#like most people are interested bc of historical setting/characters right

[elijahmiles]

v strange to have been in the ac trenches for so long and have so many new people interested in shadows. it feels like a bunch of people just walked into my house. hello. i’ve been in ac hell for years now. welcome.

[mossy-rainfrog]

Build A Cowboy Round 5!

Hi good evening sorry for vanishing OK SO i mentioned in the tags of my first poll that this cowboy is not just going to be a vaguely historical cowboy, but from a Very specific time frame, because of the fic that his partner Javi exists in. That being said, there is a lot to unpack here with this! The time period exactly is 1841, the setting is Texas (because I am texan and we are predictable) and oh my god this is one of the most insane times for a character to be from texas 😭

Our cowboy will have in fact lived through the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), the Texas Revolution (1835-1836), tx's CRINGEFAIL attempt at self governing, rapidly approaching our annexation into the US in 1844-5, and then coming right up on the fuckign CIVIL WAR in 1861. These guys deeply understand the concept of "get me the fuck out of the interesting times, im sick of the interesting times". im so sorry cowboys, you can blame Herman Melville for this.

anyways yall didnt come here for a history lesson but you are in fact going to get one because i am insufferable first and an artist second :) and also as a note, race and backstory are always intertwined things but Especially when it is fuckign 1841 so. yeah exercise caution, there will be discussion of racism, medical close-calls, and anti-indigenous genocide. PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THE BACKGROUNDS BEFORE CHOOSING ONE! you dont have to read the sources. those are just there because i have autism. 👍

DETAILS BELOW THE READMORE BC I GOT WAYYY TOO WORDY⬇️

BACKSTORY A: Black Cowboy fled Texas* to Oklahoma with his family after the revolution, now travels up the trade routes breaking wild horses, passing along abolitionist messages, and assisting refugees. A miracle baby surviving a cleft lip with limited surgery and sustained permanent hearing damage as a result, he took up the trade of horsebreaking with flying colors, keeping right up with his older brothers. A sharp shot, keen eye, and a talented horseman, his best trained horses help him identify sounds that he otherwise can't hear. Loosely familiar with PSL, but primarily used a mix of lip-reading, localized/community generated sign growing up.

* After the US aided Texas in staging a coup against Mexico and declaring independence, an ordinance passed in 1836 that fully banished free Black people from the region unless they had personal pardon from Congress. This ordinance was not passed without pushback, and it changed shape and restriction over the years as people of color such as Joseph Tate, John and Charity Bird, Diana Leonard, Allen Dimery, and more all fought for their right to their own lands and lives. The law eventually settled into what was known as the Ashworth Act in 1840, which allowed free Black people to stay IF they had been residing in the state before 1836. It certainly wasn't the victory many had hoped, and even though many free Black persons in Texas were granted pardon to stay, like the Ashworths who the act was named after, many others were forced to leave after their allotted time was up, and were threatened with the future of slavery should they return. thank you texas history for being a vile piece of shit 👍

BACKSTORY B: Mexican/Tejano Vaquero from West Texas whose family has been ranching and cattle driving for decades. Has no interest in moving post-revolution, fuck you very much. If the borders are going to cross his family without asking*, then there's no need to cross them back. Technically lives with his family, but spends extensive periods of time away from home on cattle drives. Steady-handed, steadfast, quick to keep his herd safe. Miraculously survived a cleft lip as a baby and sustained permanent hearing damage** as a result, but that didn't stop his father from teaching him everything he knew, nor our man from taking to it like a fish to water. Knows more about cattle driving than you will ever forget.

*Some brief notes on the borders shifting and alienating people in their own rightful land.

**There was no official sign language of Mexico until the first Deaf school was established in 1869, but he and his family likely have a community-based one that works for them.

BACKSTORY C: Coahuiltecan (specifically Payaya)* cowboy, farrier, and leatherworker. Picked up the line of work as family was pushed to assimilate, one of the few still claiming Coahuiltecan identity at this time**, and has made a good living for himself and his sisters with it. Like the others, miraculously survived a cleft lip as a child but sustained permanent hearing damage as a result. Knows Plains Indian Sign fluently, and also relies on the direction of his horse for picking up sudden sounds before he can spot them. Tries to keep his work as local as possible to avoid separation from family for long, and whenever that is necessary, makes sure to come back soon.

*Note: Coahuiltecan is a term referring to several northern-Mexican and southern-Texan autonomous groups with distinct cultural differences. However, since Spanish and French colonizers lumped these groups together, an immense amount of distinguishing knowledge has since been lost.

** Also note: the Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation is still very much around today (check out their site!) but nearing the mid 19th century, people at least claiming/listing this heritage on legal documents dwindled immensely for a variety of reasons.

[f0point5]

I really do wonder if drivers low-key get irked that the history books are going to remember them as mid because they happened to be driving in the Verstappen era?

//

Sorry for just jumping in and giving my two cents that nobody asked for but I do think that this is very real. Bc there are a few drivers on the current grid that would be considered great maybe even generational talents if not for the fact that they were driving against/in the era of Max Verstappen (aka the talent of the century, thx Niki Lauda for that one).

And yes, social media and the internet has changed things drastically but I still believe that just like almost nobody remembers who it was that prevented McLaren from having the perfect season back in the day, in 30 years times people will remember Max and the incredible season he had, not who won Singapore.

And most of the drivers will be forgotten, maybe not fully but not of importance anymore. A few will be remembered as could have been, should have been, would have been great. But it is Max who will be remembered as the greatest of them all (and maybe even more than that) and I do think that stings.

I don’t think any of them would be considered generational, except maybe maybe and it’s a big maybe, Charles, because the point of generational is that that person sets themselves apart. And I think Lando, George, Carlos, etc., and imo Charles (nobody come for me I cannot be bothered with this debate with today lol) are kind of too close together in terms of ability for any one of them to be standing out. Now, obviously that’s kind of a moot statement because you can say that having such a good car has given Max the opportunity to develop his skill in a way the others haven’t had etc., but I am of the opinion that Max is, and always would have been, something special, above and beyond the talents of his peers.

But certainly there would have been more race wins, points, and historic drives and stats to go around without Max in the picture. And I feel like when drivers are little kids they see themselves as Schumacher, or Hamilton, or Senna, right? They were once kids who remembered the big name heroes of the sport, so they must realise that they’re now kind of background characters in one of those stories. And maybe that isn’t a big deal to them but with the level of ego drivers tend to have I kind of feel like it would be?

And yes social media plays a big part now so kids have more access to other drivers and can have different favourites than back in the day but that’s a very present thing. Are kids born in 2040 going to be interested to know who was on the grid with Max Verstappen when he won ten races in a row? Idk. History says not.

So yeah I do wonder if when there’s like, an itch in all of them that won’t get scratched because they will probably never be the heroes they thought they would.

[your--isgayrights]

I dare you to think of any LJH meta

Yeah, ok! I mean I'm on a language kick so if you meant like a specific theme you wanted to ask about her fitting into then like lmk but I'll just do another name meaning breakdown here.

李 智 慧

^plum ^knowledge ^wisdom

이 지 혜

^ common surname ^ these two together often mean kind of like a wisdom/knowledge of overcoming ignorance/evil/chaos. has some reference in Buddhist texts.

TLDR;

the surnames in ORV group the characters together in interesting ways and some themes connecting the Lees are connection to KDJ's (and to KDJ thru extension of YJH's) past/childhood, and experience of growing in adversity (symbolized by plum meaning of Lee).

We know LJH is a Jeonju Lee because she's a descendant of Yi Seokgi in text. The stories of Admiral Yi Sunsin with Yi Seokgi and Lee Jihye with Na Bori parallel in a way that emphasizes how the moral actions that define who becomes the hero of a story are context sensitive to a society.

Historical narratives/war movies typically portray a black and white of who was right and who was wrong that is supposed to seem obvious in hindsight, but are propped up too often as moral lessons that are always true, but will actually be different relevant to the standards of the current 'setting' (society).

Jihye's Hanja can refer to an understanding of some Buddhist concepts that represent an answer to ORV's question of 'how to survive in a ruined world' that Kim Dokja ultimately disagrees with.

Detailed explanation:

Surname Lee

Yi/Lee/Li is another one of those suuuuper common last names. 2nd most common in Korea and it trades places with 王 a lot in China's population count for #1 and #2 most common. (BTW Li is such a common translation of this last name despite modern Korean spelling of 이 partially because in. Middle Korean it has been spelled multiple ways [링,니,리] throughout history, partially because the word is so old and has to be written so often, it's survived multiple standardizations of the Korean language that English is still catching up to.) You can see the commonness of the name reflected in how so many ORV characters have this last name, (Lee Sookyung, Lee Hyunsung, Lee Seolhwa, Lee Gilyeong Lee Jihye...)

But if the usage was just reflecting 'commonness' then where are the 5 characters with surname 밝 omniscient reader where have the parks of the world gone omniscient reader did they all die in the subway car omniscient reader answer me.

... ok, I would argue that regardless of intentionality, the surnames in ORV associate some characters in ORV with the roles they each have and call attention to the similarities between them. Like, Han Sooyoung and Han Myungoh both play parts of like cartoonishly obvious villains in the early text (韓 has some national pride attached to it because it's one of few Hanja commonly used in modern Korean bc it literally just means Korea today, but the etymological root is that it's a picture of a fence so you could infer like Chinese calling a nation past dynasty borders the nation over the fence which implies a separation/opposition I suppose), Yoo Sangah and Yoo Joonghyuk have sort of an emphasized relationship to Kim Dokja I discussed a bit earlier, and Kim Dokja hates Kim Namwoon because he was projecting his self-hatred of a cringe younger version of himself onto him.

