#she's also both self aware and an unreliable narrator

[extremely-judgemental]

Subtext is completely lost in this fandom. I partly blame SJM for it. This is a rant from both reading and writing standpoint and leans towards the characters since I like to psychoanalyse them.

The one thing that tired me the most in these books is the excessive narration. I don’t mean the wordy description to support world-building but the never-ending monologues. SJM takes ‘show, don’t tell’ advice literally with the visual cues when it should apply to the characters and their personalities as well. Where subtext usually exposes depth of these characters and lets you decide who they are, SJM strips away that chance by writing it down for you word by word. The reason so many are going with 'in the book' argument is exactly this.

Here’s what I mean.

In real life, people don’t think linearly. They have an idea about themselves as much as they have about everyone else around them. There are self-imposed restrictions on their thoughts based on who they believe to be and who they strive to be. And it shows in their interaction with outside world. Say, when someone is ashamed of their actions, they will deny it for as long as possible. Someone who regrets something, they will sugarcoat it.

But in her books, her characters think clearly—way too clearly so that you latch onto the ideas she perpetuates. You don’t get to know them based on their thoughts, words, and actions, and see how these three support each other. You don't get a chance to draw conclusions as to if they are the hero/villain and good/evil based on their actions. If their behaviours match their words or if their choices are acceptable. Because SJM sets it in words for you. The characters come with a label beforehand. (Feyre, Rhysand and Inner Circle are good guys. Tamlin, Eris and Nesta, sometimes Lucien are evil.) It's why so many toxic and abusive themes are dismissed because it’s the 'good guy' or the 'morally grey guy’ who does it.

And so, her lead or ‘good’ characters fall flat since they have everything figured out. They know themselves inside out. They are never wrong about themselves, there’s no part they hide from themselves or the others. There’s nothing for you to read and identify the beauty or ugliness in the character. There’s no depth in them because they don’t contradict themselves, they don’t struggle to be someone they always believed to be. They don’t have to prove anything to themselves or others. They say what they think and they do what they say. They are very aware of their shortcomings and they all seem to know the exact consequences of their decisions.

Feyre doesn’t change in the three books. Her ‘rags to riches’ story doesn’t lead to much character growth. She starts out as an adamant, reckless child and ends up being arrogant, reckless woman with a crown. She doesn’t undergo a shift in personality but climbs up the social hierarchy. And that’s considered character development. Rhysand remains the same throughout. He starts out as a villain but later revealed as a good guy playing bad. Instead of growing into a hero—given his crimes, his ill deeds are negated with sympathetic backstory. And from there, it’s a flat line. There’s no growth.

In the end how does the character change in the aftermath of the events? Which of their beliefs are shattered and rebuilt? What is the emotional impact on the other characters? SJM does offer some closure on these regards but they are solely focused on a list of traumas and specific reactions set by SJM herself. And so readers refuse to think for themselves how these scenarios may play out and take the words relayed through the unreliable narrators who are essentially preaching SJM’s biases. Also, when they are so explicitly written down, there’s not much room for subtext. After going through pages and pages of justification, it tires you from using reason.

Even if we get past this (writing) flaw, there are other major issues. Story telling is a way of experiencing life. It helps build empathy, compassion and understanding of the world. Even in a fantasy book, when that world doesn’t exist, when the characters aren’t real, their journey are drawn from real life experiences. Relating to these characters is subjective and solely depends on the reader, but determining the rightness of their actions is not. This too is warped as SJM dictates which behaviour is acceptable and how far through her lead characters(Feyre vs Nesta imprisonment). Instead of allowing you to judge the choices, the verdict is spoon-fed through the ‘hero’. If the characters are forgiven, it’s not abuse. It’s a simple mistake. (It’s a mistake if it happens once and if there’s a changed behaviour after the apology.) If the characters are happy in the end, their acts are admissible. Unless SJM stamps the word ‘abuser’ and ‘bad guy’ in block letters herself(Tamlin), it's not even considered a possibility.

In short, ‘reading between the lines’ exists as long as it supports what the author preaches. When it contradicts ‘it’s in the books’. Logic is valid only if you use it to justify the fan favourites and applaud them. Empathy is conditional. Compassion is conditional. Critical thinking is so discouraged in this fandom that it’s pitiful.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

You've talked about Lucio’s forgiveness before but specifically speaking, Do you think the M6 could ever forgive Lucio for what he did to them ( Besides Portia )?

If they could how do you think it would go and what do you think would happen afterwards? Would they be friends? Would they remain on neutral ground? “ I forgive you but I don't want to see you for a long time”? Etc

OR Do you think there is absolutely no way in the Arcana Realms that they could ever forgive Lucio for the actions ( and crimes ) he committed? ( He did a LOT )

I'm going to go on a tangent about unreliable narrators here which I promise is relevant to the story -

And before I go on, yes, I know the production of the different routes was messy. There's a lot of inconsistencies that can be chalked up to rushed planning, poor work environments for the creators at the time, etc. That doesn't stop me from over-analyzing it though!! :D

Who Lucio is changes pretty significantly from route to route, which feels like inconsistent writing until you take into account the way that who MC is attached to is going to influence their perspective. From Nadia's perspective, he's an incompetent fool. From Asra's, a despicable villain, from Julian's, a scary nuisance, from Portia's, completely irrelevant, from Muriel's, the Devil incarnate, and from his own, the equivalent of a kicked puppy. Forgiveness is much more nuanced process than we like to think it is, and the concept of empowerment and injustice play heavily into it.

When it comes to genuine forgiveness, I personally think Nadia is the closest we get to seeing it happen, and I'm referencing the events of her own route. She's able to go through the process of unpacking the effect of Lucio's actions on her and the people she cares about and addressing it. By her final confrontation with him, she's established and reclaimed the narrative of his involvement in her life, she's able to openly express her feelings to him about it, and once she's toppled their old power dynamic once and for all in a duel, she's ready to put him out of her life on her own terms. Lucio goes running off into the realms and she's able to move on with closure.

Forgiveness in this case looks less to me like "it never happened" or "it happened but I'm not holding it against you anymore." Rather, it looks like "the past has been resolved and now I'm going to rebuild what you tore apart." Both Nadia and Lucio are freed in their own ways. It's a fairly appropriate resolution in my opinion because they chose to have each other in their lives as peers and the processing Nadia did was **roughly ** proportional to the amount of personal harm Lucio caused.

Asra's route has a slightly more typical ending for Lucio as the story's villain. There isn't one point in which the ex-count shows any kind of remorse, self-awareness, or concern for his actions. He's irredeemable. However, Asra doesn't harbor fear towards him as much as they harbor hatred and disgust. They knew Lucio was somehow responsible for their parent's disappearance and assumed death and for the death of their love, but they also saw how easy it was to make a fool of him from a very young age. For them, forgiving Lucio doesn't involve self-empowerment like it does for Nadia or Muriel. It requires a courage to acknowledge the personal pain that someone they hate so much was able to cause.

There's a moment in Asra's route as they lure Lucio into the trap that ultimately causes his death where we see the beginnings of this. Asra turns after running away to face their tormentor down, lists the ways Lucio hurt them, acknowledges that there is still a way for Lucio to hurt them, and then declares their own resolve to work through it regardless. While it doesn't reach the point of forgiveness, it's enough resolution on that front for life without Lucio in it to be free of the previous bitterness. Wrongs were acknowledged, justice was done, and life can continue. I imagine if Lucio had survived falling into the frozen lake, forgiveness would've taken another ten years and proof that Lucio had no further intention of harming anyone important.

Julian's route doesn't get into matters of "right" and "wrong" as much as it gets into "worth" and "guilt". Lucio still blames an inexperienced Julian for cutting off his arm way back when, and Julian in turn chooses to commit to finding a cure for the plague and taking the infected Lucio as his patient. Julian's own poor self-esteem twists all his very real misfortunes into a blame game designed to further trap him. The first step towards forgiveness requires acknowledging that someone else has acted unjustly towards you, but with Julian convinced he's not worthy of being treated with love, he's unable to see the injustice of Lucio's hateful behavior towards him.

Julian's sense of betrayal towards Lucio stems from the hopeless situation he ended up in and all the other lives lost to his selfish choices, but even towards the end of his route he still struggles to acknowledge how Lucio wronged him as a person. He's angry on other's behalf, not his own, but he's only able to forgive Lucio on his own behalf and not other's. The process can't start for him until he's able to hold onto his own worth regardless of how he's treated or what others think.

Muriel's route shows Lucio as something akin to demonic, even having him merge with the Devil later on in the route. Muriel doesn't seem to have ever had some kind of relationship with Lucio, which left the Count without anything to temper his malice. Lucio didn't know who Muriel was as a person and frankly didn't care, as long as he was able to leverage "entertainment" out of him. It's a connection built purely on exploitation, trauma, and ego-fueled malice, and not something to be taken lightly.

The only circumstance in which forgiveness could be healthy and real for Muriel would be if it was part of enabling him to leave Lucio in the past and flourish with as little of it weighing him down as possible. Given what a monumental task that would be, and how thoroughly Muriel likes to take his time to process things, that process would take decades and might never reach completion.

Finally, in Lucio's own route, I'll be honest and say I'm pretty dissatisfied with how the topic of forgiveness was broached. Rather, the word "forgive" seemed to be substituted for the sentiment "it's the in the past and there's bigger/more urgent things to worry about which unfortunately require cooperating with you". We do get the setup for a poignant scene where Lucio has to fight the younger version of himself, but it's more focused on forcing him to recognize what a terrible person he was. Furthermore, as long as Lucio is unable to see himself as a perpetrator or being capable of filling a perpetrator's role, he won't be able to see himself as someone who needs to be forgiven.

