#their inclusivity focus is also... believable!? wow

[appleatcha]

I had a long winded thing typed and tumblr deleted it 😭 so here we go again !

I wanted to waffle a bit about the shift in tone/aura of my blog lately.

My blogs vibe has shifted a lot since its inception, but I had really gotten into this "positivity inclusive (read: anti-trad/anti-terf) housewife" thing in 2023. And in the months I spent focusing on that in my life I learned so much about gratitude and positive thinking that has truly fundamentally changed my mental health and how I see and experience the world around me. But it always felt like I was just ignoring a huge part of myself.

I would come on here and write about gratitude and positivity and subconsciously I feel like I postured myself as this elegent and soft spoken lady when thats....not me at all. I am an air-headed and ham-handed lady that either doesn't take something seriously or has panic attacks over how serious i believe something is. I am awkward and stiff and most importantly I am NOT a positive, perfect kind of person that I feel like my blog gave off. I am an anxious mess and have a tendency to be negative. Which is a big reason why I focused so much on positivity and gratitude, which again has really positively impacted me. Even with my anxiety and mental health struggles I am way less negative than I ever was before.

I've mentioned before, but the end of 2022 brought up some challenges for me that I had never encountered before and never thought I would encounter. And I feel like I really grabbed onto the whole positivity/gratitude shtick as a way of avoiding coping with that. But when my I had to resuscitate my husband last month along with a few other stressful things that were new experiences for me, I think it kind of "uno-reversed" the stress of late 2022 and I had a real "I've lost myself bit" introspection.

I've said it twice, but the complete focus on positivity and gratitude and my role as a wife and a mother helped me so much. So much in fact, that I spent some time struggling with the thought that I'd lost myself a bit. I had this thought of "well, this way of thinking and living has done me so good, why should I ease off the gas?". But in focusing so much on that side of me, I was neglecting the other side of me. I couldn't tell you how many times my husband would sit me down and say something to the effect of "Nivids, you're going too hard in the sauce. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket" and I would write it off. And as usual, here i am realizing that he knew me better than myself all along yet again!

So I've been trying to let loose on here. I refused to post about my interests on here beyond "nature, appalachia, housewife, positivity, gratitude, and occasional witchery" because I didn't think my weird interests or humor could mesh well with it. But im trying to just not give a damn. This has also coupled with an effort to engage in my silly weird interests in my real world life as well.

My husband points out a lot that I don't let myself enjoy my own things. One thing about my husband is that he drops some harsh truths sometimes lol. One big one is that 99% of the situations i feel i CANT do something, i am just not letting myself do it. For example, if I lament that I haven't had a chance to watch a video I've been waiting to watch because my son has been watching his stuff on TV, he will say "you can tell him he's had his turn and watch your tv" and I think "wow, I guess I really did just want to feel powerless to validate my inaction huh". And I think I've been doing a lot of that self-regulation this year to cope with everything that's been going on.

All of that is to say, I am sorry if you followed me this year because you are a fellow housewife and enjoyed my peaceful, nature-centric positivity and are like WTF happened to this girl when I start posting Mary Reilly, Chris Fleming, and clown doll lmao

[trendingcaterers]

Plaza Catering: Your Trusted Partner for Stellar Corporate Events in Kerala (2024)

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[parallelgalaxiesblog]

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[battle-of-alberta]

so i have some Vibes from travelling to Banff and Jasper over the years that I feel like need justification and BOY are the municipal and tourism sites validating a lot of those vibes, one of which is that Banff feels like it was engineered as a resort town from the ground up and Jasper feels like a place people actually live in.

Banff sites: if you want to live here, good luck! you will suffer horribly, you will make sacrifices, and your entire life must be dedicated to serving the whims of tourists so long as it does not interfere with conservation

Jasper: ya i just sort of accidentally ended up here and why not try it? if you forget to leave it’s whatever. bring your dog please.

[qqueenofhades]

Keeping my fingers crossed for that Black Widow meta

Aha, okay. As usual, I am ludicrously easy to enable, so let's take a crack at this. The ask obviously contains SPOILERS for the Black Widow film (and is also tagged "black widow spoilers" if you're planning to filter), and discussion/reference to other films/properties in the MCU, though I don't feel like any of those are still a secret.

Anyway, as I said in my earlier post, I can't believe I am actually still trying to critically analyse a Marvel production in the year of our Lord 2021, but then, I feel like we all have a complicated relationship with it. Likewise, the feeling of "oh wow NOW you're giving Natasha a solo movie after you killed her off in a cheap and fairly sexist way in Endgame?" If this film had come out ten or even five years ago, it would have been major, but holding it off until now seems to have left most of us justifiably unimpressed. Plus, as I am absolutely not the first person to point out, it renders Natasha's sacrifice in Endgame "because I don't have a family" even more narratively incoherent. I realize that this film was written after that one by totally different people, there's no point in expecting the MCU to make consistent canonical sense throughout its eighty billion different films/series, we were all stuck with a mess after the Whedonified Age of Ultron Nat, and so forth, but still. Natasha explicitly SAYS that she has two families (her wacky Russian found family of spies and the Avengers) and her decision to leap off the cliff in Endgame to save Clint and his retconned perfect white heterosexual nuclear family.... Hmmmm. To which I say to you, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I do bite my thumb at Male Writers, sir.

Likewise, while I am wildly attracted to Florence Pugh as Yelena and deeply desire to be wrapped between her thighs, the movie felt more like her story than Nat's. Yelena drove most of the plot and the action, while Nat was just kind of along for the ride. As a solo piece, we really didn't learn that much about Natasha aside from the opening scene (which felt like it was straight out of The Americans and probably worked the best of the whole film for the reason) with her childhood in America. But even the infamous "what happened in Budapest" backstory with her and Clint was quickly info-dumped rather than shown, and they could have taken more narrative risks or included more flashbacks or otherwise given us more NATASHA, y'know??? Instead of cramming the film into the small space between Civil War and Infinity War and making it even weirder that Nat seemingly has no memory or reference to these events when she returns to the team at that time. Why not show her looking for Yelena or her actual defection to the Avengers or anything else we might want from a film that purportedly exists entirely to provide backstory for a now-dead character? It felt like even in the film universe, the main quest was being repeated -- she tried to kill Baddie McSoviet once before and it didn't work out, so she has to do it again, something something. Okay.

As for that, good ol' Marvel and its American Superiority TM. The only actual Eastern European actress in this film about Eastern Europeans was Antonia/Taskmaster, played by the Ukrainian Olga Kurylenko (and I was very interested in her?? If she's supposed to be a narrative foil and a ghost of Nat's past and mark of her former sins, etc., why not develop her as an actual character?) Everyone else were Brits and Americans hamming it up with even more chew-the-scenery fake Russian accents than Elizabeth Olsen's "Sokovian" accent as Scarlet Witch. If it's established that they all have perfect American accents at the start of the movie, why is Nat the only American-accented character in the modern day if she had presumably the exact same childhood as Yelena? I know it's another way to set her apart, but that and Baddie McSoviet (the Russians are finding a way to steal free will from people's brains! Zomgz!!! Is this 2021 or 1981?) were straight out of the Cold War in terms of its not-so-veiled American Supremacy Message. Likewise, making modern!Natasha a former KGB agent never really made sense, since she says in Winter Soldier that she was born in 1984, and we see her in this film as an 11-year-old in 1995. But the USSR collapsed in 1991, when she was seven, and the Red Room appears to be an entirely unrelated flying....lab....thingy run by a generic evil Russian (Ray Winstone, likewise Hamming Up Accent). So like. What is she, guys?? Make up your minds!!!

Likewise, Baddie McSoviet/Dreykov as a villain obviously plays into the hoary old Hollywood "All Bad People Are Recognizable As Being Terrible Sexists and Also Probably Russians" trope, but aside from that, he doesn't make sense. He has this entire army of basically unstoppable Widows and he has just been.... waiting around and causing random explosions? Or was just waiting for Nat and company to return so he could Put His Evil Plan Into Motion? Are we really supposed to believe that this guy has just been sitting up in his flying saucer and essentially never doing anything this whole time? He had about a million chances to launch this take-over-the-world plan long before Natasha ever got there. Plus, I.... am.... not sure what to think (aside from /deep sigh/ MARVEL) about the fact that all the Widows we see dying/getting killed on screen are women of color. (Then the Black surgeon who was about to remove Yelena's brain in the Red Room and the only other Black guy being Natasha's errand boy, which just... in context... YIKES.) I think the fact that there are random Black background Widows are supposed to mean that they're inclusive and badass or something? Scarlett Johansson also has her own issues with White Feminism and all the other things we've critiqued her for before, so after TFATWS and the Flag Smashers, Marvel clearly has found its subtly racist sweet spot. As usual?

The end of the film also just basically turns into the standard Marvel empty-spectacle/cool-looking fights/people flying through the air thing, and I wanted a lot more focus on the wacky found-family Russian-spy hijinks (I did love them, for reasons) and character dynamics, rather than all of them separately fighting baddies in different places. I did obviously have feelings about Natasha putting the parachute on Yelena to save her life. But why were we then denied Nat/Gamora parallels/relationships/any character development or interaction at all in Infinity War/Endgame? Both of them are trained assassins adopted into a non-biological family that they have a complicated relationship with, but end up forging a strong bond with their sister (Yelena/Nebula) nonetheless. Of course, that would have required Endgame to put more effort into its female characters than what it did, which was one (1) Epic CGI Charge Scene at the very end, and literally nothing else. Not that I am still salty about this or anything.

Anyway. The movie was genuinely fun in places. The wacky Russian found family of spies was definitely the best part, even if it made Endgame even more nonsensical as a result. But I wanted this movie to be a lot better than it was overall, though I probably would have liked it more if it had actually come out in a timely fashion and wasn't only released after they killed her off. It just feels like there were so many possible threads of potential that could have been done with Natasha if they were actually interested in experimenting and exploring the character and not just coming up with new baddies and ways to go boom, and it unfortunately missed the mark with that.

[maxwell-grant]

Vincenzo: The Gentleman Villain Reborn

Long before there were loudmouth buff guys in spandex, there was the gentleman villain.

There once was a time when the gentleman villain, whether a gentleman thief in the Raffles or Lupin mold, or murderous arch-criminals like Fu Manchu and Fantomas, organizations like Les Vampires, and even in-between figures like Rocambole and Judex, was the coolest thing in the pop culture block. The figures right around the corner of Baker Street, when Nick Carter and Sexton Blake and any billion old serial detectives weren’t quite cutting it. Their time was not to last long in the spotlight, as the pulp heroes consolidated domain in the 30s and then the superheroes took over, but every now and then, they return in various forms, never fully gone. But I’d dare say I’d never seen a gentleman villain story quite so bold, so modern, so dynamic and so gloriously over-the-top in pride over it’s existence, until I began watching Vincenzo.

Vincenzo is BADASS and I don’t use the term lightly. Not just the titular character, but the show itself. It’s currently a couple episodes short of the finale and you should stop everything you’re doing or watching and go watch Vincenzo. It’s been an utterly glorious ride from beginning to end with no shortage of great characters, terrific writing, great relationships and jaw-dropping moments as every episode succeeds in topping each other in WOW HOLY SHIT factor. It’s a shot of adrenaline and storytelling excellence to the eyeballs and you don’t have anything better to be doing right now than watching this.