So the thing that stands out to me about LHS LSH and LJH is that they're all people who are related to Yoo Joonghyuk's "past". (Sn: I feel SYS is exempted from this grouping because of her unique position in relation to time/humanness/KDJ&YJH, her surname 申 is from Chinese astrology (stars and specific symbolism you could call daoism)/timekeeping a summer month around gregorian August, but is also used in Korean phrases associated with honesty/earnestness, w/ promises and requests) . Conversely, LSK and LGY are a few of the 'real' people of KDJ's world pulled into the scenarios by his influence and also kind of remind of his past/childhood. So I think this actually has to do with the meanings/associations of this surname's hanja

李 is easy to remember with the meaning of plum because it's a picture of a child 子 hanging down from a tree 木. Plums don't actually have as long of a history as you might think because relative to Chinese language in like 1250 BCE we only have evidence of domestic plums starting around 400 BCE. HOWEVER despite a lack of genetic evidence, Western Zhou inscriptions on bronze (which are called 金文 btw if you wanted to know that KDJ's name is like maybe even more related to lit history lol) have been found to contain this glyph:

Wherein, rather than tree, the little asterisk looking thing is actually the lingual precursor to 米 which as a noun means like a grain/grass/wheat type of situation. How does that make sense if the plum is from a tree and not a grass? Well, linguists speculate the character is pictophonetic and the precursor to 米 is just giving the sound of the character, but it could also be an implication of cultivation/domestication/having the nature of a crop in my opinion, which would be cool if true because inscriptions of this kind occur previous to 771 BC, which is 300 years before extant physical evidence implies plums were domesticated/cultivated.

(Sn: Sorry ok all this is very cool to me because I love how far back you can trace things in Chinese Language. Like if you think about where language begins, I'm reminded very much of the nature of humanity and how ORV puts it with the metaphor of the wall. The first evidence we have of Chinese writing is the oracle bones that Shang people used, and these scriptures showed an already fully formed language that may have been used on more degradable materials. But the oracle bones lend this sacredness to the idea of the written word. The Shang carved characters into ox bones and turtle shells to ask their ancestors questions, and the ability to communicate with ancestors to predict the weather, the relationship of an individual to the past, stood at the very foundation of many East Asian societies for centuries after this point. Yet you wonder, who was the first prophet of bones? Was the first pictograph we might call language an attempt to communicate to a deceased loved one? To ask a question? To write on a wall, not knowing if there was truly a reader on the other side? It's something I think of with this theme of impossible communication that ORV is making a statement with about all of literary history.)

Either way, the inclusion of the word child is significant, because it's not just tied to the fruit being 'born' from the tree, but possibly also the symbolic significance of the plum throughout literary history. This is because plum is very associated with the season of spring. Like literally if you've ever played mahjong or looked at old daoist texts I guess there's this whole thing where there are 4 flowers tied to the 4 seasons and the plum blossom is the blossom of spring. And you know when you literally have like old old old guiding religious texts that basically Explain what those seasons mean to people at the time that becomes the foundation of medicine/ruling philosophies you can see like there are some very consistent themes tied to the plum blossom and thus the character 李.

First is the idea of birth, which makes sense because spring is when the whole world is coming back to life after winter, and the flowers of the plum tree are one of the same. (Sn: a lot of daoist/naturalist influence in literary symbolism is based in the idea of scale... Like the galaxy is a microcosm of the universe, the planet is a microcosm of a galaxy, a human life is a microcosm of the planet, etc.) Because of this, the plum and spring sre associated with childhood/ the early stages of life, (as 子 implies). In this sense, it fits well that 李 would be used for important characters in raising KDJ (his mom and the people he admired in YJH's story) while also being used for LJH and LGY, whose youth in comparison to their harsh situation is often commented upon by the narrative. The other aspect of this meaning is the idea of blooming in spite of adversity, in that the first blooms of the plum blossom may appear when it still feels like winter, bringing the first signs of spring, thus the growing in spite of adversity. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to name a lot of the characters in a literal Apocalypse novel 李, they are blooming/growing in spite of their harsh circumstances.

(Sn: the history of plums/ stonefruit in East Asia is really interesting, sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what the first domesticated stonefruit was, but it's far back in time enough that 1 day isn't enough time to find that answer.)

In LJH's case in particular, 李 is also an important connection to the historical figure Yi Eokgi. This actually means she's one of few characters featured in ORV we have a Bon-gwan for, since Yu Eokgi was descendant from the Jeonju Yi clan (who made Korea's royal seal the plum blossom when they were in power btw). This is pretty interesting and ORV does like super get into it in the movie theater chapters, but I'll put some context here if you like do not know about Korean war history.

So war is a really interesting narrative in ORV because of a certain discourse on the sort of tokenization of tragedy in storytelling/propaganda. For instance, a huge theme of early Korean literature is the victory of Silla in the three kingdoms period, because extant Korean literature begins with the ancestors of the Silla nobles who conquered the peninsula. Thus, in tales of the three kingdoms, Silla may be portrayed in a better light/more accurately than Goguryeo and Baekje. Up to the modern day, these tales get retold over and over again with different actors, which is part of the point the arc about the war of kings was making, that these noble, dressed up pictures of war don't stand up to actual conflict or modern day issues, that they get rehashed over and over again as if to invoke some sense of national pride when in reality they've lost meaning/application to modern wars/society beyond the profit made by selling their recognizable images. (Shout out to Min Jiwon, her surname's hanja means 'pity' btw, lol) In contrast to this history, Admiral Yi Sunsin is someone who recorded his own history in logs without the intent of publication (as far as I'm aware), and his image/story was taken by the literate of his time only to be fed into that same content generating machine of the modern day, where war movies commercialize and glamorize the battles he fought. (Sn: ORV calls him by his posthumous title, wherein the Hanja for 'loyalty" was used despite the fact that Yi Sunsin notoriously disobeyed the emperors orders and was right to do it. This name kind of relates to this concept of the written word as a masking narrative bc he also had a given name that basically meant servant of the emperor and there's a famous letter where he was like this servant is going to do the opposite of what you said actually to the king) In the context of ORV and modern SK society, the military is just another industry the young people of today are filed in and out of, and men in particular are obligated and often made to feel there is a real need to participate in the industrial complex of modern warfare. So, this is relevant to KDJ's life experience of mentioning being sent to a bad post during his time serving, in the sense of showing war to actually be quite soul draining and unremarkable outside of fantasy.

So in the idea of considering Yi Sunsin 's Real Life story as something tokenized into "Narrative," Yi Seokgi is like almost less than a sidekick. He was a commander in Yi Sunsin 's first notable battle with Japanese forces, so the two often fought alongside one another, yet he's not the individual that is most often put with Yi Sunsin or remarked upon as his close 'comrade' in history, so it makes sense in the realm of ORV that maybe his story isn't well known. I personally think this is sort of because his story is tragic in the sense that the moral of it is to not follow orders of stupid government leaders who don't understand reality... In that he died because he went to a battle when the king ordered it after Yi Sunsin was arrested and stripped from his post for disobeying because he knew it was a stupid order. In addition, I've seen some conflicting versions of this, but some say he went to his own death over the side of the ship when Korea's loss seemed apparent.

So this is really interesting then in the concept of LJH and Na Bori (surname means Net btw). Because it puts LJH as this Yi Seokgi whose obedience to Narrative turned her into a Yi Sunsin. Like, in the epilogues we can see her interactions with Na Bori in that LJH is the younger one who gets teased and called crybaby, who relies on NBR. (What if I was casting myself overboard because of our impending doom and you were a net that caught me and we were both girls lol) Then, NBR takes care of her further by sacrificing her own life. Then, this is the incident that draws the character of Yi Sunsin 's (also I say his name here, but consider that the monikers of the constellations are actually pretty important in the meta narrative context of a Character, a being that symbolizes something in a story, an idea, rather than the actual real person with their own private emotions and such. Also how they aren't able to communicate directly until the point where KDJ himself is becoming like a character to us too. The constellations picking someone then who best understands their story/relates to it is a form of viewership/readership in a way) attention to this particular ancestor of Yi Seokgi, in a way that kind of shows a version of his own story, what if the young and inexperienced Yi Seokgi was the one to live instead? Would he become the same kind of hero in different circumstances? This concept of seeking your own narrative in the stories of others recurrs, obviously, all throughout the narrative of ORV.

