#as someone who has been abused their entire life that stuff makes me mad as hell | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

griancraft · 2 months

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Ok as per my last post. This is Long and very much about my feelings so uh don’t read it if you don’t want to. Also I’m aware I sound genujneky crazy for half of this I’m just really really mentally ill in ways I don’t talk about here at all and now I am sharing them and it’s. A little scary but oh well. The system stuff is the stuff I’m most concerned about right now to be honest bc it effects my day to day and if anyone has any kind words or thoughts on what to do I’ll be happy to listen

Please read my previous post if you’re mad /gen I don’t think I say anything bad here but I have really bad morality ocd so like uhm I am scared to post this!!! Prev post

Also I’m very sorry that the prose is terrible to read and my spelling is shit I have dyspraxia which is a coordination thing and it’s worse rn

The maybe I was boring album came on yesterday while I was cleaning and I had to stop what I was doing and turn it off halfway through because I just couldn’t stop hearing an admission. I wasn’t even sad I was just. So done with it. I still am just kinda like. God I hope Shelby is doing ok with all this being public now. I’m glad she was able to heal like she said and I’m glad she made the video dude.

I almost got his lyrics tattooed if that’s testament to how much I loved his early music. It’s not connecting in my brain that this music that’s been apart of my life for like 4 years and helped me through so much was made by an abuser.

But like, in retrospect you can see it. I can’t bear to delete ycgma off my mp3 player bc I related to his songs so much as an abused lonely teenager but I also can’t bare to listen to it. I learned the fall on my guitar as my final exam and I used to repeat his lyrics to myself to cope with abuse and I wish I could still love these songs. I dressed like his dsmp character bc I thought it made me look cool. Which is lame as fuck to admit now lol

Originally I was planning on pirating them and I like, can’t especially after that manipulative ass statement. How much was an act? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m a bad person because I still kinda do want to listen to that music again. I still want to feel that safe but I know I won’t feel that way anymore.

with dsmp stuff I think I’m going to be still able to look back fondly on it generally and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. The community was what made it and the community is what I loved, and i still do. I don’t think I’m going to reblog art of him specifically but if he’s in it I might. Idk. My policy on dream fanart is if he’s not alone in the art and it’s dsmp or mcc related I reblog so I guess I’ll continue that here. Im sorry if that sounds callous I just. Am not prepared to talk about this so I’m going back and forth

And like. We also have a wilbur factive/fictive and we have for years now and nobody in our system knows how to feel about that. He formed to fill the role of a big brother (I was being heavily emotionally neglected at that point and needed someone to be there for me) and protector from my parents abuse. Obviously, he is entirely separate from his source now bc alters change a lot for me but how we picture him is still wilbur. he’s literally just some guy now but grappling with that connection is fucked up dude it’s weird. He’ll probably further distance himself but it still fucking sucks and I don’t know how to communicate the cognitive dissonance we had to push through bc our brain struggled at first to make sense of how this person who we liked so much that he became the template for a Protector to shield us from the emotional neglect and abuse, essentially, is a terrible person. I’m sorry I know people who aren’t systems, and some who are ngl, will find this fuckibg nuts and I get that but we’re a very very internal person like I just. Kinda am with us as a system a lot and nobody else. It feels like my safe space that I’ve created in my head has been marred. Also. uhm. Our alters speak in distinct voices so it’s bad bad for me rn and we are trying to fix it. I know I know fictives and factives arenttheir source but that doesn’t change that it makes me feel gross. I’m rambling rn I’m sorry. Support Shelby.

#tw abuse #discourse #vent

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ronon-dex · 4 months

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really not sure how I feel about the ending to travelers, or the show as a whole. it has such a fascinating concept and builds an incredibly rich world off of that, but there are so many pitfalls to how it's constructed. I've never seen such a rollercoaster of quality that's SO rapid. i'm talking 10 to 1 in the space of a minute and back again, over three entire seasons. insane. LONG POST INCOMING

good stuff:

the direction is amazing. visually, the show is beautiful, and sets up shots that are consistently creative and designed to depict the emotion the scene is supposed to evoke, which I've never seen done so artistically. we'll see half of marcy's face when she's lying. we'll see kathryn filtered through soft light when maclaren looks at her. blood and sunlight is shown in stark contrast. action scenes have moments of intense stillness in the middle, which make the violence so much more shocking. philip's addictive eye-drop medication is always shown dripping down his face like tears. standout eps for stuff like this are '17 Minutes', and 'Protocol 3'.

fairly anti-copaganda for the most part. it's rare to see.

the acting is wonderful. jared abrahamson (trevor), reilly dolman (philip) and jennifer spence (grace) especially blew me away. trevor's dual energy of sprightly teenager and wise old man had to be very difficult to get right, but it was done perfectly. when he stares down his host's abuser in 'Update' his eyes were nearly black; you could imagine a 400 year old man and the rage he must have accumulated through centuries of hardened existence. philip was a character who wasn't allowed to live up to his potential, and I will be repeating this, but the scenes he had were devoured. he had an addiction to multiple substances, he was mostly ignored by his team despite being the most crucial member, and he had not a single friend outside of his fellow travelers. the agony of all of this was portrayed to perfection. grace fulfilled a role that is normally given to a paunchy white guy, an annoying genius who gets away with inappropriate behaviour because they're clever. [the rodney mckay effect, one of many stargate echoes in this show, thank you brad wright.] she was absolutely hilarious and brought light to a very grim show at times.

the traveler missions were excellent. the pacing in these scenes was great, the plots were generally airtight, and the awareness of the audience's intelligence was thrilling to witness. i figured out mysteries exactly when I was supposed to, a few minutes before the fallout - so you see how the dominoes will fall, and you see how nobody could have caught them. SO on theme for this show. the one moment that did catch me off guard was maclaren's birthday party in s1. oh my god I was so mad at the gotcha jumpscare, it annoyed the hell out of me lmao

bad stuff:

my main gripe. this show is called travelers. this show spends only about 50% of its runtime with solely travelers. the rest of the time is spent with david (marcy's boyfriend who doesn't know she is from the future and possessing the real marcy's body), kathryn (who also doesn't know her husband, maclaren, is not her husband) and jeff (an abusive alcoholic who consistently tries to beat up his ex girlfriend, who is also now a traveler.) these people completely take over the show. they have multi-season arcs and entire episodes revolving around their problems with marcy/maclaren/carly, often domestic. attempts to give philip and trevor stories outside traveler missions are abandoned sometime around s2. when these civilian characters were abducted together in s2 I literally started calling them the Avengers of Being Annoying. I've said it before but imagine how awful the show leverage would've been if 20 minutes out of every episode sophie, nate and eliot left to talk to their individual spouses about their relationship problems.

there wasn't even a serious confrontation about the consent issues surrounding the takeover of someone's life - especially assuming a sexual or emotional relationship with that person's loved ones. like that should have been a huge ethical dilemma removed from simply possessing a previously dying body. like why are you now fucking your host's wife like it's ok??? you're not him and she doesn't know you????

it was grim. it was also very clear that david was a favourite, some writer had a crush on marcy's actress, and some other writer was apologising to his wife through the maclaren/kathryn storyline. or maybe I'm just a hater. idk

this show had an amazingly compelling narrative, but it sacrificed a great deal when it comes to character stories. these characters were established very well, and built up over season 1 to have great depth and rich histories... and then we never explored most of it. we don't know the original genders of philip, maclaren or marcy. we don't know about the families of philip or maclaren. we don't know if the main 5 knew each other well or just trained before coming to the past. the future is almost a complete mystery and that was what made it cool in season 1; by the finale? fucking annoying.

these characters' most emotional moments and deepest relationships happened with the 21st century people they emotionally abducted. idk why. maclaren had no reason to stay with his host's wife. trevor could have freed himself from high school sooner. carly (with philip's help) could have gotten rid of jeff very quickly. I don't know why they insisted on this aspect of the show when the main cast were so underdeveloped and remained so for 3 seasons. this, more than anything, made the finale seem very hollow. the main 5 were coworkers, and apart from philip, and occasionally trevor, marcy and carly, they weren't that invested in each other's wellbeing outside of their efficiency as agents. this was not the found family I signed up for.

basically:

7/10 show for me. very visually gorgeous, as mentioned, and besides the kathryn and david of it all, very tightly written. thanks for saving the world, I suppose. I'm going to go look at the sky.

#travelers netflix #netflix travelers #philip pearson #trevor holden #grant maclaren #marcy warton #carly shannon #traveler 3468 if I ever see you it's on sight. you should have stayed with carly. it's insane that you didn't #philip was originally a 50 year old lesbian. to me. marcy was a 37 year old bi man.#maclaren was originally a straight guy but he was also 25. this explains a lot when you think about it. THINK about it #the fact that they never explored the mess that would come from changing genders or having a sexuality that does not align with your host's #utterly tedious. white man writer's syndrome. they can't imagine the world not catering to them.#the way philip talks about his host 'this young man'............. like...........#i know the number sequence makes it so marcy's the youngest but i need it to be maclaren. he is very much a little shit #imagine exploring the differences between yours and your host's bodies.......... hall could've been an 18 year old girl.#boyd could've been a 45 year old man with a wife and kids. WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING COOL WITH THAT.#imagine marcy and david's relationship but marcy tells him she's a gay guy from the future. a conversation for the ages. and we missed that #going to travel to the past and tell brad wright to do this or there will be a plague outbreak in 2020. back in a sec #(meant to say this show REEKED of stargate universe. even the close up shots like I WAS THERE. I WAS IN THE TRENCHES)

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brunt-f-c-a · 1 month

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I have bpd. I have very few resources. You can tell when an article or post is written by someone with bpd and someone who doesn't or doesn't actually have loves ones with it. Because they always start with "how to live wirh your abusive loved one who's behavior is their fault so you don't become a victim teehee" and when i split and need to understand the experiences of others to help understand myself i see these and feel like a monster. How do you think that affects a person with literal "take it personally because i have low self worth" disease. And genuinely i have been having a split lately and i just want to be candid about behavior. I am very easily gaslit. Bpd comes from trauma and neglect and abandonment and people with this are just as prone tp having toxic loved ones as being one. When I am approached over a wrongdoing i get defensive. I make excuses. Clearly I did nothing wrong you are making it up. This isn't because I'm trying to make my loved ones feel lesser or crazy because i don't want them to leave. A split is a defense mechanism. I am like this because i was abused. I was very devalued and my emotions and needs were disregarded pretty much my whole life. I am so easy to gaslight that there is an entire portion of my working memory dedicated to remembering what others say verbatim. So that nobody can hurt me again because i remember. Amd when confronted over something i did wrong i feel hurt. This is either rsd or a situation where the other party has hurt me too. This is a grey area and that is an obvious weak point for me. Because I can't see the grey areas amd identify where i was hurt too and talk about it. I am either completely wrong or completely right and vise versa so to protect myself from possible manipulation i choose completely right. This time the issue was small and i actually was wrong. So i apologized but wad still mad. And the problem is i recognized i was in the wrong but still hurt. And i started mentally dredging up things they did that i let go. I let a lot of stuff just go. I try not to be that guy that brings upthe this and that "i may have used your makeup but you broke my hairbrush and never apologized" or whatever. People do that. People with bpd do that a lot. And it's not my brain looking for reasons to devalue someone. It's because I'm so easy tp gaslight i gaslight myself. And now I'm having an emotional reaction and just upset because i dont realize that i had been devaluing myself and then letting things that actually upset me slide and build because they seem small and my emotions arent worth it. ONLY PEOPLE WITH BPD REBLOG PLEASE. because this post is me reaching out.

