#the context of the quote and also why I personally thought it to be appropriately used

[myinterestsvary-writes]

Finished English Class this semester but am going to read this just because. I’m sorry that the book is tattered. There’s a lot of old, poorly maintained books in my house that only recently got out of boxes and were shelved.

[satanic-foxhole-court]

(Full TSC spoilers, as in to the end of the book) The contrast of Jeremy’s biggest concern is caring for his team, making sure his queer inner circle are healthy, okay, having fun and passing classes vs. Jeans biggest concern is the literal mafia debt, serious major trauma, PTSD and learning how to live again is just perfect.

It shows really beautifully in Jeremy’s approach to helping Jean. Jeremy seeks to know, to get Jean to open up and admit what happened. And hey it eventually works. But in comparison that never happened with Neil. The foxes knew to not pry and because Neil was able to integrate into the foxes without being an issue like Andrew is that was okay. There was more concessions, understanding and leaving things be.

I do wish for many reasons Jean stayed with the foxes if only because they fundamentally get it. But at the same time no it wouldn’t work, they’re pack bonded and Jean sees them as something he can’t be apart of.

A quote that stuck with me:

“That’s not fair,” Jeremy said, and when Jean opened his mouth to argue, added, “to you or us. For someone who seems so sure of what he deserves, you don’t seem to give any thought to what anyone else does. You’re forcing us to hurt you without giving us any say in the matter.”

And yeah that’s why it’s important to shove Jean more than one might with Neil or Andrew. Andrew is violently firm with his boundaries, Neil says he’s fine when he’s not but he can cope under high stress environments and has worked on accepting help. Even if that help is calling Andrew, running and exercise (fun fact exercise is a great ptsd trigger management tactic, peak the anxiety to bring it down through physical activity).

Jean doesn’t have boundaries, will not speak up at any point when something upsets him, puts himself in harms way constantly because he doesn’t have any self worth. Understandable given what he’s been through. And for Jeremy to feel he can help he seeks to know to understand - which isnt helpful! And that’s acknowledged at the end of the book!!! (Nora I love you)

Jeremy wants to put it into context, he wants so desperately to be told what’s going on, why Jean has this reactions, that it’s important to talk. But for someone who’s learned to stop biting back, to be quiet to have no harm come to them? That’s not going to happen easily. Jean does give ground and I really appreciate seeing him set boundaries too gosh. Him saying what he will and will not talk about, reaffirming that again and again throughout the book is perfect. And for Jeremy, Cat and Lalia to respect those boundaries too, or mostly. There are points when I think they shove a bit much but this book isn’t about perfect responses. It’s a queer household taking in an extremely traumatised person and learning how to support him while he learns how to exist.

Oh and also the power imbalance that exists accidentally by Jean not having context for what Jeremy, Cat and Lalia have been through too! He’s picked up there’s something but he’s always the one being pushed to talk about things, but he knows it’s not appropriate to pry about those things with them. It’s neat.

The coaches responses are interesting too. From the shoving Jean towards the water (I wanted to punch them omg /lh), to civil conversations, to showing Jean a Raven thing and just not understanding his response.

It’s nice to see how much the Trojan’s don’t understand, they don’t know how to respond, they have no idea what’s sensitive and what’s not. We love the foxes for how understanding they are and seeing a contrast of a privileged team is awesome to see.

I’m excited to see Jean and Bee’s sessions. Adore the book and Jean’s unhinged out of pocket self<3

[bookofmirth]

hi! i have a kinda strange question about the bonus chapter with az, bryce, and nesta (so pls ignore this ask if you haven’t read it yet and don’t want to be spoiled!!) there’s a conversation in the chapter where bryce explains what bombs and guns are, and at first azriel responds that such horrible weapons shouldn’t exist, then later nesta says something along the lines that it doesn’t matter if terrible weapons exist bc people will hurt each other regardless. (hopefully i didn’t switch azriel and nesta’s opinions, i lost the source that i read the bonus chapter from lol). do you think this was intended to be a commentary on gun control/gun laws or am i reading wayyy too deep into things? that’s how it came off to me and i had mixed feelings on which side sjm was trying to portray as right since she ends with nesta’s statement and doesn’t really bring up the issue any further. because yes, people will try to find ways to hurt each other, but it’s definitely a lot harder without easy access to guns. or maybe it was meant to show the different worldviews that nesta and azriel have, more about their characterization than a political commentary. idk i’d love to know your thoughts!

Okay this is such an interesting question because on the one hand I actually did think the same thing? It was just too similar to arguments people make irl about guns for me to ignore. But on the other hand... I sorta blinked, and then moved on.

It was Nesta, here is the quote (from my Walmart copy that showed up today woohoo):

"And people would still kill each other, even without those weapons," Nesta said gravely. "The wicked will always find a way to hurt and harm."

Honestly, I don't think we are reading too much into it because Crescent City as a series has already been posing these sorts of questions. sjm has had these characters make some very clear statements on politics and disadvantaged groups (e.g. humans) and terrorism and what are "appropriate" ways to rebel in this series.

It's really important not to confuse an author with their characters. Just because she writes a character who says X, doesn't mean that she as an individual also believes X. So imo, trying to attribute a character's political stance to her personal stance is very slippery. I say that because I don't think we could take Nesta's statement and say that sjm is pro gun rights or something, you know? SJM didn't make this statement, her character did. Writing fiction is not an implicit condoning of the actions within that work of fiction.

The philosophical stances that these characters take on the conflicts within this series is one of the things that turns me off from it. It's inconsistent given the context, what we know certain characters experience simply because of their identity, and... I think I've mentioned this before? But hosab really doubled down on the idea of respectability politics, to me. Respectability politics, for anyone who doesn't know, is the idea that if people just acted polite, asked nicely, and stopped being rude or mean, then they would be granted all the rights they ask for. Which is absolutely ridiculous and a tool for control. But the series really has me questioning whether sjm thinks it's a legit demand to make of people who are being disadvantaged, given how the narrative treats the human rebellion (and any other fae or angels or whoever who tries to rebel against the Asteri). Like if the human rebels just stopped blowing things up, maybe the Asteri and Vanir wouldn't oppress them so hard, jeez!!!

That's a fancy way of saying Bryce's stance on discrimination annoys the fuck out of me. Not just hers, but many of the characters' stances.

That is only somewhat related to your question, but I hope you understand why it came to mind haha. While I do hesitate to attribute any specific political leanings to an author because of what they have written, I do think that is makes more sense to wonder in CC than in her other series, given that politics, discrimination and stratification are major themes of the series.

If you have thoughts about what I said, I am curious to hear them!

[singlecrow]

Hello!! I’d love to hear your thoughts (if you’d like!!) on the toxicity/operation alert section of “a girl wild and unwished for” — it’s so destabilizing and beautifully crafted.

oh, I like that section very much which is why this got quite so long, sorry! for context: a girl wild and unwished for is a MASH story about Hawkeye a few years post-war, who has with some persuasion begun a lithium taper. Lithium is an anti-manic drug, in its infancy then, and is notoriously dangerous because a) its toxicity level is only a little way above its therapeutic level and b) it's almost impossible to guess what any one person's dosage should be in advance. Add that to the fact small unnoticed things can push your levels higher without you noticing at first, it has a whole disaster-waiting-to-happen quality to it.

