#that there's a legitimate argument for character regression

[yolowritter]

Agreed, but I also need to point out that this doesn't necessarily mean that Chloe would always stay the person she became because of the lack of safety in her life. I'm glad they explored this aspect in S2, but sad we never got to see her childhood. Obviously Chloe has done some pretty bad things in the show, but I think the point is that she *could* have changed. She started getting better, and became Queen Bee because Ladybug was the first person to give her a chance. Let's face it, all her life Chloe was *tolerated*, at best. Her father had no idea how to parent her and just replaced interaction and effort with expensive gifts and whatever toy she asked for, Audrey is absolutely something she needs to talk to a therapist about...and her household staff are just working for her.

The closest Chloe ever got to a genuine relationship with someone that was halfway positive was Armand, because the man was kind and patient enough to try and help a little girl who was alone. Don't get me wrong, Chloe was an absolute demon, self-certained and very insecure about herself, hence the tantrums, bullying others, etc. The worst part? I don't think she ever realized that Armand cared about her. Chloe knew deep down that he was only there because her dad was paying him to be, or at least convinced herself that was the case. And why care or even bother being polite to "the help"?

None of this excuses her actions or behaviors, bt it's also not her fault. Obviously bullying is a bad thing nobody should do...but Chloe was what? Like five years old when Audrey dipped to NYC and didn't come back for a whole decade. As a child, Chloe wanted that safe space, and tried to find it in her parents. But with a father who was...a bad parent, to put it lightly (I have a whole stitch with Andre but nvm), and a mother who couldn't care less about her daughter, Chloe did the only thing she could. She learned to copy them. She started treating people the same way Audrey does in the hopes of getting approval from her mother, she convinced that with Andre's lavish gifts, she didn't need friends! Why would she care what random schoolmates think when daddy just got her a sparkly new dress? Chloe told herself again and again that she was better, superior, more worthy of love than anyone else. She internalized all those thoughs and gave herself a massive superiority complex...because she saw other kids her age with their families and felt broken inside.

She never had a home, or even a safe space where she could be herself. There was no one to confide in and no way for her to express or even articulate these feelings, so she did what all kids do. She lashed out. Granted, she did it in the worst way possible for a kid (Lila aside, not *everyone* can be assistant to the local terrorist by age 15), by bullying and threatening her peers.

And who was her biggest target? Marinette! Because she had a loving family. Two parents who supported and stood by her no matter what. Marinette Dupain-Cheng had the home that Chloe Bourgeois had craved all her life. And she was jeleous of her. As an aside, notice how everyone else in the class (that we have information on) has single parents or "incomplete" families. Alix has just her dad, Juleka only her mom, I'm pretty sure Rose or Mylene said something similar about their families in the S5 flashback...you get the point. I think that's why Marinette specifically got the worst of it.

This trend of inflated ego and superiority continues well into Chloe's teenage years, given that Andre only enabled her, spinelessly giving into whatever his daughter wanted even if it went against the law (see firing Roger on a whim in Rogercop). The only person who tries to curb this is Adrien, but we all know he's too nice and has a hard time confronting people. Again worth reminding everyone that Chloe did try in Despair-Bear, because Adrien is important enough to her for Chloe to put in the effort to be polite to people she has convinced herself are fundementally inferior to her.

Then, we come to Queen Bee. Some of my favorite moments of S2 is when Chloe gets entrusted with the Bee Miraculous again to fight various Akuma, because here we get to see her grow a little bit. She acts a bit more mature, is trying to impress but also genuinely wants and does her best to help Ladybug and Chat Noir. Attitude aside (since that doesn't change overnight), Chloe is slowly coming to expect Ladybug to seek her out, and I speculate she comes to see the Team as Home. It's what she's been missing all this time, and Chloe is desperate to hold onto it.

This, of course...leads us to Miracle Queen. I could do a whole analysis on this episode alone, but the short version is that I think Chloe subconsiously knew that she was making a bad call when Hawkmoth came to her. She sided with him anyway, and it wasn't ever about the Bee Miraculous itself, or (solely) about losing Ladybug's trust. It concerned what the Bee represented to her. Home. Chloe had started to find her footing in this new, safe environment, and Marinette unintentionally took this away without communicating that Chloe hadn't done something wrong.

Naturally, Chloe internalized this affirmation to her doubts and insecurities, leading to Miracle Queen and then her cranking up the bitching to a staggering 37/10. All this to say that while I'm okay with her not being "redeemed" since that kind of stuff just doesn't happen in a day, and can sometimes takes years of therapy to work through such problems, I am very much not okay with this never being shown.

Chloe is a very complex character that could have gone both the "redemption" and "corruption" route, depending solely on her own decisions. I wish we got to see more of her, or gotten a Chloe-centric episode showing us her thoughs on everything that happened instead of Queen Banana. I will forever hold a grudge for the harsh cut between her character arcs and lack of explanation about Chloe's reasoning. This doesn't mean I'm mad about her staying a villain, I actually preffer her as that archetype for a variety of reasons, I simply wish we got an explanation for this internal change, an episode that showed why she's a cautionary tale and maybe gave us perspective on why Chloe won't change. She isn't going to, that much is obvious, but there could have been a good message here instead of a corruption arc executed so poorly it felt more like a regression of her character.

Why do I have Chloé brainrot? Let me explain.

Close your eyes. Think back to the last time you felt safe. Conjure up that image out of your past that means 'love' to you. That feeling by which you judge every other interaction. The metric for 'okay' and 'not okay'. The quintessential nostalgia that carries us through. The 'better times.'

Home.

Now imagine they very concept was denied you from birth.

[spacecat-studio]

Can we stop having the same reductive argument about women reading MM it’s fucking 2024 and there is a fifty percent chance that my government is going to get flushed into a fascist toilet of censorship and explicit oppression of minorities. People reading and writing what they want is not the problem.

You want to talk about the problems in the MM romance community? Great, let’s talk about how it’s just chock full of queerphobia. Let’s talk about how entitled fans stewing in a soup of internalized misogyny, or just outright misogyny, harass authors who step outside the MM genre to write queer MF, or sapphic or trans or nonbinary stories. Let’s talk about women and afab enbies who won’t touch stories about queer women with a ten foot pole. Let’s talk about the authors who profit from queer narratives under one pen name and cater to homophobic fans under another. Let’s talk about how a huge majority of MM authors are women or afab enbies but who can’t even imagine worlds where there are female and nonbinary characters in the background, much less as a part of the actual narrative. Let’s talk about acephobia and how even the ace authors can’t seem to imagine a world where ace characters exist except as side stories. Let’s talk about how deeply conservative many romance narratives are, about how they perpetrate a singular view of what love, romance, and sex should be. Let’s talk about how many readers treat MM as a kind of escapist tourist destination while ignoring the real life issues queer people face. Let’s talk about the authors who put ‘New York times best selling author’ in the bio for their gay romance pen name but won’t tell you that author name because they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Let’s talk about the defense ‘it’s just entertainment’ because it never is just entertainment. We are still dealing with the cultural fallout that the Hays code perpetuated about queer characters, in which the queer characters had to be portrayed as evil predators or tragic figures who die at the end. Trans women have been the butt of gross jokes in movies for decades. (Lindsey Ellis has a great breakdown of this on YouTube.) Big studios won’t make queer stories because they can’t market them to china. Amazon’s algorithmic doom spiral buries narratives that don’t conform to the narrow standard of comforting regressive escapism. The faceless corporate machine allows authors from marginalized groups to be silenced by bullies. Let’s talk about how it rewards the privileged authors who have the time and financial considerations to put out mediocre trash every other month. Let’s talk about how we sold our future out to the Amazon machine for the immediate profits of the now, and how that’s made the system unsustainable and hostile to our interests. Let’s talk about how authors will band together against legitimate criticism of their bad behavior to use that system to silence those critics. Authors who literally made their names writing MM narratives yet still espouse conservative ideals that get real queer men oppressed. Authors who file the serial numbers off their fan fiction and publish it as original work without bothering to flesh out the narrative or characters, for profit. The system that allows scammers to do this to fan works so easily and with little to no accountability. All in the name of entertainment.

Let’s talk about the real problems, because I’m fucking tired of the bullshit and the hypocrisy. I’m tired of having a checklist to vet authors so I don’t end up supporting yet another one who turns out to be an exploitive piece of shit. And I’m tired of seeing this argument use to justify misogyny and the persistent misgendering of nonbinary folks.

[thevindicativevordan]

You've mentioned it before a handful of times, bit do you have any in-depth thoughts on JMS' tenure on Spider-Man? Were you fan of the more mystical stories?

Huge fan, it was my gateway into 616 Spider-Man. All the best and worst facets of Spider-Man, and his handling by Marvel, can be found here.

The highs are some of the best in the franchise's history. Within this run we get a Peter Parker who really does feel like an adult. He's mature, wanting to help guide the next generation by being a teacher. He solves conflicts with his brain as well as his fists, gets angry as hell, but also never loses touch with the source of compassion that makes him a hero. Drama and comedy flow smoothly together, this run has the second best handle on Peter's "voice", only beaten by the original Lee/Dikto/Romita Sr. run. Incorporating some mystical elements into Peter's origin didn't bother me as I saw it as a cool attempt at widening the scope of Spider-Man's adventures, and Ezekiel was an interesting character who stood as an example of what Peter could have been if he had never lost his uncle. We didn't get as many stories with the classic Spidey Rogues as I would have liked, but I enjoyed stories like Peter and Doc Ock briefly teaming up, or Spidery having to deal with Doom and Loki.

Romita Junior isn't to everyone's taste but he was born to draw Spider-Man, and not just because of his dad. Nobody else can capture the visuals of dudes getting the absolute shit hammered out of each other when they're fighting, an aesthetic perfect for Spider-Man. Morlun outlived JMS' run when not many expected him too partly because Romita Jr. sold you that this guy was a big deal, that he pushed Spider-Man to his limits in a way few other Rogues had ever done. Kid me reading this run for the first time was legitimately shocked and scared when I saw Spidey all torn up and bleeding after going a few rounds with Morlun. Love Romita Jr.'s art, he's as perfect a match for Spider-Man as his dad was.

Peter’s relationships with the traditional women in his life have never been better than this run either.

