#that's a whole 'nother ball of wax

[veryferaldistributions]

The Blatantly Queer Episodes of “My Two Dads” (Another Short Essay)

So, there are essentially two episodes from the series that cemented in my mind that Joey and Michael are meant to be seen as a serious domestic couple, these being set aside from the MANY winks to the camera throughout the show’s run. These episodes are “The Only Child” and “Joey’s Mother-in-Law.”

The first episode depicts a situation where Nicole is trying to manipulate her fathers into letting her do something they wouldn’t agree to otherwise by asking them for something she thinks they can’t give her: a little brother. And that should be the end of it…but then Joey and Michael actually consider adopting another kid. And DO end up fostering a child named Ben for a short period of time. And, make all the arguments you want for them just being friends in regards to them parenting Nicole, but it is a WHOLE ‘nother ball of wax for them to agree (as “friends”) to adopt a second child. And aside from the wink-wink implication that they themselves cannot reproduce, it’s not seen as a joke.

And the story then pivots to being more about Nicole being jealous of her dads’ affection towards Ben as a boy, with her insinuating they didn’t want a girl. After he’s adopted by another family, Ben never reappears after this episode, unfortunately, and I do somewhat wish he had, if nothing else as Nicole’s friend/pseudo-brother. Again, as someone who is a “donor kid,” I have several half-siblings I’ve gotten in touch with and it would’ve been nice to see Nicole maintain that relationship.

The second episode in question is taken even more seriously than the first, despite the tongue-in-cheek title and the somewhat joking sentence of Joey calling Mrs. Taylor his “mother-in-law” aloud. In this episode, Michael’s mother comes for a very abrupt visit and quickly starts trying to control everything and everyone in the family. This builds to a very serious, very heartfelt confrontation between Michael and his mother, where Michael point-blank states that his mom doesn’t think of him and Joey as “real parents,” and that he knows she wouldn’t be the same way if he was married to a woman and had a baby with her.

This is a real conversation MANY queer parents have with their own moms and dads. (One that, I am certain, at least one of my moms had with theirs.)

I was absolutely floored that this conversation was treated as dead-serious as it was. And then later, without any laugh track or hint of humor (or even the dreaded implication that Michael is Joey’s “wife”), Michael’s mother refers to Joey as her “son-in-law” and asks him to drive her to the airport, as “that’s what son-in-laws do.” I wanted to kiss this episode. It was glorious. And, truthfully, it’s probably my favorite episode of the series.

(For all that, and the pointedly hilarious segment where Joey tries to suffocate Michael with a pillow, and Nicole walks in on them in an implied “intimate moment.”)

So, despite the show’s constant winks at the audience, these were the two episodes I found to be the most compelling arguments for Michael and Joey being legitimate domestic partners as well as just being Nicole’s dads.

[senshilegionnaire]

things i say unironically and without thinking:

holy shinola

listen, buster

hey buddy, knock it off

for the love of mike

for crying out loud

jeez louise

all that and a bag of chips

that's a whole nother ball of wax/yarn

how d'you like THEM apples??

look, pal

go take a long walk off a short pier

christ on a crutch

whaddya want, egg in your beer?

oh for pity's sake

and i sound fairly jersey city when i do

[xtrablak674]

Wow so much happened in one day.

We got back from our morning yoga, a nice way to break up the walking from the week that was low impact but still good exercise. It was a flurry of make-up brushes, fabric, shoes and jewelry being tossed about as we got ready to take downtown Brooklyn by storm. It was one young ladies coming out in a very public way, and seeing if a certain mature dog had any new tricks. Would our dynamic duo impress a very thick-skinned and opinionated Black Brooklyn crowd or what they be ignored into obscurity?

I had chosen our accessories very carefully anticipating a potentially sunny situation, this gamble paid off majorly. I had also got my niece warmed up for what kind of attention to expect once we got to the festival. As one of Brooklyn's royalty I knew exactly how to make her coming out a success. Setting the tone that bad bitches don't hurry, we took a very leisurely stroll down Washington to Park Avenue on our way towards Commodore Barry Park. The gasps, smiles, open comments and stares let me knew we had selected exactly the right looks for this years AfroPunk festival. I knew we would be the belles of the ball!

We were working the vendor booths and I had stopped to get some re-twisting oil for my locs. I completed the transaction and turned around to find Anisha gone, tragedy had occurred when my back was turned! In the sea of coloured hair, flowing silks, taffetas and wax prints I had a challenge ahead of me. But then I remembered that we were like the only attendees with our special accessory and I looked for that and found her!

It is with great sympathy I report that my nephew Henry Allen Gentle had passed that morning after some restlessness we had known about from the previous day... Master Henry was borne on September 7, 2016 and in his brief life had bought great joy to his parents.

But I didn't know this at the time, I had a glamorous and very distressed niece on the phone and she kept shouting "Don't go!" over and over again, I had no idea WTF had happened. Now low key I was hoping her trashy boyfriend had dumped her so she could finally get an upgrade to a nice young lady or a medium brown complected brother, I was going to prepare my face to look suitable sad and disappointed albeit we know in my heart I felt a whole 'nother way. But sadly that wasn't the case her pet rabbit of six years had passed in his sleep and she wanted to make sure her boyfriend properly disposed of the body...

