Big fan of your work, and I’m sorry if this comes off as rude but I just wanna info dump or else I’ll go crazy

I still respect your interpretation of fuyupeko but I think it’s debatable those two are as dependent on each other as ppl say

There’s major themes of Fuyuhiko pushing Peko away

1. In the splash art of them growing up, Fuyuhiko is never looking at Peko)

2. In Fuyuhiko’s Island Mode ending, Fuyuhiko explicitly say he needs to stop running away from Peko

3. In Danganronpa S, Fuyuhiko’s first instinct is to brush off Peko but he corrects himself saying he still needs her. In the Peko and Sayaka convo, Sayaka expresses she needs to be independent to not bother her friend, but Peko says her friend is probably happy to be relied on

4. The fact in SDR2, Peko lies about almost everything about herself (she saids she has parents in freetime, she calls Fuyuhiko her childhood friend and negates that in the trial), and the only time she was truly truthful she states that all she wants to be is remembered by Fuyuhiko

5. In Fuyuhiko’s talk with Akane, he states he never told Peko he was grateful for her. And in Peko’s freetime, Peko states as a child, Fuyuhiko would cry and call her scary

I do think Fuyuhiko and Peko’s relationship is strained from Peko being taught she was only a tool but I think it’s also comes from the fact Fuyuhiko never communicates with Peko that he actually likes her as a person. It still hurts me that when they were on a dangerous island where anyone could murder, Fuyuhiko told Peko explicitly not to talk to him, the one person she could trust on the island. Like who can blame Peko for thinking Fuyuhiko resented her.

Anyways, sorry if none of this made sense. I hope you’re not mad.

NO AUGH WASNT SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED DONT READ YET IM NOT DONE closenur eyes

ok done now

Nah not mad! I just think maybe I have a very different way of interpreting info, which is fine (we all do tbh), but I appreciate a respectful differing view.

Anyway, disclaimer, my memory is brittle and I havent consumed all DR content so some stuff is not available to me.

I'm gonna do this in numbers too just bc its easier

I dont really put a lot of stock into the art anyway? I dont know which one this refers to

same as in 3. with trying to distance himself from being too reliant on the family, possibly also being distant by trying to adhere to their roles, more on that later

I remember some of Fuyuhiko's deal being that he doesn't want to rely on the power of his family of everything, and that extends to Peko with her being his protector. I think the fact that he thinks e needs her, but doesn't want to, actually just plays right into my view of them (this one, Fuyuhiko not wanting their relationship to e what it is but admitting that he doesnt know anything else and would be pretty adrift without it).

I didn't know that! That's interesting. My memory might be wrong, but wasn't some of that because Fuyhiko instructed her to keep their affiliation a secret? And since the clan is all she knows, she had to make stuff up?

I could believe that Fuyuhiko never actually thanked Peko for her services, their whole job status being messy as it is. I dont know about that second thing, but I remember something about Fuyuhiko crying because he could sense that Peko was worried / she was trying to reassure him but without smiling or anything, something about them being kidnapped. Still doesnt really negate my view on them, just once again that they wanna be there for each other but somehow just can't.

Ok so, re: that little comic, I guess I should say: I dont think they were that sweet with one another all the time, and in fact kind of want to imply that while they *were* friends as kids, as volatile as kid friendships can be, from that point onwards they did start to grow into their roles and their own seperate ways (for worse). Fuyuhiko being an overly aggressive and angry dickhead a lot of the time, trying to fit into what he thinks he needs to be, and Peko being the 'tool' that she tries to pass as in the trial, actually kind of thinking she knows what's best for Fuyuhiko instead of talking to him one on one as a friend. When I say they were reliant on each other, I dont mean they were emotionally close, I just mean they literally define themselves a bit by the other (the game does this also), because they're not sure what to be otherwise, the other being the only peer they know closely. Like Fuyuhiko says (cries) in the trial, he needs Peko, and Peko is so consumed by her role that she did the whole murder thing.

Fuyuhiko pushing Peko away and Peko refusing to back away makes sense to me in the lens that Fuyuhiko wants Peko to be more than his walking talking sword, and Peko takes her duty seriously/is unwilling to lose the one person she has a connection with. Fuyuhiko is taking dumb clumsy baby steps at not needing Peko there all the time, even though he kind of does, and Peko doesnt see what's wrong with their relationship as is (and therefore thinks she can base a murder unit because she doesnt see how it wouldnt make sense that she doesnt count as a person). Fuyuhiko also absolutely dogshit at communicating and could have avoided a lot of this with some anger management and more thoughtful speaking, but i think part of the tragedy is that neither of them knew any better because what they were doing was all they'd ever been expected to do.

I always understood the whole "dont interact w me" thing to be a, a) a way for both of them to be normal classmates, which would be good for them, and later b) scheme to protect the both of them and give them advantage in the game. I cant say I ever saw it as pure callousness on Fuyuhiko's part- rough and clumsy attempt at being helpful, maybe- and I definitely can't agree with that read. I think maybe Peko could have seen it that way, in being that she wants to be relied on and be useful and that being rejected means she's being rejected, but Fuyuhiko states that people tend to be wary and suspicious of him (for good reason) so however harsh, I think it was always gonna end in Peko's favour, in or outside of game. Whether that was explicitly planned, I dont know- probably not- but I dont think it was just him being a dick.

Anyway! I don't know if this reply makes sense, but I'm not like disagreeing just to disagree! I replied this in-depth bc I was interested in answering lol. This is just what I mean by fundamentally different reads. This is how *I* understood the events based on my own brain translating it, doesnt mean yours is any more right or wrong, just different people processing things differently.

Well you said "gender" so now people give a shit.

gosh you know what yeah, in America we get taught that Frankenstein is the first work of science fiction, but the story of Kaguya honestly fits the bill much better-

gurl what

MORGANA IS A VOLKSWAGON NOW

This line made me laugh out loud tbh. Way to hang a lampshade.

Okay so instead of Tartarus, we have Mementos. Admittedly not as pithy of a name. Morgana is hoping to unlock the secret of their true form by exploring deeper into Mementos, delving into the collective subconscious.

I love you, Ann.

Does Morgana not remember whether they are boy or gorl or other? That's very telling. By all means, if he feels like a boy, neat. But the fact that there are a lot of question marks around that makes me think once again that Morgana isn't human but is some manifestation of something from the collective unconsciousness, like Teddie was.

Also Morgana gives me massive Teddie vibes anyway. Oh, the annoying mascot character who I wind up liking a whole bunch? but a CAT THIS TIME instead of a white guy? Perfect.

Maybe Notigor is the Big Bad of the game while Morgana is the Big Good. Notigor represents confinement and false accusations and abuse of authority masquerading as "rehabilitation." Morgana has thus far enabled actual rehabilitation.

But we're so early on, who fucking knows. I am very interested in Morgana's arc tho. Like Teddie as the Star, Morgana's SLink is on a plot-progression time table, so I assume he's going to be tied to the themes of the story like Teddie was.

also the degree to which i mistrust this child cannot be overstated. FEAR ALL PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN. You better fucking not be the Justice arcana, child, i swear to fuck.

WOW Mishima's personality change now that Kamoshida is gone!!!!

Which: makes sense. He was one of the preferred punching bags and was the fucking grim reaper to his classmates, sending them to see Kamoshida for their daily beatings. Breaking loose from that would inspire a dramatic turn, easy.

He's the one who set up the Phan-Site (lmao, nice pun tbh) for the Thieves. He really really really wants to get in on helping them out and is, uh. Mildly overeager.

Moon arcana, huh. I'm being a nerd and staring at one of my own Moon cards rn.

Moon and Hanged Man are very similar in my eyes. Hanged Man is about the Choice but with the Moon, it's a place you find yourself eventually. When there has been a dramatic change in your life, the Moon represents the period of calm after. The usual depiction is of the Moon's reflection, actually, bouncing up from a pond or river, and drawing the attention of a fish or scorpion or something else.

The Moon is like staring into a mirror. It can help you understand yourself and become re-acquainted after a traumatic event. But it can also drag your journey to a halt and even lead you into madness if you don't figure out how to look away and understand what reality is.

Mishima has def been through the traumatic incident. My fear is that he throws himself too far into the Phan-Site thing and needs help clawing his way out.

also, in the Death route, I am picking the most ridiculous options and I cackled at her response. there ain't a drug that can fix Reverie Vantas The Fifth lmao.

anyway, LOOK AT THE FUCKING POLLEN

As someone living in the american south, I can look out my window right now and see my car fucking covered in a sheet of pollen. IT'S HELL. IT SUCKS. FUCKING GODDAMN TREES, STOP IT!

ftr i am not someone who thinks about concepts like 'endgame' (or even 'canon') much at all re: ships. it is just not the way i am wired. i don't care about shit like that. what i do care about is the way dynamics are handled & how in character they are. and that is why i hate pretty much everything done with frank and bonnie in s6 (well, i don't, but i DO have to take the parts i like out of context, mostly). to get the Most Obvious Thing out of the way: the writers wouldn't have gone there if they could have gotten karla back. which in and of itself is like, fine --- doesn't automatically make it bad. except it's... also written that way. things that are true:

bonnie has always struggled to see her own value outside of what she Gives To People

she has canonically always been treated as second best [by the narrative] and felt that way and most of her arc is about like... understanding that she deserves better

frank has canonically always been borderline obsessed with not hurting her feelings in any way, shape, or form. they are [also canonically] so close emotionally that they have their own nonverbal language

it is very probable that they intended her to have been pining for him for like ten years since their initial breakup which. i wish i disagreed with more than i do. strictly speaking. and i'm pretty sure he is aware of that

POINTS BEING.

frank would not pursue bonnie again if he had feelings for someone else at all. ever. even a little bit. like yes! he has impulse control issues! but i also cannot overstate how over the top considerate he has always been of her. it's like one of the only things that was ever consistent about his character. he LOVES her. in the kind of way that is very much like "i don't care what we are to each other as long as we stick together"

the fact that the Finale Drama actually hinged on frank freaking out and TELLING BONNIE SHE SHOULD HAVE JUST KILLED HIM INSTEAD OF TELLING HIM HE WAS A PRODUCT OF INCEST LIKE 1) that whole debacle was ridiculous and we don't acknowledge it but 2) YOU ARE TELLING ME THIS MAN? WOULD SAY THAT? TO HER??????

genuinely like the entire thing is bonkers bananas i do NOT know what happened in that writers room that made them lose all sense of continuity circa 6b. this keeps me up at night. you didn't ask

One of my old psychiatrist’s most useful observations was that the closer we are to someone, the more we treat them as we treat ourselves. In my case, this creates a situation others in marriages may recognize (which I’ll overstate for clarity):

to strangers, I’m like Mother Theresa; I would gladly die to avoid inconveniencing a waiter or an Uber driver, for example

to new friends, I’m a pretty good person: willing to do nearly anything to hang out, always flexible and open, never reactive

to existing friends, I’m so-so, a little introverted maybe and kind of inflexible about the things I’m open to doing, self-centered, perhaps touchy

to my partner, I’m a rigid, anxious, cold, and even cruel person, outrageously narcissistic and incapable of generosity, explosively reactive

My psychiatrist’s point was that what’s happening as people get closer to me is that they’re getting inside of me, in the sense that they are more and more subject to the default dynamics of my mind (and less and less to the performance of my social identity). A crisp way to put this: you will talk to your partner as you talk to yourself in your internal monologue. My internal monologue is harsh. I have almost no compassion for myself —why the hell should I?!— and very little tolerance for my failures, which are many and which tend to be, if we’re honest, totally inexcusable. When I make a mistake, I rage at myself. When I see what I look like, I am disgusted by myself. I believe that I’m a bad person, perhaps even an evil person, and I feel worthy of contempt.

…

While I’m perhaps an extreme example, my sense is that this is not uncommon. What varies among us is not whether we do as my psychiatrist describes, but rather how we treat ourselves and thus our partners. Indeed, if her view is correct, this all sums to a moral imperative to become generous, forgiving, and loving towards ourselves, if only so that we can be good to others!

…

In his introduction to Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, Evgeny Dobrenko writes:

[If] literature does in fact exist for the purpose of “estranging” (or “defamiliarizing”) everyday life, then great literature is foreordained to challenge the great banalities.

Art seeks to defamiliarize everyday life because familiarity does something else besides breeding contempt. It also renders things invisible. As is true of the clichéd, the familiar flees our attention; we cannot pay attention to it; it dissolves into the background, is handled by lower-level systems in our mind, is disposed of like so much ambient street noise before we even have the opportunity to notice or understand it.5 Little by little, we replace the frothing, teeming, kaleidoscopic world and all the marvelous and irreducible selves in it with customary symbols and well-worn clichés; eventually, we see nothing at all. The old have a bit of a self-contained quality, which has its virtues but is at least somewhat connected to the gradual closing off of perception, the collapse of external attention, the nightmare process of all things becoming familiar and contemptible.

A task for art or for psychology, then, might be to defamiliarize us to ourselves. I cannot hope to treat others well if I treat myself poorly; I will treat myself poorly if I am familiar to myself; I must therefore be new to myself, somehow, even as the sclerosis of age sets in.

Title: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Author: John Le Carré

Rating: 5/5 stars

Very Good, but not great

I found this book really interesting, though I couldn't put a finger on why. It's a story about people who are very smart and successful at what they do, but who struggle with their own humanity and self-perception, a struggle that is not always visible to the outsider -- for them, there can be no doubt that they are "smart and successful and human." In the first chapter, we're given the first hints that perhaps the world they have built is not all it seems: one character has a history of "disappearing," and he is later revealed to have been a police officer in the 19th century who got caught spying on a political rival, the other is a world-renowned violinist. In other words, people who have built a great success, a great machine, a "machine" that seems to transcend human feeling, do not necessarily have the kind of feelings that make them good at doing what they do, that make them "smart" or "successful."

