#I love myself a flawed character with a fucked up sense of judgement and I’m also a sucker for that character realizing that they fucked up
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five years too late let’s analyze this. the commentary has gotten me back into gravity falls reigniting thoughts and insights i came to years ago
i love everything about this commentary in general it hits the points of humor, genuine analysis of the characters, but most of all im so glad hirsch addressed that the droid not detecting any fear from dipper here doesnt make any scientific sense because that was a massive CinemaSins moment for me
IDK the fact that dipper can fucking stand after an airship crash because theres a bigger threat at hand is literally one of the defining capabilities owed to adrenaline lol...... IM SORRY im a biopsychology student if i dont point that out iwill seethe and die because that was just . its a grudge ive held for a long time about this episode but didnt rant about because it was something so minor and i’m sure nobody would care.
i was 13 when this episode came out and i’m almost 19 now, i had a special interest in biology and i still do but now i’m actually having college classes in biopsychology so i can give my arguments more oomph now. and i have to say, now that i know more about the brain and autonomic nervous system the more this scene bugs me, if that was even possible. and it says a lot of dipper and ford’s relationship.
if dipper clearly wasnt calm before, why would he be now just because he’s put up an outwardly confident facade? before he was in the flight but now hes in the fight. my boy just rode on top of a spaceship by nothing but a magnet gun that could detach at any time if it failed and then the ship crashed, he sustained injuries, is in emotional turmoil because he thinks his uncle is Fucking Dead and the threat of a security droid that detects adrenaline is on his tail and produces a Big Fucking Gun in response to dipper saying “i hAvE a MaGNeT gUn” and hes screaming and has his teeth clenched but sure there’s no adrenaline coursing through his body in that moment i can totally believe that
when dipper asks what happened, ford says “the orb didn’t detect any chemical signs of fear, it assumed the threat was neutralized and self-disassembled” but i don’t think measuring someone’s heartbeat alone is particularly relevant in detecting ... chemical signs of fear?? they dont really tell you this shit but noradrenaline (and maybe adrenaline too if the acetylcholine from sympathetic outflow always activates the adrenal medulla??, theres two pathways) is always active in small quantities to make sure your parasympathetic nervous system doesnt slow your heart to dangerous levels on its own, regardless of your emotions. it’s just a homeostatic mechanism. your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are CONSTANTLY modulating control of your organs on a see-saw, literally with every breath you take. simply standing upright causes specialized mechanoreceptor neurons in blood vessels to signal your brain to project signals to release catecholamines via the sympathetic nervous system to constrict your blood vessels so that blood is able to reach your brain and not pool in your legs. i have a deficiency in my body’s ability to adapt to this which is why i know so much about it. if i stand up my heart races to compensate. i’m not feeling fear, my body is just adjusting—albeit grossly and incompetently lol.
but what im saying here is that the security system is flawed. it’s a cool idea to have security droids detect fear, but in practice by detecting adrenaline, and not even directly by detecting the molecule itself—it’s done in a roundabout way by reading the heartbeat, could be a recipe for false alarms. like what if someone’s on beta-blockers. that’s not really an adequate way to measure “fear”; there’s so many variables that could interfere with the measurement the farther you abstract from what you’re really trying to detect. and besides, adrenaline is NOT just a sign of fear, it’s just for preparing the body for action. i know the sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline is constantly linked with the “fight-or-flight” reaponse to a stressor, but 99.9% of the time the sympathetic nervous system is used in your life is to balance out your parasympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostatic equilibrium for mundane things.
i think detecting amygdalar activation would be more efficient in detecting fear. the amygdala sends projections to the hypothalamus which then in turn modulates the autonomic nervous systems. but the amygdala is intensely activated specifically in response to a fear-inducing stimulus (it does activate in response to other emotions but they’re mostly negative and is most activated by startle and fear), and wouldnt be highly activated by many other confounding variables like measurement of the heartbeat could be. the amygala is one of the first stops directly from external stimuli.
to show you how integrated the amygdala is as the first step in registering fear after receiving input from sensory stimuli let’s look at the auditory-amygdala connection for example
see how the auditory thalamus projects to the primary auditory cortex and auditory association cortex? the cortex is where conscious awareness of what the stimuli is comes from. this is the “high road”. it goes sensing -> perception -> emotional response. but sometimes you can be startled without even processing what it is you’re sensing, like the startle response of an alarm or a phone ringing in a quiet house before you even register what it is. this goes sensing -> emotional response, without perception happening until after you’ve already felt the startle. that’s when it takes the “low road”. here’s a simplified version:
even if that were the case with these droids though it’s obvious dipper is still fearful on some level here. his body language, voice, expressions all give it away. for the amygdala, aggression isnt too off from fear so it would be detected equally.
the reason this is so important is because ford uses this as evidence for why dipper is special, “i did it?” “you did it. this is what i was talking about, how many 12 year olds do you think are capable of doing what you’ve just done?”
but like....did he really? i’m not saying this to shoot dipper down or make him out to be more of a wuss, he was incredibly strong-willed here and i dont want to take that away from him because it WAS growth on his part. but the underlying psychophysiological reactions of aggression and fear shouldn’t be that different and this was a total asspull. maybe the droid was so old that it fucked up. maybe dipper being covered in grime and dirt made it harder for the droid to measure the correct heart rate through photoplethysmography (im assuming since they use a camera and are non-contact).
and in all honesty everything i just said brings into question the interpersonal healthiness of ford’s judgements, what he thinks, his expectations, and how he communicates that. in this video alex already talks about how ford is projecting onto dipper. and i think ford may be projecting his expectations for himself onto people who are not him, and the fact that it’s on dipper here makes it far more unfortunate. you realize how much this boy idolizes ford, right? how much impressions matter? dipper even tells himself before he leaves in this same episode, “all right dipper, this is your first big mission with great uncle ford. don’t mess this up.”
even though it’s unstated, the implicit message dipper is perceiving from ford based on their dynamic is: “do you have what it takes for me to be proud of you?” and to accomplish this he must be like ford, even though he’s clearly not and he knows this. he says “i don’t think have what it takes. i was tricked by bill, i was wrong about stan’s portal, heck, i can’t even operate this magnet gun right.” then, by simple chance without even knowing what he did, he activates the magnet gun and pulls out the adhesive, which immediately takes the focus away from what dipper was telling ford about his feelings of inadequacy to ford saying, “yes! dipper, you found the adhesive!”
these thoughts of dipper’s hang in the air without resolve or comment from ford. we don’t know what ford would have said. but it then becomes painfully self-evident in the scene immediately after when the droids emerge and ford tells dipper, “they’re security droids and they detect adrenaline. you simply have to not feel any fear and they won’t see you”, to which dipper replies with an exasperated (and rightful) “WHAT?”
dipper goes in a panic trying to indirectly tell his uncle that this isn’t something he can do. and he is completely right and valid to be freaked out by that full stop. that IS crazy. you can’t control your fear. you can control how you interpret that fear in your higher brain regions but the physiological changes will stick around for longer than it takes to cognitively calm down. it’s easy for me to detach from my emotions to analyze them, but being able to do this does not come naturally for everyone. even i have an irrational fear of wasps and i can’t control it by detaching myself, my body is just automatically primed to get the fuck out of there. i know it’s stupid and i know it’s irrational and isn’t helpful to get myself worked up but i literally can’t stop how my body reacts no matter how i cognitively think about it. expecting composure from dipper in a situation like this when he’s being made to consciously be aware of his anxiety is absolutely fucking insane. look what you did, placing these cruel expectations on him, now he’s afraid of being afraid! this isn’t a case where two wrongs cancel out, they just stack on top of each other.
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there’s a good reason these scenes were put side by side but it seems up until now it had remained unanalyzed.
what dipper fears from ford is disappointment. not living up to his uncle’s (quite frankly badly placed) expectations for a twelve year old with anxiety. not once did ford say or subliminally communicate “i don’t expect you to be able to do what i can since you are not as experienced as i am and that’s perfectly okay, no judgements”. you don’t put a child on bike before training wheels. you don’t throw a kid into a swimming pool without giving them swimming lessons. the way ford is doing it, there’s no room for trial and error or mistakes that are an opportunity to grow and learn; instead, it’s life or death. he only seems to pride dipper on what he can do while ignoring the underlying struggles that plague him and never making it known it’s okay for dipper to fail in front of his hero and that he won’t think anything less of him for it.
and that’s why i found the ending scene for dipper and ford’s adventure in this episode to feel so.. wrong. on a scientific and social level. because by the sound of it ford focused more on what dipper had done to dismantle the droid (the droid not detecting any fear) instead of how dipper displayed love and protection for him even if he was truly afraid. what if the science was accurate and the droid detected adrenaline while dipper was confidently standing up for his uncle. would ford still be proud of him regardless?
#can you tell how i’m similar to ford but also so different like i said in that other post lol#gravity falls#analysis#dipper pines#stanford pines#long post#gf#gravity falls meta
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oh yeah you’re new here huh. anyway i’m flattered that you ask but i absolutely will not be able to provide you a concise or coherent reply here. i have too many thoughts. and i can’t be objective about this character, despite Wanting to be analytical. i’m emotionally invested in a way that surely clouds my judgement. anyway. rambling under the cut.
look. there are just so many things that drive me completely fucking nuts about dirk specifically - his thematic substance and narrative role / utilisation, the way his portrayal reflects HS’s ideas about masculinity and toxic masculinity and sexuality (wowww dirk is just so masculine and rational and doesnt use labels, not like the other silly effeminite and emotional gays), the way he embodies the relationship between creator and creation.. the meta stuff, the philosophical stuff, postmodernist themes, the weighty existentialism, the moral quandaries, the ocean imagery, the isolation... there’s whole a lot for me to dig into, analytically speaking, a whole range of ideas i personally find compelling all packaged up in one extremely fucking weird boy. a boy who i like on the surface/story level, also. i think his brand of dry humour is funny, he’s a fun combo of rose and dave’s personalities, and i like his rapport with his friends, despite their conflicts and communication problems - he has some genuinely sweet moments. he’s pretty badass, which is cool. he’s also kind of incredibly fucking tragic. assigned self destructive @ skaia. i can’t read him as anything but tragic, same as any of the alphas, which is why i love them. they’re all fatally flawed, but i feel for them, and would like them to overcome those flaws.
i was going to get into the ways the character is flawed / morally gray / a problematic fave but i really ran out of steam and don’t feel like trying to recreate the d*rkscourse that happens in my brain on a weekly basis. just know i think the ways he is flawed and the question of responsibility wrt his splinters and the harm they cause is also absolutely fascinating, and i’m willing to indulge some critical takes on the character because i like to punish myself for enjoying things i think seeing what this guy is like at his worst is sort of... integral to what i perceive to be the core of the character? the tension between his worse traits / selves and what i see as fundamentally good aspirations... essentially big-brother-style protectiveness, warped by a less than healthy attitude / shitty ideals wrt to heroism and masculinity, as well as communication issues partially related to a commitment to self-aggrandising and insincere cooldude posturing. i think as a defence mechanism if the breakdown on the roof is anything to go by. i’m not sure if i’m correct in that read, but it’s what made sense to me. i’m going to re-read soon though, maybe this will change?
like... essentially, in homestuck proper - he’s not a villain but he really, really could be. he is, if you want to look at hal that way. the things dirk thinks are heroic (masculine/stoic/powerful/martyrdom) ideals are very much being deconstructed by homestuck as a work, that’s more what dave’s arc is about but it goes for dirk too. those ideas, especially as handled by “villainboy diva” prince dirk, are in some ways flawed and harmful and could be putting him into villain territory if he takes them too far... idk. the tension between dirk’s multiple selves embodying his worse qualities, vs his own genuine desire to do good, do better, despite what he comes to perceive as his own totally innate and inescapable flaws... ugh, maybe i’m just also a self absorbed and mentally ill piece of shit, but jesus christ that is fascinating to me? like... it’s really hard for me to not connect some of my own personal feelings and struggles to that conflict, even if the circumstances are Obviously not even remotely similar and i don’t want to project :/ (i totally do though)
well. that was a lot of words. have fun trying to make sense of this, i guess
#replies#my friends call this mindset the washing machine#i am stuck in it#dirkposting#sighhh what am i talking about
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Higurashi When They Cry: Gou -My “Final” Thoughts
Since we’re getting a second season - and it’s so obvious that Gou was written as the first half of the story - I find it hard to rate Gou at this point in time. Do you remember how when Avengers: Infinity War came out and a lot of critics were like “well, we need to see Endgame before we can really make our judgements”? Yeah, it’s like that - hence why “final” is in quotes.
Even so, I still have some thoughts about Gou, Higurashi as a whole, and my experiences with getting in on something’s fandom. I’ll make a post for what I want out of Sotsu later - right now, here’s what I have for Gou.
What I Liked About Gou
Most of it, honestly! I enjoyed Gou greatly and I’m glad I sat down and gave it a watch. (This may be heresy, but I honestly found it better as an experience than the last airing-weekly anime thing I sat down and watched - that being Mob Psycho 100 Season 2) But as for the stuff unique to Gou thatI particularly liked:
First off, having a new Higurashi anime that’s actually good. We needed something like this after Outbreak, Kira and (to a much lesser extent) the non-Saikoroshi parts of Rei pushed the series deeper and deeper into a trash can.
I love the new art style and the new designs for the characters. There’s a lot of good in DEEN’s adaptation, but a lot of the time the art left something to be desired. Passione’s take on Hinamizawa gave us a cast that can be cute and beautiful and terrifying all while looking good.
There’s also a lot of really good cinematography - the shot used in the GIF above left me going ‘holy shit”.
The new themes are a triple threat of bangers. In particular I loved that they brought in Ayane to really give it a deeper tie to Higurashi as a greater franchise. (The best of these, of course, is Irregular Entropy)
Episode 4′s twist. Just... *chef’s kiss*. I know that people poked it apart and called it ridiculous after the fact but I don’t know if the feeling of dread when Rena’s eyes were hidden by shadow, and I realized that this wasn’t going to end well, is something I could ever really recapture.
Speaking of violence, the ending of Episode 13. The dull red light... the ringing bell... good stuff.
In retrospect, creating Tataridamashi by bringing in Minagoroshi was smart, specifically from a character-introduction standpoint. They needed to establish the existence of Kimiyoshi, Oryou and Akane for later parts of the story and dipping into Minagoroshi’s involvement of them is probably the easiest way to do it.
In general, Gou’s really smart about its character introductions. I didn’t think they’d bring in Akasaka but I’m honestly really pleased with how they did it.
SatoRika was confirmed! And was really cute... until it extremely wasn’t! (But in a good way!)
The fact that Satoko and Rika’s conflict at St. Lucia was so nuanced, with neither of them really being 100% right or 100% wrong. (Of course, this doesn’t last)
I might be slightly conflicted about Satokowashi as an arc, but none of those conflicts are with Eua. (The “FUCK YEAH FEATHERINE TIME” from Twitter was particularly tasty)
The dub! I know a lot of people are ambivalent towards the Gou dub but I for one am happy that we’ve got some great performances, as well as a Higurashi dub that’s actually good. Maybe not great, but far better than what DEEN got in the end.
This Shion face
This is the face of someone that’s going to wreck her sister’s chances with her new boyfriend for fun.
What I Didn’t Like About Gou
Watadamashi in general. This is easily the weakest arc by a long shot, which sucks because I like Watanagashi-hen quite a bit. A lot of the time, it just felt like the animators had chose it as the place to cut costs. As good as the Takano scene in the Saiguiden is, it’s one of the things that makes the least sense in retrospect given the changes to Takano that have been established in Gou. And Episode 8 was rough both from a pacing and a what-happened standpoint. While Watadamashi had some great moments (the above Shion face as well as Rika dressing down Keiichi), overall it was clearly the weakest arc, particularly after Shion left the picture.
The pacing of Gou in general left something to be desired at times - they really should’ve shifted the extra episode in the first cour from Tataridamashi to Watadamashi, and Satokowashi could’ve probably condensed some of its episodes down and gave more room to other things, like...
Satoshi. He really shouldn’t have been as absent from the series as he was - hell, until Ep. 9 I legitimately thought that he might’ve been cut from the story altogether (and honestly, if they did that maybe the story would have been better!)
On that note, Episode 22 just kinda sucked in general.