But we are big girls, so the make up was checked touched up and we went back to our adoring public, and of course we went in hard on the vendors. We got make-up, multiple sunglasses, kimonos, pants that would make Ms. Celie proud, of course jewelry, scarves, free tote bags and loads of warm welcomes. We had special blessings to bestow amongst the various vendors bringing some of them to tears, but all in all we spread love, the Brooklyn way!

The only rocky point of a day was a run-in with a photographer named Ms. Dubois, I know her name because she gave me her card after doing an impromptu photoshoot. This was a trend the same photographers approaching us again, I lost count of how many videos and photos we had taken by the end of the day, but I think we both had a greater respect for professional models. We were approached by Ms. Dubois who albeit my short interaction I trusted, so when she said she would take Anisha's bag while she shot her we trusted that she would return it, she didn't. This wasn't her purse, it was a bag of booty we had acquired at the festival.

I told Anisha to stay calm and allow all that positive energy we had put out to come back to us, we slowly and methodically searched the park and finally came across Ms. Dubois who had no blue gift bag over her shoulder and seemed a little confused why we were looking for her she broke into very defensive speeches about how she tells people to watch their belongings and I reminded her that she literally took the bag off of my nieces shoulder and uttered no such warning, more importantly she subsequently wandered off with the same bag.

Let's be clear I don't think her actions were out of maliciousness as much as forgetfulness. We were all heading back to the original spot where we did the shoot and about 30 feet away abandoned but intact Anisha spotted the bag and we hurried over to it, she was upset because she had left her phone in it. I was calm but disturbed at Ms. Dubois reticence to apologize for the accidental theft. She seemed to be unrepentant about her actions and I told my niece that if she can't take responsibility for her actions we had nothing else to say to her and directed her to leave with me immediately. Ms. Dubois was feeling a little repentant trying to focus on, but the bag was found, yes only by the grace of Goddess I said not because of your irresponsibility with other people's things. We tried to breathe the incident on and went to the VIP tent to collect ourselves.

After listening to a couple of acts we took up a quest to find the wellness area we had kept hearing about on the main-stage, we finally found it, and the set up with Black Girls Sew, Anisha was a bit excited too because she had also heard about this organization all the way down in Orlando. We partook of the booths, bookmarked some purchases for the next day and sat down to a peach and ginger infused drink before deciding to call it a day and head back to the Heights.

All in all it was a very fulfilling and affirming day filled with so much Black love and #BlackGirlMagic, my niece saw people just like her with bodies just like hers looking beautiful, confident and well accepted by the wider community, I did low-key say, they weren't going to know what to do with her when she got back to Orlando because she was going to hopefully be Feelin' Herself for a long time! #✌🏿

[Photo by Brown Estate]

[mindhuestudio]

New camera, who dis? So finally an evening when it’s not raining, or cloudy, I don’t have cold or am not completely fagged out from moving printing presses around. Which means I can FINALLY see how my new iPhone 13 likes taking pictures of astronomical objects. Woo-hoo! With the Moon, it does pretty well, at least if you give it about twenty seconds. It's like, “well, big bright blob, black background, hmmmm… oh, the MOON, duh!” and it suddenly snaps into proper focus and exposure. No futzing around with taking a video and then finding the right frame to take a screenshot (although I did include one). Caveat: This *is* a full moon, we shall see how it deals with a thin crescent. Then I tried Jupiter. Whole nother ball of wax. The camera refused to focus, tried to macro the glass of the eyepiece lens, pouted because it was too dark, and started stacking frames in order to obtain a nice sunny blue sky. It was seriously freaking out. Trying video went all pear-shaped. 1x, 3x, wide-angle, telephoto — the poor code was at a complete loss as to what the hell I was trying to do. At this point, I started throwing things at the wall, and something stuck. The setting that worked the best was Portrait Mode (!) with no magnification. All the sudden I got a crisp rendering of the eyepiece view, without an attempt to achieve a daylight sky at night. Whew! There were some artifacts, but Jupiter and its moons came out remarkably sharp. They are Ganymede-Jupiter-Europa-Callisto, for those keeping score. (Io is technically visible but it’s too close to Jupiter’s glare to discern.) It would be nice if there was a “prosumer” mode for the iPhone camera app, where you could actually select things like f/stop and exposure and turn on and off various digital processing features to see what might work, but that’s probably something anathema to how Apple runs its User Journey these days. There are probably third-party solutions out there, but I’m too tired to go look right now. #iphoneastrophotography #lunarphotography #themoon #20xbinoculars #shallowskyastronomy #galileanmoons #jupiter #io #europa #ganymede #callisto #iphone13 #iphonecamerahacks #newcamerawhodis https://www.instagram.com/p/CjhFQl1sO5S/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[reflexletterpress]

