#you can even see a reference to said new fandom in the background

[renae-the-turtle]

Art for my fanfic, Charmy and the Dad Talk; I did the drawing and line art, and @alcadanon did the colours using alcohol markers!

Link to the fic here:

[magellanicclouds]

Halo - An Essay: regarding waste management systems and devices for MJOLNIR armoured Spartans It has been a hectic sort of few weeks. Between work and getting sick again (for the fourth time already this year thanks to my crewmates who can't remember it's their duty to stay home when they're ill) I've been on the outs. I haven't had the energy for much, but I'm usually a pretty active person, so this has kind of made me loopy? Which feels like as good a time as any to talk at length about the concept of catheterizing Spartans for waste management in MJOLNIR.

Let me explain.

This Silly Post crossed my dash recently and I fully understand it is meant as lighthearted fun - we have fun here. But it also dragged out some strong thoughts I've had haunting in the back of my mind about this for years because I'm super normal about Halo, and have time on my hands and the right amount of sleep deprivation and medication on board. So I wrote 3500 words about it. And about Karen Traviss, who is pretty knotted up in this conversation, since she's the one who decided to start it back in 2011.

To preface, I'm not an expert, but I have worked in emergency medicine for 25 years, and been a fan of Halo for almost as long. I've had more of a lukewarm relationship with it the last decade or so if I'm being honest, but it will always have a home in my heart; I just think letting it under my skin like that in the first place may have made me feral and prone to biting. Thankfully, I can always happily rotate Fred in my mind until the heat-death of the universe, so that's nice. Anyway, full disclosure: the essay below contains discussion about medical devices, physical trauma, and I am sharing quite a lot of personal negativity about the Kilo-5 trilogy and Karen Traviss. That said, if you'd like to sit in on the length of what I'm about to yell into the sky about all this, you can find it under the cut. I love you.

Welcome to my dissertation.

Section 1 - The Relevant Background:

Equipping Spartans with urinary catheters weeded itself into the Halo universe in the 2011 book Halo: Glasslands, during a conversation between Spartan II Naomi-010 and ODST Mal Geffen. Glasslands was the first in Karen Traviss's Kilo-5 trilogy, and she is both the originator of this, and the only official Halo author or source to have used catheters specifically since. Some context: I don't personally like these books, or their author, or even her reasoning for why she chose to add this. My personal preference doesn't make something 'bad', and I'm not out to hurt any feelings. Kilo-5 isn't a total wash for me, there are some characters and ideas that I'd of otherwise loved to have seen explored through the lens of a different author, but these books felt smothered under Traviss's habit of always injecting her very loud personal voice into the narrative fabric. I think this is something that's fine to do in an original series, but doesn't really belong in an established third party IP. She bangs on about so much of her own narrow worldview and self-assured prejudices across the trilogy that still discussing them today creates division in the fandom, and sadly did a lot of lasting damage to a couple characters. But for the topic here, the dialogue that started all this cath chat came from Naomi-010, having idle conversation with Mal who asks her about bathroom breaks. “I’m catheterized. Another reason why that machine has to be so precisely calibrated. This suit plugs into me in a lot of places.” 'The Machine' she's referring to is a Brokkr assembly, which was introduced to the lore as a large mechanical armature used to get Spartans in and out of MJOLNIR. You can see them in action in cinematics from Halo 4 (+Spartan Ops) and 5.

One single mention, and it was big news. Traviss was naturally interviewed about it because of course she was - people can't help themselves but forget an entire novel and tunnel vision on 'but how pee pee?', and her answer has always irritated me. It's not in what she says, so much as what 'what she says' means in her voice. Traviss didn't answer it directly, but instead talked about how she likes to get into character's heads by addressing the mundane necessity of things that often go overlooked to expand a sense of familiarity with the character and their world. Sounds super reasonable, I know, but don't give her too much credit - that's not a quote. It's just me paraphrasing and honestly I was pretty generous in my wording. Probably because I agree! What bugs me about it, is if you've ever read literally any interview with her, or her personal musings about her writing process, you know there's a bit of an 'honesty' issue there. She's somebody who feels perfectly comfortable ignoring established character voices, traits, or histories to satisfy whatever roles she's reinvented for them, and too many others wind up as mouthpieces. How much are you really challenging yourself in finding characters' voices when most of them are just yours? And the part about familiarity with their world? I giggled a little. She doesn't care about their world, or their aesthetics, or their technology, or their medicine. Because she didn't care about Halo while writing these, and she's not vague about admitting that. It's a matter of pride for her to purposefully refuse to research those things, in the same way she disregarded Star Wars and Gears of War - she doesn't consider the effort to be a valuable part of her process. So instead she'll skim the foundation, gather some recognizable names, pick her targets, and trusts that her personal experiences combined with an outsider perspective will generate better content to seamlessly overwrite what existed. Cool, Karen. Annoying, but why bring all that up? We're here to talk about catheters, right? Well, the fandom for the most part begin and end their assessment of the dialogue at urinary catheters, but the whole quote implies so much more than that - "This suit plugs into me in a lot of places." We're not just dealing with a cath, but apparently with multiple additional external-to-invasive connections. Reader, this dialogue is a plinth to Traviss's bizarre refusal to research not only the franchises she's contracted to write in, but also just into the basic function and hazards of existing concepts that she wants to introduce, and all because she's convinced herself she's done learning about the world. Choosing to ignore the creative freedom of limitless potential in a future of technology that would be basically magic to us today, and instead degrade 529 years of advancement is certainly a take, but it's even more ridiculous to do it with a subject (The Spartan Programme) that is considered to be the peak of advancement in that future's setting. That's clownery, just like her alleged commitment to adjusting her perspective to suit a universe's world.

I want to close out this section with a question: Why is it that writers in the Halo space - both fan and official - cling so tightly to current-day modern concepts as if they'd still be perfectly relevant in 500+ years? Music, for example, apparently suffered a multi-century stagnation in lots of published and fanmade Halo media. Though my partner made a strong counterpoint about this to be fair: we still listen to music composed by Mozart. So there's an argument to be made there. Medicine though. There is way less latitude to embrace the classics there. It's been shown across several games, novels, and films to be sufficiently advanced well beyond anything we're currently capable of or even understand, so why undermine that and choose to drag it centuries backward? For clarity, I am not talking about what might be standard in the public or private sectors, nor the enduring things that'd be used by the public and military alike, like sterile dressings, syringes, supplemental oxygen equipment. Those are the Basics and they will be relevant to us indefinitely. But I'm talking about the UNSC. I'm talking about ONI R&D. I'm talking about Section Three. Retrograding tech and failing to address a necessity that applies to every living person in the Super Soldier Wizardry department makes my mouth flatten into a tight little line.

Section Two - Caths, and why this whole thing got written:

Indwelling urinary catheters, both urethral and suprapubic. There's a laundry list of problems here, but I've distilled it down to the three biggest when suggesting they'd have any safe practical application in Spartans: Care. Activity. Damage. There is unreasonable expectations of care and maintenance for caths with regards to people who can be on operations isolated for months at a time with no support of any kind and are often limited to carrying only what can be kept on their person. The level of extreme physical activity Spartans engage in on any perfectly normal day whether deployed or not is unfit for the stability and safety of a cath. And damage; obvious enough, but with this one I'll be taking a huge emphasis on concussive forces - explosions. Something Spartans are subjected to a lot. I'll be using the height of modern-day catheter quality as a baseline for this, since that's what Traviss felt was sufficient. Regarding Urethral vs Suprapubic, Traviss doesn't specify by name, but Naomi's comment in full reads to me that she's only catheterized temporarily while armoured, hence the assembly needing to be so finely calibrated. Foley caths are temporary urethral caths that would only supplement the urinary process while a person was armoured. Suprapubic caths however are surgically placed devices. They do need routine tube replacement to keep them clean, but unlike the Foley that just serves as an aide measure for an otherwise fully functioning bladder, suprapubic caths are usually placed in people with congenital bladder disfunction, or who've suffered injury or disease that left the bladder in poor health or failure. This type of access will always require a tube in place and this would be the exclusive method of urination - in or out of armour. My Big Three Concerns fit both types similarly, though there is some additional risks associated with urethral caths that I'll cover.

Care: Caring for an invasive cath is a not insignificant effort. They're prone to blockage, kinking, and bacterial growth. They're so frequently responsible for UTIs and kidney stones that these complications are just considered the Standard Fair for having a cath. Their need to be frequently replaced because of their penchant for bacterial growth is the kicker here - whole floral colonies sprout up in caths and can eek their way out into the body through compromised tissue and wreck havoc. They have no self-cleaning mechanism, and steadily deteriorate. Changing and replacing an indwelling cath is a procedure that requires additional supplies that'd have to be carried, and needs to be done in a practiced and clean setting; preferably medical. Granted, there are people who manage the removal and insertion of their own caths at home, but they still need to ensure a clean and safe environment while they do this. A Spartan could never be guaranteed that, nor would it even be wise to consider the vulnerability of removing so much armour to handle it. Modern day caths are recommended to be replaced every 30 days or so, with some models able to be in place for a few months at a time, but that's with constant daily care and cleaning; something that'd be unreasonable for a Spartan to maintain while entrenched who knows where for who knows how long, and without access to replacement medical supplies. Those endurance times between replacements are geared for the average public person who leads an average public life and care for their cath as directed and don't get into fist fights with Sangheili. Needless to say, the endurance time for the same device in a Spartan who leads a wildly different lifestyle probably cuts those times down to a third.

Activity: Modern day caths are designed to offer people the most utility and versatility possible. Both models are available for people who are bed-bound or have extremely limited mobility, as well as for those who are mobile, independent, and live out average lives. With regards to the latter, suprapubics are somewhat more common, if for no other reason than to reduce the Foley's higher risks of induction injury, but modern urethral caths also allow for regular movement and activity with a more reduced chance of becoming dislodged or damaged than they would have had a couple decades ago. But when I say regular activity, I mean going on a walk. Shopping for groceries. Doing basic house chores. Even light exercise and sexual activity can be managed with physician advisement and the appropriate precautions taken. Anytime a Spartan was fielded they'd have to be all the more overly-cautious about Movements Outside of Their Control during confrontations, maneuvers, ambush, environmental or vehicular incidents. Even when things go well there'd be too much risk involved. That said, traumatic decatheterizations happen more frequently than anyone would like, and I'm talking about regular old Joe Everybody. I respond to no less than a dozen of these incidents a year. Both types of catheter are held in place by a bulb balloon that's inflated from a port with around 10-30ccs of saline after the tube enters the bladder (30ccs would be more appropriate for better security of the line). Before removing a cath, the saline is removed to deflate the balloon and the tube is guided out - with a Foley cath, that means being guided out of the urethra. When a Foley cath is traumatically removed, the saline filled balloon - which is like five times wider in diameter than the average 6mm urethra - does a pretty devastating amount of damage on it's way out, penis or vagina; though a penile urethra has significantly more length to damage, and the penile meatus very typically is torn. These incidents run high risk of bladder hematoma as well, which requires urgent surgical intervention. The very worst traumatic decatheterizations I've responded to were all penile and had trauma to external tissue. Ever microwaved a hotdog a little too long?

