I don’t even care about this discourse anymore I just wish it wasn’t constantly being shoved down the rest of the fandom’s throat as this full blown “actually you’re wrong for thinking this isn’t canon” bullshit that’s so needlessly cherry picked. So much for fanworks not having to support canon.

Okay, so now that that's out of the way, here are all my thoughts on the khmom

So starting out, I know some were hoping this was the big Kairi game, and I'm sad it didn't live up to my hopes in that regard, but we also have to remember that Nomura said in interview before it came out not to expect too much, and then we learned that the story mode is an average of 10 hours.

As a fandom we need to remember that KHMoM was never advertised as "the big Kairi game", so while you can be sad that the game didn't live up to your hopes and dreams, Nomura did not "basically" tell us we were gonna get a big Kairi game and then let us down. With all due respect, this game is only a "Kairi game" in the sense that she's on the front cover and the story cutscenes at the end show her side of searching for Sora. Even the advertisements and interviews about this game were mostly focused on the rhythm game aspect, so besides cutscenes, the only talk about Kairi was the change from Chirithy to her doing narration

Now let's continue on keeping in mind that this is all my opinion and analysis, and there are various opinions out there.

Let's start with Kairi, since most of this game is about her. I haven't played the game myself yet (I watched cutscenes for now), but although it's sad Kairi herself wasn't part of any teams (which honestly makes sense since she wasn't a main character focused on in any of the games as much as those chosen for teams. KH1, CoM, and KH2 really were Sora, Donald, and Goofy, Days really was our sea salt trio, wayfinder trio was obviously the main protagonists for BBS, and even though Sora was in DDD, Sora is already on a team and Riku got a bigger charactsr focus in that game, so why not include the dream eater pals. And then honestly kh3 was Donald and Goofy and Sora again), at least we get her in the end. And her getting a small playable section at the end honestly makes sense considering the cutscene portion is the part of the game about her/following her/focuses on her, and she's been getting better as a keyblade wielder.

Now, this section shows us the pink flower thing from remind, and I'm even more convinced that it isn't her heart. For one, in remind, it was used in kh2 fashion, like an object to create a pathway to the next world or in this case Kairi herself. Then, in this game, while she's sleeping and in the final world, she finds it and it breaks apart. If it was Kairi's heart, would it make sense for it to break apart inside of her and not have an affect on her or her body? And what convinces me more is that after you collect all these pieces of the flower with Kairi, she clutches her head and has a memory moment.

What is the pink flower thing, then, you wonder? Well tbh I wonder too, but I had a thought. It's not essential enough to her state of being to be her heart, but it's definitely a part of her or a representation of part of her. My thought is that it could be a semi-physical representation of her memories or a physical metaphor of her state of being at the time it shows up. For example, in remind, it could have been scattered pices of her memory, because we remember that in kh3 they learned that a person (like Roxas, Xion, etc) couldn't completely come back or wake up from wherever their hearts were until their memories were returned to them too. So if the flower is representative of her memory, it then would make sense why it needed to be gathered, why it made Sora feel Kairi, and why it can also act as an object related to Kairi that can pave a path to her. It could also be a metaphor for her state of being at the same time since just like the flower, Kairi's body is shattered. This also makes sense for KHMoM, because if it's partly a metaphor representation of Kairi's state of being, then her "state of being" in this case refers to her repressed childhood memories and the links in those chains of memories that have broken apart. And so if the flower is representative of her memories, it would make sense that when she gathered all the pieces she remembered these memories because it brought these repressed memories to light and essentially pieced them back together when she gathered the heart pieces. If not because the flower has to do with her memories, at least in this case, why else would she remember repressed memories after gathering the flower pieces?

Continuing on from here, when Kairi holds her head and begins to remember, we get this interesting turn of the camera that flips Kairi and her reflection in the water before transitioning to the memories. I don't know much about camera techniques, but it definitely symbolizes or means something.

So we get the memory of Apprentice Terranort taking young Kairi (I honestly laughed when it showed him reaching for her just because of that "gimme your phone" meme) and it transitions to showing the scene with Kairi in one of the pods. This scene tells us a few things. For one, somehow, Apprentice Terranort knows about "unreality" or what's essentially a parallel universe to the KH universe, you can somehow get there with a strong enough connection to it (like using someone who's from there like Riku did or your heart resonating in some way with someone there. For example, if Kairi's poh heart resonated with a keyblade wielder from the alternate universe instead of Riku on Destiny Islands). It also may tell us that it's possible that Apprentice Xehanort knew the stuff we learned in the kh3 ending with the Luxu reveal would come to pass. Obviously Xehanort knew by doing what he did with Kairi that he would cause Sora's disappearance, but since we know (from Dark Road I think?) that the ancient wielders went to another world and all that, we know the stuff with Kairi was his final plan, and we know Xehanort got his peaceful death, I don't think Xehanorts final plan with Kairi was a ploy for him to do more summon kingdom hearts or a petty go at removing Sora since he might win. More than likely this "final plan" has to do with preventing a possible future and setting things up accordingly. Apprentice Terranort told 4 yr old Kairi her mission as if it's success would affect the future of the universe. And on one hand it makes sense because they needed a keyblade wielder to defeat the heartless and restore the worlds and lock their keyholes, but what if it's double meaning is that making sure the worlds last past that is dependent on making sure "the keyblade wielder" would also be in the position to prevent a future crisis? Because I doubt Quadratum is gonna only be important for getting Sora and coming back. This place is gonna have some significance, and if preventing or battling the crisis also hinges on the Keyblade wielder going to the alternate universe as Xehanort's backup plan to balance the worlds or keep them safe, then the foretellers, Luxu, the box, and that whole thing are more connected to what's happening in the alternate universe as we would've thought. Anyways, to sorta summarize that, I think that Sora had to have ended up in the Alternate universe to give our main crew a chance of dealing with something big, and if Xehanort couldn't make a new world with the keyblade, he at least had to make sure Sora could be in the right place to make sure things happen as they should to save all the worlds.

Then we get Kairi faced with the man in a cloak who's revealed to be Xehanort. This part also honestly made me laugh because we knew it would be Xehanort, but also on behalf of those who insisted it was MoM (no offense to them btw because I get their thought process. It just kinda made me laugh). I liked this sequence in the khmom trailer (especially in og Japanese because what Kairi says there is better put), and I like it because it essentially serves as Kairi facing her fear and the one who changed her fate head on, channeling all those thoughts and feelings and letting them out. So, whether or not this Xehanort is real or fake, Kairi takes him head on.

Now the fight sequence has a variation of thoughts on it, and here are mine. For one, I spent this whole sequence being so excited because she was fighting so good and hard to the best of her ability. Second, this is memory Xehanort created from her heart, so I like the explanation that he too is influenced by her personal fears and doubts, mainly an insecurity and doubt in her own abilities. So the reason Xehanort is so easily able to catch her keyblade and dodge hits from her (the first time he grabbed it I honestly thought he would insult her and snap it like Xemnas did with Lea) is because no matter how much she wants to defeat him, deep down she doesn't believe she's strong enough, and so here leads into when she turns into Sora.