I mentioned a while ago that Black was a show that, besides being also terrific in quality, captured my interest as a Shadow fan specifically because I saw in Black what I believe is the heart of The Shadow as a character: an embodiment of evil, motivated and created and warped by social catastrophe and strife, set loose to punish true evil in order to protect humanity. In that regard, if Black is where I find the heart of The Shadow, Vincenzo is where I find the spirit of what I like about The Shadow as a series: Cathartic urban fairytales where an extraordinary agent of change, armed with incredible cunning, sleight-of-hand and combat skills, rises above a dark background to command a folk brigade of ordinary people who reveal themselves to be extraordinary through their newfound purpose, to right the wrongs of society’s predators, by being better at their tactics than they are and turning their tools against them. 

I’m gonna spoil it a bit under the cut but please go watch it. I cannot praise this show enough and I’ll do my best to try.

Vincenzo centers around the titular character, Vincenzo Cassano, an Italian lawyer who works for the mafia as a consigliere, adopted by it’s Don at the age of eight. After the death of the Don and an attempted betrayal by his son, Vincenzo flees to Seoul and ends up taking residence at a ramshackle building called Geumga Plaza. Geumga Plaza is the hiding place of a gigantic stash of gold hidden by one of Vincenzo’s former clients, and he intends to retrieve it to rebuild his life somewhere else. Naturally, not only is the hidden room completely impenetrable, but the building is occupied. by residents who are being forced out of it by criminals working for the Babel corporation, which intends to take possession of the building. And thus, Vincenzo has to put his skills into working out progressively bigger problems, as his efforts to uncover the gold turn into a fight against Babel and it’s lawyers, as the problems take on bigger and bigger proportions. 

Vincenzo’s got a lot of what you’d expect from a k-drama at first glance. The leading man is a dashing young man, the leading lady is headstrong and stubborn, you see their romance coming a mile away and they take their damn time getting there, there’s emotional backstories that take a long time to be revealed, lots of wacky side characters and comedy interspersed with the darkest moments, a focus on corporate corruption, and so on. But it’s got an intrusion of elements brought by Vincenzo’s inclusion, such as mob drama, tonal and cultural imbalance, and the gentleman villain tropes that Vincenzo brings, as the catalyst of change whose antics backflip through action hero, romantic hero, super hero and super villain, cunning puppetmaster and gun-toting warrior alike, and start to have an effect on the world around him. His allies become stronger, more determined and effective, and the villains grow smarter and more horrid as they desperately try to avoid their own downfalls.

On paper, Vincenzo is almost a textbook example of how to craft a villain protagonist. He’s a mysterious foreigner with a hidden past and incredible skills who shows up uninvited in “our” world, who starts terrorizing and manipulating people into doing his bidding. He’s got a hotheaded and foolish investigator chasing after his every move, and frequently employs misdirection and sleight-of-hand to fool the authorities. He commits crimes and employs underhanded methods in the service of stamping out people worse than himself. He never really makes any claim of being a hero and actively rejects the notion he’s fighting for justice, but instead states he’s doing it as a matter of principle. One of the characters early on even states he gives off the vibe of a movie villain, even Vincenzo himself tells Hong Cha-Young, the female lead, that he’s teaching her how to be a proper villain. In another series, Vincenzo would be the hypercompetent sidekick to the main villain, or secretly the main villain, the lone badass that the action hero would have a tough fight against before defeating and moving on. But Vincenzo does not allow himself to be dismissed so easily. 

On the first episode, when we’re introduced to him in Italy, he’s painted as the badass to end all badasses. But the minute he arrives in Seoul, he falls for a trick at the airport and is mugged by two cabbies, and has to walk around penniless and without dignity, shouting curses in Italian that nobody understands. He has to sleep in a broken down apartment, his “taking a steamy shower with classical music playing” fanservice scene keeps being interrupted because the shower doesn’t work, and a pigeon chattering outside his window keeps ruining his sleep. 

The tenants of the building are all introduced as varying levels of unsympathetic and useless, or downright creepy. The tailor screws up his favorite suit, the chef who claims to have studied in Italy is a total fraud, there’s tenants who scare us by passing as ghosts and zombies, and Hong Cha-Young is introduced as an unlikable stooge for Babel. Vincenzo is a villain protagonist who is forced out of his grand mafia epic film, where he conducts business around lavish manors while classical music plays, and stumbles onto a korean drama, a world that operates by different rules and where no one has any reason to take him seriously at first, and gradually finds out that the difference between both worlds is not as big as he’d imagined.

It’s only at the very end of the first episode, when the neighborhood gangsters show up to terrorize the tenants, that Vincenzo starts to kick ass again, and he has not stopped so far. In fact, not just him, ALL of the tenants have gradually started kicking ass with him. Hong Cha-Young severs all connections to Babel and proves to be, as his main partner in crime, just as cunning, twice as driven, and three times as batshit and kooky. The tailor who ruined his suit turns out to be an ex-gang member capable of fending off groups of thugs with only his scissors. The creepy piano girl reveals herself a hacking genius, the zombie impersonators become incredible actors, the failed wrestler and badass wannabe becomes his most active field agent along with his equally strong wife, the chef improves his cooking and lends his restaurant as a meeting center, all of the characters, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM gradually become incredible, competent, resourceful people, really no different than they were before, it just took a little courage and pushing. 

The headstrong and foolish agent pursuing Vincenzo becomes 100% smitten with him and quickly becomes one of his greatest allies. Even the neighborhood gangsters, after being left to die by Babel and forced to start anew, quickly become some of his most loyal allies, and gradually redeem themselves in the eyes of the tenants to the point they become friends. In departing from his old family, Vincenzo forms a new one, even if never by his intention. They even all get matching suits.

This incredibly potent, human core surrounding the antics of an extraordinary figure of action is part of what used to make the Agents of The Shadow such a special, meaningful and beloved part of the series, and something every adaptation since then has been 100% poorer for neglecting. But Vincenzo does it, and does it right. I could watch a billion adventures with these people and never get sick of them. 

Vincenzo is a slick, modern take on the gentleman villain that takes many of it’s oldest conventions and provides blueprints for making them work in modern times. His plans often take a performance art-edge as he employs tactics both old-fashioned and modern, like using social media to stage an event in front of the Plaza so the bulldozers set to demolish it won’t be able to pass, or copying files and passing them to his police contact while keeping the real ones when said police contact inevitably betrays him. The tenants put all of their skills to use, no matter how unusual or seemingly useless. Every episode lays the groundwork for a smashing finale where all of the threads come together and we bare witness to a grand tapestry of karmic retribution.

The villains themselves are no slouch, and also have that modern edge that gradually ramps up. They stage discreet assassinations involving gas leaks and watches meant to burst into flames. They stack the deck impossibly against all characters. They employ masked goons by the dozens, armies of lawyers to smudge any connections between themselves and their actions, and every sector of society in covering them, from journalists publishing pro-Babel propaganda to police commissioners. The assistant of the main villain does zumba classes amidst ordering assassinations, and is often likened to a snake and a witch with her "Crystal Ball” (the name she uses for ordering assassin contacts by the phone), complete with a cowardly, scheming assistant she bullies at every turn. The CEO of Babel has a dual nature not out of place in a Jekyll & Hyde/Dorian Grey kind of story. 

The main villain is often painted as a slasher villain backed by massive corporate power, murdering people with hockey equipments and even outright named “Jason” at one point, with a tense string theme song accompanying his deeds. The show hides the villain at plain sight by using one of the most familiar set-ups of romantic dramas and the tension never stops even after he’s revealed. 

Mobster films tend to paint an idealized version of it’s protagonists, not necessarily because of a genuine love or interest with mobsters (I mean, it really goes without saying that real life mobsters are obviously not admirable figures), but out of a sense of displaying a “this is what it could be” fantasy, a fantasy where the mafioso is a dark hero who will still ultimately do the right thing and stick up for the little guy, in a similar way to how superheroes often function as police officers except, y’know, actually dedicated to protecting people. 

Vincenzo does go to great lengths to address the imbalance of putting such a dark figure as it’s hero, through showing how the situation can only be addressed by the intrusion of a figure such as Vincenzo. There’s a scene where Vincenzo and Hong proceed to explain extremely succintly to their cop ally why the “bad apples” argument is horseshit.  One of the show’s characters, someone who’s spent his entire life being the best person he could, and dedicating himself 110% percent to fighting evil even at the expense of connecting with his own family, someone who absolutely should be the hero to take down Babel, admits shortly before dying that it wasn’t enough, that it was never going to be enough, and that what the situation calls for isn’t a hero, but a monster. That monster being Vincenzo, who is not only powerful and monstrous, but commands the loyalty of people high and low class alike, criminals and law enforcement agents, to fight Babel. In his words, “the ultimate monster”, something even the world’s biggest badass cannot defeat by himself. 

On most other set-ups, Vincenzo would be pretty unmistakably the villain. But here, when he’s set up against a starkly realistic depiction of how corporations actually function in our world, depicts that Vincenzo’s ability to clear his way through goons John Wick-style is nowhere near enough, and to that end, he’s gonna have to fight impossible battles using his brains and his allies. And in the end, he defeats them, time and time again, and proves that they were not that impossible after all. 

One can only hope he’s on to something.

Oh yeah and THE PIGEON BY HIS WINDOW ALSO KICKS ASS and I will not explain how, just watch the show, I can’t do it justice no matter how much I talk about it.

[olderthannetfic]

It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be

You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)

However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.

Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.

(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)

But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.

--

In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.

What do I mean about them being similar?

Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.

It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)

Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)

There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.

This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.

Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)

Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.

I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.

BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.

--

But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.

In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.

My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.

I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.

But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.

[rudolphsboyfriend]

JKR’s chamber of secrets: the racist undertones in the harry potter books

The harry potter book series is arguably one of the most popular works of modern fiction. It is widely regarded as essential reading for children all over the world, and has one of the biggest fan bases of any book series. Despite it being one of the biggest phenomena of English literature, the series and the author often showcase and promote bigoted opinions, such as racism, and transphobia. In this speech I will be discussing JKRs chamber of secrets: the underlying tones of racism in the Harry Potter books.

The first thing I would like to point out, is that the elves have from the beginning been seen as these happy, carefree slaves, that are completely and utterly against freedom. This to begin with, is feeding into the slaving myth and propaganda that slave owners that told to the general public so they could benefit from free labour. This is very racist as it suggests that JKR believes that slaves were a good thing and should not have been eradicated. Hermione is the only one who seems to care about the elves’ freedom and while fighting for their freedom she is seen as a silly, misguided person for it.

Another problem with this is that while the good guys try to fight back against Voldemort's racist ideology of only wanting purebloods to exist, and wants to eradicate muggleborns, they also complicit with Voldemort's racist ideology. Wizards treat muggles as inferior to them this is shown from the first book, ‘even the muggles have noticed somethings going on’ Professor McGonagall says dismissively and Hagrid tells Harry ‘It’s your bad luck you grew up in a family o’ the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on’. It is obvious that the word muggle is not only a description it’s an insult. They also abuse muggles by erasing their memories which is distinctly a violation of consent. The books show an obvious social hierarchy, the idea that some people are better than others: purebloods, half-bloods, muggleborns, muggles, half-giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. And if this way of thinking is applied, as this book is targeted to children it can make them think that some people are better than others and if they apply this to race, sexuality, and transgender people, it can create a generation of bigoted people as so many people see her as a role model that they can copy her bigoted way of thinking. She is one of the main reasons that there are so many transphobic people is because SHE encouraged them to become more radicalised.

J.K Rowling is also anti semantic as she based goblins on harmful Jewish stereotypes. Due to years of anti-Semitism Jews were portrayed as having big noses and being greedy, as they tended to work with money. But at this point who's surprised?

