding and me painting a nice odd vision for people to share in hahahaha

“let me take you on a nice gentle stroll through my imagination” vs me supplexing you to the ground and beating the shit out of you with a bat 

And one other thing is just……. I’m sorry, I’m super tired, this bit is probably gonna be jumbled and wordy and maybe not super relevant but uhhhhhhh

So the unreality is not something I initially drew from any particular place in my psyche, but it IS something I’ve come to construct in a specific way, and a lot of it is something I build with the questions of like…… “How does a psychotic character respond to this input?” and “What does this scenery draw out in my character and how does it challenge them?” in mind, so I guess………… in that sense, there’s definitely still a fairly big impact? But kind of in a sideways way. The unreality is not so much based on psychosis, but it’s something I use to highlight specific elements of it, I guess, but mostly in terms of the skills it draws out

‘cause like. in ATDAO the only characters who kinda get to butt heads with the unreality aside from that one random dead car driver who may or may not be vaguely half alive in a state of horrific limbo are Jacob and Tris, and like

I don’t ever really frame Tris’s psychosis as some horrible terrible thing he’s burdened with that makes life a terrible living hell 24/7 but it is, like………. something he struggles a lot with over the course of the story, both in general terms and in terms of people not taking him seriously about the Extremely Real Fantastical Nonsense that’s going on and in general being hesitant to trust his perceptions of reality. And ALSO I guess in terms of just…….. the way he relates to the fact that he’s been dragged into some Extremely Real Fantastical Nonsense? And him wrestling with how he’s supposed to believe in something like that when no one else can see the evidence and everyone is telling him he’s just crazy, and how “ridiculous interdimensional dumbass sci-fi quest” is something that’s reserved for other people, because he’s already been there like four times already and it has extremely different implications for him

In terms of mental illness, all my protags have patches of the story where they make it through kinda “in spite” of their struggles with mental illness (though that’s a sentence I fuckin hate) and other patches where mental illness is just a thing they deal with alongside whatever plots they have going on…… but their experiences with mental illness are also something that gives them specific skills and perspectives and ways of understanding the world that are invaluable, and some of the most important parts of the story are the parts where they make it through specifically BECAUSE of those skills and perspectives

Which is kind of the Whole Thing With The Unreality, that’s its whole deal

The unreality is a fucking huge turning point for Tris as a character, because it’s specifically because of his experiences with psychosis that he’s able to navigate it so effectively, it’s because of the specific skills he’s developed and the practice he’s had in similar circumstances

not, like, the SAME circumstances, but things from other contexts that kind of, transfer, circumstances where the same skills are applicable

‘cause like, turns out, he’s really good at navigating confusing frightening hellscapes where nothing makes sense and mis-stepping can get you killed, because he’s had a whole lot of practice just like. existing as a person with psychosis in a weird apocalypse world where reality is collapsing in unpredictable ways. He spends a lot of his life trying to make sense of reality and figure out the rules and developing countless systems for navigating the world safely, which he often needs to adjust at a moment’s notice, or completely scrap and reconstruct. He’s had a lot of experience of just sorta waking up and whatever bullshit is going on he’s just gotta be like “ok cool so this is what we’re doing today, I have to deal with this, so how can I deal with this”. He’s used to grounding himself and problem-solving even under intense pressure and when he’s terrified and regardless of whatever objectively horrifying nonsense is happening around him. He’s used to sorting the horrifying things that are not dangerous from the horrifying things that are extremely dangerous.  

He’s basically the one character who can get tossed into the unreality and actually work with it and figure out the rules even though everything is screaming and glitched out and trying to kill him, he’s spent most of his life developing the perfect skill set for it

(and like, this is the first point in the story where he sorta realises that his specific way of viewing the world is going to be a strength rather than a weakness, but like. despite the fact that Tris is basically a walking panic attack he’s actually always been the one of the team who’s been the most adept at navigating daily life with the apocalypse, it’s just not something he’s ever really picked up on)

and uh

that’s kind of a vaguely irrelevant note to end on, actually

HEY THAT WAS SO MANY WORDS I’M SO FUCKING SORRY

I DON’T EVEN HAVE A NEAT WRAP UP TO THIS POST

MY WRAP UP WAS THAT SUMMARY AT THE START

IF YOU READ THIS FAR I HOPE IT WAS AT LEAST SOMEWHAT INTERESTING

[mittensmorgul]

Who is Belphegor?

