#watsonian brain: 'no no hold on. i can work with this.'

[downtroddendeity]

None of you asked, but here it is anyway.

And for the record, yes, I did eventually eat lunch.

Starting assumptions:

I'm putting the start of the game contemporaneous with its release date, so 2018.

The single definite point of timeline divergence I have decided on between the US in our universe and what I have taken to calling "The United Union of Eagleland" is that Reagan didn't exist. Therefore, the Republican Party is still evil but it doesn't have rabies yet, and all major political events in the last 40 years are up in the air.

I overshot my guesses about Roland's age in my first few posts because it was funnier; with full-game and DLC context, he's probably meant to be in the Obama age bracket and is just going gray early. He is absolutely still significantly older than Batu, though.

Even before the DLC validated me I had Roland pegged as a "my role model is FDR"-style infrastructure Democrat, because canon-wise his skillset is in the nuts and bolts of making a government that functions and he doesn't get heated enough about Broadleaf's corporatocracy to be a social justice or labor guy- he can keep his mouth shut when the other rulers are evil, but slips up when the way they run things is just dumb.

Since our guy is the Jungian Archetype of The President of the United States, when in doubt, assume the most Generically Presidential option.

I said in one of my jokes that he's from Illinois solely because a midwestern swing state is the most Generically Presidential and Illinois is the one with the funniest-sounding name. This reasoning is clearly foolproof.

Roland is born in 1966 (making him 52 at the start of the game), and growing up has zero intention of going into politics. The incident with the bullies is when he's 10. He gets into gun sports as a hobby as a teen because he's good at it and into 14th-century German longsword combat because he's a fucking nerd, unwittingly creating both an extensive paper trail of pictures of him at firing ranges that will become very convenient for countering NRA PR and an equally extensive paper trail of pictures of him at Renaissance Fairs that will become the greatest gift Eagleland political memes have ever received. He graduates law school somewhere respectable but not elite and goes into civil litigation. He marries his theoretical mystery wife at 31, but they keep putting off having kids because This Just Isn't A Good Time For Us. Then in like 1999, he's representing the plaintiffs in a lawsuit where some Regional Business Asshole who basically owns a couple of small towns has been doing a bunch of blatantly illegal stuff to harass people in a specific area because Business Asshole has a huge deal pending with some giant petrochemical company for fracking but can't move forward with it because a handful of people smack in the middle refuse to sign over the mineral rights for their property. Being a lawyer is frequently depressing, so now that Roland has one of the relatively rare chances in the job to be categorically The Good Guy he is getting into it. Giant petrochemical companies are evil but impersonal, but Regional Business Assholes are just some shitty guy and thus prone to getting mad and doing things that are evil but also very stupid, and that is why one day when Roland Crane, Esq. is walking out of his office on his way to a deposition some guy he's never seen before in his life walks up to him and fucking shoots him.

Except, unfortunately for the guy who got handed twenty grand in unmarked bills by the brother of the buddy of this guy the associate director of operations to the Business Asshole knows, being something you only study if you're a fucking nerd does not change the fact that historical European martial arts is, in fact, a form of close combat training, and Roland kicks the shit out of him. The security camera footage is pretty grainy, but the photos are incredible. It makes the news. It makes so much news, and of course it gets picked up nationally because they've got time to fill and this is fucking wild, and since it's 1999 and even though fracking is starting to really take off almost nobody has heard of it yet, this also kicks off a bunch of people going "oh my god I can't believe we didn't know about this sinister corporate scheme in MAYBE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD that they sent CORPORATE NINJA ASSASSINS over!!!" (Roland always corrects people that it wasn't a corporate ninja assassin, it was some guy who wanted beer money, and also the giant corporate conglomerate didn't actually do anything, it was some dumb asshole, but he knows that just makes him sound modest and while he’d be forced to admit that isn’t exactly a downside he would occasionally like it if people believed him.)

(Roland Crane, Master of Repression, subsequently started doing very normal things like, oh, say, wearing a loaded gun in a concealed carry holster on a thirty-minute drive from the airport to his hotel, which are certainly not indicative of any sort of trauma at all, and he finds it quite strange when anyone suggests that this is anything but a completely reasonable and sensible precaution to begin taking. Worked out for Evan, at least.)

Roland realizes his five minutes of fame are a golden opportunity, because he never really thought about going into government before but right now everyone knows his name and face and thinks of him as a badass crusader for justice standing up to The Man. He announces a run for House of Reps in like March and crushes the incumbent in the primary and that’s why I keep getting my difficulty gauge hiked up in the bonus dungeon. He wins in the general election and stays there for four terms while racking up a record of bills and amendments and cosponsorships on the kind of legislation that nobody gets really excited about, but if you list a few of them pretty much everyone will react to at least one of them as something that they just kinda noticed made their life get easier and more pleasant one day and didn’t realize was something their personal Congress Guy had a hand in. "Your income tax paperwork is slightly easier now," "you don't get 12 scam robocalls a day anymore," "you can buy diapers with food stamps," that kind of stuff.

Will is born in 2005. This was not planned, but Roland and his unnamed mystery wife kinda went, “Well, it’s still not a great time, but the time’s not going to be getting better any time soon, so…”

In 2008, Roland runs for Senate and wins.

Roland’s wife dies of terminal Being A Mom In The Ni No Kuni Franchise in 2013. The fact that he literally never alludes to her in any way in the entire game even on the single occasion she is directly mentioned is proof of how totally healthily he has processed his grief and certainly not indicative of any emotional baggage at all. Will is eight at the time, and totally definitely having healthy grief processing modeled for him and receiving the emotional support he needs.

He keeps his Senate seat in 2014. I have no idea what the overall 2016 Presidential election lineup looked like in Eagleland because the one in our universe was such a nightmare clownshow, but somebody notices that hey, they’ve got this guy who a) is charismatic and good-looking, b) has a reasonable amount of government experience without being a Washington Insider™, c) has a legislative record so deeply boring that it’s surprisingly hard to attack despite being extensive, but, d) simultaneously has a handful of details of his personal life and history so absolutely buck-fucking-wild that they instantly make him the most interesting person in basically any room.

And that’s how the United Union of Eagleland got universal health care, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I accidentally headcanoned 1200 words of Roland Crane backstory instead of eating lunch. Happy Presidents' Day, everyone.

[zahri-melitor]

So, question i’ve toiled in my brain for a while now. Steph and Bruce’s relationship Pre-52, was generally pretty rocky, honestly Bruce from that era suffered due to how outright mean he was written at times.

It is hard for me to think of a bruce-steph dynamic that feels faithful, that wouldn’t have her realistically want nothing to do with him, due to all that’s happened. I can think of one-two nicer moments with them, that’s about it.

I don’t think that every batfam member should be on good terms with Bruce, I suppose the reason why I think Steph’s is so striking is due to how antagonistic Bruce is, how even when he lets her be Robin—it’s cut down so fast and so quickly. I can’t even think of a working relationship between them that wouldn’t be awkward, due to all that’s happened.

Apologizing for the tangent, you’re one of the most reliable voices I can think of for batman canon related things. My questions are this, how would you perceive a more positive dynamic between Steph and Bruce? Would you do retconning and rewriting if able to make that work?

There’s a few aspects in this:

One of Steph’s main character traits is how desperate she is for approval and recognition (this isn’t an uncommon dynamic for characters with Bruce. I’d have a hard time naming characters in Gotham who don’t fall into this dynamic on occasion). If she actually didn’t want anything to do with Bruce she would have stopped trying years earlier.

For a multitude of reasons, mostly ones outside the internal logic of comics, War Games probably no longer occurred exactly how War Games and particularly War Crimes is written, especially in respect of the details around Steph. It’s pretty much been trimmed down to “Tim stopped being Robin, Steph became Robin for a short period, then was fired for not following orders” in terms of what gets referenced. We do know that Scarab as a villain is still in continuity for Steph (thanks to Robins, so only probably not definitely main canon), but nobody has really been willing to address ‘did War Games still happen, and to what extent’. Basically, nobody has dug into ‘did Steph still cause a gang war’ because for the combination of both Doylist and Watsonian reasons it’s just easier not to address that question and skate over needing to answer, because as soon as you do it makes Steph a lot less sympathetic in terms of the rehab job various writers have been attempting for years; because Steph, in-universe, has never actually acknowledged any sorrow, guilt or belief in wrongdoing towards what happened to other characters during that period that was not expressed in the original story itself. Basically: either we have to acknowledge that Steph started a gang war AND that her ‘death’ is at least partly Bruce’s fault/blamed on him; OR if we absolve Steph from having any guilt here, we also lose anything people want to pin on Bruce out of this other than ‘fired her from being Robin’.

Now. If you remove War Games as the centrepiece of the Bruce-Steph conflict, what do you replace it with? And my argument is that The Victim Syndicate extended story arc is a compelling replacement that fits both Bruce and Steph’s personality traits well, and gives them a point of contention in their relationship that, importantly, shows both of them holding valid points.

I know. I know a bunch of Steph fans don’t like Tynion’s run because it uses Tim (and their loss of him) as the centrepoint around which Bruce and Steph define their relationship. But it’s also one of the few extended storylines Steph has had since Rebirth, and it’s the only one that has any serious dynamics between Bruce and Steph in it (Realistically, since Rebirth Steph has Tynion’s run, her appearances in Young Justice 2019, Mariko Tamaki’s Shadows of the Bat: The Tower, Batgirls, and then a handful of appearances here and there of varying quality like her Death Metal appearances to explain the costume flip).

Plus. The thing about Tynion’s run is that Steph’s arc through the entire story is about Steph questioning what it means to be a hero, and whether she wants to be one, particularly in circumstances where she feels Bruce has caused both her and other people’s problems. Steph doesn’t feel comfortable being a hero, because she blames Bruce for the harm that comes from his actions and from his vigilante work, and explores what other solutions there are to vigilante work: trying to help victims of crime via vengeance (the Victim Syndicate); Lonnie’s position that radical anarchist collectives are the was to build a better future; etc. She reflects her own origin of spoiling Arthur’s plans by spoiling and revealing Bruce’s plans.