The few people of colour presented in the books were done in a racist fashion. Firstly, the Patil sisters, were the only desi characters in the book and they were sort of prissy and irrelevant to the story, that being said. The outfit they were is a more simplistic, watered-down, unflattering version of actual Indian ethnic wear. In general, Indian clothing is so bright and beautiful, and the designs are so intricate, the designers simply didn’t bother to represent Indian culture, instead chose to focus entirely on Hermione's glow up. Secondly, Cho Chang. WOW! Do I need to say more? This is one of the most openely racist things she has done. She took two Korean surnames mixed them together and called it a day. Especially in a magical world full of mystical names like Luna Lovegood, Albus Dumbledore, and Nymphadora Tonks, she didn’t even give the name even an ounce of thought.

By casting a Korean actress to play Nagini, in Fantastic Beasts, who later on becomes a pet for a white man, when she is the only Asian character is racist. End of story. It is specifically the lack of diversity that makes this stand out. It IS racist to Asian women because Asian women only ever see stereotypes like the exotic Asian woman who is fetishized by white men – which is a REAL thing. Having Nagini being owned and controlled by a white man, is harmful and just racist. Did J.K Rowling not have a single person that could have pointed the problem of having an Asian women end up in permanent enslavement to an evil white guy?

Due to the criticism J.K Rowling received for not including enough diversity in the books, she claimed that Hermione was black, which is great, but did not bother to include this in the books. She thought that by saying that ‘hey guys I now think Hermione is black’ it was enough. She simply wanted those brownie points. It is increasingly obvious that she can never be bothered to write good representation.  She also did this when she made Albus Dumbledore gay, as queer baiting to add more diversity. This could be rebutted with the idea that she does not know how to include more accurate representation. However, Rick Riordan, who in the beginning didn’t have a very inclusive universe, strived and learned to write and include diversity in the Percy Jackson universe. The author of one of the most popular book series is more than capable of learning how to write more inclusive books, she does not though because she is racist, homophobic and transphobic.

In conclusion, there are a lot of racist undertones to the harry potter books, that reflect the authors actual feelings in real life. She does not include enough representation and the few she does are written in a racist manner. In recent years she has also proved to be incredibly transphobic, teaching young children who see her as a role model that trans men are not real men, when they are and the other way round. And this concludes, today’s speech on why JK Rowling is a vile human being.

this is my speech it suck but it drags JKR through the mud and i have no brain cells left over

also @noboren and @sarcastic-sayori heres my shitty speech if you think of ways of making better please tell me

WOOHOO BESTIEEE NICE!!!!! Drag her 😌🙏🏼

[moonlightchn]

~WHOLESOME WEDNESDAY~

Not to be a soft motherfucker but I've been wanting to do this again for a week now so I guessed I would try my best to fit as many of my thoughts here as I can without being annoying or tumblr fucking up plz bear with me heh but we know none of those are actually possible anyway so THERES THAT also this is fucking long wow ANYWAY

WARNING WORD VOMIT sjsjsjsj I dont even know what i wrote I'm sorry but I'm tagging yall anyway

Some of you I speak to on a daily basis, yknow? Like,, as admin. And its fucking insane because like- I don't know but like isn't it insane? sjajsjsj How fast some people come to grow in your heart and get under your skin and become so important for you. I think it's crazy. That in four months or so I've made more friends in here that in my whole life and I've learned so much about life and myself and I've gotten marked and some of you imprinted on my mind and heart forever. And like HELL I wasn't here when most big dramas happened but I was here for two very big ones and like??? idk it feels like all of us have been through shared crises and somehow grown closer sjajskwjs idk I'm weird and im sensitive today and I just feel like wow what would I be doing without all of you right now? probably studying. or scrolling Twitter in which I never spoke to anyone. or watching Instagram stories and getting sad over how all my ex class partners are still in contact and hang out and keep strong relationships while I just sit here. like, I know we all say this place sucks and we hate it and its toxic and don't get me wrong of course some people is fucking shitty and they take a toll on a lot of others but that like... it also happens in real life yknow?? but like in real life how many people do you think would actually idk sit with you through a panic attack or stay up with you till 8am or wake up in the middle of the night or rave with you or hype you up or have meme wars or send you daily jokes or just randomly tell you how much you mean to them or make posts asking where you are when you disappear or been gone for too long or make people that doesnt know you send you birthday wishes? like I'm not saying it doesnt happen but isnt it wonderful that it happens HERE with US where maybe out of 10 people only 2 know each other in real life? Isnt it wonderful that we're from all around the world? that you half of the time dont realize someone isnt from English speaking places because they're too good or even when they're not that good no one judges you because this is such an inclusive and wonderful place for people of all races and colors and sexualities and nationalities and body types and hair colors?

idk I'm just RAMBLING but like I wanted to let everyone know that even if we dont speak, even if we NEVER spoke, even if we're only on each others tag lists, or even if I was and you took me off or I took you off or if you deleted or if you have 817383 bots and you speak to me in all of them or only one or whatever PLEASE just know that I love you so much and I appreciate you and you're awesome and if you made some mistakes know that you CAN fix them you CAN learn and be better you CAN grow.

I believe that everyone is capable of learning and changing and everyone deserves a second chance as long as they genuinely show the intention of changing and bettering themselves. I believe that we're capable of forgiving and maintaining healthy relationships without hard feelings. I believe we all have goodness. I believe we all are small universes and we have stars in our eyes and supernovas in our brains and a million things to discover and I believe its funnier to be together than alone and I'm rambling again but like idk just yesterday I was sending someone a message telling them how maybe I'm fucking delusional and naive because who the fuck goes out on their daily saying "be skeptical. dont trust too much. always pay attention" but then after two days of talking with someone they're fucking platonically whipped and would sell their soul as long as they can see those around them happy? trick question I know many of you do too which WORRIES ME PLZ DONT PUT YOUR HEARTS ON THE LINE SO EASILY I drifted I forgot what I was saying oh welp

Anyway for some of you i have so much to say I could write endless paragraphs about you about admins and characters and life and wow I do speak a lot to admins sometimes I speak more to admins as admin that the characters and for some others I can only say a few things or wish you to have a good day some of you I only ever spoke to your character or we talked too little or never at all wow I say that a lot but like one thing yall have in common is that I love you so much even if you don't know me or dont care alright I dont care if you don't care I LOVE YOU and you can FIGHT ME if you dont wanna accept it smh I just want you to know that this place so many of you have been feeling is crumbling down or hurting them or isnt the same anymore is MY safe place too is a place where I feel comfortable and secure and I know, well decide to believe, that you guys would never do willingly anything to hurt another and yknow sometimes I just sit in bed and look at my account and I'm like wow I suck I should delete but then I'm like I could never do that to you I really couldn't because I've been told so many times I'm peoples safe place too and I would never want to take that away from you yknow

I mean I'm not gonna say we shouldn't pay attention to the bad things that happen because this is somehow our home and it's on us to protect it but I think that we shouldnt focus so much on it. because theres still so many good things that we overlook when we think of the bad or when we let things get to us or when we decide to act out of impulse and not think through stuff yknow

ANYWAAY what I'm trying to say is that I love you all so so so so so much and this is my safe place because you're here for me when I need it and I would never give you guys up for anything and like i have so many people for whom i stay daily and try my best and I hope that someday when you need a reason i can be that for you too because I've said this in private but I want everyone to know that this is my corner too and I will always fight for it and protect it so like we can all fight for it together whenever things get rough or you can leave me alone and maybe I'm being super dramatic and putting a lot of weight on this but I started overthinking like halfway and in just tthink that I want to keep yall close to me and my heart forever ok so stay safe and healthy and happy yeah fight for your happiness fight for what you deserve fight for what you want and don't let anyone ANYONE EVER take away from you your joy and your spark and your will to be yourself ok bye

[yorit1]

domestically us

@averysterekspring

Stiles and Derek’s first wedding anniversary tomorrow, and Derek wanted the date to be a special one. They had the house to themselves tonight, and Derek went all out. He was cooking food that was Stiles favourite. He wanted Stiles to know that Derek loved him and that Derek loved being married to Stiles. 

Being married to Stiles was the best thing that had happened to Derek. He had a family that loved him but nothing compared to when Stiles looked at him and smiled at him. It was like Stiles was the glue that held his family together. Laura and Cora were helping him cook for Stiles. Derek had a whole event planned for them. And a trip to Australia. He had food that would hint at where they were going, and it was fun to cook with his sisters. 

Derek was excited that the food was all ready. Now he just had to wait until Stiles was home, and they could enjoy the meal and a night together before they go on their flight tomorrow morning. 

Derek heard the door unlocked and was excited that Stiles was finally home. He hoped that Stiles liked it. 

“For you,” Derek said as he handed Stiles a flower. One that was unique and beautiful, just like Stiles. 

Stiles smiled at Derek and looked up at him. Derek placed his hands around Stiles and took him in his arms. Derek kissed Stiles, and the two of them enjoyed the warm embrace of being in each other’s arm and just kissing each other. Stiles kissed Derek back, and the two of them were just mesmerised by the kiss. Stiles could not believe that he and Derek had been married for a year. 

“I love you,” Derek nuzzled into Stiles’s ear as he kissed his neck and his cheek. 

“I love you too, derbear,” Stiles said as he let Derek lay kisses on his neck. 

Derek kissed Stiles for a few more minutes, and the two of them just enjoyed each other. Derek then stopped kissing him and knew he could do more later. He grabbed Stiles hand and pushed him into the Dining room where the table was set. 

“Wow,” Stiles said. 

The room was set up like the Sydney opera house, and there were lights set up in a romantic setting lighting up the room. Stiles could not believe that Derek did all of that for him. Stiles knew that Derek was well off and could always take care of him, but he did not expect him to be so thoughtful. Only Stiles knew about Derek secret soft romantic side. He was very considerate and romantic, and Stiles loved it. 

“We are going to Australia?” Stiles asked. 

“I booked a month for us to go to all the places that you wanted to go to in Australia. All-inclusive everywhere. We will be staying in a villa on the beach for the first week in Sydney, and it will be perfect.” Derek said. 

“I can’t wait. Sydney, Melbourne, the outback, everything that I want to see. It’s going to be perfect. Now, let’s focus on tonight and us.” Stiles said and grabbed Derek’s hand and kissed it. 

Derek blushed and kissed Stiles cheek. Stiles kissed Derek’s hand again, and they smiled. Derek loved that Stiles was soft with him. Stiles was sarcastic, but he was also romantic and loved those who mattered with all of his heart. Derek was lucky to be loved by Stiles, and he wanted to show him how special he was to him. Derek kissed Stiles on the cheek again and smiled. 

“Dinner, we have something special,” Derek said and went to grab the food to put on the plates. 

Derek placed the food on the table, and Stiles looked at it. It was a lot of food and Stiles favourites and some exceptional food that put Stiles in the mood to go to Australia. Stiles was happy with what was on offer and took Derek’s hand and sat at the table. Derek kissed Stiles and placed food on Stiles plate. Stiles looked at it and smiled. Derek poured the wine into Stiles glass. It was a special wine from Australia, and Stiles did love it. Stiles loved everything that was on his plate. Derek went and sat on the opposite end of the table and poured himself some wine, and put food on his plate. Stiles clinked their glasses, and they both took a drink from the wine. 

“Mhm, this is good, Thanks Derek, this is all so amazing thanks, I love you,” Stiles said and took another seep from the wine. 

Derek and Stiles enjoyed their meal and just had a lovely quiet evening, just the two of them. Derek looked at Stiles and saw his beautiful eyes and loved him more and more. Each moment he could not believe that he had been married to this handsome man for a whole year. The two of them enjoyed their meal and were in their little world. 

When Stiles was done eating, he went to Derek, placed his hands around Derek, took his hands, and unbuttoned his shirt’s top buttons. Derek knew where this was going. He got up and took his hands, and they went to the couch. 

