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tobi-smp · 3 years

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I was thinking about it while I was in the shower, so here’s another Hot Take on the discussion on whether we can (or should) consider technoblade as abusive

a lot of interactions between technoblade and other characters are difficult to gauge because c!techno obviously isn’t honest about his feelings at all times On Top Of cc!techno Very Rarely If Ever being completely in character, including and especially with very serious lore scenes. so how we’re meant to take anything he does or says is hard to parse, especially with the knowledge that other creators can take scenes seriously and incorporate it into their lore even if it wasn’t the intention at the time (like jack’s death at tommy’s hands during exile).

(technoblade has only recently come out to state that he’s intentionally playing his side of the story lighter to give people a break from the heavy angst in the rest of the server, but that’s hardly new. he broke the tension all the time during his partnership with tommy, namely with the confrontation with dream at the portal and tommy and tubbo’s first reunion, but it was even noticeable with doomsday, his perspective is a Palpably different tone from Anyone on the l’manberg side of things. which can make some Very interesting inconsistencies when it’s directly slammed into tommy’s more serious roleplaying style.)

you can Easily read him as Either a purely opportunistic character who uses the guise of being deeply emotionally wounded as a justification for Horrific Violence when he was never that emotionally invested in the first place Or a character that is rarely if ever honest and open with his feelings, who hurts other people by accident by trying to downplay his own vulnerability who is Nevertheless deeply emotionally invested in and impacted by the people around him. both interpretations can be soundly backed up by what we’ve been given and we can’t really discount the other reading because of the semi-canoncity of whatever technoblade does. we aren’t really gonna know unless technoblade himself decides to address it specifically.

so with that in mind, I want to take a second to take a more charitable reading, not as an argument that technoblade’s relationship with tommy Wasn’t unhealthy (because it objectively was no matter the reading of his intentions) but to ground the overall conversation a little bit here.

this, I think, is where the nuance in the intersection between “technoblade didn’t have the full picture of what happened with dream and tommy” and “technoblade knew enough to know that what he did on doomsday was wrong” Matters.

if we read technoblade as a character that genuinely cares but either chooses not to or doesn’t know How to express those emotions in a healthy productive way (“tsundereblade” ala the scene of ranboo giving techno the axe) Combined With techno’s very dry sense of humor then it Is very possible to read some of the more uh, Unfortunate things that he’s said in a different light. which doesn’t excuse them by any means, people hurting their friends by not being emotionally honest or through jokes that hit harder than intended happens all the time and it’s the responsibility of that friend to apologize and change their behavior. but at the same time, people can’t actually change their behavior if they don’t know that what they’ve done is wrong.

we need to keep in mind that: - both technoblade And tommy express their affection with their friends by ribbing them. making fun of each other Is a sign of affection for them. if we’re meant to read that as part of their characters then it may not be entirely fair to say that technoblade should’ve known that putting tommy down was going to hurt him

- technoblade knows (or assumes) that dream wants to kill tommy and he knows that tommy has trauma. but technoblade Doesn’t know that dream systematically destroyed tommy’s self confidence to the point of being suicidal. he Doesn’t know how fragile tommy is about his own self worth, and he Doesn’t know that that kind of joking would hit tommy differently now than it would’ve back during their pogtopia days.

- technoblade knows that tommy was a child soldier, he knows that he was forced out of his home and isolated by someone that he’d trusted and loved, and he directly relates tommy’s betrayal to his own. he’s more likely to think that tommy’s mental state Now has more to do with l’manberg than dream specifically even if he recognizes dream as a threat to tommy.

none of this makes techno putting down tommy’s self worth Right, it doesn’t mean that we have to look at him charitably when he tells someone to their face that they aren’t equals only to turn around and destroy a country when he thinks he’s being dehumanized. but I also think that we can’t necessarily assume that he 100% devalued tommy both as a person and a friend from that interaction.

moreover, technoblade was For Sure being opportunistic in trying to recruit tommy. I’ve made my own analysis on techno obviously trying to prime tommy for a partnership at the start of tommy’s exile. but at the same time, I don’t think that’s necessarily Solely about taking advantage of what tommy could do for him, especially since he was trying to recruit tommy before he’d had his mind set on actively destroying l’manberg.

assuming that technoblade was as hurt by tommy as he was because he genuinely Cared about tommy, because he and tommy Were friends and he enjoyed his company, then he very well could’ve recognized that tommy being betrayed by the same people he was would open him up to being able to relate to him. techno and tommy have very fun interactions when there’s nothing driving them against each other, but they’re fundamentally incompatible on their morality and philosophies.

so the obvious solution to that would be one showing the other that their way of thinking was wrong, to let their relationship thrive without that barrier between them. and like, obviously technoblade is the extremist of the situation, it’s a little hard to swallow him trying to change tommy when he’s the one that refuses to compromise even when tommy tries to do it for him. but I think it’s worth recognizing when we’re having a conversation about whether or not he Solely saw tommy as an asset to use rather than a companion. if you choose to read techno as someone who refuses to compromise on his ideals but craves that interaction anyways, then the way he scooped tommy up while trying to relate tommy’s situation to his own, trying to convince them that l’manberg was bad for him, etc, can be read in a Much Less overtly malicious light. it’s still not a Healthy one, but at least it’s not Child Labor Meat Shield.

this particular reading Does have the fact that techno didn’t try to recruit anyone else on its side. for the entirety of tommy’s exile up until doomsday he didn’t try to seek out partnerships with anyone, even though there were Several people unaffiliated with l’manberg at the time. he sought tommy out the First Day of his exile, surely the moment he heard of it, and he was Noticeably Eager to partner with him the moment he’d found him in his house. if that was nothing but pure unadulterated ambition and opportunity seeking then you’d think he’d try to make at least One ally in the meantime.

then again, tommy was the most vulnerable person on the server at the time, you don’t have to know about tommy’s abuse to know that. if you choose to read techno as solely opportunistic then it’s easy to dismiss all of that and say that techno went for tommy because he saw it as the safest bet and that he didn’t gun for any other allies before him because he didn’t see it as immediately necessary until he’d been provoked. but on the other hand, it makes a lot of Sense that a character who’d just cut himself off from every ally he could’ve had but One would be kind of desperate for any chance at connection that he could get. that he’d seize the opportunity specifically Because he enjoyed his relationship with tommy before it went south and he wants to have a close partnership like that again.

technoblade’s a highly paranoid character, so you could argue that he’d try to seek out any partnership he could get his hands on if he was truly actively gunning for allies to the point of being willing to overlook his grudge against tommy to scoop him up as soon as possible. but on the other hand, technoblade’s a highly paranoid character, so he might not want to Risk someone ratting him out to the enemy if he can’t trust them or if they aren’t as neutral as they seem to be.

so ! with all that in mind I think that it’s a valid take to argue that technoblade’s actions could’ve been considered abusive whether he realized it or not, but I also think that it’s a valid take to say that it might not’ve been the intention of the roleplayers at the time and that some of the details that can be used to come to the conclusion that technoblade was abusive were tinged by cc!techno’s humor and him not thinking through the implications of tommy’s current arc. both takes make sense within the context of what we’ve been presented, we just need to make the space for both within overall analysis.

#dream smp #technoblade #tommyinnit #technoblade critical #c!technoblade critical #meta #long post #don't neg me about not putting this in the main tag it will not stop me #every time someone pulls that I add the main character tag more confidently

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clusterbuck · 3 years

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once bitten, twice shy

(3.5k, rated T, complete; asexual!eddie) read it on ao3

@911week day 5: "can you keep a secret?" + comfort

Eddie is fifteen the first time he thinks maybe he’s not like everyone else. It’s around the time his friends start discovering girls, and when Eddie listens to them talking it sounds like a foreign language. He’s misplaced his dictionary, can’t parse their intonation. Half the things they’re saying make no sense to him. He tries to join the conversations, but the words don’t come easy; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

It feels like the change happens overnight, like one day they’re trading Pokémon cards and the next day everyone’s comparing notes on first kisses and a base system that Eddie doesn’t quite understand.

And for a while, he wonders if maybe the reason he feels so out of place is that when his gaze wanders in class, it doesn’t land on a girl. The few times he lets himself look, he’s looking at Joseph McNamara. But then he listens to his sisters talking about boys, and their dialect is just as unfamiliar. When Eddie thinks about Joseph, he doesn’t think of the things his sisters talk about: the size of his hands, the shape of his ass, what his lips would feel like.

Instead, he thinks about sitting together under the wide Texas sky, tracing constellations with his fingertips. He thinks about going to the diner down the street and ordering milkshakes, switching glasses halfway through so they can both try both flavours. He thinks about having someone to call, in those moments where he doesn’t have anything specific to say, just wants to hear someone else’s voice at the other end of the line.

Eddie makes the mistake of bringing it up with his friends once—just the once. They laugh him off, and call him names that make him glad he didn’t mention who he wants all of this with. The next day Eddie sees Benny at the diner with his girlfriend, grinning like a fool into their shared milkshake, and he understands a little more: it’s okay to want the things he wants, but it’s not okay to talk about them. It’s not tough. It’s not manly. It’s just not what you do.

There are times he thinks maybe everyone else is just making it up. That maybe this is how it works, and everyone else is just better clued into that fact. But then he watches Hugo literally trip over his own feet when Stacy Connors walks past in a skirt that’s an inch or two short of the school dress code, and it certainly looks genuine enough.

Eddie doesn’t get it, so—that must mean there’s some big secret of the universe that he’s just not privy to. Or maybe there’s something wrong with him, something broken deep inside of him in the place where other people feel these things.

It starts seeping into every area of his life. Football practice gets awkward, because locker-room talk is a cliché for a reason, and Eddie lives in fear of someone calling him out for not participating. Going to parties stops being fun, because all anyone wants to do is play spin the bottle, and Eddie mostly finds the idea of kissing half-strangers stressful.

And at home, his parents start asking about girls, and he tries to find a way to say that he’s not all too interested without implying that he’s interested in boys. Because even if he didn’t like Joseph in the way you’re supposed to like people—with the urges and the desires and the constantly trying to remove each other's clothes—he’s pretty sure his parents would have things to say about it. And he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t be positive.

In the middle of senior year he meets Shannon, and his first reaction is relief. Because he likes her—still not the way the world is telling him he’s supposed to, but enough that he works up the nerve to ask her to the movies. Enough that when she says yes, he’s willing to try.

Their relationship, at first, consists of fumbling and faltering, as Eddie tries to figure out what he’s supposed to do. He plays it off as nerves, as shyness, and she must like him, because she lets him get away with it.

The few times Eddie’s tried to talk to anyone about all of this—always vague, always open-ended, always asking for a friend—everyone’s said the same thing. It’s instinctive. Just do what feels good. Give in to the moment.

But whatever moment is supposed to take over never comes, and every time Eddie’s with Shannon he’s hyperaware of his limbs, his face, constantly worrying about what he should be doing and how he should be reacting.

Sometimes he thinks it means he and Shannon just aren’t compatible, but that isn’t the truth. Because he loves her, as much as he thinks it’s possible for him to love anyone. He loves spending time with her, loves being near her. She’s the first person he wants to tell about anything that happens to him, and the last person he wants to talk to every night.

He just doesn’t know if it’s enough.

Prom approaches, and Eddie knows what’s expected of him. His friends haven’t stopped talking about it for weeks, and there’s a buzz of nervous energy in the hallway at school, because, well, prom night is cliché for a reason.

His friends are counting the days, and Eddie’s thinking about how weird it is that they’ve all booked rooms at the same hotel. Having sex for the first time is supposed to be this magical, life-changing experience, but—how magical can it really be when the captain of his football team is doing the exact same thing on the other side of the undoubtedly paper-thin wall?

Prom goes by in a blur, and Eddie spends the whole time stressing. A part of him hopes that some long-buried instinct is going to rise up and take over, but most of him knows that it won’t.

Sex is… fine? Well. It’s awkward and it’s messy and there aren’t any instincts taking over and telling him what to do, and he can’t get out of his head enough to figure out how they’re supposed to fit together. But Shannon just laughs—gently, kindly, lovingly—and reaches over to help him.

Eddie’s still not sure he’s doing it right, but it must be close enough because after prom, it’s all Shannon wants to do. Well, not all, but it sure feels like that sometimes, like she doesn’t want to see him without the prospect of sex.

He just… doesn’t really get it. This is what everyone is so obsessed with? It just doesn’t seem worth it. He’s heard people complaining about how long they’ve had to go without, but he’s pretty sure he could never have sex again and it wouldn’t be an issue for him.

But Shannon definitely wants to keep having sex, and Eddie wants to keep seeing Shannon. So he approaches it like he would a new sport, figures out the best moves and the plays that work. And Shannon is into it, but Eddie never stops feeling like he’s just going through the motions.

By the end of the summer, he enlists in the Army. It’s a combination of a lot of factors—like the fact that he has no idea what he wants to do with his life—but in the back of his mind is the ugly truth: by going eight thousand miles away, he can keep loving Shannon without having to pretend to enjoy sex all the time.

He’s running away.

And it works, for a while, and then it doesn’t; but by the time it doesn’t, he has Christopher. And he loves his son more than life itself, would lay his own life down for Christopher’s in a heartbeat. Christopher is his first priority in life, no questions asked.

But there’s no denying that there’s a convenience that comes with being a single father, and it is this: no one expects him to date. No one questions the fact that all he wants to do is focus on raising his son to be the best person he can be.

And for the first time he can remember, Eddie is happy with what he has. He’s happy with this life where he raises his son and goes to work and saves lives, and does it all with a team of people he comes to think of as family, a team of people for whom he is enough from the moment he shows up. A best friend who slides into his life so effortlessly, sometimes Eddie can’t tell where he ends and where Buck begins.

So when Ana Flores smiles at him, that day on the street when he’s treating her burn, and he feels a little flicker of something that could maybe evolve into something more, he feels confident to ask her out.

He doesn’t really know what he’s expecting—that it’s going to be different, this time? That maybe with Ana, it won’t matter as much?

As it turns out, neither of those are true. Things with Ana start off great, but by the time they’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months she’s getting frustrated, and he knows it.

Every time he goes over to her place, he tells himself tonight is the night he’s going to do it. Tonight is the night he’s going to sleep with Ana. But he can never quite make himself do it, can never bring himself to make the first move. Ana tries, a few times, but despite Eddie’s best efforts he thinks it’s probably pretty clear he isn’t into it.

When Ana breaks up with him, she doesn’t say it’s because of the sex—or the glaring lack thereof—but they both know it is. And he’s right back where he started, wondering what the hell is so wrong with him that he can’t just get it together enough to do this one thing.

He’s been sitting on this by himself for as long as he can remember, but it’s like Ana dislodges something inside him, and he’s suddenly desperate to talk to somebody—anybody—about it. And he doesn’t plan on it happening exactly like this, but it’s as good a time as any.

He’s sitting in a booth in the corner of a bar with Hen when it all comes tumbling out. “Can I tell you a secret?” he mumbles, mostly in the direction of the tabletop.