Damage: How often are Spartans subjected to explosive and other concussive forces? Silly question - answer: a lot and often and unavoidable. And we know they still feel the powerful feedback. Despite shields and dampeners and a self-moderating gel layer, strong inertial forces are still felt through the suits. Across multiple novels we're given details about near misses and blasts, accelerated or uncontrolled falls, rattling their teeth, hampering their vision, hearing, or balance; they've been rendered unconscious and suffered internal injuries. The fact that most of these events don't flat out kill them is a credit to their armour and augmentations. For reference - when a person experiences explosive or concussive force from a distance enough to avoid separation of limbs, bisection, etc, the totality of their injuries can't and won't be seen externally. How they present on the outside is just the tippy tip of the iceburg - it's what's happened to them internally that you need to be concerned about. Cracked or fractured bones, torn musculature, arterial shearing, hollow organ rupture, cardiac and brain tissue bleed, to name some common ones, and this kind of trauma extends to all implanted devices as well. For example, rods and nails and other structural aids or replacements are much more resilient than your organic tissues, and can dislodge when tissues tear or rupture, damaging anything in their way like shrapnel. The fragile little balloon of a catheter will shatter when subjected to even relatively minor explosive force, so to even consider for a moment that this would be a viable piece of equipment for people intended to routinely be involved in explosive environments is beyond willful negligence. That there wouldn't be a better solution to the question of waste management - a necessity for literally all human people who make up the entirety of the Spartan branch, with the infinite funding of ONI R&D seems so stupid to me that I… well, that I wrote this. Because, friends - participating in active warfare is not cath-safe. The kinds of physical demands and forces on Spartan bodies are not cath-safe. The risks will never outweigh the benefits to this. Even while sealed in powered armour and a skinsuit tech layer, the very thought of Section Three engineers or Halsey or anyone involved in the development of MJOLNIR dismissing the glaring obvious failure of Spartans having any kind of externalized invasive devices is so unreasonably negligent that it could only be the brainchild of an author who's convinced that these characters are all actually just psuedo-intelligent government boogiemen who aren't as capable as they claim to be. But No. They are that capable, and they are that intelligent and the fact that they have a bottomless budget and deeply flexible ethics is literally what makes them so dangerous.

So if we have to address this, how do we do it? Apparently there was always an official answer for this. Former Franchise Development Director, creator of the Master Chief**, and extremely racist asshole Frank O'Connor weighed in on this in the same interview, where he almost immediate rejected and denied Traviss's catheterization claim and says that 'this sort of stuff' was the kind of thing he and the other creative heads at Bungie/343i talked and planned about all the time. So how does this work then, because we're invested now. According to 'ol Frankie's elegant input: they just pee freely into the suit. That's it. For clarity, he's talking about the skinsuit and not the MJOLNIR interior proper. He goes on to say that connectivity between body and MJOLNIR at all levels is fully noninvasive, but precise, and that it doesn't matter what kind of body output a Spartan introduces into the suit interior, because a hygienic valve system (??) will scrub it continually and collect all matter for recycling and reintroduction via capillary action powered by movement. It's not clear in what layers or intermediaries these mechanisms occupy, he doesn't break it down more than that. But that's the answer, and it did exist back when Traviss was penning Kilo-5.

Is this answer better than haphazardly plugging extension cords from actual organ systems into MJOLNIR interior? Yes. Like, leagues better by comparison, but also I still think it sucks. To me anyway. It's flat out gross as hell, which definitely fits the personal brand of a man who proudly overfed his cat and called himself "Stinkles", but also it just doesn't strike me as the kind of design strategy ONI would pursue for any of their assets. Beside it just being 100% torn from Dune's stillsuits, it's also missing that special brand of proprietary Section Three je ne sais quoi. There's layers upon layers of too-specialized equipment installed into these people for everything else, why skip this? A body function that should have been Point 3 on a 50 point list of 'stuff to manage'. Also though? It's a lot of freedom. This is just another easy opportunity to add yet another layer of dependence. Spartans are expensive equipment. It doesn't do to give them any fewer reasons to think they can ever walk away.

So anyway, I figured I'd take a crack at it. I came up with this while editing the last two paragraphs: [Waste management] - a fully internalized collection and processing device - lets say a cybernetic implantation - that entirely replaces the bladder. It has bio-organic lumens that interconnect it to the GI and Hepatic organs. The implant assists in accelerating the processing of gathering and refining waste materials with the help of nanobots that identify and redirect waste along the lumens of each system, plus they keep the implant clean and free of bad flora. All twice-processed waste gets refined a lot quicker and any water by-product of the process is refined and redistributed back to the organs along the lumens. None of the refined water is removed from the body for drinking, because that's an unnecessary step; it's already inside. (Drinking water would be the responsibility of a suit system more likely - like, sweat leeching in the skinsuit; refine, filtrate, purify, collect into a reservoir, and jettison the excess sodium. ) There is no 'extraction of other viable nutrient' from the remainder, it's been twice identified as waste. It gets catabolized and consumed by the nanobots as a fuel source, and no externalized waste is created at all while the Spartan is geared up. The implant doesn't always run like this - it only engages this way when the Spartan is wearing MJOLNIR, and when they're not, it just works like an out-of-the-box bladder. The intermittence of usage lets the organic organs truck along as usual, preventing risk of atrophy, and the Spartan can just use a bathroom like everyone else. I'm not a bioengineer, but I do like sci fi and I think all that sounds like something that'd be possible in this sandbox. And that's the real fun of it, isn't it? There's no way anyone today can anticipate what sort of gadgetry might be available 500+ years from now, especially in a fictional universe that includes military tech hybridized with reverse engineered alien tech.

I think it's fascinating when writers and artists shake loose and really grab the reins, and I love seeing the fruit of that labour in this particular tumblr community so often. We're not a huge Halo circle, but we're a passionate one, and if this essay leaves you with nothing else, I hope it will at least remind you to Go For It when you're writing your next fic or drawing your next piece, or composing, or sewing, or printing, or anything!

In Conclusion: Rest easy, friends.

Despite Traviss's word and even books that went to print, the official canon is that Spartans are not catheterized. If that's a bummer for anyone, canon can't stop you from writing whatever you want, but I do hope maybe you'll remember my reasoning for why it might not be the best idea? At least not for armoured Spartans. A Spartan, but they're laid up in hospital? Any non-Spartan personnel? Maybe you're writing in the public sector, a colony world or vessel? Sure - I'll bet caths are still plenty widely used. Why not? They're a blissfully simple and useful effective piece of equipment. It's just all about adjusting and adapting for practicality. Medical science, like any technology, adapts and evolves infinitely as we learn and discover new things. Treatments or drug algorithms I'd of used just last year have already undergone changes, and protocols are amended constantly. It's why a person 'practices' medicine; why a scientist is always a student. If questions like this or similar really need answering in your next work, remember: Give yourself the credit you deserve, and embrace the spirit of invention. Let my Cyber Bladder, by Sparklets be the candle in the window for you!

You may all retrieve your keys from the bowl and unsilence your phones. Stay safe and please text me when you get home. Thank you. ' u ' **Addendum: Former Bungie Creative Art Director Marcus Lehto is in fact the person who is most associated with the creation of the Master Chief.**

[oscconfessions]

TRANSFEM TISSUES PROPAGANDA ATTACK!!!

why do another nonbinary arc when you can do the transfems justice? sure, we already have lightbulb, but lightbulb happened in between seasons and it was never even canonized! wouldn’t it be great to finally make the transfems happy and give the world an actual transfem arc?

tissues is easily one of the contestants i have the most problems with. firstly— the way their sickness is made fun of when it’s genuinely a disability. let’s add more to this walking ableist stereotype and build on that! make them have niche interests— since they’d probably be bedridden a lot, maybe make them a super geeky person! make them like fandoms and spending their time drawing fanart for their favorite shows— make them have super geek freakouts when they learn someone else has heard of their favorite obscure anime!! make them an enjoyer of horror media, or make them an otaku!! make them indulge in media so that they can imagine themselves in a world where no one makes fun of them for their condition!

my next point is to make them have an arc where people realize that there’s more to them! have one of the new contestants reach out despite their illness! make them learn all about who tissues is, make them learn about tissues’ rich inner worlds that they’ve built up to escape the reality of their sickness. make them become really close with tissues and make them share their interests with them as well. make them open up to eachother— i could see this happening with cabby or clover, maybe even tea kettle! …and then have one of the older contestants refer to tissues as “the sick one”, or some other dismissive term that references only their condition. make tissues’ friend angry at that contestant for only seeing tissues for their disability, make them yell at that contestant and let them fucking rant. and make tissues be in the background, hearing all this and realizing that they… really don’t deserve to be treated like that, do they? make them realize that all this time they’ve been trying to escape when in reality, they can stand up and fight. just like their favorite heroes do. just like their friend did for them.

(btw its very important that their friend is a girl i should mention this)

let them get more confident over time, starting with them glaring at people who joke about their condition. then have it escalate into them taking a stand against anyone who says mean shit against them— have them tell people off for being ableist fucks (not words used in the show most likely) and make their friend be proud of it. make them grow closer with their friend over the course of the show, and have a scene where the two are alone. tissues would ask “…what’s it like to be a girl?” their friend would be a bit confused, but would explain it to the best of their ability. “…huh.” their friend asks why they asked “…i know… that some people don’t feel like the gender they were born with… and i always kind of identified with that.” “i was wondering because… because i felt strange about being a man. and i… i feel exactly like what you said.” Have their friend realize that. oh this guy is a girl actually. Have them offer the best advice they can, whether it be analytical or motherly or even a little awkward. and i want tissues to feel inspired to change. i want tissues’ title to change from The Sickness to The Adapter. someone who can change and grow no matter the situation— if only they try.

please consider this

-🥜🪶

.

[neurodivergantizzetwitch]

ive been hearing a lot of legitimate criticism of will wood and his fan base from people who like his music, but see him as a pretentious white guy, and his fanbase as an extension of that.

now i havent been in the ww fandom v long, but given the depths i have gone in it i feel at least somewhat comfortable saying im not sure exactly where this impression is coming from.

i see him writing very eclectic erratic and idiosyncratic songs, and people having a variety of interpretations of them, and i can see how that might come off as pretentiousness, especially bc some of his fans really do cross a line in terms of a gatekeepy parasocial attachment to will

but i haven't really seen anyone going THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO INTERPRET THIS SONG YOURE STUPID IF YOU DONT SEE IT or smth to that effect

i acknowledge tho that there is also some legitimate background to this perception, bc what i have seen is:

-will playing characters live and joking w his audience in ways that are often either easily misinterpreted or clearly just someone with extreme mental health issues

-will being maybe mildly annoyed at how his fans often... over analyze his songs and upset when they overstep boundaries, and sometimes expressing that in non ideal ways.