Both Aunt May and Mary Jane have regressed since this run hard. JMS had Aunt May outright tear apart the bullshit argument that her knowing Peter's secret would be "too much" for her, by pointing out that May has been through so much pain and loss already and kept going. I loved the mother-son relationship between the two here, May here is everything that people pretend the Kents are for Superman. She's a source of wisdom that doesn't feel hokey, a foundation of strength that gives Peter the ability to stand up again when he's been kicked down. Hate it so much that they reverted to her not knowing and only existing as a cheap source of drama for Peter again.

Meanwhile the Peter/MJ relationship? Odd as it might be to say it's never been better than it was here. The two of them are funny, constantly trading banter with each other. When they're hurt they'll cry and talk about how they feel without devolving into shouting matches or blaming each other. Two of them are sexy too, constantly flirting with each other and letting you know that these are two young people in total love with one another. There's a maturity in this relationship that I've yet to see in any other Spider-Man romance, a shared sense of history that binds the two of them together in ways that make you understand why people lost their minds when Marvel broke them up. This is the run that sold me on MJ as Peter's soulmate, ironic I know, but I'm not alone in that view I've found.

Most impactful part of the run for me might surprise you. It's not when he gets the shit beat out of him by Morlun, terrifying as that is. It's not when he travels through time and has to fight through every battle he's ever fought amazing though that might be. It's not even when he gets to meet Uncle Ben again, despite that never failing to make me tear up. Instead it's the story right before One More Day where Peter has to commit a series of felonies in order to keep Aunt May safe because his identity is public knowledge and everyone is gunning for him now. That small story where Peter is internally keeping track of every crime he has to commit, and the jail time that would come with it if he gets caught, is peak Spider-Man to me. Nothing else has ever hit as hard in terms of showing how Peter's heroic identity just destroys his personal life, but his love for his aunt and Mary Jane give him the strength to push forward.

Which of course brings us to the bad, and the bad is on par with the Clone Saga in terms of being some of the worst Spider-Man stories ever. You want to see Marvel's obsession with keeping Peter young at it's dumbest? Here's the run where he sells his marriage to Satan. You want to see some examples of Quesada letting writers take wild swings because it would grab attention? Here's the run where Gwen cucks Peter with Norman Osborn and then plans on lying to Peter that he's the father of her twins. People claim that Superman is hard to write, but the sheer volume of outright GARBAGE I've seen published in Spider-Man's books have convinced me that is a claim more true of Spider-Man than any other character. How the most popular Marvel character, and likely the most popular superhero period, is constantly suffering under terrible, regressive storytelling baffles me.

The JMS era was an era where Spider-Man was moving forward only to end by regressing and freezing him into place, a status quo that has essentially held true ever since. Do I recommend his run? Yeah I do because for all the dross, this run even now contains many all time great Spider-Man moments, and this is the run that even now delineates where modern Spider-Man "begins". Whether those are enough to outweigh the negatives are ultimately going to be up to the reader, but much like Morrison for Batman, JMS and Quesada are the definitive modern Spider-Man creators for better and for worse.

[mitigatedchaos]

On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article.  The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn’t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking.  The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.” 

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.” 

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later.  Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training.  This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.”  For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods.  When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status.  And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it.  So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here. 

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop.  While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving.  (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this.  Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not? 

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist.  Anything in the world can be tied to something racist.  (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions.  There are guesses based on correlations.  Proposals.  But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands.  The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian.  It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship.  I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature.  I mean among the base.  I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective.  They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care.  He could do this tomorrow.  The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention.  When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out.  The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012. 

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t.  Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work.  In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year.  It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year.  Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week.  Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day.  Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them.  This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable.  The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology.  The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it.  It leaked out. 

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work.  The best way to do that may be to cut off the source.  Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop.  Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples.  If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results.  If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space. 

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon.  "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.”  It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.

[bthump]

I wanted to touch on the whole gutsca thing with someone (I know zero people in this fandom so you're my lucky pick!). Am I alone in feeling like their first time together came out of no where? My meta with Guts is that he was not at all comfortable with sex at that time of his life (this instance being his first time [outside of the rape he experienced as a child]). His choice of words too, "here I go", translated to me like someone only doing what they felt was expected of them rather than something he was yearning for. He clearly wasn't even ready given how rough he was and how he regressed and attacked her. This moment seemed very forced and almost rang to me like Kentaro's declaration of "no homo though". I would be curious to know how Kentaro felt about homosexuality (bisexuality, etc) and if he ever addressed the ever blatant gay tension and romantic-non-platonic-love blossoming between Guts and Griffith pre-eclipse. I do get the sense that this may be a case of severe queer baiting or perhaps a PSA against gay love altogether ("falling for a man will literally destroy you and send you and everyone you love to hell" type of message); but I'm a very jaded person so I hope to be proven wrong. Sigh, my point being Gutsca seems pretty dang forced and empty of true development. I buy them more as besties than anything romantic. Especially since both he and Casca are actually in love with Griffith (what a fucking triangle!). Does anyone in fandom have any opinions on the sad possibility of this whole beautiful and ultimately tragic love between Griffith and Guts actually being a fucked up anti-gay PSA? Are there any interviews with Kentaro shooting this theory down so I can stop being sad and bitter about it? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for sending this, I'm definitely down to talk about it! I hope you connect with more people in the fandom but don’t worry about sending random asks even if you do lol.

Anyway you’re definitely not alone. I have a lot of thoughts on Guts and Casca's hook up, and they're all pretty much "it feels really forced and not particularly romantic but I think you can argue that that's deliberate" lol. For instance I discuss in a lot of detail here how various aspects of the scene indicate that Guts and Casca having sex is shown to be a case of both of them rebounding from Griffith and sort of giving to each other what they were unable or failed to give to him.

And I talk a lot about how Judeau essentially orchestrates it all and what that suggests about Guts and Casca's relationship here.

And lol sorry for all the links but also this post is about how their relationship feels one-sided to an extent and is used to illuminate a lot of Guts' flaws, using Judeau as a comparison point.

Oh shit and also one more lol, here's a comparison between the sex scene and Griffith's with Charlotte that suggests that both start as ways for the dudes to repress their feelings.

(Don't feel obligated to read all those posts if you don't want, you should get the gist of what I'm saying w/ those descriptions.)

But yeah basically I do think that Guts and Casca getting together felt forced and awkward. At best it might be intended to be seen that way, as two friends hooking up awkwardly in an emotionally intense moment but probably doomed to failure because neither of them are ready for a relationship with the other, or particularly interested in one deep down, once they finished "licking wounds." At worst it’s just bad writing lol. But again like I think there are good arguments for the former.

I also totally agree that their relationship has a strong vibe of doing what's expected. Like for real, at least to me both Guts and Casca read so easily as gay and repressed lol. Casca talks about her feelings for Griffith in terms of “he was a boy she was a girl can I make it any more obvious”

and I can’t help but see it as Casca like, wow I have strong feelings towards Griffith, he’s a man and I’m a woman, so clearly these feelings must be romantic, there’s no other option. Then when she has sex with Guts she keeps contextualizing it essentially as repayment for Guts saving her, like she owes him. “I too want a wound I can say you gave me.” “Not just being given to... maybe I can give something as well.” Which just doesn’t make her desire for him look all that genuine lol.

And then you have Guts. The way he tells Casca that from the start only her touch was okay with him after he has sex with her, referencing the scene when he wakes up with her on top of him and starts to panic before realizing she’s a woman, is soooo suggestive of repression to me. Like, first off because it’s incorrect, he was also okay with Griffith going in for a face-grab after winning a duel Guts had been projecting his rape trauma all over, which seems like a pretty conspicuous omission. And secondly because the reason he was okay with Casca’s touch specifically is solely because she’s a woman, not because she’s special or because they have a magic romantic connection - it’s because she’s not a man. To me that just screams that Guts was open to sex with Casca because she’s the only woman he knows, and he’s afraid of the idea of physical intimacy with men, regardless of what he might actually want deep down.

So yeah that’s basically how I feel about Guts and Casca’s relationship, strong agree with you.

When it comes to Miura’s intent, I can tell you that Miura was asked about the subtext in an interview once, back in 2000, and he responded with something along the lines of ‘two men can have passionate feelings for each other without it being romantic.’ The interview is here, but this is a paraphrase the translator mentioned in the comments.

Other than that I’ve never seen him address it directly, but on the flipside he has cited several textually gay stories as inspiration (off the top of my head: Kaze to Ki no Uta, Devilman, Guin Saga, mangaka Moto Hagio in general), and he has straightforwardly said that the (magical intersex) central character of his other work, Duranki, was intended to have romances with both male and female love interests. Also people tell me there are strong griffguts vibes with the main, presumably canon or intended-to-be-canon ship there. So there’s that lol.

As for the no homo aspect and the potential homophobia in the griffguts subtext... I can’t deny I’ve also considered the idea that it’s a deliberate anti-gay PSA (though I haven’t seen anyone else address the idea as far as I remember, and I’ve only briefly mentioned it offhandedly). Like, Guts and Griffith’s relationship turns bad because they’re both too invested in each other, maybe the barely-subtextual desire is meant to look like a sinister twisting of pure platonic feelings that ruins everything, if Griffith hadn’t loved him the Eclipse never would have happened, etc.

But honestly I don’t think that reading holds up compared to a much more positive reading of their feelings, in which it’s their failure to understand them and act on them, thanks largely to formative childhood trauma and self-hatred, that leads to tragedy.

I don’t know what Miura intended, and there certainly are aspects of the story that are homophobic regardless of his intent, even if my best-faith reading is entirely correct, like the only textual gay attraction being pedophiles and over the top heretic orgies lol, or yk, Guts and Griffith both assaulting the same woman while looking at/thinking about the other in a very sexually charged way.

But the reading of their relationship where it’s positive and good for both of them, even including sexual desire, and only gets fucked up because they both incorrectly think their feelings are unrequited is legitimately so weirdly strong, much stronger than a reading where the sexual nature of their feelings is what fucks everything up, so I’m pretty happy just rolling with that take.

And as much as Casca can be seen and may very well be intended as a no homo, it’s also very easy for me to read her relationships with both as less of a hopeful opportunity for positive heterosexual romance and more of a “here’s how repressing your feelings thru attempts at heterosexuality fucks you up” PSA lol. Griffith and Charlotte too, for that matter. It’s definitely a stretch to think that’s intended, but whether it’s intended or not it’s an easy sell for me and I’m fine with not really worrying too much about possible authorial intent there.

