#who is WE exactly? bc so many writers have gone broke over this? where are their strike funds?

[sodrippy]

so glad we all held out during the wga/sag strikes bc they got all their terms fully delivered and no other departments are seeing probably the biggest layoffs in the industry right now! yay!

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

[dragon-swords-prophecies]

Writing Share 1/25: Frost & Fire & Kairon's Story

@endless-insanity & @chaotic-queer-disaster have spoken as votes:

And It's a Tie!!!! Yay!!! I get to share both which I was debating weather or not to do anyway but yay!!!!

So first is Kairon's Story, and second is Frost & Fire and I would put a cut but I'm on mobile and that doesn't work here!

First Up: Kairon's Story in which there are many things revealed probably too early in the story, but its a first draft so pacing can be ignored slightly & you don't find out who exactly Kairon lost but its alluded to in a paragraph that is not shown & also Josh & Kairon have a talk about grief and stuff & also it's clear that Joshua outlived someone he loved and no one not even the writer knows who:

Joshua, who had been walking with Elas, had fallen back and asked, "Are you alright?"

Kairon sniffed, then nodded. "I- I'm alright. At least I will be. In time. I've heard that time makes it go away."

"Not really. It lessens, yes, but it never really goes away. Not really. Not for good. It stays in the back and it starts to hurt less, and then you hit a moment when it starts hurting all over again, but then it's gone again."

"How long does it take. For it to lessen."

"Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Who you lost, and when."

"Six weeks ago."

Second up: Frost & Fire, in which Things happen & Zibra died that night 77 years ago, and it's a thing bc Enna hasn't missed an anaversery since she came back to the city (it's about 500 words which is half the length I was hoping but this is exactly what I wanted to share but I thought it would be longer, it's not clearly):

She smiled and laughed along with the siblings, and with Ana when she showed her face. She hid the sadness and grief she had inside of her, but not well enough, for when she and Zerve left hours later- it was dark by then, they had stayed to dinner and lunch- Zerve caught up to her outside and asked, underneath the silver diamondscape of the stars, “Are you alright?”

Enna’s defenses kicked in, and she pulled her shadow colored cloak tighter around her small form. “I’ll be fine.”

Zerve said softly, “‘I’ll’ means I will, Enna. Tell the truth? Maybe?”

Enna sighed, and looked up, to the stars, her eyes picking out the familiar constellations her mother had taught her. Not Jennifer Kromlin, who wasn’t her mother, not really, not in Enna’s heart, but Pike Helder. Her adoptive mother. Her chosen mother. Her real mom. After one, two, three heartbeats she answered the question.

“Do you really want it? The truth, I mean.”

Zerve answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“Alright. Could we do this somewhere other than a public street?”

“Yes. Do you know a place?”

Enna nodded, and took them across and down a street, then picked the lock on a gate and closed it softly behind the two. They sat on a bench in front of a pool that reflected the crescent moon perfectly.

“I- I’m not okay. Tonight is- seventy-seven years ago this night my brother died, and it's the first year in five decades I haven’t visited him. I just didn’t have the time today- and it- I-” She broke into a sob, choking back tears and rubbing a hand across her face as she took a deep breath.

“Oh, Enna. You should’ve- why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I wouldn’t want to burden anyone else with this. No one needs know, no one should care but me and Anne, and she isn’t the one who-” Another sob, another breath, another heartbeat. Then, in a whisper so soft not even Illa could hear, “She isn’t the one who watched him die.”

“Oh, Enna. You- don’t worry about burdening anyone with that. Sharing secrets is never a burden, I would think you would know that by now. But then again, you’re not eve a full century old, so I suppose-”

Another sob, and Zerve didn’t even ask, they just wrapped Enna in a crushing, but comforting, embrace and let her cry on their shoulder.

Once Enna stopped crying, Zrve asked gently, “Where is he buried?”

Enna gulped down a breath of air. “In the catacombs inside the city.”

“Alright. You wanna go and visit him?”

Enna nodded.

So the two went, and Enna sat by his small and modest tomb and talked, and left a stone from their mothers grave there, just like she did every year. And she took a stone from the base of the tree by his grave and put it in her pocket to carry to her mothers grave. And she introduced Zerve to his grave, to him, to her former best friend and she said goodbye again, I’ll see you next year. I love you. I miss you. But I'll see you again, Illa willing.

