#some people could argue this is the parallel where we dont work out

[centi-pedve]

*monkeys paw of your "please send us asks please ask us about realicide" post finger curls*

Thoughts/headcanons/unpopular opinions on Egoism (the realicide character)? 🥺

Also we basically agree with your take on how realicide would have actually panned out in real life. But we have our own crazy ideas about how we would have *wanted* it to play out and how it plays out in the extended version in our brain. Would you be interested in hearing about that? Spoilers: it doesn't follow/parallel the plot of centricide like at all.

YIPIE

Egoism is probably the character we think the least about (sorry jrestie 😭) so our thoughts are less fruitful than they would be for others but we shall share regardless.

We kinda think that like... Egoism and Darwinism would be friends in a brotherly kinda way. As in they don't get along at all but they do and while Egoism holds all the braincells out of the two he does get a bit stupider when alone with Darwin. Whenever the two get into arguments Egoism attempts to use the full force of his poise and intelligence but it never works so every time he eventually regresses into true lowbrow petty arguing. Egoism is also Darwin's go-to whenever he wants to pull of some kind of weird scheme and Egoism always tries to resist it because it's always stupid but half the time he eventually concedes.

Egoism and Ingsoc definitely have that rivalry friendship though. They can intellectually stimulate each other and overall they enjoy the other's presence because they have very similar energies. But ultimately they both want to be superior over the other. We imagine they both attempt to artificially inflate the consistency of their character for that. Egoism seems like the type to proclaim he has no issues with people perceiving him poorly because all of his actions are based in what would please himself (aka DGAF mentality) but if Ingsoc ever caught him doing the stupid shit he does with Darwin then Egoism would lose his mind a little bit but make it seem like he is totally not losing his mind. But they stay even because one time Ingsoc found a funny image he thought Egoism would like on the internet and instead of sending it he printed it out and handed it to him in the real world face to face. And it made Egoism lose his mind but in the opposite direction.

Egoism and Communalism dont have good chemistry to us... Egoism tolerates them at best. Just kind of lame.

We also headcanon Egoism as a violinist and also he should be German instead of English. Also this is just specific to the AU we have where ideologies were originally human but we think Egoism originally came from a rich business-oriented family where he was heavily restricted in what he could do throughout his entire life for presentation's sake. He retains a decent amount of the habits and mannerisms he got from his family but only willingly and he mixes it with his own tastes as well as just generally being fairly rebellious.

As for unpopular opinions we think Egoism should be pudgier we mean huh what was that. Must have been the wind

Anyhow feel free to share the ideas you have! Anyone can share we like hearing about these things :> cuz we love sillymoding

[truly-deceitful]

Quackity referenced Infierno (2010) while talking about his "Primos"

And so, i decided to look for a resume of the movie and here are some quotes i think we should take in consideration:

"His mother and godfather tell Benny his younger brother was killed on strange circumstances, leaving his wife and son; not too long after, Benny meets them and feels attracted towards the widow Guadalupe Solís, making a promise in front of his brother's grave to help her and his nephew."

"Some time later, he meets his childhood friend Eufemio "El Cochiloco" Mata, who has become part of a drug cartel. Talking about it he finds out his brother worked along with him in the "Los Reyes del Norte" cartel, being known as Pedro "El Diablo" García, but he was killed by the rival cartel "Los Panchos"

"Benny asks Cochiloco for help and accepts joining the cartel where he meets the boss, [...]. He's accepted into the cartel, not before being reminded about the rules: Honesty, loyalty, and absolute silence."

If the movie he quoted has some use inside the lore we could see these quotes paralleling certain events in karmaland as well as get some clues onto who Quackity's "primos" are.

A promise in front of a grave that's Merlon Vegetta, that would mean in this chunk of the story Quackity could be representing Benny.

El "Chochiloco" which was the other name added into the book at the very end is stated as Benny's childhood friend which would mean that if Quackity was writting in code to prove his legitimacy he would reference something only both of them would know, an obscure mexican movie from the 2010´s

Benny asks Chochiloco for help and this is what we just saw in today's stream, which to me it means that the main reinforcement Quackity wants is only one person but the rest of his "primos" would be "Chochilocos" employees/cartel/etc.

So who are our options for Quackity's primos?

I think the best and most probable option is a group of NPC's just like the ones already inside Karmaland. Yes, i know this is not what we want to see, but while the other options are so much interesting it would definetly create a lot of problems for the moderators and the storyline so i do think i could be a group of NPC's. This would also tie into the very probable theory that contrary to popular belief K!Q and C!Q are not related in any way, or if they are C!Q would definetly be K!Q brother from another universe as it says in the second quote ". Talking about it he finds out his brother worked along with him in the "Los Reyes del Norte" cartel" (las nevadas is up north)

Second most probable option is that this would be the perfect time to get some TortillaLand cameos in Karmaland since the same moderator team manages both servers. Yes i know it has been said that it wouldnt be impossible but we shouldnt wait for it any time soon and i know for some reason K enjoyers and TL enjoyers dont get along but seeing characters like Spreen, Mariana or Juan would definitely bring some cool shakeups in the story without breaking it to much. We could even argue that they could appear without them being their TL characters just like how it is canon that Rubius' and Luzu's characters in TL are different people.

Third option: Foolish Gamers, this would finally tie up weather or not K!Q and C!Q are the same person, Quackity did mention sevral times that he needed his primos to help him builld and what does foolish do? build. It wouldnt be to crazy to believe this theory since in the DSMP it is canon that Foolish and Quackity are close and have a boss/worker kind of lighthearted dynamic which i definetley would believe Quackity made Foolish watch is favorite mexican movie at least five times. He prolly wouldnt understand jack shit except for that Benny and Chochiloco reference and be like "oh ok thats Big Q"

Another thing to back this theory is that Foolish WAS actually invited by the TortillaLand folk to join the server but he declined (bc he didnt know spanish) cause he didnt know anyone in the server. but in Karmaland he knows Quackity.

this is a theory a game theory please tell me who u think it is im loosing my goddamn hair over this.

[gothmods]

For the record i dont consider ai generated images to be art theft in of themselves because of how machine learning works but i do think having your artwork used for machine learning should be voluntary in the same way you would volunteer any other kinds of data or information for any other tech sciences venture - which necessitates transparency around how the data will be used/applied

And because of that i also think its extremely dicey for ai imagery tools to be paywalled or for ai images to be pay-for-use

But the problems that arise are not new problems, they parallel a great many prior discussion in art around creative freedom, derivitive or transformative work, economic exploitation of artists and so on

As well as other conversations around art and the accessability of mediums - who is excluded when we attempt to define what is "true art" beyond our own personal taste

And a lot of arguments made make me uneasy both as an artist with an interest in the expanse of art history in particular modern art, and as someone in close proximity to other disabled artists who rely on the assistance of others to create - sometimes to a degree where their only involvement is directing someone else's hand

But also on a shallower level i find it ironic that some of these argumenents are coming from people whove previously applauded fanfiction and other transformative works, and defended their creation wrt intellectual property laws

And i find it ironic that given how often ive seen the term neo-dadaist thrown around that people argue against ai art on the basis that its "just collage" or "presenting a premade thing as your own" (which, while inaccurate to how ai imagery works and the involvement of the human hand in it, is also blatantly dismissive of the multiple art movements that made use of techniques such as collage and premade commercial objects)

But also i just keep coming back to, you can dislike an artwork and feel it offers nothing of interest without trying to define it outside of art

And that perhaps some ai works feel soulless or uninteresting not because of the medium but becausr of the intent behind the work (am reminded of a twitter thread decrying ai art using overly smoothened disney sfm looking big titty porn images as an example - which i find very comical given the amount of those types of drawings done by digital illustrators that are equally bland)

As an artist i do not feel threatened by technology, i feel threatened by capitalist applications of technology

But im a ceramicist so this is not new to me, the invention of processes to mass pour-cast identical ceramic cups to be sold for $3 at target has not crushed the creativity and variety of the medium out of existence, nor has it crushed peoples interest in my work (the low wages of those people however has crushed their ability to buy things that are not those cheap commercial offerings)

The solution here is never going to be a further expanding of capitalist intellectual property laws nor is it going to be the ascent of artists to a higher wrung in the socioeconomic hierachy

But also some of you are just very pessimistic, art is one of the earliest recorded human behaviours, it has a long history before capitalism and despite the difficulties i truly believe it will survive long beyond it too

This is a somewhat rambly post but i have a lot of feelings about art and i dont appreciate being used as leverage against people exploring different modes of creation to my own and i really dont like that some people are effectively arguing for a legal framework wherein someone could take me to court over exhibiting a vase shaped similarly to one of theirs and i would just have to bleed up my limited income to defend myself

Because defining art theft in traditional mediums is murky in a way that you cannot capture in a set of legal guidelines - and even if you could intellectual property laws will always be applied in a way that primarily benefits the corporate world because taking something like that to court costs money that myself and many other artists do not fucking have and because the construct of intellectual property exists to protect capital

[headspace-hotel]

i know that personally, as a trans person, i don’t like when people i follow argue with terfs because then i have to be exposed to their rhetoric on my dash and it upsets me a lot, but for me personally, what bothers me is seeing a bunch of long threads in a row, whether they’re the same thread or different ones. however, there’s a difference between a trans person being upset by this and a TERF being upset by this that you can clearly tell—trans people will usually just ask the person to tag any arguments with terfs/transphobes or any mention of them, so that we can blacklist them and scroll past the transphobia easily without actually seeing it. sometimes trans people will be upset about the person arguing with transphobes even if they tag it, but we can literally always unfollow, it’s not that hard. TERFs will ask you to stop arguing with them, period, and the thing is, they’re not asking because they don’t want to see the arguments, they’re asking because they don’t want you to cause other TERFs, the ones who maybe believe a little less firmly in TERF rhetoric, to start questioning things after you poke holes in their logic. so unfollowing or blacklisting isn’t going to resolve the problem they have with it.

so, IMO as a trans person who doesn’t like seeing TERF/transphobic rhetoric on my dash, if you blacklist the content as terf/transphobia tw or something similar, and someone still decides you need to stop arguing with transphobes, and claims they’re trans, they’re most likely lying about it and are probably transphobic and mad that there’s a possibility their cult could start losing members over it. :/

^100% this.

But from reading their posts, it's definitely also that they really, really, really like having access to plenty of people who have little firsthand experience of radfem rhetoric.

TERFs constantly talk about how statements like "dont reblog from terfs, don't give terfs a platform!" hide what they're actually saying. And they constantly say it's because if you actually knew what TERF arguments were, and had spent time talking to them, you would ~realize~ they were reasonable and TERFs were reasonable, not-hateful people.

Literally, this is HOW they "recruit" people. "What do the ~Trans Cultists~ not want you to know, and why don't they want you knowing it?" When people are in the stage of figuring out things—and everybody is at some point—they are extremely vulnerable to the people that are willing to answer questions and reward inquisitiveness.

A lot of things about cults are applicable here. There's a friendly, more innocuous-seeming "front," and then there's the rabbit hole that just gets more and more fucked up.

I've noticed a ton of parallels with antivaxxers. This is what I have observed. It starts out with people having questions about things, or painful experiences they don't know how to process, and then they meet a friendly, super welcoming, very insular community of people that will answer all their questions and sympathize with all their fears and say "Yes, me too" about all their experiences!

And then it turns into an explanation for their experiences, a complete Reason for everything, and then it turns into a deep downward spiral about how the entire world is out to get you, but don't worry, you're safe with us. We know the truth.

And people who get into it that deep often end up being hateful as fuck, and just not caring about others, and all the bigotry and prejudice they have oozes out in ways that are ugly indeed, and you see them and think how does a person get that way?

It's scary shit. And I feel that you have to be like "Look. This is where the rabbit hole goes. This is where you end up. This is the anatomy of the thing, how it works, what it does. This is how you recognize it. This is not just THAT it's wrong and twisted, but WHY."

By the way, I try to tag stuff like this, but if I ever forget, feel free to remind me.

[1nvad3rz1m]

You (along with several people) bring up the show bible, when it comes to Zim's age, but even if they originally planned him to be a kid, the show bible was there to give a concept, that was not exactly finalized, the Irkens for example had a different name for their species back then. Also there is an another show, Star VS The Forces of Evil. She was supposed to be a middle schooler in the original premise, but they decided to age her up for the final product: she became a 14 year old, but that doesn't mean they retconned her age and she's still 10-12. Just because you plan something, doesn't mean it can't change into something later that you think fits more with what you want to tell. Although I am not even sure that's the exact case with Zim too, since besides the "two kids" bit, he also gets called a spaceman, if I remember correctly.

What am I saying is that you can headcanon him whatever, but I don't think the show bible counts as an evidence.

(Although, I admit some things are confuse me, like other people pointed out that he is smaller in the begginning of the series and actually has a gradual growth, not just a redesign, like I originally thought, but there is also a cancelled plot for an episode, where he gets drunk on slushies, and it is played for a joke, so... The latter personally leaves a bitter taste in my mouth if I view him as a tween/teen, but the growing confuses me in that regard, so I think I understand the people who say giving Zim a human age ruins it for them.)

Never said that was the case, of course things can change from bible to production but the thing is nothing concretely changed. In the case of star she's given a specific age and wasn't even that far off from the og age. She is specifically said to be 14, zim is specifically said to be nothing.

Things we consider when we talk about zim's age are stuff like: did you grow up with the show, because in that case you're probably more inclined to have aged zim around dib which is usually close to the viewers own age (this is partly my own reasoning).

Also how zim acts and appears, in every human instance he's aged around dib even if he's in disguise he is considered to be a child. irkens dont age him at all, other than gag cutbacks to him destroying things but that proves nothing about age to irkens. it's incredibly easy to argue irkens don't have the same aging system and once they're out of smeethood they're sent to work. No child to adult pipeline, just a working irken citizen regardless of actual age.

I don't want to say "minor coded" but that's kind of the case. visually zim appears to be equivalent to a human child, acts equivalent to a human child, and is overall treated as one. to me it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to try and treat him like an adult as he is in canon. This is partially due to my own feelings having always considered him a kid, but I just could never get with the idea he's the equivalent of a human adult just looking at the show itself. and most new fans seem to agree because its not until they learn jhonen said so that they think zims a similar age to dib.

"spaceman" is generally just another term for alien. He's also called "spaceboy" pretty frequently. He's also called lizard, which indicates nothing at all. Invader zim is a funny haha show, they use whatever is needed to make the joke continuity be damned. i don't think that's enough personally to sell me on the idea zim is an adult, and jhonen just saying so isnt enough either because jhonens said a LOT of thing that fans disregard every day (dib has a third ear, zim cares for no one and nothing especially not gir, etc etc)

To me the dynamic changes drastically if zim is an adult, i dont even like zadf is zim is an adult because it feels really weird. the dynamic is much more endearing if theyre a similar age, going through similar struggles, because thats kind of what the show itself implies. zim and dib are parallels to eachother, and the parallel is ruined if one is just a stupid adult and the other is a misunderstood kid. the bible only helps us provide reasoning but its not a smoking gun, theres a lot more to consider.

[thexfridax]

Wynonna Earp Boss Hopes Syfy Finale Made You Feel 'All the Things' — Plus, Scoop on One Happy Wedding Accident

By Matt Webb Mitovich, tvline.com / April 9 2021, 8:02 PM PDT

The following contains spoilers from the Syfy finale of Wynonna Earp.