“Sure,” Hen says, and, inexplicably, glances across the bar to where Buck is playing a very intense round of darts with Chimney.

“I don’t get sex,” Eddie says, and keeps his eyes trained on the table, because he doesn’t want to see Hen’s reaction.

“Uh, you have a child,” Hen says. “Please tell me you don’t need me to explain how that happened.”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “Obviously, I understand how it works, mechanically,” he says. “I just… I don’t know, I don’t get why everyone’s so obsessed with it. Like, I think I could probably go my entire life without having sex again, and it wouldn’t be an issue.” He takes a deep breath. “I think that’s why Ana broke up with me.”

He looks up, finally, and Hen’s expression softens. She looks at him, considering, and then says something that is going to change his life, even if he doesn’t know it yet. “Have you ever looked into asexuality?”

Eddie hasn’t, but the word bounces around his head, non-stop like those beginning-of-the-millennium screensavers, and it’s not long before he’s making his excuses to the team, saying he has to get home to Christopher and ducking out.

Once he’s put Christopher to bed he sits at his laptop, fingers poised on the keys. Something as simple as a google search shouldn’t feel this momentous, but it’s a full minute before he can bring himself to hit search.

Eddie learns some things that night, about the world and at himself, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this free and this weighed down all at once. Free, because he’s lost count of how many years he’s spent thinking there is something broken inside of him, and now it turns out… there isn’t? It’s almost too much to process.

Weighed down, because it doesn’t change the fact that Ana didn’t want him, and he can’t imagine that anyone else will, either. He’s always been afraid that his disinterest in sex makes him unlovable, and he doesn’t really think having a label for it is going to help all that much.

Still, he goes to work the next day and pulls Hen aside, tells her she was right on the money, and she gives him a long hug.

Hen seems to think that this is good news, so Eddie tries to look at it that way. He tries to settle into his new identity, to be as proud of it as he is of being bi, but where bisexuality is a worn sweater, soft and comforting, asexuality is an overstarched coat, scratchy and poking at him in all the wrong places.

And he’s sure there’s a lot to unpack there, but instead, he hides the metaphorical suitcase under a bed in the attic of his mind.

And the thing is—it would probably be fine if all of this was abstract, a thought exercise the way it was for so many years between Shannon and Ana. Whether or not he is somehow fundamentally unlovable wouldn’t matter, if not for the fact that somehow, without him noticing, Buck has burrowed his way under his skin, and Eddie never wants him to leave.

He isn’t sure when it happens, only knows that he notices very abruptly one Tuesday morning, and after that, there isn’t a moment that goes by that he isn’t aware.

He’s almost painfully aware, in fact, after that. Aware of how every room feels a little brighter when Buck walks in, how his house feels empty when Buck isn’t there. How he turns to Buck when he sees something funny, even when he’s alone, because he’s just grown so used to the idea that Buck is always beside him, and how hollow he feels when there’s no one there.

Sometimes Buck looks at him, and Eddie gets the feeling that all he’d have to do is say the word, and Buck would be his. That the line they’re balancing on is razor-thin, and the slightest breeze would be enough to blow them over.

And god, if that thought doesn’t terrify him. Because Buck doesn’t know, and Eddie wants to keep it that way. He wants to stay in this limbo forever, teetering on the fence, full of potential but never actually taking the plunge, because if he never tries it can never go wrong. If he never tries, he’ll never have to put Buck in a position where he’ll have to lie and say he’s fine with it—of course he would say that, because he’s Buck, but how could he actually be okay with it?

But as long as Eddie lives in the maybe, he can sustain himself on the potential of it all.

Buck, apparently, can’t.

The night starts out like any other. They’re at Eddie’s, drinking beer on the couch and watching a movie to unwind after a long shift. Christopher is at Abuela’s for a sleepover, so the house is quieter than usual. Eddie’s sitting just a little too close to Buck, trying to leech his warmth and memorise the feel of their arms pressed together, so that one day when everything falls apart he’ll have something to look back on.

Out of nowhere, Buck pauses the movie and turns to face Eddie. Eddie’s heart starts racing, because he knows down to his bones that whatever happens next, it’s going to change everything.

And he’s really not convinced it’s going to change for the better.

“Are we ever going to talk about it?” Buck asks.

“Talk about what?” Eddie says, as if he doesn’t know. He’s pretty sure his voice gives him away.

“The fact that I’m in love with you,” Buck says, casual like he’s giving the weather report and not turning Eddie’s entire world upside down. “And I think you might be in love with me, too.”

For a moment, the only thing Eddie can hear is the rushing of his own blood. For a moment, he’s so tempted to just go with it, throw himself in whole-heartedly and damn the broken pieces of him, he’ll deal with that fallout when it comes.

But the rational part of him knows this approach has cost him his previous relationships, and that he can’t risk that happening with Buck. He has to cut this off at the root, now, before it has a chance to take hold and bloom. It’s the only way he’s going to survive it.

So he turns away, tries to make himself smaller. “You don’t want that,” he tells Buck. “You don’t want me.”

“Pretty sure I do, though.”

Eddie sighs. “No, Buck, it’s—we don’t want the same things. I can’t give you what you want.”

“And what is it that you think I want?” Buck doesn’t sound angry, mostly just curious.

“Sex,” Eddie makes himself say. “Buck, I’m asexual.”

There’s a beat, and Eddie doesn’t dare look at Buck. Then, carefully, Buck asks, “Wait, is that the big bad thing you’re so worried about?”

“It hasn’t exactly worked out well for me in the past,” Eddie mutters, still looking anywhere else except at Buck.

“Yeah, well, I’m not a fucking fool,” Buck says, and reaches out so he can turn Eddie to face him. Eddie goes reluctantly, looking down for as long as possible until Buck tilts his chin up so he can’t escape. “Eddie, I love you. Not the abstract concept of potentially having sex with you.”

“You say that now,” Eddie mutters. “But you’re going to get sick of it. Everyone does.”

“I’m not everyone,” Buck says, shrugging. “Look, nothing has to change, if that’s what you want, except I get to love you out loud.”

And it’s so guileless, so sincere and so entirely Buck, that Eddie lets himself consider believing it.

“Maybe… some things could change,” he murmurs, and reaches out to take Buck’s hand. Buck squeezes, quick and firm, and another piece of his resolve crumbles.

“Whatever you want,” Buck says softly.

“I want to love you,” Eddie admits. “I’m just—scared. I didn’t think this was something I could have.”

“But you can,” Buck says. “I promise you, you can.”

And the part of Eddie is still skeptical, still afraid that this is going to crash and burn spectacularly. But resisting is hard, and giving in and falling into Buck’s embrace is so, so easy.

They lie silently for a while, half on top of each other on Eddie’s couch. Buck’s face is pressed into the crook of Eddie’s neck, and his fingers are tracing soft patterns on Eddie’s arms. It’s comforting, and loving, and Eddie realises he can’t remember the last time someone touched him like this, without any expectation that it’s just a lead-up to something else.

“Wait, okay, but just so we’re on the same page,” Buck says eventually, “How do you feel about kissing? Because I feel like I’ve heard different things.”

“Uh,” Eddie says. “Kind of neutral, I guess?” Then he realises what Buck said. “Wait, who have you heard things from?”

Beneath him, Buck laughs. “I grew up queer on the internet. You’re not the first ace I’ve met.”

“We could… try it, maybe?” Eddie says, and wills himself not to blush like a seventh-grader on his first date.

“Do you actually want to?” Buck asks. “Or are you just saying that because I brought it up?”

“I actually want to, Buck, jesus,” Eddie says, shifting around until he’s facing Buck.

“I’m just trying to respect your boundaries!” Buck protests.

“Right now I’m trying to discover my boundaries.”

“Okay,” Buck says, “We can do that.” And then he’s reaching up, one hand gently cupping Eddie’s cheek, until their lips meet in a careful kiss. Eddie lets Buck take the lead, gives up all control to him. And it’s—he still doesn’t get all the hype, but he doesn’t hate it.

There are thoughts taking root in the back of his mind, thoughts about how maybe part of his general aversion has been the heavy weight of expectation that has been thrown at him from every direction. But that isn’t something he’s going to be able to think through in one night, and now isn’t the time, anyway.

Instead, he pulls back and grins at Buck. “Slightly above neutral now,” he says. “Open to further testing.”

“I told you,” Buck says, and the look in his eyes is so fond it threatens to take Eddie’s breath away. “Whatever you want.”

#911week2021 #buddie fic #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 fic #asexual eddie diaz #is something that can be so personal #honestly idk if this is really gonna resonate with a lot of people but that's okay #shush emma #emma writes #emma is ace

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evanescentjasmine · 4 years

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I’m going to talk about a little pet peeve of mine with regard to portrayal of poc in fic, TMA specifically since that’s what I mostly read and write for.

I suppose I should first start by saying that, of course, poc are not a monolith, and I’m certain there are other poc who have many different views on this issue. And also this post is in no way meant to demonise, shame, or otherwise discourage people from writing poc in fic if they’re doing something differently. This is just a thing I’ve been noodling on for a while and have had several interesting conversations with friends about, and now that I think I’ve figured out why I have this pet peeve, I figured I’d gather my thoughts into a post.

As a result of the fact we have no canonical racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds for our main TMA cast, we’ve ended up with many diverse headcanons, and it’s absolutely lovely to see. I’m all for more diversity and I’m always delighted to see people’s headcanons.

However, what often happens is I’ll be reading a fic and plodding along in a character’s PoV and get mention of their skin colour. And nothing else. I find this, personally, extremely jarring. In a short one-shot it makes sense, because you’re usually touching on one scenario and then dipping out. Likewise if the fic is in a different setting, is cracky, or is told from someone else’s PoV, that’s all fine. But if I’m reading a serious long-fic close in the poc’s head and...nothing? That’s just bizarre to me.

Your heritage, culture, religion, and background, all of those affect how you view the world, and how the world views you in return. How people treat you, how you carry yourself, what you’re conscious of, all of that shifts. And the weird thing is that many writers are aware of this when it comes to characters being ace or trans or neurodivergent—and I’m genuinely pleased by that, don’t get me wrong. Nothing has made my ace self happier than the casual aceness in TMA fics that often resonates so well with my experience. But just as gender, orientation, and neurodivergence change how a character interacts with their world, so do race, ethnicity, and religion.

As a child, I spent a couple of years in England while my mother was getting her degree. Though I started using Arabic less and less, my mother still spoke to me almost exclusively in Arabic at home. We still ate romy cheese and molokhia and the right kind of rice, though we missed out on other things. She managed to get an Egyptian channel on TV somehow, which means I still grew up with different cultural touchstones and make pop-culture references that I can’t share with my non-Arabic-speaking friends. She also became friends with just about every Egyptian in her university, so for those years I had a bevy of unrelated Uncles and Aunties from cities all over Egypt, banding together to go on outings or celebrate our holidays.

As an adult who sometimes travels abroad solo, and as a fair-skinned Arab who’s fluent in English, usually in a Western country the most I’ll get is puzzled people trying to parse my accent and convinced someone in my family came from somewhere. When they hear my name, though, that shifts. I get things like surprise, passive-aggressive digs at my home region, weird questions, insistence I don’t look Egyptian (which, what does that even mean?) or the ever-popular, ever-irritating: Oh, your English is so good!

At airports, with my Egyptian passport, it’s less benign. I am very commonly taken aside for extra security, all of which I expect and am prepared for, and which always confuses foreign friends who insisted beforehand that surely they wouldn’t pull me aside. Unspoken is the fact I, y’know, don’t look like what they imagine a terrorist would. But I’m Arab and that’s how it goes, despite my, er, more “Western” leaning presentation.

This would be an entirely different story if I were hijabi, or had darker skin, or a more pronounced accent. I am aware I’m absolutely awash with privilege. Likewise, it would be different if I had a non-Arab name and passport.

So it’s slightly baffling to me as to why a Jon who is Pakistani or Indian or Arab and/or Black British would go through life the exact same way a white British character would.

Now, I understand that race and ethnicity can be very fraught, and that many writers don’t want to step on toes or get things wrong or feel it isn’t their place to explore these things, and certainly I don’t think it’s a person’s place to explore The Struggles of X Background unless they also share said background. I’m not saying a fic should portray racism and microaggressions either (and if they do, please take care and tag them appropriately), but that past experiences of them would affect a character. A fic doesn’t have to be about the Arab Experience With Racism (™) to mention that, say, an Arab Jon headed to the airport in S3 for his world tour would have been very conscious to be as put together as he could, given the circumstances, and have all his things in order.

And there’s so much more to us besides. What stories did your character grow up with? What language was spoken at home? Do they also speak it? If not, how do they feel about that? What are their comfort foods? Their family traditions? The things they do without thinking? The obscure pop-culture opinions they can’t even begin to explain? (Ask me about the crossover between Egyptian political comedy and cosmic horror sometime…)

I’m not saying you’ll always get it right. Hell, I’m not saying I always get it right either. I’m sure someone can read one of my fics and be like, “nope, this isn’t true to me!” And that’s okay. The important thing, for me, is trying.

Because here’s the thing.

I want you to imagine reading a fic where I, a born and raised Egyptian, wrote white characters in, say, a suburb in the US as though they shared my personal experiences. It’s a multi-generational household, people of the same gender greet with a kiss on each cheek, lunch is the main meal, adults only move out when they get married, every older person they meet is Auntie or Uncle, every bathroom has a bidet, there’s a backdrop of Muslim assumptions and views of morality, and the characters discuss their Eid plans because, well, everyone celebrates Eid, obviously.

Weird, right?

So why is this normal the other way around?

Have you ever stopped to wonder why white (and often, especially American) experiences are considered the default? The universal inoffensive base on which the rest is built?

Yes, I understand that writers are trying to be inoffensive and respectful of other backgrounds. But actually, I find the usual method of having the only difference be their skin colour or features pretty reductive. We’re more than just a paint job or a sprinkle of flavour to add on top of the default. Many of us have fundamentally different life experiences and ignoring this contributes to that assumption of your experience being universal.

Yes, fic is supposed to be for fun and maybe you don’t want to have to think about all this, and I get that completely. I have all the respect in the world for writers who tag their TMA fics as an American AU, or who don’t mention anyone’s races. I get it. But when you have characters without a canonical race and you give them one, you’re making a decision, and I want you to think about it.

Yes, this is a lot of research, but the internet is full of people talking about themselves and their experiences. Read their articles, read their blogs, read their twitter threads, watch their videos, see what they have to say and use it as a jumping-off point. I’m really fond of the Writing With Color blog, so if you’re not sure where to start I’d recommend giving them a look.

Because writers outside of the Anglosphere already do this research in order to write in most fandoms. Writers of colour already put themselves in your shoes to write white characters. And frankly, given the amount of care that many white writers put into researching Britishisms, I don’t see why this can’t extend to other cultural differences as well.