[jenosweave]

college!kun

FINALLY A KUN REQUEST!! this is one of my favorites please enjoy and don’t let me flop!!

let’s start w the basics…

major: linguistics

minor: comparative literature

extracurriculars: book club

other: literally writing his own novel??

school life

kun is such a good student

he always does his work on time and tries to get ahead when he can

he’s a plug too

he'll even do his friends’ readings and summarize it for them if they have a particularly busy week

he doesn’t allow himself to be used though

he just loves and appreciates his friends so much and wants to help them be successful when there are things they cant control that can get in the way of that

kun really enjoys his studies

his required courses are really stimulating and keep him on his toes

he loves leaving class every day feeling like he’s one step closer to understanding where language comes from and why we communicate the way we do

kun’s passion for linguistics sprouted from his adoration of reading

he’s a member of every book he could find on campus

he firmly believes the more you read, the more perspectives you’re able to see, which in turn, makes you a generally more enlightened and compassionate person

kun loves reading and language so much that he decided to just write his own book over the summer for fun

he sent a “very rough draft” to a local publisher

just for experience

and to get him used to rejection in case he ever wants to seriously pursue a career in writing someday

but now he’s fucked because

they actually liked it??? so he kind of has a book deal now??

which he was not expecting at all

there were a lot of comments for him to address as he expected

and the first one he decided to deal with was the lack of a love interest for his protagonist

except there’s only one problem with that

he has no idea how to successfully write for a love interest

so he does what any normal young writer would do to get inspiration

and goes to the university’s monthly speed dating event in the quad

early stages

you had been “too single for too long,” according to your best friend

and the only way you could get them to shut up about it was if you attended one of the school’s speed dating nights

and you decided it was worth the trouble, and made your way to the quad to get this over with

you had exactly two and a half minutes with every person you’d “date”

and for the most part, those two and a half minutes couldn’t go by fast enough

after talking to other students who only cared about football, trucks, and battlestar galactica, you were about ready to up and go

but your second to last “date” changed your mind

his name was kun

“alright this is gonna go by quick, so i’m gonna take the reigns if you don’t mind,” he spoke

he was oddly productive

you nodded

“great!’ he smiled. “any hobbies?”

“well, i love to read an-”

“reading? me too! what genres are you into?”

a wide smile stretched across his smooth face and his pupils dilated noticeably UGH CUTIE

“i mean, i like fantasy, historical fiction, biographies, science fi-”

“no way! me too!” he interrupts. “i just like all books so much!! i’m writing my own actually!”

you thought that was mighty impressive and asked him what his book is about

and he told you he can’t disclose that information because of his publishing deal

and youre like,,,, wA i T.. PUBLISHER?? THAT’S SO COOL!!

and he goes, “thank you! maybe you’d like to come and read it sometime when it’s finished.”

you couldn’t help but blush and turn your head away

and that’s when you noticed you only had ten seconds left on the stopwatch

you hurriedly seized the pen the event organizers had left on the desk and grabbed kun by the wrist, taking him by surprise and causing a slight gasp to escape his lips

you messily scribbled your number onto his forearm

and as soon as you had finished writing your digits, the timer rang

as you both departed from the table, kun shouted at you from a distance “how am i supposed to read this chicken scratch?!”

you shot him a smile playfully and shouted back

“text me!”

you didn’t receive a text that night

or the night after

but the night after that, your phone dinged as soon as you hopped out of the shower

“hey! this is kun from the speed dating thing. i hope this is the right number. i’ve already texted three wrong people and have had to explain myself to each of them. it’s really embarrassing. please confirm if this is you!”

you sent him a simple “:)” in response

“so does that mean you’re down to get a coffee with me tomorrow?”

“:)”

the next morning, you had the first of many, many morning coffee breaks outside the school library

these quick little meetups usually concluded with a quick sift through the library, where you’d each recommend each other your favorite books and read the prologues to each other over a hot cup of coffee

at first, the librarians used to kick you out for having drinks inside, but now youre clever and just hide your cups under your jackets

this became a weekly occurrence

and then it started happening twice a week

and now you basically see kun every other day

he even managed to get you to join the biographical book club with him, something you’d be way too nervous to do before meeting him

kun was such a good guy

you knew he was smart and funny and you knew he was caring and fun to be around

but what you didn’t know is that he had been smitten with you from the second you scribbled your number onto his arm

one day, as you were studying for your last final of the semester, you got a call from kun

you sent him the automated response, “sorry, i cant talk right now”

but he called right back anyway

“what is it?” you answered

“i’m sorry if you’re studying but this is super important and im so excited and i just have to tell someone!”