-wills fans being incredibly obsessed with him and his music, which to the outside observer can be annoying i think (but honestly this to me reads more as a bunch of nd ppl w who have hyperfixated/have a special interest related to him)

-the lyrics to wills songs all being very confusing, especially the farther back in his discography you go, and his fans acting like their meanings are obvious on a first glance even when they arent (which is all the time)

-will pulling references from sources that can be seen as pretentious and off putting, esp when coming from a white guy (taoism, it's always sunny, modern psychology, 'classic' films, name dropping authors of philosophy, etc.)

-wills stances often being contrarian and often (especially on first glance) seemingly being that way purely for the sake of being contrarian

-will explaining his stances in fancy and grandiloquent language (a note on this one in particular: i think of this as not really a sign of being pretentious, potentially bc of my own struggles w it. i often accidentally use a bunch of complicated words and descriptions that wouldn't make sense to me if i was the one hearing them, not because im trying to be exclusionary or come off as ✨intelligent✨, but bc it was explained to me in those terms and i went through the process of studying it in that terminology and being told i had to use that terminology, and now im too dumb to translate what im thinking back into language that's actually comprehensible)

but i feel that a lot of these things are really overstated in how often they happen. by and large, i think a lot of this response is a misreading of the facts that his fanbase is really passionate to a somewhat obsessive degree, will is very passionate about the things he likes and the things he believes in, and both will and the majority of his fan base are pretty mentally unstable and/or neurodivergent.

from what ive seen, will isn't trying to be pretentious in any way and is legitimately just expressing himself. his fanbase despite their occasional issues are ultimately pretty much just very passionate people. and also he does not hate them! to quote the man himself

"guys, i don't hate you! stop telling people i hate you! stop doing that; i like you people! 99.999 percent of you are really good, and 99.999 percent of the people who piss me off are just going through it! i don't know where people are getting this idea the whole like 'will wood hates his fandom' yeah i know i said i hate you all in that song but... you know, it's a song! i like you guys."

if you have counter info/arguments though id love to see them. im always looking for new perspectives, and as i said ive *just* started listening to will wood and looking into his lore. i couldve totally missed smth and id love to hear it if i have.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! Love your blog :)

Do you think Louis being pimp will be brought up? Because I felt like it was forgotten by both the show and fandom. We had iconic confession scene done incredibly by Jacob where he acknowledges his faults against women, then he gets turned and proceeds to be a pimp.

I always felt like this and Louis at the present being billionaire in Dubai and both of these aspects being swept under rug in Louis' narration is extremely important thing that will be addressed in further seasons. Do you think Claudia knows that Louis was pimp? I can't imagine Louis sharing it with her on his own.

With her being aged up and being object of desire of no one but teens and perverts and of course being survivor of SA, her being orphan, Louis exploiting women sexually paints even more stark contrast.

Thank you for answers!

Hey!

Glad you like :)

I don't think that it's been forgotten, tbh (though it is not often brought up in fandom, granted).

But the show will surely come back to this before all is said and done. Dubai, built on slave labor and gold, is definitely not a coincidence as being chosen for the modern part of the show. And what Louis may wish to hide from Claudia (because I agree, he probably wished to keep that part of his past from her) could soon become a moot point when there will be a whole coven of vampires who can just read his mind.(*)

I'm not sure though if that past will be actually used against him next season, but it will still come up, of that I'm very sure. Because Armand's past will call back to this... and Claudia's SA will call back to Lestat's. And Louis still pays "whores" in Dubai... blood whores, to put it plainly. Daniel did call himself his whore as well, which is also no coincidence, and, given some events of the Devil's Minion arc might yet call back there, too. And who knows what "The Farm" actually is... We'll see.

(*) I agree that Claudia's fate shines a very painful light on Louis' previous occupation, but I feel like she probably knew about it. Like... New Orleans might be a big city, but Louis was an institution. For a while. He already told her that she came after his part of Storyville burning, and Claudia, being this clever and inquisitive girl that she was then, most surely went and investigated. We see later how she educates herself, chooses to learn languages, read up on things. There is no reason to suspect she didn't dig into finding out the truth about her parents, her guardians, too.

And I mean, given the later diary entries (that will still come to be) she grew to hate them both.

Given the changes the show made and that you refer to here - that can very well be a big part of it, too. Some of it bleeds through, imho, when she leaves in ep5, she throws it into Louis' face then, but that was before the assault. I bet the bitterness after was quite a different thing then.

Abuse - including sexual abuse - will be a continuous thing throughout the show.

In the books Lestat has been raped into darkness, Armand was sold as a sex slave. Both of these events have been already hinted at in season 1.

Louis being a pimp fits into that very well in a really uncomfortable way. I said it in another post, he still owned people, profited of them, and as @cbrownjc reminded me of, the show even gave him the background of actually being descendant of the plantation owners.

I absolutely believe that the show will hook into this aspect and the inherent abuse aspect for all characters.

Louis' might have been... let's say put aside for now, but I would pay real money that it has not been forgotten, because ultimately vampires maim and rape their prey, right? To death.

I think they will address this, again and again, over all the season. And it will be very uncomfortable and harrowing at times.

[genericdragon]

Hello! Since my art and designs seem to be getting more attention recently(??????) and stuff like this has come up a few times, I thought I'd lay down some ground rules about my art and characters.

Art Rules:

Generally if you want to use my art anywhere PLEASE ASK ME FIRST!!! I'll most likely say yes I just want to know about it. If you're reposting it on a different platform or sharing it on Discord or whatever I'd also appreciate if you could tell me what other people are saying about it or send me a link to the post. Also free to use as pfps or whatever as long as you ask first. and unless I say otherwise (there are some things I don't want my name attached to yknow) ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO CREDIT ME!!! ("genericdragon on Tumblr" will suffice). If it's art that I made specifically for you you're free to use it anywhere without asking just remember to credit me.

Please don't edit my art in any way, shape, or form, aside from maybe cutting out the background or whatever. (including drawing on top of it, changing colors, etc)

You're allowed to trace/heavily reference my art for practice (don't know why you'd want to tho) but DO NOT POST IT ANYWHERE OR USE IT FOR ANYTHING ELSE PLEASE.

Unless we're very close friends/mutuals do not expect free art from me. You can commission me on artistree or follow me on artfight (<- you are VERY likely to get free art this way.) I might do requests but only if it's something that I'd want to draw even if no one requested it. (no fetish baiting. I know it when I see it.)

Character rules:

If you want to use my exact humanization as your headcanon for that character or use them in your AU then be my guest! Again, just make sure to credit me for the design, and please tag me in anything you do with them :)

That being said, there are a few story related things that I'm not comfortable sharing with other AUs, but it's usually stuff that I don't post on Tumblr so you probably don't know abt it anyway. Just ask me if you're unsure. However I will also ask that you don't create an entirely new backstory for them if you're putting them in your own AU.

I can't stop you from taking inspiration from my designs but please don't just change a few things from my design and call it your own. They're not technically my original characters but I am still very attached to my humanizations and I'm not comfortable with them being modified like that. I'm glad that ppl like my designs but I don't want them to run too far away from me until they're not mine anymore yknow?

You are always always ALWAYS welcome to draw my character designs, especially when interacting with your own or other people's :) Tag me in any art you make of them!! I want to see it!!!

I made another post about it but self-shipping is allowed (as long as it's not a teenager who's way younger than you) just make sure to abide by the rest of these rules.

Also drawing nsfw of my 18+ characters is fine. (Unless I explicitly say they're a teenager or they are known to be a teenager in canon you can assume they're an adult) You can show me or not idc. Just don't send it to me without warning I don't wanna be jumpscared

Other Stuff:

I do not control the hyperfixation. If you followed me for one specific fandom/character that I don't post about often I can't guarantee that you'll see any more of it. Portal is the one thing you can ALWAYS expect me to come back to but the other stuff just comes and goes. Not saying that I'll NEVER come back to it again just don't hold your breath. Feel free to unfollow or block any tags you're not interested in, I don't take any offense to it.

Please do not reblog any art older than like... 3 or 4 years. I'll leave it up for now but if you reblog it I WILL delete it, sorry.

Continuing from that point, this is my blog and I will delete things as I see fit. Please do not download and repost my art if I delete it. If it's gone then I don't want it to be public anymore, please respect my wishes.

I won't throw a hissy fit if you like art but don't reblog it, I totally get that some things just aren't for everyone, but reblogging really does help a lot and I appreciate it :)

Please don't feel intimidated by me! Apparently some people think of me as a Big Scary Popular Artist and I have no idea where that impression came from but I'm not. I'm just a weirdo girl making my silly little drawings. Also PLEASE don't say anything to the effect of "your art is so good it makes me feel bad" or using my art to put yourself down. I have Kind Of Complicated feelings about my art so when people do this it really messes me up. Just don't, it makes both of us feel so much worse.

Asks are always welcome, although I do try to draw art in response to asks but sometimes I just don't get around to it, or it's for a fandom I'm not currently interested in. (Sorry to that one person who sent me an INSIDE related ask that's just been sitting in my inbox for several months)

I do have an nsfw blog, you can dm me for the url, although I may choose to withhold it from you for any reason. (I'm shy 👉👈)

Other than that just uhhhhh be reasonable treat me like a person respect my boundaries etc. I'll update this if needed but this is the most important stuff for now I think

[radiaurapple]

for the ask writer game:

numbers 3, 11, 14, 43, and 56 :)))))

omg buckle up this is gonna be long (also going to answer thru the lens of Lucid Dreams, sorry Mr. Shingles lol)

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter / fic

I always start with an outline! For a long-form work like Lucid Dreams the outlining process is a little like the underpainting in an oil painting — the purpose is to set the tone and arrange the major shapes in the composition to ensure that it’ll come together into something pleasing. The outline starts with broad strokes and becomes more detailed with each pass. With Lucid Dreams I began with the idea of opening on Alastor meeting a human Lucifer in New Orleans, only for the reader to later realize that the story is not an AU — that both of them are still in the hotel. The next major plot tentpoles were Hollis, Lucifer’s ability, their deal, and Alastor’s trip to Heaven.

When I begin each chapter, I always have a pretty clear idea of what I need to accomplish and how, so it’s just a matter of filling in details. I have a playlist for the fic I always listen to while I’m writing — music really helps me to hold the tone in my head while I’m working. 

Ideally I’d write the entire story before posting anything so I can set up and follow through on story beats, but that isn’t as fun, lol. For Lucid Dreams I write chapters at least 2 weeks in advance, which accomplishes a couple of things:

it makes it possible for me to maintain a consistent update schedule when I’m busy (I even updated Lucid Dreams during my cross-country move!)

it allows me move beats around and set up references within that window so the story feels cohesive

it lets each chapter marinate in my head for a little while before posting, which is super helpful for revision

This amount of lead time has worked pretty well for Lucid Dreams — there’s only a couple of things I would change if I could:

I realized after Ch. 10 that I wish I had made Lucifer’s human eyes green instead of blue (like Eden 🥺)

There’s a scene I really want to add to Ch. 2. I still might sneak it in there if I have time lol!!!