I don't think this was ever really established in the book, but that makes me suspect it's a bit too simple an idea. The story takes place over the course of four days, and at the end of each day one of the characters explains the logic behind what he has done, and why he did it. In essence, this is just a narrative version of the "how-pioneers-invented-machines" genre, right? But the main difference -- the main reason I liked this book so much -- is that these characters seem to be flawed. "They have built this machine, and they seem to use it, and we must assume they would not have been so successful if they weren't good at it," but we get the sense that these characters are flawed in ways that may not show up in their work, or in their personal lives. (The guy who spies on his rival is also a spy, and his wife has doubts about his "success" even though he says she "never seems to think of him at all.") I thought this was a good and subtle choice, and it definitely made the book feel more real, more "adult" than the genre would otherwise be, but I wouldn't want to overstate the effect.

The characters have very little time to interact with each other: the events of the book all take place over the course of four days, separated by very brief "rest periods." A number of scenes take place inside the automaton showroom, which is only visible from inside the automaton room. This does a very good job of creating a sense of claustrophobia, which works on two levels. First, there is a claustrophobia of "space," the sense that "the world is very large, and the automaton showroom is merely the size of a room in that world, and is thus not a "big deal." But there's also a claustrophobia of the human mind, the fact that these people will never see the automaton showroom in any other form than the one they built for themselves, that in the end there really isn't any way to make a machine that you're "good at" and "good with" and that "you would have built if you weren't being coerced by this other force in your life." That part of the world is so far away that we're allowed to imagine that our protagonist might be the only person who truly understands it -- he's a genius mechanic, after all. He can't possibly understand the emotions of his wife and of the people he hired to do his job.

The book does its best to make this world interesting, to make it feel real even though it is so constrained by time. For one thing, the four days are given very clear temporal structures: there is an official "workday" inside the showroom, which we're supposed to think of as the same from morning to evening, but at night they all take a break. But it also becomes very funny, because everyone is supposed to know what the showroom does, and how it works, but the characters themselves have no idea. After a very long period of work in the showroom on day one, it becomes clear that the machines cannot actually perform the "miracles" they make people think they can; the real trick is all in the show.

Another reason this book stuck with me: it really conveys the sense of the "invention" of the automaton. "How can you be so smart and yet still not understand?" the characters cry, over and over again. But the question isn't about how smart the characters are: the question is about their own self-perception, their own worldview, the view they get from inside their own bubble. What they "don't see" is not a problem about machine design, but about the people whose lives have been transformed by their machines, or about the way they themselves have changed, or about their own sense of self and self-worth. The sense that things are not "supposed" to be as they seem in this world can make a world-weary reader sympathize with people who seem naive and/or confused in their own lives -- if these people can't tell something is "wrong," then what chance have I got? This isn't necessarily a message most novels are all about. But it's definitely one that comes up a lot in Le Carré's other fiction.

This is time that was allotted to these storylines by canon, offering an expectation of meaning and importance, offering what results in a promise—not time the fans imagined or made up, not something they feel nebulously entitled to, but time they spent on plots the canon gave to them. (Cas means something to Dean after all these years and a love confession. Bucky means something to Steve after all these years and a snap. Jaime’s project of growth and his meaningful relationship with Brienne is something worth investing in.) But instead of saying, yes, you spent all this time watching these scenes, feeling these moments, taking this in—you grew with this character, with these relationships (grew in many cases away from the set starting point)—here is your promised meaning, again and again, these properties snatch the rug away and then pretend blithely they cannot understand why “entitled fans” are so upset.

I’ve been meaning to write my version of this argument for a while now, and I suppose this article is just as good a reason as any.

My thesis, in short, is that lack of queer representation actually isn’t what is creating ~the problem~ here. What’s creating the problem is the overriding power of heteronormativity as a kind of ‘trump’ story logic that is allowed to steamroller everything else into oblivion. (And yes, there actually is a substantial difference between those two things)

Sub-thesis 1: Representation Actually Isn’t A Strong Argument for Destiel (or any particular ship/character)

Controversial, I know.  The representation argument (while an extremely valid argument as applies to popular culture in general) is actually not a very good argument when it comes to why Dean should be explicitly queer and Destiel should have been consummated. 

For one, there’s no reason -- exclusively from the standpoint that it is a moral imperative that queer people are represented in media -- why any particular character or set of characters should be that representation. The ethical cultural mandate to represent marginalized groups does not mandate that any one character or set of characters in any particular given story be that representation*. Yes, even if you as a member of that marginalized group happen to identify with that character. Even then, it isn’t OWED to you. (I think writers should take those trends of identification seriously, and think about what it means to marginalized groups, and act accordingly. But I don’t think it creates an OBLIGATION)

*I’d argue the primary caveat to this would be in stories where the character’s situation or arc is directly related to struggles experienced by that marginalized group (i.e., casting mostly white actors in stories where those characters are experiencing racial oppression)

For another, if representation of queer characters were primarily dictated by fandoms, 90% of queer characters in media would be white, conventionally attractive men. (That might be overstating it a bit, but fandoms have serious biases when it comes to shipping and what kind of characters they latch onto for queer interpretation, and that’s one of the reasons I’m grateful queer representation is not primarily linked to our tastes/preferences). 

The representation argument is a very valid argument when examining popular culture as whole, and when looking at broader trends for example, within a genre, or a whole network. But no particular TV show is obligated to make particular characters within it queer just because representation is a moral imperative as a broader cultural issue. 

Sub-Thesis 2: Heteronormativity Creates Stupid/Badly Constructed Stories

The actual problem here is how heteronormativity creates a kind of trump logic that overrides coherent storytelling. 

I’m not upset about what happened on Supernatural because I think we missed out on representation. There is actually plenty of ~better~ representation elsewhere, and there will continue to be more as time goes on. The representation issue is peripheral at best when it comes to analyzing what went ‘wrong’ with Supernatural. 

The key issue here is that stories need to make sense, not just in terms of plot (although that matters), but in terms of character growth, emotional arcs, etc. The ending of Supernatural is bad because it treated massive pieces of character growth and one of the most significant emotional arcs of the whole show as if it was ultimately inconsequential -- which is bad storytelling and doesn’t make sense. 

And YES, we are ‘owed’ stories that make sense. It’s not entitled to want a story to be coherent, because coherence is what makes a story a story, and not just a series of random meaninglessly assembled plot points/fictional anecdotes. 

The problem is, Hollywood writers keep writing themselves into situations where emotional coherence basically requires an explicitly queer dynamic (or at least a strongly subtextual one), and then just being like...but these characters aren’t queer so we can’t do that. Instead, let’s end Steve’s arc by sending him back in time to live a heterosexual life with Peggy, disregarding the HUGELY significant plot points related to Steve/Bucky which grounded multiple entire movies within the MCU (Winter Solider, Civil War). Let’s end Sherlock by inventing a random, long-lost Holmes sister never remotely hinted at or foreshadowed and make that incomprehensible plot point the finale, when the entire series has been grounded in John and Sherlock’s relationship. 

Let’s make it canonically clear Cas’s love for Dean is the one single act of pure free will in a world with a malevolent God trying to manipulate everyone’s lives for his own amusement, and that Cas’s love for Dean is the only thing keeping the primary story-universe of Supernatural intact, because every other version of Sam and Dean in every other universe kill each other as God intended. Let’s make it clear that Cas’s betrayal of heaven due to his love for Dean is literally propping up their entire universe, but then end the story by pretending like it’s not that important after all. Castiel who?

And it’s just like...THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! It doesn’t make fucking sense. It’s bad writing. So why would you do it? (I mean, I being a bit facetious here. I know exactly why. Because the precious feelings of homophobes will be hurt, and companies don’t want to lose out on their money) 

It’s not entitled to want a story to make sense. It’s not entitled to want major plot points and character arcs and emotional dynamics to have resolutions that follow from what came before in the story. 

And I’m sorry, but you are a ridiculous person if you watched Dean grieve Castiel’s ostensible deaths in s7 and s13 (both times becoming nearly catatonic, nihilistic, more self-destructive than usual, and borderline suicidal over losing Cas) and try to argue to me that his shrug-it-off attitude towards Cas’s death/loss in the finale makes any goddamn sense at all. 

It is utterly inconsistent with everything that has happened before in Supernatural regarding Dean and Castiel’s relationship. It’s incomprehensibly incoherent and just stupid. (And that is just the absolute tip of the incoherence iceberg because to fully explain why the ending of Supernatural re: Destiel doesn’t make sense we’d have to review over 300 episode’s worth of content, and there isn’t time for that) 

I’m just so sick and so tired of being asked to pretend to be stupid because you know, man, heterosexuality. They’re not gay!!1! 

The exhaustion I feel, as a queer viewer, in fact is not borne out of lack of representation. The representation issue is very much on an upward trajectory and I’m not worried about the future of TV not being queer enough. I’m not. 

The exhaustion and frustration and anger I feel as a queer viewer is borne of having to repeatedly watch stupid endings to good stories because the story can only make sense if you make it queer (you cowards). I’m tired of being asked to develop dumb amnesia disease in order to consume endings to stories that had to blow everything up at the end to (re)enforce a heterosexuality that can only stand on a foundation of utter incoherence and contradiction to monumental things that came before it.

I am JUST SO TIRED of being asked to sacrifice my intelligence, my basic logic and critical thinking skills, and my ability to remember basic narrative beats at the alter of almighty Heterosexuality, supreme ruler of all cultural output and destroyer of good queer things. 

Heterosexuality isn’t owed my stupidity, and I’m not entitled for wanting stories to make sense. YOU are entitled for demanding my stupidity when you wrote that dumb shit and expected me to act like it wasn’t dumb simply because it was heterosexual. 

No, the heterosexuality is exactly the reason it IS dumb. 

Re: Star Wars prequel novelizations - the Revenge of the Sith book is genuinely one of the best things I have ever read and changed my life.

THANK YOU, anon, for reminding me about the Revenge of the Sith novelization.  I just reread it, and my crops are watered, my skin is clear, and — I cannot overstate this — I actually remember why I love Star Wars.  That love has been for too long stolen by The Fandom Menace sucking the life out of those movies to invent a new definition of suffering while digesting them slowly over a thousand years.

Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover is one of the greatest works of adventure fiction I have ever read, and it continues to inspire the way I write action sequences and character conflicts.  It does so damn much to transform a movie that is, to be honest, just okay.  There are a couple of big additions from the novel that make the whole Skywalker saga richer, and there are about five hundred little tweaks that deepen the lore in a way that shows that Stover loves Star Wars to the core.

First big addition: having Obi-Wan tell Padmé that he’s in love with Anakin. This is great because yay, queer representation!  But within the specific context of RotS, it also sets up the super-important contrast between Obi-Wan and Anakin.  Obi-Wan, Stover’s novel makes clear, is the quiet and unassuming embodiment of everything a Jedi is supposed to be: he’s selfless, loving, hard-working, and incredibly skilled with the Force.  Obi-Wan falls in love with Anakin, realizes that Anakin doesn’t love him back in that way, and... lives with it.  He spends time with Anakin, supports Anakin, enjoys Anakin’s company, and doesn’t act like the world will end if Anakin isn’t his.

Anakin loves Obi-Wan, in a siblinglike way, and he loves Padmé.  But he’s got a nasty habit of expressing that love through possession and control, through going behind Padmé’s back to “fix” her life without her permission.  Anakin falls in love with Padmé and immediately concludes that he cannot possibly live like this: they must begin a secret relationship, and he must both marry her and remain a Jedi.  Later he destroys the Jedi and eventually Padmé herself because he sees himself as having no way out of that dilemma.

And all the while, Obi-Wan is there in the background.  Also in love with someone with whom he cannot have a relationship, and just… dealing with it like an adult.  Because millions of people are in love with people who don’t love them back, and that’s just how it is sometimes.  It’s selfish to obsess over “having” their love at all costs.  For Anakin, that obsession with saving Obi-Wan and Padmé eventually leads to him killing them both.

When Yoda tells Anakin that he must deal with his fear of losing Padmé through letting go, Anakin takes this to mean “let her die.”  But what Yoda means is not “let her die,” but rather “love her the way Obi-Wan loves you: quietly, selflessly, and with a willingness to do what’s best for her, whether or not that means you get to have her.”  And Anakin never understands that, because Anakin’s view of the world is so intensely egocentric.

Second big addition: updating the Force to explain the Dark Side. Revenge of the Sith, even more so than any other Star Wars, is all about the contrast between the Dark Side and the Light Side.  Here, Stover’s contribution is brilliant; he makes the Dark Side egocentric and the Light allocentric.

Terminology! “Egocentric” in psych refers to the perspective that focuses on how the world affects you and how you affect the world.  At the extreme, egocentric thinking can be believing that a baby is crying in a deliberate effort to annoy you, or that every person in a crowded cafeteria will remember what shirt you wore when you ate there a week ago.  “Allocentric” refers to the perspective that the self is one of several disparate elements buffered around by the world.  At the extreme, allocentric thinking can be failing to realize that others are reacting to your presence, or viewing your own life as one thing you can give to help others.

Stover doesn’t use those terms, but he does describe how Dooku “drew power into his innermost being until the Force itself existed only to serve his will” (p. 64).  Later, Obi-Wan “gave himself to the living Force… the Force moved him, let him collapse as though he’d suddenly fainted, then it brought his lightsaber from his belt to his hand” (p. 285).  Dooku ultimately loses his fight against Anakin because he focuses on how everyone is responding to him, and misses that Anakin and Palpatine are beginning to build an alternate alliance right under his nose.  Obi-Wan ultimately wins his fight against Anakin because he allows the Force to shove him around, and sets aside his concern with both his own life and that of his best friend while fighting for the greater goal of peace.