So when you start lithium, you go on a taper: little by little, blood test by blood test, over a few weeks, and this is what this story is about. At this point in the proceedings, an unfortunate sequence of events pushes Hawkeye to the toxicity level. And I could've done it from Sidney's and Margaret's POV - it's their fault, after all - but as you say, I really wanted it to be destabilising for the reader as it is for Hawkeye, and the only way to do that was from the inside. The first symptom of lithium overdose is confusion, which is ideal for this: the end of the last scene has him acting oddly, and then this one is intended to drift gently to the point where the reader suddenly realises, oh shit, there is more to this than I thought oh shit this is VERY BAD. I don't know if it works! but we have Hawkeye wake up slowly and observe in a half-assed kind of way that it's foggy inside as well as out. ok, we've been told he's sleepy. But then Margaret comes in and is instantly terrified that Hawkeye has taken an overdose on purpose - because she can see what we can't see. And the fact he doesn't understand her questions is meant to be the point where the reader (almost) understands what's happened, because this is the point where Hawkeye's internal narration really falls off the wall. The style turns into simple declarative sentences and simple words. He's still him - "[he] wants to, because Margaret wants him to" - but otherwise starting to sound actually impaired. He gets hung up on the word "quiet" for, urgh, GFA reasons. And his mind is wandering, which was great for me - easy to throw in whatever thematic appropriate allusion I wanted, especially because it's Hawkeye who's read everything. So he quotes Matthew's gospel inside his head and is delighted with himself, because he's still Hawkeye. And he stays like this, eventually losing full sentences, then fragments, then a single word, until he's finally sedated, and the idea that he and the reader find out at once what's happened, when he wakes up again. Again, I don't know if it works mostly because I knew what was happening when I wrote it. But that's the intention.

I think the other thing that I like slash find interesting about this scene is that, well, Hawkeye's priorities are skewed. He is also quite worried about nuclear apocalypse in this scene. (I watch myself write down these things and wonder why no one has had me abolished.) There is a nuclear attack drill, Operation Alert, going on outside the window, and Hawkeye in his impaired state has no reason not to think it's real. It, too, is terrifying. The way I did this to set it out as a random mixture of what the people outside the window are shouting (about public shelters and millions dead) and what's happening immediately around Hawkeye. The idea of course is to make the two things scarier seen alongside each other, maybe make the reader wonder if Hawkeye has had another psychotic break (he hasn't), and call back to an earlier scene where Hawkeye described the lithium as "[my] own personal atomic annihilation". So he's very worried about THAT. But what we don't hear much about is what actually happens to him. Lithium toxicity is vile. There are no antidotes for it even now, it's all horrible things like tubes down the throat and dialysis. Hawkeye is going through all that, during the scene, but we're still in his head and the things that really upset him are that Margaret though he took the overdose himself and that she and Sidney have given Sidney's colleague a fake name for him. His selfhood matters to him more than the body he lives in, because lithium has detached him from it even as they're trying to scrub the durg out of him. That theme comes up much more loudly later in the story but here it is. (A line I cut, from Sidney's nameless colleague and Sidney. "Can't you tell me anything at all about him?" / "He's a good man and he doesn't deserve this.")

And finally - this is so long, sorry! Why do this scene at all? It's subtle, I think, but it's savage and nasty and awful and this story isn't set in a war zone. But lithium is terrifying, and we're told that Hawkeye thinks so too. Putting him directly into that terror-- well, the other reason is I've spent 10k by this point talking about how dangerous the drug is. I could've left this scene out. But I think you need it for the sake of honesty. It's really that frightening. This is really the decision Hawkeye has made for himself that the story has spent all this time examining. (And he asks Margaret, too: "Is it worth it?" Is it worth his friends' comfort, in getting him to come down from mania, if it puts him at this risk? Which isn't something she can answer. But then, there's the other theme: Margaret doesn't give a damn about semantics, she just loves him.)

jesus. that's it. thank you for asking about this one! I had a lot to say about it apparently.

[orange-orchard-system]

I keep getting asks about discourse even though I have said many times before that this not a place where I like to hold discourse. I don't plan to change that, but since people can't leave it alone, I'll give a rundown on some of our general Discourse Perspectives and Rules™ so I can just tap the sign if anyone else comes into our inbox or something screaming at us over any other/more discourse in the future.

I don't take call-outs or other accusations seriously unless they have reasonable proof for everything. This means that: the proof must not be easily disputable; it must not be offensive or harmful due to a misunderstanding, finding its way out of the audience it was intended for, or simple mistake due to perspective at the time it was made/said; it must not be something taken out of context. I also don't consider minor mistakes or a simple difference in opinion on minor issues something that justifies a giant call-out or cancelation, especially in cases where they can just be taken up with the op privately (or even just on a reblog chain); the call-out itself must be an appropriate reaction to any offense. Calling for a full "cancelation" of someone over a single post the op didn't mean to hurt anyone with (just as an example) is not what we'd consider appropriate.

On a related note, no, "this person has done XYZ which is bad but I'm not gonna elaborate on the how or why" is not enough for us to give a shit about whatever discourse you're yapping about. Either elaborate with sources, direct quotes, and an explanation, or leave us alone.

If we ever do speak about a call-out, us asking questions and questioning what we may see as weak points doesn't mean we're "defending" whoever the call-out is about. It just means I want clarification and/or think the call-out is being a little unfair, not that I think criticism of the person in question is necessarily unwarranted. My opinions on call-outs and my opinions on who those call-outs are about are two separate things. I can say I think something is taken out of context while agreeing that it wasn't very good in context (as just one example).

This is because call-outs and discourse – however normal they've become in modern internet times – can still be very serious things. I will engage with serious things like this with a critical eye, because I don't want to come to a rash decision that could hurt people. I consider myself decent at textual analysis, and I'm going to implement my skills at that to whatever call-outs or "why are you supporting X" messages I happen across. If I end up dismissing something based on the conclusion I draw, that does not necessarily mean I think the accused did nothing wrong, but rather that what was brought before me to accuse them does not hold up.

Just because we reblog from or talk to someone doesn't mean we agree with them on every discourse opinion they may have. In fact, we may disagree with and criticize their views, perhaps even openly – we've done it before.

Trying to explain our thoughts on every little discourse point is not worth the time or effort to us. If you can't find our public opinion on something, assume we either have a private opinion and have thought it over amongst ourselves, or don't feel we know enough to say something on it or form an Official Opinion™ (assuming we know anything at all). Discourse is not one of our hobbies, and we don't intend to make it one.

On a related note, stop assuming that everyone on the internet is fully and wholly informed on every single discourse argument going on at all times. I have a life outside of Tumblr and try not to make myself miserably overwhelmed by all the horrible things in the world; you cannot possibly expect me to understand what the hell you're talking about if you come onto my blog and start randomly accusing people of just generally being horrible with no context or explanation. I am not omniscient, I am just someone blogging on the internet.

Might add onto this in the future if we feel the need to, but I think this establishes most of our bases. Part of me can't believe this is necessary, but it's Tumblr, so better safe than sorry when it comes to discourse. Especially considering people have already tried to start shit with us many times in the past. Good to have a sign to tap for when it inevitably happens again.

[gildedbarbarian]

Okay, we’re going to try this again. Critical Role has done a million things for me over the course of the 4.5 years I’ve been aware of it. I’ve attached myself deeply and unflinchingly to characters and plotlines, made and lost friends, found company when I was at my lowest, and learned how to not let loss completely wreck me. I have seen myself reflected in fuckups and godkillers, chaos-mongers and law-bearers. I have found pieces of myself in this show, one after another, that I wasn’t ever really aware that I’d lost in the first place. 

But this time, specifically, we’re talking about Opal. 

The first time I watched EXU Prime, I was in one of the darkest places of my life. I was closed off from everyone, not least of all myself, with only a vague idea of how bad things actually were for me under my mask. I couldn’t look. I didn’t dare. I wasn’t ready. So I watched it at surface level: I laughed during the pageant, I cried during the last episode. I displayed the socially appropriate level of investment in every character, every moment, every line. Like so many others, I was mind boggled by the general display of craftsmanship at the table, and by Aabria. (This was my first time really seeing her in anything at all. I’ll always be grateful for the Summer of Aabria.) I loved the series, I raved about it, and then I set it down and moved on. 

The second time I watched EXU Prime was a few months ago. Work had just started slowing down and I needed something to keep my brain occupied while I did mindless busywork at my desk. I figured why not: it had been a little over a year since I’d watched it, and I’d had fun the first time, it could only be more fun the second time, right? For the most part, I was correct. I was in stitches by the time The Crown Keepers got to breakfast in the first episode. I had so much more context for Dorian and Orym and Fearne. 