When they were on the couch, Derek kissed Stiles, and Stiles kissed him back. The two of them were just enjoying each other, and Derek was kissing Stiles down the neck. He moved to remove Stiles shirt. Derek loved that it was just the two of them, and people knew not to disturb them tonight. Derek and Stiles continued in that manner, and we’re excited to spend the rest of the night together, just the two of them kissing and making love and just being together as husbands. Tomorrow they had a long flight, but tonight they were just the two of them, and it was only the two of them in the world. Derek smiled and continued to kiss Stiles and make Stiles feel good as he made Derek feel every day.

[46ten]

curious as to your take on the current debate going on in hamiltonia re: hamilton a slaver vs hamilton not a slaver?

Whew, this is going to be a long answer. Since Jessie Serfilippi’s “As Odious and Immoral A Thing” was first published (I posted a few brief quotes here), likely as part of an ongoing interest in the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site with the subject of the Schuyler and Hamilton families and slavery (see here for blogposts labeled ‘slavery’ including a couple about AH specifically), there have been three versions of a rebuttal by Michael E. Newton and some people calling themselves Philo (”Love”) Hamilton, one of whom is Doug Hamilton*. The ongoing engagement on this topic also brings up issues of historiography and hagiography.

In this whole discussion there is only one new piece of evidence that Serfilippi has referenced on Twitter but is not part of her article - I’ll get into that below. Everything else is a re-analysis of known and fairly popular sources, so I don’t think going through it point by point would be helpful.

But let’s be clear about something. This discussion around AH is in large part because of this Chernow falsehood: “[f]ew, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton.” Chernow also calls AH a “fierce abolitionist” and a “staunch abolitionist” because Chernow doesn’t know what abolitionism is. This lie got tons of mileage with Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose musical character AH may have personal moral defects, but not blind spots as huge and disastrous to a modern audience as a lackadaisical approach to the owning of other human beings. (That Miranda’s approach totally riled some Black artists and scholars is well-known, and I wrote briefly about it here.) Serfilippi’s article doesn’t get the media play it does without the popularity of the abolitionist Founding Father myth that Miranda put on stage. So this conflict and news-cycle interest arose from Chernow’s need to give AH the moral high ground by claiming that he was the best best best abolitionist because Chernow is interested in hagiography, not biography. Unfortunately, Newton-Hamilton seem interested in the same thing.

A brief note on word usage: an enslaver, in most current usage, is defined as someone who participated in any aspect of the slavery enterprise. Considering AH’s undisputed role as money-handler (or the more laughable ‘he was a banker’ assertion in the Newton-Hamilton essay) for members of the Schuyler family acquiring enslaved persons, AH was an enslaver.

In my opinion, on the issue of slavery, AH is damned by his extensive ties from 1780 onwards to the Schuyler family. There’s nothing that can explain away the fact that AH at times lived with, visited, and sent his wife and children for extended stays and to be educated by his slave-owning in-laws. AH did not somehow become innocently involved in slave trading and ownership. Rather, he knew what he was doing when he married into the heavy slave-trading and owning Schuyler family and when he engaged in business acts for that family, including helping them to acquire/sell enslaved persons. These were morally weighty - and abominable acts, argued even in his day - and he did them anyway. There is not any record that remains that he had a problem having his children reared within an abhorrent system/household where people were enslaved and served them; in fact, given the number of times he sent his children to his father- and mother-in-law’s home for extended periods, it could be suggested he found nothing morally objectionable going on there. Philip Hamilton even thanked his enslaver grandfather for his advice on how to “be a good man.” P. Schuyler’s wealth and trading was through the slavery economy. Moreover, AH’s economic concerns were also inextricably tied to slavery - keep in mind that every mention of tariffs on sugar is connected to the slave trade. Almost everything led back to that evil institution.

During AH’s lifetime, a number of white AND Black persons articulated that all enslaved Black and Indigenous persons should be freed, that the practice of enslavement was a grave moral failing. AH was well-informed enough to know that Black Americans were articulating how freedom should be applied to them - indeed, many of the manumission policies of the original states arose from these efforts. So AH was fully aware of the arguments. (His son was involved!) Maybe this helped inspire him and his slave-owning friends and political colleagues to form the NY Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, although none of this group agreed to give up their own enslaved persons as part of the organization of this group.

Or, as Newton-Hamilton audaciously state, “[AH] was more involved in building a nation” sotto voce based on enslavement and racial distinction than he could be bothered to care about the lives of enslaved people. This shouldn’t be a surprise when it comes to AH’s major moral failings/blind spots - he didn’t care about the lives of the people affected by his whiskey tax either. If one wants to nevertheless call this a “good man,” we’re probably looking at each other from across a void.

But this is well-trod territory. Several articles post-Chernow have evaluated and summarized positions on AH and slavery that I share:

“Hamilton's position on slavery is more complex than his biographers' suggest. Hamilton was not an advocate of slavery, but when the issue of slavery came into conflict with his personal ambitions, his belief in property rights, or his belief of what would promote America's interests, Hamilton chose those goals over opposing slavery. In the instances where Hamilton supported granting freedom to blacks, his primary motive was based more on practical concerns rather than an ideological view of slavery as immoral. Hamilton's decisions show that his desire for the abolition of slavery was not his priority.” Michelle DuRoss, “Somewhere in Between: Alexander Hamilton and Slavery,” Early American Review, 2011 [part 1, part 2]

“But it does illustrate something that his primary modern biographers have been reluctant to concede: Hamilton routinely subordinated his antislavery inclinations to other family and political concerns, and he did not ever approach even a modest level of engagement on the issue in his otherwise voluminous published works.” Phil Magness, “Alexander Hamilton’s Exaggerated Abolitionism,” 2015

“He was not an abolitionist...[h]e bought and sold slaves for his in-laws, and opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda.” Annette Gordon-Reed, “Correcting ‘Hamilton’,” Harvard Gazette, 2016.

Serfilippi extends this:

When those sources are fully considered, a rarely acknowledged truth becomes inescapably apparent: not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally.

I have no objection to her statement. We simply have no record of AH strongly challenging the institution of slavery, while several of his colleagues and friends most certainly did. Instead, we have the financial transactions, the possible use of enslaved labor, and the possible ownership of enslaved persons, alongside his strong personal, professional, and political ties to owners of enslaved persons. And the new evidence: the inclusion of the following in a list of persons dead of Yellow Fever in NYC 1798, “Hamilton Alexander, major-general, the black man of, 26 Broadway” An Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in the City of New-York, 1799. We cannot know if this was an enslaved man or a free Black man who lived and labored for the Hamiltons, but it should eliminate anyone confidently stating that the Hamiltons did not own enslaved persons.

Thus, Serfilippi has successfully accomplished at least one important goal: bringing to the forefront the names (as we have them) of persons, servant or enslaved, connected to the Hamiltons.

I wrote above that part of the problem here is hagiography. If his concern is with the truth, I certainly look forward to Newton’s chapter-by-chapter repudiations of books written by Chernow, Brookhiser, and Knott on AH and the AH/GW relationship.This leads to the second issue that has arisen: the unprofessional, and frankly gross, glee in trying to punch down on a young female scholar. In my own field (an ex-partner is a military historian so I’ll speak for their field too), the approach when one believes a colleague is publishing in error and one has additional information that could illuminate the issues is to contact them and seek to work together to analyze and draw conclusions. Newton and the anonymous Love Hamilton clan didn’t treat Serfilippi as if she were deserving of this respect. Moreover, Newton has never, to my knowledge - and I purchased his books! - gone this hard after Chernow, who certainly deserves it even more.

But Newton-Hamilton betray their own concerns here: “Considering the era in which Hamilton lived, the challenges he faced, and his accomplishments, it is not difficult to understand why Hamilton did not make opposition to slavery his primary focus. His attention was on building a nation.” And what kind of nation was that? At the Constitutional Convention, AH’s lengthy speeches on the formation of the government have been recorded. There is no record of him offering any statements about the slavery issue, unlike his friend Gouverneur Morris.

Newton-Hamilton continue: “Unfortunately, that meant neglecting other important matters, not just slavery but also his own financial well-being.” Wow, a comparison is made between AH’s personal finances and the ownership of human beings. Could these authors be any clearer that the slavery issue is an inconvenience that they are ultimately unconcerned about? I’m unsure if Newton-Hamilton realize just how gross their attempt at addressing this issue has been, and that it’s hard to take their interpretation and analysis of the evidence seriously when these are the kinds of statements making their way into the rebuttal essays.

Now there is an interesting discussion about how even later abolitionists did not see a conflict in the employment of enslaved labor, but that too isn’t something that Newton-Hamilton show interest in. Instead, their approach seems to be that AH needs to be celebrated at all costs, and thankfully, those days are passing into history.

*It’s ridiculous that a group of people have given themselves a stupid pseudonym to avoid attaching their actual names to a so-called scholarly article. And I’m aware that I’m writing this anonymously, but on tumblr where maybe 5 people have made it to the end of this (I’m not publishing it on my real blog).

**I will not link it, but it can be found on Newton’s blog discoveringhamilton.

[sarita-daniele]

Hi, angel! Hope you're doing alright 💓 (hola ángel! También hablo español :) ) I was wondering if you could give some advices in starting out in an arts career?

Hola amigx, ¡perdón que nunca vi tu mensajito! I’m not on my Tumblr very often and definitely forget to check my messages. Luckily my favorite causita @luthienne told me you’d messaged me! 

I don’t know what arts discipline you’re in, so feel free to let me know if the advice I have doesn’t apply to you (and ignore it!). There are so many ways to build an arts career, but I’m happy to share some things I’ve learned through trial and error along the way. 

(Outrageously long post below break!)

Educate yourself in arts technique, but also study widely. 

Techniques are important in art, but only as important as the concepts behind them. When I was younger, I wowed people by drawing near-photographic portraits, but that technical talent and skill alone couldn’t make me a professional artist. Memorable artwork has not just a how, but a why. It isn’t just the object but the story behind the object, and the meaning of the object in the world. Art is about what interests you, what makes you think, what you most value and want to change in this world. So as you build an arts career, learn the techniques behind drawing, woodworking, casting, writing, music-making, whatever your discipline is, but take time, if you can, to also study history, sociology, anthropology, ecology, linguistics, politics, or whatever else you’re drawn to conceptually. Study as widely as you can. 

The studio art program I went through (a public university in the US) was very technique-forward; we signed up for classes according to technique, like printmaking or small metals, learned those techniques, completed technique-based assignments. Then I did a one-term exchange at arts university in the UK that was very concept-forward. We had no technical courses, just exhibition deadlines, and what mattered in critique was the concept. Both of these schools had their strengths and flaws, but what I learned was that, to be a practicing artist, I needed both technique and concepts that I genuinely cared about and could stand behind. If I could go back and change anything, I would probably take fewer studio courses (after graduating, I couldn’t afford access to a wood shop, metal shop, or expensive casting materials, and lost many of those skills) and more courses in sociology, Latin American studies, linguistics, ecology, anthropology, etc., because my artwork today centers on social justice, racial justice, Latinx stories and histories, educational access and justice, the politics of language, and community ethics. 

And please know that whenever I talk about seeking an education, I’m not talking solely about institutional spaces. College career tracks in the arts (BFA, MFA, etc., much less high-cost conservatory programs) are not accessible to everyone and aren’t the only way to establish an arts career. You can study technique and learn about the world using any educational space accessible to you: nonprofits that offer programming in your community, online resources, Continuing Education programs. And of course, self-education: read as much as you possibly can!

Know the value of your story. 