Now, to preface, if the literal explanation of this from Nomura is "Kairi isn't strong enough so Sora's sleeping heart sensed her danger and possessed her to do the boss fight for her", then I think this sequence is 1000% bad, unnecessary, and people have every right to be mad. However, my thoughts on this scene is that it also has to do with her memories and anxieties. Remember that memory Xehanort says that everything in this specific version of the final world was created by Kairi's heart. And so if her doubts are on her own strength, my thoughts are that it was these doubts and feelings of inferiority that had her become Sora (or a memory Sora more specifically) because she doesn't believe she can win or beat Xehanort with out him yet. In other words, she still felt dependent on him, so in that moment her heart responded by temporarily turning her into Sora to reaffirm her fears (like when she was losing against xehanort) and beat Xehanort for her. If this is true, then that gives some depth to Kairi's character in how she currently percieves herself as of khmom, and maybe how she believes others view her. And with Xehanort's comment, I think it may reaffirm that this Sora is a projection. Because if Sora came there through his bond to Kairi, then there's no reason Kairi would've disappeared or there's no reason why he wouldn't have talked or just something. So then, Xehanort's line about Sora being where his voice cannot reach them has a double meaning. The first is that this Sora that fights memory Xehanort does not speak (and also he's fighting like a controlled puppet without a will of it's own like, did you see his soulless face?), which affirms to him that Sora is in the alternate universe, and the second may be that he realized it's a version of him from Kairi's heart (just like he himself is), and he being there instead of the real Sora affirms that Sora's bonds in this world have broken and he couldn't have been there himself, meaning he must've been in the alternate universe (if not dead, which Xehanort knows he isn't because he knows his final plan with Kairi).

Side note, also during the earlier battle with Xehanort, Xehanort told Kairi she wouldn't find Sora in her heart and that the key to him is in memories long gone. And part of my reaction to that is that I felt validated and angry, because we've been saying that Kairi wouldn't find Sora through the search of her heart and dudebros and s/ks and the like said that we were thinking about our ship and being misogynistic in thinking Kairi wouldn't have that role, and then Xehanort himself, created from Kairi's heart said "You won't find anything here". My other reaction was to "memories long gone", and it honestly made me wonder if it meant that Kairi had some of Sora's memories in her heart that he lost and they're not there anymore, or that the key to Sora is memories of his he not only lost, but are literally missing and in someone no one can reach currently (like within Yozora or something)

So anyways, Xehanort gives Kairi a clue about how to find Sora through that line referring to the alternate universe (again it being brought up in the future for a different thing is why I think Apprentice Terranort gave his speech as a double meaning in the past), and she finally wakes up where the whole lab crew work it out

As for AtW and crew assuming the alternate universe is fictional, that may or may not be true. They worked it out by saying "The opposite of our reality is unreality or fiction", but we also know that could be referring to a parallel universe, meaning both universes could very much be real. As for Yozora telling Sora "this isn't the real world", I'm not gonna go far into it as others have, but if Sora is theoretically inside Yozora's heart, hence how he can visit him in his dream, then Sora is technically not in the real world, but the alternate universe is in the real world. And if the alternate universe is a fake world, it's not impossible, but it's still odd to me how Yozora would be self aware that the world he was born in wasn't real.

Forward from here, Riku enters, Kairi and Riku have their leads to Sora (tbh one of my hopes was that Kairi and Riku would have a real talk about the odd status of their friendship and how it's honestly not great, but maybe it'll happen in the future), and Fairy God Mother magics Kairi and Riku and herself into the final world (sorry this is a bit passive aggressive, but no, we knew that Riku wouldn't need to dream dive into Kairi's dreams to make it into the final world so they could get to Sora). FGM then starts talking about the final key, alerts the two teens about the hearts in the final world, and takes them to Nameless star. It was about this point I literally had a moment over how beautiful Kairi and Nameless star's respective voices sounded because they both sounded so pretty. This is also where they learn that shibuya in the other universe is named Quadratum (haha another square reference I see, square😂), and FGM says that you can get to the other universe with the power of waking and Nameless Star's strong dream and will. I honestly can't wait until we get to see Nameless star for real and hear her name. It's honestly so sweet that Riku wanted to make her dream come true (in like a "Riku is so nice and sweet" way, not in a shippy way) and was also willing to help her not just because she could lead him to Sora.

Then, FGM informs the crew that this is as far as she goes, and leaves the rest to Riku. This is another widely opinionated section of MoM's story, because here Kairi expresses her wishes to go and is ultimately rejected. I have seen people rant about how Riku is a misogynist and explain this scene as if Riku literally told Kairi "You're too weak", shoved her aside, and called her useless, but here's an analysis of the scene with some of my pov. That part wasn't nearly as bad as people exaggerated it to be. When Kairi expressed her wish to go, Riku literally stuttered, failing to actually say she can't. He didn't even really say anything before Kairi sighed and was like "I know". So to say Riku is misogynistic for that?😬 Also, this is a completely new universe, one where Yen Sid didn't even let Mickey Mouse follow, and as FGM said you have to have the power of waking to get there. Kairi is strong, as memory Xehanort said, but she's not to master level (or at Sora or Riku's level for that matter), not strong enough to deal with a whole new world, especially since her only real experience was being plunged into war just after some training (like Sora and Riku got this whole experience starting with dealing with low level heartless and getting used to it all, and they had been practicing and self teaching themselves how to fight since they were kids, to which Kairi did not), and she doesn't have the power of waking, so no matter how much Kairi wants to go with Riku, as he was trying to tell her and failing, it's not possible for her right now. It's like how Sora wanted so badly to join Riku and Mickey in the RoD on saving Aqua, but he hadn't regained his strength yet and didn't have the Power of Waking. Example one of the Kingdom Hearts fandom's double standards: Sora being denied access to also go to the RoD to save Aqua because he doesn't have the strength or PoW is fine, but Kairi being denied access to also go to the alternate universe with Riku for the same reasons is Misogyny🙄.

And also on Kairi's rejection to go with Riku to the alternate universe, I felt like this moment was a parallel to kh1 that showed that Kairi is beginning her character development. In kh1, Kairi insisted to go with Sora to save Riku, and Sora outright said she would be in his way so she couldn't go (idk what it says in the jp version), and after being told this, Kairi accepts her situation and resigns to wait on the islands for Sora to return with Riku. During this whole time she also makes no effort to train. However, in this moment in khmom, when Riku fails to stutter out "No", Kairi very visibly and audibly is frustrated when she says "I know". She's been here before, but it says something that her being left like this, waiting to the side, isn't something she wants anymore. She wants to go, and she's frustrated that she still can't. And I know this came off to people as "Nomura is just shafting Kairi again", but in my opinion if he wanted to toss her aside, he wouldn't have done this. He would've had her okay with Riku going by himself from the get-go and had Kairi just kind of go "well, back to training with Merlin again". Heck, if he really wasn't doing anything with her, he would have just left her while FGM and Riku met Nameless star in the Final World. But what he did was present us a Kairi that is strong, but knows she needs to be stronger. He gave us a Kairi that is visibly frustrated in knowing she can't help her best friend. And her response after accepting she can't go currently? She takes the initiative to train under Aqua (a real keyblade master), meaning that she really wants to take the steps to get stronger now, and she tells Riku that one day she'll stand by him and Sora (not just Sora). The girl has resolved to take her own path and take real responsibility for her training so she never has to stay behind again. It's showing Kairi's shift from "Sora and Riku are leaving me behind and I'm struggling to catch up so I try to make sure they come back to me or I do the bare minimum to still be around them" to "I take control of my own destiny, and I'm gonna close this gap myself, by my own efforts, not by waiting for them to do something". I'm fully aware Nomura could still shaft Kairi, but I truly feel like this little we got in khmom is the beginning of her development as a character. And I feel this way because while remind at times arguably came off as pandering to people who wanted K to do something, khmom, taking into account all the things Nomura could have done instead of what he did, felt more genuine, and actually made me hopeful and excited for her character and what she does in the future. Also, example two of the Kingdom Hearts fandom's double standards: Riku struggling to tell Kairi she can't go with him (and him not actually saying it) is considered misogynistic by this fandom, but Sora in kh1 bluntly telling Kairi she would be in his way and therefore couldn't go is "UwU he's protecting his love! So cute!"🙄

Anyways, going forward, I'm so excited to witness some actual development for Kairi amd seeing her interact with the wayfinder trio! Like training with Aqua? Yes!