And then there was Opal. Now, in the interests of absolute transparency, Opal was a hard pill for me to swallow the first time I watched EXU Prime. She’s a masterclass in playing a character as exactly who they are without faltering, even when it’s uncomfortable. My first time around that block, I thought she was selfish and stubborn to a fault and relentlessly insecure behind the self-assured façade. I think I was right. I also think that’s why I couldn’t really look her in the eye at that time. I read once, and I promise this is relevant, that a lot of times the things that make us hate other people are the things we hate to see in ourselves. This is not always true, but it certainly was true of me with Opal. 

The real kicker is that with Opal came Ted. Ted, who I definitely considered the unheard voice of reason for her impulsive sister. Ted, who had given up so much for the safety of the one person in the world she could protect. Ted, whose sacrifice we still don’t know the extent of. Ted, who I could relate to and be unafraid of it, because she’s right and because she’d made the justifiable choices and because she was the one who got left, not the one who did the leaving. 

I was at work when it happened. I’ve gone back and scoured youtube to try to find a compilation of the Opal and Ted conversations from EXU Prime so that I could get the exact quote down word for word, but haven’t been able to find one. The gist, at least as I heard it, was this: Opal wanted distance, wanted power that was hers, wanted to be an individual without the baggage of her past weighing her down or the shadow of her sister just out of sight. She wanted to stand on her own two feet. Without help, without hinderance, without interference. She wanted to be just Opal. And Ted wanted to keep her safe. Would give anything, everything, in fact had already done so, to keep Opal safe. Because she couldn’t see herself without her, because her purpose was to protect her. Because she didn’t know how to do anything else. 

There’s this thing in therapy called inner child work, and it’s the hardest part of the healing process for me. Every step of it is painful, every Little Me I’ve had to look in the eye is a gut punch. But there’s one in particular that I’ve been ignoring willfully for years. She’s waited in my periphery, patient and resigned, for the day that I could give her even a fraction of my attention. That day was a few a months ago. 

I had to get up from my desk after the scene was over because I was beside myself. Literally having a breakdown at my desk, I rushed off to the bathroom to try to pull myself together. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Calming down took over 20 minutes of box breathing and other grounding methods, working my way back into some semblance of being present in myself.

And when I got there? All I heard was Her. Over and over again. Almost like she was screaming, like she’d been screaming for years. I’ve been holding this for too long. I can’t do it alone anymore. I need help. I need you. I did this to keep us safe, but it’s too heavy. Help me. Please. I’m afraid of what will happen if I let go. 

I was Opal. She was Ted. 

Both were me. 

I’m still figuring out what all of that means. All I know for sure is that I’m grateful: I don’t know how long it would have taken me to hear Her without Opal and Ted. It’s not easy. There are still days that I have a hard time looking her in the eye, but it’s a start that I needed to heal. 

[angelsaxis]

There's always that struggle I have with taking critiques with a grain of salt. I try to be understanding and I may put too much weight on someone else's perspective specifically because it's not mine. But you know. This one critiquer who frequently told me I lacked subtext. And the one time I apparently had achieved it in my writing was when Arvin and Tibe were arguing about trying to get the former to eat more, and Tibe asks Arvin who it was the decided his incredibly small meals are appropriate, implying that it was Arvins mom who controlled his meals (which was correct). And they were like "yes!!! Subtext!!!"

And I scratched my head. Because I've been doing that. Not through quotes as much but through body language and general behavior. Arvin is afraid of his mom and the first thought he has about Chima when he sees her is "she reminds me of my mother" and then he tries to avoid her for as long as possible. There's a double motive to every act of kindness tibe does for arvin. I don't say it out loud ofc bc I frankly. Don't think I need to.

"why does Arvin do X" because his ultimate goal in life is to please his mom "but why" she's abusive and controlling and she's isolated him socially for 18 years and controls everything from who he talks to to what he's even able to eat. He's 18 and he's never been anywhere without his mother and the first thing he hopes to ask for from his parents (his mother) is to travel on his own and his fear in that moment is that he'll be genuinely yelled at for eating dessert before dinner.

I'm not the best writer but I lay all of this out almost verbatim in the first chapter. First chapter. I don't like dialogue and I prefer distilled quotes to lengthy ones so perhaps this is why this person was insisting that I guess every character just says what's on their mind all the time? Supposedly? Even though they also don't do that? Like were they hoping that more of the characters would just lie or be passive aggressive or something (both of which people do). Like I'm so confused. Critiquers can say important and correct things but they also like to critique in a way where they're telling you what THEY like to see and this isn't the first and certainly won't be the last time I get a vague or incomplete critique from someone. Mind you this person could not figure out social ranking at ALL a common critique from them "why doesn't X character say (wildly inappropriate thing given social ranking an context and familiarity)" like girl come on. "Why does Arvins dad treat him like this" the man who's a distant alcoholic and serial cheater??? You're asking why that man isn't nice to his family????

"why is drei mean to arvin" oh the brother with the alcohol issues and the loyalty issues and the ego issues? Why isn't he perfectly nice to arvin 100% of the time? But then when Arvins aunt is nice to him that's a problem because now he's not learning. But also also when Drei actually does help Arvin in multiple present if subtle ways that just doesn't ping your radar. Make up your MIND.

[terramythos]

Mort by Terry Pratchett Reading Notes

Full Review Here!

So this book also opens with a young person and their parents. As did Equal Rites which I need to restart 

Ok so I didn't take notes as methodically as usual to start But as with Guards Guards it is very funny, with jokes that just keep coming back when you don't expect them. Lots of good bits and parallels 

And the fucking MORPHOGENETIC FIELD fuck 

-i like Mort but he's most certainly going to do some Dumb Shit. He is also very blank slate in terms of protagonists. His most consistent trait is reminding people about his name. Which I imagine will have some payoff 

-I find some of the parallels funny like death clearly taking on Mort to maybe get together with his adopted daughter after his dad talked about that exact thing (in that context seemingly ridiculous). I hope there's more to it than that however. 

-and I do wonder about how succession with Death would even work. As I'm pretty sure Death in this book is the same entity in the whole series 

-not to make this elder scrolls but I guess they could do something like Sheogorath where you Become that person in every significant way after inheriting the role from them. I'm sure there's a better comparison/example lol 

-but Mort could just be a. Friend or something. Which would also be fine 

-I'm sure sexy witch won't be a Thing at all later  

-Listeners hear every sound in Discworld? 

-"light dawned on Mort, but very slowly" lmao 

-ok Death showing up to someone who perpetually reincarnates is a little bit funny. What Is the point 

-'cut the heir with a knife' what a pun. Insane 

- interesting to frame Mort saving Keli from her perspective. So we don't know exactly what he thought as he did it. And this was presumably a Very Bad Thing since she was supposed to die and he killed the assassin instead? 

-so many anachronistic similies and metaphors. I guess that is appropriate for this book specifically 

-also idk if this is relevant at all. But Keli not dying has a big butterfly effect, obviously. But what about the assassin? Who were they? How would their death change things? 

-i have to imagine no one really noticing you exist suddenly without being FULLY non existent would be pretty awful 

-"there's no justice. There's just you" will this come around again to a "just us" 

-ok Ysabelle kinda goth. Which like obviously, but nice  

-oops! You made a split timeline 

-theres something interesting about this? Border? Between realities an 'interface'. Cause that has a very specific meaning in 2024, but I bet it read different in 1987. At least a little 

-i like the narrative dropping A Big Hint for the reader by noting how the character did not notice it 

-the description of how Mort has changed might be The Quote 

-a fan of something being so real it's uncanny. Especially in the realm of fiction. Gives me Inkheart thoughts 

-ok the whole thing with Mort being able to walk through doors and walls was introduced EARLY and continues to be so. And Death seemed to consider it normal. But what causes it? Why does it only work sometimes? 