I come from a Cuban/Peruvian family and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. My father’s family fled political violence surrounding the Cuban Revolution and came to the U.S. when he was a teenager. My mother was born in Brooklyn to Peruvian parents on work visas and moved back to Lima in her childhood. I grew up with these two cultures present and deeply embedded in our household, in our language, our food, our sense of humor, our sense of history. And yet, some residual assimilation trauma still affected me. I drifted towards the most American things, the whitest things, English authors and Irish music, in part because I enjoyed them but also because those were the things I saw valued in society. I wanted to fit in, wanted to be unique but not different, wanted to prove that I could navigate all spaces. The reality of marginalized identities in America is that our country tells us our identities are only valuable when they can be seen as exotic, while still kept inferior to the dominant, white American narrative (note that this “us” is a general statement, not meant to make assumptions about how you identify or what country you live in). 

But as an artist, all I have is my story, and who I am. I wasn’t willing to look at it directly. For years, I avoided doing so. It turns out, though, that I couldn’t actually begin my career until I reckoned with myself and learned to value everything about myself. To fully acknowledge my story, my history, my cultural reality, my sense of language, and my privileges. So I encourage young artists to look always inward, to ask questions about themselves, their families, and what made them who they are. 

The reason for doing this is to understand the source from which you make art.  Sometimes, however, for marginalized artists, the world warps this introspection into a trap, pigeonholing us into making art only “about” our identities, because that work is capital-I-Important to white audiences who want to tokenize our traumas. This is the white lens, and if anything, I try to understand myself as deeply as I can so that I can make art consciously for my community, not for that assumed white audience. 

Know that your career doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s, or like anything you’ve envisioned up to this point. 

As a high schooler I imagined that a life in the arts meant me in a studio, drawing and making, selling my work, getting exhibitions near and far, and gaining recognition. It was a solitary vision, one with a long history in the arts, rooted in the idea of individual genius. My career ended up completely different. Today, my arts projects involve teaching, collaborating, collecting interviews and oral histories, and creating public installations, rarely in traditional galleries or museums. 

As you work towards an arts career, figure out what does and doesn’t work for you: the kind of art you like and don’t like, the kinds of spaces that feel comfortable and those that don’t. I always thought I wanted to be part of traditional galleries, so I got a job working in a high-end art gallery in Boston during my grad program. Once in that space, however— even though I found the space calming and the work beautiful— I realized that there was something that I deeply disliked about the commodified art world. I didn’t like that we were selling art for over $10,000, that our exhibitions were geared exclusively towards collectors and wealthy art-buyers. The work was often technically masterful, but didn’t move or connect with me on a deeper level, and I realized that was because it wasn’t creating any change in the world. I liked work that shifted the needle, that made the world more inclusive and equitable, that centered marginalized stories (that gallery represented 90% white artists). I liked artwork that people made together, which drew me to collaborative art. I liked artwork that was accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy, which drew me to public art. I liked art exhibited in non-institutional spaces, which led me to community spaces. Since I was in an MFA for Creative Writing, I liked interdisciplinary art that engaged performance, technology, text, that was participatory and not just a 2D or 3D object. Figuring out all of these things led me to apply to my first major arts job: as a teaching artist in a community nonprofit that made art for social change in collaboration with local youth, in a predominantly Latinx neighborhood. 

My career path didn’t look like anything I expected, but I love it. The bulk of my income comes from teaching creative writing and art classes for nonprofits, working as a core member of a public arts nonprofit, and freelance consulting for book manuscripts. I love being an educator and consider it part of my creative practice. I love that I’m constantly collaborating with and talking to other artists. I love working with books and public art every day. I publish poetry, fiction, and literary translations, and exhibit artwork I’ve created in the studio and through funded opportunities. 

Fellow artists tell me often that I’m lucky, that my “day jobs” are all within the arts. But there are downsides to the way I’ve chosen to structure my career. I’m constantly balancing many projects, and my income is unstable. It’s difficult to save and plan towards the future,. I get by, but financial instability isn’t an option for many artists with families and dependents, with debts, medical expenses, and just isn’t the preferred lifestyle for a lot of people. I know artists who worked office jobs for years to support their practice and gain financial stability. I know artists who had entire careers as lawyers or accountants before becoming artists full time. I know artists who teach in public schools or work as substitute teachers. I know artists who are business owners and artists who work in policy and politics. I know artists who work in framing stores and shipping warehouses while being represented by galleries. These are all arts careers, and I admire every one of them. So as you build your career, don’t feel like it has to look like anyone’s else’s, like there’s anything you “should” be doing. Focus on the kind of artwork you want to make and what kind of work-life balance is best for you, then structure your career around that as best you can. 

Any job you use to support yourself can connect to an arts career!  

I get asked often by young people looking for jobs what kinds of jobs will best propel them towards an arts career. I believe that any kind of job can connect to and support an arts career, and I know that some suggestions out there in the arts world (like “get an unpaid internship at an art gallery!” or “become a studio apprentice to a well-known artist!”) assume a certain amount of privilege. So I want to break down how different kinds of jobs can connect to your art career: 

1) Jobs that allow for the flexibility and mental capacity to create. My friends who work restaurant jobs while going to auditions fall into this category. Who work as bartenders in evening so that they can be in the studio by day. Who dog-walk or babysit or nanny because the timing and flexibility allows for arts opportunities. My friends who are Lyft drivers or work in deliveries. These are often jobs outside of a creative field, but they can be beneficial because they don’t drain your creative batteries, so to speak. You still have your creative brain fully charged, and some jobs (like dog-walking) even allow for good mental processing (you can think through creative problems). As long as the job doesn’t drain you to the point where you have no energy at all, these kinds of jobs can be great because they allow time and space for your creative work. 

2) Jobs that place you in arts spaces, arts adjacent spaces, or spaces where you can learn about material/technique. My sculptor friends who work in hardware stores, quarries, foundries, or in construction. My printmaker friend who interned with graphic designers. My writer friends who work in bookstores and libraries, artists who work in art supply stores. My friend who worked with her dad’s painting company and got to improve her precision as a painter, which she then took back to the canvas. My teen students who get paid to work on murals or get stipend payments for making art at the nonprofit I work for. My filmmaker friends who worked on film crews. Friends who worked as theater ushers, in ticket sales, or as janitorial staff at museums. All of these jobs kept these artists adjacent to their artwork, whether through access to tools, materials, supplies, or books, through networking and conversations with other artists, or through skillsets that could enhance their art. 

3) Jobs that deeply engage another interest of yours, that bring you joy or can influence your work in other ways. If there’s a job that has nothing to do with your art but that you would love, do it! First, because I believe that the things we’re passionate about get integrated into our art, and second, because any job that gives you peace of mind and joy creates a positive base from which you can create. My friend who worked at a stable because she got to be around horses. My friends who worked at gyms or coaching sports because it kept them active. My friend who worked in a bike repair shop because he was obsessed with biking. An artist I knew who worked at the children’s science museum because she loved being around kids and planetariums. An artist who worked at a mineral store because rocks made her happy. If you have the opportunity, work doing things you like without worrying about whether it directly feeds your arts career.

Because believe it or not, all jobs you work can intersect in some way with your art. You’re creative— you find those connections! A Nobel-Prize winning poet helped his dad on the potato farm and wrote his best-known poem about it. Successful novelists have written about their time working in hair salons and convenience stores. A great printmaker I know who worked in a flower shop began weaving botanical forms and plant knowledge into her designs. The key in an arts career is to see all your experiences as valuable, to find ways that they can influence your art, and to be constantly thinking about and observing the world around you. 

As for me, I worked as a tennis instructor, a tennis court site supervisor, an academic advisor, an art gallery intern, and a coffee shop barista before and during my work in the arts!

Let go of objective measures of what it means to be good. 

I was always an academic overachiever. Top of my class, merit scholarships, science fair awards, AP credit overload, the whole thing. On the one hand, I grew up in a house where education was valued and celebrated, and my parents emphasized the importance of doing my best in school— not getting good grades, but working hard, doing my personal best, and reading and learning all I could. I loved school. I loved academics. And I’m not saying this to brag, but to lay the groundwork for something I struggled with in the arts.

It is jarring to be an academic overachiever and enter an arts career. I thrived off of objective value systems: study, work hard, get an A. If I worked hard and learned what I was supposed to learn, I earned recognition, validation, and opportunity. 

And then I entered the arts. The arts are entirely subjective. We hear it over and over— great artists get rejected hundreds of times, certain art forms require cutthroat competition, etc. —but it’s hard to understand the subjectivity of the art world (and the entrenched discrimination and commercial interests that affect who gets opportunities and who doesn’t) until you’re trying to live as an artist. That you can work hard on something, give all of your time and physical effort and mental and emotional energy to it, only to have it rejected. That what you think is good isn’t what another person thinks is good. That there is a magical alchemy in the act of creation that can’t be taught, or learned, but must be felt, and that you can be working to find that light while actively others try to extinguish it. That you can be good and work hard, yet still not get chosen for the awards, the exhibitions, the publications. If you chased being “the best” your whole life, you’re now in a world where there is no “best”, where greatness is subjective, where the idea of competitive greatness is actually detrimental to artists supporting each other, and where work that sells or connects to white, cishetero traditions is still the most valued. 

After struggling with this for a long time, I came to the conclusion that the most important thing to me now is making the art I want to make, the art only I can make, whether or not it fits what arts industries are looking for or what’s going to win awards. If I make art I believe in from a healthy mental and emotional place, doors will open, even if they aren’t the doors I expected. So try to let go of any sense that worth comes from external validation. Learn to accept critical feedback when it is given kindly, thoughtfully, and constructively. Surround yourself with friends and artists who who can talk to about your work, who build up your work and help you think through it rather than cutting you down. Don’t believe anyone in the arts world who thinks they get to be the arbiters of what’s “good” and who has “what it takes”. People have probably said things like that to the artists you most admire, and if they’d listened, you wouldn’t have experienced art that changed your life. 

Work to gain skills in basic business, marketing, and finances for artists. 

Many artists (at least where I am in the U.S.) go through an entire arts education without receiving resources or training in the financial side of the arts world. Your arts career will likely involve some degree of self-promotion and marketing, creating project budgets and grant proposals, artist statements and bios, sorting out taxes, and other economic elements. I can’t speak to other countries, but for artists in the U.S., taxes can be extremely complex. If you’re awarded a stipend, grant, fellowship, or employed for gigs or one-time projects, you’ll likely be taxed as an independent contractor and have to deduct your own taxes. Through residencies and exhibitions, you may pull income in multiple states and countries, which can also affect taxation. If you’re an artist who doesn’t have access to resources about finance and taxation in your arts program or who doesn’t independently have expertise in those fields, I recommend finding ways to educate yourself early: online resources, low cost courses, or even just taking your financially-savvy friends out for a coffee!

ANYWAY SORRY FOR THE LONG POST I HOPE SOMETHING IN THIS DIATRIBE WAS HELPFUL I HOPE THERE WEREN’T TOO MANY TYPOS AND I hope you have the most wonderful, fulfilling arts career! <3 

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 17X12

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Well that was an intense episode. Wow. I have to say this episode left me shaken, but I think that was the point. To put it in your face and make you take notice. The other bad stuff going on in the world doesn’t just stop because there’s a pandemic going on as much as we all wish it would. In this episode the show covered a lot of ground. They showed the Black Lives Matter protests and talked about previous protest movements that have taken place. They tackled police brutality and anti-black racism and violence and how traumatizing and fatal a simple traffic stop can be if you’re black.