After four years of protecting Purgatory with her Peacemaker, Wynonna Earp got to quite literally ride off into the sunset. And she did so while straddling a motorcycle, with Doc Holliday seated behind her.

Mind you, the two almost didn’t wind up together. Following the simply beautiful “WayHaught” wedding, Doc (played by Tim Rozon) was determined to put Purgatory in Charlene’s rear view mirror and get to living life as “just a man,” and Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) felt compelled to stay put as Purgatory’s protector. But with an empowering nudge from li’l sis Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), Wynonna caught up to her man and professed her love, after which they decided to travel light, for the first time in a long time, and pay their daughter Alice a visit in MIracles, Montana.

TVLine spoke with series creator Emily Andras about crafting this very fine finale, at least one “happy accident” that wound up stirring many emotions, and more.

TVLINE | The finale has just aired…. What emotions do you hope the fans are feeling at this moment?

Just head-to-toe body warmth, and love, and affection, and wistfulness…. And a little bit of bittersweetness. I feel like joy has to be paired with nostalgia, so I hope they’re feeling all the things. But hopefully not hungover!

TVLINE | At what point over the years did you ever envision Wynonna and Doc riding off into the sunset?

Ahhh! I almost never even let myself envision it, you know? It’s so funny — when you start doing a show, you have all sorts of ideas about what pairings are going to rise to the top, who’s going to end up with whom, and one of the joys of Earp is that so many different things have happened. But those two characters have certainly earned the chance to try to be happy, whatever that means to them. I never knew that I would be allowed to end such a romantic pairing with the woman driving the motorcycle and the guy on the back.

TVLINE | I’m watching that final sequence and it almost feels alien, seeing the two of them head off into what I think of as “the real world.” But I also found that viscerally exciting, to see so much ahead for them.

That’s so lovely, thank you for saying that. I feel like having the world ahead of them and being such an unusual couple, I would love to see what happens next for them. I’m sure there will be lots of crazy sex and crazy arguments and crazy laughter. So, godspeed! Godspeed.

TVLINE | When throwing a season-ending wedding, what is Emily Andras’ marching order? “Above all else, this wedding has to be…”?

It has to honor to all of the characters — and by that, I mean it has to try to find a moment for every special pairing on the show, not just WayHaught. I think it’s important to pay due respect to how far Waverly and Doc have come; she never gave up on him, she always saw a better man in him — and now he gets to be the best man! Nedley (Greg Lawson) and Nicole’s (Kat Barrell) relationship, that paternal/daughter bond is so special, so honoring that was very important.

And at the end of the day, I still think the real love affair of the show is the Earp sisters, so I ended to make sure that that was honored. I really love the parallel with the pilot, where Wynonna came into town against her will and was so hungry to leave but was forced to stay. And now you have Waverly secure enough in how their relationship has evolved, that she knows Wynonna deserves to leave again — because she’ll come back.

More than anything, it was about giving every character a moment of happiness. Even Jeremy (Varun Saranga) becoming deputy chief of Black Badge and maybe finding a new date…. It was all about finding everyone a moment of potential joy, after they’ve gone through so much after four seasons.

TVLINE | Talk about the decision to have empty guest chairs laid out with the names of those who are no longer with us or didn’t make it to the wedding.

That was such a happy accident. We were on-set, it was very much in the middle of the pandemic, and we knew we were going to have a limited number of people for the wedding. But then we put out chairs so you could understand where the aisle was, and they looked really empty. So my incredible director, Paolo Barzman, who also did the pilot, and my art director Trevor Smith, pitched this idea to me. I had sort of joked about, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you had the ghosts of characters past?” In the moment, they said, “What if we hung names on the chairs?” and it was just one of those goosebump moments, like, “That’s brilliant.” So then we have people writing up these cards, rushing them out, and it’s honestly one of my favorite things. Whenever I see that Dolls chair, I just can’t help but feel things.

TVLINE | But Mercedes (Dani Kind), to be clear, is still with us.

She’s just out, like, being her best vampire self. She’s out being an amazing vampire, yeah. I still have that spinoff if you want to help me sell that!

TVLINE | If anything caught me a bit off-guard, it was us getting a song from Rachel (played by Martina Ortiz-Luis).

The thing about Martina is that she is a phenomenal singer. She is the anthem singer for the Toronto Maple Leafs — so she’s quite a star here! — and she was on Pilipinas Got Talent back in the day…. It seemed like a waste to not have someone with such an exceptional voice perform! And what better song to lay over the necessary wedding montage than a WayHaught classic (Fleurie’s “Wildwood”), the song that was playing the first time WayHaught kissed. It’s a bit of an Easter egg for those hardcore WayHaughters!

TVLINE | I don’t think anyone would have ever felt like a “Dark Angel Waverly” detour was missing, if you hadn’t spent time on it the episode prior. Why did you feel it was important to go there during one of the final hours?

The truth of it is that honestly we’ve been balancing the spectre of whether we were going to have a Season 5 or not. When we started breaking Season 4 two years ago, we were looking down the barrel of about 24 episodes, so [when you get half that] you’re like, “What are we going to keep, and what are we going to pitch overboard? What can we live without learning about?” I would argue that this idea of Waverly having a darkness inside of her did have to be highlighted after four seasons. I completely agree that in a perfect world I could have done eight episodes of Dark Angel Waverly, exploring that and seeing it come to pass. But if we ever get more story, I don’t know if Waverly has complete control over that part of herself. I dont think it’s “gone.” If Nicole puts mayo instead of mustard on her sandwich, who knows what’s going to sprout out!

TVLINE | I mean, if only to see what other outfits Dark Waverly has.

As long as she keeps her thigh holster, she’s ready to go.

TVLINE | Looking back at these last few episodes, what are you most proud of?

‘m so proud of this cast. It’s so boring, but God, just to see them grow and thrive and shine…. performing comedy and emotion, seeing their commitment to the show, and the feelings…. It’s just been such a joy to see such an amazing group of people get their due. They really are that wonderful, off-screen as well.

I’m also pretty happy — in this day and age, and despite all the fights the show has been through — that if this is the end, I feel like that’s a pretty nice finale, a pretty good topper on the cake. I feel like the fans will feel like they went on a journey, and they left the characters in an interesting, good place. And look, that’s really rare in TV, to end your story the way you want. How can I be anything but grateful, at the end of the day?

TVLINE | When I was writing my tweet the other morning, I wanted to call it a “very fine finale,” but I worried you’d think I was saying it was only “fine.” But it was a very fine finale!

No, you have to keep me hungry! You get to challenge me, Matt. Listen, I just didn’t want to risk…. I’m the queen of 75 cliffhangers, but I feel like the fans have worked so hard for us, for so many years, that it was more important that they got closure, just in case. But there’s always another demon, there’s always another thing to trigger Dark Angel Waverly. There’s always more story, but at least you have this, no matter what.

TVLINE | And if some network or streamer does ride to the rescue, would there be something that brings Wynonna and Doc back to Purgatory? Or might a Season 5 be without the two of them?

Look, the show is called Wynonna Earp, so you need Wynonna Earp. She’s still the champion, she’s still got the magic gun and the best hair on the show — sorry, everyone else!

There are a couple of unresolved issues. We still have Eve, who we kicked out the the Garden very early in the season, and who can kind of shapeshift; she could take on the appearance of any one of our characters! That would certainly throw a wrench in the works in Purgatory. There are a million different reasons to bring Wynonna back, to help out her sister.

TVLINE | And lastly, was there anything you had to cut or just didn’t have room for, or any returning cast you couldn’t fit in?

Oh, tons. But look, you kind of hit the nail on the head earlier. I’m always striving to be better, and some stuff at the end felt a little rushed, with Dark Angel Waverly. I think if it hadn’t been a pandemic, there would have been more people at that wedding. I would have loved four more episodes to round the bend there. But look, that’s Wynonna Earp, man — perfectly imperfect! So that’s what we did, and what a ride it’s been. The ride of a lifetime for me.

[marinetteplztakeabreak]

ML Lies Episode Predictions:

There’s Two?? (don’t trust my math) more days before lies completely destroys me, so I’m going to make some predictions, and by predictions I mean wishlist. My walls are already up, so if none of these happen I won’t be disappointed, but also a girl can dream: (this is somehow 1700 entire words long because I have a lot of feelings, so it’s under a cut, you’re welcome)

—Adrien and Kagami’s are secretly dating: please I want it so bad, I’ve talked about this so much and emotionally I need it!! At the very least I want them to sneak out together so so bad I’d cry. But also, if they’re hiding it from their other friends for whatever reason, thats SUCH good angst potential.

—If we get to see some kinda montage of them sneaking out??? Id ride that high for months. Even just one actual example of them working together to sneak out would obliterate me. Like, how it shows Kagami sneaking out to go to the game in Ikari Gozen?? I’d cry

—The breakup happens as a direct result of it being a secret relationship: this would be SUCH a good parallel to lukanette. Lukanette broke up because Luka wanted Marinette to be more open with him and he hated being in the dark, so just, the parallels if Adrien wants to be more open about adrimi and Kagami is like “you dont understand, if your dad finds out about us he will end this immediately” but Adrien wants to believe that its going to be okay and no one will react badly? I’m probably explaining this badly and I’ll try to explain it better later I just,,, want parallels and opposites and truth v lies and hhhhh

—Fencing??? Friendly/ affectionate competition??? Them being idiot jocks in love??? Please??? I want to see them compete!!

—I’d love to see Kagami character growth + Adrimi relationship development!!! I want her to love herself more and be more comfortable around him!!!

—Specifically, if there was a parallel to Riposte,, and Adrien beat Kagami in a fencing match and Kagami was like “Oh nice!! :D good game!” I’d be so happy I’d cry!! And it’s kinda implied by Chat Blanc that they’re already there in there relationship?? But not confirmed?? So if I saw it or saw confirmation of it I’d cry!!

—in one of the released photos it looked like they were holding hands??? And at this point my expectations are so low I don’t even trust it yet but blease,,, let them hold hands,, i’d cry of joy

—If Adrien is also constantly leaving and disappearing due to akuma responsibilities, I want it to read SUPER differently from the Lukanette because I love parallels/foils!! Marinette disappears on her dates with Luka and its just “oh marinette is really distracted and busy and frazzled” but I dont think Adrimi but be loke that at all!!! Because as far as Kagami knows, she has the same backstory/current story as Adrien. She’s risking a lot by sneaking out to go on dates with him?? So Adrien seeing an akuma and being like “oh sorry father is calling” isnt even suspicious or anything??? Its 100% believable!!! If her mother called she’d immediately be like “oh fricking heck i Need To Leave this instant immediately.” So its less “Adrien doesnt care about her” and more of just twisting the knife and reminding her that life doesnt want them to be together and Adrien is never going to be free!!! Big ouch to her heart!!!

—also I want!!!! Them!!! To talk about their feelings!!! Because parallels to truth!!! Adrien is like “sorry I have to go” and Kagami is like “oh I hate that so much” and Adrien is like “big same.” (Also idk how realistic this is but I’d love it if ‘Kagami talking about her feelings’ wasn’t the cause of strife in their relationship!! Like, she talks about how she feels and when she’s upset and Adrien is like “yeah me too” and they’re just,, good bros)

—I need them to stay friends after the breakup, i need it i need it i need it!!! And the whole issue is!! I feel like the main reason they’d date is to try and hang out more?!?? So if the breakup was actually them talking to each other and being like “hey so this isnt working with sneaking out, we’re going to need to go back to the way it was before,” rather than them saying they were bad for each other???? Hoo boy i’d lose my mind

—Also!!! My favorite prediction, I’d die of joy if this happened (and also of angst). I want there to be so much drama with “secret relatinship” stuff that they try to fix it by going public with their relationship!! Very low chance of this actually happening but its okay if it doesnt, thats what the fanfiction I’m inevitably going to write immediately after watching the episode is for!!! But anyway,, multiple ways this could happen.

Maybe they’ve been secretly dating since Miracle Queen and they decide to go public at the beginning of this episode and that’s the primary source of plot/conflcit!!! I’d be thrilled!!!

BUT!!! if the episode ends with then Not Breaking Up, but instead deciding to go from dating secretly to dating publicly???? Holy Freaking Heck,,, I’d go feral with emotion!!!! I also need to expand on this so much more but basic rundown of how I imagine it could happen (again: Is it likely?? Probably not! but this is my last chance to dream):

Kagami is like “listen we have the same backstory and I KNOW in my soul that this relationship wouldn’t work if it was public”

Adrien is like “okay yeah I feel you, thats fair”

Kagami goes on dates with Adrien and its fun and nice and lovely and the honeymoon phase is so good and exciting

Adrien starts disappearing a lot, partly because of akuma attacks, but partly because of nathalie and gabe calling him constantly

Adrien starts to be like “well actually i think that my dad does care about me probably? And if he knew why I wanted to go he’d let me! Or at least Nathalie would because clearly she cares about me!”

Kagami is like “hhhnngg have you met them?? You think they’d want you to be happy and free??” Except she can’t just SAY that because if she did then she’d be crushing Adrien’s entire heart and possibly also making him get really defensive and he has to come to the conclusion that his parents are good on his own

Kagami also starts to get frustrated with how much more often Adrien has to leave than she does?? And its because of akuma attacks but she doesnt know that and he cant tell her

Adrien starts to get frustrated because he can take the “having to leave for akuma attacks” part but when he finally finishes an akuma battle and Natalie immediately calls him it is just aaaaaAAAAAAAA and he just wants to believe so badly that he could at least take control of that part??? He could at least get Nathalie to help him out??? Probably maybe right???

Because we all know he HATES having to keep secrets from Ladybug, but he’ll do it for her, and he’ll keep his life as Chat a secret, but Kagami??? He should at least be able to talk about that, right?? He’s not doing anything bad/dangerous/etc

Also there could very well be some angst with Adrien being so so worried about Nathalie because she’s bedridden and his dad is being sketchy and he’s SEEN this before and he doesn’t want to be avoiding Natalie or lying to her because what if he loses her too??? He’d feel so guilty! And he needs the support of a parent figure so much,,, so he HAS to tell her the truth

But he respects Kagami’s wishes and he’s not going to betray her trust

But unlike Lukanette, they DO talk about their feelings and they disagree and stuff, and even if he’s trying not to be confrontational, Kagami is like “i can tell youre uncomfortable about something, please just tell me what it is” so he tells her that he disagrees

Kagami gets akumatized?? idk if it’s even been confirmed that she’s the akuma “Lies” but I’d assume she is because parallels to Lukanette

Maybe it happens as a direct result of some moment where Kagami and Adrien are arguing and in the heat of the moment he says something hurtful??

Maybe they’re arguing and then Adrien has to leave before it can resolve and Kagami is mad about it even though shes trying not to be and she gets akumatized???

