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loosesodamarble · 8 months

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Hii Soda, Here I'm sending my best wishes for your well-being 🩷🩷 I might made some mistakes in my text, I hope that you don't mind them. I'm not a native speaker.

I wanted to make a one-shot request for Nacht Faust where the reader (who is also a Black Bull) despises his all-knowing personality, and how he scorns at the members. And she always talks back at him about his remarks about the members. But things escalate, I don't know how I didn't think this far 😭 I'd love to know what you can come up with this, I just want to read some fluff and see him happy 🥹🩷✨️

Hello there Anon~! First off, thank you for the well wishes, I do kinda need them at this moment. And don't worry about writing in your second language. I make tons of mistakes still land English is my first language. 😅

This oneshot turned into something a little on the long side. I couldn't think of how to make a romance between a critical reader and Nacht work without it feeling weird so I did something longer to show how the two grow closer (not quite a slow burn but the fluff isn't immediate either). It's part of why it took a bit to finish your request. It's probably not exactly what you were picturing but hopefully you still like it.

Summary: The progression of your relationship with Nacht is gradual and not very standard. But it still brings you two ever so close together. Genre: romance Word count: ~1800 A/N: This is a female reader, though female pronouns only come up, like, twice.

..........

“Tch, what a mess…” Nacht groaned after he walked into the base.

The scene he came across was the common area having turned into a war zone. It was a mess of broken furniture and spells being thrown across the room. The usual suspects of Magna, Luck, and Gauche were at play along with Vanessa, Zora, and Noelle. It appeared that there had been an especially nasty disagreement.

“These people really are no better, even after becoming the kingdom’s second ranked squad.”

“Quit giving commentary like anyone here cares about your opinion, vice bastard.”

Nacht turned his head in the direction of the voice. His eyes landed on you, leaning against the wall and glaring at him. Your presence made him tense the slightest bit.

The rest of the squad hesitated to interact with him. But not you. Even if you weren’t friendly with him, the fact that you approached him at all was something he appreciated. But because of your aggression, he was at a loss for how to reply.

Every time. Even now.

“If you really don’t want to bother with us, just quit the squad already,” you remarked before you walked past him and through the chaos, completely unaffected by it.

“Master Nacht… You’re staring at her again…” Plumede whispered in the back of Nacht’s mind.

“Yes. I know,” he said. Nacht felt like an utter fool. Why did his heart race with excitement from your glare? Why did he want to be nearer to you when you clearly resented him?

…

“Thanks for getting our order,” you said while handing payment over to the shopkeeper. You received the parcel and turned to Nacht.

His arms were full with bags of goods that you two picked up for the rest of the squad so he extended one of the less filled bags for you to slip the package into.

“I never expected you to be okay with being used as a pack mule,” you remarked as the two of you walked away.

“I only agreed to accompany you on the shopping trip. I never said I was okay with this kind of treatment,” Nacht replied.

“Yet you haven’t complained about carrying everything.” You quirked a brow in Nacht’s direction but all you got back from him was the same empty smile that he usually wore. You found it a shame that a pretty face like his didn’t express much emotion. “But now that we’ve picked up everything, we can head back.”

“We came by broom, but how about I transport us back with my Shadow Magic? It’s sure to be quicker,” offered Nacht and you immediately blanched.

“Hell no. I’m not getting sucked into that creepy void of yours,” you retorted.

It wasn’t that you didn’t trust Nacht or his magic. Okay, maybe it was a lack of trust. But after Nacht’s harsh behavior early on, putting your faith in his good will didn’t come easily. Plus, you considered yourself to be Nacht’s biggest critic in the squad. There was no way you were about to be buttered up.

“Alright then. I thought to ask instead of merely whisking you away without permission. And since you’ve declined…” Nacht veered from your side and into the shadows of an alleyway. “I’ll see you at the base then.”

“Huh? Where are you—?”

“Good day.” And Nacht was gone.

You blinked.

A part of you wanted to scream at his abandonment of you. Another part wanted to laugh because of the absurdity. And yet a third part wanted to stop and appreciate how he’d, somewhat clumsily, tried to be polite to you.

“He…” You placed your hands over your face, which felt warmer than usual. “He kinda sucks at being nice.”

…

Nacht put his signature at the end of a mission report then put it into a file with the rest of the paperwork that would be delivered to the Magic Knight Headquarters later that day.

The door opened and Nacht lifted his head to see who it was.

His heart skipped a beat upon seeing you enter, a tray of food in hand.

“I noticed you weren’t there for lunch,” you said by way of explanation.

“Lunch?” Nacht checked his clock and, indeed, it was long past the usual hour for lunch. “Ah…” He turned back to you. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

“We need to keep you fed and alive if we want any paperwork done around here,” you joked while placing the tray down. Due to your closeness, Nacht was able to make out a faint blush on your cheeks. Your eyes flicked in his direction. “What are you staring at, shadow stalker?”

“You’re hovering quite close,” Nacht coolly answered as he averted his eyes. “I couldn’t help it if you drew my attention.”

“Ha! Like I’d ever go out with you. I have a strict ‘no assholes’ policy when it comes to my dating pool,” you said with a wry grin.

Nacht raised a brow at your reply.

“First off, you realize that everyone has an anus so your pol—”

You smacked Nacht’s shoulder. Though it was clear from your bit back smile that you did find his remark funny.

“Since when did you know how to tell a joke?”

“I’m a man of secrets and surprises,” Nacht replied. “Secondly…” He rose from his seat and walked around his desk to you. “It’s awfully presumptuous to think I was staring at you with romantic intentions.”

“Uhp—!” You choked up and your flush darkened.

Feeling bolder than usual, Nacht placed his hand under your chin and coaxed you into looking up at him.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were the one who had an interest in me.”

Nacht’s heart fluttered at the idea of you liking him back. He wasn’t about to get his hopes up, not with the way you still threw insults and sarcasm at him on a daily basis. But he wanted to pretend.

You stayed silent for a moment, staring into Nacht’s eyes. It was cute, the wide-eyed look on your face. But Nacht also worried about what was running through your head. So he prompted you again.

“Well? Have anything to say for yourself?”

“Your cologne smells nice…”

Nacht blinked. “What?”

You blinked. “What?”

“You… pay attention to the way I smell?” Nacht felt his face heat up rapidly.

At that, your own face paled.

“What?! Shut up!” You yelled while stepping away from Nacht. “I’m not some creep! I just—! I just have a good nose! Shut up!”

You hurried out the door and your heavy footsteps were heard fleeing for a while.

Nacht blinked a few more times.

I don’t wear cologne, he thought. Then he grimaced. Oh gods, do I smell of something else? He raised his wrist to his nose. I probably can’t tell if I stink. I’d have to ask someone else.

“She was probably talking about your natural, masculine musk, Master,” Gimodelo said.

“I doubt it.”

Nacht touched a hand to his chest and tried to will his heart to calm down.

…

The Black Bulls were celebrating a day off, complete with alcohol and games once night had fallen. On Vanessa’s insistence, one of the games was 7 Minutes in Heaven with the choosing method being drawing lots.

You stared at the “1” drawn onto the stick you’d drawn. Meaning you’d be going first along with the person who’d drawn the other “1.”

“Alright, so who did I match with?” you questioned the group while showing your stick.

You scanned the group. Vanessa and Zora were already paired. Luck pumped a fist as he exclaimed how he and Magna had been paired off. Where was your partn—?

The second “1” stick was tapped against yours.

“I believe this means we’ve been paired off.”

Your heart leapt to your throat and you felt lightheaded as all blood rushed to your face.

Why him?! You were still recovering from your conversation in Nacht’s office the other day. And now you were supposed to be locked in a closet with Nacht for seven whole minutes? This is torture!

You shuffled into the closet with Nacht and plopped yourself on the floor without much care. It’s not like you had much dignity to bring into the situation.

After a few seconds, Nacht sat down beside you and you instinctively scooted to give him space.

“Don’t worry, we don’t have to kiss if you don’t want to,” Nacht whispered and you swore he sounded hurt.

The problem is that I actually do want to kiss you! You kept the thought to yourself, unable to think of a way to put it more… normally.

“Since we’re in here though, I’d like to make a confession.”

You dared to glance in Nacht’s direction but immediately looked away when you saw his bright red flush and the faint, relaxed smile on his face. It was an entirely different look to him and you feared your heart might burst because of how handsome he looked.

“I might sound ridiculous but I’ve liked you for a while now. You were critical of me and yet I was okay with it. Because you were right with how… flawed I acted at times. I like how unafraid and upfront you are without being reckless. And I’m glad we’ve grown closer so to speak and joke with each other a bit. It might sound strange but it’s true.”

At that point, you felt a firm thumping in your chest and your head getting light from the many beats your heart had skipped.

It was more than shocking to learn that Nacht had started loving you before you’d learned to go easy on him. Then again, you had started falling for him when he was still being distant and aloof.

Love worked in mysterious ways, you supposed.

You felt Nacht’s hand on your cheek so you faced him. Nacht smiled at you with a genuine grin full of warmth.

“I like you. I hope you’re okay with me saying that.”

“Nacht…” You finally found your voice. “It’s okay. I… like you too…”

The words hung in the air for the longest moment of your life.

You and Nacht… Alone in that small space…

Nacht cupped your other cheek, his hands were cold but soft against your skin, and leaned down closer to you. You fully turned your body toward him and placed your hands on his shoulders.