With the weight of all the harm he's done, there will come a point in the distant future will Lucio will have to forgive himself. However, that can't happen until the full effect of his actions have completely sunk in and he's matured enough to feel proportional levels of guilt. Even then, there's a necessary period of time where he has to find closure by addressing those wrongdoings before the process of self-forgiveness can start. There's none of that in his route, but I like to hope he makes it that far down the line.

Again, these are all just my opinions (and I'm so sorry it took me days to finish this!) but I hope they help!

[tallysgreatestfan-art]

Disabled4Disabled ships spotlight for Disability Pride Month: Tally Youngblood and Shay from Scott Westerfelds Uglies Series.

As much as I love them and as much as their stories helped me accept my own neurodivergence, I was hesitant to include them here and can only recommend Uglies with a huge caveat.

First reason: Unlike the other ships I include in this, Tally/Shay is not canon, it is just the relationship the series focuses on the most and has a fairly strong subtext.

Second reason: While the way the series portrays both Tally and Shays increasingly intense, for the lack of better words, general neurodiversity, and especially Tallys choice at the end, was groundbreaking for this time period and is even now much braver than what most novels would do – the way the series portrays their self-harming and Tallys and her boyfriend Zanes eating disorders is not good to say it friendly.

I don’t think the whole series is irredeemable, because everything else about it is just so good, but it is something you have to be aware of going in.

The issue lies not so much in the characters glorifying both as ways to escape their dystopian brainwashing, dystopias are famous for unreliable narrators, but that the disconnect between them doing this and the narrative and the author knowing that this is not a healthy way to deal with this is not better established.

It is also described not just fairly explicit, but also in a way that made readers who actually dealt with these issues feel alienated, since the self-harm is first described in a fairly antagonistic cult-like clique, and Tally and Zanes clique amicably mock them for loosing weight and becoming bony and haggard.

Why was this still so healing for me as a queer autistic woman with bipolar disorder?

Close to every book says that being different is okay and you should not conform to societal ideals. Uglies actually shows how insidious societal expectations are, how you still believe them even when they harm you, and how much it hurts to be lonely and different. With Uglies, you can believe it when it says being different (neurodivergent, queer) is okay, because it feels like it understands how hard it is.

In the first book, their neurodivergence is only hinted at, if anything. Tally doesn’t has many friends and all of them already were made into the older societal caste aka Pretties. She is lonely, and she desperately wants to be like them too, normal, how she should be. She meets Shay, who doesn’t fit in either, but takes the opposite route, rebelling against the system and being just so angry. It feels like the two extremes neurodivergent people can deal with their differences.

Their friendship made me feel so seen. It was deep and close, but also so jealous and it becomes increasingly more toxic and complex, as their dystopian system pushes them against each other again and again. It felt like all these messed up, failed female friendships I had. Even with how homoerotic it is, but both of them are too trapped in their other relationships and their past to ever act on it.

In the second book, without spoilering too much, their neurodivergent behaviors become so much more clear and also self-destructive due to the golden-cage like environment they find themselves in.

And in the third book, it is explicitly mentioned that the way their brains work is very different from the norm in a mental illness way. Even if, spoilers for the rest of this paragraph, their neurodivergence is artificially altered to make them more effective (read: self-destructive) super soldiers. As their allies come up with a way to undo this, Shay choses to do it. But Tally refuses. This blew my mind as a teen. That you could actually see your neurodivergence as a part of yourself. Even if it’s seen as bad, or destructive, or inconvenient for yourself and others.

There also is a third disabled character, Tallys boyfriend Zane, who already from the first time we meet him has an eating disorder, and also later acquires brain damage that causes him problems with motor skills. Tally at this point is horrible ableist to him about the physical disability, being programmed to by her dystopian society, but both her and the narrative also very firmly know that this is bigoted and something she needs to overcome. It is uncomfortable and harrowing and tragic to watch, but IMO it is respectful even if the characters are not.

Ultimately, it depends on what you search for if this would be a good read for you. Are you searching for accurate, healing self-harm and eating disorder representation? Then this is absolutely the wrong book. Are you searching for a touching, thought-provoking story about beauty culture, societal pressure and human nature, told through the toxic friendship between two teenage girls in a dystopian society? Then I can only recommend it.

A movie of the first book will come out 13.September this year on Netflix, hope it’s as good as the book. Sadly, in the book racially ambiguous Tally is white in it though, but Shay stays a WOC.

[fantasy-nerdddd]

The rooftop scene(s)

Today I'll talk about the rooftop scenes. Mainly the first one, from The Hunger Games, but a bit of both. Both of them are quite passable at first, but mean a lot, each in their own way.

In Catching Fire, Chapter 11, Peeta says to Katniss while working on the plant book: "You know, I think this is the first time we've done something normal together." Well, the rooftop scene is the first time they have done anything fun together. Not drawing some plants, not staring at each other's eyelashes (cough cough KATNISS YOU THIRSTY LITTLE GIRL), two teenagers laughing and having fun together just days before they need to go into an arena and kill each other. So rebellious, having fun with your opponent and getting closer before the games, just behind using CPR in the arena. Also, it is the first insight that there's something more going on. Because for Effie to not to train Katniss on walking on heels, it means that Katniss won't need the sponsors.

The first rooftop scene... Well there's two more? I think? The first one is in a garden, however the garden is still on the rooftop so I'll count it. I think these scenes played a big role later. And I also think they are proof that Snow had bugged the rooftop, too. Lavinia was only acknowledged by Peeta in two moments. One, where he covered for Katniss and said that she was Delly Cartwright. That was for just a moment, and for all Snow knows, it wasn't even a lie. And when Katniss explained to him how she knew her. That Katniss didn't protect her. And I think Peeta seeing the girl Katniss couldn't protect being brutally killed, might have helped with the hijacking later on, because it would prove in his mind that Katniss just didn't care about any life, or even worse wanted to see suffering, and that she was heartless towards everyone, not just him. He'd think that anyways, but seeing Lavinia die in the hands of the Capitol just underlined this.

And of course, the elephant in the room... The "I don't want to be another piece in their Games" rooftop scene. Firstly, even though Katniss is the unreliable narrator that she is, we can clearly see Peeta's true character in that scene, if we are not too caught up in Katniss' thoughts and can consider the possibility that Peeta isn't lying. That he values self-awareness, agency and staying true to yourself. Personally, that made me love him even more, wanting to resist the corruption. And of course, that makes his character arc even more tragic. That he became exactly what he resented. A piece in their Games, a monster he's not. And that is another reason I think Snow was watching them the entire time. Snow could have known from the Games that Peeta was against violence. That he adored Katniss. That he'd do anything to save her. But he couldn't have known that Peeta's dying wish was to stay true to himself. Not to be changed by the horrors of the Capitol. He couldn't know that Peeta would absolutely resent himself once he was lucid enough to realise what was going on. And also, yeah I am going to add that this scene might be my favourite foreshadowing of all time. I don't know if Suzanne had planned it all along, she probably didbut I like to think that she didn't, and instead her decision to hijack Peeta went like this:

Suzanne, rereading her own book: I'm stuck. What could I possibly do that will move the plot forward? But doesn't seem cheap? No, I have to reuse an idea. It'd be out of place to just invent facts about Panem. Wait a minute. I could turn a fan favourite (and Katniss favourite) character into an insane 17 y/o so that Katniss will be desperate for revenge and the story has a bit more Angst. The readers will hate me and I don't give a shit

Or maybe

Editor: The love triangle isn't working.

Suzanne: I know. I have expressed my opinion towards the love triangle

Editor: Yes, but it sells more. And you cannot just abandon the idea.

Suzanne: Who says that Katniss can't choose her own boyfriend in the middle of the book and not the end

Editor: Listen... There's still a lot people who like Gale. You can have anyone win her. In fact, I would advise you to stick with Peeta. But the idea of a romance between Gale and Katniss has to have a satisfying ending. So no one can doubt Katniss' decision. But it also needs to feel like a hard choice. Or maybe make it impossible to choose between them anytime before the end.

Suzanne: What if I make Gale kill Prim?

Editor: Wha-

Suzanne: And make him unfathomably annoying the entire book and have him become a violent b*itch because of the war.

Editor: What's preventing Katniss to choose-

Suzanne: What if I make Peeta go insane?

Editor: What!?

Suzanne: What if I make him go insane? He's already in the Capitol, it wouldn't be a hard feat

Editor: But then Katniss couldn't choose either of them!

Suzanne: Not permanently, idiot! You know I have a weakness for Peeta.

[jenneferofjengaberg]

I recently finished Mary & George, a limited series that portrays a fictionalized version of the story of Mary Villiers and her son George, aka The Duke of Buckingham, who rose to power in the early 17th century court of King James VI (Scotland) and I (England).

It's very good, probably one of the better historical pieces I've seen this year. Julianne Moore (Mary Villiers) and Nicholas Galitzine (George Villiers) are excellent in their roles, and it's full of a great supporting cast as well, with particular honorable mentions going to Tony Curran as King James, Laurie Davidson as Somerset, Niamh Algar as Sandie, Nicola Walker as Lady Hatton, and Mark O'Halloran as Francis Bacon.

The story basically goes like this. Mary Villiers, the widow of a minor member of the aristocracy, molded her handsome son George into becoming a lover of King James, who was well known to prefer the company of beautiful young men. (Or as the show puts it, in probably the funniest line I've ever heard, James was, "So cock-struck it's like a curse.")

The trailers for the show seemed to lean heavily on the raunch and comedy aspects, and there certainly are plenty of steamy sex scenes and irreverent laughs to be had, but there's a more serious story here as well, with themes of corrupting power taking precedence over the lighthearted.

Mary Villiers is obsessed with gaining power and favor, and more than willing to pimp out her gorgeous son to do it. And yet Julianne Moore adeptly shows Mary's side of the story, with the complicating factors of being a woman in the 17th century and therefore lacking in any traditional access to the avenues of power and wealth. "Women grow by men", as Shakespeare's Nurse famously puts it, in a play written around the time that Mary was giving birth to her son.