I mean, who is he, really? There’s a possibility that he’s exactly what he claims to be, but everything in me is screaming THIS IS A ZEKE SITUATION, and we don’t yet understand his true motives or identity. Since 15.01 aired, I’ve been playing around with theories, and I’ve got it narrowed down to a few I would really enjoy. I think I’ve talked about (or around) each of these theories in my tag for Belphie, and you can go read those posts here for further edification and general waffling on my part.

1. Belphegor. He might actually be exactly what he says he is. I mean, why NOT believe him? Reasons FOR the theory:

because he said so

his general behavior fits what we know about the demon Belphegor in a general sort of way

Reasons AGAINST the theory:

because he said so, and we’re watching Supernatural

the two characters I’ve seen most people ping to in reaction to him are RUBY (who lied about her entire motivation for befriending them and being helpful) and EZEKIEL (who lied about his identity and motives from the moment he showed up, and was actually Gadreel... which went over swimmingly)

his appearance was entirely too ~convenient~ to believe it at face value (he was the ONLY demon to pop out of hell in that mess, conveniently knew the exact spells they needed to get out of that predicament, is REALLY good at manipulating TFW specifically, etc. etc.)

what kind of torturer is AFRAID of the things he tortures? why would a demon fear a human ghost?

What kind of demon would ASK FOR A SACK OF SALT and then handle said salt as if it was nothing?

2. The Shadow. This was one of my first thoughts, even before the episode aired, because of the situation we knew to be true of Jack, where he was at the end of 14.20, and what he was DOING there-- i.e. having a friendly chat with Billie and the Shadow, and what the PR said about Jack feeling conflicted about returning to his body because of guilt. This felt like one of those situations that Billie would need to have HANDLED SOONEST, and the Shadow was conveniently RIGHT THERE to fill in for Jack. We already know he has the power to appear to be other beings (Cas faced him as himself in the Empty, and couldn’t tell he wasn’t Dumah in Heaven, for example), and can theoretically convincingly take on the form of whatever he wants to T-1000 style. That said, Reasons FOR:

Incredibly powerful being who could pull off everything we saw Belphegor do

snarky personality that also lines up with what we saw

INTENSE PERSONAL DIRECT KNOWLEDGE of the contents of Cas’s knowledge bank, his emotions and personality, feelings “i tiptoed through all your little tulips” style

can appear to be other types of beings in a way that Cas can’t perceive his true nature and accepts what he does see as truth

we don’t know the scope of his powers or abilities outside of the Empty or Heaven, or how he would be limited or affected by possessing a human-ish body (explaining his discomfort around a human soul since they aren’t relegated to his domain upon death, and his particular vulnerability to injury and pain in a human-ish body)

The Empty is outside of God’s purview, and therefore he may be able to operate in complete stealth without alerting Chuck to his presence on Earth in a way literally no other being could, making him the ultimate secret agent here

literally ZERO other demons seem to have escaped Hell during this containment breach. Every other being who got out has been a human soul.