“what’s up kun?”

“my book! it’s finished! and i finally added in the love interest like the publishers asked!”

“I’M SO PROUD OF YOU BITCH

“finish studying! then we can facetime and i can read you a chapter!”

and so for the next thirty nights (even over your winter break), you and kun would facetime so he could read you a chapter until the book was finished

and you’d give him pointers at the end of each one so he could go back and revise once you had gone to sleep

the plot was incredible, honestly

the protagonist was a divorced middle-aged man whose wife left him for being too aggressive and absent-minded all the time

in the divorce, the wife got full custody of their teenage son

but when she goes on a business trip, the protagonist gets to watch the son

however, when he goes to pick the son up to take him to his house, hes nowhere to be found

so the novel follows this poor guy trying to find his missing son

but no one seems to be listening to him, so hes losing his mind

he’s working alongside the police and falls for the dci leading the investigation

and basically in the end it turns out he’s schizophrenic and his wife and son never existed at all

all of this was in his imagination

and he had just been showing up to the police station every day like a crazy person

kun did so much research for that

he even got the accuracy of his portrayal of a schizophrenic checked by his pal psych major!jungwoo

on the night kun finally finished reading to you

you were sh0000000000000k like what the fuck all that trouble for it all to be fake?? genius kun!!

so he asked for your feedback on the development and personalities of all his characters

you complimented him on how well he portrayed the dci

they weren’t your typical love interest

they were headstrong and witty and educated

and they were determined to help the protagonist find his son when no one else was listening to him

“you like them?” he asked you

“yes! they were so different than i had expe-”

“i was hoping you’d like them. i was inspired by you.”

your heart BURST!!!

“KUN THAT’S SO SWEET!”

and that’s when he explained to you why he went to speed dating to begin with, and told you he was so glad to have met you

because you were the “perfect muse”

and then he asked if you’d like to be his s/o

and of course

you said yes bc duh?? he’s kun?? 

relationship

kun is the cutest bf ever!!!

nothing has really changed between you two

you still have library and car dates

but now you hold hands sometimes

and when kun is feeling extra bold, he gives you a peck on the cheek

you guys have such a cute and innocent relationship

you can often be seen together on the campus quad where you met for the first time, you in kuns arms, him tickling your stomach to make you giggle

he’s so sweet and is so considerate of your needs

out of all the boys, he’s hands down the one most likely to change for you if you guys hit a rough patch

he always pays for food

which kind of ticks you off because what if one day he goes broke

but all he really cares about is your happiness and satisfaction

and he really just wants you to know that no one loves you quite like he does

and he tells you every day how grateful he is to have you in his life

[trubilee]

7 min freewrite prayer (5.15.20)

last night was rough.  i htink i had this one long vivid dream bc right before, i finished spending 1 hour+ torturing paul with my long account of what happened 10 years ago between me and this one college friend-turned-enemy who to this day represents the source of so much of the insecurity that in some years i don’t even recognize and in other years are still so deeply in me it feels like i’m just cloistered by it, this thick heavy blanket of shame that drapes over me like a shadow <?>  i don’t even know.  i was actually tempted to write an entire personal piece about his one friend who 12 years later gets so under my skin, but a few lines after i started typing notes i decided not to bc i thought, i don’t want to give this guy more importance than is actually merited.  i do not want to memorialize him in any way when he was such a small sliver of a sliver of my story.  it felt not right to do that, as though he were some figure who touched my life (whether good or bad) or something, who my narrative has to account for in any way.  that guy, yes, the only friend where i felt compelled to block his posts from my FB feed bc i felt so scorned and diminished and mocked and weirdly betrayed by him at the demise of our friendship.  bc he was original, and he was funny, and he was a great friend to those he cared about (which included me, and i had priority even, especially when he liked me--”no, i ...  really liked you,” he had clarified when confessing awkwardly in my dorm room-- and even after i started dating his best friend, but ending a couple years later around the time when his best friend and i broke up), and he was good at adoring and worshiping and describing you in the most thrilling and endearing of terms.  and he called things years before they ever became cool.  he was always, always calling things that nobody had ever heard of, and i mostly thought he was just making stuff up, but on average i’d say that in 9 out of 10 callouts he was onto something years before it ended up on the more mainstream culture websites and art shoutouts.  he had strong opinions.  strong judgments.  insults that were as harsh as they were precise.  he was selectively principled.