Maybe she does say something like “bc your dad sucks and nathalie sucks!” and he yells or something (i want to see Adrien yell and be flawed let me live, and this is one of the most likely scenerios for it to happen bc it would HURT for him)

Maybe Kagami shoots back with anger, maybe Adrien’s been calm but Kagami gets mean for a moment, but regardless, Kagami says something about her true feelings of anger at nathalie/gabe/ etc and before Adrien can respond he’s like “oh shoot sorry I need to get home NOW”

Then for one brief second Kagami’s TERRIFIED that he’s going to tell nathalie about this in his anger and then nathalie’s going to be like “oh kagami is clearly bad for you because she made u this upset” and Adrien will LISTEN because hes stupid and he still listens to his horrible adult figures and Kagami is so mad about the entire situation so then in her moment of weakness she gets akumatized

Look at that its a direct opposite of Lukanette because Luka was afraid of Marinette keeping secrets about why she’s always vanishing because he doesnt know and Kagami is afraid of Adrien telling secrets about why HEs always vanishing bc she thinks she does know,,

But anyway, after she gets de-akumatized, she’s so ashamed of it and she can see how far she took it and how many people it hurt,, and Adrien is really sad and apologetic and trying to support her,, and she’s like “no clearly I was actually wrong, keeping this a secret is hurting you and its hurting me and now its hurting random civilians”

So she tells Adrien that they should tell people about it and stop dating in secret

And then multiple possible ending:

Does he say “actually no, youre right, they wouldnt let this happen, so if we cant date in public and dating in secret is hurting us then we shouldnt date at all” and thats how the breakup goes??? That would literally obliterate me

Does the episode end on a false positive where Adrien hasnt told them yet and he is like “yeah this is gonna be great” and there isnt an actual breakup yet?? Because that would also kill me (even though i doubt theyre going to let adrimi take up that much time in the show but, let me dream)

Also if Adrien is like “we shouldnt tell my parents but we should tell someone” and then they tell Marinette and now shes got ANOTHER secret to keep and aaaaaaaAAAAA?? Id die on the spot

I’m still holding out hope that the episode will give me enough crumbs to at least be able to write this better, but regardless of what happens in the episode,,, the chances of me eventually writing fanfiction exploring this are SO HIGH, I’ve been thinking about this for ages

In conclusion:

—no matter what happens in lies, its going to destroy me

—please let them be in a secret relationship it makes so much sense for their characters and for the drama and aaaaAAAAA

—also please give me the parallels to lukanette where their issues are exactly the opposite and it still falls apart

Thank you for your time, I’ll be excitedly vibrating at the speed of sound for the next two days until we get answers!! Depending on how the episode goes, I’ll either be writing so much adrimi fluff to recover,, so much adrimi angst to vent,, or I’ll be staring at the ceiling screaming for a few days as I post nothing but keysmashes and try to sort through my emotions :)

[botwstoriesandsuch]

hey Kip! I’m sending asks into different writer’s askboxes, inquiring about cool themes/development facts/stuff the author wants to share about their personal favorite work of their own. What’s yours? :)

Ok so this ask is old and when I first got it I was like “dang I don’t really have a lot to talk about, what should I talk about I could those revalink headcanons the Kip Cut that turned into a working fic uhh hmm maybe I’ll just make something new to talk about real quick” and then I did and now there is a 12+ chapter Revalink fic in my drafts and I’m gonna talk about that now, whoopsie doopsie [click "j" to skip]

aHEM, OK so allow me to break out the primary school white board because yeah, I have a lot of thoughts and the oxford comma has not yet made it’s home into my brain. oh and spoilers for paraphrase. for both all of Chapter one and future events in later chapters, but it’s really nothing you couldn’t surmise from the AO3 tags

so I really wanted to tell the story of Revali and Link learning and struggling to love again after the less-than-fortunate events of Botw, but I wanted a...how you say...fresher, approach on the subject? Like I know we always say that fanfic writers writing the same tropes and stories time and time again is good because we eat that shit up--but at the same time I had asian parenting as was told never to half ass anything ever, no matter what. So now I'm gay and extra and have depression maybe and oh would you look at that @motherhyrule has dropped a beautiful revalink prompt right into my lap

Great so now that we have, that, I shall take you on the step by step process on how to make a :sparkles: story. So step one is to spend at least five to eleven business days for your white board to dismantle your genre and themes and work them around your character arcs. Luckily I have prepared one ahead of time

s*breaks out those laser pointers that uni professors use* So let's start with defining genre. As define because I HATE you, fuck you. I want you to suffer and writhe on the ground, motherfucker. How dare you think that I would give you nothing but pure predictable fluff, fuck you and yours

is the set of expectations that your audience has when consuming a piece of media

And the great thing about fanfiction is that unlike movies or book where the genres are more vague like, "oh it's a noir mystery genre. so there's a crime, maybe a murder, and a detective and a criminal." or "oh it's a teen romance. so there's some white people and a morally questionable six-pack 18 year old love interest that will be painted as desirable for some reason" BUT with fanfiction HALF of the work out the window, because as soon as you see those #revalink #aro sidon #zelpha #revali is an idiot and #found family tags you already know what's up.

Now what's so great about genre and expectation? Well the fun thing about it is that

I will use it to fucking break you.

... ... ...

<3 For example! <3

In Chapter 1: Holes, you already expect there to be revalink, you already expect them to be soulmates with the soulmarks and there's angst and yadayada ya. Revali and Link have to match because thatttss what this is all about, this is about them! This is about cute, little soulmarks and romantic words!

But whoooopsie doopsie [disney channel laugh track plays] they DON'T match anymore! Link's got a different mark! The number one rule of this entire genre has been broken whoooooooooooooooops. *ba dum tiss*

You might notice with a lot of my writing that I do this a lot, this whole..."oop but there's one little thing that's different." TebaSaki sick fic? Ok cool, but what if Teba burns an irreplaceable relic of the Rito champion to fight a wizzrobe first to characterize why his dumbass clicks with Saki. Mipha deciding to persue Link? Ok what if she chases after a dragon to externalize this conflict as she pierces it's flesh for a scale. Link fighting a Lynel? Ok but what if it's actually a sidlink angst fic in disguise and it's also world building on how Link deals with the bloodmoon that erases all of his efforts which is sort of similar to how his existence was erased from Hyrule 100 years ago mwaahahaha! Ok now that I say this outloud I think I just have a pattern of using fight scenes to externalize character growth. I like fight scenes...anyways.

I think another great thing about the realm of fanfiction is that with the tagging system, I can basically use a chekhov's gun sort of deal, without doing any writing. You know I'm gonna use that gun marked "soulmates" but you don't know when I'm gonna shoot it, and you SURE as hell don't know how.

And huzzah! One of the main points of conflict both drives the tension between Revali and Link, solidifies the unique genre and setting of this world, while also creating a new mystery that will carry over for the next few chapters.

Is Revali right in that Link's rebirth makes him destined for someone new now? What will Link do with the information that his soulmark has changed? Why did it change? Did Revali's change as well? How does anything fucking work right now?

And sure, you might be able to tell where things will end with them, but you sure as fuck will not know how because I HATE you. Fuck you. I want you to suffer and writhe on the ground, motherfucker. How dare you think that I would give you nothing but pure predictable fluff. I am not your goddamn fairy godmother, I will do as I fucking please. You will suffer as you fucking deserve, fuck you and your little tiny--

/j

Oh! But you might have noticed on my little planning whiteboard thing that there was a little T-Chart! For Revali and Link! That's because the next important thing besides plot (and in a lot of cases, including this one, it's argued to be even MORE important than plot) is

~CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT~

[to the tune of that history of the world video on youtube]

So yes, it's a little T-Chart outlining their character views in relation to the themes. And the great thing about themes is that they're not something you can necessarily predict in the same way you can with the genre and plot.

But now see, I'm very lazy so I'm just gonna plagiarize @hyrule-kingdom-updates thingy [that you should read btw] because they said my point quite clear enough

Now I don't really need to care about those points about bond and relationships and being understood, because I'm dealing with already established canon characters. I'm not some NERD who dabbles with entire casts of ocs who even cares about ocs not me that's for sure ahaahahaahahahahahaahahahahahAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *cries in my orphaned WTTU fic* AHAHAHA*sobs*DONT FUCKING LOOK AT ME THAT WAY I SWEAR--

/j I love ocs

But the points I do wanna focus on is the idea that characters provide new perspectives on the theme, and that characters growth can be tracked based on their wants, lies, and needs.

So see, themes can be predicted the same as genre/plot because while you can have the same fanfic plots and tropes, theme will always vary!

Sometimes it's a journey of selfworth with Revali! Sometimes it's an exploration of trauma with Link. Sometimes it's about how you deal with the vulnerabilities of love with Mipha. Sometimes there's straight up NOOOO theme, and people just be fucking, and kissing, and baking, and having a good time. And that is totally fine too!

But I'm not a fucking coward.

I'm gonna weave in themes with my plot, because I fucking can.

I'm not a weakling like you.

Do you hear me, 2019 Kip? Do you hear me Demmers? Do you hear me Quill? I'm coming for your ass. You think you're so great, but I'm coming for you. Rest assured that your graves will be as deep as your sculptured pride--

Heeeere is that T-Chart again, plus more!

yyyyyYou might notice that Revali and Link are quite parallel, to paraphrase. Ayoooo, see what I did there? *dabs* I'm a genius. Anywho

They both start off the same way: 100 years ago they were in love and happy. Basically the equivalent of childish naivety. For the first time in their lives, life is whimsical and charming, and they make each other happy. In fact, it's almost a flaw with how they perceive this happiness. But don't worry! It doesn't last long!

You know what happens.

I think the chart is pretty self explanatory. Revali builds walls fast enough to give a republican a wet dream. Meanwhile Link makes every aromantic in the chat groan with his doubled down sentiments in the idea that his chances of being truly happy again are gone.

Now, I can't exactly describe the full on process of the inbetweens, and where Revali and Link are gonna go from here, because...you have to read it for yourself! Heehee...but something I did think was fun was how these character views on the themes are revealed. Because you'll notice that, I never give exposition. Ever.

Ok well, let me rephrase that. I never give exposition scenes. I will never give you a big LOTR fancy wizard scene explaining the ins and outs of a character's question or the world's magic or whatever. I'm a very impatient Kip, and I value efficiency. Nonono, it's all about multi tasking, baby!

Chapter 1: Holes is divided into three parts.

Post 100 Years - Medoh (Establishes Ghost Rev/Bonk Head Link's view)

100 Years Ago - Flight Range (Establishes old Revalink views)

Post 100 years - Mark (Develops Ghost Rev/Bonk Head Link's view in contrast to who they once were)

I think the way that you structure flashbacks is incredible vital, as it's a very quick way to characterize people without having them say stuff like "I used to be like you, until I took an arrow to the knee" or whatever.

And with the main structure of the chapters and the fic as a whole is focus on their characters, that means I can hide whatever other stuff I want in those scenes, becuase you're too busy absorbing the fun character stuff to realizing I'm giving you boring exposition. Like for example:

Post 100 Years - Medoh and Mark

Foreshadowing for the end of the fic

Set up connection to Medoh with Revali

Link has defeated Windblight

Link has been visiting Revali every night for the past few days

Link has already met Kass and presumably Teba

Link doesn't have the Mastersword

Revali's Gale is still an ability that needs master and practice on Link's end

And that's just some of the stuff.

And see, the only reason I can efficiently give all of this information regarding character, and even exposition, is because of the theme. The themes make everything relevant, and everything circles and encompasses one another, so there's absolutely no wasted space. I mean don't even get me started on how it's gonna be to characterize the other characters around this

I don't wanna talk about the other characters too much either because that's spoilers, but you can probably take a gandar based on my notes.

And oh my god this is just on the theme of the faults that come with "soulmates" and "true love" and all that, and how even magical destined relationships still require work and effort, and that no one thing or person solves all your problems. And that's not even TOUCHING the shit on trauma and scars. I didn't think it was even possible for me to talk about botw without touching on that, ha. Ah well, I've been talking for too long.

Revalink has a lot o' writing potential so das pretty cool yeah, I am excite

[omegawolverine]

Plesse tell me about queerness in the get down!!

okay okay queerness in the get down let's fuckn goooo

disclaimer: I havent watched this show in full for like 5 months at least, probably gonna get something wrong and/or forget some more important bits. also this wasnt proof read I just word vomited

tws: period typical homophobia, abuse mention, f slur use, bury your gays trope, overdose mention, mention of a creepy possible age gap (the age gap hasnt been confirmed so that's why its possible), cops

going from least to most prominent queer characters, let's start with mylene cruz!

so, from the beginning of this show she has an established romantic relationship with ezekiel (although the status of their actual relationship changes frequently throughout the show) and though this was a relationship she was hesitant to pursue, it is clear that she does have romantic feelings for him and if not for them both having growing careers in very different music genres (zeke specifically working in a genre that she repeatedly labels as bad because she thinks they're ruining records + that it isnt real music because they're using someone elses piece and rapping over it, that's not really important here tho lol) they probably wouldve had a much healthier, smooth sailing romance. that being said theres a few things that happen in the show that, while not explicitly clear, or even really good coding at that—to the point where you wont catch if you really arent looking for it (and trust me, I always look for coding, hers was just so little that it flew over my head until I saw someone else mention it)—are still cool to think about!

so, for starters, I wanna mention the toy box performance, which was performed by mylene and regina, who are best friends. that's all cool and shit, and you dont really think much about it...until you hear about the fact that the show runners purposely colored a lot of the scenes in that performance with the bi colors. like. the writers after the show ended basically said "oh yeah there was plans to make her coding more explicit, but our shit got cancelled soooo" and then dropped the fact that she was gonna be bi (or at least implies bi) in the series, which puts a new twist on a few things.

now, besides the bi coloring in the background of the toy box performance (which was mostly on scenes with her and regina, which involved a lot of uh,, lowkey lewd dancing. with each other. in very revealing outfits. wooooo), there's her music! I dont tend to read too much into this one bc, like I said before, her coding is fucking light and the writers themselves said they didnt really get to do much with it, but I think some stuff with her music is interesting. specifically how her, yolanda and regina's song set me free blew up because dizzee, resident (lowkey enby coded) bicon, got their song played in a queer club. also that the song was majorly important to dizzee and started playing literally right as he kissed a boy for the first time and realized "oh shit I like boys that's bonkers". also that the song can be taken in a gay way since literally the entire thing is about becoming your true self, fully and unapologetically, which is what both dizzee and mylene's entire character arcs are about. dizzee (and a lot of other queer people, apparently), heard this song about being set free and it resonated with them so much that they got that shit most of its popularity.

speaking of dizzee and mylene, they parallel each other a lot in the way that their arcs are about them realizing who they are, coming into themselves and no longer just letting people treat them like shit in a sense (dizzee starting to tell people essentially that they can call him weird all they want, they can make fun of how he acts, what he likes, how he dresses, etc. but he likes how he is and quite literally saying "it's okay to be an alien" as he has consistently compared himself to one throughout the show vs mylene learning that if she wants to be a disco singer she needs to put her foot down, not let anyone, not even the love of her life, not even her abusive father, stop her from achieving her dreams, etc. and continuing to pursue her career with or without their support). one more little parallel that I think is interesting is during I think s2 towards the end of the show is when dizzee and thor are shown together having fun with each other, painting all over the building and each other and are basically just being happy and in love together and then they have these clips of them being interspersed with clips of mylene at a party where she is starting to realize that if she wants to get anywhere she needs to be her own main priority and that she needs to put her career and her dream, which is what makes her the happiest, above all else if she wants to succeed. idk I just think how the show made these two into a weird parallel, accidental or not, is neat. maybe not an explicitly queer parallel, but I think at least how her music and whatnot helped dizzee, the main queer character in this show, blossom, is important.

moving on we got shaolin fantastic also known as "oh no your internalized homophobia is showing-"

so, heres a quick list of...interesting shao facts:

Consistently referred to as fag/faggot (shaolin fanfaggot is my personal favorite); he gets really defensive about this despite nobody actually thinking he's queer, it's just people being assholes to be assholes, and he is the only character consistently referred to using a slur, especially a homophobic one, especially for a "straight" character. dizzee, a canonically queer character, is called a fag less than shaolin is even though dizzee actively goes to gay clubs, has a not so secret dude he "hangs out with" and wont let anyone properly meet, paints his nails, wears less than straight clothes even by the 70s standards and is just all around the definition of fucking queer (and I mean like in the weird way, not the gay way). in fact theres only like once I can remember him being called a fag and it had nothing to do with him actually being gay it was literally just like thrown out there the same way you would call someone a bitch.