Not only that, but Obi-Wan’s understanding of the Force moves beyond that of most Jedi.  He compares “the will of the Force” to “the will of gravity,” in essence stating that simply because it is beyond human comprehension doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own rules.  One can be a Jedi without needing to understand the Force in the same way one can be a pilot without needing to be a physicist.  In RotS, we see that his refrain of “search your feelings” is a way of calling on a Force user to be mindful enough to accept realities that are already evident, if one can only allow oneself to have that knowledge.

Stover also uses these competing perspectives — allocentric and egocentric — to explain why the Jedi Order falls.  The tight control the Order exerts over the Jedi moves them away from the will of the Force and toward the will of the Council.  Its insularity creates a sense of superiority, which is the reason so many Jedi fail to see their clone troopers as threats until it’s too late. Stover tweaks the Jedi Purge scene to emphasize that the only reason Obi-Wan and Yoda survive is because of their selflessness.  Obi-Wan takes the time to befriend his alien mount, repeatedly confirming her well-being, and then she shields him with her body when his troopers open fire.  Yoda respects the Wookie command and puts himself in a position to assist rather than lead the resistance movement on Kashyyyk, meaning that when a fight breaks out between him and his troopers the Wookies don’t hesitate to side with him.  Yoda and Obi-Wan are the only two Jedi who truly give themselves to the service of others, and thus they are the only two to survive the Purge.

...and the million little favors this book does for the movie.

During the opening battle, having Obi-Wan tell Anakin to “use the Force” to fly a narrow trench and having Anakin roll his eyes at such an obvious suggestion.  It’s a callback to A New Hope, but one that drives home how much more the Force is integrated in the lives of Old Republic Jedi than it is in the lives of Imperial kids like Luke.

Fixing the minor continuity error from Episode III to Episode IV — why would Admiral Motti dismiss Vader as following outdated superstitions if there were millions of Jedi within his lifetime? — by explicitly stating that the Sith are considered a dead culture.  Ergo, Vader’s “ancient religion” isn’t the Force in general; it’s specifically the Sith creed.

Making Palpatine scarier and more seductive than he is in the movie.  Stover’s rhetoric about killing even the Jedi children is frighteningly rational and coherent, and he uses it to give Palpatine some stomach-churning speeches while corrupting Anakin.

Using the novel format for all it’s worth.  Stover skims over the physical-comedy elevator sequence in favor of having Dooku and Palpatine discussing their plans for the war.  He only tells us about Anakin’s conversation with Yoda after the fact, in scattered flashes as a panicking Anakin runs through the halls of the Jedi temple.  He gives us intense focus on Anakin’s mindset while trying to land the broken halves of Invisible Hand, less on what the ship itself is doing.  He cuts away from Anakin and Obi-Wan’s final battle, toward R2D2 and C3PO as they struggle to drag a dying Padmé into her ship out of a desperation to find some small way to help her.

Revealing that Palpatine spends the entire story trying to kill Obi-Wan.  This gets hinted at in the movie, but Stover includes several moments throughout Palpatine’s “rescue” from Dooku when Palpatine sets Obi-Wan up to die, and mentions like eight other attempts on Obi-Wan’s life as orchestrated by Palpatine.  It’s a great character addition, that Palpatine assumes he cannot get Anakin to fall unless he first eliminates Obi-Wan.

Expanding Padmé’s role in the movie (set dressing, and later refrigerator filling) by having her secretly organize and launch the Rebel Alliance right under Vader and Palpatine’s noses.

Those are just examples of how Stover clearly knows the Force, gets the Force, and strives to make the Force more internally coherent.  How he sometimes translates, sometimes preserves, and always improves the pacing and tone of the film.

I haven’t even touched on the FUCKING AMAZEBALLS imagery or introspection in the book yet, but this post is getting wicked long, so I’ll go ahead and leave it here for now.  Point is, all y’all should go out immediately and get a copy from your library and/or used bookstore, because Nonny is right and it’ll change your life.

The Queen fandom, Freddie Mercury and Characterisation

Or: Why are those anons like this? Why are those writers like this? Why don't we understand each other?

In this essay, I will-

No, I’m serious, I will. And this is an essay. It’s roughly 2500 words.

The friction, concerns and hurt in fandom around Freddie’s characterisation - most recently centred around a fic the author tagged as ‘Bisexual Freddie Mercury’, stating in the notes that they have chosen to write Freddie as bisexual - have given me a lot to think about. And if you have been asking yourself the questions above, this here might be of interest to you.

First off, why do I feel like I need to talk about this?

The answer is not: Because I’m so very influential in fandom.

I think my influence in this fandom has been vastly overstated by some people. If I were so influential, everybody would rush to read anything I rec or write. And trust me, they really don’t. My relevance is confined to a very specific part of the fandom. That part is made up of: Freddie fans, Froger shippers, some Roger fans, a handful of writers who like to support each other and like each other’s work, and people who are really into research.

There are many parts of fandom where my opinions are entirely irrelevant. Looking at the big picture, by which I mean only the Queen RPF fandom, I simply am not that important. Looking at the even bigger picture: the Queen fandom as a whole, the majority of which doesn't read or care about RPF - I am literally nobody.

Furthermore, everything I will be talking about here is in relation to the RPF-centred part of Queen fandom.

So why this public essay?

Because I have been deeply involved for two years in a divide of opinions concerning how Freddie ought to be written and how people think of RPF. I think this is in large part because I - like several other authors currently writing for the fandom - absolutely love research. It's my idea or fun. I love to dig into these real people’s lives. Not everybody does that and not everybody is comfortable with that. It’s a personal choice depending on people's levels of comfort surrounding RPF. But this does put me firmly in the camp of Freddie fans who like to explore who this man really was, and track down every last fact about him.

Freddie Mercury vs. Fictional Freddie

I’ll admit that I am one of those people who have the urge to speak up when they see somebody claim that Freddie was bisexual, and sometimes I will say: “Well, actually, we do know that he didn’t see himself that way, because…” For me, these have often been positive exchanges.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that Freddie Mercury identified as gay from his split with Mary to the end of his life (wonderfully curated here by RushingHeadlong). In the niche of fandom I have frequented over the last two years, as far as Freddie the real man is concerned, I have barely ever seen anybody argue with this.

But fanfiction and talking about real Freddie are not one the same thing, and they shouldn't be, and as far as I am concerned they don't have to be. Some writers like to put every last fact and detail they can find into their fic, in an attempt to approach a characterisation that feels authentic to them (and perhaps others), and other writers are simply content to draw inspiration from the real people, writing versions vaguely based on them.

But writing historically and factually accurate RPF is more respectful.

Is it? I've thought about this for a long time, and I really can't agree that it is. This, to me, seems to presume that we know what kind of fiction these real people would prefer to have been written about them. That, in itself, is impossible to know.

However, if I imagine Freddie reading RPF about himself, I think that he might laugh himself silly at an AU with a character merely inspired by him and may be really quite disturbed by a gritty, realistic take full of intimate details of and speculations about his life and psyche. Such as I also tend to write, just by the by, so this is definitely not a criticism of anybody. Freddie is dead. Of all the people to whom the way he is written in fiction matters, Freddie himself is not one. There is no way to know what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, in this regard, and so it isn't relevant.

Personally, I can't get behind the idea that speculating and creatively exploring very intimate details of Freddie's life, things he never even spoke of to anybody, is in any way more respectful than writing versions of him which take a lot of creative liberties. As I've said so many times before, I think either all of RPF is disrespectful or none of it is.

So who cares about Freddie characterisation in fiction anyway?

Clearly, a lot of people do. Freddie Mercury was an incredibly inspiring figure and continues to be that to a multitude of very different people for different reasons. There are older fans who have maybe faced the same kind of discrimination because of their sexuality, who saw Freddie's life and persona distorted and attacked by other fans and the media for decades, who have a lot of hurt and resentment connected to such things as calling Freddie bisexual - because this has been used (and in the wider fandom still is used) to discredit his relationship with Jim, to argue that Mary was the love of his life and none of his same sex relationships mattered, to paint a picture where "the gay lifestyle" was the death of him. And that is homophobic. That is not right. I completely understand that upset.

But.

These are not the only people who care about Freddie and for whom Freddie is a source of inspiration and comfort. What about people who simply connect to his struggles with his sexuality from a different angle? What about, for example, somebody who identifies with the Freddie who seemed to be reluctant to label himself, because that, to them, implies a freedom and sexual fluidity that helps them cope with how they see their own sexuality? Is it relevant why Freddie was cagey about labelling himself? Does it matter that it likely had a lot to do with discrimination? Are his reasons important? To some degree, yes. But are other queer people not allowed to see that which helps them in him? Are they not allowed to take empowerment and inspiration from this? Can you imagine Freddie himself ever resenting somebody who, for whatever reason, admired him and whose life he made that little bit brighter through his mere existence, however they interpreted it? I honestly can't say that I can imagine Freddie himself objecting to that.

This is the thing about fame. Anyone who is famous creates a public persona, and this persona belongs to the fans. By choosing that path, this person gives a lot of themselves to their fans. To interpret, to draw inspiration from, to love the way it makes sense to the individual. Please remember, at this point, that we are talking about how people engage with Freddie as a fictional character creatively. This is not about anybody trying to lay down the law regarding who Freddie really was, unequivocally. This is all about writers using his inspiring persona and the imprint he left on this world to explore themes that resonate with them.

This is what we as writers do. We write about things which resonate with us and often touch us deeply.

But don't they care about the real Freddie?

Yes, actually, I would argue that a lot of people care about "the real Freddie". It seems to me that depicting Freddie as gay or with a strong preference for men is what the vast majority of the RPF-centered fandom on AO3 already does. You will find very, very few stories where Freddie is depicted having a good time with women sexually or romantically. That he was mostly all about men is already the majority opinion in this part of fandom.

But another question is, who was the real Freddie? If the last two years in fandom have taught me anything, it is that even things which seem like fact to one person can seem like speculation to another. I have personally had so many discussions with so many people on different sides of the debate about the exact circumstances of Freddie's life and his inner world, that I must say I don't think there is such a thing as one accurate, "real" portrayal of Freddie. Even those of us who are heavily invested in research sometimes disagree quite significantly about the interpretations of sources. So that narrows "You don't care about the real Freddie" down to "You don't care about Freddie because you don't interpret everything we know about his life the exact same way I do". Sure, by that definition, very few people care about Freddie the same way you do.

The bottom line is, there are so many writers and fans who love him, people who are obsessed with him, people who care about him deeply. They might care about who they believe he really was or who he chose to present himself as to the world, the way he wanted to be seen. But ultimately, in my personal opinion, if somebody is inspired to write Freddie as a fictional character they feel that Freddie means a lot to them. And it is hurtful to accuse them of not caring.

But what some people write hurts/triggers me.

Yes, that can happen. Because the nature of AO3 is that everything is permitted. Personally, I am very much in agreement with that. You will also find me in the camp of people who are against any sort of censorship on AO3, no matter how much some of the content goes against my own morals or how distasteful I find it. Some people disagree with that, which is fine. We must agree to disagree then. Here, I would like to quote QuirkySubject from the post she made regarding this whole situation because I cannot put it better myself: “The principle that all fic is valid (even RPF fic that subverts the lived experience of the person the fic is based on) is like the foundation of [AO3]. The suggestion that certain kinds of characterisations aren't allowed will provoke a knee-jerk reaction by many writers.”

No matter how much you may disagree with a story's plot or characterisation, it is allowed on AO3. "But wait," you might say, "the issue is not with it being on the site but with people like yourself - who should care about "the real Freddie" - supporting it."

This is some of what I have taken away from the upset I have seen. And it’s worth deconstructing.

I've already addressed "the real Freddie". Moving on to...

The author is dead.

This is something others might very well disagree on as well, but to me the story itself matters far more than authorial intent. And what may be one thing according to the author’s personal definition, may be another thing to the reader. Let’s use an example. This is an ask I received yesterday:

This author thinks they were writing Freddie as bisexual. However, going by the plot of their story, I would actually say that it is largely very similar to how I see the progression of Freddie’s young adulthood. To me, personally, Freddie would still be gay throughout the story because he arrives - eventually - at the conclusion that he is. The author and I disagree on terminology only. And I think simply disagreements about terminology, given that some terms are so loaded with history in Freddie’s case, trips a lot of people up.

It seems to me that many people still equate bisexuality with a 50/50 attraction to men and women, when in actual fact many - if not most - bi/pan people would say that it is nowhere near that distribution. Some people are of the opinion that anybody who experiences some attraction to the opposite sex, even if they have a strong same-sex preference, could be technically considered bisexual. (However, sexuality isn’t objective, it’s subjective. At least when it comes to real people. What about fictionalised real people? We will get to that.)

Let's briefly return to real Freddie.

What I'm seeing is that there are several ways of thinking here, with regard to his sexuality.

1. Freddie was gay because that seems to be (from everything we know) the conclusion he arrived at and the way he saw himself, once he had stopped dating women. Therefor, he was always gay, it just took him a while to come to terms with it.

2. Freddie can be referred to as bisexual during the time when he was with women because at that time, he may very well have thought of himself thusly - whether that was wishful thinking and he was aware of it or whether he really thought he might be bisexual is not something we can say definitively. He came out as gay to two friends in 1974 on separate occassions, and he talked to his girlfriends about being bisexual. (Personally, I think here it is interesting to look at who exactly he was saying what to, but let's put my own interpretations aside.)