11. Link your three favorite fics right now

how to choose 😭

All time / any fandom:

Running On Air by eleventy7 | Harry Potter (trans women are women) - I am not exaggerating when I say this fic is a perfect execution of the form. It is shockingly good. It easily stands alongside the best novels I’ve ever read. Lucid Dreams is directly inspired by this fic and there’s a little reference to it in Ch. 7. 

Astra Inclinant by eleventy7 | Harry Potter (trans women are women) 

saltwater said by gimmeshellder | Steven Universe

Radioapple:

Strange Appetites by Gotllphi

my kingdom come undone by literalmetaphor

the Wicked Game series by Trashdemonx — I’ve gotta mention this one because this author honestly might be the best smut writer I have encountered in more than a decade of reading fanfiction — I will absolutely be returning to their work to study it whenever I find myself writing a scene with any kind of physical intimacy.

14. How do you write emotional scenes? Do you ever feel what the characters feel? Do you draw from personal experiences?

I am honestly just a very emotional person, lol! I am formerly religious and I often leverage that background for Lucid Dreams, which is certainly cathartic — but in general I don’t draw as much on personal experience for Lucid Dreams as I do for my original work. I have never been to New Orleans, and I am not the Devil. That said, there are elements of the characters’ internal worlds that I see reflected in myself which helps me to write them!

43. Do you take sadistic joy in whumping your characters, or are you more the “If you hurt them I would kill everyone and then myself” kind of person?

When I was younger I always pulled my punches with characters — I’m a very empathetic person and I struggled to bring characters (and myself, and readers) down into dark places. But my best artistic work has always arisen from a kind of feral impulse to capture and reflect pain — it is actually just like the description of Alastor’s second kill in chapter 9. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to understand life as a cycle of making and unmaking, losing and gaining — pain lays the foundation for healing, and that cycle is an essential aspect of the human experience. So I’m no longer afraid of taking my characters all the way down. It certainly isn’t sadistic for me, but it is cathartic, and it makes my work a far better reflection of life. 

56. What’s something about your writing you pride yourself on? 

omg why is this so hard 💀💀

I am a storyteller professionally — I started writing Lucid Dreams after a work-related trauma left me at the lowest I have ever been artistically. This story (and all the nice comments I’ve received about it 🥺) has helped me recover, which is why the prose in Ch. 10 is so much stronger than the prose in Ch. 1. But I’m still not incredibly happy with it, which probably speaks to my own perfectionism more than anything lol. 

So what do I feel Lucid Dreams does well? In the show, we really only see Lucifer and Alastor’s characters at a surface level, and I feel Lucid Dreams is successful at giving them both a complex, realistic, and relatable inner world. I’m also honestly shocked by how tightly constructed and elegant the plot came out — I’ve gotten way more skilled at constructing long-form plots in the past few years and I think that really comes through here.

thanks so much for sending this ask, I had a lot of fun answering!!! ❤️

[house-of-lovin]

To my dear house-of-lovin:

I have a series of questions about Legally Binding bear with me, this is all merely speculation and possibly too much all at once so I apologize in advance.

Cherry-pick from this ask if you have to!ᵕ̈

How young was R when she’d been forced to start acting and singing?

I read somewhere on your page that you answered early teens! And you referenced Zendaya so I’m assuming she got her big break at possibly 14 and before that moderately small acting gigs?

R definitely seems to have a passion for music but how often does she get to produce?

She also seems like the type to make music more for herself than to share with the public given her history, I think not only something she really enjoys but uses as an outlet to cope with things.

Can you give us a few songs as reference to what music R’s produced?

I’m interested in listening to them from R’s POV! Personally, I thought of Never Felt So Alone by Labrinyth. I have no fucking clue at all what song R’s creating right now and I’m assuming since it’s for Coachella it has to be upbeat but might I suggest thinking about Good News by Mac Miller. Pfft or even The Spins by Mac Miller, fun, cocky and memorable like R.

Is there someone else in particular besides her family that made her start to think of everything she does in public from a ‘business standpoint’?

What character in the MCU does R play?

For me the first character that came to mind is possibly someone from the Spider-Verse! I mean why not bend some truths and pretend there’s one Spider-Verse comic that fits R’s description? I think it would align with the fact that R’s been an actor since her teen years and by now if a few movies have been released; her Spider-Verse character has got to be aligned with her age!

Hmm so I’ve read through someone else’s asks and you mentioned not having enough time to look up tv shows and movies aligning with R’s age. I was thinking for some of them, why not just have R’s character in said projects be someone that doesn’t necessarily exist in the current adaptation but is popular anyways?

For other fandoms you say? Is what you wrote still lurking on those platforms I’m curious! Your daydreaming keeps us supporters taken care of.

What kinda music do you play/listen to? I listen to just about everything under the sun except Heavy Metal, too much shouting and I’m already losing my hearing as is lmao.

(I love to trespass abandoned building/areas, for the first date just run when I do and we’ll be good but that’s at night, can and do you like swimming? If you say yes then during the day we’re exploring open waters/pretty nature on a jet ski (safe waters dw)

Am I possibly also picking the first activity to be be held? Ahem HEARSAY you can’t prove that)

Cordially,

Specter

I think yes early teens like 13 or 14 possibly. I think somewhere in my head Justin Bieber was lowkey a reference for R's character.

R gets her big break as a teen and does roles for smaller movies that gain her critical acclaim until major studios recognize her. (Sorry to Hailee but maybe Edge of Seventeen as one of those movies LOL) Before def small roles. (Idk what good movies have a 13 or 14 year old soooo)

I don't have a list of songs for R but with all the asks its def building. I'd love to hear what you guys think? But like I answered before, I see slow & modern R&B. Like SZA (cussing songs LOL), Frank Ocean, Omar Apollo, Yebba. BUT OMG I LOVE MAC.

I feel like with R's family background & starting so young it made her grow up faster than most. So I think over the years, she's just built a wall around herself around people in the industry giving her that 'business standpoint' mentality. I mean come on, there's no way she's had a whole career w/out getting burned by someone. It happens more often than ppl think.

I think her MCU role is def a spider-verse role too! Maybe there's a version of her a Spider-Gwen in the MCU movies LOL IDK.

There's a fic or two on AO3 for a totally unrelated fandom but its a couple years old so idk its kinda cringe LOL. (I also have a Kate Bishop unfinished series that I've just never posted LOL)

I play the guitar so I listen to a whole variety of genres! I like/am open to most music except heavy metal too lol. But I love R&B, Soul, Jazz, Rap. I like older music too so I listen to a lot of 50s, 60s and 70s. EVERYTHING. I WANT TO LISTEN TO EVERY SONG EVER MADE LOL. (but same my hearing is shit lol)

I CAN swin (somewhat) I just can't tread water (ik ik disgraceful) but jet ski you say👀

(I'm indecisive af so I need ppl to plan things for me LOL)

ENJOYED ANSWERING THIS <3

[supermario-supersideblog]

My Thoughts on the Mario Movie

I just opened this blog and I'm stuck bored at the laundromat, so now seems like a great time to ramble. Will be getting into spoiler territory.

Just to give background, I literally grew up on this franchise. SMB3 was the first game I ever beat. My favorite cartoon was The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (if you can't tell by the blog URL). I started to write at 9 years old after stumbling onto a Mario fansite and being inspired. This was my introduction to fandom.

When I initially saw the movie, I had mixed feelings. I was floored when they acknowledged and even expanded upon the original story of how the brothers made it to the Mushroom Kingdom. Yes, they're just some guys from the real world, that's the point! They're just some guys!

For the negatives: The pacing is awful. They don't take long enough to pause on any one moment or expand on any point made. They immediately jump to the next thing each time. My boy Luigi barely got any screen time. The voice acting wasn't bad, but it wasn't great (but I can look past that). I'm still not a fan of the final fight taking place in Brooklyn because then that raises a lot of questions that aren't answered (How do the citizens of Earth react to a massive turtle dragon attacking the city??? Did this get news coverage??? Are we just handwaving this??? What????).

As for the positives on my initial viewing: Loved Bowser. They nailed his personality. I knew they would the moment they announced that Jack Black would be voicing him. I loved every moment he was on screen. Zero complaints. The casting of Charlie Day as Luigi was also perfect in my book (even if that one was more controversial for some reason?). It just... Fits. Anya-Taylor Joy needed better direction, but her voice worked well enough and you can tell she really enjoyed her role from the previews. Chris Pratt was certainly there but not as bad as I was expecting.

And the references! God. The references. The movie really looked at its older audience and said "Hey. This is for you too." (I'm hoping the blue toad with glasses was supposed to reference Toadbert, but that may have just been me hoping.)

But, as I said, my feelings were mixed.

Initially.

But then I thought about the movie more and more.

What's important in the Mario franchise is that the CORE is there. I'm not talking "giant turtle kidnap princess saved by plumber the end." I mean the brothers. It's Super Mario BROTHERS.

This was my biggest fear going into the theatre. Mario and Luigi actively care for each other in the games, first and foremost. They bicker sometimes. Luigi can get a bit jealous in some of the games. But in playing the games, it's explicitly clear: They care for each other. They'll protect each other. They'll risk their lives for each other. In the Mario&Luigi games especially, they're not afraid to comfort each other and show affection for each other. "Toxic masculinity" does not exist here.

My fear going in, especially Chris Pratt as lead, would be that this would be outright abandoned. This movie was produced here in the USA, and us USAmericans tend to be HIGHLY touch-averse, to the point of it being cultural taboo. It would have been far too easy for them to ignore or change their relationship to the more 'typical' depiction you see of brothers in media.

But.... no.

THEY NAILED IT. ABSOLUTELY NAILED IT!

The most important part of the series! THEY NAILED IT!!!

Mario and Luigi's interactions are PERFECT in the movie! That's them! As they should be! Constantly reassuring each other before they're separated! Mario standing up for and protecting Luigi since they were kids! Luigi insisting that Mario isn't bringing him down like their dad says! When they reunite! THE FOREHEAD TOUCH! They're on the verge of tears! They only care that the other is safe even though they're in the middle of a massive battle!

The pacing is awful. The voice acting is okay. I still don't like the final battle taking place in Brooklyn without showing consequences. But in the end, that doesn't actually matter to me! This is going to be an introduction to the franchise for so many people! So many new fans, so many kids, so many people who will grow to love it as I do, and the most important part is THERE! The movie is far from perfect, but that doesn't matter to me as much now!

Hopefully we get more of the brothers in the next movie (There's DEFINITELY a next movie). I am actively excited for what the first movie brought and can't wait to see it expanded. It's perfect for what it needed to be.

(Also Donkey Kong's "WELL YOUR DAD'S RIGHT" is the funniest subversion of that trope I've ever seen and had me in tears in the theater, gotta give credit where credit is due.)