#the magnus archives #tma #poc in fanfic #representation #tw racism #long post

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inventors-fair · 2 years

Text

Chiasmus Commentary: In Verse

So, my brain might be weird. I’ve accepted that, of course, but I’ve also accepted that I should have some fun with it while we’re together. That means words and wordplay! Chiasmus is something that I picked up on from Latin lessons in high-school, and I didn’t retain much, but I retained a lot of creative writing lessons. Putting words together is hard. How does one write flavor text? How does the brain examine these situations? And I’ll be honest, I know there’s SOME construction there, but I’ve never been able to fully process the why.

What I AM processing is that not everyone processes like I do. Take two words, switch ‘em around, find the place to put them—it’s hard to do right but there’s so much to work with there. In my head. The linguistic approach to cards isn’t as necessary when you’re on a strictly mechanical base, even if you do need to learn the ins and outs of how cards work, but that’s a language in itself. Nuances of poetry are difficult.

And they become even more apparent when English isn’t someone’s first language. At this point, I’m afraid that these contests might be limiting. So, for feedback, the question is: could it have been explained better, or is this something that’s simply easier in concept than practice? I would argue that this isn’t something unique to English, partially because it originates from non-English sources, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was an apparent barrier there. I do genuinely want feedback here—were the printed examples not enough? Was the concept explained poorly by me? What resources could have made this an easier contest?

Or maybe I’m overthinking things. Obviously, it’s hard to tell. I don’t feel that things weren’t sufficiently explained. I also am massively unaware of my own shortcomings because of cognitive biases. This is why it’s important to have community feedback. The only addition to make is that, well, not every contest is going to be accessible on either a mechanical OR a language-based level. Magic is hard. Writing is hard. We’re not ‘elite gamers’ or anything, but skill-based creation does require honing your skills. Perhaps examination can help with improving some relative writing skills. And that’s why commentary is important: it gives that specific feedback. Even more important is the feedback from you folks to ensure that, well, we can have fun while learning.

So let’s go, shall we?

@col-seaker-of-the-memeist-legion — Rust War-witch

I think for most of these cards, I want to start with the language side of things before moving to mechanics. On that note, this is something to watch out for: redundancy. One of the goals of this poetic device is to take words that would otherwise be redundant and phrase them in a way that gives them a different meaning and/or creates a different emotional response. This flavor text doesn’t reach that goal; as far as I can tell, unless you’re using ‘rotting’ in a pseudo-British slang term, I don’t feel the switch. Even then, who is saying this? The witch? If so, what are their weapons? Small note, “witch” in the name needs to be capitalized.

I’d go off of what the rules text is trying to tell me about the card here, but… I really can’t temper this well. This card is unintelligible. “When one or more artifact creatures equipped creature(s) attack,” is something I literally cannot parse. “place” in the second sentence is the wrong tense, and I think that this is saying you can use GB to destroy equipment and make deathtouch counters, but I don’t know. I want to assume the best out of this card. I strongly recommend you run this by someone next time, and/or proofread all your cards. The Discord server is the place where folks are more than willing to help.

@dimestoretajic — Precinct Lockdown

So I want this card to exist, and I absolutely need it to be more highly costed. A two-mana tax that’s card advantage and control is absolutely broken in limited, even if it’s on combat damage and not attacking. This card is miserable to play against no matter how you cost it, so the least you can do is to make it at a reasonable level. Don’t get me wrong, like I said—I love it. That’s the part that’s most easily fixable and the most easily comment-on-able, because that’s an easy fix.

The flavor text is trickier. Again, this is a moment where I like the general turn of phrase that’s being twisted here, but it’s hard to give it any other context. “Sign here” is great, I do love that. But it does sound weirdly condescending and stilted to me, because “We’re gonna fight for our rights!” isn’t as substantial without context, and yeah, the Azorius are rights-takers galore, but I’m not sold on someone just outright saying that phrase here; in the text, it feels to me less like it’s a natural line of dialog and more like it’s there to make the chiasmus happen, if that makes sense. I don’t get a sense of payoff and/or surprise. The attribution is something that you definitely needed to leave off. I’m envisioning this card in a variety of contexts—a protester being hauled off could make for a chilling and guttural reminder of what being in a prison state is like, but also, a tired guard hauling off a belligerent goblin could be a humorous version. I tried looking up the names; are these descendants/ancestors of Domri and That One Vedalken? That’s clever, but look—I don’t need that information. I need character A arresting character B in a twist. Shift+enter for different quotes, by the way—Canyon Minotaur, Hedron Archive, etc.

@hypexion — Shriekchasm Phoenix

This might not have been the exact contest to make a new mechanic, but it’s not necessarily a bad one. I think that the late-game implications and the power level of cards that could utilize this being greater would be interesting, getting away from a win-more but also, y’know, kinda leaning into the win-more. If something’s killing your opponent’s creatures, then you’re in for a good time no matter what, y’know? I think it’s perfectly serviceable. The card’s good too. Just delete the spaces around the emdash and it’ll be fine.

The flavor text has one thing that I feel is easel fixable and one thing that’s not as easy. The last part I would change to “hates the living” to keep with the tonal qualities that are somewhat disrupted by “those who” and the syllabic stressors that can go up and down in dactyls. I don’t want to overexplain things, but replace it and read it out loud with an emphasis and stress and it’ll be more apparent. The thing that’s not as easily fixed is the contextualization of “hate,” because that hate doesn’t really change between it. It’s sort of apparent that it hates those who live, and while the ‘living’ does change to make subject and object reversed, the notion isn’t differed enough to me. Still, I can imagine the kind of bird you’re after here and the kind of set where this could be a relevant card. Maybe even beef up the power if you really want to make that mechanic stand out.

@industrialsalad — One-Stone Elemental

There was a bit of contested opining about this card when it was being discussed, some who loved the text and some who weren’t as in love with it. Personally, the card is solid, and the quote is pretty humorous to read and really clever, and that attribution does not do anything for me whatsoever. So, I’m working through the decision-making process, and I still don’t know why that choice was made. What does that tell us about the world? What does it express that the wordplay above doesn’t already? If this was attributed to a goblin poet, or a regional expression, or a field guide, or even if the quote was telling a story (“When the roc rocked the rock, the rock rocked the roc”) and I love it a million times better.

It’s meta, I think, or at least self-aware, and self-awareness without reflection divorces meaning from audience participation. It subtracts; by nature, flavor text is meant to create additional emphasis. If you have to tell your readers that your joke is a joke, then the “get it?” nuance that was left subtle is no longer present at all. Chiasmus is about delivery. The delivery of rocks and rocking, the living rock, the double meaning between “gentle disturbance” and “hitting with a boulder,” the magic of a living pissed-off stone creature—all of that works.

I’m stalling here at my computer, because all the other commentary I can think of is about saying “here’s why this specific thing on this flavor text doesn’t work” and I’m aware that that’s not constructive at all. Talking about that aspect is difficult because it’s a singular glaring issue. I suppose the only place to end on is just to say that you should rely on your own awareness as well as your audience to let your clever writing have its own space to breathe. Let that goodness through. And while you’re at it, you can make this a 4/3 as well, maybe. And shift+enter.

@kamoegoi — God-Pharaoh’s Scorn

I kinda sense the Bolas-ness in the flavor text. Isn’t he fun to write for? Bolas and his gods are pretty at odds, though, considering the last gods I remember him interacting with didn’t have to be forgiving. It’s a question of where he’s coming from; is he emulating what a divinity is supposed to be, how gods are supposed to act? I’m not sure who he would be emulating, then, because he’s not really one to emulate so much as he is a trend-setter of divine aspects. And the fact that he’s probably crushed a few divinities in his day makes me wonder, who would be be talking about? I think what’s throwing me off the most is this notion that he would consider the behavior of others beings and/or what he can learn from them. It’s not antithetical but it’s a little hard to understand the exact reasons given the context of his relationships with gods.

The flavor’s worth discussing because the card is pretty rough. Unless the as-fan of enchantment removal and interaction is strong, the ability is either incredibly powerful or totally unremarkable. At the point where you’re at seven mana, if you have control of the board and a high enough life total, you can let things go whenever. If you’re at seven mana and your opponent is playing things right, then you’re already dead no matter what. The activated ability is basically useless against that strong of a standing trigger. Dread comes to mind, except Dread is much more easily dealt with for the time being. In my opinion, this card makes far fewer choices for the board, changing combat in a way that’s not super fun. Dissuading interaction is something that’s hard to do right. I feel that this card could use some work.

@nine-effing-hells — Rapscallion

Man, y’all just want to give me curveballs upon curveballs this week. This card’s really hard to talk about for me. I double-checked because I honestly forgot what allium was, and then, yeah, that makes sense with the name, and my final opinion is that this should be an acorn card. Not silver bordered, but acorn’d. I wasn’t expecting something quite like this, I’ll admit.

This card is mechanically excellent. I don’t think there’s anything else that needs to be said about it on that front. Not good—excellent. Stand-out. Fantastically positioned between Bomat Courier and Gingerbrute with the artifact-sacrifice draw you need to create a shell in so many formats. And I do not like the flavor text a single bit. The base phrase is a good example of how antimetabole works in English, one of the most famous, and it’s famous enough to become cliché. The chiasmus doesn’t exist on this card because it emphasizes the nature of the words; the chiasmus exists because “allium” has the word “all” in it. I wouldn’t hate that on a card where the silliness of how words and phrases work is the emphasis, but it’s not what I was looking for this week. When the humor is based on a reference, not on the merits of its own existence, the strengths are undermined to whatever degree your audience does or does not find references substantial.

@piccadilly-blue — Solar Cleansing (JUDGE PICK)

Is Leonid a character? All I found when I looked that up was a bunch of Italian cards. I think it was Italian. “Leonin” already being a word in Magic makes this card a little hard to parse down there. I’m okay with this text, even if I don’t really understand what exactly is going on. I’m assuming that the Divergence is some great cataclysmic event, or—no, nooo, okay, right, so there’s this literal division in lifeforms, and this character has to decide whether they lose their identity and “die” that way or literally perish on the other side. You know what? That is clever. I actually could work through an entire story with that. It’s a little awkward to read because you split it into two sentences, but whatever, that’s a minor quibble. The major quibble is the relationship with the chiasmus, because, well, it doesn’t feel like anything is switched; “death of Leonid” and “Leonid’s death” isn’t thematically crossed in any way. Like, yeah, there’s the different deaths, but the duality is in the subtext of death’s definition and not the relationship between words, y’dig?

I think that the design space for reverse is so, so narrow. Again, contests where expressive flavor connection is key are NOT the absolute best places to throw new mechanics at the wall. This particular batch of spaghetti does have some sticking strands, though. Today in particular my body and mind are beat to smithereens and I can only think of a couple weird examples where you’d have an amazing use for this card. That said, I’m sure they exist, and tis is a brewer’s dream. Fine. I like it. I’ll grouse to the moon and back about nitpickiness with new concepts and whatever, but how can I say no to thoughtfulness.

@real-aspen-hours — Wandering Hellkite

“You can take the X out of Y” is, to the best of my internet search capability, over 100 years old, and much like anyone who tries to come into Jund, has been beaten to death. It’s a great example of antimetabole, but we both know that it’s not the first time it’s been used. Surprisingly, I can’t find it on any specific Magic card. Is it a matter of time? Maybe, and I wouldn’t be shocked, because it’s a template. The phrase can have so much replaced in the middle of it that there’s no room for new concepts to grow. Because of that, I honestly don’t have much to talk about on the writing front, and in a contest of flavor, that’s a huge blow.

As for the card, though, it took me a second. The fact that it’s not a triggered ability is, I’m aware, intentional to get those counters, and wow that’s something that’s actually never been done before. I believe that the wording needs to be changed a little bit to match, of all things, Devouring Hellion from WAR. “As ~ ETB, target player sacrifices a creature. If they do,” etc. Even though it’s not a may ability, there’s that stopgate to make sure that things don’t happen unless they’re supposed to, and there’s a chance that, say, a digital client might get confused if the Hellkite tries to do something that it can’t do (e.g. targeting a player who can’t sacrifice, targeting a player with no creatures). A value of 0 is different than a value that can’t be fulfilled. This is getting increasingly hard to explain and hope I’m doing it right. Anyway, no, that ability is really cool because it can’t be responded to, which might be frustrating depending on the environment? I like it. I can see why it might be preferable to have it just be a regular ETB.

@scavenger98 — Exploratory Application

I will be upfront: I’m not smart enough to know the exact wording for what you’d have to do to make this card word. Does it work as-is? I don’t think that it necessarily does, but I don’t know why. I grok it, and it’s also giving me a headache. I guess there’s a lot to be said for how you stack them, when you’re drawing the cards in relation to the resolution of this spell, what to do with illegal targets and copying, etc. I feel that as cool as this card seems, it’s a bit of a mess and asking for messes to be made. It’s a fine concept and I think I understand the nature of how you’re looking into the double major of Lorehold and Prismari ideas (or Jeskai, or just in general that borderline in colors, sure). Honestly, I don’t have the headspace to dig into what this would properly look like, or what precedent there is. That part’s beyond me because this is, admittedly, interesting and almost completely unexplored territory.

What I can say is that the flavor text doesn’t capture that same exploration at all. Besides being a run-on sentence, I don’t feel any substance behind it. Just a strict reversal does technically fit the contest, sure. Whatever you’re trying to make it mean, though, does not come across. The vagueness of the words can’t fulfill conceptual grandness when the relationship between subject and object has to be teased apart in order to understand what the subject even is even doing here. Philosophical concepts are fine to use with the right grounding. These words mimic the concepts but no, I don’t think this translates.

@shakeszx — Impossible Possibilities

I am declaring war on that semicolon in between “Void” and “and.” Sigh. Grammar aside, this is a simple example where the chiasmus doesn’t really do anything revolutionary by itself, but the flavor text sounds good and the reversal exists so that’s about all I can complain about on that front. What’s happening exactly? Jace is in some alternate universe (alternate Multiverse? … Sorry, anyway) where he’s maybe mind-melding or walking or doing a bunch of weird things with the planar void. Sure! I think I get that, and it’s a new intriguing dimension.

With that in mind, I think we need to cut back on what this card is trying to do. That mana cost is, to begin with, an absolute mess. I understand the flavorful intent, but it just doesn’t look good or play well. I think… Well, this might be even worse, but one consideration is C/U hybrid mana. Jace and the planar void (which, by the way, isn’t capitalized, but to be fair it’s debatable) can have their relationship without that hard line. Maybe opinions have changed about weird mana costs post-Strixhaven; I’m still not budging from this one. The first ability should be two, IIRC, one to exile, one to look. Bane Alley Broker is precedent. The last ability is totally fine. I suppose my main question would be how an environment that supports these themes would look like. Still, if they did it in OTG, they can do it wherever this is. Maybe.

@snugz — Necromantic Cycle

I love the word ‘beget’ as much as the next poet. In terms of cards, lines, philosophy, and zombie-themed musings, I think I’ve seen enough of it to have my fill. It’s a perfectly fine line, and you used chiasmus reasonably, and it reads like it should on the card. As much as it works, it’s something that we’ve read before. The name’s a little on the nose, honestly, and I wonder how it could have read with a little more nuance and a bit of art direction. Heck, even abstractly, a little placement outside of the norm could have been neato. As it stands? I’d be more interested in seeing what lies beyond the philosophical surface, or what other place there might be for this kind of reference to be present.