Also, not to be passive-aggressive, but I know a number of S/Rs who would like an apology for being told that believing that Riku would be the one to save Sora was us reaching and being delusional and thinking Kairi wouldn't go is misogynistic🙂

Anyways, besides that, Soriku endgame actually?! Like Sorikus and Riku stans how you feeling about all this? Like, can you believe we were right when we said Riku would go save Sora? Can you believe in the same week we got confirmation Riku would be the one to go save Sora, we learned that there would be three sets of Soriku Nendoroids? Like we just keep on winning and honestly that makes me so happy. I honestly can't wait to see not only Kairi's training and possible future development, but also Riku's journey! This may have just been a bridge game, but I'm so excited!😊

Saïx’s Greatest Fear  

Riku: What are you saying? Isn’t he just a copy of me?

Ansem: More like a model. He is an example of what you should try to be. He accepts the darkness…just like you once couldn’t help but accept me. But now you are afraid. Perhaps YOU are the one who is being fake. Fake when you pretend to have no fear.

Riku: When have I been afraid of the dark?

Yeah, Saïx got the short end of the stick in the story. I don’t think his motivations were very well developed or understood by the fandom. I also don’t think his actions or behavior made much sense if you don’t take into account that he was a Nort (which KH3 didn’t). None of the others got treated this way. There was a clear distinction between Phantom Aqua and the real Aqua, Terranort and Terra, Vanitas and Ventus, Riku Replica and Riku. Isa was the only one who didn’t get this consideration.

Let’s use Riku as an example. The Seeker of Darkness who stole his body for much of KH1 was Riku Replica. A puppet replica of the shadows in Riku’s heart. He was born from Riku’s psyche. But he wasn’t really the real Riku. Riku acted so terrible in KH1 because he was possessed. In later KH games, you see that Riku’s real personality is quite different from KH1 Riku. The real Riku didn’t really want to kill Sora.

Riku: I walk the road to dawn!

Young Xehanort: Still afraid of the dark, I see.

Riku: He thinks I’m afraid of the dark? No, not while I have the Keyblade. It will guide me to the light!

Riku Replica was born from Riku’s greatest fear. The real Riku was afraid of the dark and he was suppressing this fear. The Riku Replica–his shadow–fully embraced it and called him a coward. He was still in denial of that fear, even in KH3D. He said he wasn’t afraid as long as he had the Keyblade, which was a lie.  

He said he knew the road his heart walked, the road to dawn. But he sounded like he was still trying to convince himself. Riku’s old Keyblade symbolized how he hadn’t faced his fears yet. When Riku left behind the broken Way to Dawn behind for the “other me,” he was referring to his Shadow Self, Riku Replica. The embodiment of his suppressed fear. I think that concept was why KH3′s theme song was called “Face My Fears”. 

IMO, Saïx was simply Isa’s “other self”. Like Riku Replica, he was a repressed part of Isa’s psyche, though not really him. He was his dark side, the Seeker of Darkness who stole his body. A puppet replica of the shadows in his heart. Simply put, Saïx was a representation of Isa’s fears. Saïx’s weapons are very much based on astrology. In astrology, Black Moon Lilith is very similar to the concept of the Jungian Shadow. It represents the dark, primal, and beastly side of a person–exactly like Saïx’s berserk state. And it also represents each zodiac sign’s greatest fear. 

Axel: Friends need to lean on each other every now and then. Ain’t that right, Roxas?

I believe Isa’s personality was intended to be based off of the zodiac sign of Cancer, which is ruled by the Moon.

Saïx: What an extraordinarily childish notion. Do you need Axel to walk you everywhere now?

They are very attached, needy, and they also need to be needed. That was Isa’s weakness.

Riku’s fear was the darkness. So, Riku Replica was the mirror to that. He was completely unafraid of the darkness. What fears was Isa suppressing to give birth to Saïx? Cancer’s greatest fear is abandonment. He was afraid he wouldn’t be needed anymore. And as a Seeker of Darkness, Saïx was the mirror to that– he acted extremely cold, distant, and unattached.

“Because they copied my powers, the Keyblade’s power, and then they didn’t need me anymore— is that it?” Roxas spat.

Axel couldn’t bring himself to confirm it.

“I guess you felt the same way, huh, Axel?”

At those words, Axel’s chest tightened painfully. Enough that he couldn’t breathe, breath plugged in his throat. No, not me. I wasn’t thinking like that. I would never.

“You’re wrong there. You’ll always be…my best friend,” were the words that tumbled automatically out of his mouth.

Axel was horrified when Roxas thought Axel wanted to get rid of him because he wasn’t needed anymore. He automatically responded that they were best friends in response to that. It seemed like what Roxas said reminded him of Isa and he had a knee-jerk reaction, assuring him best friends definitely don’t think like that. I’m sure that what Roxas said fueled Axel’s strong need to get him back.

“She doesn’t need you anymore.” Saïx smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.

Saïx was desperately in denial and trying to convince himself that he didn’t need Axel anymore after he left. Saïx’s whole character doesn’t make a whole lotta sense unless you got to see how he was as a human, which we really didn’t.

You’re ultimately still a crybaby, but you don’t need the marks anymore. It seemed like you didn’t need me either. Yes, I thought that I didn’t need you with me anymore. That’s why I sacrificed myself to that man. If you didn’t need me, then I no longer held meaning.

The tear marks were a symbol of how Lea needed Isa. I don’t think he needed him in an “objective” or practical sense. Lea couldn’t bear to lose him. He needed him because he had a heart and Isa was very dear to him. He needed him emotionally.

However, reality is different. It wasn’t about whether I was needed or not. If I could just connect to others’ hearts, that would be enough.

As a human, Isa realized he didn’t have to be needed. Just connecting with Lea’s heart was enough. That gave him meaning. But as Nobodies, they had no hearts. The heart was the only reason Lea needed him. It was his greatest fear that Axel did not just stop needing him–he stopped loving him. He was being abandoned, after all. When Axel lost the tear marks, it was just further confirmation that he wasn’t needed. This is why he became so psychotic. So, yes. It wasn’t just petty jealousy. It was a deep, DEEP seated fear of abandonment.

“Promises to keep. I’ll always be there to get my friends back.”

What do you tell someone who’s biggest fear is abandonment? That you’ll always be there to get them back, no matter how many times it takes. That’s why Lea was so determined to keep that promise, not only to Isa but Roxas and Xion, too. Isa didn’t need to atone. He didn’t need to join the organization to get Replicas. He needed to face his fears. He needed to hear Lea tell him that he’ll never ever abandon him and that he doesn’t need the marks anymore because he’s going to bring him back. Then his shadow self would disappear.

15.07 Thoughts

So 

1. Y’all know I’ve been very opinionated about certain things, but my inbox has been such a perpetual onslaught that I haven’t had time to really *sit and genuinely write*

2. This is premised 100% off of an expansion on a beautiful post by @heliodean​ (x)  -- or more, I would say that heliodean already wrote most of what I would begin to say, and very elegantly about the text, subtext, representation, visibility, canonicity, but that all as a simple underline to the growth evidenced by Dean. 2b. That is to say, that while the queer text is itself indivisible from the original text, I would like to expand on a few points that are also character-specific, and I didn’t want to kidnap a representation-leaning post to discuss only phantasmally attached affairs.

So again, @heliodean‘s post is an absolute must-read, but building aside on the discussion of Dean’s growth as expressed in the episode, I wanted to focus on some personal John-facing issues.

While helio mentioned Lee’s last advent of Dean being when he idolized John Winchester, which is very true, but I think several of their engagements -- including, yes, the queer narrative but not dependent on it -- are hugely reflecting. 

Even if we take, in example, Dean, ass slaps, waitresses and Lee -- a common discussion point  is for example that despite open flirtation, Dean dismisses her like she brought his burger over too well done, implicitly. She was there, literally while they talked about double dogging someone down, and despite ass slaps and flirts and posturing, she just kind of vanished into the aether, a thought to neither of them.