Finally, I also want to link this post that goes pretty thoroughly into why I interpret griffguts as very positive rather than as a cautionary tale or predatory gay lust etc

And also have this shorter post about Femto on the same subject too, why not

Oh and maybe this thing where I split hairs about Guts’ lust for Griffith and desire for revenge to make a point that the homoeroticism isn’t necessarily being equated with violence by the narrative lol

[the-tzimisce]

giving your argument a little bit too much thought back: i think people have the right to be upset about the cookiecutterfication of media by fandom where theres a roving group of people that go from place to place completely ignoring plots and focusing entirely on which skinny pale people they want to act out the same tired au plots with each other, and how much it sucks that online spaces almost entirely revolve around that now. its shallow in the sense that it literally breeds bias

cont'd: like one of the best examples is star wars where they had an incredibly diverse cast and two kinda good movies with them but somehow ao3 managed to focus entirely on the edgy white boy and the fascist only-in-three-scenes white boy dating than actually talk about the black lead, or the female lead, or the latino lead. yes finn and poe got shipped but the lack of *interest* in that relationship and viewer preference for white male bodies drowned them out. go check ao3, i'm right

cont'd (again): this isn't hate or anything but i think you do need to acknowledge that "shallowly engaging with text" is actually kind of a legitimately bad thing because the shallowness is almost entirely driven by what the homogenous group engaging with it wants instead of the diverse media out there, and it creates a meat grinder that forces good, interesting stories and characters into molds that mean nothing but free dopamine for whatever white kids are bored at night. it kinda sucks

Why? I mean this literally, why do they have a right to? If people want to enact tired au plots in whatever popular media fandom they come across, and you think that's icky, you can....ignore them? Talk to your friends, who like to engage in the same way you do? Or just...post the stuff you like and follow the people who post stuff you like? I know having lots of loud people around talking about thinks you find annoying isn't ideal, but like....that's life, kid. It doesn't mean they're corrupt or intellectually inferior or whatever that post was on about, it means you don't like their hobby

As for the shipping trends thing.... Like, I know this has been a big debate in fandom for a while now and you have a right to feel the way you feel about it, but I would question just, like, the facts you're working from if you're calling Disney "diverse" and fans "homogenous." Like I don't want to get into the dynamics of new Star Wars fandom in particular, because people actually in that fandom have done that with a fine-toothed comb and come to like 35 different conclusions. But like, that's exactly what I'm saying, fandom is not a shallow monolith containing only regressive shipping trends, fandom is also the many fans including nonwhite fans who are going through, pointing them out, and talking about how they happened. And like, yeah, a lot of those people have also written some of the weird porn, it turns out most of the people who spend that much effort thinking about social trends in porn fanfic got there by liking the fanfic, but if you're automatically thinking of those as mutually exclusive then yeah, it's just going to look like a monolith of Those People Who Write The Shallow Porn

Honestly though, what I find so frustrating about this argument is that, like....no, I don't actually care if a white kid gets dopamine from writing porn about Kylo Ren at night. I don't think that damages the text they're working from, and I think that's true whether the text is Dostoevsky or Disney's latest corporate extrusion. I know biting that bullet is not going to win me any arguments on tumblr dot com, but I just do not see which fictional characters people are horny for as a major battleground in the fight against racism. The overweening influence of people shipping white guys is going to be....a lot of mediocre fics about white guys, and a few good ones, none of which you have to engage with at all! Which might be really frustrating but does not constitute harm

[sirenalpha]

I actually don’t think Aang was right the whole time was a major message in atla not if the Aang was right that you’re talking about is that his way is the only moral way to conduct war and he was right to not compromise his morals

I’m not saying that morality didn’t matter in the show it’s obviously there as in Iroh literally asks Zuko to choose good, I just think some things are more thematically significant and that morality is underpinning why those thematically significant things matter

atla is a kid’s show, like all kid’s show it is fundamentally about growing up and learning more about the way of the world and taking on more adult responsibilities and doing it to improve yourself and the world around you, that’s what most serious kid’s media does

that’s why Aang’s character arc is to become the Avatar not necessarily to become a good person, the series is primarily focused on growing up enough and learning enough to take on adult responsibilities and authority and using that authority to fix things broken by previous generations

When Zuko finally changes sides from Ozai to the Gaang in the Day of Black Sun part 2, he doesn’t say he chose good, he frames it as embracing his destiny and also says that it’s the Avatar’s destiny to take down Ozai

and to be clear, I think the show intertwines (or maybe uses interchangeably) destiny with duty and responsibility, the show posits that you can choose how you fulfill your destiny but you can’t avoid it and overall treats it pretty similarly to responsibility and duty, like is it the Avatar’s destiny to defeat the Fire Lord or does the Avatar have a duty to correct the mistakes of his predecessor who allowed the Fire Lord too much leeway? If the Avatar’s responsibility is to achieve and protect world balance then yes, it is his duty which which might as well make it his destiny to do so, he can’t avoid it if he wants to do his job well

the issue I have with saying that Aang was always right and it was the right choice to not compromise on his morals was a message of atla is again that Aang was morally compromised, just not in the same way as the other characters

Aang behaves in morally questionable ways for a person who has political authority like he does as the Avatar, abandoning your duties is morally wrong when it’s your responsibility to protect people because it is harmful see the s2 finale, instead of completing his training Aang gets killed nearly losing the Avatar entirely and Ba Sing Se falls (and yes you can make the argument Ba Sing Se would have fallen anyways, that just means you’re ignoring that the narrative is punishing Aang for abandoning his duties)

so he made the wrong choice regarding his responsibilities, regressed in his character arc which he was correctly punished for thematically speaking, and he made the wrong moral choice as a person with political authority and significance

and it just gets worse in late s3 and into the finale, The Southern Raiders is around when Aang starts getting preachy on morality specifically on Air Nomad morals (not that he’s never mentioned them before but this is when he actually starts getting preachy and deciding he needs to live perfectly in line with what he’s preaching) and then in the finale point blank refuses to really entertain killing Ozai as if this is the morally correct option

and yeah for a regular 12 year old it would be bad to just go around killing a guy, except that’s divorcing the situation from it’s context which means you can’t actually evaluate the morality behind the decision

Aang is not a regular 12 year old, he’s the Avatar and the Avatar has been clearly positioned as having a responsibility to defeat the Fire Lord and that the Avatar is the only one who can be seen defeating the Fire Lord without negative political consequences aka he’s the only one with the legitimate political authority to do it (this might be said in show later when Aang is with the Lion Turtle but that’s still the situation before the show spells it out for the audience, it’s already a forgone conclusion, that’s why Sokka is saying Aang specifically is allowed to kill Ozai rather than arguing anyone in the group can kill Ozai)

Aang not killing Ozai is abandoning his duties and as I’ve already pointed out, abandoning one’s duties is a moral wrong in atla especially for Aang as the protagonist who has already been punished for it, if Aang doesn’t or can’t kill Ozai -> no one can do it -> Ozai destroys the Earth Kingdom, that’s bad

Energybending Ozai is also morally suspect as removing a person’s bending is an unknown compared to the certainty of death and removing Ozai’s bending doesn’t actually change anything except for how much harm he can do personally because it doesn’t mean he loses the throne or his claim to it post-coup and that’s the real issue here in terms of morality, not killing Ozai means Aang puts Ozai’s replacement in danger which anyone can assume will be Iroh or Zuko who are supposedly Aang’s friend and ally

If Aang’s goal is peace and to preserve balance, taking Ozai’s firebending away is a bad choice as it creates a very unclear political situation with firebending removal being unprecedented compared to Ozai’s death where Iroh and Zuko have better claims to the throne than Azula regardless of the outcome of Zuko’s Agni Kai with Azula, if the goal is to end the war with a coup, the replacement needs to be able to quickly and completely solidify their power to get the military to stand down and keeping Ozai alive makes that task basically impossible

this is the wrong moral choice for the Avatar set up within the context of the finale given by the show because it makes ending the war and achieving balance more difficult, I think this was entirely the wrong way to set things up if they didn’t want Aang to kill Ozai and complete his character arc given Aang was 12 and atla a kid’s show on nickelodeon (and that Ozai needed to be dead if they wanted a happy ending for Zuko), but that’s what was set up by the show

Aang was morally compromised as the Avatar, he made poor choices in various places throughout the show, and the deus ex machinas tried to rescue it at the end to make him look good morally and as a protagonist, but it doesn’t work within the political context of the show so no I don’t see Aang was right the whole time to be a major theme of the show, just something people made up to re-contextualize the finale to make it less bad

[johannas-motivational-insults]

I’ve seen a lot of people saying things along the lines of ”portal!Catra just wants to be with Adora and doesn’t resent her so obviously Catra is uwu soft baby who just wants to be loved and doesn’t actually want power” and implying that all Catra needs to find happiness and fulfillment is to give up the power-hungry charade and go be with her girlfriend. As an abuse survivor myself, I find this troubling on a number of levels, and I have a few things to say to this:

1) Portal!Catra is not real Catra.

Portal!Catra is something straight out of a really ooc high school au. She is very different from real Catra, and the contrast is meant to be shocking (much like the asshole au version of Buffy in BtVS 3x09 “The Wish”). It’s a reflection of how people are shaped by their circumstances, it’s not a character study of Catra’s actual wants and needs.

The Catra we saw in the portal, before she remembered her real history, was not dealing with the fallout of a lifetime of abuse. She did not know to be afraid of Shadow Weaver. In fact, she rolled her eyes and groaned when Shadow Weaver scolded her and Adora for goofing off and said she had high hopes for both of them. Real Catra would have killed to hear Shadow Weaver say she had high hopes for her, and here she was acting like it was an annoying lecture she heard all the time. The Catra of this “perfect world” has not spent her whole life being tortured and degraded and humiliated and told that she would never amount to anything.

So yeah, it makes sense that this version of Catra is happy for her friend who got promoted, in contrast to real Catra’s reaction. In this reality it’s good for the whole squad, and they all got the chance to prove themselves in Thaymor. In this reality it’s not a reminder that no matter what she does, she’ll never be as good as Adora, always be seen as useless and never get a chance to prove her worth. This Catra knows maybe she could become a Force Captain one day too. And if she didn’t, maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world; she hasn’t been told time and time again how incapable she is, so she doesn’t have her canon self’s all-encompassing urge to prove people wrong about her.