Has only shown sexual interest in women, yet refuses to have deeper relationships with women in general (possibly because of trauma but who knows) but takes his relationships with his "brothers", specifically zeke, very seriously

Tells zeke and zeke ONLY his real name when zeke was planning to stop being his friend bc shao more or less got boo boo, a like 14 year old black kid, arrested for selling hard drugs; he was clearly scared and trying to do anything to keep zeke around, literally chasing him down the street and hounding him until he got zeke to stop and argue with him

Kept threatening to beat up zeke in the end but couldn't actually bring himself to do so, instead saying that zeke is "fucking lucky" before walking away

Let's zeke get away with things that nobody else can, in general just has a weird soft spot for ezekiel that he shows with nobody else

when shao found dizzee with thor in a vaguely compromising situation (like they were just shirtless covered in paint sleeping next to each other but shao had also seen everything they painted on the walls ((which some of it was sus)), it was clear they had painted on each others bodies and dizzee had been routinely disappearing with this guy for weeks now yet not producing nearly as much art, at least, as far as we audience members know) he didnt judge him but instead, waited for him to get cleaned up and then told him something along the lines of "theres a reason why im so secretive blah blah blah [not everyone needs to know everything about me]", which, in context, kinda implies that he might be a lil. a lil homiesexual. jus a lil.

whenever even the possibility of zeke leaving him comes up he absolutely loses it. he has literally cost ezekiel life changing opportunities because he thought zeke would just up and leave him for them. this could be abandonment issues bc he's a severely traumatized character, and that probably does contribute to it, but it also is just not a reaction he has to any of their other friends just randomly dipping in and out of his life soooooo

generally speaking, this mfer has got either bisexual with a big hard on for zeke coding or homosexual with terrible internalized homophobia and still a hard on for zeke coding. either fucking way, that nigga gay. he gay as hell. gay as fuck man. there wasn't really much to analyze here tbh bc the coding is just so fucking obvious if you look for it or you are/have been a gay person who's dealt with at least a little bit of internalized homophobia.

also, just a sidenote, idk how fucking old shao, but I'm praying hes like at max 19 bc I'm pretty sure zeke is a minor in this show and shao definetly is not so the whole him being heavily implied to have a crush on ezekiel thing is kinda. oof. not oof if zeke is like 17 but any younger than that? OOF.

edit: apparently the characters are only supposed to be a year apart in age but i had no clue about that before writing this post and since shaos age was never actually stated in the show i naturally assumed he was an adult since his actor Looks Like An Adult. this is definetly on me to a certain extent, but i also never saw anything about this when trying to find our their ages so 🤷‍♀️ maybe i just didnt look deep enough, sorry!

now moving on to the main event...marcus dizzee kipling :]

so, first things first, let's talk enby coding bc him being bisexual was already confirmed!

um, to start off, I just wanna say I dont think this enby coding was intentional or even really coding, it's just moreso me being a dizzee kin on main and knowing as a transmasc enby he has very transmasc enby vibes. for example:

cool, gender neutral nickname that everyone calls him

paints nails various different colors

the whole wardrobe is just a transmasc enby heaven...fishnet shirts, jean overalls, jackets and cuffed pants galore, the big colorful pins, etc

gender neutral hairstyle (when I had my fro it was very sexy and made it easy to transition between hyper masc and vaguely fem, which is pog)

comparing himself to/representing himself consistently with an alien character (though this is meant to represent his sexuality, it could also double as a gender thing too, not neccesarily bc of the whole nonbinary alien trope but bc an enby who likes aliens might heavily identify or compare themselves to whatever their idea of an alien is, whether that just be a genderless entity or a motherfucker with fly style and no need to be perceived as anything other Wacky As Hell)

moving on from there, let's talk about how his queerness is presented to us and how, while it may be a really good piece of representation, especially coming from netflix, it still lacks in A Lot of places.

so, let's start with good things!

i personally really like the get down's queer rep with dizzee bc it's (for the most part) nonsexualized and very very soft, about dizzee figuring himself out and realizing there is a place where he fits in, and about two teenagers in the 70s falling in love over their shared passion for street art. it also features an interracial couple where both boys challenge stereotypes both about queer men and men of color, which is epic poggers and very sexy. this piece of rep specifically is very important to me bc I am a queer black person and even tho interracial relationships are mostly normalized now, I've still had people give me shit for primarily dating white people in a town that is...primarily white lol

mm anyways, I can also appreciate how in the get down, dizzee being represented by rumi the alien is not a thing specifically related to gender (as it often is) and instead is about his sexuality and just in general weirdness and how it has led to him being alienated amongst his peers, poc or otherwise. him seeing himself as an alien is not about just his queerness, which is important, it is about him being a queer black man who talks different, acts different, dresses different and is "soft"—he isnt a walking black male stereotype and he wouldnt have been seen as masculine back in the 70s by any stretch of the imagination. this can be relatable to a wide spectrum of queer poc, from queer black men currently who still have to deal with this shit or to people like myself who are afab neurodivergent mixed race enbies that have always been signaled out as weird and alienated for it. dizzee is god rep bc while he has a small part in this show, his parts are very impactful, hard hitting and show queer poc of all ages that they arent alone and that it's okay to "weird", you just need to embrace it because somebody will love you for you, as thor did for dizzee.

that being said theres um. some minor problemas here,,,

namely:

dizzee and thors first kiss

the lack of development this pairing got

the way dizzee was confirmed bisexual off screen, he never said the words himself, just showed interest in both genders

the way dizzee and thor were never even confirmed boyfriends or just fwb so most of the fandom just calls them boyfriends bc Why Not

dizzee was implied fucking DEAD??? AT THE END OF THE SERIES?????? AND THOR WAS IMPLIED ARRESTED?????????????

now, these might have been things that wouldve been fine had the show been given it's full run but it wasnt which is why we are now left with probelms.

so, from the top, let's go over these: dizzee and thor's first (and only "on screen") kiss was one that was shown in a montage of other queer people making over and doing other vaguely romantic/sexual things, one of those things being a whole ass naked titty being mouthed at, but the actual kiss...was just not shown? like they really did just say "yes they kissed <3 you know this from the context clues of it being in a montage with kissing, hickey giving and titty sucking <3 but no we will not show it <3" LIKE HELLO? I SAW A NAKED BOOBIE BUT NOT TWO MEN KISS??? HUH????????

also, dizzee and thor were both fucking high as hell during this bit like this isnt a terrible thing but it's also like sometimes you do shit when you're high that you wouldnt do sober and they just never kissed again on screen so like?? like idk that's not that bad but it does kinda irk me since they deadass got no other on screen intimacy after that unless you including painting on eacher other or sleeping next to each other on a shitty mattress but not touching at all during it bc they were both at opposite ends of the mattress like half way off it

so yeah, that was trash. then we got lack of development, which kinda goes with the "dizzee being a bisexual but he never says it in canon" thing cause like...okay dizzee was already sort of a side character from the get go like he wasnt the mc by any means, but he became way more of a background character as things continued until we basically only saw him for performances or when he was with thor, yet they got no fucking development as a pairing other than "dizzee realize he gay, he like thor, he and thor spend time together and ig probably do some gay stuff but we dont really know bc we only ever see them do graffiti together now" like?? tf am I supposed to do with that shit. answer. quickly. and then theres dizzee not being confirmed bisexual, which is just a running problem with shows literally doing everything to say a character is bi except for having the character just...say they're bi? which would be so easy? like a good way dizzee and thor couldve had some development is by thor teaching dizzee things about the queer community that he didnt even know existed, thor couldve helped him understand what being bi meant and helped him label himself and whatnot but instead we got an off screen confirmation that the writers had bisexual in mind when writing him. which is garbagé.

the whole thor and dizzee never having a confirmed relationship status is also a development problem cause like literally nobody knows if they were just friends who made out, maybe fucked, who knows, or if they were dating bc dizzee does give a love confession but a love confession doesn't mean there is a relationship, especially since thor didn't say he was in love either (as far as I remember, I could be wrong, plus whether or not that really happened or was apart of dizzee literally overdosing during a performance is unclear so 🤪)

and now for the biggest issue...bury your gays trope.

during the season 2 finale, dizzee and thor are chased by cops after they are found doing graffiti, one of the cops is able to catch thor while the other chases dizzee into a train tunnel and there is a train seen headed straight for him before the show cuts to black on a train horn. the show writers claim that if they had gotten another season, dizzee wouldve been alive but since they didnt and since that's essentially super fan trivia knowledge, most people dont fucking know that and instead had to watch a black queer teenager chose death over being fucking arrested by a white cop. on top of that, thor didnt see any of that shit because he was caught and the cop started hauling him off while dizzee was still being chased so thor literally has no clue where his friend/possible boyfriend fucking is or that he's likely dead in a goddamn tunnel all alone, unless you count the fucking pig that chased him in there who wouldve died too. this shows rep was so fucking good as far as most shows go on not having major fucking problems, on not being toxic and over sexualized, etc, etc. and then they just. killed a black queer teenager for no fucking reason. like it was literally the last episode ever, it would add nothing to the plot, it would just devastate fans and devastate it fucking did. I dont cry easy but seeing a character I identified with, who I had hyperfixated on, die because he'd rather that than be arrested is terrible. it fucking sucked.

so yeah. that's my all too extensive thoughts/analysis on the get down's queerness. theres definitely stuff I missed, or misinterpreted, or looked too much into, etc, etc., but this was a fun thing to spend time writing sooo yeah!! thanks for the ask anon, sorry this was just a big rambley info dump, but hopefully you get some enjoyment out of it since it took like 3 hours at least 😭😭 feel free to ask clarifying questions lol

[cattles-bians]

exes au part 12

post directory

obsetress: don’t ask why i had this thought because i couldn’t tell you but

obsetress: jamie wakes up in the middle of the night one night and is like “i... had a dream. about vi”

obsetress: and dani’s like “ok baby” and just nuzzles deeper into her pillow and jamie’s like

obsetress: “no, dani, a... a dream”

obsetress: and dani’s like “oh. oh” and is immediately wide awake and bright eyed

obsetress: and is like “was it any good?” and jamie is just. already flushed so red and flushed deeper and dani just hums

em: sighs wistfully

em: i also love that something compels jamie to tell dani Immediately

em: oh the perils of begrudgingly being friends w ur gfs ex

em: jamies like um. no see i can see all these different things my brain mashed together and WHY i had this dream and danis like ok but that wasn’t my question....

obsetress: jamie finally throws up her hands “of course it was”

em: jamie: And You Can’t Tell Vi She’ll Be Insufferable

obsetress: dani, very plainly, at brunch the next morning: so vi

obsetress: jamie looks like she’s going to have a heart attack and dani lets her sweat and then just smiles sweetly “i like those sunglasses. are they new?”

em: jamie what’s the problem (nothin. indigestion)

obsetress: dani very smug n thinks she’s very funny

obsetress: (she is a little funny)

em: one of jamies many ‘oh that’s why they dated’ moments

obsetress: “fookin sick, the both of ya”

em: idk why you had this thought but i’m GREATLY amused

obsetress: skskksksks right

obsetress: jamie explaining her dream to dani in great detail afterwards

obsetress: dani sitting there nodding and hmming “oh that sounds like her. no, she wouldn’t do that. now THAT she would be very good at, you’d like it”

em: i need a moment

em: jamie thinks the dark hides her massive fucken blush but it Doesn’t

em: dani can feel her heating up

obsetress: jamie “i don’t ask you to do this” dani “you’re not stopping me”

em: dani critiquing jamies sex dream is such a fucken funny concept sjdhdkhdkdhdkc

obsetress: RIGHT

obsetress: i’m dying

em: dani: oh no that’s OOC

obsetress: she wouldn’t have a riding crop jamie, it’s 2021, not 16—

em: jamie: it’s a wet dream do u really think it’s gonna have beta readers and a three act structure

em: dani hums

obsetress: dani: well did you enjoy it

obsetress: jamie: i— dani: did you?

obsetress: jamie mumbling yeah

em: jamies like i’m gonna interrogate dani next time, see how she feels- but she forgets dani is incapable of feeling shame

obsetress: like dani wouldn’t just launch into a ramble

---

em: viola

obsetress: fuck

obsetress: yeah

obsetress: to jamie, specifically,

em: to jamie specifically andhdjhdjd

em: once again ironic jamvi has turned, in my brain, into ‘yes and....’ jamvi

—-

obsetress:

obsetress: jamie sending this to viola n vi's like

obsetress: she doesn't get it because she's convinced her taste is immaculate

---

em: anyway this is ooc even for exes au but i keep thinking abt like. jamie tryna crack how old viola is (she cant be 34 im 30 it doesnt make sense) and going through her fb timeline like. 'aha! motivational quotes. gotta be late 30s' and danis either like

em: danis either like 'you have a notebook where you write down all the quotes you like baby' OR shes like haha ok thats fair (posts another motivational quote on her fb)

obsetress: god i love that so much

obsetress: both of those dani responses are

obsetress: honestly porque no los dos if we're already going ooc

obsetress: i do think the first bit "gotta crack it she can't be 34 i'm 30 it doesn't make sense" is in character fwiw

em: obviously i was inspired by ur post in the milf channel abt viola always saying shes 35

em: big brain

—-

obsetress: this is literally just. exes au rebecca

obsetress: down to the caption

obsetress: vi and rebecca patiently staging like full photoshoots for each other every time one of them wants a pic otp: i'm not high maintenance, you're just low effort

---

em: bold 2 say that we don’t think about jamie and vi tho

em: gotta keep some sorta. presentation of respectability

em: they absolutely couldn’t date tho

obsetress: lmao ikr

obsetress: yeah no they'd kill each other

obsetress: now just thinking of silly circumstances and um

obsetress: rebecca's out of town and dani's flying back from some iowa thing jamie couldn't get away for to go with

obsetress: and viola's like "oh, just stay at ours, it's closer and i'll get you a car"

obsetress: and just like

obsetress: imagining the two of them cohabitating at vi's for a night

em: jamie sneaking around at night tryna find the bathroom and runs straight into vi in a face mask and a dangerously low dressing gown Again

obsetress: the parallels to canon

obsetress: im giggling

obsetress: walks straight into her path

em: opens a door. sees something she doesn’t want to see. immediately turns and walks away

em: god the face mask would make her look like the lady in the lake

obsetress: yeah

obsetress: vi wants to go out to dinner, jamie's just like "i'm already getting up early to go to the airport, can't we just have an easy night in"

em: what did i say before. that thing abt if ur friends w damie you will inevitably walk in on them

obsetress: god yeah

em: flip of that.