but he was also petty, and even though he was good at worshiping and groveling and being pride-less if he liked you romantically or wanted to be your friend, he was also so spiteful and bitter and vengeful even if you slighted him in some way that got to him.  and as hilarious as his social and psychological experiments (esp. on the girls he liked) were, he was manipulative and wholly un-honorable about persuading girls with boyfriends or girls who were vulnerable from having broken up with their boyfriends.  

and above all, he fronted.  he fronted so hard.  he would have moments and moments of being totally vulnerable and borderling aegyo-ish and tender and dear.  but everythign he said and did was mostly characterized by all his fronting.  endless name dropping.  the hustling to get this person to come here and that person too and oh just let me know if you want X’s from this company or this artist or this hip hop group because i know someone there and i can get you X and Y.  H used to do the best impression of him on the side, and i still snicker when i think of it now:  “yo i know someone at seven jeans, just let me know and i can get you stuff from there.  seven jeans, true religion...”  (keep in mind these were hot brands at the time.)  it was nonstop.  the hustling and fronting and name dropping to the point where i was just repulsed by him sometimes.  (and so was, i imagine, the beautiful girl who he finally dated and who dumped him and seemed to have significantly broken him for all of senior year.)

anyway, now it appears that he is in fact very successful and semi-famous in his own right and extremely well-connected in exactly the thing he set out to do from the first time i met him.  he knows celebs and global designers / artists, writers, and culture makers up and across the highest and coolest of brows in the city.  this guy who i feel like ended up hating me and everything he thought (whether he was right or wrong or a mixture of both) i stood for.  and as i was telling paul, bc he hates me and looks down on me, all his friends--the celebs and designers / artists, writers, culture makers, the art-politics-culture creatives leading the way from where they stand--they hate me and look down on me too.  and “i’m such a loser, paul...”  lol.   

i dunno, maybe i do need to write about this after all lol.

i dreamed that i was at...  a house gathering of some sort, like a cozy non-rushed one, and for some reason my the an ex S was there, and so was the girl E who he sort of in a way left me for and even jumped right onto a long engagement-bound relationship with, like a frog hopping off one lilypad to another (sort of a strange pleasant way of characterizing what at the time felt like being shat on and then flushed down a toilet and then dragged out the street gutter and back into another nearby ditch to rot).  that side story and side ending aside, in my (stupid, to the point where i wonder if it’s even worth writing about) dream i ended up somehow sitting with her, sitting RIGHT with her, and weirdly telling her all these things i had thought all these years and said to her in my head.  this girl i had never met but who haunted so many of my thoughts.  i guess i felt really comfortable talking with her because the S thing does not bother me anymore, i don’t flinch or even twitch inside at that sort of thought.  it’s more his friend / my former friend (see above...) that i still have baggage about.  and anyway as i was sitting with E i told her how those 2 years were really hard for me.  how when i saw her and who she was, i felt so inferior and small at the time, because i could totally see why someone in S’s shoes would fall in love with her, because i would too.  and i even sort of asked out loud, that i wondered why she had to come in the way she did, come onto him if she knew he was dating someone--i asked her this as if we were friends or something, as if she owed me anythign at all.  and in my dream i remembered that E had actually broken off her engagement with S (a fact which, when i found out about it years ago, had brought me much vindication and glee).  and she actually sheepishly told me she’d gotten a face transplant (it was like a portion of her cheek or something, so nothing cosmetic-affecting) and S had gone with her to the operation--meaning S had made the sacrifice of transplanting his own cheek into hers.  and she realized through that whole operation and him supporting her no matter what episode that she did in fact love him and want to marry him after all.  and when i heard that something in me sort of fell as i looked at her and then over several feet away at him, and i didn’t feel like i was her friend any more and i had to fake it after that, uncomfortably act unfazed by their reunion, and i was trying to think of how i could leave the party, until i woke up.