In the portal reality, Catra wasn’t blamed for Adora’s failings or treated like a nuisance - a sidekick at best, a liability at worst. She wasn’t pushed down so Adora could be lifted up, they were lifted up together. Of course this Catra doesn’t resent Adora the same way she does in canon or have the same obsession with proving herself.

2) “Just being with Adora” is what caused this problem in the first place.

Catra spent her childhood finding solace in Adora while battling a growing resentment towards her. We’ve all seen “Promise,” this fact is right there in canon. Just being with Adora was Catra’s strategy to try to stay happy throughout her childhood, but it wasn’t working.

Adora was the only good thing in Catra’s life, but this relationship brought her pain as well, and not just from Shadow Weaver. She felt like Adora didn’t respect her, didn’t believe in her. And it’s hard to blame her when you see some of Adora’s cocky posturing, like the “sure you did” and “riiiiight” comments. Adora’s just teasing and playfully asserting dominance (perhaps even trying to flirt a little), but to Catra it doesn’t feel playful, it feels malicious and disrespectful. The one person who makes her feel like she’s worth anything at all so casually dismissing her abilities is devastating.

Sacrificing her need for respect and validation to go be with Adora is not going to fix Catra’s problems. It is not progress, for Catra or Catradora. It’s regression into the unhealthy dynamic that caused much of the conflict between them in the first place.

3) There is no reclaiming this “ideal Catra.”

This may seem like a callous thing to say, but it doesn’t matter what Catra could have been under better circumstances. We are all shaped by our experiences, and no amount of love or therapy will undo what we have already gone through and how it shaped our psychology. All we can do is learn how best to live with who we are now. I’ve had to learn this the hard way, as someone with an acquired disability and a boatload of trauma. There is no ideal version of yourself to get back to, only future versions of yourself to work towards.

This is as true for Catra as it is for anyone irl. It’s not fair to say that Catra “at her core” just wants to be safe and loved and with Adora and therefore all her other needs borne of her abuse and neglect are meaningless. That’s extremely negligent, actually. That attitude minimizes Catra’s trauma, implies that she just needs to learn to get over it and then she won’t have these “impurities” in her personality anymore.

Catra has been abused, and she will always be hypersensitive to indicators of abuse. She’ll get triggered and riled up by seemingly innocuous things when it feels like someone is trying to dominate or subjugate her, take away her agency. She is always going to need to feel a certain sense of power and control just to feel safe and comfortable. In certain situations and around certain people she may feel safe enough to let that guard down and just relax and trust, but that’s a privilege, not a right. On that note...

4) Catra does not need to chase this ideal for anyone’s comfort.

Yes, Catra needs to change. She needs to stop pushing away everyone who loves her, she needs to curb her self-destructive impulses. She needs to take steps toward not just redemption, but healing. This will only be possible once people finally start to acknowledge her trauma, but that’s a whole other story.

However, Catra does not need to change the ways her abuse has shaped her. That’s impossible, and an unfair expectation. Healing from trauma is not the same as erasing it, and this is a very common misconception in the real world as well as in fandom. It’s also an extremely harmful misconception.

Now, this idea in particular is a popular theme in discussions of Catradora’s relationship dynamics, the implication being that Catra will only be happy/healed if she can get to the point where she not only can, but wants to yield control to Adora and that if she can’t/won’t then she doesn’t really trust her and their relationship is broken. The yikes level of this argument, especially in NSFW contexts (which is where you will often see it), is off the charts. It is not fair to expect an abuse survivor to put herself in uncomfortable and potentially triggering situations just to prove she trusts her partner or to demonstrate personal growth. Period.

Now, that’s not to say expressions of trust on Catra’s part wouldn’t be good for the relationship. Adora wants to take care of Catra as much as Catra wants to take care of her, and feeling like Catra trusts her (in those contexts or in others) would certainly stroke Adora’s ego. The problem lies in it being an expectation or us treating it like a milestone, something to celebrate. If Adora is a good partner she will work with Catra as she is and let her express trust in ways she feels comfortable with, rather than pressuring her to do things she’s not comfortable with to prove her feelings for Adora or illustrate her progress.

In short, erasing her history and ignoring her abuse is harmful.

Like I said, portal!Catra is not real Catra, and we can’t treat her like she is. It makes zero sense to ignore or villainize her perfectly legitimate need to feel powerful and in control over her own life just because someone who lived a totally different life didn’t have that same need to the same degree.

And I know I will get comments that canon Catra doesn’t really want power either, but I disagree. Catra doesn’t really want to rule the world, it’s true, but she wants to prove that she can. We’ve seen her enjoy being in a leadership position because she’s good at it and it reminds her of her own competence and worth. Just because she found no satisfaction in losing her soul to take over the world does not mean she finds no genuine fulfillment in being in a position of influence.

Even regardless of how much she enjoys it, Catra is still drawn to power because she has grown to associate it with positive outcomes like safety, agency, and self-actualization. Yes, power may not be Catra’s ultimate goal, but that doesn’t make it meaningless to her. And I really wish people would stop acting like a perfectly normal response to abuse is a character flaw that needs to be fixed.

It seems a lot of people are quick to forget Catradora’s real history as depicted in “Promise” because they like the “Remember” version of their relationship better. Because they like this version of Catra better. It’s understandable - who doesn’t want to see Catra happy, right? But like Adora so devastatingly told Catra (and all of us), it’s not real.

We need to stop pretending it’s real.

[ichayalovesyou]

Yo I think I can safely say the ONLY only Star Trek I do not like (and even then it has its merits) are the AOS movies. The plots are decent, I have my issues with Kirk & Spock and how they treated Uhura, and Danvers, and Chapel (pretty much all the women basically). But I actually don’t have any other serious complaints, it’s just the things I do have complaints about make them (or mostly just Into Darkness) a little hard to watch. I know I’ve made my qualms known but

I’ve been critical meta posting about AOS lately, so here’s some stuff I do like

Everyone else’s performance (I actually like Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as actors, I just don’t like the writing of their characters). Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin and John Cho do fantastic! I also love Zoe Saldana with my whole heart as Uhura, but I only feel like they did her and the character like, ANY respect, until Star Trek: Beyond, and that’s like, 1 out of 3 movies, hopefully the fourth will keep up the positive progress!

I LOVE the timeline divergence of Vulcan getting destroyed, and Jim’s dad dying. I just, don’t like how it was handled. Like the plot concepts in and of themselves are cool! And the characters’ personalities SHOULD be altered by those events! I just don’t like, that of all the ways they could’ve changed Jim and Spock, they chose bad boy (as in actual womanizer instead of a mischaracterization) and angry, which I don’t think is true to either of their cores in ANY universe. Giving them an argumentative/adversarial dynamic was kinda saddening and painful to me, but again, that’s just my opinion.

I would’ve LOVED Into Darkness a heckuva lot more if Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t Khan, he was legitimately a great villain! While Kirk’s death scene is well done itself, the things that occur right before, and right after don’t sit right with me personally. Again if they didn’t try and make it WoK but still had the WoK elements in the death scene it would’ve been even better!

What the AOS movies lack in the elements of Kirk & Spock chemistry that I love in the original timeline, it made room for just, a TON of Spones and McKirk goodness (McKirk in the first, Spones in Beyond!)

I’m both glad and sad we don’t get a lot of nurse Chapel, the only reason I didn’t like her in TOS was how creepy she was toward Spock almost 24/7, if they’d have kept her and not have her sleep with Kirk (for no reason???) and just not done her creepiness with Spock I would’ve LOVED that characterization. I’m sure 90% of why AOS Bones is so stressed out is because Chapel isn’t there, he needs her, regardless of my opinions on her dynamic with Spock she has a wonderful one with Bones.

SULU IN THE CAPTAINS CHAIR SULU IN THE CAPTAINS CHAIR EVERYONE STFU SULU IS IN THE CAPTAINS CHAIR!!!!!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩😍😍😍😍

Chekov is BABEY, different flavors of babey than in TOS but still BABEY

Speaking of Beyond, I genuinely feel like that’s the one where AOS got it’s crap together! I love it!

Uhura finally has a character arc that’s totally independent from Spock (genuinely glad they broke up regardless of whether it lasts, I just want uhura to not rely on a man and the things he does being built into her characterization okay? Okay.)

Jim and Spock have FINALLY started acting like themselves, and also Spones! In a format that’s right up my alley! (As in whump & caretaker lmao)

Scotty and a badass alien chick that we never get to see undress (unlike almost every female character with a speaking role in these movies up until now) and she was great!

IDRIS ELBA (that’s it, just Idris Elba, he’s my husband even in weird scary alien makeup)

Stopping the bad guys with optimism and The Beastie Boys is so beautifully, wonderfully on brand for Star Trek! I can’t believe I’m saying this but thanks JJ Abrams!

So like, I do not like AOS for a lot of reasons, but the most recent movie gave me hope, and I actually genuinely wanna see the fourth one that’s coming out in 2023 and I just really, REALLY hope it keeps going forward in improvement instead of regressing into the things I was meh about in Star Trek (2009) and genuinely hated in Into Darkness. Fingers crossed!!

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[tonyglowheart]

This entire thing is a rant, feel free to ignore it, but I saw your post about how destiel fans can’t win in this context, and yeah. So have some rambles.

I’ve been thinking about the fact we (current spn/destiel fans) can’t win all night... I’ve seen so many people talking about how homophobic it is - and while I would very much like to argue, as every point I’ve seen made by a non-spn fan has been wrong so far, if I did everyone inside the fandom would agree and everyone outside would either call me straight or pity me for believing it’s okay.

(Cas wasn’t even sent to hell lmao. He was sent to angel death (the empty), a place he has escaped in the past. Other points, like that meta about spn has been predicting exactly this for months, that Dean ended up sobbing on the floor because he was so upset, like that death means next to nothing on spn, like that there is two episodes left, etc etc. you feel me right? I just don’t want to post wank to other spn blogs atm, we’re getting enough frustration as it is, no need to add to it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the bar is very, very low. Spn is a prominent TV show - not a Netflix show, or indie, or whatever - and it just said “main character in gay love saved the world”. [insert gif of ghostfacers dude saying that gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day here]

I just saw someone saying that spn having Naomi try to brainwash Cas out of loving dean makes spn homophobic (it is a conversion therapy parallel). My first response to that is that Naomi was the villain lmao? I guess we can’t write villains doing anything homophobic because having villains do homophobic things makes, uh - checks notes - villains look homophobic, and clearly we can’t have that.