Moore and the script infuse the character with wit and sarcasm, even when she's being her most evil self. And yet Mary is an unreliable narrator at best. There's a scene in the final episode, where she questions George's by now outrageous behavior, and seems to sincerely claim, "You are not who I raised". But her every action thus far makes that an obvious and galling lie, and the fact that she believes this lie renders the character's level of self-awareness as practically non-existent. To the end, she seems to accept no guilt or responsibility at all for either the predictable corruption and downfall of her son or the brutal consequences suffered by her girlfriend and co-conspirator, Sandie (Niamh Algar). But Moore's performance of this unconscious amorality is both fascinating and liberating to watch.

Galitzine is also exceptional at presenting the journey of George Villiers from a vulnerable young man into quite a monstrous egomaniac. In the beginning, George seems to act mostly out of a desire to keep his mother satisfied and even, at times, a sincere affection for the King. But as time goes on, and he must scheme and plot to maintain his place as the King's favorite, he transforms into an arrogant, selfishly ambitious, and recklessly dangerous member of the royal court. It's a complicated portrayal of a character that's a little slutty, a lot scheming, but still occasionally sincere, and sometimes even struck by conscience. His best moments, such as his patience and care for his neurodivergent brother, make the audience mourn the loss of the uncorrupted young man he was, and not the petty tyrant he turns into. Galitzine also looks screen scorchingly beautiful in every scene, which doesn't at all detract from his more nuanced performances.

My one quibble with the piece is the script's characterization of King James. Actor Tony Curran is very charming as the romantic, mercurial, and "cock-struck" King, but that may be a fault rather than a feature of this depiction. James gets off rather easy, compared to everyone else. After all, he's the one who turned his personal relationships into a patronage system that basically boiled down to a sex-for-power scheme. People like Somerset, Mary Villiers and Buckingham may have exploited that system, but they didn't author it. And, although this is obviously imposing a wildly modern set of sensibilities on a historical show/events, one wonders if a man who made a habit of sleeping with much younger men who had far less power than he, should be made out to be quite so much the victim as he is in this series. Particularly the way they changed the historical circumstances of his death to fit the narrative of the pitiable gay king who just wanted to be loved but was continually let down or betrayed by his lovers.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the performance overall. And his relationship with George also seemed touchingly sincere, but I also think they could have examined his role in corrupting those around him, both Somerset and Buckingham, more fully, rather than winking at it and mostly letting him off the hook.

Grade: A-

[theriverbeyond]

do u care to elaborate on why tlt would be worse as a visual adaptation? the issue that comes to my mind would be that the unreliable narration and the sense that the main character has no clue what is going on would be way harder to get across on film, but i'm curious if there would be other problems

sure! also sorry this ended up being rlly long lmao.

the unreliable narrator part of the books is a big reason why I think the series would be worse as a visual adaption. overall, GtN as a standalone would probably adapt okay, but you would still lose Gideon's unreliable narration and all of her gorgeous & funny prose. NtN would probably be just okay as well, but again you would still lose her subjective narrative voice and the specific way she perceives the world. like..... at their best, a visual adaption (animated or live action) of NtN or GtN would still be less-than the book because both are stories that so heavily rely on their specific narrator's internal subjective experience.

and that's not even getting started on HtN -- I have no idea how one would adapt HtN into a 3rd person narration in any way without drastically changing it. and in changing the format, you lose the backbone of the story (Gideon Telling Harrow a story about herself), and you lose the disorientation of Harrow's lobotomy. you lose the viewer experience of confusion/self doubt/etc that just makes HtN what it is. I just can't see a visual adaptation succeeding without making massive sacrifices that I just don't think are worth it. like.... these books are good because of things that don't translate to video. video isn't the pinnacle of media. if something was designed to be a book/audiobook and it does an amazing job as that, I just do not see any reason to sacrifice a bunch of what made it good just to see it on a screen.

Secondly, I do not think a visual adaption would be able to retain fidelity to the source material, because everyone in tlt is gross all of the time. I love fan artists having fun with the designs but IMO that's not the same as an official adaption. like, not only is necromancy gross, a lot of the characters are described with traits what would probably not survive the transition to camera or animation. Such as: bloodsweat, Harrow being a wet rat constantly covered in vomit or blood or both, Silas looking jaundice/like mayo, Issac & Jeannemary looking like they are going through all the terrible parts of puberty etc. Gideon has a pimple problem and a crooked smile and Ianthe is gross and constantly wearing clothing that absolutely does not fit her. Mercymorn has a resting bitchface, G1deon looks like a skeleton with skin, etc etc. Anime or arcane-style animation would probably be better, at least with stuff like necromantic gore and bloodsweat, but they would probably still end up being like. conventionally attractive! idk maybe this is more of a personal preference but it's kind of important to me that they are not.

I have 3 personal exceptions:

Stage musical adaption. I think a stage musical could capture the drama, the emotion, and the camp needed. for GtN at least, but maybe even beyond. everyone is seen from a minimum of 50 feet away so they can use exaggerated makeup and really lean into all the ugly. practical effects for necromancy, musical numbers for the marta/cam duel and initial gideon/harrow fight.... palamades' explosion happening offstage as gideon stands frozen in the middle, her and us helpless and unable to do anything but wait. massive puppets for the lab 2/final boss construct. dramatic lighting to signify eye change/lyctorhood.... gideon falls on a rail and then everything goes totally black. silence, or maybe crying. harrow screams gideon's name. then lights up on gideon standing behind harrow, holding the sword together, under a narrow beam light. it could be good. and i think a stage musical could bring in enough of a meta-level awareness to make up for the lack of narration. for example, when she's trying to do her big speech, ianthe keeps trying to sing a song but the music refuses to start for her. & before lyctorhood, she stands literally in corona's spotlight shadow. gideon makes harrow out to be this big scary witch but she is just very tiny under a big spotlight. "dulcinea" could have her face covered on stage until the reveal, leaving the audience to realize they were had. while a stage musical would lose some parts, it could enhance the story in its own way. GtN but to the left. it could be fun. i have put a lot of thought into this.

a comedy short film, shot rom com style (or animated like a shoujo), of Ianthe's POV of HtN.

a comedy short film, shot like the office/parks and recreation, of Ianthe's POV of Antioch

[protect-namine]

I am about to start a neji route (because I feel that I need at least three playthroughs to fully understand neji and his plays, so I can't leave him for last). so my thoughts on this may change, but for the moment, my thesis is that neji and kisa are the same kind of thespian, just in different fonts.

(I am slightly exaggerating kisa'a character here. there are hints and I do think pushing the envelope of what her character could be is part of what makes kisa... kisa. as I'll explain later, for better and worse, kisa is constrained by the conventions of being an otome heroine.)

anyway. in essence. neji turns Other Persons into stories,

and kisa turns Other Persons into performances,

while they both simultaneously run away from, avoid, or sacrifice Becoming Persons themselves, for the sake of theater

or maybe it's the other way around. something something discovery if not recognition of the self through the other... except they're both unreliable narrators so who's to say if the recognition actually takes hold, really. kisa at least is a little bit self aware. neji, on the other hand, deals with realizations of the self through writing, without actually processing them (e.g. ms robin, domina, etc).

I keep thinking about (novel) kisa closing her eyes and feeling like her sense of self would melt away until tsuki centers her and gives her theater as a way to heal from the grief of losing her mother. it happens again during tsuki's univeil performance: kisa curling in on herself and tsuki pulling her back to theater as way to help kisa move forward with her dreams. pretending to be others is more fun than being herself.

and then there is neji (insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme). but in his case, he would rather play eccentric roles, caricatures, comic relief, than be a Person With Depth on stage. neji is always either a seer of some kind (a fortune teller, a ghost who sees 10 seconds into the future) or a bit character (employee A), or... whatever he initially planned for domina. he is the mechanic behind the stage, but never the lead actor. his vulnerabilities do not need to "stolen" for the story, though others' are fair game.

kisa does not think about gender as it applies to herself in her daily life (mostly) and only sees it through the lens of acting and theater. how does she act mukai vs maiden, charles vs chicchi? the same way that neji does not think about the motifs and characters he writes as a window to himself, but rather as objects to be put on stage. rukiora is based on a younger neji, mary jane is I Am Death: Revisited (mary jane is to takihime as gashadokuro is to jacob), sissia is always meant to be the foil to I Am Death. but neji doeen't really understand that just like how he didn't understand oh rama havenna. sissia (kisa route, jack jeanne ver) is to kisa as domina is to neji.

literally kisa at her most extreme is just theater thoughts 24/7

kisa "I don't like being me; I'd rather be other people" tachibana 🤝 kokuto "I need to experiment and witness visions I can't create or I'll die" neji: this is a totally sane and Normal way to cope with abandonment and grief 👍

(it is not implied in the game, but since kisa turned to theater to cope with grief as a child, I wonder if the reason she never looks too deeply into tsuki's disappearance is because she's once again using theater as an excuse to conveniently Not Think About It. out of sight, out of mind. tsuki must be doing well, wherever he is, whatever it is he's doing.)

there is also the meta perspective of how kisa in-game inhabits a role where the player can (and is expected to) self-insert. otome dictates that protagonist kisa must be malleable to the player (who can choose to focus on a variety of relationships in her stead), and the plot dictates that actor kisa must be malleable to her stage roles (jack or jeanne, maiden or hero, flower or vessel), and novel kisa dictates that kisa must malleable to pretending to be other people because it's more preferable to being herself.