(sn on that: I think that KDJ finding his own narrative in different ways between LJH and KNW is also important to the main narrative of survivorship that drives KDJ's initial interest in the world of WoS because of the fact that LJH's survivors guilt and indecision are, in contrast to KNW's over-enthusiastic ownership of the identity of "murderer" relate to the internal debate of KDJ's own self hatred, in that self-exoneration through blaming the situation is the side of KDJ's trauma that triggers his self-hatred/that he has to let himself misremember to keep on living. In opposition, LJH is a "murderer" who KDJ feels sympathy towards. In the world of WoS promised to KDJ in that very initial concept of "what if everyone you know had to kill others in order to survive?" The introduction of these early characters in ORV is always tied to that idea of how they had to become a killer in order to survive. In the beginning, compared to KNW, LJH is someone KDJ wants to see be dissimilar from that version of himself)

So the battle highlighted in the movie theater chapters is the battle of Myeongyang, which is pretty important. In history, basically what happened is that the court and king became convinced by a Japanese double agent that they could ambush a Japanese fleet in a certain area of the sea that Yi Sunsin had actually been to and knew there were like just some absolutely shitty awful rocks there and so, despite not knowing about the double agent plot, he refused to take his ships out there for no reason. This double agent plot was like literally set up because Yi Sunsin had defeated the Japanese fleets a few times and they wanted to lure him right to those shitty rocks and kill him. Turns out they didn't have to because the idiot king got so pissed at being disobeyed that he had Yi Sunsin locked up and like broke his legs and wanted to kill him also but got convinced not to. Yi Eokgi and others who had fought alongside tried to stick up for him, but Yi Eokgi was sent out with another commander to sail right into the trap. Then like I said, some tellings say he died by 'honorable suicide' at sea and some say he was run ashore and killed, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm pretty sure ORV is working with the former version. In that case, Myeongyang is the battle wherein Yi Sunsin had just been reinstated and rushed out to look for the fleet that never returned.

So this is why the movie about this battle reminding LJH of her dead friend connects, because, presumably, the sea attributed to her sickness is the location of Yi Eokgi 's suicide, parallel to NBR voluntarily giving her life to save LJH's.

Another narrative occuring here is, again, the parallel of the fantasy situation to the reality of this kind of trauma. Just like KDJ and other's skills only come into play in the world of WoS, the environment -specific nature of LJH's abilities is particularly emphasized with association to this sea that is a reminder of her greatest personal trauma. This is interesting because I think the overt message of this scene is KDJ forcing this idea of like using your trauma as a necessity to become stronger, which is very interesting in the context of helplessness to narrative and the fact that KDJ's idea of being like the sacrificial goat that has to endure all suffering for the sake of any happiness to occur in the world being the final boss of ORV... Also interesting in the context of the way natural human tragedy/history is edited into narrative visavis the commentary of historical narrative here.

Because if you look at YSS, he was this admiral whose greatest advantage was always just knowing the sea the best of anyone else. He knew where the shitty rocks were, and Myeongyang was named the battle of Myeongyang because when the king was like give up on finding our guys and just fight with the land troops he was like nah man I got 12 ships here and ships are only good if there's water, and he sent one of his boats to lure the Japanese fleet of like 300 guys into the Myeongyang straight that just had like hella whirlpools.

So the idea of someone who is weak on land but strong in the sea is very parallel to that aspect of trauma which is the fact that trauma responses are trying to prepare you to encounter traumatic situations again, and when you don't encounter those situations, they just linger and stay with you, and in some ways they become a weakness in dealing with everything other than that very specific situation you once experienced. So in this section KDJ is telling LJY to get over her trauma and use it for this specific situation, that having endured killing a human being once before, you are prepared to do it however many times it takes to keep living and get to the end... But again, the entire text of ORV is challenging this idea of "necessary" traumas, and YSS is someone whose story reflects this in an interesting way.

Because YSS and YSG's 'tragedy' as told by ORV was probably quite preventable in real life. It was not really 'necessary' for so many people to be killed in the previous battle for YSS to win the battle at Myeongyang, but the bearing these aspects have on the power of his narrative? Would this story be told so many times over if YSS hadn't faced such adversity before the most told legend of the 12 ships under his command retaking the sea from 300 Japanese ships? YSS's eventual death at sea is retold over and over, while YSG who also died at sea during battle could have died any one of a few different ways without public consensus. It reminds me of that theme of little tragedies in ORV, the idea of a personal tragedy that will never reach the scale of a great story or narrative. Because narrative in some ways asks a tragedy to justify it's existence, to have a reason to be told so many times over, to fit to a certain model of what others want or expect. Like in real life we should be looking at the idiot king from YSS's time and thinking hey maybe you should just listen to people who know what they're talking about instead of having an ego about it, what an asshole, it's stupid that the government system gave him the power to do that shit, etc. But in the context of narrative, an idiot king is basically a setting, the innate nature of an uncaring and cruel world context is static and immovable, and the hero's interaction/relationship with that setting creates plot. "This is just the way things are, it's so realistic" type comments evoke this aspect of fiction that seeking radical joy in narrative fights against. Because in this narrative of war, young people are asked whether or not they will die following orders or live disobeying them, but the answer in LJH and NBR is that whether or not obeying the order to kill or resisting the order to kill will lead to certain death is completely dependent on the will of that setting the which narrative does not dare challenge.

So the aspect of war narrative adds onto this idea of systems/narratives/what we see as 'reality' having to be torn away to find the true heart of something. Because the reality of war reveals is that all death is senseless, tragedy is an impediment to happiness, not a requirement or precursor. Our sense of narrative merely gives the two a false relationship.

You can be happy without suffering, you can suffer without being happy, and you can be happy after suffering and suffering after being happy... Human life isn't always so simple as a one-way transition between winter and spring

Given name Jihye

智慧

Basically this word means wisdom, so you could interpret the whole name as like growing into wisdom or having to do with how YSS's quotations are repurposed as aphorisms or something, but like I said these characters are actually also used to translate the concept of 'prajna' in sinicized Buddhist texts. It also means wisdom/understanding/insight but there are like specific concepts that are supposed to be being Understood in the context of Buddhism u know. Basically: 1 nothing lasts forever (impermanence), 2 what causes suffering (I think usually Buddhists say the answer to that question is desire, idk), 3 the lack of self which Chinese translate 无我 (there's a huge split on what that means depending on the tradition) and sometimes also a secret 4th thing that's basically like nothing has inherent/meaning/form besides the illusions we construct of them (void).

The reason I find this Buddhism connection interesting is because I think that Buddhist philosophy (just in my experience of others trying to convert me/telling me why they prefer it not saying this is the case for everyone who prescribes to any branch) does this thing religions do where it tries to answer an impossible to solve problem that humans have but I don't necessarily agree with the solution. Like lots of religions are kind of based just in this reality that people dunno what being dead feels like when they are alive and are trying to predict it through the lense of their own societies, but Buddhism is kind of unique in that most of the branches with extended afterlife mythos develop like way later on and it doesn't immediately try to describe the creation of the world or assert any similar myth whose details are actually extremely related to the context of the society it was originally told in and hard to relate to outside of that worldview, Buddhism starts from the point of a guy who tried being rich and tried being poor and was like, I suffered doing both of those things. They both kind of sucked. Which I think is part of why Buddhism has such this huge spread across societies so early on in history because the silk road goes both ways but Buddhism caught on like a wildfire in East Asia and maybe part of that is that when your dynastic lineages and model of society goes back so fucking long it doesn't actually seem feasible to change your society as much as it seems to be able to remove yourself from the stresses existing in that society causes you.

So, 无常， 苦， 无我，空。 Society feels permanent, but there is no permanence. Bitterness exists because of this illusion of society. The concept of 'me' a symbol that represents my being to others is not actually a truly solid, unchangeable thing. To be void of the desires, concerns and stresses in the world you cannot change is 空 in the sense of void/lack of activity, but also in the sense of freedom. (Sn: I think I like the Chinese translations of the last term more than the English "void," because most English speakers will picture a dark space and feel trapped, but Kong makes me think 'do you have some free time?' which I think lines up more with the Buddhist idea of 'freeing yourself' than like the idea of you are confined to your mortal existence or w/e)

So in relation to the concept of narrative, this idea of 'wisdom' demonstrates that reaction of interaction with a horrible setting/worldly suffering/trauma/ etc. I think that because the lack of interaction/removal of self from the world is characterized as a philosophical enemy of ORV wherein 'caring about others and being happy with others does not always require suffering and even if it does keep trying to be Happy' and emphasizes the idea of the importance of individuality and identity and personhood, the name of 'understanding' in this sense is representing that LJH initially has a worldview KDJ has to fight against. Because her lack of participation in the scenario to avoid causing more suffering is like the first conflict between her and KDJ and he convinces her to fight to survive/keep on living/ interact with her suffering in a way that kinda contradicts from the idea of 'escaping the self' you know. Because at the core of ORV is that question of how do you go on living when you've done something horrible? In this sense, LJH's 智慧 is just another one of the stock responses to trauma Kim Dokja must react to in a sequence.

(Sn: once more on the concept of how narrative can justify something horrible, LSK's narrative redeeming herself in the eyes of the public vs the horrible truth she was trying to conceal. The idea that killing is acceptable in the scenarios but KDJ must conceal a past of murder outside of that space. The side characters shown to delight in horrible acts as soon as the setting/worldview has changed to expect it in them and reward them for it.)

I also think that ultimately Jihye represents the first introduction to the "reincarnator" solution to the ruined world that is later followed up by Nirvana and YSA, and KDJ's journey through that is kinda like a journey to the east instead of west where separating from narrative and your most important relationships and sense of self are the final boss.

[communistkenobi]

Hey I have a question - you seem to know your stuff when it comes to politics and theory, and I love your analyses of media. I was watching Andor and though I could pick up on its core message, I was disappointed in myself because I couldn't recognize the smaller details of why and how they showed it. Like all these posts on Tumblr analyzing why they took the characters in the directions they chose, what they showed verbally and what was left unspoken for the audience, how it actually depicts rebellion accurately compared to other shows - I would've never recognized all that myself. Do you know how I can start learning more about this and being able to think critically about stuff through a social/political/economic lens? Are there any prominent books/how can I start learning from things that have happened already in history? Thank you so much!