[depressedhatakekakashi]

E, L and Z for the first game ask and from the Fandom ask game 2, 3, 7 and 18.. sorry I'm a bit greedy XD

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

Trashbin Sensei

Ok you're going to hate me for this, but I have this headcannon that because Kakashi's such a lil shit sometimes, and because Obito told him to 'crawl back into his trashbin' and I think Gai should have lost his shit on Obito for that

But Kakashi agrees and is also grade A dork/troll man

So I had a headcannon that someone said that to Kakashi once and Gai got mad at them, but Kakashi just...did it. He crawled into an empty (clean) trash bin and stared at Gai from it

and it became a running gag where whenever they saw each other Kakashi would point at a trashbin and before Gai could stop him he'd jump in

he made the mistake of doing this in front of Gai's genin once and Tenten referred to him forever more as 'Trashbin-Sensei'

L- Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.

Shikamaru is genuinely smart and very dedicated to his friends and I can respect TF out of him for that.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Sakura is a fun character (to me) because she's imperfect. Like there's things I would love to have seen differently (Like her crush on Sasuke either going away or actually evolving into being genuine feelings instead of what seems like a shallow crush that continues forward and never gets properly addressed by her)

I don't like 'Perfect Bamp Sakura' because that makes a character boring to me. I don't want her to be stronger than everyone or the best friend/lover who never makes mistakes

like every other character I want her to be flawed and the fact she is flawed is what makes me love her as a character.

(it's not fan-related but i couldn't think of anything and delegated a whole rant about something else before coming up with this)

2. Favorite episode/ chapter/ etc from Naruto

Honestly the Chunin exams arc because you actually get to see the background characters in action while also having this big problem that they all have to deal with.

You have Neji exposing the Hyuga clan's BS which is beautiful.

You get Ino and Sakura coming to a head and knocking each other out (which shows just how much Sakura grew tbh. Ino should have had that win in the bag but Sakura's stubbornness and new skills pulled her through in the end)

Shino being RUTHLESS which was delightful to see. Like, the character he destroyed was just as ruthless and would have killed Shino had he gotten the opportunity, so Shino getting to show his talent while taking out a genuine threat to himself and his classmates (this dude would have also killed sakura, naruto and sasuke if other's hadn't intervened) was just delightful.

Plus it's the arc that introduces Gai and gives me that beautiful energetic man who seems the complete opposite of Kakashi but compliments him so damn well. that automatically win's top spot for that lol.

3. If you had to pick a character to date from Naruto who would it be

Hmmmm Gai? Sweet, Popular, would let me spoil him. I could date Gai. Plus he has all the energy to match me and perk me up when I'm feeling down.

7. Least favourite character from Naruto

Orochimaru.

18. Brotp from Naruto

Naruto and Sakura, but also Lee and Naruto and Gai and Yamato. Oh and Shizune and Kakashi I love how they work together and how Shizune teases him in the simplest way by always referring to him as 'Lord sixth' even after he asks her to drop the 'Lord'

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[rainbowsky]

I don't know if you've already talked about this here but as I'm new to the fandom I'll send this message anyway. What do you think about the Japan theory? it seems real to me, all the pieces fit together, but I also see people who don't agree with the theory claiming that it doesn't make sense... What do you think? I like the way you think and it would be nice to see you talking about it haha, if you have already talked about this theory you can attach your opinion in my message and I would appreciate it.

Thanks for your kind words, Anon, glad you're enjoying my blog!

I haven't done a post specifically about the Japan trip before, I don't think, so let's put on our 🤡 wigs, shall we?

Standard disclaimer:

This is all total fan fiction and CPN. No one really knows what happened, and all theories are just speculation. It can be fun to explore all theories and get a variety of perspectives, and I encourage you to explore all of them. Don't take what I say too seriously, it's just my own thoughts; no more or less valid than anyone else's.

For those who aren't aware what "the Japan trip" is referring to, the most comprehensive breakdown of that CPN can be found here. There's also a very detailed breakdown of the Weibo posts referencing their names here. I'm not going to go into any of the descriptions or background here, so if you're unfamiliar then I'd recommend reading those posts first.

My favorite thing about GG in Japan is all the amazing photos he takes when he is there. Some of my absolute favorite photos of him of all time. Here's a Twitter thread where most of them can be found.

My CPN

I can't say I have any particular 'set in stone' view on this trip, or even on the timeline of their relationship. I go back and forth a fair bit in my mind about it all. Sometimes I like the theory that they built their relationship up during filming - basically what's outlined in my timeline - and other times I feel like they were probably together long before filming started.

Character bleed

One thing I personally don't connect with is the theory that GG wasn't sure whether his feelings were for DD or for LWJ, and so he needed a break to sort it all out and be clear about which one he loved before moving forward with DD. The idea that GG experienced that degree of character bleed just doesn't resonate with me. I talked about that in a bit more detail in this post.

Ultimately I think it's far more likely that GG used his feelings for DD to help him get into character, than the other way around (finding that his character's feelings for LWJ drew him to falling for DD). GG is an expert at tapping into emotions. He was sobbing and in tears during table reads for the Untamed. I think his attraction for - and perhaps even love for - DD probably made it a lot easier for him to connect with WWX and his love for LWJ.

I talk about it all in more detail in the post I linked.

So anyway, character bleed is something GG clearly experienced, but I suspect it was probably more about WWX and all the torment he went through than it was about his feelings for DD.

One thing is certain: He really got attached to WWX. He said so many, many times in interviews and also in his Weibo post about WWX. He really connected with the character and went through a fairly intense process of moving on from the role.

So much to let go of...

My CPN on that is that the attachment is not just about WWX, it's about the entire summer, the experience of filming with that special group of people, having all that time filming a romantic role with DD, being able to spend so much time together, and - for me I think one of the most important things - getting to play a queer role, possibly the only queer role he'll ever get to play in his entire career.

If we believe GG is queer - and if we believe he's in a relationship with DD then we have to accept that GG is queer - then we must also understand that there are a lot of feelings/experiences that come with being queer in a world that is often hostile to queerness.

We must consider the likelihood that the role held a special place in his heart, in part because it was a queer role. We must consider that the experience of filming that summer might have been special for him, in part because he was spending so much time in what comes across to me as a fairly openly queer-friendly environment.

Around people who clearly were onboard with intentionally telling a queer story of romance, who had the intent to get that story across in whatever way they could, and champion that story even though there was so much uncertainty about whether it would air, and how much of their hard work would get cut out during censorship reviews.

This has to be a fairly rare experience on a filming set in China. To be surrounded by people who are supportive of queer stories and queer identities, who are open to and championing of love between two men. Who were fine with GG and DD being so flirtatious and sweet with each other, lewd with each other, etc. so openly on set.

I can imagine that walking away from an experience like that - and going back out into the big world where things were decidedly not like that - it had to be so difficult. It might have felt like walking out of a supportive environment where he could be himself and be free, to having to cram himself back into the closet and go back to heavily heteronormative reality.

So GG would have been letting go of a lot of things, sorting through a lot of emotions.

The character he had grown so connected to, and all the intense emotional experiences WWX went through - which GG had to go through as well in order to play that character

The supportive queer-friendly environment

Being able to spend so much time with DD and be openly close and friendly/flirty with him

The surely incredibly special experience of getting to work with DD on a project

All the daily routines that he'd likely become accustomed to during filming

Re-configuring his mind to return to heteronormative reality after experiencing something so unique and meaningful

I think if I was in GG's place, I would have felt utterly bereft to be leaving such a world and going back to reality. He talked about 'waking up from a dream', and that makes a lot of sense to me. That entire summer must have felt like a dream. In many ways, one that most people wouldn't feel great about waking up from.

Coming back down to earth

I don't think we know for sure whether the trip was taken explicitly to help him get away from it all and readjust to 'real life' again, but it would definitely have helped in that respect. Spending time with friends, doing 'regular' things, would have helped to soften the landing when coming back down to earth. Especially if those friends know and accept him for who he is. I imagine I'd need something like that right about then.

After all, he would have to deal with a variety of issues moving forward. His next projects, promo for the Untamed, management issues, his career direction... The time he had carved out to work on the Untamed - and to live in that dream - had lapsed, and now he would have to go back to all of ... that stuff.

So I think the trip would have been an excellent opportunity for him to decompress and readjust after such an intense experience.

What about their relationship?

When it comes to their relationship, I have a couple of different perspectives, depending on whether they built up their relationship from a flirty friendship during the course of filming (such as aligns with my timeline post), or whether they'd been together for quite a while before filming.

If they built things up during filming

If they had just built up their relationship through the course of filming, then I think it's likely GG needed to sort out in his mind where he wanted things to go from there.

Not because of any confusion about character bleed, but rather because it's one thing to have a relationship with someone when you're 'in a dream' and free to spend a lot of time together and be yourselves, and it's another thing to try to maintain that over longer distances and in a completely different setting.

I highly doubt he ever seriously considered a breakup. I believe he already knew he was in love with DD (that much seems clear from what we saw of the BTS). He probably just needed to think over what he wanted to do about it.

And by, "what he wanted to do about it" I mean, how far does he want to go with things? Does he want to continue dating, try to be casual and secretive about it, or does he want to commit more seriously, come out to close family and bring DD into his life in a deeper way?

I think if that timeline is correct, then the answer to that self-reflection GG might have done is pretty clear. He seems to have decided to take things deeper with DD, and make him a more central part of his life.

If they were already together

It's also possible they were already seriously involved before they started filming. There are many signs that's possible, which I won't get into here, but if you're familiar with the Devil's Timeline stuff, you'll know some of what I'm talking about.

They also behaved at the booting ceremony and in some of the earlier few hours of filming, a bit like strangers (this dissolved rapidly and that's part of why I think it might have been a ruse on their part), in ways that are reminiscent of their behavior at the infamous Weibo night. Because we have that behavior from Weibo night and also from the Produce 101 taping, it's easy to compare those events to the Untamed booting ceremony, table read and early filming and see some possible similarities.

If you really want to go galaxy clown brain on it, you can even compare their behavior during the XNINE Day Day Up episode in 2017 to some of that, and see glimpses of the possibility they were faking a lack of familiarity even as far back as then.

EDIT: More on all that in my Devil's Timeline post.

And if that timeline is correct, then I think the Japan trip takes on an entirely different meaning than what I outlined above.

If that timeline is correct, then the trip was probably nothing more than GG decompressing from the filming, processing everything that happened - maybe even processing how that experience changed or deepened his relationship with DD - and preparing for the next steps/stages in his career.

He would likely have also been coming to terms with going back to the closet after being free to show and be more of himself, more openly during filming. It's even possible he thought a lot about whether going back into the closet was even possible after the freedom he'd experienced. It's possible he might have even considered coming out (however hypothetical it might have been in his mind).

As far as DD is concerned, in this timeline I doubt there was much GG really needed to ponder. DD was probably still there with him in the background, supporting him through that trip/process by being a steady, loving presence even from a distance. Which I'm certain DD excels at. He's just that kind of guy.