Bruce and Steph fight over Tim, and which of them knew Tim better, and which of them understood his future plans better. And it’s a proxy for the fight they don’t want to have with each other, over what ‘following orders’ means and whether Bruce has the right to dictate them to Steph.

And then Tim comes back and Steph finds herself fighting with Tim himself because her answer and his answer to ‘what is the purpose of being a vigilante’ no longer match what she originally believed his answer to be. Because they’ve both grown and changed.

I find it a really compelling basis for Bruce and Steph’s modern relationship. Because they care about each other (Bruce going to find Steph after Tim dies is rooted in my brain) but also they both had to learn to give each other space and that they really do rely on having another person (Tim; Cass; Babs) as a buffer between them.

And while there are definitely Doylist reasons why we haven’t seen another story showcasing Bruce and Steph working together since then (Steph primarily appearing in stories full of other female characters because someone is ‘writing the girls’), I think it also offers the current and future direction of the Bruce and Steph relationship: they both know they don’t work as a partnership, but they can work as part of a team.

And that acknowledgement, to me, has a resemblance to the way that Bruce and Barbara have marked out territory between themselves: Babs doesn’t take Bruce’s nonsense anymore and hasn’t for years and WILL leave if he’s pushed her too far, but they came to an adult collegial relationship with each other and they work together smoothly the rest of the time.

Now, Bruce and Steph's working relationship is not as well grounded as Bruce and Barbara's. But that's where I put them. They don't so much focus on their relationship as on the fact there are a number of people simultaneously important in both their lives. And because of that, they need to be able to get along.

[philosophicalparadox]

I have no idea how exactly to make my HC into fic canon, so imma plop it here so the brain worms stop eating me:

Taking into consideration that the Infinite Tsukiyomi is a dream world, and Itachi’s Tsukiyomi is called the Nightmare World, I think it is reasonable to assume that they both work basically the same way, I.e. reflecting the subconscious of whomever they’re cast upon.

(This is reinforced for me I suppose by the old fandom theories about how Itachi’s Tsukiyomi worked, and I’ll own that bias lol.)

Anyway, something that came up way back then was an idea I liked, which is that Itachi’s Tsukiyomi works by blending the user’s influence (because Itachi can, sort of, manipulate the content consciously) and the victims deepest (subconscious or unconscious) fears or desires.

How much of each takes precedence I think is something Itachi can control — unless their fear/desire is so overwhelming that he can’t actually impress anything upon it, or if they lack the notion of either entirely.

Anyway, point is, this makes his scene with Kakashi in pt 1 very interesting. 🧐

As we know Itachi crucified him and stabbed him relentlessly in deliberately non-lethal spots for 3 full days.

Except…I’m not actually convinced, from a watsonian perspective, that Itachi was the one making up this hellscape, not on his own.

The following is entirely speculative, so to each their own opinion, but it suits my little fic-bearing heart just fine to presume that:

1. Itachi was trying to go easy on him. His objective was to capture Kakashi alive (…to what end we can only guess; I’ll write an alternate fic for that scenario someday :0) and he clearly holds Kakashi in high esteem, not even mentioning the whole former colleague thing. It’s very possible that Itachi’s actual objective, had he managed to successfully capture Kakashi, was to share intel rather than collect it, and to that end he needed to ensure that he disarmed his senpai without killing OR severely traumatizing him, because he did need Kakashi to have some hope of trusting him if that plan was to succeed.

2. However, Itachi was still figuring out the details of how his power worked; he knew it’d make him go blind eventually, so he tried to minimise how often he used it, at the expense of taking forever and a day to work out the kinks. One of which is the likelihood that, particularly in the absence of other conscious influences from him, the other persons fears/desires would manifest more vividly.

Thus we get a crucified Kakashi…because of how his father died.

Now, from a doylist perspective, obviously, the entire thing is just about the aesthetic aspect of Scarecrow vs Crow.

But the watsonian believer in me says that being crucified literally like that is a reflection of a deep, somewhat neglected fear by Kakashi of becoming just like his dad. After all, he spent so much of his young life trying so hard to be the opposite of him, all rules and no play, until Obito convinced him otherwise.

But trauma like that doesn’t just vanish. Kakashi might be very mature about it, or we can presume so, but the fear never fully left him — he’s just more aware of it and capable of acknowledging it without letting it totally consume him like he did when he was tiny.

Which contributes probably to the utter lack of long term consequences for that Tsukiyomi nightmare; first, physical torture is the easiest to psychologically resist, and second, he was at least subconsciously already aware of that fear, so while seeing it manifested certainly had an effect, it wasn’t enough to really re-traumatize him or anything.

What’s more interesting to me, in the name of catharsis, is how Itachi interpreted all that.

Sadly we don’t get to see that, but I reckon it did answer a few questions he might’ve had and probably gave him a greater sense of grace or respect towards Kakashi; or at least that’s what we are working with for A Fawn in the Grass purposes lol.

Ah the fic bunnies will surely nuzzle me to death about this concept until I actually write something down, but I am determined to finish one fic at a time right now. Otherwise I just spam 6 at a time and none of them ever get done lol.

But I will come back to it some day. Because so much could have changed if Itachi had actually captured Kakashi on that day.

I leave you with that while I go contemplate alternate timelines 🤣

[moltengoldveins]

ok i have a pacific rim question-

when herc hanson is unable to pilot striker eureka, the marshal takes over to copilot with his son. when chuck questions if they'll even be drift compatible, the marshal says "i bring nothing to the drift- no memories or emotions or [something i cant remember]" (paraphrased). how can he bring nothing to the drift? how does that work (if its ever addressed)?

Ok ok ok. Please keep in mind I’m only a fan of the movie here, not necessarily the extended universe, but I shall do my best to explain how I saw this scene after a few watches (I’ll admit, this is a scene I was a bit confused on at first :/ I kinda wish it were elaborated on more but also. Limited run time. Shame it never got a sequel) -

First big thing is that Stacker is extremely talented at drifting and piloting Jaegers. He’s the only known person to have finished a fight with a Kaiju alone other than Raleigh, and he did it in gen 1 janky tech with no backup, and then walked away largely unscathed. The sheer mental capacity and tenacity of spirit that would require is astounding, and implies that if nothing else was stopping him, he’d probably be right on the edge of being able to pilot a Jaeger on his lonesome.

Next big thing is that drifting is tricky to explain. The Doyalist (writing) reason for this is that it’s a metaphor for love, the Watsonian (in-universe) explanation is that it’s an open flow of consciousness between two brains and that can take a lot of forms. You CAN open and maintain a drift without sharing memories with the other person - Newt and Herman drift with a Kaiju, so technically it doesn’t even require you to be the same species - it’s just So Freaking Hard. It requires an immense amount of mental discipline, control, and energy to keep your mind from wandering into your own memories when you catch a glimpse of theirs and if you’re not careful someone might end up chasing a rabbit or seeing something you don’t want them to yadda yadda yadda. It’s easier to just find people who have enough overlap between them and enough willingness to share their experiences that the connection can sort of hold itself open. You’re not necessarily using the memories to create the bridge - you’re threading two minds together and then using a combination of shared emotions, memories, and experiences to make that thread stronger.

Stacker mentions earlier in the film that Mako is a risk when drifting because she’s ’carrying too much emotion into the drift’ which at first seems to contradict this, but it’s not quite the same thing. The things you ‘carry into’ the drift are the things you cannot let go of, the things you’re gonna get stuck on, the things that will clog that open line of communication and tangle the thread. Trauma, unresolved issues, hangups, grudges, the kinds of things that poison relationships. It’s hard to drift with someone who has those issues - it’s even harder to do it if you aren’t expecting those issues. Mako and Raleigh don’t heal from their respective traumas after their first drift - they just know what to expect from one another and talk it through beforehand, so it’s easier to keep the line clear.

Stacker is essentially saying “kid, I’ve got no unresolved trauma and no beef, I can keep my mind on the task at hand so you won’t be getting any stray thoughts out of me, there’s nothing in me that’s gonna trip you up, and there’s definitely nothing in you that’s gonna trip me up. I’ve had you sorted since day one, no surprises there. I’ve got the mental strength and drift skills to pilot with anyone. Your job is to not get in my way, and to handle that one glaring Daddy Issue before we get going.”

the out-of-universe why-is-this-even-happening-in-the-story-explanation? Drifting is a metaphor for love, of all kinds. Stacker isn’t necessarily the most affectionate person, but he is by far one of the most loving people we see in the film, and every ounce of his being is invested in loving his people. The men under his command are his friends, his comrades, it’s his job to keep them alive long enough to see that clock stop. He’s not doing it for glory or revenge- he’s doing it because he loves these people, all of them, but that love is not a two way street like most other forms of love. In the sort of metaphorical idealized sense we’re working in right now, love between a commander and his soldiers is not the love between a solider and his commander. The hypothetical commander’s job is to know everything there is to know about his men and care for them regardless - the soldier never learns enough about his commander to see him as human, his love is more like hero worship or devoted loyalty. Stacker even directly says that this is the kind of figure he’s trying to be for all of the people working for him re: “the only thing I need to be to you and everyone else in this dome is a fixed point”

Respect is a form of love. Mako makes that incredibly clear all throughout the film. Stacker understands and is equipped to lead Chuck - Chuck respects and is willing to trust and follow Stacker. That’s love. It’s not love the way most western cultures use the word and if I could I’d use another word but English is kinda limited :/ but it is. and the drift is love. And that’s what I think makes stacker and chuck at least slightly drift compatible.