[spectrumscribe]

The Tower.

aka the writer needing a better ending to The Heart of Evil for themself and donatello both, bc the canon one sucked.

--------------------------------------------

“This is the end for you,” Donnie says, voice tone dropping to a level Leo has never heard from his brother before. And before Leo can react further, cry out again to remind him who their father raised them to be-

Donnie’s naginata blade slices through Don Vizioso’s neck flesh, and sends an arc of red spraying into the air.

There’s a split second pause, every other fighter in the room freezing as the Don gurgles and thrashes. Then, as the enormous man slides sideways, free of Donnie’s hold, the other two men unfreeze. The twin gangsters run from the room, cries of horror following their retreat.

And Leo is left alone, staring at his brother and the blood dripping from Donnie’s blade.

Don Vizioso is growing weak, paling as the gaping hole in his neck reddens and widens. His limbs flail frantically, hands pressing uselessly against the slash in his flesh. Blood streams onto the floor, and it turns the area closest to the Don scarlet.

It’s another few beats of silence from Donnie and Leo, before the man’s chest finally stops rising and falling. Then there’s nothing but stillness, and though Leo has seen many things, the sight before him horrifies him more than almost all of them.

Leo swallows thickly, and his swords droop towards the ground as he straightens slowly. Donnie is standing sentry like, staring down at the man he’s just killed. The only sign he’s not stone is his heavy breathing.

Then, Donnie bends, prying the canister from Vizioso’s limp hand. Leo watches his brother carefully examine it for breaks, and then sees him nod satisfactorily. Donnie then whips his staff to the side, and the worst of the blood flies off. Spattering on the floor, with most of the spots disappearing into the pool of red from Vizioso.

Donnie sheathes his naginata blade, as though it’s not still stained bright red, and slings his staff back across his shell. When he turns around to face Leo, Leo isn’t sure what to make of the blank, emotionless look his brother has.

“How could you,” Leo finally manages to say, deeply horrified by his brother and the deed he’s done. “Donnie, how could you?”

“How could I what?” Donnie says, and while his tone is different now, Leo can still hear hints of the one from before. The one he’d used as he’d killed. Donnie tilts his head, and he glances back at the dead man on the floor. “How could I solve a real and serious threat to our lives?”

“How could you kill him?!” Leo exclaims. “We didn’t need to, we could have-”

“Could have what, Leo?” Donnie asks sharply, and Leo’s mouth snaps shut at the sudden change in his brother. Donnie never reacted like this to anyone, to anything, and certainly not to Leo.

Leo rallies despite his pause, and does his best not to look at the corpse on the floor. The smell of iron and salt is making him feel sick as it fills the air. “We could have sent him to jail, given him over to the police and been done with this. We could have done that, and kept him alive.”

“Sure, we could have sent him to jail,” Donnie says, eyes narrowed. The light is affecting his irises, and the red of his eyes seems shades darker than they usually are. “But how long would he have stayed there, Leo? What guarantee do we have he wouldn’t have gotten right back out, and come back to try killing us again?”

Leo darts a glance, unwillingly, at the Don’s pale face. His neck gapes in the weak light of the room, and Leo’s stomach turns. He forces his eyes back to Donnie, and scowls at his brother. “The legal system would have taken care of things.”

“Leo, no they wouldn’t have,” Donnie says, voice low. He turns the canister in his hands, staring down at the shriveled flesh inside it. “Don Vizioso was second only to the Foot. Second only to the Shredder, in terms of political power. He wouldn’t have been in jail for more than a few weeks, a few months if we were lucky. Criminals don’t just give up and disappear like they do in stories, Leo. And our country’s law system is corrupt enough to let them do pretty much whatever they want, for the right price.”

Leo’s grip on his swords tighten again, and he narrows his eyes at Donnie. How dare his brother do this? How dare he go against everything their father taught them? “Our father wouldn’t have wanted this, Donnie,” Leo says, and he sees the slight twitch to Donnie’s posture. “This goes against everything he believed in. Everything we’ve lived by our whole lives.”

“And look where that got us, where it got him,” Donnie snaps, hands tightening around the canister. His dark red irises flick up to bore into Leo’s blue ones, and there’s an anger there that Leo’s never seen in his brother before.