I think that regardless of which timeline is correct, and regardless of what GG was reflecting on during the course of the trip, he would have undoubtedly needed to separate himself from WWX mentally and emotionally. He would have needed to reflect on what direction he wanted his life/career to take moving forward. And he almost certainly needed to come to terms with going back into a more closeted reality.

I really believe that summer had that big of an impact on him.

And as I said in the notes for this post:

I really believe that summer likely influenced their apparent decision to make their relationship an open secret, and not really be in the closet at all in the backstage world of entertainment. I think it became something they didn't want to compromise on.

Things that I really don't buy into at all:

That GG dumped DD before he left for the trip

That GG changed his phone number or cut off communication with DD, and DD nagged everyone for his new contact info

That GG ever seriously considered ending things with DD

It's of course, impossible to really know what happened, but that pretty much covers most of my thoughts on the trip.

Like I said, there are a lot of different theories and perspectives. No one is right or wrong about anything. We cannot know the facts of what happened. We should all feel free to explore our own thoughts on all of this and come to our own CPN conclusions.

The "I Miss You" hat

One thing I forgot to mention is that DD wore his "I Miss You" cap every day while GG was away in Japan, and then stopped wearing it when GG returned from his trip. There's a Twitter thread about it here.

Some fans view that as evidence that they had broken up while GG was away, but I disagree. It hadn't been long since they'd finished filming, and of course DD would be missing GG after they'd spent so much time together.

That's something I didn't get into in this post, because it's about GG's Japan trip, but a lot of the experiences GG might have been having - which I listed above - would have been similar for DD. He would have been going through the same sense of loss on many fronts. No longer being in such a queer friendly environment. No longer being able to spend as much time with GG. Etc. etc.

That's the context in which I view the hat, but everyone is free to find their own CPN on all of this.

[tea-and-la]

Aang as Zuko’s “Found-Sibling”

so i kind of alluded to it on my previous post but if zuko sees his relationship with any of the gaang as a foil to his sibling relationship with azula, it’s aang. 

in the season 1 finale, zuko compares the two directly:

zuko:  I finally have you, but I can't get you home because of this blizzard. There's always something. Not that you would understand. You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a Firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don't need luck, though. I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am.

here zuko makes a lot of assumptions. he is implying that because aang is a prodigy like azula, everything must come easy for him. we as the audience know this isn’t true (he doesn’t know aang’s background at this point), but it does speak to his insecurities in terms of his sister (foreshadowing to his season 2 interactions with azula.) 

contrast that quote with what zuko says to katara in the season 1 finale:

zuko: you rise with the moon, i rise with the sun.

he sees katara as evenly skilled as himself. a match, but with opposite bending elements. and that’s even reflected in the way that katara wins their match at night, but zuko wins their fight when it’s day time.

zuko (especially in season 1) sees azula as superior to him, someone who he’ll never catch up to in skill because she’s a prodigy. in contrast, he’s seen katara when she first started to bend and made mistakes (barely able to form a water whip, and the time she accidentally froze sokka). zuko has seen and acknowledged her growth throughout the show and he sees her as someone who has also had to struggle and work hard to get to her current bending capacity.

and like @sokkastyles​ already said: 

Aang is the younger prodigy who he resents for being better than him in the beginning, the one who is imbued with power and authority by birth that he lacks, the “lucky” one.

continuing on, i wanna talk about crossroads of destiny. the zk scene again emphasizes how similar zuko sees katara to himself (not azula.)

he is calm, open, and vulnerable throughout these scene with katara. he almost allows himself to forget they’re on opposite sides because of how much they have in common. but once aang comes in:

there’s that same anger and resentment he has towards azula. 

i’ve seen some people refer to the crossroads of destiny as zuko some hidden meaning of choosing between “sisters,” but i disagree. it’s framed as a decision between azula and aang, and for zuko, it’s supposed to be an impossible choice. 

so we see him go after aang with an uncontrolled intensity that is so different from the brief peace he was able to achieve with iroh in ba sing se. and it’s easy to imagine that this is because he’s taking his frustration that he can’t express towards azula, out on aang, as a substitute. 

we see lingering bits of zuko’s resentment towards aang, even after he joins the gaang. it’s unintentional, but from the firebending masters, we can see how he initially still holds onto that insecurity a bit.

when he initially realizes he lost his firebending he tries the forms over and over, while aang is just chilling:

aang: that one felt kinda hot

zuko: don’t patronize me!

aang: sorry sifu hotman

zuko: and stop calling me that!

even though aang was being genuine, it’s easy to imagine that zuko is connecting this moment back to times with azula growing up. especially because we know how much his ability to fire bend is tied up into his self worth. 

he’s given the chance to “prove” himself by teaching someone who he considers superior in skill to himself (aang, just off virtue of being the avatar), and when he fails, that rears up the resentment again. 

but then, their dynamic shifts after zuko admits he doesn’t want to rely on hate and anger anymore. zuko has several moments where he encourages aang (who he was previously resentful towards) because he sees that aang needs it. he’s able to realize that aang isn’t a prodigy in the sense that he thinks he’s superior to anyone else. and he’s also able to see that aang has his own insecurities as well, as they get to know each other more on their trip. he has phrases like: 

zuko: you can do it. i know you can. you’re a strong kid.

aang: [Turning to Zuko.] We could turn back now. We've already learned more about fire than we'd hoped. [Aang shows Zuko his flame and gives a weak smile.]

zuko: No, we're seeing this through to the end.

and aang’s face as a result: 

so in a sense, zuko is able to be needed as a big brother. and to offer support because aang is unsure about himself. 

also this scene reeks of sibling energy:

but anyways, i think aang/zuko’s found-sibling relationship foils azula/zuko’s sibling relationship because even though they start off with resentment for similar reasons, his dynamic with aang changes.

i see people say that the reason they think katara is zuko’s “surrogate sibling” is because she provides him with care and kindness, unlike azula. the same could be said about aang.

whereas azula has made it clear that she doesn’t respect zuko’s bending, aang values and respects zuko for his skills (even when he was struggling at the beginning of the firebending masters.) aang is able to reciprocally affirm zuko as well:

aang: i don’t care what everyone else says about you. you’re pretty smart!

i also find the last few lines after they meet with the dragons to be significant:

zuko: That's why my firebending was so weak before. Because for so many years, hunting you [Turns toward Aang as screen zooms out to show Aang.] was my drive ... it was my purpose. [Aang turns toward Zuko as well.] So when I joined you, I lost sight of my inner fire. But now, I have a new drive. [Cut to Zuko's face as screen zooms in.] I have to help you defeat my father and restore balance to the world.

i’d like to think that part of losing/letting go of his anger/resentment in part was because of the new relationship he was able to build with aang. in a sense, he’s able to repair a “pseudo-sibling” relationship with a found-sibling who willingly accepts him. 

i love that they’re address their confidence issues regarding firebending together. 

and how, when they rushed to show the rest of the gaang after they returned:

aang: [Cut to Aang and Zuko demonstrating the Dancing Dragon to the rest of Team Avatar and friends.] With this technique the dragons showed us, Zuko and I will be unstoppable.

zuko has gained a found-sibling relationship that isn’t about comparing their firebending to each other, but working as a team. it’s so so meaningful that aang says “zuko and i.” the idea of zuko having a sibling relationship where he’s able to share his love of firebending and not feel insecure about it ...🥺. him having a “sibling” who wants to hang out with him and do things together and gushes about it with the confidence that aang had when he said they would be unstoppable. 

oh! not to mention that i’ve seen people say that zuko/katara have a sibling relationship because she teases him in EIP. but like .. that’s such flimsy logic. and also? aang and zuko have their mutual teasing moments especially in the firebending masters, and it’s just adorable. 

anyways, my main point from all this is that ik people love to say zuko/katara fit surrogate siblings (which i hate btw), but it’s mostly said because of katara/azula’s similar age. it doesnt matter that aang is 12, though, because honestly, he fits the “found-sibling” dynamic a lot better because of how zuko used to see aang in relation to azula. it just works better thematically. especially, because like i’ve said, and as so many people in fandom point out: zuko and katara are similar (some people... antis.. would say “too” similar). and when has zuko ever seen azula as being similar to himself? exactly. 

[usaigi]

Hii, I loved your MK latinidad post!

I have a few ideas to share, speaking from my own identity as a Latin American person ((oh also I’m just referring to what's portrayed in the tv series, cause I’ve only read Lemire’s run of the comics so I don’t have much more info to go beyond these two))

I love and crave Latin American MK so much it is unreal :( Yet I’m not satisfied with how the intersection of the cast identities with their characters’ mayyybe is being taken by some people in the fandom space as a fulfilling form of representation.

I mean, it directly ties to a larger set of issues topics that go beyond what we’ve been shown so far in the series (as in, we’re kind of limited to those 6 episodes lmao)

Anyway, going back to the intersection of identities, I think that knowing about the cast’s latinidad it’s like seeing the machinations inside an author’s head. There’s a lot of information that we know about MK’s reality that is never actually mentioned within the canon of the series. By this I don’t mean that nothing can be left to interpretation, but that we’re actually lacking ties to the characters' latinidad within their own world. Like the thing in which we know Steven in his white suit is Mr. Knight but that name is never mentioned in the tv series.

It's obvious, like you said, that these casting choices are a confirmation of the writer’s and Oscar’s interest in portraying Latin American identities. But because of this lack of material representation of latinidad in this particular case, the info about the cast’s ethnicity doesn’t actually build on some new meaning to the show. I believe that we should see it as the founding bricks for something that we will be eventually shown in a hypothetical S2 or any kind of continuation if we ever get one (I cling to these details not to lose hope lol)

Yet, we shouldn’t close the series onto itself. I think that we should rethink the line between what’s shown and not shown (through imagery and background elements as the show uses MK’s surroundings perfectly to scatter around a whole lot of their identities), especially when it comes to such complex and ultra-layered representation. Like, we cannot cherry-pick where we blur and when we don’t blur the line between inside and outside info and meaning. I mean that’s how the wild understandings of DID in real life and as portrayed by the series probably originated.

On an almost completely different note, this all ties to the inherent complexity of Latin American identities. Most times the term Latino on its own is not enough to portray the enormous diversity of it, the complex relationships within all social and private spaces and latinidad and how our identities have either been rebranded by ourselves to “copy an (European) ideal”, how others have rebranded them and created an unnuanced view of latinidad, and how the term itself is not enough to represent what we put behind it. This is like a whole field of study on its own so, yeah, long story short, it’s great to see the beginnings of its portrayal in MK and I love what it brings to the table, even if we have little to work with!