How this attaches to the John related issues actually requires dropping a level deeper, when you realize that while the implication is itself surface level text, the words hang instead in old canons, just reflecting at the surface; the sense of history being tangible between them is there for a reason.  Even if you took the most heteronormative read on how to double-dick down an ungendered individual, that we hetly decide was female, and that the balls never touched or whatever because *big gay panic* the choice to literally bring that to center discussion after Dean implicitly seemed to forget it ever existed, or act like he didn’t want to talk about it until being charmed by the memory in particular.

Or perhaps, more realistically in the subtext to the *actual text* as expository line everybody is spinning circles on -- quite simply, there were triplets and there was a woman shared between them, but she wasn’t what he remembered. As far as Dean was concerned, there was one woman and, very quite-down-to-point, one man has was sharing. The fact that he happened to have trimmings of a spare woman as a commentary didn’t even plink his memory. *Holy shit* 

-- (and let’s be real, MOST OF THIS WAS IN DIRECT TEXT TOO. The only “subtext” is the most liminal understanding that words connect to each other and sentences are usually related to the discussion at hand, but that’s about what people call subtext these days. Dean literally forgot and had to be reminded. I guess “subtext” is applying the working adult brain to figure out how the FUCK you forget who you were putting your dick in. The tryst itself, the bizarre things Dean forgot, these are all... well, text. And the rest is so narrowly subtext that someone missing it out of genuine ignorance and not petty malice and active choice/reconfiguration is pretty much contingent on someone literally not thinking at all)

like

I’m not gonna heavily debate textuality in this post because at this point, fandom dialogue is a helium inflated parody of itself on most of that, but like I really? Don’t give a shit? How someone tries to move the goalposts around? Seriously grab that whole scene at the table front to back, and then the stage, and show that to some random straight guy you know that doesn’t even watch the show. I’m going to tell you 99.9999% right now the first thing to come out of their mouth is “That’s fuckin gay” or some variation of it into various fields of PC-facing culture. The hilarity of trying to run defense lines for them at this point is somewhere out in orbit in Alpha Centauri, bitching about a whole other solar system of shit.

But taking back to that -- that waitress, that woman that just evaporated. That was a different time. That’s when Dean wanted fodder between him and anyone else he had a deep connection with. That’s when Dean *did* womanize. Did bury himself in skin. 

And frankly that’s a Dean that hasn’t existed for a long time while fandom has sat in general denial about it, or the canonicity or *sets off carousel music*

(My mood every time a young bright eyed LGBT warrior thinks they’re doing a service by dismissing, deleting or denying low-visibility LGBT text)

Mutual ass slaps and vigorous bisexual reactions be damned, Lee’s adoration OF John was even brought into text, be it the solemn vigil he held up in his service, or his textual “I’m you” to Dean, and everything old Dean might have become if things hadn’t dramatically shifted gears in his life; but something the *here* and *now* is trying to make him become.

Reaching into the alchemical stuff again, be it Silver And Gold, or Nothing Gold Can Stay, or Golden Time, or now, the monster that spits out fake gold as long as you feed it, and stop caring. The thing Chuck is trying to make them. The things -- the people -- the building treasures in their life of Eileen, and Castiel, and yes, lost several episodes but not forgotten, Jack and Mary; Eileen treasure found anew, Cas a treasure lost that took the last light of his family, and Jack and Mary’s shadows, with him.

The force that broke their chain, the force that was first ready to face authority, because this was not a new battle to him; it had just been given new meaning, many years ago, when he first faced Dean. Dean echoes the broken despair Cas once saw life as from angelic roost, and Cas stands instead for every lesson Humanity taught him, and continues the fight, and walks away from a toxic vortex of destruction drilled and doubled down on by Chuck’s purposeful machinations -- machinations Dean convinced him to break from long ago, but the man that the angel fell for is not who he is now; the fire he gained from Mary went out in her death into the dark and obsessive and introverted blackened side of John Winchester, not the one that, taking his wife’s hand, disappeared into gold.

(Don’t even get me started on the recurrence of this exact shot in Dabb’s SPN, we’ll end up in a whole other aside.)

“Nothing Gold Can Stay.” This is the lesson Chuck has been trying to force down their throats alongside murder suicide. It is our target subversion, but--

This episode fundamentally *exists* to just *put Dean Winchester’s growth into perspective*. Be that textually affirmative bisexuality (regardless of if it’s visible enough for everyone’s taste, which I hold in bizarre levels of wtf question/suspicion), or about the boy of vices and basically casual misogyny and grim habit that has grown into a man that -- while he may remember it fondly with crinkles in the corner of his eyes, he doesn’t flit it to whatever filler is in the seats between them, but to that old “friend” that, you know. *jazz hands* 

About his fight with resignation that has griefed him since his first demon deal, and of self worth, and of what he has learned, and of what he will deep down never let anyone take away, even if he’s made to question it.

(Dabb on 14.13 Lebanon and the lessons imbued)

This episode??? Like??? Jeremy Adams didn’t blow me out of the water. I jettisoned somewhere into another galaxy or some shit. Here I am holding tentative resignation about how bad the new (presumed) straight white male author on crew is gonna do while looking at history, but giving benefit of the doubt, making a few jokes??? And then it’s like HELLO YES ALL OF THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE. WHAT KIND OF FIRST EPISODE BLACK MAGIC? THAT WAS A BOBO LEVEL FIRST EPISODE. 

Oh my god.

I mean, I’m sure we all saw it coming, like deadass you all know I’m not a genius for saying and expecting -- Dean, lessons learned and remorseful from these last few misadventures, coming in to want to talk to Cas, who has had no such giving and keeps his focus on the target, outside of his perceivably crumbled relationship. Like, expecting this is about as simple as expecting them to fight monsters, or Sam and Dean disagreeing over a method/plan. 

But as unsurprising as it is, it held weight and value, after the episode -- as given in my addition to the original referenced link -- spent its entire time framing loss of best friends, empty space, the ramifications of turning one’s back, and knowing gold when you have it and what’s worth fighting for. 

Now, to fall back to touching on the textuality topic: I thank 15.07 for the display of performative absurdity. It’s not the first episode to rip open and expose fandom’s dirty underbelly and intersectional marginalization forces wearing an LGBT Activism Suit -- 14.03 also did so loudly by Bobo (eg read: “The Problem with Dreamhunter” [A post that points out what people will accept for canonization when there isn't a rival ship or excessive projection of antis specific to a ship which is *SPOILER ALERT* nowhere near what everyone pretends is needed when they want to argue just to argue and some intersectional WLW vs MLM issues]) -- but it was the first to approach it directly with Dean, much less so textually. 

The ridiculous redefinition of words, of “what *I* think canon means” whipped completely out of fandom generated buzz and no dictionary on the face of the planet -- the demands, and the active erasure of existing LGBT text because it wasn’t *visible enough* -- really does show a seedy side of fandom that wears a nice Representation Warrior dress sometimes, but betrays a series of issues:

Most points boil down to “I won’t acknowledge any text unless it is loud enough to argue down any idiot I ever meet”, putting the focus not on representative resonance and value of quality of text, but on personal vindication for raw argumentation. A world where trolls and their personal agendas have actually taken *greater importance* to people than the representative text, and is an absolutely abysmal motivation or bottom line for any discussion and yes, if you recoiled and feel ashamed or called out about that, rather than patching over your pride and doubling down, maybe skim the reblog tags bisexual people have left on my several dozen posts about the damages of them being actively deleted is doing.

If you care about representation, you’ll think about that. Even if it’s not the loudly visible version of representation you *want*, it is what it is, and well--it is. Pretty simply. There is no perfect fantasy world where everybody understands and wants the thing you do. And I’m not just talking about LGBT rep. I’m talking about the people you pretend to need to argue gay canon with still being absolutely flummoxed by canon itself, like them saying “family don’t end with blood” and “found family” are “fanon concepts”. People that are confused where demons go when they die. People that rebuke literally many-times textualized non-gay things just to suit their personal agenda. And shockingly, they have a personal agenda about the gay content too.  