You don’t have to change too much about the card, though, because this card is hella rad. Simple, yes, fun, absolutely, great in tribal, you know it—it’s the whole rotting package. You can run it in your Zombie build, you can run it in a sacrificial deck, or you can make it a control card for limited with very little other support. If this had been in MID/VOW, people would have been gushing about it and complaining in equal measure. It gives resources without being infinite, and the death… You know, maybe it could be a 2 cost activation? Just in case, because there’s some crazy cheap death happening here. Decayed zombies aren’t (physically) strong, but you do want to be careful with this thing. It would have to be played to be seen. One day, I swear, we do need to get an Inventor’s Fair cube off the ground, and I want this card in there.

@starch255 — Rem Karolus, Inquisition’s Fury (JUDGE PICK)

I had to go back over my notes, but yeah, this is a poetically great card that doesn’t technically fit what we were looking for in the flavor text. Antimetabole and chiasmus both don’t use antonyms. I used antimetabole mostly in examples and explanations because that’s what sounds the more understandable to most people’s ears. Chiasmus doesn’t have to use the same exact words, but the concepts have to be synonymous. The specific concepts here in the B/C words (“sown”/”reap” “righteous”/”wicked”) with the the sonic connection in the A words (“violence”/”vengeance”) is different. It is, unfortunately, really good poetry. Seriously, in terms of analytical writing, I love this flavor text. It’s a stand-alone best-of that you should hang onto. Maybe shift the passive voice for the stress symmetry: “When the wicked sow violence, the righteous reap vengeance.” Or you could make it a quote! “As the wicked sow violence, we shall reap vengeance.” Not the exact same, but the point is, the base is awesome.

Card’s great too! Shorten the name, definitely, but I think he’s an awesome limited bomb. Boom, blast, punish pinging, hurt first strike, get dealt damage, come back and slam into them. The cost is where it wants to be for this sort of effect, so that checks out, and the rest of the body is totally fine. That said…this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this character on a card from you, right? I had to check: it was the Innistrad Multicolor contest back last October! Different card, same dude. I’m not dinging you at all for it! I’m just curious if it’s a known thing or if your subconscious is riding a gryff somewhere.

@wolkemesser — Empowering Wind

I’m glad you’re finding art that you like for your cards. I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that extended-art promo cards have smaller text boxes and less room for flavor text, and so on a card with three lines of rules text, the space for flavor is substantially smaller. This card could look so much better without that choice. Additionally, there’s no reason why the damage and counters couldn’t be in the same paragraph. The two choices aren’t reliant on each other, and any counter shenanigans that make tokens won’t go on the stack until the resolution of this spell, so there’s no reason for them to be apart. The card itself isn’t too bad once those things are fixed, though. It’s really powerful and a boardwipe to boot.

Took me a little bit to find the winds that you were talking about, though, and through it all…what exactly do the winds have to do with Radha? I looked through what I could about the Prophecy storyline and what the winds of ascension are. The repetition of “winds” and “Keld barely make for a chiasmatic concept, and the additional story divergence could be interesting here if a) you depicted Radha or something Radha-like in the art, b) the card was reconfigured in a more legible manner without the aesthetic squishing, and c) if the second sentence about Radha expelling wind didn’t have flatulent connotations. Sometime in the next period of contest submissions, I suggest you consider art direction and see where that gets you. I like your aesthetic eye but on cards like this it gets in the way of what your cards are depicting.

There we have it. Tune in tomorrow for a new dawn. -- @abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #chiasmus contest #commentary #group commentary #inventor's fair

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cristalconnors · 3 years

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TOP 20 SONGS OF 2020

20. “BELOW THE CLAVICLE”- EARTHEATER

“The meaning hasn’t come up yet. It’s still under the surface below the clavicle.”

It isn’t just Alexandra Drewchin’s ear splitting soprano when she hits that impossibly high B, practically shrieking out the “cle” syllable of clavicle, though that’s undoubtedly when I first knew that Eartheater’s avant folk was for me- it’s also the cinematic, lush strings, both bowed and plucked (is that acoustic guitar or harp? I genuinely can’t tell), deepening and complicating the sonic texture of Drewchin’s study of parsing through emotions you aren’t ready to make sense of yet.

19. “PUSSY TALK”- CITY GIRLS, FT. DOJA CAT

“This pussy so ghetto, this pussy speak ebonics”

“WAP”’s funnier, classless Irish twin, though it’s important to note “Pussy Talk” came first. Yung Miami and JT enlist Doja Cat to expound on everything their pussies deserve and will absolutely settle for nothing less than. And why should they when they’re spitting out verses this inspiredly hilarious with such confidence and flow?

18. “LICK IN HEAVEN”- JESSY LANZA

“Once I’m spinning, I can’t stop spinning...”

Jessy Lanza is talking about losing your cool, letting your emotions get the best of you and lashing out instead of letting cooler heads prevail, but when that earworm of a chorus hits- “once I’m spinning, I can’t stop spinning” - I can’t stop spinning. I’m that woman on the single art, a wine mom lost in the delirium of the dance floor and in Lanza’s hypnotic, fragmented rhythms.

17. “GASLIGHTER”- THE CHICKS

“Boy, you know exactly what you did on my boat!”

“Gaslighter” finds Natalie Ames and her Chicks at their most simultaneously ruthless and ebullient, ripping Ames’s ex-husband Adrian Pasdar a new asshole and ratcheting up the righteous anger of “Goodbye Earl” tenfold, channeling it into a glorious wall of sound in what might be their most rousing, emotionally resonant chorus in their storied career.

16. “HANNAH SUN”- LOMELDA

“Hannah do no harm...”

While “Hannah Sun” begins as an exquisitely observed rumination on grappling with long-distance, pining for someone who’s a continent away, it gradually becomes clear that Hannah Read blames herself for putting the distance between her and the subject of her longing, and that the distance isn’t strictly literal. Skittering synths (or is that distorted flute?) complicate and enrich the texture of the song, allowing it to build organically and stunningly towards a heartbreaking plea to herself- “Hannah, do no harm.”

15. “FIRE”- WAXAHATCHEE

“And when I turn back around will you drain me back out? Will you let me believe that I broke through?”

When I’d drive back and forth between Dallas and Austin over and over again when I was in college, I’d often get off I-35 past Waco and take the back roads through towns I’d never heard of, the sun setting spectacularly behind the titular hills of Hill Country that were beginning to roll out in earnest. I think about that a lot when listening to “Fire,” a song dripping in rural Americana that was, unsurprisingly, inspired by a road trip. We’ve probably all been Katie Crutchfield as she crossed the bridge into West Memphis- alone in the car, awed by the simple beauty of the American countryside, making speeches to ourselves about our past mistakes and figuring out a way forward.

14. “3AM”- HAIM

“On the screen and in my jeans, just make me feel good.”

On an album full of genre departures and decidedly darker themes than we’ve typically heard from Haim in their near decade of syncopated bubblegum pop rock, “3AM” stands out not only as their most effective stab at pastiche, slipping into the trappings of contemporary R&B with shocking ease and gusto, but also as their most unabashedly fun track in their entire oeuvre. “I think you can hear the amount of joy and laughs we had making this song” Alana Haim tells Apple Music, and you absolutely can.

13. “QADIR”- NICK HAKIM

“We’re sinking down a hole without thinking about our loved ones who might be shrinking...”

I often wonder if I’m putting enough effort into maintaining my relationships with friends I don’t see regularly, who live several time zones away, living their own lives while I live mine. When the thought of sustaining simple correspondence becomes overwhelming, it’s easy for months to go by before you realize you haven’t spoken to one of your closest friends. “QADIR” plays less like a eulogy for a friend gone too soon (though of course it is that) than a plea to the listener to put in the work. It’s worth it. You never know when it’ll be too late.

12. “LEVITATING”- DUA LIPA

“Glitter in the sky, glitter in our eyes shining just the way we are.”

Just a few bars of that delightfully bouncy, extra-terrestrial beat is enough to launch me into space. It’s so refreshing to hear a song that remembers that pop is supposed to be joyful and is best when it’s a bit silly. When discussing this track with Apple Music, Dua Lipa cites Austin Powers as inspiration, elaborating that “if I do a video for this, Mike Meyers has to be in it.” Can’t you just see them together, performing a farcical pas de deux of seduction like the spiritual successor to “Beautiful Stranger?”

11. “RIQUIQUI”- ARCA

“Love in the face of fear! Fear in the face of God!”

Arca’s made a career of harnessing chaos and somehow making sense of it. On an album that finds her embracing more traditional, accessible song structures, “Riquiqui” is a reminder that even when working within an AB structure, she’s still breaking rules left and right and having a blast doing it. She’s also never sounded so ferociously empowered in either her femininity or in her Venezuelan identity, rattling off local colloquialisms with affection and verve without a second thought as to who’s going to understand it.

10. “FANTASY”- AGAINST ALL LOGIC

“I think about you all the time...”

Or, the musical embodiment of this gif:

When Nicolas Jaar’s tormented synths and crunching beats give way to Beyoncé’s unmistakable alto, it is indeed quite the shock. But should it be? Even if 2017-2019 finds him ditching the dancefloor in favor of more severe, unforgiving soundscapes, his already varied career has shown us nothing’s off limits to him. So why not reinvent Beyoncé’s iconic “Baby Boy” into an industrial, vaguely sinister certified bop that arguably surpasses the original?

9. “PEOPLE, I’VE BEEN SAD”- CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS

“If you disappear, then I’m disappearing, too.”

“People, I’ve been sad” plays out with the vulnerability and intimacy of a tumblr text post you put out in the middle of the night, only to hastily delete later when it gets no notes. It forgoes flowery language in favor of just getting to the point. “I’ve been sad.” Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier blows up this deceptively simple sentiment with richly layered textures and a big screen gloss not to offer any remedies but instead to offer solidarity. We’re all in this hell together.

8. “DESCRIBE”- PERFUME GENIUS

“Can you just find him for me?”

Mike Hadreas has never sounded so hopeless. Utilizing harsh, rattling guitar that would make Kevin Shields swoon, he conveys the experience of being so estranged from happiness and joy that you need to rely on others to describe the sensation to you. But how, when exploring darker textures than he ever has before, does he make despondency sound so divine?

7. “4 AMERICAN DOLLARS”- U.S. GIRLS

“No matter how much you get to have, you will still die and that’s the only thing.”

Meg Remy picks up where she left off on “4 American Dollars,” reviving the subversive pastiche she mastered on In a Poem Unlimited, this time harnessing the power of funk to dismantle the fallacies we’re taught about the virtues of capitalism. Heavy stuff, but Remy makes it less didactic than joyous, ensuring the listener will be singing “I don’t believe in pennies and nickels and dimes and dollars and pesos and pounds and rupees and yen and rubles” until they start to wonder if maybe they shouldn’t, either.

6. “STUPID LOVE”- LADY GAGA

“I freak out, I freak out, I freak out, I freak out!”

Due to a healthy spirit of contrarianism mixed with a touch of internalized homophobia and genuine bafflement at her universal appeal and praise, I was a proud Lady Gaga hater for as long as she’d been a cultural entity. I just didn’t get her at all and loved that about myself. Annoying, I know. 2020 was the year I was finally ready to let that all go. Just before the world fell apart in March, I was out at Flaming Saddles (RIP) with friends the night this song came out and by the sixteenth time it played, I understood why it was inducing such hysteria. This was a cultural shift. After a frustrating near-decade of Gaga subverting expectations so thoroughly that she was actively working against her strengths and sabotaging her cultural ubiquity in the process, coupled with the most frightening era of political upheaval in our lifetimes, she was finally ready to save us and be Lady Gaga again. Booming synth, drag sensibilities, absurd thematic conceits- all was right in the world. For the first time in a long time, people had something to be hopeful about, and as I danced that night, I felt that hope, too.

5. “SHELLFISH MADEMOISELLE”- RÓISÍN MURPHY

“How dare you sentence me to a lifetime without dancing?”

As soon as that bass starts (the funkiest bassline in the history of music?) it’s like Róisín Murphy’s snake charming oboe, coaxing even the most stalwart curmudgeon onto the dancefloor and keeping them there, dancing frantically and involuntarily like the citizens of Strasbourg in 1518, trying their best to keep up with Murphy who isn’t even breaking a sweat, commanding the masses with a sultry remove, beckoning you closer, pulling you inexorably deeper into the mass of gyrating bodies and whispering in your ear “come and have a dance with yer mum.”

4. “PARTY 4 U”- CHARLI XCX

“I only threw this party for you...”

As PC Music / Bubblegum Bass / whatever you want to call it enters its second decade, Charli XCX proves not only that there’s still new textures to explore within it, but also that no one can exploit its artifice to get down to emotional truths like she can. How can she make something this slick sound so vulnerable? “I only threw this party for you” she croons over and over again over glorious syncopated synths that build exquisitely, reaching their climax only to immediately fall away, until it’s just her and her trusty autotune, pleading with the subject of the song to just come to the damn party. But they won’t, of course. They never do, do they?

3. “WAP”- CARDI B, FT. MEGAN THEE STALLION

“I want you to touch that lil’ dangly thing that swing in the back of my throat!”

Sometimes you just immediately know you’re living through a significant cultural moment. No, not COVID. I’m talking about the experience of hearing Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s instant classic “WAP” for the first time, a titanic meeting of the minds that finds both of them at the apex of their cultural influence and at their most undeniable. Can the argument be made that these two aren’t the two best rappers in the game right now? How could you hear this inspiredly filthy sex positive juggernaut, where Cardi and Megan are trading the sickest verses of their careers, and not think these two deserve the world?

2. “KEROSENE!”- YVES TUMOR

“I can be your baby in real life, sugar. I can live in your dreams.”

If the 2010′s were all about the pop-ification of all music, trading in live instrumentation in favor of polished synths, 2020 forcefully announced the return of the electric guitar when Yves Tumor and Diana Gordon’s back and forth lustfully submissive declarations of desire suddenly gave way to that nasty guitar rip lifted from Uriah Heep’s “Weep in Silence” to announce yet another cultural shift in a year chock full of them- rock and roll was, indeed, here to stay.

1. “I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME”- FIONA APPLE

“I move with the trees in the breeze, I know that time is elastic.”

We live and we learn. Years spent soul searching and on self-discovery shape us into better, smarter people, progressively knowing and understanding ourselves and the world around us more and more clearly, but Fiona Apple knows that none of that can quell the ferocious desire to be loved by someone. By anyone. By you, whoever that is. We can know that time is elastic and that when we’re gone all our particles will disband and disperse and then we’ll be back in the pulse, and we can know that none of this stuff actually matters, but still- we want, we want, we want.