While I’m not on the “where’s Shion” train as heavily as some meme artists are, I do think that the fact that she had to be written out of the second cour entirely to make it work is one of Gou’s story’s objective faults.
There’s a lot of little details added or addressed in Satokowashi-hen that I feel are either less than good, or are just restrictive. The big two of these is Satoko watching all of the fragments (either Eua should’ve just given her a sample platter, or we should’ve seen more of Satoko’s thoughts and reactions) and the fact that the memories returning means that eventually Hinamizawa would end up “solved” without Satoko’s intervention.
Honestly, Gou’s finale needed a bit more punch - it wasn’t bad but honestly even for a halfway point it could have ended with a bit more of a bang.
The Fandom Side Of Things
First off, I want to preface this by saying thanks for following me, taking my theories into account (it always feels cool whenever I see something I threw into the aether in one of my Theory Times getting adopted and spread by someone else as an interesting idea!) and sticking with me through Gou and hopefully through Sotsu. You are all amazing and I love you all.
After Watadamashi concluded, I decided that my Higurashi bullshit needed its own sideblog, because I recognized that nobody in my other circles was even remotely into Higurashi and I didn’t want to shout into the void. So, I made myself a sideblog, named it after one of my favorite Higurashi console openings, and started posting my thoughts. Quickly I discovered a whole world of theories (”Satoko’s suspicious? I never would have thought of that!” - me, a young and naive fool), hot takes, and a surprising number of Rena kin. (Who are all delightful, I assure you!)
One of the things that stuck out to me was the different schools of opinion that formed. While I ended up as a relatively quiet analyst who overall liked Gou despite its flaws (a camp shared by two of my favorite blogs - @tarhalindur and @thewhitefluffyhat - that you need to follow if you don’t already), there were many others who had much stronger thoughts. Some of them were loudly cheering the story’s turns, while others seemed to decide that Gou could do no right and acted accordingly. Joining a Discord run by one of the larger Higurashi blogs on Tumblr gave me a live view of the process in Satokowashi’s later half, and it made me really realize what shaped people’s views on Gou. Some particular factors that caught my eye:
Whether or not they liked Umineko over Higurashi (mostly a Twitter element - the Umineko fans really enjoyed Eua making her appearance and overall reacted really positively to Gou)
Where they hailed from - honestly I think that Tumblr overall was one of the more positive fanbases for Gou (at least of the big concrete places like it and Reddit), given how the various camps thought of Gou’s eventual villain.
How they felt about Episode 16 - there were a lot of people that seriously felt that Rika learning the “lesson” of “maybe leaving the hometown where bad things happened isn’t the right call” was far, far more abhorrent and objectionable than the part where she got her entrails ripped out!
How they feel about Satoko, naturally - particularly, how much they sympatized with her and how much they didn’t want to see her go down the path she did. Tumblr in particular had a lot of people that related with her and her life situation, and it was never not interesting to see how the sympathy and occasional projection shaped someone’s particular thoughts. (There were some strong reactions to Gou showing an abuse victim becoming an even worse abuser, let me tell you.)
I think I’ll conclude these final thoughts by quoting my IRL best friend’s tags regarding the fandom of her choice:
It really is. And I’m glad I got on this ride and saw it through with all of you.
See you in July.
#higurashi#higurashi when they cry#higurashi gou#higurashi gou spoilers#higurashi gou thoughts#higurashi gou FINAL thoughts#i'll admit I'm still a little sad that satoko never killed anyone with that teddy bear#also i'm 100% going to keep posting and theorizing up to and beyond july don't you worry
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thank you for the reply to the codywan ask! I've been a long time admirer of your fics and the way you write, and i adore the way you engage with sw lore, characters and relationships. i'd love to pick your brain about something - how do you write and see characters with all their flaws without being "turned off" by it? i recently read meridian, and was fascinated by your exploration in the power dynamics btw ahsoka and rex, but also discomfited because ahsoka is one of my favourite characters1/
Hey there — you’re very welcome and it’s always an honor to shepherd someone into the Rexsoka fold ♥ There’s a lot of meaty stuff here and I’m kinda hungover from Christmas Adam, but I’ll pitch in a little on what I think are your two main questions:
1. How do you write and see characters with all their flaws without being "turned off" by it? . . . . I frequently am turned off by it — if by ‘turned off’ you mean, that I feel my instinct to stan diminish. It’s almost bound to happen when one stops privileging their POV by exploring them from the perspective of somebody else, especially when said character is privileged in and by the narrative, too. And I don’t think transforming and complicating one’s relationship with the source material in that way is a bad thing; it makes for stronger writing and more empathetic stories. It’s interesting that you mention Ahsoka, though, because where I used to enjoy her pretty easily as a character with flaws, in the sense that she was written as being real (and therefore, relatably human), I have struggled to reconcile myself to her as a character who now seems flawed by inconsistent writing — or perhaps I should say, inconsistent framing. There’s a dissonance (imo) between how she’s elevated by the Powers That Be, and what her late actions in canon beg us to believe about her. There’s a chasm in the treatment of her character that I’ve felt somewhat compelled to fill with fic (as I am sure others have), while at the same time, I’m sitting under a disappointment that’s not very inspiring, lol.
(n.b. Interestingly, Bo-Katan has lately been subject to a similar inconsistent treatment from On High; but as she’s never been practically deified by the creators or the fandom, I don’t find the discordance so jarring, since I’m used to admiring her as a difficult anti-hero with dips into villainy.)
2. Escapism vs Critical Engagement: There’s a doozy. Let’s just say we contain multitudes, and acknowledging that as individuals is hard enough sometimes, let alone when people come together to enjoy (or not) A Thing (especially A Thing as big as Star Wars). I don’t have the answers on how to make it less unsettling when someone critiques or criticizes something that you (general ‘you’ here) just want to casually imbibe for the feel-good factor, except to allow yourself to be comfortable with being unsettled. It’s a popular adage in fandom that people come to the table for different things: some folks want a five-course meal complete with palate cleansers and wine pairings, some folks want a bowl of Easy Mac, and other folks want a rigidly healthy Paleo plate; as long as we’re all sitting down and engaging in good faith with each other about our choices, knowing when to leave the table or just swap seats or try something new, all to the good. The problem comes when one person demands that everyone should have what they’re having (usually the Paleo person, lbr), and lashes out when they meet opposition. We understand this pretty well in day-to-day life, yet when it comes to something as intensely personal as consumption and production of fictional material, everybody’s got an opinion about how others are doing it wrong — undoubtedly because, for so many of us in fandom, our identity and self-worth are so wrapped up in it. I catch myself doing this all the time; to reference Codywan again, I feel my lip curl when people write it with no reference to the ~reality~ of those characters’ situations as I see it (as I am sure plenty of people recoil at ships that I like) … but then, I recognize this feeling as irrational and selfish and I just channel my frustration into doing my own thing instead and hope it touches somebody else who feels the same.
To bring this back round: “Let people enjoy things” and “think critically” should be able co-exist, and beyond saying that yeah, it’s difficult and takes maturity, I’m hesitant to add any other sort of proviso to that statement (“should be able to co-exist, so long as X Y Z” &c.). Do I think people have to performatively genuflect in the direction of all the ~problems~ with something before they are allowed to engage casually with it? No. Do I think acknowledging war crimes in a google doc about a some cartoon space siege will stop actual war crimes? No. Do I personally appreciate when even casual engagement displays some element of critical thought, and do I find myself drawn to those creators in particular? Yes and yes. Everyone’s escapism looks different.
But if I can make one random value judgement statement about critical engagement here, without equivocating: the anti preoccupation with defanging sex and interpersonal romantic relationships in fiction, to the exclusion of other topics concerning humanity and the myriad ways it can be shitty, as part of some progressive movement is so bizarre to me; not only do the goalposts constantly change for what’s “pure” between two or more people, but it’s a very myopic way to regard characters who exist in the complex round, and, imo, a really privileged Western mindset. Also, it’s boring as fuck. I like intellectually playing in the dirt; someone who tells me to wash my hands while I’m sitting ass-deep in mud just makes themselves look supremely dense.
Not sure I really answered anything here, but I did appreciate the chance to noodle over your thoughts. It’s always a good exercise. And thank you for taking the time to engage with my writing : )
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so i know i’m breaking like, this unspoken vow of silence re: the movie by making this post but this IS a movie blog and i did watch the last airbender. and can i just say. holy fucking shit.
y’all know i like a lot of bad movies. knowing that, take me seriously when i say: this is a BAD movie. and not in a good way. i went into it with no expectations except morbid curiosity and i was STILL let down. i wanted to hate watch it, and yeah, i hated watching it, but it wasn’t even fun to hate. i just hated it.
don’t watch the last airbender.
if you’re like me and you just wanted to know exactly how bad it was, please benefit from my mistakes. read my fun funky rant and then never think of that movie again. put it out of your mind. rewatch boiling rock. love yourself.
anyway.
pretty much the one and only thing i knew about why it was bad going in was that it was whitewashed; that’s like the only thing anyone ever mentions in conjecture with this movie, when they mention it at all. knowing this, going in knowing full well that the casting department did crimes against humanity, i was still shocked and disturbed at the sight of white katara and white sokka. literally... that casting choice was a hate crime. look them up (or check out my last post) if you need to see it for yourself... it’s bad y’all. somehow i had braced myself for white aang, but before i saw it with my own two eyes i couldn’t believe that they would actually whitewash katara and sokka, And Yet. the really stupid thing is that it’s not even “””justified””” IN UNIVERSE; most of the members of the southern water tribe are played by asian actors, meaning that they didn’t even pull a pan and make the WHOLE southern water tribe white, they just made sokka and katara mysteriously “special” in a spectacularly poor judgement call.
actually, that’s another thing. outside the northern water tribe (which is also mostly white... i’m wondering if sokka and katara are white because gran gran--a white woman in the movie--is from the north? anyway it’s a moot point either way because none of them should be white, there are NO WHITE CHARACTERS IN THE SHOW AVATAR, jesus FUCKING christ), most of the extras and background characters are played by actors of color, particularly asian actors, which would be accurate to the show’s canon. maybe m night shyamalan or someone else involved in the making of this shitshow of a movie thought that this would somehow absolve the whitewashing of the main characters, but in reality i’d argue that it makes it even worse; by having characters mostly played by people of color continuously being saved by three little white bitches, the movie goes HARD on the white savior trope, and also just generally uses these actual, living people as exploitative, orientalist set dressing for this 1 hour and 43 minutes of special hell.
with one notable exception: prince zuko is played by an actor of color--specifially, dev patel. (who is himself miscast, considering how zuko and the fire nation are japanese-coded, but the second they opened on that veruca salt looking ass bitch calling herself katara any hope that the makers of this movie gave any consideration to the racial coding avatar introduced went right out the window.) which adds Another layer of racism to this already inconceivably bad fuckup of a movie; how strange, that the movie’s racebending made all three heroes white, but the primary antagonist (as well as the secondary antagonist, zhao, and the mostly-off-screen-but-still-present ozai) is a man of color. what an odd coincidence. hmmmm.
i hate this movie. i do want to note, though, that dev patel’s inclusion was the only thing that actually got me through the whole thing; i have no idea why he was in this film (he’s FAR too talented for the content he was given and no one else in the entire cast went even one sixteenth as hard as he did) but he was its one saving grace. still, though, even he couldn’t save it. he was so cute and he did his damn best with probably the worst script in the history of film... but he was still in THIS film. since the release of this movie, patel has spoken out against his role in it and the world of hollywood blockbusters in general, and to that i say... good for him.
i was going for zuko though. this time it was like YES baby CAPTURE that avatar. full stop.
so yes, it was horribly miscast, whitewashed to hell and back, and went with a racist white hero/villains of color cast as a backdrop. all of these things, in themselves, are enough to completely condemn the movie, and my work here might as well be done... except to end it there would be to leave one million other glaring flaws unexamined. and i refuse to let any rock be unturned.
because, like, it’s NOT just bad because of the whitewashing. the whitewashing and the other racist elements are huge PARTS of why this is a bad movie, but even if this movie was made with an accurate and un-whitewashed cast, it would STILL be a bad movie, and i need you all to know this.
starting from the top: they ruined katara and sokka.
well, they ruined them the second they cast them the way they did. but again, let’s say they cast someone else. let’s say they cast appropriate actors for the rolls, but the level of acting skill and the script they used was the same. even in this case, they would have RUINED katara and sokka. none of the characters in this movie are 100% recognizable (and i’ll keep repeating it: the casting DID NOT HELP), but katara and sokka got hit the hardest and the worst. the things that sokka should have brought to the table (his goofy attitude, his intelligence) were erased, and the “sokka” we were given instead was a jerkass buzzkill who might have occasionally been the butt of a joke, but was never actually intended to be funny in his own right. reflecting on the series, it’s kind of as if we got his characterization from the first episode (before sokka got any development and was, i guess, kind of a jerkass buzzkill) and never strayed from that, which would be bad enough, but i think even episode ONE sokka was more fun and dynamic than White Sokka™. mistakes were made.
but it was even WORSE for katara. katara’s righteous anger was all but erased. SOKKA was the one who broke the avatar out of the ice, and only because they accidentally happened upon him--katara didn’t get to be angry at sokka’s jerkass sexism and unconsciously fuck up an entire iceberg. katara NEVER got to be angry. in fact, most of katara’s moments were taken and distributed between aang and sokka; aang, for instance is the one who inspires the earthbenders to break out of prison. we don’t even see katara train with master pakku, and SHE was the one who actually became a waterbending master when they went to the north pole. in this movie, katara mostly existed to talk about ~hope~ (very ember island players, lmfao) and hug aang when he went into the avatar state.
by the way, that prison? it’s not the metal platform in the middle of the ocean we got in the show. it’s just... an enclosed village. surrounded by dirt and earth. and the earthbenders never tried to break out until aang came along and told them to? hmmmm....
Unfortunate Implications™, but what did you expect.
other than that, idk. the writing was so fucking bad, y’all. a significant chunk of the plot relies on the “as you know” trope, in which characters have an expository discussion about something everyone present should already be aware of and wouldn’t need to get into. this normally wouldn’t bother me THAT much, if i noticed it at all (exposition is essential, after all, and you only have so much time in a movie, so i guess it makes sense when you’re trying to compress an entire season of a show into one), except like... it’s ridiculous. i couldn’t ignore it, they just hit the hammer so hard. “as you know, this is what the avatar is. as you know, zuko was exiled after fighting an agni kai with his father. as you know...”
bleh.
after that, i guess all my complaints are a little more pedantic. some smaller things that made the movie unwatchable: the bending motions were super weird and i think sped up? there were perfectly good martial arts moves right there waiting for them, and shyamalan fucked even THAT up in an effort to... what? make it look more “mystical?” bitch i’ll kill you. also, for reasons completely unfathomable to me, some of the names were pronounced oddly despite being said one million times in the show. “aah-ng” “ee-roh” “soh-ka” “ahvatar.” literally... why.
i’ve been thinking “soh-ka” in my head for like two weeks. hideous.
and one last thing, which really DOESN’T matter in comparison to what they did to the human characters, but like... what fucking happened to appa?? why did they do that to him?
don’t watch the last airbender.
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I’m going to preface this by saying: I myself am a cult survivor. I was born into one that controlled my family four generations deep. My mom was born into it, and my grandparents joined as teenagers - two of them coming with their own parents. I had the remarkable luck of having a mom who saw that place for what it was when I was 13, so I didn’t have to do what my friends did - make the choice to leave on their own. But even so, it affected me in ways that I will absolutely never be over.
This is the reason I relate so much to Crowley, actually. Both because the life I know has been defined from age 13 by my status as a pariah, and because I fucking sucked at being a cult kid. I did ask questions when I felt like things were unfair. Why I wasn’t allowed to choose who I married. Why I wasn’t allowed to make friends that weren’t pre-selected for me. Why there was only a handful of jobs I’d be allowed to have when I got older. Why there were only a few instruments I’d be allowed to learn. (And these were innocent questions. I didn’t even learn the full extent of the cult’s abuse until I was in my early twenties.) I was always told that we needed to trust “the ministry.” Nothing else.