Then, your lips met Nacht’s.

The kiss was slow and soft. Neither of you were too eager, but neither of you were too afraid.

For a moment, you two were in sync.

And hopefully that one moment would become many more in the future.

#black clover #nacht faust #black clover fanfic #nacht faust x reader #x reader #female reader #awesome anons #i kinda cheaped out using 7 minutes in heaven as the breaking point #but aisuahsuhashrt! i didn't want to take forever contriving another reason #didn't include it but the bb are going to open the door to find read and nacht still kissing #this isn't about the other bulls okay/lh #i really do hope people like this...

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eretzyisrael · 3 months

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by John Podhoretz

I have lost count of the number of times the phrase “I have never felt like this before” has been spoken in my ear, texted to me, or sent to me in an email, in the three months since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

When I talked with Israelis on a trip in November, the phrase described a gut emotion few under the age of 50 said they had ever experienced—the sense that they were personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow. They had lived through years of ineffectual rocket fire that was all but magically extinguished by the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile systems. Those interceptions had provided a feeling of near-divine protection. No longer. Israelis feel raw now, and such vulnerability is never momentary or transitory; one might say the opposite. Once it seizes you, it might take years before you wake up one morning and notice suddenly it’s no longer there.

I experienced that blissful moment once in my life, in New York City in 1998, when I was walking alone late at night across Central Park and realized I was doing something I simply would never have done before in my 37 years as a native Manhattanite. The feeling in the gut of every New Yorker of my age—the need to protect oneself from some sudden onslaught, in part because everyone we knew had been attacked in one way or another—was just no longer there, and I had never felt it disappearing. Because of the crime drop, because of increased police visibility, because of the presence of others like me in exactly the same place at exactly the same time, this new sense of freedom was now my new reality.

I am not saying Israelis ever felt secure in quite that way before October 7. They had, of course, lived through 60 years of terrorist attacks (the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964 as a violence-worshipping gang designed to attack civilians on the model of the anti-colonialists in Algeria) and several short wars over the past half century. But through the 2010s and early 2020s, the sense of immediate danger for Israelis had split in two—and might therefore have seemed, oddly enough, twice as weak.

The threat had either become too geopolitically large to affect their quotidian existences (like the existential risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program) or could have only come so suddenly and unexpectedly that it would have been absurd to disrupt your daily life taking personal countermeasures (Palestinians engaged in a bus-stabbing spree at one point; how do you defend against that?).

These kinds of perils were certainly haunting, and they played a significant political role in Israeli elections and Knesset debates, but they were more theoretical to 9 million Israelis than actual.

So, now, when an Israeli says, “I’ve never felt like this before,” what he’s describing is a loss of stability, as though the very earth under his feet is no longer truly solid but might crumble beneath him. This is why the Hamas action, though not a terrorist attack in the traditional sense, may have been the most effective strike against Israel in the history of the Jewish state. It has destabilized people internally, which is terrorism’s goal. It also helps us understand the ongoing traumatic effect of the continuing crisis involving the hostages in Gaza. They have been held in unknown conditions for months now by monsters whose vicious acts on October 7—and sadistic conduct during the captivity of those hostages who have been released—makes the thought of what they might be going through utterly paralyzing and terrifying when it crosses your mind even for a second.

Israelis have the sense that, but for the slightest accident of timing and location, any of them might have been one of those hostages. And they hear the air-raid sirens, and they run to the shelters and do not do so in the almost lackadaisical way most of them did before October 7. The larger threat to Israel’s existence, and their own existences, has moved from the theoretical to the actual. After all, Hamas actually invaded Israeli territory and roamed on Israeli soil for three days before the Gaza envelope was cleared of them. Fail to finish them off now, and it could, it would, it will, happen again.

#israel #hamas #gaza #terrorism #palestinians #israelis

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scenetocause · 5 months

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director's commentary to the logoscar bfu au :)) <3<3

oh this one (do you think it's cute that i'm so fucking stupid?) is funny because it was meant to be just a dumb idea. like i had it after idk, whatever race (miami???? seems about right) and it wasn't even from watching a bfu thing. like my youtube recommendations came up with some ancient thing where the buzzfeed girlies (gn) from ladylike made over ryan and shane to make them dress like attractive people with jobs in video media not some sports bro who doesn't know how his own hair works yet and a poorly proportioned scarecrow that comes alive at night to kill local virgins.

great content and a brave attempt by the girlies (gn) but i think it was still the better part of half a decade before ryan and shane realised they could simply look nice. a core part of the video though was ryan being like "i have 14 basketball jerseys" and them ALL being whatever los angeles team he jerks it for and i was like oh boy i know one guy who would definitely do this.

the emptyhalf thought process doesn't really go all that much deeper than that a lot of the time but i was like alright sweet i'll rewatch the old bfu eps in the mystery house and kinda mash 'em together a bit. job's a good'un. not difficult to project the insecurities of racing to the insecurities of having jobs at buzzfeed, intimately familiar with one via me and the other via some of my friends.

EXCEPT and perhaps this is my shaniac punishment for a flirtation with hauntology but then i'm like. something is bugging me about this. i started having the dreams oscar has in the fic, about the mystery house and i'm like ???? hello ???? it's a dumb tourist trap in a state i've never been to can you chill out up in there.

something about it was playing on my conscience though and i was like hey winchester lady it ain't me selling the main supply of weapons used to murder native americans you leave me out of this. but still, end up looking shit up and being like OH it's not just a dumb tourist trap it's an actively ahistorical tourist trap that covers up extensive parts of its own sad and weird history with a much less interesting version.

so i'm like. very interesting. stupid. hate this for me. but also there is clearly only one course of action because fic oscar would not want to let this lie because fic oscar is a barely disguised projection of me and we've gotta go back to the mystery house. in this fucking fic that barely anyone's read because it's a weird crossover of an obscure pairing and surely no one gives a damn.

obviously spent several days pairing up old photos of the house and finding out what would work as references and then just writing a load of stuff with my brain fully geared into neutral, as always, anyway. but basically this fic probably had the most work i have put into something for fucking ages in it because i was wracked with the guilt i, ao3 user emptyhalf, in a deeply fictional piece of rpf, might mislead the public about the myth a tourist attraction tells about itself.

to paraphrase my own, other, fic: my characters are unhinged but it's not like i'm very hinged, either. clearly.

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renaultmograine · 9 months

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The constant depiction of Evil Voodoo worshipping Aztec Trolls, bad Native American Tauren, and native Drust'var whom are all depicted as savage counterparts to perfect ersatz europe with their ersatz christianity.

And before you say anything, yes many expansions do depict tauren as evil.

I think this is the first time I was ever asked my opinion on the people that are based on my ancestry, wow! And how amazing it is that you focus on the fact that the Drust are "non-christian" and not the fact that they're vrykrul, almost as if you don't wish to actually claim that the nordic people might face racism from the depictions of them.

How quick you are to forget that the Aztecs sacrificed people regularly, that Native American tribes warred against each other constantly, and that the vikings raped and pillaged. Yet, there's still good things from all these groups of people.

The fact that there's evil trolls doesn't make commentary on the entire Aztec culture as a whole (especially because the specifically Aztec trolls are depicted as victims after having a global spanning empire like the British), the fact that there are bad Tauren says nothing about the Native Americans as a whole, and the fact that the Drust lost a war to the 'ersatz Christians' (which I mean if you ignore the whole part where the Drust druids also hated Gorak and what he did to their culture it's a handy thing to bludgeon people with) says nothing about.... paganism as a whole, I assume is what you're trying for here?

I don't subscribe to the idea that drawing aesthetic inspirations from the world you know is inherently racist, ESPECIALLY the moment that they might be depicted in a negative light. If I can live with the fact that Thor is a superhero without going to pick fights, looking for trouble in other people's inboxes for liking Marvel, I think you can too over WoW.

"Also related, any opinion on the massive controversy about "Exploring Kalimdor" using racial stereotypes?"

The moment I read this ask btw, I knew you were a disingenuous person, because I was one of the people loud about how bad the Exploring Kingdoms: Kalimdor book was when those previews were released. Not a single person thought that book was good and no one would defend that writing, and no it isn't hypocritical of me to say that after what I've just said, there's a difference between depicting a group of people that draw inspiration from real world cultures as sometimes bad and then saying that a grown ass adult had to be taught to read and write from someone else and putting it in the light of 'I grow up from a savage uneducated culture' in some vain attempt of developing a character. The trolls ruled the fucking world at one point. No one believes that they can't read.

#warcraft #ask #anonymous

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inlocusmads · 1 month

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I have a very important question to ask, so let me slide into your inbox real quick! Does Trystan ever properly introduce Nora to the Drakovian / Eastern European culture? What does he show her? What are her impressions? 👀❤️

Oh HECK YESSSSSSSS

I hate what canon did so much I am going to pull a Thanos and snap it out of existence. Here's a little HC of how that goes (and yes I'm breaking them down into categories)

Disclaimers: - these are just my hcs!!!! - take a shot everytime I say "cantonese" or "drakovian" (please don't)

Literature: Trystan loves feeding in little tidbits about his culture wherever he finds it plausible. Mostly he enjoys quoting Drakovian literature and stuff he's read in the past - things that resonated with him deeply. He does so over a voice message or dinner or really, any given situation and he loves LOVES to share them. Nora's not the reading-type as in someone you'd expect to pick up reading for a hobby and instead she likes listening to Trys as he goes off on tangents about how a case might be relevant to a quote he read a long time ago or things just remind him of home in some way.