I’m talking about straight pairings like mulder and scully that got no romo’ed around even after they kissed and got pregnant and the whole nine, because bawww that’s not what the show is about so *allow me to build elaborate theories that make no sense and pretend they have standing in canon equal to the straightforward read*.

Cuz that’s where we’re at right now. Our fandom is just particularly bonky, and has been allowed to go so far off the edge of the map and away from center GA-resonant discussion that the bog standard antis have literally come up with body-mutilating necrophilia as an answer to avoid the gay, and somehow... *shruuuuug?* people act like these people not only are of equal worth but like... deserve... any consideration long term? Which is when we lean into the next point on MOTIVATION.

So ask at what point arguing with tinhats beat out your actual interest in representation and LGBT rights and media issues. Ask at what point you surrendered your focus on feeling resonant with a character that has been textually acknowledged, and traded that for implying you suddenly can’t relate to the character until he performs [X] exact function, exactly how you want, and when you want. Hell, I have even gotten an anon that literally said they would have acknowledged it if SPN had given them what they want when they wanted-- so basically, too late, not enough.

That’s not how text works. Whether the text came ten years ago or now, the text is the text. Your personal fulfillment aside, text is text. And I highly urge people to stop demanding tokenism above demographic-targeted representative types (eg bisexual, raised in the 80s in a patriarchal/power/grit based society and its own associated dogmas, fairly masculine identity, and so on) or demanding characters perform as if they were from another demographic (be it age or gender) because that’s your demographic. 

Once you start removing elements of the represented demographics (LGBT, male, age, origin, etc) and wanting it to perform by way of *your* demographic’s behaviors or base line needs/wants, that’s when we’ve left representation. That’s when we’re demanding tokenization. And when you’re demanding tokenization to win internet fights with people who don’t even believe what they say, you have long left the representation wheelhouse. That’s what we call troll wars. 

Do not let LGBT media representation be kidnapped into troll wars. Do not let content be degraded or removed just to engage in troll wars. And if you want to engage in troll wars, and you value the arguments more than the discussion *of* representation intersectional issues, and methods, and all around it -- then just... stop. Stop saying you want representation. Don’t. 

I’m tired.

bruv im still jus. wow. theres so much to say but. do u kno how good it feels... to be jewish, to accidentally fixate on one eric cartman & love him more than any other fictional character for almost seven years now, and then to see him in a little yarmulke, standing at kyle's side while he recites from the torah? do you know how validating that is?

i gotta get personal for a second here. idk how, but in the last few yrs my relationship with my own jewishness has been deeply influenced and intertwined with south park, as ironic and ridiculous as that sounds. i grew up secular, completely nonpracticing; as a child, i was only ethnically jewish, and saw jews as strictly an ethnicity, and a popularly hated one to boot. and it scared me. ive talked about it before, but as a child hearing about the shoah and about antisemitism, i couldn't understand. i thought it was looks for a while, which confused me, because ive got blonde hair and blue eyes and all my family that got caught up in nazi europe did/do too. i remember thinking as a second grader that i would've been spared for that reason; why didn't a good chunk of my family? but i grew up in a mormon neighborhood, with plenty of other blonde kids, and they stayed away from me like i had a disease. this was before puberty, before my hair got a little frizzier and my nose got a little bigger, when i looked just like any of them. but already, at age 8, i was an outsider. i wasn't one of them and i never would be, and they wanted me to know that.

and then i started to get it. it clicked even more once i got to high school and got called a kike every other day - but prior to high school, you know what i found, and you know what really pushed me towards understanding what being a secular jew in america meant? south park. and as a dumb little sixth grader with no critical thinking skills, you know what shaped my opinions on my own people? south park.

and that's good and bad. good because i do sincerely think kyle broflovski is excellent fictional representation for jewish people, maybe one of the top few ever shown on television. he gets on my nerves at times, but he's good through and through, he's well written and multi-dimensional, he's not a walking stereotype but he still has prominent jewish features that jewish viewers can look at and see in themselves, his morals and viewpoints and beliefs are obviously deeply influenced by judaism, hes deeply proud of his heritage and culture... and that all means a lot to me. and by the amount of jewish sp fans that adore kyle, it means a lot to them too.

the bad thing is, yeah, i can't deny it, during older seasons, cartman's treatment of kyle probably taught a lot of young and dumb viewers how to view jews in real life. have i, as a kyman shipper and cartman stan, justified that within a fictional and narrative context? yes. but it doesn't change the real-world effect; south park, but specifically cartman, since he's the mouthpiece, likely did cause some easily-influenced people to pick up antisemitic beliefs. did this contribute to the rise of the alt-right? debatable, but to some extent, possibly. was that m&t's intention and should south park be canceled and denounced? fuck no, i'll always love it lol, and fuck censorship. but it is something that should be taken into account.

matt and trey clearly regret that, and understand that it's no longer acceptable or fitting or needed in today's sociopolitical climate - or, okay, maybe they don't even regret it; they just understand that when fiction becomes reality, the fictional jackass isn't necessary when there's one right there in real life, sitting in the oval office, yeah? old cartman doesn't deserve or need a voice, not when real, awful people actually have one right now. and m&t are actively trying to change cartman for the better and really, really backpedal on his bigotry, while still doing it in a way that makes sense from a story-telling perspective. it's not a complete uncharacteristic change of character; it's shifting with the times and writing it into the character's arc so that it's a logical and plausible development in cartman's story.

cartman's behavior in the last few seasons is consistent character development. m&t themselves are pushing it, and clearly it's sincere; cartman's not faking. unless they're building up a surprise twist over the last, what, three to four seasons, that he was faking the whole time! woah! if so it better be a damn good pay off, because that's a lot of time invested. though that seems more forward-thinking than sp tends to be. they're intentionally stuck in the short-term, aren't they? plot-wise. but their character development is pretty long-term, and right now, cartman is consistently decent, and if it comes across as faking, it's because cartman's over-dramatic in how he speaks, and trey does that intentionally.

that's a tonal thing, and it's hard to say in a fictional character, but as someone who struggles with empathy myself, empathy and sincerity don't go hand in hand. you can lack empathy while still caring enough to sincerely and wholeheartedly apologize for something and mean that apology. not feeling remorse doesn't mean you can't apologize genuinely; the two don't go hand in hand. you can be mentally ill in any capacity, even a psychopath, and still deeply care about things or people, just not in the way someone else might. so you can headcanon that cartman's still a psycho/sociopath, though right now that's actually kinda going against canon, but don't rain on other's parades if they're happy he's exhibiting healthy growth. besides, and i repeat: what could cartman exploit out of faking sincerity for several seasons? nothing, so why bother? he wouldn't, unless it's literal in-show subconscious growth.

does that mean he's magically developed empathy? no. is it becoming less probable he's a legitimate sociopath/psychopath (while still possibly having better-disguised antisocial tendencies)? yes. does he seem to have better coping or anger management skills? somehow, yes! he seems to be legitimately healthier. does this mean he's no longer accountable for his past misdeeds, and even his present, less-severe ones? of course not! and you can still hate him all you want, but modern cartman is not the same as older cartman, and shouldn't be treated as such. because is this growth? absolutely.

he's clearly healthier, even happier. he's less angry, he's still a little shit but he no longer relies on bigotry or cruelty or anger to get the negative attention he thrives off, rather he gravitates towards being simply annoying. you know why he called ice? pettiness, immaturity, a little bit of spite, and a need for silly revenge. he's being intentionally petty, but going about it in a sly but no longer psychopathic way. less hannibal lector and more, idk, regina george, lol. extremely different on the antagonist scale. and cartman's been both.