Basically, what I’m saying is that - for all intents and purposes, Heaven in Good Omens operates the same way. It is a cult. Crowley is an outcast, and Aziraphale is on the brink of seeing what is going on but deliberately explaining it away. Not necessarily on fear of death, but on fear of exile. And, more significantly, fear of realization that everything he believes is false. Because when you’re in a cult, what you believe is who you are. Aziraphale is holding on by a thread to something he does not believe in because to lose devotion to Heaven is to lose his identity and sense of self.
Not all cults are Scientology, or Heaven’s Gate, or the People’s Temple. In fact, most aren’t. Cults are not defined by outlandish beliefs, but by the power imbalances within those communities allowing for control and abuse.
One of the most well known and longstanding ways of defining what constitutes a cult is Steven Hassan’s BITE model. This is an acronym for the four broadest, most common types of control a cult might force upon an individual. These categories are Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, and Emotional control.
Instead of getting into them all in depth individually, I’m just going to briefly list off a non exhaustive list of a few things Heaven does that falls under each of these categories.
Behavior control - punishing imperfect obedience with threat of falling, discouraging individualism or distinctive tastes (Aziraphale being discouraged from eating by Gabriel, etc), control over who individuals are allowed to contact (and that in itself being a double standard for the authority figures, for example, Michael’s contact with Ligur)
Information control - one of the less used methods, but the entire concept of “ineffability” can, arguably, fall under this. The Metatron’s role as a buffer between Aziraphale and God is a more concrete example, though.
Thought control - arguably the most pervasive method of control Heaven seems to employ. While there are certainly other examples, the fact that Crowley fell for asking questions was the absolute biggest red flag in the series for me.
This one is why, I think, Crowley is the perfect antithesis for Heaven. While he has to submit to Hell’s authority in a physical sense - he doesn’t refuse to deliver the Antichrist, for example, despite understanding what is going to happen and disagreeing with it - his thoughts are entirely his. He fell for the crime of independent thought. Of even considering trusting his own judgement. Crowley did not belong in Heaven because his thoughts cannot be controlled.
Emotional control - promotion of guilt, discouragement of any form of happiness or fulfillment that isn’t directly caused by God or Heaven (again, Aziraphale’s love of comfort being treated as a character flaw by the Archangels) and again, the threat of falling.
I’m definitely going to look more into Hell at some point, because their behavior also rides this line. But as someone who has been through this, grown up knowing virtually nothing but this, Heaven just stood out to me as terrifyingly familiar. But that’s just my take on it, based on my own lived experience and research.
If you read this far, thank you! <3
#good omens#sorry oh my god this was long#OH AND yes you can rb it if you want!! I know its personal but i don't mind
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Fire Emblem: Awakening Thoughts
As of the date May 20th, 2020, I finished my playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening on its one year anniversary of when I got it. It is now June 5th of writing this. This post will be my thoughts and feelings on Awakening, much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post last year. Let's get into some history between me and Fire Emblem before I go into Awakening.
As I've said before, Awakening was both my first Fire Emblem game and my first Tactical RPG. Smash Bros. was where I had heard of Fire Emblem but it wouldn't be until Ultimate came out that I would start to get interested. It was because of my friend's preference for Lucina that got me into playing as her in Smash and that's pretty much how she became both one of my mains and a favorite. It honestly wasn't till I listened to the Smash remixes of Id, Conquest, and Lost in Thoughts All Alone that I decided to play Awakening and then Fates. So thanks go out to both Smash and my friend Eric for converting me to Fire Emblem trash!
Much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post, I'll be going over every aspect of Awakening I can think of, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. I'll even include a Best/Worst Girl and Boy of both generations because that kind of thing seems to matter to some people, along with my reasons for why X is Y. Keep in mind that whoever I choose as those categories, it is just my opinion and you're free to disagree with me. I say this because I know that, no matter what I say, some diehard fans will get pissed at me and come at me for daring to shit on their favorite character. I already know some people are gonna get mad because they think X should be Best/Worst and that'll be fun to see (You can interpret that as sarcasm if you want).
Listed below are Awakening spoilers, so if you want to play the game and don't want to be spoiled, now's your chance to stop reading. I know Awakening came out in 2013, meaning 6 or 7 years ago, but there may be some people who haven't gotten around to playing it yet so I want to be courteous to them. Here are my thoughts on Fire Emblem: Awakening!
First off, the graphics. I think they looked really nice for a 3DS game that came out in the early 2010's and I believe this was Fire Emblem's first fully 3D game as well so that's really impressive. The in-game models were nicely detailed, the in-game sprites were nice looking, and the prerendered cutscenes were beautiful. This doesn't mean they're not without their faults, though. I wish the in-game cutscenes were more animated because it's easy to tell when an animation's been used over and over again, I feel as if the in-game sprites have some dissonance with official art, and there are times where expressions or animations for the prerendered cutscenes have looked pretty awkward. In terms of the first and last point, I'm giving IntSys some slack because, as I stated earlier, they were developing a game for the 3DS, a powerful handheld device but it's still a handheld, and this was FE's first 3D game so there may have been issues transitioning from 2D sprites to 3D models. I'll explain what I mean by my second point. I've looked at Cynthia's official art and when I see her face, I tend to see what I'd call a baby face, pudgy cheeks and all. Her in-game sprite, however, her face is sharper, more mature, if that makes sense. Maybe it's the pigtails throwing me off or it's just a difference between two art styles, I don't know. I'm not an artist so there's not much weight behind this but I'm just saying there's somewhat a dissonance between official art and in-game sprites.
Secondly, gameplay. I loved how easy it was and how I could switch between a simple and complex UI if I wanted to see which attacks could hit or what the enemy's stats were. This may sound stupid but I honestly thought it'd be way more difficult due to this being a Tactical RPG. I know strategy's a big part of Fire Emblem but strategy's not a big problem if you're like me and you grind to hell and back. Speaking of which, I played on Easy Casual mode so that might be why it seemed so simple from the get-go. Just to give you an idea of how much I grinded, I put in 200+ hours and that mostly consisted of buying a shitton of Reeking Boxes, spawning Risen on some of my favorite grind spots, and fighting them over and over again. I went through the 3 basic classes each character could have, maxed out their default class one last time, promoted them to their advanced class, and maxed out those classes 2-3 times over. I have a video on my Twitter that shows the stats of these characters and most of them are over 220 (The shapeshifters 300). Needless to say, I loved each and every fucking crit I got. Cordelia even got what I call a miracle crit, which means she got 2 crits in one round and after the enemy attacked, she got another 2 crits. Level grind ain't a joke in this game.
Thirdly, the music. Considering it's part of why I got into this game in the first place, I loved it. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to the OST and it sounds so much better when you don't have the ambient sounds and you're not listening to it through the 3DS speakers. The song that hit me the most and just gave me the overwhelming feels was Id~Sorrow as it played in Chapter 21. It fit so well with the tone of the scene and I just sat there for a few minutes, letting it play in the background as I did shit. Other notable mentions are Id~Purpose, Destiny, Conquest, and the song that is just ellipses. If the music is this good in Awakening, I can't wait to see what's in store for Fates!
Fourthly, the voice acting. For a game where most of the voices come in forms of clips, I thought they were good. Each of the actors tried their best to convey their characters in the clips they were allowed to have and I think it shows. The only critique I have, and it's not the actors' fault, is that some of the characters' voices don't fit them. I'm not saying they miscast these characters, it's more like the direction was off, if that makes sense. Let me bring up Cynthia, Kjelle, and M!Morgan as examples. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, sometimes when you look at a character, you kinda imagine what they'd sound like before you hear their actual voice, right? I already brought up Cynthia's looks so I imagined her voice to sound very high-pitched and maybe a little childlike. I hear her voice and, while she's high-pitched and some of her voice clips do go into that childlike territory, she's nasally sounding and more mature. Kjelle is a complicated case in that, her voice fits her appearance (minus the armor) but not her personality. Her personality is similar to Sully's so I figured her voice would sound gruffer and not...cute, if that's the right word. M!Morgan's, I think, everyone can see the problem with. He's supposed to be the youngest of the kids, right? Since he's the only third generation character and all that? I think he just sounds a little too old for the supposed baby of the kids. Again, I'm not saying the voices are bad or that the delivery/emotion was bad, I just think the direction in which they were voiced don't fit some of the characters. Maybe I'm just thinking in terms of archetypes or something.
Now we move on to the story. I can't say as to whether it was good or not, mainly because I spoiled myself on it way before I decided on playing Awakening, so I don't think I can say much to the quality. The least I'll say is it's serviceable. I'll admit, the one thing I was shocked by was the appearance of the Grima Avatar because I thought Grima was inside Robin the whole time and I didn't think he'd have a separate vessel. I straight up thought Grima!Robin was either my mother or a twin I wasn't aware of so I'm giving credit to the writers for surprising me. Anyway, I think the only flaw I have with the story is with the pacing. I thought the first half was fine, it wasn't too fast or too slow. It was the second half that the pacing couldn't find a middle ground. Now I'm going to say that this half was stretched out over months of my playtime so whatever I say next might be exaggerated because of my procrastinating ass so... I feel like the Valm arc was way too slow and the Grimleal arc had so much trouble finding a middle ground. The beginning of the Grimleal arc was quick but Grima himself decided that I had to finish 2 and a half chapters before I finally got to beat him and you have to deal with constant reinforcements before you kill off the target. I think if it weren't for my overleveled as fuck units, I wouldn't have finished Awakening in time for my birthday.
Just for shits and giggles, I'm gonna say what I picked for my choice with both Luce's judgement and Grima's fate. I picked the self-sacrificial choices, which means I accepted Luce's judgement and allowed her to kill me and I dealt the final blow to Grima so Chrom didn't have to. While I knew the outcomes of both choices and them ultimately not meaning anything, I wanted my Robin to reflect what I would've done and I'm a very self-sacrificial person. Because I made Chrobin happen in my playthrough, which meant Luce was my daughter, I believe that, if my child who came from an apocalyptic world told me I was the reason for that happening and that she came back through time to stop that future from happening so she and the others wouldn't suffer, I would've let her kill me. Parents would and should do anything for their kids and if my death possibly gave my daughter the chance for a better life, I'd take it in stride. As for me dealing the final blow to Grima, if it was to save everyone I loved, I would've done it. Although there's some feelings of wanting to give a big "Fuck you" to Grima and to permanently end the problem so any future descendants wouldn't have to deal with it. This section may sound more philosophical and personal than I usually write but I think it deserved it.
Now we're on to Supports and who I chose to be together. I don't think it's wrong to say that this is where the characters really get to shine and it's because of the Supports I love these kids and how much I'm going to miss them when I move on to other FE games. As for the "canon" couples, I mainly went with characters that I thought would complement each other and this was one of the few things I tried to choose for myself. I tried my best to go for pairings that weren't fan favorites but I'm also not very connected with the fandom as of writing this so I may be completely wrong in which ships were favorites or not. So here are the pairings I got for my playthrough!
Chrom-Robin
Frederick-Sumia
Virion-Miriel
Vaike-Nowi
Stahl-Sully
Lon'qu-Cordelia
Ricken-Lissa
Gaius-Maribelle
Gregor-Cherche
Libra-Panne
Henry-Olivia
Lucina-Inigo
Owain-Cynthia
Brady-Nah
Kjelle-Laurent
Severa-Yarne
Obviously, there are some characters missing from this list and I can explain why. I didn't recruit Kellam and Tharja and it's because your girl is a dumbass. Kellam, I thought, was already on my team, he was just labelled as an ally so I didn't need to recruit him. They really should've made that clear. Tharja, on the other hand, was an even bigger dumbass than me because she decided to charge after Robin, who happened to be in front and was way overleveled, and got her ass promptly beaten with a crit. I regret not getting Kellam but after hearing how awful of a person Tharja is and how many fans are willing to put aside emotional abuse and stalker-like tendencies to have a chance to fuck her, she can stay buried in the sand where I electrocuted her ass. Unfortunately, this does means Noire didn't pop up in my recruitment list and that fucking sucks. The only characters left I didn't have a pairing were Gerome and Morgan. I think Gerome wouldn't really care for a romantic partner because he's all about not wanting to create ties in this time and shit and, since I see Morgan as the baby of the kids, I figured he'd be a little too young to be in a relationship. Despite that, I wish I got him and Nah together because I found out after she was shipped with Brady that Morgan's the only S-Support she'll say "I love you" to and I was immediately filled with regret.
Before I move on to the Best/Worst contest, there's something I need to bring up because I can see what sensible fans have shown now. This game is HELLA gay. Like, holy fuck, how many instances are there where you have two characters of the same sex and they have dialogue that seems to have been written with romantic intent but the writers decide it's meant to be platonic? Maybe I just have this weird line of thought on how straights are because there's no fucking way some of these gay moments would be a thing with even the most accepting straights. Maribelle calling Lissa darling and other pet names, Robin blushing from some of the girls and even mistaking Flavia's proposition for a marriage proposal, Severa looking at Kjelle's abs, the list goes on. I'm not straight because I'd be doing some of this shit with a potential girlfriend if I could! Why did it take IntSys until 3 Houses to implement LGBT+ pairings when this game is right here?! At least this game doesn't have the weird student/teacher relationships 3H has and believe me when I say that, if it weren't for the fact I could give less of a fuck for 3H, I wouldn't play that game for that reason! Anyway, Awakening is hella gay and it should've been the first LGBT+ FE game instead of 3H.
The Best/Worst contest... As I said in the beginning, there'll be a Best/Worst Boy and Girl for both generations because that's fun and it seems to matter a lot to some people. Repeating what I said, this is just my opinion and you're free to agree or disagree with me. One rule I'm putting in is I will try my best to not pick fan favorites. Don't get me wrong when some of the crowd pleasers are good but there are other characters that deserve just as much love as the fan favorites so this is why I'm putting in this rule. Without further ado, here are the rulings!
1st Gen
Best Boy-Lon'qu
Best Girl-Panne
Worst Boy-Virion
Worst Girl-Miriel
2nd Gen
Best Boy-Owain
Best Girl-Cynthia
Worst Boy-Inigo
Worst Girl-Severa
Let's see how many people I piss off with these judgements. So, my reasoning: Best Boy for 1st gen was a big toss-up. I kept wanting to choose between Chrom, Frederick, Stahl, and Lon'qu because they really endeared themselves to me but I chose Lon'qu in the end because he's honestly such a dork (I mean, all of them are) and I gotta admire how he tries to overcome his fear of women and try being there for his wife and daughter if he happens to have one. There's also the fact he has to literally psyche himself up to talk to women if you check in with him in the Barracks and I'm just like "Fucking hell, that's adorable and I GET it". Best girl is Panne because believe me when I say that the moment I see this woman and hear her voice, I'm immediately gay for her. Then she transforms into a giant rabbit, kicks so much ass, and I'm in love. Funny story, I'd talk to my friend about my progress in Awakening on Discord and the moment he asks me who best girl was and I answered Panne, he called me out for being a furry. Granted, I would've automatically said Luce but I'm trying not to pick fan favorites so I get his criticism. If a woman like Panne existed in real life, bunny ears and tail and all, I'd probably become a furry for her, no questions asked. As for worst boy and girl, Virion and Miriel are characters I honestly don't give much of a fuck about. Not that they're bad, I just don't care about their archetypes, if that makes sense. Miriel I found to be boring and Virion's of the Casanova archetype and I've always kinda hated that archetype so that's why they're on the ranking.
Oh boy, 2nd gen. So, best boy being Owain. This boy is going to kill me. He's so adorable and sweet and he's just a good boy. There are literally Tweets on my Twitter where I just gush about him and he deserves so much love. He's just a sweet boy who loves his parents so much and is so proud to be their son and how he manages to rope his cousins (Luce and Morgan) into going with his fantasies and how they just go along with it! Owain is a cinnabun and I want to protect him and love him. Anyway, best girl being Cynthia is sorta the same reason as Owain. She's just so bubbly and happy and just adorable. Yeah, she may get carried away with showboating but I just love her earnest desire to be a hero. I think everyone can see why I paired Owain and Cynthia up. Now for the worst. Inigo and Severa are probably the only characters in this whole game that straight up got on my fucking nerves and for different reasons. Outside of his supports with Olivia and Henry, Inigo's constant flirting with the girls and Robin and inability to take no for an answer just rubbed me the wrong way. I actually put out a Tweet saying how Inigo's like an r/niceguy and I still think he is one. Course, this doesn't mean I didn't have my fair share of laughs from him. I fucking died at his and Gerome's A-Support where he ends up pathetically crying after the emo loner got more game than him and Gerome has to comfort his ass, that was hilarious. It also helped the fact that Liam O'Brien, who I've only heard him as the brooding emo loner role, voiced Inigo as the complete opposite of that and I had a blast. Severa, on the other hand, was...really unpleasant. There's a reason I hate Tsunderes with a passion and it's because they're unnecessarily bitchy towards everyone they know, even if they have no reason to be. Severa, however, was somehow worse because she went out of her way to be horrible to people. My dislike for her was cemented the moment I saw her and Cynthia's C-Support and she chose to make fun of her, despite Cynthia minding her own business and Severa just going "fuck it". However, I should express that I understand why Inigo and Severa are the way they are and that's why I'm not being as harsh on them as I could be. They still have their good moments and I can appreciate them while also raking them over the coals.