#borderline personality disorder #borderline problems #bpd #actually bpd

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memorieow · 1 year

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I'm putting memorie on indefinite hiatus

Content warning as I do discuss abuse, rape and trauma in general

TLDR: I have been enduring abuse since I was a teen and this latest traumatic event has affected me to the point of leaving the internet behind, including this musical alias.

I’ve been offline for a little while over Christmas and also recently been unable to get on social media and been reflecting on what I want not only for this project but just my life and happiness in general. The entire events of the past few months have been traumatic, and it’s such a slap in the face when I was on a path to being mentally healthy and healed from previous trauma. I remember how the relationships and friendships in my life used to play out and how inept I was trying to navigate the world being like 15, 16, 17 with all this shit going on in my brain, being isolated from all my friends in real life and just being in this deep depression, thinking everyone was mad at me, mistreating people close to me and self sabotaging my life. I mean my childhood was alright but since I was 13, I’ve been put through events that I can’t even bring myself to think about, just repress it as best I can. I think about how when I turned 17 I chose to get better and learned so much about how to just be a person again. I got beat up a few months prior and was wearing the same neutral outfit every day. I say neutral as there was nothing identifiable about it, it wasn’t even masculine or feminine, just neutral. I remember just feeling like I’d lost all sense of self, like no matter what I did, as long as I lived I was going to be put through traumatic events no matter what. The truth is, when you live in the middle of nowhere and grow up weird and sensitive and you think there’s just something wrong with your existence, you tend to just hang around whoever will hang around you. I put myself in situations to get abused, hurt, traumatized. But when I turned 17, I just decided to be “myself” and work on healing myself and so when I got into yet another relationship that year, I tried as hard as I could to do everything right, but ultimately, when you’re with someone who hurts you, it messes with your head, you do stuff out of character, they manipulate you into this weak shell of a person where you’re controlled by them. And when it gets really bad you just hide it. I just can’t believe that after how many times I tried to tell my friends I was being abused, they all didn’t believe me when I was essentially forced to come out about it. Like how many times did I say I wanted to get out, how many times did I call you from outside the house because I was scared to be in the house with her, how many times did I write a song and literally say in the fucking lyrics someone is hurting me, it’s killing me.

It’s crazy, after I finally left her I tried to give her a chance at being my friend, I never wanted to see her as only bad and I especially never wanted her image hurt, I’d be on the phone with her and she’d beg me to come back to her and live with her and when I said no, she’d threaten me with posting stuff on twitter about me, blatant lies, recounting a phone call where I was supportive, and saying me, an actual rape victim, tried to victim blame her. Combine that with discord messages that are literally 3 years old from the age of 15 (right after the most traumatic event of my life) of me reaching out for help (not in a healthy way, but again, nobody tells you when you get raped at 15 how to cope or how to act in the future) and that was enough for basically all of my friends to leave me behind. This is all to say, I don’t wanna be in this community, I don’t want more fake friends, I want to be appreciated by those around me for who I am, believed, taken seriously. I don’t even like making this music anymore, it’s been entirely ruined for me if I’m being honest. I just hope when I finally get the strength to leave, they leave me alone. If getting abused wasn’t enough, being reminded of it by the constant harassment and death threats from her and her friends is enough to send me off the internet. I don’t wanna do this anymore, I wanna work my job and go to school and then move far away. Thanks to anyone who read, this won’t be available to read soon I don’t think just due to google’s limitations. I just wanna put the mic down for now, I want to be okay, and this soundcloud serves as a reminder of what’s happened to me. I wanna heal and I don’t need this following me. I wanna say to anyone who’s been through physical or emotional abuse, especially alone, I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured. It’s not right or fair that this happens, it’s not right or fair when the people around you choose to not believe you, it’s awful and I can’t describe how bad it gets. But you can always rebuild and leave those shitty people behind and heal, become better and although trauma sticks with you forever, it gets easier. At least I hope so.

Again thank you for reading and once I finish these last few paid verses/placements I will be deactivating my instagram/discord/everything else I can find that has my name attached and you will most likely not hear from me again unless we’re close.

Thank you so much to everyone who's supported me over the past year and a half, thank you to the people who came to see me live, I'm sure I will perform again some day, just not as "memorie", lol. Thank you everyone. Till next time

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captainlgordon · 3 years

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Friends, my darlings, my fellow critters, my obviously-only-25-and-under baby fans, the Critical Role content policy is only going to ruin your life if you were silly enough to believe basing your entire business on someones else’s IP was viable or legal. It was never legal. They just looked the other way. They will probably continue to look the other way on your small etsy stall!

The fact they let people profit from their stuff for so long is a testament to how chill and progressive they are when it comes to copyright law.

They have a global audience, remember? Multiple lines of products that are known by millions in multiple countries. A very popular story telling platform and brilliantly distinctive characters.

They live, here, in the real world, with you and me everyone we know.

WHERE COPYRIGHT THEFT BY LARGER PREDATORY CORPORATIONS IS ENDEMIC.

Which most of you acting like this is an act of betrayal well know.

You want disney, and ali express and forever 21 and fucking walmart? Fucking billionaire-family worker-abusing exploiters extraordinaire to rip up and rip off and shit all over this nice thing you like making fanart about?

No? Good.

Stop fucking bitching then.

They’re protecting their copyright from other companies who are larger and meaner than them from fucking them over.

As well they should.

They’re not stealing your “rights” because you, A FAN OF A WORK, don’t have any.

YOU NEVER HAD ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK KIDS, THEY JUST LET YOU PLAY IN THE SANDBOX!

Also, don’t @ me with that entitlement complex over your publicly posted fanworks being potentially, not necessarily, but maybe shared by the people who own the IP you are using.

I’m fairly certain CR has better things to do than rip off and remix your shipping art, kids.

THEY HAVE LIKE ACTUAL ARTISTS THEY HIRE FOR THAT.

AND THEY SAID THEY WOULD ASK FIRST IF THEY WERE GONNA USE IT!!

They just have to say it all LEGAL LANGUAGE cause THAT’S HOW COPYRIGHT WORKS.

THAT’S HOW THE LAW WORKS.

And I’m going to be a super grumpy fandom old about this - cause good lord.

In my day we had legal cease and desists and that’s it! We had fans sued for writing fanfic!! People threatened by large multi-corps for hosting fanfic! People publicly humiliated on talk shows for their fan art. People FINED REAL ACTUALLY MONEY FOR POSTING FANART.

And it still happens.

So every grumpy baby having a moment about CR being too corporate can go sit down and have a goddamned nap and a little think about how the world actually works.

Or, I don’t know, maybe if you feel like this company isn’t living to your pseudo-progressive moral purity complexes - GO SUPPORT OTHER TTRPG CREATORS WITH YOUR TIME MONEY AND DOLLARS???

Literally spend any amount of time and energy supporting the diverse anti capitalist media you say you all like so much?????

Instead of being mad that a company decided to formalise a policy they’ve been using for ages.

signed,

A fan of Critical Role with actual reading comprehension who is having a very bad day.

P. S I'm not talking about the people being genuine and confused. Just the ones who somehow believe cr are evil for having a copyright policy.

#cr discourse

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vivithefolle · 3 years

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Can I join your anti-Hermione club? Is there an application form? (In all seriousness, I'm so glad there's someone on Tumblr who is anti-Hermione for good reasons. It drives me absolutely insane how much the fandom worships her. I respect her intelligence, but there are so many absurdly unethical things she does. The hexing of Marietta Edgecombe - I researched it, it's both against contract law and would almost certainly be considered assault - was crazy, and even crazier was that it's excused.)

Hahaha, no application form needed, just a lot of bitterness and a touch of rage.

Something that really annoys me is how people are trying to tell me I'm doing Hermione-bashing when I give her the what-for. Or try to say "but she was a teenager :(". Really, freaking really? So when Hermione scars people on the face she's being a teenager but when Ron is pissy for a night in fourth year he's a total asshole? No, nope, not gonna let that lie.

My issue is that Ron's mistakes are teenager-sized; making an ass of yourself during a soirée, dating someone you're not really interested in because you're flattered by the attention, getting mad at your friend over silly stuff, saying stupid things without thinking... teenage mistakes. Those are teenage mistakes. (Something could be said of his leaving on the Horcrux Hunt but. Bitches. Voldemort himself (a part of him at least) was there singling him out for torture. Not to mention the heavy blood loss, the fact that his family's in danger, etcetera... But of course nobody is willing to accept those circumstances, nooo, it's only Ron who's the sole responsible for leaving absolutely, right, "Hermione is a teenager :(" and "Harry has PTSD :(((" but Ron isn't allowed to have problems of course. Fucking hypocrites.)

Meanwhile Hermione wakes up everyday and chooses violence and not for good reasons. I mean when your first reflex to distract someone is to set them on fire surely that indicates some issues? (Later on she forgets that she can use magic to light a fire... against a plant. I mean. How. How do you come to the conclusion that you should light a person on fire to "distract" them but cannot apply that reasoning to a goddamn killer plant.) The thing is people just... because we're constantly told that Hermione is intelligent/has good grades/works hard, people are quick to assume that she's obviously the most mature one in the room. But being a hard worker isn't necessarily a "proof" of maturity. It's just that people's expectations are that "a studious kid" is a mature kid, but really what they mean by "mature" is "doesn't annoy me to hell and back by playing noisily".

There’s this huge manipulation that plays on people’s expectations: being coded as “the studious girl” people are told through stereotypes that Hermione is smart, mature and logical… and the text is quick to try to reinforce the idea by having her spout definitions (=”smart”, for a degree of it; it’s mostly good memory), scold others for being rowdy (=mature, except that she’s not above it all either and a big part of maturity also involves REALIZING YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES which, Hermione’s don’t, so oops) and have her solve some puzzles or explain things (=logical… but sometimes her reasoning is based on emotion and she just tries to find evidence to justify why she thinks it’s right, rather than go from one thing to another).

When people try to brush off the fucked-up things Hermione did with "well she was a teenager" or "it was the war effort"... no. Fuck no. She didn't have to wipe her parents' minds and memories, there was the Order, the Dursleys were treated better than Hermione's parents for God's sake. But the only thing that matters about Hermione's parents is that they can be conveniently sacrificed to let us know how brave their daughter is right, it's not like she's in anything called the House of the Brave or something, it's not like she's constantly being thrown in mortal danger and is scared but keeps pushing forward, no we absolutely HAD to have a plot point that involves Hermione destroying two people's identities so we know how brave she is (how was any of it brave? Bravery is risking yourself, not the life of two innocents who barely know what's going on and are in no position to fight back).