New camera, who dis? So finally an evening when it’s not raining, or cloudy, I don’t have cold or am not completely fagged out from moving printing presses around. Which means I can FINALLY see how my new iPhone 13 likes taking pictures of astronomical objects. Woo-hoo! With the Moon, it does pretty well, at least if you give it about twenty seconds. It's like, “well, big bright blob, black background, hmmmm… oh, the MOON, duh!” and it suddenly snaps into proper focus and exposure. No futzing around with taking a video and then finding the right frame to take a screenshot (although I did include one). Caveat: This *is* a full moon, we shall see how it deals with a thin crescent. Then I tried Jupiter. Whole nother ball of wax. The camera refused to focus, tried to macro the glass of the eyepiece lens, pouted because it was too dark, and started stacking frames in order to obtain a nice sunny blue sky. It was seriously freaking out. Trying video went all pear-shaped. 1x, 3x, wide-angle, telephoto — the poor code was at a complete loss as to what the hell I was trying to do. At this point, I started throwing things at the wall, and something stuck. The setting that worked the best was Portrait Mode (!) with no magnification. All the sudden I got a crisp rendering of the eyepiece view, without an attempt to achieve a daylight sky at night. Whew! There were some artifacts, but Jupiter and its moons came out remarkably sharp. They are Ganymede-Jupiter-Europa-Callisto, for those keeping score. (Io is technically visible but it’s too close to Jupiter’s glare to discern.) It would be nice if there was a “prosumer” mode for the iPhone camera app, where you could actually select things like f/stop and exposure and turn on and off various digital processing features to see what might work, but that’s probably something anathema to how Apple runs its User Journey these days. There are probably third-party solutions out there, but I’m too tired to go look right now. #iphoneastrophotography #lunarphotography #themoon #20xbinoculars #shallowskyastronomy #galileanmoons #jupiter #io #europa #ganymede #callisto #iphone13 #iphonecamerahacks #newcamerawhodis https://www.instagram.com/p/CjhFCzbuts-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[everyforkedroad]

Genre romance, bias, and Kinnporsche

I know I'm asking for it, but I feel like I have to get this off my chest.

The bias against the romance genre is one of the constant elements across all media that I consume and Kinnporsche: The Series is no exception. Kinn and Porsche are given a classic romance arc, complete with a meet cute, the end of act crisis, incoming black moment and resolution. And yet, despite the series being marketed as a mafia romance people are still out here complaining about...the romance? Like, did they not get the memo that they are watching...a high concept romance between Kinn and Porsche set in a mafia world? Do they realize romance has conventions like any other genre that need to be followed? If viewers came for the mafia stuff and were disappointed by the lack of gore, angst and trauma wrt the main couple, and are rebelling against the fluff that KP has been serving up, it might simply be that they are shopping in the wrong genre.

I realize a lot of the blame for the disparity between expectation and what the show delivered is also the fault of the novel, which did a piss-poor job of, well, basically everything except for the plot (which, together with the sex scenes, is why I suspect it became so popular despite its numerous and egregious defects). However, the show does a phenomenal job of taking the best elements of the novel and leaving the chaff on the cutting room floor.

Even with this fact in mind, the novel itself is presented as a romance and though it has some moments of grit, it doesn't make it any less of a romance. As such, the romantic elements, including the fluff and showing the couple being in love, are strong because that's kind of the point. It's a convention of the genre to show the reader/viewer why the two love interests should be together. The only way to do that is to show them in full, unabashed love. And that's going to include fluff, sex, and even the kind of rom-com humor that is, coincidentally, also a part of Thai storytelling conventions as well.

We should be grateful because Kinnporsche actually does something very clever, reserving the classic romance arc for KinnxPorsche, while serving up dark romance with VegasPete (very well done, I might add) and even giving us a little traditional BL/yaoi fix with KimxChay. There really is something for everyone, and they manage to make it work.

So when I see people complain about the fluffier elements of Kinnporsche, all I can think is, how do you say you hate romance without saying you hate romance?

[arizonapoppy]

Update:

The good news is that I have finished proofreading the ms for Chapter 5. The bad news is that now I have to return all the edits to the Google Doc.

I have no idea if this is any good. I’ve done enough public speaking and recorded myself enough that I can comfortably listen to my recordings and critique myself, but writing is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.

[a-knight-in-shining-rainbows]

Look.

If I, a queer woman, look at a boy and go “wow, I’m queer” or “wow, I’m gay” or “wow, I’m [insert identity here]” that’s valid.

“But it’s attraction the the opposite genDer you cant call that gAy or qUeEr!!!!111!”

Yes, I can. You know why?

Because both gay and queer are used as catch-all terms for the attraction we feel as members of the community. The attraction I feel to a man is different for me than it is for any Allocishet girl out there, because I have that difference in attraction. I’m demiromantic and aspec. My attraction towards boys is “queer” because my attraction is queer, period! Same for bi people, pan people, poly people, whatever. Their attraction is queer and part of the community, therefore their attraction to the opposite gender (or what we consider the opposite gender because non-binary people exist, but that’s a whole nother ball of wax) is queer!

Anyway. My point is that if you are not monoamorous, allosexual, alloromantic, heterosexual, heteromantic, or cisgender - all of them- then you are part of the community, and you are allowed to say “wow, I’m gay” if someone of a different gender walks by, even if it’s not considered “same-sex” attraction.