So that concludes my review/experience of Fire Emblem: Awakening! Despite some moments of frustration and annoyance, I had fun playing this! I mean it when I say I'm gonna miss these kids but I had plenty of time to spend with them so it's time to move on to newer lands. Next up on the list is Fates and I think I'm siding with Hoshido first. It's funny how, despite me spoiling the story for myself 3 separate times, I still can't remember much, if any, of it so that may say something about the quality. I also know Fates is pretty divisive among the fandom but the thing I know it for is the weird pseudo-incestuous ships it has so that's going to be fun! Hopefully, I'll get around to playing as one of my other mains in Smash, my water horse dragon Corrin, sometime soon and I'll be sure to let everyone know when my journey will start!
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finished season two of the magnus archives! here is my s2 livetweet thread and here are my reflections/predictions from season one.
jon:
you are so fucking stupid. so incomprehensibly dumb. it is absolutely incredible how you lack any brain cells at all.
if jon was a dnd character he’d have a plus three to intelligence and a negative two to wisdom. i’m right.
[jon voice] people care about me? Must Be A Manipulation Tactic!
[jon voice, continued] literally everyone except for me is a) a murderer, b) using me, or c) hiding something. i, however, am totally fine and also sane and if you imply otherwise you are definitely Hiding Something and i need to stalk you.
seriously it’s a goddamn miracle he wasn’t fired or didn’t just like....explode on the spot
that awkward moment when you befriend a cop and get tapes that may lead to your successor’s cold murder case being solved but in the process you learn that you and your place of employment are actually owned by The Great, All-Powerful [REDACTED]
it’s so interesting listening to a man’s mental health and sanity decline in real time!
martin: do u want some tea? jon: you’re going to kill me huh?
[jon voice] it is a good idea for me to enter these dangerous tunnels alone on multiple occasions. i am fine.
his fatal flaw is still pursuit of knowledge. love that for him.
baby please you work for an entity that probably literally thrives off knowledge.......please grow some brain cells in season three before you literally die doing something stupid
i literally can’t say anything more about s2 jon that isn’t me just repeating “stupid dumb paranoid baby” over and over again
martin:
martin [shaking hands emoji] me
playing the mediator as our family loses their minds around us
martin blackwell recieves everything he has ever wanted and needed challenge!!!
baby i love you
HE CARES SO MUCH AND NOBODY CARES ABOUT HIM.......
martin’s job this season is literally the concerned husband but we’re not ready to talk about that yet
my dude really stepped up at the end! he was gonna fight michael in hand to hand combat for jon and sasha and i’m so proud of him!
martin went from baby to hold my flower
martin saw some shit in season one and now he’s a badass
his poetry.....i cried i literally love him so much
when he was talking to tim in the tunnels and he just breaks. and yells. and says he wants to get out of here and save jon and help sasha and be happy and you know what if everything DID turn out in the end that would be kind of nice actually!!!!
we didn’t see much of him this season but from what we did, especially at the end......the character development.......he’s so much braver now, so much more ready to confront the horrors of the world around him. martin is one of those special people that runs on love and uses love as a driving force to fight for the things he needs.
i hope someday martin gets to sit down in a nice little cottage in the middle of nowhere with someone who loves him and just. relax. it’s what he deserves.
tim
you are the only bitch in this house i ever respected
literally just trying his best
so incredibly valid
GIVE HIM A BREAK
as someone who is the least confrontational person on the planet i really respect and admire tim calling jon out on his bullshit
that scene was so cathartic.....god.....
@ THE ELDRICH BEING RUNNING THE ARCHIVES CAN YOU PLEASE LET HIM GO HE JUST WANTS TO LEAVE
tim at the beginning of s2: hey jon you okay? you’re acting weird and it’s kind of freaking us out
tim at the end of s2: fuck archivist lives and jon in particular,
and you know what? he’s right
i hope tim gets to go home. it won’t happen but i can dream.
are we just gonna brush over that part in the finale where michael just???? bamfed them to another dimension or something????? because neither tim nor martin seemed the least bit phased
honestly tim/jon has rights. i enjoy it.
he’s just so angry and hurt and done. he’s reached his limit. goodbye
get tim out of the archives s3!!! do it!!!
gertrude
wow i love you
every time i hear gertrude’s voice i just go [one thousand teary-eyes emojis]
there’s a lot we don’t know and there’s a lot that she knows. i wish we could like. raise her from the dead or something. altho honestly with a horror podcast who the hell knows
jon listening to/hyperfixating on gertrude is just a fancy way of him claiming her as his new mother figure
GOD I LOVE HER I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HER CAN WE GET A SPINOFF PLEASE
basira and daisy
the only cops with rights
that part where tim thought basira was jon’s girlfriend and they both dissolved into gay panic.....priceless
daisy step on me challenge. i’ve met her twice and i love her.
honestly basira is such a badass. stealing from the cops while being a cop? that takes guts and i really respect her lack of respect toward cops while being one
not to mention that entire business with that sentient cult darkness shit. she killed it in there (no pun intended). give her like a purple heart or something idk how cops work
daisy.....please tell me your secrets. what have you seen. what do you know.
melanie
please work for the archives i am BEGGING you
my ghost hunter girlfriend
i love her and jon’s relationship. just pure loathing. tension between the hunter and the archivist. i live for that shit.
but under that it’s like Oh Shit I Actually Care A Lot???? like their loathing comes from their businesses being judgemental enemies, but personally they actually have a lot in common and care for each others’ wellbeing.
i really hope melanie sticks around so we can learn more about her and see her friendship with jon grow into....an actual friendship
shes also a total badass and both her research and deducing skills are so good. she’s just a great archive candidate overall.
michael
[REDACTED]
what the fuck are you
what the fuck do you want
why do i like you so much.
okay there’s a lot more going on here but i’m putting my predictions under the cut!
okay lets check out my predictions from last time.
okay this one was partially right! “entities” rule the world apparently, and the archive is run by one of them. sort of got that!
.....yeah that didn’t happen.
hell yeah! i’m proud of myself for this one, even though the time loop part wasn’t true. i thought “time loop” because her voice started echoing when she hit the table, but turns out that was just her crazy long copy taking over. oh well!
nope. gertrude was killed by elias, apparently. fucker.
WELL.........
okay. this one is complicated because i was sort of correct but there’s still a lot of information i don’t know. gonna give myself half credit for this one i think.
REMEMBER IN THE FINALE WHEN MARTIN THOUGHT HE SAW SASHA AND TIM HAD TO STOP HIM FROM RUNNING IN TO SAVE HER? YEAH.
okay, season three predictions. let's go.
(disclaimer: while i haven’t been actively looking up spoilers or engaging in the tma tag, i also haven’t muted the tag or anything associated with it. i have ideas of what’s to come but they’re vague and mostly come from fanart on my dash/timeline).
jon just gives up. he’s having to much of a crisis to do anything other than his job.
jonmartin endgame still
michael becomes a sort of??? constant presence??? at the archive. everyone just kind of accepts it.
the books and the entities make a lot more things make sense. that’s really vague i know but like.
predictions for the entities:
fire/destruction
knowledge (jon stans rise up)
empty/alone (these stories always get to me the most. the ones where you’re endlessly falling or trapped in a cave or can’t sleep or stuck in space. shit scares me more than anything else)
chaos (i think michael is with this one. the doors also fit into this category, and maybe that shipping company)
death/id (brings out the bareness of human instinct. the meat, the bloodlust, and the death. maybe even the bugs go here, but they’re confusing. i don’t know where they fit.)
each entity represents a deep-set human fear. they were created to either teach us lessons or keep us in line.
sometimes they have devoted followers. sometimes they have disciples or avatars. you can lose yourself to them if you aren’t careful. jane was probably an avatar, that girl with the heat powers on hilltop road was an avatar, that guy with the lightning powers was an avatar, etc.
the books can teach you how to connect with the entities, but you have to be actually insane to try it. (if you aren’t already, you certainly will by the time you finish the reading/ritual. if you even survive)
anyway back to actual plot.
jon learns more from gertrude’s tapes about elias and the archives. maybe even the entities. he doesn’t want to know, but as we’ve learned, he Just Can’t Not Know.
jon finally grows a brain cell and lets people (martin) take care of him. a little.
tim is just there. he hates it but he can’t leave. (someone please get him out this is so sad)
melanie and basira join up with the archive, but for different reasons. melanie because jon asks her to, basira because despite her best interest she couldn’t stay away.
at the end of the season we’ll either meet a powerful avatar person of one of the entities themselves. that will be.....interesting.
elias gets hit by a bus. won’t happen but i can dream.
what ever happened to that one man from season one who had the dreams about death? i loved his statement. is there anyone out there like him? will jon receive a message like gertrude did?
WHAT IS THE LIGHTER FOR. i completely forgot about it until i looked at my last predictions and saw it mentioned.
martin is more active in tapes (again unlikely but i can dream. i love him)
that’s about all i got! i’m going to post this and immediately start season three. wish me luck :)
#tma#the magnus archives#tma season 2#jonathan sims#i love any cryptic laughter but please no actual spoilers!
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If you don’t want to see me rant and vent my frustrations just scroll past this.
I am so tired. I’m the black sheep, my family doesn’t respect me, they’re hypocritical and every time I try to meet them half way they don��t put in their share. People are gonna say I’m just being a teenager and that’s fine, but when I’m the one genuinely trying to compromise and talk things out like an adult only to be yelled at and blamed in return, it’s kind of hard to think I’m overreacting.
My mental state is fucked up. I have ADHD, anxiety, aspergers syndrome, OCD, depression, bipolar disorder, and those are just what’s been diagnosed. I’ve been on more prescribed medications than I can count, and my mom keeps telling me generic shit that doesn’t help and trying to convince me that if I try I can be normal.
They’re hypocritical. I only ever try and act in ways that I can fit in and yeah I’ve been a brat before and I’ve done stuff that people don’t want to deal with but I’m maturing and trying to have a genuine relationship with my family only to have everyone poke fun at me.
I’ve been homeschooled since sixth grade. I’ll be graduating high school in a couple years I want nothing more than to go back to public school to experience things and get social skills that I just don’t have right now. I’ve essentially been in quarantine for the past five years save for church, weekends with my friends, appointments, and volunteering at the library. I brought it up to my mom and- in her typical cold fashion- she seemed very disapproving and doubtful. She wasn’t supportive or encouraging.
I’m used to that. My mom’s always been that way. Very cold, stiff, almost like a mannequin trying to appear as this picture perfect person. She’s a Karen. I love my mom, I do, but she’s never been what I’m sure most would label as a good one. We’re Catholic. I’d consider myself and many other Catholics to be very accepting, open minded people, but my mom is one of those people that drive people away from Christianity.
I’m perfectly fine with lgbt+, people of other culture, race, and ethnicity, those who have different beliefs than me, etc. I’m not straight myself, so I’d be more hypocritical than my mother to be homophobic. My mom tries to be this picture perfect Christian by being overly strict, pushing her beliefs onto everyone and their mother, is judgemental, scolds me when I express my opinion in places I should be considered, and yells at me for talking about anything remotely lgbtq in front of babies. etc etc. I’m a Christian, my faith is important to me, but I see why people want nothing to do with us when my mom acts the way she does.
I get along great with my stepdad. However, today he’s been in a very grouchy mood it seems. We have actual conversations and he treats me like an intelligent human being, which I appreciate. We were supposed to go back to Kentucky (my home town) to help with a baby. Not sure how good of an idea it is with everything that’s going on, but I’ve learned over time that anytime I try to speak up I just risk getting my ass whooped and my ear drums busted. I was going to stay with my dad, but a couple days ago he called and said Tuk (his girlfriend who is the sweetest person on earth) wasn’t so comfortable with it at the time because of this covid19 thing, which is completely understandable and valid. A couple hours ago, maybe, my stepdad was ranting about how he was happy I was going with them but how stupid of an excuse my dad made. That the reason he provided wasn’t sensible at all. He asked me how many times i spend the night at my dad’s. Not that often, but I don’t normally have a reason to and he’s often very busy with work. I hang out with him most saturdays with the exception of this pandemic and bond. He said that it’s because my dad doesn’t want me there. That stung. A lot. I know it’s not true and I figured he must be in a really bad mood because he wasn’t really all that reasonable like normal, but it still hurt to hear someone I’m close with say with so much conviction that my dad doesn’t want me.
I’ve been studying super hard in school and even working on weekends just to please my mom, but it’s not enough to her. On top of that, I’m an emotional doormat. Whenever my friends need an outlet of any sort be it for ranting, venting, advice, and/or help it’s me that tend to be their go-to. I’m stressed. I love my friends and it’s just the kind of person I am to try and carry the weight of the world on my shoulders but I always do it until I snap and I can’t being myself to tell them or say no in fear of not being wanted.
I’m just being swallowed whole. The people that I love are all indeed human and have their flaws, it just seems that I’m the outlet that has these flaws lashed upon. I feel like my only source of comfort is reading, YouTube, fictional characters, and my dog. I’m tired all the time. I eat a meal a day and snack the rest of the time and barely have the energy to even read. I’ve just been doing my homework, attempting to read, answering to my friends’ beck and call, dealing with my family, and sleeping more than I’m happy with. I’m just emotionally and physically exhausted and the chances of anyone reading all of this are slim and the chances of those people actually caring are slimmer. I don’t want pity or anything, I just needed an outlet to vent because my life really sucks right now and I feel so selfish in saying that because there’s so many others that would kill to have my life and privileges but I’m just so exhausted. One of the only ways I can explain how I feel is that I want to go home. I know it doesn’t make any sense because it’s not like I’m away from my house or family or anything but I just want to go home. I feel exposed and suffocated and empty and stressed all at the same time.
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Who are your favourite asoiaf characters and why? Love your art and your answers 😁😁💙
Thank you soooo much anon 💕💕💕 I'm super glad you asked for favourite asoiaf characters and not pre-asoiaf because then we'd be here ALL YEAR and next year too. I'm also glad you said asoiaf and not GoT because the latter can officially do one. Semantics and specifics matter a great deal after all😉
I'm just going to be brief because I don't want to ramble on too long, but I fear this will end up being a long post anyway so I'll leave it under the cut.
1. Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen: I love everything about her, from the top of her perpetually singed head to her 'dainty sandaled feet'. She embodies all that is great about House Targaryen. I've loved Dany from the very beginning, she was the abused underdog, the expendable chattel, the broodmare- but she ended up as the mother of dragons and the magnificent queen we now know her as 😍 She's been to hell and back, she's clawed her way back up to the top of the organic pile that is life and she has flourished. She's endured betrayal and hardship but she's learnt so much from it at her young age :') Dany is wise but conflicted, young and naive, merciful but ruthless when she needs to be and the destiny and magic that seems to surround her just add to her charisma and intrigue. She's the last scion of her house, the last dragon, and she's determined to leave her mark but with none of the arrogant entitlement that was the downfall of many members of her house. Her relationship with her advisers is something that humanises her a great deal and she had me hooked when she wanted to be a good ruler who would protect her people.
"Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?"
I'm rooting for her so bad. Dany carries the eclectic history of her house with her, the blood of the dragon runs strongly through her veins and magnifies her excellence a million times over. She is a sister, a daughter, a mother to legends! At the heart of it, she wants to make the world a better place, to end oppression and slavery and injustice because she too has endured it.
“Slavery is not the same as rain. I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned.”