There certainly are legitimate things to criticise spn about, but this isn’t it lol.

Also now some people are unironically trying to cancel Jensen because “his acting was homophobic, and so he’s clearly homophobic”, nevermind that he’s an actor and his character struggles with understanding his emotions (which I think he played excellently, myself. That scene had a very Dean delayed emotional response), nevermind the support he’s given to us queers in the past. Like. Idek man.

We would have been laughed at if we got no destiel, too.

It would have been worse, had the writers pulled a dumbledore. At this point I also trust the writers not to pull a GoT - they have explicitly criticised that ending in spn’s canon.

Spn’s writers did that by making the main villain of this season, Chuck / God, say GoT had a good ending. To reiterate a previous point I had: villains do bad things because they’re bad. And the bad things they do make them bad. For the people out there not still following, if someone does something in a story and it makes them a villain, that is explicitly telling you the story (and probably the writers) thinks that thing is bad. In this case, Chuck likes to write things for him, and we the audience have been shown and told that is bad.

Apparently thinking a gay confession is good in 2020 makes me straight. Seems unlikely, but whatever. Sorry for the length, I guess I went overboard, I’ve been holding it in lol. Anyway, DESTIEL IS CANON 💚💙 hope you have a good night

Helloo supernatural anon I hope you are living your best life right now. Yeah I’m like..... skeptical and leery myself but having lived through some absolute garbage discourse that is general purity wank, as well as the C/QL greater fandom here and on Twitter I find myself... much more wanting to question the “general wisdom” of things esp in terms of negativity, bc a lot of the time I find.... it’s wrong? Like so wrong. Or at least presents such an incomplete picture of the whole situation and also presents it in such a removed context that words that have meaning and are operationalized in a certain way for a reason, no longer have meaningful usage.

Anyway I don’t... know too much about the specifics of Spn but someone I follow is into it and talks a lot about the Gnostic stuff and that all was very fascinating to me, and I also have been grappling a lot with cultural Christianity bc of cmedia and the way ppl just *clenches fist* unthinkingly or uncritically slap some Christian norms on it and call it a day 😩 help I’m Tired. My thing here being... I actually got tired of the uncritical “superhell”s at some pt bc I am, in fact, incredibly exhausted with cultural Christianity, and because it does seem like, even possibly(?) without the Gnostic stuff it’s different from a “hell” or other Protestant-derived afterlife concept, and also yeah that it wasn’t seeded out of nowhere, it was set up to happen, which then... lends credence to the idea that whatever the current era of Spn is doing, the current showrunners are doing it with purpose.

And idk I just... refuse to believe the concept that ALL of the fans of Spn - esp the ones who have been following it still, or got back into it and are following it currently, are acting under delusion or are fooling themselves into liking it or thinking it’s good or whatever. I personally find that kinda infantilizing and patronizing and playing into issues of dismissing things women and/or other marginalized identities like.

Plus I find the concept that (from what I think I’ve been seeing Spn fans say) that the current era of the show is quite actively grappling with itself, its past, its legacy. to be very interesting and compelling; it hearkens back to like an old lore kind of feeling, of a thing that has grown into a nigh undefeatable monster and realizing that, also realizing that the only way to defeat itself is through grappling with its own nature and transforming and transmuting itself into something else. I personally find that more plausible and compelling than “Supernatural has been actively and continuously queerbaiting for 15 homophobic homophobic years., so right now we’re all very sorry for you because this maybe is no longer queerbaiting but it’s still homophobic and it can never be anything different ever.” I’ve been sort of tangentially aware of Spn thru the years and didn’t we agree, around the time of that in-universe play about Spn and with the lil Destiel shoutout, that Spn has come a ways as far as coming to terms with its fandom and working to treat its fans better? Why the sudden regression into “oh no, Supernatural is and forever will be homophobic and a hate crime”? 🤔 

The rest under a cut bc the ask is already long and then my rambling will get longer-

But yeah I mean..... I get that the legacy of Supernatural has been certifiably Rough, but I think people also forget how different of a time 2005 was? Hell, how different of a time 2015 was, even, prior to, say, Obergefell v. Hodges. Now I’m not saying that to blanket-excuse Supernatural, but like, you look at mainstream shows from the era and... there’s a lot of shit lmao. The fact that Supernatural has existed this long seems to me like.... maybe we CAN look at how it’s developed through the years vs just insisting it is what it was 15, 10, hell, 5 years ago. Especially since, to my knowledge, there’s been showrunner changes? Which seems to me like it would... affect things? I mean honestly, I remember back when I got into Spn for a hot second because of Castiel, I remember watching panel, Q&A, etc vids thru the years, and like... I thought we agreed that... it was the fans who were going a bit far pushing the shipping question like literally ALL the time to the actors, who are not in control of the show and.... like at the time.... that could have had personal implications for them? And yes homophobia bad, and people can still be allies despite that, but again like.... I do feel like - from what I’ve seen - that these guys were NOT ready to deal with a lot of that but they’ve (okay Jensen I’m talking about Jensen here) genuinely grown and learned? Also how many years ago was the essay autograph thing that people keep trotting out, like what year was it in and what year of spn was it, and what were the prevailing opinions on LGBT issues and bisexuality then.

I’ve been seeing some murmurings of identity politicsing surrounding ppl who enjoy Supernatural, and I’m sorry that that’s happening to you, it really fucking sucks and it’s also the dumbest way to “make” or “win” an argument because it shouldn’t ever be a final determiner, just factors to consider when considering what life experiences might have informed someone else’s PoV and views as well as maybe how you can better communicate with them. Instead of it being a “weapon” or “tool” to either dismiss someone or de facto validate an argument.

Also yeah I get it that you don’t want to send discourse to spn blogs bc I imagine you guys ARE actively grappling with all the bs rn and it’s a lot. Even just from like, the stuff I see around, I’m like tired of it. I’m genuinely having more fun with ppl who are having a good time with Supernatural than the ppl who are hating on it, even in this sort of backhanded “oh we’re not clowning YOU we’re clowning the writers and showrunners who think you should be satisfied with this,” when... yeah? the people who HAVE been watching the show and therefore... know what’s up.. DO seem to be? And all this based on *fake gasp* context. And that’s where the backhandedness becomes kind of poisonous to me, because it implies that it IS bad, and that you SHOULDN’T be satisfied, but poor little you are but don’t worry, we’re not making fun of YOU for liking garbage, you’re just the hapless victim who is consuming the garbage bc... idk, whatever reasons ppl are coming up with ig.

idk man it’s 2020. Fandom isn’t activism, performative or otherwise, it’s okay to let people enjoy things even if you think they’re “objectively” bad, and like... I don’t know if people can call something bad when they’re not even working with the whole context and instead are dealing with rumor and reputation. 

[mcdynamite]

[Spoilers] I think GoT 8.05 made perfect sense, and here’s why:

 Hello people of Tumblr! I’ve seen a lot of people bashing the most recent episode of Game of Thrones for a number of reasons and I want to step up to the plate and go to bat for the show. To clarify, I dislike D&D as much as pretty much everyone else who watches the show. I think the writing has been lazy, the dialogue has been lacking, and the lead in to some of the things that have happened this season could definitely be better. But everything that happened in 8.05 makes sense, and I actually liked the episode. This is why.

Cersei’s Demise is kinda perfect.

I know a lot of us, myself included, were looking forward to a brutal, sadistic death for a brutal, sadistic woman. But here’s the thing... in its own way, it was a totally brutal way for her to go out. Think about it, Cersei has spent pretty much her entire life talking her way out of things, manipulating people, and in general feeling more powerful than everyone else around her, including her family. She died finally realizing that she was completely helpless and all hope was lost. She died knowing that her arrogance and often unnecessary brutality was what had cost herself, her children, the man she loves, and even her own father their lives. 

She couldn’t sass the collapsing rock to death. She couldn’t stall and wait for The Mountain to come to her aid. She couldn’t do anything but break down and cry and tell Jaime she wanted their baby to live, trapped in the same underground passages where she vowed to destroy all three of Dany’s dragons. Cersei wasn’t publicly executed in front of thousands of onlookers. She died UNDERGROUND, unthought of and uncared for by anyone else in the world but Jaime. She died the same death as all of the innocent citizens who died that day in part because of her own arrogance. It wasn’t special. It was lonely, hidden, and desperate - a fitting end for a woman who’s lived her whole life believing in her own importance.

And speaking of Cersei, even Jaime’s apparent regression makes some sense.

Ah, Jaime Lannister, one of the most emotionally complicated men in all of Westeros. I’m not gonna lie, this disappointed me because I had hoped for better for Jaime, but not because it didn’t make sense. We were ALL rooting for Jaime to ditch Cersei, become the noblest man in the whole world and just be with Brienne, who clearly loves him. But if you take a minute to think about it, while Jaime’s character development has been significant, it never really veered away from loving Cersei. 

He’s always been doing what’s best for her, and yes, that includes when he left her to head North. Jaime did that because humanity was in danger, and as such, Cersei was in danger. Barely over a season ago in 7.03, Jaime tells Olenna Tyrell that his love for Cersei has grown beyond his control. He openly admits it and tells Olenna that he doesn’t believe people will care how Cersei took the throne once they’re living in the world she built. He clearly still loves Cersei here, and while he’s tempering some of her most heinous ideas, like flaying Olenna alive, he’s still carrying out her orders. “For Cersei,” as he always says.

Jaime’s love for Cersei went far beyond his control. It was almost more like an addition than true love. His love for Brienne was pure and kind, but even the purest love can’t sway the grasp of an addition. Cersei was all Jaime had ever known, so even if he loved Brienne, even if he knew Cersei was hateful, even if he knew she was doing unspeakable things to the people of Westeros, it STILL makes sense that he went back. It’s legitimately not at all different from some abusive relationship in real life. One partner may realize that the other is abusive and hateful, but they can’t bring themselves to walk away, and when they do, they may go back. That doesn’t make them bad people, and it certainly doesn’t “undo” all of Jaime’s character development over the course of the series. 

Jaime Lannister is an immensely complicated character, and this is GAME OF THRONES we’re talking about. It’s a very human show. So frankly, if he has genuinely left Cersei without a second glance, that would have been immensely disappointing. It’s just not how people work, not after admitting how deep in the relationship he was literally just 9 episodes prior and only leaving to protect mankind from being destroyed.