Reasons AGAINST:

we just don’t know what he’s actually up to in canon. He could still be in the Empty babysitting Jack (not that we know that would be a limitation on where he could still be, if he could just scoop out a pile of goo-him and send a bit of himself off to animate Jack’s body for a while, but we don’t know if that’s possible, either)

3. Metatron. Based on what we know of how the Empty works, and how Metatron specifically died, there’s a good chance we’re seeing the return of Metatron for one of two separate reasons. He died without grace-- as a human-- so theoretically he would’ve gone to heaven, right? Like Jack did in 14.08? We know the Empty didn’t invade Heaven for HIS soul, though, so there’s a possibility that he may have gone directly to the Empty anyway. Though the way Amara killed him... there’s a chance he was “absorbed” into her (like she stated several other times happened when she “consumed” souls, you know? but we don’t know exactly what happened to Metatron other than he disappeared into a lil poof of darkness, so this is entirely theoretical conjecture). But I’ve long paralleled Amara to the Empty, and I don’t think there’s really a functional difference between being consumed by Amara and being sent to the empty, you know? They are both The Void. I literally JUST wrote this post, which inspired me to make a list in the first place, where you can read my thoughts in detail. Reasons FOR:

talk about someone ready to play foil to Chuck, the writer out of control in desperate need of an editor. Think 11.20, to the nth degree here.

golly he KNOWS Chuck’s whole “writing process,” and NOBODY is more familiar with the entire body of Chuck’s writing, going all the way back to creation

Even after he lost his mojo, he was still proficient in the sorts of spells we saw Belphegor pull out of thin air, you know?

he’s also the exact sort of snarky Belphegor has been

he was weirdly obsessed with Cas’s trenchcoat (lol, abomination) and had a MASSIVE jealous-on for Cas in general

the spell Belphegor used to erect the wall referencing river imagery (the river shall end at its source and all that)

metatron’s reluctance to engage in “direct combat” himself, and his comments to Cas from the get-go that he needed Cas because he’s not a warrior himself, which lines up with the “bad ghost! no!” behavior when faced with a direct confrontation

tangential to the above point, the fact he died HUMAN without supernatural powers would leave him vulnerable to injury from a ghost, as well as the “general pains of humanity” we saw demonstrated when Constance was able to cut his hand and cause him physical pain that way

Metatron, being the Scribe of God who basically possesses not only the knowledge of all of creation and a vast swath of human writings as well, would love the sort of game of pretending to be a specific demon this way, and would love the subterfuge of it all as well

He is REALLY good at this sort of manipulation

theoretically whether he went to heaven or the empty, billie was on hand to fetch him out and sign him up for service

Reasons AGAINST:

we don’t know where metatron went after he died, and if Amara did consume him it might not be possible to have brought him back (unless Amara is also part of this bigger cosmic plotting and helped his return the way she did with Mary, so this might not be a reason against after all)

would Metatron be able to cloak his true identity behind a false mask of a “true demon face” that Cas identified immediately? (unless he was, again, helped along with that by the Shadow or Amara... we don’t know if their powers would extend to that)

it’s a possibility that-- for whatever reason-- his soul did end up in Hell-- whether by nature of his “sins” or by design of some outside force (Bobby ended up wrongfully in Hell, too, so who knows), and he has actually become a demon, but this seems incredibly unlikely... would his soul have been demonized yet? it’s only been a few years... and again, this is pure conjecture for the sake of argument, and not based in anything in canon.

4. Balthazar. I mean, for all the reasons I stated above for Metatron being handy and ready to serve, and possibly getting an assist from Billie or the Empty to cloak his “true identity,” we know he would’ve been handily found in the Empty. Reasons FOR:

Belphegor kinda sounds like Balthazar... especially the way the being himself pronounced it (more like Belphagar)

readily to hand in the Empty and familiar with all the players on the board

broadly fits within the personality of Belphegor, known to have participated in a “menage a... what’s the french word for twelve?” aka an orgy

lol Belphegor is the Infernal Ambassador to France and that would be a hilarious coincidence... >.>

Balthazar is good at subterfuge, resourceful, good at spellwork (he was the one buying human souls in 6.03)

also pretty good at subterfuge and spy work, though Cas did see through him (sadly) and killed him for it once upon a time...