But despite all that, she's still a young girl with a young girl's heart and she makes mistakes and lapses of judgement BUT WHO IS PERFECT I ASK YOU? Even the most benign and just rulers in history had their flaws, they made mistakes, but it's what they achieve overall that matters. GRRM has created the perfect fantasy ruler in Daenerys Targaryen: she's complex, realistic, interesting and very human. She's got a good heart, a sharp mind, she's not infallible and has never asked to be held to impossible standards. I am in awe of her, I am enraptured, I am obsessed, SHE'S MA KWEEN OK❤😭
2. Jon Snow: I used to struggle to choose between Jon and Dany, but obviously Dany won as my numero uno in the end. I love this sassy, sullen boy so much, good lord he's everything ❤ Jon and Dany's parallels are uncanny. They're both such young people trying to do what they think is right (& it often is idc). I remember myself at 16 and I kid you not I was an actual troglodyte in comparison to those two. Anyway Jon is inherently a good person, but he's ruthless and flawed too and that's what I love about him. He's no self righteous niminy piminy chit. He's the bastard™ of Winterfell and if some meanie isn't already reminding us of that fact, then Jon does it himself haha. But I love how assertive he is too and doesn't take BS from anyone!
"I think not Greyjoy, this one belongs to me," was so iconic! I knew that boy was destined for greatness when he found himself a direwolf pup unlike any other! His love for his family is also very touching, despite being the familial outcast, he adores Robb and Arya and the others too (he’s never shown any animosity towards Sansa either) and he idolises his ‘father’ Ned too, and emulates his sense of honour and justice. He's so world weary and just done with everyone's shit 24/7 but he's a sweetheart too and honestly, I'd happily die fighting by his side. Like Dany, I admire his rise from a mere steward to the Lord Commander, I love that he makes questionable choices for the greater good (ahem like his father) and I love that he was born with a great destiny (unbeknownst to him) & he faces pitfalls at every turn but does he give up? No he does not.
P.S "Edd, fetch me a block" will be carved upon my tombstone. ICONIC.
3. Arya Stark: my little wolf child. I would have rolled over and died if I'd been through what she has, but her brains, her intuition and her heart has kept her thriving. I love how badass she is. As someone born with two left feet, I admire her agility and resilience so much. Arya is a survivor and a hardy little pup, she’s amicable, empathetic towards the less advantaged, she is touched with the milk of human kindness despite all that she endures BUT she has a darker side too (can you blame her?). Arya gazes into the abyss and the abyss gazes back. I personally love it, I love the vengeance that drives her, fuck magnanimity and forgiveness, if someone fucks with your family or friends, stick 'em with the pointy end.
4. Jaime Lannister: I love this golden fuckboy so much. I remember reluctantly hating him in AGoT but I still admired his flair and cockiness, he was such an arse! Long story short, when I got to see the real Jaime Lannister in the later books, the deep conflict that roiled within him, the noble knight that had been suppressed so long due to bad company and an even worse reputation. But what I love is that alongside all his gilded splendour, Jaime is a highly skilled fighter, a focused and loyal and emphatic man. He's not a charlatan or an inept fool. He fully deserves the acclaim. And let's not forget, Jaime's redemption arc was eye-wateringly epic. I loved his sense of humour, his good heart (once you chipped away at it for a while), the perpetual discord within him and his renewed moral code that emerged like a phoenix from the ashes. A massive thanks to Brienne of Tarth for helping to expose the Jaime we love and adore.
5. Tyrion Lannister: his cut-glass wit, intelligence and world weariness resonate with me on a deep level. GRRM literally created the most liveliest, intriguing character out of this scarred, little morsel of flesh. Tyrion is physically disadvantaged but his mind is sharper than ten men his age. He reads religiously, because a mind needs a book like a sword needs a whetstone, and anyone who can apply the wisdom of the past to better the present is worthy of admiration in my eyes. I loved his whole storyline as Hand of the King, we got to see him actually work for the good of the people of KL (for all the thanks he got lmao) and I love how competent and clever he is. Obviously he has a nasty, self motivated streak too but it doesn't turn me away, I love following his mind around the twists and turns of his murky conscience. Ultimately, Tyrion is a survivor and a hustler and he always manages to squeeze out of tight spots, not down to any legendary pugilistic skills but his quick wits.
I could say so much more about these characters but I shan't keep you any longer.
Honourable mentions go to: Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Cersei Lannister (I don't love her but I love her chapters so effing much), Sansa Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Oberyn Martell and Asha Greyjoy.
Thank you so much for this question!
#anon asks#chillyravenart answers#i tried to add a cut but it didn't work wtf#favourite asoiaf characters
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Writer’s Cut: Ginny In Stay Standing
“
This one is a lot harder to write. I think, to properly write a discourse on Ginny in Stay Standing, I have to admit to a couple of things.
First of all, the Ginny at the beginning of Stay Standing has a much different characterization than the Ginny at the end of Stay Standing. I wrote this story over years of time and grew both as a writer and as a person. And sometimes the person I was when I wrote her was ugly and bitter at the start. I freely admit that.
When I first started writing Stay Standing, my relationship with one of my sisters was very... strained, and she reminded me of Ginny very much, and that reflects heavily in this piece. I was a little 18 year old when I first began this story and I was much more prone to allowing my personal emotions to affect my writing process back then.
I had a lot of people ask for this, actually. Ginny is the hardest person to write for me, to be honest. The reasons are pretty complicated, but mostly it comes down to the fact that she is probably the only character who I can not empathize with. It’s hard for me to put myself in her shoes.
It is very difficult to not bash her and I’ve deleted scene after scene after scene where I have done just that. Usually when I have a final product with a scene she’s in, I’ve already deleted anywhere from 5 to 15 different approaches. Not that I outright write her as a terrible character, but when I reread it, you can practically taste the distaste I have and that’s not okay. You, the reader, should not be able to tell if I’m writing her right.
So in Stay Standing I have scenes where I succeeded and scenes where I did not and I feel like it left a certain message I did not intend to leave. Clearly, towards the end of the story, years in, where I’ve become a better writer, Ginny also becomes better as a consequence.
The most difficult part about Ginny, the character, is that I know a lot of my dislike comes from a certain level of animosity I carry from my own childhood. I had a hard time making friends so whenever I brought them over and my younger siblings wanted to take away the friend (the attention of that friend, I should correct) that I worked so hard for ,it always devastated me because THEY were brilliant at making friends and had them come over all the time, played with other kids all the time. But I did not and they still felt the need to take.
Now I understand more, I never viewed myself as the cool kid, never thought my siblings looked up to me. But they did. They thought I was brilliant. And they wanted to befriend their brilliant big sisters friend. It makes perfect sense NOW, but back then I didn’t understand.
Safe to say, reading about Ginny trying to get Harry’s attention right from the start in Chamber of Secrets, while I was in elementary made me hate her character very much. It was a harmless crush and perfectly normal. Obviously I know that now, but I still don’t like her. I still have this distaste that’s never faltered.
In the following books when she would befriend Hermione and Harry, it was more tolerable, but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth for her character. I found everything she did annoyed me. It was pretty innocent stuff, really, but it still bugged me that she seemed rather popular, well liked, beautiful, yet she still sought attention from her crush Harry Potter. It was a bit obsessive really and out of place because there were so few scenes where he saw her interact with Harry. It never really felt like she had a significant conversation with him. Her personality never really shined through. She was seen rarely and in those moments she never showed any care for her siblings. And perhaps that’s because the story is told through Harry’s perspective. We see her in some of the later books dancing with Fred and George and having fun, but that’s it.
Though I do understand Harry saving Ginny probably put a stamp on her adoration for him. It makes sense that the crush lasted so long. It also attributes in part to bad writing. As much as I adore the books, I’ll be the first to admit Rowling did not have a good grasp on the romantic aspects of things. And that’s coming from someone who is Ace. She did not have a good grasp on sibling relationships. The only sibling relationship I think she wrote quite well are the Creevy brothers, actually.
The lack of interaction between Ron, Fred and George. And more specifically, between Ron and Ginny, really bothered me.
That, more than anything, is what bugged me about Ginny’s friendship with Hermione and Harry, because there didn’t seem to be ANY relationship between Ron and Ginny. THAT bothered me.
There are lines in the book that suggested that Hermione and Ginny hung out. Lines in the book to show that Harry and Ginny were at least on good terms and talked on and off. BUT NOT LINES to show the same between Ginny and Ron.
It seemed like HARRY talked to the Weasley siblings more often and on a more positive note than Ron did.
This is due to Rowlings assumption that the reader just knows they hang out. In her interviews she makes comments that suggest how closely knit the Wealsey’s are. How fond the siblings are of Ron. She makes comments that of course everyone loves Ron because he’s Ron, how could you not? She’s built this world up in her head and she seems to believe that it should be obvious so she doesn’t bother to write scenes that show it because it just is. There is a clear distinction between how Rowling speaks of these characters and how she writes things down in the book. Which is a huge problem for the reader who is not privy to all that Rowling knows, only what she writes.
Getting back on track, my point here is that every time I try to write Ginny, every scene that she shows up in Stay Standing, it has been very difficult. I admit, at the beginning of the story, I failed the character a little bit. I still think she might have lost her temper and told Ron not to come for her birthday, that feels in character to me, but the bitterness and cruelty behind that scene? No, I didn’t mean that.
The birthday scene was meant to be a sort of blowing up of all the tension that seemed to manifest between them during Half Blood Prince. J.K Rowling wrote no reconciliation between the siblings. Only Ron and Hermione. We are left to assume there was one. Or that, somehow, the nod of Ron accepting Harry as Ginny’s girlfriend was some sort of make up.
Half Blood Prince has Ginny and Ron at each others throats and there simply is nothing to suggest they fixed things. They simply don’t talk much after that. And in Deathly Hallows, Ron demonstrates extreme concern for her, but Ginny is MORE concerned for Harry when they meet up again than seeing if her brother is okay. In fact, there’s not a single line to suggest that she had any concern for her big brother at all, which sickened me and pretty much reaffirmed my hatred for her character.
I despise bashing characters though and so I have tried very hard to write her in a positive light. To put myself in her position and try to see things from her perspective, but that is why she has literally only one scene in the entirety of Stay Standing, from her point of view, towards the end of the story.
The Mirror scene: “She’d thought that Harry and Hermione were a lot more damaged than Ron though.”
At this point, I’d sort of learned how my siblings viewed me. They had this... filter when it came to the things I said and did. They wanted to impress me, they wanted to be like me, they thought I was emotional impenetrable and that nothing they did could affect me in any way because I was just that strong.
So I sort of took that into consideration when I wrote from Ginny’s point of view, and I feel like I understood her better, like I could sort of see how SHE felt better than when I was younger.
“He was more put together than the other two were.”
I feel like the way she viewed Ron might have put him on this... not a pedestal, but I feel like Ginny saw Ron as someone who should know better, as someone who knew his family loved him. I think she saw his witty jokes and his many friends and the assured way he went about helping them and just thought he was a much more confidant person than he actually is. She saw him as her smart, witty, funny big brother who judged her even though she was trying her best.
I think she would have met hearing he left Harry and Hermione with anger at first before it would give way to confusion and hurt and disappointment.
“Ron abandoned them in the middle of their journey. He just fucking left, the coward.”
I think Ginny genuinely cares, but she’s spent so much time seeing her brothers a certain way, looking at them like obstacles she needs to overcome, that it would take something huge to shake her of that view point.
Molly’s expectations of her being the little girl warring with her need to be on equal footing with her brothers created the rather harsh and terrible things she did in Half Blood Prince. She’s overcompensating and her view on things are not how they actual are (just as it was for all of use growing up).
In a way, Ginny is the best way to measure my own growth, coming to understand her character (not really like, but understand) helped a lot in understanding my own siblings and realizing the problem I had with her character helped me to recognize flaws in my own judgement.
I rewrote the mirror scene probably twenty times and that’s an understatement. I did a lot of working through my own feelings in this one.
“Oh God, why was her Big Brother dying? And she felt so bipolar because just an hour ago she was filled with so much hatred for him.”
Ginny’s growth here, all the realizations, must of been like an atomic bomb going off inside of her heart and having to regrow it cell by cell. I really just obliterated her in this scene.
This writers cut will probably be the hardest to write for obvious reasons. I know a lot of readers must have been scratching their heads wondering why Ginny sometimes seemed so harsh and other times towards the end so loving.
I tried to stay true to the character, but with Ginny I always feel like I’m out of my depth and I know I’ve failed in some areas. Every time I tried to write her more... fierce side, it turned my more cruel than I intended. I couldn’t write her fierce without remembering all the shitty stuff she pulled and that in turn made it hard not to write her in anger. So then I tried to avoid writing her fierce and she just read so meek. Then I would try again and it would be this odd mix of too mean, too meek, too all over the place and I’d sit there going Yikes, this isn’t right at all.
So I hope this answers questions without angering any Ginny fans. Like I said, my distaste for her character stems from personal feelings and I’ve tried over the course of the years to be better about it, but I don’t ever really think I will enjoy writing Ginny even if I manage to keep true to her character.
But I feel like I understand her a lot better than I once did and moving forward I plan to work on writing her properly.
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doing this whole OC meme thing for me mostly, very likely not interesting to anyone else (because I’m not really explaining who any of these guys are and I don’t expect anyone to know all of them, also its formatted badly and i didn’t edit it well) so i’m putting it under a cut
The oldest OC I still bring back occasionally is Bluebell, who is an alien creature I invented in 6th grade. She used to be named Hana, because I was taking Japanese lessons and was in that phase of elementary school where you think that naming your characters after a word in another language is always the best and coolest idea
The newest OC I have that’s like, a main character is I guess Viarnne, but my newest OC that’s not a fan character is Slice the rainbow layer cake dragon
I can’t pick a favorite OC very easily- I love Pike and Tu personality-wise a whole lot out of my Dialien characters, and I think Viarnne is my favorite Neopet right now. OH also i love my old character Alkaline
picking a favorite OC design is even harder- of my neopets, Alxxa has the coolest design I think, both to draw and as far as general appearance goes. For all original characters, my favorite for a long time was the character I made whose design was... literally adapted from Alxxa but not a Neopet. I think I called it Tiramisu?? its been a while since I’ve actually drawn Tiramisu
My main reason for making OCs is sort of different for different types of characters- I think part of it is that I legitimately want to tell stories, but the biggest thing IS that I just find character design fun, in particular designing and drawing creatures.
Uhh it’s different for different characters but it usually involves finding something fun to draw and then drawing it a bunch, to see if it stays fun, or if I can keep it fun. If I don’t have fun drawing a character, they tend to sort of fall away- like, you don’t see me drawing Jukebawks often, even though I had fun coming up with a design, because she’s... hard to draw, and doesn’t have as much range of expression as a lot of my other characters. (plus I don’t have a personality for her- if I have a backstory I’m really invested in for a character, I can basically draw very similar pictures of them over and over again and have fun because I like their story so much, which is probably a bit of a flaw)
I don’t really ship my OCs with anyone else’s- I’ve never even really shipped my OCs with like, canon characters from anything? I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of shipping my characters with someone else’s, but I’m not very good at communication or roleplaying, and a lot of my characters aren’t really what I would call ‘shippable’, so it tends to be easier to just work by myself on that kind of thing.
uhhh i have a couple ocs who I ship but i’m really self conscious about doing so, so i talk about most of them almost never. I ship Sam and Viarnne but I want to actually have a story where it makes sense for them to end up forming a relationship like that, so for now i’m mostly focusing on how their friendship will work (also, just like, assume none of my OCs are fucking I guess?? even the ones i ship together- that’s one of those things that’s just never really been interesting to me, and i mostly just don’t want to deal with jokes about it because like, please?? i like relationship stuff but i just don’t get anything out of sex stuff, jokes or otherwise, most of the time. also please don’t take this as a moral judgement if that’s something you do, i don’t care as long as its not like, something morally reprehensible, you do you). oh i also have Alxxa and Sensurround (neopets), Zotyre and Gyronaut (neopets), Alkaline and Skurl (original story), uhhh kind of not sure if Tu and Iris are gonna end up having a romantic relationship in my Dialien story, i need to do more thinking
weirdest... oc... uhhhhh i’m not sure what that would entail, exactly. my fursona might be the weirdest just from like, not having any sort of world or story or anything, she just floats in space and picks up space radio signals and stuff
I don’t really have enough villain ocs- I guess at this point, Chexerton is kind of a villain, he’s like a shitty space security guard for Virtupets. most of my completely original stories don’t have villains- Dialiens (it needs a better name- maybe just Dial) is more about mental health struggles and potentially capitalism or colonialism, and with LOSER (a story i think i have barely ever talked about on here, its the one with Skurl and Alkaline) i straight up can’t decide whether its a fun road trip where character flaws are explored and then like, amends are made, or if it ultimately ends with the characters not overcoming their flaws and destroying each other. its kind of been both in my mind for a long time which is why i can’t write it- can’t decide whether the relationship should be ultimately healthy or toxic
This is a tough question- I don’t think of my OCs as real people, exactly, that I could be mean to or ‘torture, muahaha i love seeing my babies suffer’- but they’re deeply personal to me, and I don’t think its always useful to see them as constructs unworthy of being treated with kindness. I guess what I would consider being ‘nice’ to my OCs is trying to realize them better and have them make sense and function properly in whatever stories I’m trying to tell using them. In that regard, I guess there’s some I theoretically ‘neglect’ by not really focusing on them very often, or by getting tired of their stories but never officially ‘getting rid’ of them?? Plus I don’t have time to develop literally every character I’ve ever had. I have all kinds of old OCs that i’m not planning to do anything with anymore, but they meant something to me at some point, and its not like they’re going to pile up and take up space in my house if I don’t, like, sell them. I like knowing that if I ever need to look back at my old stuff for ideas, there’s a bunch of stuff I might be able to use or repurpose again someday.
