#why would want to flatten their characters to be caricatures of what you think a perfect victim should be

[fallingbyjuleecruise]

genuinely feel that the drama happening in the amc iwtv fandom is what happens when fans promote a show bc it’s gay first and do not mention the plot/genre at all

[norahastuff]

There’s a lot to like about The Winchesters, but I think one of the reasons it hits so hard for me is that it solves my biggest problem with the finale. Personally, I don’t have a problem with tragic endings. The season 5 finale of Spn has a tragic ending, and I think it’s a wonderful feat of storytelling. Aside from the fact that 15x20 tried to pretend it wasn’t tragic and tried to make it seem like Sam and Dean standing alone on a bridge in Heaven was a happy ending, what I hated most about the finale was they had to flatten Dean into a two-dimensional caricature of himself to do it. Aside from maybe the revelation that Dean stood outside Sam’s apartment at Stanford for hours trying to psych himself up to go in because he was nervous Sam would turn him away, there was no moment in the episode that Dean felt like the complex, nuanced character we had come to know and love over the past 15 seasons. He had no desires or characterisation beyond pie, car and Sammy. There was no sign of all the growth we’ve seen from him, no hint of his own needs, wants or sense of self. I mean, he wasn’t even allowed to interact with his own heaven before Sam showed up. Even after his death, he was never allowed to have anything that was just his. 

Look, I’ve said all this a hundred times before – if you look at my 15x20 tag, it’s basically just this sentiment repeated over and over again – so why am I saying it again now? Well, because The Winchesters is fixing that. The mission Dean is on is all his. It’s not about Sam, or pie or whatever surface level bullshit that finale tried to boil Dean down to. He’s going back to the past, he’s meddling in something insane because he sees value in it, and in the process going on a journey to understand himself better. His narration makes it pretty clear that through this quest he’s learning to contextualise his own life and feelings better. The past presents the future, after all (full disclosure, that’s an Ugly Betty episode title that I just really loved and use far too often in casual conversation), and one of the biggest hang ups in Dean’s life was that he was given this mythologised version of events and expected to believe them. Mary was this perfect saintly mother who sat at home baking cookies all day before she was brutally, and through no fault of her own, ripped away from them. John was the perfect mild-mannered husband and father who only slid into anger and obsession after he lost his perfect wife. 

Eventually Dean realises that none of that is true. Mary couldn’t cook. She was a hunter. She was involved in the circumstances that brought about her own death. She was a complicated person, and in the end he got the chance to see that knowing the real her, flaws and all, was infinitely superior to believing the white-washed fairytale about the perfect martyr that John created after she died. There’s also the fact that John was never the perfect husband or father, even before Mary’s death. We get maybe one reference to that in Spn, how in Dean’s heaven in season 5 he remembers John and Mary fighting and John moving out for a few days, but not much else. The focus is very much on how John turned into a neglectful parent and an angry man after Mary’s death. But The Winchesters is working hard to dispel that lie. John always had this anger in him. Mary even calls him out multiple times on how he’s using her and their relationship as an excuse to avoid his issues. She straight up uses those words. There are also references to how raising your kids to be soldiers and being their drill sergeant rather than their parent is one of the worst things a parent can do to their child. 

Anyway, as interesting as it is to see all these things addressed in the Spn universe, what’s so damn satisfying is seeing Dean realise it. Dean’s on a mission to learn more about his past. To understand that our parents and where we come from shapes and moulds the people we become, but it doesn’t have to define us forever if we don’t let it. By accepting his past and finding out the truth about who his parents truly were, he can accept himself and move forward, free of whatever baggage that had been dragging him down for so much of his life.

And the greatest part about all of this, is that Dean’s the one driving this story. It’s not God, or his father or even his duty to take care of Sam which dictated so much of his life and his choices before. This is about Dean’s choices and who he is as a person and what he wants. It’s funny because as little as we saw John Winchester in season 1 of Spn, he was very much the spectre hanging over the story, and the search to find him is what drove much of the plot throughout the season. Much of what his sons were doing was in reaction to him. And now in The Winchesters, Dean himself is the spectre that’s been hanging over the season. He’s the one making the big moves and steering the action. He’s the one everyone, friend and foe alike, is looking for. He’s the one who gave John the note and put this whole thing into motion. After the ending of Spn took away so much of his agency and everything that makes Dean Dean, he’s finally getting it back and then some.

I’m excited to see how the season’s going to end, but I’ll forever be happy that this show gave us Dean being his own person again. He’s the one picking the music this time.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Actually, sorry, I still don't see why TOTK is imperialistic. The imperialistic one does seem to be Ganon in his greed to conquer. I'm not saying I doubt your argumentsz just... Could you help me understand that?

Hey, yes! No problem at all. If that's okay with you, I'll compile my arguments in a series of links where I reply to previous asks.

Again, I want to reiterate that I don't think what we see in-game is secretely an imperialistic story about Rauru being a bad guy. We can speculate all we want, but there is no evidence in-world for Ganondorf to be anything other than a horrible baddie. My point is not that Ganondorf is secretely misunderstood in TotK, but that I believe Nintendo should have constructed its storytelling in a way that avoided falling into very loaded narrative patterns with real-life imperialistic echoes, and I am criticizing that they didn't try to deliver a version of Hyrule that gracefully accepted its own history, its influence over the world and its inherent moral grayness, instead of nervously scrubbing itself of substance out of fear of its own legacy.

This is the big one, that addresses the game's framing and why I think TotK's version of Hyrule parallels imperialist narrative movements.

This one talks about my problem with Rauru's character writing and what doesn't land for me.

This one is about why I don't think Nintendo is cackling about that good imperialist story they did, that it was probably accidental but still worth mentioning.

And this one, which I assume is the previous ask you sent me, adresses why I think saying that the zonais (and Sonia) are also PoC-coded kind of misses the point in my opinion.

Hope this clarifies my argument! I feel like, as the conversation matures in the fandom, this specific position (not talking for anyone else but me here) is getting kind of warped into something that it's not, or being conflated with the way people are creatively invested in the characters, which, while I certainly won't deny one obviously feeds off the other as far as I'm concerned*, are two separate things.

Again, it's completely fine to disagree! Or to agree and not be put off (everyone stop feeling guilty over the rare joy we manage to catch mid-flight --we can critique media without demanding people to Feel Bad as a result of the conclusions): it's a really fun game and I did play over a hundred hours! But I think the conversation is at least worth considering in a way that isn't caricatured as its weaker arguements.

*(to be very transparent so my own position is crystal clear, and it helps people making up their own mind: Ganondorf touches me as a character because of the way he inherently tries to fight against the limitations Hyrule/The Goddesses/the fiction itself try to force upon him --to devastating and unproductive results-- so the more his own canon tries to flatten him and the more poignant his character becomes to me. Won't deny that! It's this exact realization that made me spiral into hyperfocus to begin with --I am deeply touched by themes of tragic ambition and the impossibility of meaningful rebellion while STILL willingly burning everything down for the sake of refusing your place in the universe, even when the only thing accomplished by the end was the unflinching expression of your agency as well as General Suffering. So of course he would just catch me by the throat like that, that bastard. That being said, I don't think TotK Ganondorf (or any Ganondorf tbh) is a poor little meow meow, especially not in this game's canon where he is *obviously* nothing more than a threat to be stumped and doesn't ever meaningfully oppose you ideologically, which is kind of my problem. Even OoT Ganondorf, simplistic as he may be, questions Hyrule's inherent stability, inevitability and glory in many, many ways. Here's another, final post about why I liked the gerudos better in OoT despite All of The Problems, that partially addresses this exact point!)

[signorin-anarchia]

What are your impressions of the berlin spinoff new characters?

Hi Anon!

Thx for asking & mainly for giving me the chance to rant, I have a lot to say about this topic.

Sit back, this is gonna be a long ride.

I'll be honest, first impression was "lol, they're joking"

Second, I was quite annoyed.

Third, I am genuinely angry.

And I'm not even talking about Berlermo here, of course it's a bold move ignoring Martín in the spinoff, because, you know, timeline???

And don't get me started with Sergio, because I'm almost sure it will be a tough challenge to pretend that Andrés is an only child...

And while Pedro Alonso is a great actor and I'm 100% sure he'll fulfill his role at best, they're basically asking us to ignore that he's a man in his 50s playing a character in his 30s. Just because.

Also, they keep telling that "they want the show to have its own identity"; but that makes no sense, neither promotionally nor narratively. A spin-off works as soon as it has a link with the main show, there's plenty of examples around, eg. Better Call Saul. None of us would've watched without the promise that one day it would've crossed Breaking Bad's path. And I really don't get this urgency to move away from the original show: Berlin is a character from LCDP. Ignoring that LCDP ever happened will:

1) Keep away casual viewers

2) Disappoint shippers, fans and the whole fandom.

But, aside from that, let's get back to the real matter here: the new characters look like cartoons.

And I don't mean good cartoons, like those we used to watch as kids. I'm talking about, meaningless, silly, stereotypical, poorly made cartoons.

Now, I may not be Alex Pina, bit that sounds a little bit off from the mood here?! When the hell did Andrés become a comic figure being friend with a bunch of other caricatures?