[wintersmisery]

eternal struggle of k (new name pending) suffering from "claims to want 'true magical freedom' or whatever yet still forces themself bending and breaking into an archetype and holds themself to a level of culture and institutionalized hatred perpetuated by those that would to oppress you" and when this is pointed out to them by syn, they get murder-y about it. and the struggle is wanting to subvert standard dark lord tropes by having a fem dark lord (hashtag toxic yuri) vs going standard cis man dark lord. on one hand it is a very big thing in the queer community rn having dumbasses who do espouse similar worldviews (ie a hellish combination of "if you guys weren't such freaks we'd get more respect" + "we need to get weirder" but hates when someone autistic isn't hastag uwu) like Bro the fantasy conservatives aint gonna fuck you (won't treat you with any respect despite you wanting to assimilate. well you subconsciously as assimilating despite stating you're better). VS the real life phenomenon of guys saying what sounds meaningful (church-cults) but when you examine it for 5 seconds under logic it falls apart (again: the fantasy conservatives aint gonna fuck you bro), still w/ the internalized self loathing, and when someone (a perceived woman for all intents and purposes) says "hey that's fucked up, i think that's wrong of you, but i still think we can work this out together?" he loses his shit and then i can indulge in the revenge fantasy aspect of this wip by having syn and rauvna beat his fucking ass without feeling or thinking too much about it

but somewhere along the way this wip turned from "revenge fantasy" more to "applying watsonian logic to certain fantasy tropes and the brainrot that comes from reading asoiaf (it's societal rot down to the foundations baby!), and the tragedy of what's it like being both a victim in this turbo pear-wiggler and a living metaphorical representation of the societal upheaval/revolt that happens when things are fucked up long enough? (it sucks btw)" so now i have to think about it. bc like w/ the first one i feel like w that archetype in... certain circles that character either gets woobieified to the ends of the earth ("i killed a bunch of people bc i'm secretly sad:(" fuck off. also syn already gets that lmao) or is killed thoughtlessly without the protag examining/changing the circumstances that led to [villain] being what they are in the canon media. like that one shencomix. i cant fucking find it but you know the one. like obvs not all media does this but my brain's been blasted by romantasy hell the past month and i feel like these are exactly the 2 archetypes villains fall into in this stupid fucking genre. and i mean writing the first option (fem dark lord) would definitely prevent the first interpretation (woobie-fication) bc people can't stand women doing anything. ironically much like herself cannot stand most people doing anything. and i feel like syn would have more sympathy for her situation and would try to help more if they were both perceived as woman (syn's not so much but there's so much shit going on so they dont have time to worry about that. k's probably got something going on too but again too far up her own ass) and it would feel more tragic (to me) so like. well ive kinda talked myself into it huh

[seeminglyseph]

Sometimes, I fear that when I say that my brain is working too fast, it sounds like a brag, like I'm saying something cool and impressive about my brain's capabilities. But things go really, really fast in the wrong way all the time. It's not impressive. It maybe could be impressive if I was someone who had trained that speed to like... a finely honed skill that very, very quickly did other things, but as it stands, it mostly makes me really really terrible at holding conversations.

I'm admittedly kinda good at some forms of research, but that tends to depend entirely on if I am interested in the subject or not. I can also sometimes be equally be kinda good at observation. But if I'm not interested or mildly uncomfortable or tired or something, then I might not notice dick shit about anything, and really, I'm just useless.

Or potentially in need of a Watsonian sidekick if I pretended I was a trope.

[zukkacore]

Please don't feel bad for putting all your thoughts here!!!! honestly i 100% cosign and agree and i would much rather just Have the Discussion than feel the need to be coy abt it in the tags anyway. Anyway fuck my old restraint to just talk abt dnd overall im gonna go full blorbo-pilled this is about my favorite sopping wet beast. I feel like there's a general posture when i try to tackle the Jace Conundrum with any reading besides the one intended by the text that I'm inherently being defensive abt him, which i guess I am? But also, y'all don't understand. If the text is telling me to point and laugh at jace for being stupid, don't worry. I do. Readily < 3 (seriously, what's the point in having a blorbo if you can't laugh at his expense a little)

That being said, I don't LOVE ascribing intent to bleem when i cannot know what is in his heart, but I just feel like im chewing on drywall bc i feel like im pointing out the watsonian and the doylist reading of the text are just coming across completely differently when it comes to jace and whenever i express that its like. Oh no you're overthinking it. It seems pretty clear (in my opinion!!!!) that the text is trying to ascribe a "jace is privileged, jace has always had an easy life, the second he came up against one smidgen of resistance he caved b/c everything has always been tee'd up for him b/c of inherent magic, and now he is teaching that elitism and complacency to his students. And also he's kinda just dense and stupid and incurious" perspective on him and why we should not therefore feel sorry for him, which i think is a partial truth (& it is probably not a coincidence that his design is that of a white blonde man etc etc) but clashes with all these like other details in the show that are being taken pretty seriously. That seems like the obvious reading for how we are Meant to absorb his storyline. Plus the fact that he's a minor character so truly it is ultimately Not That Serious. I just think that that takeaway is so hard for me to earnestly buy as thematically coherent when we're seeing all the systemic schooling components that are making the bad kids lives miserable. Gorgug's terrible awful very bad no good year trying to get the MCAT thing sorted (multiclass commonality). Adaine having financial barriers to succeeding in class (barriers to succeeding in wizardry. Another commonality). Kristen being disadvantaged bc she has to make her own meaning and likes the idea of self determining but has this very disorganized way of thinking that makes sense in her head but is hard to communicate & is not accommodated for w/in the school system (the i have a hard time applying myself but the Girls Who Get It Get it vibe. Another commonality). Fig being naturally good at many different hats but also not being a traditional studious person & straight up deciding school is not for her! "I can't, I tried" holds hands with all their struggles!

Plus i meant what i said the other day when it was like. I just don't understand how anyone can take his "we just sit around and talk abt how great having innate magic is" comment at face value when the sorcery class would realistically be dealing with so much inherent volatility. I can buy that Jace's life has always been easy. I do not buy that he could coast by on doing nothing in that class, just knowing how sorcery actually works in dnd vs. the tone the text is trying to convey. The internal logic just does not make sense in my brain that he's telling the truth. Not every sorcerer is Penelope Everpetal. Some of them are Pete Conlan. It's not the doylist intention—again, i cannot say w/ 100% certainty but i will guess with probably too much unearned confidence that the statement is meant to be taken at face value (kinda absurd anyway considering he's lying the whole season abt what his other responsibilities are anyway which makes everything he says kinda suspect but anyway)—but if we remove intentionality from the analysis, it reads way more like something he is saying to be cavalier or nonchalant. (Friendly unassuming jace is a facade truthers literally rise up)

Nevermind the fact that I think "sit around all day and talk about how great having innate magic is" is not nearly as clear cut a "wow this guy sucks at what he does" statement as the paralanguage is trying to convey. Like we both agree sorcery is about self confidence, self control, etc. I made the theater teacher comparison for a reason. Some kids cannot be taught acting technique because the entire period is spent just getting them comfortable being on stage. And the risks of it being with kids with innate magic is like. Infinitely higher! Especially when they're coming into this school potentially viewing their magic as a burden or a danger. i also see this discussion with like. librarians and just getting kids to Start Reading. Like you have to meet them where they're at. You can't throw shakespeare at a kid who hates reading, if you want them to approach the subject with any kind of excitement, and you DON'T shame or tease them when pick up graphic novels bc that could be the bridge for their momentum. And i LOVE analysis, I'm such a turbo nerd and art rules are made up but at the same time learning about forms helps artists better articulate their aims! If i could throw every fourteen year old into reading shakespeare with excitement by analyzing the form, i would. But like. that's not how it works. And that's not a pure absolving of his teaching style. This is why my "he's great with the freshman, and terrible with the seniors" joke is a joke, but it feels true in spirit, to me anyway. Like, once these kids know what they're doing, they need a little more, and imo due to the limitations of his perspective, Jace cannot provide that. The girls who get it, get it. Schrodinger's good/bad teacher jace thesis is my truth. But this is not me saying my interpretation is fact or the only way to read that line, this is me asserting that the paralanguage is aiming to convey one reading (jace is a bad teacher), but i think the word choice leaves a lot more room for varied interpretation.

Btw i 100% agree that with the impracticality of the wizard multi-class, it feels like there could be an emotional reason for him wanting to multi-class. That feels like a logical conclusion. I think Jace tends to be written off as incurious, which i think is mostly true but literally "i can't i tried" indicates that was not a lifelong trait, at least to me. I think it's interesting when i talk to jace agnostics (aka my beloved friends irl who endure my bullshit) and to cite someone specifically (sorry if im throwing u under the bus), a friend said that they basically chalked the reasoning up to arrogance. Which i guess coheres with what the intended takeaway is meant to be for Jace. basically "i'm already good at everything i do and born naturally gifted so why not do this other thing just to prove i can" which. Makes sense. And I love when jace sucks so I'm not even opposed to it. But I do think ascribing arrogance to his character based on the handful of things he's said is like... It's definitely there, but we also see so little of him that even arrogance doesn't feel like a completely definitive character trait? Like. I think the reason arrogance gets ascribed to him is bc of the "how great innate magic is" comment and the calling wizards stinky thing. It's all we have to go on but it's also so sparse. And again, i'm doing a cringefail apologetic restorative reading of everything he says bc i like him, but i don't think those two interactions are enough to fully condemn him for arrogance. Maybe that's just me. I do think its interesting to see people's gut reactions to the "i cant, I tried" joke. Bc my friend was basically like "oh yeah that's just a natural extension of him being a conceited asshole who thinks he can do everything but has never had to work for it". Honestly, fair. Meanwhile maybe bc i was already biased i was like wow. Deeply pitiable. Deeply Baffling. Understandably played for humor, but feels like such an off the cuff joke that has implications that are NOT grappled with. And I just think we're primed to take Adaine's side in that interaction b/c obviously she's a protagonist, even tho saying "you could take a level of wizardry" to a sorcerer is kinda baffling! Little does bleem know how sick in the head that one line made me. I genuinely was such a jace agnostic before this.