Thank you! There are a couple answers to this. One is that if you specifically want to “practice” looking at media more critically (not negatively, just in the sense of like, what is this “doing” with its story/characters/set/etc?), I would recommend consuming movie and game and show reviews. I watch a lot of them on youtube and listen to podcasts that frequently talk about media, and I less frequently will read more formal reviews on news outlets. And also if i watch a movie and don’t understand the ending or something I’ll google the movie title + reddit and read what people are saying. Mostly I’ll disagree with them but that itself helps inform my own opinion better and narrow down my feelings. If you want to watch video reviews, Dan Olson (FoldingIdeas) and Jacob Geller on youtube are probably my favourites for those, the former for movies and the latter for games. These aren’t review channels per se, they moreso do the kind of media analysis you were talking about. I think they provide a good blend of political discussion as well as discussion of the component parts of a film or game (like editing, or play mechanics). I feel like I learn a lot just by watching the way other people construct their own opinions and connect them together.

Another fairly easy thing to do is to watch more movies and shows. Like I’m embarrassed by how little movies I’ve seen in my life, and I feel like the more I watch the more I feel confident in talking about why I thought a movie did or didnt work. I also think that, if you’re able to, having a friend or a group of people to discuss movies/shows/etc with helps a lot. Like the act of verbalising your own opinions for other people to understand is also a skill that you can develop, and often figuring out how to present your opinion to someone else will help you figure out what those opinions are in the first place.

I’m not sure if I’m a good person for specific recommendations on reading history/politics/theory. I frequently will pursue topics that interest me when I hear other people talk about them. I think what you first want to narrow down is what topics interest you the most - time periods, places, specific ideas or concepts, etc - and then go from there. don’t think you need to learn about all Politics and History. I really like that one post on here about how it’s really easy to become above average at something simply by spending a little bit of time on it. for example I know more about cartography than most human beings on earth right now, not because I know a shitload but because most people don’t know a lot about the topic at all. And I’m just saying this bc like I remember feeling very intimidated when approaching serious historical and political texts because they all sounded similarly authoritative and knowledgeable about everything, even though in actuality their field of expertise is pretty tightly specialised.

Anyway idk if any of that is helpful at all lol. In the same way you will hear people saying you need to practice to get better at drawing or knitting or whatever, I think viewing this as a skill you want to develop in yourself simply by watching other people and trying to summarise your own thoughts helps a lot, which sounds corny and no-duh maybe, but it’s the most reliable way I’ve been able to get better at expressing myself.

[lionbearfox]

you should state your opinions about fontaine if you're awake! (i am looking intently)

OH MY GOD I WAS GONNA AFTER THE TRAILER BUT I FORGOT. OPINIONS INCOMING

(below the cut bc to nobody's surprise it got long as fuck)

first and foremost! focalors!! furina! she looks SO FUN. huuuuuge contrast to nahida of the previous arc but i'm into it! i love her irreverent attitude, not *really* taking justice seriously, probably mostly oblivious to the problems of the people... if sumeru writing quality holds that arc is gonna be DELICIOUS. so excited for this contrast! (that was set up LAST YEAR when neuvilette was nahida's drip quote talking about how serious she was comparion to a "certain someone" being prone to hysterics....)! and speaking of neuvilette! i'm pretty sure he's nonhuman, maybe an oceanid, and i REALLY want him to be an ally of the previous hydro archon who's trying to keep furina in check! i think that could be SUPER interesting.

other characters: did not give a single fuck about wriothesley until they gave him a fun potential dynamic with adorable sigewinne and now I Love Him (my weakness is dadguys lol), Did Not expect a third sibling for lyney+lynette but i love all three of them! lynette in particular seems like she'll hit all my buttons character-wise, so i'm super interested to see what she's like and how they're gonna play the fatui/(probably) house of hearth connection. im expecting gendou ringo 2: more exciting and i'm Very delighted about it, i loved that quest!! navia and chlorinde look super interesting as well - i'm REALLY hoping they add gun as a new weapon type that would be SO FUN and the schneznayan cast would super benefit from that in the future..

so far the plot looks super cool too! from what i can tell, there are some super interesting parallels being set up regarding illusion/truth (the magic show/the lie behind it, the spectacle of trial/the lack of justice resulting from it, the pure waters/the pollution corrupting it, the glamorous society/the suffering that lies beneath) and i LOVE Themes and Motifs so IM HYPED FOR THAT! hoping they knock it out of the park with the writing again!! designs all look super solid so far tho im kind of disappointed about some freminet concepts that did not last...

if i had to choose one thing im most excited for tho... there's rumors of a hexenzirkel character in fontaine and i'm a longtime hexenzirkel fan so i REALLY REALLY want that to be true i Love the hexenzirkel and they've been getting more story relevance recently so i think fontaine would be a great place for them to enter the main plot!!

gameplay-wise: obvi we'll have to wait for more info to come out, but looks super promising! super hyped about underwater exploration, the setting design leaks i've seen knock it out of the park as always, i'm sure they'll have some super fun world quests and puzzles for us to scratch our heads over - i've got 0 doubts it'll be fantastic in that design lol. will it top sumeru's rainforest in sheer fun? we'll see but i'm feeling optimistic! my only criticism is that it's right above the newest desert expansion and there's a giant hole in the map which Bothers Me but... historically we can expect 4 map expansions total in 4.x so i'm sure that will be temporary.... (i hope so at least!)

i definitely have more thoughts but this is all the big stuff i could think of... maybe i'll post a full analysis/crumbs i noticed of the teaser, but overall- SUPER excited, i think the story is heading in a good direction, and i'm ready for it to be 4.0 already!!!!

[styxnbones]

1, 2, 7, 9, 17, 21, and 24 for whichever characters you think would have the most interesting answers! (and feel free to do multiple if you want)

1.What memory would your OC rather just forget?

As much as Corin is endlessly thankful to Minerva for un-brainwashing him, and cherishes the ability to remember everything he had been forced to forget, there's a part of him that wishes he could un-see being forced to eat his fiancee immediately after his embrace. He feels incredibly guilty about it, because he remembers as well just how good it felt in the moment and because, even with all Minerva's effort, he still can't remember her name.

2. What's something about your OC that people wouldn't expect just from looking at them?

For Minerva: he looks like he's in his late teens and dresses like a thrift-store catboy. On first glance, "Mass-Murdering Emissary Of A Vampiric Death Cult" is not really what comes to mind. This is, of course, the point.

7. What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

I'm of the "reduce reuse recycle" school of character creation, so a lot of my ocs look very different from how they started. But, I'd say the one that's changed the most would be Harper- having switched from Monster of the Week to Vampire the Masquerade and consequently become what they once hunted.

9. Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC?

Not so much a quote but the whole concept for Minerva came into being bc my brain came up with the phrase "Reality in Triplicate" and wouldn't stop spinning it around.

17. What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?

I think objectively the worst thing I've done to an OC is how I set up Minerva to be embraced. They were a long-term resident at a Troubled Teen Facility, which was bad enough on it's own before his future pack took over the place and turned it into a Fight For Your Life Black Hand Boot Camp- using the kids as both the recruits and the training dummies until Minerva was the last one standing and was then immediately put through even more shit as their Creation Ritae. All in all, horrifically traumatizing scenario that quite literally fractured their mind and left them trapped in the body of a teenager for the rest of his nights.

21. Does your OC have any illnesses or disorders? How do they handle it?

I mean, all of them are dead so illnesses aren't so much a problem- but ohhhhh boy do these vampires have disorders. Literally all of them are traumatized in one way or another, though I think Harper is the only one who actually got diagnosed w PTSD before they died. Historically they haven't dealt with it well (killing and eating people to embody the monster that nearly killed and ate them so that they never have to feel like prey again is... not constructive), but they've gained a lot of touchstones that have helped them get things under control. Cass, however, is just out there raw dogging unlife with the aftereffects of a neglected childhood, abusive relationship, supernatural NPD and fragments of an elder rattling around in their brain. I would say the one handling it best is Kellen, who's got the tism and is arguably a CSA survivor- they've got a steady job, a consensual workplace relationship, a decent connection with their brother, and they generally have their shit together as long as they can keep up their routine.

24. What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions?

Harper could have very easily ended up in the Sabbat instead of with the Camarilla. When their sire killed herself they were hovering around Humanity 3 and if a Sabbat pack had found them first I have no doubt that they'd have ended up converting to a Path of Enlightenment and fitting right in. That, or just spiraling into wighthood. All in all, though, I think that their life would actually be much more boring- at least from a storytelling standpoint. The point of Harper is the repression, the tension in the denial of what they desire in favor of superficial things like status and duty. They are having an objectively much worse time trying to fit into the Camarilla's status quo than they would letting loose in the Sabbat and they hate every second of it but still choose it anyways and that's why its interesting.