TV and Film: Nora's introduction to Drakovian culture is largely dependent on how the royals perceive it, so Trystan makes it a point to introduce her to a bunch of different films (and yes, in the off chance the films aren't dubbed or subbed, he pauses it every now and then to supply translations). It's easier for Nora to grasp (given she gravitates towards films a lot) and she ends up liking films with a lot of contemporary themes. I hc Drakovian films usually tend to gravitate towards historic themes or comedy-with-hidden-commentary and in terms of TV shows, a fraction of them might tend to gravitate towards procedural/workplace dramas and psychological/crime thrillers that might have a more serialized, seasons-spanning model or TV shows based on plays. Nora will eat that up entirely because if there's one thing she loves besides films, she loves when shows are these episodic collection of stories. She also ends up really liking some Drakovian feel-good stuff too - with the storylines (I hc) focusing on themes of "coming back home", road-trip comedies, stories set in small-towns that reflect upon the country's heritage, black comedies set in cities or this niche genre of "old person tries to keep up with today's world" or just these really mundane little ideas packaged into their own stories. They're not all "murders and daggers" cmon, let's be real.

Onto my absolute favourite part - THE LANGUAGE: Besides getting to know tid bits here and there from film and books, Trystan loves just teaching Nora a couple handy words in Drakovian. I'd like to think he did teach her a few words - just the basics when they went to talk to Bird in Book 1 (to really hammer in that good cop/bad cop routine) and once Nora reciprocated that interest back, he was like "YES now here's a couple of swear words you need to start off with" (jk jk) The reason why Nora showed an interest was largely due to the commonality she drew between her native language - Cantonese and Drakovian - and especially how they have these certain unique phrases that can't just be translated, even though Cantonese and Drakovian have very little similarities in terms of grammar or sentence structure. However they are both tonal languages (I hc Drakovian does focus on tones but it's not heavily dependent and a native speaker would be able to discern the differences without any confusion) which calls for some hilarious moments where Nora overpronounces Drakovian words and gets super focused on the tones and Trystan's like "Nora, it is okay! You can relax!" Both of them, when they're good to share, kind of introduce each other to their native languages. Normally Nora struggles with emphasizing her "r's" (she grew up speaking Cantonese at home and English in school) because Cantonese doesn't have the "r" sound and well, Drakovian takes incredible pride in enunciating your "r's" as much as possible. And how does Trystan help her with it? Swears. It's almost satisfying to exclaim in Drakovian than it is in English because there's about a hundred different ways to put your excitement as well as disappointment (sometimes both) out there. The day Nora ends up dropping something - possibly a cup of coffee and loudly swears in Drakovian is also the day Trystan's just crying tears of joy, full on happy breakdown, in the background. Conjugations suck. Forgetting English for a bit here, Cantonese from what I have gathered, doesn't have conjugations for verbs, instead there are characters that go before or after the word to indicate a specific tense. It's a bit of an uphill climb for Nora to go through this spiel because Drakovian swears by verb conjugations which makes up at least a fraction of its already complicated grammar rules. So yes, even though Nora knows this little "language exchange" thing they've got going on is something both of them really treasure in their relationship, she's one grammatically-incorrect sentence away from screaming.

Culture, traditions and so on: Trystan isn't just a walking encyclopedia of his country's traditions, rather quite literally a valuable resource for the Agency's cases. I'd like to think Drakovians who come to America end up settling in parts of the East Coast or perhaps uber-rich business conglomerates based in Drakovia gravitate towards parts of NYC for well, business reasons. While it isn't a considerable population compared to larger demographics, there is still a population comprised of business owners, celebrities, wealthy magnates and so on who might be interested in employing the services of a one private detective agency (and the endorsement by an exiled prince boosts their credibility too) The Agency do find themselves tackling a lot of high-profile cases and assisting big-name corporate law firms. Trystan's abundance of knowledge in Drakovia's culture and economics - and even some parts of Eastern Europe (thanks to trade and ambassador parties) helps Nora understand the nuances even better. A big lesson for her to learn - ever since the Agency gained traction after the Hand of Mahra case - was to discern between two different clients. A case is intrinisically unique on its own and factors such as economic, culture and society plays an additional role that gives her substance to go on with. It's how she learns more about Sonja in the first place and Drakovia's extensive history with art. Tidbits like that give her so much additional insight to carry on with. Eventually she just really ended up liking Trystan's stories (partly because he's a very good storyteller) - more than what he did as a kid and emphasis on what he saw. They kind of found a solace within each other's cultures because Nora learned the more Trystan kept talking about his, the more he tended to forgive himself for and the more Nora talked about her culture - be it through food or language or film or virtually anything she wished to share - she kind of began embracing her background instead of associating it with her trauma and wanting to ignore it entirely. Their heritage is super important to them. Trystan's family prided themselves over how their culture cannot simply be "shared around" and Nora's parents struggled to build themselves a home away from home in America, whilst ensuring their daughter didn't forget her culture. How they perceive their cultures is so rooted in their familial relationships that of course, it's going to be difficult trying to distinguish the stuff you want to forget from the culture you were brought up with. Partly why they (mostly Nora, because she doesn't like talking all that much) encourage the other to just talk about these things. It took them a while to realize even though they had completely different upbringings, they still had a couple things in common.

And lastly, the People and Places: One thing I really liked about Crimes 2 was the People's Garden scene where Trystan's just rambling about the places he loved as a kid and it's such a gateway into giving Nora an insight more than books, tv, movies, food, music etc. (They literally say that canonically too, if I'm not wrong - about wanting to take MC and give them a tour of their home) and it's like absolutely imperative to Trystan for Nora to have her experience it. Not many opportunities arise for them to go back home, but Trystan makes do with places in New York. From pubs to sociable gatherings, Trystan happens to know - and do some of his own finding-and-gathering to figure out the best scenes. He has a group of his own friends who run restaurants, bars, manage parks and so on and it's the best place for Nora to really understand what the culture is like, rather than see it from a royal/monarchial standpoint. And Nora ends up making a few friends on her own. It's great!

Out of all the avenues, Nora especially connects with the places and the language the best. Obviously it's a slow process. It took them eons to actually open up and even more so for Nora to see Trystan as Trystan and not as an exiled prince/diplomat/top-dog person or as a workplace colleague rather just a really really good friend of hers.

Them taking the time and effort to finding commonalities and compromises made them not only strong as a team (in terms of the job) but just bring them a lot more closer. They get a little jolt of happiness when the other takes an interest in the other - as in, when Trystan's able to read the label off a pack of sunflower seeds in perfect Cantonese or Nora swearing left and right in Drakovian and that basically prompts them to be more open and honest and thus, the cycle of "I NEED to tell you about this little factoid" continues lmao.

___

I'm super super sorry this ran for pages Anon! I just loveeeeee talking about their little sharing-of-the-culture (if that's a word?) <333 Thank you SO MUCH FOR THE ASK I HAVE LITERALLY WANTED AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT THIS FOREVAHHH

#anonymous #askboxed #trystan x nora #thorne rose headcanons

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lyledebeast · 2 months

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I want respond to @malicious-compliance-esq this way because my original post is already very long, and I've reblogged it a couple of times already to give more people a chance to see it. The original post with your added commentary is linked here.

First, I think we're talking about the closet and its impact on Martin's identity in different ways.

And it’s tricky business negotiating any of that when one hasn’t even gotten latitude to understand one’s sexuality completely in the first place—as often happens for bisexual folks and those who occupy other liminal queer experiences. Without that coming into identity, the closet remains not only constraining but also shadowy and fathomless. I see this happening with Ben Martin absolutely, which likely explains a good bit of his approach-avoidance behavior towards Tavington. He defaults to the language he speaks most fluently: physical violence, and threats thereof. It’s foreplay and cover all rolled into one.

I think it's very generous to Martin to present his violence as a cover up for his sexuality. What I'm arguing here is that his lust for violence is what is being covered up and represented as "justice" the way Roy Cohn's AIDS diagnosis gets relabeled as "liver cancer." Yes, Martin's rape-y violence is carried out exclusively against men, but is his queerness really to be prioritized here over his horrendous ways of enacting it? Also, he's enacted it with other men long before meeting Tavington, and while he certainly seems to be savoring the opportunity to kill him particularly after Thomas's murder, he also engages in extremely brutal violence against a man who is just following orders.

The other part I wanted to respond to is your reading of Charlotte Selton in contrast to Martin and Tavington.

Charlotte Selton certainly constitutes a fit match for Ben Martin in her own unique propensity for violence; a generous interpretation of her character would frame her as passively reproducing harms against Black people by not freeing her slaves. Parallels between Ben’s history at Fort Wilderness and Charlotte’s own life on her plantation before it burns invite themselves readily. What even happened to the other people impacted by the fire? Did the enslaved people living there lose what passed for housing, winding up caught by patrols and tortured? What happened to the families of all the people Ben and his men killed in that previous bloody war against local Native American communities?

For someone who claims to find such regret in past violence, Martin seems to accept the lot blithely if it means he gets to kill Tavington and not constantly have that reminder of his own unexamined sexuality following him around. He returns to a bland facsimile of the life he once knew with his late wife—which ironically spotlights how in many ways Will might have been the more upstanding choice of partners. And that’s after he killed two of Martin’s kids. Structural violence is a thing, folks.