And with the Romione fandom trying to push back to "nooo but she was a teenager m'kay she had her reasons for everything"... You want to get back to the Dark Ages where Hermione can do anything to Ron and it's his fault for not being perfect enough for her? Because that's how you go back to the Dark Ages.

In concept I love Romione. In the books I love it till about Book 3 (and even then that's pushing it because Hermione's utter disregard for Ron's pet sits very unwell with me, BUT okay fine she's still a child, it's her first pet, she has no idea how to own a pet and she's not used to being mindful of others' feelings. Then she gets validated by the plot because Scabbers was Pettigrew and somehow that means Hermione wasn't horribly callous to Ron's feelings or anything... meanwhile had it been Ron buying Crookshanks and Scabbers being Hermione's pet everyone would have been like "but who cares that Ron was right in the end, do you see how horribly he hurt poor Hermione's feelings!!!"...

It's just. No more excuses. Hermione is fucked-up. As a person, not just because of the war. She had a vicious, vindictive streak that only got enabled through the books because she never was called out on it. And I mean, I'm all for standing up for yourself, or for slapping Draco Malfoy's bitchy ass ferret face. But fuck. When you're doing the magic equivalent of an acid attack on someone's face, when you're physically abusing someone you're supposed to love AND THREATEN TO DO IT AGAIN AS IF IT WAS SOMETHING CUTE OR QUIRKY, when you're brainwashing your own parents into compliance because you can't be bothered to lie to them or make the Order get them... You know how many fics I've seen that take the "I did actually Confund my examiner" exchange from the Epilogue and run away with it to make it so Ron gets in a horrible car accident or invent entire collapses of the Statute of Secrecy as a result of an investigation connected to this "ha ha look it's funny Ron cheated on his exam" moment? Why don't I ever see a fic talking about how Hermione erasing her parents from existence leads to the destruction of Wizarding society through the legal bullshit that follows? Because Hermione dear, did you think to alter "Wendell" and "Monica"'s birth certificates? Their marriage contract? Their VISAs? Their bank accounts? Otherwise you've just turned your parents into homeless vagrants hopelessly lost in Australia who can't ever find a home anywhere because they simply don't exist in the eyes of any government. But hey nobody ever thinks of that because it's so much easier to nitpick everything Ron does. The only thing folks notice about Hermione nowaday is Emma Watson's boobies.

... I'm sorry, I just... Ugh. People.

#vivi answers #ask #hermione granger #hermione granger critical #hermione critical #ron weasley #ron weasley defence squad #ron weasley defense squad #harry potter #harry potter series #hp fandom #hp meta

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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 24 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Arguing

After enjoying a tense afternoon with Lan Xichen, Wei Wuxian comes home to enjoy a tense evening with Jiang Cheng. He pauses in the doorway as he takes in Jiang Cheng’s mood and decides which metaphorical mask he will put on to interact with his shidi. As someone who grew up with explosive people, I find this routine very familiar.

Wei Wuxian is always carefully playing a role as he interacts with the people in his life. Clearly he has read the classic sociology text The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and is using it as a how-to guide. We see him do this same calculation over and over, in which he reacts internally to a situation, comes to a decision about what persona to inhabit, and then dons that persona. It’s a typical abuse survival tactic and...it is exhausting.

This is why I think his leaving to be alone for a while in Episode 50 is a good thing. Being alone isn’t better than being with someone else, usually, but for Wei Wuxian, who is (by Episode 50) assured of love but not sure where he belongs in his own life, being by himself for a while is going to be the best thing for him. He can learn how to just be a person, instead of constantly trying to mold himself to fit everyone around him.

For the current tense situation, Jiang Cheng is polishing his sword, which, incidentally, is slang (in English, not necessarily in Chinese) for masturbating. Which makes their conversation about how frequently it needs doing kind of a hoot. “One time a month should do,” per Wei Wuxian.

Jiang Cheng yells at Wei Wuxian--fairly, really--for being drunk all the time and not working on clan tasks. Then he responds to a hug attempt by shoving Wei Wuxian and knocking him down. JC asks WW if he’s too drunk to manage his spiritual power. Now, we know that he doesn’t have any spiritual power to manage, and that’s the main point of this interaction. But it also shows us something else about their dynamic.

This was just a quick hit, and when it takes WWX out, JC asks why he isn’t responding with spiritual power. Which means that apparently *every* time Jiang Cheng gives Wei Wuxian a shove or a shoulder check, or strikes him--like he’s been doing constantly since Episode 3--he’s putting spiritual power behind it. That’s...really harsh.

Jiang Cheng wants Wei Wuxian to fight back, and Wei Wuxian can’t; this is a big part of why their relationship breaks down. Casual blows loaded with spiritual power are part of their vocabulary, and Wei Wuxian can’t speak that language any more, even for basic defense. He’s literally not safe having simple interactions with Jiang Cheng now, because he’s secretly disabled, and Jiang Cheng is casually injuring him whenever he gets too close.

(more after the cut!)

This time Wei Wuxian has had enough, and raises Chenqing to Jiang Cheng, who immediately backs off. Jiang Cheng has seen that thing in action, not just on the battlefield, but in a small room full of whatever remained of Wen Chao when they were done with him. He takes this as a serious threat, and backs off, disturbed and puzzled and hurt.

Jiang Cheng thinks the change in Wei Wuxian is coming from apathy, not from disability, and so he misunderstands it over and over. Think of a friend saying “whatever, I’m sick of arguing with you, do what you want.” Jiang Cheng is very ready to feel rejected, and not at all ready to look at Wei Wuxian’s behavior and try to actually understand it.

Crying Over You

Wei Wuxian bails and goes to see Jiang Yanli in the ancestral hall, where she is polishing a name plaque. I turned the gamma way up to see whose it is and...I dunno. This character might be 江 (Jiang), I guess?

Jiang Yanli is the only one of the trio who knows how to mourn properly, in that she is taking some time to sit and be sad. Mourning the dead--both ritually and just in the emotional sense--is as important a part of reclaiming Lotus Pier as the training of disciples and having good times on the lake.

She asks him about his fight with Jiang Cheng and he says he’s used to fighting with him. Jiang Yanli asks him if he’s tired of living there, and Wei Wuxian deflects and deflects, saying “it’s my home, where else would I go?” and that if Jiang Fengmian hadn’t adopted him he would still be begging in the streets. He says “no matter what happens, I won’t leave Lotus Pier,” which is not an answer to her question.

It’s also not true. Like so many of his promises, it’s an expression of his wishes, with no space for the surprises real life is made of. He promises her that he won’t be reckless again, and asks her not to be mad at him. She says she can’t be mad at him, and then they share a flashback about Jiang Fengmian finding him on the street. This is a story, not a memory; Wei Wuxian can’t remember but he remembers her telling him about it. Jiang Yanli wasn’t there, in the moment. So this is her telling the story as it was told to her, probably by Jiang Fengmian.

Flashback Time

In the flashback, picky salad-hating Wei Ying is out on the street, looking for food in a cartload of pretty okay scraps. I mean, yeah, skip the tomatoes, but most of the greens look fine.

He’s found and fed by Jiang Fengmian, who recognizes him and decides to take him in.

Within a couple of episodes, we will see Wei Wuxian paying this favor forward, saving someone he finds starving on the street. Just like Jiang Fengmian, he's going to upset and disrupt his family in order to help someone for whom he feels a deep connection.

During this flashback we get a look at Jiang Fengmian’s sword, and it is a beauty.

What is Love

As the flashback ends, Wei Wuxian is smiling, hearing Jiang Yanli tell this touching story of starvation and orphanhood. She tells him he was born with a smiling face, and that he never minds much about sorrowful things; no matter how bad the situation is, he is always happy. Way to reinforce that metaphorical mask he’s wearing over his deep, deep despair, sis!

They talk a bit about Jiang Cheng’s bad temper. Then Jiang Yanli says now that her parents are gone, they three are the closest in the world, and he responds by putting his head down on her knee and theatrically saying he’s hungry. But he’s crying for real, and so is she.

Then he decides to ask her why people fall in love, basically, and claims that he does not have anyone in his heart. He says there’s no need to like a person that much, that it’s like “haltering your own neck,” according to Netflix. Let’s have a look at that figurative language for a second, and what’s missing from the Neflix translation.

What he says is (as near as my qhanzi.com skills can make out) “這不就是自己給自己脖子上套犁拴韁吗” which Google tells me means "Isn't this just putting a plow on my neck with a rein?" The part of the image that’s missing from Netflix subs is the plow, and the hard labor and animal servitude involved in pulling a plow. This isn’t a pro-romance image.

He’s clearly thinking about Lan Wangji when he lies about having no-one in his heart, but right now the yoke that he wants to escape has nothing to do with Lan Wangji. The person he’s harnessed to in a team, the person who he labors with, the person he wants to escape, is Jiang Cheng. What’s chafing his neck is the promise he made, to stay and serve as one half of a pair, when he can no longer pull his weight.

Busted

Speaking of Jiang Cheng, he is hanging around outside the shrine, listening to the conversation. Wei Wuxian busts him, pointing out not that eavesdropping is bad, but that it’s bad for grownups. Jiang Cheng points out that he’s the master of Lotus Pier so he’s allowed to go anywhere he wants.

(I love how he looks framed by this giant lotus behind him)

We Wuxian has another of those moments where he assesses the best approach to Jiang Cheng before responding.

Then he picks a fake fight with him about soup. Yanli comes out and tells them both to grow up, saying that JC is losing his demeanor as clan leader. He jokingly fixes his already-perfect robe ad they all have a chuckle.

Then Jiang Cheng reminds Wei Wuxian of his promise for the millionth time, and Jiang Yanli goes to make soup for the millionth time. As soon as the boys see that she’s gone, the smiles drop right off of their faces. They’re both performing their typical relationship dynamic for Jiang Yanli.

Being Reasonable

The brothers repair to the main hall, and stand behind the lotus throne looking out of this complicated wall/doorway thingy, while they talk about Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan.

Jiang Cheng is being mature and sensible here, trying to give Jiang Yanli what she wants and also explaining very, very basic political stuff to Wei Wuxian, who is too caught up in his hate boner for JZX to want to think about the bigger picture. He also thinks that Jin Guangyao is a nicer person, but Jiang Cheng says that nice doesn’t matter.

Wei Wuxian is getting a full head of steam going about what a jerk JZX is, when Jiang Cheng makes him actually stop and think, by pointing out that it’s not for them to forgive or not forgive Jin Zixuan’s past behavior; it’s up to Yanli.

Wei Wuxian sees the reasoning in this, and starts to say he can’t understand why Yanli chose to like this person, but then he stops himself and goes through a rapid series of thoughtful, uncomfortable expressions.

Perhaps he’s realizing that he himself has chosen to like an infamously stuck-up, fancy cultivator, albeit one with no soup-related character deficits.

Library Time

The stuck-up cultivator in question is currently in the Cloud Recesses library, where he has snuck into the forbidden books room, against his uncle’s express command, for the purpose of helping Wei Wuxian. The forbidden books room is an entire basement floor of the library; it probably has more books than the not-forbidden part of the library, since the main floor needs space for the restrooms, circulation desk, and copy machines.