3. Freddie can be seen as bisexual/pansexual because his life indicates that he was able to be in relationships with both men and women and because there is nothing to disprove he didn't experience any attraction to the women he was with. Had he lived in a different time, he may have defined himself differently.

Now, I'm of the first school of thought here, personally, although I understand the second and also, as a thought experiment, the third.

I think all of these approaches have validity, although the historical context of Freddie's life should be kept in mind and is very relevant whenever we speak about the man himself.

But when we return to writing fictionalised versions of Freddie, any of these approaches should absolutely be permissible. Yes, some of them or aspects of them can cause upset to some people.

And this is why AO3 has a tagging system. This is why authors write very clearly worded author's notes. This is the respect authors extend to their readers. This, in turn, has to be respected. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own experience on the archive.

Nobody has the right to dictate what is or isn't published under the Queen tag. As far as I am concerned, nobody should have that right. As far as I am concerned, everybody has a responsibility to avoid whatever may upset them. I understand where the upset comes from. I also maintain it is every writer's right to engage with Freddie's character creatively the way they choose to.

None of us can control how other people engage with Freddie or the fandom. None of us can control what other people enjoy or dislike about the fandom.

The best way to engage with the content creating part of fandom, in my opinion, has always been to create what brings you joy, to consume the content that brings you joy and to respectfully step away from everything that doesn't.

I love reading your headcanons so much!!!

May I request: rfa with an mc who likes musicals?

anon, if you like any gothic musicals please look into Elisabeth Das Musical! It’s so good, genuinely on the same level as phantom of the opera <3 I’m also throwing V and Saeran in here for my own enjoyment because he dressed as The Phantom for Halloween~ I hope you enjoy!!

Yoosung Kim with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons

Yoosung hadn’t really taken any interest in musicals before meeting you, aside from vaguely knowing what Zen’s job is like and how much he has to work out. He always takes the opportunity to avoid doing his class work, however, so would be more than willing to watch a couple of them with you! 

He ends up enjoying upbeat musicals and is particularly fond of Hairspray and Hamilton! Yoosung absolutely has a new appreciation for Zen’s work and is so happy to have something else that he can share with you. 

He’s just a student, so he can’t afford extravagant gifts like tickets but he’ll try to get you merch items for your birthday or anniversary such as little posters and badges.

If you’re ever having a bad day, Yoosung will make an extra effort to put on one of your favourite musicals and cook an Omurice with extra love for you. He’ll get under the blanket and cuddle you to make you feel better. 

Zen/Hyun Ryu with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons 

My god, you’re his dream. He won’t have to worry about you thinking his career choice is unstable or pointless because you get it, you understand the appeal and love for musical theatre and the power it can have as an art form.

He’ll make sure you get the best tickets to his performance, and backstage passes to meet any of his co-stars if you’re a fan of their previous works. He doesn’t mind introducing you to them, as long as he’s still your favourite performer afterwards.

You get first dibs when the merch stall opens, and he’ll even try his best to get you any crew-only merch such as T-shirts or hoodies.

Your Friday nights together are spent on the sofa, watching various musicals and discussing them with Zen and how good he would be in the lead role. As well as singing along. There is a lot of singing involved. They aren’t always musicals that he’s been in because he likes to look around and enjoy different shows, but you can guarantee you will be watching a lot of his own DVDs.

He’ll ask you to help him with his lines, which is something you’d both enjoy, and you’re caught frequently duetting various songs with him. He gets really into it, sweeping you off your feet and into a dip. 

He gets extra soft when he hears you singing one of the love songs he’s performed in the shower and will do something embarrassing like singing the other half of the duet with you through the bathroom door.

Jaehee Kang with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons

Like Zen, Jaehee truly thinks she hit the Jackpot with you. She’s so happy to have a partner equally excited over musical theatre as it’s her main interest and form of escapism. 

The majority of your time spend unwinding together would be with one of Zen’s musicals on the TV. Jaehee is also interested in musicals from other countries, because then the both of you can talk about how well Zen would perform as certain characters, or how great his voice would sound singing a particular song. 

The absolute intensity when it comes to Ticket drops cannot be overstated, you’re both sitting there with a laptop and phone each- ready for the counter to drop and you’re each logging in. Jaehee’s more experienced so she goes for the seats you Want and you go for the seats you’ll settle for assuming that Jaehee didn’t get the priority ones in time. 

There aren’t dramatic duets or anything like that because Jaehee isn’t a loud person, but she enjoys quietly singing to herself and having you come up behind her, holding her waist and singing with her.

Jumin Han with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons

Jumin has never really seen the appeal of musical theatre, and any interested that he had in it was entirely dowsed by his annoyance for Zen. He prefers more ‘refined’ forms of live performance so it would take a few attempts before he’s willing to watch a DVD with you. 

He doesn’t mind it as much as he initially thought, but he’s not a fan of the more bawdy shows. He prefers melancholic stories with ballads such as Les Misérables. He’s much more interested in you enjoying yourself and him getting to enjoy your company and seeing you happy.

He’d gift you Priority VIP package seating with a Meet and Greet whenever there was a new show touring that you wanted to see: much to Zen’s annoyance that Jumin can just buy anything he wants with money, and then Jumin reminding him that Zen wouldn’t have a job if people didn’t pay to watch actors perform.

He’s a little bit jealous that you have something you can talk to Zen about more than him, so he definitely tries to apply himself more to the shows you’re the most interested in so he can talk to you about it and not feel upstaged.

Bonus: he was initially intrigued about CATS the musical because he thought maybe it would be actual cats, and then was promptly horrified by what he saw.

Saeyoung Choi with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons 

Little known fact but Seven does actually enjoy musicals. He doesn’t really have a lot of time to watch things like that, but when you want him to spend time with you and pick one he does he’ll always put a stupid one on. His favourite? Shrek the musical.

He definitely prefers the comedic shows, but if you want to watch something sad then he’s fine with watching that to since he’ll be glancing at you for the most part anyway. He likes watching you enjoy the things you’re passionate about.

Besides, if he can sense a sad part coming up or notices that your lip has started to tremble, he’ll do a big, dramatic but supposedly nonchalant yawn and wrap his arm around your shoulders.

This man absolutely belts out all the songs that he likes, and will also frequently pull you in to duet with him, whether you’re busy or not. he’s also someone that definitely sings to himself in the shower, but has no shame about it, so will just sing Candy Store from Heathers at the top of his lungs. 

[GOOD ENDING] Saeran Choi with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons 

Saeran had never seen a musical before, the closest thing he’s seen are holiday choirs at the cathedral, but he’s very looking forward to experiencing something new and getting to share in one of your precious hobbies. 

You decide to watch Phantom of the Opera together, since it was one of your favourites and a very popular one, so something good to start with. It was also very visually pretty to look at, so you thought Saeran would enjoy it. Which he does! So far, his favourite songs are ‘Think of Me’ and ‘Music of the Night’.

He tells you with a smile that Ray is enjoying himself, even if he is crying for The Phantom. Saeran eyes also water slightly towards the end of the Final Lair scene, so you cuddle a bit closer to him.

Saeran really starts enjoying musicals, and you catch him humming a few songs to various ones he likes whilst he’s cooking or tending to the garden.

He’s not really a fan of big Broadway ones, much preferring ones with softer music that are less in-your-face. He wouldn’t mind going to see a musical in person in the future, if there are any you particularly want to watch or if Zen wants people to come to see his performance. 

Jihyun Kim/V with an MC who loves musicals Headcanons

V has a lot of connections in the Art world, and people who feel indebted to him, so he would be able to get you early access to tickets as a gift. He’s so happy that you’re sharing another piece of yourself with him, so he will treat it with upmost respect.

He enjoys musicals, but like Jumin, he doesn’t particularly care for bawdy or overly dramatic ones. He is, however, fond of the ones that Zen’s in from when he used to watch them with Rika. So whilst he’s tentative to watch them again, he wants to replace the negative connotations with ones made entirely of you. 

He prefers older shows, since the more modern Broadway and West End ones are a little too much for his taste, but he’ll watch any that you want him to. He appreciates the artistry behind every performance and he feels as though he understands Zen a little bit better again, and he’s thankful for it.

If he hasn’t opted for his eye surgery, he’d prefer a seat close enough that he can still more or less make out what is happening on stage but V can enjoy the music and the atmosphere regardless.

The erasure of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Disney’s worst failure

R2-D2 and C-3PO make up the core of the Star Wars Saga. They are the first characters on screen; we are quite literally introduced to the universe from their perspective. They are the only characters who survive all the way through the Saga, from Episode I-VI. In Episodes I-VI, it was a deliberate choice for R2 to save the lives of the main characters at least once per episode (he fixes the ship’s shields in I, stops Padme from being boiled in II, helps Anakin and Obi Wan escape the battle droids in III, shuts down the trash compactor in IV, fixes the hyperdrive in V and gives Luke his saber in VI). C-3PO partly helps Luke along his journey by telling his exploits with the Rebels, C-3PO while annoying helped our heroes get out of tight situations and C-3PO is the only reason why the Ewoks helped the Rebels destroy the Death Star II’s generator.

It cannot be overstated how important these two characters are. In fact, a critic even argued that the Star Wars Saga was about the two droids being sent to different masters, and being the observers to all the mistakes and follies they make.

So just WHY has Disney completely ignored them? R2 no longer has his “save the day” moments; that’s literally just reserved for BB-8. When does R2 directly save anyone in the Sequels? And C-3PO, the translator, has been kicked out because Rey doesn’t need a translator because she’s already fluent in however many forms of communication the plot demands. Oh, and we don’t need R2, because Rey can fix anything she wants. If the purposes of 3PO and R2 can be replaced by an annoying Volleyball and a demigod, then why did you even bother to bring back C-3PO and R2-D2?

Even Anthony Daniels was baffled by the treatment of C-3PO "In these new movies, I have felt like a table decoration. And that is difficult because I recognize this character is worth so much more. But I understand it is a whole film, not a feature about C-3PO. That is just my personal disappointment. I get paid whether or not he does anything but it would be nice for him to have a purpose."

In TFA, C-3PO has a red arm? Why? Find out in a comic. In TLJ he does pretty much nothing and has one small moment with Luke that Mark and Anthony had to adlib because Rian Johnson couldn’t understand why these two would have one final moment. So in Rise Of Skywalker. C-3PO says “Let me take one last look, at my best friends.” Best friends? You barely knew Rey, Finn and Poe. They’ve been treating you like a nuisance all movie. Then we get a stupid “GOTCHA” gag by giving us another fucking fakeout death.

It would’ve made much more sense if we saw 3PO’s eyes imagine Han, Luke, Leia, Padme and Anakin. Oh and guess what would’ve been better? “R2, please. Let me do this. But first let me take one last look, at my best friend.” 3PO saying this to R2 would’ve made much more sense. Oh and no fake out death because that was bullshit. C-3PO gives his life to translate the Sith dagger(yes it’s as stupid as it sounds)

R2-D2 is the most screwed over character in the entire Sequel Trilogy. He spent all of TFA in low power mode either waiting for or trying to find Luke, finally does... and then he swears at him, plays one message to try and guilt him and then gives up entirely. Seriously, R2 only shows up in that one scene in the entire movie, the droid that was the most loyal little thing in the galaxy leaves the fate of his best friend and master to some random girl he knows nothing about. That's not R2. R2 would have followed Luke around and tried to save Luke instead of just sitting on the Falcon the entire time. I just find it IMPLAUSIBLE that R2-D2 would ever leave Luke. Then in TROS, R2 spends 95% of the movie being cut out. Why is R2 left out on the final adventure? R2 does not sit around, R2 goes where the action is. The treatment of R2-D2 in the sequels, ESPECIALLY AFTER KENNY BAKER’S PASSING IS INFURIATING!

Once again, let’s look at R2′s importance in the first 6 movies. George Lucas said the reason why R2 D2 has a major role in all six films is because the entire story, and therefore the canon, is actually being told BY R2-D2. He even went as far as making sure R2 saves the lives of the main cast once per film (1-Repairs the Naboo Ship and allows everyone to escape the blockade 2-Picks up Obi Wan’s distress signal AND saves Padme from lava 3-Overrides the Elevator lockdown and distracts Grevious 4-Shuts down the garbage masher 5-Fixes the hyperdrive allowing the cast to escape Vader 6-Gives Luke his lightsaber)

In the Sequels R2 never saves anyone’s life, completely breaking one of the core traditions of Star Wars. Worse, in TFA, he’s Shut down completely meaning he cannot possibly record what’s going on, hence, the entire film, and by extension the Sequel trilogy, is no longer a part of R2’s story.

Duel Of Fates actually used R2-D2.  During the heat of battle, R2-D2 would have taken a fatal blast, destroying the droid's circuits and rendering it little more than an empty shell. As Chewbacca carried R2 on his back, similar to how he once carried 3PO all those years before, R2's best friend would have been inconsolable. As a droid C-3PO has very rarely shown much emotion other than worry and fear for his own life. Seeing him mourn the death of his best friend would have made this one of the toughest death scenes to take in the entire history of Star Wars. C-3PO consoles a damaged R2-D2 as a Star Destroyers crashes to the ground in the background. C-3PO consoles a damaged R2-D2 as a Star Destroyers crashes to the ground in the background.

The fact they did absolutely nothing with R2-D2 and just fakeout deathed C-3PO in the final movie is insulting. The fact that they completely erased the importance of the storytellers of Star Wars is where the Sequels truly failed. This, I think, is the most glaring and obvious evidence of Disney’s lack of understanding of Star Wars. Over the years many, many things had changed in the Saga but the one constant was R2 and 3PO. And now they’re being unceremonious kicked to the curb.