I'm as critical of Charlotte Selton as anyone, but I think this is conflating oppressive systems with individual actions in a way that presents her in an unfairly poor light. She is guilty of not freeing the enslaved people she inherited from either her father or late husband--the film is unclear about this--and that is evil. But while structural violence is a thing and she is guilty of participating in it, however passively, murder is not a thing she is guilty of. Tavington may not own slaves personally, but not only does he force free Black men into servitude, he kills enslaved Black men. It is historically unlikely that a man of Martin's station would employee free Black men when slavery was so common in his community, but that is not a reason to doubt the truth of what the field worker who speaks to Tavington tells us. Tavington shoots two enslaved people (I think) and would possibly have shot more had Martin not arrived to lure him away.

At the same time, Martin does not just passively benefit from Native genocide; he has gotten his hands dirty in that ugly business in the most literal way. And unlike Martin with his so-called remorse, if Charlotte ever had a change of heart about slavery, the enslaved people she inherited were still alive to be set free! Or they're alive to free themselves, as many enslaved people in South Carolina did after the British arrived. If the people on Charlotte's plantation are left homeless by the fire--a situation in which the British soldiers who set it are at least as culpable as her--it is entirely possible that they did just that.

With the exception of a couple of British officers and Martin's younger children--characters who have comparably few lines and tiny amounts of screentime--everyone in this movie is kind of shitty, but there are degrees of shitty-ness. Charlotte is evil in a very banal ways as befits her banal personality, but the hero and villain are in a class by themselves as far as violence goes.

#the patriot #the closet #violence #american slavery #racism #genocide

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hxhhasmysoul · 5 months

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Sometimes I wonder how does mischaracterization happen within a fandom.

It seems like it always happens in any fandom. Especially towards characters who are more morally gray or nuanced characters being flatten to oversimplified characterization.

I wonder if it has to do with the general audience of a fandom. Such as if the fandom have more young fans within it and such. Or it’s just an increasing trend of people not having very good analytical abilities when it comes to media literacy.

it's probably a little bit of everything.

i mean reading comprehension is said to go down. i haven't looked up any research so idk if this is an actual confirmed trend. but when i tutored kids english i found out that teachers take reading comprehension for granted, both in my native tongue and in english. for whatever reason adults, including teachers who should know better, think that everyone can acquire reading comprehension through just being told to read at home and to do some true/false or single choice exercise with questions for the text. an exercise that is checked by asking 5 random people at school what the answers are and correcting them if they have it wrong without explaining why they had it wrong. and just moving on.

parents often also don't talk with children about issues, they don't point out manipulative tactics, maybe because they don't notice them themselves. i mean adults out here in social media are as bad as the younger people.

when it comes to mischaracterisation there's a lot of taking something at face value. like with gojou.

he says he cares about the youth. but throughout the manga you can clearly see that maybe he believes that he cares but his actions do not support that at all. or with yuuji who people just shove into the silly protag trope because he's not great at sciences but he actually doesn't struggle at school and he's very emotionally intelligent and a great problem solver.

in both cases it's for whatever reason not feeling the cognitive dissonance when parts of the text do not seem to add up and kinda defaulting towards the lazier option.

it might be also due to oversaturation with available stuff. people have noticed that fandom moves on very fast. people consume one thing after another instead of enjoying them. i purposefully don't engage with too many things because i just can't process them. and with some stuff i engage on a surface level but then i don't go into fandoms and spew my casual opinions.

and this is another problem that i've mentioned before. there's a feedback loop between creating an image of oneself on social media and spewing opinions on the next hot thing fast, but also mixing into it moral posturing. some people just need the media they enjoy and the characters they like to be morally pure and will twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels to argue that purity.

and since there's too much of everything people turn to others for commentary, influences on tiktok, youtube, twitter, reddit and here. learn their opinions and internalise them because often these people talk with conviction even if they are grifters and liars. and like i also like to listen to people talk about fandom stuff when i play the sims but when i write my opinions i try to go back to the text and not just repeat what others have said.

this is what most of the "gon's a monster" crowd is about. they repeat a cold take that seems smart because it often abuses academic language to give itself the air of depth and truth.

like it's a complex issue and these surely aren't all contributing factors.

but it is disheartening, especially when people will blatantly argue against the text when presented with it.

#answering ask #thank you for the ask

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irandrura · 8 months

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Addendum to BioWare post!

Warning: more politics, I'm bad at judging how spicy my takes are

demonwrestler: Wow I missed this when you posted it. I wholly agree. I think part of the trouble of BioWare being unable to properly represent race relations in DA no matter what they do is based in… white privilege blinders and a love of Game of Thrones style bleakness dominating the worldbuilding. Nothing good is allowed to remain, radical change is not possible or doesn’t last, and all you can see game to game is further enforcement of the status quo. Mostly so the game can remain in medieval stasis. The white privilege I mention because an overwhelming majority of BW’s prior writing team was white people from Edmonton, which… Alberta is notorious for poor historical treatment and modern discrimination of native people. I’m shocked we don’t have more commentary on how the Dalish are a huge indigenous peoples expy in the world of Thedas, and how very much there seems to be some… white experience differences. Justice, who represents THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE, in Awakening tells Velanna she has to forgive her oppressors to stop the cycle of violence. She has to be the one to change, despite the evil done to her clan, her people as a whole, etc. and she has to be the model minority. I would have exorcised that spirit in her shoes. It is wildly difficult for me to continue to love Dragon Age as a setting when it actively takes those big self-unaware dumps on itself.

So that isn’t quite where I was going with the post…

I would argue there’s a tendency in some self-consciously progressive politics to go so far in rejecting or opposing a particular bias as to reinvent that bias itself, sometimes in a more virulent way than the original bias was.

Dragon Age on race is one example of this. Dragon Age, textually, thinks that racism is very, very bad. That much is obvious. However, it also thinks that racism is very, very powerful and that it can’t be easily escaped from. Everyone is shaped by these vast, unconscious forces and individual will isn’t enough to overcome them, resulting in tremendous pessimism. The standard liberal solution to racism is colourblindness – just treat everybody the same regardless of race and things will shake out. Dragon Age, and I’d guess BioWare, do not believe that. But the net result is that in Dragon Age’s world, racism is something that cannot be overcome and therefore the only way to avoid its effects is to just avoid having people of different races come into contact at all.

That’s how you end up with a game that’s ostensibly anti-racist presenting a world and a story that’s… almost pro-segregation. It all follows from the premises – racism is awful, racism is structural and omnipresent, it’s insufficient to just try to not be racist – but it amounts to a conclusion that’s kind of... reinventing racism.

Let me give another, perhaps more controversial example. When I read Terra Ignota, I was particularly fascinated by what it had to say about sex and gender, and in particular the way that Mycroft (it’s unclear what his society itself thinks; unfortunately the entire series is narrated by a fruit loop) ends up reinventing and depending on the most grotesque sexist caricatures. Mycroft very determinedly believes in the importance of sex, but he doesn’t believe that it’s determined by one’s biology. So far, so progressive. But the result is that Mycroft sexes people based on whether he thinks their personalities are ‘male’ or ‘female’, and the result is, if anything, more constraining and disturbing than what a traditional sexist might think. A traditional sexist might say “you’re a woman, so you’re caring and nurturing”. Mycroft says “you’re caring and nurturing, so you’re a woman”, as with Carlyle, who ends up violently forced into a dress and made to perform some demure caricature of womanliness. We’ve seen this sort of logic outside of weird science fiction novels. A traditional sexist might say “you’re a woman, so you can’t be a warrior”. But the inverse of that – “you’re a warrior, so you can’t be a woman” – seems to exist as well, as in that horrible play.

My previous post was mostly about, if not fascism, then at least authoritarianism. I was criticising BioWare for, while ostensibly being progressive democrats, repeatedly using a story structure that seems to endorse the need for some sort of ubermensch strongman to seize power from feckless civilian leaders. The strongman will do what is necessary; the civil elites are at best weak and lack both will and vision, and at worst are actively corrupt and evil. That, uh… seems more like the worldview of the far-right in today’s politics.

I’m skeptical that all of this can be attributed to white privilege, though you are surely correct about the demographics of BioWare. Rather, I think at least some of this is a real tension that exists in liberatory movements or in marginal communities. Famously the civil rights movement in America was divided between assimilationists, who felt that it was possible to integrate on an even basis with the wider population, and separatists or revolutionaries, who felt that was impossible and advocated for black withdrawal and self-determination. In Dragon Age, this might be a valid question for elves – do you want to be treated exactly the same as humans, living in human-majority society alongside them? (I suppose this is the Sera position.) Or do you want to withdraw, to build your own majority-elven society, different and distinct from that of the humans? I believe there are still debates among Jewish people along similar lines. How do we walk the tightrope? We don’t want to be assimilated so that we lose all our distinctive identity, but neither do we want to cordon ourselves off and form our own impermeable bubble. These are interesting and valid questions.

Where I think privilege might be a useful frame is where we talk about forgiveness. I didn’t put this in my previous post, but I have written before about the way that forgiveness is portrayed in games, especially in World of Warcraft, where it seems like there’s a repetitive story beat about forgiving your oppressor. I talked about this once on a web forum. I certainly don’t mean to imply that vengeance is morally superior to forgiveness – I do believe in forgiveness – but that it’s possible to frame forgiveness as something that is very flattering to the oppressors. Is it possible to forgive while at the same time continuing to hold out a demand for justice? (Incidentally, the relationship between mercy and justice like this is at the heart of a lot of Christian theology.) It is very easy for people from a powerful group to speak of the importance of forgiveness, healing, and moving on. They already have what they want, after all.