(Did OP photoshop the Wangxian-in-the-Library porn picture onto Lan Wangjis’ book? She did.)

A couple of other Lans come along and see the main door unlocked. The lock is a big fish that probably uses magic for locking; it definitely doesn’t use a key. One of them steps in the doorway, glances back and forth without walking through, and does not check the secret door to the forbidden vault. Gosh, how did Su She and/or Jin Guangyao ever manage to steal secrets from this highly secure location, wow.

Lan Wangji hears the Lan disciple on guard duty say “don’t tell Hanguang Jun about this!’ and has a series of microexpressions that might indicate some kind of feeling about simultaneously being a rule breaker and a rule enforcer.

Boat Time

We end with an idyllic scene on the lake in Lotus pier, where a new batch of disciples is harvesting lotuses and learning the opposite of boat safety.

Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian are having a good time, and seem utterly carefree; both of them are good at living in the moment, or faking it.

Wei Wuxian thinks, in voiceover, that it seems that it’s not so hard to go back to the old days. Uh...ok.

Except he’s hiding a massive secret and these replacement kids are not the same juniors he used to hang out with, and he can’t actually teach them cultivation, since he has no socially-acceptable magic power, and everything is about to go to shit in the next episode. But you gotta take your joy where you can, I guess.

Note: There are a lot of questionable effects in The Untamed, but there are also beautiful scenes like this one, which looks like a Maxfield Parrish painting. Compare with the BTS below and you can see what a good job the VFX team did in bringing this lake to life.

#the untamed #cql #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #the untamed gifs #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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parismystere · 2 years

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Please tag your salt

sweet anon, you didn't tell me exactly what posts to tag for you, so i am going to take this opportunity to talk about something that has been bothering me for some time, probably since i found out what the salt tags are: but what is salt? on salt and its dimensions: a thesis by parismystere tumblr dot com. let's get philosophical, ladybloggers.

i cannot recall what was my first introduction to salt, how i found the tags or which salt blogs i visited first, but i think it might have been posts that criticized the show in, what seemed to me, fairly objective and civil ways - maybe somebody was discussing that the concept of love rivals is pointless and boring when you have something unique as the love square where the point is that the main two characters are each other's rivals, maybe someone was mad that lila appears once in a blue moon - who knows? all of these things i found very valid and worth of discussion, able to be debated with arguments from people on both sides, hardly negative or mean-spirited, so why were they labelled as salt? i was beginning to catch on that salt equals ml negativity, but i also wondered why the hell was the need for less-than-gushing opinions to be filtered out like that. if i am in a fandom, i am probably interested in what people have to say, right? (and i usually am: probably the only people i wouldn't be willing to engage at all is a specific very obsessive, vengeful and hostile type. i am capable of agreeing with salters on certain stuff if i think they are correct; for the most part, i feel no need to start dog-whistles that someone is Bad; it's just one sector that drives me bonkers to the point of me being unreasonably angry. but i am working on it.)

somewhere along that time i was a budding adrien stan and as such i had to face the Public Opinion on My Boy. that's when i discovered character bashing that was inane to me - that adrien was a sexual abuser when that was quite obviously not the intention of the show, that alya was a bad friend, that tom and sabine (yes) were bad parents, and so on; and i was like, aha, salt is when you exaggerate the truth to a degree that seems insane to anyone living in the real world. please try explaining to people in your life how a french boy kissing a girl's cheek is sexual harassment. you get weird looks. but also, the thing is that the people who write those things genuinely believe them; salt isn't some fun role-play where they pick a character to lash out at. if that's their truth, then it makes sense that it isn't salt from their perspective, no?

[nota bene: at some point it became clear to me that these people were nearly always maribug/lukanette stans. a l w a y s. there is a level of unhingeness in maintaining a blog in which you meticulously track down instances of your fave being wronged for years. there is something deplorable about people encouraging other people to waste their time on such endeavors. i mean - it's cultism. i hate cults. have you ever had one of those people under your posts? it's the same keywords, same sentences, same arguments, multiplied over many blogs. it's an entire community dedicated to hating a character or a show, because they project on marinette to a borderline unhealthy degree, or because they were here for s1 and then they ended up disliking the show, or because they hate everything about ml and cannot look away. fair enough, it is addictive, but if you are THAT disappointed, you walk away, you don't act like a messiah saving people. you say your piece once, you don't make a fucking cult. anyway.]

but, i also want to talk about a fandom-defining event: chameleon.

can you imagine being me, watching chameleon, not thinking anything of it and coming on here and finding out it ruined a fandom for years ahead? i'm still so incredibly baffled that real-life humans felt so slighted that they ended up writing thousands of revenge fantasies, downvoting the episode on ratings websites, began claiming that the showrunners hate marinette (she has two pairs of pajamas. shut up.), saying that everyone was dumbed down for the episode (the only dumbed down part for me was that ladybug kept trying to take objects from chameleon and deakumatize them. like, girl, the entire akuma shapeshifts. who wrote this #character assassination), made the ladyblogs and so on. and for what? because of how much they project on marinette, because they fail to see the show from the perspectives of other characters (adrien was right, actually), because they overblew this completely trivial plot out of proportion. it's kind of like the 'why does marinette always mistakes' argument - because this show doesn't allow anyone else to take the spotlight for long enough to make the mistakes. this is the life of the kid show protagonist. and that includes stuff like the lila/chameleon plot.

but here is the most important takeaway from this essay: because of the mass hysteria over chameleon, any logical and legitimate grievences with the show, any thoughtful but not glowing opinions, any things that should be rightly questioned, anyone coming from a good place and trying to have intelligent discussions about their freaking french cartoon gets shut down. we are at this point when even something as tame as asking 'what purpose does luka serve' has to be tagged as #ml salt. fam. this is not okay. hell, the show got in hot fire for using a flag offensive to south koreans, and even though it was a legitimate issue and a mistake on the creative team's part (that didn't get fixed :) even though they said they will fix it :)), posts about it were also tagged with #ml salt. this is insane, right? you're also seeing it?

the fandom response towards the kuro neko trailer for me, personally, was hard to swallow; i won't go into details of the stuff i saw, of how the narrative got constantly rewritten, of how anyone who was legitimately upset with how the episode was going down, how the ladynoir dynamic was handled, got shut down. correction: one side repeatedly got shut down, but also thankfully, those people aren't the type of people to make salt blogs or to harass people [i know that many were biting their tongue ever since marinette's plan in ephemeral because they fear chameleon 2.0, why is your opinion of adrien stans so low when that's the most mature section of the fandom smh </3].

but to me, i guess, what is even more unhealthy is to think that someone bashing your favorite thing reflects on that favorite thing, your personhood, your life and so on. it comes from a place of insecurity or weak sense of self maybe, i don't know. you can love something and have nuanced opinions about it. probably my natural arrogance, my uberconfidence in my opinions (my fatal flaw!), but - if i really understand something well, if i know that i am right, if i am secure in who i am and what i believe, then, unless i am in a shitty mood, it's hard to get to me. i used to get very upset about adrien salt - and when i understood that thing as far as i could, unless something has been upsetting me, i can just scroll past and not think of it much. i mean, if someone salts on him for hugging his blood relative without consent, you just have to laugh.

there is the 'counter salt with sugar' thing - i've said before why i don't think it doesn't work - and something that i described once as fandom defensiveness. i am as guilty as everyone for posting fandom salt, especially when it's over old wounds, because, honestly, does it matter? has anyone ever changed somebody else's mind over the internet? it's especially funny when people say that they haven't been seeing salt on their dash and only counterarguments -because the ops have probably also blocked the tags and the salt people, so they're fighting chimeras. or when people write fandom salt on tumblr about what's going on in... instagram or youtube. i don't know; it's good to let off steam, especially if there is a new episode or a trailer and we're all being anything but very normal about it; but i remember that i literally saw people blocking and unfollowing each other over dub preferences??? is this the fandom salt we should spend our energy on??? anyway.

in conclusion: there is no definition of salt, really. it can go from slightly negative things to outright hatred, from very sincere disappointment written in good faith to statements that sound closer to trolling. it's the wild west. salt is whatever you want it to be. but worst of all, the toxic idea is that anything other than blind worship is salt. because then i can't have my fun conversations in public and invite more people with interesting perspective, i have to do clandestine meetings in private messages. i mean, it is sexy, but at some point you want the company to go public.

anon, sorry if i came off as being a bitch. i am also sorry if you had to read all this lol. but hey, i know that there are people who hate-read my blog and i will probably wake up to this post being quoted and discussed without context, like always, so can you blame a girl for being defensive and not as sweet as pie anymore? [also, i am being facetious in many parts of this post. nota bene for the out-of-context crew.]

anyway, i am pretty sure that this ask is bc i narrated the plot of ml in the main part of my post but said in the tags that i dislike what's going on in a joking manner and without elaborating further. see? i had no idea it would bother people.

#to my new followers me writing whole essays is nothing out of the ordinary i used to do it all the time #ask #anonymous

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thedeviljudges · 3 years

Text

not me having thoughts about yohan today, but.

not like i need to put this out there, but i’ll do it anyway bc i saw a post discussing yohan and how no one in fandom is addressing his tendencies toward violence. and here’s the thing: everyone notices it, lmao. no one in fandom is dumb enough to sit back and not recognize the trauma of what yohan has been through. even if we don’t have the entire story, we do know enough to see that people have fucked him over his entire life. he wasn’t shown any amount of love as a child, and he’s had to fight for himself.

the man doesn’t know how to express his feelings aside from his definition of justice, but he’s not a monster despite the term devil being thrown around. he doesn’t know how to handle his emotions, and like with many victims, especially male victims, he hasn’t learned and/or been encouraged to seek help. especially if his focus was working his way up the ladder to figure out and/or seek revenge for what happened to isaac.

it’s not about lack of critical thinking when it comes to his character. the entire show is truly forcing you to sit back and ask yourself questions of mortality and ethics, what’s fair and what’s wrong and the nuances that they all play into. that no singular case is black and white, and how much humans can be animals and turn on one other in a heartbeat.

yohan has grown up with violence as the solvent for any issues that arise around him. why do you think he copes with his anger this way? especially when he gets mad at gaon? it’s clear gaon doesn’t provoke him by fighting back, and if he does, it’s with words. gaon already knows how off the rails yohan can be, and yet he stays because as he even said in the show, there is a level of understanding. and he gets it. does that make it right? certainly not. it’s self-destructive behavior, but when you look at the context of yohan’s upbringing and how he’s lived alone raising a child by himself, in what fundamentally helpful ways would he have indulged in to get help?

and truthfully, if you want to look at it through a narrow, narrow lens, as much of a weakness as this character trait is, it’s also, to some extent, a strength because he can direct his anger onto the elite and people of higher caliber that generally speaking, are never held accountable for their actions. anger is such a driving force.