[atricksterproblem]

5, 7, and 9? uwu (kittyandco)

5) if your f/o’s source has no canon info about their family, how do you imagine it? has your f/o disclosed anything about them?

There is very little canon information. What we do know is that his father was Papa Nihil and his brothers are Papas I and II. He gets along very well with his brothers (although he and Secondo bicker quite a bit) and not at all well with his father. From a headcanon perspective his mother was an Italian witch named Isabella, who unfortunately died while he was still very young. He lived with her, and then with his maternal grandparents, before the Church came for him at the age of 10. He also has demon lineage both from the Emeritus line genetically and House Lilith by way of magic (his demon-sire was an incubus) but that’s a WHOLE nother ball of entirely-made-up wax. 

7) what does your f/o like to read?

All sorts of things. He’s very fond of Roman and Italian literature--Virgil and Dante are both favorites--as well as some of the other classics. He reads a fair amount of history and poetry. And he also reads fantasy, science fiction, and the odd biography. We have a LOT of books. The only reason we have space for them all is that many of them are borrowed from the Abbey library and swapped out regularly for a new stack. 

Most people don’t realize that he loves to read. The thing is that the material has to be able to hold his attention. As long as he’s interested enough, he’s fine. The problem comes when he’s forced to read things that bore him, as used to happen when he was still in school. 

9) what’s your f/o’s favorite color combination?

Probably purple and black with either gold or silver accents, as seen on his vestments. He also appreciates other jewel-tone colors.

Thanks for asking!

[sol1056]

six anons: wtf were they thinking

Another round-up! I seem to have poked the hornet’s nest when it comes to the EPs --- though in some ways I was just building on the same clues that prompted such awesome meta from @janestrider​ and @ptw30​ --- and now I have a box filling up with asks, all over again.

Behind the cut: newbie writers, EP arrogance, earlier versions of S7, writerly randomness, EPs aren’t writers, and over-confidence. Welp. 

Let’s get this started.

Your words about being fascinated by this trainwreck is me 100%, I'm a newbie writer & I wouldn't dream of being this arrogant and think I can handle writing something like VLD by myself, like, premise and character arcs and characterization and consistency etc. are in my mind at all times and I still would have messed things up, but minor things like that don't even matter to the EPs apparently! VLD Is a giant What Not To Do list. How did they miss the 50 signs saying Danger: Cliff Up Ahead

and a second in the same vein:

Calling the EPs newbie writers is highly inaccurate methinks, newbie writers upon getting the reins ... sit down and write the rest of the story from scratch, trying to make it make sense and not completely ruin the premise and the character arcs. Regardless of success, they WRITE the rest, they don’t assemble random story points others wrote & copy paste things around. EPs aren’t writers.

Well, there’s newbie and there’s newbie-who-doesn’t-realize-it. 

Consider someone who’s ridden the train, every day, for the past ten or so years, always sitting in the first car near the conductor. They’ve been on the train when it’s broken down, when it’s late, when it’s early, when it has to plow through snow. Then someone offers them a supervisory position -- not as a driver, just a supervisor -- and they figure, hey, I’ve watched this enough, I can drive, too. Plus, the EPs had the power to force the real drivers to step aside, which just makes the entire situation even worse.  

In other words, they missed the signs because they didn’t even realize such signs exist. Those things you don’t learn (or even see) when you’re only watching from the outside. 

You, and everyone else replying, are classifying yourself more as the person who’s gotten a job on the train, and you kinda know trains, and you know they can break down, but driving it? Whole ‘nother ball of wax. 

Hold onto that humility. It’ll serve you well as a writer. Even once you reach the point you can confidently handle a complicated storyline, you still want to retain that humility, because it’s one-half of keeping empathy for your readers. 

The irony is, they were so arrogant in their belief they could do better than actual storytellers w/ years of experience (also presumably execs who checked up on them) that they not only loudly (and unprofessionally) complained about specific parts, but also broadcasted that they changed the story, and gave many clues as to where and above all why. 

You have no idea how many times in the past two years my jaw has dropped in complete shock when yet another EP quote has gone by on my dash. I cannot fathom making public that I disagreed with my bosses --- let alone using an interview to re-litigate a case I’d already lost. Well, I could, but only if I didn’t expect to have a job much longer. And that bit about doing “damage control” as a result of exec demands? Jeepers crow, dude. 

(there have been points where all I can say is, ‘wtf do these people have on their bosses to get away with this!?’ photograph negatives for blackmail? sleeping with an exec? I mean, srsly.)

On a more serious note, I’m constantly reminded of the old adage about innkeepers: you want to appear as a swan, gliding peaceful and serene, and never let the guests see that you’re paddling as fast as fuck under the surface. These EPs need a major come-to-jesus about that, because they’ve gone out of their way to splash loudly on a regular basis.

Then again, I don’t think either EP has much (if any) experience with interviews where they’re the main attraction. They seem ignorant of the fact that an interviewer is not your friend; there’s an agenda, and that agenda is to get clicks: something controversial, surprising, that’ll bring the eyeballs. The good interviewers can and will manipulate for their agenda. This is why PR people are usually present (if off-screen), because they’ll know the warning signs and call a halt, set certain questions (or answers) as off-limits. 