If they wanted to make something with "feel-good" vibes, they could've pick any other LCDP character (Nairobi laundering money, Denver illegally fighting, Bogotà inseminating random women all around the world), literally anyone...

But no. They've chosen the terminally ill misogynistic dude dying by suicide in a tunnel.

Don't know what you think, but that doesn't sound very "comical" to me.

Berlin is a dramatic character. And although he has his good dose of irony, humor, sarcasm, paradoxes, he doesn't fit in an anime-style cartoonish kids show, because it flattens him as a character.

So, I don't what they're trying to do here, but it would be like taking Alicia's story with German's cancer and turning it into a rom-com, only without German, who's now replaced by a random dude who never had cancer in first place.

Not even telenovela style. Just cartoon.

Last but not least, and I'm pretty sure this is something that most of us noticed, they tried to give Andrés a whole new gang... Which is basically a bad copy of the original one.

There's a Denver, there's a Rio, there's a Tokyo, there's even a weird version of female Martin and, best of all, a "lifetime friend" dressing up like a fake Professor.

How are we supposed not to compare these action figures to the characters we know and love? The worst part is that they all look like Rafael, mere blueprints of characters, never mentioned before and, most likely, human plot devices subservient to a retcon.

And to attract what kind of an audience, exactly? I've never seen an Andrés fan who was not fond of Berlermo. Not. A. Single. One.

But during last days, I've seen a lot of people being very disappointed by how OOC their favourite character is going.

The only chance for the spin-off to be renewed and become something good, maybe even overcoming the original, was giving to Berlin's character some kind of depth.

Exploring his relationship with his brother, his years with Martin, what his family background is, why his homosexuality denial, why did he became a sexual predator, and maybe leaving some space for characters who maybe have still something to say, like Marsella & Bogota.

They've chosen not to. They've preferred to take a good, deep, captivating character and make a parody out of him.

What a waste, really.

I know it's too early to say. I know that they said "we can't announce members from the old gang cause it would be spoiler". I know that probably it's a little better than it seems.

But even if Martin shows up, what kind of show is this gonna be?

Don't know what to think, but the premises aren't that good.

-

So here's my 2(000) cents about this.

What about you, anon?

[beatrice-otter]

Writer's would you ever: would you ever write a character you don't like?

I actually have a couple of times. Depends on how much I don't like them, and why. And who I'm writing for.

For me, the most important qualifier for "do I want to write this character" is not "do I like them". I care more about "is this character compelling" and "can I do them justice or will I flatten them into a caricature and/or bash them." If a character is compelling and I think I can do them justice, then that's more important to me than if I like them. If they're part of the story I want to tell, I'll write them. If they're not compelling my dislike will lead me to discard any prospective plot bunnies in which they would logically have a major part. (Or just prevent them from coming up from plot bunnies they have a major part in.) And if I think trying to write them will lead to me caricaturing them or bashing them, then I won't write it, because I don't tend to like caricatures or bashing.

This is an even more fraught question when I'm doing ficathons. I participate in a lot of fanwork exchanges, and that of course means writing for other people. I never sign up to write characters or pairings I don't like, but sometimes when I get my signup and I look at the characters I actually matched on and my recipient's optional details, I will realize that what they want for that character is very different from what I want for them, or we have incompatible characterizations, or something. And then I'll go looking at the rest of their signup. And sometimes their prompts for a character I don't like will be more interesting to me than their prompts for a character I do like. Of course, when you're writing a character you don't like for someone else, you have to be really careful to do justice to that character and write them well, because you want to write a fic that someone who loves that character would enjoy.

But the thing is, I rarely hate characters. "Dislike" is the most intense it gets for me. So it's not like I'd be gritting my teeth to write them and thinking about how awful they are the whole time.

[zorilleerrant]

I think people should work harder to decide the difference between these things, both to understand other people's art better and to know what they want to put in their own, or how to give advice to their friends who are creating art. because I do see a lot of conflation between them, and it flattens the ideas a lot

a character is given a political stance, and then does horrible things, in an effort to narratively undercut the political stance (the usual thing people are complaining about)

a character is given a political stance and then does horrible things that you can see (narratively) why they think that would achieve their political ends, even if you can also see why they're incorrect that this would work

a character is given a political stance and then does horrible things to achieve that, and you're supposed to read the story through the assumption that the ends don't justify the means

a character is given a political stance and then does horrible things that have some real life precedent, regardless of whether or not they would work, where people with a similar political stance used or tried to use similar tactics

a character is given a political stance that's the same political stance as another character, and one does good things and one does bad things, to contrast their approaches

a character is given a political stance and then does things that are not meant to be read as horrible. regardless of whether you personally think they're horrible, they're meant to be in support of the political stance, not against it.

a character is given a confusing or ambiguous political stance, and then does horrible things. you've created a more coherent political stance for them. this has nothing to do with the artists; you're creating your own story now.

a character is not given a political stance, only horrible things. you give them a political stance. this is also a new story now

a character is given a political stance, but you disagree and think it would make more sense for them to have a different political stance. this is yet another new story

a character is given a political stance and does horrible things, in an effort to show that even good goals can cause people to go too far, it's just badly written and shallow, so they seem to be doing horrible things for no reason

a character is given a political stance and then does things in character for that stance, but they're all treated as horrible by the text, even though you disagree. this isn't a caricature; you're just disagreeing with the artist

a character is given a political stance, and it never says or is ambiguous about what they did. you're probably beefing with the audience and not the artist this time

a character is given a political stance and then does things in support of it, and you consider either or both of the stance and the actions horrible, but the narrative treats them as good. either you're reading this through the wrong form/genre lens, in which case you could create an interesting subversion in your own story, or you're just disagreeing politically, in which case you could probably also create an interesting subversion

a character is given a political stance and then does horrible things, which are a standard for this type of character, stance, and action in this medium/genre. this is more of a systemic problem than a specific one and should be addressed differently; the work itself isn't necessarily caricaturing anything.

a character is not given a political stance and doesn't do anything horrible or only ambiguously does things that are horrible, but you've given them a political stance and horrible actions, and are now defending that they don't have that stance or didn't do those actions, or that the correlation between them is bad somehow. I don't know why I see this one but I do

[strangerthings4theories]

"You only like Billy because he's a pretty white boy!"

Aww you think he's pretty? 🥺💖

Wow, though. That's some heavy presumption right there! Billy fans, let's talk about it.

First off, if you only like Billy because he's pretty, that's totally fine. 👍 We all want different things out of the media we consume. If you just want to smash a pretty doll together with another pretty doll, go for it.

Second... yeah, we could have a longggg discussion about why our culture has certain beauty standards. You'd have to be blind not to recognize those standards favor white people. (Hard to ignore the fact that skin-lightening cream is a Thing in parts of the world with high concentrations of POC.) I'm sure a thought experiment where we imagine people's reactions to Billy if he was black would be... instructive (and probably like stepping on a landmine 😅).

But hey, now's a great time to remind everyone that people exist who have to connect emotionally before they feel attracted to anyone. I'm one of them. I was completely unmoved by Billy, not interested at all, until S3 peeled back the layers and showed me that depth. Then he became attractive to me.

Same with other characters I've stanned in the past. I like Kylo Ren. Didn't like him at first, though, and at the time I thought he looked odd. I only found him attractive after the story peeled back his layers.

So yeah, accusations like "you only like him because he's pretty" are fun. They simultaneously shame us for feeling attraction AND flatten us into a caricature. Don't you love it?

Tell you what, Billy fans. I want to hear your story. Did you feel attracted to Billy first, or later, or never? When did you become a fan and why?

And if you really want to get into the weeds with me... how many of you have loved "ugly" characters like, idk, the book version of the Phantom of the Opera (another of my old faves)? Or ones that aren't exactly ugly, but aren't conventionally pretty either (I'm a sucker for William in Westworld, even when he's old)? I'd love to compare notes.

[fonulyn]

What do you think about something I heard today regarding infinite darkness: somebody said they couldn't wait for Ada to show up and finally save Leon. Obviously this person is fond of their dynamic but I found it.. idk, unfair towards Leon? Towards both of them really? 🤔

I have a lot of feelings about this particular attitude and there is no way to word all of them nicely, tbh.

it is unfair towards Leon and it is unfair towards Ada. first of all it makes it sound like Ada is just at Leon's beck and call, like she exists solely to come bail him out of trouble, and it strips her of her own agency. it makes her an irrelevant character and makes it sound like her sole purpose is to be there to save Leon and like she doesn't have any life of her own?? missions and goals of her own?? she is a badass. she takes shit from no one, she is self-sufficient, she can do whatever she decides to do. and demoting her to Leon's lackey?? is incredibly disrespectful towards her. and it's not even true. because at all times in all the games she's in she has her own agency and she has her own goals she works towards, and if those goals contradict what Leon wants or needs? she is willing to go against him. because what matters to her is doing what she needs to get done. and we should respect her for that! she helps Leon when it doesn't screw up her own goals. so credit to her for that. but she doesn't run around following him to make sure she's there to save him if he's in a tight spot, c'mon.

and it's also very unfair towards Leon because it makes him sound downright incompetent while he is anything but. he's legit one of the (if not the) most competent agent in that universe, and making it sound like he needs to be constantly saved just shows that people haven't understood like. any of the happenings. of course he gets in a tight spot every now and then and of course he could use help sometimes but it doesn't make him incompetent. no single person in this world or any world would be able to do absolutely anything, we all have our limits, there are impossible odds, and making it sound it's because he's bad at what he does is just willfully twisting things. plus most of the examples of when Ada "saved Leon" are moments where she did help, but we have no way of knowing if Leon would've survived on his own had she not been there. and I'm not trying to diminish her role, but saying she was the only reason he made it is just plain wrong.

and like... I get enjoying their dynamic! there's a lot there to unpack and to explore. it's super complicated to say the least. she is clearly fond of him on some level, she clearly wants to help him out at times, but at the same time she clearly has no problem throwing him to the wolves if she needs to. and he's wary of her, he doesn't trust her, he knows what she is capable of. but at the same time he cares about her and he wants to help her, too. so it's like. you could make up a million explanations and headcanons and stories from there and never run out! I understand 100% why it's compelling and why people find it interesting.

what I do not understand? is people trying to flatten them into caricatures and doing both characters a disservice with that. it's. baffling, to say the least. because it doesn't serve either one of them.