i don’t think fandom, by any stretch of the imagination, is excusing yohan for his physical altercations. and just because people don’t talk about it and/or bring it up, doesn’t mean we don’t see it and recognize it and think about it. it’s just not a focal point because as audience members, we can pick and choose what we want to focus on. not everyone wants to highlight the intricacies of characterization and meta. i mean, yohan being unhinged is kind of, sort of, the reason this entire story can even exist to begin with. he’s self-destructive, has anger issues, has not dealt with being a victim and now he’s got one of his abusers after him.

yohan has been in fight mode his entire life. he’s an animal backed into a corner. how else do you think he’d respond? especially with gaon who pokes and prods. yohan thinking gaon is sorta on his side until he does and/or says something that reaffirms that gaon is not entirely on team yohan. he’s let gaon in, but there are reminders that he should be wary of gaon, too. yohan doesn’t have time to sit there and hand hold with this stuff when he’s got a target on his back, especially now after episode 6. it’s either you’re for him or against him, and anything in between is a reason for suspicion. yohan literally hasn’t been able to trust anyone in his life, except for isaac, as far as we know.

i also know most people will not condone yohan’s physical violence, and i do too. however, as a writer and a creator, it is utterly fascinating to see what makes these characters tick. otherwise they’d be boring as fuck. do i think throwing gaon around or him shrugging at someone dying is cool? no, not entirely. but it adds depth; it adds reasons for why he is the way he is. and that’s different than saying ‘hey that’s okay he did that’ than it is ‘hey he did this bc x, y and z and i want that fixed through healing but like, look, it makes him multi-layered and complex and that’s fascinating to watch.’

please do not dismiss nor mistake people’s enthusiasm for yohan, or any of the other characters with questionable decisions, as acceptance. you cannot have a story without convolution. and as much as some of us love to dissect the story, others don’t want to go in depth, and that’s fine.

i love yohan’s character so much. regardless of whether he is truly the ‘bad guy’ or not, he’s really a gem of a character, morally gray and fucked up, and that’s what i absolutely love about him. like yes yohan, make all the questionable decisions for our entertainment and so that we don’t ever have to, lmao

#x #the devil judge #in a perfect world he'll get help and gaon will throw it back in his face about being beaten up with petty sarcasm #bc that's how they'll function but that's just me jfalsdk

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highfaelucien · 3 years

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While on the topic of wishing sjm had done something different for her characters, I really wanted something more for cassian. For example, cassian’s wings going from being completely ruined in the end of acomaf to being 100% healed in acowar made no sense to me. I think it would’ve been an opportunity for the growth of cassian’s character to see him go through the loss of losing the ability to fly and instead retrain himself to be a warrior in other ways and find other things about himself that prove his own worth to himself. Given the fact that cassian’s confidence is aligned with his ability to protect and serve others, it just would have been sooo good to see him overcome his grief and become even stronger of a character. And how wings, in general, are a sense of male pride among illyrians. I think this would’ve been the perfect way to write cassian and have him break away from his own idea of masculinity. He could have redefined what it meant for him to be a Man ™. Ugh, it just could have been so GOOD, imagine the character we could have gotten from him.

Listen, after ACOMAF, when this happened, EVERYONE was buzzing about this. Most people thought he wouldn't outright lose his wings permanently, but there would be a LOT required.

And then ACOWAR came and approximately nothing happened whatsoever. Oh he had to be healed. the healer had to rebuild his wings. he had to do strength training every day. But fundamentally: not a sausage.

Personally? I think Maas chickend out. I think she was unable to commit to taking Cassian's wings, or figuring out how to write him as anything other than what she's established him as: fun jock man who likes to hit things real hard and make dick jokes sometimes.

Having to see Cassian vulnerable? Having to see him broken, and struggling, and having to reevaluate his entire life and self-esteem and sense of masculinity would have been an incredible option for a character arc.

Most of the theorising/Nessian fics involved Nesta helping him. The two of them being broken/fundamentally altered by their experiences in Hybern - she being killed and Made with a dark power, Cassian losing his wings.

There was expected bonding over that, peeling away the masks they both wear to discover the softness underneath. The two of them being able to reach one another, because of their bond, in a way the others could not. It produced some pretty epic stuff, honestly.

And how badly I wanted that I didn't FULLY realise until the disappointment of ACOSF, when it hit fully.

Because instead of stripping Cassian back and seeing the tactician, the strategist, forcing him to put his other skills to use, to develop those skills, rather than 'smash with sword and ask questions later'. This man is a General. All the combat training in the world doesn't let you be good at this job if you can't command, if you can't use tactics, if you can't strategise.

And THIS is where I wanted to see Nesta. Nesta, the woman who calculated how many ships would be needed to save the humans of Prythian. The woman who looked at Greysen's manor and assessed its capabilities and saw a prison. The woman who devours history novels, who has a tactical, cunning mind. Who has never been a warrior or a creature of brute strength or physical abilities.

THIS is how I wanted to see Nesta evolve. This was how I wanted to see her develop. I didn't want her taken out of lady's dresses. I didn't want her forced into fighting leathers, to basically become another copy of her sister, and follow down that path.

I wanted her to take her own. I wanted her to finally be in a place where she could learn, and strategise, and contribute. And I wanted her to work with Cassian on this - who was grounded because of his wings, who couldn't command on the frontlines anymore, or even fight. Who had to stay back, and see how he handled this. How he maintained his authority. How he maintained his sanity without his wings.

We could have had so fucking much. Such a powerful narrative about survival. I wanted her in the library, with the other survivors, (and with fucking MORRIGAN - not sidelined, not dismissed, not being bitchy and catty for the sake of it. But someone who visits the library frequently, who interacts with the women there, and sometimes just is a woman there herself, because there are still hard days.)

But no. No instead of something nuanced, and original, and actually tailored to Nesta's strengths as a character, we got Yet Another Weapon's Trainng Montage.

We got the narrative that the only way to heal from abuse is to be able to beat the shit out of your abusers. Because that's #GirlPower, right?

It makes me so furious I almost want to just. Just fucking rewrite the whole damn fucking thing myself the way it SHOULD have gone.

And I know you talked about Cassian and not Nesta, so I do apologise, but they were tied together. But I agree.

We all wanted Cassian to evolve from that 'Lord of Bloodshed' / "savage brute" because reading between the lines and forcing some nuance from these books, which is the only way to survive: Cassian has a lot of layers. There's a lot of trauma there. A lot of insecurity. A lot of angst. A lot of heart. A lot of fucking INTELLIGENCE. (I'll fight on that point, I really will. Cassian is not a dumb himbo who can barely add 1 and 1).

But sjm was too busy writing him having a hard on for Nesta to explore....anything about himself. Or his relationship with Azriel, and Rhys, and Mor, and everyone else.

The removal (even temporarily) of his wings would have allowed for a LOT of that exploration.

Firstly, the fact that he injured them by CHOICE, saving Azriel's life. That would have been such a deep connection and bond between them. The guilt that Az would feel - but the potential for Cassian to step in, even with his wings gone, and say that he'd do it again.

Because Azriel is his brother. He loves him. And it was worth it. It would be worth it a hundred times over to save him. Because he's worth saving. And he's worth sacrificing for. And what that would have done for Az as a character, too. Who always offers himself up first for dangerous missions, puts himself in peril to protect the others.

And having Cassian join Feyre and Az's flying lessons? Because Cass having to relearn how to fly once (if) his wings healed to that extent, means letting Azriel train him. Because those old instincts aren't enough. And he has to learn how to strengthen them, and train with them. And how this affects his perception of himself and his masculinity, as he said. But also deepening his understanding for Az, and the bond the two of them share, in having this experience together.

Bonding with Rhys, who FINALLY fucking opens up to someone and has some nuanced therapy-like conversations about what happened with Amarantha. The sacrifces they've made for their people. How they'd do it again but it still hurts, and changes them, and how they have to learn and grow and move on from that and heal together.

Rhys working with Cassian on his other talents, using him as the skilled strategist and tactician he MUST be. Helping him to develop that, keeping his brother from losing his mind while he can't fight or use his physicality to solve problems, as he usually does.

Mor personally healing and tending to Cassian. Mor being there at his bedside every day while he was bed bound. Mor becoming as possessive and overprotective of both him and Az as any mate ever has been.

Mor speaking to him about her own rehabilitation after what her family did to her, the physical toll that took on her. Mor's heart breaking because she nearly lost both him and Az and she couldn't handle that at all. Mor reiterating how much she fucking loves him, and how she needs him.

Mor helping him through the darker days of his depression because she's been there. And she knows what it is to put on a front. To always be laughing, and joking, without the seriousness of life -leave that to the others. But sometimes it's too much and he needs to break down. And be angry. And furious. And hopeless. And scared. And that's what she's there for. Because she understands.

Mor winnowing him to his favourite spots that he can't fly to anymore, just so he can be there. The two of them spending time, and bonding, and developing that relationship we got in ACOMAF beyond 'we bicker constantly and drink together and make sexual innuendos'.

Even Amren showing up and doing her part. Snapping at him to stop brooding so much. But also bringing him some of her puzzles. Some of her favourite military history books (which she has anotated and edited to highlight the bits that have been incorrectly reported). Spending time with him to stop him going mad. Exhausting herself those first few days personally attending to Cassian's wings, and snarling at anyone who tried to interfere.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH.

IT COULD HAVE DEVELOPED SO MUCH WITH THE INNER CIRCLE. AND CASSIAN. AND NESSIAN. AND JUST. EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER BUT NAW. IT WAS BASIC ASS AND BORING AND I'M GONNA DIE MAD ABOUT IT.

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whatifyoulivelikethat · 3 years

Text

mango, m | jjk | 2

pairing(s): jungkook x reader

summary: A love story between bad boy Jeon Jungkook and a strange girl with mango eating obsession.

warnings: rated M (18+) for language; mentions of parental abuse and suicide; suggestive words/actions; alcohol consumption; mentions of nightmares plaguing the reader; non-idol!AU - university!AU; badboy!Jungkook x sociallyawkward!reader, ft bestfriend!Hoseok and friendly!Namjoon

Your head leaned against the wall of the library. Too many books around you, research paper already outlined for you seminar class. That was good. You only needed a partial outline next week and you would finish tweaking the outline tomorrow. You phone was open beside your papers, screen blaring at you.

Jungkook’s text, asking where you were. Your reply.

Library.

No further information. A guy like that probably never stepped foot in a library his entire life.

You closed your eyes. Placed your arms over your papers, sighing softly. You were in one of the study rooms in the upper floors of the library, where all the scientific journals were.

Why had you given him your phone number like that?

Self-destruction.

You turned your head the other way, eyeballs shifting under your closed lids.

Guys like that only cause self-destruction.

Your thumb ran over your glossy nails. You wondered if he would be mad at you for associating yourself with someone who looked dangerous and wild. Maybe he would tell you it was a bad idea. Maybe he could make you see reason. All you had to do was call him and ask for his opinion.

I’m sorry, Hoseok.

You ran your other thumb over the nails on your other hand. The little stickers caused raised bumps, but none of them had peeled off yet. You pressed your thumb down on one of them. At least he was still there, with you in this way.

A soft blackness swallowed you up, taking you into deep slumber.