Once again the fandom coming together to daydream about Mickey helping Ian out and seeing him back on track to become an emt again but why is that on Mickey? Why does he always have to do things to make Ian happy when Ian's usually nothing but annoyed by Mickey and does nothing to make Mickey happy? Truly shows which character y'all care about more.

This got absurdly long, because I am who I am and did take the opportunity to go off on a tangent about valid conclusions and what not, so I put it under a cut. Read at your own risk! Oh, and I also do address the actual question about whether or not Ian's career is on Mickey, and whether or not Ian never does anything to make Mickey happy. ;)

For the sake of clarity, I got this ask in response to this post.

And I gotta say, nonnie, getting this ask perplexed me to the point of running off to Trusted Fandom Friends, demanding to know how my undying love and loyalty for Mickey could ever be doubted. Had to laugh at myself a little, actually, and the strenght of my befuddlement. It reminded me of the time I went on a trip with people from the 501st (cosplayers dedicated to the bad guys in Star Wars) and Rebel Legion (cosplayers dedicated to the good guys in Star Wars) and a lot of people assumed I was a Rebel sympathizer simply because I had friends in that group and those were the people who had invited me. Excuse me, I didn't yell, I have like 30 Darth Vaders in my damned home, how dare you question my allegiance? I was so used to always being known as a diehard Vaderkin fangirl that the mer fact of strangers failing to recognize me as such genuinely fucked a little with my sense of identity. My love of Mickey isn't anywhere near as deeply ingrained into my sense of self, since he's only been an occasional presence in my life since 2016 while Darth Vader's been my main man since 1994, but it was still a little jarring to suddenly find myself (mis)identified as an Ian stan.

Being a fangirl is strange.

And I want to make it clear that I do love Ian. He's a fascinating character and, to me, he's a character that's often much harder to understand than Mickey. He rewards careful analysis and discussion, though, so I guess I tend to talk a lot about him? I don't need to spend as much time considering Mickey's feelings and motivations because they are (almost) always pretty obvious; I don't need to tease them out. But at the end of the day, Mickey is my favourite. (Though I'll always love Ian and Mickey together more than I love either of them on their own. It's like fresh cilantro and mint – each perfectly lovely in their own right, but the combination of them creates a flavour that's just out of this world.)

Now, you might argue that you don't follow me and so have no idea who I am and what I like to post about, and that going only by that single post (which, in fairness, was tagged with 'i just want ian to be happy okay?') I give off the general impression of an Ian stan. And that's fair enough; I'm an obscure blog in a decently big fandom and you're not required to keep track of anyone. However, if you want to throw around passive aggressive accusations of caring more about one character than the other, I will ask you to do your research first. Reacting to one single piece of data without considering the context is a common but highly unfortunate practice that needlessly complicates meaningful conversations, and we'd all do well to abstain from it.

Oh, you don't want to spend a lot of time and energy on consdering every single thing a specific Tumblr blog has ever said on a specific topic just so you can draw a valid conclusion about their stance? That's perfectly understandable, nonnie, and easily sorted: refrain from making unsubstantiated claims about what other people think or don't think and you won't have to. Ask them, if you wonder. If you see a tendency in fandom to put the responsibility for Ian's wellbeing and career or Mickey's shoulders and want to discuss that, that's totally cool! I am game (and will address that question below)! But it's very possible to do that without somewhat rudely ascribing perferences and opinions to other people, and you'll get better answers for it (for instance, you won't have to wade through me rambling on about valid conclusions and my memories from other fandoms... ).

It seems to me, though, that this touches upon a long-held frustration of yours. If I interpret your ask correctly, you think the show gives us an Ian who is mostly annoyed with Mickey and doesn't do anything to make him happy, and you think that the fandom responds to this by relegating Mickey to the role of Ian's caretaker, whose sole purpose is to serve Ian's needs without any regard for what might Mickey himself happy. Have I got that right?

If so, it should be noted that I don't agree with either of these takes: I don't think that's the Ian the show gives us (a point I will return to below), and I don't think that fandom at large only cares about Ian's happiness, and I particularly don't think that my post can be used a evidence of the latter.

For instance, when you sent me this ask the post in question had all of 40 notes. As I write this, it has just over 70. ”The fandom coming together” seems to be slightly overstating the case, don't you think? There are certainly fans who care more about Ian and only see Mickey as valuable as long as he contributes to Ian's happiness, just as there are fans who care more about Mickey and only see Ian as valuable as long as he contributes to Mickey's happiness - but this single post with less than a hundred notes does not support that either of these stances would be predominant within the fandom. (And, while on the topic, I'd like to state that I don't actually see a problem with either of those stances; these are fictional characters that exists for our entertainment and we don't have any moral obligations to treat them equally and fairly. Don't ruin other fans' fun by dumping on either of them in the character or shipping tags or on character and shipping posts and this is not a problem. It might be a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I don't think you have to love or even like all characters in a ship to ship it: I refuse to drink plain tea because it's nasty but put a splash of milk in it and its my favourite thing ever. You can love a combination without loving all the seperate pieces on their own. And yeah, I do revert to food metaphors a lot. I like food.)

Secondly, whether or not the post can be said to represent the feeling of the fandom at large (it cannot), I think that reading a post specifically about ”Mickey helping Ian out and seeing him back on track to become an emt again” and then extrapolating from that that Mickey ”always have to do things to make Ian happy” is a little wild. The very first thing I wrote for this fandom was a vision of Ian offering Mickey comfort, goddammit. (Ian giving Mickey a hug is so high on my list of desires, you can't even imagine)

As for your actual question (and, ah, imagine how much shorter this post would be if you had just left it at that) – of course that's not on Mickey. That much, incidentally, I've actually explicitly stated in another post. Ian might have his issues but he's still an adult and responsible for himself. That being said, I don't see it as particularly strange that someone would go out of their way to help their partner when they see them struggling? If I realize that someone I care about is unhappy and there's a way for me to help, I would want to help because I love them and want them to be happy, even if it's – ethically speaking – not my responsibility to do so. Pretty sure Mickey, who is action-oriented and so very protective of the people he loves, feels the same way.

Of course, if it's a one-sided thing – if one partner is always the one to do stuff for the other and never receives any support in return – that's not a healthy relationship, and I assume that this is what you're seeing in the show and taking exception to?

Only... I can't help but wonder who this Ian is, this uncaring, selfish version you see – because I don't quite get how it can be the Ian who emptied his bank account for Mickey, or the Ian who was ready to throw his parole and stay in prison for Mickey even when they were in the middle of a fight specifically because Mickey said it would make him happy, or the one who kept trying to talk to Mickey and win him back after Mickey punched him in the face, accidentally broke his leg, and took off with a new lover (I'm not taking sides in this one, btw – I have a lot of sympathy and understanding for both of them and their actions throughout this whole sorry affair), or the Ian who immediately wanted to marry Mickey protect him from the consequences of a murder Ian thought he had actually comitted, or the Ian who went along with arranging a real wedding even though he initially didn't at all understand why this was important to Mickey and who had someone come serenade him once he did, or the Ian who chose At last for Mickey to walk up to the aisle to, or the Ian who keeps trying to reach out to Mickey and to touch him and discuss their issues in a mature way even when he's (justifiably) upset about Mickey using all their wedding money without telling Ian. (Though Ian deciding for both of them that they're saving the money isn't great either.)

I mean, Ian's absolutely done shitty things, as has Mickey. They're human, and they're the products of a chaotic and often hostile enviroment. They do mess up a lot; they've hurt each other rather badly over the years. Depending on your perspective and preferences, you may think one or the other have behaved worse, but as far as I can see, the claim that Ian never does anything to make Mickey happy is simply not supported.

Ian has seemed unusually annoyed with Mickey this season, I'll give you that, but while that's not always the most fun thing to watch and I strongly sympathize with the wish to just see Ian look at Mickey with that fond look again, I don't find him being frustrated right now all that weird, given the circumstances. I'd argue it has less to do with Mickey and more to do with a general frustration over thwarted ambitions and not being able to hold on even to a really shitty job, though Mickey's attitude doesn’t exactly help (which is not to say that I think that Ian's the one in the right here, becasue Ian's way of handling things hasn't always been been stellar either). However, I do have faith in them sorting this out – because even though they fight and bicker and get annoyed with each other, there's never any indication that they're not both committed to making this marriage thing work. They certainly stumble, they misunderstand each other and lash out, but they calm down and go to sleep in the same bed and compromise and keep trying. Every day, they – both of them – choose each other.

I'd like to finish this off by noting, even though it's not entirely relevant to my argument, that that the number one thing that does make Mickey happy is being together with Ian, and even when Ian is pissed at Mickey and withholding sex (which was very ill-advised but says a lot of interesting things about his character, I think!) no one's sleeping on the couch, there are no nights away from the house and each other, and even in the middle of an argument they sit and stand next to each other. I think that's pretty telling of Ian's dedication, especially given his propensity for running away from his problems.

Phew. Okay, nonnie – though we don't agree and I doubt you'll find this answer satisfactory, I hope you see that I have done my best to understand your point of view and treat your arguments fairly and give you a thoughtful response. If you'd like to get back to me and elaborate on your stance, I'd ask that you show me the same courtesy. :)

A little rambling: on grief; and grieving a dog, a cat, an unborn child, and pieces of me that got hurt along the way. 

2300 words under the cut. 

It’s a very gloomy day today. I don’t usually mind; I like rain. But on a bad day, or a bad week, it only seems to insulate me in my own dark thoughts. That’s what today seems to be. I’ll work on fixing it later-- getting some exercise, sunlight if the clouds clear, making some tea. Should’ve done that already, but I forgot. Ate half a banana, at least. 

As I’ve complained about a few times lately, I’ve just not been doing especially well. When and why did it all start? It’s hard to say, but this ‘unwellness’ spell seems most potent starting April 11th (my anniversary, unfortunately, which is why I can remember it), when I came down with a gruesome stomach bug. Really haven’t been feeling right since. I’m really bad about being sick; it scares me and I handle it badly. I assume that’s part of what has messed me up. 

But grief is the other part, I think. Grief, and my being scared and worried that what caused it could strike again at any minute. Look, I’m... 32 now, and I’m sure that most people by this age have experienced profound loss. I’m probably not unusual, and I’m certainly not alone, but I think all the loss I’ve experienced is just piling up on me now, like there wasn’t enough time to process the new fresh ones before newer fresher ones came on, and so now even the old tough scars are aching. 

When I was a teenager, my parents died. They were old, and it was health problems. It was not a surprise, but that didn’t make it easier to deal with in freshman year of high school. (What made it easier to deal with? Rabidly cleaning out the fridge and watching Lord of the Rings tapes the neighbors lent me. That’s all I did for three days after my mom died.) It’s been a long time-- more than half my life ago-- and I do feel like I’m ‘over it’, but sometimes it just wells up, tears from nowhere. Maybe that’s just how grief is. 

A certainly had a good decade of my 20′s. I got married at 19, and had a pretty uneventful set of years. That felt normal to me. I do think, though, that the loss of my parents haunted me in that time, quietly. It influenced everything I did; it probably still does, if only because it changed the person I have become. But other than that, things were good, I think.  My dog Roxy died two years ago, when I was 30, not long after I got back from seeing my siblings for the first time in ages. She was violently ill, and died right in front of us as we were getting ready to take her to the vet. I think I’ve written about it. In fact, the next day I wrote a depressing fanfic piece, certainly as a coping mechanism. (It made people cry, so, mission accomplished, I guess.) I think that helped a lot. A few months later, my in-laws’ dog died too, while mom-in-law was on vacation, and that was rough as well. I wrote another sad fanfic about death. I really like both of these pieces, because they mean something, and they’re very raw. Furthermore, I’ll always have them, as tokens for Roxy, Ginger, and the little pieces of me they crushed when they died. I don’t know if the exchange is worth it, but it’s what I have. 

My grief over Roxy was gentle, as time went on. It didn’t bother me. I think I’d processed it well. I’d written out my feelings. I held her body in numb arms as my husband dug her grave. It was okay. 

In early 2020, basically on my 31st birthday (and right as Covid was happening), I found I was pregnant. Long story short, those were the densest two months of my life, where everything seemed to change so quickly. My thoughts and feelings could fill so very many pages; this is not the place I’ll leave them. The point of this particular story is that it didn’t work out. The baby ‘died’ not terribly unlike Roxy had-- violently ill, in front of me, with far too much blood. I passed out three times-- the real start of this current fearful nature, because I cannot overstate how very much I felt like I was going to die. I went to the ER; it was miserable, an ordeal I could say quite a lot about. I won’t, though. I have before, and I likely will again, elsewhere. 

This... This grief... I think I still don’t know what to do with it. I don’t think I ever will. Months later, I started writing a fic to deal with my feelings, though it took 90k words and many months before I got to the part where I could really delve into my trauma. And it has helped, I’m sure. I’m really sure. And I care about this fic so much, because like the others it is raw and real and it’s something I’d never have if not for my experience. Again, it may not be a fair trade, but it’s what I have. 

I don’t grieve for the baby. It didn’t make it far enough to even have a heartbeat. It doesn’t have a name, a gender. It doesn’t have a grave. We let the hospital take care of it. But I still grieve. I’m sad. Wrecked. I grieve what it could have been. I grieve the hope that was spent and lost on it, a precious resource that will take a long time to grow back, if ever. I grieve over not only my own disappointment, but my husband’s, and my in-laws. They’ve never pressured us to have kids, but they’re in their 60′s now, with no grandchildren. I think they feel... lacking, in a way. I understand. I feel the same (though different). I wanted to give them that. I wanted to have that. 