“Our father is dead for following the bushido code, Leo,” Donnie continues, shoulders straightening as he draws himself up to his full height. “He died because he couldn’t ever do what needed doing, and I don’t plan to let us keep making those mistakes.”

Leo’s lips curl back at his brother’s insult to their father. How dare he? “Do you hear yourself Donnie? Have you completely forgotten who you are?”

“And who is that?” Donnie asks, voice tight. “Who am I, Leo?”

Leo draws himself up like Donnie has, and finds himself not even reaching his brother’s nose. There’s a room between them, but Donnie looms, and for a split second, Leo sees what their enemies probably always see when they look at his brother.

Something inhuman. Something deadly.

“You’re not this,” Leo says, firm and commanding. “Our father taught you better than to be someone like this.”

Donnie looks at Leo for a long moment, and then says, “Then I guess you don’t know me very well at all, Leo.”

Leo’s grip on his swords make them shake, and he’s caught between outrage and horror as Donnie calmly crosses the room to the windows. Donnie pulls the blinds apart enough to see the outside world, and neon green light flashes over his scales as he does. It illuminates his eyes in a way that looks wrong, and the look Donnie turns on Leo only makes the feeling of wrongness persist.

“Do you know why I killed him, Leo?” Donnie asks suddenly, before Leo can manage to say anything to his previous statement. “You said earlier you didn’t know what was between me and him.”

Leo glowers at his brother, and can only respond with a tight, “No, I don’t know why, Donnie.”

Donnie doesn’t seem fazed by Leo’s ground out words, and turns back towards the continuing fire fight outside. “Because, he tried to kill me. And I know lots of people have, but that time was different,” Donnie’s eyes narrow again, and darken further. “And you didn’t even know, did you? That he tied me up and planned to vivisect me right in front of Mondo. Who, might I remind you, is much younger than us both. He tried to kill me, and he wanted to make a show of it.”

“So?” Leo asks. He’s unwilling to step away from the doorway, which he’s half guarding still, and unwilling to step towards his brother. He’s not sure exactly why, but something holds him back. “Lots of people have done that to us. Lots of times, too. Why do you care so much about that one time?”

“I don’t know,” Donnie replies, still calm and eerie. “Maybe it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, or maybe because it was something like a wakeup call.” Donnie turns his head back towards Leo, and doesn’t give away any emotions in his expression. “Don Vizioso wasn’t just the second strongest crime boss in New York. He was also the one who hated mutants the most, and was willing to do anything to see us dead. The world isn’t like the stories our father told us, the bad guys won’t spare us because we spare them. We have to grow up some time, and make decisions about how we’re going to keep surviving in a world that wants us gone.

“Do you know what’s happening out there?” Donnie asks, nodding his head towards the flickering, flashing bursts of light from outside. “A war. A war being fought with weapons specifically designed to kill mutants. And this man? He spent a lot of time and resources creating those weapons, and I doubt he would have tucked them away to gather dust. There wasn’t any other way I could ensure he wouldn’t ever get the chance again to use those against us. Don’t fault me for keeping our family safe, Leo.”

Leo can’t believe his ears. He can’t believe that after all this time, after everything they’ve lost, his brother is throwing aside everything their father taught them. Leo squares his shoulders, intent on channeling the tone and power of his position as their Sensei. “This is wrong. What you did was wrong, Donnie. There’s no way around that you just killed someone, and that we could have let him live.”

“Maybe it’s wrong,” Donnie says, thoughtful and still eerie. “But not everything is as black and white as your cartoons make it, Leo. Morality isn’t as simple as Sensei taught us. A ninja does what they have to, to keep their clan safe and protected. What I just did made sure that Don Vizioso’s power and reach wouldn’t ever hurt us again, and I’m sorry, but I don’t feel bad for killing him. Not if it means we get to live another day without someone pointing a gun at our heads.”

Leo is at a loss, because he hears in Donnie’s voice that he means those things. Donnie, who has always been kind, and giving, and the last person to give up hope for a better solution. Not this… cold person, standing with blood on his hands, and not caring at all.