Again, I don’t really think about it as ‘killed’. I guess I don’t have the main character from Skurl’s original story anymore, who was like a mammalian Invader Zim-esque fantasy evil fortress knight?? and Skurl was the funny animal curmudgeon sidekick. I made that protagonist up because the story needed a protagonist, and he never even really had a personality to speak of- his rival was better defined, the mad scientist from the idea had a more interesting character design- basically every other character from that story I might bring back, but that protagonist is probably gone for good. Maybe I’ll bring back his weird ear decorations that smushed his fabric-y rabbit ears down, those were kind of the most interesting thing he had going on.
OH if you mean literally killed off in a story, in the nightmare angst version of LOSER Skurl ends up like, not DEAD exactly, but severely fucked up to the point where he’d be better off dead. And Viarnne is technically dead
Oh man years ago I had an OC named O-BR who was a robotic panda bear toy who was possessed by the soul of some dude who died who was a father, and now is kind of the robotic parental figure of the child who owns the bear toy. i don’t think that actually works well as a story- i never even figured out what that dude’s name was, just the name of the bear. it’s name was O-BR because its ears were like, floating purple plastic cheerio shapes that hovered next to his head. this was another ‘i’m obsessed with invader zim’ era character
80% of my Neopet OCs at any given time- also 80% of my non fandom based OCs at any given time. I don’t have time to come up with stories for all of them, and I tend to just focus on whatever is interesting enough that I remember it
I hate drawing Jukebawks... i’m sorry jukebawks........ maybe i should like, offer her up for trade, but i’m not sure anyone else would want her?? i like the idea of her!! i should actually probably design her to be easier for me to draw, in all honesty. When it comes to writing though, Moe has given me so much grief because I honest to god don’t know how he fits into the story and group dynamic in Dialiens. He’s like, kind of an asshole loner who keeps to himself and doesn’t want people to bother him?? i’m not even confident he uses ‘he’ pronouns. i don’t know
this feels like its more designed for people who have more humanoid ocs where they’re heights are more, like, similar, so being short or tall is a thing?? like, for Neopets, Alxxa’s the tallest because he’s really long, and Viarnne is the shortest because he’s an oval that’s like a foot tall. as far as the only character heights that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, the Dialiens, tallest to shortest, are: Pike, Moe (not counting the ears), Iris, Chives, Tu
I guess my oldest ocs are Zotyre, Gyronaut, and that mutant Moehog lady- youngest would be Chilston, i guess. and as far as OCs, i have no idea, i don’t think enough about age. approaching characters from the angle that they’re Cartoons!!!! and then deciding to try and give them nuance later means that everyone’s just sort of nebulously adult-ish
Do I dislike any of my OCs, like, as characters, or as people? I think Pike, despite being one of my favorite OCs, would irritate me quite a bit in real life, because his personality is heavily influenced by traits that annoyed me about other people I’ve met, but like, trying to see them more sympathetically?? but he’d get on my nerves. Iris fits this a lot too- I don’t think I’d like Moe much either?? i dunno its a weird question, i like them because they’re my characters and also because they’re not real. i don’t think most of them would be friends with me or anything if they were real, even if so many of them are based on parts of me
oh i’ve made self inserts- i definitely had a self insert Invader Zim character that i drew maybe a single time, and then pretended to be in daydreams in my head while bored during school. she had an angsty backstory. then after that i pretended to be Trigger in my daydream stories all the time in school for like, 3 years (like, during points in time where i was zoning out during class, or walking between classes)
uhhhhh I regret not doing more with these characters, and i regret that i can’t answer a lot of important questions about characters I’ve had for years Now. i’ve had them for years, so they feel really definitive and rock solid in my mind, so they’re hard to change, but also they’re really not as nuanced as i want them to be. its a bit tough
well someone in freshman year of college who i ended up cutting ties with because of some kind of wild friend group drama and like, important political and philosophical differences, actually knew me from deviantart and remembered one of my OCs. that was pretty wild. that’s one person though... uhhh, are any of my OCs popular?? I’m just excited when anyone finds a character i’ve come up with interesting. I’m glad other people seem to like Viarnne!!! it fills me with terror that i’ll like, ruin him by writing a bad story, but its also exciting and validating to come up with a character story and for other people to also enjoy it
uhhh its Viarnne again. i drew him to try and demonstrate how a robot Kiko could be an appealing character design and it backfired on me. i love drawing Orb with a Face and Arms and i am happy when i see him as my active pet on neopets. I guess Pike also qualifies- when I initially drew the Dialiens, I had very vague personality ideas for them, and I felt like he would be the bully. he has since become very much NOT the bully (like, he seems more like a person who would get bullied) and I’ve grown really fond of him. also i created Trigger to be a Chuck E Cheese style mascot back before fucking Five Nights At Freddy’s existed and destroyed that that as an original idea (fuck you FNAF i have two characters now who are basically... that and you can’t ruin that for me. i was here FIRST (this is a joke its not even that great of a premise, my shit isn’t horror, and i’ll deal)). he was also based on a glow in the dark grey alien and a skeleton and lived in an abandoned pizza entertainment building and was basically an evil villain, and then high school me decided that instead of being that he was gonna be a mutated teenager and it was going to be really angsty. I don’t really have as much interest in that backstory anymore??? but I sure had a lot of fun with it for like 4 years so i think that counts
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The Morally Grey Mile
Strap in for another grim tale. At least men are the ones getting fucked in The Green Mile, amirite ladies? No, still not cool? Ok then.
I suppose it is a disservice to call The Green Mile solely a “grim” tale, but because the core story focuses on an innocent man headed to the electric chair, it is pretty damn grim. If you haven’t read the book you’ve seen the movie but spoilers anyway - the innocent man dies and it sucks for the reader. It’s certainly more complicated than “bad wins” but a real bummer all the same.
Backing up a bit. The Green Mile was King’s first attempt at a serialized story release. In the book’s forward, King tells us it’s story of inception. Through a series of fortuitous events and a conversation with business associates about Charles Dickens, King concocted the idea to release a story in a series of “chapbooks”. Apparently Dickens released some of his stories that way, and they were so fervently popular that a band of dingdongs pushed each other off a dock and drowned while awaiting a shipment of Dickens into Baltimore Harbor. I imagine if the Harry Potter books were released that way I would have ended up in the harbor too. No judgement, zealous Dickens readers, I get it.
Logically, if it worked for 19th century Dickens, it would surely work for 20th century Stephen King, right?
(cue Mr. Burns fingers).
A single book released in installments monthly, garnering 3-4x the cost of a single paperback. Good for you SK, good for you. Cause turns out, the constant reader ate it up and bought ‘em like hotcakes.
Cause that’s the thing - this is a really really good story. Not because it’s beautifully written like Cujo or Firestarter or mind-bending like The Dark Tower books, but because it is a real page turner. I credit the format for that - you can tell it was written in a plot-driven, cliffhanger kinda way. In the same way serialized TV (before binging took this joy away) would leave you wanting more week to week, The Green Mile leaves each installment in a way where you can’t imagine not picking up the next one.
Per my contractual agreement with myself, I am required to reach each and every page of this story, but I’m a strange bird and the rest of the world isn’t a weirdo like me. At the end of the day, the narrative structure here really works and I plowed through all 6 installments in a day or so. Those reading in real-time (and not binging like me) waited a month between each publishing, from March through August 1996. There was no dock delivery in Baltimore in 1996 but I imagine if there was, the crowd waiting for each would be large.
So the narrative approach works, but what about the story itself? My analysis comes back slightly muddy but mostly positive despite some hard to swallow flaws.
I can’t claim to know what death row would have been like in 1932, but I’ve watched enough PBS documentaries to know what it’s like now. The group held at Cold Mountain are described as killers, yes. As rapists and wife beaters and arsonists. But they also come across like a rag-tag group of buds that should have their own reality TV show. One of the prisoners, Del, raped and murdered a young girl then accidentally killed a bunch of other people trying to cover his tracks by setting the building on fire. But he’s got this cute, somewhat supernatural mouse named Mr. Jingles that does tricks. Ain’t it cute? Then he fries and literally catches on fire in the electric chair.
I understand the intention of the tale - humanity lives in all of us. Empathy shouldn’t be reserved just for some. Death is final and it comes for all of us. What I struggled with was trying to understand if this was blatant reference to King’s personal stance on the Death Penalty (against it, obvs) or something more subtle. Should we take away that killing is wrong no matter what? Or that there is more nuance at play here?
Because there’s more happening on the green mile than just murderers dying (no matter how dramatically) in the chair comically nicknamed “ol’ sparky”. We’ve got John Coffey in chains, convicted of raping and murdering two 9 year old girls. JFC. I just can’t.
But he did, and he will die for his crimes. Here’s where the controversy around this novel begins. John Coffey is a large black man with magical powers. Spike Lee specifically calls out King publicly for this “magical negro” trope, which honestly I can’t disagree with. Dick Halloran from The Shining and Mother Abigail from The Stand fall neatly in this bucket as well. But even as I type this I know I am cherry-picking; I’ve read plenty of King stories with mystical beings and they’re mostly white (or more often other worldly). But King’s repeated use of the n-word and other racial slurs in his writing is real cringeworthy. As I move further towards his 21st century writing I keep hoping this will stop. It hasn’t yet, as of 1996. But King and writing about race is an entirely separate post for another day.
Back to The Green Mile; we learn that John Coffey has special healing powers when he cures the head guard, Paul Edgecomb of a UTI by grabbing his crotch. Normally this type of behavior will get ya thrown in the hole, but Paul’s so grateful he lets it slide.
Once we learn of the healing powers of Coffey, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. While getting arrested he cries “I tried to stop it but it was too late.” Everyone involved in the investigation assumes he means he tried to stop himself from murder but couldn’t; anyone with half a brain can deduce that someone else killed the girls; he tried to heal them. He was too late.
We’re set off to learn who really murdered the girls, but this revelation takes a backseat, at least in my mind. For me, the big mystery is; will John Coffey get executed? I’ll be honest, I hadn’t seen this movie, so I didn’t know. The phone the governor used to phone in stays-of-execution was mentioned early, so my Chekhov’s Gun senses lead me to believe it was possible. Why bother if not? Well the phone is mentioned at execution time, only to say it won’t ring. And of course it never really was a question - Coffey is a black man in the south, convicted of murdering two girls in 1932. Of course no one’s coming to save him. It’s sad. Real sad.
We’re given solace in the fact that Coffey claims he’s ready to go - his powers are too much and he’s tired. This is a nonsense cop out that provides relief to all those that understand the truth, allowing them to go on living, loving their wives and kids and casseroles. John Coffey should not have died. The end.
Things are wrapped up in a bow with the end stories of everyone involved and their timely and untimely deaths. I guess that’s it; life sucks, then you die; death can come for you in any way, without discrimination.
I earmarked what is one of my favorite lines I’ve encountered so far in King’s work.
“We had once again succeeded in destroying what we could not create.”
Executing anyone (murderer or not) takes a toll on most of the prison staff. I just loved this so much on so many levels; they are men without the ability to create life; they are not god; they are mortals stealing mortality. So beautiful.
So, it’s no stretch to call this the brother of Shawshank, but at least we get a female character in Paul Edgecomb’s wife. I don’t remember her name so that’s not great. But she was a woman and she at least was there, so it gets knocked up a few rungs from Shawshank IMHO.
I’d have to say this is one King novel that really perplexed me. I suppose I got into the routine of enjoying typical good-vs-evil tales where the good guys eventually overcome. For me, The Green Mile wasn’t green at all but a wavering shade of grey I still can’t see properly.
(Side note: As I sat down to write this, I thought to myself “I’m not sure what I’ll say about The Green Mile.” Turns out, quite a bit, this is probably one of my longest entries. Who knew?)
8/10
First Line: This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain.
Last Line: I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.
Adaptations:
Like it’s brother Shawshank Redemption, I had never seen this movie before. It made it’s run through awards season in 1999, mostly for Michael Clarke Duncan’s portrayal of John Coffey. Who later tragically died of a heart attack with his girlfriend Omarosa (of Trump WH fame) which I didn’t know, but good golly, that is another sad story for another day.
Listen, this is a highly regarded movie that’s on many top lists, so I won’t stab into it too hard. But it is SO LONG.
Frank Darabont got his panties all in a bunch when folks told him a 3 hour running time was too long, claiming that if 2 hours was the correct length of a film that cinema classics like Lawrence of Arabia were invalidated. Well guess what? I’ve seen Lawrence of Arabia, and yes that shit is too. damn. long. As is The Green Mile.
One would think that with 3+ hours of material, the character development would be on point. It’s not really; the prisoners are mostly glossed over (even more so than in the book) as lovable murders. Wild Bill is the exception (overacted by Sam Rockwell), and he serves as the sole real “bad guy”.
Edgecomb and his other prison guards are painted as saints (again, minus one guard who takes on the “bad guy of the good guys” role). If the book was grey the movie is much more black and white. Tom Hanks for president for sure, the guy is a national treasure. But they were one step away from giving him an actual halo. As someone complicit in the murder of an innocent man, I just can’t declare his character for sainthood. The real Tom Hanks, a million times yes. Paul Edgecomb? Nah.
The movie is fine. I approve of Darabont’s relationship with King and have thoroughly enjoyed their previous collaborations. I was sad to see that he let his film rights to The Long Walk expire last year, picked up by New Line and James Vanderbilt (of Vanderbilt fortune... old money... sigh) who penned Zodiac, which leaves me slightly hopeful but assume it’ll trickle back into development limbo for the remainder of eternity.
I’ve already finished my next read, Desperation and after I slog through the 2.5 hour ABC miniseries (UGH) I will keep trucking. New Year, more pressure placed on myself to plow through the back half of King’s bibliography.
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Anomalies: Chapter Four
Summary: Anomalies is about different reactions to grief and how four brothers each respond to the death of their mother. The oldest brother, Roman, gets custody of the twins, Patton and Virgil, and the youngest brother, Logan, after their mother`s death. Virgil is also trying to navigate through a multitude of anxiety disorders, including OCD and trichotillomania, with the help of his brothers and his therapist, Dr. Picani. But meanwhile, Roman isn`t sure he can handle the responsibility of taking care of his brothers, Logan doesn`t process loss in a way most people can understand, and Patton isn`t nearly as okay as he seems…
Warnings: Death of a parent, grief, anxiety, trichotillomania, panic attacks, obsessive thought spirals, dissociation, OCD, some swearing, mentions of terminal illness (leukemia), thoughts about death, self-hatred, self-depreciation. For a list of the content warnings for the whole story as well as more information, please see this post. Please heed the warnings and stay safe.