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evakuality · 3 years

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Hanna, episode 9

1. Hanna is such a sweet character. Occasionally it’s easy to forget that, but even in the face of her own hurt and justifiable anger at Matteo and what he’s done, as soon as she realises he’s going through some shit, she not only doesn’t pursue her anger but asks Jonas to hug him for her and give him best wishes. Honestly, I love her so so so much. I don’t actually much recall the way this scene goes in Eva’s season, but Eva always felt tougher (? I think that’s what I mean?) somehow. I mean, I know Hanna doesn’t let it lie forever (good for her!) but she has so much compassion in this particular moment.

2. I adore that Hanna is wearing this ‘stronger together; shirt when she’s talking with Jule. This is always such a great moment - the girls realising that actually they need to stop tearing each other up and actually place blame where it needs to go. This scene with Jule is also much nicer/better than the previous one. I really do think that’s because the stuff with Leonie was SO emotional that the Jule thing had no time to breathe. But here it’s a) much longer and b) is given the space it deserves, and Hanna is being so proactive in such a positive way. Love this for her. Also, look at this gorgeous yellow surrounding this scene. It’s so warm and calm and it calls back to those soft colours of the early season, but it’s so much stronger and brighter. I like that we’re kind of getting a return to Hanna’s true self (if that’s even a thing) but it’s not so washed out and pale. My girl is getting stronger.

3. Hanna and Jonas. Awkwaaarrrrddddd. But also this hallway/stairway they meet in is so cool. I love how many different textures this place has. Also, it’s a bit.... hmmmm. I don’t know, it feel so artificial the way they are giving us this information about Matteo’s family. It could arguably have come out (the stuff about his mother anyway) more organically earlier in the season. It’s good to know, but the execution isn’t the best. I do like the bit with Sam and Jonas. I mean, not ‘like’ as in approve, but like as in I like the way it’s executed. This is so real for this age, and it really felt like it could be genuine. I also really really like how Hanna’s immediate reaction is to try to settle Jonas, to give him the same attention she used to, and how natural that also feels. But of course, he’s still in pain and so it doesn’t work. But it does show just how well connected they were - and lends weight to what Hanna was saying about how she has genuine feelings for Jonas. It wasn’t just about stealing a boyfriend. I really do like the way these clips bleed into each other, bits from one informing what comes into another.

4. I do like these little girl squad moments. And while Kiki really does get on my nerves, it’s nice that they are all thinking about and concerned about her. It’s nice when they support each other. Still. She still really hasn’t grown up, and is still chasing that whole popularity thing at any cost. She’s at risk of losing genuine friends, and of seriously damaging her health. But we know that, and it sucks what’s going to be coming for her.

5. Ahh, the karaoke is so much fun!! I really really do love this whole bit. It reminds me of ho0w much fun we used to have doing it. Though I was never good enough at singing or confident (or drunk!) enough to do it by myself, so full kudos to everyone here who did it.

6. The thing with Matteo is also super well done. The acting here, from both of them, is really great. Her voice changes when she asks if he’s better and when she says he’s trustworthy you can see on his face that he knows that she’s caught him before she even has to say anything. This is always a moment I like in these scenes - when the Isak character is so close to the verge of admitting that he likes the Jonas character, and the Eva character goes in an entirely wrong direction. And it is really well done here. His little face when he realises she hasn’t got it, and the absolute irritation in her voice when she says that’s no reason to be doing all this fucked up shit. I’ve seen people saying they don’t like the way Matteo is acted in this season, but it’s very much consistent with how he develops later, particularly given the changes in his life situation rn. It’s a lot in the face and the body language, and I guess again because Matteo is subtly different to Isak you might see that as ‘bad’ but I really like it. I like that they’re two different characters who happen to go through a similar life path (and I did go over that at length in this series of posts starting here). The acting really has been great this season imo. Even when it was finding its feet early on, Hanna always resonated and rang true and it’s still true here. And the really nice thing is, you can see here that they are and have been good friends. So when she tells him she misses him in s3, you can believe it. You can see it here, how upsetting this is for her.

7. I’d forgotten just how much is in this clip. It’s roughly half of the entire episode! And oh. Kiki. Again, I think the acting is so superb, from all of them. But Lea infuses so much into Kiki, that as irritating and hard headed and just plain horrible as she can be sometimes, you can’t help but feel so much for her. This moment is awful. You can feel how lost and unhappy she is, and while the other characters are bemused (Amira’s face when she grabs the mic is amazing), I can’t help but feel so sad for her. I also find the way Druck moves PoVs occasionally to be a strange choice. But it does allow us to get this little insight into Mia before we’re with her fulltime (and ick. Alex needs to learn boundaries and back off - how does he even have her number? Do we find that out? I don’t remember).

8. The whole thing with Hanna and Jonas is so painful, from the wistful looks between the two of them, to the scene together and how that all plays out, and I really like that the way it’s shot is so awkward and just a bit ‘off. The fact that Jonas is singing a Matteo song (to Matteo, no less), and then ends up singing it to Hanna. Then they’re not properly framed in the shot at the end, and it almost feels designed to make it uncomfortable. They clearly have a great connection, but at the same time nothing has been talked about and so everything is just subtly ‘wrong’ and that’s why this whole bit works for me. It’s all off, kind of difficult to parse, and leaves the episode in this place where things are not really right. They’re not right with Mia and Kiki and they’re certainly not right with Hanna and Jonas.

This is such a difficult episode in so many ways. You can see why it’s called ‘crashes’ - so many things are crashing down for so many people. So much is packed into this last clip too, that it must have been really intense when it aired. And so we’re close to the end - one to go. Which is a bit sad because I really really am going to miss this revisit of Hanna. I’d forgotten just how much I love her because it’s been far too long since I watched her.

#druck #og druck #hanna episode 9

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hex6rcist · 4 years

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I would like to second your sentiment about the confession bit for Kenpachi's fluff alphabet needing it's own fic~ it's so cute 💞💞💞 Consider it requested in whatever capacity you'd like to write it! The thought of Ukitake and Shunsui helping him parse out his feelings is so delightful!

Wow this was super fun to write but it got pretty long so I threw in a read more. I hope you like it! I used fem pronouns because I noticed that's your preference. I hope that's okay.

Kenpachi Love Confession

She was feisty that one. It was exactly why she’d caught his eye. It was rare to find firecrackers like y/n in the 2nd division. Sui-Feng expected her inferiors to be the pinnacle of grace and restraint. That’s what brought her around to the 11th so frequently. For a short amount of time Kenpachi had considered trying to snake her away from the 2nd and bring her under his command. However he scrapped the idea. He wanted something more than a captain/subordinate dynamic. It would feel a bit creepy to him his he got her to join his division and then tried to pursue her. So he let himself be happy with her just hanging around for training sessions.

Watching y/n take down his men was a thrill to him. But it couldn’t compare to the feeling of when they went toe to toe. She fought like she was dancing, lithe and graceful, no doubt due to her training under Sui-Feng. It was in staggering opposition to his own brash fighting style. She’d cavort out of the way of his blade with a gleeful laugh that lit his skin on fire. She always threw him off his game just a little. Kenpachi was pretty sure she’d landed more hits on him than any of his men ever had. Every little graze she left on his body he’d admire later. Firm, large fingers would trace over the feint scar as he laid in bed. Sometimes he’d find his eyes drifting shut and in a brief moment he’d imagine it was y/n’s fingers insteaed. Kenpachi’s eyes snapped open and he stared up at the ceiling. He was hit pretty hard and he knew it. The feared Kenpachi Zaraki fawning over a beautiful girl. It was almost laughable. He had to do something about this.

He spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to pull this off. He’s not a big romantic gestures kind of guy. But would y/n even want that? Would she even want him? Sure he was muscular and tough but was he... Attractive? Kenpachi had never even considered the thought. His life in the Rukongai was harsh, leaving was no time for courting or romance. as embarrassing as it was he was kind of inexperienced in this matter. That’s when he finally got an idea. Though he’d really have to swallow his pride on this one. This was how he found himself sitting on Shunsui Kyoraku’s veranda next to Jushiro Ukitake.

The two men sipped on their tea while Kenpachi looked down at his with mild distaste. He still took small samples from his cup as to not be rude. He had learned some manners after all and he was here for help. Jushrio’s smile was genuine and soft, he was pleasantly surprised by Kenpachi’s request for advice. Shunsui however had a big shit eating grin. “So y/n huh?” He chuckled softly. “She is something.” Jushiro odded in agreement, “A lovely young lady.” “Very lovely.” Shunsui swooned playfully. Kenpachi was beginning to worry he might of made a mistake, but before he can back out Jushiro fixed him with a serious look. “We’re more than happy to help you out in this matter and we’re glad you came to us for advice.” “You know I think This is a conversation that calls for sake.” Shunsui stood up and moved to retrieve a bottle. Finally one of them was speaking his language. Kepachi set his tea aside. “So Kenpachi, did you have any ideas on how to approach y/n with your feelings?” The large man pinched the bridge of his nose. _‘Don’t be rude. They’re trying to help.’ _“Can’t say I do. I’m not even sure how she’d react. I’m not the most,” he cleared his throat “eligible guy around.” Shunsui returned with 2 cups of sake and some more tea for Jushiro. “Nonsense, don’t be hard on yourself. Y/n Isn’t the average lady who’d be intimidated by you. She’s tough and already comfortable around you. I don’t think you have to worry about intimidating her.” He handed a cup to Kenpachi and he gladly accepted it, drinking deeply. “I guess that’s true...” Jushiro held up a finger, signaling that he’d thought of an idea. “The Sakura Festival is coming up next week, perhaps you can invite y/n to come with you. It’s a relaxed event so you won’t feel uncomfortable and y/n won’t think anything of you asking her to go because everyone attends.” Shunsui hummed mulling over his friend’s suggestion. “That might be a little too, uh, what’s the word...” “Flowery.” Kenpachi interjected. The 1st Division captain nodded in agreement. “Yeah, flowery.” A small silence fell amongst the men as they pondered other options. “Well what do you and y/n usually do in the time you spent together?” Shunsui inquired. “Fight. Drink. Talk.” The men nodded. “Talk about what exactly?” Jushiro chimed in. “Stuff...” The elder captains sighed in unison. He wasn’t making this easy was he? Kenpachi took another long drink to gather up the nerve to elaborate. He really wasn’t too good with this whole sharing his feelings thing. But if he wanted to pursue a relationship he had to get used to it. “We swap stories... Some about her time in academy or my time in Rukongai**.” **They were finally getting somewhere. “Well then maybe that’s what you should do then.” The Sotaicho smiled at Kenpachi. “It might not be the most romantic thing in the world but it would be the most genuine.” He held up his cup of sake. “A nice drink and when you’re sharing stories just tell her how you feel.” Jushiro nodded in agreement a smile blooming on his face as well. It sounded simple enough. Kenpachi downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp. “Just tell her huh? Yeah. I can do that.”

The next day when Kenpachi woke up late into the afternoon and his head was pounding. He’d stayed at Shusui’s well into the night going drink for drink with him. He ran a large hand down his face before dressing and emerging from his quarters. He could already hear a ruckus going on in the direction of the training grounds. Walking out onto the engawa he saw y/n was already here. She was covers in a thin sheen of sweat, her shihakusho clung to her body and her jewel like eyes shoe with glee as her opponent fell. She gestured for him to be removed from her sight before her predatory gaze latched onto the 11th Division’s groggy captain. With the crook of her finger he was summoned before her to fight. The hairs on his neck were already standing on end. He really was a slave to her beck and call and he had a suspicion that she maybe knew.

Dusk had come before either of them knew it. They often lost track of time while locked in combat. Too caught up in the thrill of it all. By now the cool wind had dried the sweat on their skin leaving them cold and uncomfortable. Most of the division gave up on getting their training in and went about business as usual. Y/n and Kenpachi’s Zanpakuto were locked together in a stalemate. Their eyes burned into each other. Finally he used the last of his strength to push and y/n fell. She laughed giddily and stared up at the darkened sky, trying to catch her breath. The captain entered her line of sight and offered a hand to pull her to her feet. She gladly accepted and bowed to the winner who in turn bowed back. “You know you’re better than most of my men right?” She let out a loud laugh. “I’ve noticed.”

The two had settled on the engawa side by side. Kenpachi had brought out a bottle of sake to share. Y/n was leaning back on her banged up elbows, one knee bent and the other hanging lazily off the edge of the platform. Even caked in dirt and blood she was beautiful. Scratch that it was when she was the most beautiful. He handed her off a choko full of alcohol and she drank from it greedily. His eyes lingered on her neck, watching as she swallowed. He licked his lips and tore his gaze away. The night was moving far faster then Kenpachi would have liked. His Division was slowly falling quiet and soon it felt like they were the only two still up in the whole Seireitei. At some point she’d gotten cold and inched closer to his side. He could feel her warmth through his clothing and he was sure she could feel his as well. They talked, and laughed, and drank like they would any other night. Only Kenpachi knew this one would be different.

“Y/n, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” Clear eyes turned to look up at the captain but he couldn’t meet her gaze. “What have we been doing?.” He shook his head, eyes fixed in the sky above them. “About something specific.” It was time to rip the bandaid off. He knew the worst she could say was no, but it was going to sting more than the slice of her blade. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you.” He peeked over to see her cheeks had flushed a light pink. He figured that had to be a good sign. Right? They finally locked eyes. “And what do you think of me?” She leaned in involuntarily. Here goes nothing. “That I like you... A lot.” He wanted to punch himself. Kenpachi felt like a child with a schoolyard crush saying it like that. He really should have- His train of thought was derailed by a quiet chuckle. Y/n got up on her knees and leaned into him. “I like you too.” A little smirk crossed her lips. She was going to say more but her words were cut off. A large hand had found the back of her head and pulled y/n into a deep kiss that made her head spin. Her hands clutched onto the front of his haori and his hands slowly found their way down to her hips, pulling the smaller girl into his lap. His kiss was full of passion and longing that she’d never known before. It made her let out a tiny moan. The sound shot a bolt of lightning though his whole body. When they parted they were both gasping for air. She licked her lips and smirked softly. “A lot.”

#kenpachi zaraki #kenpachi #kenpachi x reader #bleach imagines #bleach scenarios

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moonbittern · 3 years

Text

i’m really excited about this fic and i want to post it right away but i also want to let it sit for a day or two and go back over it to make sure it’s where i want it to be, so i am compromising with myself and posting it here for now lol

just under 1k words, modern au, echo and fives talking about autism, 100% unedited. i’m experimenting with using style to express certain things which was a lot of fun to play with!

echo is bone-tired, everything sucked out of him, leaving him light and empty and calm. everything feels pleasantly distant: the murmur of the TV he doesn't think either of them is watching anymore, the scratch of the couch beneath him, the specific way his hip joints are flexing that brings his legs up to his chest and holds them there. his earlier bout of crying has passed, but it's left him feeling all new and tender - if emotions had skin, his would be newly-healed and sensitive. thin-skinned, really, but it doesn't feel like a bad thing, not in the moment.

fives is talking.

did you really think i'd react badly?

echo lets his head loll against the back of the couch, tries to make eye contact, decides better of it. he uses the time it takes to get comfortable to think of a good response, or maybe it's the getting comfortable that lets him respond.