(with this I finish I swear, this turned out way longer than I expected lmao)

I’d love to see Marc and Steven, specially Marc, reconnecting w his Latin American identity through their relationship w Jake… probably bringing some brand new characters or characters from the comic but with Latin background that Jake got to know throughout time (I think maybe Gena Landers would be a great friend for them to bring into the tv series) and that maybe he has this kind of found-family-like relationship with. I think it would be a nice way to talk about Marc’s relationship with his heritage and to separate his latinidad from his mother’s image. GOD if only I had time to do this, I think my life would be fulfilled

Anyway, I can’t wait to read more of your ideas on this! Hope you’re doing fine! :)

Thank you so much for this comment, it is so intelligent and well thought out, I was a little intimated to answer so I hope I did ok. I am well thanks for asking. I hope you’re ok too 😁❤️

I think you made a fantastic point that the line between the actor and their real-life identity and the fictional character they portray is blurry. Paul Rudd being a Jewish man doesn’t necessarily make Scott Lang/Ant-Man also Jewish but Zendaya being biracial does then make MJ bi-racial. Actors are actors and they shouldn’t just be limited to roles that perfectly match their own personal identities. For POC especially, there are simply not enough roles written for POC actors. I joke that there are more MCU characters named Steve than Latino characters with names, but is it really a joke? What makes it blurry for Oscar Isaac and MK is we’re not just talking about his Guatemalan-Cuban ethnicity, but also about him being mixed race. He himself jokes about being ethnically ambiguous but the reason we perceive him that way is because we fail to recognize ingenious features. The Spanish conquistadors and the US government have worked together to genocide, to disconnect “Latinidad” from indigeneity(and in some cases blackness). By creating labels like “Mestizo,” by saying “Latine isn’t a race,” and forcing us to check for ‘white’ on the census, it disconnects us from our history and grants us conditional “whiteness.” Even if MK is never openly confirmed to be Latino, why is the default white unless proven otherwise?

For me, in my heart, it is nondebatable that MK is Latino. Jake’s Spanish, costume, MK’s family and young MK’s is all the confirmation needed. While any explicit reference confirming MK as Latino would be nice, I personally do not need it. MK being Latino is a hill I will die on.

Casting Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector/Moon Knight was a color-blind casting choice. Nothing about how the character was written in the show was changed in order to reflect the character's potential identity. They could(and should) have explored internal and external barriers to mental health within the Latin community, alcoholism and substance abuse, tendencies to look away when it comes to domestic abuse, generation trauma, and the intersectionality of being Latino and Jewish but they didn’t. As much as it pains me to say it, MK is not a Latino story just because the main actor is Latino. It could be, and hopefully they explore those topics in s2, but as it stands, it is not.

On the other hand, Layla is an identity-conscious casting. They didn’t just hire May Calamawy as Marlene Alraune, they rewrote the characterization in an Egyptian context. Calamawy and Diab worked together to create Layla and bring her cultural identity to the forefront. Layla’s passionate about her country, she’s opposed to foreigners exploiting and stealing Egyptian artifacts, she speaks Arabic. They reimagined some minor comic book characters and turned her into the first Egyptian/Arab superhero. She is an Egyptian character.

As fans, we shouldn’t grow complacent with representation, hiring a minority actor isn’t enough. There need to be more stories about POC for POC. I desperately want MK to team up with Robbie Reyes and Gael García Bernal's character and talk shit in Spanish. I want Marc to reconnect to his Latindad through Steven and Jake, and learn to see it in a context outside of his family. I want them to explore what it means to be a Jewish-Latino. I want Marvel to hire Latine writers and actually tell our stories.

In case anyone is interested, Khadija Mbowe has a fantastic video about Color-blind vs. Identity-conscious casting

[fizzyxcustard]

Covert Eyes (10)

Prologue| Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6| Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Fandom: Spooks

Pairings: Lucas North x OC (Amy Holland)

Warnings: Stalking behaviour, anxiety, language, sexual references.

Summary: Lucas takes notice of a young woman, Amy, but his obsession and want to get to know her begin to spiral out of control. Their relationship is back on track; with them living a ‘normal’ life. But how long will their domestic bliss last? Amy now has another pair of eyes watching her, and Lucas has submitted a security vetting application to complete all necessary background checks on his new girlfriend

Comments/Notes: If you wish to be tagged in any of my tag lists for fics or characters, please let me know, and stipulate what you want to be tagged in. The above image was located on Pinterest, with no link back to the original source. 

I also wanted to stipulate, and I don’t mean to be rude, but if you ask to be on my tag list and never interact (even if just a ‘like’ on the chapters I post) then I will remove you after a few weeks. Please try and show some kind of engagement, or ask to be taken off my list if you’re no longer interested.

Reluctantly, Amy requested for a meeting with her manager to discuss the incident with Jonathan. At ten sharp, on the Tuesday following Jonathan’s buzz at Amy’s block, Amy sat opposite her manager. The two of them had a cup of tea next to them. Thankfully her manager was a kind hearted woman, a lot like Debbie, only less outspoken. Avril was of a very slight build and would always listen to concerns, unlike a lot of the other managers in the building. Most of them were disconnected from their staff and only listened to the senior management who held the whips and forced everyone into submission with threats of disciplinaries and performance reviews. 

“I’ve had someone following me,” Amy said with a sigh. “I’ve called the police and been given a reference number and a file has been opened, but they’re pretty loathed to do anything yet because he’s not actively come after me with a weapon or intent to harm.”

Avril rolled her dark eyes and took a mouthful of her hot tea. “That’s what they always say,” she replied, her voice thick with a Cornish accent. “I’ll have a word with the security guys and make them aware of what’s going on. Is there anyone who lives close to you who you can walk home with?” 

“My boyfriend has been coming to meet me, but I can’t always rely on him as he’s got work as well. He walks in with me as well. It’s not fair on him.” 

“I get that. He’s not always going to be there, but I’m sure he tries his best.”

“Somehow this man has found out the building I live in, so he’s been following me. I met up with him after matching on Tinder and agreeing to go out. He wasn’t very gentlemanly, let’s put it that way. So I walked out on him while he was getting another drink. And it’s only been in the last couple of weeks, just after I started seeing my now boyfriend that he’s started following me. I was at my local café and the manager had to escort me back because he was watching me. Then a couple of days ago, he tried to buzz into my building.” 

Avril sighed. “What an arsehole. I’ll definitely go and have a word with security now to make sure they keep an eye open for anyone waiting outside. Do you know if he’s a claimant?” 

“As far as I know, he’s not, no. I’ve never seen him in here.” 

“Leave this with me, Amy, and I’ll tell security. Do you have a description of him?” 

On the other side of the city, Lucas was sat at his desk, lost in his thoughts of Amy. She had bewitched him, making him feel as if he were swimming in a dream. It was a dream of love, peace and joy. There were no questions of motives, worry of who she really was. Today would be the day when he would give over her details for vetting. True, he had already looked up her details on most of the systems he had access to, finding only the ‘normal’ traces through her national insurance number, driving licence and passport. Executive Officer at the Department for Work and Pensions, civil servant. Youngest daughter of three. Two previous addresses. No trace on any warning indexes or security databases. No police record. Such a good girl, Lucas thought. It raised a smile. He’d never fallen in love with a good girl before. It had always been the women with secrets. 

Just before lunch and Lucas took Harry, the senior intelligence officer of the team, to one side in an empty office. He held up a case file. Amy Holland was marked on the front. “For vetting,” Lucas said simply. “My application is inside.” 

“Anything of note before we proceed?” Harry asked. “Anything I need to know?”

“I’ve told her what I do for my job,” Lucas replied, taking a deep breath. “But nothing specific.” 

Harry blinked and straightened his back and shoulders. “Do you think that was a wise move?” 

“I trust her.” 

“How long have you known her?” Harry asked. 

“We’ve been seeing each other now for almost a month, but known each other for approximately three months.” 

“How can you be sure you trust her?” Harry countered. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of trust with people who are detached from our work.” 

“I know her, Harry,” Lucas insisted. “Please, just do the vetting. Then I can at least feel more normal when I’m with her. It’s a breath of fresh air to be able to share your time with someone who isn’t fishing for intel. She just wants to be close to me.” 

“Fine,” Harry said. “I’ll submit it this afternoon. But, Lucas? Just be careful. Our hearts aren’t always the best gauge for seeking out good company.” 

Lucas said no more and disappeared out of the office swiftly, the door slamming behind him. Harry merely sighed and took a quick look through the file, stopping on a photograph, and stared into the large eyes of a young woman whom he hoped for Lucas’ sake was everything she appeared to be. In all his years working on the team, Harry Pearce had seen many people ‘outed’ by romantic partners, even if only in an innocent way, such as simple conversation with a family member. Normally it didn’t end well. 

“How did it go?” Jo asked as Lucas sat back down. 

“Fine. Harry has her application now. I can’t see any reason that she won’t pass the vetting.” 

Lucas slipped out of work early and took the tube to Amy’s work place, and waited. His blue gaze flitted back and forth, looking for any sign of Jonathan. Nothing. This guy was going to be slippery; Lucas could feel it. A scorned potential lover, left behind on a date with no word. Of course he’d be pissed off, as most people would. But all of those ‘most people’ would also carry on with their lives and not bear a grudge. 

As they always did, Amy and Lucas greeted each other with a kiss and then walked back to her flat. Amy spoke about her day, filling him in about the meeting with Avril. Then she continued on about a budding romance between two of her colleagues who worked together on the second floor. “They were pulled out of one of the meeting rooms after going in there for a quick snog,” Amy giggled. “The best thing is the fact they’re both in relationships. One is married and one is engaged.” 

“Sounds more like a hook-up bar, your work,” Lucas chuckled. 

“That is true. We did find another couple last year having it away on the photocopier,” Amy laughed. “Another married couple, and not to each other.” 

“Have I got to worry about all of this?” 

“Dear God, no,” Amy laughed. “Never. I struck gold with you, love. I’m still wondering why you even look at me the way you do.” 

Lucas tightened his grip around her waist and pulled her in closer to him. He whispered to her ear. “I have to go back into work, but I once I get back later, I’ll look at you all night if you let me.” 

Amy giggled like a little girl. “Depends on the angle.” 

“Any angle with you is perfect.” 

At Amy’s flat, she let both of them in. “Do you want to stay for a quick cuppa before you go back to work?” 

“Just a quick one,” Lucas replied, unable to deny her proposal. Every moment with her was to be treasured. “I should be home by nine though. Only got another application to write up which shouldn’t take too long. I put your vetting application in today.”  

Amy let her gaze sink to the floor. How could he be so serious about her that he would do this? Was this his way of showing her that he really was serious about their relationship? Or was it just a protocol that everyone followed when sleeping with someone? How many other people had been vetted for Lucas? 

He watched her for a few seconds as her gaze remained locked on the floor. He shifted closer to her and curled his arms around her waist, pulling her in against him. Her small hands reached out and pressed against his chest. Then she finally looked up at him. But only for a few seconds, not seeming to be able to hold his gaze for too long. 

“What’s wrong?” Lucas whispered. “Something is bothering you.” 

“I just can’t fathom it.” 

“What?”

“You. You see me. And you actually like what you see. There seems something wrong with that. No one has ever made me feel like I’m in any way attractive or what men want. But you somehow like me. It feels like a bad joke.”

“I think it’s a bit more than just liking you, Aim. I love you.” 

“All those mornings in the café, and you could have easily just watched me walk in and out, like everyone else does. I’m only noticed when it matters or it’s something advantageous to someone else. No one actually notices me for who I am and then wants to keep me around.” 