Word Count: 1,808
Notes:
Masterpost to All Chapters
The next Friday, he walked out of Dr. Picani’s office with diagnoses of OCD, trich, and a panic disorder. He managed to hold it together until he got into the car, and then started to cry. Patton, who had come with him again, slid over into the middle seat so he could do both of their seatbelts and then put his arms around his twin.
“This is a good thing,” their mother said as she drove out of the parking garage. “Now that we know why you’re feeling this way, we can work on making it better. Are you okay with Dr. Picani, or do you want to find a different doctor?”
“I’d rather stay with him,” Virgil replied, trying to keep his breathing under control with the exercise that the therapist had taught him. “He--he’s good, I like him.”
“Is he helping?”
“Uh-huh.” Virgil nodded, putting his head down on Patton’s shoulder with a sniffle. “I mean--I don’t know how much anyone can actually help, but...if anyone can, I think it might be him.”
And over the next six months, things did improve. A lot. Virgil actually managed to get the trich under control, and he was passing out from panic attacks a lot less. After a few weeks, he didn’t have anxiety attacks about going to see Dr. Picani anymore. He actually found himself looking forward to it, which really surprised him. He could laugh at the therapist’s slightly ridiculous, over the top cartoon comparisons one minute and then talk to him about the deeply rooted obsessive rituals that he had never told anyone else about the next minute. Some of his eyelashes even started to grow back.
Then their mother had been diagnosed with leukemia, and all of the progress flew out the window.
The night after the confirmed diagnosis was told to him, he found himself in front of the bathroom mirror. He could barely remember doing it, he must have dissociated, but pretty much all of his eyelashes were gone again, and most of one eyebrow. As soon as he realized what he had done, he burst into tears and collapsed onto the bathroom floor with a thud, smacking his arm against the cabinet.
A few seconds later, someone was knocking at the door. “Virgil! Virgil, what was that sound? Virgil, are you crying? Open the door, please, let me come in,” Roman pleaded.
Footsteps, and then Patton’s voice joined him. “Virge?” he said, sounding frightened. “Virge, are you okay? Answer me!”
Shaking so hard he could barely get his hands to cooperate, he reached up and unlocked the door. It flew open.
“Oh, Virgil, honey!” Roman exclaimed. “Oh…”
Patton dropped down in front of him and grabbed his hands. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he said. “What happened? Did you fall? Are you hurt?”
Virgil shook his head. Sobbing, he tried to explain that he had relapsed with the trich. Knowing that he wasn’t making much sense and finding it difficult to put words in any sort of coherent order, he wiped away his eye makeup roughly with the back of his hand.
Patton gasped sharply. “Oh! Oh, Virgil...oh, you should have told me it was bad again.”
“I was doing so good,” Virgil sobbed. “I w-was doing so good, I d-don’t understand, I was t-trying s-so hard! And n-now I f-fucked it all up, I c-can’t...I’m a f-failure, m-mom’s gonna be s-so disappointed, and so is Dr. Picani…” He hit the floor with his fist, wincing at the pain.
Roman nudged Patton aside, saying, “Virgil, let’s get you out of the bathroom. Come here, it’s okay, we’ve got you.” He hesitated for a second, then just scooped the crying Virgil up into his arms and carried him down the hall into the nearest bedroom, Patton’s. He set him down on the bed.
“I’m a failure,” Virgil whimpered again. “And m-mom’s gonna see when she g-gets home from her appointment, and I’m g-gonna have to t-tell Dr. Picani that I fucked up, and I’m so stupid, I hate myself for fucking this up, I--”
For once, Patton didn’t tell him off for swearing. He held Virgil’s hands as tightly as he could. “You’re not a failure,” he said sternly. “Listen to me, Virgil. The...the news we got yesterday, it’s messing with all of us. Logan hasn’t said a word all day, I...I can barely stop crying.” And indeed, there were tears dripping down his cheeks. “It’s scary, Virgil, and Dr. Picani told you that it gets worse when you’re scared or stressed. Remember?”
“Uh-huh,” Virgil managed. “But still--”
“No, no ‘but still’. You aren’t allowed to hate yourself because of this, Virgil. We won’t let you.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Virgil into his arms. “Nobody is disappointed in you,” he murmured. “Nobody is going to blame you.”
Probably drawn by the noise, Logan nudged his way into the room. He gazed at his brothers, wide-eyed.
“Hey, kiddo,” Patton said. “What's up?”
Logan gestured at Virgil and tilted his head.
“He's...he's gonna be okay,” Patton said.
Logan narrowed his eyes and left the room, walking with purpose.
The phone rang suddenly. Roman groaned. “I'll go get it. You got him?”
“I've got him,” Patton confirmed.
Roman ruffled Virgil’s hair as he rushed off to get the phone.
“Pat?” Virgil said in a tiny voice.
“Yeah?”
“I'm really scared.”
“Me, too.” Pat gave him a squeeze. “Me, too.”
Logan came back into the room and held out one of his koosh-balls. It was pale pink, and a little smaller than the blue one he had given Virgil a while ago.
Virgil smiled through his tears and took the toy. “Oh, Lo...thanks.”
The quiet 12-year old hopped up onto the bed, his legs dangling over the side. “The five year survival rate for leukemia is 63% and rising with advancements in treatment,” he said, the first words he had spoken all day. “The probability is on our side for a good outcome.”
“That...that helps, Logan,” Patton said sincerely. “Are you doing okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Roman walked back through the door, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “That was Mom. She wants us to know that they’re doing more tests, and it might be a while, so don’t wait for her to come home to go to sleep. She says she loves us all, and that she’s really proud of us for being so strong.”
Virgil’s lower lip trembled. He hadn’t been strong.
“I’m really tired,” Patton said, squeezing Virgil’s hand. “Can...can we all stay here tonight?”
“Sure,” Roman agreed. “Let’s all get pajamas. Lo, do you want me to read the next chapter in the book for you?” Logan was, of course, more than capable of reading even very advanced books by himself. However, he also liked being read to, and Roman was always more than happy to oblige, especially if it meant that he got to do character voices. He had just finished reading Logan The Hobbit, and was beginning The Lord of the Rings. Logan had immediately pointed out the flaw in logic with the plot hole that ‘the eagles could have just flown them to Orodruin’. Roman had decided to engage in a debate about realism vs fantasy and plot devices, which was one of the very few topics he had a fighting chance of winning against Logan in. He actually managed to get Logan to suspend disbelief, and now the kid was just really enjoying the novel.
“Yes, please,” Logan said. “If Patton and Virgil are okay with it?”
“I’m definitely gonna fall asleep halfway through the chapter, but sure,” Patton answered.
Virgil nodded his agreement.
Logan and Roman went off to get ready for bed, and the twins got changed in Patton’s room. They went to the bathroom to brush their teeth, Virgil avoiding looking in the mirror at all costs. Then they went back to Patton’s room and settled down on the side of the double bed that was against the wall. Patton reluctantly moved some of his many pillows and stuffed animals on his bed to the top of his dresser.
“Surely you don’t need that many pillows,” Virgil said. “And you’ve got, like, fifteen plushies there.”
“Eighteen, and I love each and every one them,” Patton retorted. “And hey, you like sleeping on a tiny twin bed with about a hundred pounds of blanket on top of you even though Mom offered you a double bed as well. I don’t cast judgement on how you choose to sleep.”
“Whatever,” Virgil said. He had slid down underneath the covers, facing the wall. He was still holding the pink koosh-ball from Logan.
Patton plunked down next to him. “So...how are you doing?” he asked seriously.
Virgil laughed humorlessly. “Well, I’m all out of tears. Is that good or bad?”
“Ohhh…” Patton nestled up against him, sighing. “Virge.”
“No, I…” Even though his eyes were dry, there was a lump in his throat that was difficult to speak around. “Pat, I went almost a month without pulling at all. And then I just completely ruined it. And I hate that that’s what I’m focusing on, and not the fact that our mother has cancer. I just feel like...like I’m a horrible person.”
Patton let out a sound of discontent and wrapped his arms around Virgil’s waist from behind. “You’re not a horrible person.”
“Then why am I crying about my stupid eyelashes instead of our sick mom?” Virgil muttered.
“I don’t have the energy to fight you right now,” Patton said tiredly. “So I’m just gonna hold you instead.”
Virgil exhaled softly. “I appreciate that. I don’t want to fight you, either.”
“Good,” Patton mumbled into his shoulder.
By the time that Roman and Logan returned, the twins were both nearly asleep. Roman got through about five pages before Logan was out as well. The oldest brother put the book on Patton’s bedside table and turned of the lamp that was casting a pale golden light around the periwinkle-colored walls of the bedroom. He had left a note for their mom on the kitchen table to let her know why the first three bedrooms she would check on as she made her way down the hall when she got home were empty.
When she returned from the hospital, exhausted and in a fairly significant amount of pain, the sight of her children curled up together, peacefully asleep, brought a smile to her lips. She blew them each a kiss before slipping out quietly, not wanting to wake them up.
Two years later, the four of them were all sleeping in Patton’s bed again. But now, their mother couldn’t come to check on them. She would never return from the hospital again.
It’s been a pretty cloudy head-day for me, I haven’t really been able to focus on much, so apologies for this sub-par end note. Uhhh, okay. So. Hope you guys are having a good Monday! Make yourself some tea and take some deep breaths, it’s gonna be okay. Try to find some reasons to smile, even if it’s hard. Work for three minutes on something you’ve been putting off. Intend to just do three minutes, and you might be surprised by how much more you end up doing. And if you do only do three minutes, then that’s fine! You accomplished a goal! Great job! I’m so proud of you. Keep going strong, my friends. I love you! <3 ~Martin
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Elliot Alderson x Reader - The Dark Army
Request from @wiitchy-biitch: Would it be too much trouble to request a little Elliot x Reader fluff? Elliot is a pure bean who deserves all the love that Sam Esmail won't give him
Words: 2,433
Darlene looks at me. I can see the sympathy and pity deep in her eyes.
Poor, old Elliot. Back at it again with the endless, breeding misery.
"Elliot, I have to go,"
I perk up, staring at her expectant, wanting to say something, anything, but nothing coming out.
"Talk about your fondest memories, okay, buddy?"
She smiles at me with her wide lips, readjusts her knee-high socks, slips on a pair of black-tinted sunglasses and vanishes. Leaving me all alone to bathe in this dark, uncertain time.
She's opposite me; she looks different from her profile. More modest – less of an identity. Plain. Just a girl. A normal girl.
I like normal girls.
I like anything normal.
"I've never done this sort of thing before," She says, sniggering behind her menu. "Internet dating – just sounds so...cliché. Moronic, you know?"
There's a subtle harmony ringing in my ears. I can't tell if it's the music in the restaurant or the after tone of her voice.
I ruffle my hair, menu still closed beneath me. I feel as if I am on high alert; the paranoia is setting in again.
Should I tell her? Should I tell her something's wrong with me?
I swallow down the bubble of anxiety building in my throat. "I've never done anything like before either," I reveal, uneased. "I'm trying to work on my social anxiety."
She looks at me as if I still am the same person. She's glittering and radiating the happiness I wish I had. I watch her finger caress the fine paper; chest rising and falling with every soft breath. Real. Not fake. Not a fragment of my imagination.
"Don't worry, this is an utterly safe environment for you to do that," She smiles, eyeing up the dessert section. "No judgement here."
My top lip overpowers the bottom one. I feel an unnatural smile come along.
"Cool."
Her attention is elsewhere. My attention, however, is fixated on my favourite film: Back to the Future. It's not the so-called plotline, or the characters, but I like the visuals. It scratches that part of mind that doesn't allow good to exist without condition.
Her legs are on my lap, her eyes watching her mobile device intensely. She seems to be exhausted; slow blinking, sagging eyes.
Is she getting bored of me?
She must be; we've spent the last three days together.
I shake the thought out of my head, trying to concentrate on the movie. It works. Until that little small voice comes back into my mind, draining me, gnawing at me.
Hello, hello, hello! It calls inside of my head. I'm here. Notice me.
She's getting tired of you. She's getting tired of you!
My thoughts are suddenly interrupted by a generic, droning tune.
"Hello?"
I shift my focus to her.
Eyes closed, mobile device pressed to her ear.
"No, I'm not home."
I pretend as if I'm not listening.
"No, I'm with my boyfriend."
I don't react.
Boyfriend?
When did I become the boyfriend?
"Okay, talk later. Love you."
Without another word, response or acknowledgement, she hangs up her phone and throws it down on her stomach. She seems restless. A gnawing desire to move; a desire to go outside and see the world for what it is but she's cooped up inside with myself and Flipper.
It can't be much fun.
We're not the best company.
She rakes her fingers through her hair, fidgeting slightly.
"I'm sorry for calling you my boyfriend back there," She says. "My Mum; always prying into my life."
I feel sad. Yet I feel grateful for being important. Recognised. Valued.
"No," I slowly say. "I liked it. I mean, I didn't mind it."
Y/N peels open her eyes, her teeth on display, eyes shimmering. She lifts her feet, the bare, sweaty sole touching my cheek. "Well, maybe you should become my boyfriend then."
My heart rate soon elevates.
Do not scare her away. Be calm.
I laugh; coming out too flamboyant and loud than I anticipated.
"Yeah, maybe," I answer, through the fake, nervous giggling.
"Cool. You're my boyfriend now then."
I remember how naïve I was back then. How stupid I was to think that Elliot Alderson was going to be someone different; living life and not stuck on the outer fringes.
When she became my girlfriend, I promised myself that I would lead a bug free life from there on out. I went to see those stupid Marvel movies with her. I joined a gym. I hearted things on Instagram. I drank vanilla lattes.
Now, she's sobbing in my apartment, packing her bags, stuffing the suitcases to the brim with things that didn't necessarily belong to her.
Flipper is fast asleep, slumbering peacefully on my couch.
I stand in the corner of my bedroom, sullen, awkward, shy, reserved within myself. I don't know what to say.
"Elliot," She cried, zipping up the suitcase. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you fucking tell me?"
I watch her analyse the bruises upon my skin; my arm that inhabited a cast until a few days ago. A deep, oozing, poisonous gash upon my forehead.
"There's no way to explain how I threw myself off of the Coney Island Pier by accident," I said, quiet and hushed. I don't want her to leave. "I didn't want you to worry."
She collapses onto the edge of bed, eyes locked onto the ground. "Elliot, I've spoken to Darlene."
"What?" I ask, almost shocked and betrayed. "Why would you do that?" I adjust myself in my hoodie; it feels tight all of a sudden.
"She told me about your...issues, Elliot. She told me about your...delusions. She told me everything."
I don't say anything.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I don't say anything.
"I must ask: did you throw yourself off of the pier as a suicide attempt? Or was it an entity that you see that made you do it? I'm so confused; I need to make sense of this."
I shake my head. I don't say anything.
"Elliot, say something."
I chew on the inside of my cheek.
It was him. It wasn't me.
"Do you feel differently about me?" I ask, fighting back the tears.
Y/N seems relieved to hear the sound of my voice. She wipes away her own tears with the base of her hand. "Of course I don't, how could you ask me that?"
She looks at me as if she dreads losing me. "I love you. I'm not in love with a version of you that you pretend exists."
She loves me.
Not the bug free Elliot Alderson.
But the bugged Elliot Alderson – the Elliot Alderson with the flaw in his code.
I cry like a little boy in the rain; arms hanging loose by my side; chin tucked to my chest.
"They don't like me," I say through the tears.
Y/N frowns, full of sadness and sorrow. "Stop your tears," She says. My head flops onto her shoulder. Oh no, I think. I have lost all control. "They don't even know you, Elliot."
I play with her the ends of hair that are draping down her back like silk.
"They know enough," I answer, calmer. "They don't like me."
Her fingers circle patterns on my back through my shirt. "My parents...they're very...different to you and I," She vacantly replies. "Don't take it heart, okay? They don't know anything about you. They don't know you the way I know you."
I'm not a bad person.
Am I?
Why don't they like me?
Do I even exist?
We lay in silence, wrapped up in the duvet. She is lit by the white wine, bitter sunlight. Her hair is messy; skin dewy and glowing. She bats her eyelashes at me, topless, her hands searching my own.
She removes her gaze from me, and returns a look to my palms. She's fascinated by the patterns and swirls. Can she predict my future?
I wonder if she's there.
There's a sense of tranquillity and peace whenever she's around; the world seems to stop.