Reasons AGAINST:

would he be able to cloak his true identity? basically apply what I said about Metatron for this one

Belphegor’s speech patterns. He uses a lot of “filler words,” and Balthazar... didn’t. Then again, he uses SO MANY of them that it could be a deliberate affectation

the line about Cas’s trenchcoat (the one in the dirty trenchcoat, who’s in love with you), so he doesn’t have any particular reason to refer to it as an “abomination,” though it’s not entirely out of the question

5. A Random Reaper. Billie may have ordered one of her Reaper Babysitters to make sure Jack’s body remained safe and viable for when he was ready to return, as well as allow one of her reapers to... to quote Dean from 6.09... “interact more forcefully” with creation. Reasons FOR:

would report directly to Billie, and give Billie an on the spot window on the Winchesters

intimately familiar with the Winchesters from having kept tabs on them for the last several years

have the innate ability to control others’ perceptions of them and the world in general, so disguising their true form from Cas would’ve been easy

Reasons AGAINST:

do reapers have any other magical abilities beyond their known functions?

WHY would A REAPER be afraid of a human ghost? Literally their JOB is dealing with human ghosts

I don’t think a reaper would’ve been able to have been injured by a ghost, unless these ghosts have somehow been “supercharged” by the way Chuck forced their souls from hell... one screenshot of the ghost Cas smashed with the big stone slab showed a weird glowy-orange patch on its shoulder, almost as if it had been “marked by Chuck” and granted some sort of special dispensation of powers, like we know all those sorts of “marks” on people have in SPN canon, so this may not be an issue against.

Billie’s own “clean hands” policy for reapers... if that’s something that would still bind their actions if Billie gave them a direct order to play this specific role now.

Other theories I’ve considered are that it could be a specific reaper-- thinking possibly Tessa, since she was already in the Empty, too, and I just love her and hate what happened to her. Or possibly a random other demon, but again most of the reasons I objected to it being Belphegor apply to other demons even more strongly to Random Demon Minion #3, too. It might be a specific demon we’ve known in the past, or someone we’d known as a human who’s since become a demon, but again... that seems highly doubtful. It could also potentially be Goocifer, i.e. dead!Lucifer, but I don’t think the Shadow would’ve allowed him to just trip out of the Empty so easily. Though he did have a connection to Jack, and after death it’s possible his attitude toward everything has... shifted? the way Billie said hers did after ascending to the mantle of Death and she saw a bigger cosmic picture. If he’s had an enlightenment of sorts in death, this could be a possibility, but again... I think it’s less likely than the above notions but not something I can discount entirely, unfortunately. If he’d been “specifically depowered” like he’d been when his grace had been drained, that could explain his ability to have been injured by a ghost, for example, but would he even have the ability to hide his true form from Cas-- an angel he literally knows from the inside out, having possessed him for half a year... >.>

I’ll update this list as canon unfolds. :D

[seddm]

Season 4: where to go now?

What happened, happened. It’s no secret I’m not happy about it, since the show brought all the shipping related situations to a point of no return at the end of S3, just to then absolutely ignore them for seven episodes, and then go “no but see Marco and Star were constantly eaten inside by how much they love each other but did nothing about it and now they fear it might have been the Blood Moon influencing their feelings even if that had never been remotely hinted at in the show so far and then they realize they love each other but nope lol they forget about it and now Tomstar an Kellco are canon so they’re going to need the rest of the season to re-realize that they’re in love”.  Terrible.

But we can’t change the past and I’m not one to suddenly dislike a whole product that brought me years of happiness (and fear and anger and stress) and several satisfactions, and Starco is still a fantastic ship and a fantastic duo of characters to me, even if S4 handled them just plain horribly so far (see a post about it here). So, where could the season go now, and how could Star’s growth arc go back to bouncing between moments connected to the plot and moments connected to shipping that all contribute to her overall development and maturity?