every thought she has about herself must be tied to acting, somehow. kisa's personhood is defined through stagecraft. she is the maiden, and mukai, and charles, and chicchi, and sissia. she can romance anyone in the school, of the player's choosing. she can be jack, and jeanne, and jack jeanne. don't get me wrong; kisa is her own character and has a strongly defined personality, but the story also demands for her to be malleable. a painting and a blank canvass at the same time.

neji externalizes where kisa internalizes. where kisa Must Perform™ to function and to avoid herself, neji Must Create™ to function and to avoid himself. scriptwriter neji dictates that neji must use everything at his disposal — his memories, his classmates, his obscure knowledge — as inspiration for stories. director neji dictates that he must use everything he knows about his actors — their complexes, their relationships, their weaknesses and strengths — as inspiration for stories. from the cook (mitsuki) needing apricots for a recipe and wanting to harvest honey from a beehive, to mary jane (fumi) being good at sewing and wanting an equal in jacob. suzu and sou fighting and developing a rivalry leads to jire and fugio fighting over chicchi. kai limits himself as a vessel in hasekura, and kai learns to embrace his desires as the priest. from the water/ocean/drowning themes, to rukiora being based on neji's younger self, and her family life and relationship with domina.

every thought neji has must be tied to stories, somehow. neji's personhood is scattered through stagecraft. the more you read his plays and lyrics, the more you get a glimpse of who he is. it is to the point that neji himself doesn't... really see how his stories reflect himself. ms robin being a "random" song the jazz lounge singer sings thay hasekura and ando can dance to, oh rama havenna being a so-so throwaway play that neji doesn't understand why it's entertaining. lmao. neji, please.

and this is why when problems arise, neji becomes a demanding director and kisa becomes a chameleon actor with a shaky sense of self (we don't really see this a lot because jack jeanne is not that dark of a story and kisa is still an otome heroine of an uplifting game, but it's a reasonable conclusion if you push hard on the kisa from neji's "good morning" exercise, or kisa going ham on method acting as charles. kinda wish the game explored more of that. I think a very stressed kisa can get lost in method acting, just as a very stressed neji is almost paralyzed by the fear of the death of talent).

idk where I was going with this. just. them. they have the same issues, just in different fonts. and I think that's actually what first attracts neji to kisa. kisa "steals" (to borrow neji's own words) just like him. kisa is a fountain of inspiration, an ever changing muse. and neji provides kisa with an endless amount of prompts and characters for her to inhabit. kisa does like to play pretend a lot. that's why she's in theater!

kisa and neji: Art Imitates Life people stuck in a Life Imitates Art video game

ANYWAY usual disclaimer that I'm jotting down livebloghing thoughts and I know some spoilers to neji's route but I'm only just about to actualy start his playthrough so. yeah. this was drafted all the way back in may lol, opinions may change and all that

[purpleleafsyt]

Apologies for not maintagging these other posts but for this AU post to make sense you need to read this post and ESPECIALLY this one so go do that.. be aware of the warnings though

So hey hi hello I'm making my own Hanahaki AU since I was the one who sparked up the conversation initially by reminding people that platonic hanahaki can exist :D

In the second post I went over motivations behind Soul, Whole, and an overview of how the headspace works for my HMS.

I mentioned Heart and Mind too, so, I want to go over more with them in this post because they're ALSO interesting

Warnings for everything under the cut: Self harm/destruction/sabotage, Unreliable narration in the form of poor mental ideologies, isolation, suicidal ideation, and gore/body horror. Hanahaki in this AU is a physical representation of issues found in poor mental health so anything that can spawn from that can here!

Unlike Soul, who started having typical symptoms early in the loop, before it developed into something more, Mind jumped almost immediately into the blossoming stage. It couldn't tear through metal, but vines, stems, and flowers certainly found it's way through the exposed parts of her joints. She knew early on that something, fundamentally, was wrong with her

It hurt, more than anything she can remember, to feel it wrap into and tear through her wires. She cursed herself for relishing in the pain, however. It makes her closer to being human, and thus real, if she is feeling pain, does it not?

The divide of being alive and nonliving is something she struggles with a lot, because she finds herself able to logically thing through both. She is a fracture to a whole, who is alive, and yet she is a robot, inorganic, an automaton freak

But that's besides the point. The flowers are confusing, inconvenient, and is halting any progress. How they're even able to grow within her mechanics is beyond her. The flowers make her weaker too, and is sometimes she cannot let her thirds be aware of, lest they take advantage of that said weakness(Because after all, why would any of them inform the others of their condition?)

She, despite everything, wants to understand them. She removes them, because she has to, and repairs herself. She's alone, so while difficult, it's safe. She experiments with the carefully removed flowers, and finds they can continue to grow apart from her so long as she continues to cultivate them. It's a distraction sure, but there has to be an answer somewhere in there. Besides, her garden is her own, hidden, safe, and the flowers are oh so beautiful thanks to her efforts

On the flip side, it took Heart longer to figure it out(Mind found out first, and Heart last. It left Soul, the root cause, in the middle, as usual)

He formed in the new loop, and got progressively sick. It caused agitation, as he kept getting worse, but he pushed through. Eventually, he threw up petals, and was rightfully horrified.

By this point, Mind and Soul had effectively isolated him(themselves, truly, but the real reason didn't matter) so the thoughts were free to creep in, he wasn't needed by them, nor wanted. It doesn't take long, due to the circumstances, for him to enter the blossoming stage.

The removal of the flowers is a violent act, as it always is with him, because like hell is he going to let his thirds see it. They're already treated like a burden to their thirds, why would he let them know it's worse? It's agony, but he does it anyways, all the while hiding himself further

He notices, despite the torn and ripped petals, that the flowers never wilt if he stays by them. They simply do not die in his presence, in his care. From what he can tell, they're vibrant and beautiful too.

He's allured by the flowers. He's not sure of his worth, or his life, but it becons him to take care of it, so he does. Because after all, he needs purpose, and if his thirds clearly do not need him anymore, then he can yield. He devotes himself to his garden, staying alive for the flowers to remain vibrant and beautiful.

The thirds still have to see each other because, after all, if one suddenly dissappears for too long it can cause suspicion to rise, but all of them remain unaware of each other's plights.

(That is, until very specific events happen, which I may go deeper into with another post. This one is dedicated to rounding out motive)

[ashikarin]

Ai-hyperion / Ai-Λ

Honestly, she's the biggest red flag in the story - and her colour palette is green. That's saying something.

A rant about Ai-Hyperion, lazy story writing, and an unneeded Deus Ex Machina.

I'm definitely not the first person to say this, but Ai-Hyperion was the worst thing they have ever introduced into the main story. She literally appeared like: "Hey! I'm Ai-chan, no I'm not the same one you know, I'm not gonna tell you where or when I came from, and the only information you're getting is that I come from this weird pseudotime crystal thing!"

And then we never get an explanation as to what this pseudotime crystal actually is beyond 'it allows me to see every possibility that could happen and therefore I am basically god!' The game itself pretty much is self-aware of the fact that Ai-hyperion's power scaling is utterly ridiculous and trivializes the problems the main cast have been facing – the problems that they fought to find an answer to – by simply going "haha fourth wall break haha captainverse haha hello captains of Honkai Impact 3rd!".

(The main cast also just... accepts it? Like with no question? I get Kiana being the Herrscher of Finality and having its authority but does that suddenly mean she's privy to the fourth wall that Ai-Hyperion broke down with a sledgehammer too? But that's a different complaint)

Her introduction was just a lazy (and literal, given the definition) deus ex machina that stemmed from the writers wanting to finish the first part of the story as quickly as possible for some reason (perhaps the release of Star Rail?) and also to connect the current story to the APHO continuity (despite its glaring flaws and plot holes). Maybe part of that was also them wanting to insert the player in as the 'captain'. But we already have Captainverse - which is canon to the Honkai continuum, as it's the captain travelling the sea of Quanta - and it's been established early on that the captain has no bearing on the story.

This view (the 'player' as an observer) is also compounded by the multiple different POVs we have. We view the story in the beginning through Kiana's eyes, then through Mei's in the Elysian Realm, Bronya's in the Sea of Quanta and the Deep, and various other characters throughout the story. Seele, the twins, the other flamechasers, and even Grey Serpent are just some examples of that. We view the story from their point of view, which makes the narrator lines themselves unreliable, as they're in the POV of another character. There was absolutely no need to integrate the player into the story in my opinion - the story has been perfectly enjoyable even without 'us'.

That brings me to the ending of HI3 pt 1. Ai's involvement with the captain breaking Kevin's shield is such a cop-out. Like the writers couldn't be fucked to end the story properly with the characters we had followed until now doing it themselves - despite Bronya saying that she could break the shield. Like maybe they wanted to demonstrate that Kevin was still stronger than the trio even after their powerup (eg. he had the power of finality and they didn't), they could have shown Finality picking Kiana and the power leaving Kevin for her. It'd be a more fitting ending than this. Or the baseball fight could have been a metaphorical battle of wills between the old generation of Kaslanas and the new. Kevin's will versus Kiana's hopes. HI3rd has always been about fighting for what's beautiful, not "hehe power of friendship deus ex machina".

It genuinely seems like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too? Like they wanted Kiana on the moon stuck with Finality radiation but also wanted her to get a happy ending? HI3rd writers, you can't have both at the same time! You were setting Honkai up for a sad ending! The previous arcs all but pointed to Kiana being sealed on the moon without a way to contact earth, but this is less of a seal and more of. a forced vacation. She can be visited in the future and she can video call with them? What did Fu Hua sacrifice herself for then? The Flamechasers? The entire PE? Even Kevin to an extent. All of them sacrificed so much just for a half-assed fourth-wall-breaking ending that invalidated all of their hard work. It's so anticlimactic no matter how you look at it. It's sweet, but it's a complete 180-whiplash difference from the tone of the chapters before.

tl;dr honkai part 1 ending writing was really fucking lazy, ai-chan was nothing more than a literal and figurative deus ex machina, and the writing in general took a nosedive in the ending. thank you for nothing, honkai writing team.