[memorys-skyscraper]

finished up like a dragon: ishin, a lot of miscellaneous thoughts

the punchline to people repeatedly seeing not-majima and going "oh weird....... i heard you were hot" being that he stole the identity of not-oda is hilarious. its not that there's some vocal minority that finds not-majima hot, straight up, nobody does, everyone who'd said he was hot was thinking of someone else. extremely funny.

even better is not-kiryu and not-majima putting their own clause in the letter they take to not-daigo, bc if i have my history right, the approximate american equivalent of this would be, like, making a metal gear game set in the 1700s and suggesting that solid snake came up with the first amendment. insane choice

i was hoping they'd leverage the audience's meta knowledge of the characters from the main series for more twists in this one, but for the most part characters mapped pretty cleanly onto the archetypes of their main series counterparts. the biggest departures were probably shibusawa and adachi, but they ended up in their respective roles of antagonist and ally eventually. it wouldve been cool if we'd gotten like, evil date or something.

other thoughts: seeing daigo half-bald took years off my life. not-zhao's death and not-majima's reaction to it actually got me. not-kiryu holding not-nishiki's hand as he died was surprisingly tender, but the moment was completely unearned by this game and was only meaningful with the context of y0/y1. its wild that they wrote ryoma to be a WAY better communicator with haruka than kiryu's ever been. the "romance" between ryoma and oryo was painfully boring, but the scene of her using ryoma's massive tits as a pillow and looking absolutely thrilled about it was very funny. looked pretty comfy ngl

anyway. this one was weird. i actually enjoyed the different combat styles, the swordplay was neat, but the plot itself was a snoozer, a function of being so heavily based on actual historical fact no doubt. also ryoma's speech at the end was...... strange. the whole thing had a distractingly nationalistic streak- again, probably mostly a result of being historical fiction, but still. the vibes were weird. i'd be interested to know what people who are more informed on this period of history/japan's current politics think of this one.

[cjbolan]

honestly i see your point about alicent and team green! i definitely think they’re more sympathetic in this show and i like that personally. they’re all a bit like a medieval succession cast and they don’t like each other no but they do and will die for one another and i don’t think that’s debatable from how alicent can’t even utter how to tell aegon that she loves him (rhy’s actor saying otto also struggles with the capacity to tell his daughter he loves her so i think it’s really a generational detriment and dissonance) but will stand in front of him and protect in faced of a dragon. i guess because i find the relationship interesting of a kid raising kids herself growing up to not be able to relate to them or understand them or like them and still begrudgingly doing horrible things because she loves them and no one will protect them, not viserys who neglects them and not rhaenyra who ignores them and does threaten their safety (aemond specifically with the sharply questioned euphemism and historically bc succession wars have started like lady jane grey). she’s a pretty good anti-villain to me for that. overall i’m not an any team as i understand this is more of a shakespearan tragedy with no happy ending for either side but your point about the tragedy of these characters is really on point. i’ve seen people compare Rhaenyra’s story to a greek tragedy specifically too and ahh idk all the foreshadowing that’s been set up for both her and alicent and their fall is really cool to see. either way i’m excited for the angst of it all

Indeed!! You're right that most everyone in this story is an anti-villain. Or anti-hero, depending on how you look at it. Some characters seem more likeable now, but that may change as the series continues. I'll likely take no sides in the end.

House of the Dragon is ultimately a tragedy.

[ziracona]

For the videogame ask game 5, 7, 9, 11 :D

5: Game(s) coming out that you’re looking forward to

Hmmmm I guess the next Dark Pictures game, because I really like Supermassive, and I’m enjoying the series! Someday they’ll make another main series Fallout game, and I’ll be excited for that. I’m excited for the new Spider-Man determinately—not playing until I hear if they did right by Harry Osborn, because he’s a blorbo of all time, but if so, I will be over the moon. Wolf Among Us 2, like most people, and I’ve heard if it succeeds, Batman the Telltale series season 3 will be next and I desperately need to help John and Harvey and see what happens, so that too.

7: A series you’ve lost interest in

Right now I’d have to say Dragon Age, if this question means in a moving forward way? Like I still Adore Origings through 2, but DAI was so fucking horrible in a lot of the pulls they made that I have -200 interest in Dread Wolf or any new DA game unless the devs like, un-become shitty people. I felt genuinely betrayed by a lot of stuff they did in DAI, and I’m still very hurt over it.

9: A game you played completely blind with no prior knowledge of and enjoyed/loved

Hmmmm Oxenfree I think I just snagged on a PS sale? OH The Council is a fantastic little mystery/suspense/eldritch horror game, and I love playing titles where the ends aren’t even all known because it’s so branching and so few people have played (this was also my experience with Oxenfree, bc I played around launch back when people thought there just was no good ending). I googled like ‘suggestions for decision based games’ and that’s how I found The Council, but I hardly thinks subgenre counts as prior knowledge. — oh I could also say Fallout 4. I knew nothing about Fallout at all, and got a PS4 to play Until Dawn as many times as it took to save Josh right after launch, having played once with my brother on his. I came home with my system after a shady Walmart parking lot Craigslist deal half an hour away where both I and the seller were sure we’d be murdered by each other, and when I got home my brother offered me his copy of FO4 for ten bucks (a month after release, back when it was a sixty dollar game), because he’d beaten it and only plays games once. I owned no games yet and wanted to try out the system, and happily agreed. I’d never played an open world game before. Or one where followers had an affinity system, or branching choices in the large scale way, so my mind was blown. I remember Piper stopping me (literally) to tell me she thought I was a little bit of a do-gooder, and being amazed the game was keeping track of my actions and she had comments on it. Core system memory there. It’ll always be a special game in my heart.

11: Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

I like both! I guess I prefer a little backstory though? Because a game like FO4 where you can chose almost everything but you had a spouse, kid, and specific job, solid building blocks to rp with while getting a more complex personality. if I start a game like Skyrim where there’s a fuck ton of backstory I don’t know for the world, and NO history for me, I have no idea how to RP correctly. Because I don’t have the social and historical context. Like, DAO? Okay I get a quick background. Tabris. I love in a shitty Alienage, humans oppress us, I’m getting married, here’s an overview of my immediate social and political system. A+ — my personality and feelings are mine, but I have enough context for the world and my species and class that I can rp well. DAI? Idk we assume you played the rest of the series and tell you fuckall. I was a mage Vashoth. I got ‘your powers that would have made you a threat back home made you a successful mercenary. People are afraid of your species though.’ I’m there for some meeting?? That’s nothing. I started DAI before any other game, and had fucking 0 clue what anything to anyone was, and I couldn’t even give ‘I don’t know’ answers to make that work. Terrible game design. You can’t assume every player in your franchise played all 5 games before this. I know like 30 people who started Witcher in Witcher 3, and it did a great job of giving us not only world background, but specific past game facts too, so we /could/ start in 3. Anyway uh, I like minimal but enough context to rp well out the gate I guess? But it’s also fun to like, play a Telltale game be Lee Everett or Bruce Wayne. Like that’s cool too, idk which is more fun. Both fun for different reasons.

Ask game

[troglobite]

i’ve mentally added to my list of hamlet interpretations and productions i’d like to do 

disabled hamlet

any disability would do, but what makes the most sense is some kind of chronic pain or something like EDS

something that occasionally necessitates mobility aids and/or pain management

i’m gonna think out loud here so TW for all of the themes in hamlet, but w a disability & ableism twist

i just think making claudius (and possibly gertrude) homophobic and ableist would be even more interesting

bc it further complicates the reasons that claudius kills the king and usurps the throne and his wife, right? like he didn’t just do it for selfish reasons

he justifies it by being ableist as fuck and thinking that main character hamlet isn’t fit for the job

but everyone else doesn’t necessarily agree

hamlet’s father appearing to him and demanding vengeance, and later appearing to him and asking him to be kinder to his mother, both imply that his father, the original king hamlet, thought he was good enough to take over the throne

clearly he had been trained and educated well

he was competent, and perhaps had even seen combat--which--idr what i was originally going to say, but it is entirely possible. whichever king richard it was w the scoliosis, like it’s entirely possible--his armor was custom made for him and he fought on horseback. it’s possible. both historically and today (ethical discussions of warfare aside)

ANYWAY so further questioning hamlet’s competence, and trying to undermine him that way, as well, to try and further cement his own illegitimate rule, would make sense w claudius.

a disabled hamlet would ALSO allow for way more interesting takes on his suicidality

like i was just running through his first scene on stage, and it’s (after interacting w claudius and gertrude) “oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. or else that the everlasting had not fixed its cannons ‘gainst self-slaughter”

literally like “FUCK bro, this shit hURTS”

and then the delivery of the next line could be darkly ‘sarcastic’

like the ways in which some might “playfully” ~joke~ abt suicidality, or at least in a way of like “please, can i get some No More Pain for a bit?”

obviously hamlet’s also grieving and depressed af for other reasons

and claudius is a GIANT SHITSTAIN to him

bc claudius’s giant monologue at hamlet just before this literally calls him unmanly, with an unschooled mind, an affront to heaven, etc. these are also all things and insults that might be slung at a disabled person, particularly in this time. 

and that would make them hit just that little bit harder

and also set the stage for hamlet’s feigning of his “madness” throughout the play

which incredibly boring scholars have interrogated re: whether it’s really a performance or not

and like honestly just read the fucking play, you boringass bozos. it’s not that hard to see it’s a performance. the way he shows his genuine devastation is much clearer, and i’m tired. 

the closest we get to anything resembling the blurring of lines btwn feigned madness and actually losing it is when he jumps into ophelia’s grave, and even then it’s more that he’s like retroactively mourning his father again, and is furious that others get to mourn without mocking, and the aftershocks of having just escaped death, only to get home and see things in even more upheaval

ANYWAY

it makes his soliloquies abt suicide more interesting and less one-note. not in the intellectual way, but in the way where it can complicate delivery of the line, and also add layers to what, exactly, hamlet is grappling with.

bc in the absence of who was clearly his biggest supporter (his father), all of those digs from other people abt his fitness to rule must surely be weighing on him.