-this is a fairly familiar plot where you change 1 thing in history and everything else changes as a butterfly effect. The main difference so far is it being a delayed reaction. I want to see if Pratchett does something different with it otherwise 

-capital L Logic "taking the night off too" 

-so a split timeline will heal itself but Mort is going to fuck it up again? 

-a fucking island named KRULL? No way, no fucking way. Hold on I have to look something up 

-2 thing I learned googling Krull: the MOVIE Krull came out in 1983, 4 years before this book. So it is very plausible Pratchett knew of it. Second thing is Liam Neeson was in it, which I was somehow unaware of or forgot 

-"why did you save me?" "... for later" God damn why is Pratchett clever 

-Mort suddenly scary! And here I think is the first bit where he doesn't say "Mort" when someone calls him boy. Instead he's scary about it. So. That's a fun play on what I expected. 

-we have. Switched to present tense. I see 

-im not sure what this revelation about Malich is supposed to be implying. Maybe I missed something. I think the only person we don't know anything about it Deaths butler? Guy? 

-oh yeah. Albert is his name. And the famous wizard is Alberto Malich. So Death like. Adopted a famous wizard who's now like. A cook? 

-my biggest area of criticism with this book is I just have zero investment in Mort's obsession with this random princess. Like it's an objectively stupid thing to cause so much trouble over. Doesn't even know her. Maybe that's the point but it's hard with no investment whatsoever in it 

-A PET SWAMP DRAGON??? I UNDERSTAND THAT REFERENCE (read: the only other book I've read in this series) 

-trying to imagine how shooting Mort would even work. 

-it is difficult to convey how clever & funny Death's alternate typeface is when it shows up unexpectedly. Just an oh shit moment every time. 

-'if you win, you will [do this] ' 'and if I lose?' 'You will wish you had won' what a fucking threat lmao 

-update: shooting Mort did not work. 

-i know this book predates "bucket list" as a term but that is nevertheless what Death seems to be doing 

-god I thought the bit was gonna be that Death can't get drunk and then he DOES halfway through the scene. Then manually stops being drunk

-bartender: 'well at least this weird hooded figure seems to be harmless' (it's literally Death)

-no way can Albert be a wizard, he doesn't wear a wizard hat! So true bestie 

-i know Ysabell is probably like The Actual Love Interest but it is a little cute that Mort got so angry at people not using his name but went back to just correcting when Ysabell did it 

-theres a whole shelf! Aw fuck do we have a doctor who situation or some shit 

-no he's just been alive that long ig. Wonder if this character shows up elsewhere 

-Death at a job broker.... 

-Oh my GOD *THAT* was the payoff for the "Mort." bit! A fucking typeface wham line. Jesus christ that's good lmao  

-"Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe" either sounds like a quote from some ancient philosopher or an 80s prog rock album. But nope, Pratchett. 

-ysabell girlboss 

-kinda feel bad for Death finding happiness and the implication being he can't keep it. Unless Mort does actually become Death 

-and there's the idea of becoming real becoming more like death. All in a fictional story of course. 

-ok I am Compelled, finally, by Morts transformation. 

-i do really like how the "Mort." bit has extended throughout the book to convey his character arc and even got integrated into the storytelling in a meta way with the Death typeface. 

-this presents the idea of a human becoming Death as Really Bad because if you apply human morality and emotion to it, Death becomes cruel. Which sounds philosophical as fuck and all, but it brings to mind all the terrible things humans have done when inflicting death on others. It is comforting to think of Death as neutral from the perspective of an uncaring universe-- all things die, no matter what, but likewise, its hard as a human to see Death that way within the context of lives and experiences. 

-but there is some positivity to the overall story so I am interested to see the "good" side if there is one. I'm not sure there is 

-Mort is a blank slate character, i think intentionally so, so that as he develops we see how his mistakes and the worst sides of his personality manifest as he matures and becomes more Real, like Death. The actual Death character isn't cruel but when Mort is given the opportunity he makes selfish decisions (rescuing Keli) and cruel (how he treats Albert in this scene). So then my question is where do his Best traits manifest? Is it impossible for then to, in this context and with this kind of power? 

-man Mort is so mean to Ysabell. 

-the fucking speech check war between the Emperor and Vizier was pretty funny 

-oh hey, The Librarian cameo. And.. Albert called him a monkey. Oh dear. Also isn't Rincewind a protag in another series 

-"THERE'S NO JUSTICE," said Mort. "THERE'S JUST US."  --- Oh my god I fucking called it I CALLED IT I KNEW they were gonna use that line holy shit 

-"You are whatever you think you are" hell yeah 

-at least Ysabell punched Mort in the face. He kind of deserved it 

-shout out to The Librarian killing Albert lmfao 

-the elephant gets drunk and sees pink people 

-i mean good for the elephant going home. Ok king 

-i like the implication that the speed of night is faster than the speed of light 

-oh so we do get to play a game with Death? At the end? 

-"were all lives--from a personal viewpoint-- entirely the same length?" I mean okay damn 

-i like Mort thinking "you'll never beat him... the best we can do is hold him off for a while" about Death, but in the context of like. A duel. 

-i mean YEAH you CAN turn hourglasses over! Obviously! That's how they work! 

-the weight of a pearl, huh 

-I like closing the story with Mort reading his own book and that becoming the last of the narration 

Hmm ok! So I liked it. But have some mixed thoughts. I'll need to gather them together 

First off I loved the writing, Pratchett really was clever and had very unique and humorous ways of saying things. Stuff like "her voice could have kept milk fresh for a month" instead of "her voice was icy". And its not just wordplay but situations themselves. It is difficult to convey just how much clever stuff there is in the book because it would 

overwhelm anything else. I think that this is probably true for most of the Discworld books and is at least in part why they're so beloved. I have a hard time thinking of other writers with quite this knack for clever humor in such a nonstop abundance. There's stuff like this book introducing the detail that every person has a book being written that narrates their life, then closing out the book with Mort reading from his, and then using that as the closing narration. Like that's cool and brilliant. 

I like Morts character arc and how he goes from a blank slate to something more in order to convey how being Death's apprentice changes him. There is also fun worldbuilding and creativity on how Death's actual job works, with the tongue and cheek acknowledgement that even this is a personification and not really real. 

Deaths typeface is used as an honest to God wham line which is probably the only example I've seen of... a font conveying a plot twist. I guess technically this also happens in other Discworld scenes where Death shows up unexpectedly. But in this particular story it's not Death saying it which is why its so shocking. 

My main struggle with Mort is I had a hard time caring about or being invested in the main plot. For example, the inciting incident that kicks off the main plot is Mort making a selfish decision to save the life of a princess who is destined to die, purely because he has a shallow crush on her. I know it's intentional that their relationship doesn't really matter and is just surface level. But theres nothing to make me care about it at all, and when him doing this AND KEEPING IT SECRET FROM DEATH is the main source of narrative tension, it's a problem when I can't find any reason to care about it. 

The plot itself is very... loose I guess. It's a collection of scenes and vignettes a lot of the time that are only tangentially related to the story. Which is fine, but this makes the problem of investment in the story even harder for me. I was suddenly very compelled when Mort started to transform into Death and the personal issues of identity, human behavior, etc that this introduces. It just felt like that's what the story should have been about the whole time. 

Basically what carried me through the book was the clever prose and humorous scenes/situations. Which again, is fine! I definitely enjoyed reading Mort. It just didn't amaze me as a story. 