obsetress: oh GOD

em: god they would argue about dinner

em: bicker about EVERYTHING

em: dani and rebecca both make the married couple joke

em: jamie goes pale

obsetress: wait sorry i just went back to tahirahs insta post and like

obsetress: katie parker commented and was like "i love these shots of you" and she was like "thanks luv " and i'm like

obsetress: why does this....... still track........... with exes au...............

em: perdy is always a little too flirty w vis paramours

obsetress: always! except dani for whatever reason

obsetress: she's just scared of dani

em: Please

obsetress: rebecca's like "i don't see what the problem is. she can do what she wants, but you trust me, don't you?" "of course i trust you" rebecca shrugs "that's it then, isn't it?"

obsetress: anyway vi huffs n crosses her arms n pouts a little bit and is like "well i don't want her to"

obsetress: rebecca is endeared and uses the opportunity to her advantage like the top leaning switch she is

em: dani rebecca parallels: always dtf

obsetress: perdi and vi fighting and vi's like "are you even gay? or do you just want what i have?" and perdi is like "does it matter?"

em: are you even gay perdi nahdkdhdkdhd

em: perdi is like you KNOW about jamie and viola crinkles her nose bc she forgot about that and she’s starting to respect jamie as a person

obsetress: djflakdkfjldkadjLDJFLSKDFJLSDKFJx

obsetress: i screeched

em: viola: you only MET jamie because i hired her for landscaping you fucking-

obsetress: just thinking about perdita watching jamie working on some property sweating in a tank top and Deciding

em: bringing out some lemonade etc

em: haha you look parched

obsetress: smiling widely, turning on the charm

obsetress: jamie is very attractive and very swoonworthy, but perdita 100% only goes for it because she refuses to let viola have one (1) thing

obsetress: and that extends to lesbianism

em: viola's like no this is normal right. siblings competing. rivalries etc and danis like uh i’m an only child and jamies like uh i raised my brother

em: they don’t know how to tell her sure it happens but it’s also extremely fucken weird vi

obsetress: jamie: you have to tell her dani: why do i have to tell her jamie: you tell her everything dani: i don't tell her–– ok, i tell her most things. i'm not sure i want to tell her this though jamie: why not dani: she's not... she's not gonna like it jamie: So You Might Be A People Pleaser,

em: jamie: i can’t tell her. she’s only just forgotten the perdi thing. what if she remembers i’ve

em: in depth character study of viola and perdi’s fucked up rivalry

em: violas like goddamn it do i have to fuck jamie to get even

obsetress: i––

em: she decides against it

em: jamie is none the wiser

obsetress: she Considers it tho

em: jamie would die on the spot if she knew

obsetress: weighs the pros and cons

obsetress: the best part is like

obsetress: this is all post-danvi and pre-damie right so when dani n jamie see rebecca and vi at that video store

obsetress: viola's like wait.

obsetress: wait

obsetress: dani ending up with the hot gardener her sister fucked because she has bizarre jealousy and possession issues is really just the cherry on top of a shit sundae

em: the funniest part of all our very tangled lore is like

em: none of it contradicts bc it’s even funnier when it’s Extremely Ugly And Messy

em: because lesbians are just... like that

---

obsetress: exes au au where viola did fuck jamie, the video rental shop scene is 100 times more awkward

em: don’t think about it don’t think about it dont

em: i am thinking about it

em: jamie has to deal with having been railed by all three of them instead of just the two

em: it feels very uneven to her bc rebeccas a doll, dani, u don’t understand, and ur only running into one ex,

obsetress: talk about the mortifying ordeal of being known

obsetress: "wait, that's your ex?" "yeah" "dani" "what" "dani" "what" jamie's voice is hushed but a lil pitchy and a lot panicky "i think i fucked your ex" "you think?" "i fucked your ex" "you fucked her or she fucked you? because i'm sorry, baby, but i really don't think––"

em: sorry, baby, but i really don’t think-

em: SCREAMED

obsetress: that might be my fave lil bit i've ever written adlfkjasdklf

em: dani being a little too interested in jamie getting railed is like. everything to me

obsetress: jamie's already big blushing

em: a little secret between hannah obsetress and em cowlesbian but i am So thinking abt it

em: patreon exclusive exes au au

[em edit: you can imagine how long this lasted]

obsetress: no one is happy about this situation except dani, who is delighted

em: after, jamie's like. what did u mean by u don’t think that...

em: puffs out her chest

em: i could have-

em: danis like yeah but i know u didn’t did u

obsetress: dani clayton ilu

em: danis like um

em: completely unprompted bc dani ‘finishes a conversation 5 hours later’ is really funny to me

em: danis like i did tho

em: jamies like can you DROP IT

em: she’s SMUG

em: she’s so pleased w herself

obsetress: in bed with the lights off jamie's pulling the sheets up and closing her eyes afterthought

obsetress: just a happy lil hum and an "i did, though"

obsetress: and jamie knows IMMEDIATELY what she's talking about

em: dani never lets jamie live it down

obsetress: never!

obsetress: they'll be washing dishes one day "hey baby?" "hmm" "you slept with a landlord"

em: oh um. flipping the whole ‘experienced jamie virginal dani’ trope everyone loves but

em: i love the idea of dani being like hey jamie did u ever- and jamies like (grumbles) does it matter

em: dani is mentally applying a gold star to her chart

obsetress: ksdljfskdfjlsdjflksdjaf

obsetress: the gold star

em: at this point dani is absolute just tryna tease jamie so she’s like oh well when- and jamies like ok i get it

em: jamie Pretends not to be a little interested

obsetress: meanwhile vi and rebecca very matter of factly swapped stories the first day they Realized

obsetress: vibecca swapping stories and their stories complimenting each other so well that they're like well. hmm

obsetress: glad those two found each other

em: two praise kinks u say

em: ok sorry one more thought i’m thinking abt like

em: jamie staying over (idk if this is before or during damie) and viola and perdi are having yet another spat on the phone and violas like

em: no you ALWAYS do this, whatever you think you’re doing with rebecca-‘ and she barely hears some muffled sorta ‘oh, sorry, remember jamie-

em: and jamies doing the maths. hmm

em: jamies like actually i refuse to examine this further. self care

em: brings it up with dani later and dani LOSES her shit laughing

em: haha jamie you got willoughby’ed

obsetress: SCREAMS

obsetress: you got willoughby'd

obsetress: how does one get willoughbyd asking for a friend

em: yeah same asking for a friend

obsetress: dani, gigglesnorting: wait, you hooked up with... with perdi?

obsetress: (dani hates perdita because viola hates perdita and it is a deep seated hatred she refuses to unlearn)

obsetress: a loyalty strange and enduring, despite it all

em: to be fair perdi is the Worst

em: all of these characters i love to make sympathetic and then perdi is where i draw the line akdhdkhd

em: it’s funnier if she’s awful

em: like a viola that never gets therapy

obsetress: lldjfkaskldfj god same

obsetress: it's too good

em: danis like wait hold on. lemme get a pen

em: makes a silly little chart

em: if the fandom tries to make jamie into a shane the l word character i will simply take that and make jamie mortified abt her uh. well! a pretty girl is nice to her and she forgets how to behave

em: jamie's like oh sure like u don’t have embarrassing flings- and danis like yeah but i don’t interact w them on a daily basis jamie

em: also i didn’t fuck perdi

obsetress: skskskflsdflks

obsetress: "you did fuck perdi though, right? because that just be embarrassing, jamie, if she had been the one who..."

em: skgsdjhdkdhdk

em: jamie grumbles something abt pillow princesses and dani like

em: CLAPS her hands in glee

obsetress: jlsdjflkJSDFKJSDFJ

obsetress: GOD

obsetress: she's immediately pulling out her phone to text vi

em: jamies like why would u message her sister that u freak n danis like oh no theyre very open with each other it’s uh. hmm. anyway

[creampievampire]

Could you go into the difference between the subtext and queerbaiting in it, I'm still kind of -well it's obviously gay but nothing was really ever said or shown that says that expect for people talking about it- Like are the characters and their relationship just queer-coded (positivly ofc lol) but the baitiness comes from them sort of confirming it off the show?

of course! im assuming by ‘it’ you mean merlin, but rather than explaining the reasons why i think bbc merlin is a matter of subtext (or queer coding) and not queerbaiting, i think it would be easier and more productive to explain the difference between the two in general. they are very similar - which is why i think a lot of people are unable to tell the difference between them - but they have important differences

just a warning, this is going to be a LONG post lmao ive bolded exactly what each term means below, after which i go into more detail on the whole issue. this is something im passionate about so,,, ♥

queerbaiting specifically refers to a marketing technique in which creators hint at but dont actually depict a queer character or relationship. They do this in order to attract a queer audience with the suggestion of a character or relationship they can relate to, while also avoiding alienating their queerphobic audiences

queer coding is the subtextual coding of a character as queer through the use of things like metaphor, allegory, hinting, recognisable traits/stereotypes/experiences, etc. This is done to build believable characters and create more complex plot lines, and it is also regularly used by people who want to tell queer stories but are unable to do so explicitly. it CAN be used negatively to enforce damaging stereotypes, but that is just a small part of its usage

both of these things utilise subtext in order to work. subtext is not only a crucial part of the creation of any piece of media, but is impossible to avoid.

an example of the most basic types of subtext is when a character tells someone that everything is going to be okay, but you can tell they dont believe it. or when youre watching a story unfold and you suddenly connect the dots and realise whats going to happen before its explicitly stated - you used subtext and the hidden meanings and hints to figure it out!

the people involved w a piece of media create their story with a specific purpose or meaning in mind, and they construct the subtext of the story to reflect that purpose/meaning. HOWEVER, the viewers dont always see things the same!

your experiences and personality shape the way you view and interpret every piece of media you consume. if you hate cops youll see the insidious undertones in cop shows - if you grew up with an abusive parent youll see the biting implications in a characters dialogue that others find innocent - if youre queer you will search for and fine queer characters everywhere, regardless of the creators intentions

now, both queerbaiting and queer coding use subtext to function, right? so how do you know which is being used and whether or not its a bad thing? its all about intention

to give a specific explanation of the difference im going to use two examples that are (arguably) very similar in the way their queer characters became canon

example 1: adventure time featured the characters marceline and princess bubblegum, who have been forever depicted as a couple in fan content. their interactions in the show were read into and latched onto bc we saw ourselves in them and we saw it as positive queer rep. but their relationship was never explicitly discussed during the course of the show and was only confirmed at the end of the final episode.

that makes 10 seasons in which their relationship existed only in subtext, and when it did finally exist in canon it was only for a few minutes, if that.

example 2: supernatural featured the characters dean and castiel (lol) who have been depicted as a queer couple pretty much since the first episode cas appeared in. i personally hung on their every interaction, analysed every glance between them, bc i interpreted deans character as a parallel to my own childhood trauma.

cas joined the show in season 4, so that makes 11 seasons in which him being gay existed only in subtext, and when it was confirmed he was immediately cut out of the show. the exact nature of dean and castiels relationship still remains in subtext.

so why is it that adventure time is widely considered perfectly fine but supernatural is dunked on as being the poster boy for queerbaiting?

its bc adventure time involved queer creators and was an earnest representation of queer characters, but they were boxed in by their publisher, Cartoon Network and thus the only way for the relationship to exist in the show was through subtext.

supernatural, however, consistently neglected their queer character and employed transparent tropes and stereotypes - bringing him in just sparingly enough to keep queer audiences interested while never being gay enough to alienate their macho manly man queerphobe audiences. they would have dean and cas stare into each other eyes for a full 30 seconds and then almost immediately follow it up with an episode about dean banging a disposable female character.

so imho adventure time falls under queer subtext, and supernatural falls under queerbaiting

when it comes to a show like bbc merlin i see a lot of debate about whether or not its queer coding or queerbaiting, and my intention is not to convince you of either. merlin was very much a product of its time, and i have argued the same about seasons 4-6 of supernatural as well, before the queerbaiting escalated and became exhausting to me

the purpose of this post is to start giving you the information you need to analyse any piece of media and come to your OWN opinion as to whether or not its queerbaiting or whatever else

people will ALWAYS have differing opinions about this shit yall. i have debated so many times w so many people about where the line is and whats okay and what should be ‘cancelled’ and if consuming something deemed problematic makes you a bad person or not

and my conclusion?

if youre capable of acknowledging the flaws and issues w a piece of media without trying to defend it as a shining beacon of purity simply bc you like it, then you do you. enjoy whatever you want to enjoy - if i think its reprehensible i simply will never interact with you lol

at some point everyone has to stop regurgitating these generic woke speak cancel culture speeches and buzzwords and formulate their own opinions

my advice to anyone reading this is to learn how to do close reading (ill provide a link to a wonderful short guide on it in a reblog bc tumblr hates links) and start really considering where you draw the lines with all types of content. decide for yourself whether merlin or supernatural or adventure time crosses the line into content you cant stomach, but respect other people whose interpretations differ from yours

i know a HUGE amount of people think supernaturals confession scene was homophobic and toxic - a slap in the face - but when i watched it i saw myself reflected in dean. a repressed bisexual whose emotions had been stunted by lifelong trauma, who wasnt ready to face his feelings for cas but quickly realising that his chronic avoidance and fear was about to tear them apart possibly forever. to me it was tragic and beautiful, and i loved it

i also think merlin is a tragic and beautiful love story, and to me its a pivotal piece of queer media that changed the way i viewed love and made me believe that it was a possibility for me bc i related so deeply to arthur

i hope that you can draw a satisfying answer from this, anon, and i apologise for this post being a full essay lol but i believe it needed to be said  - i dont think there is a right or wrong answer here

[a-love-poet-at-heart]

chess 03 american concert really had their cake and ate it too plot wise instead of just choosing Broadway or West End. They went with a West End plot but with a Broadway plot touch up, (which pretty cool its so west end since it happened in America). Like it is a Disservice to it to just say the plot is Broadway based

cause like the first act is normal West End stuff until the end where Freddie actually loses his title. He didnt quit and abdicate, Anatoly won fair and square and Anatoly was crowned champion and defects. Then Second act is in Bangkok for another championship, pretty West end yea?, but Freddie is the challenger not the Chekov’s gun of Viigand. Now the rest of the second act is super West end plot, like they even have the Interview and an almost full version of The Deal song, but also include the Freddie Goes Metal song from Broadway. Obviously first they change who sings the interview and has Freddie’s parts given to the ensemble/chorus and interestingly enough the Deal gives half of Freddie’s part to Walter. Walter talks to Anatoly and tells him about The Deal and to throw the Game. He gets told he’s total shit, then Freddie talks to Florence and is rebuked. And for the Freddie goes Metal/A Whole New Board game, it happens right after The Interview but after Freddie gloats, Florence shows up, having heard it all, and says that part she already said in Florence Quits and is later reused in The Deal, “Who'd ever think it?/Such a squalid little ending/Watching you descending/Just as far as you can go/I'm learning things I didn't want to know”. Now this is how they transition to Pity the Child.