I think i'm just a little too close to this issue to be fair abt it tho. As someone who DESPISES incuriosity, I get the whole Wizard understanding the fundamentals of the universe thing. As someone who is a very pedantic and obsessed with precision of lanugage and goes on these like weird riz spirals abt everything, I do not personally relate to the Girls Who Get it Get it thing (i do have problems with overexplaining but again that's bc im anxious about my precision of language) but my best friend is someone who struggles with brain fog in a way that they often feel very frustrated by their limitations with communication and are just like "why can't i just gesture wildly. You get it. you get it. right", maybe i just feel for him more than average. ALSO not to be cringefail but yeah, I got told i was bright as a kid then bombed my sophmore year of high school honors b/c i wasn't used to working for things. What about it.

Hi do you. By any chance want to expand on both 1) Sorcerer Wizard and the dichotomy and 2) Sorcerer trans thoughts??? Bc BOY I would LOVEEEEE to hear them if you’re willing to!!!

Hiiiii beloved old man yaoi mutual anyway sorry this took a hot sec bc I do have more thoughts on this but tragically they’re kinda formless and incoherent. Prepare for the unorganized paragraph monster. Anyway I’m like pretty bad at understand dnd as a system but I have seen other ppl who are actually better versed than me express like. A sorcerer / wizard multi class is pretty counterintuitive. And like, if that’s part of the character arc that’s fine, obviously with Gorgug it was an intentional character choice and they made a profound point of of him doing unexpected and not typically “optimal” just bc he liked it & bc of that he has a perspective on rage AND artificing different from everyone else. Idk if im over explaining the obvious with the like, oh wizardry is abt understanding the fundamentals and components of the arcane it’s abt studying the world whereas sorcery is abt control and understanding of the self etc etc. like described as the ability to “project one’s will” into the world and the meta magic mechanic is a way to actualize like. Being able to literally change the rules of magic (honestly very interesting and cool imo).

Like, I don’t think they HAVE to be opposed in terms of what they’re doing, if you think abt it like. Art rules ya know? Like you gotta learn the fundamentals and the rules before you can break them. So I could see that being a reason to study wizardry. And if your character just has a natural curiosity than sure. But also, I GET the reason why it’s an impractical build and a weird choice for a character beat bc the drawbacks of losing high level sorcery aren’t really compensated for in getting some wizard levels. Esp bc they’re different casting modifiers or whatever, int vs charisma. Like you have to have a high modifier in both to even make it worth it. AND on a character beat level, not to make this JUST abt our favorite sopping wet cat Jace stardiamond but like. Wouldn’t it be kinda counterintuitive to learn all these rules and fundamentals of magic and everything in those classes is saying THIS is how it works meanwhile there is something inherent in you that could change that? And I was like oh haha trans bc it’s abt saying like oh something essential is actually less rigid than you think + projecting your will is in my mind kinda like the ability to self-determine?

At the same time the counterpoint to this is that sorcery is about inherent magic so that IS like oh this is essential to your person. At the same time I feel like the distaste toward sorcerery bc it’s inherent or essential is kinda unfair bc like? Yeah divine right is not real, someone being inherently divinely powerful is not a thing in real life but also how different is that from the divine right of being a chosen one for a deity (like. Not to go toooo into fantasy high but Kristen IS a chosen one). So I get the counterpoint that sorcerery is bad and essentialist but eh? Like take it for what it represents on a thematic level, don’t take it so literally.

Not to backtrack but I don’t think self knowledge vs worldly knowledge HAVE to be fundamentally opposed, but I do think one class transitioning into the others would be really difficult bc it’s someone learning a system and realizing actually it’s bullshit and broken & malleable vs. someone who intuitively GETS that rules are kinda just made up and the education system is saying no this is truth. Despite everything about you being a contradiction to that. Like, I feel like a sorcerer is coming into low level wizardry learning “you can’t do 1 - 2” and intuitively they go but you can? But at that level it’s like no, you’re not ready to teach someone just being introduced to those concepts abt negative numbers abt imaginary numbers etc etc etc. (similar w biology. Like yeah we all took 7th grade bio where we learned there are 2 sexes. But actually the human body a lot more varied & complicated than that. These are rigid categories we made up to “better” understand things or articulate a certain idea but they also cause systemic harm) Also. There are some particles that behave differently when observed. I respect the wizard’s quest for knowledge as someone who is a turbo nerd. I respect it so hard. But also. I get why riz spirals abt it. It’s hard to be bleem coded and love complete taxonomies when you know the world is a lot more complicated than that. I get why a sorcerer wouldn’t be able to hack it. Again not to make this abt blorbo from our shows but the failed to wizard multiclass thing opened SUCH a can of words in my brain…..

[cassatine]

I love love love hearing you talk about the bastard thing and how it was legit never about legitimacy but the throne. So many people seem to debate genetics and how they COULD be laenor’s kids etc but I feel like it totally misses the point

Thank you it is my lil’ hill to camp out and die on… it's like, sure, some things are up to interpretation, but not that one. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it could hardly be more obvious that the kids’ legitimacy was never the problem. It’s in the fucking text ffs… Otto & Hobert were already having their lil discussions about putting Aegon on the throne when he was two and Rhaenyra was still years away from being married or having kids… Otto straight up tells Alicent that Rhaenyra could have been Jaehaerys reborn and it wouldn’t have changed shit because she was born without a dick also before she even got married or had kids. How those scenes went over so many heads I don’t fucking know, but it’s kind of amazing how people can look at something that’s clearly meant to be an indictment of the patriarchy and still go… ok ok but listen… what if… what if the text is really meant to be read with the fake patriarchal medievish mores in mind?? What if the issue really is the kids' legitimacy?

The brain rot is so bad, we could have a Greek chorus looking at the camera, telling the audience “it has nothing to do with legitimacy and everything to do with patriarchal structures & the Hightower patriarchs thirsting for power” and people would STILL be like, but but but how can the chorus be reliable?? Don’t the fake patriarchal medievish mores say sex out of wedlock is dishonorable whore behavior and bastards are by nature wanton and treacherous??

The fake patriarchal medievish mores also say you shouldn’t break guests rights, or kinslay, and that protecting people who did such things is bad, all things the people who point the finger at a woman having consensual sex out of wedlock with one (1) dude that isn’t her gay husband don’t seem to care overly much about for some reason -- don't even start me on how fucking yikes it is that people are like "well clearly Rhaenyra & Laenor didn't try hard enough they didn't do their quote unquote duty :((".

And lmao people are bringing genetics into it?? Missing the point indeed. I love to push the watsonian approach to its limits as much as anyone else but ffs, HotD isn’t. like. the real world. What we see is what the people telling the story chose to show and if they’d wanted us to think for even a hot second that maybe the kids were Laenor’s, the hints would have been on the fucking screen: the Velaryons would have been white, Rhaenys would have had her dark Baratheon hair like in F&B, Harwin wouldn’t have had that scene holding baby Joffrey, Rhaenyra wouldn’t have had that scene telling Jace “you’re Targs and that’s what matters” -- nor would she have told Daemon “yeah Laenor and I tried and it didn’t work,” etc etc.

And in any case…: if the kids had been Laenor's, then Otto & Hobert & co would just have pulled a different card, such as: well Laenor is super gay so how do we know the kids aren’t quote unquote deviants as well, can’t have a gay King in the future can we? Or: well Laenor is super gay so how do we know the kids actually aren’t some other Velaryon’s kids, Rhaenyra was spotted talking to Vaemond for more than two minutes twice in the last ten years, isn’t it sus? Etc etc -- and of course, they could always have defaulted to the classic “well Rhaenyra doesn’t have a dick so she clearly isn’t qualified to rule.”

[allalrightagain]

ONE GIANT FOLDER COMING YOUR WAY

Ooh a giant one you say?? Ok, here’s my DADA prof conspiracy theory:

(under a cut because I wrote you an essay. oops.)

SO! One of the biggest mysteries of the whole series is what on earth Dumbledore was thinking when he hired Gilderoy Lockhart of all people to teach 11-18 year olds defensive magic, especially the year after he confirms that Voldemort is definitely still around and kicking and trying desperately to come back to power/get to Harry. Obviously the last prof died etc etc and the “willing and able” population is extremely slim pickings after 30-40 years of needing a new person every year, so there might not be anyone who would actually say yes that Dumbledore was willing to take.

(This is true even when you consider the professors who do accept for the next few years— Moody and Slughorn come out of retirement to take it, Umbridge and the Carrows hardly make Dumbledore’s “Not a Chance in Hell” list, and Lupin, well... would he take the job? If Sirius had not broken out of Azkaban? Would Dumbledore have even offered it? More on this later!)

But there’s a war brewing, even if Dumbledore’s the only one who knows it, and he doesn’t do anything without thinking it through his General brain (though the same can’t always be said for his Politician or Professor brains).

So what on earth does Dumbledore gain by hiring Lockhart?

Well, he fills the spot, that’s for sure. Best case scenario, he skates by for a whole year, nobody dies, the kids maybe learn a little, and next year we do it all over again.

Except— Harry.

Dumbledore has already proven himself by this point to be relatively focused on Harry in particular and preparing him for the future, both skills/knowledge-wise and “virtue”-wise (ie having him live with muggles, not know about his fame etc). It seems strange to intentionally choose not to provide the best possible education (specifically in Defense Against the Dark Arts) to the kid you absolutely need to survive until he's old enough to die at the hands of the right person (or, since CoS takes place before Dumbledore encounters a horcrux, until Harry is old enough to kill Voldemort for good).

Once you start reading Dumbledore’s hiring choices specifically through the lens of teaching Harry in particular, they start to make a lot more sense.

(a quick note is needed here to mention that the books focus on Harry as the main character etc etc it’s a children’s book but the worldbuilding should still be able to stand on it’s own. Whatever. We’re taking a Watsonian explanation because it’s more fun.)