We already suspected as much after the season premiere, and especially after Surviving the Spiderbites, but it looks like a major theme this season is going to be “choices”: Star trusted Eclipsa and gave her the wand and the throne, but now might not be completely sure about this decision anymore. At the same time, she does trust Eclipsa and she sees that she’s doing more for monsters than any other Queen before, but she’s bound to eventually see (maybe next Sunday, in Cornball, an episode that’s going to feature Buff Frog) that it’s not enough, or at least not the right way to go at it. It’s easy to see how this theme of “choice”, of learning how to rule while also ruling her heart and feelings, could relate to shipping and Starco. Furthermore, Curse of the Blood Moon introduce a tangential concept, the idea of free will, of making your own choices without letting external forces influence you. Brian H. Kim, the show’s composer, confirms it while talking about the Blood Moon waltz track:

But I also love this episode for how it moves along the greater story of Star and Marco, and what it says about destiny vs. free will. If they are to be together, would we be happier for them if that was a result of magic, or by their own choice? And if they aren’t to be together, that should be their own choice too. I immediately loved the question mark it left and how it sets up the rest of the season, and the greater idea that we should all be allowed to make choices about who and when we love someone.

Now, while I think that applying this theme to Starco at this point of the show is useless and a waste of time for a number of reasons I already explained here, I can also see why, on paper, an arc like this might have sounded interesting to the writers, and it could genuinely bring some moments of deep emotional intimacy between Star and Marco, and eventually a canonization on very, very sure terms - at that point the L word being said wouldn’t surprise me at all. And how this all ties with what happened in the episode, and with what might happen in the near future (as usual, I’m very often wrong about specifics in these kind of predictions, so take everything with a lot of grains of salt)?

According to Relicor, the Severing Stone was going to sever the bond between Star and Marco by erasing the memory of the moment they fell in love. 

Going into the vision, all the kids thought “Well we fell in love when we got cursed by the Blood Moon, so it’s going to remove that”. But then Star and Marco find themselves experiencing new parts of the dance, moments that never happen in real life, and the Stone acts only when they actually do fall in love.

Once the vision is over, they still do remember the Blood Moon ball, and that they were dancing. They just forgot about all the “I like this” part, the part when they ACTUALLY did genuinely, strongly, purely, fell in love with each other.  They enter the Stone with feelings at level 99 They dance and level up to 100 The Stone severs that, and brings them back to 99

So leveling up those feeling to 100 again, this time being sure that the Moon didn’t influence anything, is likely going to be the new arc for Star and Marco, and it’s possibly going to go hand in hand with Star having to question her own choices and certainties: one could be that giving the throne to Eclipsa was the best move, another one that being with Tom and not with Marco is the best choice. Now, this is where the speculations become predictions and being wrong gets super easy, but since we know that the picture from the future is important in this season, Beach Day might become the next big moment for Star: playing in the water together and being as happy as they look in this picture might be a new occasion to fall in love, replacing this,

with this.

Because it’d be extremely fitting both the narrative of the show and this arc, and the generic norms of romance, to give the message that when the feelings are true and genuine, love can blossom in any moment, it doesn’t need a fancy ball or a magic light, even going splashy splashy bally bally in the warm waters of California can do the trick.

Obviously Tomstar still exist and Kellco is kinda a thing now (even though she still has to get over Tad before being fully ready to move on with Marco I guess), so I don’t expect Beach Day to canonize Starco, unless by some miracle both of the grow close together enough before episode 16A to realize that they have to break up with the other people in their lives, but that sounds unlikely and, in this season, stupidly optimistic. Still, realizing once again that they love each other - not just like, love, and this time with no Stones immediately erasing their memories, might be the last push needed to solve all the ongoing situations in their respective lives, and finally get together.

If this happens before the series finale, allowing the dorks to enter the climax of the story while already being romantically together and sure of their feelings, allowing for the closing scenes to truly be as close to “I want to spend my life with you and I’m sure about it” as they can get without being too cheesy or too unrealistic for two teens, I’ll probably forget a great deal of the dissatisfaction and anger this first part of the season made me experiences.

Please.

[attemptingthoughtfulness]

...this is worthless, I’m rambling and procrastinating. Sorry ‘bout that.

(minor spoilers for Naruto and Detective Conan as well as major spoilers for Magic Kaito and... Avengers Endgame?)