Most of the EPs’ interviews, there’s been no sign of PR. Hell, the EPs have admitted in interviews they couldn’t remember what had happened in the season they’re being interviewed about! (wtf srsly wtf) If we got more than we should’ve, that’s also on the EPs for not realizing they were getting played. 

And while I’m at it: an interview is not where you tell the story. Explain what did happen? Sure, though that’s a tacit acknowledgement that the story failed, if it requires your explanation after the fact. But to tell things that are vital to the story but don’t actually happen in the story? No. Just no. 

did we really get an interview where the EPs confirmed there was an original script with Shiro as the Black Paladin? If that's the case then HOLY CRAP. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Yep, I saw the quote but didn’t chase down the source. I think it was one of the interviews shortly after S7 aired. You’d need to ask someone who still reads all those interviews, since I don’t. I only see what goes past on my dash.

Well, missed opportunity but also... we all know (or should know) that the first idea is never what makes it to page or screen. And once the story’s done and the dust has settled, then you can do a track commentary about how the story changed between idea and execution. 

While the story’s in progress? Nope, nope, nope. You smile and say it’s all going according to plan, it’s an awesome season, you hope everyone enjoys it, everyone went the extra mile, etc. You say nothing about the disasters, the late-night sessions, the last-minute changes. If you can’t be a swan, be a cat: yep, we totally meant to do that.

To say what JDS did? I still cannot fathom why anyone would ever say that. There is no fandom on this planet that wouldn’t have some percentage enraged by news they’d been denied the story they’d expected. Hinting at discarded paths will always, always, disappoint someone --- and quite often, a lot more someones than you realize. 

Really, the only reason I can see is sheer contempt. For the audience, for the story, for anyone who’d worked on that previous version. It’s gloating. It’s saying, a lot of people worked on it, but we decided to throw away everything they’d done, and redo it as we wanted. 

Yes, I know that happens. It’s part of the process. But you don’t freaking boast about it, and you don’t plant in everyone’s head that there was something else out there. Especially when that something else was exactly what they’d been waiting for. 

It’s an asshole move, no two ways around it. 

@janestrider's post and yours about the VLD writers and EPs reminded me of a phrase JDS said in one interview after S6 about Cosmo ... "well, I wanted to give Keith a wolf, so I did". ... he doesn't seem to consider the consequences of his actions? That's also how he decided to write the Black Paladins episode ... "I wanted to make it a Winter Soldier type of thing, so I did". It feels like something a very unexperienced professional would do.

There’s no rule against throwing something into a story that you think is cool. I mean, easily 90% of any story out there revolves around something the author thinks is just freaking cool. Considering the hours we’re going to spend writing, revising, writing again, revising again, discussing, thinking, living, breathing, eating, dreaming about the story? It’d better be something we find cool. 

But that said... there’s a difference between making sure the story fires you up, and treating the story like a tossed salad. I’ve seen multiple pull-quotes from LM that affirm their approach was to chase the rule-of-cool. And... that’s not quite so okay, really. 

The Black Paladins episode is probably the best example, and ironic that it’s the only one JDS wrote, ‘cause it’s textbook failure. If you cannot hold the entire story in your head, then you will be blind as to how tossing in this idea or that -- no matter how cool -- may halt, muddy, or even undermine the story’s forward movement. When you can’t even pace a story properly, throwing in extra cool is just going to make the whole thing even more rickety. 

I did a long walk-through on that episode to outline how I’d translate it into a written story, and I’d planned to do a follow-up talking about the emotional aspect. The problem is... once I had a chance to think about the episodes after, there is no emotional context to that fight. Sure, it got a huge budget and attention, and it’s hyped like a big deal. 

But there’s no there, there. 

None of it matters. Keith went through all that for someone who wasn’t even his friend, someone who dies (or whatever) right after and is treated like an empty shell. And the one who rescued him wasn’t even the person he’d fought, but the person he’d thought he was fighting for and with -- who was dead, the whole time. The two episodes that follow basically gut the entire premise --- and all the emotion --- of that fight scene, and render it null. 

And that’s where the rule-of-cool smashes up against the need to hold the shape of the story in your head. You need to see the big picture of how each scene supports the story’s theme. JDS hasn’t the chops to see how what he’d created was promptly undone by what came next. 

Oh, I’m aware there are lots of fans who loved that episode and he sure basked in the accolades, but I can’t ignore that in the end, it means nothing. No one pointed out this will impact another thing downstream, or this later thing undermines what came before, or this breaks a continuous motif, or contradicts a theme. Anything. 

Or maybe someone did, and JDS told them that as the EP, he got the final say. Frankly, from the way he talks in interviews, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if that’s how it went down. 

@lysanatt commented on a post:

This to some degree even explains the over-confidence of EPs that avoiding the BYGs trope did not apply to them because, sure, they could do it better, landing them in the exact trap of doing a classic double BYG.

Call it what it is. It’s not over-confidence. It’s arrogance.

It’s complacency in over-estimating social capital as to what an audience might forgive or overlook. It’s an assumption that job titles or IMDB entries or the nice things people had said on twitter could be protection from being held accountable. It’s certainty that a rigid and uncreative vision of the story can and should override all other concerns, including the larger playing field in which this story is only one of millions. 