Probably the funniest thing is you could remove Albert from the story entirely and it wouldn't change anything. Like slightly rework the scene at the University near the end and you're set. It felt like Pratchett realized we needed a villain in the third act and assigned that role to a random side character so Albert was evil, briefly, then not as soon as Death dealt with it. Just felt very oddly paced and structured 

There are loose ends that did not get concluded and I'm not sure if this means they are explored in greater depth later. For example Mort bungles one Death collection and a witch's soul escapes mortality. Another is this persistent idea/theme of what's "real". We explore it a little but never to its conclusion. Mort gets a pearl which is supposedly a piece of reality he created. And there's the idea of one reality happening when it shouldn't and how the universe reacts to it. But it's very mechanical (literally turns into an artifact) and the thematic implications are still up in the air 

Anyway I'm thinking 7/10 cause it was good and a fun read, just didn't floor me

[hollyoxleylevel6]

My quote experiments

Following my conversations with Dot and Emily, I decided to choose one quote from my recordings and give them to different people for them to create the conversation that came before it. I thought this would be quite interesting because it would work similar to overhearing part of a conversation and trying to guess what they were talking about. This would give me an insight into how different people interpret a phrase.

I decided to use the phrase "It's like a little tickle, but a tug as well." (Treais and Gilchrist, ,2023b), which was a description my flatmate Heather used to describe when her insulin pump is ripped out. I chose this phrase because I think it is quite open and can be used to describe a lot of things. However, it is also a bit obscure meaning the person will need to think about their answer.

I found it quite interesting on peoples first reaction when I gave them this phrase. Some started laughing, others instantly started writing but some gave me a freaked out look and asked me whether this quote was suitable for a university setting. I found this quite funny becayse nearly all of them twisted the innocent phrase into something sexual when they first read it. However, instead of using their first impressions to direct the narrative, the majority of people took time to consider what they should write. I found this reaction quite intriguing because on the people I asked explicitly told me that they chose a narrative they deemed more 'appropriate' than the one they first thought of. Therefore, when reading them I began questioning whether their answers may have been vastly different if they did not know this activity was for my university project.

On the other hand, this response to the phrase shows me that writing the first narrative this phrase shows, creates a chaotic response. I like how this answer twists the phrase so much that it changes completely from the original meaning.

In conclusion, I have found that recording a conversation can lead to many different narratives depending on the context it is given. By changing something as small as where the people are and what their tone of voice is, I can create multiple narratives by only using one exchange.

When talking with Emily earlier, she told me about Overheard London. Overheard London is an Instagram account that has quotes the admins have overheard somewhere in London. When looking at this account I was inspired to try my own experiment with creating the narrative by choosing 4 quotes and creating the story behind them.

I found this exercise quite fun to do myself because I needed to think what setting and context I wanted to place the phrase in. This would set the overall tone and layout of my narrative.

However, with my narratives, I decided to write down the first narrative that came to mind. This made my responses more instinctive because I did not overthink them. I like how this made my responses feel less scripted. The responses from the others feel more like a script instead of a conversation because each sentence looks planned out. Meanwhile my narratives feel more loose and less detailed.

Following these experiments, I am interested in exploring why amusement was the most popular response to the phrases. This will give me a better understanding on how I can express my narrative typographically, as I will be able to see how I can evoke different emotions.

Overheard London. (2023). “Until you have cried on public transport, you’re not a true Londoner”. Instagram. [online]. 31 May. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs6Pt2mPDi4/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==. [Accessed 18 October 2023].

Overheard London. (2022). “I’m 50% wondering if it’s too late to drink coffee, and 50% wondering if it’s too early to drink wine”. Instagram. [online]. 14 July. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf_rP90M-nq/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==. [Accessed 18 October 2023].

Overheard London. (2020). “I’m a stay at home daughter”. Instagram. [online]. 25 August. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf_rP90M-nq/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==. [Accessed 18 October 2023].

[uraharashouten]

the post about tessai using honorifics made me think of something. please note i am not nearly as educated on him as you guys. but i was thinking, as a kidou master, and probably THE kidou teacher back in the day(?), maybe he was quite used to training the kids of the elite? youngsters of noble clans or what not?

i know he wasn't really a teacher like ukitake or unohana would have been, since he was only the head of the kidou corps. but i believe that it wouldn't be too absurd to assume that noble families "hire" someone as professional as tessai to train their offspring kidou rather than letting them go to the shino-classes with "ordinary shinigami".

maybe this is why he's just so used to saying "-dono"

what do you think :O

So, first of  all, credit where it’s due to Dee ( @thepyrotechnicshiba , @more-than-a-kido-master), the author of the meta post to which you’re referring. I have made a post on Tessai and honorifics before, in which I also quoted Dee’s thoughts that -dono could have been Tessai’s method of egalitarianism. He addresses everyone with -dono, just as Kisuke addresses everyone with -san, just as Yoruichi uses no honorifics. In a sense, they all have their own ways of putting everyone on equal footing.

But as far as when he first began to cultivate the habit, I absolutely agree that he could have been a private tutor to noble families, and that is in fact how I believe he met Yoruichi and Kisuke. I also believe that he’s not much older than they are, so Tessai teaching them as children and adolescents would have been like hiriing a high school or college-age tutor for your children. It’s even possible they were his first students... though it’s interesting to wonder whether he’s old enough to have had Kaien and Kuukaku as students (as I imagine them a little older). In that context, him being young himself, it would have been appropriate for him to be so polite and deferential. But other than Kaien, Kuukaku, and Yorucihi.... there were no other Great Noble children of that generation, or we would know.

Just as an aside, I don’t imagine there were ever many noble or even lesser noble children around at any one time. This is a whole topic unto itself, but I’ll just say my headcanon there is that it takes a lot of reii to produce a whole new soul, and evidence would suggest that shinigami who are able to bear children tend to space them out. Look at how much younger Ganju is than Kuukaku, or  Yuushirou is than Yorucihi. But given the amount of time between the early 1600s, when I imagine he would have taught Kisuke and Yoruichi, and 1900, when canon introduces him as Kidō Corps Commander, it’s certainly possible that he could occasionally have served as private tutor to lesser noble children throughout the centuries. 

Personally, I like to believe that the -dono habit formed early, and simply stuck as an affectation..

[cryoftheplanet]

The Unifying Theme of FFVII

So I recently got an ask that was very interesting and which I think I did a piss poor job answering. Republished here:

what is the biggest theme of FF7 that ties every character together to you? life? pro environmentalism? identity? connections?

My answer was, in a nutshell, "existentialism." It's broadly true, and was certainly an influence on the game (see: Martin Heidegger, Existentialist philosopher and known bastard) but it's a reductive and Western take overall.

So, here's the long version, and a disclaimer up-front that I'm a simple Western weeb doing internet research to the best of my ability; apologies to those who know more than me.

Square has always stated that the theme of the game is "life". This is wholly accurate, but comes off as a little twee to a Western ear. This is because "life" is a translation of the Japanese word "inochi" (命). It is a broader, more holistic concept than the English "life," with different nuances and connotations.

For a longer and much more informed read on inochi specifically, see The Concept of Life in Contemporary Japan by Masahiro Morioka. Otherwise, keep reading after the cut!

In addition to meaning life or lifespan, "inochi" also encompasses the idea of a "spirit" or vital force. It extends beyond referring to life in the general sense. Much like any one person's mind, spirit, and lived existence isn't interchangeable with anyone else's, one's "inochi" is unique and individualistic.

This concept extends beyond just human life. Animals, mountains, rivers, and trees all have "inochi" too. An illuminating quote From Aspects of Shinto in Japanese Communication by Kazuya Hara (and his primary source):

From the viewpoint of Shinto, nature itself is seen to have a spirit and life. For example, Japanese people have looked upon even a tree, a rock, or a river in nature as a figure of life. Kamata (2000) argues that the Japanese word inochi connotes the dynamic motion, flow, and circulation of all the universe.

That circulation also includes the idea that "inochi" does not refer to only a single individual life, but a chain of all the lives that have gone before. It encompasses the fleeting and finite life of the individual as well as the ecosystem in which they lived, and the influence and impact which will survive them and create the next link in the chain.

You'll recognize many of these concepts as being expressed through the Lifestream, and extant in the environmentalist elements of the game. Navigating the apparent paradox of a finite and infinite "inochi" also pulls our cast in, all of whom are characters struggling with their individual existence in the context of a greater, deeply interconnected crisis.