and maybe it's personal bias on what type of human is worse within fiction, someone unstable and bizarre with violent tendencies (which is how he's come to be viewed in pop culture & some of the fandom, as a result of eps like scott tenorman must die), versus someone inclined towards pettiness and more silent and, i dunno, social-status-and-pride-driven types of revenge (cartman in general when he's not being particularly awful, tbh)... but i think it'd be pretty universally agreed that the latter is at the very least more tolerable, manageable, and even likeable - and certainly more redeemable. let's put it this way; if cartman continued on the path he was on, he'd be one of those tiki holding fucks, wearing a confederate flag hat, and he'd treat kyle soooo much worse. instead, m&t have turned him into a hypocritical false-woke ignorant dumbass - but that's strongly less problematique than it's counterpart, and it works.

because cartman simply serves a different narrative purpose now. and that's not sloppy writing; it's well-timed evolution of a character that stepped into a pre-9/11, pre-trump, pre-social media world! so much has changed, and south park is reflecting that in its characters, most notably in a character who was stuck in the, what, 1960s with his beliefs? that was fine way back when, but matt&trey are smart dudes - they understand that sometimes things have to change. besides, they love cartman, too. he's their favorite. but they understand that when real people act like him, it's not so comedic or satirical or funny, & they don't want to look at cartman, at their creation who they've invested twenty-two years in, and see the all-too-real hate of modern radical white america.

i think we know enough about matt&trey's social stances these days, and the empathy they've seemed to develop after having kids, to understand that they're no longer in their "apathy is best, everyone is stupid" phase. current south park is left-leaning and admittedly preachy at times, but i wouldn't want it any other way. g-d knows it's better this way than if they'd embraced and decided to appeal to their right-libertarian following instead. cartman's evolved in a progressive and positive way, and it's fucking dope, especially to us cartman stans who so badly want him to be good. and he is good right! he's doing so good!

and i know im up my own ass rn but yall know how much i myself have campaigned for jewish kyman/cartman and how much i just deeply and truly adore it, and to see it actualized in a canon episode to some extent? that meant the world to me. i couldn't believe my eyes. i was tellin lai - that's the most genuine, pure, almost violent happiness ive felt in my soul in years. that was like a straight shot of serotonin to the heart. that simple little scene made me so fucken happy yall dont even know. & theres a lot to be said about the political commentary and plenty of other people are analyzing that, but im a simple jewish kyman & cartman stan and boy ive been fed good fjskfkdkdkfk!!!

🤷🏆(i want a rant about you know what/who for either of these) 😎 🎵

🎵 - What do you listen to while you read?

Generally can’t listen to anything with lyrics as it just distracts me. If I have it turned down low so it’s more like background noise it’s okay, but I prefer putting on a score (MoS is my go-to) or sometimes just nothing at all.

😎 Who is your BroTP?

Stepping away from DC for a moment, but Harry and Ron. I love them. I love them so much. They’re the best Best Friends ever.

🤷 What thing that your fandom loves do you just not “get”?

Prepare yourselves for some long ass thoughts on Barbara and why I don’t like her and why I don’t get why other people do.

I don’t get the Gotham fandom’s love for Barbara. And this is on two levels. Firstly, she’s a bad person, that somehow, to me at least, stands out in a sea of bad people. Because there are others on the show who are murderous and cruel and selfish and petty, but Barbara has always felt worse to me, I think because so much of her behaviour is toxic and abusive in a very real way, a way that I recognise. Barbara treats the people around her badly, consistently, and is straight up abusive to every one of her romantic partners. She treats Tabitha like shit again and again, abusive in both physical and emotional ways, and she’s manipulative with Renee, employing classic abuser tactics to turn Renee’s desire to stay healthy into an attack on her to create guilt, deflecting blame off her for that and other parts of their relationship. It’s the worst with Jim though. Throughout their relationship in S1 she abused his trust, ignored his boundaries, was manipulative, controlling and jealous, tried to gaslight him on more than one occasion and then either A. cheated on him, or B. left him to immediately hook up with an ex who was as knee deep in the stuff Barbara said she was afraid of as Jim, and then got mad that Jim wasn’t sitting around waiting for her when she finally came back months later, having run out of other options (and either way, she left Jim via letter, which is just a crappy thing to do). And then following her breakdown her behaviour escalates to murder attempts, physical assaults, repeated sexual harassment, and on at least two occasions, outright sexual assault.

And she is never, ever held to account for any of it, by the narrative, by the fandom, or by the other characters. When anyone tries she turns it back on them, or the one questioning her is made out to be the bad guy, and she doesn’t ever apologise or make amends or work for any kind of redemption, which would be fine if she stayed a villain, unrepentant to the end, but that’s not what happened. Which is why I will never be happy with her being the mother of Barbara Gordon. Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t want her anywhere near a child, nor do I think the character we saw for 5 seasons would want to raise a child, or be able to (remember how she told a 12 year old she should start using her looks as a weapon to manipulate people? And that time she actually did take her 10 year old daughter out of the house/away from whoever was taking care of her to drag her across town to an empty club in the middle of the night while there were criminals loose to get a gun?), she was Jim’s abuser, for years, so for her to be the mother of his child, the mother of Barbara Fucking Gordon, leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Even when she was pregnant she spent half the time using it to punish Jim for not wanting her back. Everything about it was so spiteful and I hate it and it was a bad choice all around and they shouldn’t have done it.

And I have my suspicions as to why she gets away with all of it, why the fandom, and even the writers I think, don’t see her behaviour as anything particularly bad. There’s almost a wider issue of letting the female characters off easy for particular kinds of behaviour that male characters would, do, and rightly should get called on, stemming really from the idea that it’s fine if it happens to men. Lee can slap her partner and ignore his explicitly stated personal boundaries, he’s a man, that’s fine. Selina can lie and deliberately hurt her partner again and again, that’s fine. Female characters can beat and abuse and assault male characters, romantic partners even, and it’s no big. Barbara can spend years sexually harassing someone and there’s nothing wrong with that, because it’s happening to men, it’s fine, gurl power, etc etc.

It’s a general “problem”, I guess, that’s beyond Barbara, but for me her treatment by the fandom is the worst. I just don’t really understand why she’s so beloved, because most of the fandom seems intent on pretending she doesn’t do 99% of the terrible stuff she does, which is insane to me - love a villain for the things they do, love them because they’re villainous. It’s fiction, it doesn’t mean you approve or whatever, but the bad things they do are a part of them. If you can’t handle that, if you have to change everything about them, then you’re not really loving the character at all, you’re making up a whole new one. I mean this even extends to her relationship with Tabitha - Barbara treats her horribly, and Tabitha spends half her time seeing someone else, but the fandom holds them up as their perfect, healthy, appropriate representation lesbian queens (also erasing their bisexuality in the process). Again, if you have to erase or ignore almost everything about the characters and their relationship and their history and their personalities in order to ship or stan them, then you’re basically just making up new ones. More than anything, I just don’t understand that.

Which brings me to my other point, because the second reason I can’t stand her is the writing. Erin is a great actress, does the best with what she’s given, but Barbara is just so badly written. So, so bad. And it’s not that the writers can’t write well, even with stumbles and bad choices, the majority of the show’s characters, male or female, are written well, particularly the villains, but for whatever reason they just didn’t with Barbara. She has no consistent personality or goals. She’s twenty different kinds of crazy, which one which time just depends on the episode. Her personality and mental state and wants change multiple times each season. Who is she? 

And it’s frustrating and infuriating watching a character be so inconsistent and aimless, especially when it interferes with other story arcs, which is what happened time and time again with Barbara. It’s pretty obvious that the writers had no idea what to do with her after season 1. There was a decent enough arc following her breakdown, where you could track what she was after - Jim, her love and hate and obsession twisted up so that she wants to hurt and kill him as much as she still wants him, but after the coma, she just loses focus, and it never really comes back. She floats between the other villains with very little point, like the writers couldn’t come up with a story for her, so they just stuck her in scenes. Her personality jumps all over the place too. Like, is she crazy, is she faking, is she a little crazy and faking the rest? Who is she with? Who is she working for? What does she actually want? Who is she?