On the Dalish specifically – I generally like to advise against reading groups like the Dalish as expies for any one specific group. The Dalish are clearly written to have resonances with a lot of different groups. Native Americans are one of them. Jews are another. Irish are a third. Romani people are a fourth. You can read the Dalish in a way that resonates with those different groups and experiences without excluding others. Arguably it’s because the Dalish don’t map one-to-one on to any real group that they’re interesting. Rather, their fictional nature allows them to explore issues related to all those groups and their experiences, but without being limited to any one of them. So I wouldn’t want to close the Dalish off to being only an allegory for insert-group-here.

Anyway, to try to come to some sort of conclusion – I think this is the sort of mess you get when you’ve absorbed a bunch of contradictory superficial convictions, but haven’t really thought about them at any length. BioWare end up implicitly endorsing positions that seem like they would horrify them. I don’t think they did it maliciously at any point, but they went step by step and eventually reached absurd places. Thus for instance, David Gaider famously wrote the Sith Code based on Mein Kampf. Then fans played the game and thought it was cool and embraced it. Then somehow we ended up in a place with TOR where we have heroic Sith who use the dark side and whole story arcs that portray the Sith as morally equivalent to or even sometimes superior to the flawed but still democratic Republic. No one had to be explicitly evil at any point in the process, but it’s still weird how they end up implicitly endorsing the opposite of what they probably believe.

Baldur’s Gate starts with that famous Nietzsche quote about “he who fights with monsters”. Maybe it was more relevant than we thought?

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ichisoarz · 9 months

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Okay so today I participated in Barbieheimer together with some of my roommates and here are some of my hot takes (spoilers abound!):

Oppenheimer is not clear in what it wants to be; is it a biopic about a man who created the atomic bomb, is it a commentary on the US government regarding war, or is it a legal drama? It has elements of all three but not enough of each to satisfy me.

For all that the movie is a biopic, I feel that we spend an extremely limited time actually getting to know who Oppenheimer *is* as a person. What was his youth like, why is he disapproving of Jackie (his brother's wife), why does he continue to bring flowers to Jean, what motivated him to try to kill his professor? We get throw away lines such as "I was homesick", "I was going through a rough two-year period back then", and the sum-up of character traits when he is recruited by General Groves, but a lot of it feels distant, like Nolan just read the novel the film was based on and all the transcripts and did very little else to actually dive deep into the psychology of the man. A lot is implied or inferred of course, but I feel like so much of it is cold and unfeeling. The only good two moments of character work in my opinion were his breakdown after Jean and the whole sequence regarding Trinity, the rest feels very shallow to me personally.

Now when it comes to social commentary, the film puts itself in kind of a weird position. On the one hand it greatly criticises the US war mindset and its cruelty, which I greatly appreciated, but on the other hand it gives almost no sympathy or even acknowledgement of the victims of Oppenheimer's work. The Japanese were hardly mentioned and absolutely no mention was made of any victims of the New Mexico tests, only a throw-away like of returning the land to the natives. Now you might argue that talking about the victims is for a different movie to do, since this is a biopic about Oppenheimer, but to have almost no acknowledgement of the negative impact of his work and the people that he hurt feels weird. We spend a lot more time hearing about what a great scientist he was and much less time hearing about the devastating effects of the atomic bombs that's for sure. Like even a conversation with a survivor of testing in New Mexico that he comes across while riding, to humanise the harm he caused, that would have been great! It might be too unsubtle, but then again Truman's bit was not exactly subtle either.

Finally, the legal drama. I was fine with it when it was just the legal case regarding Oppenheimer, since it seemed to be an important part of his story, but I did not care for Strauss' part at all. To have one of the main climaxes of your story be Oppenheimer's hearing versus Strauss' while having basically the same thing happen in both, as well as Strauss' weird ass villain monologue, just did not work for me. Why did we go from an examination of Oppenheimer and the cruelty of the US war system, to some minister appointment hearing? I guess Strauss was cruel to Oppenheimer, but was this meant as some sort of karma lesson?? What was the point?

Besides those larger criticisms of the film, I also found the cuts of some scenes to just be kind of weird.

Moving on to Barbie, I really liked the movie for being a 2-hour commercial. It was fun, very self-aware (maybe a little bit too much at times), and it was gorgeously designed (set, clothing, cinematography). I have some slight issues with Barbie (much less than with Oppenheimer), but this is a hot takes post so here they are:

Obviously due to it being a commercial some things were treated in very specific ways. The Mattel guys being weird and kind of harmless in the end ("Why don't we just let things stay like this?" "Because I want to make girls' dreams some true!" Also the tickle thing) is quite obvious, along with all the things regarding the teenager.

Ooh boy the teen, poor girl. She made some very good points upon meeting Barbie, all of which immediately become less convincing when she ends it with calling Barbie a fascist. I mean the word does get used too often now by teens, but Barbie herself also only takes away fascist instead of the other very good points, sooo yeah. Also she very quickly approached Disney Channel levels of wholesomeness with her mom after going to Barbieland, she lost her style, lost her meanness and was mostly just smiling happily in the background. All of that felt kinda yikes to me lol.

Finally, I was not fully comfortable with the final resolution talk with Ken, the sheer amount of emotional labour Barbie was doing there when she herself is just discovering these things and him needing to be rejected several times from his advances all felt kinda yikes to me too.

Congrats on reading this big post if you made it this far, feel free to agree/disagree on anything, these are just my thoughts and opinions!

#barbie #barbenheimer #oppenheimer #spoilers

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earlgreytea68 · 2 years

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The West Wing thoughts - watching for the first time

I just wanted to feed back to you some of my thoughts upon watching The West Wing for the first time in 2021-2022. I got up to about the sixth season then started again from the beginning, so I haven't finished yet, but I can give you some of my initial thoughts.

Some of it, astonishingly and sadly, is still very relevant. There are discussions about gun control and education standards and strategies that I swear are still being replayed. The climate change sections are interesting, and I must admit that I frowned very sternly at Leo (who mostly I love) when he repressed/adjusted that environmental impact report. I'm not American, but I suspect that the episode (which I think is called 'Two Indians in the Lobby'?) about native title and land ownership and First Nations people is also still pretty accurate. The whole plotline about Charlie not being able to afford a lawyer, and the financial difficulties he has on his salary I think is also probably accurate. I don't think salaries for government workers have appreciably increased, despite their ridiculous time commitment. I also wonder how he manages to afford his wardrobe - his job obviously requires professional dress, and he would need to keep himself in suits, shirts, shoes, ties, etc.

The part which I find glaringly jarring is the sexism. It's not in the treatment of CJ, there's also very good commentary on the numbers of women in various roles, etc. It's partly in the treatment of Ainsley Hayes, who I like very much, and who is repeatedly referred to as a sex kitten. She's completely appropriately in her dress (the one time she comes straight from a reception she changes immediately), but Sam continually makes comments to her about her appearance. There is definitely respect for her brain and her input, but there's also an implication that as a Republican she would not have been hired if she wasn't really attractive. There's also kind of a running joke about Will Bailey and his interchangeable interns. I like Will very much, but these women are saving his bacon and doing stellar work, mostly overtime, he should at the very least learn their names and also champion the cause of getting them properly paid positions. There's an implication that he wouldn't treat them quite so casually if they weren't attractive women.

The technology is obviously out of date but doesn't really disrupt the story. The women's fashion holds up surprisingly well, I guess very classic office attire doesn't date too much, although the fit of Josh's suits particularly is very of his time. Toby's also, though Sam seems to spend more time in shirtsleeves rather than jackets, and I think his trousers are cut more closely (I think this is more about his wardrobe showing off a more attractive actor, though. For the record, I find Josh really hot in all his rumpled glory - it's probably the dimples and the very passionate personality).

Sorry, I need to stop here, but I might send you other thoughts if they occur to me, and they interest you.

Regards,

***

omg thank you so much for all of these!!! I think you're very right about how the political discussions are mostly sadly still relevant and how very little has been done to improve any of the issues they're worried about. I actually don't remember the climate change stuff (and only barely recall "Two Indians in the Lobby") but it would be interesting to think about how the discussion around climate change has shifted in the intervening years.

You are absolutely right about the sexism. A lot of it is the accusation that gets leveled at Sorkin all the time that he can't write women. Although I think he writes some women just fine, like, CJ is great, and I always loved Abbey, too. But Ainsley for some reason, I agree, stands out, and she did even at the time, that we were all kind of like, "Why does Sam keep making these weird comments about Ainsley????" I admit I don't remember as much about Will Bailey because that post-dated my passionate love for the show, then I was just kind of watching to finish out the Josh/Donna arc lol.

You are soooo right about Josh's suits, they are so, so boxy! It's interesting that they cut Sam's "sexier," so to speak, I didn't think about that! But I'm with you, Josh was the hot one to me, he was by far my favorite character, I absolutely adored him.