It’s a lack of concern for real-world damage. A lack of care for the craft. A lack of understanding that there even is a craft and it’s not learned overnight. A lack of willingness to stop and think about what the story is saying, what it means, what it’s trying to do. 

It’s an inflexible certainty, engendered and enabled by the near-constant attentive interviews and adoring reviews. It’s an inability to hold onto (or listen to) any reality-checks when it comes to hype. It’s falling so hard into enjoying the ego-strokes of constant interview and congratulatory reviewers and forgetting no one is doing anything out of altruistic reasons. Including them. 

In the end, it’s a complete failure of empathy. It’s near-constant trolling of execs and the audience at large, a broken record of obvious contempt. It’s an amoral and frankly callous disregard for the characters, the story, the messages, the themes. 

It’s never seeing the characters as people, and never seeing the audience as people, either. Stories matter because we, as human beings, care about other human beings, real or fictional --- a care the EPs have made clear they cannot, or will not, afford anyone but themselves. 

[lysapadin]

Do you think you'll ever write shance again? I noticed you don't have the tag "twinks" anymore do you hate lance now? So I'm not sure if reading your fics would be appropriate for my heart. Poor Lance never did get the character arc he deserved. Neither did shiro.

I don’t hate Lance! It’s just that the way the canon is going has really focused my shipping on Shiro and Keith/Lance and Allura. I don’t see Shiro/Lance being a thing so much these days, so I changed my tag to be a little more accurate. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a thing or two with Shiro, Keith, and Lance that has the twinks tag, though. 

Now, if we want to talk about clone!Shiro and Lance, well, that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Heh.

In either case, my fic is still Lance-friendly! Hell, it’d be Lance-friendly even if I loathed Lance (which I don’t) on account of the fact that I am super super not into character-bashing. And I have to write a little bit more Lance and Shiro because I still need to finish writing A Friend In Need, so there you have it. 

[alikat7]

What are you talking about? It looks like he’s going after the IEG guy at the lawyer’s office, not Pam. Please, we know they aren’t gonna show that. They’ve gotta keep the romanticization alive, right?

That's why I asked because I couldn't tell who he was going to hit

IMO up until Brandon was born, they were lovey dovey in love. Like Tommy was completely in love and the sextape really just messed them up. It's really sad when you think that a tape that mostly shows two newlyweds just enjoying each other and being in love then went on to destroy so much. 😞 My point is the show is showing them in that newlywed stage because that's how they were at that time. I think the timeline of the show will end before it all fell apart.

I honestly don't know if it's better or worse to not show it. maybe they just want to focus on the effect of the tape and the assault would be a whole 'nother ball of wax. And showing that assault would shift the focus too much

I like how the shoes goes back and forth on whether people are good/bad, wrong/right or sympathetic or whatever.

Sadly we know they won't have a happy ending.

[heedra]

i think in a lot of ways this site has lost a lot of nuance behind the term ‘sympathetic’. like imo a lot of villains, even irredeemable ones who i wouldn’t want to get a redemption arc in a million years, can be sympathetic and its pretty natural for them to be. empathy for other people, even awful people, is a human thing to feel and i don’t think its good or healthy to suppress in real life with real people so like and outright pointless to suppress when it comes to fictional ppl. it just shouldn’t be treated as if sympathetic=defensible (plus when the character isnt even fucking real: plain ol bad writing exists). 

like i felt awful during the scene in stranger things 2 where billy’s dad’s being awful to him but i still think he’s a merciless horrible bastard who i want to be eaten the fuk up by monsters next season lmfao.

tho it depends on the definition of sympathetic too; here im responding to the ‘can you feel sorry for them type’ but there’s also the ‘oh i can see this guys point’ type which is a whole nother ball of wax altogether, and frequently A Mess.

[ndrmag]

Contributor Interview with Kristine Langley Mahler

Kristine Langley Mahler lives and writes on the suburban prairie of Nebraska, where she is completing an erasure book on Seventeen‘s advice to teenage girls, a grant-funded project about immigration/inhabitation on native land through the lens of her French-Canadian ancestors, and a graduate degree in creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Quarter After Eight, Sweet, Split Lip, Storm Cellar, the Bitter Southerner, and received the 2016 Rafael Torch Award for Literary Nonfiction from Crab Orchard Review. Visit her at kristinelangleymahler.com.

How did the initial idea for “Club Pines” come together for you? How does the finished work differ from that original conception?

It started as a very ambitious multimedia EXPERIENCE: I had hand-drawn the neighborhood and I was going to have the houses hyperlinked so the reader could click on them to read the segments, but I realized that wow, I might have some coding skills but not enough to pull that project into place. So I scaled it back. Earlier versions of “Club Pines” had the neighborhood map reproduced before each “house,” with the house in question colored in and any previously encountered houses as empty boxes to indicate how they had become "vacant" for me, but again—it was too much. I loved the visualness of that neighborhood because it was such a maze, so winding and so metaphoric, but (and this is where I had to tone back my writer ego), that doesn't matter to the reader. In the essay, the map just looked like a visual distraction, an unnecessary bit of detail—the reader could ascertain from the narrative that Club Pines was a maze to me. They didn't need to see it shoveled in front of their face like LOOK SEE I WAS REALLY CONFUSED SEE HOW CONFUSED?