"Inochi" is also connected to FFVII's strong themes of navigating identity and uncovering the fundamental self. The word can also be used to refer to the core or fundamental part of something, its "most essential quality." This echoes Cloud's journey to rediscover himself, and it's noteworthy that he find again within the Lifestream, the manifestation of "inochi" itself.

"Inochi" is definitely a very accurate unifying theme. We've touched on how that connects to Shinto themes, but Buddhist philosophies of life and existence are just as culturally prevalent in Japan and influential on the themes of VII in turn. So, let's talk about Buddhism, with another disclaimer that I'm not expert by any means whatsoever.

A foundational concept in Buddhism is the Three Marks of Existence: Impermanence, the non-self, and suffering. We'll mainly focus on the first two.

The first, impermanence, is as it says on the tin. According to Buddhist thought, impermanence is inherent to the natural world, and failing to recognize this will bring suffering. The bad passes along with the good, the big as well as the small. The strain of Buddhist thought through the game is part of why FFVII's original ending is so appropriate, and Aeris' death so integral to the rest of its themes.

The second is the non-self. Related to the concept of impermanence, the idea here is that there is no permanent incarnation of the self, and there is no way to separate the self as an individual from its myriad pieces and its context. From What Are The Three Marks of Existence by Dana Nourie:

When you start to see how you aren’t a solid, unchanging self, but a impermanent, dynamic person, you also loosen your clinging to thoughts, ideas, emotions, and the idea of a “real you”.

The connection to Cloud's personal journey throughout the game is obvious - an abundance of attachment to an artificial self causes him to suffer until he is able to reconcile it and let it go. Sephiroth, meanwhile, faces a similar challenge to his own identity and slips sideways into Nihilism, unable to overcome (or even admit) his own suffering.

There's a connection between Buddhist and Existentialist/Existential Nihilist thought. While Buddhism incorporates the concept of suffering as an inherent and endless facet of life until nirvana can be reached, Existentialists struggle with a post-modern feeling of dread or anxiety fundamental to living in a meaningless and chaotic world. There's also been plenty of cultural exchange between eastern and western concepts here - Heidegger is one notable participant.

Another is Keiji Nishitani from the influential Kyoto University of Philosophy. Engaging with western Existentialist thinkers, he wrote Religion and Nothingness on the connection between the concept of the non-self and the western philosophy of Nihilism. He compared the similarities between the two, while ultimately refuting Nietzche's perspective. This quote (helpfully, from his Wikipedia page) seems particularly instructive, especially in returning back to some of the initial concepts expressed by "inochi":

"All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing."

My original answer to this question was Existentialism because there simply isn't a word or a tidy concept in my vocabulary that can convey all of this disparate information. Existentialism seemed to me like the most familiar and broad concept to encompass these themes, always in the form of questions: How do we live? How do we separate subjectivity from objective truth? How do we preserve the sense that our lives are meaningful?

You must decide for yourself; you must remember your connections to other lives; you must let go.

[sanktyastag]

I know people have already talked about the changes Mal has gone through in his show adaptation vs his book self - most of which are changes people generally agree are for the better, since they’re sanding off some of his less endearing character traits. But something that baffles me are the changes that they didn’t make as a consequence to the changes that they did. And by that, I mean, some key pieces of dialogue.

And even more specifically, this dialogue choice:

And to explain why this line of dialogue doesn’t make sense to me in the show, I need to talk a bit about the original book context for it:

In the books, Alina has been harboring a one-sided crush on Mal for years. And I don’t mean she thought it was a one-sided crush, when really they were both mutually pining for each other. I mean that Mal genuinely didn’t have romantic feelings for her in the beginning. Or at least, not ones he acknowledged:

“Wrong. I was planning how to sneak into the Grisha pavilion and snag myself a cute Corporalnik.”

Mal laughed. I hesitated by the door. This was the hardest part of being around him - other than the way he made my heart do clumsy acrobatics. I hated hiding how much the stupid things he did hurt me, but I hated the idea of him finding out even more.

This is something Alina battles with herself over for most of the beginning of SaB, before she’s taken to the Little Palace. She had a close relationship with Mal in Keramzin, when they were both just two kids in an orphanage. And then they join the second army and Mal is suddenly a popular, capable, respected soldier in people’s eyes, while Alina is stuck battling her own resentment at her inability to fit in, as well as some pretty gnarly feelings of inadequacy.

Feelings of inadequacy that are a reoccuring issue with her - in the beginning, she describes herself as a mapmaker “and not even a very good mapmaker”. With Botkin, she’s unable to keep up with the other Grisha in physical combat, and with Baghra, she’s unable to master her Grisha abilities. It can be summed up nice and tidy in the Siege and Storm quote, when Alina isn’t using her powers because she’s in hiding with Mal:

I was so frail and clumsy that I’d barely managed to keep my job packing jurda at one of the fieldhouses. It brought in mere pennies, but I’d insisted on working, on trying to help. I felt like I had when we were kids: capable Mal and useless Alina.

So at the beginning of the books, Mal gets the chance to gain acceptance and respect from his peers, and Alina is stuck feeling inadequate and ineffectual. The natural progression of this type of rift is that they would begin to grow apart: Mal would make friends and find a sense of belonging, and Alina would remain alienated and isolated from her peers. Which is exactly what happens. It takes less than a year for them to change from being inseparable, to a normal, casual friendship:

“So what are you doing here?” When we’d first started our military service a year ago, Mal had visited me almost every night. But he hadn’t come by in months.

And that’s pretty much how their relationship stays until they’re reunited after the Little Palace. It comes to a head with Mal talking about his jealousy over seeing her with the Darkling, and with Alina admitting she’d been happier at the Little Palace than she’d been in a long time, largely because she’d finally found what Mal had found in the second army: A place she fits in and feels accepted:

“That night at the palace when I saw you on that stage with him, you looked so happy. Like you belonged with him. I can’t get that picture out of my head.”

“I was happy,” I admitted. “In that moment, I was happy. I’m not like you, Mal. I never really fit in the way that you did. I never really belonged anywhere.”

“You belonged with me,” he said quietly.

“No, Mal. Not really. Not for a long time.”

And this is where that “I’m sorry it took me so long to see you” line drops. It’s specifically about Mal acknowledging that he started taking Alina for granted when they joined the second army, because he was so caught up in finally feeling like he could belong somewhere, and feel pride in himself, he stopped prioritizing their friendship. Which is a very understandable thing!

The books don’t really go into this, but at this point in the story, it feels like something Alina might finally be in a place where she could understand how he felt: living a life where you’re taught to be grateful for other people’s charity, and that you’re a burden on other people, and then suddenly being put in a position where your existence isn’t just tolerated, but celebrated and respected, is a very validating and heady experience. It’s easy to get caught up in a new life where you don’t have to think about how ashamed you felt in your past, and can instead be the person you’ve always wanted to be. It’s a shared experience of theirs that I feel like would have been worth exploring. What actually happens is that they seem to play resentment tag around each other throughout the trilogy, with one of them getting the chance to be respected amongst their peers, and the other feeling inadequate and resentful about it, and then something coming along that flips the dynamic, over and over again.

But I digress - so here is the context of that line in the book:

“I missed you every hour. And you know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. I’d catch myself walking around to find you, not for any reason, just out of habit, because I’d seen something that I wanted to tell you about or because I wanted to hear your voice. And then I’d realize that you weren’t there anymore, and every time, every single time, it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I’ve risked my life for you. I’ve walked half the length of Ravka for you, and I’d do it again and again and again just to be with you, just to starve with you and freeze with you and hear you complain about hard cheese every day. So don’t tell me we don’t belong together,” he said fiercely. He was very close now, and my heart was suddenly hammering in my chest. “I’m sorry it took me so long to see you, Alina. But I see you now.”