Then, a coated sweetness pressed against your lips. A familiar taste. You opened your mouth and the thin, flat piece of dried fruit slid partway in. Your teeth stopped it. Spun it slowly with your tongue. Then it went into your mouth. Chewed.

Opened your eyes.

Jeon Jungkook, standing over you.

Holding a pack of dried mango. Eating a piece, his straight white teeth gnawing at it. Pink lips closing around the orange fruit. The mole under his lip danced with movement. His brown eyes were darker due to the harsh fluorescent overhead light. Tan skin glowing, black hair slicked back with too much gel, revealing his clean undercut. Leather blazer over a low-cut black t-shirt. Black jeans. Black backpack far too deflated to be holding much.

“Don’t know how you eat this stuff,” Jungkook said absentmindedly. He sat down on the chair next to you. Scooted closer. You could smell his cologne. Something sharp, but clean. “It’s not bad, but I couldn’t eat packs and packs of it like you.”

You lifted your head. “Habit.”

He nodded. “I noticed you do it whenever I talk to you.”

You chewed slowly.

“I don’t talk to people.”

“Hmm.”

He looked you over. Black turtleneck. Maroon oversized hoodie. Black flared miniskirt. Black opaque tights. Black boots with a ten-centimeter platform.

“What do you do for fun?”

You reached over and stuck your hand into the pack of dried mango. Picked a piece and placed it in your mouth. Sat back in your chair as you chewed on it.

“I don’t have fun.”

Jungkook sucked his teeth. It seemed like he was trying to unstick some candied fruit from them. “You seem like the creative type though. Moody and artistic.”

You shifted your eyes, staring into the bookshelves. “Creation is meaningless without an audience.”

Jungkook scratched his nose. “Maybe you just don’t want anyone to know what you’re thinking.”

You stopped chewing.

You turned your head to face Jungkook. He frowned at the packet of dried mango and placed it on the desk, sliding it to you. Then he noticed you staring at him. His lips curved into a slow, sly smile.

“You doing anything tonight?”

You didn’t go to parties.

Never. In your entire life. Not even a birthday party. You didn’t have birthday parties yourself either.

You only remembered beatings on your birthday.

You stood at the edge of the lawn, looking up at the large house. Too many people. Too much drinking. Too much danger. You reached into the center pocket of your maroon hoodie, pulling out a piece of dried mango. Slowly placing it in between your teeth. Spinning it. A couple was making out on the porch, pressed against the wall. Sucking the dried mango in your mouth. On the other side of the porch, a girl was slapping another guy and tossing the contents of a red plastic cup at him.

Chewed.

You shouldn’t have come. This wasn’t where you belonged.

A strong hand gripped your upper left arm. Familiar fingers. Long, strong ones, with small tattoos.

“How long you been standing out here?”

Alcohol on his breath.

“How much mango you consumed in that time?”

You held out an empty cellophane bag.

“Wow. Impressive.”

You chewed. The fingers let you go. They danced up your shoulder.

“You don’t seem to be bothered when I touch you.”

You swallowed.

“That’s because it’s obvious what you want.”

Jeon Jungkook chuckled. Deep and amused.

“But talking bothers you?”

You exhaled. Took out another piece.

“Words, intentional or not, leave everlasting scars far longer than a meaningless fuck.”

You placed it in between your teeth.

“Do you think it will be meaningless?” His voice was low, treacherous.

You paused. His fingertips balanced on the shoulder of your hoodie. A gust was wind made your black skirt flutter against your thighs. You felt nothing. Not cold, not hot. Nothing but those fingertips balanced on your shoulder. You sucked in the piece of mango and chewed. You could walk away. Not provoke him anymore and not try to walk through that fire.

You could back away and continue on your tightrope, high above.

But if you were already standing on this street, in front of this house, didn’t that mean your feet were already on the asphalt? Weren’t you already on the ground, wandering down that lost highway?

“There is no meaning in the arms of a stranger.”

You reached for your hoodie pocket again but his fingers wrapped around yours. Stopping you. Pulling you to him. Face shining in the moonlight, brows furrowed as he looked down at your face. Thick silver chain glinting at his throat. Dark hair slicked back but falling apart due to the events of the night. Eyes like the dark side of the moon.

He leaned down.

You could feel his breath against yours. Alcoholic, but somehow not unpleasant. It mixed with his sharp, clean cologne and the leather of his jacket. You saw his eyes flicker. He was really staring deeply into your eyes. He was as handsome as everyone said he was. You tilted your head at him.

Guys like him were always looking for a target. A puzzle to solve. The harder and more difficult it was, the better the thrill. That’s how it was and that’s how Jeon Jungkook was. So, you stood there. Waiting for him to do it.

Thing was, Jungkook wasn’t doing anything.

He finally backed off; expression unreadable. You pulled your hand out of his.

“Let’s go on a walk. I have to sober up.”

You looked from the house to him. He cocked his head. You two began to walk, stepping into the moonlight. Not touching each other, but walking side by side. The silence was deafening. He wasn’t speaking to you. Not even looking at you. You placed your earbuds into your ear and put on some violin music.

“What are you listening to?”

You jumped, surprised he noticed. Jungkook tilted his head at you. You handed him one of the Samsung buds. He placed it in his ear, tucking his hair back. Profile illuminated by the moon, nodded slowly at he listened.

And then you two walked, serenaded by violins.

Jungkook texted you and showed up in the library again. You were in the middle of writing your seminar research paper. To be honest, he was a welcome distraction. The scientific articles were giving you a headache.

He handed you a piece of dried mango before speaking.

“Let’s date.”

You blinked at him. Jungkook grabbed a seat and sat down, taking out a slice himself. You placed the piece of dried mango in your mouth and chewed slowly. He watched you the entire time, chewing with you, staring at your lips. You swallowed, sighing.

"Jungkook, you don't want to date me."

He nibbled at another piece of dried mango. "Pretty sure I do."

You took in a deep breath, feeling the annoyance rise in your chest. "Your body is the literal reincarnation of Adonis himself and you radiate bad boy vibes like nobody's business. You would ruin your image by dating the strange girl with a dried mango obsession."

Jungkook chewed slowly. "That's the first time your tone has changed with me."

You froze, realizing that too. Realizing that, for once, you were actually irate instead of being objective or apathetic about it. You were not making an ambiguous comment or philosophizing humanity. You were just stating what you were thinking straight up.

"And, anyway, you're the literal reincarnation of sex goddess Aphrodite herself, so there should be no problem if you're worried about looks."

"That's not..." You cut yourself off, not bothering to correct him. "You can barely see my body."

Jungkook's eyes traveled down to your legs. Your black pantyhose-covered legs, with your short red skirt and black hoodie. He reached out and grabbed your hand. You tried to pull away, but his grip was like iron.

"True, your skin is always covered," he mumbled.

Then Jungkook pressed your hand into his crotch.

Your eyes widened, feeling his semi-hard length in his jeans. He let go of your hand and you recoiled as if burned. Did he really just–?

He gnawed thoughtfully. "And yet every time I hear your voice, that happens to me."

You narrowed your eyes at him. "Sexual attraction is not a solid foundation to a relationship."

"It's not," Jungkook agreed, grabbing another piece of dried mango. Then his eyes flickered to you, dark and serious. "I just didn't like how you dismissed my physical attraction to you so easily." He went back to nibbling.

You looked away; ears hot. "In the end, all you want is to boast that you fucked me."

"That was my original intent, yes." You snapped your head back, furrowing your brows. Jungkook inspected the dried fruit, licking some sugar off. Your stomach flipped a little as you watched his pink tongue. "But now I want to take you on dates, hold your hand, and make you eat real meals that aren't only composed of candied mango."

You looked down at your lap. "I'm not a hand-holding kind of girl."

"Then I'll hold your ass."

A muscle in your eyebrow twitched. You glared at him, but he was smiling, popping the mango in his mouth.

"One date. And then we'll see how it goes."

You closed your eyes. Inhaled deeply. You could say no. You could refuse and tell him to leave you alone and never speak to him again. You could and maybe you should. Because once he knew... he would know. You chewed on your lip. Fear was an understatement. And you were afraid because you knew the truth. If there was a flame between you two, the truth would likely snuff it out.

Was that better or worse than you smothering it yourself?

"Before we go on a date," you said quietly but firmly. "I need to show you something."

“Okay. What is it that you have to show me?”

You were standing in Jeon Jungkook’s apartment. Different day, different clothes. He was wearing a loose leather jacket, white shirt, and distressed acid-wash jeans. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Black hair slicked back as usual, sculpted dark brows framing intense brown eyes. Even though he was dressed like a delinquent, his apartment was well-kept and clean. It was one of the student apartment complexes, decently expensive, segregated for men and women. Not that it mattered, since you were obviously standing there right now.

You were wearing your black turtleneck and flared black miniskirt. But instead of your usual opaque pantyhose, you were wearing black thigh-high socks. They made you very uncomfortable and not because Jungkook was staring at the sliver of exposed flesh. To be honest, you couldn’t care less if he was staring or not.

You chewed on you lip, clutching your messenger bag.

You really wondered if you should show Jungkook. Your thumb ran over your nails. Painted royal blue with raindrop crystals. You asked Hoseok to do them for you this time. He was excited to pick a design and style for you. Asked you what it was for and you said you just felt like it.

Hoseok was very happy to hear that.

Jungkook seemed to sense your unease.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently. “Do you want a piece of man–”

You shook your head furiously. Just do it. Do it and maybe he’ll leave you alone. Do it and he’ll understand this is a bad, bad idea.

You took a deep breath and bent at the waist. Then you yanked down both your thigh-highs, all the way to your ankles.

Jungkook gasped sharply.

You stared down at your legs. At the knife scars, mostly on your calves. Some white and thin, but there were a few big dark ones, knotted and twisted from the skin trying to grow back evenly but failing. Your legs were quite pale too. They never saw the sun.

You hated looking at them. They reminded you of why you had nightmares.

“What… happened?”

You didn’t look at him. His normally smooth, suave voice was trembling. Confused.

You sucked in your lips and clicked your tongue.

“My father was not a nice man. I was an only daughter and he was not happy about it. Perhaps he was never happy about life to begin with. He reminded my mother and me about it constantly.” You straightened, still not looking at Jungkook, but no longer wanting to look at yourself either. “He beat us up a lot. At the time, I really thought that was how it was. Men lost their temper sometimes. Happens. What else am I supposed to think?” You shrugged. “But it was always slapping around, the occasional punch. Not that bad, perhaps.”

You had to remember to breathe. Breathe.

“But when I was twelve, thirteen, it got worse. I don’t know if it was because my mom was slowly fighting back or if work became more stressful and he acted out, but the reason doesn’t matter. He simply got worse. Things thrown at us. Years of insults made them cut deeper, harder. He pulled a knife on me, when I was home alone and my mom was at work.”

You had to swallow hard, trying not to go back there. Trying not to get too detailed, because the nightmares already did that for you. You pulled up your sleeves. There were a few unpleasant scars there too, but nowhere near as bad to your legs.