-i don't know. i didn't want you to, but i couldn't stop guessing. always prepared, i guess.

i still can't believe you kept a lid on this for a year.

-i wanted to be sure. i knew there was something, but i wanted to be sure it was autism.

you could have said you weren't sure. i would've understood.

echo appreciates the sentiment.

-yeah. i just - it's hard. i feel...vulnerable, i guess, talking about it. it's fragile. i don't want it to break.

-all of this, it explains a lot.

yeah? like what?

it takes a moment for echo to parse the question. his first instinct is to bristle, but he stops himself from reacting and thinks about it. he thinks it's a genuine question - not a challenge. he looks at fives again, lightning-fast, and then away. he knows his brother. it's genuine.

-well, there's a lot. uh, i like it when things are predictable. unexpected change stresses me out. like the other day when you wanted to take another route to work-

that was - what, a few weeks ago?

-i don't know.

you could've said no. it wasn't that big of a deal.

-i know. i guess - even knowing why, it feels like a stupid thing to care about. i don't want to think that way - that's why i want to talk to you about these things - but at the same time it feels - i don't need to be that controlling.

it's confusing, is what it is. his instincts pull him in multiple directions and they show no signs of letting up.

i wouldn't call it that. if it matters to you - it doesn't really matter to me, is what i'm trying to say.

-yeah. it does matter to me. it wasn't the end of the world but it - it made a difference. that's all. and it was unexpected, in the middle of the drive and not - you know - if you'd asked before we left that would've been easier. i had an image in my head of how the drive was going to go, and then it was different, and that was a problem. i lived with it, but it was a problem.

that shaky-uncertain feeling, that knowing that he should be somewhere else, that he should have taken that turn a mile back. knowing, at the same time, that it didn't matter, that it wouldn't make them late, that they would still arrive at their destination. that the destination would not be unchanged because the journey was.

knowing that it would be.

yeah. i can do that - tell you if i want to change a plan. sometimes things happen, though.

-i know they do. just. i want you to know that it's different for me, when that happens. it matters. as long as we're on the same page, that's better than, than having to keep that hidden.

okay. i can remember that. anything else you want to be on the same page about?

-oh. uh, a lot, too much to remember right now - i can try to make a list later - what i really want you to know is that i, um, i've been - my whole life feels like a performance. i've been trying so hard to be normal, without even really realizing it - and even now that i know it's hard to break the habit - but i want to try to break it. and i might seem different because of that. i might do things you're not used to me doing. i might get some things wrong. i don't - i've realized i don't know myself as well as i thought i did, and i guess that means no one really does, and i don't want you to be taken off-guard if i...if i'm not myself. not who you think i am.

echo knows who he is - he's echo - but he doesn't always know who echo is. sometimes that distinction makes perfect sense to him, and other times he can't quite grasp it. like everything else in his life, maybe.

-i need to figure some things out and i don't know how long it's going to be, it could be the rest of my life, and - and i'm ready to start including other people. if that's what you want.

yeah. yeah, i do, i really do. i think this'll be good for you. i - i'm happy for you.

fives looks happy/is smiling.

-yeah. me too. you know, some things might not be a surprise. i didn't grow out of repeating things so much as i learned that other people didn't like it. i'd like to - it'll be hard, figuring out what's me and what's everyone else, and i don't know where i'll be at the end of all this - if there is an end - but. i don't know. it'll be an experience.

you'll always be my brother. no matter what.

-yeah. i - yeah. thank you. thank you so much.

what are brothers for?

-what are brothers for?

#i'm not gonna stick this in any main tags but you are welcome to reblog this if you want #for such a short piece i really do feel like i labored over it lol #it didn't even take long to write but i put a lot into it yknow #nd echo

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elizabethemerald · 3 years

Text

Water Heals; Chap 4

AO3

Today was another of Katara’s visits. Azula felt like she was getting better at telling the days apart, and keeping track of the weeks as they passed. Katara had said that she would bring a guest this week. It would be the first time she had seen someone other than Katara, her brother, or the staff since she was admitted to the hospital. Azula had promised to be on her very best behaviour.

She smiled her own private smile when the door to her room opened to show Katara, though she kept her face otherwise schooled. As a princess of the Fire Nation she wouldn’t let herself show all of her real emotions to outsiders like Katara’s guest.

Behind Katara entered her brother, Sokka. Katara has talked quite a lot about her brother and what he had gotten up to recently. It would be interesting to meet him face to face, and for once, not on the other side of a conflict.

It certainly seemed like peace was suiting him well. Sokka still had the build of a swordsman, though now he was really hitting his growth spurt, he was going to be tall, possibly even taller than Zuko. He had a slightly nervous air about him, though he was masking it well. He smiled a wide, easy smile upon seeing Azula. Her spine stiffened for a moment, fearing he was smiling because of her bonds. Before she could snap at his insolence he clapped Katara on the shoulder and took a seat. Perhaps he was just in a jovial mood?

Katara took the seat next to her brother, returning his smile. Azula felt a hint of color rise in her cheeks. Katara’s smile never failed to bring some warmth to her face, and set Salmonflies fluttering in her stomach. For some reason Sokka’s smile widened, his earlier nervousness dissipating.

“So Azula!” He said. Azula was suspicious of his friendliness, but she supposed Katara had brought him along first for a reason. “Katara’s told me a lot about her visits with you. How have you been liking them?”

Katara had side eyed him at this question, but Azula felt their mutual companion was a safe enough conversation topic.

“Her visits continue to be the highlight of my time here. Even at my most dower Katara’s smile brightens my day.” Azula said stiffly, as if she were giving a report to the war council. Her eyes flicked to Katara, and she couldn't help but notice a faint blush dusting Katara’s cheeks, her eyes down cast as she fiddled with her hair. She decided to quickly change the subject, not trusting Sokka not to stray too near sensitive topics. “And how about yourself? Katara has kept me informed on some of the inventions you have made.”

“Oh she has!” Sokka immediately pulled a sketch book out of his satchel. Azula leaned forward as close as she could to look at his drawings. Some of the sketches seemed almost infantile in quality, but as she was able to parse the information she could see he was trying to figure out a way to trap a fire bender’s lightning, so it could be used to power other inventions. “You see, if I can make this work we can create other things that could wildly improve life for the people of the world. I’m just trying to find some way to replicate the lake of Chi a fire bender uses to control and redirect lightning. Though its really hard to get a hold of some lightning to test my theories.”

“It should not be that hard to get.” Azula said with a smirk. “Would you like a free sample?”

Before he could respond Azula took a deep breath, pulling on her own lake of Chi and spat out a flash of lightning. Sokka jumped back with a yelp as the lightning flashed wildly around the room. Without the use of her hands to control and direct the lightning, she didn’t have any where near the control she usually did. She released the rest of her breath as a short pant of blue flame. Lightning bending was far harder than fire bending without hands.

Katara jumped up, water flying to her hand from the pitcher in the room. Azula couldn’t help her flinch, still battling the fear that Katara was going to turn against her one day and try to kill her. Instead of forming a whip the water around her hands glowed with a strange light. Azula watched, her eyes wide in awe, as Katara used the water to heal any slight mark Sokka may have received.

“That was rude Azula!” Katara said. Azula couldn’t help but feel a rush of guilt. She had promised Katara she would be on her best behaviour. She couldn’t stand the idea that Katara would take this as a sign to stop visiting her.

“I’m sorry Katara.” Azula said, her eyes down cast.

Katara was about to reply in her usual huff, but Sokka, now settled from his surprise, spoke.

“You know Azula, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize to literally anyone. I didn’t think you knew how to.” HIs words, heavy with sarcasm were at least a game Azula knew how to play.

“I prefer to reserve my apologies for those who mean the most to me. Not water tribe peasants like yourself.” Azula said, putting her nose up in mock disdain, though she met Katara’s gaze, attempting a small joke based on their first conversation. Katara’s smile showed that the joke had landed, and again there was a dusting of a blush across her cheeks. “Though I guess since the war’s over, I should make right with those I can. Is there anything I should apologize to you for?”

“Suki.”

With that single name, Azula felt her hard won control slipping. The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. She had taken great pleasure in ensuring she was imprisoned and in making sure her incarceration was as unpleasant as possible.

“Do you know what happened to her?” Azula asked, her voice sounding lifeless and mechanical even in her own ears. All she could remember was defeating Suki and shipping her off.

“Yeah, me and Zuko broke her out of the Boiling Rock.” Sokka said. His voice sounded like it was coming from a cave.

The Boiling Rock. The start of her fall. She had tried to kill her brother again there. Mai and Ty Lee had turned against her there. Not only had they shown their true colors but she had shown hers as well, first by trying to kill them, then by having them arrested. From there she had known that there was no one she could trust. Eventually everyone would betray her. And she deserved it. She was a monster after all.

Azula was fading fast, her grasp on the moment slipping as her mind spiraled into the memories of her many failures. She was only distantly aware of a rapid yet hushed conversation between Sokka and Katara. They were probably discussing how to punish her for imprisoning Suki.

“Did Katara ever tell you about the time I drank cactus juice?” Sokka said. The surprise of the strange sentence shook Azula from her dark spiral.

“Isn’t cactus juice…” She was trying to focus her brain on the bizarre statement.

“Hallucinogenic?” Sokka laughed. His laugh was loud. Different than Katara’s soft laugh. “Oh yeah it is. I spent a few hours absolutely out of my mind. I remember seeing a giant mushroom that I was sure was going to be my friend.”

Azula felt a crooked, broken smile creep up her face at the idea.

“Or there was the time Toph trapped me in a hole in the ground. It felt like I was stuck there for hours. I promised to give up sarcasm and eating meat if I was able to get out. That didn’t last very long.” He said sarcastically.

Her broken smile crept higher on her face, feeling less broken and more natural.

“How about the story when me and Katara got sick, I spent the entire time thinking I was an earthbender! Then guess what the cure was?” He didn’t wait for Azula to guess instead continuing on excitedly. “Sucking on frozen frogs! Aang had to go fetch them while we were resting in our sleeping bags!”

Azula could see Katara’s own smile creeping higher on her face as her brother brought back some pleasant memories from their time traveling the world during the war. Azula could feel her own smile grow, a soft huff coming from her nose at the thought of Katara with a frozen frog on her face.

“Oh or the time we tried to convince those guards that I was an earthbender!” Katara said.

“That was a good one! Especially because that one guard thought that Momo was the earthbender! Not the brightest guard.”

“Can’t forget the whole adventure in the secret tunnel! I thought you would have a handprint on your forehead from facepalming for a week!”

Azula let out a short bark of a laugh. She felt more herself, like her mind was back in her body where it belonged and less like she was going to start sobbing.

“It seems traveling with the Avatar wasn’t all hard work and battles.” Azula said. Her voice still sounded a little flat, but it was coming back to her regular tone.

“It was a lot of work. And there were some things that are going to be in my nightmares for years.” Sokka said, his tone more serious than it had been since he arrived. “But that doesn’t mean it was all bad. Aang’s a fun loving guy. He wouldn’t let us stay to serious for to long.”

“When we first met him, he immediately wanted to go penguin sledding!” Katara said, her smile now her usual full faced and spirit-blessed smile.

The conversation continued, Sokka carrying most of it, for the next hour or so. By the end Azula was exhausted from the social interaction, but she was happy. Sokka had caused her first genuine laugh in what felt like months, though she couldn’t tell exactly how long it had been. Katara had also seemed to enjoy having her brother there. She fell into good hearted bickering so easily with him, her smile brightening up the entire room, causing even more Salmonflies to buzz wildly in her stomach and a warm feeling to fill her chest.

When it was finally time for Sokka and Katara to leave for the day, Azula stopped him. He stood at the door, Katara behind him in the hall looking over his shoulder. It took Azula a few moments to gather her words and force them out.

“Sokka… I’m sorry.” The words felt painful as she pushed them out past the lump in her throat. She wanted to apologize for everything. For the harm she had caused during the war, for the harm her people had caused, even for throwing lightning at him just today, but she couldn’t get all those words. He seemed to understand the enormity of what she apologizing for and gave her a solemn nod. “Please tell Suki...I’m…”

“I will.” He nodded again, that same seriousness from earlier in his voice.

With that the two Water Tribe siblings left. Azula was exhausted. Her body drained like she had fought for the entire afternoon. However her mind felt like it was fully active. They had given her much to think about.

She had been inclined to dismiss Sokka, as a non bender, and as an oaf, he was never the same threat that Katara was. However he had clearly earned his place among the Avatar’s closest. He was cleverer than she had ever given him credit for, and he had the ability, almost uncannily, to switch between lighthearted and serious at a moment’s notice. She would have to think more about him. About his ease in forgiving her. About his inventions and ideas.

Thinking of Sokka was significantly harder considering something else occupied her mind. Katara’s smile. Katara had seen her slipping, had noticed her reaction to the mention of Suki and the Boiling Rock. She had encouraged her brother to joke to offset the tension and help ground her back in her body. Katara had seen her, and seen through her, and some how still visited again and again, and still smiled and laughed with her, not at her, but with her. It was a lot to think about all at once.

#atla katara #atla azula #Avatar The Last Airbender #writing emerald

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wisteria-lodge · 3 years

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snake primary + bird secondary?

i regret having to say this but i’m still not sure what my fucking secondary is.

please help.

okay, i should back up a little. i’ve been pretty aware of my snake primary as a thing since i first got it as my result on the sortinghatchats quiz, and it feels like me (even if sometimes i get called a lion primary by aforementioned quiz). I’m happy and proud to be a snake!

but my secondary… oh god, the only thing i’m sure i’m not is a snake secondary because, while i admire how they can constantly act different around different people without a set reason for it besides it being what they do, i really don’t think i could do that?

like, i roleplay for fun a lot, which is acting a different way than what i, personally, am, but it’s still usually a character i made in a situation that’s been well-defined? and i have no fucking clue where that fits in for lion secondaries? like… no lion secondary in media that i’ve seen has ever been a casual roleplayer or actor.

Well, that sounds a very great deal like an Actor Bird.

…then again, that’s fiction, and this is reality, and honestly i’m probably overthinking this media analysis tool in relation to me, an actual physical person. still bothers me though.

Focusing in on the inherent differences between sorting a fictional creation and real person is a rather Bird move. There’s Bird somewhere in your system, but so far it could be secondary or secondary model.

as i’m trying to get my words and feelings down onto paper, i’m looking at all the other sort me stuff that’s been sent in for you to read and i’m really envying how all these people are able to look outside themselves and stop just. being exactly who they are? well, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it but. i can’t just “describe myself”. i always need other people to do it for me because, while i have a good sense of what i want to be and feel like i am at my core (loyal, protective, emotional, ambitious, creative) those are also like. pretty common ways a person describes themselves?

Honestly, none of that stuff helps me sort you. I want to know about your motivations, decision making, and problem solving process. And maybe your favorite way to have fun. All that personality stuff can point me in the right direction, or confirm a theory, but it’s not what I’m looking for.

honestly i really don’t have a good way to go through all this, at this point i am spewing trains of thought trying to figure out what, if anything, leads anywhere.