Now, when we look at the show... none of this is really relevant? We never get the sense that their relationship has changed from what they were like in Keramzin. Mal doesn’t grow distant from Alina - it’s almost the opposite. The only reason they aren’t together at the beginning of the show is because their units weren’t together. It’s not Mal creating distance, it’s their job. And the second that he gets the chance, he seeks her out. In the flashback, as well, we see him immediately look for her, and he goes so far as to hit someone with a glass, because he was told the guy said something shitty to Alina, just so he can be with her in a cell.

Similarly, instead of them sitting at separate tables in the mess hall, Alina simply doesn’t get served at all (because Racism), and so Mal goes out of his way to steal food from a Grisha tent, just to cheer her up.

He’s present, attentive, loyal, and completely in tune with her emotionally. He is, I would argue, also completely in love with her (which is something I think they flipped from the books - I get the impression that Mal’s been in love with Alina for a long time, and Alina is the one who hasn’t quite made the leap from “best friend” to “romantic interest” in the show, although that’s obviously a personal interpretation). So what, exactly, is he apologizing for in that scene? What about her didn’t he see?

The only way I can try to make sense of the scene now, is that he’s apologizing for perhaps not realizing she was a Grisha? Or maybe for inadvertently “making” her repress her powers for all this time, because she didn’t want to be separated from him? And that works, I guess, except that the lead up to this apology is Alina saying that Mal looked at her “with fear in his eyes” back in Kribirsk, after he finds out she’s Grisha. And that’s, again, a book thing. In the books, Mal apologizes for just standing there as she’s taken away, for not chasing after her. In the show... he does chase after her. He does literally everything in his power to go to her. There’s no pause, there’s no moment of doubt. The last time she sees him, he is afraid for her, as she’s being taken away, but he is not, for one moment, afraid of her. So I just... don’t get where that line comes from.

It seems weird to completely erase all of Mal’s flaws from the books, but then keep the dialogue where he apologizes for how those flaws have negatively impacted their relationship, without recontextualizing the apology into an appropriately impactful moment.

[potteresque-ire]

Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about  The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ... 

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly  unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ... 

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever. 

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.” 

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”    

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ...  Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take. 

I feel I’ve already started anyway. 

[nothorses]

if queer isn't a slur, are cishets also allowed to say it..?

I have... some Thoughts™ about this.

First, "queer" is a slur, in many uses and contexts- as well as in roots. That doesn't mean it can't be used in ways that are not inherently harmful, abusive, or that do not uphold queerphobic systems of power. In fact, many uses inherently challenge and deconstruct those very systems of power.

Second, I don't think we should base our "slur rules" on the work black activists have done with the n-word. Not all of these words are equal, and the reasons behind the "white people shouldn't say the n-word" rule are very, very particular to the history of that word. "Queer" does not share that history. We should base our understanding of it on its own unique history.

Slur discourse is exhausting, and policing the language people use for the sake of adhering to rules, or using the most correct words, is pointless- and does much more harm than good.

People who use words that are important to them are required to out themselves in order to do it, we restrict the power of these words and whittle down the space they're allowed to occupy to the point of erasing them entirely, and we strip away valuable and powerful tools for understanding, communication, and self-expression.

It shouldn't matter so much whether someone is using the right words. It should matter why they're using the words they are in the first place. Let's not forget that people can absolutely use all the right words, in the right contexts, for entirely the wrong reasons.

I feel the issue is best summarized as: "if you are ready to explain why you're using the word, go ahead and use it."

If a cis/straight person can explain why they're saying "queer", then yes, they should use it. Maybe it's academic, maybe it's a quote, maybe it's because a queer person asked them to use the word to refer to them; and if it's not an appropriate use, then they should be ready to have that conversation with whoever challenges them on it.

[schraubd]

The Coda to the Israeli-American Food Truck Fiasco

(Previous posts here and here)

Eat Up the Borders, which ignited a firestorm of criticism after uninviting an Israeli-American immigrant food truck from its festival, has issued an apology.

It is, I think, a good apology. It provides relevant context, while making absolutely clear that they own their mistake and affirming their absolute intention to keep working with Moshava Philly in the future. While the apology is primarily -- an appropriately -- directed at Moshava and the Jewish community, it also at one point extends its apology to "the Jewish and Palestinian communities." I've seen some people push on this -- why the apology to Palestinians? -- but I don't have any particular problem. Eat Up the Borders made its own mistake, and yet Palestinians are having it imputed to them. To the extent Eat Up the Borders dragged them into a mess of their own creation, it's fine to apologize for that.

More broadly: apologies are important, and we should be encouraging Eat Up the Borders for doing so here. It's hard to apologize, and harder still when you know that many won't accept the apology and many others will be furious that one deigned to apologize at all. Sometimes it's paradoxically more comfortable sitting with obvious, outright antisemitism -- there is a weird sense of relief in finding a situation where everyone knows this was not okay, and there is the temptation to continue sitting in that comfortable position of righteous anger than to transition to the far more precarious, vulnerable, and uncertain posture of trying to grow forward. 

This is a temptation that must be resisted. If we want people to apologize and work to do better, one needs to respond favorably when they earnestly try to do so. Positive reinforcement is good! And this, I'd note, has been the consistent tone taken by Moshava Philly, which has been emphatic that likes Eat Up the Borders, thinks they do good work, wants to continue working with them, and thinks this was a mistake they'll learn and grow from. If one refuses to allow for that possibility, one cannot hold oneself out as an ally to Moshava Philly.

In other thoughts: It was notable that, once this story broke into the mainstream, one spotted very few defenders of the decision to expel Moshava Philly. Obviously, they exist and one could find them if one looked, but the usual suspects remained pretty quiet and the slightly-less usual suspects tended to use this as a case of "here's an example of where a 'boycott' goes too far." So that's notable. 

Those who did come out in defense of the expulsion -- JVP's Swarthmore branch was probably the highest-profile case I saw -- really did a sterling job of demonstrating how BDS, at least for that camp of fundamentalist, is about objecting to Israelis existing in any form or capacity. Eater Philadelphia got a quote -- one of the first I've seen -- from one of the persons who initially put pressure on the festival to cut ties with Moshava Philly based on the view that its food was "appropriated Palestinian food that they’re marketing as Israeli food" and therefore "contributes to the marginalization and erasure of Palestinian culture" (as Ron Kampeas notes, when it comes to the food in question, this is both historically illiterate and erasive of Middle Eastern Jewish history).

But the flailing effort to find something -- anything -- that supposedly rendeered their targeting of Moshava Philly something more than just naked national origin discrimination made them look more ridiculous than righteous. A popular move was to claim that "moshava" means "settlement" (it means something like "small village", which, yes, most thesauruses would say is a synonym for "settlement", but not in the sense referred to here). Others poured over social media to find basic statements of pride in being Israeli or love of their country to present as mortal sins (Manny's in San Francisco endured a similar strategy). One "collective", for example, made the shocking discovery that a product that Moshava Philly sold had its origin in a farm which the proprietor began working on "illegally" in 1993 (the intended implication being that it was from an illegal West Bank settlement). Even that six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon tag fell apart when it was discovered that the farm in question was in pre-48 Israel (who knew that BDSers had so much respect for Israeli property law!), at which point they showed their whole self by declaring flatly that "It’s all a settlement: Tel Aviv is a settlement just like Havot Ma’on, or Kiryat Arba." So yeah, that's who we're dealing with.

Ultimately, this story ends on an optimistic note. The festival apologized. The promise to keep working with Moshava Philly was secured, and it appears neither grudging nor coerced. Moshava Philly has been very vocal about how humbled they've been from the outpouring of support they've received. Few, if any, mainstream actors did anything but say "this was wrong". Those are all good things. We can be happy about those good things, and work to build on them -- and it looks like both Moshava Philly and Eat Up the Borders are committed to doing so.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/3gQ0kA4

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

(pt 1) i really enjoy all your atla analyses & you've done a great job breaking down the usual arguments re how eip shows that kataang shouldn't have happened. i'm curious about your take on one specific argument that i just saw today, in an analysis of the show by a zker that was otherwise quite good and respectful (i know you've already talked about eip a lot, so no problem if you don't feel like rehashing). the premise: aang didn't just pressure katara in eip, he threatened her.