“And do you know why? Because you’ve kept the company of arseholes.” 

Amy laughed. “And what if you’re secretly an arsehole?” 

“I was hoping you’d try and find out for yourself.” 

Lucas raised his eyebrow and smirked. 

Much to Ros’ annoyance, Lucas scooted back into the office half hour later than he had originally stipulated. 

“Domestic emergency?” Ros hissed, crossing her arms. 

“Sorry,” Lucas replied, swiftly edging around her to sit down. “Not exactly an emergency,” he continued to himself in a whisper. 

Jo looked up at him and then smiled to herself. “I hear you put in your vetting application this morning for your lady friend. Did the emergency involve her?” 

“If we’re referring to this as an ‘emergency’, then absolutely.” 

Ros came striding over to Lucas’ desk. “Can I have a word, please?” 

She took Lucas into an office which was empty, and sat him down opposite her. “Harry told me that you’ve put in a vetting application for Amy, Lucas. And you’ve also told her about your job. You’re being reckless.” Her eyes were dark with frustration. 

Lucas crossed his arms in defence. “Ros, I haven’t broken any rules by telling her. And I’ve submitted vetting, in line with protocol.” 

“And being late? That’s unlike you. I don’t even understand in the first place why you had to leave, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. If she’s going to cause you to act like this, then I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.” 

“Oh, come on. Enough of the parent child talk.” 

Ros leaned forward across the table. “I’m doing it because you’re acting like a child, and we don’t have any place for that here. You should know that. You’re one of our best operatives; damn well act like it.” She said no more on the matter and left the room. 

Lucas sat with his arms resting on the table and took a deep sigh. Amy made him feel the most alive that he had been in years. Maybe she did bring out that child-like side in Lucas, the one who hoped and dreamed. It was the part of him that could watch Disney films while eating chocolate and not give a damn what anyone thought. He could laugh with Amy while in bed, tickling her under the sheets and then chase her into the bathroom while she screeched with laughter. 

Work had to remain a priority, but not the priority. 

Amy was watching reaction videos on YouTube when Lucas hit the buzzer. As usual, she allowed him in. It was only quarter past nine when he came into her flat, looking deflated. She could see in his face and posture that something was bothering him. Lucas always had an ability to look intense, no matter his emotion, but whenever something serious was on his mind, she couldn’t quite place the emotions. 

“You okay? Work alright?” she asked. 

“Yeah, just had a bit of a run in with one of my managers as I was late going back,” Lucas replied, peeling his jacket from his shoulders. “She decided to give me the parent child lecture.” 

“That was my fault as well, Lucas,” Amy said, flicking the kettle back on for another hot drink. “We shouldn’t have decided to have sex on the table again. It doesn’t really bode well when you’ve come out of work only to bring me home, not satisfy me sexually as well.” 

Lucas swept over to Amy and curled his arm around her waist. “I satisfied you, you say? That’s one good thing to come out of this afternoon.” He grinned, feeling a sense of pride swell in his chest. 

Amy giggled. “So your main mission in life is to know that you easily get a girl off?” 

“If that girl is you, then yes.” 

***

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[pale-silver-comb]

So I know absolutely nothing about Leverage except what I've been seeing you post lately and I have to admit you're making it look tempting to watch! Can I ask what are some of your favorite things about the show/reasons you would suggest people watch it? And is there really a poly relationship that is canon?

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I am going to do my best not to just “asdfghkjl” at you and answer coherently.

In a nutshell, Leverage is about 5 people. 4 are criminals (Parker, Hardison, Eliot and Sophie) with different and unique skill-sets and 1 is an ex-insurance investigator (Nate) who, at one point or another in his career, has tracked down (or at least attempted to) the other 4. The whole show is essentially: man reluctantly reforms 4 criminals to use their criminal powers for good and 4 criminals move into man’s life and stubbornly refuse to leave because, goddammit, now they have morals. 

I’ve got a lot of favourite things about the show but the main ones are as follows:

1. Found family. And I’m not talking about loners who come together to fight crime and happen to co-exist to the point where they realise they happen to have found themselves a family. I mean, Nate and Sophie are the Drunk Uncle and Wine Aunt who somehow become Mom and Dad to 3 beautiful criminal children. Mom and Dad love their criminal babies and the kids love them (as well as each other, but we’ll come to that in a moment). You get amazing family moments such as: Mom and Dad packing the kids lunch before sending them out to kick corporate greed’s ass; Mom and Dad giving the kids ridiculously expensive and personal Christmas presents causing their most Grumpy Kid to go very very quiet and soft as he runs off to gleefully play with his new murder toy; the kids interrupting Mom and Dad’s big Movie Style Kiss to ask if they can please keep their new underground layer and huffing and puffing when Dad tells them no.

2. Found family: the OT3 edition. To answer your question, the OT3 is indeed canon, confirmed by the creator. Now, usually, “confirmed by the creator” infuriates me because most of the time it’s a way for a creator to be seen as “progressive” without doing anything to actually be progressive. That isn’t the case here. The OT3 are built up carefully and while it is obvious the creators didn’t originally intend for all 3 of them to become a relationship in the romantic sense, by mid-season 5 we are given a very clear picture of where Parker, Hardison and Eliot are heading in their relationship. There aren’t any kisses at the end to signal this but there are solid marriage vows in not only one but two episodes. (And by marriage vows I mean literal equivalents of marriage vows: “for better or worse” and “’til death do us part”. I’m not even exaggerating). The OT3 also doesn’t need explicit romantic narratives to convey how much they love each other. Their love is laced through the whole show, from the way they teach each other things to the way they respond to each other and work as a unit. The way they fiercely protect and admire each other. Like someone once said, if you need characters to kiss or say I love you to let the audience know they love each other, you are writing them wrong. 

Aside from that, each of the parings in the OT3 are just. Gah. They are so well done, with friendship being the solid basis for them all. The creators never expect the audience to assume anything about them or fill in the gaps. They give us their relationships on screen and reference many things off-screen to show us how these relationships continue to build in between episodes.

Hardison and Parker are a canon couple and date in the show: it’s approached slowly and they are so goddamned sweet. They are basically every fluffy slow-burn trope with a healthy dash of mutual pining in the mix. They are basically that quote “love is patient, love is kind”. (I would like to add their romance never becomes the focus of the show or overrides the importance of any other relationship they have with the other characters, especially Eliot.)

Hardison and Eliot are the Old Married Couple and from day one are already bickering and looking at each other/making comments that are found in every UST fic ever (not to mention Hardison has a very good knack for making Eliot grin like a little kid, when usually he’s basically an Angry Little Chef Man). They argue, they play, and love each other plain as day. 

Parker and Eliot are more subtle but every bit as wonderful. They have an unspoken connection and understand each other on a level no-one else can. Parker and Eliot are not good with giving themselves over to affection for different reasons (and Hardison plays a central role in helping them realise it’s okay to want it and have it- that boy has endless patience) but there is something so beautiful in the way the two of them come together on their own and develop their own special bond that works for them. Parker and Eliot are that trope where the characters don’t need to speak to understand each other perfectly. They just do. Their love language is a lot of the time non-verbal but speaks volumes. (Parker also likes to annoy the hell out of Eliot and Eliot....just.....lets...her. Because he’s soft. The softest, grumpiest boy.) 

I could go into so much depth for each pairing and their dynamics as a 3 but that's for another post.

3. Subverting stereotypes. There is the occasional hiccup in the show regarding stereotypes but ultimately, Leverage gets an A+ when it comes to writing characters and making them 3 dimensional people who are not defined by certain characteristics or events. Nate could so easily fall into the White Man Pain trope where he uses the trauma of losing his kid as a reason as to why he is entitled to act like a dick. Nate is a dick but he doesn’t use his pain to excuse it and I appreciate that. Hardison is a black man who is soft and nurturing. Easily the most empathetic and patient of the group. He’s nerdy, an actual genius, and has the biggest heart of all the characters. Nate is maybe the glue but Hardison is definitely the heart. Media’s usual aggressive, amongst other, racist stereotypes can fuck right off. Parker is canonically autistic (I am sure this was confirmed by one of the creators) and she is not defined by it. It’s not written as some kind of singular personality trait. It’s part of what makes up Parker but it’s only one facet of who she is and not once is her actions, thoughts or feelings treated like a joke. Sometimes people don’t understand why she does and says the things she does but it’s met with patience and fondness over the course of the show. Equally, it’s not met with over-caution. Parker is just Parker. No-one tries to change her. The other nice thing is Hardison, who always makes sure Parker knows she’s amazing because of who she is and not in spite of it. Finally, Sophie is in her 40s. She’s not treated like she’s past her prime. Ever. She’s sexy, smart and never is she pitted against or compared to Parker (who is younger) for anything. Sophie is amazing and there’s never even a conversation of “I may be older but I am still *insert adjective typically associated with younger women here*”. Sophie is possibly the first female character I’ve ever seen who isn’t just unapologetic about her age but has never had to apologise for her age. It’s a non-issue and that’s that. The women on the show are written so well, right down to secondary characters and it’s beyond refreshing.  

4.) It’s just fun. The show has a “monster of the week” type format. Except instead of a ghoul or a ghost, the monster is some corrupt wealthy and powerful individual or organisation. The show draws on real-life individuals to do this and therefore closely parallels real-life people and events. It addresses important political, economical, social and environmental issues while at the same time remaining fun and light-hearted. The characters constantly get the chance to play dress up and by GOD do they have fun with it. You get to watch Eliot beat up bad guys in the most delightful of ways, usually after a witty non-sequitur and with a weapon you’d never think could be a weapon. The dialogue and back and forth between the characters is everything. And finally - my favourite thing- the team can never resist striking a dramatic pose after they’ve taken down the bad guy, making sure the bad guy sees them. I mean, they COULD just walk away, satisfied they’ve taken the person down, but nope. They gotta be dramatic bitches 24/7 and pose like they are models for every single month of this year’s Criminal Calendar.  

5.) Competence Porn. So. Much. Competence Porn.  

Honestly, I could list a thousand reasons for why Leverage is amazing but to list them would to be spoiling so many amazing moments you’d get to discover for the first time on your own if you do choose to watch it. It’s the kind of show you can watch with an eagle-eye and sink your teeth into. But it’s also the kind of show if, you would prefer, put on in the background for something entertaining while you do something else. Each episode is about the job at hand but it’s made up of so many moments between the characters that show how much the creators and writers care about them. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll do whatever it is you do when something Soft and Wonderful happens that makes your heart melt. I am so beyond grateful for Leverage. It’s everything I always wanted in a show. Nearly every show I’ve watched in the past 10 years has disappointed me in some way, usually either because the writers run out of steam or characters who I love are treated poorly or given some kind of unnecessary “shock value” arc. Leverage doesn’t do that. Leverage is what it says on the bottle. Fandom isn’t something I joined because I needed canon fix-its. Fandom only enhances and celebrates an already excellent canon.