I’m procrastinating, don’t mind me. And during that time of procrastination I have been watching a show I used to watch when I was like 12 or 13, so it’s been a while. And even though that show has some obvious flaws - flaws I will be writing about in a bit - it find myself liking it. So why?

Magic Kaito is a spin-off show of the much bigger Detective Conan anime, which was actually my first anime ever and one of the few memories I have from age 0-4. I actually went onto the wiki and looked up the episode, which was a lot harder than you can imagine: episode 282 which features (for that show anyway) rather graphic imagery of a bloody corpse and like blood in showers and stuff. I don’t know if I just randomly watched the most traumatizing episodes of animes or - which is far more likely - I just remember them darker thant they were but the Naruto episode right afterwards was the one where Gaara tries to murder Lee at the Chunin exams which is also a rather dark episode. (I know, it doesn’t really matter but that was season 3 episode 58 of the original Naruto series). I bet you could find out the exact day and station that I was watching because there’s virtually no way those two episodes would ever follow each other more than once.

I guess that’s not what it’s really about but Detective Conan was probably one of the core animes I watched when I was younger because it was well known and free online. It was also the one that got me into doing QCs for subtitles (funny story, since I had been a QC for a while and seen the really bad mistakes some translators did, I actually applied for the “job” of a translator, that was mere months before I wrote my Cambridge Certificate exam which I, not to brag, passed with C2, and I had been rejected, which probably fed into my fear of rejection but is also  very funny retrospectively.)

I don’t like Detective Conan that much, it’s a fun episodic detective story that has a very, very thin overarching plot and is probably only ever end when the writers don’t have ideas for crimes anymore. And Magic Kaito suffers from its bigger sibling immensely. In case you don’t know, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, Magic Kaito tells the story of a character that occasionally appears in Detective Conan - a thief who is also a magician (which is quite frankly the best pairing I have ever seen, it’s such a good idea!). Kaito is the son of one of the biggest magicians ever who gets killed in a mysterious accident. One day he finds out that his dad was the thief in the moonlight Kaito Kid and murdered by a mysterious organization - who he now tries to lure out of hiding to protect his father’s legacy and put them in jail.. or something? I mean, there is some revenge fantasy implied, but he’s also like 17 and it’s a children’s anime, so he probably doesn’t want to kill them. Anyway, the way he does it is dressing himself up as Kaito Kid to attract those criminals. And that’s the entire premise of a 24 episodes anime.

Before we get into anything, here some in-universe lore that has been stuck in my mind since 13. My favourite thing about Kid is that his name was also “master thief 1412″, the number being the police file number, but if you write the numbers in a certain way it looks like the word “Kid”, a name given him by Shinichi Kudo’s father (meaning Conan’s father). And both Conan’s and Kaito’s fathers knew each other and were aquantances that respected each other? Like, Conan’s mom went to Kaito’s dad for acting training and stuff which is how his dad figured out that he was Kaito Kid. And when her training ended Conan’s dad gave her a card to give Kaito’s dad with an exclaimationpoint - which was an answer to a card he had previously given him with a question mark. Excuse me if my speech is unclear, I am just nostalgic.