You do seem pretty confuzzled, which makes me think it’s possible your secondary is a little burnt.

i guess i do have one major experience which, while it turned out to be a pretty hasty and rash decision which made my friend have to deal with the fall-out, still felt like it was a justified move– even though i cried about doing it afterwards because, again, it made my friend sad and have to apologize to their friend. anyways:

so my friend and i start this server, right? and a person joins, who i realize is a person that my friend had said had hurt them a few months prior. and that gets the protective instinct flaring up. so i go into the third person’s dms, and tell them that i know what they did, and also say, basically, that if they haven’t become a better person since they hurt my friend, i will make their life hell.

and like, i learned an hour or two later that doing that was a pretty terrible idea, and i ended up stressing out a friend of my friend, which. yeah.

Yeah, you’re for sure a Snake primary.

i apologized to the person i effectively threatened, and never talked to them again, which is fair. i did fucking threaten them after all.

I guess this is kind of Lion secondary flavored, but that just be getting that impression because you swear like a sailor. (Don’t worry, I think it’s very charming linguistic quirk.)

and while threatening people is kind of a shit thing to do, if the person had genuinely been harming my friend i wouldn’t feel any guilt about it, yknow?

Yep. Snake.

…i don’t know how to follow that up.

Me neither.

i hope you enjoy parsing this ramble of mine!

Probably bird secondary? Maybe bird secondary model? Lion? How do you solve problems, apart from grudgingly apologizing to people you’ve threatened?

… I guess that means you’re probably not a Badger.

#sortinghatchats #sortme #wisteria sorts #snake primary #bird secondary #lion secondary #submission

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cellard0ors · 3 years

Text

Fic: Into The Night

This was SUPPOSED to be posted around @nekoaimy BD and Halloween, but then LIFE happened.

With my OWN BD coming up, I felt this was still good to post. Might write more to this one day. For now just a one off. Inspired by artwork aimy did, but with the added twist of Halloween costumes - lol.

Ford stands by the punch bowl grousing and feeling like an idiot. The first is because he's being forced to attend a Halloween party he doesn't want to. The second is because he's dressed like a cat.

Okay, not a complete cat. There's no tail, thank god - but a black headband with felt black ears was slapped on to his head and painted black whiskers were slanted on his cheeks - a little black dot on the tip of his nose.

The culprit? One Stanley Pines, worst twin (EVER) extraordinaire. Maybe a bit overdramatic, true, but this is all Stan's fault.

Ford had been minding his own business in their shared room when he'd been ambushed. What started off as a normal wrestling match between brothers resulted in Stan pinning him down, painting Ford up with their Mom's eyeliner and him begging Ford to join him at Rachel McCarthy's party.

Mainly because Stan is now eyeing Rachel after the whole Carla fiasco and why Stan wants to date anyone is beyond him.

...alright, this is not entirely true either. Ford gets why dating might be fun, but considering who he'd like to date, well...

Ford can easily say having six fingers on each hand is the least freakish thing about him. Not that Stan will ever, ever, ever, EVER know that. Nor will anyone else. Ford will take his secret shame to the grave.

Grave. Halloween. How fitting.

Regardless, Stan tossed the cat get-up on him, begged him to go to this thing, and now here Ford stands, everything full circle.

Stan, for his part, seems to be having a grand old time. Their mother's green eyeshadow is powdered all over his face and his hair has been lightly slicked down. Screw bolts have been tacked to either side of his neck to complete the monster ensemble and frankly, Ford worries about what kind of adhesive his twin used to accomplish this.

It wouldn't be the first time Stan got something almost permanently stuck to him. Ford keeps hoping for a last, but knows that will probably never happen...lovable, infuriating fool...

Ford really does need to start thinking seriously about looking into colleges. He's been playing Stan, saying he'll join him on their ship, but he knows that's a recipe for disaster.

Stuck alone on a ship with the object of his forbidden desires? Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Sure, Stan will be sour about the whole thing, but better they part then Ford potentially do something unforgivable.

Like kiss the breath out of the big, handsome, stupid-!

"Bro, what are you doing?"

Ford snaps out of his thoughts as Stan approaches him. He blinks and tries to be normal, "Nothing "

"Exactly. Nothing," Stan throws an arm around him, shakes him amiably, "Come on, join the party! You're next to the punch bowl - grab a drink, mingle, have fun!"

Ford carefully extracts himself from his brother's grip, frowning, "I agreed to come with you, Stanley. Not engage in the festivities. The punch is heavily spiked, there's no one here I wish to talk to, and this is miles from what I would constitute as 'fun'."

“Aw, don’t be like that, Sixer! Loosen up!” Stan pulls a face, bottom jaw jutting out, eyes rolling upwards as he growls, “Frankenstein say party gooood.”

“...you know you’re not Frankenstein right?”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Stan tugs at one of the bolts, “Think I did a pretty good with the costume last minute an’ all...”

“Frankenstein is the name of the main protagonist in the novel, Stanley. The doctor. The creature he creates is not, in point of fact, named Frankenstein.”

Ford once again questions how he can love someone who can give him such a blank face only to follow it up with a raspberry and an eye roll, “Yeah, like anyone past nerds’ll think of that.”

“Are you calling me a nerd?”

“I’ll call you whatever you want if, you know,” he wiggles his eyebrows, “You play it a lil’ cooler.”

Ford scoffs, “And why on earth should I do that?”

“Because you’re bringing people down, man,” Stan whispers this to him as if it’s a terrible secret, “Missy Caldwell told me that Rachel was thinkin’ about busting out some kissin’ games! You know, like Spin the Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven and the like. but then she saw you over here, looking like the kid picked last for dodgeball and it kinda killed the mood!”

Ford looks over to see that Rachel is, indeed, standing with Missy and a large group of girls. They are whispering to one another and looking in his direction. Rachel, in particular, is wearing a sort of judging expression. The fact that Stan would take her concerns over his...

And why shouldn’t he? His thoughts whisper. You’re his brother. You’re supposed to have his back. Be there for him as much as he’s there for you. He wants to kiss Rachel. It’s normal for him to want to kiss Rachel. He can’t know that you want to kiss him. He should NEVER know that. Should never even consider it.

Ford knows his thoughts are correct. They are smart. Logical. Everything he has always vowed himself to be. And yet...

...and yet.

“Look, just...” Stan waves at his face, “Give ‘em a smile. A little sign that you’re fine.”

Ford doesn’t feel much like smiling, but he gives it his best shot. It must be pretty bad, because Stan winces, “Yeesh.”

His lips drop, “No good?”

“You look like you just chugged the kool-aid at a cult meetin’.”

That actually gets a genuine smile, a laugh, and Stan beams, pointing at him, “See? That’s much better!”

Ford shakes his head, “What can I say? You always manage to get a rise out of me.”

The words leave and he feels a whiplash of heat wash over him. Shoot! Was that too suggestive? Apparently not, because Stan’s grin just grows, “That’s my job, bro! Keepin’ you from being too stuck in the mud! Now come on...”

He puts a big arm around Ford’s shoulders and drags him over to the group of girls. Rachel appears much mollified now, as do Missy and the others. They’re all girlish giggles and coquettish smirks and Rachel sends some of the gals to collect the other boys, to set everything in order for a game of Spin the Bottle.

While she does this, Stan drags Ford to one side again, hissing, “Alright, Sixer - now’s the time I need your big brains.”

“Wh-? How-? Why?” Ford stumbles over the questions, because as far as he can tell, they’re all intrinsically linked together. Stan explains, “You can like, tell me the best way to spin the bottle. Use maths and wind velocity and science to tell me how best ta make sure it lands on Rachel.”

“I...” Ford starts, but then someone walks up to them. It’s Becky Gilmore, another girl from Rachel’s pack, and she bats her eyelashes at them as she plays with a strand of her dark hair, “Hi! Hey, uh, can-can I talk to Stanford for a sec?”

“He’s Stanford,” Stan points to him even as Ford says, “I’m Stanford.” Both sound surprised as they give this information, but Becky is unfazed, “Um, yeah - I know. Look, can I just-?”

She sneaks out one slim hand to grab at one of Ford’s wrists, dragging him away from Stan who - clearly thinking this is a good thing - gives his brother a big smile and two thumbs up. Once out of Stan’s earshot, Becky says brightly, “’Key, so, Rachel’s like, all about your brother. Like, he has acne and whatever, but she totally wants to kiss him.”

Ford does his best to parse her words, separating the good from the bad, and doing his oh, so best not to comment on the bad, because it really gets his goat, teeth on edge at the acne remark. But Becky, clueless, just continues on, “I think maybe she’s trying to make Joey jealous, ‘cause I know they broke up about three weeks ago and she’s pretty sure he’s running around with Cheryl Manchino and we all know about Cheryl Manchino-”

(Actually, Ford knows nothing about Cheryl Manchino.)

“-but my point is, we definitely need to get your brother to lock lips with Rachel, but with the way the circle’s looking that might be problematic with you there, not to mention I mean, you’re - I mean, you’re cute and all and totally smart but like, I mean, I would never want to offend you or anything, but, okay - you get what I’m saying, right?”

Ford, amazingly, does get what Becky is saying.

His face colors and he hides his hands behind his back and feels like complete trash. Becky, seeming to pick up on this somewhat, lightly taps one of his shoulders, “Aw! There, there, kitty kitty! You wouldn’t’ve enjoyed this game anyway, right?”

“...no.” his voice is so soft as to be near silent, “I suppose not.”

“Great!” Becky returns with the same amount of sparkle she uses on the cheerleading field, “Then how’s about you set your brother riiiiiight-” she drags the word out as she looks around the circle, before pointing to a certain spot, “-there! Rachel and us girls are going to make sure the bottle picks him for sure. And you can stand on the sidelines in case we need an assist, ‘kay?”

Ford nods numbly and Becky bounces off. When he returns to Stan, he does his best to play stoic.

He fails miserably.

“Whoa,” Stan breathes, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“That ain’t ‘nothing’,” Stan says pointing at his face, “That’s ‘Crampelter gave me shit’ face and he ain’t here. So? What is it?”

“I told you,” Ford hisses, “Nothing.”

“What did Becky say to you?” Stan asks and there’s such heat in the question. Anger and accusation and Ford pushes up his glasses and pours on the ice, “It’s not important. You’re going to miss out on the game, Stanley. Now, you asked for my help and considering the curvature of the bottle and the state of the floor I would suggest sitting-!”

“I suggest you tell me what she said before I make a scene,” the words sizzle out of Stan’s mouth and close to Ford’s ear, nearly scalding it and Ford can feel the barely leashed fury rolling off his brother in waves and he starts shaking his head, “You know, maybe I just don’t want to talk about it, Stanley! Did you ever think of that?”

Stan actually stands up straighter, looking startled, “Holy shit...what did she say?”

Ford lets out an aggravated breath and points to the exact spot Becky indicated, “You want your kiss? You want Rachel? SIT. DOWN. THERE. I’ll be outside!”

With that said, Ford exits the house. He starts walking down the neighborhood street, but he doesn’t get far before he’s being yanked back, Stanley’s hand turning him around roughly, “Just where the hell do you think you’re-?!”

“DO YOU WANT TO KISS HER OR NOT?!” the shout escapes Ford before he can leash it and it seems to echo in the empty streets. Thankfully Rachel’s neighbors seem to be tucked in for the night and no one left her house to follow them.

Stan, regardless, shushes him even as he seethes, “Not more than I want to know whatever the hell is up with you! You’ve been sulking all night, Sixer - hell, you been sulking the past couple of weeks if we’re gonna be honest about it!”

Ford looks down at his feet, kicks at the pavement even as Stan charges on, “Then Becky pulls you aside and whatever she says seems to be the last straw and I don’t get-!”

“She said I shouldn’t play, alright!” Ford snaps, “She said I should-should sit the game out and that Rachel wants to kiss you and-and...” he falters, drops off, because he doesn’t want to hurt Stan’s feelings.

He doesn’t want to tell him about the comments on his acne or how he might just be a ploy in some plot to make someone jealous because he does want his brother to have something nice - even if it’s fleeting, “And you should go back in there and get what you want!”

“...Becky said you shouldn’t play?”

“She-she figured I-I wouldn’t enjoy it anyway and she’s...she’s not wrong...”

“No,” Stan breathes in loudly through his nostrils, his hands curling into fists, “She’s wrong. She’s very wrong and if she wasn’t a girl, I’d pound her right in the face!”

“Stanley,” Ford sighs, suddenly very, very tired, “You shouldn’t want to pound anyone in the face. Boy or girl. And certainly not for my sake.”

“Whose sake would it be for then?” Stan returns, “I’ve told you time and time again, I’m here for you. I’ll protect you, I’ll-!”

“You won’t always be there for me, Stanley.”

This remark stops Stan short. Makes his eyes widen in alarm, “What-? What does that mean?”

“...I think you know.”

“I sure as fuck don’t!”

“Language, Stanley.”

“Fuck your language!” Stan growls and comes closer. He gets in Ford’s personal space and Ford can feel the heat radiating off him. He’s very much the monster he’s dressed as - exuding power and force and deadly seriousness as he looks at him, “I will always be there for you. Always.”

Ford lets out a sad, watery sound. He looks away and there’s a restless wind that seems to rise up, to play with his hair and suddenly Stan touches his chin, directs his face back to him, “Look at me.”

The touch is clearly just meant to direct his eyes, but Ford feels it zip throughout his entire central nervous system, feels it shoot out his toes as he looks into Stan’s eyes and his twin says, “Stanford, you ain’t never got to keep anything from me. Alright? You ain’t gotta hide or-or keep to yourself. Thinkin’...thinkin’ maybe now this is why you’ve been poutin’ so much lately, huh? You think we’re going to be apart?”

“Stanley...”

“That I’m not going to be there for you? Because I will be, Sixer. Always and forever. You should know that.”

Another sigh, “Rachel...”

“She’s just some broad,” Stan promises, and then, with a chuckle, “A cute one, but just the same. She’s not as important as you are. Never will be.”

“You-” Ford swallows around a big lump in his throat, his heart aching, “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not? You’re family.”

And it’s that, that last word, that helps Ford grab a hold of his senses. He gulps and lets out a shaky laugh, “Uh, yeah - yeah. I am. And, uh, as your family - I...I think you should go back in there. Get your big kiss.”

Stan seems to thinking it over, but more for show than anything, as he cracks with a laugh, “Nah, forget it. Plenty of fish in the sea.”

The breath that leaves Ford sounds as if he’s pushing off a sob. Which makes sense. Ford feels like sobbing. He feels strangely vulnerable and exposed. More so when Stan just. Keeps. Pushing. “’Sides, if they’re not going to let you play...”

“I told you,” Ford manages weakly, pathetically, “Becky wasn’t wrong. I don’t want to play.”

Stan doesn’t say anything for awhile and it’s good. It’s great. Ford can feel his lungs filling with air, can feel his sanity returning, can feel himself pushing away from the ledge of tears. Stan didn’t mean for the things he said to sound so-so romantic. So much what Ford wants to hear.