[terraco-07]

I'm gonna start this off by being self aware. Vriscourse in 2024 is so funny and kind of silly in a way so take as little or as much of this as you want. I think I should lead in with Vriska is divisive on purpose. Her entire story is rife with places where you can either hate her, love her, or find shades of grey. I love Vriska as a character, but I want to be perfectly clear. Vriska Serket is NOT a good person, but imo very few people are. Narratively speaking Vriska grows up on a hostile planet where she's forced to kill for her Lusus. She also has the influence of Mindfang's journal to contend with. Vriska never knows who she is, she's always living in someone else's shadow and constantly hating it. Yet at the same time she's trying to live her life by some grand formula. Let's take Tavros for example. By virtue of Karkat and the descriptions we get of Alternia we see the word pity used several times when describing Flushed feelings. Can we take it with a grain of salt and assume that Karkat a known romance over enjoyer is being an unreliable narrator? Sure, we can. That said I think that wording is relevant here. In Vriska's head she feels bad for this guy and thinks that she's the only one who can fix him. On top of that you add in that her hero was flush with a powerful bronzeblood and you've put massive blinders on yourself. She becomes so self absorbed with this idea that she ends up going way too far in her efforts to bring him around and pushes heavily past his consent and boundaries. (Looking at that kiss scene). Even after his death she says maybe 2-3 things about ahh man maybe I shouldn't say bad things about that guy anymore or am I bad for killing (another) friend. She's young but I think the lack of remorse is something that matters here when looking at her in adulthood which is what we're really trying to get to here. As for the previous murder it's barely even touched. There's an air of well Aradia killed me back so we're all good. Even though she ascended to God tier and initially Aradia was just a ghost who had to deal with it while Sollux had to cope with the fact that physically it was his body that killed his matesprit. General other beats are the arrogance, easy to anger, and lack of empathy. Which we actually get to see some development on those from pre retcon Vriska! More on that here in a second.

Holy shit Gil, you're rambling so God Damn much why do we care? I don't know, don't ask me, but here's why all that foundation matters. If we're thinking about the theoretical for any Homestuck character as a whole I feel like we have to consider who they are in adulthood. Tons of discussion and debate all circles around "well they were kids!" Okay, well lets talk about what they could be as adults. So with everything we've already brought up about Vriska, how does she act in her 20s? Personally I think she struggles post game. She has no mental purpose for a while and she's in a place where she doesn't have to fight just to live so that means tons of time to sit around and think. We've seen from pre retcon Vriska that when the stress is off she does actually consider what she's done to a degree. Do I think she thinks about Tavros or Alternian sins all that much? No. I think she doesn't like her younger self (like most people) and does what she can to avoid being like that anymore. That comes with painfully slow growth and still a lot of bridges in need of mending. Those same traits of being self centered and needing attention are there but they're a little more tempered. She can at least listen now and has the emotional intelligence to realize when she's hurt someone and actually care about that. In summary: Vriska is a complicated and flawed character and saying that she did nothing wrong but also saying she did everything wrong are both incorrect. There is nothing defensible about her acts (She fucked up bad) but we can understand why she may have done them without condoning them. As an adult she is still kind of an asshole but she's not to that same level and she gets to grow into a somewhat reasonable adult that is still a dick at times. Also if you got this far then enjoy my shameless Vrisrose propaganda. They get in fights all the time and want to beat the shit out of each other nonstop. Both of them suck and it's so funny.

[rainhadaenerys]

Daenerys Meta Masterpost Part 3c - ASOIAF

This is a continuation of my Daenerys Meta Masterpost Part 3 and Part 3b.

I’ve compiled more than 2000 metas about Daenerys, both about the books and the show, and I intend to constantly update this post with more metas. The metas listed here will be linked to their reblogs in my blog, (since many people tend to change their usernames, and I don’t want the links to stop working in this case). Of the metas linked here, the ones that I wrote are in bold text. It’s also important to note that the metas here reflect my own opinions about the characters, I don’t claim to be listing every meta that was ever written about Daenerys.

Tumblr has a limit of 250 links that can be put in a single post. Once you reach that limit, your links will no longer appear. Which is why I am making this continuation of my previous Masterpost, because Part 3b reached this limit of links, since I constantly update it with new metas as I reblog them in this blog.

The topics of this part will be the same as part 3 and part 3b:

METAS AGAINST VILLAIN DAENERYS

DAENERYS, HEROISM, AND FIGHTING FOR HUMANITY

DANY’S CHARACTERIZATION, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, AND TROPES

MADNESS

DAENERYS AND HOME

Please check both part 3 part 3b and part 3c if you’re looking for meta about any of these topics.

This is a list about the books, but there might be a few metas that mix books and show if I think they bring up interesting points about the books.

Link to the complete Masterpost: HERE

Last update: July 7 2024

METAS AGAINST VILLAIN DAENERYS

Arguments against the idea that GRRM will make Dany into a villain

Dany being hungry at the end of ADWD has nothing to do with "hunger for power"

DAENERYS, HEROISM, AND FIGHTING FOR HUMANITY

Edit: Daenerys is prophesied to bring exactly what the smallfolk pray for

Daenerys is NOT an anti hero

Dany's story is a good way to complexify heroic narratives without invalidating the hero's idealism

DANY’S CHARACTERIZATION, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, AND TROPES

Dany longing for a simple life

Edit: Dany desiring a simple life, love, friends and family, but feeling that they’re unattainable to her

Dany following through on her desire to take down the harpy statue

Daenerys and gods

Daenerys and sexual freedom

Daenerys is an independent thinker A song of giggles

Edit: Dany being critical of herself and self-aware

Edit: Dany’s desire for peace and distaste for war

The parallel journeys of Daenerys accepting her dragon identity in AGOT and ADWD

Dany + kisses

Edit: Parallels between Mother of Dragons and Mhysa (and they they are complementary identities)

Edit: Dany identifying with her dragons

Dany's progression in AGOT from not identifying with dragons to identifying with dragons and seeing herself as the heir to House Targaryen

Dany's despair in saving Drogo and how it's connected to her agency and power

"If I look back I am lost" is NOT an indication that Dany refuses to look to the past or to her mistakes

Dany doesn't laugh at her enemy's humiliation

Dany is not "full of rage" or "amoral" when she eats the stallion's heart

Dany's conflict is not peace vs war (because she always chooses peace) but duty vs wants (more on this here)

Daenerys is not fueled by rage and vengeance, and the few times she shows rage is when other people are harmed, not herself

Saying that Dany's anger towards slavers means she is vindictive and could turn that anger on innocent people is a mischaracterization

Case Study of ASOIAF Neutral Bias Against Dany: The Question of the Unreliable Narrator (more here)

Dany does not become arrogant by men wooing her

Daenerys & The evolution of “If I look back I am lost”

Why it's significant that Dany is a mother and why it could be significant for her not to have children again

“The gods have fashioned us for love.” - Dany and her people

Dany is an overtly good person in a world that doesn't allow for easy overtly good choices

Dany eventually leaving Slaver's Bay to pursue her own personal goals doesn't make her any less selfless or heroic

The fandom rejects Dany's connection to all of the cultures she's a part of

Dany doesn't help people just to get something in return

Dany doesn't look down on the women of the dosh khaleen, she just doesn't want to lose her agency

Dany resignifying what "waking the dragon" means to her

Dany uses her belief that she is immune to diseases not as a way to feel superior to others, but to help others

Dany choosing life and seeing the beauty in the world

Edit: Dany + queenly attributes

Edit: Dany only uses violence in response to threats to her people or loved ones

About Dany's experience as someone who was both enslaved and a beggar

Dany's views that a ruler protects their people come from her experiences with bad rulers

Dany longs to form relationships that Viserys never allowed her to form

ASOS: Daenerys and her children

Dany is an adrenaline junkie

Dany doesn't believe people in Westeros will just bow to her

MADNESS

Madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin

Daenerys is not paranoid for starting to believe that Westerosi lords are trying to kill her after she actually suffers an assassination attempt

DAENERYS AND HOME

Edit: the concept of home: Dragonstone

Edit: Daenerys coming to terms with the fact that Meereen will never be her home

Why home is not simply a lemon tree, and why Meereen can't be home despite having a lemon tree

[peacerisendove]

Big Ethel Energy S2 Episode 27

My big takeaways from this episode:

Ethel is constantly sanctimonious and wrong.

And one big thing that is wrong with this comic/why it reads so goddamn weakly is it and its characters lack a voice in which to engage with the readers. Instead, we are being forcibly spoon fed opinions of the characters from Ethel's perspective, instead of the personality and characteristics of the characters being allowed to speak for themselves and form their character, or being allowed to read into their actions on our own. The perspective of the comic, and I don't think this is simply because it is predominantly shown from Ethel's perspective, is forcing you to read characters in a singular and myopic way without even allowing for Ethel to be seen as an unreliable narrator. She's automatically deemed as right and correct.

Now on to the reactions:

ETHEL THE ANSWER IS NOT SETH!

IT'S YOU!

YOU CAUSE ALL THE DRAMA

God you know what I would love? For the comic to turn everything around on her and end up running her out of town for all the shit she's caused. Like this comic just needs to give up on being serious.

Also does this comic really think that one talk after being abandoned by your friend and cute matching outfits is really going to make be believe things are all hunky dory between them! Where's the anger?! Where's the rage on both sides! Why are we getting quick fixes?!

It has no perspective at all!!

Maybe this comic instead is about white people ruining things.

Also the fucking condescension! Do you talk to you friends like that? I hope not!