I'm sorry this is so rambly I'm incredibly tired and I have a lot of feelings about this :'D

[damienthepious]

it’s too goddamn cold&snowy here right now so i dove back into my summer-y-est fic <3

Made A Garden (chapter 4)

[ch 1] [ch 2] [ch 3] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Rilla’s Parents, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, (categorized as ‘other’ bc arum is nonbinary when i write him bye), Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, POV Alternating, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings, edited to feature my Rilla’s Two Dads theory

Fic Summary: Rilla’s parents take her out when they do field work. She’s a smart kid, and she knows how not to get in trouble when they’re caught up with their experiments and research. This time, they’ve taken her to an enormous, beautiful swamp, and their theory is that the monstrous presence in this place should be entirely dormant- which is why Rilla is so surprised, when she meets a monster for herself.

Chapter Summary: A conversation, an argument, and an interruption.

Notes: Please appreciate these children. Please. I care them................ also idk if this needs warning for, really, but i guess chapter warning for an adult Being An Asshole to a child? yeah.

~

"Why did you decide to start actually talking to me?" Rilla asks, laying lazily back on the thick trunk of a fallen tree, her hand draped to trail fingers in the slow-moving water beneath it.

Arum looks away from her, sinking his face further into the water for a long moment before he rises enough to answer.

"Well..." he says slowly, "when I determined that you and your... kin posed nothing of a threat-"

"Which I told you the first time we met," she interrupts in a chirp, and Arum scowls up at her until she laughs. His snout twitches then, a tell she's beginning to suspect means that he's burying a laugh of his own, and then the monster sighs.

"Which I needed to have proven, for the safety of my lands and my own self," he amends, hissing. "I decided that you should have an eye kept on you."

"And..." Rilla tilts her head back, her long braid rolling off the log enough that the end dips into the water beneath her. "You decided to do that yourself?"

Arum raises an eyebrow. "Who else would?"

She shrugs, her shoulder pressing against the bark beneath her. "Mm, I dunno? I just figured- you're the Lord of this place, right?"

"I am," he says, stiff and proud.

"So, I figured you'd, like, have someone else you could send, if you wanted to keep an eye on us?"

Arum growls, though he looks more sullen than angry at the assumption. "Perhaps I simply didn't want to risk any of my subjects in the effort, just in case I was wrong about you."

"In case..." she trails off, and then she blinks. "So, what, you'd risk yourself, first?"

"I can take care of myself," he snaps, his frill flaring quick enough to splash a little halo of water around his face for a moment, rippling across the surface of the pond. "And- and a good ruler is concerned for his subjects before himself, anyway. That is my entire purpose."

Rilla tilts her head a bit more, trying to get a better look at the vague purple blush coloring the webbing of his frill. "Huh," she says, and then his words sink in a bit more. "But- if you got yourself hurt-"

"I can take care of myself," he spits again, and she frowns.

"But if," she insists, "if something bad happened, who would take care of the swamp, then?"

Arum scowls up at her, and then he ducks his head beneath the water entirely. For a second she thinks that he's just going to disappear again, and she sits up, the wet tip of her braid flicking water along her arm, but then Arum reemerges a few feet down the log. He flings himself out of the water like a salmon, then pulls himself onto the log ahead in front of her, easy and oddly elegant.

"You," he growls, glaring at her with his claws digging into the bark, "ask altogether too many questions."

"Is... is that an observation?" she asks slowly, "or do you- do you want me to-"

He exhales an exaggerated huff, then sits back on the log and lets his tail drape over the side. "You may do whatever you want," he says, not for the first time, "so long as you understand that I may do the same. Meaning that I will not answer, if I don't feel like doing so."

Rilla pulls one of her legs up, hugging her knee against her chest and letting her other leg dangle. "Yeah," she says, and then she grins. "Yeah, you've kinda made that pretty obvious by now."

"Good," he mutters, and then he flicks his tail in the water, splashing her leg.

She laughs again, surprised, and Arum's snout twitches.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, mister secrets, I'm totally and completely informed that you're not gonna answer anything you don't want to, but you have to know that I'm still not gonna stop asking." She grins, and the monster frowns at her, and then sighs in an exaggerated way and looks off towards the edge of the pond instead. "So unless you're gonna tell me to stop-"

"I rule my swamp, Amaryllis. Obviously I do not rule you. As I said, you may-"

"Do whatever I want," she parrots, bouncing her head back and forth. "You don't ask questions basically at all, do you?"

"If you wished to tell me about yourself, you would," Arum answers with a shrug, and then- he smirks. Rilla doesn't think she's seen that particular look on his face before, actually. "In fact," he continues, "you have. I don't need to ask, Amaryllis. You are perfectly content to share the bland details of humanity without any prodding whatsoever."

"Humans aren't bland," Rilla says. "Just because you're bored all the time doesn't make everything else boring, it just means you aren't looking hard enough."

"Tell me something interesting, then," he says, leaning his head back and draping himself dramatically across the log, and for half a second he almost reminds her of Marc. She buries a laugh at the idea of the two of them meeting - Tal would get along with Arum better, she thinks - and thoughtfully drums her fingers off her chin.

"What sorts of things do you actually like?" she asks. "I'll be less likely to bore you if I know that much, at least."

The monster rumbles in his chest without opening his eyes, then makes a humming noise. "Blade combat," he says simply. "Music. Pollinators. Translations and ciphers. Questions within questions."

Rilla purses her lips for a moment. "Questions?"

"Indeed."

"So- wait. No, no- we just talked about this. You don't like questions."

Arum glances up at her, then, his mouth curling into a frown. "I think I know better than you do, what I like."

"If you liked questions, you wouldn't get so annoyed at me when I asked them."

"I don't dislike your questions," he says, sitting up again. "I dislike that you assume that all of them will be answered. A decent question will only lead to further questions, and trying to neatly tie anything to a single, simple solution will only reduce a thing from its true nature to a caricature of itself."

"If you can never find the answers, then how are any of the questions useful?"

"It's not about usefulness," he says. "It's about understanding, both the nature of inquiry itself and your own small place in the infinite."

Rilla frowns hard. "Those were a bunch of big words that mostly seemed to mean basically nothing."

Arum blinks, then gives a shocked, incredulous laugh. "How- how dare-"

"Even if a question leads to a bigger question, a bigger question is still an answer, Arum. Knowing that you don't know enough is still an answer. That's just- that's all just dumb semantics."

Arum sputters for a moment, then narrows his eyes. "I would say, I think, that the argument that a question is an answer is far more a matter of dumb semantics than the assertion that not all questions have answers, Amaryllis. You simply do not know what you're talking about."

"If you're not even trying to get to the bottom of the questions you ask, then maybe you're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about," Rilla says, and Arum scowls again, more viciously this time. "I think it's better to actually know things, instead of just- making everything even more confusing. Isn't the world already confusing enough?"

"Maybe for creatures as petty and small-minded as humans," Arum growls low, but as he opens his mouth to continue-

There's a noise. Unexpected, and out of place enough that it takes Rilla a moment to recognize it.

A small whinny, not all that far off.

When Rilla meets Arum's eyes again she knows he heard it too. He looks exactly as scared as she feels.

"Hide," she hisses, and Arum's wide eyes go wider.

"You hide," he snarls, slipping off the log and back into the water. "It could be anyone, you don't know-"

"Horse could mean knight," Rilla snaps, and Arum's frill flattens against his neck. "Just hide and-"

The brush at the edge of the pond rustles, and Rilla hears Arum gasp before he slips beneath the surface entirely, and Rilla holds her breath as she turns to see whatever pushes through the foliage at the edge of the pond.

Rilla doesn't think she's ever been less happy to be correct, before. The knight frowns down at her from beneath his helmet and atop his sandy-brown horse, and Rilla tries to lean into her surprise so the guilt hopefully won't show.

"Oh!" she says, pressing a hand to her chest as she scrambles to stand on the log. "Oh, I- you scared me! I didn't hear you, and-"

The knight narrows his eyes, and Rilla realizes that his hand is resting on the pommel of his sword as his gaze sweeps suspiciously across the shore.