I still....?

I can’t say. I don’t know what I want. The event complicated my already complex emotions. I’m still waiting for them to simplify. Maybe they will, or maybe they won’t. 

I was alright for a while. Stressed enough because of Covid and family’s declining health. Then in early April 2021, just a year after the miscarriage, I got badly sick. Gross, but not what most people would call a real issue. But only a year after the miscarriage, when my body betrayed me and I was at its horrid mercy, this felt like too much. Again I felt like I was going to die. A week of near delirious fever and nausea; I’d have handled it badly enough in any other circumstance. 

As expected, I got through it. A horrible week, but just a week (or so). And then my dog Tobi died, just days later. 

This is it. This is the one I... I’m speechless about. The one I... maybe haven’t processed enough. I was just back from the edge of being badly, violently ill. I didn’t have the energy to write, physically or emotionally. And that just made it worse. I love writing. It’s my outlet (surprising, I’m sure). I wanted to write. I thought I ought to write. I needed to write. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t muster the words. I still... can’t. 

Tobi was... my baby. Not literally, of course. I didn’t conflate him with my lost child or anything. Tobi was 14. I’d had him since I graduated high school and got an apartment. Adopting him was one of the first things my husband and I did as an established adult couple, before we were even married. He was there, at my wedding. The photographer took a cute picture of me holding him before the ceremony. He was 11 months old at the time. Still had all his brown spots before they turned tan, then later white. He was there; he was always there. He was my entire adult life. And now I’ve lost him, the pup I had longer than my marriage (though soon we will outlast him). He was the big brother to all my other pets. He practically raised all the cats, and they adored him. (Tobi was a chihuahua, so they might have thought he was just another cat.) 

He was a sweet boy, who loved his mom and dad first and foremost. When he was little, he was scared of everyone else. Eventually he warmed up to strangers and friends, and in his old age he mostly liked to nap somewhere on his own. He was silly and playful; he always chased the cats when they wanted to be chased. It was a game they all loved. 

The vet... well, we took him in when he started to cough badly. He’d had a cough for a few months, but it wasn’t constant and didn’t seem to be affecting his quality of life much. But that day it was bad, so we took him. (We can’t afford frequent vet visits, so this was clearly desperate.) The vet took him and put him on oxygen. We had to stay in the car because they weren’t open for human guests. Then she came and told us a scan had revealed cancer, marbled through his lungs. He was suffocating. In fact, he wouldn’t likely even make it home, not even the two mile drive. We had to put him down. My husband and I cried like babies. We’d never put an animal down before. Generally speaking, we don’t really ‘believe in it’, if that makes sense. But faced with this situation, we had no choice. 

I didn’t see him again. I think that’s the worst part, though it would have been equally bad to see him, I think. And it was all so sudden. He was playing and chasing the cats the day before. Begging for treats of human food. Barking at the Roomba. And then I had to pay hundreds of dollars to say goodbye to him. It felt so unfair. I cried all day. My husband and I, we just went home and laid down and wept. 

But I still haven’t written about it, not in the way that I wrote about the others. For all that I wrote here, it doesn’t begin to encompass my deeper feelings on what it means that he is gone, and how I felt to have to make that decision. I have ideas. I think I know what I would write, if I could, but writing... still mostly eludes me. I may try. I probably should. 

I take a deep breath. I know I should sum this up and take care of myself, but there’s yet a little more to say. 

I think Tobi’s death is a large part of what affects me still, but several weeks ago I had what I could only call a panic attack. In the middle of the night I awoke, my heart beating rapidly, a horrible feeling of dread like certainty that all I could possibly do was die. It took over two days for me to feel mostly normal again, and then I still felt vaguely nauseous for two weeks. Then, just a few days ago, it happened again, but this time before bed. I could feel it rising in me, this indescribable sickness. It took several days ago before I felt normal. And this is where I am now. 

Sadly, a little while after the first panic attack, my husband and I failed to save a malnourished feral kitten. It was not a surprise, but yet one more reminder of the fragility of life, and how little I can do to keep death away from those I care about. This poor thing, it was so desperate to live, but nothing we could do could save it. I could have poured all my time into trying, could have scrounged up money to take it to the vet (when I should take my own cats, who all have colds), but I know better. I know... so much of the time, there’s nothing you can do. And now I’m trying to help what might be its siblings, a few cute feral kittens nearby. My favorite seems... a little lethargic, and not very interested in eating the wet food and meat scraps I sometimes bring by. I don’t think there’s anything I can do, if it ends up being sick, if it ends up being malnourished. I can’t bring it inside when it could infect my own cats. I have to care for them first. 

But knowing that it could die... it bothers me. 

And knowing that I could die. I could die. I’m too aware of that, on top of everything else. I hate doctors, so I never go. (Also I’m poor.) This toothache? Could be a terrible abscess. My brother went to the ER for sepsis from an abscess tooth recently! That’s probably what caused the panic, to be honest. But then... why have I felt so week? Is there a problem with my blood? Am I sicker than I know? Do I have breast cancer? My grandma did, and I know I should get it checked out, but it’s just ONE MORE THING. It’s always like that. 

And that’s... how I feel right now. Covered in ‘one more thing’s on rainy days and night-work schedules. Trying to take care of myself but not always knowing what that means. Lacking the inspiration to do the things I know I enjoy, because worry and apathy holds me back from everything. 

I’m okay. Really. No day of mine is ever entirely without merit, and I have plans to do most of the things that should keep me healthy. But the day is short when my needs and long, and the day is long when I’m paralyzed by apathy. 

So. I’ll just take it a moment at a time. And when I can, I’ll try to keep writing. 

Trust Me

Iconic anemone request: I love your drabbles about the MCU. Do you mind writing some scenes of Coulson, Hill, Nat, Clint, being a family with frustrated Fury having to deal with the aftermath? (Cause Fury definitely isn't part of that family, no way.)

Thanks for the prompt, babe! I hope it’s kinda what you wanted!

Read on Ao3

Pairings: can be none, can be clintasha

Warnings: none

Word Count: 2297

Trust plays a big role in the success and failure of any SHIELD agent. Trust of the agent, trust of the system, trust of the self.

Perhaps no one knows this better than Clint Barton, Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, and Nick Fury.

Natasha Romanoff will learn it soon enough.

“What do you mean you can’t find them?”

“Agent Barton has turned off his trackers, ma’am,” the SHIELD agent in front of her says, typing furiously on his keyboard, “we’ve lost them.”

“There’s no way he’s turned off all of them,” she barks, “check again.”

“Ma’am, it’s every single one!” Sure enough, there are no readings on the screen. “We can’t—we can’t trace him, there are no trackers in his suit that are still operational.”

Hill pinches the bridge of her nose. This isn’t the first time they’ve had issues with Barton, it probably won’t be the last. “He does realize we can’t help him if we don’t know where he is, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Barton is a survivor. We’ll just have to hope he can pull it out of his hat one last time.

To be honest, Hill thinks to herself as she stares at the screens, if this were any other mission, she’s not sure she’d be so upset about it. Barton is capable. Barton is scrappy. Barton is stubborn.

The problem is he’s hunting an assassin who is all those things and more.

It’s the most dangerous target SHIELD’s been after in a while, and she’s still not completely sure why they’ve sent out Barton, who’s still pretty green by SHIELD standards, and just him at that. No team. No backup. Just one little agent.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and turns, seeing Coulson staring at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I hate this,” she murmurs, too quiet for the others to hear, “I hate being here, behind the screens, not out there.”

“We have to trust them,” Coulson says in that soft patient voice she only hears when she’s in the medbay after a mission, not sure whether or not she can relax, “you know that. They’ve got the eyes and ears, the feet on the ground. They can adapt to things faster than they can tell them to us.”

“I know,” Maria says, letting his hand hold her steady, “I just don’t like it.”

“You’d rather be out there, wouldn’t you,” he chuckles, watching her face pinch, “can’t say I blame you.”

“He’s going to get written up for that,” she grumbles, nodding toward the still deactivated trackers, “isn’t he?”

“Only if he can’t lie his way out of it.”

“You ever met someone who’s lied to him and survived?”

Coulson just gives her a wink that tells her nothing.

For the rest of the night, she stands there, heart in her throat, palms prickling, as they keep trying to make contact with Agent Barton. It never crosses her mind that Coulson said to trust them. Not him, but them.

At least, not until later.

Clint looks down. He can’t kill her. He knows he can’t. He’s sure that whatever handler is on the other end of his now-deactivated comm would scream at him to follow orders, but that’s just not what he’s here for.

He knows he’s lucky. He got this chance. He got out. He’s got someone on top of him that wants him here. There’s a good chance he can roll with the punches once he gets back.

The assassin has bright red hair that curls into a shock near her leg. She isn’t asleep. He knows she isn’t. Her breathing is too even. There isn’t a chance she’s asleep right now and he doesn’t blame her. He’s sure he wouldn’t be either.

There’s no reason for her to trust him, he gets it. There’s absolutely no reason that he shouldn’t try and put an arrow through her right now. But he won’t.

He knows that look. The facial expression that’s just this side of too soft, blank in every sense of the word. Hers is even better than his, a slight uptick of the lips on the left side, her eyebrow arched ever so delicately. At a first glance—and let’s be honest, any glance for most people, but he’s not most people—it looks like haughty superiority. But it’s not. It’s evident in how still it stays.

She’s as much of a prisoner as he was.

He’s going to get her out of this, one way or another, and deep, deep down, he knows he can’t kill her. Skill level unaccounted for, he knows he won’t be able to kill her. SHIELD would think that a weakness, probably.

All he can hope for is when he turns this comm back on, he’ll get someone good.

“You can stop pretending now,” he murmurs, “I know you’re not asleep. I got food.”

She stirs, turning over and staring at him, her expression perfectly blank. He doesn’t try and talk. He won’t convince her of anything right now, except the fact that maybe the food isn’t poisoned.

He doesn’t promise that he’ll keep her safe. He doesn’t promise that they’ll take care of her. He doesn’t promise anything.

He only types a word out on his comm and hopes that when he presses send, it doesn’t go to Victoria Hand or Jasper Sitwell or any of the other higher-level agents that might be monitoring.

He knows he’s done right when he gets a return message that can only be from Maria Hill.

Coulson knows what being a SHIELD agent is like. Which means he knows when someone is hiding something.

Maria Hill is an incredible agent. Her understanding of logistics makes her an invaluable asset and her ability to change and adapt to almost any set of challenges thrown her way cannot be overstated.

Maria Hill cares. Deeply. She throws herself into projects because she believes in SHIELD. In protecting people. That includes her fellow agents. And sometimes that can be more than a little blinding.

Coulson can’t really talk. He’s gotten into his fair share of scrapes for sticking his neck out or being more than a little reckless to protect someone he respects and cares about. But he’d like to think he’s gotten a little better at disguising those acts as doing his duty.

There’s not much Hill can disguise when she receives a comm message from Barton right in front of him.

She knows when she’s been made, looking up at Coulson with a determination he’s rarely seen face to face from her. Her hand is poised over the comm, almost as if she’s daring him to tell her not to do something.

“Protocol states that you must inform all active agents of developments,” he reminds softly, “including when comms come back online.”

“I’m aware, sir.”

He glances around. No one else has noticed yet. “Agent Barton is deep in hostile territory and it’s likely that he’s made contact with the target.”

“Satellites confirm that assumption, sir.”

Coulson looks back down at her hand. “Any contact on our part could compromise the mission.”

“The mission comes first to SHIELD, sir, always.”

Her responses are perfect. No inflection. Her hand barely twitches. In any other circumstances, if he weren’t paying enough attention, he doubts he’d’ve noticed. He tells her so, smiling when her eyebrow quirks. She’s still staring at him.

Coulson knows what being a SHIELD agent is like. And sometimes that means throwing away the book and trusting each other. He trusts Maria Hill. He trusts Clint Barton.

When Hill sends the return message, for a brief instant, Phil’s eyes flicker up toward the ceiling, up toward the office of a man who knows what it means to be a SHIELD agent.

He trusts him too.

Trust. What a small, small word.

Bat your eyelashes. Smile shyly. Arch your back a little. Stumble into them just enough so they feel the press of your body. Nod firmly. Tilt your head. Draw your eyebrows together.

She knows how to make them trust her. A few soft words, a few gentle touches, this kind of trust she understands. Lure them closer, coax down their guard. Get what you need. Vanish.

These people have a very different type of trust.

They are not a unit. They would be easy to pick apart. They all have different wants, different desires, different needs. Different weaknesses. The one who came to find her, Agent Clint Barton, doesn’t fit in here like the others. Their uniformity rasps against his skin like sandpaper and he moves like he knows his body, but not like he knows its place.

She sees distrust in all the other eyes, in the slight shift of shoulders, in the fingers that never stray from the trigger guards. She walks past them with her bubble that threatens to burst at the slightest falter until she meets the new agent.

Maria Hill, Agent Clint Barton had said, another agent. A different agent. Her gaze travels up and down as Maria Hill’s does the same. She’s sure the agent sees some of her history written in the way she breathes. She can see Maria Hill’s too.

Maria Hill is a cog in the machine she has walked into. Significant enough to be important, well-placed enough to cause a massive hindrance if she chooses to, not important enough to be essential. Maria Hill wears her rank on her chest in the hidden halls of this mysterious bunker and does not shy away from meeting her eyes, even when she turns up the danger and stares. Maria Hill does not flinch.

Maria Hill trusts Clint Barton. She can see it.

Another agent walks into the room. She wills her body to remain completely composed.

Some people in this world are bullets, she has learned. Some people are guns.

Clint Barton is a bullet. Maria Hill is a gun.

This new agent is the finger on the trigger.