And finally, let’s talk about the psychotic break of Daenerys Targaryen.

First, just a quick reminder at how utterly human this show is. We’ve got all sorts of realistic depictions of human nature in Game of Thrones. We have very real depictions of PTSD (looking at you, Theon and Sansa), realistic depictions of the horrors of slavery, realistic depictions of racism and ableism, the list goes on for miles. It’s made abundantly clear throughout the series that the Targaryens have a strong family history of mental illness, so here we go people. Let’s talk about mental illness.

Obviously, there are no therapists in Westeros to diagnose Dany with any particular illness, but it’s reasonable to hypothesize that Dany is experiencing psychosis, also known as a “psychotic break”. Something important to not about psychosis: it’s sort of like a break from reality, so the way someone behaves during a psychotic break is not at all who they normally are as a person. And here’s another thing about psychosis: YOU DO NOT SHOW SIGNS OF IT YOUR ENTIRE LIFE, especially not major ones. Not every person who commits a heinous act of violence grew up murdering small animals and saying sadistic things to family members and friends as a child. I’ve seen a lot of anti-Mad Queen Dany arguments online, and I’d like to debunk a few of them with regards to how mental illness often actually works.

1. Dany was an abused child, why would she hurt children?

Yikes, you guys. This is a really weak argument. Many studies have shown that childhood trauma is associated with greater disposition towards psychosis later in life. Obviously not everyone who has gone through a childhood trauma will experience psychosis, but it can actually be a direct contributing factor to a psychotic break.

2. Dany has always showed compassion to innocent people like the slaves across the sea, so why doesn’t she now?

Again, psychosis is not a direct reflection of who someone is as a person because it represents a break from reality. You don’t have to be an intrinsically horrible person to do something bad when you’re not in control.

3. The warning signs were there, but they were too weak to justify what happened to King’s Landing.

When a person experiences psychosis, the EARLY warning signs (let’s just say for the purposes of this argument are things that happened prior to the start of season 8) are often subtle or even unnoticeable until you’re looking back retrospectively. These can include things like spending more time alone than usual (check), suspiciousness or uneasiness with others (check), and having no feelings at all (check, remember when she ended things with Daario and the show made a big deal out of how she didn’t really feeling anything about it?).

The slightly later warning signs (so, this season) include strong and inappropriate emotions (check, she wants to have sex with her nephew not too long after she accused him of trying to steal her throne), social withdrawal (check), odd beliefs (check, her belief that she was sent by god to change the world), and suspiciousness (check). The warning signs were there and frankly exactly what one would expect to see in someone in the prodome (or very early stages) of psychosis.

4. It just happened so suddenly, the build up wasn’t enough.

Actually, it SUPER was enough. Recently, Dany has lost two dragons, her most trusted advisor, her best friend (who she watched be beheaded) and has arrived in a country where nobody likes or trusts her. All of these are pretty freaking traumatic, and a traumatic event can trigger psychosis. Boom. Bang. It makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people are upset about this. We were all rooting for Dany, our hero who walked out of the flames all those years ago with three baby dragons clinging to her. What happened in 8.05 was devastating to watch, but it wasn’t unrealistic. It was actually very well done from a standpoint of how things actually work in the real world. You can be frustrated with how things turned out, you can be devastated by the destruction of King’s Landing and Dany’s break, and you can be pissed about the lazy writing of this season, but you shouldn’t be angry with the show runners for Dany’s descent into madness. It was actually remarkably well done.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Valar morguhlis.

EDIT: Obviously not everyone who goes through a period of psychosis is violent. It is an INCREDIBLY small percentage who actually inflict harm on others during a psychotic break. With that being said, rare as it may be, it does happen, it is a real thing that happens in real life, and cases in which a violent outburst happens are pretty spot-on similar to the way it happened to Dany. As someone who has experienced psychosis myself, I of all people know that not everyone becomes violent. But the portrayal of Dany throughout the whole show does align with the prodome of an exceedingly rare, but real, type of psychosis. I’m sincerely sorry for not clarifying this in my original post 💙

[koi-has-joy]

the secret to being "boring" is to say everything

Voltaire

    Here are a list of words that I know and would like to inform others of!

Tractable - easy to control, obedient

Extrinsic - external, on the outside

Rugged - rough, harsh, bumpy

Yogi - someone that does yoga

Torturous - painful

Orderly - organized, neat

Unique - one of a kind

Receptive - open minded, willing to accept new ideas

Apt - likely, most likely

Nonplussed - confused, unsure, unprepared

Oscillate - rotates, sways back and forth

Throng - a large crowd

Homage - public display of respect

Extricate - escape, remove, free yourself of something

Regress - go back, return to a previous state

Bait - lure, attract, tempt, intisce

Reciprocate - give back, pay back, in return

Idiom - an expression that’s not meant to be taken seriously

Credence - faith, trust, belief, confidence

Kith - friends, acquaintances

Impose - to put in place, force upon

Novelty - something new, original

Taper - to decrease, decline, lessen, reduce, go away

Harangue - long angry speech, rant

Eyesore - unpleasant sight, ugly, unpleasing to the eye

Whim - impulse, sudden desire

Arbiter - somebody that’ll settle a dispute or argument

Legitimate - lawful, legal

Lieu - instead, in place of

Faze - disturb

Archaic - old fashioned, out of style

Bedlam - chaos, commotion

Outlandish - bizarre, unusual, weird

Temerity - courage, gull

Terse - short, brief, to the point, concise

Ornery - mean, grouchy, grumpy

Triskaidekaphobia - fear of the number 13

Modus Operandi - pattern/method of doing something

Egregious - shockingly bad, outstandingly horrible

Denigrate - degrade, criticize, belittle

Gratuitous - unnecessary, unneeded

Iconic - well known, famous, popular

Tact - caution, sympathy, sensitivity, thoughtfulness

Ultimatum - final choice/option/chance

Affront - insult, an offense, a sign of disrespect

Toilsome - involving hard work or labor

Innocuous - not harmful or offensive

Offhand - offensive, carelessly, indifferent

Nepotism - family bias, favoritism

Listless - lifeless, lacking energy or enthusiasm

Insinuate - imply, to suggest, to hint at

Vivacious - full of life, energetic, lively

Indignant - angry

Noisome - stinky

Ostentatious - flashy, extravagant, showy

Neurotic - overly nervous, unstable

Atrocious - terrible, shockingly bad, horrible

Paraphernalia - tools, objects that go along with a particular activity

Recoup - regain, recover

Anomaly - unique, out of the ordinary, unexpected

Yore - a long time ago

Essence - the key element, the basis

Relish - great enjoyment

Stupor - in a daze, state of unawareness, near unconsciousness

Chagrin - disappointment, frustration, annoyance

Hinder - to delay, to obstruct, slow it down

Obviate - prevent, eliminate

Ordeal - challenge, experience of difficulty

Liable - accountable, responsible

Somber - gloomy, grim, serious, sad

Onset - beginning of something, start

Umbrage - offense

Trepidation - fear, nervousness

Discomfit - to make someone uncomfortable

Etymology - the study of words

Meddlesome - nosey

Orientation - the act or process of becoming familiar with something

Nemesis - rival, enemy

Staunch - dedicated, devoted, loyal, reliable

Bonafide - real, actual or genuine

Ire - anger

Loquacious - talkative

Lucid - clearly

Indigenous - native, from originally

Ethic - a set of morals

Jovial - happy, cheerful, friendly, kind

Exacerbate - to worsen

Aspire - to hope for, to dream of

Nullify - numb, cancel out, void

Tout - flaunt, boast

Logistics - plans, steps, arrangements, the process of managing or coordinating

Kismet - fate

Subrosa - secret, hidden

Hone - to sharpen or perfect a skill

Onus - responsibility

Wane - decrease, lessen, decline

Harbor - keep, hold on to 

Obstinate - stubborn

Sycophant - suck up, flatterer

Taut - stretched or pulled tightly

Battery - a long list or series

Lethargic - tired, unmotivated

Unwarranted - unfair, undeserved, unjust

Envoy - message

Status quo - normal, the usual, the way things are

Ubiquitous - everywhere, existing or present everywhere

Extraneous - extra, unnecessary, unrelated

Divisive - separation or hostility

Expound - explain in great detail

Snippet - a small bit of, portion

Histrionic - overly emotional, dramatic

Oraion - formal speech

Ensemble - a group that performs together

Succinct - brief, to the point

Superlative - the best

Tenet - opinion or belief

Acclimate - get used to, adapt

Innate - something you’re born with

Reparation - something you do or pay to make up for something that you’ve done wrong

Watershed - turning point

Ad Nauseam - to the point of annoyance

Yearn - crave, long, desire

Taboo - wrong, forbidden, restricted

Optimal - the best, ideal

Heinous - wicked, evil

Ergo - therefore

Affirmation - approval

Vilify - degrade, criticize, condemn

Edify - change for the better, improve, to instruct

Nexus - center

Magnanimous - generous

Amenable - open, willing, agreeable

Gaggle - noisy group

Inclusive - sharp, clear, direct

Consolidate - combine, unite

Altruism - selfless

Laconic - quick, brief, short, concise

Mesh - connect, work closely together

Yield - produce, grow

Snide - rude, mocking, insulting, sarcastic

Rescind - change, reverse, cancel

Lackadaisical - slow, lazy, unenthusiastic

Seethe - not showing/expressing intense anger

Wince - flinch/cringe in pain

Harmonious - agreeable, peaceful, friendly

Abscond - escape, flee

Trite - unoriginal, overused

Stupendous - extraordinary, astonishing

Evolve - to develop gradually

Repercussions - consequence of a previous action

Absolve - getting rid of guilt/responsibility, flee

Excursion - trip, journey

Negligible - insignificant

Mishap - accident

Sadistic - getting pleasure off of other people's pain, cruel, vicious

Malleable - impressionable, influenceable

Amity - peace, harmony

Existential - pertaining to existence or being

Obsequious - excessively obedient

Loathe - to hate

Solicit - to ask or request

Intricate - complex or detailed

Prodigy - a person or thing with extraordinary traits or abilities

Replete - having plenty, being full of

Delude - to mislead someone into believing something that isn’t true

Homonym - words that sound the same with different meanings

Elusive - hard to catch or pin down

Juxtapose - to put things side by side for comparison

Witless - without intelligence or wisdom, foolish

Zenith - a climatic or highest point

Vehement - very emotional or earnest

Unwieldy - difficult to carry or move due to size, weight or shape

Obligate - to hold someone to accomplishing a task

Transact - to exchange or conduct business with others

Purport - appear or claim to be or do something, especially falsely

Timorous - showing or suffering from nervousness, fear or lack of confidence, timid, without courage