"What is a little girl like you doing out in the wilds all by yourself?" the knight says slowly, and Rilla-

Rilla isn't the best at reading people, but something about the way his mouth curls, the way his eyes stay suspiciously narrowed, something tells her that his tone is less concerned for her, and more concerned by her.

"Oh," she says, and she tries to smile. "Well, I'm not by myself," she says. "My parents are- they're not far."

"Hm," the knight says, and then he swings himself down out of the saddle.

Rilla takes the moment to glance down, and- and she has to hold herself very very still to keep from flinching when she realizes that Arum is still in the water beneath her. She was certain that he'd be- completely gone by now, safe and away and- and she widens her eyes at him quickly while the knight is still busy with the horse, and she jerks her head to the side, trying to tell him- get out of here, obviously, get away-

But Arum glares up at her, his violet eyes furious, and then he jerks his own snout towards the knight.

"Who were you talking to?"

Rilla jolts, wobbling on the log before she regains her footing.

"Wh-what? I- I don't know what you're-"

"I heard voices. Who were you talking to?" the knight repeats, his hand still on his pommel even after dismounting.

His eyes are icy and sharp and unsettling, and Rilla decides that she's really, really glad that she's out in the middle of the pond, instead of on the shore with him.

"I-" Rilla pauses, then lowers her eyes, shuffling her feet as if embarrassed. "I was talking to myself," she says quietly. "I know I shouldn't-"

"You were shouting at yourself?" the knight drawls, dubious, and Rilla tries to smile. If it comes out awkward- well, that'll work too, right?

"Y-yeah. I was- I was making up an argument? I- I'm not good at- at arguing for real, so I like to- to practice? Sometimes? When I'm on my own?"

"Well," the knight mutters, looking away, "I believe you're not good at talking, at least."

Rilla swallows, ducking her head, and-

And in the water beneath her, Arum rolls his eyes hard enough to make a little ripple on the surface above him, and then he makes a face as if he's gagging on a piece of rotten fruit. Rilla presses her lips together tight, choking down an almost overpowering urge to laugh.

"Your parents," the knight says, and Rilla's eyes flick back up from the water to his sullen, stubborn face instead. "They let you wander around in monster-infested wilderness all by yourself, then?"

"They- um. I mean- this place is pretty safe, and- and they aren't far."

"That's what you said before,"

"Do-" Rilla swallows. "Do you want me to- to call them? I can- I have a whistle, I can-"

The knight seems to consider this, looking her up and down as if checking for weapons and then scanning his eyes around the shore again quickly, and then he adjusts his stance, his frame tensing before he nods. "I think you had better, little girl. Go on, whistle for them."

Does he think that I'm a monster? Rilla thinks, feeling maybe just the littlest bit panicked, and then she raises her hand to her neck to lift the whistle.

They have a whole system, Rilla and her parents, for the emergency whistle. There's a call for monster, there's a call for injured, a call for someone else injured, a call for not-an-emergency-but-you'll-really-wanna-see-this-right-now-it's-cool, a call for I'm lost, among others. Rilla doesn't use any of those right now, though, because her parents don't think about magic and medicine exactly the same way that the King does, so-

Rilla lifts the whistle to her lips, and she gives the call that means that she's spotted a knight nearby.

The knight tenses further, as if he's fully expecting to be swarmed or something, and when nothing immediately jumps to attack him he glares at Rilla again. She- barely manages to fake a smile, certain that she must just look like she's showing teeth at this point, but it takes less than a minute for her dad to come bolting out of the underbrush on the far side of the pond.

"Rilla- Rilla what's wrong?" he says in a rush, and he's always been a better actor than Rilla or her papa. When he swings his eyes across the pond and 'notices' the knight, the flash of surprise on his face looks entirely genuine. "Oh- oh, I'm so sorry, Sir-"

"Sir Caradoc," he says, his expression bemused (surprised, Rilla thinks, that she was telling the truth) despite his flat, toneless voice. "The Dauntless."

"An honor," her dad says, smiling sharply, "and what a surprise to meet a knight this far from the Citadel! What- Rilla, why did you..."

He trails off, his sharp on her own, and Rilla manages a weak smile of her own. "He- he was- worried? That I was out here all on my own, so- so I wanted- I wanted to show him that I was- that you were here, if I was got in trouble."

Her dad exhales, something like a sigh, and then he nods and turns his attention back to Sir Caradoc. "Well, I'm glad nothing's wrong, at the least. Thank you so much for looking out for my daughter out here, Sir Caradoc. Please- would you come back to camp with us? I'm sure you're out here on important business, but the least we could do is get a hot meal in you before you've gotta be on your way, right?"

Caradoc raises an eyebrow, but after a moment his lip turns up into a very slight smile, and he nods.

"It'd be a pleasant change of pace," he says. "Been weeks since I've had a meal I didn't cook myself, and I'll admit I'm not as good with a ladle as I am with my sword."

Her dad's smile goes wider and more forced at the reminder of the weapon, but he laughs lightly anyway. "Great! Rilla, c'mon back to shore, now. We might not be home, but we've got company to look out for, yeah?"

Rilla nods, plastering on a smile that she hopes looks as honest as her dad's, and then she- she aims herself so she won't land right on top of Arum, and she hops into the water.

When she's under the surface she cracks her eyes open, and Arum is- closer than she expects. His eyes are narrowed and bright, even through the murk of the water, and when she makes a vague get out of here motion with her hands, he scowls even harder, and then he reaches out and grips one of her wrists. He flicks his eyes towards the surface, then back towards Rilla, and he squeezes lightly before he lets her go again, retreating further down into the muddy detritus at the bottom of the pond.

Rilla gives him one more glance (she can barely see him, obviously he knows exactly how to blend in), and then she kicks her way back to the surface, and then over to the edge of the water where her dad can reach down and lift her back out.

Her dad keeps hold of her hand when she's back on shore, and he squeezes soothingly as Sir Caradoc leads his horse around the pond to join them, trampling through the brush with authoritative carelessness.

"We'll be fine," her dad says under his breath, before the knight will be able to hear them again, and Rilla nods.

She already knew that, actually. She knows they'll be fine, because her papa is clever and her dad is confident and charismatic. She knows they'll be fine because her dad is holding her hand.

As Sir Caradoc comes closer, batting aside a hanging branch and wearing his bland, professional smile, Rilla thinks about Arum's hand, too. She thinks about the odd texture of his scales against her skin, the way he frowned when he squeezed her wrist, the intensity of his eyes under the water.

Rilla is pretty sure - pretty sure - that what he actually meant to say with that little squeeze was be careful.

Pretty good advice, Rilla thinks, if the coldness in Sir Caradoc's eyes above that smile is anything to go by.

[englishstrawbie]

Did you ever imagine Maya and Carina having kids? I really didn’t, so this is m a shock. Sorry if you’ve already answered this but I’m catching up on this season and I’m so perplexed by this baby-no baby’s storyline. What happened to the honeymoons period??? Why is Carina pushing so hard and acting like Maya sprung this on her? It’s not like she didn’t know Maya’s feelings going into this? Their conversation this week really left a bad taste in my mouth. I mean- “I want you to want what I want too?” I get where Carina was going with that but it sounded so bad. It’s just, with how they’re framing it, it’s like Maya is doing something bad or withholding something because she doesn’t want kids. And I don’t think the solution of ‘wait and see’ is healthy or even makes sense. How long? What if Maya never changes her mind? And this is so not like sex. You’d think Carina, a medical doctor who literally did a study on female sexuality would know that. Not to mention sex drive can wane and people adjust. It was so silly to even compare that to kids. I hate how they’ve dumbed her down and flattened her so much these past couple of seasons. I don’t get why she can’t be the strong willed woman from Greys and also love Maya. She’s basically a caricature now and it’s getting old.

Honestly? No, I didn't. Neither of them has ever shown any interest in having kids or being mothers. That's not to say that they don't like kids or aren't good with kids, but that's not the same as being a parent. I'm surprised at how strongly Carina feels about it and I hope they articulate why she's so upset at the thought of not having kids, because Carina in GA liked not being tied down.

Of course, Carina is in a very different place now compared to a few years ago and she's with the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with, so she's thinking about what that life is going to look like. I get that. But as I said in a previous post, write the story to fit the character, don't write the character to fit the storyline.

Shondaland doesn't believe in the honeymoon period. Two women in a relationship? At least one of them must want kids because that's what women do, right?!

"It’s just, with how they’re framing it, it’s like Maya is doing something bad or withholding something because she doesn’t want kids." - I have such an issue with this message they're telling, that Maya not wanting children has to be tied down to a reason: sexism, her father. And that if they can get to the bottom of that reason, it can be "fixed". The only time they've got it right is with Cristina, who steadfastly didn't want children and stood by her feelings - but of course that meant that her relationship couldn't survive.

I'm worried about the wait and see attitude, just like I was worried about them jumping into a marriage being on opposite sides of the baby question - which turned out to be justified because it didn't take long for the issue to come up. You're right, what happens when Carina grows impatient waiting for Maya to change her mind and she never does?