“Anyway,” you continued. “I think he thought I was bleeding out or dead. My mom, feeling that something was off, decided to come home early. I don’t think I would be alive if she hadn’t thought to do that.” You inhaled deeply, pausing for a moment before continuing. “My father took his car and drove to the other side of town. Drove to a deserted area and ended his own life with the knife he cut me up with. I don’t know if it was guilt or fear of being exposed. But it doesn’t matter. I went to the hospital and stayed there for a long, long time. Not because of the cuts or almost bleeding out, but because I had to talk to a lot of psychologists. A lot of counselors.”

You reached into your bag and pulled out the pack of dried mango. “My mom would buy me these. She couldn’t visit often. She had to sell the house and work overseas to pay all the medical bills. Maybe she has a hard time seeing me too.”

You chewed on your lip, shoving it back into your bag.

“I look more like my father, unfortunately. And, even though I understand what has happened to me, I can’t escape it. I see it every day in the mirror. I am reminded all the time. I can’t talk to people unless I’m eating dried mango. It’s a stupid tick, but my therapist told me once that it was better than cocaine, so, whatever, right?”

You chuckled darkly, feeling empty.

“And I have nightmares. They don’t go away. When I take medication, it gets worse, so I don’t try anymore.”

You kept your eyes on the wall, still not looking at him.

“You’re handsome, Jungkook. Handsome, decently smart, could clean up well,” you said, still gnawing on your lip. “I’m not pretty like the other girls you hang around with. I don’t get to wear what I want because I don’t want to be asked what is wrong with my skin. Sometimes, I wake up screaming, remembering everything that happened that night. I eat way too much dried mango and speak like a fucking robot.” You closed your eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath. “I spend a lot of time trying to not feel anything. I’m not okay. You shouldn’t date someone like me.”

Silence.

Ten seconds past.

Then, the creak of leather. You suddenly felt his presence right in front of you. Strong arms wrapped around you, holding you tight. The sharp, clean scent of his cologne, the thinness of the white shirt revealing his toned torso. Well, the reaction wasn’t disgust. Maybe it was pity and that was worse. You did not want a pity fuck.

“At the risk of something insensitive,” Jungkook murmured quietly into your hair. “Your battle scars are really fucking cool.”

… What?

You laughed.

You laughed, because, what? That wasn’t a reaction you expected. Your laugh was raspy and kind of gross, considering you hadn’t laughed like that in years. But you laughed into Jungkook’s chest, laughed because it was ridiculous, laughed because it was a little insensitive, laughed because you didn’t care. No one who knew about your scars ever said anything like that. Everyone else was very serious and solemn, pity in their eyes as you explained.

Jungkook buried his face into your hair. You could feel his smile.

“Your laugh is cute.”

You wheezed, shaking your head a little. “It isn’t. I didn’t even know I could laugh,” you choked out weakly, breathless.

You felt him kiss the top of your head. You froze, a shiver running through you.

“You know,” Jungkook murmured. “I was really nervous in the library when I was asking you out.”

You didn’t reply. Couldn’t breathe, really.

“I found myself continuously eating that mango. I think you rubbed off on me.”

You remembered. And then you realized.

“You only ate one piece though,” he muttered. “It made me even more nervous, honestly. I just kept eating to keep my mind off it.”

Was this… was this the first time you had an entire conversation with Jeon Jungkook without eating mango at one point?

The only person you weren’t like that with was Hoseok, and that was because he was your oldest friend. The only friend who knew it all, who witnessed your bruises and tear-stained cheeks. The only friend who saw you in hospital gowns and did his best to cheer you up. Drawing pictures with you, making bracelets. Telling you that it was going to be okay, that he was going to be your daily dose of sunshine, your hope, never getting discouraged. There weren’t romantic feelings between you two, but there was love, and you were eternally grateful that Hoseok never gave up on you.

Jeon Jungkook?

He was just the annoying kid who kept trying to copy your Chemistry homework.

“You’re… not that bad at Chemistry, are you?”

Jungkook chuckled. “Nah. I always do the homework. I just wanted to annoy you.”

“You are, indeed, very annoying.”

You two stood there, Jungkook hugging you, your thigh-highs at your ankles, clutching your bag. To be honest, you thought it would have been a lot weirder. But somehow, it was kind of nice. You were okay with it.

“Where do you want to go on our date?” Jungkook suddenly piped up.

You spoke into his chest. “We’re still going on a date?”

He hugged you tighter. “Yeah, of course.”

You were pressed against his body, held so close that your ribs felt like they were being crushed.

“Jungkook.”

“Hm?”

“Something is poking me.”

“… Please ignore him. He doesn’t know time and place.”

A few silent seconds passed.

“I mean, maybe you needed some reassurance that I still think you’re fine as hell.”

“He’s getting bigger.”

“I told you to ignore him.”

masterpost

#jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #jeon jungkook x you #jungkook fanfic

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writterings · 3 years

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In light of the new Owl House episode, I have some THOUGHTS about its excellent writing.

So, first things first, I wanna state something that everyone knows but we also kinda forget sometimes; TOH is a kid's show. Yeah, yeah, that's obvious. But also, that GREATLY impacts its writing. However, it also balances this type of writing PERFECTLY with the adult perspective on the world which ultimately does make it great for all ages. And "Yesterday's Lie" is the ULTIMATE example of this.

Luz's story fits the typical isekai plotline - but it also is an example of what real-life kids in Luz's positions want. Like think about her life in the first episode - she had no friends, she wanted adventure and fantasy and magic, and her mom and she weren't seeing eye to eye. She then got whisked away to a magical realm full of adventures, magic, friends (and a girlfriend!), and a mother figure who tries hard to understand her and loves the fact that they're both weirdos. The Boiling Isles is heaven for Luz, just because it's fulfilling all her wants and needs that she wasn't getting in the human world.

As someone who is going into the professional writing field and spends a lot of time in and out of class thinking about writing rhetoric, I've taken one or two classes about writing children's stories/media. And, obviously, children's media is written differently than adult media -- but specifically in the idea of values. Kids value different things than adults because of their perspectives on the world. Hell, the whole reason "whisked away to a magical fantasy world" is so popular in kids' media is because so many kids find themselves in that position in wanting that to happen to them. I sure as hell did when I was Luz's age.

Stories like these essentially are wish fulfillment for kids. And since they are wish fulfillment, that typically means that more real-life concepts such as abandoning family, missing the "real world", or any negative consequences are either conveniently written out in a satisfying way or are left out entirely. (Think how in Harry Potter, he's able to escape the "real" world without negative consequences because his family's abusive.)

(Also, fuck JKR btw but just using this example because this is the example we used in my one children's lit class.)

And what I'm about to say next also explains further how TOH is wish fulfillment, but it starts as a bit of tangent first. Just bear with me, it'll make sense.

Anyways, I've seen a few MP100 posts around that praise the show for having an adult "step in" and tell the child protag that they don't have to fight the villains because they're just a kid. And to me, that shows how MP100 is an adult-focused media -- because a piece of children's media would NEVER do something like that. That's not to say that children's media encourages kids to do dangerous stuff that harms themselves, but it's just not appealing to kids. Kids want to be the ones going on adventures and saving the day. They want to be treated with respect and be trusted as capable as the adults around them. And who can blame them? We all want that - it's just that kids hardly get ANY respect or autonomy. That's why kid's media where the kids are allowed to fight, be the chosen one, or go on adventures is so normal and popular: it's what kids want!

And that, again, is how TOH is wish fulfillment. Luz is allowed to go on adventures, do dangerous and stupid things, and she still kicks ass! Sure, Eda might express concern for her or say she doesn't want her doing something dangerous -- but Eda trusts Luz and is never angry when she goes someplace dangerous (think how she acted in "Separate Tides" when she found out Luz was also there in the cave).

So, ultimately, this is all how TOH's writing reflects its status as a children's show. Which is totally fine! And it's brilliantly written!

But as for the more adult-focused parts of its writing -

To state again, adults value different things in media than kids do. We (since I'm an adult) typically do want to see the more nuanced and darker side of things. We want the complexity. We want subversion of genre. We also want things that reflect our experiences. And TOH does this by addressing realistic negative consequences.

Camilla was upset that Luz left her. She cried and got mad, and even asked the questions of "Were you trying to live out some witch fantasy? Did you hate living with me that much?"

This is a genre subversion because we usually don't get this kind of confrontation in a kid's show. Typically, our plucky young protag who chooses to stay in another world faces no negative consequences for this choice (except for Marcy in Amphibia but for different reasons lol). But here Luz is, watching as her mother cries all because of her choices. It's not explicitly adult and tbh isn't mature - but it's still a level of nuance and character complexity we don't typically get in a kid's show/media. Honestly, it's most likely that adults are the ones identifying with Camilla instead of Luz in this situation - even if we don't have kids. Camilla, essentially, feels abandoned and rejected by her daughter. While some kids might be able to sympathize, it's probably mostly adults (and older teens) who have been through similar situations and emotions. And, in that, shows how TOH can also appeal to audiences in a more "adult" way as well.

But, despite that, it's still not a polarizing scene. It may frustrate some kids watching (or even teens/adults who identify strongly with Luz), but ultimately Camilla's words and actions are still understandable. She's not being evil or mean; she's just hurt. And that's clear! Even Luz sees it! But it doesn't harm the narrative appeal of the show being kids' wish fulfillment because Camilla can't do anything to take Luz away from her amazing life in the Boiling Isles. While she did make Luz promise to find a way back and to stay for good, she ultimately has no power to do anything. The status quo of the show is not changed and it is still wish fulfillment -- though, now, it just has some complexity added to the situation, plot, and characters.

In that sense, the scene where Camilla confronts Luz can still appeal to kids and doesn't make the show unenjoyable for them despite it being a more "adult-focused" scene. Sure, it adds complexity, but it's a type that kids can understand.

And that, basically, is just brilliant writing. It's such a perfect balance of adult and kid-focused,m and the writers definitely understand the values that both children and adults have when approaching media. TOH is definitely one of the best-written cartoons of this decade, and I'm so glad it exists.

Anyways, here's my essay. Thanks for reading if you got this far!

#the owl house #toh #owl house #yesterday's lie #the owl house spoilers #the owl house meta #me rambling......on and on........

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bigskydreaming · 2 years

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In the interest of trying to do more soundbite-sized takes in 2022 instead of trying to retroactively make Tolstoy feel inadequate from beyond the grave with each and every post....

The abusive Bruce thing: I will never blame anyone for not wanting to engage with this content or take on him, or feeling its not true to his character. My literal only stance has always been and will always be just.....how do you treat or interact with what’s on the page when you DO choose to interact with it or depict it in some way.

That’s it. That’s my entire thesis. I literally just believe that depictions or scenes in which Bruce is abusive should be addressed or acknowledged as abusive. And it isn’t just about Bruce, but extends to other characters. If Dick’s friends or family are depicted as getting one free punch in on him when mad, which he accepts penitently as something he deserved, I would like that characterized within the narrative or by people outside the narrative as Not Healthy Dynamics, Actually. Same as I think when Dick’s the one written this way, I’m going to be like ‘wow I fucking hate that, not because Dick would never be abusive and thus that’s not what that is, but because what is written there is definitely abusive and I hate that look being chosen for this fictional character who does not make their own choices, just enacts a writer’s wishes.’