There were a lot of houses/girls who were in the original essay, but I tried to pare it down to only those girls who tied me to certain aspects of my adolescence. I thought about including boys’ houses, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Nearly every house in that neighborhood had meant something to me at one point: I had babysitters who lived there, or I had babysat there myself, or I went trick-or-treating there once and a woman handed out personalized toothbrushes she’d bought at the dollar store so I got RICKY or whatever. Stuff like that. But those are the sort of completionist tendencies that could have snowballed into a whole neighborhood ethnography, and the emphasis, here, was really on those girls. That’s where I felt out of place and in place, even temporarily.

What craft struggles did you encounter while writing this essay? How did you overcome them? What did you learn from the process?

Oh, you know, as a memoirist, it’s always a challenge to be comfortable with my portrayals of other people. I’ve always been very watchful, obsessive about retaining memories and situations so I can analyze them later, but I know it’s presumptuous to ascribe motives to others. These girls were so much more than the summations I present to y’all as paragraphs. So I tried to remain true to the way I knew the girls, at that time, and to make it clear through the way I sketch them that I’m laying my own biases out for judgment. There’s a moral code I don’t think I’ve broken, but I’m also protected from any real-world retribution since I’m only “officially” social-media-connected to one of the girls in “Club Pines.” I’m one of those tracking dogs who finds digital loopholes and can pick up a cold trail: they’re married, they’re mothers, they’re single and childless, they’re living their best Southern life and they’ve left for other regions, other countries. They’re unprotected and they’re on social media lockdown; they’re oversharing and they’re silent as the grave. Just like me, we’re all telling the narrative of our girlhoods the way we need to believe they happened; we’re all revising when we see a perspective we didn’t realize. If they ever came across this piece, I hope they’d know that.

"Club Pines" presents a neighborhood that simultaneously feels ubiquitous and incredibly specific in its details, particularly those concerning toys and media of the time, as well as the denizens and their spaces. In capturing a place that is both unique and typical at once, how were you able to decide what to keep and what to let go?

The essay progresses from age ten through age fourteen, crucial years when we’re all figuring out who we are, trying on friendships, trying out cruelties, jostling for place. I doubled-down on my feelings of displacement as I wasn’t a native North Carolinian, but honestly, the anomie and aloneness in adolescence are pretty universal.

I think I included so many details because they set the reader in the era of the early-to-mid 90s—an important era because it predated the Internet, predated the ability to form an escapism that might have allowed me to retain virtual connections with my old friends from my old town. Instead, I had to grind through adolescence in that neighborhood, which I name, in that city, which I don't (though it's not hard to figure out), where I was a regional newcomer bombarded with all this “knowledge” everyone else seemed to have and I’d never encountered: sweet tea, cotillion, tobacco, smoked and grown everywhere. When writing “Club Pines,” I fixated on the details in the girls’ houses that were NOT regional because those were the details that made me feel like I had an entry way into these Othered spaces: troll dolls, The Beatles, fortune tellers.

Part of what makes "Club Pines" such a phenomenally textured essay is the broad range of feelings it depicts. For instance, there's the bitter levity of  "I sneer at her because I may be a pleb but she is a snob" and, later on, more somber notes such as "when we still called it “playing,” when I still anticipated her calls, when she was still my best friend, when she was still." What advice would you give a writer attempting to establish such a tonal dynamism without things feeling unfocused?

I suppose it's important to remember, particularly in a segmented essay, that each section needs to be treated as its own narrative and needs to be able to stand on its own. To hover above a single moment as if it had to represent all the moments you’ve ever had with that person or space can force you to recognize the range of your emotions. The trick is forcing that range to harden into the meringued truth for one scene: fragile, beaten, but momentarily solid.

The houses are distinct spaces, yet are especially vivid because of the specific atmospheres you conjure. How did you go about capturing these atmospheres so lucidly and in such short spaces?

I had layered, multi-year friendships with some of those girls in “Club Pines,” and with others, complex and painful situations I didn’t even address here. I word-spattered all over early drafts, writing the first things I thought about when I thought about those girls, and as I cleaned up the mess, I kept the scenes that emblematized those girls singularly, for one blurt. More often than not, they were the first things I’d written.

There are a number of details I muted throughout the piece, little signals to myself which hint at outgrowths of moments I don’t describe here, and I think their hinted presence must have allowed me to restrain over-telling and over-showing. For instance, I used the word “nook” in describing the location of my house and Betsy’s final bedroom in her house because they were both places where I was hidden and ignored, and yet they were places of comfort. You don’t get descriptions of the girls’ appearances. They don’t matter, because these girls are Everygirls. These houses are Everyhouses. No matter where you live, adolescence is packing season, leaving season, replacing season, curing season. 