He was being a good brother.

Ford wants to do the same - needs to do the same.

But then.

“Stanford, any...any of those girls would be lucky to kiss you...”

And that’s it.

It’s the funniest thing.

That’s the thing that breaks Ford. That’s the thing that pushes him over that ledge. That’s the thing that leads him to cry out, “I don’t WANT to kiss THEM, Stanley! I WANT-! I want-!”

And Stan’s looking at him as if he’s never seen him before. As if Ford is some stranger - raving and demonic and he is - he truly is. Because with an anguished whimper, he grabs Stan and forcibly tugs him over. He seals his lips over Stan’s.

He kisses him.

Ford kisses Stanley.

The sound of pure shock that leaves Stan sears Ford’s soul and Ford catches a glimpse of Stan’s eyes - big and round and white. Startled. Stunned. Maybe even terrified. So he closes his own as he brushes his tongue against his twin’s inert mouth, as he eases just so between the seam of them to get the taste he’s always feverishly dreamed of and then-!

Ford pushes him away as hard as he can, as hard as he tugged him over to begin with. He pushes him away and with a choked ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ he runs. He runs and runs. He runs off into the dark Halloween night and prays that Stan will forget what happened.

#stancest #my writing #nekoaimy #gift

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prairiedust · 4 years

Text

The Further Folklore of Supernatural

Here’s a little more folklore meta in light of how season 15 has been playing out if anyone is game. I genuinely thought that Moriah would be the end of the folklore stuff and tossed out “Folk the Author” as an “epilogue,” so this is probably less of an addendum than it is a waymarker as I try to continue to parse these themes into the last seven episodes.

Welp. *waves hands at everything* THIS is not how anyone expected 2020 to go. Things got a little bit big and I stopped thinking about Spn in light of needing that energy elsewhere. But I also don’t want this crapfest to ruin how I fan my favorite show, so here I go again. I will attempt a TL;DR, too!

If you’ve read my old “folklore” analysis here about how I think fairy tales and all their baggage fit into Supernatural season 14, you know that I believe Castiel has stepped into a Sleeping Beauty type story, and that coincidentally a few themes and symbolism from Snow White kept popping up around Dean. (I hold Sam to be a Protagonist in the modern “literary fiction” sense of the word, but emotionally, thematically, and narratively he’s always been a little inaccessible to me. I finally understood him when the death-of-the-author plot surfaced, and I’ll get to Sam eventually here. And Jack, there’s a little Jack in here, too.)

If you would rather have the TL;DR than read several thousands of words about how folklore and myth *might* be abstractly connected to an American genre show, all I can say is that I tried. The textual support is all in the folklore posts. This is as succinct a summary as I could fabricate. At least I’m not gonna talk about Sam and bricolage and freeplay! This is an almost completely theory-free post! If you don’t want to read or don’t need a refresher and just want to know how this has been working in 15, you can scroll down to “END OF TL;DR”.

So, to catch up, I’m not talking about the folklore and mythology that this show has always relied on for plot and MOTWs. I wasn’t drilling down into urban legends like Hook Man or world folk monsters like shtrigas or pishtacos. By “folklore” I mean the study of storytelling tropes and tale types that have been with us for ages. One of the many subtexts of the end of the series. I’ve been tracking this because I think it’s fun to see how fairy tale imagery and mythology might layer preconscious suggestions into the text of the show. I personally think it was loud enough to be seen easily, but more than likely viewers felt unsettled, felt cheered, or felt like they knew what was coming? I’m curious to know. Anyway.

When we found out that Kelly Kline was going to name her baby “Jack” waaaaay back in season 12, things started chiming. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack the Giant Killer. Jack Tales. Jack is a powerful Western character, sort of a cross between a noble hero and a trickster, featuring in stories that often blur lines and boundaries. He is both the poor man’s youngest son and the equal to King Arthur’s heir. Jack is both everyman and extraordinary. Jack is so cool, I wish I had more time to parse that but his qualities are not subtle in the text/subtext, anyway.

But back to my half-crack reading of seasons 14 and 15.

Once upon a time in Supernatural, there were two fairy tales being told. Both fairy tales are found all over the world and in many forms, but they all can be grouped together because they all contain shared elements of the same basic plot or shared themes, and these two in particular are sister stories. So when I mention “Sleeping Beauty,” I’m talking about lots of different versions of the folk tale, and the same for “Snow White,” which can be found in one form or another in storytelling traditions all over the place. It is both helpful and irritating that these are both Disney movies, too.

Jack makes an allusion to Sleeping Beauty in 14x03 The Scar while talking to Castiel-- it’s the kind of subtextual flash that in and of itself means little and proves nothing, but then beginning with The Scar we got three stories in a row that dealt with “sleepers” of some sort-- Lora in 14x03 doomed to die because of a witch’s spell, Stuart in 14x04 Mint Condition in a coma because of a ghost attack, and Sasha’s father in 14x05 Nightmare Logic under the spell of a clever djinn. It’s powerful subtext, like a soft light that bathes these episodes in the color of fairy tale and makes Jack’s Dramatic Swoon at the end of Optimism all the more Dramatic-- subtext amplifying the plot. Jack goes to Heaven, but is eventually cornered by the Shadow, who wants him in the Empty where he will sleep forever-- the Shadow being an entity who has claimed the husks of dead angels since their inception and thus implies a “curse” laid on Jack from the moment he came into being-- but Castiel, who is ever a thief in oh so many ways, makes a bargain with the Shadow and essentially takes over the consequences of Jack’s Sleeping Beauty story (hence my rarely used but hilarious tag “Castiel Thief of Endings.”)

Now that we know from 14x20 Moriah that the Shadow and Billie the Reaper are, if not allies, at least working together when Jack is awakened in the Empty, does that mean that Castiel’s deal is still on the table, or has that fate been thwarted? *pounds table* Was Jack’s death and Chuck’s rise as a “greater threat” in 14x20 enough to shift Castiel’s ending? It’s the kind of subtextual question that lends tension to the narrative and it’s what I am here for.

Well, speaking of thwarted expectations, Dean’s arc was being shadowed by a Snow White tale type. We all know Snow White but why don’t I sum it up anyway, since Disney messed up the folktale ending lol. Snow White is cast out of her home by her jealous stepmother (and echoes of the stepmother’s magic mirror show up in 15x02 Gods and Monsters) who sends her huntsman to kill her; the dude can’t do it and turns the girl loose in the forest instead. Snow White joins a band of outsiders who live in the forest-- in the Disney movie and the Grimms’ tale they are dwarfs, in some versions she happens upon a band of robbers-- and they love her very much and we presume she’s safe for the rest of her life; Michael mysteriously turns Dean loose to join Sam’s gathering of hunters, however we know, like Stepmom, Michael is still out there. The stepmother finds out that Snow White is actually alive and contrives to kill her herself. Eventually succeeding, Snow White appears to die and is usually laid to rest in a crystal casket/glass coffin. Her stepmother’s machinations have _stolen her agency_ (further paralleling Dean’s possession by AU!Michael.) A Handsome Prince stumbles upon Snow White, is besmitten with her, and he asks her protectors if he can have her, as one does. Leaving the Disney adaptation aside, Snow White awakens when whatever item that has caused her death-like state is dislodged (piece of apple in her throat) or removed (magic corset) or withdrawn (poisoned hairpin) by her protectors. Snow White is a story about the community of the dwarves of band of robbers or adopted family caring deeply for her, and when Dean starts making his own crystal casket, the ma’lak box, in which he will ride out eternity in tormented symbiosis with Apocalypse Michael, he has to rely on his family to help him see the plan through. However, here’s where Jack-- who is as much a chaos engine as his surrogate father Castiel if not more so-- steps in and ruins the ending. Jack smites Michael. Dean Winchester is saved. Again. To put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, Jack later destroys the ma’lek box entirely.

That was quite the surprise ending… for one of the stories.

Was the end of season 14 the end of the Sleeping Beauty theme, also?

END OF TL;DR

I quit writing about “folklore” for a while, but that doesn’t mean it stopped being a theme. It just stopped being fun to write about as the story got more and more dark, and when it transmuted into two parallel themes of “folklore” or storytelling by the people versus Death of the Author--or storytelling by a lauded authority-- and there was so much angst about the boundaries of Chuck’s powers, I just wanted to sit back and enjoy that. I did distill my thoughts about Sam’s new arc in the DotA plot, which I thought would subsume the folktale themes but hey, we still have folktales around, too. I mean, we have Sam and we have Dean, and we have two “literary” subtexts, or maybe rather two subjects about the nature of story, something that I thought was a little bit of a surprise.

Storytelling was a Feature of 15x07 Last Call, both in the sense that Lee and Dean swap new stories and tell old tales of their adventures together as they catch up, but also in the sense that we got additional “text”-- hints of a backstory where John and Dean hunted with Lee in that swampy long-ago “Stanford era,” and again we get storytelling when _Lee recounts how he ended up keeping a marid in his basement_. There is also an allusion to the Thousand and One Arabian Nights in that episode that I yelled about in a meta that I never put on the interwebs, but the “marid” is in a specific tale in many editions of that collection, and thus calls in not only a different folktale tradition but the concept of a framed/nested narrative, which I believe will be important to understanding the last episodes of the series, but that’s an aside. In 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t In Heaven, Castiel _tells Michael the story_ of how everyone ended up where they are now to convince him to help. And Michael and Adam’s allyship, if not friendship, was probably the best subversion of any “storytelling” expectation we’ve ever had on this show. Belphagor set us up for “room full of crazy” or something, but, no. We got symbiosis.

That almost sums up how I’ve been viewing the last “era” of spn. This wasn’t in the master post, but I shouted a lot about underworlds before 15x09 Purgatory 2: Return to Purgatory, and then stopped shouting because I had to ferment for a while. Also, as has been mentioned, the world turned to crap. But talking to other meta writers during the ramp up to the resumption of the season helped me realize just why this reading of myth to folktales to literature feels so right.

Underworlds and Otherworlds…. Everybody has crossed into an “underworld” or three in Supernatural, it’s really nbd. It was actually surface-level plot in season 13. By the time 15x09 rolled around, our heroes are just, like, strolling in and out of “sealed off” Hell after doing a level one spell and chilling with Billie in the Empty and even that Purgatory trip didn’t have the same feeling of danger that, say, crossing into the AU did. But also, we’re at the point where subtext is leading us to a _satisfactory_ ending. Where before we had serial text, like a cumulative tale type-- “The House that Jack Built”-- which just kept adding more and more plot, we’re hurtling o’er the apex of Freytag’s pyramid now and things are getting loud.

But they’re also getting very shifty.

I wrote a little bit about Sam Winchester successfully reviving Eileen in 15x06 Golden Time and the “Orpheus and Eurydice” symbolism of him keeping his back to her. (I’m not linking it because it’s so, so rough.) But because Sam is not an underworld hero, not completely-- I see him as a modern Protagonist coming to terms in a psychoanalytical model with things like mortality, fallibility, and mastery-- maybe bildungsroman, even -- he was able to subvert the tragic ending of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice because it is not “his” story. But if I were pressed to find a mythic or folk tale type to measure Sam against, I could. I would probably sideye “the sorcerer’s apprentice” trope (ATU 325-The Magician and his Pupil :D ) which began as a poem that entered European folklore on different fronts. (and weirdly, that story was also Disnified in Fantasia. That’s probably more my own limitation as a gen x american lol than anything coming from the writer’s room.)

Dean got his moment in Purgatory where he was able to finally come to grips with his anger and heal the rift between himself and Castiel because Purgatory is a different kind of underworld. Dean is a successful threshold-crosser, having crossed that boundary out of Purgatory before, but in 15x09, his prayer to Castiel is all a subtextual evocation of doing the emotional and mental work of therapy, which Sam, as a modern protagonist, is usually caught up in. The mythic hero also deals with mortality, failibilty, and mastery, but in different terms. I hope I’m doing an okay job peeling apart these nuances that I’m seeing.

Since Castiel accompanied Dean to Purgatory, and in the past made his own wildly successful incursion into and out of Hell with Dean’s soul, and was the one in The Trap who actually retrieved the Leviathan blossom, Castiel counts as an underworld hero, too, but you can pull the lever and send the tumblers spinning again and make him a fairy tale character in that he has made this Bargain with the Empty which is both in the “modern” tradition of subverting a fairy tale, and the tale type “deal with the devil.” Or he could be seen as a modern protagonist in that he’s lowkey grappling with questions of selfhood and identification. “I am an angel of the lord.” “I am no one.” “It’s Steve, now.” “You are nothing.” “I am an angel.”

We even got an episode that playfully explored the concept of “hero” by subverting our expectations (Sam and Dean were rescued by, of all people, an upgraded Garth.) It was called The Hero’s Journey, after the Joseph Campbell book about mythic heroes.... !!! Like, what??? !!!! I didn’t even have anything to say about that episode, it just rocked. The “meta” was just all out there in plot, like the olives and boiled eggs in a 1950’s gelatin recipe.

Some of this slipperiness in the subtext points right at the study of folklore and the (admittedly Eurocentric at first) efforts to transform a “soft science” into something approaching scientific rigor. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale index is today a codifying or cataloguing tool, with which anthropologists and literature scholars can line up stories based on the motifs found within them-- it is useful for cataloguing tales, making comparative studies, and for trying to trace these stories back through human history to find the One First Story of that type, for instance the ur-story that led to Snow White. When did people first start telling that tale, where, how did it spread, and why are we still telling it today? The danger in using the ATU index is that by stripping a story down to it’s bones, we lose the story, if that makes sense. The beauty of using the ATU index is that you find many, many more interconnected stories. It’s sort of a paradox. Some scholars criticize the ATU, claiming that one could take a random selection of these motifs and shuffle them to create a story and, you sort of could? That’s the beauty of the system.

So that brings us to Jack. I feel like Jack, as in Jack of all Trades, is anything that the narrative needs him to be. As far as I can find, “Jack” is not a “tale type.” He shows up alongside any number of them-- sometimes as a trickster, sometimes as a hero, almost always as a kind of slippery character. In the first folklore post, I invested many words in exploring Dabb’s obsession with threes-- AU Michael asks three beings what they desire, asks his human victim to guess his name three times, then we follow three sleeper stories, and so on. The original TFW was three people. But Jack makes four.

What is Jack’s story going to be?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And speaking for a sec about the origins of myth and folklore-- what about ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE in the world? Are they lowkey churning the matrix of reality on their own and generating their own content, like Becky and her AO3 stories and mackettes?

*¯\_(ツ)_/¯ intensifies*

It all just feels so good at this point, even the peril that I feel surrounding Castiel.

I *think* this will be the last of the longform metas before the end of the series. I mean, I can only hope so. I’ll drop some stuff about individual episodes that might be applicable as I rewatch, and I might clean up my post about Last Call and drop it on here, but I just wanted to kind of hold this up as a mile marker before the Final Seven air.

#the folklore of supernatural #idk even what to tag this

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