(pt 2) they point to when katara joins aang & asks if he’s alright: “aang: no, i’m not! i hate this play! katara: i know it’s upsetting, but it sounds like you’re overreacting. aang: overreacting? if i hadn’t blocked my chakra, i’d probably be in the avatar state right now!” the suggestion is he’s threatening her when he says ‘i’d probably be in the avatar state right now’ to describe his anger. i think this take exaggerates and oversimplifies it, but interested in your thoughts on it.

Hello my friend!! It is true I am Old inside and don’t like rehashing dhdlksjslks BUT your comments on my posts are always incredibly kind and insightful so I am more than willing to do a bit of rehashing for you 🥰 Besides! I’ve seen this general take before a few times and it’s always irked me for the exact reason you point out - it simultaneously exaggerates and oversimplifies the situation (and honestly that’s an impressive duality since it’s seemingly contradictory, so hats off to them lmaooo) - and now is as good a time as any to address it. So, for starters, let’s go ahead and get the excerpt they love to focus on so much:

Cut to Aang standing alone on a balcony. Katara enters and walks up to him.

Katara: Are you all right?

Aang: [Angered.] No, I’m not! I hate this play! [Yanks his hat off and throws it on the ground.]

Katara: I know it’s upsetting, but it sounds like you’re overreacting.

Aang: Overreacting? If I hadn’t blocked my chakra, I’d probably be in the Avatar State right now!

Here’s the thing about so-called analyses of this excerpt: in a manner extremely convenient to the poster, they never seek to contextualize this moment. (I mean, to do so would deplatform their entire “argument” - perhaps that’s why they avoid performing a full analysis?) So let’s avoid that pitfall from the start.

Firstly, below are some links to related posts; I’m going to do my best to summarize the most relevant parts, but for anyone who desires greater detail, I gotchu 😤

This post explains why EIP (the play, lol) is imperialist propaganda and is intended to belittle the entire Gaang.

This post explains how Aang never acted “entitled” to Katara’s affections, particularly in regard to EIP.

This post breaks down the infamous EIP kiss like Snopes Fact Checker, covering common misconceptions, important perspectives to consider, etc.

Alright. With that out the way, it’s time for some context.

Aang and Katara have this conversation on the balcony after watching 95% of “The Boy in the Iceberg,” a play chock-full of Fire Nation propaganda that demeans the entire Gaang in order to prop up the Fire Nation as superior (hence why the play ends with Ozai’s victory). Here is my general breakdown of Aang and Katara’s treatment in particular from a previous post:

- katara, an indigenous woman, is highly sexualized and portrayed as overly dramatic and tearful, because the fire nation objectifies women not of their own people and views them as less intelligent and less emotionally stable

- aang, the avatar, the sole survivor of the fire nation’s genocide of the air nomads who is incredibly in-touch with his spirituality and femininity, is portrayed as an overly-airy and immature woman. the fire nation portrays him with a female actor to demean him (like, that’s classic imperialistic propagandist tactics) and furthermore writing his character as a childish airhead reinforces the fire nation sentiment that the air nomads were weak, foolish people who did not deserve to exist in their world

In other words, these kids have just watched almost an entire play that preys upon their insecurities and depicts them using racist and sexist stereotypes about their respective nations. It is completely understandable that tensions might run a little high and that their interactions would not be as balanced as usual (Katara and Aang have a great track record of communicating well with each other, as it happens!).

So we have to keep that in mind when examining the aforementioned excerpt. But there are other factors to consider, too! Namely: they are kids. Children. Teens. Aang is 12, Katara is 14.

If we want to be scientific, a person’s brain doesn’t finish developing until they are 25, lmao, and the preteen/teen years are when the prefrontal cortex that controls “rationality,” “judgement,” “forethought,” etc. is still developing. This doesn’t mean Aang and Katara are irrational and make poor decisions 24/7 (obviously not), but it does mean that in an intense, highly emotional situation, like after watching a play that intentionally demeans them and depicts them as inferior, they are more likely to overreact, more likely to be emotional, and more likely to make mistakes. Like, I’m serious, lol. “Teens process information with the amygdala.” That’s part of the brain that helps control emotions! It’s why teens sometimes struggle to articulate what we’re thinking, especially in situations that require instinct/impulse and quick decisions, because we’re really feeling whenever we make those choices. Acting more on emotion. Our brains simply haven’t finished developing the decision-making parts, lmao.

In sum: Aang and Katara are both kids, not adults, and should be interpreted as such. This doesn’t negate their intelligence, because they are both incredibly smart and Aang is arguably the wisest of the Gaang, but they are human. Young humans. They have emotions, and we should not be so cruel as to assume they’d never act on them.

So taking that all together, we can now acknowledge the high stress Aang and Katara are under, understand why they might be upset (*cough* imperialist propaganda is hurtful *cough*), and examine how their youth might play into their emotional reactions. And funny thing - all analyses that come to the conclusion of Aang “threatening” Katara here do not usually bother with this context. I can’t imagine why!

And you know what, let’s add one more piece of context: Sokka states that Aang left the theater “like, ten minutes ago,” which is what cues Katara to go look for him on the balcony. The reason I mention this line is because to me, it suggests Aang knew he was more worked up than usual! He chose to separate himself from his friends so he could process his frustration! He did not take his anger at the play out on them; instead, he purposefully took time and space to be alone.

With that in mind, I don’t understand at all how Aang’s Avatar state quote could be interpreted as a threat? Canonly, Aang is someone who was aware enough of his frustration to separate himself from the others - yet the logical next step is him threatening Katara as a result? He knew his intense emotions were because of the play (which he says himself), so the logical conclusion is that he then pinned the fault on Katara? What?? Sorry, that interpretation has no textual basis, lmao. But I digress!

Aang tells Katara, “If I hadn’t blocked my chakra, I’d probably be in the Avatar State right now!” As you said, this is the line people point to in an attempt to justify their (baseless) conclusion that Aang is “threatening” Katara. So let’s bring in the two key pieces of context: imperialist propaganda and age. Given that Aang is 12, and given that Aang has just watched almost a full play that demeans him and everything his people stood for (and let’s not forget it also mocks his and Katara’s love for each other)…

His reaction is understandable. An exaggeration and needlessly dramatic, but understandable. He feels vulnerable and insecure and Aang is human. He is human and flawed and he overreacts here and I love that A:TLA shows how even our heroes, even people who are truly good at heart and in soul, can get overly upset (especially given the aforementioned circumstances!). Would Aang actually be in the Avatar state at that moment, had it been possible? Of course not! He’s young and he’s hurt and as such he says something dramatic to convey his anxieties and frustrations. The line is not meant to be taken literally, and seeing people do so despite all the factors that should be taken into consideration when analyzing it… Cue a long, tired sigh from me and so many other A:TLA fans.

And to be honest? I cannot fathom how people watch this episode and come to the conclusion that Aang is “threatening” Katara. To me, this episode - besides being a recap episode - is one that humanizes our cast even further. Aang snaps at Katara, kisses her when he shouldn’t (which the story appropriately treats as wrong). Katara pushes down her true feelings and retreats into herself, afraid to start a relationship with the boy she loves because she’s already lost him once before and can’t bear to do so again. Zuko further confronts the hurt he’s enacted upon others, especially upon Iroh. Toph practices being vulnerable and accepting vulnerability from others by conversing with Zuko. Sokka witnesses how others have erased his contributions and labelled him as nothing more than the token nonbender in the group. Even Suki learns that she is not the only person who holds a place in Sokka’s heart and that she can never replace what he has lost.

To watch this episode where our heroes must come to terms with how the Fire Nation deems them inherently inferior, with how they have more fights to overcome in the future with the Fire Nation than a single war, and to come to the conclusion that… that what, Aang is abusive? A monster? Irredeemable? That he would threaten his best friend, someone he loves in every way?

Wow. That says more than enough about the viewer, doesn’t it?