In order:

Quirrell is a test, and a trap— Dumbledore has set the stage: a bright young man just returned from the place Voldemort was cited having been in at least 2x; a magical object that grants immortality; and a virtually untested, unknown 11yo Harry. This is Dumbledore getting the lay of the land and verifying that Voldemort is in fact alive and that Harry can handle the path set for him. If Quirrell doesn’t end up possessed or otherwise working for Voldemort, then Dumbledore has found another ally against him

Lockhart on the other hand is a lesson, specifically in what not to do/be— Harry grows up as far away from fame as physically possible, and Dumbledore expresses concern that the fame within the wizarding world could get to his head on several occasions. So Dumbledore sees Harry at 11: modest, but with a habit of rule breaking, a Quidditch star, the potential for becoming comfortable with his role within this new society. And Dumbledore shows him the worst possible version of where he could end up if he lets it go to his head. Nothing screams “don’t rely on your fame” like Gilderoy Lockhart. (in as much of Dumbledore’s defense as I’m comfortable providing, this was literally the only year where he didn’t know in advance of the school year what exactly would make it a difficult/dangerous one, so he probably felt he could get away with someone who didn’t need to be able to defend the students. They were supposed to be safe.)

Lupin is bait, and education (!!)— There’s history there, and Dumbledore knows it. Remus draws in Sirius, so Dumbledore knows where he should be headed, and he should protect Harry if it came down to it (and if he doesn’t, then Remus ends up dead or in Azkaban and Dumbledore has shaken out another possible traitor). Remus is also there to teach Harry— about defending himself, which has become increasingly necessary— and to hold the same role he did in school: to keep Harry in check. A teacher who is specifically and singularly interested in Harry first and foremost is a teacher who might actually be able to keep a determined child of James (and Lily) from throwing himself in harms way, especially if information about Sirius gets out.

Moody (or well, Dumbledore’s hope for Moody) is protection and to train soldiers for a war— Again, Dumbledore knows what’s coming this year. Or at least like, 50%. He knows Karkaroff will be there, he knows Pettigrew ran off to Voldemort, and he knows these kids are nowhere prepared to fight in a war. If nothing else, hopefully Moody will scare someone straight.

Umbridge is obviously against Dumbledore’s will, but she does teach them all about politics (in the worst possible way)

Snape sets the stage— It’s part of Dumbledore’s final moves on the chessboard. It teaches Harry actual, useful magic (and is almost as good as Dumbledore teaching Harry what he needs to know directly). It’s NEWT level magic, specifically geared towards fighting a war that Harry, Dumbledore AND Snape (plus… literally everyone else) knows is happening. It sets Snape up to leave re: the curse, however he needs to in the moment where things start falling apart.

Bonus: Slughorn, gets the memory and scares Harry away from using his connections— Dumbledore knows he’s going to die. He knows this war won’t be finished by the time he does. He knows it’s going to rely on Harry finishing the horcrux hunt and doing it with enough of a martyr complex to walk to his death at the end. But he’s also set Harry up with a support system within the Order out of necessity and desperation less than a year ago. So what can Dumbledore do to ensure Harry doesn’t go to any/all of the adults in his life on the occasion of Dumbledore’s death, present them with the horcrux hunt and ask for help? He gives Harry Slughorn, who is the epitome of a Slytherin who knows how to use their resources, and he does so blatantly and without a shred of shame. Harry is supposed to look at him, assembling the Slug Club, bragging about tickets he’s gotten and correspondence he keeps, and think “I do not want to be like him.” Slughorn is supposed to isolate Harry from anyone who would tell him not to walk to his death, and, just like Lockhart makes Harry even more uncomfortable about his fame, it works because it perpetuates the abuse Harry has endured.

TL;DR: Dumbledore chooses DADA profs to teach Harry something specific, in the case of Lockhart (and Slughorn), it’s specifically a moral lesson on who not to be and what not to do

Send me a 📂 and I'll give you a useless/random headcanon

[phdna]

I'm legit curious how Steve and Bucky's last conversation went on. Steve's idea of making Sam the next captain and Bucky "well, I don't know him well but nice". Like, these two old man don't even thought in asking what Sam would think.

Also, what are your thoughts about that scene when they recovered the shield and Bucky throws the shield on the floor next to Sam. I got ?? like wtf man you are really imposing and implying something here. The next scene of them they already cleaned up the shield and Bucky was really upset and I not talking to Sam, I wonder if it was because after all happened Sam didn't seem to want the shield. And one more thing, when Bucky had a change of mind ? like, meeting Ayo and realizing that he's able to do the right thing and being forgiven is when he decided to visit Sam and apologize? I have so many thoughts and doubts 🧐🤯

Oh, great points (and sorry for taking forever to get back to you.) Hope it’s okay to post in public - if not, let me know and I’ll delete the post!

There are soooo many ways that conversation could go, right? Depending on how much time they spent talking, what Steve’s tone was, what Bucky’s headspace looked like... The possibilities are endless. And when the show starts, Bucky has been ignoring Sam’s texts, so???? It’s not a matter of “sometime off-screen Sam and Bucky became friends” - sure, maybe as Bucky became more depressed, he began to ignore Sam in a way he hadn’t before, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened. So I honestly have no idea. And if they had the time to discuss it, couldn’t they have spent half a sec saying “Hey, Sam, you want the shield?” I’m not asking them to spend a whole week discussing the finer details, but even just a heads up? It’s probably the result of the show trying to make sense of a scene that was awkwardly written in the movie due to pacing, but I hate it when I can’t make Watsonian sense out of weird Doylist decisions :/

Okay, so I went back and rewatched that part of the episode. I think part of why Bucky is a complete asshole in that scene (sorry Buck, but you were) is that I’m pretty sure - even if it’s Walker - fighting someone who has that shield probably triggers the hell outta Bucky’s PTSD, on top of generally messing with his unresolved Steve feelings. The other part is, I think, that he’s still thinking (especially because heat of the moment, etc) that Sam didn’t do a good enough job looking after the shield that Steve left him. Yeah, they took it back, but only after it’d been... desecrated is the word I’m looking for, I think. I think maybe it was something like “There you go, we got you the shield - make sure you hold on to it this time because you completely fucked this up and none of this would’ve happened if you’d just done as Steve told you and like I kept shouting at you to do”? Which is stupid and mean, but y’know. Emotions. Bucky’s track record with Sam hasn’t been exactly stellar.

Then what happens is, as far as I can tell, that Bucky only sticks around because the mission isn’t done. I find it pretty interesting that he’s... withdrawn but not as sulky as he could possibly be up until when Torres shows up. For me that shows he was already pretty on the edge and even just one half-stranger showing up was enough to make him want to Get The Hell Out Of The Room Immediately, Mission Be Damned. But then by the time he gets to Zemo, he seems bad-tempered but honestly pretty calm? Zemo tries to get to him and doesn’t manage to, which is maybe a first in the show, so while I don’t think he was in a good mood, I think by then enough time had passed that he had cooled off enough to be more rational about things.

And then it’s like... He messed up, but when he made things right, Ayo gave him a second chance. And I think something clicks in his brain that even if Sam messed up, he’s trying to make things right, so maybe Bucky should give him a second chance too. Asking Ayo a favor definitely seems to be a last second decision. No that he thought right then and there “hey, let’s get Sam vibranium gifts!!!” but maybe he had considered that before and this moment just made him decide to follow through with that idea.

By the time Bucky takes the suit/wings/whatever to Sam, he’s definitely had the time to sleep on it and I think that’s how he goes from “I can forgive Sam for messing up” to “Huh. Maybe I messed up,” because by the time he meets up with Sam to “drop this off” he seems... extremely convinced Sam is about to kick him out. There’s something very defensive, very ready for Sam to pick up their argument from earlier, y’know? He keeps checking if he’s still wanted there or if Sam wants him to leave, which is very unusual for Bucky “I’M COMING WITH YOU WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT” Barnes. I think he knows Sam would have every right to be mad at him.

Now what exactly made the lightbulb go off, I have no idea. My headcanon is that since he’s on speaking terms with Ayo, maybe they had a quick chat about it? He almost certainly didn’t go to Wakanda with her - he’s not welcome anymore - but it’s possible that they talked when she gave him the suit/wings/whatever? Bucky seems to have a tendency to work out things by talking (even if he’s bad at it), so I feel this is just a tiny bit more likely than him just staring at the ceiling Reflecting. Not that I think reflection didn’t happen - I think it did - but I think Bucky might have double checked with Ayo that he was on the right path, you know? That’s the headcanon I’m going with until canon contradicts me.

...this is probably 10 times longer than what you wanted, I’m so sorry, I’ll shut up now.

[checkdispleased]

re. ep. 21 on Lardo, what are your thoughts on the idea that Lardo's haircut/ art student vibe, is sort of trading on the visual cues/ imagery of queerness, to provide an illusion or semblance of queer rep, while not actually doing the work to write an actually queer character? You guys have touched on N using a sort of visual/generic shorthand in her characterization in other areas, but the mentioning the Ollie/Wicks thing got me thinking again about how few canonical queer characters are 1/2

2/2 are in the majority of the comic, for a comic supposedly all about queer rep. [it kinda reminds of that author of the wizard books and her word of god gay character after the fact, though i don't think N is doing it to nearly the same degree], but i can't help but see similarities in how cultural cues are used to a nod to representation that's not actually treated as canon by the text itself.

I just deleted a whole stupid Harry Potter essay and will instead say this: I was about to say we found out Dumbledore was gay 15 years before OMGCP even started, and then I remembered I’m an idiot who can’t do math. Still, not that I think JKR needs or deserves the very meager fairness I’m about to lend her right now, but, one difference between that series and this comic is, Harry Potter is not about queer experience, and it never claimed to be, and it wasn’t de rigueur for YA book series to feature any LGBT characters necessarily over the period when it was begin published. Check Please is supposedly about that exact topic! And it was created and presented in a space -- specifically the slash fandom subculture on Tumblr, in 2013, working on the vernacular of webcomics -- where the expectation of queer content was de rigueur. In addition to the fact that I got into the comic because I had heard Jack and Bitty got together, this is maybe why I diverge from @tomatowrites​‘ uncertainty that they would get together: this was being created from and presented in the space where that was exactly what would happen.