ESPECIALLY since he’s forbidden from returning to school, where he clearly does well. so thank fuck horatio is there, y’know?

bc that’s the other part--horatio can demonstrate his love for him in a lot of ways. hamlet can be unabashed abt his disability and needs around horatio, who will automatically be there to help him. and it would be really sweet, and a great nonverbal type of communication to the audience abt what, exactly is wrong at court.

bc we could also see the strain around his disability w his mother, as well, bc what if she wasn’t as on board w hamlet as his father was? what if she had more concerns, or was more critical?

it also allows for more evidence of his journey on the ship and encounter w the pirates--if he comes back w an injury. 

and that’s when claudius and laertes challenge him to a duel.

like in and of itself, having hamlet executed on foreign soil is like so inherently fucked up. but esp if he’s disabled and queer. like bro, CHILL. claudius is fucking NASTY, bro.

anyway

so then hamlet has to shake off his injury and get to fighting anyway, and--

like that’s the only sticking point for me that i have to think abt some more, bc in that original scene

you will lose, my lord

i do not think so. since he has been in france i have been in continual practice. i can beat him at the odds. but all wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart

my lord

etc etc etc

i typically play that scene as being the both of them recognizing what story they’re in, that this is the end of the tragic play, that the odds are narratively against him

but w the injury and disability, it might read as more doubt. 

so i think it would have to be layered w some of that--or perhaps they can’t exist in equal amounts in the scene bc that might be too much to try and convey in so few lines

regardless, he could easily stand, stretch/prep, and do some warm-ups before they arrive w the rapiers, etc., to kind of “prove” that he’ll be fine and can, indeed, fight, even in this state (bc he’s used to it--bc he’s had to do it before)

and then the rest of the scene can be Gay again

it is a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps...trouble a woman...

if your mind dislike anything, obey it. i will forestall their repair hither. 

nay. we defy augury. there is divine providence in the fall of a sparrow. 

and so on

ANYWAY so i’ve been having Thoughts

but i should really fucking sleep, now

[chibnallwhosurvey]

what are people thoughts on spyfall pt2? curious to know 🤔

(NB: currently at 62 total responses (60 individual responses))

[ID - bar chart showing results for episode 12x02 Spyfall part 2 (58 responses). votes for 1/10: 3. votes for 2/10: 2. votes for 3/10: 3. votes for 4/10: 2. votes for 5/10: 4. votes for 6/10: 6. votes for 7/10: 12. votes for 8/10: 9. votes for 9/10: 10. votes for 10/10: 7.]

average rating: 6.8/10

unsorted/raw comments below!

(NB. i joined the question of part1/2 discussion together so some of the comments are about part 1/both parts!)

12x01-02 Spyfall (Parts 1 & 2) - 28 responses

I mostly liked this one. Like a lot of recent action episodes, it felt kind of rushed, but I enjoyed the new Master and the Doctor's time travel shenanigans to save them from the plane crash. The villains were cool and pretty creepy at moments; I wouldn't mind learning more about them. (anonymous)

The Doctor in a James Bond movie is such a good idea I can't believe it hasn't been done before. Generally, these episodes were a lot of fun. I really liked the "O" reveal at the time because I didn't see it coming at all, and Sacha Dhawan nailed the role. I am still sad we never saw a 13 and Missy showdown, but he did a very, very good job. The historical parts of this episode were interesting, too, and I liked them quite a bit despite some of the, ah, missteps. The Doctor abandoning anyone in Nazi Germany- even the Master, especially the Master, and especially when he's looking like someone not white- is a vicious cruelty that didn't sit well with me. (vienna-salvatori on tumblr)

Very strong first episode with an excellent master reveal. Second episode was less strong with some...weird choices regarding 13 giving the master up to the nazis. (tumblr- @zanderbobs)

Literally FAV. (Part 1, at least) (And part 2 too right until the ending) (capribornio on tumblr)

I loved the Master reveal. It's all such a heartbreaking *mess* for her. (r4151n67h3d34d on Tumblr)

"" (haven't seen recently enough) (dakekintraining on tumblr)

Very, very good. Still delighted by all the moving parts in this story and how they came together. (nvzblgrrl on tumblr)

sacha’s performance/ dhawan!master is easily the best/ most enjoyable part of this story. the morally dubious choices of the doctor are awful this episode. and honestly the plot of the second part falls apart, I get very confused by that episode. (anonymous)

Saw this in theaters. So good in theaters surrounded by other fans too bad the pandemic wrecked future events like that, maybe someday in the future they shall return. (anonymous)

As I’ve said, I don’t like the Master at all. The Australian outback setting is bizarre. They should’ve cast Australians to play the Australians thanks very much. (anonymous)

Hated the wwii segment with a passion (do not use in further work)

Loved the Master reveal. Lenny Henry's character did not really need to be in here, however, and it was unclear what happened to him at the end. Felt like more conversation needed to be had about the mind-wipes. The Doctor's racist moment was also terrible. (anonymous)

Very childish, very basic. Consists of caricatures instead of characters. With the exception of Dhawan!Master - he makes it up with his charisma. And Master is a drama queen :) (anonymous)

don't like the fact they made the master a nazi 🤮🤮 (anonymous)

The Master reveal at the end of part 1 <3 (GoldenDruid76)

1st part ok, the master reveal is shit, 2nd part is really bad and also the doctor does an accidental racism oooops (anonymous)

The Master reveal was very cool. Hate the Nazi stuff. (anonymous)

The moment Chibnall essentially gave up writing. The fact this story is two hours long while having about as much substance as a 10-minute minisode is absolutely mortifying. (anonymous)

Nazi Doctor bad (anonymous)

1st part was crazy!!!! 2nd part not as good bc it had some questionable things but still fire. I love Ada Lovelace. The Master was so good (Hanna Martin)

man these eps are FUN though. I love "O", his and the Doctor's dynamic is so fun, especially on rewatches where you can see the signs of the Master.... i feel like after the reveal he kind of becomes less interesting though and more run of the mill Angry Master which is dissapointing. the kneel scene is so them but i get why it makes people uncomfortable. its a bit odd that the whole thing with graham/ryan/yaz being on the run is sort of... forgotten after these eps. the bit where she turns the nazis against the master is crazy i really dont get what they were thinking with that... using your enemy against your enemy is i SUPPOSE a move the doctor uses??? this one at least?? but its just feels so gross here (pitynostars on tumblr)

The Master reveal was brilliantly done! And getting interesting new monsters from other dimension that aren't easy to beat is always good (Malpkakaka)

Hard to describe. Too much going on. I liked some but definitely not all of it. (galileosballs)

Part 1 gave me all the hope I lost. Might not stand up against other episodes in general, but was one of the best chibnall ones. Part 2 I liked less. Not such a fan of the mad Master though the were good moments. Really hate him wearing Nazi stuff and her turning him over. Generally a less interesting episode. (Credit RoA or rekhyt-of-arcadia.)

Great opening part, but fell short a little in the second part. (Headcanonsandmore)

oh wow its the master !!!! (walkingnightmare on tumblr)

Very fun and entertaining. Phenomenal score once again. Hello? Thirteen in that suit doing spy shenanigans? Can't go wrong. Part 1 was stronger though. (anonymous)

such fun. dont love the kassavin or whatever they're called nor do i care for braxton but still. one of the best of the era i think (snowglobegays on tumblr)

[firelxdykatara]

I’m just really confused as to where this idea that Zuko is gaycoded came from. Like people are allowed to have that headcanon but I don’t understand where people are coming from when they try and claim that he was undisputedly gaycoded and trying to deny it is homophobic when he’s only ever shown romantic interest in women.

I made a pretty long post on the topic a while back, but the ultimate gist of it is this: there are a lot of elements of Zuko's status as an abuse victim and trauma survivor that resonate with queer folks. This is understandable and completely fine! However, there are some parts of the fandom who have taken that to the other extreme and will now insist that those elements are uniquely queer, and that they can only be read as some sort of veiled gay/coming out narrative, even though that doesn't make much sense since there is no part of Zuko's narrative which is unique to any sort of queer experience.

I think the problem really does stem from two things being conflated--Zuko's history of abuse and trauma, and trauma&abuse being something a lot of queer people have experienced. I suspect it goes something like 'I see a lot of myself in Zuko, and I was abused for being gay, therefore Zuko must be gay too in order to have had similar experiences.' This can then lead to feeling dismissed or invalidated when other people point out that those experiences are not unique to being queer--but on the flip side, abuse victims and trauma survivors whose abuse&trauma do not stem from queerness (even if they are queer themselves) can feel invalidated and dismissed by the implication that their trauma must be connected to their queerness or it isn't valid.

This is also where the 'people don't actually know what gay coded means' part comes in, and I realize now that I didn't actually get into what gay coding (and queer coding in general) actually means, since I was so hung up on pointing out how Zuko doesn't really fit the mold. (And the few elements that exist which could be said to count are because of the 'villains historically get queer coded bc Hays Code era' thing and mostly occur in Book 1, not because of how he acts as an abuse&trauma survivor.)