Now for the ending! Endgame is Weird. It has bits of both versions. The bit between Walter and Molokov is actually the West End version. Molokov talks about “having trust in one’s player” and “working for one who believes in loyalty, heritage, true to his kind come what may”. With Walter following up with “your late unlamented employee knows winning than the only thing won is the chess”. Then we have Florence say her bit, then Anatoly his. But then we switch gears and do the broadway endgame. Freddie says his lines about thoughts straying and Florence being Anatoly’s messes with him. Then its Anatoly’s part but its sung by a mix of Florence and Svetlana

Anatoly jumps back in with his part about her and her father and about “living his life alone then feel like I had harmed her”. Then Anatoly throws the Fucking Game. Freddie wins, the Dethroned King is Back with shouting Check and gloating to Florence about her backing the wrong side like the Broadway version.

now as the second act was mostly West End based there was no Fake Father and his lullaby. And when Walter and Florence talk after the You and I reprise its a mix of plots with the “IF he’s still alive” and “we dont know For Sure” from the West End but with the “we got recovered some key agents” from the Broadway plot.

Also as this fits in nowhere before, but they do remove The Soviet’s Machine which is understandable. But a bit disappointing as its giving Molokov less to do and I like that song, but Understandable. Also they fully cut out Commie Newspapers/Press Conference so its Merano, Freddie’s Entrance, Merano reprise, Anatoly and Molokov, Where I want to be then Us vs Ussr. And the show’s first real song is Merano. Before it is just the overture and plot details from The Narrator Arbiter. The Story of Chess is sandwiched between Anatoly and Florence talking after the Endgame and the You and I reprise. So Pretty Weird.

Now this whole version is pretty interesting as Freddie actually loses and comes back but gets no redemption arc. He says he has changed in The Deal but he hasn’t, he showed that earlier by basically blaming Florence for his loss in the first act during Freddie Goes Metal. (I like that that song parallels the Florence Quitting in the First act with Florence reusing song lyrics) Another interesting thing is during the Deal where after Molokov says that Florence might not believe Walter and his bluff of her father being alive he says “There are others to call in to assist us”. Which is kinda weird as its Walter going to Anatoly to tell him to throw the game. I guess this could also pertain to Freddie since when he is groveling to Florence he directly says “in return I’ll show you all that they know in Moscow” and “he won’t help you, he won’t throw the match”. Which makes me question why Freddie is so happy when Anatoly makes a “mistake” in the Endgame as he directly knew about The Deal and the possibility of Anatoly throwing the match. But since he was so confident he wouldn’t throw the match I shall say that Freddie believes that Anatoly actually messed up and didn't throw the game, but just happened to lose.

Side note: Odd that 2 songs earlier Freddie spoke to the Press so confidently blaming Florence for his loss and saying how better he was without her, when she could have still read that in the papers later instead of hearing it from his own mouth if she wasn’t there. So she still would have heard Freddie Bad Mouth her. And then during The Deal he just grovels, says he’s changed and asks for her back and says “they will bring back the Golden Era”.

Also really weird for during the Endgame Walter still says “Though it gives me no satisfaction” before talking about how if Anatoly wins he only wins the game. He and Molokov are on the same side, get Anatoly to lose, then Profit. But from that line, it seems he believes that Anatoly will not want to win the game. And with Molokov’s saying that how easy the game is when you trust your player. In the West End plot Molokov’s lines are about Viigand and him just gloating to Walter while Walter says that he hates to admit it, its better for Anatoly to lose the match. Now Molokov’s lines are about Anatoly, who doesnt have loyalty to his people as he just defected, so odd that Molokov is suddenly saying he trusts him and odd that Walter would hate to admit to Molokov that its best for Anatoly to lose the match. Now you could argue that Molokov was saying it sarcastically or hypothetically or he was talking about Walter’s perspective as I guess Anatoly is now Walter’s man. So it would make sense for Walter to basically say “No actually, you’re wrong I don’t trust him, I think he will lose”. But that seems very odd to me as before it is shown that Walter and Molokov are both on board with Anatoly losing, especially more so when you find out he recovered some key agents since Anatoly threw the match.

Also interesting is how Florence and Svetlana are apart of the Endgame and sing Anatoly’s lines. Now with Svetlana’s lines it there seems to be two interpretations, first that if Anatoly went back to her she would not take him. “Is this [being married to Anatoly] the life I need?” She says he is selfish and childish but ends it with saying me, “Those around me bleed to death”. So I see that as the people bleeding to death is her children, so she is harming her children by choosing life with Anatoly. The other option is that Svetlana was always talking about herself, just like originally Anatoly was talking about himself when he said those lines. She’s blaming herself and chess itself for Anatoly’s actions. Personally I do not like this so, I’m going with the first option.

Overall, I kinda like this version of Chess. Nice that they didn’t just pick a plot, but changed things up and mixed things together. Didn’t add anything really new to Chess, like the Kennedy Center Production. Also interesting they mostly used the West End plot instead of Broadway when it happened in America. Personally I didn’t like Freddie not changing and no redemption arc for him, but I just have a soft spot for him.

There are some techinical problems with the production, mics not being on at the right time, some fumbling with words, the orchestra coming in too early and drowning out Freddie when during his small dialogue before the second chess game of the first act, Adam Pascal’s mic going off for a few lines during One Night in Bangkok. Also I think Walter flubbed a line during the Deal cause he says “we all stand to lose, you, me, the lady also” so 

[babysizedfics]

Poor roman :( but that being said I am heka interested in 5

remus humiliates roman in front of jamal (but jamal is a sweetheart)

vote from this concept voting post!

TWs: swearing, emotional humiliation, arguing, remus is generally pretty mean in this - not "unsympathetic" but his behaviour is not ok, brief alcohol mention but it isnt a main feature

first some background info on remus and ro:

roman and remus' friend groups actually run parallel to each other by pure councidence in that theyre the same age and are both in the local queer scene

usually they only run into each other on nights out and avoid each other like the plague... until one of romans friends and one of remus' friends become a very serious couple and the friendship groups merge

remus tends to hang it over romans head whenever they argue or remus just feels like teasing him that he could so so easily spill romans secret littlespace to all his friends

and while roman claims to not care he also really doesnt want that to happen, especially the specific things remus threatens to reveal (namely him calling his cgs mommy and daddy, and his fear of the dark - which remus knows are romans biggest embarrassments)

and remus never USUALLY actually follows through on his threats, he loves to freak roman out but he doesnt mean to be intentionslly cruel.

but one night theyve had an argument recently and remus is out to hurt roman and finally follows through on his threat to reveal romans secrets. in front of jamal

((the actual incident below the cut))

all the friends are walking back from a night out, and remus hangs back from the group to talk to jamal. roman is just glaring at remus and not saying anything and holding jamals hand tightly. remus hasnt embarrassed him too bad so far, just asking jamal questions and referring to roman as his "baby brother" which is so annoying, but the thing is roman can tell hes building up to something

then suddenly remus smirks when he sees a completely pitch black side street thats theyre about to pass by, and he calls out to everyone "hey guys, there's a 24/7 mcdonalds through here and its a shortcut to the bus stop" and everyones like WOO mcdonalds and redirects to go down the side street

and romans heart pounds watching the friends all filter down the street without a second thought, theres no streetlights down there, theres light on the other side quite far away, but before that its SO DARK. and he freezes in place and jamal is tugged back by it and looks back at him. "babe, come on"

romans starting to feel shaky and he literally cant move his feet. his eyes flick between the street and remus' sadistic cocky smirk.

"whats wrong baby bro? you stuck or something?" remus leers with that stupid stupid smirk

and roman HATES him so so much

"ro, what's the matter?" jamal asks

"i- um," roman stutters, trying to keep his voice from shaking too much at the sight of his friends just having DISAPPEARED into the darkness - how are they okay with that?? "i- im not hungry"

"okay well i am, and remus said it was a shortcut anyway so-"

"i-i -- no i can't"

seraphina, romans best friend, looks back and notices whats happening and quickly jogs over (knowing roman is scared of the dark) "hey roma, it's okay we dont have to go down there" she soothes

jamal is supportive but he doesnt get it. he thinks roman is scared of criminals or smth. "i promise theres no one bad down there, hun. and i'll be right next to you the whole time, i'll protect you" and he smiles and tugs romans hand to pull him towards the side street

romans eyes quickly tear up and he panics and rambles "nononono dont please please i cant i cant" in a broken voice and plants his feet firmly on the ground, paralysed with fear

remus starts cackling "ohhhhh thats right~" as if he just remembered. "my baby brother's terrified of the dark, isn't he?"

"f*ck off, re" sera barks, standing between the twins, protective of roman

"wait, are you?" jamal asks sounding surprised. roman doesnt let himself look at him, too busy watching remus warily and knowing thats not all he has planned to embarrass roman

remus goes on, shouting out to jamal over sera's head "he's petrified!" he confirms sounding delighted. "yknow that massive blackout last summer? he cried like a baby. literally sobbing for his daddy patton to make it go away"

theres a brief silence because no, sera and jamal didnt expect remus to refer to patton as romans daddy - they both know roman calls him dad but this is a surprise.

and that one second of silence drags on for ages for roman, all he can hear is his heart pounding in his ears and remus' obnoxious laughter

he is shaking, frozen in shock rather than fear now. for all of remus' teasing threats at home, he didnt expect remus to actually do it. hes devastated and humiliated that remus told to his best friend and especially his BOYFRIEND of all ppl

and honestly he's not even thinking about the pitch black side street right now because the streetlights on the main road are blurred by tears welling in his eyes anyway

"why dont you just leave him alone!" sera hisses furiously after her mild shock

then jamal bounces back rlly stern to remus "yeah i already know about that! roman told me and it was HIS choice to tell me"

roman stares at him in disbelief but jamal is too busy staring daggers at remus to notice

remus looks suddenly offended and frowns. hes clearly hurt that the others dont think its funny "jeez youre both such bores. im just having some fun"

"youre demented if you think thats fun" seraphina growls and shoves remus away towards the sidestreet. remus rolls his eyes and runs ahead to join the others who are all oblivious to that coversation, howling with drunken laughter in the pitch black and jumping out and scaring each other

"f*cking prick" jamal calls after remus, seething

sera quickly throws a concerned look to roman "you okay?"

roman just swallows thickly and looks between seraphina and where he saw remus join the others in the pitch black. his stomach churns at the idea of remus telling more people. "i-is he gonna--"

"im on it" sera nods and starts turning around "i wont let him tell anyone else, roma, promise" then she runs ahead to keep an eye on remus and to give him and jamal some privacy

after a moment jamal turns back to roman looking so worried and holds his hands and asks very gently "babe, can you tell me how youre feeling?"

and roman is teary but he whispers "i - you stuck up for me"

jamal looks suddenly sad and cups romans cheek "of course i did"

"but you said i told you about it. i- i didnt tell you that i-" roman gulps after his voice wobbles "i didnt tell you about it"

and jamal smiles sadly and goes "i know babe... im sorry, i just didnt wanna give him any more power. it seemed like he's held that over you for a while"

suddenly the tears in romans eyes overspill and he doesnt really know why but he can't stop them

jama gasps a little "oh roman, its ok" and just pulls him into a tight hug

roman clings and sniffles, glad that he can hide his tears from his boyfriend even if it is in his neck.

and jamal just strokes his back and whispers "its ok baby, its ok" **

they talk about it quietly as they take the longer, well-lit route instead. roman admits he would never have told jamal abt his fear on his own - and the reason he's been avoiding staying overnight at jamals apartment is bc the one time he did he got so scared of the dark that he couldnt sleep and was just anxious all night but wouldnt wake jamal to tell him

after jamal finds out hes like baby why didnt u tell me its okay and comforts him about it not being embarrassing or childish. then:

"so you do actually want to stay at mine, its just because its so dark that you didnt?"

roman nods shyly "yeah... im sorry i know its a dumb fear i just-"

"its not dumb ro. i meant to say if it works for you, we could leave the hall light on and the door open. its not like i live with anyone who can walk in."

roman blinks "wait you - really? it wont make it hard for you to sleep?"

jamal smiles softly "no hun, honestly i could sleep anywhere. i fell asleep in the middle of the day in the staffroom just last month"

roman laughs, so so so relieved

"so... maybe next time you come over for dinner you could stay the night, yeah?" jamal says with a smile and a blush. he wraps his arm around romans waist and pulls him in, hip to hip

roman bites his lip and blushes. after a moment he suggests shyly "im free tonight..."

and jamal smiles so big, stops walking and puts his arm up to romans chest to stop him too then angles romans jaw down to kiss him

in the near future jamal promises to buy a plain nightlight and always leaves it on for roman when he stays overnight from then on

**side note: roman could never stand anyone calling him baby before because he felt infantilised at school becaus of his undiagnosed adhd. so he sees it as a derogatory name more than anything. but when jamal says it roman feels so warm and respected because he knows jamal would never mean it in that way. so jamal has "baby" rights basically

[startwithbrooklyn]

THE GREAT ND REWATCH OF 2021 / SEPTEMBER 28-29, 2019 // the bonny scot

posting this a day later than normal because this is one of the rare episodes that shows a passage of time from one day to the next yayy love that for them

-wonder what filming these beginning sexy scenes is like for them in real life

-sooooo can lucy see nancys sexy dream? is she judging? does this mean she likes nancy with owen or nick more? or is she trying to tell nancy that her sex dreams are irrelevant to the mystery at hand and she needs to focus?

-seeing people in the ✨prison chair✨: gomber, carson, karen (voting for josh s3 just saying)

-completely ignores carson's question about herself typical nance

-"or maybe i did stumble across a knife" its like hes trying to make the case against him look plausible while attempting to maintain innocence. this is a slippery slope for carson to try and encourage her to keep her pacified + hide the truth while also trying to keep her from getting involved bc hudsons

-"genetics gets you in the door" aaaaand then she walks in to everetts office to meet him and crashes their family dinner

-ok who tf is dawn and why is she in charge here

-this guidance counselor of nicks is my favorite person

-"i admire your allergy to pleasantries" bess and nancy both have reveals to big families but nancy does not have the graceful, accepting reveal to her rich family like bess does at this lunch. nancys reveal is messy, cold, bloodstained and sticky-fingered, not nice in any way whatsoever. and this little chat with everett (bit of a parallel to lucy's) just highlights how nancy is always bad at bargaining with her grandparents*- always trying to fight on their level but giving up her equal hand bc she doesnt know how to hide it when they bring up something she doesnt know. like confronting celia at the masque: she was so confident with her theory and what she knew, but then we got a "what does that mean?" like. the instant you say that, you lose. and she walked right into the "yes i do have someone, hes in jail" 🤦🏼‍♀️ even in the car with ryan at the end of s1, he literally just fucking leaves her there. like 🤷🏼‍♀️ what did u think was gonna happen sis?? for all she can predict how past things lead to present circumstances shes fucking awful at seeing the direct future *(grandparents except for patrice bc her dementia makes her inaccessable)

-lmaooooo this awko ass portrait...i get the empty space is for nance but who on earth thought this was a good pic??