“This is wrong,” Leo says again, and though he tries, he can’t muster the same conviction he’d had a moment ago. He’s supposed to be his brother’s master, but Leo can feel that he’s lost control of Donnie completely. And that maybe, he never had that control to begin with.

“Maybe,” Donnie says, stepping away from the window, and moving towards the door. As he passes Leo, cradling the dead heart of the man that’d taken their father from them, Donnie gives Leo a look. It’s an even, steady look, and too dark to be one Leo recognizes.

“Maybe it was wrong,” Donnie says, still looking Leo dead in the eye. “But we can’t always be the heroes, Leo.”

And Leo looks up- up, because Donnie towers over him- and can’t say anything as his brother keeps walking. Donnie leaves the room, exiting out into the halls of the hotel, and then Leo is alone.

He doesn’t want to, but he looks back at Vizioso one last time. The man’s death pale face shines in the flashing lights from outside, and Leo can barely tear his gaze from the exposed insides of his throat. The size of the gash, how it yawns and goes nearly to the spine, shows how little Donnie had been holding back. How much he’d really wanted the human dead.

Leo shudders, feeling lost and out of his depth, and goes to follow his brother. Donnie’s words echo in his mind, and Leo wishes he knew what his father would have said in response.

(sequel to this fic)

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 9: Strange Fandom Space

I suck at sleeping at the right times in general but especially this week so I didn’t watch 4x02 until just now and I don’t have time to write up thoughts because like...work exists tomorrow unfortunately. I’m gonna just start indiscriminately closing order lines like whatever.

Wrote this earlier though so it’s kinda long but is not proof of me staying up late to ramble on tumblr I swear. Will write some sort of reaction tomorrow. Quick quick version: I liked 4x02 a lot. I’m quite pleased.

*

Yesterday when my mother was giving me her cryptic spoiler-free review of 4x02, I realized that the only couple whose canon status I'm waiting on is Bellarke. Like the only non-canon couple I both ship, and expect to be canon, is Bellarke. Which surprised me for some reason, though I don't know why. Maybe because I low-key ship so many people? I don't know, it probably shouldn't be a shock as I'm so out of step with the show romantic-pairing wise lol.  

(This came up because she said there was a romantic development I would like, and I guessed Kabby sex scene right away. We'd just been talking about Bellarke in a way that made me aware she wasn't talking about them, so I knew it had to be a development with an established couple. I don't have any not-quite-canon ships beyond Bellarke. And other convo had already made me aware it wasn't Miller/Bryan either. Thus the choices were really narrow.)

I just often feel like I’m in a totally different place re: thoughts/feelings on couples in the show, versus like the rest of fandom. And I think part of the reason for this is that I'm very used to using fandom to fill in gaps in canon. So, when the canon is giving me a couple, and giving me everything I want out of the couple, I lose a lot of interest in them, or at least a lot of fanon interest. I start enjoying the show (or whatever) in much the way that casuals do.

This plays into a larger theory of mine that I fall into fandoms particularly for the transformative aspects and thus don't get heavily invested in shows or other pieces of media that I'm perfectly content with—that fandom participation for me is basically a form of mixed adoration and criticism.  

This means that it's hard for me to understand a lot of things in, at least, this fandom, possibly current fandom trends more generally. For example, the focus on definitive truths, which includes expanding the sources from which definitive proof is found—for example, the idea that an interview could be canon. The more you accept as canon, and the more importance you give to canon, the less room there is for debate and interpretation because certain avenues are closed off even if there's nothing in the text to close them. Or the occasionally virulent hatred people receive if they question any aspect of the show, as if being a fan of something meant you cannot criticize it. Or even the weird way that people just like latch onto a random pairing because it's there and it's canon now and there's no room for saying a canon-ship doesn't make sense because it's canon lol so like you're obviously wrong. (Guess who isn't bitter about guess which mystery pairing.) (No one's ever said this to me I'm just bitter and paranoid.)

Or, perhaps most noticeably, the intense focus on whether or not something (usually a couple) will become canon. The derision fans receive if they like something not-yet canon. The ugly debates. The defensiveness (understandable given the derision though.) And just the investment in canon status.

On the one hand, as someone who's had a lot of non-canon OTPs I dearly wanted to become canon, I do get it. When you see all this evidence that A+B should be together, of course you want to see that come to fruition. Clearly. This happens to me a lot because  I (usually) need there to be some sort of canon-basis for a relationship in general to start shipping it. Very rarely do I ship people who've never interacted in canon, for example, and most of my big ships and OTPs are ones that I think should have been canon, given the evidence/foreshadowing.