To be also fair to Ngozi, I guess the comic never really positioned itself as speaking to LGBT experiences other than Bitty’s. Still, he says he’s come to Samwell because of the breadth of its queer community? I think, through the lens of the comic alone, what he must have meant was that he wanted to be in a place where he could be openly gay to find a boyfriend, not that he wanted to like, have LGBT friends broadly speaking. One interesting thing about the Y4 Tweets, which I have only ever seen in the chirpbook, is that it is established that Bitty, uh, addresses one of the most pointed criticisms of Check Please:

“ducksducksducksducks,” I’m entirely sure based on other Tweets in here, is Lardo.

Hey, this is loooong.

This is SO confusing because it’s like, Lardo’s not a lesbian ... probably? She’s very into Shitty? They live together? Like sharing-a-bedroom live together? There is nothing in the physical comic, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, period, where it’s implied that she’s into women at all, beside the fact that she’s got short hair for a while? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think these were ever tweeted; I think they were written to go in the chirpbook. So it’s tough to know, in a Watsonian sense, what precisely Bitty is responding to, or if he’s responding at all. There’s no context for this. Like much of the comic, it’s just there, implying some things broadly while also addressing a major criticism of the text (that Bitty has no gay friends) without actually examining it within the text itself. Confusing!

I’m not sure what was originally intended in regard to Lardo. (Would love to hear Tomato weigh in on this, if she has time.) It could be as straightforward as, some people at art school look like this. It would be absurd to code a character as queer and then do nothing to establish them as queer in your queer webcomic, of course. Anyone who understands the potential gain of having people think Lardo is not cishet must also understand the potential cost of not just making it canon?

Part of the essay I started writing about Harry Potter up there was to say that, of course, fuck JKR, but also, I think people are making a very 2020-based criticism of the “Dumbledore is gay” reveal, which happened in 2007, concerning a book series that was written starting in the mid-1990s. Not that nobody was ever gay in mainstream media before Check Please, but I do think it’s possible that as popular as those books were, and as powerful as the author was, she may actually have felt she couldn’t put that in there? At the time, I felt like it was a cheap nod to an obviously huge slash fandom -- but now I actually kinda feel like, okay, maybe it was a cheap nod to her obviously huge slash fandom and also she genuinely didn’t think she could have it in there? The very conservative principle of universally legal gay marriage still felt, at the time, like a distant prospect. My goal in thinking this through isn’t to say it’s okay because it happened in ~the past~ when things were less socially just, but rather, to try to explore the thinking that must have gone on around these decisions.

Which leads me, finally, to the actual point of this post: conceiving of Lardo, and OMGCP, in 2013, Ngozi was coming from a slash fandom perspective that largely held these two beliefs:

It is unrealistic for a story to have more LGBT characters than the main pairing; 10 percent of people are gay so if a friend group has more than one or two gay people in it, that’s submitting to some kind of slash-brain internet logic that can’t hold; and

Just as it is homophobic to presume that gay people are or have to be any particular way, it is similarly problematic to presume someone is queer just because they look or act any particular way

The first one is really rooted in fanfics where an entire cast of characters who aren’t gay in canon are suddenly gay in fanfic; this is presumably not a problem for OMGCP because OMGCP is not actually a fanfic. But it is heavily influenced by fanfic; it functionally works as a fanfic ahout two characters named Jack and Bitty who just happen to have also originated within the fanfic. But the comic’s initial readership is going to be people whose interests cross with fandom, because Ngozi is a prominent fan artist so her audience is gonna be that! So you can kind of feel why maybe Bitty is the only gay in the cast until it turns out Jack magically (??) is also.

Which brings us to Lardo: she looks like someone you would think is into women? But I think she was potentially designed as an example of a character who seems gay but isn’t, because it is not okay to presume things about people based on how they look. This is pretty complicated because, well, yes, in general there’s a saying about not judging books by their covers because that level of superficiality perpetuates harmful biases. At the same time, people do judge just about everything by their appearances regardless of whether it’s superficial or not, and so most people know this and use their own appearances to construct their own identities, that is, try to tell people how they want to be read. It’s very 90s-2000s to assert that it’s wrong to make assumptions about whether someone is gay based on appearances, and you can understand why: normalizing gender non-conformity was and is an important project, but until recently the only way to do that was to do it from a position of insisting cishet people could be gender non-conforming. Of course, looking back, this feels like an insane supposition because of course there is a gay aesthetic, or gay aesthetics? Of course queer people have always looked and acted certain ways to try to subtly identify for the purpose of finding fellow travelers?

If I recall correctly, this came up in fanfics a lot, where you’d have one character who is the straightest man making jokes about how much he loved to suck dick, or whatever. And maybe, maybe, some of this lingers in Lardo. I’m thinking mostly of how Kenny was used in South Park fics, but also, come to think of it, Butters, who doesn’t so much crack jokes but he does seem pretty gay, if you take soft-spoken weak-willed effete boys to be gay, which, of course you do. We all do, sometimes. (There’s also an episode about him cross-dressing.)

But what’s even more striking is that there’s already a character who embodies this particular trope in Check, Please: Shitty. He’s theatrical (flamboyant?), he’s writing his senior thesis on the homoeroticism of hockey, and in a very brief (very badly written) ficlet from the back of Huddle Vol. 1, he checks out Jack’s body in the lockeroom and tells Jack he’s a “Greek god.” When Jack says, “That’s so gay,” Shitty responds with, “Welcome to fucking Samwell. Sometimes dudes will tell you you’re hot without even saying ‘no homo’ afterwards.” So we’ve got Jack, who is gay, telling Shitty it’s gay to admire another man’s body as he reddens and is visibly uncomfortable, while Shitty, who is straight, acts like it is somehow normal for all men to be attracted to other men without it being much of an issue for him personally or society broadly. This is not to say that you can’t find these attitudes reflected in the real world; Jack, who’s closeted, obviously has reasons to posture like this, or be uncomfortable with another man complimenting his appearance. But paired with Shitty’s comments the comic is engineering a reversal that claims it’s not inherently gay when a man is attracted to the body of another man -- except, it is? It’s a fiction that serves a kind of post-post-modern post-queer theory pop cultural attitude that I think, in 2020, we’ve moved on from. Underneath Shitty’s posturing is the sad truth that it’s a straight man, particularly a man like Shitty, whose comments on other men’s bodies would be tolerated; it’s unlikely that this is something Bitty (or Jack) would feel it was socially acceptable for him to say. Shitty’s working here as a type.

An I think it’s not a coincidence that he’s paired with Lardo within this story? She is similarly gender-transgressing; beyond having short hair she is characterized as a “bro” (an inherently male-coded performance) and crushes at beer pong and belches on her opponents. Not in the comic, obviously, but we’re told she does -- maybe kind of like Shitty only finds Jack hot off-page? (When he’s not lounging naked in Jack’s bed--again, something that Jack is uncomfortable with, but if a gay man did this, it would certainly be a problem.) I think these are all jokes that are very of their time for fannish texts in the period leading up to when this comic was started.

Again, nothing is impeding Ngozi from putting a female-identifying character who’s attracted to women into her markedly LGBT webcomic in 2014. I think it’s more than likely that if Lardo were meant to be queer, it’d be in there, somewhere. Or, rather, I think if it were an intended reading from start, it would have been in there. Or it would have been in a Tweet. In an extra. In an FAQ. On the Patreon blog. Mentioned in a Livestream. Somewhere? But where we get one incredibly disconnected hint that she might be, it’s in a Kickstarter-backed volume of post-canon content in a way that ties into the actual story or Lardo’s nonexistent interior life not at all. It’s not a story about her--but that’s the point? It’s not a story about her. If it were meant to be a story about a friend group, how would this particular detail not be enriching? When Lardo notices Bitty fretting over Jack’s game in the library, doesn’t the moment have more weight if she can empathize with even slightly more incision?

And like, you can say a lot of things about JKR, and the politics of gender and sexuality within her books was always bad, so this isn’t giving her, like, credit. But you can totally see how using cultural cues might have been all she felt she was able to do in the 1990s and early 2000s, yes, even as one of the most powerful authors working at the time. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have done more, or that her bad views are actually understandable, see. (I mean, they’re perfectly understandable, also abhorrent.) 

Ngozi is making a fucking gay webcomic for a gay readership on Tumblr in 2013-2020. She had no reason to use cultural cues to hint broadly unless she wanted credit for something she felt she couldn’t represent (which makes no sense, see previous sentence; entire essay) or Lardo was never intended to be anything other than a cis straight woman -- which is a fine thing to be, by the way, nothing against cis straight women? It’s just that like, this comic got a lot of flack from an internal crowd of complainers, myself included, about the things it didn’t do -- and one big thing it neglected to do was introduce meaningful relationships with other LGBT characters for Bitty. So I think that Chirpbook shit is just a late-in-the-day retcon for virtually nobody.

But this is a conspiracy theory so like, take it with a grain of salt.

[mappinglasirena]

Mapping La Sirena

Welcome one and all to the Mapping La Sirena Project!

If you are a fan of Star Trek: Picard and you would like to know more about the show’s most prominent ship, to check out floor plans and screencaps, and to discuss theories about the layout of this magnificent vessel, this is will be the place for you!

(Long, slightly rambly introduction and masterpost after the cut ;] )

Hi! My name is Lili and I’ve been a fan of pretty much all things Star Trek ever since I started watching Voyager at the tender age of 6. Besides the sometimes goofy, often brilliant storytelling and the wonderful characters, I always loved the worldbuilding of these shows - and in particularly the starships.

When Star Trek: Picard started airing a  few months ago, I was immediately drawn to the main ship, La Sirena. The mixture of the monumental physical set, judiciously used CGI, and sheer attention to detail made me fall madly in love with this little mermaid, and I wanted to find out every little thing about her that I possibly could. And since I imagine, I’m not the only one who feels this way, I decided to take you all on this journey with me!

What am I doing here?