#submission #the west wing

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hardestgrove · 2 years

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a huge post with bios of all the main king family members. might add aunt Liz later when she’s more relevant but for now here’s the nuclear family.

very light general warnings for mentions of various forms of non-physical child abuse and talk of dysmorphia and ED

everything under the cut bc i’m not a fucking monster lol

ADAM KING BORN: 1938 PRONOUNS: He/Him BIO:

A ruthless business man who exemplifies the american dream of heartless capitalism. A narcissist with dangerous tendencies and no regard for others he began his career strong in New York City by defaming, undermining and terrorizing his competitors in tandem with his ruthless business tactics. Married and had a family explicitly for the optics and sees them all as props to forward his future. When it comes to “continuing his legacy” after briefly trying to mold the teens he instead chose Emily as the child to focus his grooming on as her base personality and skillset was the closest to his own, unlike the twins.

Moved the family to Indiana when he was offered a high level position in large scale construction projects (things like malls hint hint), this was also prompted by the 1977 black out and subsequent riots. While he’s rarely home, preferring to spend the majority of his time on his work instead, his presence looms over the family like the threat of an air raid. He is a sadistic, cruel, manipulative man with drug and alcohol issues who enjoys reckless behavior and inflicting fear in others for his own amusement. To this end he once held a loaded gun to Emily when she was 13 while he carried on a casual conversation with her.

While he rarely engages in physical violence he is still absolutely a threat to others.

CHRISTINA KING BORN: 1945 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

A socialite type who married entirely for security she has never grown out of the rich party girl mentality. She has no interest or desire to be a mother to any of her 5 children and left it to a nanny when they lived in NYC and then dumped as much of it as possible on Emily when they moved to Hawkins. She’s a loud, shallow person concerned only in her own hedonistic pleasure and rarely thinks about the consequences of those actions and usually only does when it effects her personally. Her ideas about like, everything are toxic and she has no filter.

She is in the house about half the time, when not there she’s on what she calls “me time” trips which is basically her and possibly other women like her going to a bigger city with better nightlife and partying for undefined amounts of time. She is an addict and a heavy drinker who still lives in the “invulnerable youth” mentality of 20-somethings who think being a psycho in Cancun over spring break is totally acceptable. She is actively damaging to her children’s mental health, frequently commenting on their physical appearances, especially the girls. She’s given up on trying to groom Emily into the perfect woman (read: sex object for men) due to the facial scarring she got when she was 12 and now Stacy gets the brunt of her damaging commentary with Alison coming in second.

EMILY KING BORN: 1967 PRONOUNS: She/They BIO:

The oldest child, Emily is a control freak with psychic abilities and pyromania cursed with being given impossible to meet standards by her parents. They’re a fan of horror and dark fantasy and an avid goth but largely concealed and obfuscated their interests and true identity when they started high school as part of a long con to get better references and reputation for college applications and scholarships, instead presenting almost as a stepford yuppie for like 3 years. Is this kinda insane? Yes. But Emily is an extremely intense person who struggles with regulating their behavior and not taking the steps that take something from “reasonable” to “extreme”. While this intensity is native to their personality, this along with the masking, is also part of their coping with the expectations and parentification inflicted on them by their parents. Their pyromania stems from a need for emotional outlet as they are comically locked down, the fire fixation itself coming from seeing the many arsons that were committed in 70s NYC. Emily has been the top of their class, student body president and strong competitor in sports every year on top of their parental duties and finding ways to save up money to escape the family for the last 3 years of high school.

When Emily was 12 they moved to Hawkins and not long after Emily had their first real “i was absolutely not imagining this” psychic experience when they linked telepathically with the Hawkins Lab massacre perpetuated by 001, both from the pov of his many victims and 001 himself. Which has further damaged her mental health and left her with fractured reactions to violence— both triggered by it but also desensitized and able to engage it in. Due to when it happened and where she was she ended up with a large scar on her face.

They befriended Eddie Munson shortly after over their mutual love of fantasy and the newly forming metal genre and considered him their best (and only) friend even after they became overwhelmed with responsibilities in high school. Eddie’s friendship was a critical factor in their recovery from experiencing the massacre and Emily’s exploration of their own identity and he was the first to be told. The two dated for a while when they were 16 but it ended amicably after Eddie voiced that he just felt he couldn’t handle the pressure and responsibility one is assumed to take up as a romantic partner as in this case that basically meant becoming the co-parent of 4 children at 16 but still cared for them and wanted to support them however he could.

Emily is at heart an intense person who feels extremely deeply and is wildly passionate and compassionate. They are fearless and determined and undeterred by anything. But they also have a vicious streak and inherent cruelty derived from and encouraged by their father. They’re open-minded, introspective and fiercely protective. They have a firm belief in responsibility, self-sacrifice and “pulling your own weight” —all of which is a mixed bag when actually put into practice. Emily’s psychic affinities lay more in the world of telepathy and pyrokinesis than telekinesis, as she’s extremely adept at controlling and invading the mind and setting both massive and/or intense fires but is nowhere near Eleven’s telekinetic capacity. Frequently in contact with their Aunt Liz who’s a psychologist to try and not be The Fucking Worst.

DAVID KING BORN: 1969 PRONOUNS: He/They BIO:

Emily’s younger brother and Jackson’s fraternal twin brother. The taller, more built and quieter of the two. He and Jackson share an intense passion for music and both are very serious about their futures as musicians. David is a huge fan of punk music both for it’s sound and it’s highly political and critical commentary. He’s passionate about politics and social reform, firmly keeping to punk mantras about equality and fighting against the regime. While both brothers are frequently wrangled into being Emily’s back up, enforcers and workers David gets it more so due to his size. Both brothers both love and resent Emily for how they perpetuate their father’s control and emotional abuse in the name of keeping them in line to avoid even worse outcomes but David is overall more sympathetic to Emily’s situation. His habit of being less vocal has meant he’s lashed out at them less and thus been able to see more of how much the responsibility and behavior effects them.

David more likely than not has selective mutism as a result of their father’s attempts to mold him into a Mini Adam and that is most likely why he speaks less overall than his siblings. He’s also just a naturally quiet and observational person which also probably comes into play. While David is pretty easy-going for the most part he’s also an incredibly angry person which manifests in him as a kind of quiet rage that permeates his vibe and behavior and pouring himself into his special interests over other things, even important things like schoolwork. David can play the guitar, bass, piano, drums, and is looking to pick up a wind instrument or something like the synth or theramin. He and Jackson are working on starting a band, while the band will likely be a metal/hard rock one the boys also really enjoy writing really high quality comedy music as Weird Al is both an inspiration and a comfort artist for them.

JACKSON KING BORN: 1969 PRONOUNS: He/Him BIO:

Emily’s younger brother and David’s fraternal twin brother. Jackson is shorter, leaner and louder than his brother David but they share the same intense passion for music and both are very serious about their futures as musicians. Jackson is a big fan of Metal and music with expressive imagery and prose. Like David, while this is his go to genre he inhales music of all kinds to better understand the art and to improve his own work. Jackson’s life is basically entirely spent on creating music, watching bad horror movies to make fun of them and building stuff in legos. He’s also shockingly well read for a weird music obsessed high schooler and has strong political opinions like his brother David. Of the two he’s the one who resents Emily the most for acting as their dad’s enforcer and frequently using his tactics against them. As he’s gotten older he’s come to better understand how they’ve been basically left to raise them all completely alone but still struggles to be compassionate to them. Still he consistently steps up to the plate to act as their own enforcer and back up when it comes up because he can see their survival is a group effort.

loves

poetry for it’s evocative and raw language and much of his songwriting work reflects this. His greatest passion is writing music and lyrics. Jackson can play the guitar, bass, drums, piano and is learning the saxophone currently. He can also sing but ironically feels uncomfortable doing so so he strong arms Emily into doing it instead. He and David also bully them into playing the bass for them as well since their band is currently just the 2 of them and they need at least a guitar, bass and drums to function and bass is easier to learn.

STACY KING BORN: 1971 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

Stacy is the second youngest and second least affected by the abuse from their parents which isn’t saying much since she has an anxiety disorder and is under constant threat of picking up body dysmorphia and an ED thanks to her mother. Stacy is a bubbly, friendly girly girl. She likes pink, pop music, rom coms and literally anything you can think of that’s aggressively girly. She’s just like that y’all. She does dance and gymnastics. While she comes off as boy crazy she’s actually a lesbian and just thinks that those boys are Kinda Neat and Aesthetically Pleasing and would like to give them all hugs and sandwiches like a kooky aunt or something.

Stacy suffers from crippling anxiety, negative thinking and extremely poor self-esteem thanks to their parents but especially her mother’s toxic commentary. This is part of what fuels her to be kind to others because she doesn’t want other people to feel like her if she can help it. Stacy befriends the Party and Eleven when Emily and the boys leave her and Alison at the Wheeler house so they can help search for Will. It’s an unlikely friendship at first but Stacy just enjoys being around good people and supporting people’s interests and stuff. They do end up wrangling her into playing D&D which she enjoys because of it’s collaborative storytelling elements. She ends up becoming close with the Byers and looks up to Jonathan a lot, bordering on hero worship as she sees him as a Perfect Older Sibling, and has gotten into photography because of him.

LUCY KING BORN: 1977 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

The youngest King kid and the most sheltered of the whole lot. All of her siblings are hellbent on making sure she’s exposed to as little of their parents abuse and toxicity as they can protect her from. She’s a sweet tho a bit shy little girl who likes animals and princesses. She likes to play and draw and act out little skits and plays of her own creation and has been petitioning for a family pet for years. Thinks Steve, Billy and Eddie are prince charmings because they’re handsome and nice to her. They all tend to humor her a lot and play when asked because like man, she’s 7.