They showed anti-Asian racism and the difficulties of treating someone who doesn’t think COVID-19 is real. They addressed issues about health care reform in the United States and how the most vulnerable people in society are the hardest hit right now. It was a hard watch. It boggles my mind that there are people out there that think COVID is a hoax or that health care professionals are getting kickbacks of some kind. People who believe that have a greatly over estimated view of how government and health care institutions operate. The idea that a government or a hospital would ever be in a position to do such a thing is absurd and the idea that people would perpetuate that on a mass scale is just ridiculous.

The patient that Bailey treated who was a COVID denier infuriated me! How can people be so stupid? So ignorant? So disrespectful? I get why Bailey freaked out and had to take a minute. I would too. I love that she still tried to help the man get better and tried to frame things in a way he could understand. But he still refused and while she was gone, he signed out AMA. Ultimately, he was killed by his own ignorance and I felt for Bailey when she was ranting to Teddy about how ridiculous it all is.

This was a small moment but when Bailey comes over to talk to the COVID denying patient he calls the surgical resident whose treating him, Dr. Mabel Tseng, a nurse. After Bailey corrects him, he doesn’t apologize he just calls them ‘her’. So not only does this guy think COVID is a hoax but he’s also racism and sexist. I like that they showed that just because there’s a pandemic going on and the focus of the episode is on anti-black racism and police violence that doesn’t mean that the racism and sexism that other people experience magically goes away.

I like the way they handled the protests and showing the different ways people choose to respond in times of crisis. Richard went to march, Jackson realized he felt like he wasn't doing enough, Catherine continued to try to work within the system, and Hayes had to make difficult choices about whether to let his boys go to protests and was injured when he had to step in front of someone who tried to attack his sons. I hate that this stuff isn’t fictional. I hate that there are real people out there getting hurt and killed every day for no reason.

As a white person I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for parents and guardians to have to make decisions about this kind of thing. How do you keep your child safe when the people you are supposed to call in an emergency want them dead? What do you do when the state itself considers you disposable? A non-human object? Do you march and protest and try to make your voice heard and make a difference? Or do you stay home and keep to yourself and try to help in other ways? What do you do knowing that just being at home does not keep you or your child safe?

One bright spot in this episode for me was seeing Hayes interact with his sons and getting to see more of their dynamic. Watching him grapple with figuring out what the right thing to do was with regards to letting his boys protest or making them stay home was heartbreaking. Also the fact that he was so blasé about getting hit on the head with a Billy Club to the point that he needed stitches to Jackson really got me. The fact that he had to step in front of his children to stop them from being attacked by a neo-Nazi is insane and I hate that real people in real life have to deal with this.

I loved getting to learn more about who Hayes is as a parent and his relationship with his boys and his sister-in-law. I loved the scene at the end there where he told them he realized he was wrong and that this was their country and if they want to protest, they should but only during the daytime and only with him for safety. I particularly liked that scene because they’ve established that Hayes is Irish and that he grew up and spent most of his adult life living in Ireland before moving to Switzerland and then the U.S. But his wife Abigail was an American which would make his boys Irish American and most likely dual citizens.

His boys are black and biracial, and they were born in another country and recently immigrated to the U.S. This episode takes place at the end of May in 2020. Trump was still in office and things were going from bad to worse. Which is a very scary time to be all of those things for Hayes’ boys, so I get why he struggled with this. But I also understand why he decided to let them protest. As Hayes says this is a moment. I wish that coming up on a year later we could say that things have radically improved. And while there have been some improvements not enough has changed. In the U.S., Canada, and so many other places.

The scenes with Winston being stopped by the police were scary and I hate that that is the reality for so many people. A lot of the issues they showed in this episode with regards to how black people are treated are just as much of a problem here in Canada. The rates are less in some cases because our population is lower than the U.S. and we have stricter gun control laws, but the issues are just as real and as heartbreaking. I felt like I was going to throw up watching those scenes.

It was so hard to watch, and I was so scared for Winston. What really got me is that I knew Winston wasn't going to die because they upped him to a regular cast member at the start of this season but for the real-life people who go through this that is not a guarantee. They don't know if they are going to make it out alive at a simple traffic stop. My heart broke for Winston and for Maggie. As a white person I cannot imagine the terror that black, brown, and Indigenous people in my own country and elsewhere must feel every time this happens. I got why Maggie was so distraught and unable to focus. I would panic too.

It would be extremely difficult for anyone to focus on their work when you know the police could be murdering your fiancé at that very moment. I'm glad that Richard was there to help and support her so that she could then help her patient. I definitely think Maggie and Winston are endgame. I got that vibe from the beginning and I still feel it now. I’m starting to feel like this season’s finale will feature Maggie and Winston’s wedding.

I also thought the scene where Jackson came to talk to Catherine about why she didn’t take him to protests as a kid and why they don’t go to protests was interesting. Jackson was upset because he suddenly realized that he felt like he wasn't doing enough or being involved enough. He wanted to know why his mother didn't take him to protests and why she taught him to work inside of a system that was never made to include people like them and still isn't. He's angry because that clearly isn't working. Catherine for her part felt like she had suffered enough and just wanted to keep her son safe and took what Jackson said as a personal offense.

This is one of the aspects of Catherine's character that I really don't like because she takes things really personally that aren't really about her at all. I liked seeing some more follow up to what Jackson and Mama Ortiz were talking about last week and Jackson's ongoing fight to really help people in Seattle in a more systemic and long-lasting way. I have no idea where Jackson is headed at the end of the episode and I'm really interested to find out. I also liked the scenes in the hyperbaric chamber where Levi heard Meredith's voice in his head telling him what to do and not to panic. He’s really coming into his own as a doctor. He’s no longer the bumbling idiot who dropped his glasses into a body cavity on his first day.

I thought the editing and the inclusion of Meredith’s voice was really well done. I’m disappointed that Jo is switching specialties and choosing to go into OBGYN because as I’ve said before I don’t feel that they’ve given us enough set up here. I thought we got some great set up in that one episode about her switching to Urology and being mentored by Catherine and I’m sorry they’re not going that route. She briefly talks to Hayes in this episode and they’ve worked a few cases together now and she still hasn’t brought up her desire to switch so I think it’s safe to say that Hayes won’t be mentoring her or training her. My guess is that Carina will be the one doing that. Although I can’t understand why Jo hasn’t approached her on screen or mentioned that by this point.

I think this storyline will only last so long if the show gets another season. There’s only so much content they can create out of ‘Jo delivers babies and sleeps with Jackson’. I think Jo will make the switch and then will get bored quickly and wind up re-specializing again in either pediatric, fetal, or neo-natal surgery. It was nice to see Teddy back at work and doing better and I really loved the sweater that Amelia wore in the brief scenes that she had. While watching this episode my best friend and I were talking about how those of us who lived through the pandemic and this time of social unrest will probably never want to re-watch certain episodes of this season and other shows or media from this time because it's just too hard.

It's too painful. It's too raw. I understand now why people who grew up during times of war and social unrest don't want to talk about it. Don't want to look at anything that reminds them of that time. We're still in it and I already feel that way. Onto next week’s promo! And it looks like I was right! Derek is coming back in what appears to be his last appearance. Him and Meredith are shown talking and embracing and I think Meredith is going to wake up and return to the land of the living once and for all. It’s also been revealed that April will be returning not next week but the week after. I’m excited to see what April returning will mean and how it affects Jackson and Jo’s storylines.

Until next time!

[oswildin]

Unlucky in Love ~ Dhawan!Master x F!Reader (PART 2 to ‘What’s My Name’)

~ So after people enjoying Part 1 of this fic, I decided to write a Part 2! I hope the Master isn’t OOC, I tried my hardest to keep him in character and true to cannon. Hope you enjoy! ~

Part One - https://oswildin.tumblr.com/post/190143436190/whats-my-name-dhawanmaster-x-freader

Summary: After finding out her best friend is actually the Doctor’s oldest enemy, things become complicated... She’s given a choice...

Warnings: Possible spoilers.

~

(Y/N) opened her eyes, a red glow lighting up her face, as she felt her head swirl.

“It’s alright, it’ll wear off in a second.”

She recognised the voice, it was a voice she was used to hearing. It was the voice that brought warmth to her body as she felt calmed by it. She blinked a few times, steadying herself as she took in her surroundings.

“How’s your vision?”

Her eyes began to focus, as she saw an outline of someone in front of her, extremely close. She felt hands on her waist as she was being held up. She quickly began to realise who it was as she felt a surge of anger rise inside her. She instantly reached out her arm, slapping the man around the face as he released her. He held his cheek as he laughed to himself.

“Seems ok to me.” He commented as he regained his composure. “Oh, never knew you had that in you. Full of surprises you are.” He smiled at her darkly.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She exclaimed, shaking her head. She felt her heart beat increase speed as adrenaline ran through her veins.

“That’s it, let it all out.” The Master smirked, enjoying the show in front of him. “Hit me again if you like.” He smirked. “Truth be told, I kind of enjoyed it.” She let out a sigh as she felt her head swirling still, but this time from all the information she had just learnt about her friend.

“You lied to me.” Her voice cracked, as her eyes were sad. “You got close to me... all for... all for this?! To get back at the Doctor?!” She cried, her hands clenched as fists.

“Well, how else was I supposed to keep an eye on her?” He asked casually. “I was already pretending to be her little friend as Agent O, helping her out a few years ago. So I knew I needed to up it. I knew I needed to go one step closer.”

“And that was me.” She confirmed, she felt her heart breaking.

“And you were so good.” He complimented, a sick smile on his lips. “So good.” He placed a hand on his chest. “You didn’t really think it was all coincidence did you? Me being your best friend-“ he spat, “and an MI6 agent? I mean-“ He began to laugh manically. “Really?” He shook his head, clapping his hands. “Bravo to me. I did so good.” He grinned. “You should’ve seen your faces.”

(Y/N) felt her breath shake as she learnt against the table, she realised they were back in O’s home. Which she realised must have been the Master’s ship.

“What about my friends?” She asked quietly. “Where are they?”

“Well, they’re a little caught up at the moment. They’re going on holiday, don’t worry it’s all inclusive, death included.” He said lowly, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “They’ll be landing soon.” She swore under her breath.

“The Doctor will stop it. She’ll save them.” (Y/N) reassured herself, her eyes narrowing at the Master.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know the Doctor, and she wouldn’t let any of us down.” She sneered as the Master laughed.

“That’s what you think?” He raised his brows. “Oh so much trust... humans. So loyal, trusting, gullible.” He zoned out on the last word, almost like he was remembering something.

“Yeah well it’s better to be that than bitter, twisted and hopeless.” She spat back as he chuckled at her words.

“Oh, keep going.” He bit his lip. “You’re really flattering me.”

She hated herself. She could still see him as Mason. She wanted so much to hurt him. Hit him. Scream at him. But she couldn’t. And he knew it.

“I should hate you.” She said quietly. “But every time I look at you... I see him.” She shook her head, laughing sadly. “I’m just waiting to wake up and for this to be a nightmare. Cause the man I knew... that man I grew to...” She swallowed the lump forming in her throat, cutting herself off. The Master watched with intense eyes, staring into her own. “The man I knew, was wonderful.” She stepped towards him. “He was kind, caring, funny and a pain in my ass.” She laughed breathlessly. “But this man, stood in front of me now... I don’t recognise him at all.” There was a moment of silence as the Master gritted his teeth.

“Wow, I really fooled you well, didn’t I?” He took a breath as he turned away, grinning manically. (Y/N) wasn’t having it.

“No.” She said, causing the Master to stop in his tracks, turning.

“No?” He repeated, questioning.