As a reader and writer of fanfic, I know how helpful it can be to have a clear sense of the location your story is set in. When I realized that a good month after the final episode of ST:PIC season one aired, there still was no floor plan of La Sirena easily found on the web (easily = using my very limited googling-skills), I figured somebody had to sit down and do it. And apparently, that somebody was me. (May the gods help us all =D)

So, I sat myself down, and over the course of a few long days screencapped every single last scrap of Sirena that appears on the show. I now have a library of reference images and will post my progress as I work through them, trying to determine questions about the general layout of this ship, the details of its architecture and furnishings and all the questions that still remain. By the end of it, I am pretty confident that I will have a mostly accurate floorplan of the set that was used on the show (at least the parts of it that were shown to us thus far). We might even end up with the basis for a plan of the ship as it would exist in-universe (more on the movie set vs. “real place” issue later).

The following soon-to-be-links might give you an idea of what I plan to post over the next few months and I’ll keep adding links to this post as I go. So, without (even more) ado: Have fun exploring La Sirena!

Schematics & Floor Plans

A very crude first sketch

Official Set plan

We finally have an official set plan from the Ready Room!

A First Deeper Look at the Ready Room set plans

Centred Floor Plans from Set Me Up + cross section & more designs

Layout of the Captain’s Quarters

Shape and size

How large is La Sirena as seen on the show and is she larger on the inside?

Upper Deck

The Bridge

Where is the Holodeck?

Picard’s Study

Transporter Pad and Engine

The Trouble with Locating the Quarters/Conference Room

Crew Quarters

Captain’s Quarters

A closer Look at the windows

Conference room

The Mysterious Back End of the Ship

Crates, Tanks, Boxes, and Miscellania

Lower Deck

The Mess

Sickbay: Pt. 1: Size and Construction; Pt. 2: Furniture

So Many Nets

The Wall Problem, aka. Mysterious Nonexistent Corridors

Cargo Bay and other Speculative Spaces

Is there a dedicated cargo bay at the back of the ship?

Where are the rest of the crew quarters hidden?

Overall Design and Technological Aspects

A quick rundown of the Engine placement and history

Some Considerations

Tv Set vs . Starship

The set of La Sirena is just that, a tv set. When building a set, there are many constraints of time, budget, and practicality that will force the creatives to make decisions that will not always make sense when mapped onto a “real” starship. Take, for example, the fact that the Captain’s Quarters and the Conference Room were likely filmed in the same physical set, just redressed for the occasion.

Of course, there can always be Watsonian explanations for these kinds of incongruities and I’d love to hear people’s takes or read fics about them (after all, the entirety of La Sirena is apparently equipped with holoemitters, so I suppose technically, anything is possible).

But I am sticking with the Doylian “it’s a movie set” approach and will generally ignore these kinds of problems when trying to draft an in-universe-accurate floorplan of what we can know of the ship so far. I will be very diligent about pointing out whenever I handwave anything, though, so if you want to stick as closely to what we actually see on the whoe, you’ll know which parts of my analysis/headcanon to disregard ;)

Questions about “silly little details”

I have spend a ridiculous amount of time on this little project so far and in the course of it have gotten pretty familiar with a lot of aspects of the interior and exterior of this amazing starship. If you have any questions regarding details about what we can see of La Sirena on the show, please ask me and I will do my best to help! I absolutely love digging into the really nitpicky, tiny little scraps of information, and at this point, I can probably tell you straight away which scene might provide the info you’re looking for or whether there likely is no answer and you’ll have to get creative. So if you don’t feel like scrubbing through the entire 10 episodes of Picard to find out, say, the colour of the plates produced by Sirena’s replicators, please shoot me an ask, I’m always utterly delighted to help! (They’re white, btw.)

And just to make clear what I mean by “tiny little details”: in the course of writing some of my stories, I have collected answers to such important questions as

On which side of the desk does Rios have his chair? (Both)

How many cups are on the shelf next to the replicators? (4, even when one of them is currently in use)

Could a football roll under the railing on the upper deck and fall down into the mess hall anywhere but where the stairs go down? (No, there is a raised edge all around the rim that would catch it. Bouncing would work, though, since the space between the railing bars is large enough.)

Could I just say “Fuck it, I’ll just write it however, because it really doesn’t matter at all?” Yes. Would it be better for my sanity? Probably. Will I still keep trying to figure out as much about this crazy little ship as I possibly can at every turn? You betcha! So, no question is too silly, please ask away!!

A Quick Thought on Fanfic and “Accuracy”

This whole project started because whenever I write fanfic or make up stories set on La Sirena, my brain keeps insisting that we need to know which side of the mess hall the replicators are on! We need to know where exactly the holodeck is located and whether a football could fall to the lower deck through the railing. I would never hold anyone to these standards of “accuracy” - in fact I frequently don’t hold myself to these standards. Fic is for creative expression, so if in your imagination, La Sirena is twice the size of what we see in the show and has a ton of additional rooms and features, I would love to read that story! I want to create a resource for anyone looking for Sirena references to get inspired, not to point out inconsistencies or canon-divergence in lovingly created fanworks. I hope it comes across that way =)

[shy-magpie]

RQG 141

The wait is over! Skraak's gonna sober up soon and all signs point to upcoming boss fight. Will they end up with an army of captured Kobolds fulfilling the promise to make Skraak a general or are they going to spend the last episode on the island trying to remember who was tied up where? Patreon thanks have gotten more fun since I started recognizing names.

Alex sounds contrite about possible errors. Ben is honest about the social contract. Honestly these guys hold themselves to too high a standard sometimes. Oh everyone is doing Ben impressions, I love it when you can see they are really are friends Back to the elevator shaft Hamid and Zolf can fly without warning but are Cel and Azu going to be OK? Oh ladder is bad bad bad. Right not their first rodeo: Hamid and Zolf are talking out the plan. Zolf will scout? *scouts* *elevator ain’t moving* *reports* Regarding the text level of the ensuing conversation: Everyone is going to be tied together. No falling allowed. Hamid makes a case for Lightest First, Zolf was thinking Heaviest First. They go with lightest first. Eh I'm no hiker so not going to spend to much brain space on working out which order makes sense. Especially since none of them are allowed to fall, Alex. Subtext: Hamid sounds a little nervous about it but is in leader mode, not presenting an idea to his boss mode. Zolf sounds unsure how to take that level of the conversation but always did take Hamid's ideas seriously; even if only seriously enough to argue about rather than dismiss out of hand. As they discuss it Hamid sounds a bit more confident as Zolf takes it well. Zolf sounds frustrated but I think it's only on the level he explicitly said: this is going to suck and he would rather do it quickly, than have time for worry to really set in. I swear if they have Azu fall on someone like Bertie fell on Sasha; the way the last season of scripted shows do call backs to fan favorite episodes I'll never trust the dice are unweighted again. Eep, fatigue mechanics are starting now Yes having typing as an excuse to pause as they hit the bit we've been worrying about is nice. I don't want anyone to slip but I kinda need Zolf as Iron Man saving someone fan art. Ha Bryn just figured out they can work out how much time has passed by how often Zolf has to reactivate his boots. He clearly knows how much Ben will appreciate being used to add to the admin when he points this out. Oh this is going to be Planes Walking all over again, rolls every few seconds. I refuse to track the numbers, we had too many naturals in both directions. Tired climbing in the dark. Or not: Zolf lights a torch because Hamid can't cast and climb. Fatigued officially kicked in for Cel. Yeah we worried about this in the discord it is a Bad condition. Alex was going to soften it but Zolf has it covered? Well at least cover 7 times a day but there are only 5 of them unless sickened* or one of the other conditions comes up too. Zolf & Cel scene is fun. Rolls, trying to tune it out and just wait for the effects. Mood lightened by Ben rolling for fun. Skraak needs to be rolled for too. Of course Ben is the only one not sounding stressed at this. To be fair its a bit heavy handed by Alex standards to give us an NPC whose two main traits are endearing and vulnerable. Yes, yes, yes! Zolf is carrying Skraak in a little rope backpack! What is up with this design? I'm getting an overpowered kid vibe. Where is Alex going with this? Water reflections? Leaking hydraulics? Break right after pointing out that Hamid's armor is probably gone. Please tell me he can recast if there is something nasty down here. Ouch falling would have hurt even worse than expected. No Cel/Lydia, things that could have easily turned you into pâté are not cool. Alex has trained them too well to just open the door without a plan. Little Kobold Jeffrey's Tube hatch Skraak time. Yes, I know I said Alex was manipulating us, I never said it didn't work. Poor little guy is too cute. Ben admits Zolf would have cured his fatigue. Aquarium tunnel? For just the boss? Doesn't fit the military past and is a stretch for a school, did Yoshida have it added? how rich is this guy? Quick Hamid and Azu moment My respect for Shoin as an alchemist is going down.  Maintain your equipment: you're a mad scientist for heaven's sake. Going back to my “something is using Yoshida as a boogeyman” theory Sorry if this isn't up to my usual. Listening at home instead of waiting for work and I don't think I got 10 minutes in a row undisturbed. Anyway: set design/world building is wonderful. Light turns out to be natural phosphorus(?) from a thermal vent, because Alex world builds from the geothermal layer up. Never let it be said Alex doesn't give the people what they ask for. Thank you Alex and Helen for 15 octopuses and the rest of the table for making the Jurassic Park reference/background music. A pulpy fun scene that was indulgent even before a geeky reference right from my childhood? RQG is good to me Ship wrecks? Gotta be the Mechanical Squid from Dover! Zolf knowledge time Boats were sunk over the last decade? Hamid agrees with me! I am going to be smug even if debunked, at proof I'm thinking the same way as the players. I'm thinking dragging the boats here was just an easy way to be sure they got all the stuff they wanted before dumping the looted wrecks? Telling a machine to grab a boat and bring it back has to be easier than defining what loot it should take and what to dump. Genre savvy Zolf points out we will probably get an evil monologue explaining. Good bye nice safe tunnel. Utility is king in the new complex but no maintenance again? Been damaged without repair too? And has it's own power? Cel is also wondering about the maintenance. Azu points out the danger Cel is accidentally but actively making her more frightened. On a Watsonian level anyways. Lydia knows what she is doing. Literal fun-house is it, Ben/Zolf. The place was set up for the kind of nerdy party RQG fans would love then it was abandoned? But the food was fresh and the costumes were designed for the team? Locker, trap, and Helen gasp. Vial broken, was that what the potion puzzle with the costumes was for? Alex is merciful and reinforcing the "set up for a party years ago and abandoned in place" by the contents being too old to hurt the team. 3 years expired, is that when the party was? Zolf breaks the box because  he does not like puzzle games. It was the prize: 4 vials but also too old to use. The customization is discussed. Lydia has Cel accidentally point out the time skip accounts for a lot of the time element. Well half of it, but if we take 3 years as a solid date, that leaves 18 months before the times skip and I don't think The Rangers were formed over a year before that. Maybe minions who kept updating based on old orders? "Actually"? Alex?!? OK, Broken traps can be tagged on like that. Holy Hades, I was right: Corpse with a bolt through his head?  Gotta be Yoshida. Poor Bryn glitched on his own character name because of all the Salad jokes; honest to god we tease because we love. Ben lightens things back up. Wait hey Zolf's cure fatigue also covers poisons*, is Skraak no longer drugged? Also is he still tied to Zolf? I don't remember them taking him out of the rope back pack. Did a lunch time re-listen/edit of these notes, because the universe punishes me with interruptions if I try to break my ritual. Hope it helped more than made the tone even more confusing. *I could have sworn poisoned was one of the conditions cured by Calming touch (Zolf's spell). I listened while doing my edit pass on this post and I couldn't find it. Maybe that damned processing issue again: you know I can wrap my head around hearing a tone but not make out words; hearing a completely different word so clearly I don't know my ears/brain glitched? Pisses me off more than it presents an actual problem.