If you’re going to write it, if you’re going to praise it or defend it, I think you should be able to do so without pretending its something OTHER than abusive, or like you don’t know where people are coming from when they DO regard it that way. I think too many fandom arguments devolve into this circular merry-go-round of Why Are Any Of Us Even Here past a certain point, where it becomes more about using revisionist history to act like a criticism of a certain depiction isn’t valid because its technically inaccurate, than like, criticism just being used to spotlight WHY a certain depiction or take might be resonating for some readers in ways the writer didn’t intend for it to.

Because none of this has to be a zero sum game. There is absolutely nothing locking any of us INTO defending certain takes or depictions on characters that say stuff about a fave character we don’t actually MEAN to say or actually believe.....when its literally just as easy for us to look at what’s actually being criticized, try and see a depiction through the angle presented by the critic, and just reevaluate if this is actually something we want to stand by or can we give it up and look for a better take. Y’know, instead of just doubling down on “I have literally never been wrong in my life and thus this is not me being wrong, its you being a fucking dumb dumb stupidhead who doesn’t get how obviously incorrect you are about this.”

Just....treat things like what they are on the page, and if you don’t like how that looks or what that says about a character or dynamic....change it. Not by trying to change how someone else engages with what’s already been written or depicted, but just by literally changing how you present or depict that in the future. Fanfic in particular is inherently transformative, so just fucking embrace that, instead of embracing willful avoidance of problems written into these characters by decades of problematic canon writers who don’t NEED us defending their takes as valid or worth upholding.

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chainofclovers · 3 years

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Grace and Frankie 7x1 - 7x4 thoughts

Meh? Like...I love them so much, but...meh?

(I did enjoy this line about brunch.)

I really loved season 6 of Grace and Frankie. I thought it was well-paced, largely very well-acted, generally well-written, and it culminated in a massive moment of character development for the title characters, who, having spent years growing closer and being there for each other when others could not or would not be, finally articulate to each other that they are the primary person in each other’s lives. Platonic gal pal soulmate BFF emotional support witches 4 lyfe!

I know progress isn’t always linear, and in fact is very rarely linear, but after a moment that significant, you’d think the writers on this show would maybe come up with some more interesting things for these characters to do than spin in circles?

@bristler and I watched on Friday night, and just this morning over breakfast had a good conversation about the first four episodes of the new season now that they have settled in our brains a bit. We concluded that the writing (often noticeably clunky, like the dialogue is responsible for more narration than usual) and the tone (aggressively wacky) feel really off, especially compared to the prior season. I think we diagnosed the big issue, which is that Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are by far the most talented actors on this show (if you disagree, fight me in the parking lot) and it feels surprisingly unfortunate that their characters have, to this point in the new season, pretty much figured out their perspectives on each other. No matter how people feel about Grace and Frankie’s sexualities, the whole show has been about them finding each other and getting in deeper and deeper, and it’s less interesting to watch other characters have realizations about that than it is to watch Grace and Frankie having realizations about themselves. If the title characters are now limited to reacting to other people’s actions, and the title characters are played by the best actors on the show, the whole show’s gonna suffer. And is suffering, very much so, at least for these first four episodes. I’m definitely still excited for the final twelve in 2022 (twelve! I cannot believe this season will have sixteen eps!), but I’m pretty disappointed so far.

Stuff I Loved:

The family brunch. These families have been entwined for so long, and the backstory for this particular brunch was so fun (even though I didn’t care for the effects they did to depict Grace and Robert 25 years ago; there was no need for a visual flashback in the scene). I love that Grace hit Frankie with a wiffle ball bat. I love that the two couples realized some of the emotional reasons behind their decisions to lie to each other about Bud’s Bunny and about M’Challah. I love the way Jane Fonda sounds uttering the phrase “Bud’s Bunny” with little to no irony. I love that Grace is able to recognize and articulate just how deep and miserable her anger issues were, albeit with the continued help of her omnipresent martini, and that Frankie told her she’d now make up a holiday in order to spend more time with Grace. I really, really hope Frankie does exactly this at some point in the remaining episodes of the season. I love that Grace is generally a pretty good person now, with aspirations of being a delightful person. I love that she and Frankie don’t have it in them to stay angry with each other, and I love all the evidence that they really, really talk to each other about everything now.

Frankie talking to the man at the office (I don’t remember who he was supposed to be? A toilet manufacturer? I didn’t mention this before, but I actually got pretty high while watching?!? Believe it or not, this was the first time I smoked pot and watched Grace and Frankie at the same time despite having enjoyed both activities on their own for quite some time. I would recommend the combo! And I think I still pretty much got what was happening) about paying for the toilet parts with candy. This whole subplot with the money laundering was absurd and not that interesting, but I loved this particular scene because it was finally evidence of some really thoughtful writing. The concepts aren’t enough! You have to write them into good dialogue! And the whole cash/candy thing was a moment of dialogue that only someone as hilarious as Lily Tomlin could pull off. Which she did, IMO.

In a show about super messy people, Coyote has stayed sober this entire time. He is sober, employed, in love, and preparing to buy a full-sized house with his partner. He hasn’t murdered anyone in his family. Hasn’t even attempted murder once.

In 2017 or whatever, Grace Hanson would have been furious about Frankie using obscure Beatles references like a treasure map when hiding the cash. But here in 2021, she cooperates and even gets in on the fun. The writing is very unsubtle this season, but that did feel like a reasonably subtle moment that shows how good of a partner she is for Frankie. (Platonic, of course! So platonic. Female friendship, amirite?)

Stuff I Did NOT Love and Felt Incredibly Negative About:

Brianna. I can only conclude that June Diane Raphael has decided she’s happy with playing a character whose primary role in life is to be hot and mean. She succeeds at being hot and mean, but I have reached my limit with this character. I realize we’re only a quarter of the way into the season, but I don’t think I can take another arc about her learning to compromise only to reveal to Barry that she never intended to compromise at all. At this point, it’s both abusive and boring. How?! The Grace/Brianna parallels aren’t interesting anymore, because one character has grown and the other is stagnant. I get that Brianna was raised in an emotionally stilted environment by two unhealthy people. But I think it would be very cool if she could learn something from her mother at this point. Grace has put a ton of effort into dealing with her “rabbit-killing, mad-at-the-world anger.” She’s put a ton of effort into figuring out what makes her happy, what she wants her life to look like. She’s even started accepting her age and abilities without shame. And that growth is believable; Grace is still short-tempered and she still slugs back way too many martinis and she struggles to articulate certain things, but she’s grown into a truly lovely human. And while, as a daughter with a mother, I can absolutely attest to the fact that it can be difficult and uncomfortable to learn lessons from one’s mother, Brianna really, really should. Grace spent decades letting anger and shame trap her in a small, miserable life. Brianna—and even Mallory, who just seems like a vapid idiot this season—are traveling that same path, but there’s someone right there who could really help, maybe even more than Frankie helped when the Hanson girls were first growing up.

The arraignment. The scene might’ve been salvageable if it was filmed from Grace’s perspective, and filmed to reflect how surreal and improbable it all was. But speaking of non-linear progress, this scene erased everything Nick Skolka has done to put himself in my good graces (LOL) over the past couple seasons. I mean, I tried, man. I even wrote fic about Nick, Grace, and Frankie making a genuine effort at polyamory. But the arraignment is so emotionally manipulative, such a slap in the face of everything Grace has worked for, and while we’re certainly “supposed” to feel the weight of the moment, I mean, it’s not like we’re supposed to be like, “Oh, cool, we’re in a rom com now! This is adorable!” it still felt bad and unearned and slapdash.

And I want Frankie to process these things with her! Frankie seems so happy to have all this information about Grace and how Grace feels, but I want to see scenes in which we can gain an understanding of how Frankie actually feels. Hearing Frankie talk to other people about how Grace feels is interesting, but it’s like there’s no room in these episodes for us to learn anything new about Frankie herself.

Grace’s transitional wig. Is so. Bad. It is. Such a. Bad wig. Oof. I mean, I like what they’re doing with Grace’s hair from a plot perspective, although (see one bullet up) I would really like to get more of an understanding of what’s happening in Grace’s head, not just on top of her head. And gosh, Frankie would be a really good person to talk to about this in a conversation that lasts longer than 30 seconds. But the wig! She’s in a wig in all four episodes, of course, since Jane Fonda went grey and cut her hair short before they started filming this season. The wig for episodes 1 and 2 is fine; it’s a good approximation of Grace’s typical hair, and of course we know that canonically Grace’s hair isn’t 100% her own hair anyway. But the wig with grey roots looks so weird. The part that’s growing out doesn’t look the same as the hair on the wig from 1 and 2. And the grey roots look like a yarmulke. I cannot wait to get to the point in the season when Grace goes all the way grey.

(One more thing about the hair. I can’t let it go. I paused the show while we were watching to rant, but I’m not done.) I had the great privilege of seeing Jane Fonda in person at a protest in 2019. She is an insanely beautiful human. She was growing her hair out and it was partially dyed blonde and partially grey. It looked really cool. I am not ashamed to say I spent that day learning many things about the climate crisis and about Jane Fonda’s hair. Having seen her in real life with her real hair looking that fucking great, I just have a an extra-large grudge against everyone involved in that horrible wig. The wig is necessary, but it didn’t have to be this bad.

What Do I Care About Now?

I am pretty intrigued by the way Grace threw out her real age in a conversation with Nick and Elena. She has nothing to fear anymore! She’s so chill about aging! What could go wrong? I assume that Nick and Elena maneuvering for Nick to be on house arrest in Grace's house specifically has to do with the fact that Grace is 82. She’s gonna find out that Nick is allowed to be with her because she’s ancient and helpless and the court took pity. Or something like that. She’s going to feel betrayed on top of feeling stifled and overwhelmed by Nick’s presence. I want to see where this goes for sure.

Other than that, and other than the fact that I really do continue to believe this show is moving in a direction in which Grace and Frankie will choose each other, I feel very whatever about this whole thing. I love this show and I will always appreciate this show for giving me some incredible characters to spend years of my life writing about, and for bringing me some pretty amazing friendships. Speaking of those friendships, yesterday @ellydash and @telanu and I were talking about some of the incredible TV we’ve watched recently, like Ted Lasso and Hacks and Fleabag and Killing Eve, and how great it feels to watch beautifully written TV crafted by writers who are profoundly—organically yet intentionally—attuned to even the most minor character’s rhythm. The disappointment of these first few episodes of the new G&F season feels like a mild disappointment rather than a sharp heartbreak, and that has a lot to do with being deeply invested in other shows that could also go in all kinds of different directions but with writing I fundamentally trust.

Also Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are my forever faves and my appreciation for their performances and general awesomeness onscreen and in life is undiminished. So that’s pretty cool.

#grace and frankie #meta by me #grace and frankie s7 spoilers #a lesbian watches ted lasso #grace hanson is a gay disaster #except #she's not even a disaster anymore #she's totally fine and men keep bothering her!#frankie bergstein is a bisexual mess

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