The comic continues Ethel's pattern of shit talking other people, which has been one of her defining traits since the beginning of the comic, but also making her the end all be all of who characters are. She defines other characters constantly. Jughead and Seth are prominent examples of Ethel defining other characters and particularly so when she deems them as "bad," but we've also seen this with

The story and characters do not speak for themselves, the readers and audience are not the ones interpreting, but rather it's more like we're being spoon fed what to think about all of the characters and it's infuriating when it is directly contradicting to what you see as the reader. There are these purposeful pivots and we're just supposed to take them, which feeds into my constant gripe that Ethel takes no responsibility for anything.

Ugh, I don't want to be told what my opinion should be of characters. Almost everyone is terrible in this comic and especially so the main character who lacks any self awareness.

[x-neurotoxin-x]

Something something about how grief can cause people to romanticize the deceased and remember only the good memories with them. And how Enji's memories of Touya always involve him smiling. The first image of Touya from Enji's pov was Touya with a gentle expression. After Dabi confronts him is when Enji seems to remember the "bad" memories of him being completely distraught and what Touya would do to try and get his attention.

Rei, on the other hand, remembers him as an angry child with eyes that are too much like his father's. (This is probably because Touya was more aggressive (for lack of a better word) with his mother than his father. In the flashbacks we've seen, how he talks to each of his parents is very different.)

Idk where I'm going with this, I just find it interesting how both of them remember Touya differently.

Much of the todofam are unreliable narrators, especially Enji and Rei. Change my mind. (I'm joking, i don't want discourse leave me alone.)

Specifically involving the Touya situation, they're both unreliable narrators. Enji chose to only see the "positive" moments, and Touya's pleas for attention, likely because of guilt. He didn't want to look too hard at any of his more intense emotions (ie Touya's breakdowns seem to cut off right when it gets bad; he attacks Shouto, starts ripping out his hair, etc). There's also conveniently very little flashbacks of him training Touya before his quirk started burning him. It's like he's self aware enough to know Touya was not a happy child, desperately needed help, and he ignored and mistreated him, but he doesn't wanna look at it. Wants to remember things differently.

Rei seems to be doing much of the same, and only has a few memories of Touya in her point of view but they are SUCH a drastic difference from Shouto and the other kids, almost all of which are so much softer, tender memories. Touya's always hostile, angry, bitter, almost like she's choosing to remember him that way instead of acknowledging that he wasn't a cruel child, he was just really hurt and felt ignored, and lashing out because he felt like he wasn't being heard. It seems like she's also doing it out of guilt, and kind of shifting blame. I don't think she deserves the praise she's getting this arc for doing the literal bare minimum after ALSO hurting Touya. It was mainly Enji, yes, and Rei's mistakes dont take the blame from him, but she also fucked up incredibly.

Yeah it's certainly grief related that makes them think like this, but it's still, like... Damn.

[finitevariety]

can we hear your argument about the correct way to understand bronte’s ‘the professor’?

warning that there's an EXTREMELY long post below. Don't click 'Keep reading' unless you're sure you can face it.

The correct way to read the novel is as a satire. I say this not because it's necessarily the accurate interpretation, but because it's the most interesting.

I'm excited to get into this, but first let's tie it back to the post I tagged earlier by seeing what reviews for The Professor indicate about the state of critical thought today (the prognosis is grim).

Typically, reviews fall into two camps:

One: Charlotte Brontë is a stupid fucking woman who betrayed feminism and therefore doesn't deserve rights anyway. Why did she write about a main character who's so RUDE?!

Two: Charlotte, you've done it again! Truly this is a romance for the ages! Can't wait to call my husband 'monsieur' for the rest of my natural life! This truly is a marriage of equals! Go feminism!

There is also a secret third type of terrible review that's basically 'this is your brain on mid-10s ~feminist~ internet', in which feminism was less about gaining power for cis and trans women of all races, but more of a vehicle to advance the nebulous idea of empowerment.

'Not like other girls but make it a poorly-drawn webcomic' vibes, you know?

Bluntly, nothing here admits to the possibility that Brontë might have been aware she was writing about an unrelatable, flawed asshole, and that that might have been exactly what she wanted to do.

I don't pretend to be an expert about Victorian literature or criticism of such, but the dominant opinion over the years seems to have been that The Professor is first-draft back-of-a-drawer stuff that was deservedly rejected by 9 publishers and languished correctly in said drawer before being posthumously released. For some, it's the Go Set a Watchman of her canon.

Many lean into the idea that The Professor is a wish-fulfilment fantasy concerning the married headmaster under whom she studied in Belgium, and with whom she was certainly infatuated. I do think this interpretation can be convincing—and it's been covered elsewhere by smarter people than me, so I won't bother.

What I'm going to do is look at why I think satire is a far more satisfying interpretation that does have justification in both the text and its context. I'll look at:

The Professor as a parody of the Victorian self-help genre; and

The unreliable narrator, more broadly

I was also going to examine the novel in relation to Brontë's other work, and particularly Villette, but the post was fucking long enough already. I really do apologise for its length: please know that this is me attempting to be concise.

The Professor as a parody of the Victorian self-help genre

There is a plague of whiny nerds who call themselves bookworms yet get scared and call the lit-police when the moral of a story isn't laid out at the end like an after school special. For years now, these #amwriting fucks have considered 'not-chris-evans.jpg' the ultimate gotcha on interminable twitter threads.

This shitty mic-drop fails to consider that there are some people for whom purpose and target will always be unclear. If Twitter had existed in the 1700s, there would be people incandescent with rage that Jonathan Swift wanted to buy and eat impoverished babies. One only has to look at what this supposedly literate group did to Isabel Fall to know that to make satire intelligble to these people you'd have to break out the crayons.

Another important consideration is that satire which was clear within its time can, bereft of context, seem earnest. It's my argument that this has happened to The Professor.

Heather Glen, in her 2004 book Charlotte Brontë: The Imagination in History, makes the compelling case that The Professor is written as a fictional example of a self-help genre which was popular at the time:

It is not a clumsy fictionalization of autobiographical concerns; or a draft for its author's later, more popular works, but a novel of a very different kind (p34)

She identifies Brontë's Preface as a key signpost, linking its explicit references to themes of self-reliance and discipline to the maxims so popular in the genre.

These references continue throughout the novel, with Crimsworth making much of his industry, effort, and self-restraint. But there are clear and telling differences between these self-help narratives and the life led by Crimsworth.

This might as well be him, right down to the decision to broadcast to the world.

Self-help was, as the name suggested, focused on the individual—authors such as Craik and Smiles argued that poverty was caused by personal irresponsibility and conversely could be alleviated by discipline. (As a side note, the self-help trend did coincide with 'mutual improvement societies', a more radical movement created by and for working class men to educate themselves and participate in political life.)

The bootstrap-bios of the self-help genre are exactly what you'd expect. In the conclusion to Volume 1, Craik highlights the promised reward, if one only puts one's mind to it: joy.

Crimsworth is set apart from these heroes of self-help because he is so bereft of positive emotion. In fact, his entire worldview is poisoned: to him, existence is impersonal, violent, and hostile. I'll swing back to Glen for this, because she lays out in significant detail just how paranoid and brutal his mental landscape is:

Crimsworth is the empty, sad shell which houses all hustle culture rise and grind don't-deserve-a-bedframe fundamentally pathetic fucking idiots of the Victorian Era, and Brontë is, I argue, lampooning this sigma male grindset nearly 200 years before the rest of us. His self-strictness curdles the supposed happy ending, and it's so fucking good if you interpret that as deliberate:

again, Glen:

the scene in which he proposes to her is charged with half-suppressed violence: he holds his beloved in 'a somewhat ruthless grasp' and insists that she speak his language, not her own. She, for her part, is 'as stirless in her happiness, as a mouse in its terror'

He professes contentment, when they marry, but there is never any peace to be found. Yet, for the story to end, and for him to consider it a story worth telling—one where self-discipline and hard work won the day—he must pretend at it. He might even believe it—but are we supposed to do so also? I don't think so.

2. The unreliable narrator, more broadly

Crimsworth tells us that:

The other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an old school acquaintance...

To this letter I never got an answer...what has become of him since, I know not. The leisure time I have at command, and which I intended to employ for his private benefit, I shall now dedicate to that of the public at large. My narrative is not exciting, and above all, not marvellous; but it may interest some individuals, who, having toiled in the same vocation as myself, will find in my experience frequent reflections of their own. The above letter will serve as an introduction. I now proceed.

Crimsworth refers to this person (Charles) in distant terms. He's an 'old school acquaintaince'. His fate is unknown, but this does not keep him up at night. Crimsworth implies that there's less affection there than utility: he'd intended to bestow on Charles the dubious gift of this tale, and now it's our turn instead. In the letter, too, he's at pains to point out that he would never lift a finger for him, especially for rotten work:

you were a sarcastic, observant, shrewd, cold-blooded creature; my own portrait I will not attempt to draw, but I cannot recollect that it was a strikingly attractive one—can you? What animal magnetism drew thee and me together I know not; certainly I never experienced anything of the Pylades and Orestes sentiment for you, and I have reason to believe that you, on your part, were equally free from all romantic regard to me.  Still, out of school hours we walked and talked continually together; when the theme of conversation was our companions or our masters we understood each other, and when I recurred to some sentiment of affection, some vague love of an excellent or beautiful object, whether in animate or inanimate nature, your sardonic coldness did not move me. I felt myself superior to that check then as I do now.

but he writes, anyway, not for Charles's benefit, but because he wants to be heard and understood as he was then. The companions have changed, but if there is anyone who will agree with him about their character and motivations, he believes it will be sardonic, cold-blooded Charles.

Yet Charles did not reply, and so he turns to us for vindication.

Am I reading too much into this? I don't think so. Here's a fragment from a reworked Preface which would have replaced this first section and given us an alternate explanation for the existence of the text:

I had the pleasure of knowing Mr Crimsworth very well—and can vouch for his having been a respectable man—though perhaps not altogether the character he seems to have thought he was.