“My name is Phil Coulson,” the man says, completely taking the protocol for interrogation and throwing it out the window, apparently, “I’m an agent of SHIELD.”

She does not offer her name. This new agent, Phil Coulson, keeps talking to her. He asks her how long she’s been working for the Red Room. She doesn’t respond. He asks her why she was in Latvia. She doesn’t respond. Sooner or later they will learn that they won’t get any information out of her.

Then she learns that what they want is not information.

“I told you,” Clint Barton mumbles, “they’ll listen. And if you…if you want, I’ll vouch for you.”

Maria Hill nods. Phil Coulson smiles at her.

They want her to join them.

She knows what she should do. There are guns in this room. She can take out Clint Barton in barely an instant. Use his body as cover. Kill Maria Hill, kill Phil Coulson. Escape with the intel and return to the Red Room, ready for whatever punishment she will receive for failing her mission or die trying to get there.

But she looks into the eyes of Clint Barton, an agent, an assassin, someone who stared at her and made the choice to lower his weapon.

There is a different kind of strength required to grant mercy.

She can trust strength, even if she can’t trust them.

“What must I do?”

Phil Coulson smiles. “We can start with your name.”

“Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

Fury looks at the report as Coulson leaves the office. He flips through it one more time as the door shuts.

He is not a young man anymore and years of being a SHIELD agent have honed his paranoia into weapons that keep him alive. Weapons that can just as easily turn inward if he’s not careful. That’s why he has a very small circle of people that keep their eyes on things he can’t.

Maria Hill is a carer. She takes statistics and bends them to her will when they won’t agree. Clint Barton is a wild card that lands on his feet just to catch someone else.

Phil Coulson is a good man.

Fury sits back and stares at the door, Natasha Romanoff’s file open on the desk in front of him. Three people have come to him to vouch for this mysterious assassin that got on SHIELD’s radar in perhaps the worst way possible for someone who wants to survive. She’s a survivor.

Fury knows what it means to be a survivor.

You don’t really survive the kinds of things they live through. You don’t come out of hellfire without getting singed and you sure as hell don’t dive back in. You don’t bear your teeth when someone else’s are at your throat and come out of that without blood running down your chin. You don’t light the fire inside you that keeps you warm on ark lonely nights and expect it to go out, just like that.

You don’t defeat monsters without becoming one.

Fury knows that just from looking at this file what he’d see in the gaze of Natasha Romanoff. Of the calculations that would be running through her head the second she steps foot into the office. The games of chess they’d play with every spoken word. The gaze that would lock onto his jugular or the bridge of his nose and refuse to let him go.

He wonders, briefly, if she recognizes the same in him and realizes he’s not going to take advantage of it the same way she would.

The world doesn’t like people—the world doesn’t like things like them.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth protecting.

Fury closes the file and stamps it, sliding into the secure safe in his desk drawer.

He made the right choice sending Barton out after this one.

I dunno if I have a lot to say, but I figured that give how many people follow me, I wanna share some tips on preserving mental health during these chaotic times

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have noticed my last story QA, which was a bit of a survey just to see how some of you lovely monitors are feeling, because I know the world in general has been stressed lately for obvious reasons. The elephant in the room is that we as individuals are all walking a tightrope of staying up-to-date about the future and how to maintain our physical health while also trying to preserve a sense of productivity and activity to sustain our mental health, the latter of which I’m noticing being especially strenuous for many of you, likely because this prolonged period of uncertainty and anxiety is highly unfamiliar. I want to disclaim right away: I am not a doctor, I am not a psychologist trained in extensive therapy who knows how to guide each and every one of you to your healthiest behaviors. However, I still wish to still help you with some advice. I do wish to see you as my friends, and as my friends, I want to ensure that you are happy and healthy. I already have a history of self-isolation, and without getting too in-depth of the exact details, this involuntarily hermit-like lifestyle we’re all being encouraged to ascribe to has been my way of living for the past several years (the involuntary-ness included). I’ve become much more acclimated to not just being alone, but stuck in a place of residence with little directive or seeming control of my own future, with a long history of trying to discern of not just what to do with my life in general, but just getting through the day-to-day. I want to discuss that day-to-day, because the month(s) away we have from returning to a normal world again is still comprised of many, many days, and if I can’t come up with a surefire long-term plan for how to deal with a future we are all in unfamiliar territory of dealing with, I can at least suggest a few low-cost stepping stones to helping you take in each day a lot easier, and hopefully help lift a bit of the collective burden over however long we may be like this. 1) DON'T LET YOURSELF GIVE UP. I feel like this is a bit of an obvious tip that might come across as “are you feeling sad? Just be happy!”, but hear me out. One of the biggest sources of human (or human-equivalent) stress is the feeling that one has no control over their life. The period where I fussed incredibly hard about the fate of my future as I was first condemned was one of the darkest, most exhausting parts of my life, as were all the times I had done before. It wasn’t merely that I was so ashamed of my failures, but it was the fact that I’d constantly and semi-consciously associate it with my entire being, to the point where I couldn’t make a casual joke in a non-depressed context that didn’t end with a side remark of how I wanted to die (now that I explained it without context… yikes.) Eventually, there was a eureka moment for me where I had enough of being tired. I’m not sure exactly what triggered it -- perhaps it was just dealing with the banality of the isolation, perhaps it was just me thinking more about how I mentally hurt myself and what I could do to stop, perhaps it was me simply deciding to find professional psychological help for it -- but whatever the case, I realized that even if the world could do bad things to me, I wanted to stop doing things that would hurt myself, as not only was being good to myself the least that I could do, but it also helped me forge a modicum of very real power for my self-esteem, giving that first boost to kickstart my life again (in part by starting this channel and making new online friends!) This wasn’t a solution to get rid of all my outside problems, but rather a means to help accept that things would be tough, but I could still live with them. Challenges will need to be faced, and there will be failures because that’s how life can be sometimes, but it also helped me better comprehend that there will also be victories, because that’s ALSO how life can be sometimes! I can’t say for sure how each and every one of you will be able to help yourself realize that negativity, hopelessness, and cynicism are not the only means to approach an uncertain and stressful future. Perhaps you already realized it! Perhaps you were in the process of realizing it but the articulation of my journey may give some guidance. Perhaps you still need some more time and thought to think about it. But whichever way, I implore you to consider that this future is not solely one to be defeated by, but one which you can fight to be happy in… and win. 2) GIVE YOURSELF A DAILY RHYTHM. One of the biggest things I see people complaining about is how without their usual daily schedule with work or school, their mental acuity is going haywire and it’s difficult to get things done. There are many reasons for why our brains are reacting to the situation the way they do: a bunch of collective trauma surrounding the pandemic putting our brains on edge for what to expect next, stress making us unable to register complex tasks, our inner survival instinct diverting away our ability to think about personal minutiae, etc. The human brain is a fickle thing doing its best to cope with the trauma it’s presented with, and first and foremost, it’s important to be patient with yourself. Going back to the “how to take on the day-to-day”, let’s talk about schedules. The truth is that many of us crave at least a mild semblance of structure and compartmentalization, and a big factor for why our minds are getting sloggy is because we’ve lost the ones we followed, mostly ones imposed onto us by our professions, and were wholly unprepared to figure out a compensation plan (as many of you students learning via Zoom conferences are aware). The practical trick I have to help remedy this is a pretty basic-on-paper one: seek out your own schedule. Speaking from my own experience, the daily grind into this miasma of a future becomes less cumbersome once you intuit what you actually define as “the daily grind”. This is not to say you need to become a rigid, Clock King-esque fanatic who plans every action by the minute, as simply understanding what you do and what you WANT to do will be of help. For me, I schedule my alarm clock to go off at 8:30. Every day I get up and make coffee or tea along with breakfast for myself and The Master. My current daily priorities are messy janitorial duties and Animal Crossing, while my personal hobbies that I’d reserve to my free time include filming content, playing video games, watching movies or Youtube, cooking, or going outside to jog. Every week or so, I go out for groceries. I do my best to go to bed and sleep before midnight. Of course, this is just MY schedule, but this is how rudimentary it can get while still giving me a sense of fulfillment when I do pass the time as I do accomplish my tasks. There are many ways to go about it, but really, one of the simplest ways to recognize them in your life is just write it out. Actually articulate it into just a really simple list that you have to transfer from mind onto paper/digital text. This is especially recommended if additional tasks or changes to your life occurs: write it down so you can remember everything! And allow yourself to do it! This is not to say you should be worrying constantly about how productive you are, as the goal is not to define yourself by how much you accomplish per day, but rather a way to give yourself that sorely needed daily rhythm we all miss, while allowing you to reward yourself when you hit your goals. And like every plan, it doesn’t need to be flawless -- there will be times where we need to relax and take a break. There might be emergencies to deal with. There may be times where things are so overwhelming where it’s like “Yknow what? I don’t wanna do anything today.” And that’s okay. On a related note: Something I’d like to place importance on with my schedule is my sleep. As someone who has experienced long periods of miserable exhaustion in my life, I cannot overstate just how important and cathartic a good, consistent sleep schedule is. I’m not joking: the night when I stopped being “insomniac” by going to bed tired but staying on my phone up until 2 AM, and instead actually went to bed at 11-ish, I woke up feeling the best I had in years. Exhaustion no longer felt like a necessary, expected burden. I felt legitimately well-rested, and discovering that I could freely feel things that weren’t depression was almost epiphanic (if that’s a word lol). I know that going to sleep and waking up on a consistent time of day might sound chore-like to many of you night owls, and there may be other concerns at play like actual insomnia, but I implore you to at least consider giving yourself a consistent nightly rhythm as well as your daily one. Being exhausted is an easy way to get stuck in your own head, and if you’re thinking dark thoughts and lack the energy to force yourself out, you can be in trouble. Don’t underdo or overdo it that you still feel like crap when you wake up. Be honest to yourself. Good sleep can be incredibly rewarding in ways that you might not even believe until you experience it for yourself.

01-22-2112:00 PM

‘Time is running out’: Prince Harry calls for social media reform after U.S. Capitol riot

In a Q&A with Fast Company, The Duke of Sussex responds to social media’s role in the Capitol attack and explains why the next step must be to hold social platforms accountable.

[Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images]

BY KATHARINE SCHWAB

LONG READ

Over the past year, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have become increasingly outspoken advocates for healthier social media—a topic that is clearly near to their hearts, given the horrendous vitriol and harassment they have faced online and in the press.

By partnering with organizations that aim to understand technology’s impact on society and vocally critiquing the state of online life in the media, the couple are using their clout to push for change in the current digital ecosystem. In an essay for Fast Company last August, Prince Harry called on business leaders to rethink their role in funding the advertising system that underlies the misinformation and divisive rhetoric that’s often shared on social platforms.

“This remodeling must include industry leaders from all areas drawing a line in the sand against unacceptable online practices as well as being active participants in the process of establishing new standards for our online world,” he wrote.

Now, social media is facing an inflection point, just weeks after a violent mob stormed the Capitol in an attack that was conceived, plotted, and stoked primarily online. Powerful platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube responded by suspending Donald Trump’s accounts, while Amazon and Apple cut ties with Parler, a social network that was used by the rioters. But experts and regulators believe that more must be done to reform social media.

Against this background, Prince Harry is once again imploring people to pay attention to the problems social media have wrought. In a wide-ranging interview with Fast Company, he explains why social platforms must be held accountable for the Capitol attack and the circumstances that enabled it, and why we must remodel the digital world before it’s too late.

FC: Six months ago, you wrote an essay for Fast Company in which you asked companies to take action to ensure the meaningful reform of our “unchecked and divisive attention economy.” How has your perspective on social media’s role in society changed over the last few weeks since the attack on the U.S. Capitol?

Prince Harry: When I wrote that piece, I was sharing my view that dominant online platforms have contributed to and stoked the conditions for a crisis of hate, a crisis of health, and a crisis of truth.

And I stand by that, along with millions of others who see and feel what this era has done at every level—we are losing loved ones to conspiracy theories, losing a sense of self because of the barrage of mistruths, and at the largest scale, losing our democracies.

The magnitude of this cannot be overstated, as noted even by the defectors who helped build these platforms. It takes courage to stand up, cite where things have gone wrong, and offer proposals and solutions. The need for that is greater than ever before. So I’m encouraged by and grateful for the groundswell of people who work—or have worked—inside these very platforms choosing to speak up against hate, violence, division, and confusion.

FC: Why is this topic so important to you? How was your outlook affected by the well-documented online harassment you and your wife have faced in the U.K.?

PH: I was really surprised to witness how my story had been told one way, my wife’s story had been told one way, and then our union sparked something that made the telling of that story very different.

That false narrative became the mothership for all of the harassment you’re referring to. It wouldn’t have even begun had our story just been told truthfully.

WE ARE LOSING LOVED ONES TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES, LOSING A SENSE OF SELF BECAUSE OF THE BARRAGE OF MISTRUTHS, AND AT THE LARGEST SCALE, LOSING OUR DEMOCRACIES.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

But the important thing about what we experienced is that it led to us hearing from so many others around the world. We’ve thought a lot about those in much more vulnerable positions than us, and how much of a need there is for real empathy and support.

To their own degree, everyone has been deeply affected by the current consequences of the digital space. It could be as individual as seeing a loved one go down the path of radicalisation or as collective as seeing the science behind the climate crisis denied.

We are all vulnerable to it, which is why I don’t see it as a tech issue, or a political issue—it’s a humanitarian issue.

From an early age, the guiding principle in my life has been about the duty to truth, the pursuit of compassion, and the alleviation of suffering. My life has always been about trying to do my part to help those who need it most, and right now, we need this change—because it touches nearly every single thing we do or are exposed to.