I was thinking about the Calzona storyline back in season 6. With Callie and Arizona, the issue was initially too big and they split up - until the shooting when they realised that they couldn't live without each other and both of them was prepared to bend to keep the other in their life. Which side of the fence does Carina fall on? Will she forgo kids to keep Maya (which is what she said in 5x02 but was clearly struggling with that idea in 5x03) or is the desire to have kids too overwhelming? Time will only tell!

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[fanfic-inator795]

Oneshot: Movies and Mermaids

((Have some Mikey and Draxum bonding *throws confetti*))

It wasn’t as if Draxum had any genuine interest in human culture, certainly not! He could care less! ...Though, his obvious lack of caring didn’t prevent certain annoyances.

Like how he would be sometimes be completely lost in certain conversations. A member of the faculty at the high school would ask if he had seen the latest film in theaters and if he liked it better than the remake, or how his fellow lunch servers would reference certain shows and encourage him to watch them as well - Gladys especially seemed entranced with a show regarding doctors all dating each other in-between doing their actual jobs, for whatever reason.

The rest of the city seemed to only aggravate him more. From displays and the videos that would play on the large screens on towers, to the advertisements he saw on the television box or in magazines. It just seemed like everything he saw in human culture was a reference to something or someone - a laundry list of names and shows and movies and jokes and even what were supposedly ‘simple’ concepts like technology and brands and lingo and-!

After over two months of living on the surface, Draxum had reached his limit. He was tired of constantly being confused. He was tired of constantly missing or misunderstanding the references.

He was tired of being reminded that this was not his world, that he was still a yokai in human clothing.

So naturally, as a man of science, Draxum thought it only made sense to start with some research. Granted there was an entire pantheon that he would have to go through, and without the power of the ‘internet’ and a television box that only had five channels, it would be a incredibly slow process... At the very least, O’Neil had said that she would help him get a human library card when they both had a free afternoon. 

In the meantime, Michelangelo had plenty of ‘reference material’, and even with the insistence that this was all for education and NOT entertainment, Draxum figured it was as good of a starting point as any, considering how much the humans seemed to admire their on-screen stories and their film stars. (No wonder Lou Jitsu was just as popular as an actor as he was as a warrior...)

It was late Friday night when Mikey showed up to Draxum’s apartment with a backpack full of movies of all different genres and formats and a VHS/DVD combo player tucked under his arm. “Good thing Donnie found this thing a few years ago, huh?” he said as he hooked it up.

Draxum didn’t bother replying. Instead, he was focusing on his choices for that evening - as well as for the rest of the week, since Mikey said he could borrow them as long as he needed to - pulling out each tape or DVD case and examining it carefully. Quite a few of them looked like they were for children, which he probably should have expected, though he didn’t dismiss them immediately.

“Don’t worry,” he heard Mikey said, “I remembered what you said. All of these are super popular ‘staples of human culture’ that practically everyone’s seen.”

“Good,” Draxum mumbled, putting aside a movie about a boat next to a movie about a boy gardener who wore a cloak and was apparently very harry. Picking up the next one, his expression flattened a bit at the cover. “This one you can take back, I don’t need to watch it.”

“Huh? Why- ohhh.” The box turtle chuckled as he took the tape, smiling at the younger version of his dad on the box. “Sorry, guess that one accidentally got slipped in there. Though to be fair, ‘Jitsu for Justice’ is a total classic.”

“Irrelevant,” Draxum huffed, “I have no desire to watch ANY of Lou Jitsu’s films, no matter how popular they may be. Once was more than enough...”

“Alright alright, I’ll- wait,” Mikey paused, “so you DID watch his movies?”

“Er, I- Not because I actually wanted to!” Draxum told him, “It was for research!” Mikey gave him a flat look. “He had stopped fighting in the Battle Nexus and I needed to study his moves! I-I didn’t enjoy doing it, if that’s what you’re implying! His movies were still ridiculous and completely unenjoyable! I would never actually-”

“Whatever you say, man,” Mikey shrugged, ignoring the Baron’s growls at being interrupted, “Though, how’d you watch ‘em anyway? I didn’t think that TV was that big of a thing down there?”

“I used my viewing orb to summon and display them, obviously,” Draxum told him, “Most yokai have them for when they need them, and they’re much more useful and clearer than any television box.”

“If you say so...” “Hmph.” With that settled, Draxum went back to digging through the bag of movies. It didn’t take long for another video to catch his eye, this one in a plastic case rather than a cardboard one, with a picture of a happy mermaid and an equally happy human plastered on it.

“Awwww!” Mikey said suddenly, “That was April’s favorite movie when she was little! Which meant it was one of the first movies she brought over to share with us! Heh, guess we borrowed it so often we forgot to give it back, whoops. But it’s a really good movie! See, there’s this mermaid who wants to live on land as a human, and she’s friends with a crab and-”

Draxum had begun to tune the turtle out as he continued to stare at the VHS case. Mermaids weren’t too common in the Hidden City itself, though that didn’t mean they weren’t there at all. The city was next to water, after all, and some would live on the shore or become part of an air-boat crew - and they certainly didn’t look like this.

He felt his thoughts start to swirl, becoming just as mixed as his emotions as a grimace began to form on his face. On one hand, Draxum supposed he should’ve been grateful that the humans were portraying a yokai positively - as cute and friendly instead of vicious creature that lived to drown humans. 

Centuries ago, before the Great Migration underground, Draxum had heard that and many other similar claims about his people... Baseless claims meant to justify hunts and attacking on sight...

On the other hand, did humans only see them as ‘harmless’ when used for entertainment purposes? Did they only approve of yokai existing when they only existed in fiction, where they could be used however humans saw fit? 

He was briefly reminded of the creatures - the ‘poke-o-mon’ - that he would occasionally see on shirts or on phones, creatures not directly based on yokai, but similar enough. He had to wonder how much other human entertainment was based on so-called fictional creatures and monsters that they never would have even smiled at before.

“-xum... Hey, Drax?” Mikey poked his bicep, making Draxum flinch. “You okay, bud-?”

“Fine,” Draxum snapped, though there was a little actual bite to it, “Just surprised that humans would portray a yokai so positively, even in fiction.”

“Most humans do think they’re just fiction,” Mikey told him. After a moment, his tone became a bit gentler, thinking back to certain points brought up by his father and April. “Though, I can still sorta see why that would feel weird or kinda insulting, seeing a fake version of yourself or your people and not knowin’ how they’d react to the real you, wondering if they would only like the fake you. That probably doesn’t feel the greatest... and I’m really sorry about that.”

Draxum blinked. He stared at the turtle for a few seconds before finally replying with, “You’re a lot more introspective than I would have thought.”

“I get that a lot,” Mikey grinned, “But hey, they don’t call me Dr. Feelings for nothing. So, did you wanna keep this one then, or- I mean, I can understand if-”

Draxum stopped him, looking at the tape again. “...I am admittedly curious,” he said, “You did say this was a movie humans watch as children.” Studying a species’ influences during adolescence could prove to be pretty useful in understanding the adults. “And besides, if the portrayal is truly offensive, I can always send a complaint to this ‘Walt Disney’ and demand certain edits.”

“Riiiiight, though I don’t think you’ll be too mad at this one,” Mikey told him, “Ariel is a great character, and all the other mermaids in the movie aren’t portrayed as jerks or anything. ...Well, one guy kinda is but, uh-”

“Let’s just watch it already,” Draxum told him, shoving the tape into his hand, “The sooner we start it, the sooner I can gauge whether or not it’s actually worth watching.”

Mikey smirked a little. “Heh, alright.” Opening the case, he pushed the tape in while Draxum went over to the couch they had gotten him at the thrift store, briefly checking it for bugs or lumps before sitting down. “Good thing it’s already rewound.”

The only annoying thing about that was that they had to sit through previews, though Mikey used that time to cook up some popcorn kernels that he had snagged on the way out of the Lair, easily cooking it using a pan and the stove top. (No one trusted Draxum with a microwave after That One Time.)

By the time he finished, the movie’s title had just faded onto the screen. Mikey smiled widely, the nostalgia from the music and the memories he had with the movie sending slight shivers up his shell. 

Draxum, meanwhile, was watching the film intently, taking in every detail. The mermaids in the film were still completely different than actual mermaids, but at least they weren’t an insulting caricature (even if they were a bit too human-like for his liking).

As it turned out, the main mermaid character was not only a bit of a collector and explorer, but also a human fanatic. “Ugh,” Draxum grumbled as he grabbed a couple more pieces of the puffed-up corn-snack. Mikey gave him a bit of a look, but he ignored it. Just because he had been able to find a bit of common ground and comradery with his fellow lunch servers didn’t mean he was willing to give ALL humans a pass.

At least the mermaid’s father seemed to have some common sense. In fact, Draxum found himself nodding in agreement with nearly every scene the mer-king was in. ...Up until a certain point, at least.

Mikey winced a bit as the scene began. He resisted the urge to go into his shell like he always had when he was little, but he did sink a little in his seat as Triton stepped out of the shadows. When he noticed Draxum glancing over at him, Mikey simply mumbled, “I always hate this scene...”

A couple minutes and a destroyed grotto later, and Draxum could sort of see what Mikey meant, understanding how Triton’s act might have been “harsh”, as the orange-wearing turtle would’ve put it.

As the movie moved onto the next seen, Mikey relaxed a little, though a frown remained on his face... However, his expression of sadness soon became one of confusion as he felt a hand pat the top of his head.