Here, the signposting is even clearer: we are not to take Crimsworth's tale entirely at its word.

Catherine Malone highlights this fragment when she examines Crimsworth's perception of his relationship to sex.

while at the beginning of the novel he declares an interest only in women with 'the clear, cheering gleam of intellect' (p. 13), asserting that for a professor, feminine 'mental qualities; application, love of knowledge, natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness are the charms that attract his notice and win his regard' (p. 120) ...

the puritanical image he presents is continually undermined by his regard for physical beauty, manifest in his obsession with the boarded window in his bedroom at M. Pelet's, and his observations on his female pupils and the women with whom he has already come into contact. During the party at brother's house, Crimsworth is not introduced to the 'group of pretty girls' surrounding Edward and feels that he can take no part in the dancing: 'Many smiling faces and graceful figures glided me-but the smiles were lavished on other eyes-the figures sustained by other hands than mine-I turned away tantalized' (p. 24). Similarly, it is Mlle Reuter's outer rather than inner charms wh chiefly attract Crimsworth. It is he who nearly falls in love Zoraide and she, confident in her relationship with Pelet, who with his affections. Although any relationship between the two had been largely of Crimsworth's imagining, on discovering the engagement, he considers Zoraide and Pelet's deceit an act of 'treachery' (p. 112)—one which does not just cause him momentary bitterness, shame, or embarrassment but temporarily extinguishes his entire 'faith in love and friendship' (p. 111)

What Crimsworth tells himself about his desires is at odds with his reactions.

One final aspect to discuss (because I really need to finish this post up and go to bed) is gaze. In The Professor, being seen is understood as an assault; The Professor exists, we are told, because Crimsworth wished to present his tale to 'the public at large'. When Crimsworth has a narrative he thinks he controls, he'll share it—but even in the bounds of that text it's clear that he bristles under scrutiny.

Glen compiles near-endless examples of references to sight and seeing in The Professor, but I'm most interested in the way that plays out in interactions with his brother.

His first meeting with his brother is described like so:

my mind busied itself in conjectures concerning the meeting about to take place. Amidst much that was doubtful in the subject of these conjectures, there was one thing tolerably certain—I was in no danger of encountering severe disappointment; from this, the moderation of my expectations guaranteed me. I anticipated no overflowings of fraternal tenderness; Edward’s letters had always been such as to prevent the engendering or harbouring of delusions of this sort. Still, as I sat awaiting his arrival, I felt eager—very eager—I cannot tell you why; my hand, so utterly a stranger to the grasp of a kindred hand, clenched itself to repress the tremor with which impatience would fain have shaken it.

He will concede to feeling eager, but he cannot—will not—tell you why. After all, he has moderated his expectations! He does not hope! Fuck off!

He hardens himself still further, and in so doing insulates himself from disappointment—or, indeed, connection:

I can't help but feel like it is deliberate on Brontë's part that we see his professed successes as defeats. This is a man who despite all his hardness and his flaws has found himself a wife—but is that worth anything? Has he allowed himself to be understood even as much as he was back in his schooldays with maybe-dead 'acquaintance' Charles? Does he feel even a fraction of the contentment he thought he would, if only he followed the rules? Does his wife?

Towards the end of the novel is a terrifying passage that demonstrates, imo, that Frances, his wife, knows his deal far, far better than he does. Their pal, Hunsden, shares a miniature of a woman he was once into, Lucia, admitting that 'I should certainly have liked to marry her, and that I have not done so is a proof that I could not.'

In Crimsworth's list of desirable attributes from above, it is docility that ranks highest, and Frances knows it. She loves him, as other passages show, but she also sobbed as they were married, and in the scene before the wedding criticised Hunsden for an attitude that Crimsworth demonstrates throughout the text: being a facts don't care about your feelings dipshit.

so: it is very fun to interpret The Professor as a surprisingly relevant satire of the self-made man. I think there's ample justification for this in the text, which repeatedly and deliberately sets up and exposes the contradictions in character that Crimsworth himself cannot see.

I can't decide whether it's worse to assume Brontë didn't know what she was doing when she wrote about this dickhead, or that she did and he's wonderful actually. Perhaps one of those interpretations is even correct—but I am a huge fan of unreliable narrators, and I think it's 100% defensible, and far more interesting, to see Crimsworth as one.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Any thoughts on Prince Harry's Spare?

Not completely done with it!

Immediate thoughts:

--Lol I feel really bad for his ghostwriter that so many translated-from-Spanish excerpts were leaked, because the prose is legit good.

--People are making a big deal out of a celebrity memoir oversharing when a) this is the point of a memoir and b) they don't have to engage with it if they don't want. And honestly? This is a pretty intimate memoir (more so than I initially expected) but it's nothing crazy on that front. I've read more revealing.

--If I'm being super real, I'm kind of reading to read it and then I'll fully process what it makes me think of him AFTER because I don't know how else to read a memoir, but.... I don't know, the picture he paints of himself is PRETTY MUCH how I expected him to be.

--He's obviously got a huge Oedipal Complex, but I think that he is aware of it and that also is literally ... impossible to avoid, and not necessarily a bad thing. Hard for a partner to put up with (and I hate to say this, but harder for a partner to put up with when the mother is alive and around to interfere in your relationship) but the thing is that if his account is to be believed, Meghan does remind him a lot of his mom. She seems to be a good match for him on that front, so it's like. Cool? It works? I don't know, it's wild to see people take things like the "I had a frostbitten dick and people told me to use Elizabeth Arden cream on it and that reminded me of how my mom used that on her lips" out of context going "OMG SO WEIRD" because he immediately says "OMG SO WEIRD" lol like... He knows this.... I don't know how normal you expected this man to be...

--I think he's a lot fairer to William and Charles than people give him credit for. Not fair! He's naturally an unreliable narrator. None of us can be fair to those we're very close to. You either protect them or rake them over the coals. I wouldn't say he totally rakes them over the coals. I think there are things he's withholding about them for both self-serving purposes, and protective purposes. But he clearly loves them (especially Charles) and knows they love him, but also deeply resents them because of things they can't help and things they can. It's very classic familial shit.

--The picture he paints of Prince Charles is of a classic distant father who cannot deal with expressing affection the way his kids desperately need him to, who prioritizes his own happiness over that of his children. Standard issue. He doesn't really connect the dots with how a lot of that is because Elizabeth and Philip were rotten parents themselves, but he skirts close to it.

--The picture he paints of William is of a guy who resents Harry because he has supposed freedoms William doesn't get, while Harry resents William for being pompous about being #1, favored by the family and the press, and distant as an older brother. The book really dismantles the perception (which I shared at one point) that they were super close. Like, they were and they weren't. They were trauma bonded over their mother's death (and I'll note that Harry NEVER takes away from how much William loves their mom, at least at the point I'm at, that is very clear) but they were raised in rivalry and it's clear that they are naturally *very* different guys.

--He really loved Kate as a sister. The affection he had for her shines through, though she isn't discussed a TON. It makes me wonder about his animosity towards William and what that could further be connected to.

--He's an army guy through and through. That is not just clear in the way he discusses the army, but the way he discusses life. If you've known the Average Army Guy (and I'm talking not the big time politically army guys, of which I.... have met relatively few, personally, but the guys who see it as a job and culture and family, who often have distant family lives and seek a purpose) Harry will be very familiar to you in just... the way he talks about EVERYTHING.

--I'm not gonna give my view on the way he discusses killing people in the army just yet, because.... I think that's a very complicated topic and I need to reread that part and really think about it. I will say, I think the uproar over it being "revealed" in this book is super! Fake! Because a) if you googled what Harry was doing in the army, where. he was doing it, it would be highly unlikely for him to not have been indirectly or directly killing people, and we've known that for years b) he literally said he killed people to a reporter years ago, so. That doesn't make the act any better or worse, or his view on it, but this is not bRAND NEW INFORMATION, and I can tell you that there is much more context on his thoughts in the memoir... Which is is why... if you care that much.... you should probably read more than a few sentences before giving an opinion lol.

--Whoever taught Harry about unconscious bias needs to dial that back because while that is a thing and it is a thing he and his family deal with, it is not the explanation behind *everything*. I believe that he wants to Do Better. I think he has a lot more work to do, and his discussions of race and his racism in this book are not fully formed. I believe that on some level he wants to take full responsibility, but on another level he is very afraid of doing so. And I get that. If he is out there like "damn, I was so racist", his family will absolutely use that against him. And I also think that Harry is still grappling with how people can both be racist and also be super against racism, tbh, and how to discuss that. I mean, most people don't know how to discuss it properly, to be real. I'm not surprised that a guy who is not even the top priority in a family where a fifth grade education is CRUSHIN' IT is not discussing this properly. But like. He still needs to work more if he wants to discuss it.

[syzyg3tic]

Yuletide Letter 2022

Hello!

Thanks so much for writing for me! I’m excited to see what you come up with :) Here are some general likes and dislikes, as well as fandom-specific thoughts. Feel free to think of this as a grab bag of starting points or inspiration, not hardline prompts (of course)!

General Likes:

-Character study/character motivation exploration

-Expressing emotions physically--sex or kissing or any physical interaction as conversation/argument/apology/confession/goodbye

-Characters B&C talking/making out about their mutual feelings for Character A

-Reveal moments (confessions, when a couple is discovered by friends, in general just the fallout from the moment when characters have to stick by the choices they’ve made about their feelings because other people know the feeling, now)

-Getting together moments/firsts

-Missing scenes/vignettes

NSFW likes:

Again, no pressure to write explicit fic, but if you do, here are some things I like to read about!