And when they do manage to write something more substantial for her, it rarely makes much sense. Barbara suddenly wants to be head of the underworld? Okay then, came a little out of nowhere, but okay I guess. Then she’s an arms dealer???? Then she’s Sofia’s lackey????? Then she’s the god damn head of the League of Assassins??????????. This last one being the worst for me. Barbara’s involvement in the League arc was 100% unnecessary and in fact made the whole thing more confusing and nonsensical and is the most egregious example of the writers just sticking her in somewhere because they didn’t know what to do with her. Ra’s was only interested in Bruce to begin with, so why bring her back at all? Why give her the power when he and others explicitly name Bruce as his heir? Why would the League follow her, a criminal, and not Ra’s’ actual heir, or idk, one of his daughters who are already involved? Why would they keep following her once it became clear she had no intention of fulfilling the League’s mission? Why did she look like that chick in the painting? Why was Ra’s into her, given that literally everything about her is antithetical to everything he stands for? Why any of it?

And then there was her incredible writing in season 5. The whole pregnancy thing was badly done and pretty much the worst way to bring Barbara Gordon in, but besides that, the writers once again had no idea how to write her so they pretty much spent the first half of the season turning her into Oswald.

So yeah, that’s why I don’t like Barbara as a character, and why I don’t understand why so many people love her now.

And that’s today’s Unpopular Opinion

Wait, so you don't have BPD but you want to write parse with bpd as your representation? How does that work? I'm really sorry, I like your Parse stories and read them and I don't mean to say that you shouldn't write them, but I don't understand where you're coming from on this. Is it really that difficult to identify with any of the characters of color on the same level?

I’ll answer your questions backwards so the long personal story can go under a readmore:

“Is it really that difficult to identify with any of the characters of color on the same level?“

That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks. Like, mental health is my wheelhouse, that’s a huge thing I write about; what about writing mentally ill characters of colour?  I can do it pretty easily with my OCs (cf. Luis and Maida) but feeling my way into mental health themes with canon characters of colour is more difficult while Kent and Jack are kind of like... low-hanging fruit, for me.

It’s why I’ve started bugging @abominableobriens with thoughts about BPD Nursey, gone back to trying to work my way into Ransom’s anxiety (I can’t find the post where I talk about where I was with this a couple months ago).  It’s not a smooth process, though--I’m flopping around being like “but how do I respect Ransom’s personality and preferences but get him some TREATMENT and REST” and “Okay but I haaate conflict-laden relationships and Nursey and Dex’s canon relationship is so full of sniping, how do I write Nursey without Dex?” and that’s the kind of flailing and experimentation I have to do internally or talking to a few people. Mostly the for-public-consumption stuff that’s come out of that process so far has been fluffy romantic headcanons.

So we’ll see how that goes. It’s partly that positive depictions of BPD/the kind of complex trauma I’m interested in are really rare. Before OMGCP, I spent most of my time writing straight-up OCs in fandom contexts because I couldn’t find what I wanted in the source material. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oookay, and now for the long bit: Why I care really personally about representations of BPD even though I don’t have it myself.

So basically, I’ve been depressed/mentally ill since elementary school, but growing up I kind of internalized the idea that letting my family know I was suffering would be so awful and unbearable for them that I could NOT do it. So I hated myself and I was miserable and was convinced that I couldn’t tell any adults about it. The big lifeline for me were young adult problem novels--books about teens in treatment programs for eating disorders or self-injury or, heck, kidney disease or parapalegia--I never saw myself in the symptoms, precisely, which was confusing, but I did see myself in the emotional experience of overwhelming pain, and I was captivated by the idea that feeling so awful all the time wasn’t normal, it was a disease; and a disease that could be treated. There were people who could help me be Not-That--but I couldn’t ask my parents to see a therapist, since that would be too awful for them, so I tried to soak up what knowledge I could through those books (or the nonfiction books that were available to me).  The books... were very  bland, whitewashed, rendered down to be acceptable; the girls were very soft, very fragile, would never hurt a fly (except themselves). I kind of internalized that as what a Good Mentally Ill Person should look like, and didn’t realize there was any other sort of mental illness.

In junior high school I started being able to articulate this depression to other kids and started making friends, online and in real life, who were also mentally ill like me. We could talk together about feeling worthless and unlovable, and participate in a conspiracy of silence Not To Let The Adults Know.

I’m struggling to explain this and keep my narrative somehow concise, not an essay about my entire childhood--long story short, I’m not Borderline; I was a lot more emotionally stable, even if my stability was in absolute fucking misery. I could take an emotion like a punch to the gut and sit with it, when a lot of my friends would have to get it out somehow--it drove them to do crazy and self-destructive things. (As an adult I know this difference is a lot about genetics and our lives before the age of three.)  And also, long story short, I learned that one way to make people like me was to pay attention to them and take care of them. I nurtured out of self-defense and because it was the only way I knew how to socialize. So I was the person all my friends told about their problems.

And I thought they were like me, that we had the same problems, the same illness? I tried to take what I learned from books and apply it, which was all about being patient and giving and empathetic and loyal and A Good Friend. I thought friendship could cure anything.  No matter what anybody did to me, I was totally disconnected from my anger and self-protective instincts; I thought I had to be a sponge, soaking up all their bad emotions and loving them no matter what.

So I was totally unprepared for them to split on me. I didn’t know anything about the idealization/devaluation cycle.

Splitting is... so, Borderline Personality Disorder is basically an inability to self-regulate, to integrate, to tolerate ambiguity. Either the person with it is an amazing perfect god, or a destructive piece of shit. Either their friend is a wonderful loving angel, or an evil demon who hates them and wants them to suffer. And this is an opinion that can flip on a dime, depending on how the person feels in that moment. So like--

I was maybe 16 or 17, and made a friend through a speech and debate club I was part of. From out of nowhere she liked me, thought I was pretty and smart and special. I stayed up until 3am one weekend and talked with her; we shared our hopes, our dreams, our favourite books. She sang a Scottish ballad that she said reminded her of me (”black is the colour of my true love’s hair”). The next time we met she gave me a little teddy bear with a hand-written note about what a good friend I was.

Then in the club, it was my job to make sure everyone got to meetings on time and was properly dressed and everything, and someone pointed out to me that my friend was wearing a skirt that was way shorter than dress guidelines allowed for. I had to go tell her that she was supposed to change and said, squirmingly uncomfortable, “People have talked to me...”  She stalked off.

That night was a ceremony where people who aged out of the group got to talk a little bit about what the group meant to them, and say goodbye to people, and play or sing a song. Her turn came, and she announced that our entire group was full of fake, awful, petty monsters, two-faced liars, almost as hurtful, hateful, and abusive as her foster parents. The song she played was “Just Like You” by Three Days Grace. I sobbed the entire time and tried to apologize to her, but it didn’t work. 

About a month later, she emailed someone in the group to say she’d been angry and hadn’t meant it, and she was sorry for ruining the ceremony.

That kind of thing happened to me with... maybe five or six different people, to greater or lesser degrees, from the time I was 12 to the time I was 20, which is when I finally got a handle on what was going on and how to predict it and keep it from happening. Friendships where everything was fine, wonderful, great thanks, how are you, fine, wonderf--KABOOM YOU’RE A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT LIS YOU ABUSER (oh wait sorry i didn’t mean it where are you going).

It took a lot of work to learn that I had to get my sense of self from something other than helping other people, to look after my own needs as well as other peoples’, to learn (GASP) to accept and even ask for help. A lot of things changed when my mom told us, when I was 15, that she was depressed and going into therapy, because that meant we were allowed to do these things in our family. I immediately blurted out, “Can I see a therapist too?”  So I got more centred in myself, and also finally figured out what was going on with my friends, and got better at maintaining friendships with people with BPD that did not explode, at making friendships that were not based around me being a pseudo-therapist, and at getting my helping-people jonesing out with actual paid work.