“Uh... there, there,” Draxum mumbled, giving Mikey one more head-pat before retracting his hand. It was awkward as all heck, they both knew it, but seeing the sheepman somewhat care about his feelings still made Mikey smile.

It didn’t take much longer for Ursula to make her appearance, and as soon as the Sea Witch began talking of deals and trades, Draxum gave a small smirk of his own.

“What?” Mikey asked, tilting his head a bit.

“I didn’t realize Big Mama was in this movie.”

Mikey snorted at that. “So what, you tell jokes now?”

The sheep-man shrugged as he grabbed another handful of popcorn. “Just making an observation,” he said simply. As the scene went on though, his mind made another small connection - Ursula’s two eels reminding him of his own pair of pets, even if Flotsam and Jetsam were much more confident than his former goyles.

Even so, the reminder made his chest ache a little... Not in sadness, mind you, or because he actually missed them. No, clearly his chest ached for a completely different reason that he was sure he’d think of later.

Once the little mermaid made the contract and silenced herself, the film very much became a literal ‘fish out of water’ story, complete with plenty of amusing moments featuring misunderstandings and an over-abundance of cuteness, as well as another musical number. Thankfully, before things became too saccharine, Ursula launched the second half of her plan to rule the seas.

After that, the movie moved pretty quickly through its third act. Draxum was a bit annoyed at the human prince being the one to ultimately save the day in the end, but overall he could agree that the ending was a pretty happy one.

As the credits rolled, Mikey looked at him with eyes wide. “Sooooo, what do you think?”

Draxum cupped his chin in thought, staying silent for a few moments before finally speaking. “...If the king’s trident had the power of transformation, why didn’t he just turn the prince into a merman?”

Mikey’s face fell. “...That’s what you got out of it?”

“It’s a valid question!” Draxum argued, “Why should she have to be the one to transform?”

“Because she wasn’t just after the guy!” Mikey told him, resisting the urge to facepalm, “You saw her collection and heard her song, she wanted to be human! She was tired of bein’ stuck in the same ocean and wanted something new - something she thought was cool!”

“Hmph, I suppose that’s true... Plus, she still has the option to turn back into a mermaid later on thanks to her father’s power, so at least there’s that.”

The box turtle slumped back on the couch, disappointed though maybe not too surprised. “I guess that means you didn’t really like it, huh?”

There was a long moment of silence. “I didn’t completely agree with the ending but... the film overall wasn’t too bad,” Draxum conceded, “Not as bad as I thought it’d be, at least?”

“...You really mean that?” Mikey asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t waste my time lying about something as trivial as animated human-entertainment,” Draxum replied, “And... there were high production values. Characters were mostly understandable, and it was... cute. Not too annoying or insufferable. Even if it was still slightly inaccurate to actual mermaids and mermen.”

“...You know what, I’ll take it. And I’m glad you enjoyed the movie, and not just for my sake.” With a bit of a ‘whup’, Mikey sat up and tucked his legs under his body in a sort of lotus position. “Though, now I’m kinda curious. What’d the movie get wrong, and what else can you tell me about merpeople? I only ever saw one, on Hueso’s brother’s ship, but that was only for like a second.”

This time, it was Draxum’s turn to give him a look. “Really... The child who’s always pushing me to ‘embrace humans’ and hide my ‘mystic stuff’ is asking me to teach him about a member of Yokaikind?”

“Hey, I only to tell you to hide your mystic stuff so you don’t get yourself evicted, fired or arrested,” Mikey retorted, “I’m not the one goin’ around mutatin’ kids and/or lunches and making giant stone heads angry.”

“...Fair enough,” Draxum said, only slightly reluctant.

“But as far as I can figure, there’s no harm in just talking about mystic stuff. And as for my actual interest... Yeah, I really do wanna know.” Unable to help himself, Mikey directed his gaze towards the floor - down towards the Hidden City that he knew was there. That he only now knew was there. 

He wouldn’t have traded his life with his dad in the sewers of NYC for anything, but he would’ve been lying if he said there wasn’t a small part of him that wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up around people that looked like him in a city full of magic.

“We protect humans, but we don’t like only humans, you know,” Mikey continued, “We’ve got other mutant friends, and yokai friends too.” His smile softened. “Senor Hueso and Sunita and the chefs I’ve met at Run of the Mill, they’re all so amazing. And I’ve only seen, like, a fraction of the Hidden City but I know that’s amazing too, and I just... This city - the surface - is always gonna be my home, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the other city or wonder about it.” 

He finally looked back at Draxum, his eyes firm. “So yeah... I wanna know.”

There was another moment of silence between them, though within it, the slightest bit of connection was formed. Small and fragile, but no less noticeable.

“...Fine,” Draxum finally agreed, “But pay attention, I don’t want to repeat myself later. First off, no merperson has the same skin tone as a human. They range between greens, blues and grays to help blend in with oceans. Their eyes are also much wider than a human’s to help them hunt.”

“Makes sense to me!” Mikey smiled, leaning back on his hands a little, though looking no less attentive. Even when the TV turned to quiet static, he kept his focus right on Draxum - a gesture the former warrior-scientist certainly appreciated, even if he didn’t say so outright.

“Merpeople are also able to survive outside of water. While mobility becomes an issue depending on how often they’re moving or traveling, they have no issues living on land - hence why some take to living on air-boats as a sort of compromise, plus it helps them travel across bodies of water in a shorter amount of time. They also don’t eat humans, despite the lies told about them, though they can be territorial when they are in the water - although you can’t blame them, especially if fish start to become scarce. Furthermore-”

It was sort of nice... Sure, Mikey had plenty he wanted to show and teach Draxum about humankind - and if all went well, then maybe there was a chance of Draxum having a change of heart. Maybe their technical creator wasn’t totally evil, and maybe one day, he really would be a better person and would understand what he and his family already knew. Mikey certainly hoped that would end up being the case...

But, in the meantime, maybe Mikey would end up learning a little from Draxum too. And honestly, as long as it wasn’t lecture series about ‘effectively destroying humans’ or anything like that, the orange turtle didn’t see anything wrong with that at all.

THE END

[applesandbannas747]

Fence: Striking Distance Review

Thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for the ARC!

Title: Fence: Striking Distance

Author: Sarah Rees Brennan

Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Expected Publication Date: September 29, 2020

Pages: 368

My Rating: ★★★★

Disclaimer: I’ve done my best to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, so no specific plot points or examples are talked about, however, some fans may find my reactions and vague references to be spoiler-y. Review is under the cut :)

Like many other reviewers have commented, Fence: Striking Distance reads like a fanfiction. Funny and full of heart, you look at it and say ‘maybe the real plot was the friends we made along the way.’ And I think that’s great! Striking Distance is Sarah Rees Brennan’s tie-in to the comic written by C.S. Pacat and illustrated by Johanna The Mad, which means that its focus is on relationships and backstory rather than plot progression. Striking Distance takes place after the events of the fourth volume of the comic, Fence: Rivals, after Kings Row’s first fencing match, when it’s clear some team bonding is necessary if they hope to make it to the state championship. And let it be known that bonding does happen, if not in the way Coach Williams envisioned.

If you, like me, love Fence and jump at every chance to spend some more time with our Kings Row boys, then Striking Distance is just what you need! No big plot points or romantic tensions get resolved—and why would they? We still have so much left to cover both in future volumes of Fence and future tie-in novels, but the look deeper into the lives and pasts of the characters was exactly what I wanted from this book.

Sarah Rees Brennan has a way of making me laugh out loud like nothing else can and Fence: Striking Distance truly held up to all the hilarity and shenanigans I was hoping for from the minute I found out she was writing it. I was laughing the whole way through reading and that’s something I love from a book. But, paired with her wit, Brennan offers a deeper look into the past of our favorite insouciant playboy that is both enlightening and upsetting, with the added bonus of slotting right into place with the hints we’ve glimpsed of Aiden’s home life thus far in the comics. One of my favorite aspects of this book was all the context for the characters we get from it, such as family dynamics, out-of-school activities, and a little more information on some of the cast’s childhoods.

Perhaps the most surprising magic trick of characterization Brennan pulled off for me was with Dante Rossi. In the brief scenes we got with him, Dante quickly became a favorite, where before I didn’t have a huge interest in him. Now I am fully convinced that Brennan’s next tie-in novel needs to be about Dante and his struggle living surrounded by annoying fencers.

Let me reiterate that I thoroughly enjoyed Fence: Striking Distance and, by my book, that earns it a 4/5 stars. I plan on rereading it—I’m crossing my fingers for an audiobook so I can listen to it, too. I had a great time with it. But, as much fun as it was, Fence: Striking Distance did not feel like Fence to me. It felt and read like really fun and compelling fanfiction. So let’s get into what I took issue with.

While Brennan deepened some characters, such as Harvard and Aiden, I felt that she flattened others down to a base idea of who they were, providing me with caricatures of characters I loved that were hilariously entertaining but didn’t ring true. An easy example of this is how Eugene—our lovable jock with a heart of gold—goes from being a jokester in the comic to being a joke in the novel. Seiji and Nicholas didn’t translate at all for me from Pacat and Johanna The Mad’s portrayal of them to Brennan’s take on them. I’ll be curious to see if the fourth volume of the comic can bridge the gap between the characters I know from the first twelve issues of the comic and the characters I feel like I was introduced to in Striking Distance.