-Sensation play

-Breathplay

-Solo/fantasizing

-Sex as conversation--sex that’s also about forgiveness/goodbye/someone else/admission/catharsis/grief

-First times/exploration of each other

Dislikes/DNWs:

-AUs

-A/B/O dynamics

-Soulmate/one true love stuff

-Mpreg/pregnancy/kidfic

-illness fic

-Noncon

-Scat/pee

-Non canonical character death

Requests

1) เส้นลองจิจูดที่ 180 องศาลากผ่านเรา | 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us (TV)

Characters: Inthawut, Sasiwimol, Siam

Why I like It:

This show obliterated me. The way In, Mol, and Wang balance and unbalance each other and circle around the absence of Siam. How it ended the way it should have but made me ache for other possibilities. All the damn line and bridge and travel imagery and concepts. It was so restrained while making me FEEL unhinged. Real fuckin art. Anyway, the show made me feel like my heart got scraped over gravel, and I would love to feel worse. I mean. I am also down with a hopeful ending, but if you want to dig into the angst (especially for In), feel free.

I requested In, Mol, and Siam, and I am happy to have any fic focusing on any one of/combination of those three characters! While I do love Wang, and the fucked up juicy tension of Wang/In, I am not interested in fic that focuses on their relationship, which is why I didn’t request him. I am fine with him being a background character, and his different fraught relationships with both In and Mol can still be present, if you write about the canon era, I’d just rather have the main dynamic the fic is about be some combination of the other 3.

Concepts:

-More about the past era! Could be more about a time In and Siam almost got together but didn’t. Or make it more Mol focused, her trying hard to Not See the truth, because if she manifests what she wants hard enough, surely it will happen. Or a time when they were happy (or thought they were happy) In/Mol, In/Siam, Mol->Siam, Siam shooting his shot to try and get a 3 way, and it absolutely not going well, if at all. Any of that!

-This is uh. The most wretched concept I’ve got, but I am very fond of it. I keep thinking about what if In and Mol did some grief hooking up once. The show is pretty clear on the fact that they didn't hang out after Siam died, but like. What if Once. And it was just miserable for them. Lots of talking around Siam. Or what if they run into each other, pretend they don’t know each other, and hook up playing like they’re strangers but they’re both definitely aware of what’s going on? Or Mol trying to get In to talk about Siam while they’re having sex and it making In dissociate. I just really love the trope of persons A and B hooking up about person C that they both love. And this would work both with them acknowledging this to each other or not. This could be cathartic or make things worse, or both!

-Any kind of In, Mol, or Siam navel gazing, past present or future, self-aware or unreliable narrator style.

-And a note about Mol--She's one of my favorite parent characters ever. She’s extremely flawed, but I think the show does a good job of showing us why her fears make sense to her, and how they lead to her narcissism and hold her back from being a happier, better person. I know some people have a hard time with her character, but I love her a lot, so if you feel up to writing her, I’d love it if you show that she is trying hard to be good, to be loved, to not be left behind, rather than just demonizing her.

2) คาธ | The Eclipse (TV 2022)

Characters: Kan, Ayan, Thua, Akk.

Why I like it:

This show makes me soooooooo achingly fond of my own teen queer era, and have so much love for every queer teen ever. I love how it shows people in multiple stages of understanding their own queerness, and is tender about how it deals with each boy’s struggle with where he’s at, and how he reckons that with where other queer kids are in their own journeys. There is so much intra-community pain dealt in this show by characters who are just scared and hurting,

Concepts:

-I’m actually especially interested in the cross-pairing unlikely friendships that bloom over the course of the show. I’d love to see more of the conversations Aye has with either Kan or Thua. He goads both of them toward the things they need but shy away from–with Kan it’s about accepting his own sexuality and confessing his feelings to Thua, and with Thua it’s about Aye nudging him toward seeing his place in the larger queer community, and why it matters to protect others in it. I’d be happy to see a fic that follows either friendship as it grows, either in missing scenes or postcanon. They can bond more over their growing relationships and identity exploration or they can bond over other things! The canon pairings (and Akk) can be there in the background, I just would prefer the focus on another dynamic! ~~~~~~OK I wrote all that before episode 11 and now after it, i'm soooo fucked up over how Thua handled his rage over watching Akk successfully hide in the closet when he can't. All of my previous thoughts still stand, I’m just wanting the added layer of Thua’s turn to fuck up in there. I still do love him and understand why he did what he did, but some more digging in to how they all interact would be great.

-If Akk and Thua have any interesting friendship connections I might add more here, and hey who knows, I might end up with shipfic concepts once the show has ended, or at least after this week's episode. Watch this space. ~~~~~ post ep 11 thoughts AHAHHA. wow. OK YEAH I would love to have Akk and Thua have to work through more of their shit together in some kind of forced interaction.

ETA 11/1/22 I HAVE NOT had a chance to watch the finale, since i'm watching with friends and we keep taking turns being out of town. I do know some spoilers though, and my prompts still stand for now!! so no need to wait for me to get going. BUT i will come back when i am able to finish watching (should be by this weekend).

ETA 11/6/22 OK I FINISHED IT! Sorry to leave you hanging, if this was the prompt you wanted to write. But all the previous things still stand. Any kind of missing scene or postcanon thing with the switched pairs (a few more prompts--Thua and Akk talking before or after their little sentencing meeting, or Kan asking Aye for love or sex advice). You can definitely include kanthua and akkaye in there too if that's what you're super excited about writing!

DNW explicit fic for this (I know I didn’t request any pairings, but since I mention solo stuff in my general likes, not for this show please! M and fade to black is fine though!

3) สามเราต้องรอด | 3 Will Be Free

Characters: Miw, Mae

Why I like it:

I love all the characters in this show a lot, and I love the hero trio and the “villain” trio on their own, but I think a LOT about the two women, on their own and together. They both have had to learn to be hard, and to push away their feelings. They both are scarred by the memories of the first person they killed. The fact that one woman’s revenge quest hinges on another’s downfall is aaah it’s a big feeling, especially because Miw gets what she wants in the end and Mae doesn’t. This pains me. The 3 who end up free are the only people left in the world who know what Mae went through, and she can’t really talk to them about it because of the nature of their situation!! Their connection in that big confrontation in the forest really hit home how similar the two of them are, and how well they’d get along in other circumstances. I think there’s a lot of bittersweetness in that. I want Mae to be happy.

Concepts:

-I would love to see postcanon fic where Mae and Miw meet, either planned or by accident, and get a chance to talk. To create some kind of friendship forged in trauma. I think they are both capable of forgiving each other, since they now know they both acted the way they did because of situations they did not control. I can see them wanting to take back control from those external forces by being good to each other, both learning to feel worthy of the other’s forgiveness. I can see this being fully friendship or turning romantic or physical. I love the idea of them experiencing queer gender euphoria together. I don’t want you to break up Shin/Miw/Neo, but hey, they’re already polyamorous, why not let Miw have a girlfriend also! Or at least a one off emotional cathartic hookup (or series of healing hookups) with Mae??? And Mae deserves the world, by god, and I want her to have SOMETHING good after the story ends ;-;

DNW “welcome to the polycule, here are the rules” type long winded relationship negotiation. The way the main 3 navigated their relationships in the show was pretty fluid and organic, and a bit of checking in with each other is fine, but I’d like to keep that relaxed tone, if you do take this in a romantic direction.

I didn’t request the other characters because I wasn’t interested in fic that focused on them, but feel free to include them as side characters if you like.

4) Great Men Academy สุภาพบุรุษสุดที่เลิฟ (TV)

Characters: Love, Rose.

Why I like it:

This is my favorite show of all time and if you've seen me anywhere online before you probably know I never shut up about it. I almost didn't request it this year, but new people are watching it recently, so what the hell, why not! Anyway, I love this SHOW. Especially the gender stuff and the self/identity stuff.

Concepts:

I requested Love and Rose, because I am most interested in fic that focuses on one or both of them, but I am happy to have other characters in there as background characters. I ship just about every combo of characters in the show, but especially love/tangmo, vier/nuclear, love/rose).

-I adored the bathroom scene where Rose showed Love all her secrets. I loved their tension, as well as the sort of tentative trust and understanding they came to. Once Rose didn’t see Love as a threat, and once she started chilling her ass out a bit (partially because she saw how Love was handling things not so good), they had a really interesting dynamic! I’d be happy to see them in any combination of Self forms postcanon. Maybe Rose has been perfecting her look and her smokey eye makeup even in her Sean form, so her giving Love some makeover tips for her new form would be great? Love visiting Rose in Germany and Rose thinking life was chill and fine but then as soon as she sees Love she realizes she still has shit to work out? This can be friendly or friends with kissing or whatever!

 - I am a huge sucker for multiple selves interacting, so when that happened in canon I lost my shit. We didn't get to see this with Sean/Rose in the show though, and I would be interested in some postcanon or missing scene fic with this! Especially without the rest of the world watching on live TV, haha. I like this in a platonic way and also in a selfcest way, so feel free to have multiple selves kissing/experiencing the weird fraughtness of trying to understand themselves through the eyes of their other self emotionally or physically. This can be via unicorn hijinks or VR goggles or whatever. I could also see some messy verbal sparring/making out happening. Her vibes are soooo intense, so them reflecting on themselves via Two Of Them would be a lot. If you wanted to get sad, having her-as-Sean tell her the things she wished Vier would tell her? Anything in this vein. I'm really interested in the way Rose approaches gender as though Rose and Sean are two separate facets of herself (as opposed to Love, who is just Herself no matter what she looks like<3).

-I also have this idea i like to rotate in my mind where Rose like plays lakewater chicken with herself (by herself in her own mind or with the Sean double, sure) where she waits til 11:59 to drink it. Just to feel something.

DNW for this canon:

-explicit fic (kissing and tension are both great, and fade to black is fine too, though).

I'M GOOD WITH TREATS. Just learned about this. Rip