"Do you want children?" She asks, not looking at me, grazing my skin with the tips of her fingers.
I watch her closely, searching through the files in my mind.
"I don't know," I awkwardly respond.
She hastily replies with, "I do. I really want children,"
I decide to initiate contact – I touch her hair.
"I don’t want children," I reveal. She flinches, and still doesn't look at me. "I think of it this way: I'll be saving them from the invisible hand that brand them with an employee badge, ridding them of the zero-hour contracts, nine til five; the people who control us every single day without us knowing it."
She giggles in my face as if I'm joking. She pecks my nose and jumps up from bed quick. "I guess you won't appreciate the news."
She flicks a pristine white card onto me.
I pick it up in my hands and find a delicate drawing of a bird, soaring high in the sky, carrying something in its pale yellow beak.
I open it up to find a small, written message.
Congratulations.
You're going to be a father.
Angela stares at me, soulless and empty. She looks at me as if she doesn't even recognise me at this point. Her beady blue eyes decorated in makeup that she does not need.
"Who are you, Elliot?" She asks, swirling her drink in the glass lifelessly. "I don't even know who you are anymore."
I squint my eyes at her suspiciously, an infectious grin soon following. "I'm still Elliot," I reply, unable to contain the overwhelming joy within me. "I'm just happy."
"I've never seen you like this," She acknowledges. "You're literally bouncing. Are you on some new meds, Elliot?"
I shake my head. "No, I'm just really happy at the moment," I say.
She takes out her phone. "I'm calling Darlene."
"There's really no need," I respond. "Things are just going really well for me, at the moment."
My best friend does not seem convinced, though, she puts her phone back anyway.
"I never realised how many stairs there are until right now," an all too familiar voice calls out. My heart leaps in my chest – relief. "My back is absolutely killing me."
I find my girlfriend, my girlfriend, my girlfriend who I intend on making my wife one day soon, struggling with a mountain of shopping bags, stood in a baby blue maternity shirt and jeans that I funded. Her stomach is protruding; a safe haven.
"Oh," Angela says, deflated. "Congratulations?"
I ignore her comment.
"Why didn't you say? I would have come down and helped," I say, happily taking bags from her grasp. "It's not like I was doing anything special."
There is an uncomfortable silence within the apartment.
"Elliot.." Y/N says through gritted teeth. "Angela is sat right there."
I snap back into reality. I immediately feel a violent pang of guilt.
I look towards my best friend. "I obviously didn't mean it...like that."
Angela forces a smile, standing from my couch, adjusting her messenger bag on her shoulder. "I know," She doesn't seem upset. "Happy Elliot makes no mistakes."
She heads towards the door, my girlfriend and my best friend merely uttering each other's names as a sense of acknowledgement, before we are finally left alone to our own devices.
When are you coming home?
Elliot!
Elliot, please pick up.
Elliot, answer the phone.
When are you coming home?
I haven't seen you in weeks.
ELLIOT.
My phone has been blown up with texts and missed phone calls.
I've been absent for twenty-six days, six hours, thirty-nine minutes and approximately twenty-eight seconds. Twenty-nine minutes off of the seventh hour of the twenty-sixth day.
My heart has broken once more. The two broken halves completely torn in half, taking all arteries and fibres with it.
It's a suffocating type of sadness. The worst it has ever been.
I'm surprised she's still contacting me. That she's still making an effort to know if I'm okay.
He's back. More alive than ever.
He glares at me mockingly, pouring a lime green substance into a triangular glass. "Aww, soften up, kid," He says, pushing the glass towards me. "It wasn't much of a loss. You didn't even have a fucking name for it."
The bar is dead and silent; desolate and lonely. Just me and the stranger in the booth in the corner.
I haven't seen a bartender once during my time in the bar – the whole twenty-six days, five hours, twenty-three minutes and approximately fifty-eight seconds.
"Not the fucking point," I hiss in return.
My father snorts at me, his thin lips in a pursed, ridiculing grin. "They say that when a woman has a miscarriage, it's God's way of saying that the baby was not ready for this world."
I look up from my glass, staring this fragment of my imagination in the face. "Fuck God. He's not a good enough scapegoat for me," I say.
My phone has fallen silent for the past three days, fourteen hours and thirteen seconds. No doubt this time. No doubt, no approximation. That's how long it's been.
I think she stopped trying.
I don't blame her.
I would have done the same.
It's time to face the music. It's time to apologise for my behaviour.
Though, it's time to break off all ties. It's time to let her go.
I don't want to forget about her. It's just for the best, I think.
I want to rush in there, and apologise profusely, until the words are unable to leave my lips once more. I want to rush in there, and do all of it again, restart.
But you can't disappear for thirty-eight days without a word and return home as if everything is same; that nothing is different.
I enter my home – our home.
The door is unlocked. The wood surrounding the lock is cracked and broken.
There is an unholy sight before me.
Her skin has been drained of colour. Grey. She looks ill.
The only dashing sense of colour is the pink, purple bruise around her neck.
She floats ominously, innocent and beautiful.
I take a step closer, a small note pinned through her lip.
She was tired of you.
Deepest condolences,
The Dark Army
My sister steps out from the shadows. "I found her a few days ago. I tried calling,"
She's gone.
"You better start writing your speech."
"What should I talk about?" I ask, numb.
"Talk about your fondest memories."
#mr. robot#mr robot#elliot alderson#rami malek#elliot alderson-x-reader#elliot alderson x reader#x reader#imagines#ships#elliot alderson imagines
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Okja Meta: It’s all edible. All edible except the squeal.
Is Okja is a vegan film or not? I want to offer my personal perspective on Okja's layered messages on the meat eating and factory farming and what responses the film proposes. I’m writing this as someone who has been a vegetarian since I was fourteen (Mija's age in the film) and this year I've been attempting to make the transition into veganism. I'm also a person who grew up in a house next to a cattle farm, walking family dogs through fields of cows that would disappear to slaughterhouses at the end of every summer. We’re raised to have very different feelings towards animals who are our pets and animals bred as livestock and most movies propagate this distinction rather than breaking it down. With Okja we have a film that introduces its titular animal character as a beloved pet, loyal and loving as any family dog, then we see her re-categorized as a product, as a piece of meat to be killed and consumed. This transition has led to some critics to complaining about the film’s "jarring tonal shift" from its cutesy child-friendly opening scenes to the graphic slaughterhouse scenes at its ending. But this is not propaganda. It is simply reality. This is the hypocritical way different animals are treated. Kids are encouraged to love their pets and eat their meat and now critics are worried over a film that highlights this? If the inescapable message of Okja is that the animals we love and the animals we eat are the same then what response should we have? Should we all go vegan?
Even as an aspiring vegan myself, I'd say Okja’s message is not that simple. I have read several articles now arguing that Okja is not anti-meat eating but anti-factory farming. Pro-meat eating Okja fans are quick to point out that Mija herself is not vegetarian. However I'd argue back that there's a difference between how our farm girl heroine eats meat and how most westerners eat meat. The opening of film dedicates a lot of time to showing how Mija consumes all food in harmony with nature. When Okja rolls into a tree to dislodge its fruit, Mija warns her pig not to hit the tree so hard it'll fall down. When they go fishing, Mija takes only one fish for her supper and throws the others back in the water. She also uses Okja's eco-friendly excrement to fertilize the pool and feed the fish. And it should be noted that while Mija and her grandfather don't abstain from meat, the vast majority of their diet is plant-based, their dinner table crammed with vegetables. We only see them eating their own free-range white meat as opposed to mass-produced red meats that are so damaging to the environment. Mija could be more accurately described as having a flexitarian diet. Plus she knows exactly where all her meat comes from because she prepares it all herself. So if you are a western viewer watching and thinking it’s fine to eat meat because Mija does, I have to ask - are you a farmer living in the mountains catching or rearing your own meat sources in balance with the natural world? Or are you eating factory farmed meat from the supermarket? Because if factory farming is what Okja is really railing against and factory farmed meat is what you personally consume then isn't Okja still anti the type of meat you’re eating?
While we identify most with Mija as the film's protagonist, if we don’t live on remote farms in the Korean wilderness then we have to look to Okja’s western characters for their stances on ethical and sustainable food consumption. And here's where the message gets complicated because all the western characters - whether pro or anti meat - are portrayed as flawed and questionable. First I want to consider the Mirando corporation characters, who are largely perceived as the villains of the film, though I'd say Lucy is probably more representative of the average westerner than any other US-based character. Does Lucy really care about creating a new livestock industry that is kinder to the animals and leaves a minimal carbon footprint? Or does Lucy only care because she knows that in a progressive western society these things make for a better company image? Like Lucy, the progressive westerner would like to say they are animal lovers and they care about the environment but most also want to eat meat that "tastes fucking good". Lucy promotes herself as a savior to the hunger crisis and she greenwashes Mirando’s very tarnished corporate reputation. But her primary motivation is to make herself and her customers look good, rather than really doing good. As soon as the ALF exposes the “little white lies” behind her super pig campaign and she faces bad press, Lucy just gives up on her supposed humanitarian mission and surrenders the company.
Another Mirando stooge who surrenders themselves to the company's corruption is Dr Johnny Wilcox, a character who I actually had some pity for. I don't think Dr Johnny would have become a qualified veterinarian and zoologist if he hadn't genuinely cared about animals at some point in his life. I can believe that Johnny loved animals as a child and he does seem sincerely awed and emotional the first time he meets Okja. I also felt there was a real despair in Dr Johnny ranting - "I shouldn't even be here!" while he is drunkenly abusing Okja in the squalid Mirando laboratory. For ten years Dr Johnny himself has been the "prize pig" of the Mirando corporation and during that decade I imagine he has been party of a lot of animal mistreatment. But Dr Johnny has stuck with the company because he craves fame above all else and as a has-been celebrity Mirando is likely only real option that he has for continuing with his media career. Johnny's alcoholism could just be put down to his bitterness over his fading stardom and that after so long as the face of the company he is being “put out to pasture” too. But I think it is more interesting to view him as a former animal lover who's been driven mad by his complicity in animal abuse. Johnny seems sadistic in his torment of Okja but I sense that Johnny is lashing out, rather like Okja herself lashes out after being mated in the Mirando labs. Johnny offering Okja his bottle and telling her that the booze will "make her feel better" suggests to me that his alcoholism is the only thing Dr Johnny has to make himself feel better too.
The main character who embraces the meat industry’s cruelty without qualm his Nancy Mirando. The capitalist mindset that Nancy represents isn't evil so much as it is pragmatically amoral. Nancy is not sadistically motivated by wanting to murder a young girl's beloved pet pig. Nancy doesn’t care whether Mija’s pet lives or dies. She only cares about making a profit and when it comes to pig farming she reasons that she can “only sell the dead ones”. So when Mija offers Nancy gold in trade for keeping her pig alive, Nancy is perfectly happy to accept the deal. In the end Mija can only save Okja by bargaining with Nancy’s capitalist industry on its own terms. It is significant that this is the one scene where Mija speaks English because she is speaking Nancy's language in more ways than one in this moment. Appeasing the Nancy's desire for profit is the only way Mija can win. She has to hand over further riches to an already mega-rich company that is murdering hundreds of other super pigs just like Okja. Fighting for animal welfare is largely portrayed as a hopeless cause. At the end of their mission, the ALF team have been arrested and their stunt has only succeeded in destroying Lucy's company image and not in saving the pigs from slaughter. They inflicted some economic damage, likely hurting their sales with a scandal, but as Nancy reasons even with the PR damage they can still shift their product because "if it's cheap they'll eat it". It's not hard to imagine that Nancy is right given that in the real world most western consumers are more concerned with price comparison than ethical shopping. And in the case of hungry poor people worldwide, they will just eat whatever food they can best afford.
Unlike Mija, the ALF group’s mission against the meat industry is driven by their ideology rather than by a personal connection to a specific animal. We are told in their character posters they are vegans and vegetarians, but I’d say that ALF leader Jay in particular represents what so many people find alienating about veganism. That to be vegan you must be a purist and you must be judgemental towards anyone who doesn't meet your high moral standards. Jay talks about his compassion for all living creatures, but in early scenes his manner is cold, formal and impersonal to those around him. Jay is always correcting his fellow ALF gang members and threatens to exile them if they say or do anything that conflicts with his version of their ideals. Jay is a perfect example of a “the left looks for traitors” mentality. After K makes an honest and reasoned confession to mis-translating Mija’s consent, Jay inflicts a beating on K even whilst telling him that he still holds him dear to his heart. Jay has clearly taught his little ALF gang to avoid hurting people during their missions, but Jay dishes out violence and a banishment on a friend maybe only to serve as a warning to the rest of his team to follow his idealism absolutely or suffer the consequences. Early on Jay shows more concern over strict adherence to ALF credo than he seems worried over one of his teammates starving themselves. Silver exhibits a dangerous extreme to ethical consumption where his ideals have led to him damaging his health for the cause. I think that is where a purist judgemental vegan mindset can lead - if you live in the western world and you are determined not to eat food that harms animals or the environment...where do you draw the line? With that mentality you will start to find even tomatoes objectionable.
Jay begins his mission with the lofty ideal of saving all the super pigs from slaughter even if it means compromising Okja's personal safety. But when this results in Okja being raped and abused, Jay finally does start showing his true heart and takes personal responsibility for saving the super pig he used for his own political ends. As Jay silently holds up his 'We love you' sign to Mija and then warns her not to look at the screen as the ALF expose Mirando’s animal torture to the world, he is trying to protect not only their lives but their emotions from further harm. There’s two more lovely moments of silent solidarity between Jay and Mija in the film; one where Mija stares at Jay removing the splinter from Okja’s hoof (as she would’ve done) and the other where Mija prevents Jay from striking Okja when the super pig is biting down on her arm. If Jay learns a lesson from Mija then I think it is that love should drive his activism, not his credo. After all, Lucy points out that the ALF’s pig-napping did little damage to Mirando but the image of one girl who loves her pig being dragged away by cops was a PR nightmare. This type of love was always there deep down in Jay. Even after his mission fails he goes with Mija all the way to the slaughterhouse just to save her pig, sacrificing his own freedom just to support her. And in the post-credits scene where Jay released from prison it is also implied that he took responsibility for the ALF’s activist crimes so his teammates could walk or at least serve shorter sentences. Jay's loyalty and self-sacrifice make me pleased that K came back to him even after his very violent expulsion. And just as Mija brings Jay back to his heart, I think it is fair to say that Jay inspires a greater idealism in Mija. Earlier on in the film, Mija only cared about her personal connection to her pet and refused ALF’s ‘greater good’ mission to attempt to save all the super pigs. But once she witnesses the horrors of the slaughterhouse, Mija is clearly devastated at having to abandon the other pigs and takes the risk of rescuing one of the piglets, which is an ALF action more so than a personal one for her.
So after considering all the main characters viewpoints, I don't think Okja leaves you with one message, but rather three potential messages for how to respond to meat eating and factory farming from now on. First there's the response that’s represented in the Mirando characters which is simply to go along with it, accept this is how our ugly world works and keep handing over your cash to the factory farm industry. Or you could have the Mija response - have a flexitarian diet and care for the animals that you personally keep. But also if you buy something with your gold, pay for animals to live not die. Mija does this by paying for Okja, but metaphorically we can follow Mija's example by giving our money to cruelty-free products, which naturally includes vegan food. Going vegan or vegetarian isn't the simple solution to the issues raised in Okja but it is not the wrong response either. You could even follow Mija's example in a more literal way by donating to sanctuaries that rescue animals from factory farms and allow them to live out their lives in peace and safety, like Okja in the mountains. Lastly, if you watch all the way to the post credits scene, the ALF gang represents yet another possible response - that being to get involved in animal activism. Even though the ALF gang fail in their mission to save all of the super pigs, it gave me hope that they had not given up the fight and were even gaining new members. And if they are accepting former Mirando employees into their group then they aren’t being too purist and exclusive either. I loved the final beat of the ALF offering a ski-mask to the prim looking middle-aged woman on the bus. It felt like they were holding a mask out to the viewer too and saying "Wanna join?"
(If you read and liked this meta please help me out with a reblog because my hashtags aren’t working on searches for this post)
#okja#okja review#paul dano#steven yeun#devon bostick#tilda swinton#ahn seo-hyun#lily collins#bong joon-ho#long post
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