But then on the other hand it's becoming pretty clear to me that, as I said, I lose interest in a couple in rough proportion to the degree that the couple is canon. Maybe it's because I've pretty much never gotten a canon ship before that I'm only realizing this now, but apparently when a Really Obvious Ship crosses the line from almost-there to actually-there, I start tuning out of the fandom.

For example, on The 100, I have followed along neutrally with some canon ships, like Finn/Clarke or Wick/Raven. (At some point I would have said I actually shipped Wick and Raven but...IDK fandom pretty much ruined that pairing for me and given that I didn't miss Wick when he was gone, I think in retrospect I was just having the sort of reaction a casual viewer would to it: I picked up the hints the story was giving me, enjoyed when they lead exactly where they were supposed to lead, but was never so invested that I focused on the couple in fanon or felt a loss in the show when they off-screen broke up). Even Lincoln/Octavia is probably in this category, as I enjoyed their relationship on the show, but never thought too deeply about it (because you can't, or it falls apart right away lol); I enjoy/ed them as a background couple in fics but have never sought out fic that features them as the main couple. That sort of thing.

I'd say I actively ship Jasper/Maya in the sense that I'm more-than-average invested in them, but again, the narrative gave me everything I wanted from that pairing so I very rarely spend any sort of fannish energy on them.

Miller/Bryan is a canon ship I actively ship (and have even written for) but they only had a handful of scenes in S3, we barely know Bryan's personality, etc. In other words, even though they're a canon couple, the narrative isn't/wasn't giving me everything I wanted about them, so fan works fill/ed the gap.

And Kane/Abby...they were never a big ship for me but I would say I pretty actively shipped them pre-S3. Now I passively ship them. I like them, I look forward to their scenes and their relationship developing, but a lot of my excited fandom feels just disappeared when they became canon.  

Even Bellarke is a little bit like this to me, only in the sense that I think it is super obvious they are going to be canon/endgame and I so trust the narrative on that point that I have no reason to ever think about their canon/not-canon status. It'll happen eventually. I'll enjoy it. But it really doesn't matter to me if it happens next week or next month or next season. Honestly, I really don't like feeling this way. I envy people who can get excited about their imminent canon-ness or even who can debate just how imminent it is. I just have no passion about it personally.

And...everyone else I ship on this show is very clearly in the Never Going to Be Canon category.  

I think there's sorta an argument to be made that canon Raven/Clarke could have been a thing... I mean IDK canon Cl*xa happened on less build up than Raven/Clarke had in S1 so I mean reasonable people can disagree I think... but not anymore. What with the damage in their relationship, the clear disinterest in the writers in developing even the friendship aspects, and the super bright signals that Bellarke is full steam ahead at this point, I don't see any room for R/C and in fact if they did veer off in that direction I'd be confused and annoyed even though I do ship them. Every other ship of mine is like...maybe if hell freezes over lol. In some cases, making a fanon-ship of mine canon would literally involve raising the dead but tbh even when both parties are still alive it's still just about as likely. And my point is that I'm okay with that.

I don't know what the overall point of any of this is except that being in this fandom is really making me re-evaluate the whole concept of fandom to me. What I want out of it, what other people seem to want out of it, and so on. My interest in the show itself is falling so low that sometimes I cannot fathom why I'm still in the fandom—I don't think I've ever felt like this about the source material before without actually leaving. I really thought S3 was bad, and I think S4 is better, so far, but if this were S1 I'd probably drift away before mid-season, it just doesn't match up with my interests very well. And yet I'm still here and I like being here, and it's because the core idea of the show, the universe, the first two seasons, the characters, and the stories I've put them in within my own head, are all so dear to me that I remain actively invested in something. It isn't the source material, isn't the community really (I'm an unknown that's all I mean, and I don't interact with people really bc I'm shy—this isn't an insult to the people in fandom). It isn't the fandom in the sense that stuff-that-concerns-the-fandom-as-a-whole doesn't concern me. And yet, for whatever reason, I'm still here. My very niche fandom interests keep me around. And it's just so bizarro to me.