#stranger things oc #ocappreciation #the king family #adam king (derogatory)#christina king (derogatory)#emily king #david king #jackson king #stacy king #alison king

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wherestoriescomefrom · 2 years

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ooo but u know what is fun (ref to ur latest rb abt translations) is autobiographies, when the author has moved from their native country to let's say england & has written in english & they're thinking abt language or telling u how they spoke to their parents vs their friends or w/e (I am NOT explaining this very well but a good example is When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and the subsequent Bombs on Aunt Dainty, where a girl moves from Germany to France to England (partly autobiographical anyway) in ww2 and has to adapt & the commentary she makes on the language changes, even if they're pretty seldom, are v interesting)

link to the original post.

you know thats an excellent point, because i rarely (if ever) see any autobiographies that use a form of domestication, usually its just translated straightforwardly. but with something that is partly autobiographical (im going by what i have heard of this book anon, i'm sorry, i have not read it), you'd have to do some significant work to make a translation work. and then if the text is travelling across languages and countries, i simply wouldn't know what to do!!

have you read about the polysystem theory by zohar anon??? i think you might like it!! i think it's from the essay The Position of Translated Literature within a Literary Polysystem (don't take my word for it, i am nowhere near an expert in translation studies, this is just an essay that stands out in my mind. i think this essay was also part of a journal called Polysystem Studies, so maybe the theory in itself is expounded on elsewhere. this particular essay discusses translation). the part where he talks about translation is very cool, but i really like that method of thinking about language and culture as a whole. that languages exist within a literary system, influenced by other languages and cultures. i may be way off base here (again, not an expert on translation), but the way i tried to understand it was actually through fanfiction. if you think of fanfiction as a literary polysystem, you can so easily conceptualise all the ways in which it interacts with the world, borrowing languages and cultural modes, even ways of talking to each other!! it's very cool.

really importantly, according to zohar, "It is clear that the very principles of selecting the works to be translated are determined by the situation governing the (home) polysystem: the texts are chosen according to their compatibility with the new approaches and the supposedly innovatory role they may assume within the target literature."

the text you are discussing does seem to have significant space for osmosis, especially if the author is travelling across europe, and presumably as she grows and changes, she has to ensure a myriad of cultural histories and languages travel with her. yet perhaps it is still easier for her to make the journey across because the language systems speak to each other. more difficult to translate may be the situation of the war in itself.

this isn't exactly new analysis ig, especially since diaspora authors have a good time discussing the untranslability of their own cultural histories. i can't get into that here, i mean i have thoughts, but i can't - we will be here literally forever. but what struck me was you're discussing a single girl travelling across the continent, and has to change and adapt according to where she goes - i know she's representational of a larger people, but something about the way you phrased it made me feel like she's a polysystem in herself, if that makes sense?? and yes, when you think about your own self, and all your habits and keysmashes and growth through the internet, maybe you can track all the different people who influenced the way you speak and act - which just means you're a literary polysystem of your own, part of all the other, bigger polysystems that make you up!!

im sorry for the tangent i will go away now <3

#linguistics #translation #the people??? want me to answer???#hello void this is ridiculosity #pls ignore me if i have said something not quite right where translation is concerned i am not well studied in it #i took a few courses across my masters and undergrad and phd #that sounds like a lot but when you dip into translation studies you'd know that that's barely the tip of the ice berg #personally i was a huge fan of zohar from the moment i read him #lawrence venuti who #just a joke he's pretty good if a little dated

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gonegrove · 2 years

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reposted from my old blog hardestgrove.

a huge post with bios of all the main king family members. might add aunt Liz later when she’s more relevant but for now here’s the nuclear family.

very light general warnings for mentions of various forms of non-physical child abuse and talk of dysmorphia and ED

everything under the cut bc i’m not a fucking monster lol

ADAM KING BORN: 1938 PRONOUNS: He/Him BIO:

While he rarely engages in physical violence he is still absolutely a threat to others.

CHRISTINA KING BORN: 1945 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

EMILY KING BORN: 1967 PRONOUNS: She/They BIO:

DAVID KING BORN: 1969 PRONOUNS: He/They BIO:

JACKSON KING BORN: 1969 PRONOUNS: He/Him BIO:

Like Emily and David, Jackson has rage issues. Unlike Emily and David, Jackson is not trying to bury his under 10 miles of stoicism like it’s toxic waste. He’s extremely vocal about his grievances, prone to arguing and name calling and the most likely to start a fight. Outside of his rage issues Jackson is a really outgoing and funny guy. He’s friendly, loves collaboration and learning knew things. Things like his long ass hair are in direct opposition to the aesthetic decrees of their parents and not just because he likes them. Jackson loves poetry for it’s evocative and raw language and much of his songwriting work reflects this. His greatest passion is writing music and lyrics. Jackson can play the guitar, bass, drums, piano and is learning the saxophone currently. He can also sing but ironically feels uncomfortable doing so so he strong arms Emily into doing it instead. He and David also bully them into playing the bass for them as well since their band is currently just the 2 of them and they need at least a guitar, bass and drums to function and bass is easier to learn.

STACY KING BORN: 1971 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

LUCY KING BORN: 1977 PRONOUNS: She/Her BIO:

#stranger things ocs #the king family #adam king (derogatory)#christina king (derogatory)#emily king #david king #jackson king #stacy king #alison king #ocs #bp content

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gaykarstaagforever · 7 days

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Wolfen (1981)

Based on this interaction, prompted by my review of Predator, I decided to seek out this movie I had never heard of before. It is available to rent for $4 on several streaming sites. But it is ALSO available via the Internet Archive to accidentally download the entire thing for free to my phone immediately, so I did that, and watched it.

And it fucking rules.

I have to spoil this shit to talk about it. It is a mystery story, so if you want to see it first without me having ruined it for you, go accidentally download it and watch it yourself.

Or DON'T, because that is stealing. And you shouldn't do that, even if Google makes it easy and simple to accidentally do that.

Ostensibly a werewolf movie, what Wolfen actually is is a slow-boil, hard-R police procedural set in the filthy ruins of 1980 NYC, where the murderer just happens to be a pack of immortal god-like wolves.

While that premise could immediately be B-movie territory, that isn't what happens here. This is more in the vein of The Exorcist or John Carpenter's The Thing, where average, messy people in the average, messy world get stuck dealing with some inexplicable nonsense they are utterly not prepared to deal with, but by gum, they have to anyway. Confusion and chaos ensue, and everyone who survives it comes out the other side physically scarred and mentally broken.

It's fantastic.

Albert Finney plays a "damn good" NYC police detective, forcibly retired due to an unexplored emotional breakdown, who is forced back into service because he is "the only one" who can hope to solve a brutal but inexplicable triple-homicide at Battery Park. He teams up with Diane Venora (Juliet's weird mother from the Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet), who works for the international private security company who was hired to protect the rich and well-connected murder victims, but failed to do so. As more brutal slayings start to pile up, they are further assisted by Gregory Hines as a forensic scientist, and Tom Noonan as a likeable but eccentric wolf-obsessed zoologist. The cast is as good as it could get in 1981, and that is very damn good indeed. The screenplay also employs them well, creating well-rounded human characters with engaging, fun interactions, at least until half of them are mauled to death by turbo ghost-wolves.

Edward James Olmos plays an ex-con Native American construction worker who knows exactly what is going on but won't admit to it until it after it doesn't matter, charismatically toying with Finney the entire time.

He has luxurious John Travolta hair, and gets naked and wet at one point. If you don't need to see that, I don't know how to talk to you.

He is part of another interesting (if ham-fisted and dated) aspect of this, a low-level commentary on race and class, including but not limited to how the US has treated and continues to treat Native Americans. It is done as well as a movie from 1981 made by white people was going to do that, and it does effectively tweak the emotional sympathies of the audience. Your personally milage will vary on how problematic you might think that is, but I thought it was at least a valiant effort, that sets the movie apart from standard fare.

Technically speaking, this is kind of a low-level masterpiece. It was shot on location in NYC, and everyone who worked on it was/is a filmmaker, so despite being mostly filmed in the drug-addled wasteland that was The Bronx at the time, it is beautiful and well-paced and scary when it needs to be and funny when it needs to be and even the saggy middle of the movie is not allowed to get boring. The James Horner score is mostly incidental, but hits hard when it needs to, just exactly suited to what this is and how it should work. This little movie is a masterclass in great filmmaking. Watch it solely for that, if nothing else.

No movie is perfect, and this is not. At nearly 2 hours, it is exactly a half-hour too long, with plenty of things that should have been cut as totally unnecessary. The production was troubled and the director was fired and replaced, specifically because he wanted it to be longer than the studio did. While it pains me to say it, the studio was absolutely right. Adapted from a novel or not, this is "exactly 90 minutes" material, and in no way benefits from another half-hour of visually impressive but plot-irrelevant guff.

The movie was recommended to me on the basis of it having way too many distorted "Monster Vision" POV shots. And it absolutely does. Now, compared to Predator, I think they are done better here, and actually serve something of a purpose, some of the time - we immediately notice the perspective means we're seeing things from a dog's view, it is playing a precise and gleeful hunting game with its victims, we see its presence impacting the behavior of other animals it comes across. All fine, but there is still twice as much of that as we need. Like, we get it. This is cheaper than showing the monster. Good job. Now stop.