[asexual-society]

Self Discovery via Fanfic

It's kind of a funny story, actually... Several months ago I began reading Supernatural fanfiction (Destiel, specifically). One day I'm trawling AO3 looking for something to read, and I run across this story that looks intriguing. It's about one character being super nervous about the end of a third date because that's the "sex deadline." I was raised to believe in not having sex before marriage so I felt a connection to the summary on that basis--it was a deeper connection, as I learned later. So I start reading this fic, and I'm going along thinking "Omg, I relate so much to all of this character's emotions, this is awesome!" and then the guys try to have sex and have to stop because the character hates it. Then the other dude says "maybe you're asexual," and I'm like "asexual... I've heard that before," so I decide to look it up. I read the definition and I'm like, "wait..." Then I read a bunch about it and I'm like "Well this explains so much about literally everything. Thaaats why I don't understand why all the characters are constantly having sex on like every show I watch... That's why I don't get innuendo..." and variations there upon. After which followed a couple months of frantic googling and self-doubt, but after several more months, and coming out to some friends, I'm definitely really comfortable with being ace... other stuff, not so much, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.

[melchiordahrk]

What mods do you recommend for someone who's just getting their Morrowind modding feet wet?

The first thing I recommend to people is to try Morrowind with a bare minimum of mods first to experience the world and gameplay in its original form - this way you have a sense of how various mods come in and shake things up and can make an informed decision if you like it or not. I will purposely steer away from most graphics and content mods here since they are each a whole ‘nother ball of wax for another time, but if you’re ready to look at adding mods to the game, the starter pack which I recommend would include:

Essential Utilities

Wrye Mash Standalone - if you’re planning on installing a bunch of mods or want to swap out different graphical replacers, then Mash is a must. It’s the best mod manager for TES3. The Morrowind Modding Wiki has a fairly comprehensive article on using Mash and it may seem daunting, so I would say the two most important features for players are Installers (you can put mod packages into a folder to install/uninstall using Mash rather than cluttering your Data Files folder if you then decide to try removing a mod) and Repairing a Save Game.

mlox - this program should be used in tandem with Mash to organize your mods. This program uses an extensive database of mods to set a load order with the best chance of eliminating conflicts and errors.

Morrowind Code Patch - still actively being supported by our resident wizard, Hrnchamd, MCP was just updated to 2.3. The effect the patches included in the MCP have on the quality of life when playing cannot be overstated.

4GB Patch and Exe Optimizer - these two programs combined significantly reduce the number of CTDs you will experience while playing. Even if you don’t want to use mods, use these. Install MCP first, then 4GB Patch, then EXE Optimizer - the order is important.

Morrowind Graphics Extender XE - major graphical enhancement to the game without even updating any models or textures. I would recommend limiting your distant land to under 7 cells. Removing the artificial “veil” by being able to look across the entire island is great for screenshots, but removes some of the mystery which lends to this old game’s charm. I personally use the beta version from Hrnchamd which can be found here and have found it to be relatively stable.

tes3cmd ( - To get to the download page yourself, follow the MW Modding Wiki instructions. I recommend this insanely powerful program to players for one primary reason: Multipatch. tes3cmd can create a patch from your entire load order to fix a number of common issues. The MW Modding Wiki has instructions for creating a batch file to help make the multipatch creation easier since tes3cmd is a command line program with no GUI.

Plugins

Morrowind Acoustic Overhaul - this mod overhauls the environmental, music, and effect sounds in the game. Even having the option to have a player voice. This mod is an impressive technical feat which will truly help immerse you in the world of Morrowind.

Morrowind Patch Project - like the unofficial patches you may be familiar with from later Bethesda titles, the MPP is an extensive bug squasher. Version 1.6.6 is the latest, but you will need to install 1.6.5b first.

Landscape and Object Fixes (assorted) - complementing the MPP, this series of fixes address a lot of visual errors such as floating objects, bad texture mapping, and visible seams.

Boats and Silt Striders - makes the “fast travel” services of boats and silt striders have a “scenic” option where you can actually ride the ship or giant flea. Excellent, must have mods. If you’re wanting another excellent transportation mod by abot, check out Guars.

Fatigue and Magicka Overhaul - managing fatigue and magicka burn in TES3 is fairly challenging. Not that it’s wrong, but this mod - along with other alternatives like it - make the systems function a bit more like TES4 and TES5 while still remaining balanced for TES3. Note: if you’re playing a magic character, you might be interested in Mastering Magicka which is a gameplay mod focused on magic users. You’ll just want to turn off its magicka regen feature if using it with this mod.

Go To Jail - instead of just getting warped outside of an Imperial Fort, you will actually serve your time if you commit a crime. This mod may be geared more towards thievish players, but it’s still a great addition to the game.

Graphic Herbalism - geared more towards magic characters, this mod makes it so if you pick from a plant, it will change visually as a helpful queue not to bother with it.

Morrowind Containers Animated - this mod makes containers open when you activate them like in the later Bethesda titles. A relatively simple mod, but to great effect.

There are so, so many more amazing mods out there. I myself keep a very full mod list when I am actually playing and not modding. Get in there on MMH and Nexus and find your own diamonds in the gold! Or feel free to ask me if you’re looking for something in particular. if you think I missed some crucial mods, feel free to let me know.