So you might notice that a lot of my fics about Kent and BPD aren’t actually from Kent’s perspective or about him--they’re about people trying to live with him. Hurricane or Campsites are stories about people who know what to expect, who have some understanding of what he’s like and how to keep themselves safe. They can find ways to love him for his good parts without letting his bad parts hurt them, can love him without letting themselves be sucked in by the extreme warmth of his regard, can maintain their own boundaries and make their own decisions.

(To be honest, I was initially really amazed to find that people with BPD appreciate my fics or me talking about the subject? Because I am an outsider, because I am writing from this perspective--a medical perspective, no less! The voice of the Establishment! But a lot of people have been really receptive to my POV--which might just be, again, the paucity of positive representations at all.)

I didn’t really think about it this way until I got this ask and started trying to explain it, but... I’m trying to write the kind of story I could have used when I was a kid.

(So then you ask, Lis, you’re still writing about other people, about meeting other peoples’ needs--when are you going to write about children like you were, about experiences like yours? When are you going to tell your own story? and then I change the topic and sidle awkwardly out of the room. I’m not ready for that yet.)

A Letter to the Sherlock Fandom

You may think that this is a lot of text and too long to read but I implore you to try so that you can better understand these points of view.

I apologise if this isn't as eloquent or measured as I intended it to be but I am honestly so angry at the Sherlock fandom right now. Not all, obviously, many are conducting themselves amazingly no matter their opinion on the episode. However, there are a large (and loud) number who are not and not only are these people making the rest of us look bad and acting as if they speak for the fandom as a whole, I fear that they are doing (and may have already succeeded in doing) irreparable damage to what could have been a great community.

There are several points I wish to address in this post so I will try to dissect each one individually to the best of the ability.

Harassment

No matter what you thought of the episode it is NOT okay, or even productive, to harass members of the cast or crew in any way (whether it be through social media, through official complaints (which can actually have further effects on their professional lives also which are definitely not yours to mess with) etc.). It started with Amanda back when season 3 was announced and that was just downright cruel and now it seems the lesson has not been learnt. They have worked hard on this show and even if it did not turn out as you personally expected it or wanted it to you cannot hate them for having a different view of where things should go than you. I have seen many people on Tumblr saying things along the line of 'it our show anyway we can do what we want and it can be what we want it to be'. No. It is their show, we merely enjoy it - they created it and they have final say on what happens. I for one would not wish to see a world where the fans get to decide what happens as that would only ever cause further divide in communities and result in one section of a fandom having superiority over the others which is already happening in the Sherlock fandom with some Johnlockers/TJLCers.This harassment also extends to the harassment of other member of the fandom - labelling someone as homophobic because they don't ship a same-sex ship is not only detrimental to the LGBT+ cause it puts up further barriers for the normalisation of non-traditional relationships.

On a similar topic, complaining to the BBC because you didn't like the episode is not only petty but also counterproductive - these people are not asking for change in doing so they are calling for an end to the show and a witch-hunt in which those who created it are to be mocked in a public sphere. I have seen many people proudly posting images of their complaints and encouraging others to do the same and even petitions to a similar effect and it saddens me that people have become so arrogant in believing that the show is theirs and they were owed more that they would stoop to such levels. You were not owed anything. You didn't like it, deal with it, move on.

Queerbaiting

I cannot express how much I dislike this term. Sometimes, yes, the teasing of fans with a potentially queer couple is done in an interpretably malicious way. With Sherlock, this is not the case. The cast and crew have said from the start that Johnlock (the main ship brought up in such discussions) was not going to happen. If you missed that and were not aware - fine; but if you knew this and then continued to be upset that it wasn't happening - that is on you.  It is not queerbaiting if there was never any potential for the relationship in the first place - especially when neither character has been canonically stated to be queer.

Fetishisation of Gay Relationships and the Anti-Straight Trend in the Progressive Community

Wow, that was a long title. I have seen many of the aforementioned complaints to the BBC, petitions and Tumblr posts claiming that by not making a ship such as Johnlock canon they have let down a large portion of the community who are LGBT+ and have not given them the representation they deserve. Whilst representation is good and everyone does deserve to be able to see someone like them on television, as I said before, we have known from the stat that this was not going to happen with these characters. If you didn't understand that clear message - again, it is on you, not the creators who have always been honest about the future of such a ship. You can be upset that they did not become canon in the same way that you would for any other ship but you cannot claim that you have been robbed of representation, misled in any way or owed better because you were never promised it in the first place.

As for the title of this section, I have seen a common trend in fandom communities towards making canonically straight characters gay, which whilst harmless if not taken to the extreme (as I feel some members of the Johnlock community have) actually highlights a double standard and serious problem that must be addressed. If one were to take a canonically gay character, strip them of their identity and make them straight they would be called homophobic in an instant. However, when it is the other way around, no one complains. Heterosexual is an identity too and to keep classifying it as separate from the others, in a class of its own, is only going to slow down progress and make it harder for true unity to occur. By stating that two characters, one of whom has categorically stated that they are not gay (and of course only one would be enough) have to be gay because of they way they interact (via your personal interpretation - often though tinted lenses) you are not only arguing that two men cannot be simply very good friends without harbouring romantic feelings for each other, you are also denying John of his own self-proclaimed identity.

The Bad Side of TJLC

(The previous paragraph is also relevant to this section and thus again I must state that whilst shipping two characters is fine, outright ignoring their identity and labelling them yourself is not.)

On paper, TJLC (The JohnLock Conspiracy) is not too harmful, you can speculate as much as you want. Where it becomes harmful is where people delve into the realm of delusion. There are many TJLCers who wholeheartedly believe that Johnlock is already canon or has to be canon and it is these people who appear to harbour the strongest negative beliefs about the recent episode and who are doing the most damage to this community.

I have seen countless posts recently along the lines of the following: 'clearly we know more than Moftiss', 'how could they not see it was so obvious', etc. Such arrogance as to your own beliefs is extremely harmful to the wider community. You do not know more than the creators of the show, the show is as they intended it to be - anything that you find within the show (with your TJLC-tinted glasses) that supports your predetermined theory is simply you putting two and two together and making five. It was not intended and therefore not symbolic of your beliefs and so your interpretation is no more than that - an interpretation not fact.

Believe it or not, for those of us not in the TJLC community, JohnLock was not obvious - for someone like me, when I first heard of this ship and TJLC I was incredibly surprised because I saw no romantic connection whatsoever - just two friends; and that was all that they were intended by the creators to be. If you were aware of the cast and crews comment of the subject and still deluded yourself into believing that TJLC was true - that was on you. No one else is to blame for your beliefs not lining up with the facts of the show.

Your ship does not rule this fandom and you do not speak for the whole fandom so those of you saying they didn't give the fandom what they wanted - you are wrong. They didn't give you what you wanted. You don't speak for me and you don't speak for the countless others like me who actually enjoyed the episode and/or are not in any way JohnLock shippers.

Sherlock Holmes and the Delusion of the Fake Episode

For those of you who still believe in some way that the episode was a fake one, that a  new episode will come out and say that it was all a dream etc. Again, you are deluding yourself and this is not healthy and will only lead to disappointment. It is what it is. Failure to accept reality for what it is and move on from there, living in a constant state of denial is a serious problem.

 I have so much more to say and honestly not the words to say it without going off onto too much of a tangent right now. I may add continuations (in fact I most likely will once I can formulate sentences again) to this if I think of anything.

I know that one post on Tumblr isn't going to make a whole lot of difference and the fractures in this community may never heal but I honestly could not hold this in any longer.

You are welcome to ask questions or for clarification on any point made or any point you wish me to address.