Negate - to deny or cancel

Paltry - small or meager

Petty - of little importance, trivial

Reciprocate - to give in return

Pungent - having a strong smell or taste

Intrepid - confident, fearless

Eschew - to avoid or refrain from using

Divergent - moving progressively away from each other, tending to be different or develop in different directions

Cajole - to persuade through the use of flattery

Tangible - touchable, clear or undeniable

Luminous - glowing or brightly lit

Recuperate - to regain, to restore health or strength

Abnegate - to give up or renounce

Deteriorate - to become worse over time

Maxim - a saying or phrase that expresses a truth or rule

Evanescent - vanishing or fleeting

Usurp - to take wrongful possession

Dominion - sovereignty or control

Tenure - the conditions under which land or buildings are held or occupied

Vicissitude - a change of general situation or circumstances

Undulate - to make wave-like motion, to move like a wave

Prim - formal, proper

Relinquish - to give up or surrender control of something

Sapience - great wisdom or acquired knowledge

Resplendent - shining brightly and pleasantly

Atonement - amends made for a past wrong

Enigma - a mysterious or puzzling thing or person

Fraudulent - deceitful or fake

Reconcilable - capable of being restored to harmony

Iniquity - a weighty wrong or injustice

Jeopardize - to put at risk

Rigmarole - a complex, usually absurd procedure

Salience - the quality of being prominent or standing out

Ameliorate - to male a situation or problem better

Debase - to reduce in value or character

Advocate - to make a case for, to actively support a cause or person

[mantra4ia]

The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Reaction Episode II (spoilers ahead)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I must preface my opinions with the one central point of view that has never wavered: you can be a Star Wars fan and a film critic simultaneously.

Dislikes (big and small)

So in this new trilogy, does everyone know all about the secretive Sith? No one knows where Exogol-Sith-home-world is without a wayfinder. Yet some random spice traders know who the Sith are and that they have a runic language, but nearly the entire Jedi culture disappeared until the tale of Luke Skywalker revived it. This dislike is not isolated to RoS, but it's so odd considering that in the prequels and OT, the Emperor did not put the knowledge of the Sith right out in the open.

Too much telling, not enough doing. I detest plot reveals via exposition, because a majority of the time explain-y dialogue is far inferior to natural conversation. But for two-thirds of the movie, I couldn't settle into the world because I felt like I was being told a Star Wars story instead of being in it. Case point 1: Poe's argument that Rey is training instead of being on the front line to try to verbally push the narrative that she's not just naturally too-gifted. Case point 2: Explaining Force heal to the audience (via droid) after its already been demonstrated as if we can't interpret how it works. AND YET we get no planet captions? Who's advice are you listening to? Disney could spell everything else out in dialogue when it was unnecessary and borderline condescending to audience, but when it mattered you couldn't give us planetary captions so I blinked and missed the fact that we opened with Kylo Ren kicking a** and taking names on freaking Mustafar! That was a great scene. Epic. Kylo’s on a mission, and there ain’t no questing here - it’s as fast and direct as the throat punch. He’s tired of being jerked around, he’s in a position of power to demand answers, and he’s going for the head of the Emperor, all while I was like...was that Mustafar, that was Mustafar, except now we just left Mustafar. DAMMIT.

We see the repair on Kylo's mask but not the repair of Luke's saber, or Rey building her own saber? TLJ broke the most iconic lightsaber and RoS just fixed it off screen (see point above)? I suppose this shouldn't be shocking since they introduced Palpatine IN THE CRAWL, but it was disappointing.

Did like the opening crawl, did not like how it was used as Palpatine’s business card. I think my exact words were: did they really, what kind of movie am I here for?

Leia's death. I don't buy for a second that establishing a Force visitation with Kylo across the galaxy was enough to kill her. TLJ (in my opinion) demonstrated enough to establish her as a powerful force user, which Rise of Skywalker doubled down on using the flashback training scene. So no, I don't think the exertion of it was enough to take her life unless it was inferred that she either wasn't recovered from the events of TLJ or that the Force sensitive impact of Luke's death was taking an extended toll on her, or that she was somehow already overdoing it trying to use other Force abilities behind the scene to protect the resistance/ reach out to Luke. I understand that with Carrie Fisher's (rest in peace) sudden death it would make certain practical sense for Leia to die if fitting, but put all that explanatory dialogue to some good use for once and build up tension so that Leia's death makes sense.

Luke's Force ghost being underutilized. From the beginning I didn't have a problem with Luke's conclusion in Last Jedi (minus a subtle eyeroll at the noble sacrifice trope being easily confused with honor) because it doesn't bother me whether a character is living or not as long as they are still growing. I thought, I hoped, I legitimately put money on the fact the Rise of Skywalker would use Luke in the training of Rey or the haunting of Ben and that he would play an active Force ghost role. He was used for damage control. That was infuriating.

Han Solo. I recognize the irony of this moment being in both my likes and gripes. While I liked seeing Han bestow Ben forgiveness, even if he was just a memory and not a ghost, it quickly became a hollow sort of nostalgia. FULL POST HERE.

Why in the world is there an arbitrary 16-hour frame before the Exogol fleet strike? The Last Jedi gave us a slow space chase and now what, the executive team thinks that the polar opposite is the answer? So you already have to wrap of an entire saga in a 2-3 hour real world runtime, and you've decided to amp up the pace and cram that into 16 hours of Star Wars time just for funsies while the Emperor broadcasts propaganda to kill morale? Rushed, forced, we just spent a chunk of the movie at Fyre Festival in a space desert, don't tell me there wasn't more time to allocate for imminent doom.

So essentially, we had a StarKiller base in TFA, mini-Death Star canon in TLJ, and a thousand Death Star planet killing cannons on Star Destroyers? LET that part of THE PAST DIE!

The execution of Leia training Rey. The idea was wonderful...in practice you can really tell the dialogue was built around her, and the scenes suffer for it. Execution, for the sake of preserving the character Carrie built, may have been accomplished by Tricia or Joely Fisher or her friend Meryl Streep as a way to still honor her.

A case for triple / quadruple convenience. Star Wars has always been a universe of happy coincidences, but Rise of Skywalker takes them to new extremes to the point it smacked me out of the movie. Every movie has it's own unique level of “good faith reserves” after which point plot conveniences elicit “you've got to be kidding” reactions. This happened to me during the setup of Force healing. FULL POST HERE.

Execution of Finn's character. Apart from his force-sensitivity and connection to the trooper defectors, I think Finn's plot regressed in this film each time he had to follow in Rey's wake every time she went solo, (going after Rey in the sciff, yelling Rey in the Death Star battle, Rey I have something to tell you). I thought that we had gotten past this in TLJ when Finn found purpose in the Resistance and something worth fighting for, but old habits die hard. 

Scavenger hunt questing and the damn Sith Dagger. If part of this was in the crawl, that might have been good with me. I get that Rey's a scavenger – it's good to see her in her element like TFA, climbing through the Death Star at the culmination – but it's far too time consuming to do the double header of dagger/wayfinder and coincidental. She could have been standing anywhere on Kef Bir, the oceanic moon of Endor, but she happened to be standing exactly where she needed to be with no reference to force power, and the tides hadn't moved any part of the wreck and the topography hadn't changed at all for the protractor on the dagger to work?! I’m a nerd about mathematical, logical tools, but they don't work well in a Sith alchemy plot! Even when we try for logic, the convenience appears, which could have been passable if I still had good faith. In the words of John Mulaney, “you spent it already?!”

Nostalgia aside, where are the stakes? They're trapped in a sand cave / wait, no they're not. They're being hunted through Fyre Festival and they don't have a get away ship / oh yeah they do, and its fully fueled, parked in the open, not stripped for parts. There are about five different “fake” deaths where the tension releases so fast, and two real deaths of spies that should have been given beats but were skimmed over: Chewie's dead / but no it was the wrong transport, 3PO's peril / never mind we've got backups, Zori wants to turn Rey in for bounty / then they have the quickest fight in Star Wars and are on good terms. Instead of taking big risks and getting reward, this film banked on unraveling the plot by the flip of a two-headed coin and settling for surprise “Oh, they did wot now?” instead of awe.

“Retconning” The Last Jedi / plucking it out of the timeline. Rise of Skywalker, in many ways, feels like a direct sequel to The Force Awakens. Direct slaps to TLJ include but not limited to: Holdo maneuver “one-in-a-million,” and Luke plucking Rey's saber from the fire. “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect (except when its Kylo’s),” and Luke lamenting about going into exile as a mistake. Concepts that could have been accepted, some even verbatim foregone conclusions from TLJ, were it not for terrible execution clearly framed at goodwill appeasement.

So, the Knights of Ren were window dressing? They just follow Kylo around like bouncers and when he turned to the light, they turned on him? A) Like the praetorian guard for Snoke, they are supposed to be loyal to Kylo and if they’re not we should get to see that, B) they just made Ben look boss as he took them out. Epic saber fight, lackluster idea, especially when the Knights were so speculated on and could have had mythos. Take them out of the film and put Luke's ghost in. Problem solved.

Rey as a Palatine / OP (Overpowered) Rey. All the one-ups that ensued between Rey and her grandfather. No thank you. I don't mind that she has power and is very naturally and diversely talented, don't let lineage play a factor. It was vastly more meaningful when she was ‘ordinary.’ I could go into a whole dedicated post on this.

Hux as a spy? No, I can't imagine that's what TFA set him up for. Interesting concept - I don’t want you to win, I want Kylo to lose - terrible setup. The Last Jedi did it better, Benicio del Toro is one of the only things I'll give Canto Byte credit for.

What even is the point of Zori apart from a character used to deliver a plot point of security clearance? She is very much used to prop up Poe's story. I like the idea of the character, I don't dig her role, and even more so I don’t like how the destruction of her planet first was used to fish for emotion. Invest more in Poe's struggles ascending to acting general.