Under a cut because I kind of go on a tangent about gay/queer coding, but I swear I get back to the point eventually.

Queer coding (and it is notable that, with respect to Zuko, it is almost always framed as 'he couldn't possibly be attracted to girls', rather than 'he could be attracted to boys as well as girls' in these discussions, for... no real discernible reason, but I'll get into that in a bit) is the practice of giving characters 'stereotypically queer' traits and characteristics to 'slide them under the radar' in an era where having explicitly queer characters on screen was not allowed, unless they were evil or otherwise narratively punished for their queerness. (See: the extant history of villains being queer-coded, because if they were Evil then it was ok to make them 'look gay', since the story wasn't going to be rewarding their queerness and making audiences think it was in any way OK.) This is thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially and more popularly known as the Hays Code), which was a set of guidelines which movies coming out of any major studio had to adhere to in order to be slated for public release and lasted from the early 1930s until it was finally abandoned in the late 60s.

The Hays Code essentially existed to ensure that the content of major motion pictures would not 'lower the moral standards' of the viewing public. It didn't just have to do with queerness--cursing was heavily monitored, sex outside of marriage was not allowed to be seen as desirable or tittilating, miscegenation was not allowed (most specifically interracial relationships between black and white people), criminals had to be punished lest the audience think that it was ok to be gay and do crime, etc. Since same-sex relations fell under 'sexual perversion', they could not be shown unless the 'perversion' were punished in some way. (This is also the origin of the Bury Your Gays trope, another term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied today.) To get around this, queer coding became the practice by which movies and television could depict queer people but not really, and it also became customary to give villains this coding even more overtly, since they would get punished by the end of the film or series anyway and there was nothing to lose by making them flamboyant and racy/overly sexual/promiscuous.

Over time, this practice of making villains flamboyant, sexually aggressive, &etc became somewhat separated from its origins in queer coding, by which I mean that these traits and tropes became the go-to for villains even when the creator had no real intention of making them seem queer. This is how you generally get unintentional queer-coding--because these traits that have been given to villains for decades have roots in coding, but people tend to go right to them when it comes to creating their villains without considering where they came from.

Even after the Hays Code was abandoned, the sentiments and practices remained. Having queer characters who weren't punished by the narrative for being queer was exceptionally rare, and it really isn't until the last fifteen or so years that we've seen any pushback against that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is famous for being one of the first shows on primetime television to feature an explicitly gay relationship on-screen, and that relationship ended in one of the most painful instances of Bury Your Gays that I have ever personally witnessed. (Something that, fourteen years later, The 100 would visually and textually reference with Lexa's death. Getting hit by a bullet intended for someone else after a night of finally getting to be happy and have sex with her s/o? It wasn't remotely subtle. I don't even like Clexa, but that was incredibly rough to witness.)

However, bringing this back to Zuko, he really doesn't fit the criteria for queer coding for a number of reasons. First of all, no one behind the scenes (mostly a bunch of cishet men) was at all intending to include queer rep in the show. This wasn't a case where they were like 'well, we really wanted to make Zuko gay, but we couldn't get that past the censors, so here are a few winks and a nudge', because it just wasn't on their radar at all. Which makes sense--it wasn't on most radars in that era of children's programming. This isn't really an indictment, it's just a fact of the time--in the mid/late 00s, no one was really thinking about putting queer characters in children's cartoons. People were barely beginning to include them in more teen- and adult-oriented television and movies. It just wasn't something that a couple of straight men, who were creating a fantasy series aimed at young kids, were going to think about.

What few instances you can point to from the series where Zuko might be considered to exhibit coding largely happen in Book 1, when he was a villain, because the writers were drawing from typically villainous traits that had historically come from queer coding villains and had since passed into common usage as villainous traits. But they weren't done with any intention of making it seem like Zuko might be attracted to boys.

And, again, what people actually point to as 'evidence' of Zuko being queer-coded--his awkwardness on his date with Jin and his confrontation with Ozai being the big ones I can think of off the top of my head--are actually just... traits that come from his history of trauma and abuse.

As I said in that old post:

making [zuko’s confrontation of ozai] about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

And, regarding his date with Jin:

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

Zuko is socially awkward and maladjusted because he was abused by his father as a child and has trouble relating to people as a result. He was heavily traumatized and brutally physically injured as a teenager, and it took him years to begin to truly recover from the scars that left on his psyche (and it's highly likely, despite the strides he made in canon, that he has a long way to go, post series; it's such a pity that we never got any continuation comics >.>). He was not abused for being gay or queer--he was abused because his father believed he was weak, and part of Zuko's journey was realizing that his father's perception of strength was flawed at its core. That his entire nation had rotted from the inside out, and the regime needed to be changed in order for the world--including his people--to begin to heal.

That could be commingled with a coming out narrative, which is completely fine for headcanons (although I personally prefer not to, because, again, we have more than enough queer trauma already), but it simply doesn't exist in canon. Zuko was not abused or traumatized for being queer, and his confrontation with Ozai was not about him coming out or realizing any fundamental truth about himself--it was about realizing something fundamental about his father and his nation, and making the choice to leave them behind so that he could help the Avatar grow stronger and force things to change when he got back.

TL;DR: at the end of the day, none of the traits, scenes, or behavior Zuko exhibits which shippers tend to use to claim he was gay-coded are actually evidence of coding--they aren't uniquely queer experiences, as they stem from abuse that was not related in any way to his sexuality, and they are experiences that any kid who suffered similar abuse or trauma could recognize and resonate with. (Including straight kids, and queer kids who were abused for any reason other than their identity.) And, finally, Zuko can be queer without erasing or invalidating his canon attraction to girls, and it's endlessly frustrating that the 'Zuko is gay-coded' crowd refuses to acknowledge that.

[sharkbait77]

Banner by me! (Which does give you little clues to the story 🤭) *pictures found on Pinterest

The Sun Sets With You

Ezra Prospect x f!Reader

A Pioneer Age AU

Summary: A simple yet despondent farm life suddenly sparks with new hope when an unusual traveler makes your town his latest stop and brings with him intriguing and promising viewpoints and no one to share them with. Until he meets you.

Rating: M (due to the context of the story throughout)

Warnings: Feelings of desolation/despondency/depression (it won’t last long, I promise), death of a parent mentioned throughout (a constant theme, pls be aware), grief, angst, age old sexism, unsolicited advances, general fluff, as of this moment, I have no smut chapter planned. Sorry! But oh well lol (will add warnings to each chapter)

A/N: Okay okay okay! I wasn’t expecting to say anything about this for a while but I’ve kinda hyped some people up about it & I don’t want it to die so here we go lol so this AU idea slapped me in the face one day out of the blue. I knew I wanted to do a pioneer age AU with one of the boys & the more I thought about it, the more I felt a strong pull towards Ezra.

I tried to fight it bc there are some amazing Ezra AUs right now and idk, I didn’t want it to seem like I was jumping that bandwagon as well (silly, I know), but I just couldn’t help myself. The time period, the wordplay, the scenes I was imagining in my head all revolved around Ezra. So I hope it’s okay, I hope you don’t mind, but most of all, I hope I do Ezra justice.

He is such a difficult character to write for, & it truly threw me for a loop trying to get his elocution down, but I’m so proud of myself for pushing through & facing the challenge. I reread his scenes multiple times, watched Prospect over & over, & I still don't think it’s perfect, but I didn’t want to make myself go crazy either lol but not only that, I also completely switched up my own writing for the time period of this story which was so fun to do.

I did as much research as I could for this, tabs upon tabs open to learn more about this era (I did not even do this in high school lol) but my little disclaimer is that it might not all be historically accurate, but I hope I got enough of the basics down for you to get a feel of the times.

Also a quick note I’m making because we don’t actually know his last name in the movie, I decided to keep it as Prospect bc I found out that it was actually a last name in the late 1800s, which is when this story is set, & it was unique at the time, and it all fits the characterization of our dear Ezra & I just thought it was funny how that worked out.

This story will not be for everyone, as you can see the warnings above, those will be recurring themes throughout. Some chapters more than others, which I will properly disclose in each one. I, myself, know the pain of losing close loved ones and a lot of how Reader feels is what I pulled inspiration from myself for, so this story is very personal for me.

I’m rambling because I’m nervous as fuck & I'm not sure how it will be received, & mine definitely won’t be as great as everyone else’s, but I’m so proud of myself so I’m gonna post it anyway and I just hope people enjoy it too. I’m attaching the same taglist I’ve had on my other fics (plus more that specified interest in this particular story), so please let me know if you’d like to be removed & anyone else that sees this, let me know if you’d like to be on it ♥️

Coming soon!

Tags: @the-ginger-hedge-witch @asta-lily @honeymandos @pascalpanic @aliwritesfic @mandocrasis @hnt-escape @winter-fox-queen @barbossa2319 @sarahjkl82-blog @day-off-inkyoto @pedrocentric @astoryisaloveaffair @ezrasbirdie @danniburgh @foli-vora @lucrezia-thoughts @djarinsbeskar @chasingdreamer @meesterblack @amandalovess @hunterofartem1s

[sophfandoms53]

3 4 and 5

3) Who was your first crush in the show?

We all know the answer to this c’mon😭

To answer the most obvious question I had to use the most common picture you associate with him, randy LMAOO My love for Mikey has survived 10 years idk how but it has.