Okay, let’s get started: the series suffers from weak characters and the introduction of too many ideas. That’s it. To get the first thing out of the way: if you make an anime about a spin off character and the main character of the main show keeps showing up that means you don’t trust your spin off to stand on its own feet. I love appearances of in universe characters of other shows, I love the MCU, but imagine if Iron Man kept popping up in Jessica Jones. I mean, he can’t because he’s dead but still. Or Aang keept being part of The Legend of Korra. From 24 episodes, Conan/Shinichi is a major character in 4 of them and is also kinda important in another one. That does not really speak of confidence about your series’ characters which is fair considering it got rebooted. Also, every episode starts with Kaito Kid “opening commentary” the episode before the curtain opens and the actual thing starts - and it also ends with Kid shortly commenting on it and bowing in the end which more often than not features the phrase “I will keep entertaining you if you wish so.”, which is a kinda funny meta commentary of the creator’s being painfully aware of their situation.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are really good scenes and funny moments; the one that made me laugh was when Kid hasn’t stolen anything for like three months and since Kaito still goes to high school his friend is kinda disappointed and he thinks: “Who do you think I am? A weekly manga magazine?”, which is already funny but literally a few miliseconds afterwards his friend goes: “Oh, I know why he hasn’t stolen anything for so long! He’s dead!” and he falls off his chair. These jokes wouldn’t be fun on their own but their close proximity to each other makes them work so well. I’m like 70% sure this happened to Gosho Aoyama at some point Over all there is a lot of very good imagery, the magic tricks and heists are fun and often times we have parallel’s, call backs and very well fitting juxtapositions, but over all there’s just a bunch of not-great going on, which I will list now:

1. The Jukebox and the Poker Face: The entire show is also framed by this jukebox Kaito’s dad has left him which has 24 disk and an appendix playing some advice that is tangentially related to the episode. And what more often than not gets repeated is that “he should not forget his poker face”, which, yeah, seems like generally good advice for a magician but... why? It doesn’t serve narrative purpose at all. There is no theme or deeper meaning in the show? The idea of a poker face doesn’t even gets touched on outside of the first episode? Like, otherwise he never breaks his pokerface and there’s like no tension between his real self and the poker face which might as well be a metaphor for Kaito vs. his thief persona. I dunno, am I reading too much into this - why poker face?! Further more, because the jukebox only has 25 audio tracks in total and they play every time Kaito is up to a heist, it kinda feels like he doesn’t do anything in between the episodes? Like, if he listens to that juke box chronologically, which seemed implied, he has only gone to like 25 heists in total which.. is fine for real life statistics but doesn’t really make sense since there is no sense of time in that universe and it just feels like he’s done a lot more?

2. Magic: Yupp, in a universe with a magician reliant on smart tricks and improvisation like a magician on stage there are witches with actual magic. There is actual magic introduced to a world that has previously never had magic before and, believe it or not, magic has no purpose at all. Actually, it does kinda come up in three episodes and they do some really fun stuff the first time with the idea that an illusionist wants to trick and entertain an audience, change their hearts which has different if not more value than actual magic changing the people themselves. Really cool stuff. Would be a shame if the writers wouldn’t know how to go from there and it never comes up again.

3. Super weak as fuck characters outside of Kaito: There are, in total six characters that are not Conan which switch up being the focus of an episode. The witch that practises afor mentioned actual magic is this archetype of a seductress who uses love spells to make boys like her and because her magic doesn’t work on Kaito Kid, she’s like super into him. First, she wants to kill him because she detests his trickery but then she just kinda wants to bang him? And that’s her entire character. Then there is a detective. I didn’t even bother learning his name because he’s the “main challenge” for the first episode he appears and then just kinda stands next to the police officer occasionally to drop observations for exposition or tell Kid something he doesn’t know. I mean, you cannot introduce another high school detective into a universe that whose main character is literally a high school detective. It was as if Jessica Jones kept having Iron Man and another random play boy billionaire with a weird robot suit. There just hast to be a better character than that? Make it a very smart police officer, just anything else. It feels like most of the characters are mostly window dressing and there is just no emotional arc to them whatsoever - they’re treated like most side characters that get shown something by Kaito Kid, have a change of heart and never appear again - with the exception that they are on screen. Constantly. Doing nothing at all.