FC: Where do we go from here? What do you think needs to change to create an online atmosphere where truth, equity, and free speech are all prioritized?

PH: I ask the same thing every day and lean on the experts to help give guidance on how to reform the state of our digital world—how we make it better for our kids, of course, but also for ourselves—now.

The avalanche of misinformation we are all inundated with is bending reality and has created this distorted filter that affects our ability to think clearly or even understand the world around us.

What happens online does not stay online—it spreads everywhere, like wildfire: into our homes and workplaces, into the streets, into our minds. The question really becomes about what to do when news and information sharing is no longer a decent, truthful exchange, but rather an exchange of weaponry.

WHAT HAPPENS ONLINE DOES NOT STAY ONLINE—IT SPREADS EVERYWHERE, LIKE WILDFIRE: INTO OUR HOMES AND WORKPLACES, INTO THE STREETS, INTO OUR MINDS.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

The answer I’ve heard from experts in this space is that the common denominator starts with accountability. There has to be accountability to collective wellbeing, not just financial incentive. It’s hard for me to understand how the platforms themselves can eagerly take profit but shun responsibility.

There also has to be common, shared accountability. We can call for digital reform and debate how that happens and what it looks like, but it’s also on each of us to take a more critical eye to our own relationship with technology and media. To start, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Consider setting limits on the time you spend on social media, stop yourself from endlessly scrolling, fact-check the source and research the information you see, and commit to taking a more compassionate approach and tone when you post or comment. These might seem like little things, but they add up.

Finally, there’s a responsibility to compassion that we each own. Humans crave connection, social bonds, and a sense of belonging. When we don’t have those, we end up fractured, and in the digital age that can unfortunately be a catalyst for finding connection in mass extremism movements or radicalisation. We need to take better care of each other, especially in these times of isolation and vulnerability.

FC: Since the Capitol riot, big tech companies from Twitter to Amazon have exercised their power by making determinations about who gets to use their products. Do you think companies should have the power to make decisions about who has access to some of the most prominent platforms on the internet?

PH: We have seen time and again what happens when the real-world cost of misinformation is disregarded. There is no way to downplay this. There was a literal attack on democracy in the United States, organised on social media, which is an issue of violent extremism. It is widely acknowledged that social media played a role in the genocide in Myanmar and was used as a vehicle to incite violence against the Rohingya people, which is a human rights issue. And in Brazil, social media provided a conduit for misinformation which ultimately brought destruction to the Amazon, which is an environmental and global health issue.

In a way, taking a predominately hands-off approach to problems for so long is itself an exercise in power.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Speakers’ Corner, an area in London’s Hyde Park which is home to open-air debate, dialogue, and the exchange of information and ideas. I used to go past it all the time.

This concept of a ‘public square’ isn’t anything new—it can be traced back to the early days of democracies. You get up there and speak your piece. There are ground rules. You can’t incite violence, you can’t obscure who you are, and you can’t pay to monopolise or own the space itself. Ideas are considered or shot down; opinions are formed. At its best, movements are born, lies are laid bare, and attempts to stoke violence are rejected in the moment. At its worst, intolerance, groupthink, hate, and persecution are amplified. And at times, it forces lines to be drawn and rules or laws to emerge or be challenged.

I THINK IT’S A FALSE CHOICE TO SAY YOU HAVE TO PICK BETWEEN FREE SPEECH OR A MORE COMPASSIONATE AND TRUSTWORTHY DIGITAL WORLD.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

I’m not saying we should abandon technology in favour of Speakers’ Corner. Rather, it’s that we should avoid buying into the idea that social media is the ultimate modern-day public square and that any attempt to ask platforms to be accountable to the landscape they’ve created is an attack or restriction of speech. I think it’s a false choice to say you have to pick between free speech or a more compassionate and trustworthy digital world. They are not mutually exclusive.

With these companies, in this model, we have a very small number of incredibly powerful and consolidated gatekeepers who have deployed hidden algorithms to pick the content billions see every day, and curate the information—or misinformation—everyone consumes. This radically alters how and why we inform opinions. It alters how we speak and what we decide to speak about. It alters how we think and how we react.

Ultimately, it has allowed for completely different versions of reality, with opposing sets of truth, to exist simultaneously. In this, one’s understanding of truth does not have to be based in fact, because there’s always an ability to furnish some form of “proof” to reinforce that version of “truth.” I believe this is the opposite of what we should want from our collective online community. The current model sorts and separates rather than bringing us together; it drowns out or even eliminates healthy dialogue and reasonable debate; it strips away the mutual respect we should have for each other as citizens of the same world.

FC: How do you plan to use your platform to push for change when it comes to hate speech, algorithmic amplification, and misinformation in 2021? Since you’re not a trained expert on these topics, why do you think people should listen to your perspective?

PH: I know enough to know that I certainly don’t know everything, especially when it comes to tech—but when you see this as a humanitarian issue, then you see the spread of misinformation as requiring a humanitarian response.

This is why my wife and I spent much of 2020 consulting the experts and learning directly from academics, advocates, and policymakers. We’ve also been listening with empathy to people who have stories to share—including people who have been deeply affected by misinformation and those who grew up as digital natives.

What we hope to do is continue to be a spotlight for their perspectives, and focus on harnessing their experience and energy to accelerate the pace of change in the digital world.

FC: Your Archewell Foundation has collaborated with several groups and institutions that aim to rethink technology and study its impact on people. As a philanthropist, why are you supporting research efforts within this space?

PH: If we’ve learned anything, it’s that our dominant technologies were built to grow and grow and grow, without serious consideration for the ripple effect of that growth. We have to do more than simply reconsider this model. The stakes are too high, and time is running out.

WE HAVE TO DO MORE THAN SIMPLY RECONSIDER THIS MODEL. THE STAKES ARE TOO HIGH, AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT.”

PRINCE HARRY, THE DUKE OF SUSSEX

There are a lot of incredible people and digital architects thinking about—or already working on—innovative and healthy platforms. We need to support them, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it can make commercial sense. And we have to look at the state of competition and ensure that the landscape doesn’t indiscriminately squeeze out or incentivise against fresh ideas.

I believe we can begin to make our digital world healthier, more compassionate, more inclusive, and trustworthy.

And it’s time to move from rethinking to remodelling.

FC: Given your concerns about divisiveness, misinformation, and hate speech online, how have your views on using social media yourself changed over the last few years? How do you approach it now and are you planning to make any changes?

PH: It’s funny you should ask because ironically, we woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago to hear that a Rupert Murdoch newspaper said we were evidently quitting social media. That was ‘news’ to us, bearing in mind we have no social media to quit, nor have we for the past 10 months.

The truth is, despite its well-documented ills, social media can offer a means of connecting and community, which are vital to us as human beings. We need to hear each other’s stories and be able to share our own. That’s part of the beauty of life. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that a reform of the digital space will create a world that’s all rainbows and sunshine, because that’s not realistic, and that, too, isn’t life.

There can be disagreement, conversation, opposing points of view—as there should be, but never to the extent that violence is created, truth is mystified, and lives are jeopardised.

We will revisit social media when it feels right for us—perhaps when we see more meaningful commitments to change or reform—but right now we’ve thrown much of our energy into learning about this space and how we can help.

FC: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our ability to build a healthier online ecosystem?

PH: Optimistic, of course, because I believe in us, as human beings, and that we are wired to be compassionate and honest and good. Aspects of the digital space have unfortunately manipulated (or even highlighted) our weaknesses and brought out the worst in some.

We have to believe in optimism because that’s the world and the humanity I want for my son, and all of us.

We look forward to being part of the human experience—not a human experiment.

i’ve never heard of the video game series u talked about in that last ask, but i loved ur character analysis for torque! i’m very curious to hear abt dr killjoy if you want to share ur thoughts there too? even just the name dr killjoy is bitching as HELL

You do not know how happy it makes me to talk about Dr. Killjoy.

Torque may be one of my favorite characters of all time, but Dr. Killjoy is… he’s up there. And he’s a lot more fun to talk about because he is a fabulous disaster, as well as the poster child for the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Since Torque is such a vague character, whose personality and backstory are revealed gradually and oftentimes subtly over the course of two games, Killjoy is really the motherfucker who steals the show and is very obviously the favorite of the creators. Even the other sentient spirits on Carnate Island take a backseat to him, and he ends up being a massive driving force in the plot and the one who actually helps the player unravel the man they’re playing as.

(I can’t even say “the guy who you’re put in the shoes of” because Torque doesn’t wear shoes.)

Spoilers follow, but I’ve already told y’all you probably don’t wanna actually play these games. 

Dr. Killjoy is the most well-intentioned, terrible person you will ever see in a video game, probably.

Dr. Killjoy is the spirit of a deceased alienist who was the head doctor at a facility known as The Carnate Institution for the Alienated in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Basically, he’s a psychiatric doctor who hails from a time when lobotomies were still in high fashion and experimental procedures on the mentally ill were less than savory, to put it lightly. Killjoy specifically was known for being rather extreme even at the time, having a very experimental mind and extreme delusions of grandeur. While it’s never outright said he was anything beyond “insane,” he operates in a perpetual manic state and is very, very animated and melodramatic.

How melodramatic? He acts like he has a live studio audience at all times. His whole schtick is that he appears from old film projectors. In a game that is mostly mired in the realm of realism (barring the ghosts and monsters), he creates a fucking weird-ass magic machine that lets you cast spells and basically says, “Ta-da! Look! I made brain magic that will cure your psychosis, Torque!”

(It does not, in fact, cure his psychosis.)

The problem with Dr. Killjoy is that he’s very much a product of his time, and obsessed with the idea of scientific progress over all else. He firmly believes that what he’s doing will further a cause that will eventually work out to help people, but the lives lost in the process are just par for the course. The remnants of his hospital (still used as of the first game, albeit as a hiding spot for COs to smoke, drink, and party) are littered with the mummified bodies of former patients and captured corrections officers that Killjoy decided to experiment on.

He will gladly tell you about all of the dead shit laying around his house, too. He loves to hear himself talk.

In the first game, he fixates on Torque as a special interest case and is absolutely obsessed with figuring out how to “fix” him. Most of the time this involves testing him in positively batshit ways. Sure, it probably seems like bad form nowadays to lock a guy in a burning cafeteria or a room full of monsters with shivs for hands, but to Killjoy? Makes perfect sense, since you can really see a man’s character based on how they react to high-stress situations, and what’s more high-stress than a near-death experience?

But whenever he shows up, whenever he has anything to say, whenever he decides to grace Torque with his presence, it’s always under the belief that he is doing something good for the guy. While he never outright says anything to the effect of “I care about you,” his chipper attitude and his absolute determination to coax Torque into doing what he feels will be for his benefit makes it obvious. He’s adamant about every death trap he lures Torque into or every “diagnosis” he tosses out or every “treatment” he devises, and is even the only character from the first game to follow him into the second…

… Because he feels like Torque isn’t well yet, and he cares enough about this random guy that he’s just going to tag along and try to find a way to help him out. In all the worst possible ways.

He’s equal parts a perfect foil to Torque and a driving force to the narrative, being the one who lays down most of the scraps you get about Torque’s mental health (though a lot of it is conjecture, outdated, and wrong), the island, the monsters, and even the drama in Torque’s life. He’s like a weird, gossipy old lady with a very out-of-date medical degree, and he is delighted whenever he sees his favorite patient and excitable about pretty much every goddamn thing he sees.

And it’s funny to watch Torque and Killjoy interact because Killjoy is so exuberant and loud, and Torque is just Very Done With This Shit. In the first game, Torque mostly responds to him by glaring at him stone-faced until he stops talking, and in the second game he seems actively annoyed whenever Killjoy has the audacity to open his mouth. And Killjoy? Does not give a single iota of a shit, and will just gleefully quote Othello at Torque as he’s trying not to get himself killed, or idly chit-chat with him while he’s struggling to figure out how to get out of a room Killjoy locked him in.

But I cannot overstate that despite how annoying, how unpredictable, how dangerous, and how utterly in love with himself Killjoy is, he is absolutely dedicated to the idea of curing Torque. There is actual good intent in what Killjoy is doing, and he seems to legitimately give a damn about Torque and vouch for him to pull through all of the trials thrown at him. Again, this man essentially built a magical machine to try to cure schizophrenia and, even if it worked about as well as shining him with a UV light, that’s some dedication.

Hell, when Torque escapes Carnate Island, as previously stated, he follows him just to double down on helping him understand what is going on and making sure he gets a shot at treatment. He’s so fucking flippant and apathetic with literally anyone else he encounters (all the people Torque is trying to save mean nothing to him), but he is rooting for this man so bad. So bad. 

There are hints dropped that Killjoy has known Torque for a while longer than even Torque was aware of (and even an implication that he was acquainted with Torque’s dead mother), and he’s just so disdainful of Blackmore, Torque’s nebulous nemesis, and when compared to the other spirits across both games, he’s actually the only one attempting to offer any assistance at all. Horace Gauge (the “good” spirit) mostly just whines about how much pain he’s in and how unfair life is, and Hermes (my EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC THIRD FAVORITE of this series) is actively trying to kill Torque or convince him to kill everyone around him. Creeper and Copperfield in Ties That Bind are just irredeemably awful and… yeah.

Yeah. Don’t look up either of those last two.

Killjoy is of the mind that he and Torque are a team, it seems, and this ghost would follow him to the ends of the earth for no reason other than to make sure he succeeded at defeating his inner demons, basically.

… Ugh. Okay. I can’t really do Killjoy any more justice in words. Here’s every cutscene involving him from the first game. Ignore how ugly this game is. Also, I know I linked it before, but he also has a really good boss theme.