I really am grateful, though, that at such a young age I attached myself to a character that provided me a lot of what I lacked at the time, genuine happiness. I’ll probably dive into that when we get to the shows 10 year anniversary cuz I don’t wanna get sad on an ask post. But I look back on the last 10 years with Mikey and, not only do I understand why I was so attached to him from the start of the series, I understand his character on a much deeper level than any other character I’ve been attached to. Mikey was the first character I really delve in to understanding his mindset and his arc and doing that for 10 years just made my love for him grow in different ways.

This boy just means so much to me.

4) Least favorite character in general?

Okay this actually took me a while to figure out because I pretty much enjoy every character to a certain degree and appreciate whenever they’re used and what their purpose is.

With that in mind, I’m gonna say Don Vizioso.

Vizioso is, like, the definition of good idea but bad execution. We meet the guy in season 3 but then he does nothing until his one episode in season 4, then he does nothing again until Heart of Evil.

The thing with Vizioso is that he introduces a really interesting plot point that could’ve been used to delve into how things would be in the future, mainly that he’s extremely anti-mutant and the writers could’ve used him and his ideals to play around with how mutant rights would be integrated in future episodes. How many other people outside of Vizioso’s gang are anti-mutant? Will mutants ever be truly accepted by society? Will they just be seen as experiments the government wants to work on? Will the government even acknowledge them and make the existence of them public? We actually do explore these last two questions but in an episode that has nothing to do with Vizioso despite him being the character to introduce this narrative.

We could’ve actually explored his beef with mutants and what made him so against them. He could’ve been an actual challenge for the boys and the rest of the mutants in the city. Mutant Gangland set this all up really well and then it’s just abandoned come Heart of Evil and Vizioso and his gang are arrested.

2012 focused a lot on the boys being seen as alien and acknowledged that they feel out of place around humans and want to be accepted by society, so it’s odd the show never went all the way with fighting for mutant rights despite very clearly setting it up.

It also doesn’t help that Vizioso doesn’t have a ton of character, he could’ve if he had more episodes, which is ironic because he’s literally a mobster and those characters historically have a lot of character to work with.

It’s a shame because Vizioso could’ve been their next Shredder in the sense of how threatening he was.

5) Least favorite turtle?

Lol forgive me for this peoples but it’s Donnie.

Now I don’t dislike Donnie, I think he’s a really fun character, he has his episodes that I absolutely adore (the two Pulverizer episodes are some of my favorites bc of how they handle Donnie’s character) and also Rob Paulsen, always a win. But my issue with Donnie is that I just don’t find him all that interesting when compared to his brothers. This isn’t really his fault, it’s on the writers for focusing too much of Donnie’s character around April.

I’ve always said Donnie’s best episodes are when they don’t involve April because they allow him to just be himself and not have his character be morphed to fit the crush narrative. Donnie’s strongest aspect is his mind and how it works, Monkey Brains is probably the only episode to balance Donnie’s brain and his feelings for April well without morphing his character entirely.

I have this same issue with how Mikey was handled in Turtles in Time where his character literally morphs to just be about his feelings for Renet. All the other aspects that made Mikey Mikey, such as his empathy and his silly nature, vanish because his entire focus just becomes about Renet and the way he behaves just doesn’t feel genuine. Ya there are moments of Mikey being his goofy self in that episode but it just feels weird because it just comes off as Mikey doing things to impress Renet.

And it’s weirder with how that episode ends with him being shy about asking Renet out after we spent 20 minutes of him being obnoxiously confident about it. It was such a random 180 but honestly I think it would’ve fit better if Mikey was shy the entire time, he has his occasional flirts and we’re aware he’s into Renet but overall not every little thing he does stems from getting Renet’s attention. Oddly enough, the Halloween arc does exactly this, Mikey behaves how he usually would in any other episode and his feelings for Renet are just an addition so their moments together feel a lot more natural.

Donnie has this same issue across the first two seasons and the first half of season 3. Anytime April was the focus of Donnie’s episodes she’s just his entire motivation, and that’s not a bad thing in theory, but in execution because of how one-sided this crush was during those episodes it just comes off as Donnie being incredibly oblivious. I know a plot point is that Donnie over thinks things and spends too much time in his head to the point he misses what’s in front of him but there were several points where it was clear April wasn’t into him, season 2 in particular felt like it was leaning heavily in a Capril direction, but the show just never acknowledged Donnie realizing that.

The one time they did they fucked it up by suddenly having April kiss him.

Which looks awful on April’s end and that’s a whole other conversation omg.

There are several episodes I look back on that focused on Donnie’s feelings April and a lot of them I realize that if Donnie didn’t have any feelings for her, he would behave a lot differently. I know feelings can make people do stupid things, my own writings dive into that, but it shouldn’t be to the point that how they behave or decisions they would make are only different because of the love interest.

Donnie acts very rationally but when April appears suddenly all rational thoughts leaves his head and he feels like a different character.

Moving on from the April aspect though, I also just can’t see a lot of depth with Donnie’s character. They tried to add some with the April crush and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but overall Donnie’s character is solely reliant on his ability to create and his mind being able to adapt whatever he finds and build something out of it. Donnie has a huge love for discovery but we never really explore that and it just makes his character feel a little dull.

Idk if anyone else noticed this but Donnie is used a lot less in s3-s5, meaning he doesn’t have many episodes that are about him, because the writers wrapped up the love triangle thing in Race With the Demon and, as mentioned before, a lot of Donnie’s character was about April, so now that’s over, Donnie really got shafted.

[crysieofwoodsbeyond]

TPK Q&A: Author and Editor Edition with @pumpkinpaperweight

Questions for Kate from Crystal

1.) What were your first thoughts of the first few chapters?

Was nice to see some of Nicola in Gavaldon bc that’s something we never saw for ourselves in the series, anything about Nicola’s past was either mentioned in passing or through another character, so good to see it directly! Also appreciate that we get right back into School stuff, I appreciate it not messing around too much lol.

2.) What drew you to the story?

I always like fics where people pick a side character and give them their dues, and Nicola was so damn hard done by in the series that I really think she deserves a fic or several with her as the main focus! Also I like seeing people play around in the sandbox of the school, there’s a lot of potential there with talents and so on.

3.) Do you have a favorite character in TPK so far?

Very fond of Lakim! Also not exactly a new character but I like Professor Espada’s increasein prominence, that’s fun since he’s not around much in the books.

4.) Do you have a favorite chapter in TPK?

Chapter 7 was nice; I really like extra worldbuilding and trivia about SGE stuff so all the historical bits you made up about other kingdoms were super interesting. Also the Circus of Talents was interesting to see what everyone was competing with, I find talents really hard to come up with but there was a massive variety which was really fun.

5.) If you had to choose one of the special talents shown in TPK, which would you choose and why?

Etain’s talent to manipulate shadows of others to attack them was super cool, really liked that one! Spooky. Realistically I think I would probably actually manage to blow myself up somehow but it sounds cool in theory lol.

6.) What else would you like to see explored in the TPK series?

Anything further than first year is of interest to me, since no one often gets past that! The internships and stuff could be really good to play around with.

7.) Any final thoughts for Crystal or the audience?

Enjoyed editing this, thank you!! Really enjoyed the creativity w the talents and backstories and worldbuilding, the type of thing I always go in for, so great to see!

Questions for Crystal:

Have you been planning on writing this for a long time, or was it a more spontaneous thing?

 TPK was the combination of my desire for Nicola to have a story of her own and a dream that introduced me to Lakim and his backstory.

How did you come up with the OCs for this fic? Or are they previous characters you already had?

 If you would believe it most of the Odd Evers came from dreams I had around the time I contemplated writing TPK

How have you found writing a multi-chapter fic, since they’re notorious for being a bit difficult? 

I would say it was of medium difficulty. I find writing papers much harder and they have outlines!

Who’s your favourite of your OCs? (if you can pick!)

 Lakim and Natasha would be tied for me. Lakim because he is everything I wanted to be represented as a black boy in this world. He is caring, loyal, expressive and fully enjoys his interests even if some would say it’s “girly” he would say “and what’s wrong with that?” Natasha is a lot like me in many ways. She’s reserved and knowledgeable but when she’s excited she’ll be so loud most people would be surprised how high her voice can be.

What’s something in the future you’d like to explore in the SGE world / the Woods? Could be a place or a concept or another character, anything. 

I’m setting up to thoroughly explore the politics of the Woods because I feel it wasn’t well utilized in the series. This question has a lot of room for me to give spoilers but what I can say is TPK holds quite a few secrets to Lakim’s past.

Are there other fandoms you’d like to write fic for in the future? If not, are there other SGE fics you’d wanna do?

I’m actually planning to post original works through ao3 just to get practice. When the PJO series comes out I’ll probably write short stories for it. I would love to write some Tagatha stories, especially ones that tie into TPK.

What were the most difficult (and easiest!) bits of writing TPK?

The most difficult bits would have to be the descriptions and dialogue. The descriptions were very hard for me to put in words though I knew exactly what I wanted to describe. A lot of times, Kate would edit chapters I wrote at night and I would be so embarrassed by it. The dialogue was hard because I really wanted to make sure it was understandable and sounded like something each character would say.

Any other comments or things you wanna say that you’ve not had a chance to?

There is far more TPK in store as the story continues the Odd Evers will enter their second year at the School for Good and Evil. If you have The Ever Never Handbook that will give you some ideas of what to expect but don’t get too comfortable as a story comes with quite a few twists.