“No.” She confirmed. “No one can fake being that for so long. We’ve known each other for months. Months!” She walked up to him, staring up into his eyes. “You could’ve left me on that plane... but you didn’t.” She couldn’t read the Master’s expression. She went to turn away as she got no response from the man, but to her surprise a hand grabbed her by the throat, pinning her against the ship wall. She gasped from shock, as she cowered under his stare. He wasn’t holding her neck hard enough for her to struggle to breathe. It was like part of him wanted to, but the rest of him couldn’t. “Go on.” She tested. “Master.” She hissed out. “Do it.” She wanted to push to see how far he’d go. What she didn’t expect was what happened next.

The Master leant forwards, closing the gap between them as his lips crashed to hers. (Y/N) didn’t know what to do. Half of her wanted to push the man away, but the other half, wanted to believe for five seconds... wanted to believe she was with Mason. Almost as a goodbye. A closing of a chapter she never got to finish.

The Master finally pulled away, staring into her eyes once more before pushing himself away. He turned, kicking something nearby as he growled.

“This wasn’t part of the plan.” He snarled, leaning on the console, slamming his hands down on it a few times. “Stupid ape!” He hissed. (Y/N) blinked, shock still on her features as she watched in slight fear.

“I think you enjoyed being Mason.”

(Y/N) spoke bravely. Her voice confident.

“You didn’t have to worry about what the Doctor was doing. You didn’t have to worry about who was after you or, or, what move of attack to make next!” She laughed lightly. “You were comfortable.” He stayed with his back towards her, as she wore a sad smile. “It’s ok.” She reluctantly placed her hand on his shoulder as he tensed. “Truth is...” He turned to look at her, hesitating before looking in her eyes again. “I always did like a bad boy.” She joked, causing the man to smirk.

“This doesn’t change anything.” He said sincerely. She gave him a small smile.

“I know.” She paused. “But we had some good times didn’t we?” She felt tears well up in her eyes. “The Doctor will stop you.” She told him truthfully, knowing the outcome of all of this mess wouldn’t get any better. “And if you hurt any of my friends... I won’t hesitate to kick your ass.” She poked him in the chest as he wore a restraint smile.

After that, the Master continued on with his plan, after dropping (Y/N) back home. She knew she had to find the others. She had seen the news reports, making them fugitives. As she was watching the report, she also saw her name and picture had been added to the list. She swore under her breath as she shook her head. Her phone buzzed as she received a text from the Doctor. She knew where she had to go.

(Y/N) had changed from her suit, tying her hair back and wearing a hoody to hide her identity as she made her way to where the Doctor had text to meet. She knew the Doctor must have worked out that the Master didn’t hurt her. Perhaps she had even worked out why.

(Y/N) arrived at the bunker, running into the building as she saw her friends.

“Yaz!” She called as her friend turned seeing her. A smile grew on her face as she was relieved to see them all ok.

“(Y/N)!” Ryan called, smiling back as she approached them. “You’re alright!”

“Yeah, will take more than an a man having a tantrum to stop me.” (Y/N) smirked, as they all ensured each other were ok.

“Move away!” A voice boomed through the bunker as the four jumped, turning to see the Master, looking angry. “Now.” (Y/N) stared at the man, noticing he had more of a beard and a change of clothes since she last saw him. “I've just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life.” He sighed. “Have you any idea how hard it is to live through the 20th century? The places I've escaped from...” He inhaled deeply. “Still just in time to... watch you all pay.” He smiled tightly, as (Y/N) stared at him. He almost looked broken, desperate even.

“What’s the machine?” Ryan questioned, taking a protective stance in front of (Y/N). He acted like an older brother to her.

“Conversion and transmission.” He informed them. “We're transmitting Kasaavin energy around the world all at once into every device, hitting every human being and erasing all their DNA simultaneously.” He walked round the machine, looking at the silver lady.

“Why?” (Y/N) asked, stepping forwards. He paused, turning to look at her.

“Why not?” He retorted, raising his brows.

“Yaz!” Ryan exclaimed, causing everyone to turn to see a blue light coming from the iPad, grabbing her arms.

“I can’t let go!” She exclaimed, panicked. (Y/N) shook her head, running up to the Master.

“Please. Stop this.” She pleaded, her eyes begging as he glanced down at her before proceeding.

“First her.” He snarled. “Then you two. He pointed to Graham and Ryan. “And Then you.” He looked down at (Y/N) her eyes sad as she looked in shock at the man she had spoken to only hours ago. The man she thought she began to understand more. How stupid of her. Suddenly the machined stopped as Yaz was let go. The Master growled in annoyance.

“Sorry.”

Everyone turned to see a familiar face as the Doctor finally reappeared, joined by two females close behind.

“I think that might have been me. And I'll admit, it was close.” She smiled, glad to see all her companions safe. They four returned her smile as they felt relief wash over them.

After the Doctor explained how she had managed to stop the Master and Barton and their plan. The Kaasavin began to appear all around them.

“You're going to have to explain yourself to them, Doctor.” The Master commented, as the Doctor raised a brow.

“Am I? Listen, you lot, I've rigged the Silver Lady to exile you back to your own dimension. This planet's off-limits.” She argued, causing the creatures to glow brighter. (Y/N) looked over helplessly at the Master. She was torn. She didn’t know what to do.

“Oh, and you know that deal he made with you?” The Doctor played the recording of the Master explaining his plan.

“Barton and these creatures do the dirty work, and once they're done, I get rid of them, having destroyed your precious human race in the process.”

“Win-win-win.” The Doctors smirked, as Yaz, Ryan and Graham smiled with her. However, (Y/N) didn’t smile.

“Oh...” The Master realised the outcome, his face falling.

“That's your name. Don't wear it out.”

(Y/N) turned to the Master, walking towards him.

“You can change.” She told him, her eyes pleading. “You can be better. You could come with us.” She held out her hand. “Please. Don’t leave me.” She begged. “Not again.” She felt tears well up in her eyes as he stared down at her, a sad smile on his lips.

“I’d rather die.” He said casually, causing (Y/N) to shake her head as the creatures reached out to him.

“(Y/N)!” Graham called, drawing her out of her trance as Ryan pulled her back.

“No!” She cried, watching as her once best friend disappeared. She felt her heart sink as Ryan comforted his friend. She felt defeated.

The five ended up back on the TARDIS, as (Y/N) sat on the steps of the console room, the others questioning the Doctor about her life.

“Is he dead?”

Everyone went quiet as (Y/N) finally spoke.

“I know you may not care, but he was my friend. At least, I thought he was.” She said quietly.

“I don’t know.” The Doctor answered honestly. “Probably not.” She walked over to her companion. “He tends to escape death.” She gave her a small smile. “It’s his thing.” (Y/N) nodded. “I’m sorry.” The Doctor said sincerely. “It was my fault he even knew you in the first place.”

“You know...” (Y/N) started. “The crazy thing is... I wouldn’t change knowing him.” She laughed lightly. “He was there for me. He was a good friend.” She spoke fondly. “Even though it wasn’t him, I’d like to think some part of him enjoyed my company.” She shrugged. “You know what they say... Lucky at dice... unlucky in love.” The Doctor gave her one last sad smile as she turned back to the console, ready to drop the companions home.

(Y/N) walked into her flat, sighing to herself as she threw her keys down on the hallway table. What a day. Or week. She couldn’t tell anymore. Time was all moving so quick with the Doctor. She entered the lounge as she threw herself down on the sofa, looking over to see the box of Operation in the coffee table in front of her. She smiled at it, before going to pack it away. As she moved it, something fell from the box. She looked down, confused as she saw a small device. She picked it up, holding the cold metal in her hand before pressing a button on it. Suddenly a hologram appeared from it, projecting in from of her a 3D image of the Master.

“It’s not in my manner to leave things open ended.”

He began as she stood, staring at the hologram with wide eyes.

“Chances are the Doctor foiled my plan. Saved the day. As always.” He spoke with a monotone voice. “There’s not many things that I regret.” He paused. “But not telling you the truth was something that I do regret.” He tightly smiled. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry. Because I’m not.” He spoke truthfully. “It’s in my blood. I won’t ever change. I enjoy being bad too much.” He smirked. “What’s that earth saying? A leopard never changes his spots.” He laughed lightly. “Rest assured, I will be back.”

(Y/N) stepped forwards slightly towards the hologram.

“And I will succeed and destroy the Doctor.” He added. “But until then, you have a choice to make.” (Y/N) furrowed her brows, confused. “It’s me, or her.” He told her seriously, his eyes boring into her own. Even though she knew he wasn’t really there, she could feel his intensity like he was in the room with her. Like she was cornered. “I could promise you... so much...” His smile turned manic. “Fun.” He smirked. “Times on the clock. Tick tock.”

The hologram disappeared as she took a breath, not realising she had been holding it. She felt her heartbeat increase as she heard her phone buzz.

It was the Doctor.

She peered down, seeing something sticking out from the box. She reached down, grabbing the papers that were lodged inside. She furrowed her brows in confusion, seeing a file with ‘THE DOCTOR’ written on it. ‘CONFIDENTIAL MI6’ was also stamped in red on the front. She knew what it was. She knew it was files from O. Well... the Master. She swallowed hard, taking a deep breath as she placed it down on the table...

She had a decision to make...

~

Taglist: @wonders-of-the-multiverse

[incorrect-pokespe-quotes]

I read every single Emerald fic on FFN so you don’t have to

There are 66 fics with Emerald listed in the tags. 

First, I took out any fic that was either not in English or actually gameverse, leaving me with 38 fics-- though I will say, the Spanish fics look like they slap

After filtering out “everyone appears” fics (I skimmed them to make sure) I was left with 26 fics. (While I would like to include “everyone appers” fics, I do not have the time nor motivation to read 30,000 words of derring-do and melodramatic heroics seventeen times in a row for Emerald to show up, deliver 2 lines, shoot something, and leave)

From there, I sorted them into various categories based on whether Emerald was a BG character or not, whether the fic had romance, whether Emerald was actually PART of that romance, etc. Then, finally, I was ready. 

Below the cut are the reviews of all twenty six fanfictions!

Category 1: BG Emerald      Every fic needs side characters, whether to provide extra voices or comedic relief or just a foil for the MCs. These fics don’t feature Emerald in a huge capacity, but he’s there and that’s what matters to me. I came into this site expecting anything: third wheel Rald, wingman Rald, Im-only-here-to-complain-about-your-flirting-Rald... I found everything but! It seems the most cliche writers among us don’t like using the Emerald tag, bc the few Frantic-with-BG-Emerald fics with I did find turned out to be spectacular! I’m pleasantly surprised and impressed. 

1. That Special Someone - Team Cap      Cap is on this list like 30 times so get used to it. This fic is mostly about Ruby refusing to shut up about Sapphire and how much he loves her (and how Emerald finds it infuriating). The details of this fic are super cute and the way Ruby and Emerald interact added 3 years to my lifespan, so I highly recommend this one if you want a nice, relaxing read involving the Hoenn boys (dare I say best boys?). In short, read this fic and all of Cap’s other fics while you’re at it.

2. A Picnic - Team Cap      Oh look. It’s Cap again. This fic, surprise surprise, is also good, and while it’s a little more basic than the others (Emerald runs into Ruby/Sapphire at a park and they mess around), it’s still cute and I still love it! Not really much else to say here... but the fic is good and I recommend if you’re in for some light domestic reads. 

3. High Hopes and Checkered Skies - aromatisse      I’ll be honest: my general opinion of frantic fics with BG Emerald is... low. A lot of them shoehorn my poor boy into whatever the plot requires at the cost of his characterization but this fic really surprised me in the best way! This one features Sapphire bringing Ruby to a “special place” the two of them arguing, and Emerald having to patch things up (mature Emerald? I don’t believe it!!). I found this fic while making this list and immediately bookmarked it bc THIS SHIT GOOD FAM. Please read this. 