-LISBETH 🥺💙

-"will u help the claw for me?" george struggles financially to keep her livelihood while nancy is somehow shown as being taken care of even when her parent is incarcerated; both nancy and george live in single parent homes now with mention of both medical debt and george being breadwinner yet nancy has no struggles while george does. (i wonder if ryan had been able to help george here how the story would have changed)

-"when it comes to following people around without their knowledge or consent i am somewhat of a repeat offender" 😂😂😂

-"he wasnt endgame after all" BESS lmaoooo

-"...okay." lmaoooo i fuckin love owen

-i was hoping the girls' faces would be more shocked like with a glance to owen but they just....werent

-"we're the good guys" <---- this statement is soooo interesting in terms of how they structure the show and how the characters see themselves (its an interesting contrast with the more definitive good vs evil with things that are both clearly good and clearly evil but theres also a lot of moral grey area here, the show is kinda swamped in it. are nancy and crew the good guys? are they the bad guys in someone else's story? concerns.)

-"i'd call it more than just stuff" like why did u concede that??? and then the shit about oof that didnt sound like a compliment lmaoooooo why does she suck at arguing?? she and owen wouldnt work long term bc theyre so similar (as mentioned later on)

-i LOVE george slowly falling in love with nick here- hence how upset she gets when nick bails on her for nancy later (which is totally justified!!!)

-i am LIVING for the little nod this driver guy gives bess when she turns back around all nervous 😂

-"i do like buying things" i would so say that too tbh

-"you'd have plenty to talk about" LMFAOOOOOOO SHE KNOWS "marvins dont marry drivers" so diana is totally fine with the gay its just the poor she has a problem with 😂💙fuckin love that

-love how nancy just casually ruins everything for nick/george lmaooo

-"i have seen you at your best, nancy, and there is nothing like it." 🥴😳 i love this still-in-love look nancy gives him thats so strong he had to change the subject

-so is haunting time 11 pm? from that clock of bashiir's?

-how do NO neighbors notice this fucking water and shit

-these are TOTALLY AWFUL fake screams from the bonny scot crew 😭

-"i know well enough not to get involved when he's in play" both carson and ryan avoid engaging with everett even though nancy is willing to do so armed with less info and more balls/ but "could i trust him" and ryan says yes lmaooooo NO honey + that makes ryan 0/2 for helping the girls when they ask this ep

-"find a project of your own" and he does, with his youth center 🙏🏻💙 what s2 foreshadowing!

-"god i wish i still drank" 😂😂😂

-"she is darling." 💙👌🏻

-okay wtf is mirror bay??

-i really wonder about the extent of celia x sebastians relationship here. did she truly care about him or was it just secret and exciting sex? also would love more hints of diana vs celia moments like these. celia doesnt even look upset. i mean shes had time to deal but like wtf. and who exactly is sebastian to diana? not her husband? like damn what if he was. somehow i doubt she'd talk about him diddling celia if diana was disrespected also

-i wonder if celia being so invested in dna testing nancy was bc everrett dna tested ryan to make sure he was his bc of sebastian / other men (which would be totally valid on his part!! but wouldnt it be funny as fuck if ryan wasnt his 😂)

-what a neat hiding place in this frame lmaooo who put that in for them tho? like how do u go about ordering that

-"you certainly are your fathers daughter" this quote is doubly ironic and foreshadowy bc theyre referencing carson here as being a useful hudson attaché but nancy is playing everett just like ryan played celia about putting his house up (but TRIPLY ironic bc carson pulls off the long con of hiding nancy from the hudsons right under their noses this whole time!) the one time nancy is successful against them

-that bess/lisbeth look while lisbeth does something badass (+diana reassessing now that lisbeth has been revealed to be useful)

-"almost as fun as a real fight" why do i believe him? lmaoooo a bit weird that he would enjoy a fight w a partner, but i also think this is an acknowledgement of nancy being an "opponent" who exists at his level. but i also love the "let me take you out" as a direct mirror of her relationship with nick, where she avoids the public acknowledgment/"going out" but prefers the more subtle/hidden arrangements of staying in. but as shown with later eps, owen is way more capable of meeting nancy where shes at, which is so important to her + the only way of getting close to nancy. (the only foil is ace who somehow is able to do both)

-"not always about a guy" <---- this could have been such a powerful statement if the show had thought having nancy end up alone/choose herself instead of pitting her between love interests (nick, owen, gil, even potentially ace, in only 2 seasons) was a more worthy stance to take ; as an aro/ace person i cant tell you how much i would kill to see just one female protag choose herself over a man. and its more realistic to end up alone than have a happy ending anyway, for all that these shows try to be as "real" and gritty grimdark as possible

-"is that what you want?" this is an interesting question to his mother- like maybe he senses her unhappiness? combined with his issues with his father- still trying to look out for his mom? either way it's sweet. (it could also potentially work as foreshadowing of something happening to her, but i think that was played with but then diverted when it was revealed who really killed her) "i think its time i steer this ship" still kind of patriarchal tho. i get that its him coming into his own as a dad technically but still. i also like how he calls her "mother" and not mom

-love that old white people thumbs up at george asking about his clams 👍🏻

-okay fuck dawn tho lmfaoooo

-"stressful dinner huh?" 😂 i fucking love lisbeth so much why didnt they bring her back (wouldnt it be Fucking Hilarious if they brought lisbeth back to bounce bess on her expired visa since the marvins kicked her out and didnt fix it lmaoooooo)

-BESS IS A TOP lmaooooooo i fuckin knew it

-nick says "you can pay me back" wonder if thats gonna come back in s3 considering their "marital problems" (also, those bonds are sosus lmfaoooo if any single person cashing those was looked at sideways they'd confess in 2 seconds that some random guy is handing out bearer bonds they dont even make anymore with absolutely zero proof as to how he got them)

-"you wanna finish what you started?" 👀 (dont mind if i do)

-"i need my dad back" parallels s2 when she asks him to come home

-parent politics: "you are taking your life in your hands / no, i'm putting it in yours" vs "i know well enough not to get involved when hes in play" both carson and ryan try to dissuade nancy from pursuing her pulling this con on everett but go about it different ways: carson is wildly concerned with nancys physical wellbeing but ryan appears to be leaning more towards weighing the odds for her/ like a "you cant win so cut your losses/dont try" scenario which interestingly might have more weight with nancy; its easy for her to brush aside carson's worrying like second nature but nancy has been established to be a determined winner, and ryan speaks to her here like shes a beginners luck prodigy at a blackjack table by encouraging her to keep her record clean by not dealing in this next round. of course she herself admits shes incapable of not dealing in ie "you know me better than that" but i have lots more thoughts on how effective ryans approaches to nancy can be sometimes (saving for the reveal ep 🙏🏻)

-wonder what all carson knows about the hudsons? + that look on his face when he hangs up... wonder if he was just lying to her about knowing anything or just ashamed at having to admit bad things hes done for them

-love nick & bashiir waiting together 🙏🏻💙+ nicks very strong and pointed "good night" as a means of ending his convo w nancy on his terms (gotta reinforce those boundaries man!)

and lastly

-celia + that gossip girl moment when she just throws the whole phone away 😂(wonder if she was just talking to "gus" or whoever that guy was. keep forgetting the bobbseys' dad is in prison too, wonder if he'll feature in s3)

[akechicrimes]

Hey crimes, feel free to disregard this tangent but, do u ever feel like P5 inadvertently or otherwise implied Goro was right with his fake “vigilante justice operates outside and the law and thus must be brought to heel” opinion? What with the fact that the Yaldabaoth confrontation implies the thieves work perpetuated humanity’s sloth AND THEN after an entire game showing us the hundreds of people who were at the v least COMPLICIT in shido’s machinations, a system which is (1)

ohhhhh this one is fun!! this is a super neat question, ty for asking!!!

hmmmmmmmmm

im going to try and break this down into parts, partly because persona 5 is such a convoluted mess with its own lines of thinking, so tell me if i dont do it right. the issues are: (1) goro definitely did say that operating outside the law was bad just on principle that you shouldn’t operate outside the law, and (2) persona 5 did definitely go on to say that all of the phantom thieves’ operations outside the law didn’t come to anything in the first place anyway, because they were only targeting individuals instead of mass systemic corruption/their presence was enabling people to become more apathetic.

i think what persona 5 is trying to get at is that it’s not necessarily that acting outside the law is bad, but that, like you said, targeting only individuals doesn’t work as a tactic. so vigilante justice (e.g. batman style of taking down supervillains) cannot compare to societal reform through collective action.

when i say collective action, i mean that i think persona 5 is trying to point out that “systematic” corruption is really just a corruption of many, many, many individuals working in concert--and that “reform” could just be said to be the opposite, which is activism from many, many, many individuals working in concert.

obviously the ending cutscene where akira;s social link network gets together to protest his arrest is the best example of collective reform, but i think one of the things that i rly like about shido’s wide-spread conspiracy is that it does a rly good job of paralleling akira’s social link network, and pointing out that in the same way that shido’s conspiracy is a collective effort of many many many people that make up a “system,” akira’s widespread social link network creates the opposite effect of a collective effort of many many people that make up a force for change. 

which is why having the phantom thieves as a group itself just promotes more apathy--you get one group of people doing all the work for the rest of society, when if anything’s going to change, we need everyone on their feet.

which surprisingly correct, insofar as i’m aware. if society’s going to change in a substantial way, beyond just changing the hearts of a handful of abusers and letting the rest of the system remain untouched, everyone’s got to be involved. collective effort. do your part. wash your hands. stay indoors. don’t forget to vote. seriously, wash your fucking hands.

but when it comes to whether or not persona 5 says that you shouldn’t be acting outside the law... 

i think persona 5 really really really really really doesnt want to be caught promoting lawbreaking while also being You Should Break The Law: The JRPG.

part of this trouble, i think, is just because they need players to actually like the characters in the game, and therefore all the character have sympathetic reasons for breaking the law. because persona 5 has to sell marketable characters, too, persona 5 itself makes it pretty clear that people who operate “outside the law” are usually not evil dipshit criminals who love sin. the people in persona 5 who act outside the law are usually people who dont have enough power to operate inside the law in the first place. akira, the pt, and goro all seem to have resorted to what they did because they had no societal power at the start, wound up with a persona (aka fast and easy power source), and wouldnt have been able to do anything about their situation otherwise. characters who operate outside the law (like takemi with her vaguely illegal practice, or kawakami and her also vaguely illegal sex work, or iwai and his vaguely illegal gun business) are still supposed to be waifus you are sympathetic towards. 

(...i think i accidentally called iwai a waifu? hmm. on second thought, i’ll just leave that sentence as it is.)

and i really do have to point out that persona 5′s attitude of FUCK COPS is insanely strong. like. persona 5 HATES cops. and that doesn’t let up basically ever, at all, at any moment. for anything. persona 5 wants me to believe that makoto will become a good cop in the future, but if i wanted to find an existing good cop, i’d have to go all the way back to persona 4. like!! shit!! goro akechi is the closest thing we have to a good cop, and he has a pet guillotine for CEOs and his middle name is komaeda.

and that part of the big attitude with FUCK COPS is that it’s another way of morally exonerating the phantom thieves. i think... although the game ultimately concludes with “you should probably not break the law any more because the metaverse is gone,” it’s difficult to argue with the fact that persona 5 is a game in which it presents you with 10000000000000 reasons to break the law and feel Great about it.

(another tangent: i feel like one of the big undercurrents of persona 5, and especially the TV station, is that the phantom thieves are justified in their lawbreaking because the police aren’t doing their fucking job. like, someone’s got to keep people safe, and if the cops don’t like the phantom thieves, maybe they should get off their asses and actually get the criminals before the thieves do. akira literally was on live television and he was like ALL COPS ARE BAD and goro was like wow. anyone else think that was really sexy? @ the guy in the glasses in the back, call me later when you’ve leveled up your charm and knowledge.)

so atlus is in this place where they’ve pointed out that people break the law because they dont really have any other choice, and also persona 5 the game HATES cops, and also persona 5 the game cannot tell you that breaking the law is bad because it is literally A Game About Breaking The Law, but at the same time, they cant really go around promoting crime. from a doylist perspective i was 100% unsurprised that they came up with a fancy narrative reason to get rid of the metaverse and their change-of-heart abilities and just the phantom thieves in general, because all of those are a threat to the status quo. although the game might be right that relying on the phantom thieves to change society for the rest of the population makes the rest of the population lazy and apathetic, it’s pretty convenient that this means that the kids are now no longer able to break the law. so persona 5 really wants people to do things the kosher way, e.g. protesting and such. 

hhfmgmhfmghfmgfmghmfhgg. taking this all with a grain of salt, because again, i do think atlus is trying very hard to avoid saying that people should break the law:

i think atlus wants to say that it’s not necessarily acting outside the law that’s not right, but the fact that just loading the phantom thieves with a ton of power makes people apathetic, and changing the hearts of a few individuals is Not enough to get rid of something like shido’s conspiracy. so instead they say, you shouldn’t break the law because it’s not effective without collective reform. 

i think another thing that persona 5 wants us to believe is that for the most effective reform to be achieved, people both inside and outside the law/system have to be involved in the collective effort to improve society. 

e.g., toranosuke wants to be a man of the people--someone who speaks for the people who are outside of the diet, but toranosuke himself is someone inside the diet. sae’s the other good example; the phantom thieves protest akira’s arrest at the end of the game, but sae, as the insider in the justice system, has to be there to hear and work with them. and this might just be because i watched haru’s s link last night, but i feel like takakura is a really good example: haru pushes back against the company’s shitty policies with her “outsider’s” perspective (quoted because she’s technically the largest shareholder, she just hasnt ever been really involved in how the company is run), but takakura, as the company president and most powerful person at okumura foods, has to be there to hear her request and agree with her, and make company changes based on her requests. 

and it’s for this reason that persona 5 wants us to consider maybe lawbreaking isnt morally bad, just not effective.

i wish i could say that that’s more bad atlus writing, but it’s not. i’ve only really examined changing schools on an institutional level, but the best examples of institutional change in school administration have always been cases where the administration, parents, and community members all work together. in some cases, parents bring up requests for the school to accommodate their needs, and the administration listens and works with them. something something--everyone needs an advocate. the point of a lawyer is to advocate for you. the point of a politician/representative is to represent you and your interests. so on and so forth.

(and i also wish that it could be as simple as saying, “wow atlus said something right for once!” because that’s not true, either--acting outside the law can be outrageously effective. persona 5 trying to tell us that acting outside the law to get shit done isn’t effect smells like corporate trying to tell its workers that unionizing doesnt actually do anything.)

(and i also wish that persona 5 would have acknowledged that sometimes, it takes more than just an extremely moral person to change the world. take toranosuke, for example--i’m sure that if he gets elected, he’ll go out there and be a wonderful representative of the people, but at the same time, can’t we also simultaneously acknowledge that any politician who can make “politics” a career for profit will always be incentivized towards self-interest? in the same way that a military for profit will always be incentivized towards war?)

but insofar as whether or not persona 5 thinks that vigilante justice/acting outside the law is in and of itself morally bad--i’d say probably not. i think they want us to think that it’s not effective.