4.The last two episodes: They’re probably the worst. So, there is this “new magician-thief in town and his name is Kaito Corbeau” and he’s kind of the antithesis of Kaito Kid, dressing in the same suit but in black and probably like a joke on the fact that Kaito Kid is a magician who uses doves which are white and crows are black? I mean, it’s fun but the mirror doesn’t really work that much because the words “Kid” and “Corbeau” don’t mirror each other and Kaito Kid rarely uses doves. But I get the point, A for effort, I guess. Anyway, so. Corbeau who looks suspiciously much like Kaito’s dad and apparently knows something about his death, then challenges Kaito to a duel of thieves also being a magician asks him to solve the mistery of how he will steal some precious gem. By the end of the first episode of the two-parter, Corbeau has stolen the gem and Kaito walks home wondering how he did it. As he comes home the lights of his house are turned on, which is weird since he lives alone because his dad is dead and his mother is always travelling the world. But that unexpected visitor turns out to be his mother and my first reaction was... really? No, they would not be doing such a stupid thing, right? Nah, that’s probably a red herring. No way she’s Corbeau. (Spoiler: she’s Corbeau.) And she asks him “if he really wants to do this? If he doesn’t want to become a magician in Vegas or anything?”, which is a reasonable question from a mother: do you really want to be a thief and hunt some criminals who might as well kill you like your da? But it’s also kind of a stupid one because it is absolutely reasonable that he definitely wants to do that and that there is no grain of doubt in his mind that he does. And that is ultimately the problem of the last two episodes: they’re about testing Kid’s commitment which fails on a bunch of levels. The first one being: there is never a struggle on the side of Kid at all. He never doubts himself, Corbeau isn’t even that big of a challenge, considering he has been regularly challenged by genius high school detectives who seem to be the smartest demographic ever, an actual witch, a serial killer+thief, another differen thief and this shady organization that killed his dad. There is no escalation, no actual struggle against all odds making him question his motivations which - he doesn’t even think for longer than a second about his mother’s questions which is why, when Corbeau tells him around the end that it was all to test his commitment, it could have been substituted for literally anything else.

However, that’s not my real problem with that: Kaito Kid is a necessity, not an identity. There is no need for a commitment towards the figure of Kaito Kid because the moment that criminal organization is caught, there is no need for the mantle of Kaito Kid anymore. This whole idea of commitment of character falls apart because Kid is not a superhero. He’s not taking up a huge and never ending task that is going to take forever - Kaito could very well become a big magician in Vegas afterwards, these things are not mutually exclusive which is why that question kinda backfires and makes his mom look bad because she doubts him for no reason whatsoever? Also, Kaito is literally still in high school and 17, they somehow came up with something less rational than having him dress up as a magician at night and hunting criminals by having him drop out of high school and become a magician in Las fucking Vegas with 17. And I get that it’s the last episode and you wanna end it on a heroic note but that didn’t work at all.

(next morning thoughts: I think I kinda understand the underlying problem of those two episodes now, let me, like the show itself compare it to his bigger brother - Detective Conan. There is no similar episode to test the main character’s strength of mind, but his parents often times wonder and ask him if he really wants to do this considering he nearly died the first time, and that is genuine care and if it wasn’t a better idea to let the police handle it; Conan always answers that he needs to keep doing it. However, these kinds of episodes would actually work with Conan as the main character because for one, his parent’s reasoning is way more sensical and two: he’s inherently human. Yeah, he is super smart and knows a bunch of weird shit that helps him solving crimes, but detectives are humans and they never pretend to be otherwise. I’m not saying magicians aren’t humans, the idea of supernatural things that is beautiful and quite literally casts a spell over us, to be willingly tricked into a world where the impossible is possible is a very human thing. Magicians just aren’t, they’re entertainers and try to exceed our reality, to be exceptional and - to be not human. That’s why the show always has him being cocky and witty, rarely struggling more than a bit with a heist, because he needs to. At this point his poker face has quite literally become his entire character.)

I know, I have been rambling, what I wanted to say is: despite all of this I don’t dislike the show. And in a way it suffers from the same Detective Conan problem of having selfcontained stories but an obligation to connect them to each other, weakening the entire thing. And I don’t know why I like it so much, because I like it more than anything reasonable would justify me to. And this is kinda what I need to find out. I’m very tired now and I have three days to work on my paper and I should go to sleep. If you expected a satisfying conclusion to this whole affair: welcome to Magic Kaito and I’m sorry.