4. Alpha and Omega- Ruby and Sapphire's Thoughts - Shadoweevee70     Not much to say about this to be honest. It’s exactly what it says on the tin. No plot, no development, not even 500 words. Emerald has a line. I think two. 

5. Boundaries - Team Cap     This fic hurt my heart. Though it focuses on Wally’s one-sided crush on Sapphire, there’s a touch of Emerald in there acting as Wally’s emotional support buddy, which tells me that either Emerald has matured or Hoenn is just devoid of emotionally stable individuals. Regardless, this fic is heartbreaking and beautiful but contains very little Emerald, so therefore I have very little to review. In short... not a lot of Rald, but you should read it anyway. 

6. Summer Days - eonentity      Crystal and Silver go on a “date” and Gold + Emerald try and stop them. It’s cute, it’s honestly kind of creepy if you think about it, and it involves Emerald. While the premise is kind of sketch, the banter between Gold and Emerald is incredible and I really like the general progression of the plot (especially the ending!) This is a very cute fic if you’re looking for something simple to read. Highly recommend, utilizes Emerald as a character really well!

Category 3: MC Emerald (gen)       This... this is my bread and butter baby. These fics run the gamut from friendship to domestic to drabbles to angst and everything in between, but the gist of it is that it includes Emerald as a focus without pairing him off. Not to say this is my favorite category... but it is. I’m biased, sue me. 

1. Family Inclusion - Team Cap      They say to leave the best for last, but I disagree. You’ll realize pretty quickly that Cap is one of my favorite authors to appear in this tag, and this fic is one of her best! I’m focusing on Chapter 3 (that’s the part with Emerald) where he has to entertain a shiny baby Ralts while Ruby and Sapphire are away (everybody say awwww). The fic is stupid cute, and while it doesn’t really offer much in terms of character development or stakes, it’s the type of domestic fluff you can read over and over and still find just precious each and every time. Also... Emerald takes care of a baby pokemon how can you NOT love that. Seriously. Look at this. 

2. At the Amusement Park - Team Cap       Oh wow, another Cap fic I really like. What a surprise. I’m astounded /s. This fic focuses on Emerald’s dilemma of being short at a place where height restrictions mercilessly mock the vertically challenged and how he deals with it with the “help” of Ruby and Sapphire. Though there is background Frantic (which shouldn’t really come as a surprise), this fic mostly focuses on Emerald’s insecurities and his relationship with the trio. It’s introspective, it’s wholesome, I’ve read it six or seven times (I lost count). Regardless, it’s good, and like every other Cap fic on this list, I demand you read it. That is a threat. 

3. Frantic Fight - Puph17      Any fic that drops a line like “margarine is in vogue” within the first three lines is immediately propelled to my top ten fics of all time list and this is clearly no exception. Despite the name, this isn’t franticshipping, just Ruby and Sapphire bickering and Emerald / Wally being annoyed about it. This fic, hands down, is one of the funniest pieces of fanfiction I’ve ever read on this godforsaken site. I am begging you to read this fic, if not for Emerald with a megaphone for the sheet amount of laughter it will cause. This fic may not be deep but it sure as hell is hysterical. ... Well, what are you waiting for? Why are you still here? Go read the fic, we’re wasting daylight. 

4. Weird War - storm-aurora      This is another fic I think I’ve probably read a dozen times and refuse to get tired of. Emerald and Sapphire are having a paintball fight in Slateport market, and I literally could not ask for a better friendship fic. The writing is high quality, the characters are very accurate (altho bc this is fanfic it doesn’t matter all that much), the friendships feel real, they’re having a paintball war.... everything about this is ideal. This is the quality content I live for. Please PLEASE read this fic, you’ll be happy you did. Close this tab and go read it immediately for your sake and mine. 

5. Skydrop - ayasato      Not a lot of people write about Emerald. The ones that do, for whatever reason, seem to do it very, VERY well. This fic, which is so long it might as well be considered an epic, is probably the piece de resistance of Emerald friendship fics. While not as snappy or funny or domestic as some of the other fics in this list, it more than makes up for it with a beautifully built slowburn friendship between Emerald and Sapphire, my favorite take on his living situation I’ve ever seen, and enough introspection to make your high school English teacher swoon. This fic is a must for any Emerald fan, even if it takes like an hour to read in full. It may be long but it’s magnificent.

6. Croissant Kings - ayasato      The fact that this fic is discontinued is irrefutable proof that this is the timeline god abandoned. Emerald and Pearl running a croissant stand is quite possibly the single most absurd fic concept I’ve ever heard but... it works. Somehow? It works. This fic is perhaps, hands down, one of the most ridiculously entertaining concepts and executions I have ever seen in my life. Everything about it, from the setup to the writing to just Emerald being Emerald is so raw and so ridiculous that I smile fondly when I think of it. I wish there were more than 3 chapters, however...

7. Perfect - Micah Debrink      I’m gonna be straight with y’all: I don’t like this fic. I’m not too sure what the plot is, and it was certainly an interesting read, but not my cup of tea. It’s good, don’t get me wrong; the writing is mature, very well paced, and overall well-written, but something about the characterizations is just not vibing with me. Thus, I’m not gonna pretend I thought this fic was perfect (har har) but I will say it’s something you should give a try. I’m admittedly a very biased party, so maybe you’ll enjoy this fic more than I did. For sure give it a shot, because maybe you’ll like it more than I did. This ain’t my jam, but it’s quality preserves nonetheless.

8. Roost - ayasato      This is short and sweet and may have some Sapphire/Emerald crushing if you squint, but overall a fun read. Very short, very good, give it a shot. This author is very high quality and that’s that on that. 

9. One Day - Jian-Kenkoku      This is short yet again but has a super interesting (if poorly explained) premise: Emerald gets adopted by Gold / his mom! This short oneshot details his first day, and while it is a tad rushed, it gives me the Emerald family content I have been sorely lacking. Not sure if this is one of my “reread until my eyes bleed” fics, but it’s certainly worth the trouble of reading through! It’s very cute and I recommend!

10. Emerald: Lying to Himself - reminiscent-afterthought        Very poetic and extremely well-written, but less than 200 words. This fic took me thirty seconds to read and it feels like time well spent. Please read it, even if for the sole reason that it’s super short. It’s also a super poetic way to talk about the Emerald arc. 

11. Go Away Gold! - jayfeatherelle      Ah yes, the “little brother enlists the help of a prankster to keep apart his sister and her boyfriend” trope... This may be cliche, but it sure as hell was enjoyable! Emerald enlists the help of Meddler Blue (side note: where did this trope come from bc she never does anything in canon that would be qualified as meddling other than just messing with Red at any given opportunity). Anyway, this fic is adorable, has a lesson at the end (that surprised me), had a really mature conclusion, and gave me Blue / Emerald friendship I really didn’t know I needed. In short? This is a cliche done well. It’s predictable, sure, but that’s not a bad thing! If anything, it’s a great nostalgic read. 

12. What if: Emerald never met Crystal - LetEveryoneOveraRip        This fic stole the last little bit of hope I didn’t even know I still had. You thought it couldn’t get more violent or sad? You were wrong. Everyone dies. This fic made me sad for like 45 minutes and I feel emotionally manipulated. I guess I should have seen this coming. Not much else to say except that this fic made me really sad, which, of course it did, but I still feel cheated out of a happy ending regardless. 

13. Emerald Owner’s Guidance and Maintenance Manual - Pokerescue18    Nothing happens in this fic. It’s literally an instruction manual and it’s well written and all but also has no plot. It is quite literally what it says in the title, so perhaps this should have been obvious but even still, I was left confused after reading this. I think I need a nap. 

14. Through My Eyes - Kaith1    Relationship angst that hurt my heart. This is less than 400 words so again, took me only around a minute to leave but the emotional impact scarred me for life. Very well done! This fic details Emerald’s inner turmoil as Gold and Crystal get together and Emerald worries he’ll be abandoned again. While I do feel like Emerald hating the two of them for getting together is a little ehhh, this fic does a great job of showing why Emerald would be so upset about it and his inner motivations for being so hurt by it. While I don’t agree, the author made me “get it” a little more, and for that I say bravo! 

15. At the Fair - IanDonyer      This one is short and focuses on Emerald meeting a security guard at a Halloween fair kinda deal. It’s also one of the first Emerald fics on FFN, released far before the remakes even came out! While obviously it doesn’t contain much in terms of character development, it also was written with only the Emerald arc to go off of-- so I can easily overlook any character inconsistencies. That being said, this fic is really cute and uses the OC pov really well! If you’re looking for a blast from the past, check this fic out! 

Category 4: Emerald shipping fics      On the rare occasion where the blue moon hangs melancholy in the sky, the planets align, and starlight rains down from the heavens... someone ships Emerald with another character. Romantically. Not sure where the aversion to shipping him came from, but for whatever reason everyone prefers him single. These authors, these brave knights, they’re changing that. Hell yeah for romance. 

1. Left Out - RedCharmeleon       Not to be like “this fic is painfully straight...” but yknow. Emerald is upset at Gold/Crystal’s wedding because he’s the only single one and needs a girlfriend. There’s also a “what are you, gay?” joke in here, which soured my mood for the rest of the fic. I’ll be honest, I never really liked the “all male protag / female protag ships and then taking Silver, Pearl, and Emerald and pairing them off with OCs” deal, so I’m heavily biased against this fic, but the writing is decent and the plot is fine. If you enjoy this style of plot (everyone needs to be paired up, blushing galore, love at first sight, everyone acts like they stumbled out of a hallmark movie script) then this is the fic for you!

2. Glances - Diemerald      A collection of drabbles about Emerald and Wally becoming friends and falling in love. I’ve read it seven times now. While the plot is a tad disjointed because of the format, this author really NAILS Emerald’s character. Emerald (and Wally) show a lot of growth between the snippets and god it’s so beautiful I need more of it. Please read this fic. Tell your neighbors about this fic. This fic is fantastic. 

2. Revolvershipping Cuddles - Charmerruby     You’re never gonna guess what this one is about. It’s very cute but it’s literally just fluff. Very cute, like marshmallows. This is kinda short so there isn’t really much to say, but I will am starving for Emeruby content, so though this be but little, it be fierce. And fluffy. Did I mention cute? This fic is so filled with love my heart grew three sizes after reading it. I could keep calling it adorable, but I don’t think that’s productive. Spend the time reading this fic instead. 

3. Misunderstandings - Pokeluv101      Reading this was very weird because I know the person who made the OC the story is centered around. Reading even the names thrust me so violently back into my middle school days I can almost taste the edge. It’s very good, and I suggest giving it a read even if you’re not a huge dexholder/OC fan. Also tsun Emerald is good Emerald. 

4. Unexpected - Diemerald     A fic about Emerald and Yellow falling in love. Not exactly my cup of tea so I skimmed it but this author is really good so it’s a great fic, even if it’s not to my tastes. I suggest giving it at least a once over because this author worked hard and I respect them, even if this isn’t really... my thing. Check it out!

5. Big Changes - Aquatales     You know how I said I would read every Emerald fic? I lied. This one is about Emerald getting genderbent and immediately shipped with Wally against his will by his friends. Reading the summary gave me hives and I could not bring myself to read it in full.

Final Thoughts      While I’ll be honest and say that I did find some of the the cliche fics I was expecting, I was incredibly and happily surprised to discover that more often than not, the people who bother to publish Emerald fics really care about his character and publish some pretty high quality stuff, and that’s pretty damn cool. There are shipping fics, BG Emerald fics, MC Emerald fics, and most of them are pretty fantastic! Way to go spe fandom writers, you did my boy justice, all..... 10 of you.

[trh-thesussexes]

HRH The Duchess of Sussex Introduces The September Issue In Her Own Words