[letteredlettered]

What did Moira say to Patrick post open mic performance? That woman was crying for her son and she didn't even comment about not being on stage. And then we have David, I don't want to think what he did post that performance because I think he lost his brain heart limbs blood and just got thoroughly dehydrated from the tears

I’m guessing whatever Moira says it starts out nice and ends up being a backhanded compliment, because that’s how Moira is even though she doesn’t realize she’s doing it, and Patrick makes his “did you really?” face, the one he always tucks away so that David doesn’t think he’s being critical of them.

Re David. The performance is really beautiful; the arrangement is beautiful; Noah Reid’s singing and playing is beautiful; the whole setup in magical. But it’s Dan Levy’s FACE that really kills me, because it portrays a thing that I have felt but am just not sure I’ve seen? Or maybe I’ve seen it and just never identified with it so strongly; like maybe it just hit a resonant frequency and I’m bringing a lot of my own stuff to it that’s not necessarily in the source. But the intense emotion is obvious; I think the intense pleasure is obvious; for me, the thing that just sends it into another dimension is the pretty much equally intense need to hide it.

Like. If someone sang that way to me, I would instantly feel the need to GET OUT and GO AWAY, not because I was embarrassed, but because everything would just be TOO INTENSE. It’s not even necessarily the case that I don’t want other people to see my intense emotions, though that’s definitely a part of it. But I just have difficulty feeling intense emotions around other people because other people take energy; they’re distracting; I can’t handle them and my heart exploding at the same time; it’s too much, and my instinct is to reduce all other stimuli as quickly as possible. And that’s particularly difficult if you’re in a room full of people and you’ve got a job to do!

David does experience intense emotion around others, but the way D. Levy plays him as always holding in his smiles (which. Is obviously intentional now. But I do wonder whether it started that way. Because I have worked with actors who are so self-conscious that they just smile their way through everything. Even when they shouldn’t. And you tell them not to and they TRY but if they’re not concentrating on it the smile CREEPS up and then they’re making faces trying not to smile. Which, I’m sorry, is what D. Levy looks like through like, all of S1, whereas later on it looks a lot more purposeful to me anyway that’s a Doylist observation let’s get back to the Watsonian), he’s someone who has trouble letting people know he’s happy. I mean there’s even a textual explanation for that--he’s been hurt a lot in the past and doesn’t trust people. So I see it as conceivable that all through that song his heart is screaming GET OUT, and he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to hurt Patrick and needs to hear the end of this song, and needs to clap to make sure Patrick knows he liked it.

BUT that shortly after it he gives himself five minutes to go away and burst into tears, and Patrick, who has already introduced the next act finds him crying out back and David is very concerned that Patrick will think he’s upset so David does like, a lot of clinging and possibly some gross kisses, and Patrick is baffled but just keeps teasing him until David gets a hold of himself. Then David makes Patrick go get him face wash they sell in the store so David can fix his face before he goes back in there to sell things to customers. Patrick gets him the cream but apologizes and lets David know his face is pretty unfixable.

[farashasilver]

recently found your fics based on a rec and idk I just have to ask why you write vik//turio shit when obviously you can write good victuuri because you have :/ I wanted to like your fics but I can't now

Because I want to and I don’t give a fuck what you think.

I could honestly stop this answer there, but I get the sense that you’re somewhat confused by the concept of a) multishipping b) shipping something that breaks up the canon couple and c) people liking things you don’t like.

First and foremost, I don’t write for you. I occasionally write for my friends because I like them, but I don’t know you, anon. You’re obviously new to my oeuvre, it’s likely we’ve never interacted before, and I don’t care what you like. I’m writing for myself and, rarely, for friends who I know will enjoy what I’m writing. 

I write Vikturio because - shock - I enjoy it. I like the dynamic. It’s a little messed up and a little broken, but I like stories about slightly messed up, slightly broken people making each other better because they love each other. Yuuri tripped into Victor’s life entirely by chance and if he hadn’t, the spiral of apathy Victor was tumbling into might have gotten worse. He might have needed someone close to him to give him a hand up from that. Maybe someone who cares about him enough to make insights into how he’s feeling. Maybe someone who’s shared a rink with him for years and has noticed that he doesn’t seem like himself. Maybe that someone is Yuri. Maybe Yuri has had a crush on Victor since he figured out what attraction was. Maybe Yuri has watched him dominate the field and then lose his inspiration and is desperate to know how to keep that from happening to him. Maybe Yuri has issues with abandonment and intimacy that are different from Victor’s issues with isolation and loneliness, but those issues can come together in a way that makes them both better. 

Secondly, I enjoy taking scenarios that would set off every red flag imaginable IRL (for good reason) and exploring the “what if” of that. What if, even though objectively this thing is an absolutely terrible idea and carries a lot of risk, it all turns out okay? What if, against all odds and logic, a relationship that just about everyone would side-eye turns out to be great for the people involved? I mean, you hold up Victuuri as a “good” ship, but let’s think about this for a minute. Yuuri was drunk as fuck when he ground all over Victor and invited him back to Hasetsu--so drunk he didn’t even remember what happened in the morning. And yet, Victor shows up in Yuuri’s hometown literally with his dick out, proceeds to be incredibly forward about what he wants from Yuuri, and keeps trying different tactics to get into Yuuri’s pants when it turns out the first tactic doesn’t work. Victor is putting Yuuri’s career in jeopardy as an inexperienced coach because he’s thirsty for Yuuri’s dick. Yuuri is letting Victor fumble all over the place and largely fail at understanding Yuuri’s performance anxiety because he worships Victor and has since he was twelve. If you want to talk about problematic power dynamics, I mean, Victuuri is far from starting out on equal footing. Victor has all the power, coming in and upsetting Yuuri’s life and career, assigning him a program he’s uncomfortable with, playing with his emotions by threatening to quit if Yuuri loses, holding back on communicating what he actually feels or why he’s actually there, and then in the end allowing Yuuri to push him back into skating because it’s the only way he can keep Yuuri from retiring.

Y’all, Victuuri has fucking issues. They communicate about as well as--well, actually, they don’t communicate, full stop. Ignoring all of the problems surrounding Victor and Yuuri’s relationship--problems that will blow up in their faces if they don’t address them--because it’s your pure canon mlm ship is... disingenuous and does a complete disservice to the complexity of the people and the relationship we were given (note: on a Doylist level you can totally argue that all this communication happened offscreen and we just didn’t get to see it because romance in Japanese media is portrayed at more of a remove than Western romances, without the voyeuristic look into a couple’s most intimate moments, but I’m chosing to take a Watsonian tack with this). Victuuri has a pretty high likelihood of crashing and burning if this was a real relationship between real people.

However, since it’s fictional, it gets to turn out A-ok despite all the red flags and warning signs. And that’s what I like to write about with Vikturio, with Victuurio, with YuuYu, or with any other ship I write that has some kind of inherent power differential that can be a roadblock for a couple (or OT3) to overcome instead of a reason not to do it at all.

People take risks in real life, especially romantically. I enjoy writing Yuri and Yuri ships for a lot of reasons, primarily because I love the frustrating complexity of dating while your hormones are doing tap dances through your brain stem. I was an angry, thirsty, pint-sized fifteen-year-old who knew what she wanted out of sex and wasn’t afraid to go out and pursue it. I dated people two, three, and four years my senior while I was a high school student. I dated people a decade or two my senior when I was in college. And you know what? The one time someone chose to hurt me? He was my same age. All those romantic relationships I participated in when people warned me, “Oh you watch out for them, why could they possibly want to date a teenage/college student unless he’s a creep,” those relationships? I fondly remember those relationships the most, as a time where I was respected, valued, cherished, and allowed to explore my sexuality with someone who actually knew what the fuck they were doing. My very first sexual experience at fourteen was with a girl four years older than me, who stopped when I asked and never gave me any shit about not wanting to touch her in return. I wasn’t ready. She knew it. She respected it.

So, the short answer is fuck off. The long answer is I write Vikturio because it’s nostalgic, because it’s wish fulfillment, because I enjoy the character and relationship dynamic, and because I fucking well want to.

PS learn what Death of the Author means.