Palpatine overall, from his intro in the crawl to his motives – He's such a cool, larger then life character, it shamefully never feels like we JJ knows what he wants out of the Emperor as his villain. Palpatine's motivation for decades was the dark, unnatural Sith ability to live forever sought by his master Plagueis before him, yet in RoS he's so utterly content to say “kill me so that you can ascend to Empress and I can flow through you (possess you)” – and then the discovery that draining the “Dyad in the Force” can regenerate him changes the plan immediately. Principally its an interesting idea using him as a puppet master to tie *all* the trilogies together, but for me it didn't work as nothing else about his character felt cohesive. And then when his own Force lightning is blasted at him, hasn't he learned to stop using it (throwback: Mace Windu) and pick up a saber and fight. Fool my once, shame on you, fool me twice and I'll cut you down. Wouldn't it be so great if, despite his wizened state, he still had latent combat skills? We were sooo robbed of that opportunity.

“Undermining” Anakin’s arc as the chosen one. I don't think bringing in Palpatine undoes Darth Vader's sacrifice – because Anakin still brought peace and balance to the Force when he sent Papatine back to the shadows. Balance restored by nature is not a permanent state, so it makes sense that the balance Anakin brought would eventually be challenged - but it does take away from the satisfaction of his story, especially considering that we do not see him return in physical form.

I get the "Be with me" use of Force ghost voices from all the Star Wars mediums. It was teed up right in the very beginning of the training montage. But you’re STAR WARS, you are making history. Go big, take a risk, PUT THE FORCE GHOSTS ON SCREEN (or at least a few from the central saga)! Give me Obi-Wan, Anakin, Yoda, maybe Mace, Luke, and Leia bestowing their energy on Rey, or go home! I mean my goodness, the Emperor had Snoke clones, but they were just sitting around as props in tank. If you wanted to go really big you could get all the clones of his main Sith disciples on screen (Snoke, Maul, Dooku), and have him force drain them to illustrate Sidious matching the power of the Force ghosts. But instead Disney played it safe.

Rey’s return to Tatooine and taking on the name Skywalker. FULL POST HERE with better options than appropriating the name Skywalker, especially considering that the plot does plenty to fulfill the film’s marquee during the Final Order Battle on Exogol when Rey embodies the Force of the Jedi and they will her to RISE. Taking on the name by contrast seems to trivialize via overkill what was delivered on (imperfectly, but powerfully).

The death of Ben Solo / “the redemption”: This depends on largely on what how you define and merit redemption. I can see why some loved it and others hated it – if you define redemption as “Kylo turned good after all that universe wrecking carnage and now he has access to light side force ability?!” then I can see where you didn't like or want his redemption arc, and might be satisfied with his death as a conclusion. If, like me, you didn't see Kylo's redemption not as the act of turning good but rather turning to face his own reflection / the thing he most feared – himself – exactly like Rey – and that's what allowed him access to the light side abilities to heal, that's fascinating as h***.  My gripe is I don't think Ben needed to die for the redemption to work or as a way to finish his arc. (FULL POST HERE) Again, why another Luke-themed noble demise? It could have worked for Luke’s character because Rise of Skywalker follows TLJ and gives you room to breath and play. But there’s nothing after this episode for Kylo in the same way.

So peace was created by defeating Palpatine and his fleet? Nah. First of all, Rey killed Darth Sidious exactly like he “wanted” her to and yet he didn't possess her as promised, while an order of Sith stand around watching– okay, was the Emperor really that attune in his Force Cognizance that he expressed with full confidence to his followers “whatever happens, the ritual will be complete. Don't move, sit back, enjoy the show”? And there's still the fragmented First Order (see the previous point above). Not every First Order officer and ship were loyal to or trusting of the Emperor and his comrade General Pryde, so it would stand to reason they didn't all heed the call to the final order and join the fray. What happens to them now that their Supreme Leader (Kylo) abdicated and then died? Yes, they are far fewer in number and they no longer have the firepower of Exogol behind them so they retreat into that shadows and regroup like opposition always does. I don't believe for a second that they all gave up or were defeated by the groundswell of Resistance. And now we are right back to where Return of the Jedi left us almost beat for beat.

Initial Reaction *** Episode I *** Episode III

[dgcatanisiri]

So, I was thinking again about the issues I have regarding The Last Jedi (yes, I know, I probably just lost like half of you there)...

So, walking out of the theater, my mental scoring of things legitimately put it in the “low B/high C” range. Not bad, not the worst thing ever, but flawed enough that kept in from greatness in my eyes.

And then the backlash hit, and... Whatever meaningful discourse there was, it got drowned out. And while there was that chunk of the racist, sexist, “wah you ruined my childhood!” (only using a different word than ruined) whiny fanboys... There was ALSO this chunk that basically hailed it as utter perfection beyond reproach, and that if you had ANY criticism of the movie, then you fell into that former category.

(In fairness, that reaction does make sense in the fact that it was the former category highjacking the criticism, but still...)

And I think that it was in response to THAT attitude that really pushed me towards hating the movie. Not because it INHERENTLY was bad, but that there was this vocal contingent that demanded that I see it as wholly good. 

And just... I think it’s a flawed movie. I genuinely do. It rehashes the story that several characters went through in the previous film. It demotes Finn - the male lead from TFA - to a “comedic” C-plot that could be cut entirely and ignores the contribution his unique character could have (a deserter stormtrooper returning to the First Order). Rey gets reduced to Kylo’s sexy lamp, becoming convinced that SHE can “save” him from the dark side, after the climax of TFA was two people she cared deeply for being on the receiving end of his lightsaber, one fatally, the other put into a coma (which, going back to Finn for a moment, gets resolved in seconds of screentime, and AGAIN played for laughs, because why is a coma patient shoved into an unattended storeroom instead of in a medical ward?). There is not enough development of Luke Skywalker for me to see how a character whose last appearance beyond the cameo of TFA involved him proudly proclaiming “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” becomes the self-isolating hermit declaring “the Jedi must end.” I said at the time that if anyone deserved to tell Luke to let go of the past it was not the goblin who refused to acknowledge his attachment to the Jedi Order as an institution but Anakin Skywalker, the man whose attempt to follow those rules broke. To say nothing of the many flaws of the Poe-Holdo scenario that range from having redubbed her dialogue in the name of making Poe seem more hot-headed to her wearing a cocktail dress in the midst of a military scenario reaching an existential crisis, all the way to the fact that it was an intentional writer’s decision to call her interactions with him “flirting.” (No, I’m not exaggerating, this is from an interview with the costume designer who quotes Rian Johnson’s reaction to her initial costume designs for Holdo looking more military in design.) On top of all of that, the First Order was treated like a fringe movement that suddenly obtained a nuke in TFA, while in TLJ, they were, in every respect except name, the Empire - the Empire that had been built on the bones of the Old Republic, only to be toppled in Return of the Jedi and pushed out to the fringes by the New Republic. This movie basically reset the political board to the original trilogy’s dynamics, without accounting for the changes that came over time. 

It is a very flawed movie, and the fact that these things that I saw as being flaws as actively being the reason that so many seemed to praise the movie as the best thing to happen to Star Wars... THAT, I feel, more than the movie itself, is what soured me so much on it. Because I was legitimately seeing this from people who make film and media critique a career, and just... I can see this so easily as flaws, and things that bring it down, and I don’t see how it is that I’m the weird one, missing these things, seeing just how it didn’t work for me, in such detail that I am still writing pages on the ‘why’ to this day. It feels like they all got distracted by the shiny surface, missing what was underneath.

There’s also the fact that, in the movie where the script actively calls for most of the time and focus to be on the women and people of color, THIS is the story where they all end up failing. That this is a movie that explores the concept of heroes failing us RIGHT at the point when it should be presenting these “new generation of heroes,” where these characters do the same kinds of things that white male heroes do all the freaking time in movies, rebelling against authority, taking one-in-a-million chances, risking lives on the hope of success... and failing. So, in effect, I see a story whose message can be taken as “leave the heroing to the white guys, women/non-white people suck at this.”

(I mean, I will state it for the record that I don’t genuinely believe this to be the intended message. My point is just... That’s a very real subtext I feel in this story, and my impressions of the hype for The Rise of Skywalker, at least in the corners of Tumblr that I frequent, is that this message was received, even if it wasn’t what was meant to be sent - writer intention is, at best, one tenth of audience reaction.)

And, again, because of the attitude that spread of “if you didn’t like it, you must be one of those assholes who can’t accept Star Wars changing,” it wasn’t even particularly worth it to argue, because you’d end up dismissed before speaking your piece. 

But you know, I’ve been there through Star Wars evolutions before. I loved the New Jedi Order series, that was what brought me in to the Expanded Universe. I even managed to enjoy the subsequent Legacy of the Force/Fate of the Jedi novels, though I found them flawed. Hell, my big complaint there, looking back on them a decade later isn’t their mere existence. It’s the fact that they backtracked on a changing view of the Force, a change of tearing down the light/dark dichotomy. Legacy and Fate go out of their way to basically undermine the entire idea that the Force IS. And one of my favorite games - not even Star Wars, I’m talking period - is KOTOR 2, which is ALL. ABOUT. deconstructing the Star Wars mythos.

And so when people said that “Star Wars is changing, it needs to evolve,” honestly? I just saw regression - Empire versus Rebels, white man taking center stage, even the fact that the ending centered around the actions of the Original Trilogy’s hero, rather than the new generation of heroes - again, going back to the “message received” thing, it veers uncomfortably close into “sit down kids, and let yesterday’s hero fix your mistakes.”

TL;DR: I think that the response that basically tried to cut any criticism of TLJ, not just the bad faith arguments, but also shouting down the good faith ones, ended up souring me more on the film than necessarily the film itself. 

[missphase]

Sonic characters aren’t fucking kids.

They don’t have kid physique.

People aren’t drawing porn about em to sexualize infantility.

The canon ages are put there by the creators (and adjusted time and time again by regressing the main cast’s age BACKWARDS, even) as an argument in what age demography they believe their franchise is for.

Stop trying to de-legitimize artists/audience members, to the point of accusing them of being pedophiles, just because you don’t like Sonic porn.

Also My Little Pony characters are ACTUAL kids. And people DO draw porn of them to sexualize zoophilia. Even then, I don’t give a shit. You do you. But eat shit if you try to pin me down as a fucking pedophile.