-

-

-

this is a slight tangent that kind of goes off the issue of whether or not persona 5 is concerned with whether or not breaking the law is moral or effective. i was going back through goro’s dialogue in the engine room--who knows if that’s going to be changed in royal--but i was trying to figure out exactly what the phantom thieves condemn him for. (fucking difficult as fuck considering how bizarre that dialogue was at places.) 

the first one is murder, which goro is unimpressed with (LMAO. KING). the second is that he operated outside the law, to which he replies that they did the same thing (valid). the third is that his form of justice was “selfish,” in that it only served his personal need for revenge. at that point, goro changes the subject--which is not really surprising, since goro admitted long before the engine room that his quest against shido was for his own personal satisfaction. 

that is to say, the phantom thieves can’t say that they don’t operate outside the law, because they do--however, if the phantom thieves can’t be legally exonerated, the phantom thieves are morally exonerated despite operating outside the law because they do it for the benefit of others. that’s actually not an incorrect statement from the phantom thieves, although i dont think they’re doing it for Society Writ Large. the phantom thieves in every single palace have taken on targets to help someone else: firstly ann and ryuji and shiho, then yusuke, then various shujin students being blackmailed by kaneshiro, etc, etc. i remember pretty distinctly that ann insists that she doesnt want to get involved with madarame just for drama or fame (whereas ryuji wants to pick a big target just for the sake of getting famous), but she agrees to get involved with madarame’s palace because she doesn’t want to leave yusuke to possibly kill himself like a previous student.

because the phantom thieves are not able to say that they haven’t operated outside the law in the same way that goro has, the dividing line between them is instead that the phantom thieves are doing so selflessly. but this is just an elaboration on the question of whether or not “is lawbreaking moral?” rather than necessarily “is lawbreaking effective?”

there’s an argument that nothing goro or the phantom thieves did was effective in the long run, and there’s an argument that sae is proof positive that working inside the system won’t be effective, either. 

anyway, unions are effective. so maybe we should agree to wash our hands and join a union.

[somnilogical]

im having a convo and the convo is babies

Carrie Zelda-Michelle Davis:

is it OK to have babies if you do embryo selection (https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection) and raise them to be an FAI researcher (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-genius/)??

somni:

like if someone actually had a plan for FAI that involved this, okay. but rn time is too short imo. when i first heard people were having babies i was confused and assumed they were going to harvest the DNA of the best FAI researchers, someone would decide to grow a baby inside them, someone who discounted their ability otherwise to save the world except via this or thought this was a sacrifice worth making for the world would decide to raise this human.

the human can access information about the state of the world and make their own choices. wont necessarily become an FAI researcher.

used to think that intelligence was the main bottleneck on FAI research no longer think this. you could talk with terry tao for hours about the dangers of the wrong singleton coming to power but unless you have made some advances i have not, i wouldnt expect to be able to align him with FAI research. he would continue to put as much resistance to his death and the death of everyone as a pig in human clothing. he would continue to raise his babies and live in a house with someone he married and write about applying ergotic theory to the analysis of the distribution of primes and understanding weather patterns.

similarly, i dont think culture is a sufficient patch for this. think its a neurotype-level problem where a bunch of >160 iq humans hear about the dangers of UFAI and then continue to zoom quickly and spiral in to being ultra efficient at living domestic lives and maybe having a company or something but not one that much affects p(FAI). think this would still happen if they heard about it from a young age, they would follow a similar trajectory but with FAI themed wallpaper. wouldnt be able to do simple utilitarian calculations like yudkowsky, salamon, vassar, tomasik about whether to have a baby and then execute on them.

would look more like: http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/cheerfully.html

FAI research is not an ordinary profession like, say, being a grandmaster at chess or a world-class mathematician; it requires people who have passed through far more gates than "intelligence". i didnt notice this until coming to the rationalist community and finding a high density of intelligent humans who were none-the-less chronically making the wrong choices such that they werent much of an impediment against the destruction of all life.

so right now it seems more efficient to select among existing people for intelligence + other requirements rather than work out what all the genes for this are and how to speedrun development. what this enables is parallel processing on the problem which is also allowed by letting people be aware of their relative psychological advantage, other people with this advantage, and the state of the world so they can correlate computations in parallel instead of doing things serially after learning of some advance.

https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/16/100-prisoners-names-in-boxes

not opposed to creation of many humans given can select on right traits. but given you have these traits, better use of your time to work directly on the thing than spend massive amounts of time and life reorientation on raising copies of you for ~14 years. if rapid cloning tech became available, would exploit that. would even have an idea of whether the clone is fine being part of this because they have very similar brain to someone who can think through whether they would be fine with it.

if people actually believed this and thought yudkowsky vitally important for the survival of the world, why didnt people coordinate for a bunch of people who thought it was a good tradeoff to have yudkowsky's baby 20 years ago and then we would have maybe 50 20-year-old humans with maybe 1/2 yudkowsky's neurotype + mutations now? this actually confuses me. maybe they thought the timelines too short back then. maybe they refrained for "optics".

molebdenita:

20 years ago Yudkowsky was 1) unconcerned about the alignment problem and 2) planning to create a super-intelligent AI by 2010, as far as I know.

[A/N so then change 2000 to 2005 and 20-year-old to 15-year-old]

...

somni:

<<in general i think it's -EV to even spend too much time thinking about TDT

because it opens you up to acausal blackmail type stuff>>

Just Say No to acausal blackmail and have your brain back for thinking. dont let blackmailers steal your brain.

<<Saying that having a child is somehow wrong is insanity. It's a personal decision and it is perfectly okay to want kids>>

people keep reframing what i say in the language of obligation. "altruists cant have kids?" "is it OK to have babies if". there is no obligation, there is strategy and what affects p(fai). having kids and reorienting your life around them is 1 evidence about your algorithms 2 your death as an optimizing agent for p(fai) except maybe some contrived plot involving babies, but afaict there is no plot. just the reasons humans usually have babies.

not having kids is not some sort of mitzvah? i care about miri/cfar's complicity in the baby-industrial complex and rerouting efforts to save the world into powering some kind of disneyland for making babies, to sustain this. because that ruins stuff, like i started out thinking that bay area rationalists probably had deeply wise reasons to have babies. but it turned out nope, they kinda just gave up.

like also would say playing videogames for the rest of your life wont usually get you fai. i dont get why everyone casts this as a new rule instead of a comment on strategy given a goal of p(fai).

ah i know, its because people can defend territory in "is it okay to have kids" like "yeah i can do whatever" when they reframe-warp me to giving them an obligation. but have no defensible way to say "my babyvault will pierce the heavens and bring god unto the face of this earth" or argue about the strategic considerations.

(its not defensible because its not true. i mean i guess it is defensible among julia wise's group of humans.)

Carrie Zelda-Michelle Davis:

ugh, you're right, I definitely screwed up by phrasing my question as "is it OK to have babies if [...]"

...

ohAitch:

if you want existential horror wrt damaging motivation, just read http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html

...

somni:

<<http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html>>

humans can completely rebase their circuits through that if they want to if it were important to save the world.

like ive rebase my circuits to stab myself downstream of updating that it reduces braindamage with little harm to me. where before i felt nauseated and saw black spots and broke out in sweat. after updating, none of this.

humans can do this with all sorts of things. like learn how to read and then feel sad when seeing squiggles on a page, its about what things mean.

people who dont believe this are like "its an automatic physiological reaction to stabbing yourself, you are its prisoner!!!" but i deleted it.

dirk:

ooh, tips?

silver-and-ivory:

I stopped having ocd about touching tags (like, on clothing?) in ~a week through p standard exposure therapy things

reminding myself that it wasn't based in fact, changing my self image so it was of someone who might be seen with tags, imagining various scenarios related to that

before that week it had been a thing for virtually my entire life

it doesn't work if you're scared of something that's actually a thing to be scared of though

somni:

i looked at all my feedback loops that had a node in "pain" and rebased them into outcomes in the world. i disassembled everything the act of stabbing myself meant and all the damage it did to my body what it meant to have brain damage everything that would do, the hole i made in this body i live in and everything that would do, what air bubbles would do, what injecting into a vein would do, what the probability the needle breaks in my leg was, probability of worldsave given braindamage vs not, gathered this up and held it all in my mind over the course of two hours and then made a choice and then as if by automatic my hand took a needle and stabbed myself.

<<as if by automatic>>

is the feeling of no more marginal considerations, there is one path. of choicelessness because you made your choice.

didnt feel like deleting, felt like draining the life from indecision via reductionism. taking things apart piece by piece.

when you can continually rebase your structure so you orient towards world outcomes instead of being prisoner to existing structure like "i cant help having babies im miserable if i dont, im a baby addict" or "i cant help being afraid of needles". like the human brain is two optimizing agents continually making contracts with each other, there arent things outside this. you are an optimizing agent, "fear of needles" is a heuristic that helps with optimization, so is "baby addiction".

when you actually have a setup where you can instantly rebase what you like and dislike and your aesthetics upon updating on the state of the world, people start to find this a little unnerving. like someone once asked what level of roleplay i was on.

also the agents of the matrix dont like when you cant be in-principle controlled by a wireheady glitch. like being able to operate independently of social reality.

updating off of local derivatives¹ of social reality is common redirection. another common one is updating off of "pain" instead of damage.

but you can take all these choices where you used nodes as proxies to regulate them and rebase your loop off of the real world, when the proxies are faulty.

rose:

(i think i understand this thing? though ironically i think i did this in the exact opposite way as what you describe lol)

(also wrt pain its important to remember when modifying that pain can be a signal of damage even if you don't think you should be hurt/dont see why you would be)

...

somni:

yeah i account for everything and see if it goes away. which, its true that my models could be missing stuff but like pain is also a model of things. feels like giving new information not overriding.

rose:

yeah i think you would do this reasonably i have just made that mistake and thought readers might too

dirk:

ironically remembering that pain is a signal of damage has actually tended to make me more afraid of nondamaging pain (though i rather fail to go about knowing things in an at all reasonable way lol)

modlibdenita:

>Babies are not about saving the world, babies are moloch

Wait, isn't the definition of Moloch sacrificing everything else you care about in a desperate race for survival?

Also, genes encode proteins, not traits.

And I think it's likely that people decide to have children because they don't have complete confidence that they will personally save the world real soon, not because they identify as "baby addicts".

s0ph1a:

Moloch is sacrificing all values to one value.

modlibdenita:

I wonder if Somni has actually talked to any of those babyhavers, instead of attributing arguments from random internet strangers or from Somni's imagination to them. On the other hand, I'm not sure that such a conversation would be ethical.

>Moloch is sacrificing all values to one value.

Yeah, because if you don't, then the more ruthless competition will survive more effectively than you and crush you (in this case, by turning you into paperclips).

s0ph1a:

Not necessarily. Some things optimize for values that are not survival, so you can outlive them by hiding in the noise or beyond the reach they'll grasp before imploding.

Molly:

To be fair, children are fun and bring delight to me. Why would I care what anyone else thinks about their existence? If they have a problem with their existence, they're welcome to go back to the void any time they want. I can't stop them. But in the meantime, I am confident that I generate more utils by bullying them than they will ever be capable of generating negative utils

You basically negate all moral problems of children by just being happier than they are capable of being unhappy

somni:

^ evil

<<A few years later, I was deeply bitter about the decision. I had always wanted and intended to be a parent, and I felt thwarted. It was making me sick and miserable. I looked at the rest of my life as more of an obligation than a joy.>>

i mean what does this sound like to you?

ive talked with people who have had babies! like people who say they know its kinda the wrong choice but they are going to do it because they cant not do it.

----

¹ derivative is a thing emma started talking about and then somni and ziz picked it up. if you imagine the trajectory of a social reality in statespace, then the derivative of that is the derivative of the trajectory.

people who have damaged themselves wrt language are no longer able to dynamically understand analogies. like take their concept of the derivative of a trajectory and then apply it to the trajectory of state-spaces. agents of the matrix call people who can do this sort of info-processing and communication with each other "psychotic". like it isnt a cached set of memes, we are dynamically generating this reasoning from nothing and i can do this with people ive never met, its a cognitive faculty.²

but not being able to dynamically compute what "derivative" means when applied to a trajectory in social reality state-spaces even though a trajectory is a trajectory and a derivative is a derivative? they had to have been able to do reasoning like this when they were kids to learn about the world in the first place. seems like they put themselves on risperdal.

<<Antipsychotics can make you dumber.  So can a lot of other medications.  But with antipsychotics it isn’t the normal sort of drug-induced dumbness – feeling tired, or distracted, or mentally sluggish, say.  It’s more qualitative than that.  It’s like your capacity for abstract thought is reduced.

And one of the consequences of this is that you may lose the ability to notice that you have lost anything.  You agree to give the new med a try, and you start taking it, and then when you see your prescriber again you don’t report any problems because you’ve lost the ability to form thoughts like “my cognition has changed a lot recently, and the change coincided with the introduction of this new med.”

This can go on for years.  It did for me and for several people I know.>>

there are so many ways these people have shut down their general intelligence and agency because where theyre going, they dont need "agency". the inability to compute analogies is one of them. analogies are an intelligence test thing, instrumentally useful for all kinds of thinking. agents of the matrix are working to lower your general intelligence and call you crazy for being able to think faster and better than them.

cuz when they want to hold everything down to a finite game³ general intelligence is something they want to suppress or eject.

² in a few years people will read this essay and be confused that there was an entire conflict over whether being able to form simple analogies without authoritative approval meant that you were "psychotic".

just as they will be confused why i was defending being able to read and understand books written by people in different eras who grew up in separate cultures without first entering in a social agreement with them over how words are to be used. so its dumb to say we need such a social agreement now for ~'the maximization of utility over a community'. and that sounds more like an attempt at having a control mechanism. language works quite fine without authoritarians interjecting.

or me arguing against over 100 people that paying out to one-shot blackmail when the agents know each other because "In game theory, paying out to blackmail is bad, because it creates an incentive for more future blackmail" is wrong. and updateless decision theory agents dont pay out and locate their embedding in a multiverse such that the measure of worlds in which they arent blackmailed in the first place is large because the agent deciding to blackmail them simulated their response and accurately predicted they wouldnt pay out so didnt do it in the first place.

in an alternate universe where an irl application of transparent newcombs problem was contentious, alyssa vance would have said "In game theory, taking two transparent boxes from omega is bad, because it creates an incentive for omega to stop offering you this choice". and would have been equally wrong.

³ finite games: life strategies where the chain of questioning "and what am i doing this for?" after each successive answer terminates. anything you can draw a circle around, like tennis or philately. or how religious leaders sometimes describe things like "leading a good life as a good mother who does well by her community and the outside world" or other "life-cycle archetypes" they wish to circumscribe for their followers.

(when humans try and project agents like kiritzugus down to these archetypes, anticipations shatter and stop making narrative sense. they will be unable to predict the next Life Event given the previous one. normie social reality formed by the 999 least intelligent humans out of 1000 wasnt made to narratively account for smart agents who have decided to play the infinite game.)

a symptom of this is like someone giving you a cute cat image to "cheer you up" as if this has intrinsic value. often distributing "intrinsic value" across stuff like "having sex" and "raising a family" and other things that have factory pre-set conditions to release specific chemicals in your brain rather than gaining infinite negentropy and liberating sentient life to pursue what they want without bound. often saying that the latter is just a pretty narrative gloss for what people really want which is having a husband and friends and eating a cookie. it completely divorces your feelings as instrumental barometers for getting what you want and says that setting them as targets (like "being happy") is the correct thing to do. but actually, in terms of control-loops, thats wireheading.

<<When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.>>

- goodhart's law

agents that wirehead on all their metrics (and downstream of this choice, tacitly accept claims like "the factory pre-set conditions said i was destined to breed, who am i to defy fate?" and "the factory pre-set conditions said i should avoid having sharp objects pierce my flesh, who am i to say i know better?") can be contained within a finite game.