There is also a continuous call-back to the security company's local base of operations, where they use magical NCIS computers to fill plot holes the screenwriter was clearly afraid we'd notice. I appreciate the effort, but I also hate this stupid magical-realism tech crap, essentially because it is always written by someone who has no idea how actual technology of the time works. I understand that in the early 80s, most people still thought of computers as mystical boxes that would just do everything in the next ten years. But they weren't, and they aren't, and tossing this nonsense in just raises distracting questions and overcomplicates everything in a rock-stupid way.

The plot-holes this is supposed to fill in could have been dealt with in better ways, or simply ignored, honestly. It was just an added expense that ended up being nearly entirely pointless.

The last problem may not necessarily be a problem, depending on who you are. The "monsters" here are magical wolves. But they are portrayed by...actual wolves. They're cool wolves and pretty wolves and good wolf actors, but if after an hour and 20 minutes you are expecting to see a gnarly werewolf puppet or guy in a costume or a stop-motion beast, you're shit out of luck. They're just wolves. I didn't mind because I'm a World of Darkness and wolf fan, but it does feel like they knew this was kind of a cop-out, so they waited until they absolutely had to to show them.

But if they're just wolves (physically), why not just show them earlier? All this build up for...kind of nothing. Certainly could feel a bit like "...That's it? Really?"

I mean they still snarl and there are all-black ones and an all-white one, and they still fly around and maul people, so it's okay. But it also is utterly that.

For a movie this good, which was also well-reviewed then and now, it being kind of lost is a real shame. I'm a huge fan of werewolves and werewolf movies, and I'd never even heard of it before. It apparently came out between The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, two movies that aren't as good but are certainly a lot more fun. That's a shame, because there should be room for all of them.

Solid A-. Go watch it. Just don't expect a shlocky action-horror movie. This one is trying to class up the joint, in its dark and grimy way.

#wolfen #1980s #werewolf #horror movie #movie review

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jcmarchi · 5 months

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The Last of Us Part II Remastered Preview - A Hands-On Breakdown Of The Remaster's No Return Roguelite Mode - Game Informer

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-last-of-us-part-ii-remastered-preview-a-hands-on-breakdown-of-the-remasters-no-return-roguelite-mode-game-informer/

The Last of Us Part II Remastered Preview - A Hands-On Breakdown Of The Remaster's No Return Roguelite Mode - Game Informer

Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, The Last of Us Part II is getting the big remaster treatment in January, over three years after it was released for PlayStation 4. This updated version leverages the PlayStation 5’s hardware with graphical bells and whistles like native 4K resolution, improved textures, and unlocked framerate. It also adds new interactive goodies, such as developer commentary and previously unplayable lost levels. But the centerpiece of the package’s new offerings is a new mode called No Return.

In this new roguelite adventure, players choose from one of 10 playable characters, from main stars like Ellie, Abby, and Joel to previously unplayable faces like Tommy, Dina, and Lev, to battle a randomized series of combat encounters. I traveled to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s office in San Mateo, California, to play several rounds of No Return and speak to the director of The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Matthew Gallant, to learn how and why Naughty Dog implemented this surprising addition.

My initial assumption was that No Return was an idea intended for the original release of The Last of Us Part II that didn’t make the cut. However, Gallant states the mode was conceived after Naughty Dog decided to update the sequel. “We’re like, okay, we knew we were going to be doing this next-gen upgrade and offering the PS5 improvements and the fidelity and the performance mode, haptics, and all that really great stuff,” says Gallant. “That was for sure going to be in The Last of Us Part II Remastered, but then we were thinking, ‘What else would be really great? What would surprise people, delight people, give them something to make this a really robust offering?’”

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Naughty Dog wanted something that took advantage of the game’s exceptional combat that had the same high stakes as The Last of Us Part II’s Grounded difficulty, in which players must restart the entire game if they die just once. It also wanted to challenge players to constantly change their tactics and behaviors; Gallant believes many players settled into their chosen playstyles and loadouts once they got deep into the story campaign. The run-based, randomized blueprint of the roguelite became the clear answer. “We thought that this roguelike mode [would] be a really great way to surprise players, get them thinking on their feet again, throw them into situations where they might be uncomfortable having to react or to plan on the fly,” says Gallant.

Upon starting a new run, I choose one of two available characters: Ellie or Abby. Each character has a playstyle and specialized traits. Ellie is classified as “Balanced,” meaning she’s well-rounded, while her three traits are gaining 50 percent more supplements, the ability to craft Molotovs (other characters must unlock this recipe), and two upgrade branches. Abby is a Brawler, meaning she hits harder, and her traits include a health regen that restores HP each time she performs a melee attack. Dina excels at crafting, based on how she’s able to repair the WLF radio in the story. Lev, who I unlock later, is stealth-focused, so he’s automatically equipped with his powerful and silent bow. His sister Yara’s trait allows Lev to accompany her as an AI companion at the expense of starting with only a basic firearm, meaning her upgrade path is longer by default.

I choose Ellie, and my run begins in the hideaway. This HQ takes different forms location-wise and has a workbench to upgrade weapons and a trading post to purchase new guns and tools from a randomized selection, which changes upon each visit. If you’re unhappy with what the trading post currently offers, you can reroll the selection by spending a small amount of currency. I begin with a pistol, a knife, and a couple of health packs. A corkboard displays the current run, a branching web of levels represented by Polaroid photographs that display any stipulations.

The first level’s match is Assault, which tasks me with defeating three waves of enemies. I can go loud, but I choose to pick them off quietly, my preferred tactic in the story campaign. I’m reminded of how good the combat feels after being away from it for three years. The action is brutal, and I find myself wincing all over again at the sickening sound effects as I pierce throats with my knife or cave in someone’s skull with a bat. And yes, human enemies still scream out the names of their fallen comrades (“No! Mike!”) in agony upon discovering my handiwork.

The Last of Us Part II’s unsettlingly grounded depiction of violence is juxtaposed by No Return’s more video game-y elements. Abby’s health regen trait means that health symbols explode out of enemies when she strikes them. Level modifiers can be goofy, such as one that makes all enemies invisible, detectable only by using listen mode, or by shining your flashlight to cast their shadows. Gallant, who worked on Part II’s combat in the original game, says Naughty Dog always valued keeping things grounded when it came to the series combat, but No Return’s non-canonical nature presented the opportunity for them to cut loose and get wild.

“We know our combat mechanics are really fun, we know our gameplay is really fun, [and we’re] trying to give that its own space to be fun and not quite as heavy as the main story,” says Gallant.

Between killing enemies, which range from human factions such as the WLF, Seraphites, and Rattlers to various types of infected, I scour the zones for crafting ingredients. Resource chests, which are highlighted with an indicator and appear in different places throughout a level, offer larger rewards for those brave enough to reach them.

After working my way through the web of zones, I eventually reach the endpoint: a boss battle. I’m pitted against a giant Bloater (along with a few Clickers), and, to my embarrassment, I’m killed after only a few minutes. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to exact my revenge, though it wouldn’t be a guarantee that I could. Other bosses could appear instead, such as a Seraphite Elite or a Rattler Captain, which are new encounters not seen in the campaign.

My death means having to start a whole new run. It’s disheartening, but at least I know my path won’t unfold the same as before. Levels occasionally have mods such as adding a thick fog that makes it harder to spot enemies (and, in turn, concealing you better) or causing hazardous pustules of spores to rain from the sky. Sometimes, tripwires will be placed all over the arena. Some levels provide an AI companion to lend a hand. Using Ellie, I play one mission that pairs me with Dina for some tag team play. Other mission types include Hunted, which throws a never-ending barrage of enemies at players with the goal of surviving until the time limit expires. Certain levels have their nature obscured and labeled as mystery zones, meaning you have no idea what you’ll get until you play them.

“If you don’t make it out of the situation…knowing that the game’s going [to] be just rolling this entirely new random run at you, it’s going [to] be rolling all these new challenges, new combinations of stuff that you wouldn’t have expected,” says Gallant. “So [it] just makes coming back to the combat and running into new situations and new combinations just really exciting and really fun.”

A list of challenges provides additional objectives, and completing these unlocks new characters, outfits, mods, weapons, recipes, and more. For example, I unlock Lev by completing two levels as Abby. I also unlock Gambits, a feature that introduces a riskier set of challenges once per encounter for much greater rewards. Naughty Dog has ensured that No Return is regularly evolving and expanding the more time players put into it, which helps keep it fresh for the long haul.

A multitude of difficulty options means No Return can be as easy or hard as players make it. A Custom Run option even allows players to tailor their runs by choosing what mods, perks, and match types appear. Gallant believes that this flexibility in how players can mold No Return, along with the opportunity to play as fan-favorite characters, most of which were not playable before, offers enticing hooks to draw in fans who don’t traditionally play roguelites.

As a fan of The Last of Us Part II and roguelites in general, No Return is a fun blend of the two ideas that feels like a better fit than I expected. The evolving challenge, fun mods, and the tension of losing an entire run due to one mistake squeeze more juice out of the already enjoyable combat. Most of all, it offers an entertaining and substantial dessert to the meaty main course of the campaign (which Gallant recommends playing before jumping into No Return). I’m not sure if I’m ready to endure The Last of Us Part II’s emotionally taxing narrative again, so I’m glad No Return lets me enjoy the gameplay side of things without that stress.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered launches on January 19 for PlayStation 5.

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