There are a couple more nit-picky details that I only mention because Fence is so close to my heart, I couldn’t help but notice them. It was plainly obvious to me that Sarah Rees Brennan is not American, so the dialogue and thoughts of these American teenagers often read as strange and unnatural to me. There are also a couple of continuity errors along the way that caught my eye. They weren’t big enough to bother most people, but they did bother me—what can I say, I’m obsessive.

Overall, I highly recommend giving Fence: Striking Distance a read. It’s funny, packed with relationship drama sure to please Aiden and Harvard fans, and has some fun insights into characters. However, you should keep in mind that it’s a tie-in novel and therefore the book ends basically where it began with little to no plot or relationship progress. Sarah Rees Brennan’s writing is always a delight and Striking Distance was no exception. If you’re a fan of Fence or Brennan’s In Other Lands I think you’ll definitely enjoy Fence: Striking Distance!

[toast-the-unknowing]

For the behind the scenes ask: 19: easiest character to write? And 20: favorite minor character to write? Thank you!

(Questions are here)

19. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

Adam comes fairly easily for me, there’s a lot that’s familiar and natural to me about the way he thinks. He's easier to write from his point of view than from other POVs, though, there's at least one time I can think of where I made a glaring characterization error, and I think it was maybe because I wasn’t really in his head; I was in the POV character’s.

Gansey is hard to write because it is so easy to make him a caricature -- and sometimes that's the point, but I'm not always writing a comedy, and when I want a more robust version of him he's very tricky. He's such a mess of compartmentalization and different personalities, and he has a lot of traits that could make someone very unlikeable if not handled well, and I do in fact like him a lot, so I don't want to do that to him.

I would say outside of TRC some of the characters that have been hard for me to write (Spock and Holt and Kevin from B99 come to mind) are in a similar boat where it is very easy to flatten their character out to one note, and the challenge is in keeping them true to themselves and not just making them caricatures.

20. What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

Henry Cheng is very fun to write -- I am still proud of the line in darling, don’t make such a drama, "I have never met a person whose appearance was so unfortunate as to make me describe them by saying, 'they have a great personality'. But you? If someone should ask me, 'Henry, that Ronan Lynch, what is he like?' I would have to say, 'well, he is very attractive'."  But really all of his dialogue is fun. Opal is a blast, too. I'd like to write Calla again, I just never have inspiration.

Also one time I wrote a fic where Sito Jaxa and Tasha Yar are temporal agents together and that was immensely good for my heart and soul, as far as I'm concerned that's canon now, what are you talking about they're both dead, la la la la la.

[maiji]

FRUITS OF THE 1000 YEAR OLD FANDOM: Tale of Genji fanfiction

A while back I mentioned I was hunting down historical Tale of Genji fanfiction to read. I DID. AND IT’S BEEN SO MUCH FUN. And super fascinating! Especially seeing the amazing continuity of the human and fandom experience over the course of a millennium. It seriously makes you feel like part of something ANCIENT AND POWERFUL. Anyways, I decided to write some reviews.

This post covers four Tale of Genji historical fanfics ranging in date from approximately the 12th century to the 1930s. (Which is incredible when you realize this means the oldest fanfic on the list is still separated from the original source material by a century or so.) I break them down as follows:

Background: What it is, some historical context.

Premise: Short spoiler-free summary.

Thoughts: My "review”, with some minor spoilers.

I think ALL of them are worth reading, for many different reasons. In chronological order of when they were written, they are... 

1) Yamaji no Tsuyu ("Dew on the Mountain Path")

Background: Estimated 12th century. Believed to be written by either Fujiwara/Sesonji no Koreyuki or his daughter Kenreimonin Ukyo no Daibu, members of a family with a tradition of Tale of Genji scholarship.

Premise: Continuation after the last chapter of the Tale of Genji. Ukifune is reunited with the people closest to her after her brother finally succeeds in delivering a message from Kaoru. 

Thoughts: As I mentioned before, I have to stop myself from calling this “The Mountain Dew Story”. In any case, I have a huge soft spot for it, partly because it reminds me of the kind of fanfic I would probably attempt to write. It's pretty quiet and subtle and focuses on existing characters and deepening the exploration of their relationships within the continuity of the known material. It focuses on family over lovers, and it doesn't force Ukifune out of nunhood and back to the “normal” world. The ending is also ambiguous and leaves the door open for further extension.

ALSO, and this was a big big deal to me - what most other fanfics seem to forget is that Murasaki Shikibu/the author(s) of Tale of Genji had a sense of humour. This author does too, with multiple moments and lines that made me laugh because they were honestly funny (as opposed to laughing because it was badly written), just like the actual novel itself.

2) Kumogakure Rokujo ("Vanished into the clouds: Six chapters")

Background: There’s a long story about this that I won’t get into here... but essentially the version I read is estimated Muromachi era, a collection of fakes pretending to be real missing chapters. It uses titles of 3 legendary missing chapters and adds a few more to increase the Tale of Genji total chapter count from 54 to 60 (a number sometimes mentioned in historical documents).

Premise: All the stuff that you wanted to read but didn't get to see!! It all happens!!

Thoughts: This is practically the diametric opposite of the previous entry. If you asked me to describe the stereotype of what comes to mind when I hear the words "Tale of Genji fanfic" IT'S THIS! THIS IS IT!! It's hilariously-written wish fulfillment where everyone has been flattened into the most basic caricatures of themselves (and somehow still manages to have OOC lines). But it is pretty impressive how many loose threads it attempts to tie up, and all the boxes it tries to check in terms of what fans of the original story dreamed of seeing happen. Genji renouncing the world and Genji’s “death”, check. Kaoru and Ukifune reuniting, check. Niou getting his just desserts. Murasaki reappearing (in a dream/as a ghost). Kaoru being too awesome for everyone. And so on. Which is probably why the whole thing is so much telling instead of showing and comes across very choppy... In any case, it is THE EXEMPLAR of the kind of thing I hoped to find when I first started my search. 

I will end this by describing a sequence of just three of the many (MANY) things that amused the hell out of me:

Scandalous Third Prince Niou becoming Emperor instead of his older brother the Second Prince because apparently the Second Prince doesn’t want to be Emperor and also his Chinese is atrocious. OK. I think the writer did this mainly to put Niou in as high of a position as possible to make the next point even more impressive and satisfying for Kaoru fans (which was apparently everyone at the time).

Emperor Niou groveling at Palace Minister Kaoru for forgiveness for being a dick when they were younger (the whole Ukifune affair) while all the women serving him (Niou) are like "Oh Kaoru, he's so amazing" (I mentioned this part previously in my art ramblings).

Kaoru being literally too saintly and good for this world. He literally talks to a monk, becomes enlightened, steps outside and vanishes into thin air. The monk he was talking to is like WHOAAA HE'S SO AMAZING!!! What was amazing to me was the fact that I didn’t crack up on the spot. I was sitting in the reference library reading a research copy of Reading The Tale of Genji (the same day I randomly stumbled on a Yu Yu Hakusho doujinshi cover in another academic thesis) and the gentleman sitting across from me was probably like "What is up with this person's expressions".

3) Tamakura ("Arm Pillow" or "Pillowed Upon His Arm")

Background: 18th century. Written by Edo scholar Motoori Norinaga as an attempt at recreating the writing style - including historically accurate Heian period vocabulary and grammar - of the original novel as closely as possible.

Premise: The missing tale of how Genji and Lady Rokujo met and began their love affair.

Thoughts: I must start by saying that I give the author a TON of points for the title. As an artist and a writer, coming up with good titles IS SO FREAKING HARD. And this one is perfect. It's so simple yet so evocative and fits the mood and the sophistication of both characters so well. Aside from that, this story gives you basically what the summary says. I admit these two are not my favourites, so that partly affects how excited I am about it/how much I care about what I read, but they are two of the most memorable characters in the story. And if you think about gaps begging to be filled, this is probably the biggest one. It was shocking to me to learn that there didn’t seem to be any other notable attempts at filling this hole before this one! I did read Yamato Waki’s shoujo manga take on the same thing in Asakiyumemishi, so that was very interesting to compare and contrast.

While the full effect of the Heian prose writing exercise is lost in English, the translation I read still carries a sense of density to the text, and of how the characters interact, that does remind me more strongly of the main chapters of the original novel than any of the other stories on this list. Even compared to Yamaji no Tsuyu, which is closest in time to the Tale of Genji, but still a century apart, and focused on the Uji chapter characters (the later section of the novel has a different structure and flavour to the writing).

4) Le Dernier Amour du prince Genghi ("The Last Love of Prince Genji")

Background: First published 1936. Written by French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, who imagined what Murasaki Shikibu might have written for Genji’s death.

Premise: Genji finally renounces the world, and soon realizes he's going blind. As the Shining Prince gradually loses his sight, he's visited by a woman from his past. 

(As I finished typing the above I realized how much it really does sound like a fic summary on fanfiction.net or AO3 hahahahha)

Thoughts: This story has much more contemporary origins compared to the others on this list, but I was intrigued when I learned of its existence and just had to hunt down a copy. I was surprised to discover this was a Genji and Hanachirusato pairing! She's probably the most overlooked of Genji's lovers, and definitely the most reserved and understated.

The piece is written - and translated - VERY beautifully, which is not surprising considering whom the author is. It's also both the easiest read on this list, being the most modern in style and approach, and the darkest. If you're familiar with the source material and have a fairly solid understanding of the Heian period, you'll quickly find clear liberties with both characters and setting that give it a, shall we say, "otherworldly" quality, since it distances the characters from the known "reality" of the actual novel. If you're not familiar with those things, then it may be less jarring. I'd say all things considered, Genji's characterization feels pretty true and believable overall, which for the purposes of this story is 2/3rds of the point. The rest is more questionable, for me personally anyways. But I enjoyed it for what it is, a fanciful romantic Asian fantasy fairy tale take on the missing death chapter from the Tale of Genji... with a sardonic twist ending. There's also a section where Genji thinks back to his various loves and I had fun figuring out who was who since the sobriquets are different.

It was honestly a pleasure getting to read these stories! For anyone interested, Reading the Tale of Genji: Sources from the First Millennium has translations of the first 3, and the last can be found as part of a collection of Yourcenar’s short stories, “Oriental Tales” (which are not, despite what you might assume from the title, all based in East Asia).

I've yet to venture into the world of Tale of Genji historical AU fanfiction. Two that are on my radar:

Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari/Mitsu no Hamamatsu - 11th century story purportedly written by the first Tale of Genji fan ever documented (Sugawara no Takasue no Musume/Lady Sarashinai - I mentioned her in my Ukifune illustration). I’ve read some summaries/reviews of it, but haven’t read an actual translation yet. It’s kind of a reimagining of the Kaoru and Ukifune story, but the Kaoru character is more successful. Reincarnation and the Chinese imperial court are also involved. (Update: At last! Here it is!)

Nise Murasaki Inaki Genji (translated variously as “False Murasaki and a Country Genji”, “A Fraudulent Murasaki's Bumpkin Genji”, and “The Rustic Genji”) - very famous late Edo period take on Tale of Genji by Ryutei Tanehiko, which transplants the story into the Muromachi era. I only knew of it as a parody, but when I read a bit more about it, the title translations do NOT do justice to what the story involves. Basically Genji is sort-of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood and almost all his love affairs are carefully calculated machinations as he recovers stolen artifacts and foils political villains. There's a lot of murdering and assassins and swords flying about and stuff, even with the ladies. It sounds AWESOME STAY TUNED (Update: It was awesome. Here it is!)

[the-desolated-quill]

Flatline - Doctor Who blog (Clara Who)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Yesterday @upslapmeal sent me a very nice message saying that I was going to love this episode. Thanks @upslapmeal :D

So did I love Flatline? Well... there are bits of it I loved. There are other bits I didn’t. And I’m sure you can all hazard a guess as to which bits are which.

My eyes lit up when Jamie Mathieson’s name cropped up. He’s the guy who wrote the pretty damn good Mummy On The Orient Express. (Two episodes in a row? Now you’re just spoiling us). Something I’ve been complaining about a lot this series is the lack of original ideas and the constant back-referencing, and it’s great to see Mathieson take the show into uncharted waters this time around. The idea of 2D aliens from a 2D universe is a genius one and it lends itself to some very creative imagery. The cold open of the man screaming inside the wall was chilling, as was the bit where that policewoman gets sucked and flattened into the floor, but I think the bit that ultimately wins the creepiest scene ever award is when that community support worker gets sucked into the wall unbeknownst to the others, and when Clara looks at him from an angle, we see that he’s been flattened and stretched across several objects and ledges. That actually sent shivers down my spine.

I also really liked the shrinking TARDIS. Admittedly this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a shrinking TARDIS in Doctor Who, but it’s never really been done like this before and I love it. It’s a good way of keeping the Doctor out of the action and it does raise the stakes ever so slightly. I think my favourite bit was when the Doctor used his fingers to move the TARDIS out of the path of an upcoming train. Doesn’t really make sense because its been stated numerous times in the past that the TARDIS is indestructible, but it’s still cute.

Oh and let’s quickly talk about the Doctor. Even though this Doctor is much darker and less sure of himself than previous incarnations, it’s nice to see the character’s trademark optimism is still very much intact. Right up until the end, he’s prepared to give the 2D aliens the benefit of the doubt, assuming (or rather hoping) that this is all one giant misunderstanding. That maybe the aliens don’t realise they’re actually killing people and are just trying to research and understand us. That’s always been one of the central characteristics of the Doctor. He can’t help but think the best of everyone until proven wrong. And when the Doctor gives his final dramatic speech to the aliens before banishing them back to their own dimension, not only is there the usual rage and authority you often get in these speeches, but there’s also just a hint of disappointment in there too. He was eager to converse and get to know these aliens, and he’s genuinely saddened by their malicious intentions.

I must confess he’s not the only one who’s disappointed. As much as I love the concept of 2D aliens, they’re pretty weak as villains. I wish they really were just misunderstood explorers that were trying to make sense of this new 3D universe they had discovered because that’s a lot more interesting than what we ended up getting. When they started reading the numbers off of those people’s overalls as a way of identifying targets, I started to sigh, and when they started making 3D zombies, i just let out a massive groan. They’re just yet another monster that needs to be defeated. What’s worse is that their plan and motives are left unclear, which I’m presuming is an attempt to inject some ambiguity and mystery into them, but it actually just makes them really flat (sorry) baddies and they very quickly just descend into repetitive killing machines.

The characters too aren’t very good. Rigsy is probably the best of the bunch. Joivan Wade gives a decent performance and the character seems like a nice enough person, but like with most of the characters in Mummy On The Orient Express, he’s not very interesting or compelling. That old guy got on my fucking nerves. He’s just a moaning, grumpy caricature with absolutely nothing to counterbalance it whatsoever. It even gets to a stage where he callously dismisses the dead, saying they were scum. And don’t get me started on that stupid scene where he tries to wrestle the miniature TARDIS out of Clara’s bag for no reason other than as a contrivance to split the Doctor and Clara up. It’s just sloppy writing. Beyond that, the other characters are really little more than nameless redshirts. Who cares?

And then there’s Clara.

Obviously I don’t have a problem with assertive companions and I don’t necessarily have a problem with the whole role reversal thing. What I do have a problem with is Clara’s personal brand of smugness as well as the arrogance of Moffat trying to insert his own shitty creations into vital parts of Doctor Who lore. We’ve had numerous instances where we see Clara trying to out-Doctor the Doctor, such as in The Day Of The Doctor and Listen, so to have an episode where Clara literally takes on the role of the Doctor felt to me like being forced to drink a cup of cold vomit. 

I mean you could do something interesting with that idea. Have Clara realise the massive weight that’s constantly on the Doctor’s shoulders as she has to take on the responsibility and make the decisions he has to make, but that’s not what this episode is about at all. They try to suggest that at the end, but I’m not convinced. The episode is more about trying to convince us how cool and impressive Clara is, which I’m just not buying. I’ve mentioned before in Asylum Of The Daleks how she’s like the physical manifestation of that feeling you get when someone scrapes their nails over a chalkboard, and it’s the same here. Clara is just so smug and so obnoxious. You never believe an actual person would behave the way she behaves, and there are several scenes where her attitude really starts to grate. One example is when Rigsy plans to sacrifice himself by ramming the 2D aliens with a train (which is stupid in and of itself because, hello, they’re 2D. Somehow I don’t think a train is going to hurt them) and then Clara starts to mock him for his decision, saying how she’ll always remember how he died to save her hairband. You know you could have just led with the hairband thing Clara. No need to be such a prick about it.

And then there’s the scene when the Doctor and Clara discuss what to do next, and Clara suggests lying to the survivors and give them false hope because ‘that’s what the Doctor would do.’

I’m getting so sick to death of the whole ‘the Doctor lies’ crap because it’s not even remotely true. The Doctor doesn’t lie to people to give them false hope. In fact he doesn’t lie to people at all. He’s genuine when he says he’ll protect someone, which is what makes it heartbreaking when he occasionally fails. I do wish they’d cut this shit out. But worse than that is when Clara suggests the idea, it’s almost as though she’s condemning the Doctor for lying and doesn’t approve of what she’s about to do, which caused me to let out a hollow laugh. It’s a bit rich criticising the Doctor for his supposed dishonesty Clara when you yourself have been lying to both him and your boyfriend. Not because you’re trying to protect them, but because you’re too selfish and spineless to admit that you overreacted at the end of Kill The Moon (that’s the explanation I’m going with because I still don’t understand why she’s lying to either of them in the first place).

Her whole attitude just fucking stinks. Even at the end, she’s more concerned with getting the Doctor to admit she did good whereas any normal person in her shoes would probably be more disappointed and slightly ashamed that they didn’t manage to save everyone. Remind me, why am I supposed to like Clara again? I’ve had nettle rashes that were more tolerable than her.

It’s such a shame because the central idea is really good and very original. It’s just the stuff orbiting around it that drag it down. Nevertheless, I would like to see Jamie Mathieson come back and write some more Doctor Who in the future. Please tell me he does.